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Neuroscience

Theres no such thing as an objective view of something – Medical News Today

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University used a series of sophisticated experiments to test a philosophical idea. They found that it is nearly impossible to separate an objects true identity from the viewers perception of it.

A persons ability to see the world objectively, separate from their perspective, is the subject of intense debate in philosophy and neuroscience.

What happens when a person looks at an object that appears different from its true nature because of their perspective on it? For example, a circular coin rotated toward them will appear as an oval.

The classical view is that the brain transforms the image that hits the retina and removes our perspective from the representation. This means that the brain represents the object in its true form in this case, a circle.

Researchers from the Perception and Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD, have turned this view on its head.

They carried out a series of experiments to find out how people detect objects under different conditions. They suggest that the brains representation of an object includes how someone perceives it not just how it truly is. They conclude that a person cannot see an object in a way that is entirely separate from their point of view.

Their findings challenge previous assumptions in the philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of perception and appear in the journal PNAS.

A persons perception of the world around them is a complex process that goes far beyond wavelengths of light hitting the back of the eye. It involves multipart transformations by the brain and is biased by what we a person has seen previously and what they know to be true about the world.

The way a person perceives things depends on their perspective, their point of view. What happens when perspective distorts an objects form is the subject of a long-standing philosophical debate. As the paper puts it, do we ever escape the perspective from which we view the world?

This question about the influence of ones own perspective on perception is one [that] philosophers have been discussing for centuries, says senior author Chaz Firestone, assistant professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Director of the Perception & Mind Lab.

Firestone and his team are investigating whether the brain represents an object based on how a person sees it (their perspective) and influences this perception, even when the person knows that the true form of the object is different.

To test this idea experimentally, the researchers conducted nine separate experiments, the first seven involving computer-generated objects and the final two using real-world objects viewed under natural conditions.

Most of the experiments featured coins that were either circular shown head-on (immediately recognizable as a circle), oval shown head-on (immediately recognizable as an oval), or a circular coin rotated in such a way that it appeared similar to the oval coin.

In the first experiment, researchers showed the participants a series of images and asked them to determine which showed the oval coin. An oval coin presented head-on was present in all images, and a circular coin appeared either head-on or turned 45 degrees.

Further experiments involved coins of different sizes, rotations, the number of coins, and the movement of the coins. Other experiments included variations on this theme using different shapes.

In the final experiments, the participants sat in front of a real-life display containing wooden coins, and the researchers asked them to indicate the location of the oval coin.

The results showed that when the researchers presented the participants with tilted, circular coins at the same time as the oval coins, their response times slowed significantly. This was the case whether the coins were still or moving and whether the volunteers saw them on a computer screen or in real life.

The fact that the subjects were distracted by the tilted circles suggests that their brains did represent the tilted coin as oval in shape, rather than as the circular object it is in reality. All of the experiments generated results consistent with this idea.

The results indicate that people cannot separate an objects true identity from how they see it.

Our subjective approach to the world stays with us, says lead author Jorge Morales, postdoctoral fellow and resident philosopher in the Perception & Mind Lab. Even when we try to perceive the world the way it really is, we cant completely discard our perspective.

This study also shows that researchers can test ideas from philosophy empirically, and is the first of several experiments the lab is working on to understand human perception better.

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Theres no such thing as an objective view of something - Medical News Today

Neuroscience

Madrid-based Kymatio raises 725K to expand its cybersecurity tools for employees – EU-Startups

Spanish startup Kymatio, the SaaS platform that manages cyber risk for employees, has increased its first round of investment by 40% to accommodate two new partners, Banco Sabadell, BStartup and the JME Ventures fund. These new investors joined the round led by The Crowd Angel, which also had support from Wayra, Telefnicas open innovation hub, and prominent business angels such as Enrico Raggini.

Kymatio, founded in 2017, addresses cybersecurity from one of the most significant parts of risk: that associated with people. According to Kymatio, around 60% of security incidents involve internal personnel. The startup states that organizations face massive losses in domestic incidents with an average cost of 8 million in large corporations and 40K in the case of SMEs.

As stated Fernando Mateus, CEO of Kymatio: 70% of organizations have suffered an internal incident. Kymatio determines the cyber risks being faced, and assesses the level of awareness of each employee in the main areas of cybersecurity, to automatically deploy measures focused on customized strengthening of the individuals in those areas of risk, and enhancing the role of the first and last line of defense that employees have.

With this round, Kymatio aims to fuel its sales and boost the product, adding functionality that identifies, analyses, and overall covers everything an organization needs to address the security risks linked to information and employees.

According to Yolanda Prez, Director of BStartup: Cybersecurity is a field of growing importance to businesses and with the expansion of remote work it will be even more relevant. Kymatio allows a holistic prevention strategy, tackling the problem from the human factor by the means of state-of-the-art techniques and innovative technology. At Banco Sabadell we hope to be able to contribute to the growth of this company that has a first-class team and product.

As indicated by Lourdes lvarez de Toledo , Principal at JME Venture Capital: Kymatio is a pioneer in addressing vulnerability and internal cyber risk threats by coupling technology with neuroscientific tools. This position, together with the team that leads it, as well as the distribution agreements that it is carrying out, are the factors that make us trust in the future success of this company.

To date, Kymatio has had the support and validation of important cybersecurity institutions, such as INCIBE, and leading neuroscience research centers, such as the Autonomous University of Madrid. The startup was acclaimed winner of the first call for Cybersecurity by ElevenPaths , and the Ministry of Science and Innovation, granted the NEOTEC grant from the CDTI for technology companies of 160K.

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Madrid-based Kymatio raises 725K to expand its cybersecurity tools for employees - EU-Startups

Neuroscience

Manipulating synthetic optogenetic odors reveals the coding logic of olfactory perception – Science Magazine

Ensemble activity and perception

The mechanisms by which sensory percepts are encoded in neural ensembles are still incompletely understood. Chong et al. used single-spot optogenetic stimulation to control neuronal activity in mouse olfactory glomeruli in space and time. Animals were trained to recognize a learned activity pattern that was likely perceived as a specific odor. The authors then systematically varied the activity patterns by changing either the activated glomeruli or the timing between activation of glomeruli to evaluate their impact on odor recognition. Glomeruli that were activated early during the synthetic odor contributed more to odor recognition than glomeruli that were subsequently activated. This approach allows neuroscience to explain how features combine in complex patterns to generate perception.

Science, this issue p. eaba2357

Advances in monitoring brain activity at large and fine scales have revealed tremendous complexity in how the brain responds to, and represents, the external world. Although many features in brain activity patterns (which brain cells fire and when) are found to correlate with changes in the external sensory world, it is not yet known which activity features are consequential for perception and how they are combined to generate percepts. Some studies have shown that many of these correlated changes in activity may be redundant or even epiphenomenal.

To address how brain activity generates perception, we directly and systematically manipulated neural activity in the mouse olfactory system while measuring perceptual responses. Mouse olfaction is an attractive model system because the relevant brain circuitry has already been carefully mapped out and is accessible for direct manipulation. We used genetically engineered mice in which brain cells can be activated simply by shining light on thema technique known as optogenetics. Optogenetics allowed us to directly generate and manipulate brain activity in a precise and parametric manner. We first trained mice to recognize light-driven activity patterns in the olfactory system, or synthetic odors. Subsequently, we measured how recognition changed as we systematically manipulated learned activity patterns. Some manipulations led to larger changes in recognition than others, and the degree of change reflected the importance of each manipulated feature to perception. By the additional manipulation of multiple features simultaneously, we could precisely quantify how individual features combined to produce perception.

The perceptual responses of mice not only depended on which groups of cells were activated, but also on their activation latencies, i.e., temporal sequences akin to timed notes in a melody. Critically, the most perceptually relevant activation latencies were defined relative to other cells in a sequence and not to brain or body rhythms (e.g., animal sniffing) as previously hypothesized from observational studies.Moreover, earlier-activated cells in the sequence had a larger effect on behavioral responses; modifying later cells in the sequence had small effects.To account for all results, we formulated a simple computational model based on template matching, in which new activity sequences are compared with learned sequences or templates.The model weighs relative timing within each sequence and also accounts for the greater importance of earlier-activated cells.Based on our model, the degree of mismatch between the new sequence and learned template predicts the extent to which recognition should degrade as neural activity changes across many different manipulations.

We developed an experimental and theoretical framework to map a broad space of precisely and systematically manipulated brain activity patterns to behavioral responses. Using this framework, we uncovered key computations made by the olfactory system on neural activity to generate percepts and derived a systematic model of olfactory processing directly relevant for perception. Our framework forms a powerful, general approach for causally testing the links between brain activity and perception or behavior. This framework is especially pertinent given the continued development of advanced tools for manipulating brain activity at fine scales across various brain regions.

(A) We trained mice to recognize synthetic odor patterns: artificially stimulated neural activity in the olfactory bulb. Patterns were defined in space (top right) and time (bottom right). (B) Perceptual responses were measured across systematic modifications of trained patterns. (C) Template-matching model of pattern activity (left) accounts for perceptual responses (right).

How does neural activity generate perception? Finding the combinations of spatial or temporal activity features (such as neuron identity or latency) that are consequential for perception remains challenging. We trained mice to recognize synthetic odors constructed from parametrically defined patterns of optogenetic activation, then measured perceptual changes during extensive and controlled perturbations across spatiotemporal dimensions. We modeled recognition as the matching of patterns to learned templates. The templates that best predicted recognition were sequences of spatially identified units, ordered by latencies relative to each other (with minimal effects of sniff). Within templates, individual units contributed additively, with larger contributions from earlier-activated units. Our synthetic approach reveals the fundamental logic of the olfactory code and provides a general framework for testing links between sensory activity and perception.

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Manipulating synthetic optogenetic odors reveals the coding logic of olfactory perception - Science Magazine

Neuroscience

This is how the brain maps our interpersonal relationships – Hindustan Times

The closer you feel to people emotionally, the more similarly you represent them in your brain. In contrast, people who feel social disconnection appear to be lonelier, according to a new study.

The findings of the Dartmouth study are published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Over the past 100 days or a little over that, a large number of the worlds population has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic and the virus-led lockdown, leading to several people getting accustomed to staying home all the time, experience the impact of social isolation.

With the new normal becoming an important part of our lives, solitary confinement has possibly entered our homes and workplaces (or the makeshift ones at home) making loneliness a major threat to our overall health including obesity, hypertension and other lifestyle disorders.

If we had a stamp of neural activity that reflected your self-representation and one that reflected that of people whom you are close to, for most of us, our stamps of neural activity would look pretty similar. Yet, for lonelier people, the neural activity was really differentiated from that of other people, explained senior author Meghan L. Meyer, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, and director of the Dartmouth Social Neuroscience Lab.

The study was comprised of 50 college students and community members ranging from age 18 to 47. Before going to an fMRI scanner, participants were asked to name and rank five people whom they are closest to and five acquaintances.

The results showed how the brain seemed to cluster representations of people into three different cliques: oneself, ones own social network, and well-known people, like celebrities.

The closer participants felt to someone, the more similar their brain represented them throughout the social brain, including in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), the region associated with the concept of self.

Lonelier people showed less neural similarity between themselves and others in the MPFC, and the demarcations between the three cliques were blurrier in their neural activity. In other words, the lonelier people are, the less similar their brain looks when they think about themselves and others.

Meyer added, Its almost as if you have a specific constellation of neural activity that is activated when you think about yourself. And when you think about your friends, much of the same constellation is recruited. If you are lonely though, you activate a fairly, different constellation when you think about others than when you think about yourself. Its as though your brains representation of yourself is more disconnected from other people, which is consistent with how lonely people say they feel.

The findings illustrate how loneliness seems to be associated with distortions in the neural mapping of social connections with others.

Researchers have found evidence for a causal link between the prolonged experience of loneliness and smoking in a recent study. The study led by researchers from the University of Bristol was published in the journal Addiction. Although numerous studies have shown there is an association, it has been difficult to disentangle whether being lonely leads to substance abuse or if substance abuse leads to loneliness.

By applying a novel research method to the question - Mendelian randomisation - which uses genetic and surveys data from hundreds of thousands of people, the team found that loneliness appears to lead to an increased likelihood of smoking behaviour. There was evidence that being lonelier increases the likelihood of starting smoking, the number of cigarettes smoked per day and decreases the likelihood of successfully quitting.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action of Smoking & Health (ASH), commented that If lonely people are more likely to start smoking and find it harder to quit, they are more likely to suffer the harm caused by smoking. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable premature death, with thirty times as many people who die suffering serious smoking-related illnesses such as cancer, heart and respiratory disease. This research highlights the need for smokers suffering from loneliness to be given support to stop, to improve not just their health and wellbeing but also to help reduce their loneliness.

-- with inputs from ANI

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This is how the brain maps our interpersonal relationships - Hindustan Times

Neuroscience

Honing in on Headaches – The Naked Scientists

Let's dive into some Naked Neuroscience news, with cognitive neuroscientist Duncan Astle and perceptual psychologist Helen Keyes. First up, as lockdown continues here in the UK, Cambridge Universitys Duncan Astle highlighted a perhaps quite pertinent paper about roaming. Duncan told me that the evidence suggests when animals are free to roam in enriched environments, they have greater wellbeing. So can the same be said for us humans? Does being able to go exploring relate to our mood? Well thats the question the paper he looked at wanted to answer...

Duncan - They took a group of subjects, about 130 of them, and they supplied them with a geo-location tracker. And this tracked their movements around town over a period of three to four months. During that time, they would also send mini surveys to their mobile phones on a regular basis to check up on their mood. After they collected the data, they were able to calculate something called roaming entropy or R.E. It's just a way of providing a measure of how much you move about. And what they found is that subjects' mood was significantly related to their RE. When roaming entropy was higher, their mood was also higher. So on the days where they moved around a lot, they tended to report being in a better mood or having better affect. Secondly, looking across days, they found that mood tended to be highest when those days took in novel locations. And in fact, actually this explains subjects' mood over and above the basic roaming entropy finding. So there's something particularly strong about novelty. And thirdly, what they could do is take into account the socioeconomic diversity of the places that people visited. And they found that when there was a greater diversity of places visited, that was also associated with greater mood.

So two important findings. One is about the novelty. And one is about the diversity of the places that people are going. And both of these things seem to be associated with people's mood.

Katie - Does it make a difference how you move around? Cause I would assume if you're walking around compared to say driving in the car, that would make you feel better. Is the tracker about how you move or just where you're going?

Duncan - I don't think the tracker gives them that level of granularity. I guess it checks your locations on a minute by minute basis. So in theory, they could use that to work out speed.

Katie - OK, but this isn't about exercise, this is about going to different places, regardless of how you get there, right?

Duncan - Yeah exactly so they've controlled for that. One question you might be starting to think is - is it that novelty boosts mood, or is it that when you're in a better mood, you sort of seek out novel places? The answer from their data seems to be that it's both and they can test that by doing what's called a lagged analysis. So for example, they could see whether your mood today is influenced by the novelty of locations from yesterday. Or they could test whether your mood today will influence the novelty of the locations you go to tomorrow. And what they're able to show is that actually all of those relationships were significant. So the lag works in all directions, implying that these things are kind of mutually beneficial to each other. So for instance, when you're starting to feel in a better mood, you seek out more novel places. And in turn seeking out more novel places will have a subsequent beneficial effect on your mood the subsequent day. So you can imagine quite quickly how people can get themselves into positive cycles or negative cycles.

And then finally, half of the subjects went into an MRI scanner. And in particular they were focusing on a part of the brain called the ventral striatum, which is an area that lots of people have implicated in affect and mood. And what they did was to test which areas in the brain are functionally connected with this area, the ventral striatum, in a way that moderates the relationship between someone's roaming behaviour and their mood. And they find there was one particular location, the hippocampus, heavily involved in spatial navigation. So in subjects who have strong coupling between the hippocampus and the ventral striatum, those subjects seem to show a stronger coupling between their roaming behaviors and their mood, implying that there's some kind of neurological basis or neuroscientific basis that mirrors the behavioural relationship between the roaming behaviour and the mood.

Katie - So does that mean for some people, going somewhere else and seeking out a novel environment might be really, really good for your mental wellbeing?

Duncan - Yeah. I can think of lots of different potential explanations. So one is the one that you just said, right? Some people, these areas are just naturally better connected. And as a result, the more mutual benefit, the information can flow more easily between the two. Another account is that this relationship is kind of trained over time. So that the more you do one or the more you kind of co-activate these different brain areas, the more they become functionally coupled. And so what you're seeing in the brain scanner is kind of the after effect of repeatedly co-activating these two different brain areas. But I think it's nice to demonstrate that there is some neuroscientific instantiation of what's obviously happening out there in the real world, in terms of people's experience.

Katie - It feels quite intuitive, that link between seeking novel places and feeling quite good. Does this explain why I really like going on holiday?

Duncan - Ooo, I think there could be lots of reasons why you like going on holiday, depending on what you do when you get there. I think there's lots of ways in which navigation is kind of beneficial for your mood. So I don't know about you, but when I'm trying to find somewhere, it really gets my mind off whatever was going on in the place I just left. And it allows me to somehow mentally sort of draw a line or kind of demarcate what was a particular attentional episode and start a new one. And I can imagine that being able to do that physically in terms of your navigation could have all sorts of mental benefits as well. And I think that whilst we're all currently in lockdown, I suspect that we're not able to do that. And that is one reason why people's moods have been really altered by their experience.

Katie - Helen, do you want to chip in with anything?

Helen - I think it's really interesting in terms of some of the studies we've covered in the last few months around mindfulness and using things like video games to actively take your mind off of a situation, for example off of work stress and how that can really encourage mindfulness and improve your mood and mental wellbeing. It seems to tie in really nicely the idea that both novelty and diversity are improving moods here. Because that is the link isn't it? Novel and diverse places will engage you in a way that is likely to take your mind off your worries, more so than trudging around the same old places again and again. And I think it is probably a significant worry at the moment and that it's not very easy for us to encounter novel or diverse situations. And we probably will see quite a large effect on mood as a result.

Anglia Ruskin University's Helen Keyes been delving into confirmation bias this month, which is essentially being more likely to take on board, and, Helen told me, even remember, information that confirms our beliefs. And the paper shes been looking at seeks to understand this on a neural level. Could the confirmation bias be explained by how the brain likes to take in new information? Well the authors got subjects to do a visual task - to look at moving dots on a screen, decide which way they were moving, and decide how confident they were in that decision. Then, when faced with more moving dots, the scientists wanted to see if peoples degree of confidence in the first dot decision related to how they approached the new information. Helen told me more...

Helen - So the authors of this study recorded 28 participants using MEG, or magnetoencephalography, which records neural activity with really tight timing precision. And participants were shown a series of dots on a screen for about 350 milliseconds. And some of the dots will be moving rightwards or leftwards. And the rest of the dots on the screen will just be moving randomly. Your task is simply to say whether the dots are generally moving rightwards or leftwards. A participant had to indicate their decision. And then importantly, they had to give a rating on their confidence in their decision. Then they received a second sample of dots. The dots were moving in the same way as in the first session. And they were then asked again which direction the dots were moving in and their confidence level.

Because the authors were recording MEG, they were able to look specifically at brain responses, which are known to be involved in evidence accumulation. And they found that if you're a participant and you really felt that these dots were moving in a leftward direction, and you were confident in that, when you saw the next set of dots, your neural activity in these areas that are involved in accumulating evidence was really high, if the evidence agreed with you. So I'll say that again. If the second set of dots agreed with what you believed, agreed with your assertion that these dots were moving in a leftward basis, these parts of your brain that are involved in taking in this information were really active. If the new evidence disconfirmed your decision, so if you thought they were going left, and the second set of dots show that they were going right, those parts of your brain involved in taking in new information, basically just, they just dismiss this information. They were not active.

Really, for relatively unimportant, non-politically motivated decisions, just about dots moving across the screen, people showed a really strong confirmation bias where they tended to favour incorporating new evidence that fit with their initial decision, and ignoring evidence that disconfirmed it. So it shows that this confirmation bias happens, at least in part, at a neural level. And it does suggest that maybe holding a high level of confidence in your decisions makes you more likely to disregard potentially useful information, if it kind of disagrees with your initial decision. This isn't necessarily a negative thing. There's reason to believe this might be to stop us dithering and to enable us to move forward with our decisions.

Katie - See, that's my problem, Helen. I am an ultimate ditherer. I always thought that this was about efficiency. You know, the idea being that the brain only has so much processing power. So why not just use a shortcut? Is that relevant?

Helen - I think it's absolutely relevant. I think it's the brain's way of using your heuristics and saying, "well, you're confident in this decision, I'm just going to direct my resources towards this in an efficient way. And off you go down this path and I'll support you in that". Thank you brain for being very supportive of my decisions.

Katie - Do you think this could open up opportunities to unpick some of the confirmation bias? Is it possible to work on it as a skill, to be less biased in this way?

Helen - It absolutely is. So most of the research prior to this, on the confirmation bias, has been, you know, around this behavioural response. Why is it, for example, that people hold particular political beliefs? Or for example, if somebody is racist or has a very entrenched opinion, there is work done there to show that these entrenched opinions can be challenged and lessened and opinions can be changed. What might be quite interesting is to see when is that happening at the neural level? At what stage is it that we can make that opinion change happen? So how much new evidence or what type of new evidence, or in what new way can we present new evidence that challenges people's deeply held beliefs, that at some stages is going to be absorbed or taken on board in the way we would hope, rather than disregarded.

Katie - Duncan, is there anything you want to add?

Duncan - Yeah, I was gonna ask how confident we are that the mechanisms that govern these dots are the same as other sorts of biases? So let's imagine that there's a really controversial celebrity, and I think they're great and Helen thinks they're awful. I might selectively take on board all the wonderful things that I see in the news. And it kind of reinforces my impression of that person. It might engage all sorts of different kind of emotional processes. How well do you think that kind of confirmation bias translates to, you know, whether the dots are moving left or right on the screen?

Helen - There's more work to be done, but when we take together the huge body of evidence, behaviourally, around what you're describing, we haven't tied that to the neural level. So this is the first type of study looking at whether this confidence effects your decision making and your ability to take onboard new information at a neural level. So yes, the next stage will be to take it back up to that world view level stuff. But what I like about this is we've taken out that motivation altogether in this study. There's no reason why - you know, I might see myself reflected in this particular celebrity and therefore it'd be self-protective to think they were doing a great job. We've removed all that. There's not really these other reasons why people should believe these dots are moving left or right. So we'll work back upwards from there, I think, and do bigger studies on this.

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Honing in on Headaches - The Naked Scientists

Neuroscience

Memory Impairment Treatment Market Detailed Analysis of Current Industry Figures With Forecasts Growth by 2026 – 3rd Watch News

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Table of Content

Table of Contents Executive Summary 1 Memory Impairment Treatment Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Memory Impairment Treatment1.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production Growth Rate Comparison by Type (2014-2025)1.2.2 HT-39511.2.3 2-PMPA1.2.4 Meldonium1.2.5 AC-2531.2.6 RO-49385811.2.7 Others1.3 Memory Impairment Treatment Segment by Application1.3.1 Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption Comparison by Application (2014-2025)1.3.2 Clinic1.3.3 Hospital1.3.4 Others1.3 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Market by Region1.3.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Market Size Region1.3.2 North America Status and Prospect (2014-2025)1.3.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2014-2025)1.3.4 China Status and Prospect (2014-2025)1.3.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2014-2025)1.3.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2014-2025)1.3.7 India Status and Prospect (2014-2025)1.4 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Market Size1.4.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Revenue (2014-2025)1.4.2 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production (2014-2025) 2 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production Market Share by Manufacturers (2014-2019)2.2 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2014-2019)2.3 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Average Price by Manufacturers (2014-2019)2.4 Manufacturers Memory Impairment Treatment Production Sites, Area Served, Product Types2.5 Memory Impairment Treatment Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Memory Impairment Treatment Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion 3 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production Market Share by Regions3.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production Market Share by Regions3.2 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Revenue Market Share by Regions (2014-2019)3.3 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)3.4 North America Memory Impairment Treatment Production3.4.1 North America Memory Impairment Treatment Production Growth Rate (2014-2019)3.4.2 North America Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)3.5 Europe Memory Impairment Treatment Production3.5.1 Europe Memory Impairment Treatment Production Growth Rate (2014-2019)3.5.2 Europe Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)3.6 China Memory Impairment Treatment Production (2014-2019)3.6.1 China Memory Impairment Treatment Production Growth Rate (2014-2019)3.6.2 China Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)3.7 Japan Memory Impairment Treatment Production (2014-2019)3.7.1 Japan Memory Impairment Treatment Production Growth Rate (2014-2019)3.7.2 Japan Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019) 4 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption by Regions4.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption by Regions4.2 North America Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption (2014-2019)4.3 Europe Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption (2014-2019)4.4 China Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption (2014-2019)4.5 Japan Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption (2014-2019) 5 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production Market Share by Type (2014-2019)5.2 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Revenue Market Share by Type (2014-2019)5.3 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Price by Type (2014-2019)5.4 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production Growth by Type (2014-2019) 6 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Market Analysis by Applications6.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption Market Share by Application (2014-2019)6.2 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2014-2019) 7 Company Profiles and Key Figures in Memory Impairment Treatment Business7.1 F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.7.1.1 F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. Memory Impairment Treatment Production Sites and Area Served7.1.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Product Introduction, Application and Specification7.1.3 F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)7.1.4 Main Business and Markets Served7.2 Suven Life Sciences Ltd.7.2.1 Suven Life Sciences Ltd. Memory Impairment Treatment Production Sites and Area Served7.2.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Product Introduction, Application and Specification7.2.3 Suven Life Sciences Ltd. Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)7.2.4 Main Business and Markets Served7.3 Met P Pharma AG7.3.1 Met P Pharma AG Memory Impairment Treatment Production Sites and Area Served7.3.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Product Introduction, Application and Specification7.3.3 Met P Pharma AG Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)7.3.4 Main Business and Markets Served7.4 Dart NeuroScience LLC.7.4.1 Dart NeuroScience LLC. Memory Impairment Treatment Production Sites and Area Served7.4.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Product Introduction, Application and Specification7.4.3 Dart NeuroScience LLC. Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)7.4.4 Main Business and Markets Served7.5 Omeros Corporation7.5.1 Omeros Corporation Memory Impairment Treatment Production Sites and Area Served7.5.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Product Introduction, Application and Specification7.5.3 Omeros Corporation Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)7.5.4 Main Business and Markets Served7.6 Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc.7.6.1 Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. Memory Impairment Treatment Production Sites and Area Served7.6.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Product Introduction, Application and Specification7.6.3 Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)7.6.4 Main Business and Markets Served7.7 AbbVie Inc.7.7.1 AbbVie Inc. Memory Impairment Treatment Production Sites and Area Served7.7.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Product Introduction, Application and Specification7.7.3 AbbVie Inc. Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)7.7.4 Main Business and Markets Served 8 Memory Impairment Treatment Manufacturing Cost Analysis8.1 Memory Impairment Treatment Key Raw Materials Analysis8.1.1 Key Raw Materials8.1.2 Price Trend of Key Raw Materials8.1.3 Key Suppliers of Raw Materials8.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure8.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Memory Impairment Treatment8.4 Memory Impairment Treatment Industrial Chain Analysis 9 Marketing Channel, Distributors and Customers9.1 Marketing Channel9.1.1 Direct Marketing9.1.2 Indirect Marketing9.2 Memory Impairment Treatment Distributors List9.3 Memory Impairment Treatment Customers 10 Market Dynamics10.1 Market Trends10.2 Opportunities10.3 Market Drivers10.4 Challenges10.5 Influence Factors 11 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Market Forecast11.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue Forecast11.1.1 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production Growth Rate Forecast (2019-2025)11.1.2 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2019-2025)11.1.3 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Price and Trend Forecast (2019-2025)11.2 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production Forecast by Regions (2019-2025)11.2.1 North America Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue Forecast (2019-2025)11.2.2 Europe Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue Forecast (2019-2025)11.2.3 China Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue Forecast (2019-2025)11.2.4 Japan Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue Forecast (2019-2025)11.3 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption Forecast by Regions (2019-2025)11.3.1 North America Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption Forecast (2019-2025)11.3.2 Europe Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption Forecast (2019-2025)11.3.3 China Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption Forecast (2019-2025)11.3.4 Japan Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption Forecast (2019-2025)11.4 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Production, Revenue and Price Forecast by Type (2019-2025)11.5 Global Memory Impairment Treatment Consumption Forecast by Application (2019-2025) 12 Research Findings and Conclusion 13 Methodology and Data Source13.1 Methodology/Research Approach13.1.1 Research Programs/Design13.1.2 Market Size Estimation13.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation13.2 Data Source13.2.1 Secondary Sources13.2.2 Primary Sources13.3 Author List13.4 Disclaimer

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Memory Impairment Treatment Market Detailed Analysis of Current Industry Figures With Forecasts Growth by 2026 - 3rd Watch News

Neuroscience

Researchers Make Mice Smell Odors that Arent Really There – The Scientist

By activating a particular pattern of nerve endings in the brains olfactory bulb, researchers can make mice smell a non-existent odor, according to a paper published today (June 18) in Science. Manipulating these activity patterns reveals which aspects are important for odor recognition.

This study is a beautiful example of the use of synthetic stimuli . . . to probe the workings of the brain in a way that is just not possible currently with natural stimuli, neuroscientist Venkatesh Murthy of Harvard University who was not involved with the study writes in an email to The Scientist.

A fundamental goal of neuroscience is to understand how a stimulusa sight, sound, taste, touch, or smellis interpreted, or perceived, by the brain. While a large number of studies have shown the various ways in which such stimuli activate brain cells, very little is understood about what these activations actually contribute to perception.

In the case of smell, for example, it is well-known that odorous molecules traveling up the nose bind to receptors on cells that then transmit signals along their axons to bundles of nerve endingsglomeruliin a brain area called the olfactory bulb. A single molecule can cause a whole array of different glomeruli to fire in quick succession, explains neurobiologist Kevin Franks of Duke University who also did not participate in the research. And because these activity patterns have many different spatial and temporal features, he says, it is difficult to know which of those features is actually most relevant [for perception].

To find out, neuroscientist Dmitry Rinberg of New York University and colleagues bypassed the nose entirely. The clever part of their approach is to gain direct control of these neurons with light, rather than by sending odors up the animals nose, Caltech neurobiologist Markus Meister, who was not involved in the work, writes in an email to The Scientist.

The team used mice genetically engineered to produce light-sensitive ion channels in their olfactory bulb cells. They then used precisely focused lasers to activate a specific pattern of glomeruli in the region of the bulb closest to the top of the animals head, through a surgically implanted window in the skull. The mice were trained to associate this activation pattern with a rewardwater, delivered via a lick-tube. The same mice did not associate random activation patterns with the reward, suggesting they had learned to distinguish the reward-associated pattern, or synthetic smell, from others.

Although the activation patterns were not based on any particular odors, they were designed to be as life-like as possible. For example, the glomeruli were activated one after the other within the space of 300 milliseconds from the time at which the mouse sniffeddetected by a sensor. But, Ill be honest with you, I have no idea if it stinks [or] it is pleasant for the mouse, Rinberg says.

Once the mice were thoroughly trained, the team made methodical alterations to the activity patternchanging the order in which the glomeruli were activated, switching out individual activation sites for alternatives, and changing the timing of the activation relative to the sniff. They tried "hundreds of different combinations," Rinberg says. He likened it to altering the notes in a tune. If you change the notes, or the timing of the notes, does the song remain the same? he asks. That is, would the mice still be able to recognize the induced scent?

From these experiments, a general picture emerged: alterations to the earliest-activated regions caused the most significant impairment to the animals ability to recognize the scent. What they showed is that, even though an odor will [induce] a very complex pattern of activity, really it is just the earliest inputs, the first few glomeruli that are activated that are really important for perception, says Franks.

Rinberg says he thinks these early glomeruli most likely represent the receptors to which an odorant binds most strongly.

With these insights into the importance of glomeruli firing times for scent recognition, the obvious next question, says Franks, is to go deeper into the brain to where the olfactory bulb neurons project and ask, How does the cortex make sense of this?

E. Chong et al., Manipulating synthetic optogenetic odors reveals the coding logic of olfactory perception,Science, 368:eaba2357, 2020.

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Researchers Make Mice Smell Odors that Arent Really There - The Scientist

Neuroscience

The Price of Isolation – Rolling Stone

On the same May day that the World Health Organization made the announcement that one of the many effects of the COVID-19 pandemic would be a worldwide crisis in mental health, I found my own mental stability challenged by a photo on Twitter. The picture heralded Frances return to school, and depicts a play yard covered with large, spaced-out, chalk-drawn squares in each of which is deposited one tiny French child. A girl sticks her toes out of her box. A cross-legged boy stares at the ground. In their pigtails and floral tops and Velcro sneakers, they are playing all alone, together.

Its a vision that is imponderably sad, for all the obvious reasons. And its a distillation of what, essentially, weve all been through. Though there are innumerable aspects of what has happened during the coronavirus pandemic that our psychology cant possibly compute how to wrap ones head around hundreds of thousands dead, around millions of jobs lost? what we all have known and experienced in excruciating detail is the scope of our own solitary struggle, be it the 65th day of seeing other living souls only through the screen of a computer or the 82nd day of trying to balance a regular full-time job with being a teacher, line cook, referee, or maid. Or the third day venturing back out into a world where mortal danger could still be floating invisibly through the air. In some form or another, weve all been in our depressing little boxes, eyes fixed dolefully on the ground.

What we dont know is how this will ultimately affect us. The last time a pandemic kept this much of the globe at home, carrier pigeons were in rotation, women couldnt vote, and people still occasionally died from blisters. A study of the 2003 SARS epidemic localized though it was found that quarantined persons exhibited a high prevalence of psychological distress, with PTSD observed in almost 30 percent of cases. The longer someone was isolated, the greater their chance of developing PTSD grew. Now, as the need to socially distance goes on for months (even possibly, in some form or another, years), we cast about for analogs to help us envision how we might cope. To what can we even compare this moment? The teched-up confines of space travel? A dystopian novel come to life? Recently, I came across a depiction of an otherworldly existence full of physical danger, a hostile climate, dependence on external supplies, isolation, enforced small-group togetherness, restricted mobility and social contact, and the disruption of normal recreational and professional activities. It was describing Antarctica. It may as well have been describing my Wednesday afternoon.

In the face of a global catastrophe, the impulse humans have to band together when bad things happen, our so-called disaster-convergence instinct, is now hemmed in by the number of people in our immediate household and the pixelated faces of a social circle however many far-flung miles away. The large-scale social media experiment of the past 15 years may have been priming us for just such a moment as this when whole swathes of our lives would migrate online but we also know that its an experiment thats failed at replicating the type of social interactions we humans need to thrive. Weve seen in large epidemiologic studies that using social media isnt necessarily correlated with better connection, says public-health expert Brian Primack, the former founding director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health. In fact, its often connected with feeling lonelier.

Regardless, we certainly know that none of this feels right. I feel like Im stoned all the time, but without the fun parts, a friend texted me the other day, summing up what is possibly the COVID-era human condition. I laughed out loud, but of course she couldnt hear me. Right now, our screens are our own little boxes, keeping us together while keeping us apart.

Man is by nature a social animal, Aristotle wrote some 2,348 years ago, though modern science has shown that its probably the other way around: Being social is what made us human. Cooperation among our prehistoric ancestors helped solve, if somewhat imperfectly, the problem of how to fit a large brain through a small, bony pelvis; the young of the species could be born dramatically premature compared to other animals if more than one adult was around to care for them. That care required a give-and-take that favored the survival of those whose caregivers worked well together. Better social skills allowed for the development of bigger brains, and those bigger brains, in turn, allowed for the development of more social skills.

According to Matthew Lieberman, a founder of the field of social cognitive neuroscience and author of the book Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, evolution could have favored any number of attributes when it came to brain development, but what it chose to favor was our ability to socialize with others. A 2015 study Lieberman co-published in The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience showed that the brain basically has two modes: one used for engaging with the physical world (thinking about where to find food, for instance) and another for considering mental states, for seeing other people as psychological entities with thoughts and feelings of their own. Using MRI imaging, Liebermans team found that this second mode, the social brain, as he calls it, is actually the default. Every chance the brain has, even if only for seconds, it goes back to priming itself for the next social interaction. Evolution has apparently decided thats the most important thing that we can do with our brains spare time, says Lieberman. We are literally wired such that, when other distractions fall away, our brain automatically switches to a mode thats more social in nature.

How we use that mode, however, is highly variable. Introverts and extroverts both have similar, total social needs, says Lieberman. But they manifest and are satisfied in very different ways. In extroverts, the dopamine reward network which is triggered by external stimuli and sensory input is more active. Introverts get a bigger hit from the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which warms up when we turn inward. This explains the fact that, while isolation can be measured objectively, loneliness is highly subjective, a function of whether or not ones social expectations are being met. Some of us are better at modulating our expectations than others, and some of us have lower expectations to begin with. Some of us feed off of solitude and then feel guilty that this time of suffering for so many has been a creative or emotional boon for us. Others have felt the need to text everyone theyve ever dated, going for social breadth in a time when immersive depth isnt accessible.

Kids return to school in France during the COVID crisis. Loneliness has been linked to negative health outcomes.

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How well this can work out is a matter of conjecture. Our biology has evolved over millennia to respond to social cues, Primack says. The new media that we use can try to emulate a lot of those things, but to what extent are they really capturing the essence of those social necessities? In fact, its been found that texts and emails dont move the needle when it comes to meeting social needs though more intimate forms of communication like talking on the phone (and presumably Zooming) do. Social media is more complicated. A 2018 study of 18- to 30-year-olds found that the odds of depression were significantly lowered by face-to-face emotional support, but significantly heightened by reliance on social media. Another study found that decreasing time on social media reduced feelings of loneliness in 18- to 22-year-olds. Yet when technology use (including email, Skype, and Facebook) was studied in older adults, it was linked to lower rates of loneliness and better psychological outcomes. The key, according to Primack, may be how were using these tools, whether theyre simply a way of projecting a version of ourselves out into the ether or whether theyre fostering real social connections we otherwise wouldnt be able to have.

Still, even under the best of circumstances, there are limits to what technology can achieve. As infants, human attachment is developed through the sense of touch, and that need likely doesnt go away. Removing even one of the senses from the full sum of social interaction affects animals in ways that still arent entirely understood. There have been this whole series of very elegant studies in a rodent population where they take away one sensory input and show how that totally dysregulates the rodent body, says Naomi Eisenberger, a psychologist at UCLA who specializes in the neuroscience of social connection and who (speaking of social connection) happened to marry Lieberman after the two did a study showing that social rejection activates the pain regions of the brain (so much so that its effects can be mitigated by Tylenol). The implication for this is that being able to smell somebody else may really regulate one of our physiological systems. Being able to touch somebody else may regulate another of our physiological systems in very specific ways. Women born without the ability to smell, for instance, report having trouble trusting their partners; men have less interest in sex. In other words, being able to socialize using only some of our sensory inputs can leave us feeling dysregulated, can upset systems that we didnt even know were thrumming along below the surface of our conscious.

In extreme cases solitary confinement or being taken as a prisoner of war the lack of social stimulation becomes so pronounced that the brain seems to invent stimuli for itself. Sleep and mood are dysregulated. Heart palpitations and hallucinations occur. But even in much less extreme cases even when taken on voluntarily isolation can have unexpected effects, as was famously illustrated by the outcome of the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe yacht race, in which nine men competed to be the first to do a solo, nonstop circumnavigation of the globe. Only one sailor, Robin Knox-Johnston, finished the mission, after 313 days alone at sea. But Johnston would likely have lost to an eccentric Frenchman named Bernard Moitessier had Moitessier not found the solitude so compelling that he abandoned the race altogether and just continued sailing, feeding cheese to seabirds and circling the globe more than one and a half times before landing in Tahiti. A fellow competitor named Donald Crowhurst, meanwhile, spent much of the trip concocting fake coordinates as he drifted around the Atlantic, plagued by loneliness and depression. After more than eight months, he capped a rambling 25,000-word philosophical treatise with I have no need to prolong the game, and presumably threw himself into the sea.

As individual as the experience of isolation may be, America as a nation entered this pandemic particularly ill-equipped to handle it. For years, we have been engaged in what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called a loneliness epidemic. According to the most recent census, more than a quarter of Americans live alone (the highest percentage on record) and more than half are unmarried (with marriage rates at historic lows). People are having fewer children, volunteering less, and reporting lower levels of religious and other forms of affiliation. These markers may all seem too anachronistic to say much about our modern age, but Americans also feel more lonely: The percentage who say they are has doubled since the 1980s, from 20 percent to 40. In 1985, when a large-scale survey asked respondents how many people in their life they could discuss meaningful things with, the average was three. By 2004, that number had dropped to two. But heres the more devastating part of the survey, says Jamil Zaki, director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory and author of The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World. In the Eighties, the average was three, but the most common response was also three. In the 2000s, the average was two, but the most common response was zero. So its not like people were really satisfied with their social connections before this pandemic hit.

According to Steve Cole, the director of the UCLA Social Genomics Core Laboratory, this loneliness epidemic is actually a public-health issue. Around the time when scientists were mapping the human genome, Cole looked to genes to solve the mystery of why closeted gay men were dying from AIDS faster than others: He found a clear difference in gene expression, proving that the closeted guys were in a perpetual low-grade fight-or-flight mode, suppressing the bodys ability to fight viruses and pivoting instead to inflammation. That is the bodys first line of defense against injuries, particularly wounding injuries, Cole explains. When we feel insecure, our physiology essentially gets us ready to be hurt, because through the bulk of our evolutionary history when we werent feeling safe, we were likely to get bitten or speared by something.

Around the time he was making this discovery, Cole was approached by John Cacioppo, a social neuroscientist interested in the link he was seeing between loneliness and negative health outcomes. In the back of my mind, I was like, What is this loneliness garbage? scoffed Cole. This isnt going to add up to much. Cacioppo pulled frozen blood samples for a group of people he had been following for 10 years, and Cole looked at the genes of the ones they knew were most lonely and the ones they knew had a lot of social support. When we ran the analyses, it just couldnt have been clearer, Cole tells me. The lonely people were showing much higher levels of these gene transcripts that are involved in inflammation, and simultaneously lower expression with the genes that are involved in viral responses. I was like, Wow, Ive never seen such a clear biological signal in anything Ive ever done. This was a biological explanation for what John had been seeing in the epidemiology if you wanted the body to be making more heart attacks, cancers, and Alzheimers cases, this is exactly what you would do. And if you wanted the body to be crappy at fighting viral infections, this is also what you would do. That left the pair with another question: What the hell? Why would loneliness do this to a body?

The years they spent trying to figure that out amounted to the first study ever to use the whole human genome to look at a social epidemiological risk factor in humans, and what it determined was that loneliness is a perfect way to make the body feel threatened, to tell it that no one is around to pass on a virus but also that no one is around to help fight off a predator, to tend a wound, to share resources. Loneliness, which has since been found to be a medical risk factor on par with smoking and obesity, may not feel like an active threat to us emotionally, Cole says, but biologically, man, the memo is making its way down into our nervous system and our tissue and fertilizing chronic disease and undermining our antiviral defense. And at this particular time, neither of those seem like great results.

What this means is that those of us experiencing the loneliness of social isolation may actually be less equipped to fight off the coronavirus. Even more alarming, it has also led some scientists like Sheldon Cohen to question whether it could impact the effectiveness of a potential vaccine. Cohen once did a study in which he gave college freshmen the flu vaccine and over the course of several weeks asked them questions about their social life. With college freshmen, you tend to get a lot of lonely kids, Cohen says. So we had a good distribution of loneliness. Those who reported being lonely after we gave them the vaccination produced less antibody than those who were not.

In fact, they didnt even have to report being lonely: The effect was seen in those who had few social interactions, even if they seemed unfazed by their isolation; loners were not spared the biological results of their solitary lifestyle. Both loneliness and social isolation and interestingly, they almost werent correlated at all were having a negative impact on the response to the vaccination, Cohen tells me. It seems that the body knows its alone. And the body responds accordingly.

Sometimes, though, the body can be tricked. When Cole and his colleagues started looking for ways to combat the physical effects of loneliness, they didnt find that positive emotions made a difference at all. But one thing did: It was something called eudaimonic well-being, which is a sense of purpose and meaning, a sense of a commitment to some kind of self-transcendent goal greater than your own immediate self-gratification. People who have a lot of connection to some life purpose? Their biology looked great. Even when researchers compared lonely people with purpose to social butterflies without it, purpose came out on top. In other words, its possible when were doing things to better our society, the body assumes theres a society there to better. Were technically alone, but it doesnt feel that way.

Which has profound implications in the moment in which we currently find ourselves, a moment when the physical isolation and disconnection the virus has inflicted is now layered over the clear divisions and systemic inequities that have always plagued our country. In the midst of our solitude, weve been confronted with the terrible knowledge that people of color are dying of the virus at the highest rates and that 40 percent of families making less than $40,000 a year have lost their livelihoods. Weve been confronted with the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Weve been confronted with the lie that the virus is a great equalizer. Weve witnessed the many ways it isnt.

There may be a societal benefit to being in the grip of what have been called positive illusions to having an outsize view of our chance of success in life, an outsize belief in our control over our environment, an outsize faith in the competence of our government and the systems around us. For communities that can maintain those illusions, those outsize beliefs can become self-fulfilling prophesies, and it can be traumatic to let them go. Yet, there is also evidence that trauma makes societies kinder and more community-minded. We didnt enter this virus a healthy society. We entered it having a serious crisis of connection, says Niobe Way, a developmental psychologist at NYU, who researches how society imposes isolation on itself. Our culture is clashing with our nature. But we can change our culture. We do it all the time.

If a great irony of the coronavirus is that its dangerous curves have forced us to reckon with how connected we are while also forcing us to keep apart, a great heartbreak of the disease is that it has underscored the many ways in which we were profoundly disconnected to begin with. When the masks come off and the chalk squares are washed away and we venture out from our metaphorical boxes, we will find that were changed, of that there is no question. The real question is: Will we have changed enough?

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The Price of Isolation - Rolling Stone

Genetics

Genetics study helps tiger conservation The Shillong Times – The Shillong Times

By Natasa Milas

Preserving the tiger population in the Indian subcontinent is a passion with Uma Ramakrishnan, an assistant professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, and one of Indias leading scientists. Her work focuses on population genetics and the evolutionary history of mammals.Data from Ramakrishnans work has been used for creating and improving plans for conservation of tigers in a rapidly urbanising India. In 2013, Ramakrishnan and her teams data was used as evidence in the Supreme Court to petition for an underpass for the widened National Highway 7 to enable tiger connectivity between Kanha and Pench tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh.Ramakrishnan was a 2015-16 Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow at Stanford University, California. She is the first Indian to win the Parker/Gentry Award, administered by The Field Museum in Chicago in recognition of her work on conservation efforts. Excerpts from an interview:

How did you become interested in population genetics?I was always interested in the natural world and in understanding animal behaviour. I was lucky to grow up on the Indian Institute of Science campus in Bengaluru. My curiosity as a child always extended beyond simply observing the natural world. I asked myself: Why do animals behave the way they do? What is actually transpiring in these animal populations? Early on, I realised that there was a hidden layer of information that we were not considering DNA and genetic variation.After high school, I accompanied my family to Princeton University, USA, where my father was on a sabbatical. There I spent time in a molecular ecology lab and could gain deep insights into biology by understanding this hidden information layer. I knew then that I wanted to use a genetics lens to study wildlife populations.After my studies, I was lucky to get a job at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru. I was their first hire in the ecology and evolution area. Soon after, I got a call from conservation zoologist and tiger expert Ullas Karanth, asking if I was interested in working on tigers and their genetics. My journey over the last 15 years or so at NCBS, understanding tigers and other Indian biodiversity, has been incredibly exciting.

How is your work helping to preserve the tiger population in India?The future of tigers is really in our hands. Thanks to the efforts of the Government of India, several tiger populations have recovered. The viability and future survival of these populations will be contingent on our ability to maintain connectivity between them.I hope our research has and will continue to fill the gap between science, management and policy. We are currently working on an isolated population of tigers in Rajasthan and I hope our research insights will help plan what may be the best way to ensure long-term survival of this population.

How has your experience at the Stanford University as a Fulbright Fellow helped your current work in India?This was a really great opportunity. After nine years at NCBS a sabbatical sounded great. I was outside my comfort zone at Stanford University, the academic mecca for population genetics. Additionally, Stanford is nestled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where many conservation NGOs and start-up companies at the forefront of new genomic technologies are based.The amazing thing about being outside your comfort zone is that its empowering. With colleagues at Stanford, we turned what has typically been a challenge for conservation genetics non-invasive or poor-quality DNA samples into a strength. We asked whether we could develop cheap, reliable and fast methods that used novel genomic technologies to work on poor-quality samples. While there, my colleagues and I set up the Program for Conservation Genomics. Our goal was to provide simple-to-use genetic approaches to on-ground conservationists. We are still working together to make this a reality.

What are some of the biggest challenges in your work?Permissions to work in protected areas are always very challenging. Then, there are the things you really have no influence over. It rains and, well, your samples collected over the next few days are unlikely to have DNA or yield results. Sometimes, we work with large teams or in areas which are very difficult (for example, high elevation), inaccessible or not very politically stable.

What are your future research plans?I would really like to build partnerships with other tiger researchers across Asia. The methods we developed while at Stanford are going to be generalizable across tiger range countries. One of the goals is that everyone across the world can use a common platform for analyses, so that the data is comparable. Critical to this effort, however, is that each country builds an ecosystem to generate and analyze their genetic data on tigers locally.We are working hard to understand the impacts of inbreeding or mating between relatives on small and isolated tiger populations. This is a big ask for a species like tiger, but I am hoping the detailed work we are doing could shed some light on this problem, which is sure to become more common with time.I hope that our research can contribute in whatever small way to reverse biodiversity loss. (SPAN-TWF)

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Genetics study helps tiger conservation The Shillong Times - The Shillong Times

Human Behavior

Three Weeks After George Floyd Protests, No Spike In COVID-19 In Chicago, But It’s Still Too Soon To Celebrate – msnNOW

Provided by CBS Chicago

CHICAGO (CBS) Its been three weeks since the first major protests in Chicago in reaction to the death of George Floyd.

During those demonstrations, many wore masks, but others did not. And social distancing was top of mind, but sometimes difficult. For these reasons, health officials were concerned about a potential spike in COVID-19 cases.

However, at least so far, that hasnt happened. Being outside, wearing masks and trying to remain as far apart as possible seemed to help. Over 21 days, which included dozens of protests with thousands people, there has been a deep drop in Chicago COVID-19 cases.

Weve started to see a decline in the number of cases, which is great, said Jennifer Layden, chief medical officer of the Chicago Department of Public Health. But we are still in a relatively high-incident state.

Walk as we did through the Juneteenth crowd today and you saw Chicagoans on defense: masks, signs, and awareness. But the virus never stops playing offense.

It takes several days to almost weeks before someone exposed and is identified as a new infection, said Layden

Three weeks of good data since the protests, isnt the whole Chicago COVID picture.

At the same time we saw protests, we were coming out of shelter in place, Layden said.

That makes two big swings in human behavior. Experts say dont think of this report card as A+ work but more of an incomplete.

I would say its too early to say for sure, said Layden.

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Three Weeks After George Floyd Protests, No Spike In COVID-19 In Chicago, But It's Still Too Soon To Celebrate - msnNOW