hkl @hkl@qoto.org

"It is a puzzle why humans tend toward unrealistic optimism, as it can lead to excessively risky behavior and a failure to take precautionary action. Using data from a large nationally representative U.K. sample (N=36, 312) our claim is that optimism bias is partly a consequence of low cognition—as measured by a broad range of cognitive skills, including memory, verbal fluency, fluid reasoning and numerical reasoning."

Dawson, C. (2023). Looking on the (B)right Side of Life: Cognitive Ability and Miscalibrated Financial Expectations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672231209400 #OpenAccess #OA #Research #Article #DOI #Human #Psychology #Optimism #Cognitive #DecisionMaking #Academia #Academic #Academics @psychology

#All_Aboard for iOS: #AI-based app uses a smartphone's camera to guide the blind to bus stops https://newatlas.com/good-thinking/all-aboard-app-blind-bus-stops/ YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUVpqEw1_2k Sounds like a bomb will go off any second?

#Neuralink has put its first chip in a human brain. What could possibly go wrong? https://theconversation.com/neuralink-has-put-its-first-chip-in-a-human-brain-what-could-possibly-go-wrong-222497 #BCI #NeuroTech #NeuroEthics

Beyond hippocampus: Thalamic and prefrontal contributions to an evolving memory
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2023.12.021
#Neuroscience

"In this technical report, we demonstrate a single scenario where a Large Language Model acts misaligned and strategically deceives its users without being instructed to act in this manner," https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-will-lie-cheat-and-use-insider-trading-when-under-pressure-to-make-money-research-shows #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LLM #Tech #Technology #STEM #Science @science

Histone Serotonylation is one of the crazier epigenetic modifications - #Serotonin, the neurotransmitter, is shuttled into the nucleus and coupled to specific glutamine residues on the histone tails.

This happens not only in the brain, but apparently also in the placenta, this new paper shows:

Serotonin transporter-dependent histone serotonylation in placenta contributes to the neurodevelopmental transcriptome
Chan et al., J Mol B 2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2024.168454

#epigenetics #histone

White Ibis and its Reflection

I took this photo in Georgia 2022. It's a young white ibis (Eudocimus albus). It was late and getting dark, but I like the serenity of the picture.

#photo #photography #photographer #photographylovers #birds #birdsofmastodon #birdwatching #WhiteIbis

An actor-model framework for visual sensory encoding https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45105-5 No noticeable advantage over the downsampling of The vOICe for Android (cf. Fig 6. and https://twitter.com/seeingwithsound/status/1709535527181947356); #BCI #NeuroTech #neuroscience

"The quest for the einstein tile—a shape never seen before in mathematics—turned up even more discoveries than mathematicians counted on" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-mathematicians-search-for-the-mysterious-einstein-tile/ #Maths #Math #Mathematics #STEM

Incredible footage of a Kingfisher dive captured in slow motion.

Kingfishers compensate for the reflection and refraction of water to pinpoint the depth and position of prey underwater.

Video credit: RTÉ
Watch the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CsyenHROSE

Neural activity shaping in visual prostheses with deep learning https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.20.572123v1 "visual perception provided by retinal prostheses is poor and limited to images constructed of phosphenes generated by the electrodes"; #BCI #NeuroTech #AI

"This article argues that the liturgical tradition of celebrating Christmas on 25 December travelled from the Latin West to the Greek East at the behest of Theodosius I upon his arrival in Constantinople in AD 380. From there it made its way to Cappadocia, Pontus and Syrian Antioch by means of travelling clerics who belonged to a pro-Nicene network."

EDWARDS ROBERTGT. Travelling Festivals in Late Antiquity: How Christmas Came to the Greek East. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. 2023:1-17. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S002204692300009X #OpenAccess #OA #Journal #Article #Christianity #Christmas #Religion #History #Histodon #Histodons #Antiquity #Academia #Academic @histodon @histodons @antiquidons

2023 was filled with exciting discoveries about the brain, so we asked our writers to share one thing that got them excited about neuroscience this year. Their answers ranged from discovering the neurons that make you faint to the fact that chinstrap penguins take as many as 10,000 mini-naps a day.

Read all their answers in our last post of the year: https://pennneuroknow.com/2023/12/21/2023-neuroscience-year-in-review/

See you all again in 2024!

#neuroscience #sciComm #brain #2023

Fediverse is the future of social media and 2024 will be the year of Fediverse, writes
@theverge.

#fediverse

https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub

Actually managed a few respectable images of a Goldcrest today. [they are proper hard to find let alone photograph]

#nature #birds #Wildlife #photography #NaturePhotography #BirdPhotography #BirdsOfMastodon #UK

Why birds are smart
https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(23)00281-4
#neuroscience

A breathtaking early morning timelapse of Comet NEOWISE rising over the Adriatic Sea behind undulating noctilucent clouds captured in 2022.

Video credit: Paolo Girotti / CC BY

Vermillion Flycatcher, 11-21-23
#birds #birdphotography #silentsunday

Spectacular timelapse of the Milky Way galaxy and a phenomenon known as airglow seen from the International Space Station.

Watch the full video in 4K on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wMbzylZxEI

Related is also the haptic counterpart: Visual experience is not necessary for the development of face-selectivity in the lateral fusiform gyrus https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2004607117 by @apurvaratan @echodislocation @NancyKanwisher et al.