Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. Blair and I are here to cook for you. No, well, we will cook up some stories of science. That's a little bit of a little science lab cooking. All right, are we ready for this show, Blair? Yeah. As we are here. All the mode family style here it comes. Yes. Ooh, I would like apple pie, ala mode. Yes, please. Science, ala mode. Science, ala mode. Science in the fashion. I think that's what they call a science podcast. It is the fashion. Yeah. Yes. My computer has decided to stop freaking out. It was doing weird things for a moment. And so then I freaked out, but now it's not freaking out. And so I'm calm and so everything's calm now. So let's begin this good adventure time. We like to call twists. We're recording live. Anything that is done here will be done here, but it may not end up in the podcast because the podcast gets edited without any further ado, beginning in three, two. This is twist. We can science episode number 864 recorded on Wednesday, February 3rd. No, recorded on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022. It's not Tuesday. It's science day. Hey, everyone. I'm Dr. Kiki. Welcome to twists. Tonight we will fill your heads with birds, neurons, and death. But first, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. You may hear my voice, but these words are not mine. So without much ado, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. We are living in the now. The now we are in is a lot like now's past. In the past now's humans thought about the future as some unknown territory filled with possibilities, plausibilities, and contemplated preferred futures, as well as dreaded ones. We know now what their futures held, or at least we have some general idea of how the past might have occurred. When we looked to the past, we see a combination possible and plausible events that took place with varying degrees of certainty about what exactly happened. Our own probable futures are only possible because of the plausible past. The actions taken by people of the past in there now that hardly knew how that now came to exist and could not have predicted how it would lead to our now. No matter where or when you are in time, the view is the same. The past is vague. The future is unknown. The only moment in which you could do anything is now. And this now, the current one that is taking place in this narrow slice of perspective, is the way all of history has happened. It is not an imagined reality. It is not a memory. It is only. This Week in Science, coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough on every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I wanna... Good science to you, Dr. Kiki. And a good science to you too, Blair. And everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. Justin is not joining us this week as he has parental duties that must be attended to. So I say to him, how now, brown cow? It is so very now. We are... He gave me a disclaimer to read that was quite the word salad, and now he's gonna go read how now brown cow to his little one. It's probably gonna feel like his own word salad, considering he's probably very low on sleep, so... All new parents get to be very low on sleep. It's the gift, the gift of parenthood. But we have a gift of science for everyone. As this show is getting going, there is news of movements and military actions taking place in Ukraine. So I know that people's heads might be other places that are very serious. But in the meantime, I do hope that we can bring you a little distraction and a little curiosity and a little enjoyment of this world with science. And so we have stories tonight. I've got stories about, well, I have synthetic neurons. Is that how we do this? I have Neanderthal genes and I have brain death. What'd you bring? Oh, I have reproductive health again, two weeks in a row. I'm kind of caught on it, I guess.  I have frogs, I have lizards, I have rats, I have... Oh gosh, what was the other thing? Fish, I keep forgetting about the fish. Don't forget about the fish? You can't forget about fish. So frogs, lizards, fish, rats. And I have... You've got them all. I brought birds. Yes, I saw that, I'm very excited. I was going to bring that one. And then I saw you had it taken care of. So I'm very excited to talk about it. We have to have the birds. If there's an opportunity, we will talk about the birds. Before we jump into the show and all the science stories, I do want to remind you out there that if you are not yet subscribed to the TWIST podcast, you can find us all places that podcasts are found. We also stream weekly on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Pacific Time, live to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. And you can find us by searching for This Week in Science. We are also TWIST Science on Instagram and Twitter and Twitch. All the places. But our home base is TWIST.org. That's our website where you can find information, show notes, and all the things. Okay, though. Science time. Are we ready? I'm so ready. Let's get it. Well, you know, I just want to start off with a guess. That could mean so many things on a science podcast. Methane. Methane, specifically this time around. Okay, got it. Yeah, specifically, we are going to discuss the fact that we have a report out of the International Energy Association, the IE, or the International Energy Agency, the IEA, that methane emissions are 70% higher than officially reported. So there's a lot more methane coming out of the earth than the gas companies, the fossil fuel companies, governments are reporting and noting. And Blair, why would that possibly be bad? What's wrong with methane?  What? It's because it's a heat-trapping gas. And while it does not have as much latency as carbon dioxide, it doesn't last as long in the atmosphere, it is actually way more effective at trapping heat in the short term. So we're going to talk about that. It is actually way more effective at trapping heat in the short term. So if they are just dumping methane into the atmosphere, that's going to have a pretty big impact on the short term, which feeds the feedback loop of global warming, then it makes it even worse in the long term. It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Yeah. So overall, the IEA said that methane emissions from the energy sector grew by just under 5% last year. This did not bring them back to their 2019 levels, slightly lagged the rise in overall energy use, indicating that some efforts to limit emissions may be paying off. However, industries like the coal industry are releasing methane natural gas during discrete events when they open mines for maintenance, for the fossil fuel industry does this as well. But the IEA and other researchers are saying that, hey, there's all this gas that you keep releasing that you could trap. And it's interesting that one of the countries, so the United States and a lot of Eastern countries, EU countries in Russia are all very high on the methane release list. Saudi Arabia is very low. They do not release a lot of this excess methane. And I'm wondering what the reasons behind this would be, but there definitely could be not just an environmental benefit to catching this excess methane that gets released through all of the practices that are used in various fossil fuel protocols. But they could also trap the gas and sell it. So there could be a net economic benefit to these companies to trap the gas and not just release it. It seems like more, it's always been, and it will continue to be about short-term gains, right? Because that's it. You could catch it and sell it later. That would actually be a long-term gain for you, not to mention a long-term gain for the place that we live. But the short-term is to cut costs right now. And that means to just look the other way when there's methane being released. So that's fine. Specifically right now, we should not be looking the other way. And that is what many people are arguing. And three weeks ago, an article was published in Science that also discovered that there were these venting events, these large releases of atmospheric methane by oil and gas industry ultra emitters, they're calling them. They used a satellite platform called Tropomy to quantify these emissions. And they calculate that these large releases that happen represent about 12% of global methane emissions. And so just to mitigate those large events, it would just take a little bit of planning and maybe some extra staff because they just, you know, instead of just venting it, they could take a little time and preparation around it to not vent it. Yeah. So we could economically reduce the contribution of this industry to climate change. Possibly if they caught this. It's a way, it's a way, if you look at the belt, the wallet belt, you could, we can argue economic issues Oh, and what, what were you going to say? No, no, that's all just it's, there's always an economic angle, but the problem is that today in this very moment, they don't want to pay the extra people, the extra money on this extra hour to keep this from happening. It's all about the short-term needs. It's all about what will you do for me right now? And so it's, this is why the economic argument for most environmental issues ends up not working because even corporations that say that that's what's stopping them, it's not. It's the path of the least resistance, which is not a good business model. I don't get it. So let's, so let's make it difficult. Yeah. Exactly. That's the thing, man. That's the thing is you want downstream to be the right decision and upstream to be the wrong decision and right now it's flipped. Yep. It is absolutely flipped. We don't have, our, our world governments are focused on economy, our corporations are focused on economy. And so unless it is detrimental economically, it's not beneficial to the, to the companies. And so that needs to be, that whole model needs to be flipped on its head for everything to work. All right. But additionally, hey, don't go to Antarctica. Okay. Just stay out. Okay. All right. I mean, so many people have these dreams of going to Antarctica and visiting the far away Antarctic. Just don't go. Researchers are, have just reported their, their work looking at the snow and the ice in Antarctica. And guess what? We're polluting the pristine place. That makes sense. Yeah. In nature communications this week, they have reported on black carbon that we are leaving on the snow and ice from combustion engines that are our power generators, our snowmobiles, tour boats, all the things. So even you didn't set foot on Antarctica. You took a tour boat and just looked at things from the water. You're still polluting Antarctica. So this, this is back to that whole conversation about ecotourism. There's, there's some ecotourism that's extremely helpful and beneficial to the environment. And there's some ecotourism that is not, and it's not all created equal. And you can't just say kind of blanket statement, ecotourism is good or ecotourism is bad. It really depends. But honestly, why do you need to go to Antarctica for fun? You don't. You super don't. You don't really need to do that. We don't need to go to all the places. I'm really the one big benefit of VR that I'm looking forward to is being able to travel, travel to places in VR. Virtual reality could negate a whole bunch of this kind of tourism that does have negative environmental effects. One of the big things though is it's not just tourism. It's also the scientists. It's the researchers. It's all the people, everyone who goes down there has an impact. And we've known for a long time that researchers have had impacts just on being there. Their buildings cause a disruption to the environment that leads to snow buildup. That if you researchers who want to study something pristine have to go miles away from the encampments to be able to actually find pristine conditions. In this particular study, they found black carbon in very, very small quantities. So an order of magnitude less than what is currently recorded in the Arctic or in the Himalayas. And the researchers say it's kind of like putting an LED light bulb in each square meter of the snow. It doesn't sound like much, but that little bit of heat put off by light bulbs placed every three feet apart can add up. And this is from an article in Inverse. And the black carbon, the soot can lead to warming of this snow, of the white surface by darkening it and lead to melting. And we don't want that. Let's avoid that.  I'm sad to hear about this because all the, all the, everything I was saying about not going there as a tourist. Okay. But I would like scientists to be able to go. So then, then are you saying you have to reduce the number of people that go? You have to reduce the scope of research. And then are you turning access to Antarctic research into a weird elitist structure? Like there's all sorts of problematic things that can come from that. I would like people to be able to go do science there. That's, that's a farmer. But I think this, I think this gets at an even bigger question as we look beyond our own planet to other planets. And the idea of going, and we've talked before about bacterial contamination and, you know, whether we're putting bacteria or tardigrades on, on the moon or on Mars and it just begs the question of whether or not we can study a place while we're there. Is it just by the, the reality that we are physical and if we go to a physical place, that physical interaction is going to change. It's, it's a quantum situation. We change it by being there. And at what point do you throw up your hands and go, this is a reasonable impact that we're willing to have to explore a space and research to save it potentially. Or to learn more to learn about various earth systems without, yeah. Yes. It's a very interesting question. Okay. Let's move on from destroying the environment. Rah! To frogs? Yeah, I can tell you about frogs. Cute frogs. I want to tell you about the taper frog. The cutest little frog in the world. It goes so it was discovered. I don't often report on animal discoveries on the show for a couple reasons. One being this is an audio medium and if you can't, you know, for everyone watching us who will be able to see this frog, it's very rewarding. But for the majority of people who consume the show in an auditory fashion, not very rewarding to hear about a new species. But I gotta, I gotta tell you. The other reason I don't is because there's not a lot to discuss. It's a discussion show and I'm just kinda like, this thing exists. But I wanted to tell you about how they found this frog and I also just really wanted to have a very intense call to action that you all Google the taper frog if you haven't already seen it the last couple of days. He's a little itty bitty frog. He's about half an inch.  Also kind of like a taper. And so he he was discovered in Peru. And the native people in Peru's Unidad Nativa Tris Esquinas have long known about these little tiny burrowing frogs with a long snout. And the local name for it is Rana Donta Taper Frog. But researchers, biologists have not captured these guys describe them coded their DNA to this point. And so this is one of those very common instances where the native population is very in tune with the animals in their environment. And then the researchers come in and want to catalog everything and something eludes them. In this case they finally found these guys with the help of native populations of course. And so this is an international team of researchers who worked in tandem with the native peoples to find these guys so they could give it a proper scientific name, categorize it, all that good stuff. Because of course the Amazon forest we're losing animals as fast as we're finding them actually probably faster so it's important for us to describe what we can. The reason these were so hard to find is they live underground, they're half an inch they're brown, they dig and they come out at night. All the frogs are brown. And so the way they've actually ended up finding it was by hearing this coming from the ground and so they ended up kind of just following the sound. They'd kind of hear it, they'd dig for a couple of hours see if they could find it.  Now they sequenced the DNA and they were able to confirm this is a new species that was not yet categorized and based on the DNA they were able to give it a proper genus species. So Rana just means frog it's a very generic genus of frog but of course there's a bunch of different genuses so they were able to accurately place it into the genus Sineptoranus so it's Sineptoranus Danta so Danta again, Taper so they got to keep that species and the genus species as Taper since they look so much like a little Taper and so this is again another piece of evidence of why scientists and local people need to work together to protect these very biodiversity rich areas before they disappear but mostly just point of order go Google Taper frog they're so tiny and so cute I love them these little teeny tiny frogs you described the difficulty in finding them and having to rely on their auditory sounds, their communication to be able to locate them but yeah if one day there are very few of them they're so tiny and what if they try it, you would never find them peep peep peep whispers in the night I'm trying to find an actual the actual recording the sound but it doesn't appear to be published with the with the story with the story at all so they probably honestly didn't record it the fact that it was so hard to find these guys they probably weren't able to isolate the frog so I would guess hopefully in the near future they will be able to find more of these guys enough so that they'll be able to take a couple back to a lab bring them back and release them again afterwards I'm sure so that they can record some of those sounds because I require Taper frog beeps please if that happens if anyone out there has recordings of Taper frogs and then it'll meet me I will make it my text message tone I promise yes so you can help Blair out by sending her frog sounds little frogs moving on from frogs little tiny cute froggies let's talk about neurons for a second sure yeah so Blair you we were just talking about jungles and one kind of plant that we find in the jungles is the Venus fly trap it is a it is a predator of sorts a lion weight predator of plants that has little tiny hairs inside of it that when they're triggered they instigate little action potentials within the plant itself these Venus fly traps have action potentials just like human nerves like like nerves in in all sorts of vertebrate species plants action potentials why would they use action potentials to communicate information well it it's information moving very quickly so these little hairs get triggered action potential happens and snap the Venus fly trap closes its mouth and you have a nice meal for the fly trap of an insect that is wandered into its jaws so some researchers decided that they were going to use Venus fly traps to test a new system that they're developing to create synthetic neurons they're taking the idea of regular biological neurons and recreating them using ions and chemical gradients electrochemical gradients and what they are calling them are organic electrochemical neurons neurons and synapses and these have ion mediated spiking and so in the neuron there's a difference a chemical gradient of sodium and potassium on opposite sides of a membrane and then ion channels open and sodium flows across and suddenly you have this spike in sodium and that leads to this there's a whole bunch of steps that the propagation of an action potential occurs that speeds this transmittal of information down the neuron to allow you to do something make a movement, close your eyes whatever it happens to be so these researchers in trying to create potentially interfaces and prosthetics eventually they want to try and create artificial neuromorphic neurons that can interface with devices so bring biological systems together with basically silicon systems or technological systems soft robots like I said prosthetics etc and in this what they did which was really cool they demonstrated what they call the facile bio integration of OEC ends with the venous fly trap and so instead of normal action potential production they stuck these OEC ends into the venous fly traps and got them to trigger instead of wiggling a hair inside the fly trap mouth using the OEC ends they triggered an action potential that led the venous fly trap to snap shut yeah so what they are saying is that these OEC ends can be integrated with all printed organic electrochemical systems exhibiting short term plasticity with paired pulse facilitation and long term plasticity with retention over a thousand seconds so these fake neurons make in action potentials can facilitate learning which that in itself so they are plastic they can be printed these fake neurons could potentially be used in all sorts of systems they could potentially be printed in ways that they could be interfaced into the human brain maybe your limbs if they work just like the real thing could be very cool very neat yeah fake neurons everyone give me neurons made out of fake fly trap bits and then also give me muscle fibers grown on top of spider silk and we'll just keep we'll just keep stealing inspiration from the natural world until we can build a whole new human yeah right it's gonna be the natural world inspires our creativity to basically recreate ourselves there you go we'll get there we'll get there oh look we figured out how it was done and we'll do it again ourselves okay moving from fake synapses tell me about did you want to talk about your female health story yeah my tubes your tubes you want to talk about your tubes my tubes your tubes lady tubes everybody's tubes let's talk about if you got tubes let's talk about them so this is a study from UC San Francisco this study made me really mad but I'm gonna try to stay calm so a recent study six years of Medi-Cal claims data this is looking at 83,000 Medi-Cal recipients who received either tubal ligation that's getting your tubes tied or an IUD between 2008 and 2014 found IUD's work at least as well as getting your tubes tied with fewer side effects great there is more reversible yes it is reversible and there is also just way less side effects so women who received IUDs were less likely to get infections have procedural complications again duh if you're not having surgery and more than six months later had less pelvic abdominal and geniturnary pain than those who had tubal ligations so overall less complicated and on top of that reversible so if you change your mind and you want to try to get pregnant later you can but get this so they were specifically looking at how many people became pregnant within a year of either of these options 2.4% of hormonal IUD users which already sounds higher than I expected by the way got pregnant 2.99% of copper IUD users got pregnant and 2.64% of those who got their tubes tied got pregnant so in the case of the hormonal IUD it's actually more effective also the other thing that got me just safer and more effective mad is 2.4% that is not what is told to you in the doctor's office for any of these things so first of all getting your tube tied is just to be permanent and fail safe like full proof you cannot get such a tiny likelihood because you're cutting off the eggs from the tubes sometimes they grow back together but it still it's talked about like it's the end all be all of contraception IUD similarly they talk about as being extremely reliable now granted 2.4% it's not a lot but it's still more than I would have guessed so this is like a breakdown in either expectation of how well these things work or communication and education of how well these things work so there's something weird happening here but on top of that I just it was all I could do to not just get so mad and start hitting things because you know you know this is part of a weird this is a science show but you know it's some sort of weird like weird control trip over the health of people who can be pregnant where you want to just make the end all be all decision for them so I mean this is a conversation that needs to be had all over the public health sphere and it's the question of how do you communicate these things how do you communicate risk how do you communicate uncertainty how do you communicate these statistics that were maybe not collected in the best way so when was the last time that there was a review of actual failure rate of these various kinds of contraception techniques and how were they compared who did these studies were they the you know for the hormonal contraceptive is that the hormonal IUD pharmaceutical company who makes it like where did all this data come from there are all sorts of questions that that do need to be asked but I think you're absolutely right it is a communication problem it's also a it's it's not trusting people it's not trusting people to take care of themselves it's a desire in our society to make a decision for women about their bodies that's ultimately what this sounded like to me because also let's remember IUDs first of all when I was first exploring my options of contraception I was told IUDs were pretty much only for people who'd already had a kid yes that's not true it's completely not true and it's a great option because you don't have to remember a pill like if you're actually trying to prevent unwanted pregnancies IUDs are a great option at really any age it's really good and it's just really frustrating to me that they're kind of pushed over to the side in the patient a lot it's not even discussed as an option a lot of the time people go on the pill early and it's also the pill is a whole host of medical problems because you're using systemic hormones instead of localized it's a whole thing but really this is just a good exemplification of this like confusing mishmash of information that is not delivered to the person making the decision for their own bodies in the right way so the question how do we how do we communicate it moving forward how do we have more open transparent conversations I think the one of the you know it's easy to say one in one thousand people this will fail that's an easy take home message that's easy to communicate and it probably just started being said by everybody you know as opposed to a conversation that potentially takes some understanding and nuance related to statistics and probability which you know nothing is 100% for everybody and this is you know how do we go about discussing this and so it is a huge huge conversation that needs to be had moving forward not just for women's issues but all sorts of public health issues yeah and you bring up a really good point which is that if people understood there was a two and a half percent chance of still getting pregnant that's important to know because if you get pregnant in any of these cases there's a huge opportunity for medical complications if you get pregnant if you have an IUD or if you get pregnant and you had your tubes tied there's a lot of opportunities for something to go wrong you need to check out and if you're not expecting it right you're like late then you're gonna be like oh something's wrong I can't be pregnant so you don't go to the doctor as soon right there's no way that could happen absolutely so this is a total breakdown in communication but I think also this is one of those situations where the historical expectation for how certain medicine works and the historical knowledge and the foundational knowledge is not questioned for a really long time so I'm really glad that this group decided to do this comparative study because it's it's wild oh you know that's that's what women's health is it is wild yeah the ladies we be wild I'll tell you you know what's wilder maybe what birds oh you're right yeah we need to talk about the birds yeah the birds and the intelligence of the birds the birds the birds if you've been looking at the internet and news on the internet recently you may have come across a story talking about magpies specific magpies Australian magpies now they are corvids they are very intelligent birds as part of the corvid family magpies are great they're all over the place but they're social birds they they like they're very gregarious they do a lot of things together anyway these researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast wanted to take a look at how these birds work together what their social life is like how they move around and what their dynamics are and so they put some little tiny so the little tiny monitors on the birds and then the birds didn't like them and so they took them off they didn't just take their own off they got help from others taking them off and so this has led to a whole study about the social helping in Australian magpies and that these birds are socially aware enough to help each other out of trouble to take these unwanted backpacks of their friends and their family right so these monitors they have little antenna they're small but at the same time to a bird they would be very noticeable and they normally are placed in a location that the bird themselves cannot reach so they will not be preened off during the process of preening or with a bird who's really annoyed of this backpack that it's being made to wear usually it's somewhere between the shoulder blades that's in a kind of hard to reach location so these these researchers were just very excited by the realization that these birds may have altruism that they weren't just getting their own taken off they were helping others and were they doing it for their own benefit no they may have though right we don't know that of course they have of course birds are altruistic come on we know this yeah so it's an interesting question however what are the dynamics that allow an intelligent species to live socially I mean it can tell us more about ourselves even though these are birds they are I like to think humans are intelligent although sometimes you have to question that intelligent animals living socially but these birds found that within 10 minutes of fitting the final tracker on their birds they saw an adult female who had no tracker on her working with her bill to try and remove a harness from a younger bird and within an hour most of the trackers had been removed and they say by even day three by day three just three days later even the dominant male of the group had its tracker successfully dismantled so they they don't know if it was altruism they don't know if it was the same individual that female running around and just taking it off of everybody's backs or if there were specific relationships that were involved they have a lot more questions to answer but this is definitely some kind of cooperation because all the birds were free free as a bird may I make a prediction yes please yes it's altruism no it wasn't all the same bird they learned yeah I would think so so this is the thing that I started thinking about this study that I love yeah first of all why hasn't this happened more we put trackers on animals all the time we put trackers on social animals all the time so intelligent social animals dolphins they're all sorts of animals why hasn't this happened more to this point I'm very surprised but the other thing I'm thinking now is maybe maybe it just takes other species longer and the trackers that we designed to quote unquote fall off after a while maybe they're getting pulled off and we just don't even know maybe we don't know to look for it we think that a tracker fails or the strap fails but actually it just fell off on its own I'm very curious I want to know more about this because I feel like it can't just be the magpies magpies are very smart but it can't just be the magpies I will say that the innovative innovative aspect of magpies their intelligence is creative innovative and so I Australian magpies of course are not the same as the birds I worked with in the central valley of California yellow-billed magpies but I experienced this intelligence firsthand when we tried to get the birds to do food storing we denied them food of whole pieces of food ground up dog kibble and ground up peanuts to eat so it was powder and they had to scoop the powder into their mouths and eat it they compressed the powder in their crop into a bolus that they then regurgitated that they could store so our study was ruined because we couldn't keep them from storing they made storable bits of food very cool yeah and all of them did it once one bird started doing it they all did it see so it wasn't all the same bird telling ya yep so magpies super smart I think it's definitely cooperation but there are we need to do the science we need to have the studies to really understand what's going on here in other bird news cities affect their residents and that means birds as well and researchers just published a study on how how cities affect birds they published it in Ecosphere and ESA Open Access Journal and they found that the socio economic status of cities co-varies with avian life history strategies so what the bottom line is is that as a city became more compact everything put together and less sprawl, less suburban sprawl and as it became richer more higher socio economic status it tended to support more migratory species and species with lower body mass shorter lifespan and larger clutches they also found that species had lower body mass in cities with higher median income and higher body mass in highly populated cities so there's an interesting tradeoff in bird metabolisms is that there are some species that put everything into their babies and so they don't fatten themselves up they're shorter lived it's like a live and burn kind of metabolism do what they can to raise their babies and I find it interesting that it was these compact close in cities that were better for migratory species but perhaps in songbirds it's more likely that those small migratory birds pop into cities have a bunch of babies and then jet out maybe they're just there for a short time and so it doesn't really matter but the other side of it is whether or not there's a lot of food available on the ground where food is available whether and if the city is more spread out resources they're going to be more widely distributed and less centrally distributed but as we've talked about before on the show this could also impact the choices that birds make about where they're going to live with respect to cities could also impact population sizes because in cities especially maybe compact cities I don't know but in different urban settings you're going to find different cat populations different predator populations that could then impact a species so say you have a migratory species coming in and it's choosing to burn it's one shot at having a clutch of eggs and then you know but it's a high density cat area because of the type of city that they're in there are lots of resources lots of food but then lots of cats so there might be some major trade-offs for the choices that these birds make I wonder there's lots of other I mean obviously there's lots of other potential confounding variables here I'm also thinking about sound and light pollution and the fact that that is different depending on the affluence of an area because it's also dependent on how dense a population lives so yeah nicer neighborhood with single family homes it's going to be different it's going to be quieter and darker at night so I don't know I'm not sure which way that would impact them exactly but I'm just thinking cities are living breathing spaces with so many variables right but it's the way that the socio-economic aspect of it came out is that if it's a higher socio-economic sector it's better for the birds which would track then right that they have their circadian rhythms would track with your comment about predators and vermin and strays they're usually in more densely populated areas disease disease all of it all of the things did you have any more early stories no that's all I got alright well everyone this is this week in science thank you for joining us today we hope you're enjoying that means enjoying and joining you joined and enjoy we hope that you are enjoying the show and that you share it with a friend today alright let's do a quick COVID update oh sure why not we'll just do that we're learning more about BA2 BA2 appears to be taking over more and more still it's unclear as to whether or not it is really more severe than BA1 and in what ways that is still being determined by many however a couple of years ago a study found that Neanderthal genes may predispose you to more severe COVID there are a few genes related to the immune system that don't react well with COVID that don't react well with SARS-CoV-2 and lead to more inflammation and more inflammatory issues these chemokines that are involved in COVID-19 we know that individuals carrying the COVID-19 risk variant have reduced expression of chemokine receptor genes CCR1 CCR2 CCR3 and CCR5 CCR5 encodes the C chemokine receptor type 5 it's a G protein coupled receptor that's expressed on the surface of T cells or immune cells dendritic cells, macrophages, microglia, they're all over the place CCR5 you may have also heard it referred to with reference to HIV CCR5 is related to HIV virus 1 because HIV virus 1 enters immune cells that utilizes CCR4 and CCR5 and so these researchers just published a study wondering whether or not if you have the COVID-19 Neanderthal risk variant that makes it not good for COVID does that lead to some amount of protection against HIV and the way that HIV can enter the cells and da da da the answer is yes COVID might be bad but Neanderthal is good for protecting you from HIV individuals carrying the COVID-19 risk allele on chromosome 3 have a 27% reduction in the risk of HIV infection and that's why a genetic trait that could appear to be deleterious could continue right is because there are benefits in some one way or another and it happened and because evolution it happens in individuals but then later has an effect at the population level so an individual who is exposed to HIV and has this would potentially be protected and survive as opposed to COVID but it's an association study it's not causal and there's still more work to be done so they will be looking into this to figure out why these Neanderthal variants lead to increased risk in COVID-19 patients I was just looking at my 23 and me data and I have lots of Neanderthal DNA which when I saw this story yes I'm reporting on it because it's personally relevant of course hide in the house now but be protected from HIV later protected later that's right and then this second study is not specifically COVID it's COVID relevant because of all the conversation that we've seen online and especially social media networks related to vaccine hesitancy and in this study published in plus one researchers looked at social networks to characterize the networks that were occurring that were popping up within places like twitter related to anti-vaccine messaging or pro-vaccine messaging and what they what they found is that one thing that was very interesting was the let's see if I can get my pictures in the right place so you can see the pictures there we go one thing that as we're sitting here on Facebook and Twitter and Twitch and YouTube people who promote anti-vaccine messaging on YouTube they found tend to use links from websites like YouTube Facebook natural news worldtruth.tv Fox News these are more predominant in the links that are shared within the networks that promote anti-vaccine views pro-vaccine views more often link to scientific evidence and more fact-based websites and so that in itself was interesting is that there is a dichotomy in the actual information that's being shared and I suspect that I thought was very interesting was looking into the networks that they characterized they are different that the people who are vaccine hesitant and connected to people whose networks are more anti-vaccine they're going to be pulled into the more anti-vaccine messaging because of the people they're connected to this messaging occurs in echo chambers and so the messaging is happening where people are stuck in these echo chambers they're all parroting I'm probably doing this as well parroting the same things I'm sending somebody on Twitter science-based links and information and somebody in a different group on Twitter that I don't know anything about and have no connections to is sending other links to YouTube etc and the conversations rarely cross except for when they do and then it's incredibly polarizing and it pushes because of these different message bases these different evidence bases it pushes the groups even further apart and into their networks even more and so COVID-19 has really brought this to the forefront it's not new social media has been pushing this new way of people getting news algorithms and this siloing of perspectives and it's been growing for years and years and years so that this particular vaccine issue with COVID-19 is is different than vaccine issues and conversations that have taken place in the past and so it's it's really highlighted the problems that we're going to be facing in the future unless we do something about it yeah I was talking to someone about this today actually and how in my experience there's actually been two completely different camps of anti-vaxxers that I've come across and so this isn't a two-sided argument in my experience it's been a three-sided argument which makes it more difficult to debunk and fix so you have if you want to call it pro-vaxx the pro-evidence, pro-science pro-saving-live side of things, not that I'm biased at all and then and then you have these two different sides of the anti-vaxx movement that I've seen so one is the natural is better I don't believe in any vaccines narrative but the other is the conspiracy theorist this vaccine is bad narrative right and this is something that we haven't seen as much previously as with other inoculations you know if I if I tell somebody that they have to get a tetanus shot to get a job they go and they get their tetanus shot but now if you tell them they need a COVID vaccine they're not going to get it why it's because there's this whole other narrative that it has 5G or a microchip or it's not tested well or it's too new or this whole narrative around this specific vaccine and I think that's one of the things that makes this so hard is you can't target one echo chamber it's these different narratives that are getting to the same terminus of I'm not getting it and I'm going to let COVID last forever because I'm not vaccinated but it's I it is more complex than even two or three sides in that even within the conspiracy theory or the vaccine hesitant you have people who are from communities that have been lied to in the past by the government or by pharmaceutical companies you have you have groups that have religious objections you have groups that there are you know there are the natural very natural my body all that you know nature's going to get is going to help me well nature can kill you too but there there are there's a multitude of perspectives and that is the difficulty in the conversation when it is from a perspective of a deficit a knowledge deficit these people people everyone has knowledge about the world they have contextual information from their lives from their families from their history and they have opinions and ideas and those need to be taken into account you can't just say this is going to work I mean we do that on the show we say please get vaccinated because we have followed the science and that also is a catchphrase now follow the science which means the opposite of that now strangely yeah I know it's just so everything is getting it's upside down world when it comes to talking about all this stuff but this is what maybe we need to get step through the looking glass so that we can really start to have conversations with people meet people where they are have compassion don't just yell at people about you know what they should be doing why aren't you doing that what is it that you think questions lead to information lead to ways that you can talk to somebody and like we've talked about before it's sometimes important to understand that you have to step away yes absolutely you don't have to win every argument or conversation and in fact if it's during a pandemic and it's someone who refuses to get vaccinated I would suggest you walk away regardless so walk away yes but I thought that was an interesting interesting study looking into social networks and their influence on messaging on echo chambers on society and kind of a warning to us all that unless we want to continue polarizing in these directions we need to keep an eye on this stuff and figure out how to nip it in the bud and by that I don't mean smoke weed yeah we can only do so much this is part of the problem is that some of this is out of our hands and is in the facebook or the youtube or the instagram or the twitter algorithm that is causing the echo chamber to exist so it's not marketable before because you wanted to see what you wanted to see and it was just for fun whatever but now if this is how people get the majority of their information and make decisions for themselves and the safety of others around them they have to fix the algorithm this can't be the way this can't continue because people aren't getting their news anywhere else people are getting their news from social media platforms so this has to be fixed we can only do so much one on one this is affecting millions of people at a time because of the way the algorithm works because it's profit based and just like climate we need to turn it on its head somehow it's all economic stuff needs to be turned on its head oh speaking of economic stuff this is this week in science thank you for joining us for another episode full of science of those connections of science into our daily lives science surrounds you it's all around you thank you for bringing twists into your life so that we can bring you more and help feed your curiosity if you are enjoying this week in science on a weekly basis please consider heading over to twist.org and clicking on our Patreon link Patreon is how we support this show and at ten dollars or more a month we will thank you by name at the end of the show we really can't do this without you thank you for your support oh look at here I think we're back with more this week in science but is it time for Blair's Animal Corner why yes, why yes it is music what you got Blair I have lizards and before I get into this story I'm going to warn you Kiki there is video associated with this story ready. But you may or may not want to play it. It's up to you. It might grow some people out, but I am not grossed out by it. It is about how lizards drop their tails. So if you want to see some autonomous tails squirming, you may share a video. I think it is very interesting, but I just wanted to give everyone a warning because I don't know. Things that I think are very enthralling other people think are gross animal science. But anyway, so I wanted to talk about how lizards drop their tail because it's something that is super cool that lizards can do, but it's something that we don't totally understand yet. The mechanism of how it works, not to mention, is this something that we could adapt into how we design robots or, I don't know, heal people, kind of like the conversation we were having early in the show. So the mechanism here could be something that's really valuable. Now I'm going to back up and explain this in case anyone listening or watching doesn't totally understand how this works. But some lizards, most lizards, if they're being pursued by a predator, if they get snuck up on by a predator, they can actually sever and release their tail. The tail continues to squirm and the predator chases that, and then as soon as the predator is distracted by the tail, the lizard can run.  So it allows them to escape. What's really cool is lizards can then grow their tail back. It doesn't look exactly the same. It doesn't have the articulated skeleton. It's usually one long bone. It looks kind of weird and lumpy, sometimes kind of fatty compared to the tail that was there before. So it's a bad substitute, but it is a substitute nonetheless. It's more than we can do if we chopped off a finger. We're not going to grow a finger back, but these guys, they can grow back their tail. So the question there, there's in lots of studies on how they grow back their tail. That's not what this story is about. This question is about how they cleave, how they, they sever that tail in that exact point in that exact way and don't bleed to death. How do you do that? How do you just, my tail's gone. I've dropped it. Well, you don't want to bleed to death. So you'd have to figure that out. But yeah, if we tried, if we pulled the finger off, that's not going to work very well. Also, it would be pretty dang hard to pull your finger off. It would be very difficult. And these guys in a split second can get it done. So you're about to see it. There we go. And you can do it. They can do it at different segments, depending as well. But so long, they've wondered how the bones and the muscles kind of articulate and fit together so that they can break off in this very particular way. And so previous studies have showed that the vertebrae and the lizard's tail are ringed by muscles that fit together like plugs and sockets. Each of them have a conical plug covered in microscopic bumps. So they're like little Legos.  And when they zoom in on the sockets with an electron microscope, you can kind of see how they all fit together. But when they use the electron microscope to look at it, they didn't find what they thought. They thought they would find these concave notches for the bumps to fit into exactly like a Lego. But instead, they found small indents. So it wasn't as deep as they thought. It wasn't as kind of locked tight as they thought. And so it really didn't seem secure, which is where this is kind of confusing. How do you have something that simultaneously is secure and a part of the body and connected, but also can detach like nothing. The top of each bump was dotted with holes called nanopores. And so then they made model tails out of glass with or without silicone patches dotted with nanopore like grooves. And then the fake tails with the nanopore patches were toughest to pry apart. So something about this is almost like I picture it as like little suction cups or something. Right. And so they were able to kind of stick together really well. So that that that explains how they could stick together. But the question still remains of how they break apart so easily and so specifically. And what they did is they filmed real Lizards tails with high speed video and found that when the lizards went to detach their tails, they bent their tail at a side angle. They're not pulling out. They're kind of bending and snapping it. So they they bend their tail at an angle.  So it worked. You have to go from an angle.  So there you go. That's how the lizard lost its tail. And so of course this has lots of implications, as I mentioned, for robotics, for material use in the body, but also not in the body, but maybe well, I don't know. I could foresee a medical scenario where you'd want to implant something temporarily and snap it off at some point, pull it off easily. But you don't want it to pull off accidentally with kind of friction.  I could foresee a use for it. But anyway, at least we answered the question. And yeah, and now like we've talked about inspired by biology to make something new. Sure. Let's do new things.  Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, so here besides kind of potential future innovation, here's another motivation for research and it is to give somebody what for the done your problem. So this is a study. This is a study from Osaka City University. This is actually an international team of researchers led by Masanori Kota from the Graduate School of Science at Osaka City University. And the reason for this study was looking at self awareness in fish. And they had to do this study. It is a second study, again, showing mere self recognition in fish because they were told, it's probably not true. They were like, we'll show you. Because no one expects it, right? No one expects self awareness in a fish. So there were critics that said the sample size was no good. There was a need for repeated studies. There were issues with the procedure, which I'll get into in a minute. And so Professor Kota teamed up with researchers from McPlank Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany and the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland did not say that right. And they increased the sample size to 18 cleaner fish, but they also did all these different permutations on the study to try to prove the critics wrong. And that's what I want to talk to you about. Awesome. That's cool. First of all, it's very cool. I'm saying first of all a lot tonight is my catchphrase tonight. First of all, I'm excited about multiple things is the takeaway tonight on twist. So obviously finding near self self recognition in fish is awesome. That is the whole thing where you put a dot on an animal and then they go to rub it off, not in the mirror, but on themselves. And they know therefore that the reflection is them. There's all sorts of problems with that test, which I do believe we talked about a few years ago on the show and specifically that like this is a very human centric way to test this because we use mirrors all the time just because an animal doesn't understand a mirror doesn't mean they're not, they don't have a sense of self. So that's my own personal issue with this test in general. But that being said, these fish showed mirror self-recognition when you put a brown dot on them. They're cleaner fish. They're the cleaner wrasse.  They get in their mouths and yeah. Yeah. And so they're the perfect animal to do this to because it's in their nature to try to clean something. So if they see a spot and then they go to clean it off themselves, that should be an indication that they know that that fish in the mirror is them, right? But of course there's all sorts of weird things that could impact the study, which is how we're here at this second go round of the study. So they had 18 cleaner fish. There was a 94 positive result of 17 of them demonstrating the same behavior from the previous study, which is that they saw the brown mark and they went to clean it. So first, why brown? It's because when they've done similar studies on monkeys, pigs, dogs, cats, they've all tested negative. It might have been because it was a red dot. It was a dot that is not related to something that they would see in nature. And so it didn't spark an action to them, which also kind of leads to if they don't understand a mirror, if they don't understand a red dot, maybe they don't care there's a red dot on them, which is why using a brown mark for a cleaner wrasse is great because they already clean muck. So they're like, oh, something's wrong. They are attuned to it. Yeah. And then so then one of the other criticisms was maybe there's a physical sensation related to the mark. And so they feel the mark and then they clean it. It has nothing to do with seeing it. So what they did is they then injected the brown mark three millimeters deep on some of the fish too deep for them to see it. And so they found that fish with the deeper injection, scrape their throat at similar late rates, whether a mirror was absent or present.  If it was deep, however, it did have an impact if it was superficial, which means the vision of the dot meant something. They also tried different colors, green and blue marks, no scraping behavior. So the sensation of getting injected didn't appear to have anything to do with it. And then the other critics were curious if they recognize the mirror image as itself, or if they recognize the mirror image as a fish and not themselves, just another fish. So then they had to mirror train the animals. So they teach them how the mirror works, they express aggression and they think it's another animal, then they kind of see the same aggressive movement back at them, it confirms the mirror image is not another animal, then they figure out it's them, they show no aggression. And so they were able to show that moving a mirror reignites aggressive behavior, which means the animal has only learned a spatial contingency. So this is kind of the critics thought was like, just move the mirror, they'll show the aggression, that means that they don't understand what the mirror is. But so to address that, the team transferred the mirror to one side of the tank to the other three days later to another mirror on the other side, no aggression towards the mirror after they figured out what the mirror was. So they didn't just get used to having a mirror there, it really was, they understood that was them, they were not showing aggression to this new fish that popped up on the other side, right? Then the last thing they did is they placed mirror train fish in adjacent tanks that were separated by transferent glass. So we trained you on the mirror, here's a mirror, oh no wait, actually it's another fish. It's another fish. Yeah, so with no mark or with a different mark, right? And so after two or three days, when they reduced their aggressive behavior, they were marked, but none of their fish scraped their throat. So without seeing it, they didn't do anything. So they feel like they squashed the critics on this. They proved, yes, they understand the mirror. Yes, they're looking in the mirror. Yes, it has to be a brown dot. No, it's not physical sensation. Yes, these fish are seeing a dot, they understand it's on them, they are scraping it off. So this gets at a very interesting question of like, what is the self-awareness that we're looking for, right? So the idea that they don't care that they've been physically, like what was that thing that hit you? Like as a human, you'd go, oh, I was bumped. Is there something on me? They're obviously not doing that. No, maybe this pertains to how they interact with other fish. Maybe, you know, maybe there are, of course there are going to be ecological reasons. But I find that very interesting that it's the site of it, that it's a very specific color. But when the particular stimuli are exactly right, they're like, dude, that's, that's on me. That's me. I got to clean that. Yeah. And so if, if a fish is showing this self-recognition, that means they got to go back. They got to go back and check on all these other animals that they tried to say didn't have mirror self-recognition. They need to go back and test all these other animals because, because clearly they, they didn't do it right. Clearly it's wrong. Yeah. The monkeys, pigs, dogs, cats, they got to do it again. They got to keep trying because this is back to my previous argument. Why is this test relevant? Yeah. Why is this the test for self-recognition? Because a dot maybe isn't going to do it. Maybe it's putting food just out of reach behind them and seeing if they reach for the mirror or if they reach behind them. You know, I think there's, I don't know. I think there's other opportunities to figure out if they understand, because then there's also the problem, just understanding how a mirror works equals self-recognition. No, not necessarily. No. No, they're not the same. No. Yes. So this is part of the whole situation. I don't know. It's tough. It's very tough because we can't, we can't just go in there and knock about their brain and figure out what they're thinking yet. But we can knock out their brains and slice them up because they're fish. And, you know, so far we have yet to give them conscious animal status. That's sad, actually. Fish are contrary. Oh, man. Okay. Anyway, one last quick story for the animal corner. Real quicky. Oh, fishies. We'll see how quick it is, how time-accurate I am. Rats may be better than me. They can estimate their timing accuracy. So as we are able to estimate how long something will take us, when we're managing our tasks and we're at work, whatever, when rats perform a task, especially a time-based task, they also can evaluate their performance and correct themselves in order to do better next time. So if I say, okay, I got to finish this before lunch, I can realize there's no way of finishing this before lunch. You know, tight 90. It's 9.30 already. Not a tight 90. We're not doing well on our on our time management today. It's my fault. But we can evaluate our timing as it goes on. And usually we can tell if something takes more time or less time than it was supposed to. Rats can do that too. And so this new research has just demonstrated, by having the rats press a lever for at least 3.2 seconds, that they could tell if they were fast, slow or very slow or very fast. And so they had to press this level and then a lever and then a second phase. Two feeders distributed a reward according to the animal's performance. If they did it with a small error just above 3.2 seconds, it received food in the left feeder. If it was way over 3.2 seconds, it was in the right feeder. They learned the location, dependent on accuracy. And so they were then in the third stage, given a choice of both feeders, but the reward was only distributed after they chose. And so they lose if they picked the wrong one. So the rats chose the correct side most of the time, about 60% of the time. Not hugely better than chance, but still pretty good. And so it seemed like they had a pretty good idea of the size of their temporal error. Now, immediately I was like, maybe they just kept picking the same one over and over. Could be. And so I dug deeper. Unfortunately, couldn't get access to the full paper, but I found out that they controlled for all those variables, as a good scientist would. So they controlled for frequency. They controlled for if there was a bias for a particular rat to do a particular thing every time. And so it really seemed like they were trying to assess how well they did and go to the correct side of the feeder, depending. And so future research for this will be looking at fundamental knowledge on the mechanisms and brain structures involved in representation of time. So how do we interpret time? How do animals interpret time? What is time? It's all me. What is time anyway? There's day and night. That's the only real thing. It's a construct, but our brains are very active in a time in in time. Yes, time is relative. It is. But it also in that way is measurable relatively. Right. But these rats, they were learning, they were figuring their figuring their error out, trying to reduce their error and make choices accordingly. Yeah. In a timely fashion. In a timely fashion. No, yeah. No, go ahead. I was going to say in an attempt to stay timely, it was good transition. Yes. And in the in the essence of time, I will I want to talk about brain rhythms and how we measure time, how we how we do things with our brains. Well, it turns out that really it's the different frequencies of our neurons that lead to our ability to to sense different components of stimuli, different aspects of stimuli. And we have multiple different frequencies that our neurons transmit to each other at how fast they signal information to each other from one to 250 Hertz. And our neurons aren't always going at the same speed. And in fact, researchers have discovered that there are these slower frequencies that kind of manage neurons that move at faster frequencies. And so there's this coupling or this decoupling of these frequency rhythms within neurons in the brain so that you can have different kinds of information come into higher brain centers. So you have your visual information related to color, maybe related to direction of something, those things can't be giving the same exact signal. If they're giving the same exact signal when it gets to your perception part of the brain, your brain goes, Blur. That's the scientific term. Exactly. I have many scientific terms such as these. Right. But so you have these these, these co coupled frequencies, the low, the low frequencies like one to eight Hertz and then you have the higher frequencies that work together to transmit all this information to the brain in a way that the brain, your brain, you that is you can understand it. And so it's, it's very important that these pieces of information come together. And the analogy that they give is similar to radio transmitter that you have different signals. You have one radio receiver, but your radio can tell everything apart based on the different frequencies. You can even have AM and FM and all the different frequencies in between on each of those bands. Now we've got Wi-Fi and microwave. We've got all the things, but our brains do very similar things, which is very, which I think is very interesting.  And this is how our networks use frequency and timing to create these networks that link together to allow us to perceive things. And we wouldn't be able to perceive things if we didn't have this rhythmic neuronal coupling of activity. I always pictured my brain like a filing cabinet before, but I like this way better. It's a, it's a radio with a dial with all these different frequencies. I think that makes a lot of sense because it allows for the, the simultaneous input in a way that other metaphors I've heard in the past don't, it kind of is a procedural thing of, okay, let me hold, let me process this and then let me process this and then let me, that really allows for the, the multi-fasal nature of input that we deal with. Cool. Yeah. So you have to, but you have to have this company coupling low, low frequency modulation of the higher frequency rhythm so that the coupling allows the population.  All these signals go along with this low frequency signal. So these all go together into, look, it's a helicopter in the sky.  But in, in, in essence, it's like that FM dial, like you said, and you have all the stuff coming in on the FM dial, but because it's the FM dial, you know that you can, you can tune in to a particular station. But is that like why certain sensory inputs will get coupled together? Like you have almost like a, like a smell memory and it puts you in a specific place in a specific time? Probably. Right. And so this is very likely how, how these components, these modalities, these contextual modalities of a scene of an episode in your life do get tied together. And so they'll all be tied together in this, in this neuronal network of activation, and they'll only be activated based on their frequencies. And so you could have the same neurons, but at different frequencies, and they could be telling a different story. So they could just, if they're tuned to a different frequency, it could be the same group of neurons as a network, but oh, they're playing this channel instead of this channel. And so you're remembering breakfast last Friday, instead of being in the car on the way to work. Sure. I think this kind of stuff is so interesting. How does the brain do it all? Dynamic coupling. That's what it, that's what we like to think possibly. But how, how do we recognize song? It's singing in the brain, everyone. A new study has determined that there is a part of the brain, a very specific population of neurons that only gets activated by singing. But by hearing singing or singing? By hearing singing. Okay. So I mean, if, if you sing, it will hear you singing. And so then it will get activated. But it's the hearing, and not the production of song. And it's not other types of music either. Only singing. There is a specific group of neurons in your auditory cortex that only responds to the combination of music and voice. So I know this part of my auditory cortex is getting very activated every time I listen to vocal house music. Because that's voice. But then again, when it's just minimal techno and there's no voice, that's why I don't get excited. Possibly. I don't know. These research researchers, Sam Norman Hagnere, who was formerly at MIT and worked on the study now as an assistant professor of neuroscience at University of Rochester Medical Center, he says the work provides evidence for relatively fine grained segregation of function within the auditory cortex in a way that aligns with an intuitive distinction within music. There's one population of neurons that responds to singing. And then very nearby is another population of neurons that responds broadly to lots of music. At the scale of fMRI, they're so close that you can't disentangle them. But with intracranial recordings, that's right, they during surgery on people with epilepsy, they actually did recordings within the brain, within the auditory cortex. Electrodes were stuck into the brain tissue to do this. They got additional resolution. And he says, that's what we believe allowed us to pick them apart. Ooh, really good question in the chat. Does it have to be a human singing? Or could it be a robot attempting to sing? Well, I imagine it would have to be a robot that sings, not like a robot, but less uncanny valley and more real. They played, while they were doing this electro corticography, they played 165 sounds to these participants while they were under their surgery. And they were able to record the neuronal populations. And they said that the neural response pattern popped out that only responded to singing with this particular group. So do you think this is some sort of super far and hominid past origin of communication through song? Or is this something that is way far back on the evolutionary tree? Because I'm thinking about birds. I'm thinking about the frogs. So there's all sorts of interesting auditory cues that are kind of melodic throughout the animal kingdom. So is this something that actually has been preserved for millions of years? Right. That's a great question. And if the fact that there is a neuronal, a specific neuronal population, it suggests that this is something special. But now we need to go look and see does this exist in... Well, we know that there are specific neuronal populations within the bird brain for hearing and producing song. But it's bird song. Is there communication? So it's different than music. And we don't necessarily know about other primates using music and song. And so we can't very well compare it against for like an evolutionary perspective. That's a really interesting question now that we're thinking about it. I have no idea. I mean, it could be the kind of thing that just popped up in humans. Yeah. But why? Right? Why and how? It almost makes more sense as something that's late and that was like hanging out from previous evolutionary past and then pop back up again. Yeah. I don't know. That's very... I mean, what would be the... Evolutionarily, why would you need a specialized part of your brain for song? It's got to be some... It's definitely selection based. But why would it be selective? There has to be some aspect of voice and music because we have neurons that respond to both. Right? Yeah. This is a great question. I don't know. Let's see. They ask how might song selectivity have arisen in the first place in their paper? The visual word form area demonstrates that category selective neural populations can arise purely from experience since reading is a recent cultural invention. So from reading, they say that could happen. Music could similarly arise from individual experience, particularly since it engages reward related circuits in the basal forebrain whose activity can deduce long term plasticity in the auditory cortex. However, unlike reading, singing could plausibly have shaped neural circuits over the course of evolution since it appears to be a natural and instinctive behavior that is widely present across human societies and does not require technology. Indeed, we observe music and song selective electrodes in a subject with no reported musical training consistent with a recent finding from our lab that music selectivity does not depend on explicit training. On the other hand, almost all listeners have extensive implicit knowledge of music and song gained through listening over the lifetime. They admit after this that, thus, many questions remain about the origins of song and music selectivity within the auditory cortex. What we need to do is keep people from listening to songs with voice and see if this population, I mean, that's, it's just an easy experiment to do. Yeah, no problem. For how long?   I wouldn't, it wouldn't be a life worth living. And so then the question is, what happens to our brains when we die?  I don't want to know. I don't want to know what happens.  So there's the near death experience relation to this concept of something happening in our brains that replays all of our memories from our lives. But we've never been able to record the activity of somebody's brain while they've been dying. And some researchers were working with an older person who happened to have a heart attack and died during an experiment in which they had them in an fMRI machine and were recording their brain activity. And so they were able to record, not that they were able to, but they did record what happened with the brain as this individual was dying. One problem that they admit to is this could, this recording definitely could have been impacted by the fact this person died of a heart attack. And that heart attack could have impacted what happened in the brain in a very particular way. But the interesting effect here that is reported was a general increase in gamma waves in this particular frequency oscillation of the brain. And so we have these alpha, beta, delta, gamma waves of activity in the brain when you're just recording the gross activation of the brain, not like I was talking about before with like the activation of specific neurons and the frequencies. But when you take all of those little activations of all the little neurons and you put them all together, your brain can be in heightened states of activity. It can be working on stuff. And the gamma brain waves are related to memory retrieval. And so what they saw in these 30 seconds around the time of the heart attack, when the heart stopped beating and as the individual was just starting to die, they saw these gamma oscillations in the brain. And so the implication is that understanding that gamma brain waves are related to memory retrieval processes, as we've seen these waves in large scale brain studies of living people retrieving information about memories, maybe at the time of death, your life does flash before your eyes. Lots of caveats here, though, single individual. You don't know, there's no controls. You have no idea what has led to this. It could also be that this is the, this brain oscillation is what happens when you have an overstressed brain that is not receiving the blood that it needs and is undergoing a hypoxic situation. Because if the heart stops beating, blood isn't moving to the brain. And so you're suddenly going to be, there are going to be a lot of stress responses that are happening in those moments. So there are other questions that relate to this. And it's very, very possible that this story is getting a lot of sensationalistic coverage and it's an anecdote.  That's not science. It's one study. It's one, it's not even a study. It was happenstance. Right. And I honestly think there could be many, many more explanations for this. So I just, I'd need to put that out there as the spot of reality. And so Blair, don't be afraid. No, don't be afraid. But if that is what happens, what an odd and interesting thing, if that is a mechanism that occurs, is it memory retrieval and the life flashing before our eyes as some kind of selected thing that, hey, this is great.  But is it, or could it just be a correlated kind of thing where, like I said, this is just what happens when there's a lot of stress on the brain and the ion channels open in a particular way and that's the signal. And maybe the byproduct is that memories get retrieved, but it's not on purpose. It's not like anything. I don't know. There are nuances to this, I think. We have to get that machine going that the images what you see. Right.  But here's the question. So I mean, I guess the ethics of this, how do you, aside from, oh, this happened to this person, unfortunately, in the middle of this study? Right.  So do we talk to people who are planning end of life? And if we are talking to them about sharing these last moments with scientists, are you then sometimes somehow helping to talk them into their end of life planning? It gets, you know, there's a bit of recursiveness there, but these are very important ethical considerations that as researchers need to be taken very seriously. Because end of life is no joke, even if you relive everything in a burst at the very end. No joke. Do we really need to know? Do we really need to know what happens? This is something that, I don't know, I'm just, I'm getting in a philosophical way now, but like, Blair, it's science. Isn't this one of the beautiful things about death? Is it the only people who've experienced it can't tell us what it's like? I'm kind of okay not knowing what death feels like. You don't want to have, you don't want to have like your planning manual that, you know, the binder that you go, I'll read that later. I want to go to bed. If it gets to that point, wouldn't you rather just, I don't know, do you know what I mean though? Like what is there to gain from knowing what happens when you die? I guess other than trying to prevent death. Well, it could also, it leads to interesting questions. Like I was saying, why is this happening? Is it a byproduct of just random neuronal activity that memories get replayed? That is very likely. You know, the likelihood that some kind of evolutionary process led to this instant replay of your life in your last moments. That to me is, that doesn't make sense, but who knows? These are the things, I mean, this is what science is about. To you, it's not a question you would study, but to other people, it's very interesting. And it's a question, right? I'm just curious what the, what the implications would be or what the, I mean, it's not going to tell you what's beyond.  You know, as everything begins to deteriorate, as the chemical gradients start to decline, as the metabolism, all those metabolic processes start to alter in a direction that is not supported by the lub dub of the heart, by the, of the breathing. You know, these are, it's, it's when that stops, what happens? And yeah, and perhaps it can prolong life, perhaps understanding it can help predict changes to mental state. Hopefully it can help create treatments to damage to the brain. That's a good one. I'm also wondering if, I mean, it would be a huge bummer to find out, but if we found out that that process was actually kind of jarring or upsetting in any way, then you could try to make easing off into death less traumatizing. I'd like to think that dying is kind of peaceful, especially, I mean, specifically for when it's not sudden and unexpected. Um, but, but if it, yeah, if it's not, that would be so dark to find out. But I guess if you found out that it's, it's a panic in a way of your brain trying to grab onto something and you could prevent that from being the last feeling that a person has, that would be beneficial. Yeah. Geez, that's oof. We're in the show on death. Oh, but it's just the, the, the yang to the yin of life, right? It's part of it all.   It is a natural consequence of life. We don't get the life without the other part of it. And so acknowledge, I think it is healthy to acknowledge these life processes and to understand them and not to ruminate on them in a depressive way, because that's not fun for anyone, but to, you know, to look at them like a pretty marble and to appreciate and question how it got to be the way that it is. Whatcha doing there? Brain death? You're, you're an interesting marble. I'm gonna put you in my marble collection and we're not gonna talk to you for a while, but I'll look at you and think you're pretty sometimes. Huh. On that note, I hope that we haven't, uh, bored y'all into a state of torpor or rather you were gonna say brain death? No, I hope we have brought new life to your brain through curious curiosity and curious conversations, interesting questions, taking it different places, contemplation. We appreciate that. Thanks Blair. Yeah, this is good. Yeah. Thanks everyone out there for being there. I see you in the chat room. I see you in our discord. I see you there chatting, being a part of the show, thinking about these things that we are discussing. Thank you for being here for this episode. We hope that you enjoyed it. Hope you enjoyed listening. Shout outs to Fada. Thank you so much for show notes, show descriptions, and the social media that you do. Thank you. Identity 4, thank you for recording the show. 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This week's science is coming your way, so everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth, and I'll broadcast my opinion all over the air. Because it's this week in science. This week in science. This week in science. Science. Science. This week in science. This week in science. This week in science. Science. I got one disclaimer, and it shouldn't be news. That's what I say. May not represent your views, but I've done the calculations, and I've got a plan.  I hope everyone is well. Thank you for another great show. Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Raspberry schnapps.  Which one is it? You'll never know. Water. It's so delicious. And yes, it was wonderful to be distracted by science for a short amount of time.  That's right. Special crane. Good night, Michelle. Thank you for joining us from your late night digs one a.m. Exactly. It has to be vodka. Otherwise, I would never be able to deal with all this gracious. I'm, I'm, I'm logging into Mailchimp so I can invite Rachel to work on the newsletters. And I, please help me. That's great. That's us. We're doing it. Did I? Thank you, Rachel. Every time I want to say that, I want to say it like lipstick taser. You have your own Mailchimp account or do you use my username and password to log in? I use yours. Okay, great. I mean, I can, yeah, I use yours. I was just trying to figure out if I was trying to add a user or just share credentials. So you shared credentials with me. So every time I want to use it. I just say, Hey Blair, say it's okay. And let me in. Gaurav, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Your internet is really bad today. Mine was terrible earlier. I don't know what happened. My computer did a weird ol' wacky thing. I don't know what that was either. No clue. No clue.  Yes, that's me reading all the names. Thanks. So let's see, R and Lore, you had shared a link way, way long time back. I didn't see it. Yeah, Steven Rain mentioned maybe that person was remembering his favorite memories, right? Maybe that maybe you go, oh no, and then maybe you do an accounting. Maybe that's what happened.  And that's actually true. DMT is produced in our bodies, usually in small amounts. Penial gland. Penial. Yes.  Well, I don't know if I've just been out of the animal game too long, but yeah, I was getting confused. Parietal eye. Excuse me. I love it. Oh, pineal eye. Yeah. That's yes. I cannot use that computer for that. Why are they both called pineal? Are they different? The pineal gland is called the third eye. The third eye comes from the pineal gland's primary function of letting in light and darkness, just as our two eyes do. Gland is the melatonin secreting neuroendocrine organ containing light sensitive cells that control circadian rhythm. Okay. So the pineal gland is kind of like pineal gland is kind of on the path of the optic nerve and all that kind of stuff. So it, okay, that's why one of the reasons that like looking at light is important. So I was right. Release melatonin and all that kind of stuff. The third eye on an iguana on the top of their head. This is what I'm thinking about is also called. It's usually called a parietal eye, but it's also called a pineal eye. Yes. It's the same organ. Oh, I'm pretty sure it's the same organ yet in a different spot. Whoa. Because of evolution. What the heck? Blair, you're cracking me up right now. You're like, what is even going on? That's crazy. I love it. That's a crazy thing that exists. Why is it crazy? I don't know. Cause just like, cause we call it our third eye and it's related to like light sensitive stuff, but then it's actually like a third eye on a lizard. Yes. It actually is that. It is that. Yes. Let's see. Penial, I don't know. I always put the embosses in the wrong place, I think. I always said pineal. Reptile versus mammal. There we go. Penial like the land. Yeah, parietal eye, blah, blah, blah. Right on top. Mm-hmm. Yep. I'm glad I was right about that. You were right. You were just confused because you like the lizards. It's not a gland, it's an eye. No, it's a gland. That makes sense. It's a gland. It is an eye. It is a gland. It's all these things. It's not an eye. It can sense light and dark, but it can't. It's not an eye. But, I mean, in terms of an eye, it's a light-sensing organ. So, technically, yes, it's an eye, but it doesn't let you see visual details. It's just a light versus dark. It's a light sensor. It's an eye like jellyfish have eyes. Mm-hmm. Oh, did I find it? No, this is a mammalian one. What are you looking for? Well, I wanted to find if, of course, you know, of course, somebody on the Internet has done a very specific dissection in comparison of the reptile pineal gland to the location of the mammalian pineal gland. I'm sure that there is comparative anatomy out there. That's what I'm looking for because these are the things that I look for. I want to see it. It's got to exist. It's got to exist. Does it? No, it doesn't. It doesn't got to if nobody did it. Oh, but it's near the medulla oblong gotta. Look at the mammalian. What does the iron lore says? It's Latin. The word pineal from Latin, pine cone, refer to the cone shape of the brain gland. Pineal. Would you like some pineal gland? Huh. I know. I know. I love your comments. Everybody here. Funny. I shared a YouTube. You shared a YouTube. Yeah. It's a song made at the Magpie by Donovan that I had in my head while we were talking about magpies today. It's a good song. All right. Let's try and find the reptilian pineal. Pineal. Let's look at the Springerlink image, which you got going on there. Comparative cookie giver. Oh, I can't have. Comparative cookie giver. Very good.  There we go. It is not the giver of the reptile brain today. Come on, computer. Cell. The only known job. I was reading a headline. Go ahead. I'm curious how people responded to that video of the lizard tails. Were people grossed out? I don't think people were. It didn't seem like people were like, ew, gross. Disgusting. I don't think people were grossed out about their own surgeries. Okay. Maybe I gave enough warning that it wasn't so bad. When I was watching it, I was like, this is super cool to see, but also I feel like some people would be like. And yes, noodles, the taper frog. Tape here. Man, I don't see. You gave noodles a new fave. What? Is that because I'm not logged into Twitch? Discord. Oh, Discord. I'm being open guys. Too many things. I always forget about this course. Oh, when we were talking about the modulation of neuronal frequency and you asked about different things being connected, it kind of made me think also this can explain these carrier waves, like the lower frequency with the modulation of the higher frequency signals. Maybe this could partially explain synesthesia where it kind of crosses over in between. That's like where you can taste smells, right? Yeah. Hear colors. No, that's wrong because you can taste smells. That's a real thing. Wait a minute. No, olfaction. Mouth. Similar. Ugh. Where you can hear colors. Oh, that would be a terrible thing, though. Can some people taste colors? Yeah. Hear smells. I hope that the colors taste good. Sometimes you can hear a smell if you know what I'm saying. I'm going to be saying this word all day long. Luckily, the day is not much longer. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. Oh, geez. You did this to me, people. It's you. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. Peniel. I do not want to look at the Internet. I want to avoid the Internet. Yay. The Magpie. Kayva Ghosas. This is normally the point where Justin would inject some low-brow humor into the After Show. So, thanks, Blair. You're welcome. Lizzyn, I go where I'm needed. go where I'm needed. It was time. I work like diffusion. I feel empty space how I work. Excuse me. Oh my goodness. Under suggested YouTube videos under the song I shared. Low five for witches. Excuse me. Because I've watched some D&D videos.  Are you a witch now? No, no. No, actually, I am a frog barred currently. Singing the tape your song. She's actually she's a Panamanian golden frog. So she's yellow with black spots. R&L, I've been playing D&D for five years, I think. It's pretty fun. So this is my so we were playing we've been playing one. Yeah, I'm a grung. You're exactly right. R&L, which like we're doing it. We're doing a shorter campaign right now. It's a one shot, but it's going to be over two or three days really. And that's the only reason I was allowed to be a grung because it's not a full sanctioned race yet, I guess. Because it's so I guess it's too powerful. You have poison skin. So nobody can touch you. I also think it's it's it's a fair give and take because also then like nobody can heal you without touching right. And then, you know, I get hurt healing you have to roll a constitution saving throw, whatever anyway, now getting like super into it. But good, you can also like rub projectiles on your skin to to make like an arrow poison or something, which is right. So you're like a poison dart frog. Yeah, but I also have water dependency. So I have to I have to soak for at least an hour a day or I take a point of exhaustion. Yes, it's official. It's non core. Exactly. Yes. So I was I paid the extra or should I say Brian paid the extra for in D&D beyond to to get the the expansion or whatever for the grung but it's very fun. But before that and still we have an ongoing campaign where I'm a dragonborn cleric trickster. That sounds more usual. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a master of games. It's very fun.  That's awesome. Yeah. Oh, were you D&D over Skype zoom during the pandemic? How have you not made it to a podcast? So yes, we pretty much exclusively have done that because when we started one of our campaign lived in New York. And then right around when he moved back, another person in our campaign moved to Oh, I'm going to get this wrong. Oklahoma, I think. But so we were pretty much never in the same place. So we always have done Skype or zoom, we did some other stuff in person, like we played fate at one point, or we were all cats. And we did that in person. And then we've also played some Monster of the Week in person. My character in Monster of the Week is a she's the expert, obviously. And she wears a silver 3p suit and has an oobliet and a laboratory set. And she solves magic with science. But yes, I didn't make it into a podcast because there's a million of those. There's a million D&D podcasts. And I think it's really hard to do one that's not boring to listen to. Like there's a few that people have figured it out. But otherwise, I could see that being super boring. I don't know. No, you should Twitch stream. People love watching those kinds of things sometimes. Yeah, you should. But I mean, it's just a stream that you have going and then you can keep doing what you do. Yeah, you can interact with people and get people to vote on like what you think you should do next. Yeah, if they're there, makes it very nice. Everyone thinks we should live stream our D&D campaign. We can start a new one. Yeah, you are gonna you're gonna DM you could DM something for us. That'd be pretty fun. Real people, real people. Yeah, do it, Brian. Yeah. Okay. Have a good night. Yeah. Bye. I can only find tape ears. I can't find the tape ear frog call and don't have it even though they said they recorded it. Oh, they did. They record it. Yeah, the researchers says I am obsessed with recording frog calls. So I decided to record the call first and then continue digging. So they've got calls. Next time. Yeah, it's out there. The audio is out there. Oh, yeah, I did see that that the grung money went to extra life, which we interviewed someone from extra life. I think in Philadelphia. I think it was at that event, we interviewed someone from extra life. That's fun. Yeah. Does that sound familiar to you at all? It's a yes. Wait, who did we talk to about extra life? One of the one of the founders. I do believe. Yeah. Yeah, I was like, what, you play games, and you make money for donations to nonprofits for good causes. I was like, what is this? Yeah, awesomeness. What awesomeness is this? How does this work? Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna search the word grung in here. Chavez. Okay, who is this Chavez who wrote the I'm okay. No, German Chavez. I'm going to find you. What are you looking for? Oh, the how them on the show. Yes, frogs. Here goes. I can find the BBB. I am. G Chad still does those charity streams. That's great. Yeah, he's been doing Minecraft stuff for years. Oh, OMG, Chad, I remember when he was just a little kid. Now he's an adult. What is it with these people growing up? Me too. Let's see. New paper. What is this? What have I tonight? I'm going to be settling into bed. I'm going to find this person. Tweets. Tweets, I bet. I wonder if I'll be able to find his calls. I wonder if he'll have shared them with the mile. There's lots of pictures. He's sharing the paper. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is this it? Wait, that is so quiet. Did you find it? Something? I don't know. I'm going to keep looking. Estuvimos en Quebrada Federico Inventario Rapido with the Field Museum. Try again. Was that it?  I've got it. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me try again. I had it all turned down. Let me try again. Let me try again. Okay, we're going to do this again. Let's see how this sounds. Maybe I found it. Here comes again. You don't think though? I love it. Oh, you looked, I thought you looked sad and upset. No, I just need it isolated. Hey, someone who knows how to do that. Isolate it. Okay, it's time for now. We've gotten to the part of the show where I'm going to look for frog ringtones. Enjoy. We're doing it. Time for the ringtones. I found it. German. They're all going to be bunked normal frogs, huh? Oh, wait, here is this. Yeah, I think that's too normal. Yeah, going on. Normal frogs. Oh, it's a little yellow frog. That's like a bullfrog. Yeah, I found it. I can probably download some, I can probably download some audio of these and see if I can separate it. Yep, noise gate. You can do noise remover. Steven Rain, it's a great idea. I could probably put it on Twitch and do that. I just would have to how do I do that? Would I have to have a server running it? I'd have to be running it all the time. I like that. Oh, you got one. Who's going to be shouting at kids to get off their lawn? The frog hunters?  You might step on the frogs. That's what I do. Oh yes, OMG, Chad. That's the next step exactly.  It's not unless you are mining the minecraft bricks. Poison dart frogs. Rana. Ooh, what's this one? A quick, oh wait, segmentation. No, that's a video. White lipped bright-eyed frog. What is this? Oh, no, that's just a picture. Ooh, that's pretty. I do like that one a lot. That one's a good one. Will you actually hear it and answer your phone though? No. It'll also probably get annoying. Oh, you should have that be your text, your messages notification. Yeah. Not that one. The boop beep. I like the boop beep. You should make that one your texts. Boop beep. Boop beep. Boop beep. That's too basic. That's a basic frog. Get out of it. What? Wait, wait, wait, wait. Dragon Prince is getting a TTRPG? What? I never got past that one of that show. I will be honest. I liked it. I like the Dragon Prince. I like the stuff out of that animation studio avatar. Yeah. I think I was expecting it to be too much like avatar and I was sorely disappointed. Soarly, sorely. It was a little dragon, baby. All right, Lori says, for a earphone ringtone, use a Vixen's screams. Oh, no, I'm okay. No, no, no, no, no, I'm okay. But what's this?  Great question, Kyva. Answer because it doesn't interject chainsaw and camera shutter sounds in between frog sounds. You are absolutely correct.  Oh, my, my earpiece is making my ear uncomfortable this evening. That's a horned frog. A witch? Oh, I love that one. That's one of my favorites. That one's so much. That one's great. Yes, please. I'm sending that to Brian right now. He's gonna put it on his phone as the sound notification when you call him. Right now, it's the electrical parade from Disney when he calls me. Oh, that's sweet. Well, on that note, I think it's time to say good night, Blair. Yeah, good night, Kiki. Good night, everyone. I think I'm going to call it. It's 10 30 and do you need to get some rest? And I hope that you all get some wonderful needed rest. I hope Justin gets some wonderful needed rest. Some stories that came out this week were very, very, they found a lot of evidence related to circadian rhythms and sleep. Great. Being important for delaying or stopping the accumulation of proteins related to Alzheimer's disease related to mental disorder, aging, sleep is very important. As much as we love to stay awake, common circadian rhythms, keeping a good bedtime, whatever it is, it could be always three in the morning. As long as it's always the same, just do the same thing all the time. That's what you need to do. What you're saying is you shouldn't change from nocturnal to diurnal every four days. You're saying you shouldn't do that. I'm saying you should not do that. Great. Circadian rhythms keep everything happy, but maybe every four days your body gets used to that. I don't know. I'm not going to say anything. OMG. Yes, OMG, Chad. Stop the 48 hour marathon streams. That's it. We will see you all next week. Stay well, stay rested, stay entertained, stay curious, and we'll see you for more this week in science. Hope you all have a wonderful week. Good night.