Human fingertips have several types of sensory neurons that are responsible for relaying touch signals to the central nervous system. Scientists have long believed these neurons followed a linear path to the brain with a “labeled-lines” structure. But new research on mouse whiskers from Duke University reveals a surprise — at the fine scale, the sensory system’s wiring diagram doesn’t…
In a breakthrough for understanding brain evolution, neuroscientists have shown that differences between primate brains – from the tiny marmoset to human – can be largely explained as consequences of the same genetic program. In research published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Professor Marcello Rosa and his team at Monash University’s School of Biomedical Sciences and colleagues at Universidade Federal…
In studying spotted hyenas, lions and, most recently, the raccoon family, Sharleen Sakai has found a correlation between the size of the animals’ frontal cortex and their social nature. In her latest study, Sakai examined the digitally recreated brains of three species in the Procyonid family — the raccoon, the coatimundi and the kinkajou — and found the coatimundi had…
Every year, the MacArthur Foundation bestows large financial grants on a group of people who are doing exceptionally creative or important work. MacArthur fellowships are often called “genius grants,” and grant-winners tend to be unusually motivated, passionate and forward thinking. But are they geniuses? The annual conversation that ensues raises questions about what it means to be intelligent and whether…
Researchers at the University of Aveiro in Portugal are developing DNA barcode tags that can be harmlessly applied to a wide variety of products, even foods or liquids. Each tag is a unique combination of DNA base pairs that attach to most surfaces, and can later be collected, amplified, and sequenced. The power of this technique lies in the uncountable…
One of the hopes and promises of the Human Genome Sequencing Project was that it would revolutionize the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of most human disorders. It would do this by uncovering the supposed “genetic bases” of human behavior. With a few exceptions, however, the search for common gene variants -“polymorphisms” – associated with common diseases has borne little fruit.…