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But even junk has hidden treasures. Studies found variations in these unsequenced regions were intricately involved in human health, from aging to conditions like cancer and developmental disorders like autism. In 2022, a landmark study finally resolved the genomic unknown, completely sequencing the remaining eight percent of undeciphered DNA remaining.

Now, scientists are discovering that some genetic sequences encode proteins that lack any obvious ancestors, what geneticists call orphan genes. Some of these orphan genes, the researchers surmise, arose spontaneously as we evolved, unlike others that we inherited from our primate ancestors. In a paper published Tuesday in the journal Cell Reports, researchers in Ireland and Greece found around 155 of these smaller versions of DNA sequences called open reading frames (or ORF) make microproteins potentially important to a healthy cell’s growth or connected to an assortment of ailments like muscular dystrophy and retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease affecting the eyes.

“This is, I think, the first study looking at the specific evolutionary origins of these small ORFs and their microproteins,” Nikolaos Vakirlis, a scientist at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming” in Greece and first author of the paper, tells Inverse. It’s an origin, he says, that’s been mired in much question and mystery.

Researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have discovered that the energy management of inhibitory brain cells is different than that of excitatory cells in our brain. Why is that the case and what is the link with multiple sclerosis?

Brain cells are connected to each other by axons, the parts of the neuron that transmit electrical signals. To do this efficiently, axons are wrapped in myelin, a lipid-rich material which increases the speed at which electrical pulses are conducted. The importance of myelin becomes apparent in diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), where myelin is broken down, which has detrimental effects on brain function.

As a result of myelin loss, the conduction of electrical signals is disrupted, which also means that the energy costs of this process become much higher.

It has been shown in epidemiological studies that the immediate postnatal period has a significant influence on the development of our microbiota. A change in postnatal microbiota has long-term implications on neurocognitive outcomes and mental health. Currently, little is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying critical windows of microbial influence.

About the Study

A recent Brain, Behavior, and Immunity study investigated the role of the early-life gut microbiota in determining neurodevelopmental outcomes. The current study used a mouse model to evaluate the long-term impact of gut microbial disruption during the critical windows of development.

Summary: Study reveals how various brain regions and neural networks contribute to a person’s problem-solving abilities and general intelligence.

Source: University of Illinois.

Scientists have labored for decades to understand how brain structure and functional connectivity drive intelligence.

During deliberation, as we quietly consider our options, the neural activities representing the decision variables that reflect the goodness of each option rise in various regions of the cerebral cortex.^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7} If the options are depicted visually, we make saccades, focusing gaze on each option. Do the kinematics of these saccades reflect the state of the decision variables? To test this idea, we engaged human participants in a decision-making task in which they considered two effortful options that required walking across various distances and inclines. As they deliberated, they made saccades between the symbolic representations of their options. These deliberation period saccades had no bearing on the effort they would later expend, yet saccade velocities increased gradually and differentially: the rate of rise was faster for saccades toward the option that they later indicated as their choice. Indeed, the rate of rise encoded the difference in the subjective value of the two options. Importantly, the participants did not reveal their choice at the conclusion of deliberation, but rather waited during a delay period, and finally expressed their choice by making another saccade. Remarkably, vigor for this saccade dropped to baseline and no longer encoded subjective value. Thus, saccade vigor appeared to provide a real-time window to the otherwise hidden process of option evaluation during deliberation.

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If you don’t like the background music, we published a version with it all removed here — https://anchor.fm/machinelearningstreettalk/episodes/Music-R…on-e1sf1l7

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A large portion of people on the planet is infected with the parasite Toxoplasma. Now, a study headed by scientists at Stockholm University demonstrates how this tiny parasite spreads so successfully throughout the body, for example to the brain. The parasite infects immune cells and hijacks their identity. The research was recently published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

The various roles of immune cells in the body are very strictly regulated in order to combat infections. How Toxoplasma infects so many people and animal species and spreads so quickly has long been a mystery to scientists.

“We have now discovered a protein that the parasite uses to reprogram the immune system”, says Arne ten Hoeve, a researcher at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, Wenner-Gren Institute at Stockholm University.

Researchers discovered a new daily rhythm in a kind of synapse that dampens brain activity using a mouse model. These neural connections, known as inhibitory synapses, are rebalanced as we sleep to allow us to consolidate new information into lasting memories. The results, which were published in the journal PLOS Biology, may help explain how subtle synaptic changes improve memory in humans. Researchers from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, led the study.

“Inhibition is important for every aspect of brain function. But for over two decades, most sleep studies have focused on understanding excitatory synapses,” said Dr. Wei Lu, senior investigator at NINDS. “This is a timely study to try to understand how sleep and wakefulness regulate the plasticity of inhibitory synapses.”

Kunwei Wu, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Lu’s lab, investigated what occurs at inhibitory synapses in mice during sleep and wakefulness. Electrical recordings from neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory formation, revealed a previously unknown pattern of activity. During wakefulness, steady “tonic” inhibitory activity increased but fast “phasic” inhibition decreased. They also discovered a far larger activity-dependent enhancement of inhibitory electrical responses in awake mouse neurons, suggesting that wakefulness, rather than sleep, might strengthen these synapses to a greater extent.

Quantum telepathy, laser-based time crystals, a glow from empty space and an “unreal” universe—these are the most awesome (and awfully hard to understand) results from the subatomic realm we encountered in 2022.