Portable Imaging - Dopamine Sensors - Diet vs Exercise - Neanderthal Diet
Breedlove, S
Can portable headsets peer into the minds of hunter-gatherers and other understudied populations?
By Siddhant Pusdekar
The food we eat, the air we breathe, and our daily activities all shape how our minds work. Yet most brain research focuses on a narrow slice of humanity: people in high-income countries in the Northern Hemisphere. That leaves a vast gap in our understanding of how neural activity varies across cultures, environments, and lifestyles.
A team of researchers from Tanzania and India has taken a step toward closing that gap. In a study published this week in eNeuro, they describe a strategy for collecting data from the brains of diverse groups—from hunter-gatherers to urban dwellers—using electroencephalography (EEG). The technology relies on portable headsets, widely used in clinical settings, that record the brain’s electrical activity through electrodes placed on the scalp.
The researchers trained trusted community members as “surveyors,” who visited participants where they live and work to gather EEG data and conduct surveys about their lifestyles and experiences. The initial effort, which involved nearly 8000 volunteers across Tanzania and India, shows that this kind of data collection in low- and middle-income countries is feasible and affordable, the researchers say. The work cost them $50 for each person studied, a fraction of equivalent, large-scale studies conducted in research labs.
A: I think mental health is one of the defining health issues in India. When we survey 18- to 24-year-olds, 50% tell us that almost every other day of the month they don’t feel like going to work or college. India is a young country and is increasingly relying on its youth to grow its economy. If they can’t function in their daily activities, you can’t expect them to be productive and contribute to the economy.
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New dopamine sensor powers three-color imaging in live animals
By Diana Kwon
A new sensor makes it possible for the first time to simultaneously track dopamine and up to two additional molecules in the brains of living animals. The sensor, dubbed HaloDA1.0, uses a novel dopamine-tagging system that emits light at the far-red end of the color spectrum, according to the team behind the work.
“There’s a real need to monitor multiple relevant molecules, as they’re doing here,” says Nicolas Tritsch, assistant professor of neuroscience at McGill University, who was not involved in the study. Because dopamine is involved in a range of key brain functions, when studying its effects on a cell it’s important to consider other neuromodulators that are released at the same time, as well as the signaling cascades these molecules may trigger, Tritsch says.
Most dopamine-tracking strategies genetically encode a naturally occurring fluorescent protein into dopamine receptors; when dopamine attaches to the modified receptors, the fluorescent protein changes shape and emits light. But naturally occurring fluorescent proteins have a limited color palette, which has made it difficult to develop sensors that can go beyond two-color imaging, says study investigator Yulong Li, professor of life sciences at Peking University.
Instead of genetically encoding a fluorescent protein, HaloDA1.0 attaches a synthetic molecule called HaloTag to dopamine receptors. This tag binds tightly to previously developed artificial dyes that change shape and fluoresce in the far-red spectrum when dopamine binds to its receptors. Because the dyes fluoresce at the far end of the red spectrum, it leaves room for other sensors to glow at different wavelengths.
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https://www.npr.org/2025/07/24/nx-s1-5477662/diet-exercise-obesity-nutrition
You can't outrun a bad diet. Food — not lack of exercise — fuels obesity, study finds
Maria Godoy
Back in the 1800s, obesity was almost nonexistent in the United States. Over the last century, it's become common here and in other industrialized nations, though it remains rare among people who live more traditional lifestyles, such as the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania.
So what's changed? One common explanation is that as societies have developed, they've also become more sedentary, and people have gotten less active. The assumption is that as a result, we burn fewer calories each day, contributing to an energy imbalance that leads to weight gain over time, says Herman Pontzer, a professor of evolutionary biology and global health at Duke University who studies how human metabolism has evolved.
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But in a major new study published in the journal PNAS, Pontzer and an international team of collaborators found that's not the case. They compared the daily total calorie burn for people from 34 different countries and cultures around the world. The people involved ran the spectrum from hunter-gatherers and farming populations with low obesity rates, to people in more sedentary jobs in places like Europe and the U.S., where obesity is widespread.
"Surprisingly, what we find is that actually, the total calories burned per day is really similar across these populations, even though the lifestyle and the activity levels are really different," says Pontzer.
And that finding offers strong evidence that diet — not a lack of physical activity — is the major driver of weight gain and obesity in our modern world.
© 2025 npr
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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/maggots-neandertal-diet
Maggots may have been on the Neandertal menu
By Sofia Caetano Avritzer
The original paleo diet might have included fewer succulent steaks and more juicy maggots.
Neandertals are often depicted at the top of the food chain for their time, consuming as much meat as lions or hyenas. But maggots growing on rotting meat might have been the real signature dish of the Neandertal diet, researchers report July 25 in Science Advances.
The idea that Neandertals were extreme carnivores comes partly from the high levels of a specific type of nitrogen called N-15 in their bones. Nitrogen has two stable forms. N-14 is lighter and a lot more common in nature, while N-15 is heavier and much rarer.
When an animal eats a plant with both types of nitrogen, it will keep more N-15 than N-14 in its body after digestion. If that animal gets eaten, its predator will have an even higher proportion of N-15. That makes this molecule more prominent in animals that eat a lot of meat, says Melanie Beasley, a biological anthropologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.
The proportion of N-15 to N-14 found in Neandertal bones is similar to that found in animals like hyenas, which eat almost exclusively meat, Beasley says.
But humans can’t consume as much meat as specialized carnivores, says Karen Hardy, a prehistoric archeologist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Without a balanced diet, the human body transforms protein into energy instead of using it to develop muscle, hormones and more. This creates toxic waste products that can cause nausea, diarrhea and even death.
So, if Neandertals probably couldn’t eat as much meat as lions or hyenas, where does all the N-15 come from?
Rotting meat.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/science/sarah-morlok-cotton-dead.html
Sarah Morlok Cotton, Quadruplet Who Knew Fame and Suffering, Dies at 95
By Michael S. Rosenwald
Sarah Morlok Cotton, the last surviving member of a set of identical quadruplets who charmed Depression-era America with song-and-dance performances, and then took part in a landmark psychological study after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, died on July 7 in Belleville, Mich. She was 95.
Her death, at an adult foster home, was confirmed by her son David Cotton.
The Morlok Quads, as they came to be known, were a medical marvel and attracted crowds of people to Edward W. Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Mich., shortly after they were born there on May 19, 1930.
Newspapers held naming contests, and the winning entry suggested names that derived from the first letters of the hospital: Edna, Wilma, Sarah and Helen. The quadruplets’ middle names were simply initials denoting their birth order. (Sarah, the third born, was C.)
Donations poured in almost immediately. The city of Lansing provided the family with a rent-free home. The Massachusetts Carriage Company sent a custom-made baby carriage with four seats. Businessmen opened bank accounts for each child.
“Lansing’s Morlok quadruplets,” The Associated Press wrote, “are the most famous group of babies on the American continent.”
The Morloks charged visitors 25 cents to visit their home and see the babies. Carl Morlok, who ran for constable of Lansing in 1931, used photos of his daughters on his campaign ads with the slogan, “We will appreciate your support.” He won in a landslide.
Amid the commotion, Sadie Morlok tried to provide her daughters with a sense of normalcy. “Our mother used to dress us in pretty little identical crocheted sweaters and bonnets in spring and summer, or snow pant outfits in winter,” Mrs. Cotton wrote in her autobiography, “The Morlok Quadruplets: The Alphabet Sisters” (2015). “Then, she would carefully seat two of us facing the other two in the carriage and go for a nice stroll around the block to give us sunshine and a breath.”
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