Author archives: Ignacio Amigo

Image of Ignacio Amigo

Ignacio is a science writer based in São Paulo, Brazil. He graduated in Biochemistry and holds a PhD in Molecular Biology. He likes to think of science as part of a complex puzzle rather than a silver bullet.

Between science and fascination:  An interview with Dr. Nancy Segal

Between science and fascination: An interview with Dr. Nancy Segal

EvolutionGeneticsPsychology

By Ignacio Amigo

How does the Zika virus cause microcephaly? Why do some people develop schizophrenia or mental disease while others don’t? Is our sexual orientation hardwired in our genes? As seemingly unrelated as these questions might sound, they can all be addressed using the same scientific tool: twin siblings. Nancy Segal (Boston, 1951) has been chasing twins […]

Learning to remember

Learning to remember

Neuroscience

By Ignacio Amigo

Legend goes that the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos was having dinner at the house of a wealthy man in Thessaly when he received a message to go outside to meet two men who had requested to see him. When he left the room, the roof collapsed, killing the host and all the other guests […]

Sex, alcohol and flies

Sex, alcohol and flies

EthologyNeurobiology

By Ignacio Amigo

Men have been drowning their love sorrows in alcohol since the dawn of times. What probably none of those lonely broken-hearted drinkers might have imagined, is that their despair would serve as inspiration for an interesting research involving sex, alcohol and flies. As the story goes, a group of researchers at the University of California […]

Viruses at the edge of life

Viruses at the edge of life

Biology

By Ignacio Amigo

The definition of life is not a simple one. According to classical textbooks, “living things are born, grow, reproduce and die”. But one doesn’t have to look too far to find some caveats in this interpretation. For example, when bacteria divide, can we really say that one is “giving birth” to the other? The part […]

Exploring the brain of jazz musicians

Exploring the brain of jazz musicians

Neuroscience

By Ignacio Amigo

Improvisation is a hallmark of jazz music, arguably its most salient feature. When they improvise, musicians compose and play simultaneously, one of the most notorious examples of spontaneous creativity. What happens in the brain during improvisation is largely a mystery, but studying it may help us gain some insight on the basis that underlie the […]

What if Alzheimer’s disease was caused by fungi?

What if Alzheimer’s disease was caused by fungi?

HealthMedicineNeurobiologyNeuroscience

By Ignacio Amigo

More than a hundred years have passed since the German physicist Alois Alzheimer associated the traits of dementia of one of her patients with morphological changes in her brain after her death. While we know a great deal about what today is known as Alzheimer’s disease, we still need to answer two fundamental questions: what […]

Having sex with another species

Having sex with another species

Biology

By Ignacio Amigo

Looking for a sexual partner outside your species is not very common, but that is what the males of a type of spider mite do. Even more, a recent work suggests that this kinky behaviour could have been key to colonization of new environments. Tetranychus evansi is a species of red spider mite originally from […]