Elisabetta Versace

"Why simply ending animal testing isn’t the answer in biomedical research www.nature.com/articles/d41... " (2025) is a more helpful discussion than this from today"The age of animal experiments is waning. Where will science go next?" www.nature.com/articles/d41... .

Neuro-3D: Towards 3D Visual Decoding from EEG Signals arxiv.org/abs/2411.12248

Molecular and neural basis of pleasant touch sensation A neuropeptide and spinal neural circuit that encode and transmit pleasant touch sensation have been identified.

Molecular and neural basis of pleasant touch sensation | www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I am more familiar with animations

it's a fascinating question: we are working on this, thanks for flagging the paper

ScienceShot: Razor Clams Create Quicksand to Burrow Water-sediment mix reduces drag on bivalve shells

"Fluidizing" reduces the drag between sand grains & shell by as much as 90%, allowing our razor clam to move at a rate of 1 foot/minute straight DOWN into the wet sand.

Some sand is taken into the siphon, which is then ejected as a 'sploot.'

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom - Nature Ecology & Evolution Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal resolution of perception.

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What would a typical worker earn today if their wages had grown as fast as CEO pay over the past 50 years? Take a guess This Graph Exposes Our Rigged System

Do you know how much the typical worker would be making today if their wages had grown as much as CEO pay?

This graph holds the shocking answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lPPsrAMtTI

This is really interesting!

“An enchanted April” “Un incantevole aprile”

how interesting! "Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... " by Maria #Locondole #Benavides-Varela #Regolin 🐥

Place cells in CA1 lack topographical organization of firing locations | PNAS Topography is a well-described and well-known concept for cortical organization in primary sensory and motor cortices of mammalian brains. Similar ...

A half-century old question may have its final answer. Using high-resolution #Mini2P microscopes, we find no evidence of local topography in #PlaceCells. Place fields of neighbouring cells are no more similar than those of randomly selected cells. 🧠🗺️ Out now in @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

interesting! (but behind paywall) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/o...

interesting paper www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1... "Octopamine and tyramine dynamics predict learning rate phenotypes during associative conditioning in
honey bees"

Behavioral biases drift in individuals.

• Drift happens on many timescales
• Drift rate depends on genetics and neuromodulators
• It might be adaptive for rapidly changing environments

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

…now we (UK researchers) are asked to connect more to industry and other sources of external funds, companies, charities, capital ventures… but how do we know where the money comes from?

in case of need: "The Illusions Index" www.illusionsindex.org/i/ebbinghaus...

… I thought you covered all levels 😂

I cuccioli non nascono “inermi”: così anche senza esperienza gli animali sanno scegliere Segui La Zampa su Facebook (clicca qui), Instagram (clicca qui) e X (clicca qui) - Non perderti le migliori notizie e storie, iscriviti alla newsletter settima…

some coverage of our new paper on the advantages of multiple biases for inexperienced animals in the Italian press
@mm-repubblica-bot.bsky.social

www.repubblica.it/la-zampa/202...

orginal paper here royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

interesting pre-print: "A comparison of concept learning ability in honeybees and bumblebees using matching-to-sample tasks" www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

Bang the Drumstick Slowly | Ian Frazier About 26 billion chickens occupy Earth, but apart from the lucky ones in backyards, most are condemned to the hellscape that is industrial farming.

“Chickens and other poultry comprise 70 percent of all birds by weight. Chickens are the most numerous farm animal. As a global tribe, human beings could be called the People of the Chicken.” —Ian Frazier

Inferring social structure and its drivers from refuge use in the desert tortoise, a relatively solitary species - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Abstract For several species, refuges (such as burrows, dens, roosts, nests) are an essential resource for protection from predators and extreme environmental conditions. Refuges also serve as focal s...

interesting: Inferring social structure and its drivers from refuge use in the desert tortoise, a relatively solitary species link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I am not the author of that paper, I think you intended to ask the authors of the paper you cite in your message?

"Building Intelligent Agents with Neuro-Symbolic Concepts" dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Innate biases/predispositins vary in flexibility and strength. The figure shows examples of studied biases that vary in strength (more biased on the left, less biased on the right) and flexibility (less flexible on the left, more flexible on the right). This includes the gray goose rolling egg, aggressive biases against "red bellied" objects , flee responses to looking objects and orienting responses towards the see in turtle hatchlings on the left, and more flexible and "weaker" preferences for colours or transient preferences for certain motion dynamic on the right. Fixed-action patterns usually have low flexibility and high strength, while early predispositions are weak and plastic. The figure illustrates some innate biases described in the references indicated with specific numbers. Cues position along this spectrum should be interpreted qualitatively. The exact position on the horizontal axis is purely indicative, as predispositions depend on species and context, as shown in this article.

Curves that represent the success probability of a choice, as a function of number of valid cues (x axis), number of misleading cues (different curves), and synergy between cues (different column), bias strength (horizontal row) Success probability as a function of the number of valid cues, misleading cues, bias strength and cue synergy. The horizontal axis represents the number of valid cues, different line colours represent different numbers of misleading cues. Subpanel columns represent increasing levels of synergy (from λ = 1 for the additive model with no synergy, to synergy of 2). Subpanel rows indicate bias strength β.

New paper: Reflecting on the multiple biases and predispositions observed in young animals with no previous experience, we modelled a new idea on the strategic role of biases to guide adaptive choice and reduce errors: doi.org/10.1098/rspb... Fantastic collaboration with @debivort.bsky.social

Is time a fundamental part of reality? A quiet revolution in physics suggests not The puzzle of time remains one of the most persistent obstacles to a unified theory of physics

The puzzle of time remains one of the most persistent obstacles to a unified theory of physics

Oggi su Domenica del Sole 24 Ore

No doubt we can tell it's an AI-refined email (polite, clear but doesn't impress). It's becoming so frequent that you might soon start to be happy rather than disappointed in receiving my genuine typing with some funny typographical errors, Latin derivatives, loan translations, Proustian syntax...

The older you get, the faster time feels, and Calvin somehow figured that out way too early. Did you ever notice this as a kid, or only later?
#CalvinandHobbes #TimeFlies