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John Paul Peck-  The Mystery of the human Brain

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John Paul Peck-  The Mystery of the human Brain

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The human brain in my opinion is one of the most interesting mysteries in the human body.  Thanks to this Article I have a much better understanding of how our brains function and perform certain tasks.  I've always wondered how our memory, emotions, and scenes work.  If you have similar questions to mine about our brand, I highly suggest reading this Article, or even do more research than me.

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The brain encodes information collected by our senses. However, to perceive our environment and to constructively interact with it, these sensory signals need to be interpreted in the context of our previous experiences and current aims. In the latest issue of Science, a team of scientists led by Dr. Johannes Letzkus, Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, has identified a key source of this experience-dependent top-down information.

The neocortex is the largest area of the human brain. It has expanded and differentiated enormously during mammalian evolution, and is thought to mediate many of the capacities that distinguish humans from their closest relatives. Moreover, dysfunctions of this area also play a central role in many psychiatric disorders. All higher cognitive functions of the neocortex are enabled by bringing together two distinct streams of information: a 'bottom-up' stream carrying signals from the surrounding environment, and a 'top-down' stream that transmits internally-generated information encoding our previous experiences and current aims.

"Decades of investigation have elucidated how sensory inputs from the environment are processed. However, our knowledge of internally-generated information is still in its infancy. This is one of the biggest gaps in our understanding of higher brain functions like sensory perception," says Letzkus. This motivated the team to search for the sources of these top-down signals. "Previous work by us and many other scientists had suggested that the top-most layer of neocortex is likely a key site that receives inputs carrying top-down information. Taking this as a starting point allowed us to identify a region of the thalamus -- a brain area embedded deep within the forebrain -- as a key candidate source of such internal information."

Motivated by these observations Dr. M. Belén Pardi, the first author of the study and postdoctoral researcher in the Letzkus lab, devised an innovative approach that enabled her to measure the responses of single thalamic synapses in mouse neocortex before and after a learning paradigm. "The results were very clear," Pardi remembers. "Whereas neutral stimuli without relevance were encoded by small and transient responses in this pathway, learning strongly boosted their activity and made the signals both faster and more sustained over time." This suggests that the thalamic synapses in neocortex encode the previous experience of the animal. "We were really convinced that this is the case when we compared the strength of the acquired memory with the change in thalamic activity: This revealed a strong positive correlation, indicating that inputs from the thalamus prominently encode the learned behavioral relevance of stimuli," says Letzkus.

But is this mechanism selective for these top-down memory-related signals? Sensory stimuli can be relevant because of what we have learned to associate with them, but also merely due to their physical properties. For instance, the louder sounds are the more readily they recruit attention in both humans and animals. However, this is a low-level function that has little to do with previous experience. "Intriguingly, we found very different, indeed opposite, encoding mechanisms for this bottom-up form of relevance" says Pardi.

Given their central importance, the scientists speculated that the way these signals are received in the neocortex must be tightly regulated. Pardi and co-workers addressed this in further experiments, combined with computational modeling in collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Henning Sprekeler and his team at Technische Universität Berlin. The results indeed identified a previously unknown mechanism that can finely tune the information along this pathway, identifying a specialized type of neuron in the top-most layer of neocortex as a dynamic gatekeeper of these top-down signals.

"These results reveal the thalamic inputs to sensory neocortex as a key source of information about the past experiences that have been associated with sensory stimuli. Such top-down signals are perturbed in a number of brain disorders like autism and schizophrenia, and our hope is that the present findings will also enable a deeper understanding of the maladaptive changes that underlie these severe conditions," concludes Letzkus.

Journal Reference:

M. Belén Pardi, Johanna Vogenstahl, Tamas Dalmay, Teresa Spanò, De-Lin Pu, Laura B. Naumann, Friedrich Kretschmer, Henning Sprekeler, Johannes J. Letzkus. A thalamocortical top-down circuit for associative memory. Science, 2020; 370 (6518): 844 DOI: 10.1126/science.abc2399

Cite This Page:

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From the inside out: How the brain forms sensory memories

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The brain encodes information collected by our senses. However, to perceive our environment and to constructively interact with it, these sensory signals need to be interpreted in the context of our previous experiences and current aims. In the latest issue of Science, a team of scientists led by Dr. Johannes Letzkus, Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, has identified a key source of this experience-dependent top-down information.

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name: Jessy
day to present:  2020.11.12
summary:
Wolf use their howl to communicate in many purposes: the lone howl attract its packs's attention and communal howls may send territorial messages to other pack. Grey Wolves are adaptable and by far the most common and were found all over the northern hemisphere. Although they almost never attack human, but they do attack domestic animals and because of this tendency countless of them have been shot, trapped, and poisoned. They live and hunt in hierarchical pack and cooperate on their preferred prey-large mammals, but they eat small mammals as well. They can consume 20 pounds of meat at a sitting, and roam perhaps for 12 miles a day.

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Scientific Name:

Canis lupus

Average Life Span In The Wild:

6 to 8 years

Size:

Head and body: 36 to 63 inches; tail: 13 to 20 inches

Size relative to a 6-ft human:

What are gray wolves?

Wolves are legendary because of their spine-tingling howl, which they use to communicate. A lone wolf howls to attract the attention of his pack, while communal howls may send territorial messages from one pack to another. Some howls are confrontational. Much like barking domestic dogs, wolves may simply begin howling because a nearby wolf has already begun.

Population and conservation

Wolves are the largest members of the dog family. Adaptable gray wolves are by far the most common and were once found all over the Northern Hemisphere. But wolves and humans have a long adversarial history. Though they almost never attack humans, wolves are considered one of the animal world's most fearsome natural villains. They do attack domestic animals, and countless wolves have been shot, trapped, and poisoned because of this tendency.

In the lower 48 states, gray wolves were hunted to near extinction, though some populations survived and others have since been reintroduced. Few gray wolves survive in Europe, though many live in Alaska, Canada, and Asia.

Wolf pack behavior

Wolves live and hunt in packs of around six to ten animals. They are known to roam large distances, perhaps 12 miles in a single day. These social animals cooperate on their preferred prey-large animals such as deer, elk, and moose. When they are successful, wolves do not eat in moderation. A single animal can consume 20 pounds of meat at a sitting. Wolves also eat smaller mammals, birds, fish, lizards, snakes, and fruit.

Wolfpacks are established according to a strict hierarchy, with a dominant male at the top and his mate not far behind. Usually this male and female are the only animals of the pack to breed. All of a pack's adults help to care for young pups by bringing them food and watching them while others hunt.

Did You Know?

- It's believed that wolves were first tamed in East Asia about 15,000 years ago.

- In Canada, beachcombing wolves swim between islands, eating crabs, clams, and other tidbits.

- Gray wolves are the planet's most widespread large land mammals after humans and livestock.

- A wolf pack is two or more wolves that have a defined territory.

- Wolves can go for more than a week without eating.

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Scientific Name: Canis lupus Average Life Span In The Wild: 6 to 8 years Size: Head and body: 36 to 63 inches; tail: 13 to 20 inches Size relative to a 6-ft human: Wolves are legendary because of their spine-tingling howl, which they use to communicate.

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The United States is impacted by a particular weather pattern called El Nino and La Nina.  El Nino and El Nina are both a climate pattern that leads to significant differences in ocean temperatures, winds, surface pressure, and rainfall across the tropical Pacific which ends up impacting our weather in the U.S.  This pattern swings back and forth every 3-7 years on average and is known as El Nino -Southern Oscillation (ENSO).  Scientists state that in 2020 we will enter the La Nina which began in August, 2020.  Forecasters are predicting these conditions will continue through winter in the Northern Hemisphere.  La Nina generally results in warmer, drier winters in the southern U.S. and snowier than average conditions across the northern U.S.

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El Niño & La Niña (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) | NOAA Climate.gov

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La Niña-the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern-emerged in the tropical Pacific in August 2020. Forecasters estimate a 85% chance these conditions will last through Northern Hemisphere winter. La Niña winters tend to favor warm and dry conditions in the southern tier of the U.S.

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Welcome to Science In The News - Virtual Style 

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Welcome to Science In The News - Virtual Style 

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Science is everywhere around you! The classroom is here to teach you the fundamentals of what is happening all around you. This is your opportunity to explore science outside of our curriculum.

Find a topic that interests you and research it. Find a current article (the last 5 years) about a topic and share it with your classmates. Topics may include: Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, Physics, Nutrition/Health, Medicine

To earn 5 points of Extra Credit:

Post link

Your name

Date you are presenting

Date published

3-4 sentences summarizing the article (in your own words!)

Present to class (in person or virtually)

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2020, The Year That Keeps On Giving!-  John Paul Peck

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2020, The Year That Keeps On Giving!-  John Paul Peck

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A few days ago on Sunday, November 8, 2020, a category 3.6 earthquake occurred on the coast of New Bedford in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts at 9 am according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center.  The earthquake struck at a depth of 15 km or 9.3 miles.  It was felt in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and into parts of Connecticut.  Personally, I did not experience any effects of this earthquake.  If you experienced these events where you live, you have witnessed a very unique event in the Northeast and in history.

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Credit: CC0 Public Domain

An earthquake struck southern New England on Sunday morning but there were no immediate reports of damage.

The earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.0 centered a few miles off the coast of New Bedford in Buzzards Bay struck just after 9 a.m., according to Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center.

The earthquake struck at a depth of a little more than 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) and was felt across southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

© 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Earthquake felt in Massachusetts, Rhode Island

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An earthquake struck southern New England on Sunday morning but there were no immediate reports of damage. The earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.0 centered a few miles off the coast of New Bedford in Buzzards Bay struck just after 9 a.m., according to Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S.

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Article's name:
Beaked Whale Shatters Record With 3 Hour 42 Minute Dive

Summary by Jessy:
This article introduces "the remarkable diver", Beaked Whale, to us. One of them shatters the record with 3 hour 42 minute dive, which is the longest and deepest dives of any marine mammal ever recorded, and the others that are tagged by Dr. Quick and her colleagues, are able to dive for 1hour and handful of them pass the two-hour mark.
This new record is so beyond what scientists, biologists, and physiologists have seen and learned before. One ecologists said the beaked whales might have unusual muscle composition that makes their tissue less rely on oxygen", and their unique physiology may make the deep-sea-journey, just like a walk in a park.

presenting date: 2020.10.16

The day it was published: 2020. sept. 23

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Scientists still don't know how the marine mammals go so long without air.

A Cuvier's beaked whale recently spent almost four hours underwater, or nearly seven times longer than scientists say its body size and metabolism should allow. Credit... Danielle Waples/Duke University

The 1959 movie "Ben-Hur" runs some three-and-a-half hours long. A Cuvier's beaked whale could watch the entire film underwater, never taking a gulp of air, with time to spare.

"They are remarkable divers," said Nicola Quick, a marine biologist at Duke University. These pointy-snouted cetaceans, which frequent the world's deep waters, have clocked the longest and deepest dives of any marine mammal ever recorded, plunging nearly 10,000 feet below the surface of the sea.

Dr. Quick's latest paper, published Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Biology, documents the whales' most impressive observed descent to date: 3 hours 42 minutes, trouncing the previous record by over an hour. The new record is nearly seven times longer than scientists expect the mysterious mammals should be able to dive, based on scientific understanding of their body size and metabolic rate.

"This is just so beyond what we've seen before," said Andreas Fahlman, a physiologist at the Oceanographic Foundation of the Valencian Community in Spain and an author on the study. "They're not supposed to be able to do this, but they do."

Most people, on the other hand, can't hold their breath for more than a couple of minutes, although the Guinness Book of World Records documented one free diver who went more than 24 minutes without coming up for air.

The biology-bending stunts of beaked whales come with serious perks. By swooping down into light-starved layers of the ocean, the animals can find and feast on droves of fish and squid that are not accessible to most other predators.

But this predilection for the deep also places beaked whales among the least well understood mammals in the world, Dr. Quick said. Although they do occasionally ascend to breach, often it is only for a couple of minutes at a time, just enough to suck in a few breaths of fresh air. The whales are also boat-shy.

Still, with some nimble maneuvering, Dr. Quick and her colleagues were able to tag two dozen Cuvier's beaked whales near Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Between 2014 and 2018, the team tracked the whales' movements as the animals undertook 3,680 foraging dives.

Previous calculations have estimated that Cuvier's beaked whales, which can grow as large as 5,000 pounds and 20 feet long, should be able to store enough oxygen to sustain dives of 33 minutes. But the majority of the dives executed by the whales in Dr. Quick's study lasted about an hour, with a small handful stretching past the two-hour mark.

Remarkably, the whales seemed unfazed by these feats: There was almost no relationship between the duration of their dives and the amount of time they spent recovering at the water's surface.

"These guys blow right past the limit that's seen with other species," said Eric Angel Ramos, a marine biologist at the City University of New York who was not involved in the study.

One oddball whale managed two extreme dives, with one lasting 2 hours 53 minutes and the other for 3 hours 42 minutes. These numbers might be knocking up against the animals' physiological limits, Dr. Quick said. But they are probably not typical, she added; both dives were recorded in the weeks after the whale had been exposed to a Navy sonar signal, a sound that is known to discombobulate and disturb marine animals.

At least a couple adaptations likely help the marine mammals survive and thrive during their deep dives, Dr. Fahlman said. For one, the whales are probably shunting blood flow away from their liver, kidneys and guts to free up oxygen for their brains, hearts and muscles - tissues essential for deep dives. At the same time, they might be lowering their heart rates to ramp down metabolism.

Lucía Martina Martín López, a marine mammal ecologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who was not involved in the study, said that beaked whales mighthave an unusual muscle composition that makes their tissues less reliant on oxygen. Then, when oxygen stores eventually run low, the animals might have a way of tolerating the toxic chemicals that tend to accumulate in tired muscles.

Three-hour-plus-long dives might stretch the boundaries of human imagination. But to beaked whales, with their unique physiology, these deep-sea journeys may be just a walk in the park, Mr. Ramos said: "This shows how extreme mammalian physiology can get."

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Beaked Whale Shatters Record With 3 Hour 42 Minute Dive

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Scientists still don't know how the marine mammals go so long without air. The 1959 movie "Ben-Hur" runs some three-and-a-half hours long. A Cuvier's beaked whale could watch the entire film underwater, never taking a gulp of air, with time to spare. "They are remarkable divers," said Nicola Quick, a marine biologist at Duke University.