Researchers from Tufts University have released a study that has effectively made use of flatworms to expand the brains of other flatworm types without changing their genes.The findings expose that the genome does not change the wire head shape and can be bypassed with the adjustment of bioelectrical networks in the physical body. Although it has actually long been known that networks in the mind could exploit electrical synapses in order to reword information in the brain, this is the first experiment to use this understanding to induce one species to grow qualities of another.
Flatworms Can Grow Heads and Brains of Other Species
It has generally thought that the structure of chromatin, the particle that makes up chromosomes, determines the form of a microorganism, but these results show otherwise. The function of physiological networks can bypass the species-specific default makeup, as stated by Michael Levin, lead author of the research study.
Using the flatworm Girardia dorotocephala, the researchers induced the development of head shapes that were specific to other species of flatforms by interrupting gap junctions, the protein channels that permit cells to pass electrical communication signals to each other. These interruptions not only transformed the head shape of the worm but also altered the circulation of its adult stem cells.
This Research Could Even Help Us Regrow Body Parts
The researchers share that by modulating the connectivity of cells through electric synapses, they were able to obtain head morphology as well as mind pattern belonging to a totally different species from an animal with a healthy genome. Biologists could use this research to learn exactly how to change birth flaws and, much like a lizard, grow brand-new body parts after injury.
While we all have memories, some of those memories, especially ones that are particularly traumatic, are hidden from us by our own brains. In a way, this protective mechanism of being unable to recall stressful memories prevents us from experiencing the emotional pain associated with the memory. But what if we need to face them? How can we get these memories back?
A new study published in Nature Neuroscience has explained the process of state-dependent learning and how it affects our memories — or lack thereof — thanks to our brain’s protective instincts.
Memories Formed In Particular States Can Only Be Accessed In A Similar State
Our brains may hide our emotionally painful memories, but the repression of these memories can manifest themselves as mood disorders, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
What happens when we have a traumatic experience is that our brains are still recording, but they are within a specific type of recording category known as state-dependent learning. The study researchers have found that those memories that are formed within a specific state of mind (be it fear-induced or drug-induced) are best retrieved when the brain has returned to that similar state.
Key author of the study Jelena Radulovic of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine explains that this important finding may lead to better treatments for patients suffering psychiatric disorders who need to face their traumatic memories in order to recover.
There are two main amino acids in your brain that are the neurotransmitters that control your nerves. Meet glutamate and GABA receptors!
Glutamate stimulates your nerves, while GABA calms them. They act as opposing forces to help balance your brain function: one excites your nerves when the time is right, the other inhibits them when you need to chill. But in certain overstimulating situations, our glutamate spikes, which wouldn’t be a terrible problem except it’s also the main chemical needed to store memories for easy retrieval.
Now, GABA is interesting because there are two kinds of GABA receptors. The first is the balancing receptor to glutamate, while the other has a different role. These extra-synaptic GABA, as they are known, primarily focus on adjusting mental states and brain waves in response to internal body chemicals.
Extra-synaptic GABA are at play when we are tired or are waking up or are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. But they are also hard at work when a fear-inducing state is occurring and we are using out glutamate to respond to the event. During this fear state, our extra-synaptic GABA store our memories deep within our subconscious.
The researchers in the study likened this to tuning the radio from AM to FM frequency, where we regularly access FM, but the station we need is on AM. We can’t get to the channel we need if we stay on the FM frequency, so we must switch to AM.
Likewise, if our GABA receptors store the traumatic memory, in order to get it back, we must activate them again.
The Study That Used Inebriated States To Restore Memories
The study researchers came across their findings after taking lab mice and getting them inebriated. No, not with alcohol, but with a drug called gaboxadol, which stimulates the extra-synaptic GABA receptors in their brains.
While inebriated, the researchers moved the mice to a box, gave a short electric shock, and repeated the assignment the next day but without injecting the mice. Strangely, the mice showed no fear of the box. However, when they gave another shot of gaboxadol to the rodents and placed them in the cage, they stood anxiously awaiting another shock. They had remembered.
Under the same drug-induced brain state, the mices’ memories of the traumatic event came flooding back because the extra-synaptic GABA receptors were activated. They had tuned into the AM frequency and the channel was playing loud and clear.
What does this mean for humans? Well, it may mean that a different system for regulating, storing, and accessing memories has been found that can prove useful in therapies for mood disorders. Our memories are all there, we just have to learn on which channel they are playing to hear them.
While the paleo diet may still be popular, a new study suggests that consuming carbs in the form of starches was the key to accelerating brain expansion in early human evolution, effectively making us smarter as we evolved larger brains.
Consumption of Carbs Responsible for Brain Growth, Increased Intelligence
A key issue in the human evolution timeline has focused on human brain evolution, specifically why we grew such large, complex brains and how. While the answers have yet been clearly defined, it is a widely accepted assumption that the size of our brains is somehow connected to a dietary change within the past 3 million years.
While most studies relied on evidence of increased meat consumption (we’re looking at you, Paleo Diet advocates!), other studies highlighted the importance of the invention and continued development of cooking as they factors for our brain size increase.
However, a new study by Dr. Karen Hardy and researchers is arguing that based on evidence from archaeological, anthropological, genetic, physiological, and anatomical data, it is not meat consumption that drove the brain to accelerate expansion, but rather consumption of dietary carbohydrates.
So stock up on the potatoes, rice, and whole-grain breads as this study breaks into the health and diet arena of the scientific community to argue for human evolution (and smarter evolution at that!) through eating carbs in the form of starches.
Are All Diets Equal? The Case for Carbs in Brain Evolution
The study, published in The Quarterly Review of Biology does not necessarily argue against the role that meat consumption played in the human brain’s evolution. However, it does argue that plant-based foods (carbs) were absolutely essential in the evolution and expansion of the human brain.
During the Pleistocene epoch, the human brain was undergoing many rapid changes. One of these was an increase of brain size and function.
The study points out that evidence of increased carbohydrate consumption, along with the adaptive role that cooking had to play in order to improve the ability to digest the starchy carbs, had a tremendous impact on the brain’s development.
Cooking starches (think of things such as putting a potato on the roast) helped improve the digestibility of the foods. It also provided a source of preformed glucose, which was used by the developing brain to meet high glucose demands, including red blood cells production, brain function, and even fetal development.
Digestible carbs were absolutely needed for the increased demands of the growing brain during this time. What also may have helped fuel carbs’ role in brain evolution was the increase of salivary amylase genes that increased starches energy yield after cooking.
Consuming Carbs, Cooking, and Creating Bigger, Better Brains
There are some merits to the Paleo Diet, including limited sugar consumption, it may not be the true “caveman” diet during some ages of the human evolution timeline that dates back to 3 million years.
Through much of the research focus on diet and its role in evolution, carbohydates have been overlooked. That is until Dr. Hardy and her team came along to clear up some of the misconceptions the starches carry.
The study showed that the brain needs up to 25% of the body’s energy, as well as at least 60% of its blood glucose. Only a diet rich in dietary carbohydrates could supply such a high glucose demand.
This same glucose need is effectively doubled during human pregnancy and lactation, which in the case of low-carbohydrate diets, would be too short of a supply to support the health of the mother and baby.
The research goes on to include that the availability of starches were found all over the world, available to all ancestral civilizations, whether in the form of tubers, seeds, fruits, or nuts.
What’s more is that as the art and science of cooking spread through the world, the raw starches became more easily digestible. Couple that with the fact that an increased presence of salivary amylase genes, which helps to digest starches as well, and the evidence points to carbs being our friends.
While eating meat most likely started the evolution of the human brains, the coevolution of cooking and consuming carbs in the form of starches accelerated the evolution to help make a perfect diet to increase our smarts and chances of survival.
Meet The Neurotransmitters that aid your Memories
