Pigeon Magnetoreception? - CNS Weapons - Kissing Evolved - Glutamate & MIgraines

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Nov 22, 2025, 7:03:21 AM (2 days ago) Nov 22

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03798-8

Has birds’ mysterious ‘compass’ organ been found at last?

Davide Castelvecchi

Pigeons can sense Earth’s magnetic field by detecting tiny electrical currents in their inner ears, researchers suggest. Such an inner compass could help to explain how certain animals can achieve astonishing feats of long-distance navigation.

The team performed advanced brain mapping as well single-cell RNA sequencing of pigeon inner-ear cells. Both lines of evidence point to the inner ear as the birds’ ‘magnetoreception’ organ. The results appeared in the Science on 20 November 1.

“This is probably the clearest demonstration of the neural pathways responsible for magnetic processing in any animal,” says Eric Warrant, a sensory biology researcher at the University of Lund in Sweden. Studies have suggested that various animals, including turtles, trout and robins, can sense the direction and strength of magnetic fields, although the evidence has sometimes been contested — and the mechanisms have remained controversial.
Bird-brained navigation

Two leading hypotheses have led the research into how birds sense magnetic fields. One is a quantum-physics effect in retina cells where birds ‘see’ magnetic fields. Another is that microscopic iron oxide particles in the beak could act as tiny compass needles. However, it’s largely unknown where magnetic information is sensed in animals’ brains and how sensory neurons confer sensitivity to electromagnetic changes.

In 2011, researchers found hints that magnetic fields triggered pigeons’ vestibular system, the organ that enables vertebrates to sense accelerations (including gravity) and helps them to stay balanced2. The structure is made of three fluid-filled loops which are mutually perpendicular, so they can communicate to the brain the direction of an acceleration by breaking it down into three ‘x, y, z’ components.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/22/mind-altering-brain-weapons-no-longer-only-science-fiction-say-researchers

Mind-altering ‘brain weapons’ no longer only science fiction

Mark Brown

Sophisticated and deadly “brain weapons” that can attack or alter human consciousness, perception, memory or behaviour are no longer the stuff of science fiction, two British academics argue.

Michael Crowley and Malcolm Dando, of Bradford University, are about to publish a book that they believe should be a wake-up call to the world.

They are this weekend travelling to The Hague for a key meeting of states, arguing that the human mind is a new frontier in warfare and there needs to be urgent global action to prevent the weaponisation of neuroscience.

“It does sound like science fiction,” said Crowley. “The danger is that it becomes science fact.”

The book, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, explores how advances in neuroscience, pharmacology and artificial intelligence are coming together to create a new threat.

“We are entering an era where the brain itself could become a battlefield,” said Crowley. “The tools to manipulate the central nervous system – to sedate, confuse or even coerce – are becoming more precise, more accessible and more attractive to states.”

The book traces the fascinating, if appalling, history of state-sponsored research into central nervous system (CNS)-acting chemicals.

During the cold war and after, the US, Soviet Union and China all “actively sought” to develop CNS-acting weapons, said Crowley. Their purpose was to cause prolonged incapacitation to people, including “loss of consciousness or sedation or hallucination or incoherence or paralysis and disorientation”.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/science/kissing-study-primates-science.html

Kissing Has Existed for at Least 16 Million Years, Scientists Say

By Ali Watkins

The act has been called many things: Centrifugal motion. Perpetual bliss. The thrill of the moment. Unstoppable. In technical terms, it is “non-agonistic interaction involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer.”

Or, as her majesty Faith Hill might say, “This kiss.” And, it turns out, it’s also really old.

British scientists say they’ve traced the age of the kiss, to anywhere from 16 million to 21 million years ago, and have found that it was far more common among other species than previously understood.

Ants? They smooch. Fish? Kissers. Neanderthals? Yep, they puckered up, too — sometimes even with us.

But kissing, the researchers said, has always been something of a so-called evolutionary mystery. It doesn’t present much benefit for survival, it has minimal reproductive benefits, and it’s mostly symbolic.

“Kissing is a really interesting behavior,” said Matilda Brindle, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University who led the study. Dozens of societies and cultures use it, it’s common, and it has weighted symbolism. But, she said, “we’ve not really tested it from an evolutionary perspective.”

In prehistoric kissing, it seems, could be the primitive origins of our search for intimate connection. The act inherently requires vulnerability, and trust. It’s not always sexual and is often used among and between genders simply to show affection, and often between parents and offspring.

Though researchers found evidence of kissing in several species, they narrowed the focus of the study mostly to the behavior of large apes, like gorillas, orangutans and baboons.

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/low-glutamate-diet-ease-migraines

A diet low in glutamate may ease migraines

By Laura Sanders

SAN DIEGO — A diet low in the amino acid glutamate may ease migraines, a small study suggests. A month of staying away from high-glutamate foods led to fewer migraines in a group of 25 people with Gulf War Illness.

The specifics of these veterans’ migraines, part of a collection of symptoms resulting from the Gulf War, may differ from those of other people who suffer from migraines. But if the underlying relationship between glutamate and migraines is similar, the diet could help the estimated 1 billion people worldwide who have migraines.

Current drugs for treating migraines, including a new class of compounds that block a chemical messenger called CGRP, can help. But existing drugs don’t work for everyone, says neuroscientist Ian Meng of the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. A dietary change could be a low-risk and accessible way to bring relief.

Glutamate is both a signal that excites nerve signals in the brain and an amino acid found in tomatoes, processed meats, aged cheese, mushrooms and, of course, monosodium glutamate, or MSG. For a month, 25 veterans of the Gulf War ate a low-glutamate diet full of whole fruits and veggies and avoided high-glutamate foods including soy sauce, mushrooms and ultraprocessed foods.

Before this diet, 64 percent of these people reported having a migraine in the previous week. After a month of a low-glutamate diet, that number dropped to about 12 percent, neuroscientist Ashley VanMeter said November 16 in a news briefing at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. After the one-month diet ended, 88 percent of the people in the study chose to remain on the diet. “They feel that [the diet] is definitely benefiting them,” said VanMeter, of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/autism-scientists-push-back-cdc-inaccurate-vaccine-claims/

Autism scientists push back on CDC’s inaccurate vaccine claims

On 19 November 2025, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed language on a “vaccine safety” page on its website to assert that the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is not evidence based. The updated CDC page now incorrectly suggests that a link between infant vaccination and autism exists, and it casts doubt on a wealth of research that has produced evidence to the contrary.

The updated language contradicts decades of research findings that show vaccines do not cause autism. The move has also prompted backlash from multiple groups, including the Coalition of Autism Scientists and the Autism Science Foundation.

“These sort of claims have been repeatedly debunked by good science and multiple independent replications of negative studies, and for years no scientist has opined that more research is needed,” Eric Fombonne, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, told The Transmitter.

He noted several problems with the arguments presented on the CDC website, including the citation of “fringe studies executed by uncredentialed authors with poor methodologies and published in low-quality journals.” Fombonne described the authors of the page as having “cherry pick[ed data] … in support of their preconceived beliefs” and mischaracterizing well-conducted and replicated research.

Experts The Transmitter spoke with raised many concerns about the agency’s statements, including how those statements could confuse families and whether they indicate shifts in priorities that threaten solid scientific research. “Families deserve honest answers,” says David Mandell, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Center for Mental Health.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03849-0

A brain implant that could rival Neuralink's enters clinical trials

Liam Drew

Paradromics, a neurotechnology developer, announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a first long-term clinical trial of its brain–computer interface (BCI). Early next year, the company — one of the closet rivals to Elon Musk’s neurotechnology firm Neuralink — will implant its device in two volunteers who were left unable to speak owing to neurological diseases and injuries. It has two goals: to ensure the device is safe; and to restore a person’s ability to communicate with real-time speech.

“We’re very excited about bringing this new hardware into a trial,” says Matt Angle, chief executive of Paradromics, which is based in Austin, Texas.

Paradromics’ BCI has an active area of roughly 7.5 millimetres in diameter of thin, stiff, platinum-iridium electrodes that penetrate the surface of the cerebral cortex to record from individual neurons around 1.5 mm deep. This is then connected by wire to a power source and wireless transceiver implanted in an individual’s chest.

Initially, the two volunteers will each have one electrode array implanted in the area of the motor cortex that controls the lips, tongue and larynx, Angle says. Neural activity will then be recorded from this region as the study participants imagine speaking sentences that are presented to them. Following previous work by researchers who are now collaborating with Paradromics1, the system learns what patterns of neural activity correspond to each intended speech sound.

When participants imagine speaking these neural patterns will be converted into text on a screen for participants to approve, or into a real-time voice output based on old recordings of participants’ own voices.

This is the first BCI clinical trial to formally target synthetic-voice generation. “Arguably, the greatest quality of life change you can deliver right now with BCI is communication,” Angle says.