Good and Bad Feelings for Brain Stem Serotonin

An illustration of a mouse head in profile, indicating areas where facial expression change is observed during the experiment. The majority of the head is blue, but the ears, nose and lower jaw are indigo through read, indicating that these areas are show the most changes. Illustration by Yu Ohmura.
An illustration of the facial expression changes in mice following stimulation and inhibition of the median raphe nucleus (Yu Ohmura).

New insights into the opposing actions of serotonin-producing nerve fibres in mice could lead to drugs for treating addictions and major depression.

Scientists in Japan have identified a nerve pathway involved in the processing of rewarding and distressing stimuli and situations in mice.

The new pathway, originating in a bundle of brain stem nerve fibres called the median raphe nucleus, acts in opposition to a previously identified reward/aversion pathway that originates in the nearby dorsal raphe nucleus...

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Spray-on Smart Skin uses AI to Rapidly Understand Hand Tasks

Spray-on smart skin uses AI to rapidly understand hand tasks
Spray-on sensory system which consists of printed, bio-compatible nanomesh directly connected with wireless Bluetooth module and further trained through meta-learning. Credit: Kyun Kyu “Richard” Kim, Bao Group, Stanford U.

A new smart skin developed at Stanford University might foretell a day when people type on invisible keyboards, identify objects by touch alone, or allow users to communicate by hand gestures with apps in immersive environments.

In a just-publish paper in the journal Nature Electronics the researchers describe a new type of stretchable biocompatible material that gets sprayed on the back of the hand, like suntan spray...

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Action of 2 Protostars appears to be making conditions right for Planet Formation

Action of two protostars appears to be making conditions right for planet formation
Left: ALMA 1.3 mm observations toward the triple class 0 system IRAS 16293–2422. The observations have a resolution of ∼35 au and were published in Sadavoy et al. (2018). Right: ALMA 1.3 and 3 mm observations of the southern binary system at a resolution of ∼13 and ∼7 au, respectively. Similar maps for source B are presented in Zamponi et al. (2021). In all panels, the positions of the protostars are marked by stars. Additional continuum peaks around the A1 and A2 protostars are labeled and marked with plus signs in the right panels. The beam is shown in the bottom left corner of each panel. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2022). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aca53a

A team of researchers at Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, working with a colleague at the U...

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Scientists uncover a Novel Cellular Mechanism that Regulates Aging and Fertility

“We have always been intrigued by the dichotomy between two diametrically opposed, fundamental phenomena in biology: soma mortality and germline immortality. The prospect of uncovering the molecular underpinnings of this sharply idiosyncratic character of cell types, within a single organism, provided ample motivation for us to embark on a research journey, towards tackling such questions. We decided to focus on nuclear morphology in somatic cells, which deteriorates during ageing. By contrast, the overall architecture of the nucleus is preserved in the germline. Our hypothesis was that a homeostatic mechanism effectively maintains the structure of germ cell nuclei, whereas it fails during ageing, in the soma...
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