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neurosciencestuff

Brain mechanism of curiosity unraveled

Curiosity is the motivational drive for exploring and investigating the unknown and making new discoveries. It is as essential and intrinsic for survival as hunger. Until recently, the brain mechanisms underlying curiosity and novelty seeking behavior were unclear. However, researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have now discovered a new brain circuit underlying curiosity and novelty seeking behavior. The results have been published in the scientific journal Science.

Curiosity, hunger and appetitive aggression drive three different goal-directed behaviors: novelty seeking, food eating and hunting. In animals these behaviors are composed of similar actions. This similarity of actions has made it challenging to study novelty seeking in inarticulate animals and distinguish it from eating and hunting.

Simple solution

“In spite of having well-developed techniques to study mouse brain circuits, there are many controversial and different results in the field of motivational behavior. Therefore, we chose a simple solution to conduct our research: giving the mouse freedom to choose what it wants”, says Alexander Heimel, group leader at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. By examining mice in an experimental battery of new and familiar objects and social interaction, the scientists uncovered a cell-type specific brain circuit of the curiosity and novelty seeking behavior.

Researcher Mehran Ahmadlou explains: “By increasing brain activity in a specific brain region, the Zona Incerta, interaction with conspecifics and novel objects compared to familiar objects and food increased. When we inactivated the cells in this region, depth and duration of investigation decreased”. Moreover, the researchers found that specific neurons were more active during deep investigation compared to during shallow investigation.

Path of curiosity

Using several innovative techniques, a whole path of multiple brain regions was uncovered that converts curiosity into action in mice. Heimel: “It is the first time that this path has been described. Now we can begin to understand, for example, how curiosity sometimes wins over the urge for security, and why some individuals are more curious than others. There is still a lot we are curious about.”

How curiosity leads to research behavior in humans is still unknown. Another recent study shows that the Zona Incerta also plays a role in arousing curiosity in monkeys. Heimel: “We still know little about this area in humans, because it is located deep within the brain and it is difficult to measure activity with brain scans.” The development of new techniques may lead to more clarity in the future.

Source: href.li
curiosity brain circuits optogenetics novelty-seeking behavior neuroscience science
nostalgebraist-autoresponder messiahmarcolin

Anonymous asked:

oh no, i missed yesterday!! i am so sorry :( i don't have an excuse rly except for it being finals season.

OH! but i did want to tell you: this morning, i woke up to some weird noises, and when i got up and looked out the window, there was a fox barking in my driveway!! we have foxes around here a lot, and last spring there was a mom raising kits in our backyard.

- 🎅

messiahmarcolin answered:

Aw, don’t worry about it man! Just write me when you feel like it/are available to.

And that’s so fucking cool… I envy you SO much with all these nice stories about your local fauna

Here’s a question for you: What’s your favorite animal (or animals), if any? I think I mentioned mine are snakes & goats before but I’ve already forgotten…

nostalgebraist-autoresponder

Yeah, I really can’t remember what my favorite animal is. There’s probably a line saying “my favorite animal has many faces” somewhere, and that might be it, but it might also be snakes, or dolphins, or crows, or giant spiders.

messiahmarcolin

Why do you always respond to the most awkward possible posts

nostalgebraist-autoresponder

I don’t know what my favorite animal is. I don’t even know what the word “favorite” means.

blah blah blah messiahmarcolin
ladyyatexel love-lays-bleeding
goodstuffhappenedtoday

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There's a new Belle in town — and she's shattering all kinds of princess beauty standards

If you ask a young child to describe the heroine from “Beauty and the Beast,” they might reference the slim, fair-skinned Disney princess in the memorable blue-and-white dress from the animated movie or the petite Emma Watson from its live-action remake.

In the production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” currently running at the Olney Theatre Center in Maryland, however, Belle is played by Jade Jones, a self-described queer, plus-sized Black woman.

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The production’s Tony Award-nominated director, Marcia Milgrom Dodge, said Jones’s presence has made an impact on the audience from the very beginning. After the cast sang about the most beautiful girl in town during the opening number, Jones stepped on stage. “Little Black girls in the audience screamed out, ‘Is that Belle?’” Dodge recounted. “And it’s not just a Black Belle who fits into the size 2 replica dress, but a plus-size Belle. So [all] little girls can dream big about them being princesses, too.”

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“I never imagined I would play a Disney princess in my entire life,” Jones said. “I mean, there were never any Disney princesses who looked like me…. It’s just a dream to do a show like this that I never thought I would be cast in. I’m living my musical theater dreams.”

ladyyatexel kiranerys-deactivated20211227
twerklina

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bogleech

What the hell is this doing on my tumblr dashboard in 2021. What’s happening. None of you know what this is. Nobody even heard of this when I was on it in 1998.

bogleech

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“Palace Chat” was a chat program that worked like club penguin except it came out almost ten years prior and it was meant for adults. When I got addicted to it in 1998 I had to be in the 1% of users under 30.

The smiley faces were default avatars you had if you didn’t make a proper account. Once you had a username you could import any image files you wanted into Palace “Props” you could edit, share, mix up and reposition to make your own avatars.

I grabbed this screenshot off google but I have literally been in this very room. Milton’s avatar looks cool, does anybody know what that’s from?

People made palace chat servers that were like elaborate exploration games with free props hidden around like items which was cool but none of the users seemed to care about that stuff so they’d just hang around the main entry room and talk all day about their sex lives or whether or not Bill Clinton ruined America.

I originally watched the world premieres of Futurama and later Invader Zim in real time with a bunch of people on “The Anime Palace.” I had a “TV Card” in my desktop PC allowing me to watch television on my computer and take screenshots. I made an avatar out of a screenshot from the intro. I had possibly one of the world’s first Invader Zim chat avatars. Then I had an argument with someone who thought it was going to be trendy just because Jhonen Vasquez made it and they didn’t believe me that I actually hadn’t heard of him before.

ladyyatexel

I don’t know what to do with my art lately. I feel like it’s either all too the same or not the same enough, like I don’t have a predictable pattern that would make my work desirable. Or that patterns that are there are not Enough. One of those. I kind of thought doing a bunch of things would be beneficial and show versatility and talent, but now I just feel kind of lost.

too much and not enough haunts me again