Infants use eye contact with speakers to work out what to pay attention to and synchronise their brainwaves, helping them learn language, scientists have shown.
Infants are surrounded by a vast range of stimuli that compete for their attention – sights, sounds, voices – and must somehow work out which things are worth paying attention to and learning from. To do this, they often rely on social cues – eye contact, ‘baby speak’ or someone calling their name, for example – but how this helps with learning is not clear.
The researchers have previously shown that when an infant and adult make eye contact, their brainwaves synchronise with each other.
A scientific paper reads as a clean progression from question to result. And yet, research almost never happens that way. Experiments fail, conversations redirect projects, and none of it survives into print. When the founders of a field retire, their tacit knowledge goes with them, and nothing records that it existed.
Writing in Nature Physics, a team led by the University of Pittsburgh’s Jeremy Levy and Chandralekha Singh describes the inverse seminar, or “inverseminar,” a format designed to recover some of the hidden knowledge and decisions that result in polished papers.
Pathogenic B cell activation underlies many autoimmune diseases (AIDs), and their depletion is an attractive therapeutic approach. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-expressing cells-initially developed and successfully used to treat certain cancers-are increasingly being developed to selectively deplete B cells and ‘reset’ the immune system in AIDs. In this Review, we survey this fast-developing field, providing insights on the current unmet needs in the treatment of AIDs and how CAR T cells could address these needs. In particular, we explore the concept of deep B cell depletion, discuss the currently available technologies and review the key targets (CD19 and B cell maturation antigen) relevant for the treatment of AIDs. We summarize current evidence on the efficacy, safety, risks and limitations of autologous and allogeneic CAR T cells in this setting. Finally, we discuss the future outlook-from a technological and clinical standpoint-for development of engineered CAR-expressing cell therapies for AIDs.
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