Pigeons sense Earth’s magnetic field in an entirely new way

Amazing stuff! When will humans be able to do some magnetoreception?

"... It's now proved that a wide variety of animals detect magnetic fields. This sensory ability helps birds and insects migrate and turtles remember the locations of rich feeding areas.

There are two widely discussed mechanisms.

One is better established: Light-sensitive proteins, called cryptochromes, inside the retina have so-called quantum spin states that respond to magnetic fields, revealing the direction of a field and giving the animals a visual indication of which way is north or south.

The other mechanism is less well demonstrated. Tiny iron-rich crystals, comprised of the mineral magnetite, rotate in the magnetic fields in ways that could stimulate cellular receptors, providing a signal to nerves that could be interpreted to understand the direction of magnetic field lines. Some scientists claim these crystals exist near nerves in the noses of trout and birds’ beaks, but their existence remains controversial. ..."

"... observed robust activation in a brain region called the vestibular nucleus, which is connected to the inner ear. Genetic analysis of inner ear tissue revealed cells with highly sensitive electric sensors. ..."

From the abstract:

"How animals detect the Earth’s magnetic field remains a mystery in sensory biology. Despite extensive behavioral evidence, the neural circuitry and molecular mechanisms responsible for magnetic sensing remain elusive.

Adopting an unbiased approach we employ whole brain activity mapping, tissue clearing, and light sheet microscopy to identify neuronal populations activated by magnetic stimuli in the pigeon (Columba livia).

We demonstrate robust, light-independent bilateral neuronal activation in the medial vestibular nuclei and the caudal mesopallium.

Single-cell RNA sequencing of the semicircular cristae revealed specialized type II hair cells that express the molecular machinery necessary for the detection of magnetic stimuli by electromagnetic induction.

Our data supports a model whereby electro-magnetic input from the semicircular canals activates a vestibular-mesopallial circuit within the pigeon brain."

Pigeons sense Earth’s magnetic field in an entirely new way | Science | AAAS "Specialized hair cells pick electric currents induced by magnetism"

Elusive sensory organ: Pigeons detect magnetic fields through inner ear (original news release)

A global screen for magnetically induced neuronal activity in the pigeon brain (no public access)

Sonova launches hearing aid with real-time AI, first in market

Good news! "I can hear you now" (song)!

Will it effectively separate background noise and speech?

"Switzerland's Sonova on Tuesday introduced a hearing aid that utilises real-time artificial intelligence to improve speech clarity from background noise, the first such product in the global market, sending its shares 5% higher. ..."

"Understanding speech in background noise (‘speech-in-noise’ problem) is the most pressing need to solve for people with hearing loss. Sonova is now addressing this challenge with the launch of Phonak Audéo Sphere™ Infinio, a unique hearing aid using real-time Artificial Intelligence (AI). Its proprietary AI chip instantly separates clear speech from background noise and allowed users in a clinical study to more than double their speech understanding in noisy environments, compared to current products in the market. ...  According to the WHO, hearing loss affects 430 million people worldwide, a number that is expected to rise to 700 million – 1 in every 10 people – by 2050. ..."

Sonova launches hearing aid with real-time AI, first in market

Sonova announces two new hearing aid platforms, including the first hearing aid with real-time AI to address most pressing need in hearing loss (original news release)

Credits: Last Week in AI

Scientists used a vibrating capsule to assess people’s gut sensitivities and understand how the brain interprets these signals

My gut instinct tells me that the approach taken seems to be a little primitive, but the results are interesting!

"Our organs constantly communicate a multitude of complex signals to the brain to keep the body functioning. Scientists have been puzzled by how the brain interprets and controls those signals since interoception, the process of sensing signals from the internal organs, is still poorly understood. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR) reported a novel tool for measuring the gut-brain connection. Such a tool could help researchers identify response patterns in healthy and diseased populations. ..."

From the abstract:

"Understanding the neural processes governing the human gut-brain connection has been challenging due to the inaccessibility of the body’s interior. Here, we investigated neural responses to gastrointestinal sensation using a minimally invasive mechanosensory probe by quantifying brain, stomach, and perceptual responses following the ingestion of a vibrating capsule. Participants successfully perceived capsule stimulation under two vibration conditions (normal and enhanced), as evidenced by above chance accuracy scores. Perceptual accuracy improved significantly during the enhanced relative to normal stimulation, which was associated with faster stimulation detection and reduced reaction time variability. Capsule stimulation induced late neural responses in parieto-occipital electrodes near the midline. Moreover, these ‘gastric evoked potentials’ showed intensity-dependent increases in amplitude and were significantly correlated with perceptual accuracy. Our results replicated in a separate experiment, and abdominal X-ray imaging localized most capsule stimulations to the gastroduodenal segments. Combined with our prior observation that a Bayesian model is capable of estimating computational parameters of gut-brain mechanosensation, these findings highlight a unique form of enterically-focused sensory monitoring within the human brain, with implications for understanding gut feelings and gut-brain interactions in healthy and clinical populations."

Scientists used a vibrating capsule to assess people’s gut sensitivities and understand how the brain interprets these signals.   | The Scientist Magazine® Scientists used a vibrating capsule to assess people’s gut sensitivities and understand how the brain interprets these signals.  

Parieto-occipital ERP indicators of gut mechanosensation in humans (open access)

Fig. 2: Parieto-occipital event-related potential (ERP) indicators of gut sensation during vibratory gut stimulation and their association with perceptual accuracy measures during normal and enhanced stimulation in n = 40 biologically independent samples.

Scents and Sense-Abilities: Using locust Brainpower to Smell oral Cancer

Amazing stuff! I smell a rat (just kidding)! 😊 Cancer is history (soon)!

To use olfaction biosensors and exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to detect human diseases appears to be very promising!

This research is a bit dated! Mea culpa!

From bomb sniffing to cancer sniffing! From an ancient much feared plague to cutting edge medicine!

It is very fast too and might be able to distinguish oral cancer stages.

"... This dramatic body and lifestyle [of locust] makeover depends on their exquisite ability to detect and differentiate subtle odors. ...
Recently, [a] team tapped into the odor-sensing circuitry of the locust brain to detect the scent signatures of human oral cancers. ... previously used locusts for sniffing out bombs ...
“Cancer changes [cellular] metabolism and those changes are reflected in exhaled breath,” ... Known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), these unique chemical signatures are promising biomarkers of disease—if scientists can detect them. ...
They performed brain surgery on a locust and inserted electrodes into the brain regions that process smell. ... team then collected gas samples from the cell cultures of three different types of human oral cancer cells and healthy human oral cells. They wafted the gas samples—each of which contained a distinct mixture of VOCs from the corresponding cells—over the locust’s antennae and recorded the brain’s electrical activity. ..."

From the abstract:

"There is overwhelming evidence that presence of cancer alters cellular metabolic processes, and these changes are manifested in emitted volatile organic compound (VOC) compositions of cancer cells. Here, we take a novel forward engineering approach by developing an insect olfactory neural circuit-based VOC sensor for cancer detection. We obtained oral cancer cell culture VOC-evoked extracellular neural responses from in vivo insect (locust) antennal lobe neurons. We employed biological neural computations of the antennal lobe circuitry for generating spatiotemporal neuronal response templates corresponding to each cell culture VOC mixture, and employed these neuronal templates to distinguish oral cancer cell lines (SAS, Ca9-22, and HSC-3) vs. a non-cancer cell line (HaCaT). Our results demonstrate that three different human oral cancers can be robustly distinguished from each other and from a non-cancer oral cell line. By using high-dimensional population neuronal response analysis and leave-one-trial-out methodology, our approach yielded high classification success for each cell line tested. Our analyses achieved 76–100% success in identifying cell lines by using the population neural response (n = 194) collected for the entire duration of the cell culture study. We also demonstrate this cancer detection technique can distinguish between different types of oral cancers and non-cancer at different time-matched points of growth. This brain-based cancer detection approach is fast as it can differentiate between VOC mixtures within 250 ms of stimulus onset. Our brain-based cancer detection system comprises a novel VOC sensing methodology that incorporates entire biological chemosensory arrays, biological signal transduction, and neuronal computations in a form of a forward-engineered technology for cancer VOC detection."

Scents and Sense-Abilities: Using Bug Brainpower to Smell Cancer | The Scientist Magazine® Scientists use locust brains as living biosensors to perform cancer cell breath tests.

Sniffing out cancer with locust brains (a primary news source, but from August 2022)

Harnessing insect olfactory neural circuits for detecting and discriminating human cancers (no public access) Michigan State research shows insects can differentiate between cancer cells and healthy cells, which could help detect the disease earlier

Harnessing insect olfactory neural circuits for noninvasive detection of human cancer (open access; this seems to be the preprint version of the journal article)

Fig. 1: Individual projection neurons respond differentially to the oral cancer vs. control VOCs.

How octopuses taste with their arms

Amazing stuff!