The It Ain't Magic Science Blog

Social novelty in the brain: haven’t I seen you someplace before?

Social novelty and contextual novelty are segregated in the SuM region of the hypothalamus and in projections to the hippocampus, allowing memories of meeting new people to be formed separately from memories of new places.

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Super-thin wearable electronics just got more flexible

A method for making super-flexible and ultra-thin wearable electronics uses water-vapor plasma to create gold-gold bonds.

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Sphingolipid S1P: Potential new target for schizophrenia treatment

Sphingolipid S1P is reduced in brain white matter of people with schizophrenia, making S1P receptors a good target for new treatments.

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Something smells fishy: categorizing odors in the brain

Calcium imaging and mathematical model explain how categories and mixtures of odors are represented in the fly brain and consistent across individual flies.

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New treatment assembles cancer drug inside the body

Cancer drugs assembled inside the body on cancer cells should reduce harmful side effects to other tissue.

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Physiological origami and proper body development in flies

Genetics and mechanical origami in the fly embryo helps proper body development by fighting off “noisy” fluctuations is the environment.

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Topics

Latest research animations

Self-assembly of spider silk

This gut microbe might protect against diabetes and reduce insulin resistance

NEW: One-way hydrogel guides motion of tiny worms!

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Nanocarrier spray: better crops without genetic modification

Gene expression, but not genomes, altered in plants and crops with a spray containing bioactive molecules tethered to nanocarrier peptides

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RIKEN at a glance

We’ve just gotten our order of RIKEN at a Glance booklets back from the printers, and they look fantastic. Follow the link to download your electronic copy now!

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Telework: a societal game-changer

COVID-19 series — installment #3: Team Leader Osamu Sakura (@RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project) talks about how the pandemic has affected society through the need for telework.

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The sound of molecules: NMR-inspired music

Science & art: how NMR works and how NMR spectra have been used to compose music based on molecular structures.

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Japanese people are a mixture of three separate ancestral groups

A new study shows that the current Japanese population is derived from 3 ancestral groups, one of which brought Denisovan DNA to the party.

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Predictive grid cells help self navigation in the brain

Scientists have discovered grid cells in the brain that map an animal’s (or human’s) future position in space.

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Social contact-seeking behavior and loneliness in the brain

Levels of the peptide amylin in the brain are related to loneliness; activating amylin neurons in the MPOA drives isolated mice to seek social contact.