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Other ERP studies have reported diverse neurophysiological responses to inconsistencies between the message meaning and the speaker’s representation, typically manifest as a modulation of the N400 and/or P600 components15,16,17. Different patterns of ERP results reported in these studies are likely related to the nature of the mismatch manipulations used. For instance, whereas the P600 component is typically associated with a reanalysis/repair of syntactic incongruences and grammatical violations18, in experiments modulating the speaker’s voice it can also be elicited by the violations of the stereotypical noun roles in the absence of grammatical incongruencies as such (e.g., “face powder” or “fight club”, produced by male and female voices, respectively16) as well as the general assumptions based on the pronoun processing during sentence comprehension19. In contrast, the semantically-related N400 effect has been typically found for the semantic-pragmatic incongruences (e.g., “I am going to the night club” by child’s voice17).

Interestingly, these ERP effects offer support to two models of pragmatic language comprehension—the standard, two-step model and the one-step model. The two-step model claims that listeners compute meaning first, in isolation, and that the communicative context is considered at the second stage (speaker’s information, in particular16,20), as reflected in the late P600 responses. More recent findings showed, however, that this pragmatic (extralinguistic) integration is likely happening in a single-step manner already during semantic processing, as reflected in the N400 effect17,21. Nevertheless, other studies also reported the overlap of both processing stages, showing an N400 effect elicited by expectation error and a late P600 effect for overall reanalysis of this expectation22.

Understanding how gender information is integrated by the listeners is particularly important when one considers the differences in how different languages signal grammatical gender. In some languages, such as in English, Finnish or Mandarin, overt grammatical gender marking is almost completely absent. Many other languages, such as Slavic languages, explicitly mark grammatical gender in nouns, verbs, and adjectives, often in a complicated interdependent manner. Russian is one of such languages, offering an optimal testbed for investigating linguistic and extralinguistic gender integration. As far as we know, there is only one study addressing this question in a Slavic language: using Slovak, Hanulíková Carreiras23 found that, during an active-listening task, the integration of speaker-related information and morphosyntactic information occurred rather late during complex sentence processing. Additionally, a conflict between the speaker’s and the word’s genders (e.g., “I– \(stole_{MASC}\) plums” in female voice) was reflected in the modulation of the N400 component. Given that N400/LAN modulations have been consistently found for morphosyntactic violations, in particular for number, person, and gender agreement, as well as in phrase structure violations (e.g.,24, see also for review25), this result may suggest that extralinguistic information is directly integrated during online (morpho)syntactic processing (such as speaker’s sex converted into subject’s gender in (morpho)syntactic processing). However, N400 is also known to be related to conscious top-down controlled integration of linguistic information24,26. Indeed, in the study described above, the participant’s overt attention to the stimuli was required, and the effect generally appeared rather late in the comprehension processes. Thus, the question of whether such findings reflect the involvement of genuine online parsing mechanisms or secondary post-comprehension processes (such as repair and reanalysis24,27) still remains unsolved. Importantly, syntactic parsing has been shown to commence much earlier and to take place in a largely automatic fashion, as demonstrated in studies focused on early left-anterior negativity (ELAN) or syntactic MMN. In particular, ELAN modulation around 200 ms or earlier has been reported during outright violations of the obligatory structure, reflecting an automatic early analysis of the syntactic structure like phrase structure errors28,29,30,31, and it is considered to reflect the brain’s response to the word category violations.

Summary: The neural circuitry that connects olfactory information about another mouse’s sex to decision-making in the brain determines the behavioral outcome as to whether aggression or affection is expressed.

Source: CalTech.

Dog owners whose pets meet during a walk are familiar with the immediate sniffing investigation that typically ensues. Initially, the owners cannot tell whether their dogs will wind up fighting, playing, or trying to mount each other. Something is clearly happening in the dog’s brain to make it decide how to behave toward the other dog—but what is going on?

AS man and machine get ever closer, the world of sex tech seems to get a little stranger.

We’ve rounded up some of the most bizarre sex tech inventions that are in the works, including an exoskeleton could let humans make love in the metaverse.

Humans may rely on exoskeletons to have realistic sex in the metaverse, one sex tech expert has revealed.

University of Maryland psychiatrist Polymnia Georgiou and colleagues accidentally came across an unexpected example of researchers unwittingly skewing a study’s results when their laboratory mice’s reactions to ketamine differed depending on the sex of the humans who administered the drug.

To check it wasn’t just a weird fluke, they did a blinded, randomized trial with an even mix of male and female experimenters. The mice indeed had a greater antidepressant response to ketamine when handled by male humans.

Obviously, the presence of male humans does not somehow change the properties of ketamine, so the researchers probed deeper to confirm the exact mechanism.

Electrical activity in neurons is highly energy demanding and accompanied by rises in cytosolic Ca2+. Cytosolic Ca2+, in turn, secures energy supply by pushing mitochondrial metabolism either through augmented NADH transfer into mitochondria via the malate aspartate shuttle (MAS) or via direct activation of dehydrogenases of the TCA cycle after passing into the matrix through the mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter (MCU). Another Ca2+-sensitive booster of mitochondrial ATP synthesis is the glycerol-3-phosphate shuttle (G3PS) whose role in neuronal energy supply has remained elusive. Essential components of G3PS are expressed in hippocampal neurons. Single neuron metabolic measurements in primary hippocampal cultures derived from rat pups of either sex reveal only moderate, if any, constitutive activity of G3PS. However, during electrical activity neurons fully rely on G3PS when MAS and MCU are unavailable. Under these conditions, G3PS is required for appropriate action potential firing. Accordingly, G3PS safeguards metabolic flexibility of neurons to cope with energy demands of electrical signaling.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT:

Ca2+ ions are known to provide a link between the energy-demanding electrical activity and an adequate ATP supply in neurons. To do so, Ca2+ acts both, from outside and inside of the mitochondrial inner membrane. Neuronal function critically depend on this regulation and its defects are often found in various neurological disorders. Although interest in neuronal metabolism increases, many aspects thereof have remained unresolved. In particular, a Ca2+-sensitive NADH shuttling system, the glycerol-3-phosphate shuttle, has been largely ignored with respect to its function in neurons. Our results demonstrate that this shuttle is functional in hippocampal neurons and safeguards ATP supply and appropriate action potential firing when malate aspartate shuttle and mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter are unavailable, thereby ensuring neuronal metabolic flexibility.

Millions of faces and car license plates were stored in a sizable Chinese database that was publicly accessible for months before it was silently removed in August.

A tech business called Xinai Electronics with headquarters in Hangzhou on China’s east coast is the owner of the disclosed data. In China, the firm creates systems for regulating entry for people and cars to workplaces, schools, construction sites, and parking lots. Its website boasts the use of facial recognition for a variety of uses beyond building access, including personnel management, such as payroll, monitoring employee attendance and performance, while its cloud-based vehicle license plate recognition system enables drivers to pay for parking in unattended garages that are managed by staff remotely.

In addition to other personal information like the person’s name, age, and sex, the database also included links to high-resolution photos of faces, including those of construction workers entering construction sites and office visitors checking in. Resident ID numbers are China’s equivalent of national identity cards. The database also contained information on the license plates of vehicles that were captured by Xinai cameras at parking lots, driveways, and other workplace entryways.

Toxoplasma gondii (T.gondii) is a common parasite, one that scientists say may infect more than half the world’s population. Now, scientists also believe that T.gondii may be manipulating its hosts to make them more attractive to others. If true, it means there may be a parasite out there that makes people more attractive to fuel its spread to new hosts through sexual activity.

Parasites have always been known to influence the way their hosts behave when trying to move to a new host. T.gondii itself has been known to manipulate its hosts. Researchers previously discovered that the parasite could make infected rats attracted to the smell of urine from predator cats. This led the rats to take part in riskier behavior. As a result, the likelihood of a cat eating the rat increased dramatically.

This allowed the parasite to move on to its optimal host. Once it has reached that optimal host, though, the parasite can then reproduce sexually. What’s most terrifying about how this parasite works is that the manipulation doesn’t stop there. Instead, similar manipulations have been seen in chimpanzees, hyenas, and humans, too. If the parasite can make people more attractive, it could spread more easily.

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk has taken Twitter by storm by sharing his “sex tape” tweet, sending his fans wild guesses.

What Happened: Musk shared an image that he labeled as his “sex tape,” showing two tape dispensers placed in a way that formed the number 69.

Then he joked in the caption, saying, “But have you seen my sex tape?”

Elon Musk, often known to break the Internet by his statements or acts recently tweeted what seemed like a futuristic invention. Being one of the wealthiest people on the planet was not enough for the CEO of Tesla as he thought two of his brains would be better. One would always wonder how a brain can be transferred into a man-made machine, but with his recent tweet, Elon Musk confirmed he copied his brain to the machine and talks to his digital version.

Read More, ‘I haven’t had sex in ages’: Elon Musk Defends Himself Against Affair Allegations With Google’s Sergey Brin’s Wife, Fans Say He’s a Snake For Forgetting Brin’s Loan To Build Tesla

A recent tweet by Shibetoshi Nakamoto, known as the creator of Dogecoin with an account named, @BillyM2k asked, “If you could upload your brain to the cloud, and talk to a virtual version of yourself, would you be buddies?”. In the second continuation of the tweet, the user posted, “would be cool to have a competitive game buddy of approximately the same skill level. Except he would be a computer and have infinite time so I would more just see him get better at everything while I am busy with dumb life things.