Smell-Based Memory Training: Evidence of Olfactory Learning and Transfer to the Visual Domain.

Human and non-human animal research converge to suggest that the sense of smell, olfaction, has a high level of plasticity and is intimately associated with visual-spatial orientation and memory encoding networks. We investigated whether olfactory memory (OM) training would lead to transfer to an untrained visual memory (VM) task, as well as untrained olfactory tasks. We devised a memory intervention to compare transfer effects generated by olfactory and non-olfactory (visual) memory training. Adult participants were randomly assigned to daily memory training for about 40 days with either olfactory or visual tasks that had a similar difficulty level. Results showed that while visual training did not produce transfer to the OM task, olfactory training produced transfer to the untrained VM task. Olfactory training also improved participants' performance on odor discrimination and naming tasks, such that they reached the same performance level as a high-performing group of wine professionals. Our results indicate that the olfactory system is highly responsive to training, and we speculate that the sense of smell may facilitate transfer of learning to other sensory domains. Further research is however needed in order to replicate and extend our findings.

Disrupted RNA editing in beta cells mimics early-stage type 1 diabetes.

A major hypothesis for the etiology of type 1 diabetes (T1D) postulates initiation by viral infection, leading to double-stranded RNA (dsRNA)-mediated interferon response and inflammation; however, a causal virus has not been identified. Here, we use a mouse model, corroborated with human islet data, to demonstrate that endogenous dsRNA in beta cells can lead to a diabetogenic immune response, thus identifying a virus-independent mechanism for T1D initiation. We found that disruption of the RNA editing enzyme adenosine deaminases acting on RNA (ADAR) in beta cells triggers a massive interferon response, islet inflammation, and beta cell failure and destruction, with features bearing striking similarity to early-stage human T1D. Glycolysis via calcium enhances the interferon response, suggesting an actionable vicious cycle of inflammation and increased beta cell workload.

Time to childbirth and assisted reproductive treatment in women with congenital heart disease.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the time to first childbirth and to compare the prevalence of assisted reproductive treatment (ART) in women with congenital heart disease (CHD) compared with women without CHD. METHODS: All women in the national register for CHD who had a registered first childbirth in the Swedish Pregnancy Register between 2014 and 2019 were identified. These individuals (cases) were matched by birth year and municipality to women without CHD (controls) in a 1:5 ratio. The time from the 18th birthday to the first childbirth and the prevalence of ART was compared between cases and controls. RESULTS: 830 first childbirths in cases were identified and compared with 4137 controls. Cases were slightly older at the time for first childbirth (28.9 vs 28.5 years, p=0.04) and ART was more common (6.1% vs 4.0%, p<0.01) compared with controls. There were no differences in ART when stratifying for the complexity of CHD. For all women, higher age was associated with ART treatment (OR 1.24, 95% CI 1.20 to 1.28). CONCLUSIONS: Women with and without CHD who gave birth to a first child did so at similar ages. ART was more common in women with CHD, but disease severity did not influence the need for ART. Age was an important risk factor for ART also in women with CHD and should be considered in consultations with these patients.

Bumble Bee Workers Give Up Sleep to Care for Offspring that Are Not Their Own.

Sleep is ubiquitous in vertebrates and invertebrates, and its loss is typically associated with reduced performance, health, or survival, for reasons that are yet unclear [1-3]. Nevertheless, some animals can reduce sleep for increasing foraging time [4], under predation risk [5-8], during seasonal migration [9-11], or for having greater mating opportunities [12, 13]. Here, we tested the hypothesis that social bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) workers give up sleep for improving brood care. We combined video recordings, detailed behavioral analyses, sleep-deprivation experiments, and response-threshold assessments to characterize the sleep behavior of worker bees and showed that immobility bouts of ≥5 min provide a reliable proxy for sleep. We next used this index to study sleep with an automated video-based activity monitoring system. We found that isolated workers severely reduce sleep time in the presence of both larvae that need to be fed and pupae that do not. Reduced sleep was also correlated with around-the-clock activity and wax-pot building, which are typical for nest-founding mother queens. Cocoons, from which we removed the pupae, elicited a similar but transient sleep loss in tending workers, suggesting that the pupa effect on sleep is mediated by pheromonal signals. Sleep time increased following brood removal but remained lower compared to control bees, suggesting that the brood modulated sleep need. This first evidence for brood modulation of sleep in an insect suggests that plasticity in sleep can evolve as a mechanism to improve care for dependent juveniles, even in social insect workers that do not care for their own offspring.