Month: September 2022

HUMAN-RAT HYBRID. "Transplanted human umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells improve left ventricular function through angiogenesis in myocardial infarction" in rats." https://lnkd.in/dMTDSsJ View in LinkedIn

HUMAN-PIG HYBRIDS. “Organ research scientists combine human stem cells and pig DNA.” https://lnkd.in/dYGb5ck View in LinkedIn

THE UNKNOWN. "Could the mixing of human and nonhuman materials threaten human identity and, if so, how might this happen?" https://lnkd.in/dvTCsN2 View in LinkedIn

SPECIAL CASE. "The special issue here with stem cells is that those types of human cells are so powerful and so elastic that there's great worry about the degree to which the animals could become humanized." https://lnkd.in/dmf_2MB View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for the next two weekends examines the phenomenon of synesthesia, where sensory inputs can be crossed, so people may hear colors and taste words. These skills can be associated with creative people and with those gifted by phenomenal memories, but studies show that the picture is more diverse than that. View in LinkedIn

WE MAY ALL BE BORN WITH SYNESTHESIA. A lovely TED talk on the subject. https://lnkd.in/d66DVpv View in LinkedIn

CROSSED SENSORY WIRES. “Synesthesia is a perceptual experience in which stimuli presented through one modality will spontaneously evoke sensations in an unrelated modality. The condition occurs from increased communication between sensory regions and is involuntary, automatic, and stable over time.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

GENES AND OTHER CAUSES. “While synesthesia can occur in response to drugs, sensory deprivation, or brain damage, research has largely focused on heritable variants comprising roughly 4% of the general population. Genetic research on synesthesia suggests the phenomenon is heterogeneous and polygenetic, yet it remains unclear whether synesthesia ever provided a selective advantage or is merely a byproduct of some other useful selected trait.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

DIVERSE MIXINGS. “Synesthesia can theoretically bind any two senses, but research has largely focused on two of the most common variants in which auditory tones and achromatic (colorless) numbers produce vivid and perceptually salient colors. The specificity of these evoked colors remains stable over time within any given individual, but the same tone or grapheme doesn't necessarily evoke the same color in different people.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

BRAIN REGIONS. “Several groups have demonstrated that simple achromatic graphemes activate both grapheme regions as well as color area V4 (a region of visual cortex that shows a stronger response to colors than to grayscale stimuli) in the brains of synesthetes, which is consistent with the view that synesthetic colors are sensory in nature (i.e., arise through a bottom-up processing stream), as opposed to being high-level cognitive associations, as has been proposed.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn