Neuroscientists identify the smallest units that make up the vocalization of marmoset monkeys

 

From short 'tsiks' and 'ekks' to drawn-out 'phees' -- all the sounds produced by marmoset monkeys are made up of individual syllables of fixed length, according to a new study. The smallest units of vocalization and their rhythmic production in the brain of our relatives could also have been a prerequisite of human speech.

"Seven times a second, our speech apparatus can form a syllable," says Steffen Hage. Regardless if it is Batman shouting 'Ha!' or Mary Poppins singing 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious': when we speak, our utterance is made up of small units that are on average a seventh of a second long. This rhythm inherent in our production of syllables is as much constrained by the structure of our voicebox as it results from the processes that control speech in the brain. These biological fundamentals of speech may have been very similar in our ancestors.
 If we want to understand the evolution of human speech, we should look into its biological basis in our close relatives in the animal kingdom: primates. However, we still do not have a sufficient understanding of their vocalisation. To come to grips with the neurobiological basis of primate vocalisation, Hage's neuroscientific research group works with marmoset monkeys, a primate species from South America. Marmosets are far closer related to us than, for example,perching birds, whose vocalisation has been the focus of much research into the rhythm and length of syllables.
The researchers recorded thousands of instances of the little monkeys' 'tsiks', 'ekks' and 'phees' in a sound chamber. They interrupted the animals' natural vocalisation with white noise at irregular intervals. The researchers effectively 'talked over' the monkeys, causing them to fall quiet.
Thomas Pomberger, one of the study's authors, explains the results: "The marmosets' 'phee' had so far been considered part of their basic vocabulary, alongside the 'tsik' and 'ekk'. We observed that they would stop right in the middle of their 'phee' calls when we disrupted them with noise. Moreover, that would only happen at specific points within the call."
Co-author Cristina Risueno-Segovia adds: "What we found was that what had been known as a long 'phee' call actually consists of small units of about the same length as a 'tsik' or 'ekk' -- about 100 milliseconds." Their supervisor Hage says: "Until now, the supposed existence of the long 'phee' has not allowed for the conclusion that we can draw now: just like us, marmoset monkeys have a 'hardwired' rhythm that controls their vocalisation. It is even similarly fast."
Such a rhythm might be an evolutionary prerequisite on the path to developing true speech. The new study demonstrates that research in marmosets can provide the necessary clues to better understand the origins and properties of human speech -- a question that has been much debated in the scientific community.

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Researcher discovered how genetic variants in taste receptors related to sweet preference

 

The types of snacks a child chooses could be linked to genetics, a new study found. The study investigated whether genetic variants in taste receptors related to sweet, fat and bitter tastes influence the snacks preschoolers choose and found nearly 80 per cent carried at least one of these genotypes that could predispose them to poor snacking habits. These findings could help parents tailor their kids' diets based on their genetics of taste.

Whether your child asks for crackers, cookies or veggies to snack on could be linked to genetics, according to new findings from the Guelph Family Health Study at the University of Guelph.
Researcher Elie Chamoun investigated whether genetic variants in taste receptors related to sweet preference, fat taste sensitivity and aversion to bitter green leafy vegetables influence the snacks chosen by preschoolers. He found that nearly 80 per cent of preschoolers in the study carried at least one of these potential at-risk genotypes that could predispose them to poor snacking habits.
"Kids are eating a lot more snacks now than they used to, and we think looking at how genetics can be related to snacking behaviour is important to understanding increased obesity among kids," said Chamoun, a PhD candidate in the Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences and a member of the Guelph Family Health Study. "This new research could help parents understand how their kids taste, and tailor their diet for better nutritional choices."

 



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Taiwanese police give cyber-security quiz winners infected devices

Police have apologized after giving infected memory sticks as prizes in a government-run cyber-security quiz.

Taiwan's national police agency said 54 of the flash drives it gave out at an event highlighting a government crime crackdown contained malware.

The virus, which can steal personal data and has been linked to fraud, was added inadvertently, it said.

The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) apologized for the error and blamed the mishap on a third-party contractor.

It said 20 of the drives had been recovered.

 

 

Around 250 flash drives were given out at the expo, which was hosted by Taiwan's Presidential Office from 11-15 December and aimed to highlight the government determination to crack down on cyber crime.

Cyber-fraud ring

All the drives were manufactured in China but the CIB ruled out state-sponsored espionage, saying instead that the bug had originated from a Taiwan-based supplier.

It said a single employee at the firm had transferred data onto 54 of the drives to "test their storage capacity", infecting them in the process.

The malware, identified as the XtbSeDuA.exe program, was designed to collect personal data and transmit it to a Polish IP address which then bounces it to unidentified servers.

The CIB said it had been used by a cyber-fraud ring uncovered by Europol in 2015.

Only older, 32-bit computers are vulnerable to the bug and common anti-virus software can detect and quarantine it, it said.

The server involved in the latest infections had been shut down, it said.

In May, IBM admitted it had inadvertently shipped malware-infected flash drives to some customers.

The computer maker said drives containing its Storwize storage system had been infected with a trojan and urged customers to destroy them.

At the time, it declined to comment on how the malware ended up on the flash drives or how many customers had been affected.

The trojan, part of the Reconyc family, bombards users with pop-ups and slows down computer systems.

It is known to target users in Russia and India.

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NASA warning: ‘Unseen’ asteroid set to skim Earth

 

EXCLUSIVE: NASA is closely monitoring the arrival of a previously unseen asteroid that is set to brush past Earth today at 21,362 miles per hour.

The space rock had been invisible to astronomers until Christmas Day when it was first identified.
Now called asteroid2017 YZ4, it will come past us between the Earth and the Moon at a distance of just 139,433 miles.
The Moon is 238,000 miles from Earth, and this pass is considered a cat’s whisker in astronomical terms.
NASA considers and monitors anything which comes within six million miles of our planet as a near earth asteroid.

This year, we discovered 1,985 new near Earth asteroids. There were 1888 such objects discovered in 2016 and 1,571 in 2015.
NASA spokesman

 

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Mystery of how first animals appeared on Earth solved

Research has solved the mystery of how the first animals appeared on Earth, a pivotal moment for the planet without which humans would not exist.

Research led by The Australian National University (ANU) has solved the mystery of how the first animals appeared on Earth, a pivotal moment for the planet without which humans would not exist.

Lead researcher Associate Professor Jochen Brocks said the team found the answer in ancient sedimentary rocks from central Australia.

"We crushed these rocks to powder and extracted molecules of ancient organisms from them," said Dr Brocks from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences.

"These molecules tell us that it really became interesting 650 million years ago. It was a revolution of ecosystems, it was the rise of algae."

Dr Brocks said the rise of algae triggered one of the most profound ecological revolutions in Earth's history, without which humans and other animals would not exist.

"Before all of this happened, there was a dramatic event 50 million years earlier called Snowball Earth," he said.

"The Earth was frozen over for 50 million years. Huge glaciers ground entire mountain ranges to powder that released nutrients, and when the snow melted during an extreme global heating event rivers washed torrents of nutrients into the ocean."

Dr Brocks said the extremely high levels of nutrients in the ocean, and cooling of global temperatures to more hospitable levels, created the perfect conditions for the rapid spread of algae. It was the transition from oceans being dominated by bacteria to a world inhabited by more complex life, he said.

"These large and nutritious organisms at the base of the food web provided the burst of energy required for the evolution of complex ecosystems, where increasingly large and complex animals, including humans, could thrive on Earth," Dr Brocks said.

The research is published in Nature, and the findings will be presented at the Goldschmidt Conference in Paris, France, this week.

Co-lead researcher Dr Amber Jarrett discovered ancient sedimentary rocks from central Australia that related directly to the period just after the melting of Snowball Earth.

"In these rocks we discovered striking signals of molecular fossils," said Dr Jarrett, an ANU Research School of Earth Sciences PhD graduate.

"We immediately knew that we had made a ground-breaking discovery that snowball Earth was directly involved in the evolution of large and complex life."

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Creating music by thought alone

Newly-developed hands-free musical instrument now allows people to make music with their minds.

Neurologists have created a hands-free, thought-controlled musical instrument. They hope that this new instrument will help empower and rehabilitate patients with motor disabilities such as those from stroke, spinal cord injury, amputation, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

The Encephalophone is a musical instrument that you control with your thoughts, without movement," explains Thomas Deuel, a neurologist at Swedish Medical Center and a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, and first author of the report.

"I am a musician and neurologist, and I've seen many patients who played music prior to their stroke or other motor impairment, who can no longer play an instrument or sing," says Deuel. "I thought it would be great to use a brain-computer instrument to enable patients to play music again without requiring movement."

The Encephalophone collects brain signals through a cap that transforms specific signals into musical notes. The invention is coupled with a synthesizer, allowing the user to create music using a wide variety of instrumental sounds.

Dr. Deuel originally developed the Encephalophone (patent pending) in his own independent laboratory, in collaboration with Dr. Felix Darvas, a physicist at the University of Washington. In this first report, they describe their development of the instrument, as well as their initial studies showing evidence of how easily the instrument might be used. This preliminary study showed that a trial group of 15 healthy adults were able to use the instrument to correctly recreate musical tones, with no prior training.

"We first sought to prove that novices -- subjects who had no training on the Encephalophone whatsoever -- could control the device with an accuracy that was better than random," says Deuel. "These first subjects did quite well, way above chance probability on their very first try.

The Encephalophone can be controlled via two independent types of brain signals: either those associated with the visual cortex (i.e. closing one's eyes), or those associated with thinking about movement. Control by thinking about movement may be the most useful for disabled patients, and Deuel plans to continue researching this application. But for now, this current study shows that, at least for this small group of novice users, control by eye closing is more accurate than control by imagining movements.

The Encephalophone is based on brain-computer interfaces using an old method, called electroencephalography, which measures electrical signals in the brain. Scientists first began converting these signals into sounds in the 1930s and, later, into music in the 1960s. But these methods were still difficult to control and were not easily accessible to non-specialist users.

In a collaboration with the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), Deuel has built upon such research to make the Encephalophone more musically versatile, as well as easier to use.

Deuel and his collaborators are already working with more people to see how much users can improve with training. Deuel also plans to begin clinical trials of the Encephalophone later this year to see whether it may be useful or enjoyable for disabled patients.

"There is great potential for the Encephalophone to hopefully improve rehabilitation of stroke patients and those with motor disabilities," Deuel says.

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Cocoa and chocolate are not just treats -- they are good for your cognition

Cocoa can be seen as a dietary supplement to protect human cognition and can counteract different types of cognitive decline.

Researchers have examined the available literature for the effects of acute and chronic administration of cocoa flavanols on different cognitive domains. It turns out that cognitive performance was improved by a daily intake of cocoa flavanols.

 

A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands -- a phrase commonly used to justify ones chocolate snacking behavior. A phrase now shown to actually harbor some truth, as the cocoa bean is a rich source of flavanols: a class of natural compounds that has neuroprotective effects.

In their recent review published in Frontiers in Nutrition, Italian researchers examined the available literature for the effects of acute and chronic administration of cocoa flavanols on different cognitive domains. In other words: what happens to your brain up to a few hours after you eat cocoa flavanols, and what happens when you sustain such a cocoa flavanol enriched diet for a prolonged period of time?
Although randomized controlled trials investigating the acute effect of cocoa flavanols are sparse, most of them point towards a beneficial effect on cognitive performance. Participants showed, among others, enhancements in working memory performance and improved visual information processing after having had cocoa flavanols. And for women, eating cocoa after a night of total sleep deprivation actually counteracted the cognitive impairment (i.e. less accuracy in performing tasks) that such a night brings about. Promising results for people that suffer from chronic sleep deprivation or work shifts.
It has to be noted though, that the effects depended on the length and mental load of the used cognitive tests to measure the effect of acute cocoa consumption. In young and healthy adults, for example, a high demanding cognitive test was required to uncover the subtle immediate behavioral effects that cocoa flavanols have on this group.
The effects of relatively long-term ingestion of cocoa flavanols (ranging from 5 days up to 3 months) has generally been investigated in elderly individuals. It turns out that for them cognitive performance was improved by a daily intake of cocoa flavanols. Factors such as attention, processing speed, working memory, and verbal fluency were greatly affected. These effects were, however, most pronounced in older adults with a starting memory decline or other mild cognitive impairments.
And this was exactly the most unexpected and promising result according to authors Valentina Socci and Michele Ferrara from the University of L'Aquila in Italy. "This result suggests the potential of cocoa flavanols to protect cognition in vulnerable populations over time by improving cognitive performance. If you look at the underlying mechanism, the cocoa flavanols have beneficial effects for cardiovascular health and can increase cerebral blood volume in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. This structure is particularly affected by aging and therefore the potential source of age-related memory decline in humans."
So should cocoa become a dietary supplement to improve our cognition? "Regular intake of cocoa and chocolate could indeed provide beneficial effects on cognitive functioning over time. There are, however, potential side effects of eating cocoa and chocolate. Those are generally linked to the caloric value of chocolate, some inherent chemical compounds of the cocoa plant such as caffeine and theobromine, and a variety of additives we add to chocolate such as sugar or milk."
Nonetheless, the scientists are the first to put their results into practice: "Dark chocolate is a rich source of flavanols. So we always eat some dark chocolate. Every day."

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