Artificial Lights and Bat Drinking Behavior
Darkness is a diminishing natural resource. Over the last hundredyears, human development and urbanization have changed the nocturnallandscape, making the nighttime sky 20 percent brighter.
This is bad news for nocturnal animals like bats, which depend on the protection offered by darkness. In my latest Animal Minds blog post, I take a look at how artificial lighting affects bat drinking behavior.
Read the story here: Do Artificial Lights Cause Drinking Problems in Bats?
Promiscuous Lionesses Keep Cubs Safe
African lions seem to exemplify the conflict between genders. Acoalition of males will defend their right to exclusively breed with agroup of females against intruding males, who won’t think twice aboutkilling all the cubs in order to hasten the siring of their own with thefemales.
But in a subspecies of lion, infanticide and sexual coercion are much rarer – and much of it appears to be due to the savvy mating strategy of the females.
Read the whole story at my Animal Minds blog: Who's the Daddy? For Lion Cubs, It's Safer Not to Know.
Brain Imaging Bipolar Disorder in High-Risk Children
Researchers report a potential neural marker of individual risk in those with a family history of bipolar disorder. The study, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, points to particular patterns of brain connectivity as future potential targets for early intervention. Patterns in connectivity in a portion of the frontal lobe called the inferior frontal gyrus appears to be an early biomarker in children of parents with bipolar disorder.
Read more about the study here: Can Brain Imaging Help Predict Bipolar Disorder in High Risk Children?
Emotional Mirror Neurons in Rats
Researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have demonstrated that specific neurons in the rat brain are active both when a rat experiences pain itself and when it observes another rat in pain. The results, published today in Current Biology, suggest that sharing the emotions of others is a common mammalian trait.
Read my article on the study here: Rats Feel One Another's Pain.
Congenital Heart Disease and Lapses in Care
Medical advancements over the past 20 years have allowed more people with congenital heart disease (CHD) to survive into adulthood. For these individuals, routine surveillance and follow-up care by a cardiologist are critically important. However, a new study shows lapse in care is prevalent among CHD survivors by age five, with nonwhites demonstrating elevated risk. Medicaid patients and those with less severe diagnoses also had an increased risk for lapse in care.
Read more at Pediatrics Nationwide: Keeping Young Patients with Congenital Heart Disease Connected to Care.