Nikolay Kukushkin

Describing this as a “break” on the immune system is the wrong metaphor. It implies that the immune system is static at rest, gets going upon infection, and then needs to be stopped, like a car. NOTHING in biology is static. Everything is an equilibrium. It’s not a break, it’s a counterweight.

To hold something steady on an outstretched hand, you press down on your wrist with your second hand (e.g. cops holding guns in movies). That, in a nutshell, is why we need these T-regulatory cells that work against actual antiviral T-cell fighters. Congratulations!

Ubiquitin is made in a five-pack. The last monomer has a tail. Apparently this last tailed ubiquitin is a special "fast ubiquitin" for stress. An E4 ligase (which extends already existing Ub chains and so forces them into the proteasome) grabs it under stress. Tell me AI could have predicted this

ONE HAND CLAPPING: Consciousness, Evolution, and the Meaning of Life. Science says that you are nothing but a chemical reaction — a collection of atoms and molecules, like rocks, paperclips, and everything else in t...

If you are in NYC, join us for my book launch party! Tuesday October 7th 5:30pm, NYU, Liberal Studies lobby, 726 Broadway, 6th floor (non-NYU: dm me to register). Conversation between myself and Prof. Jared Simard, our resident classicist! Books available! Slavic food! events.nyu.edu/event/onehan...

What interests me: is this the first harbinger of a post-screen future? The key question is what the OpenAI device ends up looking like.

Love it when the solution to an existential crisis is sauna.

What Can a Cell Remember? | Quanta Magazine A small but enthusiastic group of neuroscientists is exhuming overlooked experiments and performing new ones to explore whether cells record past experiences — fundamentally challenging what memory is...

What can a cell remember? A lot more than you think. My latest, for @quantamagazine.bsky.social, is on memory beyond the brain—in tiny unicellular creatures and the smallest, most ancient parts of ourselves:

www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-a-c...

YouTube video by Neuroscience and Beyond Where Is Our Memory Stored? Everywhere and Nowhere

Ever wondered where memory truly lives? 🧠 In our latest episode, we welcome Prof. Nikolay Kukushkin @niko-kukushkin.bsky.social (NYU), to discuss the biology of memory and consciousness.

▶️ Watch the full clip here: youtu.be/VY9gqT7rs_A
🔗 More: linktr.ee/neuroscience...

Are Humans Running Out of Memory? Human memory has a limit. As a civilization, we may have reached it. What happens now?

We may not sense the progress bar, but human beings are running low on memory. Here’s what we can do.

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smal...

Ep 66: Memory and the Human Mind - The Work - We Love Science Our special guest for today is Nikolay Kukushkin, a clinical associate professor and neuroscientist at NYU, and author, who also considers himself a molecular philosopher. His research answers the que...

Had a great time talking about sea slugs, cellular memory, and my upcoming book with Shekerah and Fatu of We Love Science. Listen here: "Ep 66: Memory and the Human Mind - The Work" at www.buzzsprout.com/1720419/epis...

Here's a biological mystery that stumps me. What's the deal with iodine in thyroid hormones? OK, it helps the hormone pass through the membrane and bind to the receptor. But steroids do that without any exotic atoms. Why iodine, and why thyroid? Any experts?

So true. Vitamins are ridiculous.

The Body Keeps the Score. Should We? All cells, even kidney cells, retain surprisingly detailed memories. How does this affect our everyday life? We will soon find out — but might regret the knowledge.

Will this future make us healthier? Or feed our growing anxiety about controlling every cell? For now, I would stick to “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” — until science refines the timeline. /🧵 www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/sm...

As we uncover more rules of cellular memory, we might develop bizarre health protocols: “cardio only during full moons; coffee must be exactly 6 hours after magnesium; alternate nostril breathing synced to gut bacteria cycles...” /7

Two things are clear about cellular memory:
1) It exists
2) It can depend on precise timing, down to seconds. /6

Mechanotransduction in bone: do bone cells act as sensors of fluid flow? - PubMed When compact bone is subjected to bending loads, interstitial fluid in the bone matrix flows away from regions of high compressive stress. The amount of interstitial fluid flow is strongly influenced ...

Similar memory-like properties appear in the immune system, embryonic development, and cancer. The most obvious example? Muscles growing from exercise. These examples are probably just scratching the surface. /5 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8070637/

Comparison of storage- and signal-limited models of pancreatic insulin secretion - PubMed Kinetic patterns of glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from the in vitro perfused pancreas were used to test different types of secretion models of similar complexity. A storage-limited, two-compart...

But there’s a lot more. The pancreas remembers sugar exposure: hit it with sugar twice in 20 min, and it releases double insulin the second time. Bone cells remember mechanical patterns: pressure at 2 Hz triggers growth, 0.5 Hz does nothing. /4 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6990796/

These cellular memories form within minutes and can last for days or longer. This *could* mean our conscious memories — including trauma — partly reside outside the brain, as suggested in "The Body Keeps the Score" by van der Kolk. /3

The massed-spaced learning effect in non-neural human cells - Nature Communications When learning is spaced in time, memory is enhanced, but so far this was only observed in neural systems. Here, the authors show that non-neural cells, including kidney cells, also show a spaced effec...

I study cellular cognition—how cells process information, detect patterns & form memories. We recently showed non-brain cells (even kidney cells!) can learn from chemical patterns, similar to how brain cells learn when we study, or practice piano. /2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Time travelers would be amazed by how much we plan for future health. We take vitamins, count fiber, exercise, and do Dry January — all for benefits we won't see for years. But it might be that even shorter-term patterns leave lasting imprints on our body. 🧵

One of the odd things about non-neural memory we study is how long it lasts — in neurons same genes get deactivated in hours, in kidney cells they stay on for days. This might be why. Neurons repress memory genes stronger. Increases information capacity? Claude Shannon again!!

ARE YOU KIDDING

A reminder that our NYC Russian book club meets to discuss Vladimir Sorokin’s “Day of the Oprichnik” in two weeks, Sunday 26 Jan, 3:30pm, Toné Cafe, Brighton Beach! DM to join.

Swiss guard uniforms are actually camouflage in dichromatic vision

Has The Tennis Ball Gotten Worse? | Defector The best way to snap an athlete out of platitude autopilot in a press conference is to get them to vent about some technical complaint. Like everyone else, they have esoteric gripes about their workpl...

What a metaphor for the unpredictability of the real world. We are trying to solve climate change and cancer and we can't even figure out what's going on with tennis balls. Real life is an infinite parameter space.

defector.com/has-the-tenn...

Excellent piece about our recent paper on cellular memory.

And yet: quotation marks in the post, and “memory-like processes” in the article. I suspect the authors get it when I emphasize it’s not a metaphor —that’s the whole point—but then the editors just can’t let it go without conditionalizing.

The connection between body and emotion is deep and many interpret our research on non-neural memory in that vein: kidneys store trauma, hearts carry personality. Here’s a much more realistic connection: the insula. A brain region that literally builds emotional awareness out of bodily states.

Nikolay Kukushkin, New York University - Kidney Cells Learn Like College Students - The Academic Minute Memories are a big part of celebrating the holidays, but is more than your brain involved in this process? Nikolay Kukushkin, clinical associate professor of life science at New York University, looks...

Honored to be on #NPR for this Christmas segment about our research on memory outside the brain. Will it help students do better on finals? I wish. Happy holidays!

#neuroscience #memory #brain #christmas
academicminute.org/2024/12/niko...

Numerical Cognition Without Words: Evidence from Amazonia Members of the Pirahã tribe use a “one-two-many” system of counting. I ask whether speakers of this innumerate language can appreciate larger numerosities without the benefit of words to encode them. ...

Tried using Claude as a scantron for finals today and it’s absolute garbage—reads every question and answer but can’t figure out how many mistakes there are. Reminds me of the Pirahã who can talk about each child but can’t tell you how many they have. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Personally, I think that the best way to learn is to find enough things to switch between so that at least some of them are inspiring at any given time. If everything you are learning is boring — maybe it’s time to rethink your life!/🧵