Sci-Ed Update 261

Exercise affects thinking, elephants are like people, microplastics in the body, monkey embryos & human pregnancy, free books, personal autonomy in healthcare, flu increases heart-attack risk, ...more

Apr 10, 2023

Yay! My IT helpers got theAPprofessor.org website back into a functional state. It’s going to need a few tweaks here and there, but the essential functions are now working. So you can expect another podcast episode soon!

How exercise leads to sharper thinking and a healthier brain

New findings from 350,000 people make the strongest case yet that exercise improves cognition. A small study shows it raises BDNF, a brain chemical.

Image: iStock

To build a better brain, just exercise.
That’s the message of two important new studies of how physical activity changes our minds. In one, scientists delved into the lives, DNA and cognition of thousands of people to show that regular exercise leads to much sharper thinking.
Another study helps explain why exercise is good for the brain. Researchers found that just six minutes of strenuous exertion quintupled production of a neurochemical known to be essential for lifelong brain health.
The studies arrive at a moment when some recent, widely discussed research has been raising doubts about the extent to which exercise bolsters thinking and memory. But the new findings, which analyzed data for almost 350,000 people, make the strongest case yet that regular exercise can improve cognition.
These studies reinforce the idea that “absolutely, exercise is one of the best things you can do” for your brain, said Matthieu Boisgontier, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, who oversaw one of the studies.

Elephants may be domesticating themselves

Find would put pachyderms in a rare group that only includes humans and bonobos

Elephants of all sizes and ages gather peacefully at a waterhole.JIM BRANDENBURG/MINDEN PICTURES

Elephants are the gentle giants of the animal kingdom. They will often empathetically reach out their trunks to console a distressed sister or attempt to lift up those that are ill and suffering. They recognize the bones of deceased elephants and appear to mourn their dead. They also recognize themselves in mirrors—a sign they’re self-aware. These traits may have evolved because elephants have domesticated themselves, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If so, that would make them the only known animal besides humans and bonobos to have done so. But not everyone sees it as an open-and-shut case.
Proving that any animal, let alone elephants, has self-domesticated is a challenge, says Richard Wrangham, a Harvard University primatologist who was not involved in the new study. Yet he and evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare of Duke University have long held that self-domestication—a phenomenon where wild animals develop traits that are similar to domesticated animals—must be “widespread,” Wrangham says, perhaps found in numerous species from mice to whales and elephants. Showing it in pachyderms would bolster that argument.
Most of us are familiar with the outward signs of domestication: a tamer personality and babylike features. Domesticated animals also tend to have smaller brains than their wild counterparts. By all of these metrics, dogs, cats, and pigs easily qualify.

Kevin Patton comment→ I’ve mentioned elephants several times in The A&P Professor podcast because its a great model organism to compare and contrast with human structure and function. Besides, who doesn’t love a good elephant story once in a while? 😎 Here’s one more elephant story to put into your elephant file. (You have one of those, right?)

Some elephant episodes

theAPprofessor.org/podcast-episode-121.html

theAPprofessor.org/podcast-episode-31.html

Microplastics are in our bodies. Here’s why we don’t know the health risks

There are big, open scientific questions about levels of exposure and toxicity

Microplastics are in the air we breathe and have turned up in lung tissue. But the potential health effects are far from clear. LISA SHEEHAN

In recent years, microplastics have been documented in all parts of the human lung, in maternal and fetal placental tissues, in human breast milk and in human blood. Microplastics scientist Heather Leslie, formerly of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and colleagues found microplastics in blood samples from 17 of 22 healthy adult volunteers in the Netherlands. The finding, published last year in Environment International, confirms what many scientists have long suspected: These tiny bits can get absorbed into the human bloodstream.
“We went from expecting plastic particles to be absorbable and present in the human bloodstream to knowing that they are,” Leslie says.
The first step in determining the risk of microplastics to human health is to better understand and quantify human exposure. Polyrisk — one of five large-scale research projects under CUSP, a multidisciplinary group of researchers and experts from 75 organizations across 21 European countries studying micro- and nanoplastics — is doing exactly that.

‘rmhttps://aandp.info/u8cAandP.info/u8c

First mock monkey embryos may shine light on human pregnancy

Scientists hope these "pseudoembryos" will boost research into early development, miscarriages

Researchers in China grew this embryolike ball of cells, known as a blastoid, from monkey embryonic stem cells. The researchers were the first to produce monkey blastoids, which could serve as good models of early human development. ZHEN LIU

To probe the mysterious early stages of development, researchers have concocted a variety of embryo stand-ins from mouse or human stem cells. Now, scientists in China have created the first monkey versions. These pseudoembryos should more closely reflect human development than their mouse equivalents. And unlike human embryo mimics, they can be inserted into females to help scientists better understand the beginnings of pregnancy—and why it often fails.
“The findings are a milestone in the field of stem cell–derived embryo models,” says stem cell biologist Alejandro De Los Angeles of the University of Oxford, who wasn’t connected to the study.
Starting with stem cells obtained from embryos or from adult cells transformed into an embryonic-like state, several groups of researchers have grown structures that resemble the blastocyst, the ball of cells that in humans takes shape about 5 days after fertilization and implants in the uterus. Termed blastoids, these imitation embryos can survive for several days in culture and develop many features of the real things. Scientists have even inserted mouse blastoids into mother rodents and shown that they induce some of the changes of pregnancy, although they don’t continue to develop. But mouse blastoids can only reveal so much about human development, and it would be unethical to implant human blastoids into people.

“Get a Plan” Guide

NOW FREE - Thwarting the Thieves of Your Time, Energy, & Attention

My awesome friend Meggin McIntosh, who is a virtual fountain of practical wisdom for us academics, has just released all of her “Get a Plan” series of books as free resources!

I cannot recommend Meggin’s work highly enough.

Personal Autonomy and Self-Determination are Crucial for Professionalism in Healthcare

Anatomical Sciences Education - Wiley Online Library

In our role as medical educators and researchers, we support in the strongest manner possible the personal autonomy and self-determination of our students, patients, and colleagues. A fundamental value of the medical profession is for the patient to have personal autonomy in their health care decisions, including how they would like to be identified. It is, and will continue to be, an important priority to be taught and encouraged throughout healthcare education [1] ,and it begins in the anatomy laboratory with the proper and respectful treatment of body donors[2] . Learning this value continues with respecting and accepting this same autonomy in fellow students, staff, faculty, and patients.

Kevin Patton comment→ This opinion piece in Anatomical Sciences Education is an important statement that you’ll want to know about, I think.

Read the full, brief statement here→ AandP.info/v0w

Power Shift

The student-professor dynamic has changed. That makes many faculty members nervous.

It would appear that professors must cower in fear of offending students — on the left and the right — who are itching to shut them down. But that version of higher ed is a caricature. What’s really happening is more complicated, and so are professors’ feelings about it.

Flu Boosts Short-Term Odds for Heart Attack 6-Fold

Getting the flu isn't fun for many reasons, but it can also trigger a heart attack, a new study suggests.

A heart attack is six times more likely in the week after a person is diagnosed with flu than in the year before or after, according to Dutch researchers.

This emphasizes the need for flu patients and those caring for them to be aware of heart attack symptoms. It also underscores the importance of getting a flu shot, the authors said.

The findings are scheduled to be presented April 18 at a meeting of the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, online and in Copenhagen, Denmark.

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