Jitse S. Amelink

Brain Surfaces of 70 primate species

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To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised!

🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...

See the blog at: www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2629&lang=en

www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2629&lang=en :)

And I wrote my third science snack in a series on brain evolution for our @mpi-nl.bsky.social's TalkLing blog

This time: two genes, called ARHGAP11B and NOTCH2NL, we don’t share with chimpanzees and what they do to our brains.

Enjoy your meal 🙂

#brain #evolution #chimpanzees #scicomm #science

Imaging genetics of language network functional connectivity reveals links with language-related abilities, dyslexia and handedness - Communications Biology Common and rare genetic variants, as well as polygenic scores of dyslexia and handedness are associated with the functional brain language network and hemispheric differences within this network, shed...

Plus, we've begun to uncover how DNA variants contribute to connectivity of language circuits in the human brain, via largescale genomic analyses of resting-state functional neuroimaging data. Check out this @commsbio.nature.com paper by @jsamelink.bsky.social @clydefrancks.bsky.social & co. 🧬🧠🧪7/n

A screenshot of the first page of a newly published forum article entitled "Advancing GWAS of human communication" authored by Rosa S. Gisladottir in the journal Trends in Genetics. The abstract reads as follows: The last decade has seen an explosion in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on almost any imaginable phenotype. Unfortunately, humanity’s most distinctive trait – communication, broadly construed – has been underserved. In this forum article I review recent advances and promising avenues that may help us understand the genetics and evolution of human communication.

Highly recommend this superb forum article on genomics of human communication traits, free to read in @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social. Beautifully succinct & accessible overview by @rosagisladottir.bsky.social on where the field is now & where it's heading. 🗣️💬🧠🧬🧪
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I'm so excited to see this online now in TRENDS IN GENETICS: Advancing GWAS of Human Communication. I review latest developments in genetics of speech and language and highlight opportunities for research on genetics and evolution of human communication.
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lHgMcQbJF...

The Genomic Code: the genome instantiates a generative model of the organism How does the genome encode the form of the organism? What is the nature of this genomic code? Inspired by recent work in machine learning and neuroscience, we propose that the genome encodes a generat...

In the new issue of @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social, @wiringthebrain.bsky.social & Nick Cheney seek out a better metaphor. They propose a generative model concept to capture the indirect, distributed, & non-linear relationship between info in the genome & form of the organism. Worth a read: 🧬👇🧪 11/11

Presented my latest #PhD work at #BioSB2025 to the Dutch bioinformatics community. Had a great time connecting with all my colleagues! #imaging #language #genomics #brain

Benchmarking cerebellar organoids to model autism spectrum disorder and human brain evolution While cortical organoids have been used to model different facets of neurodevelopmental conditions and human brain evolution, cerebellar organoids have not yet featured so prominently in the same cont...

New preprint alert 📣
#Cerebellum, organoid, autism & brain evolution 🧪 🧫🧠🧬
Collaboration with G. Testa; fruit of years of work by smart students, led by postdoc Davide Aprile. Organoids to understand better the developmental basis of autism (focus: CHD8) & sapiens brain evolution (focus: CADPS2) 🧵

🧠 Blog alert: why wrinkles make us human 🧠

I dove into the evolution of the human brain and discovered a key property: wrinkles (gyrification in science speak).

Find out more below! ⬇️

www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2589&lang=en

#brain #evolution #language #scicomm
@mpi-nl.bsky.social

🚨PAPER ALERT Chimpanzees expand the meanings of their single calls when combining them. They use a variety of mechanisms, analogous to those found in human language, to alter the meanings of single calls in their combinations. Photo by @lirsamuni.bsky.social
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

"Scientists need not become full-time ethicists. Instead, they must cultivate awareness of the issues; the questions outlined above offer a starting point and can help researchers recognize when to seek out ethical expertise. This type of reflection should occur throughout the research life cycle."

Humans reached southern South America by 14,500 years ago, genomes from 139 Indigenous groups reveal A large-scale genome study shows that Indigenous peoples in the Americas split off several times, resulting in loss of important genetic diversity.

New genomic evidence lines up well with archaeological sites throughout the Americas. 🧪🏺

For #SustainabilityTipTuesday we want to echo this message about donation and repair, with a shout-out our friends at EquipSent (equipsent.org) who connect labs and enable donation of functional equipment 🤗♻️ #sustainablelabs

Happy birthday, David Attenborough! 99 ways he has inspired us, by Barack Obama, Billie Eilish, Morgan Freeman – and many more This week the presenter turns 99. To celebrate, we asked 99 nature lovers – including Margaret Atwood, Jane Fonda, Bono, Kate Winslet and Michael Palin – how he has helped us see the world with fresh eyes

Happy birthday, David Attenborough! 99 ways he has inspired us, by Barack Obama, Billie Eilish, Morgan Freeman – and many more

📣Blog alert📣

What are the different aspects of internationalization in science? 🌏

I had the opportunity to cover a panel discussion on the different aspects of Internationalization in Science at the #InScience Film Festival.

➡️ www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2477

@mpi-nl.bsky.social #scicomm (1/4)

📣 Blog alert 📣
What does a chocolate factory smell like? 👃🗣️

@izabjordan.bsky.social gave a fantastic talk about #language #diversity in naming smells at #InScience to introduce #WillyWonka and the #Chocolate Factory.

➡️ www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2491&lang=en

#scicomm @mpi-nl.bsky.social #science

A graphic with an icon of the sun, a wiggly line denoting natural cycles, and a volcano, with a title reading "WHY is climate changing?" created by me. Not fancy, as my graphic design skills lean to function over art!

Scientists who study climate don't automatically attribute all changes to human activity. Rather, we carefully investigate every possible natural factor that could explain the planet's warming.

Could these be the real culprits?

The evidence is in--and the answer is NO.

This thread explains! 🧵

Greta Thunberg's distant cousin, Svante Arrhenius, was a physical chemist.

In between his Nobel Prize-winning chemistry research, he also calculated the very first climate model--by hand, in the 1890s!

His estimates of how each latitude band would warm as CO2 increased are still accurate today.

Overlooked No More: Eunice Foote, Climate Scientist Lost to History (Gift Article) Foote’s ingenious experiment more than 150 years ago yielded a remarkable discovery that could have helped shape modern climate science had she not been overshadowed.

Wait, it gets better.

It was Irish scientist John Tyndall who connected coal mining with CH4 - but it was NY's Eunice Foote whose ground-breaking experiments led her to conclude that, if atmospheric CO2 were higher, the planet would be warmer...experiments in her greenhouse in 1856. 1856!

Read:

Four images to illustrate some prominent single-gene myths. Top left shows a photograph of a person deftly rolling their tongue into a U-shape. Top right shows a photograph of a person’s ear, highlighting the shape and features of the earlobe and cartilage. Bottom left shows a close-up photograph of a person’s eye, with a vivid blue colouration. Bottom right shows a photograph of a person poised to write with their left hand on the blank white page of a spiral-bound notebook.

Remember when you first learned about genetics at school? All those fascinating examples of human traits that are each apparently determined by just a single gene? Time to check in on some of your favourites to see how they’re doing. 🧬🧵🧪 1/n

📣 Blog alert 📣
What does a chocolate factory smell like? 👃🗣️

@izabjordan.bsky.social gave a fantastic talk about #language #diversity in naming smells at #InScience to introduce #WillyWonka and the #Chocolate Factory.

➡️ www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2491&lang=en

#scicomm @mpi-nl.bsky.social #science

Break the climate silence! Pakistan scales up solar, the world loses a climate champion, and conversations spark action

Last year, Pakistan installed an incredible 22GW of solar—more than Canada has ever built!

Pakistan initially committed to slash emissions 20% by 2030. But in 2021, it upped that commitment to 50%, as it's a win-win: switching to clean energy addresses poverty too.

Read more:

A great example is that of the Sami people, the indigenous inhabitants of Lapland, setting the research agenda now together with scientists. Because science simply does not exist in isolation. Science is powerful: it affects the world we live in and the world our children will live in. (4/4)

The second big question is how to make science benefit both global and local society. We need an influx of ideas from local society back to science. I think stakeholder science and various grassroots movements are great places to start. (3/4)

What stuck with me were these observations: first, science is, and has always been, a fundamentally international enterprise. Heino Falcke said: “the sky belongs to everyone”. It’s not just the sky, but many scientific subjects. Even in the Cold War, US and Soviet scientists exchanged ideas. (2/4)

📣Blog alert📣

What are the different aspects of internationalization in science? 🌏

I had the opportunity to cover a panel discussion on the different aspects of Internationalization in Science at the #InScience Film Festival.

➡️ www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2477

@mpi-nl.bsky.social #scicomm (1/4)

Great rant on how academia NEEDS to conform around basic insights and how the populist right (I would not put all conservatives in that box) is cancelling ITSELF in science 👇🏼

Correcting for volunteer bias in GWAS increases SNP effect sizes and heritability estimates Nature Communications - Genetic studies may be biased due to volunteer-based biobanks. Using UK Biobank, the authors apply inverse probability weighting based on UK Census data, finding that...

So happy to finally see this paper out in @natcomms.nature.com. rdcu.be/ehQsd “Correcting for volunteer bias in GWAS increases SNP effect sizes and heritability estimates”. A thread on our findings!