ReportWire

Tag: Cognition and Learning

  • Some mosquitoes like it hot

    Some mosquitoes like it hot

    Newswise — Certain populations of mosquitoes are more heat tolerant and better equipped to survive heat waves than others, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

    This is bad news in a world where vector-borne diseases are an increasingly global health concern. Most models that scientists use to estimate vector-borne disease risk currently assume that mosquito heat tolerances do not vary. As a result, these models may underestimate mosquitoes’ ability to spread diseases in a warming world.

    Researchers led by Katie M. Westby, a senior scientist at Tyson Research Center, Washington University’s environmental field station, conducted a new study that measured the critical thermal maximum (CTmax), an organism’s upper thermal tolerance limit, of eight populations of the globally invasive tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus. The tiger mosquito is a known vector for many viruses including West Nile, chikungunya and dengue.

    “We found significant differences across populations for both adults and larvae, and these differences were more pronounced for adults,” Westby said. The new study is published Jan. 8 in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

    Westby’s team sampled mosquitoes from eight different populations spanning four climate zones across the eastern United States, including mosquitoes from locations in New Orleans; St. Augustine, Fla.; Huntsville, Ala.; Stillwater, Okla.; St. Louis; Urbana, Ill.; College Park, Md.; and Allegheny County, Pa.

    The scientists collected eggs in the wild and raised larvae from the different geographic locations to adult stages in the lab, tending the mosquito populations separately as they continued to breed and grow. The scientists then used adults and larvae from subsequent generations of these captive-raised mosquitoes in trials to determine CTmax values, ramping up air and water temperatures at a rate of 1 degree Celsius per minute using established research protocols.

    The team then tested the relationship between climatic variables measured near each population source and the CTmax of adults and larvae. The scientists found significant differences among the mosquito populations.

    The differences did not appear to follow a simple latitudinal or temperature-dependent pattern, but there were some important trends. Mosquito populations from locations with higher precipitation had higher CTmax values. Overall, the results reveal that mean and maximum seasonal temperatures, relative humidity and annual precipitation may all be important climatic factors in determining CTmax.

    “Larvae had significantly higher thermal limits than adults, and this likely results from different selection pressures for terrestrial adults and aquatic larvae,” said Benjamin Orlinick, first author of the paper and a former undergraduate research fellow at Tyson Research Center. “It appears that adult Ae. albopictus are experiencing temperatures closer to their CTmax than larvae, possibly explaining why there are more differences among adult populations.”

    “The overall trend is for increased heat tolerance with increasing precipitation,” Westby said. “It could be that wetter climates allow mosquitoes to endure hotter temperatures due to decreases in desiccation, as humidity and temperature are known to interact and influence mosquito survival.”

    Little is known about how different vector populations, like those of this kind of mosquito, are adapted to their local climate, nor the potential for vectors to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. This study is one of the few to consider the upper limits of survivability in high temperatures — akin to heat waves — as opposed to the limits imposed by cold winters.

    “Standing genetic variation in heat tolerance is necessary for organisms to adapt to higher temperatures,” Westby said. “That’s why it was important for us to experimentally determine if this mosquito exhibits variation before we can begin to test how, or if, it will adapt to a warmer world.”

    Future research in the lab aims to determine the upper limits that mosquitoes will seek out hosts for blood meals in the field, where they spend the hottest parts of the day when temperatures get above those thresholds, and if they are already adapting to higher temperatures. “Determining this is key to understanding how climate change will impact disease transmission in the real world,” Westby said. “Mosquitoes in the wild experience fluctuating daily temperatures and humidity that we cannot fully replicate in the lab.”

    Washington University in St. Louis

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  • Blending the school curriculum to create eco warriors

    Blending the school curriculum to create eco warriors

    Newswise — They’re among our youngest citizens, but when children learn about sustainability in their own backyard, they’re more likely to protect the environment, say University of South Australia researchers.

    In a citizen science project, UniSA researchers found that when students investigate local sustainability issues, they engage deeply with learning and develop meaningful connections to the environment.

    It’s a vital skill for the next generation, particularly as the world deals with the negative impacts of climate change, waste, and scarcity of resources.

    Now, a new research project, ‘Being Heard: Remixing Critical Literacy for Active Citizenship’, is introducing Year 5 and 6 students to a variety of climate issues through the Climate Ready Schools initiative.

    Conducted at Burton Primary School, the transdisciplinary nature of the project enabled teachers to embed core competencies from the school curriculum, ensuring students achieved required academic outcomes while concurrently developing skills as an environmentally and socially responsible citizen.

    UniSA researchers and Burton Primary School teachers, Bernadette Haggerty and Michelle Miller, say connecting students with local issues is key to building students’ motivation and learning.

    “By working on projects that are close to the students – both physically and emotionally – they’re better able to grasp what the issues are and develop solutions,” Haggerty says.

    “The breadth of projects was amazing – we had students working on beeswax lunch wraps to replace single use plastic, no waste cooking classes to stop food landfill, climate change mitigation by expanding local tree canopy, and even a machine to help plants and animals survive in the desert.

    “Learning about climate change is important for everyone. When we explore sustainability issues in a school setting, we engage the young brain to investigate and find solutions to bigger problems.

    “Students are scaffolded to understand the origins of some of our major disasters like ocean pollution, food waste, plastic pollution. The realisation that pollution starts in their own community, inspires them to take action at the grass roots – at home and the school community.”

    The Burton Primary School project is part of a literacy initiative from UniSA’s Associate Professor Joel Windle, Dr Melanie Baak and Dr David Caldwell, with the Primary Education Teaching Association Australia.

    “Our project encourages student voice and active citizenship. But by tapping into literacy skills from the English curriculum, students concurrently learn multiple skills,” Miller says.

    “It’s all part of creating a transdisciplinary unit of work that enables students to develop knowledge from multiple perspectives. For example, using maths to construct maps, biology to understand the relationship between plants and animals, technology to design solutions, art for sketching, and English for reporting.

    “In this project, students communicated their ideas using literacy skills such as slam poetry, podcasts and YouTube clips. By experimenting with news media, poetry, and film, they learnt different language techniques, skills, and communication approaches.

    “At the same time, they learn how to communicate powerful messages to reduce their ecological footprint, and how to present positive messages to the community.

    “Students have learnt to notice nature, investigate the science, and engineer solutions. They know they can make changes to the world through positive action.”

     

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    University of South Australia

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  • Brain imaging pinpoints mental illness biomarkers.

    Brain imaging pinpoints mental illness biomarkers.

    Newswise — Philadelphia, November 9, 2023 – Research and treatment of psychiatric disorders are stymied by a lack of biomarkers – objective biological or physiological markers that can help diagnose, track, predict, and treat diseases. In a new study, researchers use a very large dataset to identify predictive brain imaging-based biomarkers of mental illness in adolescents. The work appears in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier.

    Traditionally, psychiatric disorders such as depression have been diagnosed based on symptoms according to subjective assessments. The identification of biomarkers to aid in diagnosis and treatment selection would greatly advance treatments.

    In the current study, the investigators used brain imaging data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study of nearly 12,000 children aged 9 to 10 at the beginning of the study. Modern neuroimaging techniques, including resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analysis, allow researchers to investigate the organization of brain circuits through their interaction with one another over time.

    Yihong Yang, PhD, senior author of the study, at the Neuroimaging Research Branch, National Institute on Drug Abuse, said, “Using a functional MRI dataset, we identified a brain connectivity variate that is positively correlated with cognitive functions and negatively correlated with psychopathological measures.”

    Cognition has long been studied in the context of mental disorders, and recent research has pointed to shared neurobiology between the two, as supported in this new study.

    This brain-based variate predicted how many psychiatric disorders were identified in participants at the time of the scan and over the following two years. It also predicted the transition of diagnosis across disorders over the two-year follow-up period.”

    Dr. Yang added, “These findings provide evidence for a transdiagnostic brain-based measure that underlies individual differences in developing psychiatric disorders in early adolescence.”

    John Krystal, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, said of the work, “Mental illness in adolescence has emerged as a cardinal public health challenge in the post-COVID era. More than ever before, we would benefit from better ways to identify adolescents at risk. This study uses data from the landmark ABCD Study to illustrate how neuroimaging data could illuminate risk for mental illness across the spectrum of diagnoses.”

    Dr. Yang added, “Finding biomarkers of mental illnesses, rather than relying on symptoms, may provide a more precise means of diagnosis, and thereby aligning psychiatric diagnosis with other medical diagnoses.”

    Elsevier

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  • High engagement, high return: the secret to student success

    High engagement, high return: the secret to student success

    Newswise — High engagement, high return. That’s the advice from education experts at the University of South Australia for teachers looking to improve student outcomes.

    In a new study conducted in partnership with Flinders University and Melbourne Graduate School of Education, researchers found that less than a third of teachers are engaging students in complex learning, limiting student opportunities for building critical thinking and problem solving.

    Filming and assessing* the content of classrooms across South Australia and Victoria, researchers found that nearly 70% of student tasks involved superficial learning – simple question and answers, taking notes, or listening to teachers – rather than activities that engage students on a deeper level.

    UniSA researcher, Dr Helen Stephenson, says teachers need more support to plan interactive and constructive lessons that promote deep learning.

    “When we look at learning, the greater the engagement, the deeper the learning. But too often students are doing low-engagement, passive work,” Dr Stephenson says.

    “In our study, around 70% of classroom content was considered ‘passive’ (where students had little observable input) or ‘active’ where they may have been doing something simple, like answering questions on a fact sheet.

    “While there is certainly a place for such tasks in a classroom, student learning is much improved when students spent more time engaging in complex activities that promote deep and conceptual learning.

    “Deep learning requires the organisation of knowledge into conceptual structures, which we know improves the retention of information and therefore improves learning outcomes. Deep learning also supports knowledge that’s needed for innovations.

    “Small changes to teachers’ existing lesson plans and teaching can significantly increase student engagement and consequently their overall results.

    “At a base level, teachers need to consider how they can adjust their existing classroom activities so that more tasks are on the deeper end of the learning scale.

    “Take for example, watching a video. Students can silently watch a video (which is ‘passive’); watch a video and take notes using the presenter’s words (which is considered ‘active’); write questions that arise for them while watching the video (which is ‘constructive’); or watch a video and discuss it with another student to generate different ideas (which is ‘interactive’).

    “Interactive engagement in classrooms is where students are involved in activities with other students that stimulate them to develop deeper understanding. They’re making judgements, proposing and critiquing arguments and opinions, and working out solutions to problems. These activities can also help them to develop critical thinking and reasoning skills…all of which are predictors of improved learning.”

    Interestingly, one of the main findings of the research was that many teachers seemed not to know or fully appreciate the importance of how their lesson tasks could stimulate different modes of student engagement.

    “Even changing class activities from ‘active’ to ‘constructive’ can go a long way towards improving student learning,” Dr Stephenson says.

    “Teachers should be supported to undertake professional development to shift their thinking towards practices that support deeper learning and better outcomes for students.”

    Notes to editors:

    * Using ­­the ‘ICAP’ framework to qualify teaching activities, learning content was assigned to one four categories: 1) passive (listening to a lecture); 2) active (underlining text or writing a summary); 3) constructive (raising questions or creating concept maps that expand knowledge); or 4) interactive (constructive learning that takes place between two or more learners to generate new ideas or perspectives). Each level of the framework delivers deeper learning.

     

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    University of South Australia

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  • Uncovering insights into the early stages of schizophrenia.

    Uncovering insights into the early stages of schizophrenia.

    Newswise — Philadelphia, October 24, 2023 – Schizophrenia is a severe neuropsychiatric disease that remains poorly understood and treated. Schizophrenia onset is typically in adolescence or early adulthood, but its underlying causes are thought to involve neurodevelopmental abnormalities. Because human prenatal and postnatal brain tissue is exceedingly difficult to procure and therefore study, researchers have had limited opportunities to identify early disease mechanisms, especially during the critical prenatal period. Now, a pair of studies that appear in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, use new technology to study schizophrenia in models of early human brain development.

    The first study used a unique approach involving three-dimensional brain organoids, which are known to recapitulate fetal brain development. The researchers, led by first author Ibrahim A. Akkouh, PhD, and senior author Srdjan Djurovic, PhD, both at Oslo University Hospital, collected skin cells from 14 patients with schizophrenia and 14 healthy controls and generated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which they then manipulated to develop into brain-like cortical spheroids.

    The organoids grown from patients and controls differed in their expression of thousands of genes – in line with the finding that the genetic influences on schizophrenia are many and very small. However, among the genes, those associated with neuronal axons stood out as a group.

    Dr. Akkouh explained, “We identified persistent axonal dysregulation as an early contribution to disease risk.”

    Importantly, the researchers assessed organoid maturation at several time points, which enabled them to establish the persistent nature of the disturbances throughout development.

    Dr. Akkouh added, “Our findings provide novel and hitherto inaccessible insights into the molecular basis of schizophrenia during early brain development.”

    In the second study, researchers led by Roy H. Perlis, PhD, at Harvard Medical School, focused on a particular genetic risk locus. The schizophrenia risk locus 15q11.2, a particular chromosomal region containing four genes, has a penetrance of over 10%, translating to a doubling of risk for schizophrenia among people carrying an unusual copy number of this genetic region. One gene in the locus, CYFIP1, has been associated with synaptic function in neurons and confers increased risk for neurodevelopmental disorders including schizophrenia and autism.

    CYFIP1 is highly expressed in microglia, the brain’s own immune cells, but its function there is unknown. Microglia are known to carry out synaptic pruning, in which they “eat” excess synaptic structures, a process critical to healthy brain development.

    Dr. Perlis and colleagues collected blood cells from healthy volunteers and isolated iPSCs, which they then manipulated to differentiate into microglia-like cells. The researchers then used CRISPR technology to remove functional CYFIP1 from the cells.

    Dr. Perlis said of the work, “Our findings suggest that changes in the behavior and function of microglia due to aberrant CYFIP1 function, such as through coding or copy number variants, could affect microglial processes such as synaptic pruning, homeostatic surveillance, and neuronal maintenance, which are critical for proper brain development and function. This could contribute to CYFIP1-related neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders resulting in part from microglia dysfunction. Among the specific disorders linked to variation in CYFIP1 are both autism and schizophrenia.”

    John Krystal, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, commented, “The biology of schizophrenia is very complex and yet two themes represented by these two studies seem to be very important: the increased rate of elimination of glutamatergic synapses during development, and disturbances in the signaling properties of these glutamate synapses. These two disturbances could perturb circuit function in ways that are critical to development of symptoms and cognitive impairments associated with schizophrenia.”

    Dr. Perlis added, “More broadly, our findings highlight the importance of looking beyond neurons to understand risk genes. While finding risk loci may be the first step in understanding the role of genes in brain diseases, it’s only a first step; figuring out the relevant cell type, and what those genes are doing, is absolutely critical in moving from association to – we hope – actual treatments.”

    Elsevier

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  • Brain Immune Cell to Neuron Conversion Aids Post-Stroke Mouse Recovery.

    Brain Immune Cell to Neuron Conversion Aids Post-Stroke Mouse Recovery.

    Newswise — Fukuoka, Japan – Researchers at Kyushu University have discovered that turning brain immune cells into neurons successfully restores brain function after stroke-like injury in mice. These findings, published on October 10 in PNAS, suggest that replenishing neurons from immune cells could be a promising avenue for treating stroke in humans.

    Stroke, and other cerebrovascular diseases, occur when blood flow to the brain is affected, causing damage to neurons. Recovery is often poor, with patients suffering from severe physical disabilities and cognitive problems. Worldwide, it’s one of the most common causes for needing long-term care.

    “When we get a cut or break a bone, our skin and bone cells can replicate to heal our body. But the neurons in our brain cannot easily regenerate, so the damage is often permanent,” says Professor Kinichi Nakashima, from Kyushu University’s Graduate School of Medical Sciences. “We therefore need to find new ways to replace lost neurons.”

    One possible strategy is to convert other cells in the brain into neurons. Here, the researchers focused on microglia, the main immune cells in the central nervous system. Microglia are tasked with removing damaged or dead cells in the brain, so after a stroke, they move towards the site of injury and replicate quickly.

    “Microglia are abundant and exactly in the place we need them, so they are an ideal target for conversion,” says first author, Dr. Takashi Irie from Kyushu University Hospital.

    In prior research, the team demonstrated that they could induce microglia to develop into neurons in the brains of healthy mice. Now, Dr. Irie and Professor Nakashima, along with Lecturer Taito Matsuda and Professor Noriko Isobe from Kyushu University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, showed that this strategy of replacing neurons also works in injured brains and contributes to brain recovery.

    To conduct the study, the researchers caused a stroke-like injury in mice by temporarily blocking the right middle cerebral artery – a major blood vessel in the brain that is commonly associated with stroke in humans. A week later, the researchers examined the mice and found that they had difficulties in motor function and had a marked loss of neurons in a brain region known as the striatum. This part of the brain is involved in decision making, action planning and motor coordination.

    The researchers then used a lentivirus to insert DNA into microglial cells at the site of the injury. The DNA held instructions for producing NeuroD1, a protein that induces neuronal conversion. Over the subsequent weeks, the infected cells began developing into neurons and the areas of the brain with neuron loss decreased. By eight weeks, the new induced neurons had successfully integrated into the brain’s circuits.

    At only three weeks post-infection, the mice showed improved motor function in behavioral tests. These improvements were lost when the researchers removed the new induced neurons, providing strong evidence that the newly converted neurons directly contributed to recovery.

    “These results are very promising. The next step is to test whether NeuroD1 is also effective at converting human microglia into neurons and confirm that our method of inserting genes into the microglial cells is safe,” says Professor Nakashima.

    Furthermore, the treatment was conducted in mice in the acute phase after stroke, when microglia were migrating to and replicating at the site of injury. Therefore, the researchers also plan to see if recovery is also possible in mice at a later, chronic phase.

    Kyushu University

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  • Johns Hopkins School of Nursing Professor Bonnielin Swenor Named Inaugural Endowed Professor of Disability Health and Justice

    Johns Hopkins School of Nursing Professor Bonnielin Swenor Named Inaugural Endowed Professor of Disability Health and Justice

    Newswise — Johns Hopkins School of Nursing Professor Bonnielin Swenor, PhD, MPH, BS, also founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center, has been named the inaugural Endowed Professor of Disability Health and Justice.

    “Dr. Bonnielin Swenor is an incredible researcher, scientist, and educator with an unrelenting drive to ensure that people with disabilities are able to thrive,” says JHSON Dean Sarah Szanton, PhD, RN, FAAN. “Her installation as an endowed chair formally acknowledges the impact her career has made, and our trust in all there is to come.”

    “Dr. Swenor and the Center are committed to training the next generation of disability equity researchers, including researchers with disabilities,” says Jermaine Monk PhD, MSW, MS Mgmt, MA Th, MA, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. “That is so important to build into nursing education as we prepare the next generation of nurses.”

    The chair was funded by the estates of Ms. Charlotte B. Lockner, School of Nursing alumna from the Class of 1955; Mr. Ralph S. O’Connor, University Trustee and Krieger School of Arts and Sciences alumnae from the class of 1951; and Antoinette Delruelle and Joshua L. Steiner, along with The Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund Authority.

    Today more than 27 percent of American adults have a disability, and yet people with disabilities still face many barriers to health, equity, and inclusion.

    With that in mind, the Endowed Professorship of Disability Health and Justice was established to push scientific discovery and develop innovative, evidence-based strategies to foster inclusion of people with disabilities into the workforce.

    Dr. Swenor founded and directs the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center, which is home to experts across disciples who test and collaborate on data-driven approaches to reduce disability inequity. It officially moved to the School of Nursing in 2022 when Dr. Swenor joined the faculty. The professorship will fund Dr. Swenor and the Center to develop novel tools that inform policy and integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies into new disability health tools.

    “I am honored to be the inaugural Endowed Professor of Disability Health and Justice,” says Dr. Swenor. “We aim to shift the paradigm from ‘living with a disability’ to ‘thriving with a disability’ and maximize the health, equity, and participation of people with disabilities.”

    Through this endowed chair, Dr. Swenor and the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center will have significant impact on our ability to build up activism and visibility in the disability community.

    ***

    Located in Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is a globally-recognized leader in nursing education, research, and practice. In U.S. News & World Report rankings, the school is No. 1 nationally for its DNP program and No. 2 for its master’s. In addition, JHSON is ranked as the No. 3 nursing school in the world by QS World University. The school is a five-time recipient of the INSIGHT Into Diversity Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award and a four-time Best School for Men in Nursing award recipient. For more information, visit www.nursing.jhu.edu.

    Johns Hopkins School of Nursing

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  • Argonne’s STEM mapping project highlights opportunities on Chicago’s south side

    Argonne’s STEM mapping project highlights opportunities on Chicago’s south side

    Newswise — To become the diverse and talented workforce of today and tomorrow, learners of all ages and from every community need access to educational and training resources in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). There are many schools and organizations working to inspire, motivate and train learners of all ages in historically underserved neighborhoods of Chicago. To better understand these current resources and to grow and sustain a robust STEM ecosystem, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has undertaken a STEM mapping project, called the STEM Opportunity Landscape Project, in nine south side Chicago neighborhoods.

    STEM asset mapping consists of an information gathering process that involves identifying all STEM programming, community learning spaces, workforce development programs and STEM employment opportunities in a neighborhood. The collected data is then depicted in the form of maps and other visualizations, creating a comprehensive and interactive STEM opportunity landscape.

    STEM mapping provides communities a holistic view of their community assets and collective strengths, enabling them to leverage these resources effectively. The maps and visualizations reflect STEM assets and opportunities that serve students from kindergarten to their careers, and they have just been made fully accessible to the public.

    “Argonne’s STEM Opportunity Landscape Project provides a free website that elevates the STEM learning, workforce and employment opportunities within these nine communities for learners of all ages. This tool provides valuable insight into crafting deliberate STEM learning pathways K-Career, addressing and closing existing gaps, fostering strategic partnerships, and optimizing available resources to enrich STEM opportunities,” said Meridith Bruozas, the institutional partnership director at Argonne.

    As part of the Argonne in Chicago initiative that includes an office space in Hyde Park, the STEM mapping project focuses on the following nine communities: Douglas, Grand Boulevard, Greater Grand Crossing, Hyde Park, Kenwood, Oakland, South Shore, Washington Park and Woodlawn.  The mapping project collected survey data from learning spaces, including schools, within these communities to identify potential linkages between them. “There are places that already exist in these communities, like makerspaces, computer labs and instructional kitchens, that a lot of people are generally not aware of,” said Argonne STEM Education Partnerships and Outreach Manager Jessica Burgess.

    According to Burgess, the STEM inventory being performed as part of the mapping project helps fulfill a need for a unified approach. “There’s been a call for a STEM ecosystem in which we can bring people together,” she said. “Through the Argonne in Chicago office, the laboratory has the ability to be a convener, building bridges within and between communities to maximize the connections that learners can make as they embark on their educational and career pathways.”

    Various organizations have historically offered valuable programming in these communities. However, these programs do not always connect into a larger STEM ecosystem. “The STEM mapping project offers us a really good view of the current state of the landscape, so that the schools, organizations and employers that work in these communities can identify strengths and weaknesses and ultimately drive connected learner pathways that provide skill development for learners that will eventually lead to STEM careers,” Burgess said.

    In addition to STEM education in schools, Burgess also described ways in which the STEM mapping initiative would be helpful for workforce development. “By including employers, particularly those that demand math- or engineering-related skills, we can help develop various routes by which members of these communities can achieve new STEM-related possibilities,” she said.

    “We are excited to introduce this comprehensive STEM resource to the participating communities,” Bruozas said. “With the tool launched, we are excited about the next phase of the project — diving into the data with the community — this will include hosting data-driven community conversations and co-creating a plan for what STEM learning looks like on the south side.

    By highlighting existing resources, facilitating collaboration, and engaging communities in decision-making, the STEM mapping initiative seeks to create a more equitable and inclusive STEM ecosystem. The project’s impact extends beyond the immediate communities on Chicago’s south side, serving as a model for other regions striving to provide equal access to STEM opportunities.

    Argonne National Laboratory

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  • Tufts Welcomes the Undergraduate Class of 2027

    Tufts Welcomes the Undergraduate Class of 2027

    BYLINE: By Laura Ferguson, Tufts Now

    Newswise — President Sunil Kumar welcomed members of the Class of 2027 to Tufts on August 30, encouraging them to take full advantage of the “immense freedom” that comes with being a college student—starting with being open to new ideas and experiences.

    “Every now and then, when someone asks you why you are doing something, your answer should be ‘Why not?’ . . . As you’ll come to learn, one of the great advantages of being a college student is the immense freedom you are afforded,” he said. “I urge you to take full advantage of this freedom. It will never be easier to explore a new discipline or to discover new ways of viewing the world than in the next four years.”

    Kumar, who took over the presidency of Tufts on July 1, shared his words of advice at the university’s matriculation ceremony. While traditionally held on the Academic Quad, the event this year was moved online due to forecasts for heavy rain.

    Kumar’s remarks were drawn from his own journey. When he landed in the United States to pursue a PhD in electrical engineering, his new hometown of Urbana, Illinois, was a far cry from the large city of Bangalore in India, where he had earned his master’s degree. “To say that I felt out of place when I arrived would be an understatement,” he said.

    “My solution to this discomfort? I grew a ponytail, bought a 20-year-old Cadillac, and developed a taste for truck stop food. Looking back, these were arguably not the wisest decisions I’ve ever made, but the point is that I immersed myself in discomfort rather than shying away from it.”

    That experience shaped his belief that “personal growth rarely comes from within your comfort zone. I firmly believe in the value of so-called mistakes and failures. They help you discover deep truths about yourself and your calling,” he told the incoming class and transfers.

    “So, when you are debating whether to take that course on a topic you’ve always been curious about, or whether to fulfil your dream of studying abroad and immersing yourself in a new language and culture, ask yourself how that decision will contribute to your overall learning and growth. And, if you’re still unsure, just ask yourself ‘Why not?’,” he said.

    “Today marks the beginning of an exciting journey, and it is a privilege for me to be part of it,” Kumar noted. “I look forward to getting to know each of you during your time here, and I can’t wait to see what you will accomplish.”

    Diverse in All Kinds of Ways

    Kumar’s remarks followed similar warm greetings from Caroline Genco, provost and senior vice president, and JT Duck, dean of admissions and enrollment management for the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering.

    “We know that this class is going to make our community’s light on the Hill shine brighter,” said Duck, who then shared some of the distinctions of the 1,742 first-year students and 73 transfer students, six of whom are enrolling as members of the Resumed Education for Adult Learners program.

    He noted that first-year students represent the most ethnically and racially diverse class ever to enroll at Tufts. They come from more than 1,100 high schools—the largest number of high schools ever represented in a single, incoming class—and include more than 300 that have not sent a student to Tufts in the past five years, if ever. 

    “This class represents our continuing commitment to expand access to a Tufts education and to expand the number of communities from which our students enroll,” he said.

    Additionally, “nearly 200 of you will be among the first generation in your families to graduate from college. I, too, was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I see you—you belong here.”

    As reported in January, the Class of 2027 grew out of the university’s most diverse applicant pool in its history. The pool included the largest number of international students, first-generation students, and students of color, as well as the largest number of transfer applicants.

    It was also Tufts’ largest applicant pool to the School of Engineering and to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts (SMFA), and the second largest-ever applicant pool to the School of Arts and Sciences. 

    Students were selected through an “individualized and holistic review of their application by members of the Tufts admissions committee, a process that sought to understand the unique accomplishments, potential, and aspirations of each student,” said Duck.

    Overall, “kindness, empathy, compassion, and a collaborative spirit defined much of what we saw in this exceptional applicant pool,” he said.

    The Class of 2027 is the third class to enroll under Tufts’ SAT/ACT test-optional policy. The policy has been extended to the next three application cycles—for students entering in fall 2024, 2025, and 2026. Similar to each of the past three years, about 45 percent of the students enrolling at Tufts this fall applied without submitting ACT or SAT results.

    The Class of 2027 by the Numbers

    Identification and Diversity

    • Women make up 55% of the overall class and men account for 41%.
    • Students who identify as genderqueer, non-binary, or preferred not to specify a gender identity account for 4%.
    • 50% of incoming U.S. undergraduates identify as students of color.
    • 7% identify as Black or African American.
    • 11% identify as Latinx/Hispanic.
    • 20% identify as Asian American.
    • 11% identify as multiracial. 
    • 47% identify as white.
    • 3% did not specify a race or ethnicity at the time of application.
    • 40 first-year students identify with a Native or Indigenous heritage, nearly all as part of a multiracial identity. This includes 26 students who identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, including four students who are enrolled citizens of their tribe, representing three tribal nations: Cherokee, Muscogee, and Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, and 14 students who identify as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

    Academic Pathways

    • 282 first-year students indicate interest in the School of Engineering; 47% of those are women.
    • 1,460 first-year students indicate interest in School of Arts and Sciences, of which 5% intend to pursue the B.F.A. at the SMFA and 6% intend to pursue the combined B.F.A. + B.A./B.S. degree.
    • 12 first-year students are enrolling in the Tufts Civic Semester, a Tisch College of Civic Life program that combines academic coursework and experiential learning with a focus on community engagement and social and environmental justice. This year the program is based in Urubamba, Peru.
    • 32 incoming students took a gap year last year.

    Global Reach

    • In total, enrolled students have citizenships from 65 countries.
    • The most represented citizenships among international students are China, South Korea, India, Turkey, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Spain.
    • At least 75 different languages are spoken in the homes of the students enrolling in the Class of 2027. The most common languages other than English are Spanish, Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi, German, Arabic, Cantonese, Thai, Turkish. Other languages spoken at home by incoming students include Hausa, from West Africa Zo; from Burma and northeastern India; and Dholuo, from Kenya and Tanzania.
    • Students hail from­­ 49 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
    • Students designated as foreign nationals account for 12%. 
    • The states that sent the most students are Massachusetts, New York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, Texas, and Washington.
    • One-third of the class enrolling from the U.S. is enrolling from the South, Southwest, and West.
    • 48 students come from the university’s host communities of Medford, Somerville, Boston, and Grafton. Several students are affiliated with local nonprofits supporting access to college, including Bottom Line; Steppingstone Foundation; Breakthrough Greater Boston; and SquashBusters.

    Access to College

    • The class received more than $33 million in need-based grants from Tufts. The average grant this year was more than $53,500; 12 percent of the class are Pell Grant recipients.
    • 11% are the first generation in their families to pursue a bachelor’s degree.
    • 43 students participated in the virtual Voices of Tufts Experience hosted by undergraduate admissions last fall, a program for students interested in learning more about diversity and community at Tufts.
    • 53% attended public or public charter high schools.  
    • Transfer students represent more than 50 different colleges and universities across the country and around the world, including area community colleges such as Bunker Hill Community College, North Shore Community College, and Northern Essex Community College.
    • 125 students worked with local and national community-based organizations that support their path to college, including A Better Chance (ABC), EMERGE, Minds Matter, TEAK Fellowship, Thrive Scholars, and QuestBridge. Twenty students enrolled through the QuestBridge National College Match program.

    https://now.tufts.edu/2023/08/30/welcoming-undergraduate-class-2027

    Tufts University

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  • Impact of Psychedelic Drugs on Rat Brain Functions Explored

    Impact of Psychedelic Drugs on Rat Brain Functions Explored

    Newswise — Researchers at Lund University have developed a technique for simultaneously measuring electrical signals from 128 areas of the brain in awake rats. They have then used the information to measure what happens to the neurons when the rats are given psychedelic drugs. The results show an unexpected and simultaneous synchronisation among neurons in several regions of the brain.

    The idea that electrical oscillations in the brain could be used to teach us more about our experiences was conceived several years ago. Pär Halje and the research team was studying rats with Parkinson’s disease that had problems with involuntary movements. The researchers discovered a tone – an oscillation or wave in the electrical fields – of 80 hertz in the brains of the rats with Parkinson’s disease. It turned out that the wave was closely connected to the involuntary movements. 

    “A Polish researcher had observed similar waves after giving rats the anaesthetic ketamine. The ketamine was given at a low dose so that the rats were conscious, and the equivalent dose in a human causes psychedelic experiences. The waves they saw were in more cognitive regions of the brain than in the rats with Parkinson’s, and the frequency was higher, but that still made us consider whether there were links between the two phenomena. Perhaps excessive brain waves in the motor regions of the brain cause motor symptoms, while excessive waves in cognitive regions give cognitive symptoms,” says Pär Halje, researcher in neurophysiology at Lund University.

    The research team that Pär Halje belongs to has developed a method that uses electrodes to simultaneously measure oscillations from 128 separate areas of the brain in awake rats. The electrical waves are caused by the cumulative activity in thousands of neurons, but the researchers also succeeded in isolating signals from individual neurons.

    “For several of these areas, it is the first time anyone has successfully shown how individual neurons are affected by LSD in awake animals. When we gave the rats the psychedelic substances LSD and ketamine, the waves were clearly registered.”

    Collective wave patterns 

    Despite ketamine and LSD affecting different receptors in the brain – they have completely different ways into the nervous system – they resulted in the same wave patterns even if the signals from individual cells differed. When the rats were given LSD, researchers saw that their neurons were inhibited – they signalled less – in all parts of the brain. Ketamine seemed to have a similar effect on the large neurons – pyramidal cells – which saw their expression inhibited, while interneurons, which are smaller neurons that are only collected locally in tissue, increased their signalling. 

    Pär Halje interprets the results seen in the study, which is published in Communication Biology, to mean that the wave phenomenon is connected to the psychedelic experience. 

    “Activity in the individual neurons caused by ketamine and LSD looks quite different, and as such cannot be directly linked to the psychedelic experience. Instead, it seems to be this distinctive wave phenomenon – how the neurons behave collectively – that is most strongly linked to the psychedelic experience.”

    Research model for psychoses

    Even if what is happening in individual cells is interesting, Pär Halje argues that the whole is bigger and more exciting than the individual parts.

    “The oscillations behave in a strange way. One might think that a strong wave starts somewhere, which then spreads to other parts of the brain. But instead, we see that the neurons’ activity synchronises itself in a special way – the waves in the brain go up and down essentially simultaneously in all parts of the brain where we are able to take measurements. This suggests that there are other ways in which the waves are communicated than through chemical synapses, which are relatively slow.” 

    Pär Halje emphasises that it is difficult to know whether the waves cause hallucinations or are merely an indication of them. But, he argues, it opens up the possibility that this could be used as a research model for psychoses, where no good models exist today.

    “Given how drastically a psychosis manifests itself, there ought to be a common pattern that we can measure. So far, we have not had that, but we now see a very specific oscillation pattern in rats that we are able to measure.”

    Can the waves reveal more about consciousness?

    There is also a dream – that the model will help us in the hunt for the mechanisms behind consciousness and that the measurements may be a way to study how consciousness is shaped. 

    “In light of the development of AI, it is becoming increasingly important to clarify what we mean by intelligence and what we mean by consciousness. Can self-awareness occur spontaneously, or is it something that needs to be built in? We do not know this today, because we do not know what the required ingredients for consciousness in our brains are. This is where it is exciting, the synchronised pattern we see, and whether this can help us to track down the neural foundations of consciousness,” says Pär Halje.

    Lund University

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  • Free energy principle predicts self-organized learning in neurons

    Free energy principle predicts self-organized learning in neurons

    Newswise — An international collaboration between researchers at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) in Japan, the University of Tokyo, and University College London has demonstrated that self-organization of neurons as they “learn” follows a mathematical theory called the free energy principle. The principle accurately predicted how real neural networks spontaneously reorganize to distinguish incoming information, as well as how altering neural excitability can disrupt the process. The findings thus have implications for building animal-like artificial intelligences and for understanding cases of impaired learning. The study was published August 7 in Nature Communications.

    When we learn to tell the difference between voices, faces, or smells, networks of neurons in our brains automatically organize themselves so that they can distinguish between the different sources of incoming information. This process involves changing the strength of connections between neurons, and is the basis of all learning in the brain. Takuya Isomura from RIKEN CBS and his international colleagues recently predicted that this type of network self-organization follows the mathematical rules that define the free energy principle. In the new study, they put this hypothesis to the test in neurons taken from the brains of rat embryos and grown in a culture dish on top of a grid of tiny electrodes.

    Once you can distinguish two sensations, like voices, you will find that some of your neurons respond to one of the voices, while other neurons respond to the other voice. This is the result of neural network reorganization, which we call learning. In their culture experiment, the researchers mimicked this process by using the grid of electrodes beneath the neural network to stimulate the neurons in a specific pattern that mixed two separate hidden sources. After 100 training sessions, the neurons automatically became selective—some responding very strongly to source #1 and very weakly to source #2, and others responding in the reverse. Drugs that either raise or lower neuron excitability disrupted the learning process when added to the culture beforehand. This shows that the cultured neurons do just what neurons are thought to do in the working brain.

    The free energy principle states that this type of self-organization will follow a pattern that always minimizes the free energy in the system. To determine whether this principle is the guiding force behind neural network learning, the team used the real neural data to reverse engineer a predictive model based on it. Then, they fed the data from the first 10 electrode training sessions into the model and used it to make predictions about the next 90 sessions. At each step, the model accurately predicted the responses of neurons and the strength of connectivity between neurons. This means that simply knowing the initial state of the neurons is enough to determine how the network would change over time as learning occurred.

    “Our results suggest that the free-energy principle is the self-organizing principle of biological neural networks,” says Isomura. “It predicted how learning occurred upon receiving particular sensory inputs and how it was disrupted by alterations in network excitability induced by drugs.”

    “Although it will take some time, ultimately, our technique will allow modelling the circuit mechanisms of psychiatric disorders and the effects of drugs such as anxiolytics and psychedelics,” says Isomura. “Generic mechanisms for acquiring the predictive models can also be used to create next-generation artificial intelligences that learn as real neural networks do.”

    RIKEN

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  • Researchers Challenge Experiments Denying Free Will Validity

    Researchers Challenge Experiments Denying Free Will Validity

    Newswise — The dispute about how much free will people have in making their decisions has been going for decades. Neuroscientists have joined this discussion thanks to the electroencephalographic (EEG) experiments of Benjamin Libet. In the 1970-1980s, he showed that 0.5–1.5 seconds before conscious awareness of the intention to perform a movement, subjects emit EEG activity that predicts this movement. It turns out that the brain makes a decision and sends readiness potential before a person realises it, and our actions are nothing more than the result of an unconscious physiological process in the brain.

    The results of Libet’s experiments have generated a lot of controversy about free will, and some neurophysiologists have even concluded that it does not exist. Moreover, Libet’s experiment has been repeated using functional magnetic resonance imaging, and it turns out that the decision of the subject can be predicted even 6-10 seconds before their conscious awareness of it.

    The staff of the HSE Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience questioned this experimental paradigm and in their new study confirmed that the time of intention awareness in Libet’s experiments was determined incorrectly. In addition, EEG activity, or the brain signal indicating the readiness of a decision, which was recorded by Benjamin Libet before the decision was made, actually has no direct link to this decision.

    In the Libet’s original experiment, the subjects were asked to occasionally bend their wrists and at the same time remember the moment when they felt ready to perform this action. The time of intention awareness was recorded from the words of the subjects themselves: they observed a point that moved along the screen-dial, similar to a clock hand, and indicated the position of the point when they felt the desire to bend their hand. The moment of the final decision was determined by the exact reading of the sensor attached to the wrist of the subjects.

    The HSE neuroscientists repeated the experiment with two groups of subjects, adding small changes to the task in one of the groups. Using behavioral reports and hypersensitive EEG techniques, the scientists investigated the correlation between the time of intention awareness and the time of final decision. It turned out that the time of awareness can be influenced by experimental procedures: for example, without certain training, the subjects are barely able to determine their intentions, and the traditional Libet paradigm pushes them to the feeling that they can determine the moment of decision-making and intention. Apparently, the instruction itself in the Libet task makes the participants feel that the intention should emerge long before the final decision is made.

    In addition, the study confirmed that there is no direct link between the activity of the brain preceding the action and the intention to perform the action. The sense of intention emerged in the subjects at different points in time, whereas the readiness potential was always registered at about the same time. Thus, the readiness potential may reflect the general dynamics of the decision-making process about making a move, but it does not mean that the intention to act has already been generated.

    “Our study highlights the ambiguity of Libet’s research and proves the absence of a direct correlation between the brain signal and decision-making. It appears that the classical Libet paradigm is not suitable for answering the question of whether we have free will while making decisions. We need to come up with a new approach to this extremely interesting scientific puzzle,” says Dmitry Bredikhin, author of the research, Junior Research Fellow at the Centre for Cognition & Decision Making.

    “Neuroscience tries to answer key questions in our life, including questions of free will and responsibility for our actions. We need to be especially precise in order to draw conclusions that affect our outlook and attitude to life. Therefore, we tried to understand the predetermination of our decisions and confirmed a number of shortcomings in the famous experiments of Benjamin Libet. This does not mean that we have closed this issue of the illusory nature of our free will, but rather emphasizes that the discussion continues. This might be one of the most interesting questions in modern science, to which we have yet to give a definitive answer,” comments Vasily Klucharev, Project coordinator, Leading Research Fellow of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience.

    National Research University – Higher School of Economics (HSE)

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  • Memory and Learning Genes Date Back 650 Million Years: Study

    Memory and Learning Genes Date Back 650 Million Years: Study

    Newswise — A team of scientists led by researchers from the University of Leicester have discovered that the genes required for learning, memory, aggression and other complex behaviours originated around 650 million years ago.

    The findings led by Dr Roberto Feuda, from the Neurogenetic group in the Department of Genetics and Genome Biology and other colleagues from the University of Leicester and the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), have now been published in Nature Communications.

    Dr Feuda said: “We’ve known for a long time that monoamines like serotonin, dopamine and adrenaline act as neuromodulators in the nervous system, playing a role in complex behaviour and functions like learning and memory, as well as processes such as sleep and feeding.

    “However, less certain was the origin of the genes required for the production, detection, and degradation of these monoamines. Using the computational methods, we reconstructed the evolutionary history of these genes and show that most of the genes involved in monoamine production, modulation, and reception originated in the bilaterian stem group.

    “This finding has profound implications on the evolutionary origin of complex behaviours such as those modulated by monoamines we observe in humans and other animals.”

    The authors suggest that this new way to modulate neuronal circuits might have played a role in the Cambrian Explosion – known as the Big Bang – which gave rise to the largest diversification of life for most major animal groups alive today by providing flexibility of the neural circuits to facilitate the interaction with the environment.

    Dr Feuda added: “This discovery will open new important research avenues that will clarify the origin of complex behaviours and if the same neurons modulate reward, addiction, aggression, feeding, and sleep.”

    University of Leicester

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  • Board games enhance math skills in kids

    Board games enhance math skills in kids

    Newswise — Board games based on numbers, like Monopoly, Othello and Chutes and Ladders, make young children better at math, according to a comprehensive review of research published on the topic over the last 23 years.

    Board games are already known to enhance learning and development including reading and literacy.

    Now this new study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Early Years, finds, for three to nine-year-olds, the format of number-based board games helps to improve counting, addition, and the ability to recognize if a number is higher or lower than another.

    The researchers say children benefit from programs – or interventions – where they play board games a few times a week supervised by a teacher or another trained adult.

    “Board games enhance mathematical abilities for young children,” says lead author Dr. Jaime Balladares, from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, in Santiago, Chile.

    “Using board games can be considered a strategy with potential effects on basic and complex math skills.

    “Board games can easily be adapted to include learning objectives related to mathematical skills or other domains.”

    Games where players take turns to move pieces around a board differ from those involving specific skills or gambling.

    Board game rules are fixed which limits a player’s activities, and the moves on the board usually determine the overall playing situation.

    However, preschools rarely use board games. This study aimed to compile the available evidence of their effects on children.

    The researchers set out to investigate the scale of the effects of physical board games in promoting learning in young children.

    They based their findings on a review of 19 studies published from 2000 onwards involving children aged from three to nine years. All except one study focused on the relationship between board games and mathematical skills.

    All children participating in the studies received special board game sessions which took place on average twice a week for 20 minutes over one-and-a-half months. Teachers, therapists, or parents were among the adults who led these sessions.

    In some of the 19 studies, children were grouped into either the number board game or to a board game that did not focus on numeracy skills. In others, all children participated in number board games but were allocated different types e.g. Dominoes.

    All children were assessed on their math performance before and after the intervention sessions which were designed to encourage skills such as counting out loud.

    The authors rated success according to four categories including basic numeric competency such as the ability to name numbers, and basic number comprehension e.g. ‘nine is greater than three’.

    The other categories were deepened number comprehension – where a child can accurately add and subtract – and interest in mathematics.

    In some cases, parents attended a training session to learn arithmetic that they could then use in the games.

    Results showed that math skills improved significantly after the sessions among children for more than half (52%) of the tasks analyzed.

    In nearly a third (32%) of cases, children in the intervention groups gained better results than those who did not take part in the board game intervention.

    The results also show that from analyzed studies to date, board games on the language or literacy areas, while implemented, did not include scientific evaluation (i.e. comparing control with intervention groups, or pre and post-intervention) to evaluate their impact on children.

    Designing and implementing board games along with scientific procedures to evaluate their efficacy, therefore, are “urgent tasks to develop in the next few years,” Dr. Balladares, who was previously at UCL, argues.

    And this, now, is the next project they are investigating.

    Dr. Balladares concludes: “Future studies should be designed to explore the effects that these games could have on other cognitive and developmental skills.

    “An interesting space for the development of intervention and assessment of board games should open up in the next few years, given the complexity of games and the need to design more and better games for educational purposes.”

    Taylor & Francis

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  • Getting adults on board with messy nature play

    Getting adults on board with messy nature play

    Newswise — Climbing trees, making mud pies, or simply playing outside, parents and educators know that being in nature is an important part of every childhood. But when it comes to messy or risky play, it’s a whole different story according to new research from the University of South Australia.

    Talking to parents and early childhood educators, researchers found that parents and educators will happily open the door to ‘safe’ or ‘clean’ nature play but are more reluctant to let children engage in ‘messy’ activities or play that may be perceived as ‘risky’.

    UniSA researcher and PhD candidate Kylie Dankiw says that parents and educators act as important gatekeepers when it comes to nature play.

    “Nature play is well known for its positive effects on children’s health, development, and wellbeing,” Dankiw says, “and this was a common theme when interviewing parents and carers alike.

    “Nature play helps improve emotional regulation, physical skills, and learning outcomes, and can encourage children to develop their creativity and imagination.

    “Parents and educators also identified that nature play can help children form a connection with the natural world and learn about sustainable practices.

    “Importantly, parents and carers felt that nature play experiences could be used to offset technology use such as TV and screens.

    “But despite the known benefits, parents and carers can find it difficult when it comes to engaging children in nature play, especially if activities are messy or dirty (such as water or mud play) or are thought of as being risky (such as climbing).

    “Educators tell us that safety regulations and time restrictions can limit what they choose as outdoor activities, especially when they need to change children’s clothes after muddy play, or when parents expect for their child to come home clean from childcare.

    “There can be a conflict between encouraging children to experience nature, and what adults need to deal with in the so-called aftermath.”

    Nearly 50% of Australia’s children aged 0-12 years (two million) spend time in formal or informal early childhood education care, with long day care being the most common type of care for children aged 0-4 years.

    Paediatric expert UniSA’s Dr Margarita Tsiros says given the large number of children in care, further education and training for both  early childhood educators and parents could help overcome some of the challenges that might be linked with nature play.

    “Our research highlights that opportunities for young children to engage in nature play is influenced by other people in their lives,” Dr Tsiros says.

    “While parents and educators recognise the benefits of nature play, they can struggle with certain aspects of being in nature, particularly risk.

    “Understanding these barriers can help inform strategies to promote nature play for different age groups. It can also help inform policies and practices to promote enabling factors.

    “A key move will be to boost educators’ knowledge about nature-based learning, what constitutes nature play, and how they can use natural resources to facilitate nature play experiences.

    “In a time where screens threaten to consume children’s interest, it’s vital that we present opportunities for them to engage in nature play, and to achieve this, we need to have parents and educators on board.” 

    …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

    University of South Australia

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  • Evolutionary Origin of Cognitive Flexibility Traced

    Evolutionary Origin of Cognitive Flexibility Traced

    Newswise — Key factor in many neuropsychiatric diseases

    Cognitive flexibility is essential for the survival of all species on Earth. It is particularly based on functions of the so-called orbitofrontal cortex located in the frontal brain. “The loss of cognitive flexibility in everyday life is a key factor in many neuropsychiatric diseases,” Professor Burkhard Pleger and first author Dr. Bin Wang from the Berufsgenossenschaftliches Universitätsklinikum Bergmannsheil describe their motivation for the study. “Understanding the underlying network mechanisms is therefore essential for the development of new therapeutic methods.”

    Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the Bochum team and their cooperation partner Dr. Abhishek Banerjee from the Biosciences Institute at Newcastle University examined the brain functions of 40 participants while they were learning a sensorimotor task.

    While lying in the MRI, the volunteers had to learn to recognise the meaning of different touch signals – similar to those used in Braille – on the tip of the right index finger. One touch signal told the participants to press a button with their free hand, while another signal instructed them not to do so and to remain still. The connection between the two different touch signals and pressing the button or not pressing the button had to be learned from trial to trial. The challenge: after a certain time, the touch signals changed their meaning. What had previously meant “pressing the button” now meant “holding still” – an ideal experimental set-up to investigate the volunteers’ cognitive flexibility. The fMRI provided images of the corresponding brain activity.

    Similarities between humans and mice

    “Similar studies had already been done with mice in the past,” says Pleger. “The learning task we chose now allowed us to observe the brains of mice and humans under comparable cognitive demands.”

    A surprising finding is the comparability between the Bochum results in humans and the previously published data from mice, Wang points out. The similarity shows that cognitive functions that are important for survival, such as the flexibility to adapt quickly to suddenly changing conditions, are following comparable rules in different species.

    In addition, the Bochum scientists were able to determine a close involvement of sensory brain regions in the processing of the decisions made during tactile learning. Wang emphasises: “Besides the frontal brain, sensory regions are essential for decision-making in the brain.” “Similar mechanisms had also previously been observed in mice,” adds Pleger. “This now suggests that the interplay between the frontal brain and sensory brain regions for decision-making was formed early in the evolutionary development of the brain.”

    Funding

    The publication was funded by the Collaborative Research Centre 874 (SFB 874) and the project PL602/6-1 of the German Research Foundation. The SFB 874 “Integration and Representation of Sensory Processes” existed from 2010 to 2022 at Ruhr University Bochum.

    Ruhr-Universitat Bochum

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  • Brain activity organized by spiral signals found

    Brain activity organized by spiral signals found

    Newswise — University of Sydney and Fudan University scientists have discovered human brain signals travelling across the outer layer of neural tissue that naturally arrange themselves to resemble swirling spirals.

    The research, published today in Nature Human Behaviour, indicates these ubiquitous spirals, which are brain signals observed on the cortex during both resting and cognitive states, help organise brain activity and cognitive processing.

    Senior author Associate Professor Pulin Gong, from the School of Physics in the Faculty of Science, said the discovery could have the potential to advance powerful computing machines inspired by the intricate workings of the human brain.

    The discovery opens up new avenues for understanding how the brain works and provides valuable insights into the fundamental functions of the human brain. It could help medical researchers understand the effects of brain diseases, such as dementia, by examining the role they play.

    “Our study suggests that gaining insights into how the spirals are related to cognitive processing could significantly enhance our understanding of the dynamics and functions of the brain,” said Associate Professor Gong, who is a member of the Complex Systems research group in Physics.

    “These spiral patterns exhibit intricate and complex dynamics, moving across the brain’s surface while rotating around central points known as phase singularities

    “Much like vortices act in turbulence, the spirals engage in intricate interactions, playing a crucial role in organising the brain’s complex activities.

    “The intricate interactions among multiple co-existing spirals could allow neural computations to be conducted in a distributed and parallel manner, leading to remarkable computational efficiency.”

    PhD student Yiben Xu, the lead author of the research from the School of Physics, said the location of the spirals on the cortex could allow them to connect activity in different sections, or networks, of the brain – acting as a bridge of communication. Many of the spirals are large enough to cover multiple networks.

    The cortex of the brain, also known as the cerebral cortex, is the outermost layer of the brain that is responsible for many complex cognitive functions, including perception, memory, attention, language and consciousness.

    “One key characteristic of these brain spirals is that they often emerge at the boundaries that separate different functional networks in the brain,” Mr Xu said.

    “Through their rotational motion, they effectively coordinate the flow of activity between these networks.

    “In our research we observed that these interacting brain spirals allow for flexible reconfiguration of brain activity during various tasks involving natural language processing and working memory, which they achieve by changing their rotational directions.”

    The scientists gathered their findings from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans of 100 young adults, which they analysed by adapting methods used to understand complex wave patterns in turbulence.

    Neuroscience has traditionally focused on interactions between neurons to understand brain function. There is a growing area of science looking at larger processes within the brain to help us understand its mysteries.

    “By unravelling the mysteries of brain activity and uncovering the mechanisms governing its coordination, we are moving closer to unlocking the full potential of understanding cognition and brain function,” Associate Professor Gong said.

    University of Sydney

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  • Task-specific modulation of corticospinal neuron activity during motor learning in mice (Nature Communications)

    Task-specific modulation of corticospinal neuron activity during motor learning in mice (Nature Communications)

    Newswise — Learning motor skills depends on the brain’s ability to change, or be plastic. Specifically, the primary motor cortex of the brain can change as a person learns new motor tasks. When someone learns a complex task that involves fine motor control, like grasping an object, their brain undergoes large changes in the representation of the body part that controls the fine movements. In contrast, simpler tasks do not lead to such changes.

    In this study, researchers at Burke Neurological Institute investigated the role of a specific group of neurons, called corticospinal neurons, in learning and performing different motor tasks. Corticospinal neurons provide output from the brain directly to the spinal cord. The researchers used calcium imaging to measure activity in these neurons in mice as they learned to perform two different tasks: one that required precise movements of the forelimb, and another that was simpler and did not require as much precision.

    The researchers found that the activity of corticospinal neurons was different depending on the task the mice were performing. Specifically, the neurons showed patterns of activity that were associated with the timing of the precise movements required for the more complex task, but not for the simpler task. Further experiments showed that corticospinal neuron activity was necessary for performing the complex task, but not the simpler one.

    Overall, these findings suggest that the corticospinal network in the brain plays an important role in learning and executing precise motor movements. This research was supported by the Burke Foundation, the New York State Department of Health Spinal Cord Injury Research Board, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

    Burke Neurological Institute

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  • No clear link between social behavior and animal innovation

    No clear link between social behavior and animal innovation

    Newswise — Innovating, i.e. the ability to find solutions to new problems or innovative solutions to known problems, it provides crucial benefits for the adaptation and the survival of human beings as well as for animals. What are the characteristics that make specific species or animals to be innovative? A study by the University of Barcelona has analysed this cognitive skill in ungulates, a group of mammals such as dromedaries, horses and goats, characterized by walking on the tip of their toes or hooves. The results show that those individuals that are less integrated in the group and those that are more afraid of new objects were the best at solving a challenge posed by the researchers: opening a food container.  

    “These findings are in line with recent scientific literature about wild and captive primates, and they show that less socially integrated individuals are less likely to obtain resources such as food, but they are more likely to overcome neophobia —aversion to new things—, to improve their situation. Also, this confirms that ungulates are a promising taxon to test evolutionary theories with a comparative approach”, says Álvaro López Caicoya, predoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Psychology and the Institute of Neurosciences (UBneuro) of the UB and first author of the article.

    Regarding this issue, the researcher states that most comparative studies on the evolution of cognitive abilities have been conducted on birds and primates, but that evolutionary pressures to which these are subjected may be different from those of other species. Therefore, including other taxa —such as ungulates— in future studies is “essential for understanding the limits and the generalization of specific evolutionary hypotheses”.

    The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, includes the participation of Montserrat Colell, lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology and researcher at UBneuro, together with other experts from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Leipzig (Germany).

    An experiment with a hundred animals in captivity

    The experiment was carried out on 111 animals from 13 different species, among which there were goats, dromedaries, Przewalki horses, giraffes, llamas, sheep and deer, among other ungulates, which lived in captivity in the zoos of Barcelona, Barbent (France), Nuremberg and Leipzig (Germany). Each of these groups of animals had to deal with a test, consisting opening a type of container they did not know and which contained their favourite food.   

    All the animals had previously been classified according to several aspects that could have an impact on their ability to solve problems, such as the fear of new objects, the diet and the social integration in the group. The aim was to identify the individual and socio-ecological characteristics of the animals that were most successful when working on the challenge the researchers had prepared.

    Dromedaries and goats, the most skilled

    The participation in the experiment varied between species: while 100% of the dromedaries approached the container, only 33% of the sheep did. But the species that showed the most interaction were the domesticated ones and those with a greater fission-fusion dynamic (those belonging to complex groups that go together or separate depending on the environment and the time). However, these characteristics were not indicators of a higher ability to solve the challenge they encountered. “The domestication process could have specifically selected specifically the traits and features that facilitate interactions with humans (and human artefacts), but not the cognitive skills that allow for a more efficient problem solving”, note the researchers. 

    Finally, out of the hundred animals that participated in the experiment, only 36% could open the container and access the food at least once. “Species with a higher percentage of individuals that escaped were dromedaries and goats, with 86% and 69%, respectively”, highlights Álvaro López Caicoya.

     In successful cases, the researchers assessed the diversity of resources used to solve the challenge. “Most of them opened the containers using their nose, muzzle or lips; only nine out of these forty animals used more than one strategy to solve the challenge, such as lifting the cover gently with their lips or throwing the cup to the floor”.

    A pioneering study

    This paper is a pioneering study in the research on the ungulates’ cognition, since “there are barely a handful of similar studies” with these species. “Traditionally, they have been considered cattle and their behaviour or their understating have not been of interest. Thanks to this and other studies, we are starting to see these are animals with complex behaviours which that are worth studying”, stresses Álvaro López Caicoya. 

    In this sense, the UB researcher highlights the need for more studies that include more species and individuals, both in captivity and wild ones, and more complex challenges, to generalize the findings. “The ungulates are an exceptional model for the comparative research and this study is only a first approach to the cognition of these species”, he concludes. 

     

    University of Barcelona

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  • Psychology Expert: Smartphones Negatively Impact Mental Health

    Psychology Expert: Smartphones Negatively Impact Mental Health

    This Mental Health Awareness Month, one researcher explains why “unplugging” from your smartphone could improve your psychological well-being. 

    Melissa Huey, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at New York Institute of Technology, studied the impact of smartphones in the college classroom and discovered that the devices were damaging students’ mental health. 

    Huey and a colleague conducted a six-week study to see how college students’ mindfulness, anxiety, and course comprehension were affected when smartphones were removed from the classroom vs. when they were physically present.

    In two classes, students handed in their smartphones at the beginning of the lecture. In two other classes, which served as a control group, students kept their phones and used them with no limitations. At the end of the six-week study, students self-reported scores on course comprehension, mindfulness, and anxiety levels.

    “Students who handed in their smartphones reported much higher comprehension and mindfulness scores. In addition, they reported lower levels of anxiety,” Huey notes. “However, the opposite was true for those who kept their phones. These students reported lower comprehension and mindfulness scores and higher anxiety levels.”

    Huey’s findings, which were published in the journal Innovative Higher Education, make a strong case for taking smartphone breaks.

    This is not the first time that she has explored how technology affects mental health in younger individuals. In 2021, Huey authored an International Business Times op-ed contending that smartphones and social media were eroding Gen Z’s critical thinking abilities. The following year, she commented on a study that found TikTok’s algorithm offered teens psychologically damaging content that promoted self-harm and eating disorders.  

    New York Institute of Technology, New York Tech

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