For a long time, it was thought that dreaming occurred in the rapid eye movement phase of sleep (REM sleep). It is now well established that it can occur at any stage of sleep and, therefore, is not exclusive to a specific global vigilance state. Today, there is no known physiological correlate of a dream […]
Intermittent fasting is more than the latest diet fad, it has proven benefits –at least in animal models– against longevity, and it appears that it could even improve nerve regeneration, according to new research. The problems with axons in the peripheral nervous system is that their regenerative capacity is not very high. There are certain […]
Modelling of neuron-glial interactions is an emerging field of Computational Neuroscience. The ubiquity of these interactions and the possibility that they may occur within the time and spatial scales that are usually ascribed to neuronal and synaptic function, calls for a revision of current neuron-based modeling paradigms to include potentially relevant effects mediated by glial […]
New research has unearthed evidence that points to a strong relationship between the magnitude of mass extinctions and global temperature changes in geologic times. Abrupt climate change, accompanied by environmental destruction from large volcanic eruptions and meteorites, has caused major mass extinctions throughout the Phanerozoic Eon, covering 539 million years to the present. To date […]
Every geography schoolbook has them: maps that look like today’s Earth, but not quite, since all continents are merged into a single supercontinent. Those maps were used to explain why dinosaurs in South America and Africa, or North America and Europe looked so alike. “Paleogeographic” reconstructions like these provide context to study the processes that […]
A common saying refers to the power of the eyes as a window inside our souls; interestingly, our eyes could also be a window into our brains, helping identify certain neurological conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent work published in Frontiers in Neuroscience found distinct electrical recording signatures […]
We can model the motions of planets in the Solar System quite accurately using Newton’s laws of physics. But in the early 1970s, scientists noticed that this didn’t work for disc galaxies – stars at their outer edges, far from the gravitational force of all the matter at their centre – were moving much faster […]
In the last years, CRISPR-Cas9 technology has revolutionized gene editing, having enormous research and clinical potential. However, gene editing can be tricky and have unexpected effects, like recently reported in the journal PNAS , where tweaking a gene produced aggressive hamsters instead of the calm, Zen animals the researchers were aiming for. Arginine-vasopressin (AVP) and […]
The scattering of conduction electrons in metals due to impurities with magnetic moments is known as the Kondo effect, after Jun Kondo, who analysed the phenomenon in 1964. This scattering increases the electrical resistance and has as a consequence that, in contrast to ordinary metals, the resistance reaches a minimum as the temperature is lowered […]
The migration of carbon atoms on the surface of the nanomaterial graphene was recently measured for the first time. Although the atoms move too swiftly to be directly observed with an electron microscope, their effect on the stability of the material can now be determined indirectly while the material is heated on a microscopic hot […]