hkl @hkl@qoto.org

Anyone can learn #echolocation in just 10 weeks — And it remodels your brain https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/anyone-can-learn-echolocation-in-just-10-weeks-and-it-remodels-your-brain/ Now imagine what encoding a truly visual live camera view into sound may do to your brain, letting you hear zebra crossings and all things visual... #neuroscience

"Human echolocation repurposes parts of the brain's visual cortex for sound, even in sighted people."

AI in Epi 554 (part 1)

I offered students in Introduction To Epidemic Modeling For Infectious Diseases some general guidance on using AI this week, and I thought I'd share it more broadly. We are going to get into specifics for AI-assisted coding over the next few weeks, because that is one area where I think this stuff might really help them in this course. Introduction to Generative AI in Epi 554…

http://healthyalgorithms.com/2024/10/18/ai-in-epi-554-part-1/

The planet Venus passing across the face of the Sun captured by the Hinode spacecraft during a transit in 2012.

Venus's atmosphere is visible as a thin, glowing border in the upper left.

Credit: JAXA/NASA/Lockheed Martin

Today I got a lovely interview request because someone remembered me from the #Astrophysikerinnen outreach I did on Twitter.

Also today, I deleted the X account which I kept to not let someone take my username. But the last change of the TOS broke even that, I truly do not care anymore. Even though that place meant so much to me and even though I still feel the positives it added to my life back when it was twitter.

A Long-tailed tit from this afternoons walk

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

#JosephLeDoux - What is the Nature of the #Self?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ0DB0Qn7WQ

#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #Mind #PhilosophyOfConsciousness #Consciousness #Neuron #Neurons #Synapse #Synapses #Psychology #Freud #Person #Personality #Personhood #Identity #PersonalIdentity #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn

Bird of the Day — Palm Warbler, Kansas 2024
Nary a palm in sight

#Nature #NaturePhotography #Birds #Wildlife #NatureCommunity #Photography #BirdsOfMastodon #BirdPhotography #BirdWatching #FlyoverCountry #Warblers

Layer 6 corticothalamic neurons induce high gamma oscillations through cortico-cortical and cortico-thalamo-cortical pathways https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.05.616808v1 #neuroscience

Turns out the postsynaptic densities (PSD) that we use in electron microscopy to identify synapses aren’t made of large protein aggregates but rather of specialised cellular organelles:

“we combined mouse genetics and cryo-electron tomography to determine the 3D molecular architecture of fresh isolated and anatomically intact synapses in the adult forebrain. The native glutamatergic synapse did not consistently show a high density of proteins at the postsynaptic membrane thought to be characteristic of the PSD. Instead, a ‘synaptoplasm’ consisting of cytoskeletal elements, macromolecular complexes and membrane-bound organelles extended throughout the pre- and post-synaptic compartments.”

Excellent work by Julia Peukes et al. 2024 https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/100335

#neuroscience #synapses #CryoEM #CryoCLEM

A few climate change cartoons for you.
Any resemblance to the scientist behind the lectern is purely coincidental.

#Ultrasound system for precise #neuromodulation of human deep brain circuits https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.08.597305v1 "we demonstrate the system's ability to selectively modulate the activity of the lateral geniculate nucleus (#LGN) and its functionally connected regions in the visual cortex" #neuroscience

More information in the Twitter/X thread https://x.com/UCL_Ultrasound/status/1799718513655120318

"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