The Light at the End of the Tunnel, and Why Moths Seem to Love it.

The scene is a common one; you are sitting outside on a warm summer evening with the porch light glowing. A moth flutters by, catching a glimpse of the light. He begins to float toward the light, seeming unaware of his imminent demise. As he reaches the light, he ceases flying and falls to the ground, ending his time on earth.

              This behavior is one we see fairly often. It has even been used to create traps to attract and kill moths and other insects. The question is, why do moths engage in such detrimental behavior? Clearly, the outcome is not a positive one for the moth. Recently, scientists have begun to examine this odd behavior and why it might be occurring. According to one article, there are a few common hypotheses being explored regarding why moths may engage in such seemingly counter-intuitive behavior. Some of the reasons include the moths believing that the light source is actually the moon, the dark space around the light providing a seemingly good hiding place for the moth, or the light actually temporarily blinding and disorienting the moth. While all of these hypotheses seem like reasonable ones, more explorations need to be done in order to determine the true root cause of this behavior.

              It should also be noted that not all moths engage in this action. After a recent study exploring moths from different habitats, it has been found that exposure to light pollution plays a role in the tendencies of moths to fly towards light. It appears that moths who live in habitats with high levels of light pollution have learned to refrain from engaging with light sources while moths from darker areas with less light pollution are naive, and hence more likely to fly towards artificial light sources when exposed to them. While it might seem strictly positive that moths are learning not to engage in behavior resulting in their death, there may be larger evolutionary consequences to this change in behavior. If moths evolve to not fly toward light sources, it is worried that animals that prey on them may lose a vital source of food when moths are not flying in the open as often. This is just one effect that this change in behavior could have and who knows what else may follow.

              So next time you are enjoying the night sky while sitting on your back deck and you see a moth being lured toward the light, maybe you’ll begin to wonder “what is going through this moths mind right now”. Or maybe you won’t, but I certainly will.

Posted by Jamie Downer (1)

             

Why Epilepsy Surgery Needs to be Changed

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Most epileptic individuals are able to take medicine to combat their seizures. By most, I’m referring to 70%. For the other 30%, their seizures are medication-resistant. A beneficial option to those medication-resistant individuals is sometimes surgical resection of the brain are that is responsible for the seizure initiation. However, up to one-third of patients continue to have seizures even after the surgery. This is because the surgeries themselves are not very creative. Along with the continuation of seizures, the surgery itself carries a lot of risks. A lot of patients report post-surgical amnesia, vision defects, and psychological sequelae effects, such as depression. Given these worries, surgical candidates must first undergo a variety of tests and exams which help to map out the ictal focus, seizure initiation, and the surrounding region as accurately as possible. Epilepsy surgery then is usually saved for individuals with an easily accessible lesion.

Even individuals with an easily accessible lesion continue to have seizures. Gleichgerrcht et al. explored whether analysis of pre-existing whole brain networks could be used to predict the outcome of a surgical candidate. Using existing imaging and clinical data from previously treated patients, the authors trained a deep networking computer approach to analyze surgical outcome based on presurgical structural connectivity. These computed predictions were far superior to those arising from standard clinical variables alone. The authors were even surprised when they discovered that some of the connections linked to surgical outcome were actually far away from the seizure focus.

Though this model was very effective, it is not certain if its performance is reproducible since the original model was based on 50 individuals. If it can be reproduced on a larger scale is still unknown. Also, all of the individuals used in this model had one type of epilepsy, temporal lobe epilepsy. This is the most common type in adults and has a specific site of seizure origin. As to whether this model could be used in younger patients or different types of epilepsy is to be investigated. This study is a great example of how machine use and imaging data can be combined to enable better risk stratification of prospective surgical candidates. This study urges us to see epilepsy not just as a local brain dysfunction, but as a global one as well.

Posted by Danielle Bermingham (1)

http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/457/eaav0335

Friends Are Better Than Chocolate?

Altruism has always been an intriguing aspect of evolutionary selection. It seems very counterintuitive to have animals sacrificing resources (or even themselves) to save others. Sometimes these acts of valor are committed for animals that are not even the direct descendants or relatives, which makes appear to be even more illogical.

The whole mindset of looking at selfless behavior as something that is evolutionarily altruistic provides an interesting perspective. When we help out a friend or a family member, are we doing that because we care or because of our own evolutionary tendencies?

A recent study conducted by researchers at the Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan shed some interesting light on the whole concept of altruism. Rats, which are generally associated with sewers and filth, were studied to observe their social dynamics. Interestingly, when provided the ability to choose between chocolate and saving another drowning rat, the rats decided to save the other animal. The research project altered the experimental setting to provide insight, and even studied scenarios where the compartment with the drowning rat was actually dry. The rats only opted to open the door for the test subject when it was actually in danger. When provided with two doors (one with chocolate, the other with a drowning rat), the majority of the trial resulted in the experimental rat saving the drowning rat, despite the fact that chocolate is a desirable food source for the animals.

I was surprised by this finding. Though I have studied altruism in many courses, I never expected it to be prevalent in this specific species. This does not directly relate to humans, however the study of altruism has sparked an interesting debate in how it can be applied to human social dynamics. For animal species, altruism and selfless behavior have always been explained as actions that are evolutionarily beneficial for the selfless animal. For humans, the discussion changes. Are we truly dictated by natural selection in the same way as other species? Are our selfless actions actually just for our own evolutionary benefit? The intersection of evolution and social factors have not been fully studied, in humans or any other species.

Regardless, it is intriguing that the rats chose long term resources (the benefit of sociality in rats) over the immediate source of food. Though this project did not conclusively explain any of the aspects of altruism in the rats, it did demonstrate that altruism is a powerful force in decision making, potentially strong enough to dictate our own actions. The study of human evolution is still a young movement, but with the progress that researchers are making with other species, it will be interesting to see what light that may shed upon our understanding over our own evolutionary tendencies.

Harris Jackson (Week 1)

Citations and links:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/rats-forsake-chocolate-save-drowning-companion

Bartal, I. B. A., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011). Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats. Science, 334(6061), 1427-1430.

Sato, N., Tan, L., Tate, K., & Okada, M. (2015). Rats demonstrate helping behavior toward a soaked conspecific. Animal cognition, 18(5), 1039-1047.

Rise In Bat Population Means More Tequila ?

To my surprise, I found in reading a National Geographic article that there is a strong connection between bats and tequila.  Tequila comes from a spiky, stocky, blue plant called agave, which rely on multiple bat species for pollination, one of them being the lesser long-nosed bat. Without bats there would be no tequila, which is why the removal of lesser long-nosed bats from the endangered list is such good news for tequila drinkers everywhere.  This is good news for all humanity in fact, as it shows how efforts to conserve the Earth and its species is really paying off. In a joint effort between Mexico and the United States, conservation scientists were able to raise the lesser long-nosed bat population from about 1,000 to over 200,000 in the span of thirty years.

This was the first ever bat removed from the U.S endangered species list, which has come a long way be completely stable and void of all threats to its species’ survival.  Due to the fact that these bats spend large amounts of time in both Mexico and the United States, both countries had to work together to conserve the species. By identifying the symbiotic relationship between bats and agave plants, scientists were able to develop a plan which would conserve the plants and protect the bats.   One program implemented to help the lesser long-nosed bats was to certify tequila producers as “bat friendly” if they allowed these bats to pollinate their agave plant, which helped to supply more food for the bats. It took many years and many different programs in order to bring these bats off the endangered list, while there are still some bat species that remain threatened.   The Earth is facing many challenges with climate change, which will require much more environmental conservation efforts. But for now, its important to reflect on the successful efforts to help protect the planet, it’s species, and tequila.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/04/lesser-long-nosed-bats-conservation-delisted-endangered-animals-spd/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_tw20180418news-endangeredbat&utm_campaign=Content&sf187238935=1

-James Bowler (3)

Marijuana's Journey into Pediatrics

            With many states legalizing marijuana as more of it’s benefits surface, a controversy that’s arising is whether or not CBD should be used medicinally to treat children or adolescents. CBD, or cannabidiol, differs from THC in that it doesn’t have any psychoactive effects, therefor it doesn’t get one high. Its known to work exceptionally at easing nausea that’s often caused from chemotherapy, reduce seizures with those who have disorders such as epilepsy, and even increase the ability to focus with those whom have attention deficit disorders. Even though marijuana is becoming legal among most states as it’s benefits become more known, the long term effect on use while the brain is developing is still unknown. This brings in the issue on whether or not its ethical to treat children with CBD rather than past treatments.

     One pediatrician took the child out of the picture when trying to settle this debate. Regardless of the effects it poses on the child, Julie Kim a pediatric oncologist of fifteen years has been seeing a side of prescribing opioids that’s often overlooked. A huge issue found is many parents taking the medications themselves instead of their sick child, creating an opioid addiction. In some cases, the parents make up the children’s pain just to get the prescription.  It’s often seen that parent keep persisting that the original recommendations of rest, ibuprophen, and physical therapy aren’t helping their child until they’re finally prescribed things such as oxycodone or morphine. From there, Kim has found that parents who struggle with these addictions start obtaining these prescriptions at an alarming rate that would normally way too often for a child to take. In attempt to try and trick these parents into stopping their addictions, Kim prescribes CBD instead, a much less dangerous and addictive drug. This way she eliminates any responsibility or liability she may have had if a parent ever experienced an overdose.

            Kim makes it clear throughout her article that she is pro-marijuana because she is anti-opioid. I think this is a very important way to look at this issue. When researching the pros and cons to prescribing a child medicinal marijuana, most cons consisted of there not being enough search to know that long term effects it may have on the child’s development, or that certain cognitive abilities may be impaired. Those are valid cons, but when looking at the bigger, more dangerous effects that other opioids prescribed to them have cannabinoids don’t compare. Plus, there have bee many cases in which CBD is more effective than other treatments. Until the opioid business gets proper regulation, marijuana may be a better way to help treat your child.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pro-marijuana-pediatrician-opioids_us_5ac281e0e4b04646b6452c1e

-Katherine Patota (3)