Lifeboat Foundation

Computer simulations of a human brain under the influence of LSD show that entropy increases the most in regions responsible for processing vision and integrating sensory information.

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

The Dark Tetrad personality traits of sadism, narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism have long been associated with perpetrating negative behavior, but can they also put someone at higher risk for victimization? A study published in Frontiers in Psychology suggest that these traits may be associated with higher rates of being the victim of bullying.

Bullying is a serious and pervasive problem that can be associated with many negative outcomes for victims, including depression, anxiety, substance use, and even suicidality. Due to these potentially grave outcomes, research has attempted to delve into the dynamics surrounding bullying, including what makes people more likely to become a perpetrator and/or a victim of bullying.

The Dark Tetrad traits are typically linked with antisocial and criminal behaviors. They are personality traits that are frequently associated with a lack of empathy, increased manipulation, and a disregard for other people.

The study parrots engaged in various social behaviors that researchers would often see amongst groups of birds or in the wild, including dancing and singing together.

Parrots are socially complex animals, outperforming 6-and 7-year-old children in puzzle activities and memory skills. When kept as pets, these birds frequently lack suitable stimulation to meet their high social, cognitive, and emotional needs.

A recent study by the University of Glasgow and Northeastern University looked at this issue by using 18 pet parrots to see if video calls could help them meet their social demands.

Summary: Our brain consumes a significant amount of energy, accounting for about 20% of the body’s total energy consumption. Most of this energy is used for information processing.

While research shows that increased mental activity does lead to slightly higher energy consumption, this increase is minimal, region-specific, and often offset by energy decreases in other areas.

Feeling exhausted after mental activity is likely due to mental stress rather than actual energy depletion. Pacing yourself can help avoid mental overload, stress, and fatigue.

What the human genome is lacking compared with the genomes of other primates might have been as crucial to the development of humankind as what has been added during our evolutionary history, according to a new study led by researchers at Yale and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

The new findings, published April 28 in the journal Science, fill an important gap in what is known about historical changes to the human genome. While a revolution in the capacity to collect data from genomes of different species has allowed scientists to identify additions that are specific to the human genome —such as a gene that was critical for humans to develop the ability to speak—less attention has been paid to what’s missing in the human genome.

For the new study researchers used an even deeper genomic dive into primate DNA to show that the loss of about 10,000 bits of genetic information—most as small as a few base pairs of DNA—over the course of our evolutionary history differentiate humans from chimpanzees, our closest primate relative. Some of those “deleted” pieces of genetic information are closely related to genes involved in neuronal and cognitive functions, including one associated with the formation of cells in the developing brain.

Caltech researchers discovered an enzyme that enables viral vectors to cross the blood-brain barrier, potentially aiding brain disorder drug development and research.

The blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a stringent, nearly impenetrable layer of cells that guards the brain, protecting the vital organ from hazards in the bloodstream such as toxins or bacteria and allowing only a very limited set of small molecules, such as nutrients, to pass through. This layer of protection, however, makes it difficult for researchers to study the brain and to design drugs that can treat brain disorders.

Now, a new study from Caltech has identified a previously unknown mechanism by which certain viral vectors—protein shells engineered to carry various desired cargo—can cross through the BBB. This mechanistic insight may provide a new approach to designing viral vectors for research and therapeutic applications. Understanding this and other new mechanisms could also give insight into how the brain’s defenses may be exploited by emergent pathogens, enabling researchers to prepare methods to block them.

New research shows that rhythmic brain activity is key to temporarily maintaining important information in memory. Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester published these findings today in Current Biology that found brain rhythms—or patterns of neuronal activity—organize the bursts of activity in the brain that maintain short-term connections.

“The thought has been that the temporary storage of important information is linked to neurons in the brain that just fire away, retaining that information until it is no longer needed. Recent research has shown that it might not be such persistent brain activity that matters most for the temporary storage of information, but rather a short-term strengthening of the connections between neurons that are representing the information. Our research shows that brain rhythms are organizing these transient bursts over time,” said Ian Fiebelkorn, Ph.D., assistant professor of Neuroscience and senior author of the study.

“The rhythmic coordination of brain activity over time is important because it allows overlapping populations of neurons to store different pieces of information at the same time.”

All land animals have an Arc gene in their brain. This gene serves as the “master regulator” that determines how neuronal synapses (i.e., neuronal connections) form in the brain.

Two independent research groups [1, 2] have published their findings in the prestigious academic journal, Cell, in 2018 — showing that Arc behaves like viruses and has ancestral roots in retroviruses.

In a sense, the Arc gene moulds and sculpts the brain connections — forming the mind — making amphibians think like amphibians, birds like birds, reptiles like reptiles, monkeys like monkeys, and humans like humans.

Listen to an audio version of a recent Nature feature.