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Topics in Cognitive Science Apr 2024How did humans become clever enough to live in nearly every major ecosystem on earth, create vaccines against deadly plagues, explore the oceans depths, and routinely... (Review)
Review
How did humans become clever enough to live in nearly every major ecosystem on earth, create vaccines against deadly plagues, explore the oceans depths, and routinely traverse the globe at 30,000 feet in aluminum tubes while nibbling on roasted almonds? Drawing on recent developments in our understanding of human evolution, we consider what makes us distinctively smarter than other animals. Contrary to conventional wisdom, human brilliance emerges not from our innate brainpower or raw computational capacities, but from the sharing of information in communities and networks over generations. We review how larger, more diverse, and more optimally interconnected networks of minds give rise to faster innovation and how the cognitive products of this cumulative cultural evolutionary process feedback to make us individually "smarter"-in the sense of being better at meeting the challenges and problems posed by our societies and socioecologies. Here, we consider not only how cultural evolution supplies us with "thinking tools" (like counting systems and fractions) but also how it has shaped our ontologies (e.g., do germs and witches exist?) and epistemologies, including our notions of what constitutes a "good reason" or "good evidence" (e.g., are dreams a source of evidence?). Building on this, we consider how cultural evolution has organized and distributed cultural knowledge and cognitive tasks among subpopulations, effectively shifting both thinking and production to the level of the community, population, or network, resulting in collective information processing and group decisions. Cultural evolution can turn mindless mobs into wise crowds by facilitating and constraining cognition through a wide variety of epistemic institutions-political, legal, and scientific. These institutions process information and aid better decision-making by suppressing or encouraging the use of different cultural epistemologies and ontologies.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Ecosystem; Cognition; Cultural Evolution
PubMed: 37086053
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12656 -
Cell Nov 2023Elea-Maria Abisamra is an honors undergraduate student and research fellow at Virginia Tech. She is majoring in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience and has passions...
Elea-Maria Abisamra is an honors undergraduate student and research fellow at Virginia Tech. She is majoring in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience and has passions for STEM, writing, and entrepreneurship. In June 2022, Elea acted on her dream and founded Kids Can Write, becoming a CEO of a global nonprofit organization helping turn kids into published authors while teaching them STEM in an innovative and unique way. This is her story.
Topics: Communication; Creativity; Emotions; Students; Writing; Science
PubMed: 37949053
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.10.010 -
AEM Education and Training Feb 2024This reflective poem explores the profound human impact of receiving a serious medical diagnosis. The speaker grapples with the emotional upheaval of this sudden...
This reflective poem explores the profound human impact of receiving a serious medical diagnosis. The speaker grapples with the emotional upheaval of this sudden severing from one's presumed healthy future. There are attempts to cling to denial or bargain for a different outcome. But the truth of the diagnosis persists, sending ripples of change throughout the patient's life. Dreams slip away and plans evaporate in the crucible of illness. After a struggle, the mind makes peace and courageously leans into the difficulties ahead. The poem celebrates the human capacity to accept vulnerability, find gifts within trials, and walk the remaining road with wisdom. It reflects on how a diagnosis can heighten awareness that life is fleeting and precious. The accompanying digital artwork was generated using OpenAI's DALL·E 3 and modified using Adobe Firefly. It is a stark, black canvas, which can be seen as a metaphor for the profound and contemplative journey described patients go through. It symbolizes the inner darkness and uncertainty faced when confronting life-altering diagnoses, echoing the feelings of isolation, the search for meaning, and the gradual acceptance of a new reality as one navigates through the trials of illness.
PubMed: 38510736
DOI: 10.1002/aet2.10941 -
Revista Espanola de Quimioterapia :... Dec 2023This document is the result of the deliberations of the Committee on Emerging Pathogens and COVID-19 of the Illustrious Official College of Physicians of Madrid (ICOMEM)... (Review)
Review
This document is the result of the deliberations of the Committee on Emerging Pathogens and COVID-19 of the Illustrious Official College of Physicians of Madrid (ICOMEM) regarding the current situation of tuberculosis, particularly in Spain. We have reviewed aspects such as the evolution of its incidence, the populations currently most exposed and the health care circuits for the care of these patients in Spain. We have also discussed latent tuberculosis, the reality of extrapulmonary disease in the XXI century and the means available in daily practice for the diagnosis of both latent and active forms. The contribution of molecular biology, which has changed the perspective of this disease, was another topic of discussion. The paper tries to put into perspective both the classical drugs and their resistance figures and the availability and indications of the new ones. In addition, the reality of direct observation in the administration of antituberculosis drugs has been discussed. All this revolution is making it possible to shorten the treatment time for tuberculosis, a subject that has also been reviewed. If everything is done well, the risk of relapse of tuberculosis is small but it exists. On the other hand, many special situations have been discussed in this paper, such as tuberculosis in pediatric age and tuberculosis as a cause for concern in surgery and intensive care. The status of the BCG vaccine and its present indications as well as the future of new vaccines to achieve the old dream of eradicating this disease have been discussed. Finally, the ethical and medicolegal implications of this disease are not a minor issue and our situation in this regard has been reviewed.
Topics: Humans; Child; Spain; Tuberculosis; Antitubercular Agents; BCG Vaccine
PubMed: 37922367
DOI: 10.37201/req/115.2023 -
International Journal of Molecular... Oct 2023Mice with a constitutive increase in p53 activity exhibited features of dyskeratosis congenita (DC), a bone marrow failure syndrome (BMFS) caused by defective telomere... (Review)
Review
Mice with a constitutive increase in p53 activity exhibited features of dyskeratosis congenita (DC), a bone marrow failure syndrome (BMFS) caused by defective telomere maintenance. Further studies confirmed, in humans and mice, that germline mutations affecting or its regulator may cause short telomeres and alter hematopoiesis, but also revealed features of Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA) or Fanconi anemia (FA), two BMFSs, respectively, caused by defects in ribosomal function or DNA repair. p53 downregulates several genes mutated in DC, either by binding to promoter sequences () or indirectly via the DREAM repressor complex (, ), and the p53-DREAM pathway represses 22 additional telomere-related genes. Interestingly, mutations in any DC-causal gene will cause telomere dysfunction and subsequent p53 activation to further promote the repression of p53-DREAM targets. Similarly, ribosomal dysfunction and DNA lesions cause p53 activation, and p53-DREAM targets include the DBA-causal gene , at least 9 FA-causal genes, and 38 other genes affecting ribosomes or the FA pathway. Furthermore, patients with BMFSs may exhibit brain abnormalities, and p53-DREAM represses 16 genes mutated in microcephaly or cerebellar hypoplasia. In sum, positive feedback loops and the repertoire of p53-DREAM targets likely contribute to partial phenotypic overlaps between BMFSs of distinct molecular origins.
Topics: Humans; Animals; Mice; Tumor Suppressor Protein p53; Bone Marrow Failure Disorders; Fanconi Anemia; Anemia, Diamond-Blackfan; Dyskeratosis Congenita; Telomere; Nuclear Proteins; Cell Cycle Proteins; Proto-Oncogene Proteins; Exodeoxyribonucleases
PubMed: 37834388
DOI: 10.3390/ijms241914940 -
The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology... Nov 2023
Topics: Humans; Gastrointestinal Microbiome; Sleep Duration; Sleep, REM; Emotions; Glucose
PubMed: 37265231
DOI: 10.1210/clinem/dgad320 -
Revue Neurologique Oct 2023All our lives, we alternate between wakefulness and sleep with direct consequences on our ability to interact with our environment, the dynamics and contents of our... (Review)
Review
All our lives, we alternate between wakefulness and sleep with direct consequences on our ability to interact with our environment, the dynamics and contents of our subjective experience, and our brain activity. Consequently, sleep has been extensively characterised in terms of behavioural, phenomenological, and physiological changes, the latter constituting the gold standard of sleep research. The common view is thus that sleep represents a collection of discrete states with distinct neurophysiological signatures. However, recent findings challenge such a monolithic view of sleep. Indeed, there can be sharp discrepancies in time and space in the activity displayed by different brain regions or networks, making it difficult to assign a global vigilance state to such a mosaic of contrasted dynamics. Viewing sleep as a multidimensional continuum rather than a succession of non-overlapping and mutually exclusive states could account for these local aspects of sleep. Moving away from the focus on sleep states, sleep can also be investigated through the brain processes that are present in sleep, if not necessarily specific to sleep. This focus on processes rather than states allows to see sleep for what it does rather than what it is, avoiding some of the limitations of the state perspective and providing a powerful heuristic to understand sleep. Indeed, what is sleep if not a process itself that makes up wake up every morning with a brain cleaner, leaner and less cluttered.
Topics: Humans; Sleep; Brain; Wakefulness; Electroencephalography
PubMed: 37625978
DOI: 10.1016/j.neurol.2023.08.007 -
Sleep Medicine Reviews Aug 2023Parental relationship dissolution is considered one of the most common adverse childhood experiences. Although sleep is crucial for healthy development of children and... (Review)
Review
Parental relationship dissolution is considered one of the most common adverse childhood experiences. Although sleep is crucial for healthy development of children and very sensitive to environmental changes, it is poorly studied in the context of parental relationship dissolution. The aim of the current study was to systematically review and critically assess the existing literature on the associations between parental relationship dissolution and child sleep (0-18 years old; registered on PROSPERO (CRD42021272720)). PsycInfo, MEDLINE, Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, Social Work abstracts, and Web of Science Core Collection were searched. Published empirical quantitative studies were included if they reported statistics regarding the association between parental relationship dissolution and any child sleep variable. Out of the 358 articles screened, 14 articles met inclusion criteria and reported on several sleep dimensions: sleep quality, dreams and nightmares, and sleep disorders (enuresis, night terrors, and bruxism). Out of the 14 articles, six were longitudinal studies and eight were cross-sectional studies. While most studies found that parental relationship dissolution was associated with some indices of poorer child sleep, studies were generally of low to moderate quality. Health professionals should assess child sleep in the context of a parental relationship dissolution.
Topics: Child; Humans; Infant, Newborn; Infant; Child, Preschool; Adolescent; Solubility; Sleep; Parents; Dreams; Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders
PubMed: 37390636
DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2023.101804