#naturecommunications — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #naturecommunications, aggregated by home.social.
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https://www.europesays.com/es/676519/ ¿Esta nueva enzima puede retroceder el reloj en el cuerpo humano? #aaron #Cravens #ES #España #Health #longevity #microbiology #NatureCommunications(Journal) #Proteins #research #RevelPharmaceuticalsInc #Salud #Spain
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https://www.europesays.com/it/599925/ Il cervello adulto può riscriversi? Una ricerca riapre una possibilità che sembrava perduta #cervello #depressione #DiffusionTensorImaging #DipendenzePatologiche #Health #ImperialCollegeDiLondra #InvecchiamentoCerebrale #IT #Italia #Italy #londra #NatureCommunications #neuroscienze #Psilocibina #RiorganizzazioneCerebrale #Salute #SanFrancisco #UniversitàDellaCaliforniaDiSanFrancisco
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https://www.europesays.com/it/591760/ Vaccino mirato a Kras: per la prima volta sull’uomo risposte immunitarie durature contro il cancro al pancreas #AdventrisPharmaceuticals #AmandaLHuff #CancerDiscovery #ElizabethJaffee #Health #IT #Italia #Italy #JohnsHopkinsKimmelCancerCenter #MarkYarchoan #MKrasVax #NatureCommunications #NeehaZaidi #Salute #SkipViraghCenterForPancreaticCancer
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Nature Communications aldizkarian argitalpen berria 🧠🔬
Achucarroko hainbat ikertzailek gidatutako nazioarteko ikerketa-talde batek MCT2 identifikatu du gai zuriaren osotasunaren erregulatzaile berri gisa.
Irakurri gehiago 👉 https://www.achucarro.org/news/2026-07-novel-metabolic-regulator-white-matter/
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Nature Communications aldizkarian argitalpen berria 🧠🔬
Achucarroko hainbat ikertzailek gidatutako nazioarteko ikerketa-talde batek MCT2 identifikatu du gai zuriaren osotasunaren erregulatzaile berri gisa.
Irakurri gehiago 👉 https://www.achucarro.org/news/2026-07-novel-metabolic-regulator-white-matter/
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Nature Communications aldizkarian argitalpen berria 🧠🔬
Achucarroko hainbat ikertzailek gidatutako nazioarteko ikerketa-talde batek MCT2 identifikatu du gai zuriaren osotasunaren erregulatzaile berri gisa.
Irakurri gehiago 👉 https://www.achucarro.org/news/2026-07-novel-metabolic-regulator-white-matter/
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Nature Communications aldizkarian argitalpen berria 🧠🔬
Achucarroko hainbat ikertzailek gidatutako nazioarteko ikerketa-talde batek MCT2 identifikatu du gai zuriaren osotasunaren erregulatzaile berri gisa.
Irakurri gehiago 👉 https://www.achucarro.org/news/2026-07-novel-metabolic-regulator-white-matter/
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World’s first superconducting quantum heat engine looks to transform quantum computing
A heat engine small enough to fit inside a superconducting circuit has converted heat into measurable work near…
#NewsBeep #News #Physics #Aaltouniversity #absolutezero #AU #Australia #heat #heatengine #NatureCommunications #Ottoengine #Quantumcomputers #quantumheatengine #quantumsystem #quantumthermodynamics #Qubit #Science #superconductingcircuits #thermodynamiccycle
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/804859/ -
World’s first superconducting quantum heat engine looks to transform quantum computing
A heat engine small enough to fit inside a superconducting circuit has converted heat into measurable work near…
#NewsBeep #News #Physics #Aaltouniversity #absolutezero #AU #Australia #heat #heatengine #NatureCommunications #Ottoengine #Quantumcomputers #quantumheatengine #quantumsystem #quantumthermodynamics #Qubit #Science #superconductingcircuits #thermodynamiccycle
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/804859/ -
World’s first superconducting quantum heat engine looks to transform quantum computing
A heat engine small enough to fit inside a superconducting circuit has converted heat…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Physics #Aaltouniversity #absolutezero #heat #heatengine #NatureCommunications #Ottoengine #Quantumcomputers #quantumheatengine #quantumsystem #quantumthermodynamics #Qubit #Science #superconductingcircuits #thermodynamiccycle
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/766237/ -
World’s first superconducting quantum heat engine looks to transform quantum computing
A heat engine small enough to fit inside a superconducting circuit has converted heat…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Physics #Aaltouniversity #absolutezero #heat #heatengine #NatureCommunications #Ottoengine #Quantumcomputers #quantumheatengine #quantumsystem #quantumthermodynamics #Qubit #Science #superconductingcircuits #thermodynamiccycle
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/766237/ -
https://www.europesays.com/ie/588217/ World’s first superconducting quantum heat engine looks to transform quantum computing #AaltoUniversity #AbsoluteZero #Éire #heat #HeatEngine #IE #Ireland #NatureCommunications #OttoEngine #Physics #QuantumComputers #QuantumHeatEngine #QuantumSystem #QuantumThermodynamics #Qubit #Science #SuperconductingCircuits #ThermodynamicCycle
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Canadian study suggests social norms rival economics in climate fight and can sway action abroad
Efforts to cut emissions in one region can echo far beyond it, influencing public support for climate action…
#Canada #climateaction #climatechange #climatechangemitigation #climatemodels #climaterisk #NatureCommunications #Socialnorms #UniversityofWaterloo
https://www.europesays.com/canada/127448/ -
DATE: July 13, 2026 at 02:14AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Second Pregnancy Changes the Brain in Surprising New Ways
Source: Science Daily - Top Health
Researchers have found that every pregnancy rewires the brain in its own way, with a second pregnancy bringing a different pattern of changes than the first. This finding, reported in the journal Nature Communications, could lead to better treatments of maternal mental health challenges, including peripartum depression. The study also identified links between structural changes in the brain and peripartum depression during both first and second...
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SecondPregnancy #PregnancyBrainChanges #MaternalMentalHealth #PeripartumDepression #BrainRewiring #NatureCommunications #MaternalWellbeing #PostpartumResearch #PrenatalPsychology #HormonalBrainChanges
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DATE: July 13, 2026 at 02:14AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Second Pregnancy Changes the Brain in Surprising New Ways
Source: Science Daily - Top Health
Researchers have found that every pregnancy rewires the brain in its own way, with a second pregnancy bringing a different pattern of changes than the first. This finding, reported in the journal Nature Communications, could lead to better treatments of maternal mental health challenges, including peripartum depression. The study also identified links between structural changes in the brain and peripartum depression during both first and second...
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SecondPregnancy #PregnancyBrainChanges #MaternalMentalHealth #PeripartumDepression #BrainRewiring #NatureCommunications #MaternalWellbeing #PostpartumResearch #PrenatalPsychology #HormonalBrainChanges
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DATE: July 13, 2026 at 02:14AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: Second Pregnancy Changes the Brain in Surprising New Ways
Source: Science Daily - Top Health
Researchers have found that every pregnancy rewires the brain in its own way, with a second pregnancy bringing a different pattern of changes than the first. This finding, reported in the journal Nature Communications, could lead to better treatments of maternal mental health challenges, including peripartum depression. The study also identified links between structural changes in the brain and peripartum depression during both first and second...
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SecondPregnancy #PregnancyBrainChanges #MaternalMentalHealth #PeripartumDepression #BrainRewiring #NatureCommunications #MaternalWellbeing #PostpartumResearch #PrenatalPsychology #HormonalBrainChanges
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https://www.europesays.com/it/581350/ Tumore del rene: al San Raffaele un modello di IA stima il rischio prima dell’intervento #CarcinomaRenale #CareggiFirenze #ExplainableAI #Health #IntelligenzaArtificialeSanità #IT #Italia #Italy #MedicinaPersonalizzata #NatureCommunications #SRACE #Salute #SanRaffaeleMilano #TumoreDelRene #UrologiaOncologica
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Brown tree snakes reached Guam hidden in military cargo during World War II, and it triggered an ecological collapse that wiped out nearly all native birds and slashed tree seedling growth by up to 92% |
An invasive snake that likely arrived on Guam hidden inside military car…
#NewsBeep #News #Wildlife #Browntreesnakes #CA #Canada #ecologicalcollapse #guam #guamscientists #marianaislands #NatureCommunications #PacificOcean #Science #secondworldwar #worldwarii
https://www.newsbeep.com/ca/775394/ -
https://www.europesays.com/uk/1063651/ Brown tree snakes reached Guam hidden in military cargo during World War II, and it triggered an ecological collapse that wiped out nearly all native birds and slashed tree seedling growth by up to 92% | #BrownTreeSnakes #EcologicalCollapse #Guam #guamscientists #MarianaIslands #NatureCommunications #PacificOcean #Science #SecondWorldWar #UK #UnitedKingdom #wildlife #WorldWarII
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https://www.europesays.com/ie/565070/ Brown tree snakes reached Guam hidden in military cargo during World War II, and it triggered an ecological collapse that wiped out nearly all native birds and slashed tree seedling growth by up to 92% | #BrownTreeSnakes #EcologicalCollapse #Éire #guam #guamscientists #IE #Ireland #MarianaIslands #NatureCommunications #PacificOcean #Science #SecondWorldWar #Wildlife #WorldWarII
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DATE: June 30, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Scientists accidentally discover an inherent human tendency for counterclockwise movement
When humans walk freely in open or enclosed spaces, they naturally tend to veer in a counterclockwise direction. This individual bias provides evidence that intrinsic personal tendencies shape how large crowds spontaneously organize themselves. These findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggest new ways to understand human movement.
In the study of pedestrian dynamics, scientists observe how large groups of people move together in shared spaces. In crowded areas, people often spontaneously form opposing lanes or alternate like a zipper when passing through a narrow doorway. These patterns are known as emergent behaviors. An emergent behavior occurs when simple actions taken by individuals combine to create a complex, coordinated group pattern without any central leader.
In the past, experts thought these collective crowd patterns arose mainly from social interactions and environmental boundaries. For example, people stepping to the right to avoid a collision might eventually cause an entire group to rotate in a specific direction near a wall. Other theories suggested that learned social habits, such as driving on a particular side of the road, dictate how crowds navigate.
To test these assumptions, an international research team designed experiments to determine if the counterclockwise rotation seen in crowds is a social phenomenon or a built-in individual bias. The research team was led by Iñaki Echeverría Huarte, a researcher in the Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. The project included researchers from Waseda University, the University of Tokyo, Shanghai University for Science and Technology, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Echeverría Huarte noted that the project was a collaborative effort that grew out of years of patient experiments. In fact, the initial discovery happened entirely by chance. “It was entirely serendipitous,” he told PsyPost. “During the COVID-19 pandemic we were running experiments on social distancing, trying to understand how many people could safely share a room, and while analyzing that footage we noticed by chance that people kept walking counterclockwise.”
That unexpected observation became the starting point for everything that followed. To formally study the behavior, the authors conducted their first experiment at the University of Navarra. They recruited 50 adult participants and placed them in a confined circular area with a radius of 5 meters. The participants were instructed to walk randomly for several intervals of about 40 seconds. A camera mounted 10 meters above the area recorded their exact paths at 15 frames per second.
Before the walking trials, the researchers tested whether each person preferred turning to the left or right when facing a wall. They then mixed these individuals into different group sizes and combinations. To track the rotation, the scientists calculated a mathematical score for the collective motion, measuring whether the group favored one direction.
The results showed a persistent counterclockwise rotation across all groups. This happened regardless of the overall group density or the ratio of people who preferred turning right. “If you ask a group of people to walk around freely, with no rules or instructions, they will very likely end up going counterclockwise,” Echeverría Huarte said. He called this a small, playful fact about human behavior that most people have never noticed.
To see if the walls caused this rotation, the authors moved their next experiment to an open space. They observed 107 teenagers, aged 13 to 14 years old, walking freely in a 50 by 60 meter schoolyard. Drones recorded the students from 40 meters above the ground, capturing video at 30 frames per second. The researchers used a custom computer program to track the walking speeds and positions of every student.
Even without physical boundaries to guide their movement, the teenagers consistently rotated in a collective counterclockwise direction. The mathematical distribution of their walking paths matched the results from the enclosed arena. This suggests that interactions with walls or fences are not the primary cause of the rotational bias.
Next, the researchers traveled to Japan to test the collision avoidance theory. In Spain, pedestrians typically step to the right to avoid bumping into someone approaching them. In Japan, pedestrians generally step to the left, which the researchers confirmed through a preliminary picture survey. If stepping aside caused the group rotation, the Japanese participants should have rotated clockwise.
The team recruited 39 adults to walk randomly in a circular enclosure with a radius of 4 meters. The participants wore colored hats to help the tracking software map their exact coordinates. Surprisingly, the Japanese groups also exhibited a consistent counterclockwise rotation. This finding refutes the idea that local collision avoidance maneuvers drive the group movement pattern.
Echeverría Huarte noted that the results repeatedly surprised the research team. “The biggest surprise came in Japan, where road traffic and spontaneous pedestrian lanes go the opposite way to Spain, so we were convinced the rotation would flip there,” Echeverría Huarte said. “When my colleague Claudio Feliciani sent me his first video from Tokyo, my reaction was immediate: ‘No way, this is counterclockwise again.’ Its robustness across cultures is what makes it striking.”
The team also wanted to explore whether learned adult rules influence this behavior. They analyzed pre-existing video data of preschool children running freely during a musical activity in a Japanese nursery school. Since young children under the age of six have not yet fully absorbed adult societal rules, their behavior offers a look at more instinctive movement.
The tracking data showed that the children displayed a highly stable and pronounced counterclockwise motion. In fact, the children moved in a cohesive vortex pattern, completely aligning with one another. This suggests that the counterclockwise walking bias is present long before humans learn complex social rules regarding traffic or pedestrian flow.
To ensure no unspoken social expectations were at play in adults, the scientists surveyed 168 university students in Spain. They showed the students a picture of a circular arena and asked which way they would personally walk. The researchers also asked the students which way they expected others to walk, measuring what behavioral experts call empirical and normative expectations.
The survey results showed no consensus on a counterclockwise social norm. In fact, nearly forty percent of the respondents expected people to walk in a clockwise direction, which directly contradicted the physical experiments. Because the actual physical movements did not match the expectations, the researchers concluded that a conscious social rule is not responsible for the behavior.
Finally, the researchers sought to isolate the behavior completely by testing 209 adults walking alone. Each person walked freely for 60 seconds inside an empty hexagonal enclosure while a camera tracked their individual path. The researchers assessed each participant through physical tests to find their dominant hand, dominant foot, and dominant eye. To test visual influences, they also asked 49 of these participants to walk while wearing a patch over their right eye.
Even when walking entirely alone, the participants showed a strong mathematical preference for counterclockwise movement. The scientists found no statistical differences based on a person’s dominant hand, dominant foot, or dominant eye. Wearing an eye patch also did not change the walking bias. These single-person trials provide evidence that the counterclockwise preference is an inherent individual trait rather than a byproduct of crowd dynamics.
“The deeper one is scientific: for physicists, this reframes how we think about complex systems,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We usually assume that the patterns we see in a crowd emerge from the interactions between its members, but here the collective rotation does not come from the group at all, it comes from a bias each person already carries individually. It shows that some collective patterns may have hidden individual origins we had overlooked.”
As with all research, there are limitations to consider. The sample sizes for individuals with specific traits, such as being left-footed or left-handed, were relatively small. Because of this, minor biological influences on walking direction cannot be completely ruled out by the current data. Additionally, the participants were all healthy children, teenagers, and young adults.
“We can say with confidence that the bias is individual and very robust, but we cannot yet explain its origin,” Echeverría Huarte said. “Our best interpretation points to subtle body asymmetries at the level of the sensorimotor system, though this is not settled.” The sensorimotor system refers to the parts of the brain, nerves, and muscles that work together to process sensory information and control movement. Echeverría Huarte also noted that he would caution against overselling practical applications, which at this stage remain modest.
One should avoid assuming that this counterclockwise bias will dictate behavior in every real-world scenario. In highly structured environments, explicit goals or dense crowding might override this subtle natural tendency. People navigating a crowded train station with visible signage and static obstacles may not exhibit the same looping behavior seen in these empty testing arenas.
“The biggest open question is the origin: why this individual bias exists in the first place,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We are now running virtual reality experiments precisely to isolate locomotion from other cognitive factors and test whether the asymmetry sits in how we sense, integrate or execute movement. Finding the root cause is the next big step.”
As the team continues to investigate the biological roots of human walking patterns, they reflect on the unexpected nature of their initial discovery. “Sometimes the most interesting findings are the ones you were not looking for,” Echeverría Huarte said.
The study, “Individual locomotor bias drives counterclockwise motion in pedestrian crowds,” was authored by Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte, Claudio Feliciani, Zhigang Shi, Katsuhiro Nishinari, Angel Sánchez, Angel Garcimartín, and Iker Zuriguel.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #counterclockwisebias #pedestriandynamics #emergentbehaviors #crowdbehavior #inherentmovement #sensorimotorsystem #NatureCommunications #spatialnavigation #universalmovementbias #collectivemotion
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DATE: June 30, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Scientists accidentally discover an inherent human tendency for counterclockwise movement
When humans walk freely in open or enclosed spaces, they naturally tend to veer in a counterclockwise direction. This individual bias provides evidence that intrinsic personal tendencies shape how large crowds spontaneously organize themselves. These findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggest new ways to understand human movement.
In the study of pedestrian dynamics, scientists observe how large groups of people move together in shared spaces. In crowded areas, people often spontaneously form opposing lanes or alternate like a zipper when passing through a narrow doorway. These patterns are known as emergent behaviors. An emergent behavior occurs when simple actions taken by individuals combine to create a complex, coordinated group pattern without any central leader.
In the past, experts thought these collective crowd patterns arose mainly from social interactions and environmental boundaries. For example, people stepping to the right to avoid a collision might eventually cause an entire group to rotate in a specific direction near a wall. Other theories suggested that learned social habits, such as driving on a particular side of the road, dictate how crowds navigate.
To test these assumptions, an international research team designed experiments to determine if the counterclockwise rotation seen in crowds is a social phenomenon or a built-in individual bias. The research team was led by Iñaki Echeverría Huarte, a researcher in the Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. The project included researchers from Waseda University, the University of Tokyo, Shanghai University for Science and Technology, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Echeverría Huarte noted that the project was a collaborative effort that grew out of years of patient experiments. In fact, the initial discovery happened entirely by chance. “It was entirely serendipitous,” he told PsyPost. “During the COVID-19 pandemic we were running experiments on social distancing, trying to understand how many people could safely share a room, and while analyzing that footage we noticed by chance that people kept walking counterclockwise.”
That unexpected observation became the starting point for everything that followed. To formally study the behavior, the authors conducted their first experiment at the University of Navarra. They recruited 50 adult participants and placed them in a confined circular area with a radius of 5 meters. The participants were instructed to walk randomly for several intervals of about 40 seconds. A camera mounted 10 meters above the area recorded their exact paths at 15 frames per second.
Before the walking trials, the researchers tested whether each person preferred turning to the left or right when facing a wall. They then mixed these individuals into different group sizes and combinations. To track the rotation, the scientists calculated a mathematical score for the collective motion, measuring whether the group favored one direction.
The results showed a persistent counterclockwise rotation across all groups. This happened regardless of the overall group density or the ratio of people who preferred turning right. “If you ask a group of people to walk around freely, with no rules or instructions, they will very likely end up going counterclockwise,” Echeverría Huarte said. He called this a small, playful fact about human behavior that most people have never noticed.
To see if the walls caused this rotation, the authors moved their next experiment to an open space. They observed 107 teenagers, aged 13 to 14 years old, walking freely in a 50 by 60 meter schoolyard. Drones recorded the students from 40 meters above the ground, capturing video at 30 frames per second. The researchers used a custom computer program to track the walking speeds and positions of every student.
Even without physical boundaries to guide their movement, the teenagers consistently rotated in a collective counterclockwise direction. The mathematical distribution of their walking paths matched the results from the enclosed arena. This suggests that interactions with walls or fences are not the primary cause of the rotational bias.
Next, the researchers traveled to Japan to test the collision avoidance theory. In Spain, pedestrians typically step to the right to avoid bumping into someone approaching them. In Japan, pedestrians generally step to the left, which the researchers confirmed through a preliminary picture survey. If stepping aside caused the group rotation, the Japanese participants should have rotated clockwise.
The team recruited 39 adults to walk randomly in a circular enclosure with a radius of 4 meters. The participants wore colored hats to help the tracking software map their exact coordinates. Surprisingly, the Japanese groups also exhibited a consistent counterclockwise rotation. This finding refutes the idea that local collision avoidance maneuvers drive the group movement pattern.
Echeverría Huarte noted that the results repeatedly surprised the research team. “The biggest surprise came in Japan, where road traffic and spontaneous pedestrian lanes go the opposite way to Spain, so we were convinced the rotation would flip there,” Echeverría Huarte said. “When my colleague Claudio Feliciani sent me his first video from Tokyo, my reaction was immediate: ‘No way, this is counterclockwise again.’ Its robustness across cultures is what makes it striking.”
The team also wanted to explore whether learned adult rules influence this behavior. They analyzed pre-existing video data of preschool children running freely during a musical activity in a Japanese nursery school. Since young children under the age of six have not yet fully absorbed adult societal rules, their behavior offers a look at more instinctive movement.
The tracking data showed that the children displayed a highly stable and pronounced counterclockwise motion. In fact, the children moved in a cohesive vortex pattern, completely aligning with one another. This suggests that the counterclockwise walking bias is present long before humans learn complex social rules regarding traffic or pedestrian flow.
To ensure no unspoken social expectations were at play in adults, the scientists surveyed 168 university students in Spain. They showed the students a picture of a circular arena and asked which way they would personally walk. The researchers also asked the students which way they expected others to walk, measuring what behavioral experts call empirical and normative expectations.
The survey results showed no consensus on a counterclockwise social norm. In fact, nearly forty percent of the respondents expected people to walk in a clockwise direction, which directly contradicted the physical experiments. Because the actual physical movements did not match the expectations, the researchers concluded that a conscious social rule is not responsible for the behavior.
Finally, the researchers sought to isolate the behavior completely by testing 209 adults walking alone. Each person walked freely for 60 seconds inside an empty hexagonal enclosure while a camera tracked their individual path. The researchers assessed each participant through physical tests to find their dominant hand, dominant foot, and dominant eye. To test visual influences, they also asked 49 of these participants to walk while wearing a patch over their right eye.
Even when walking entirely alone, the participants showed a strong mathematical preference for counterclockwise movement. The scientists found no statistical differences based on a person’s dominant hand, dominant foot, or dominant eye. Wearing an eye patch also did not change the walking bias. These single-person trials provide evidence that the counterclockwise preference is an inherent individual trait rather than a byproduct of crowd dynamics.
“The deeper one is scientific: for physicists, this reframes how we think about complex systems,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We usually assume that the patterns we see in a crowd emerge from the interactions between its members, but here the collective rotation does not come from the group at all, it comes from a bias each person already carries individually. It shows that some collective patterns may have hidden individual origins we had overlooked.”
As with all research, there are limitations to consider. The sample sizes for individuals with specific traits, such as being left-footed or left-handed, were relatively small. Because of this, minor biological influences on walking direction cannot be completely ruled out by the current data. Additionally, the participants were all healthy children, teenagers, and young adults.
“We can say with confidence that the bias is individual and very robust, but we cannot yet explain its origin,” Echeverría Huarte said. “Our best interpretation points to subtle body asymmetries at the level of the sensorimotor system, though this is not settled.” The sensorimotor system refers to the parts of the brain, nerves, and muscles that work together to process sensory information and control movement. Echeverría Huarte also noted that he would caution against overselling practical applications, which at this stage remain modest.
One should avoid assuming that this counterclockwise bias will dictate behavior in every real-world scenario. In highly structured environments, explicit goals or dense crowding might override this subtle natural tendency. People navigating a crowded train station with visible signage and static obstacles may not exhibit the same looping behavior seen in these empty testing arenas.
“The biggest open question is the origin: why this individual bias exists in the first place,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We are now running virtual reality experiments precisely to isolate locomotion from other cognitive factors and test whether the asymmetry sits in how we sense, integrate or execute movement. Finding the root cause is the next big step.”
As the team continues to investigate the biological roots of human walking patterns, they reflect on the unexpected nature of their initial discovery. “Sometimes the most interesting findings are the ones you were not looking for,” Echeverría Huarte said.
The study, “Individual locomotor bias drives counterclockwise motion in pedestrian crowds,” was authored by Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte, Claudio Feliciani, Zhigang Shi, Katsuhiro Nishinari, Angel Sánchez, Angel Garcimartín, and Iker Zuriguel.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #counterclockwisebias #pedestriandynamics #emergentbehaviors #crowdbehavior #inherentmovement #sensorimotorsystem #NatureCommunications #spatialnavigation #universalmovementbias #collectivemotion
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DATE: June 30, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Scientists accidentally discover an inherent human tendency for counterclockwise movement
When humans walk freely in open or enclosed spaces, they naturally tend to veer in a counterclockwise direction. This individual bias provides evidence that intrinsic personal tendencies shape how large crowds spontaneously organize themselves. These findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggest new ways to understand human movement.
In the study of pedestrian dynamics, scientists observe how large groups of people move together in shared spaces. In crowded areas, people often spontaneously form opposing lanes or alternate like a zipper when passing through a narrow doorway. These patterns are known as emergent behaviors. An emergent behavior occurs when simple actions taken by individuals combine to create a complex, coordinated group pattern without any central leader.
In the past, experts thought these collective crowd patterns arose mainly from social interactions and environmental boundaries. For example, people stepping to the right to avoid a collision might eventually cause an entire group to rotate in a specific direction near a wall. Other theories suggested that learned social habits, such as driving on a particular side of the road, dictate how crowds navigate.
To test these assumptions, an international research team designed experiments to determine if the counterclockwise rotation seen in crowds is a social phenomenon or a built-in individual bias. The research team was led by Iñaki Echeverría Huarte, a researcher in the Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. The project included researchers from Waseda University, the University of Tokyo, Shanghai University for Science and Technology, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Echeverría Huarte noted that the project was a collaborative effort that grew out of years of patient experiments. In fact, the initial discovery happened entirely by chance. “It was entirely serendipitous,” he told PsyPost. “During the COVID-19 pandemic we were running experiments on social distancing, trying to understand how many people could safely share a room, and while analyzing that footage we noticed by chance that people kept walking counterclockwise.”
That unexpected observation became the starting point for everything that followed. To formally study the behavior, the authors conducted their first experiment at the University of Navarra. They recruited 50 adult participants and placed them in a confined circular area with a radius of 5 meters. The participants were instructed to walk randomly for several intervals of about 40 seconds. A camera mounted 10 meters above the area recorded their exact paths at 15 frames per second.
Before the walking trials, the researchers tested whether each person preferred turning to the left or right when facing a wall. They then mixed these individuals into different group sizes and combinations. To track the rotation, the scientists calculated a mathematical score for the collective motion, measuring whether the group favored one direction.
The results showed a persistent counterclockwise rotation across all groups. This happened regardless of the overall group density or the ratio of people who preferred turning right. “If you ask a group of people to walk around freely, with no rules or instructions, they will very likely end up going counterclockwise,” Echeverría Huarte said. He called this a small, playful fact about human behavior that most people have never noticed.
To see if the walls caused this rotation, the authors moved their next experiment to an open space. They observed 107 teenagers, aged 13 to 14 years old, walking freely in a 50 by 60 meter schoolyard. Drones recorded the students from 40 meters above the ground, capturing video at 30 frames per second. The researchers used a custom computer program to track the walking speeds and positions of every student.
Even without physical boundaries to guide their movement, the teenagers consistently rotated in a collective counterclockwise direction. The mathematical distribution of their walking paths matched the results from the enclosed arena. This suggests that interactions with walls or fences are not the primary cause of the rotational bias.
Next, the researchers traveled to Japan to test the collision avoidance theory. In Spain, pedestrians typically step to the right to avoid bumping into someone approaching them. In Japan, pedestrians generally step to the left, which the researchers confirmed through a preliminary picture survey. If stepping aside caused the group rotation, the Japanese participants should have rotated clockwise.
The team recruited 39 adults to walk randomly in a circular enclosure with a radius of 4 meters. The participants wore colored hats to help the tracking software map their exact coordinates. Surprisingly, the Japanese groups also exhibited a consistent counterclockwise rotation. This finding refutes the idea that local collision avoidance maneuvers drive the group movement pattern.
Echeverría Huarte noted that the results repeatedly surprised the research team. “The biggest surprise came in Japan, where road traffic and spontaneous pedestrian lanes go the opposite way to Spain, so we were convinced the rotation would flip there,” Echeverría Huarte said. “When my colleague Claudio Feliciani sent me his first video from Tokyo, my reaction was immediate: ‘No way, this is counterclockwise again.’ Its robustness across cultures is what makes it striking.”
The team also wanted to explore whether learned adult rules influence this behavior. They analyzed pre-existing video data of preschool children running freely during a musical activity in a Japanese nursery school. Since young children under the age of six have not yet fully absorbed adult societal rules, their behavior offers a look at more instinctive movement.
The tracking data showed that the children displayed a highly stable and pronounced counterclockwise motion. In fact, the children moved in a cohesive vortex pattern, completely aligning with one another. This suggests that the counterclockwise walking bias is present long before humans learn complex social rules regarding traffic or pedestrian flow.
To ensure no unspoken social expectations were at play in adults, the scientists surveyed 168 university students in Spain. They showed the students a picture of a circular arena and asked which way they would personally walk. The researchers also asked the students which way they expected others to walk, measuring what behavioral experts call empirical and normative expectations.
The survey results showed no consensus on a counterclockwise social norm. In fact, nearly forty percent of the respondents expected people to walk in a clockwise direction, which directly contradicted the physical experiments. Because the actual physical movements did not match the expectations, the researchers concluded that a conscious social rule is not responsible for the behavior.
Finally, the researchers sought to isolate the behavior completely by testing 209 adults walking alone. Each person walked freely for 60 seconds inside an empty hexagonal enclosure while a camera tracked their individual path. The researchers assessed each participant through physical tests to find their dominant hand, dominant foot, and dominant eye. To test visual influences, they also asked 49 of these participants to walk while wearing a patch over their right eye.
Even when walking entirely alone, the participants showed a strong mathematical preference for counterclockwise movement. The scientists found no statistical differences based on a person’s dominant hand, dominant foot, or dominant eye. Wearing an eye patch also did not change the walking bias. These single-person trials provide evidence that the counterclockwise preference is an inherent individual trait rather than a byproduct of crowd dynamics.
“The deeper one is scientific: for physicists, this reframes how we think about complex systems,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We usually assume that the patterns we see in a crowd emerge from the interactions between its members, but here the collective rotation does not come from the group at all, it comes from a bias each person already carries individually. It shows that some collective patterns may have hidden individual origins we had overlooked.”
As with all research, there are limitations to consider. The sample sizes for individuals with specific traits, such as being left-footed or left-handed, were relatively small. Because of this, minor biological influences on walking direction cannot be completely ruled out by the current data. Additionally, the participants were all healthy children, teenagers, and young adults.
“We can say with confidence that the bias is individual and very robust, but we cannot yet explain its origin,” Echeverría Huarte said. “Our best interpretation points to subtle body asymmetries at the level of the sensorimotor system, though this is not settled.” The sensorimotor system refers to the parts of the brain, nerves, and muscles that work together to process sensory information and control movement. Echeverría Huarte also noted that he would caution against overselling practical applications, which at this stage remain modest.
One should avoid assuming that this counterclockwise bias will dictate behavior in every real-world scenario. In highly structured environments, explicit goals or dense crowding might override this subtle natural tendency. People navigating a crowded train station with visible signage and static obstacles may not exhibit the same looping behavior seen in these empty testing arenas.
“The biggest open question is the origin: why this individual bias exists in the first place,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We are now running virtual reality experiments precisely to isolate locomotion from other cognitive factors and test whether the asymmetry sits in how we sense, integrate or execute movement. Finding the root cause is the next big step.”
As the team continues to investigate the biological roots of human walking patterns, they reflect on the unexpected nature of their initial discovery. “Sometimes the most interesting findings are the ones you were not looking for,” Echeverría Huarte said.
The study, “Individual locomotor bias drives counterclockwise motion in pedestrian crowds,” was authored by Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte, Claudio Feliciani, Zhigang Shi, Katsuhiro Nishinari, Angel Sánchez, Angel Garcimartín, and Iker Zuriguel.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #counterclockwisebias #pedestriandynamics #emergentbehaviors #crowdbehavior #inherentmovement #sensorimotorsystem #NatureCommunications #spatialnavigation #universalmovementbias #collectivemotion
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US-Forschende zeigen: Säugetiere könnten Gliedmaßen regenerieren – nicht komplett „neu“, sondern verschüttet. Nach Amputation bei Mäusen lenkten sie mit FGF2 gegen Narbenbildung und mit BMP2 die Zellen zur Gewebe- und Knochenbildung. Spannend für künftige Regeneration 🧬🦶 #ScienceNews #Regeneration #Medizin #NatureCommunications https://t3n.de/news/studie-auch-bei-saeugetieren-koennen-gliedmassen-nachwachsen-1749629/
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US-Forschende zeigen: Säugetiere könnten Gliedmaßen regenerieren – nicht komplett „neu“, sondern verschüttet. Nach Amputation bei Mäusen lenkten sie mit FGF2 gegen Narbenbildung und mit BMP2 die Zellen zur Gewebe- und Knochenbildung. Spannend für künftige Regeneration 🧬🦶 #ScienceNews #Regeneration #Medizin #NatureCommunications https://t3n.de/news/studie-auch-bei-saeugetieren-koennen-gliedmassen-nachwachsen-1749629/
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US-Forschende zeigen: Säugetiere könnten Gliedmaßen regenerieren – nicht komplett „neu“, sondern verschüttet. Nach Amputation bei Mäusen lenkten sie mit FGF2 gegen Narbenbildung und mit BMP2 die Zellen zur Gewebe- und Knochenbildung. Spannend für künftige Regeneration 🧬🦶 #ScienceNews #Regeneration #Medizin #NatureCommunications https://t3n.de/news/studie-auch-bei-saeugetieren-koennen-gliedmassen-nachwachsen-1749629/
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US-Forschende zeigen: Säugetiere könnten Gliedmaßen regenerieren – nicht komplett „neu“, sondern verschüttet. Nach Amputation bei Mäusen lenkten sie mit FGF2 gegen Narbenbildung und mit BMP2 die Zellen zur Gewebe- und Knochenbildung. Spannend für künftige Regeneration 🧬🦶 #ScienceNews #Regeneration #Medizin #NatureCommunications https://t3n.de/news/studie-auch-bei-saeugetieren-koennen-gliedmassen-nachwachsen-1749629/
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US-Forschende zeigen: Säugetiere könnten Gliedmaßen regenerieren – nicht komplett „neu“, sondern verschüttet. Nach Amputation bei Mäusen lenkten sie mit FGF2 gegen Narbenbildung und mit BMP2 die Zellen zur Gewebe- und Knochenbildung. Spannend für künftige Regeneration 🧬🦶 #ScienceNews #Regeneration #Medizin #NatureCommunications https://t3n.de/news/studie-auch-bei-saeugetieren-koennen-gliedmassen-nachwachsen-1749629/
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https://www.europesays.com/ie/556327/ Most butterflies die in weeks, but these tropical species may be cracking the code of aging #Butterflies #Éire #IE #Ireland #NatureCommunications #Science #TropicalSpecies
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https://www.europesays.com/be-fr/154641/ Alzheimer : une bactérie courante détectée dans l’œil pourrait aggraver la maladie #Alzheimer #antibiotiques #APOE4 #BE #BEFr #Belgique #Belgium #BêtaAmyloïde #CedarsSinai #ChlamydiaPneumoniae #DéclinCognitif #dépistage #Health #ImagerieRétinienne #inflammation #MayaKoronyoHamaoui #NatureCommunications #Neurodégénérescence #rétine #Santé
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DATE: June 24, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Scientists identify an ancient brainstem network that acts as an attentional selection engine
A recent study published in Nature Communications provides evidence that an evolutionarily ancient group of brainstem neurons is required for the brain to filter out distractions and focus on important spatial information. The findings indicate that these specific inhibitory cells are specialized for helping animals select the correct target of attention, without affecting basic perception or physical movement. The discovery of these neurons in mice could represent an initial step toward developing targeted treatments for attention disorders.
To navigate a complex environment, animals must constantly filter sensory input to select the most important information. The importance of a stimulus, known as its priority, is a combination of two factors. One factor is physical salience, which is a bottom-up signal driven by how much an object stands out, like a bright flash of light. The other factor is behavioral relevance, which is a top-down signal driven by the animal’s current goals, such as searching for a specific shape that leads to a food reward.
Historically, the dominant view in neuroscience proposed that sophisticated spatial attention was managed primarily by advanced networks in the prefrontal cortex, a region highly developed in humans and other primates. However, animals with less developed outer brains, such as birds, fish, and rodents, still show impressive abilities to focus their attention. This observation suggests that an older, deep brain structure might be responsible for this fundamental cognitive skill across different vertebrate species.
“If we really go back in evolution, for hundreds of millions of years, birds have had this ability, fish have had this ability. And they do not typically have a highly developed prefrontal cortex, so how does the brain solve this problem?” said lead author Ninad Kothari, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. “We were able to identify an evolutionarily old region in the brainstem which affords this ability.”
The impetus to investigate these neurons in mammals stems from earlier studies of birds, frogs, and turtles conducted by Shreesh Mysore, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies neural circuits tied to behavior, and other scientists. Previous research indicates that a midbrain area called the superior colliculus is involved in processing spatial information. Because the superior colliculus is a major hub for both sensation and movement, disrupting it tends to impair basic sight and physical coordination.
This makes it difficult to determine if the superior colliculus itself computes attention, or if another specialized brain module handles the competitive filtering of distractions. The authors of the new study focused on an older group of brain cells called the parabigemino-lateral tegmental inhibitory complex, or PLTi. These specific brainstem neurons produce a chemical messenger called GABA, which tends to reduce the electrical activity of other nearby neurons.
The researchers first mapped the anatomical connections of PLTi neurons in adult mice. Using fluorescent tracers, they found that these cells receive highly organized input from the superior colliculus and send long-range projections directly back to it. By using a technique called chemogenetics, which allows scientists to selectively activate or silence specific cells using a custom drug, the authors demonstrated that activating PLTi neurons directly inhibits the superior colliculus.
To test spatial attention, the researchers trained freely moving mice on a touchscreen test known as the flanker task. The mice had to interact with a screen through a custom mask with three holes. They learned to nose-touch the screen to report the orientation of a central target image, such as a vertical or horizontal striped pattern.
At the same time, a distracting peripheral image, called a flanker, appeared on the screen to compete for the animal’s attention. The flanker could be congruent, meaning it shared the target’s orientation, or incongruent, meaning it displayed the opposite orientation. The authors systematically altered the visual contrast of the flanker to change its physical salience.
The researchers then used chemogenetics to bilaterally silence the PLTi neurons in six genetically modified mice. The scientists administered a specific drug that turned off these targeted brain cells while the mice performed the flanker task. With the PLTi neurons deactivated, the mice showed severely impaired performance on the incongruent trials, indicating a massive increase in distractibility. “When we inactivate these neurons, the mice become hyper distractible,” Kothari said.
“A hallmark of ADHD is that even faint distractors draw attention away, and that’s exactly what we see here when these neurons are silenced,” said Mysore. “But the very next day, when the neurons are turned back on, the same animal can ignore distractors again, even very strong ones.”
Notably, the mice still performed accurately when the flanker matched the target, or when the target appeared alone. To check if the PLTi neurons merely reacted to raw visual intensity, the researchers replaced the task-relevant flanker with a simple block of light that held no task information. Under these conditions, silencing the PLTi neurons did not harm the animals’ performance. This provides evidence that PLTi neurons evaluate both physical intensity and goal-oriented relevance to guide behavior.
Because attention is closely tied to basic sensory processing and movement, the researchers checked if silencing the PLTi neurons simply broke the animals’ ability to see or move properly. They analyzed data from four mice performing a basic single-target visual test and found no changes in visual perception. Using calibrated 3D video cameras, the authors tracked the physical head movements of the mice and their choices between the upper and lower response ports.
The physical movement trajectories and the motor choices remained entirely unchanged. The only physical difference was that the mice reacted slightly faster across all task conditions when the PLTi neurons were silenced.
“The only thing impaired was their ability to take the competing pieces of information, compare them, and pay attention to the location with the most important information,” Mysore said. “This part of the brain is like an attentional selection engine. It helps solve the question: ‘What is most important information I should pay attention to right now?'”
Using mathematical models and brain recordings, the researchers determined that this faster reaction time occurred because the superior colliculus became generally overactive without the constant, calming inhibition from the PLTi neurons. This supports the idea that the PLTi acts as a specialized module specifically designed to filter out distractions.
In natural environments, the brain must make strict choices about which stimulus is the most important. This process relies on a subjective decision boundary, which is the exact point where a distractor suddenly overrides a target. The authors analyzed the precision of this boundary in the mice, finding that healthy animals display a sharp, highly precise transition point that acts like a winner-take-all filter.
When the PLTi neurons were silenced, this decision boundary shifted significantly, allowing much weaker distractors to inappropriately capture the animals’ attention. The boundary also became wider and less precise, meaning the animals’ choices were less categorical.
To understand the underlying brain mechanisms, the scientists recorded electrical activity directly from 16 individual neurons in the superior colliculus of head-fixed mice. They presented competing visual stimuli, which consisted of expanding dark dots on a screen, to see how the neurons processed conflicting information. Normal superior colliculus neurons showed a sharp, precise transition in their firing rates when a distracting stimulus outcompeted a central target.
When the researchers silenced the PLTi neurons during these recordings, the neural signals in the superior colliculus lost their sharp precision. The neural boundary shifted in the exact same way that the behavioral boundary did, with weaker distractors heavily suppressing the main target signal. This suggests that the PLTi orchestrates competitive interactions within the superior colliculus to create a precise signal for selective spatial attention.
While the study provides detailed evidence for the role of the PLTi in attention, there are potential limitations and areas for future exploration. The authors note that entirely silencing the PLTi still allowed the mice to perform slightly above random chance. This suggests that other brain regions likely contribute to comparing competing stimuli, even if they operate at a lower resolution without the PLTi.
Another potential misinterpretation is assuming that the PLTi acts as a passive relay station rather than an active computing center. The detailed structural logic of how the mammalian PLTi and the superior colliculus circuits communicate step-by-step remains unknown. Future research will need to map these exact local connections to fully grasp the underlying neural wiring.
In addition, scientists do not yet know how this deep brainstem network interacts with the highly evolved networks in the cortex. Understanding how these different brain circuits cooperate to drive spatial attention will be necessary to build a complete picture of sensory processing. Resolving these questions might help explain the attention deficits observed in atypical cognitive conditions, such as schizophrenia, autism, and ADHD.
The researchers plan to investigate the degree to which these specific neurons are involved in human attention. If their function is affected in neurodivergent conditions, it could lead to the development of novel, targeted drugs.
“All the evidence to date suggests that these neurons exist in humans too,” said Mysore. “But are they responsible for selective spatial attention in humans? An exciting hypothesis is that they play a crucial role.”
The study, “Evolutionarily old brainstem neurons are required for the control of selective spatial attention,” was authored by Ninad B. Kothari, Arunima Banerjee, Qingcheng Zhang, Wen-Kai You, and Shreesh P. Mysore.
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
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-
DATE: June 24, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Scientists identify an ancient brainstem network that acts as an attentional selection engine
A recent study published in Nature Communications provides evidence that an evolutionarily ancient group of brainstem neurons is required for the brain to filter out distractions and focus on important spatial information. The findings indicate that these specific inhibitory cells are specialized for helping animals select the correct target of attention, without affecting basic perception or physical movement. The discovery of these neurons in mice could represent an initial step toward developing targeted treatments for attention disorders.
To navigate a complex environment, animals must constantly filter sensory input to select the most important information. The importance of a stimulus, known as its priority, is a combination of two factors. One factor is physical salience, which is a bottom-up signal driven by how much an object stands out, like a bright flash of light. The other factor is behavioral relevance, which is a top-down signal driven by the animal’s current goals, such as searching for a specific shape that leads to a food reward.
Historically, the dominant view in neuroscience proposed that sophisticated spatial attention was managed primarily by advanced networks in the prefrontal cortex, a region highly developed in humans and other primates. However, animals with less developed outer brains, such as birds, fish, and rodents, still show impressive abilities to focus their attention. This observation suggests that an older, deep brain structure might be responsible for this fundamental cognitive skill across different vertebrate species.
“If we really go back in evolution, for hundreds of millions of years, birds have had this ability, fish have had this ability. And they do not typically have a highly developed prefrontal cortex, so how does the brain solve this problem?” said lead author Ninad Kothari, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. “We were able to identify an evolutionarily old region in the brainstem which affords this ability.”
The impetus to investigate these neurons in mammals stems from earlier studies of birds, frogs, and turtles conducted by Shreesh Mysore, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies neural circuits tied to behavior, and other scientists. Previous research indicates that a midbrain area called the superior colliculus is involved in processing spatial information. Because the superior colliculus is a major hub for both sensation and movement, disrupting it tends to impair basic sight and physical coordination.
This makes it difficult to determine if the superior colliculus itself computes attention, or if another specialized brain module handles the competitive filtering of distractions. The authors of the new study focused on an older group of brain cells called the parabigemino-lateral tegmental inhibitory complex, or PLTi. These specific brainstem neurons produce a chemical messenger called GABA, which tends to reduce the electrical activity of other nearby neurons.
The researchers first mapped the anatomical connections of PLTi neurons in adult mice. Using fluorescent tracers, they found that these cells receive highly organized input from the superior colliculus and send long-range projections directly back to it. By using a technique called chemogenetics, which allows scientists to selectively activate or silence specific cells using a custom drug, the authors demonstrated that activating PLTi neurons directly inhibits the superior colliculus.
To test spatial attention, the researchers trained freely moving mice on a touchscreen test known as the flanker task. The mice had to interact with a screen through a custom mask with three holes. They learned to nose-touch the screen to report the orientation of a central target image, such as a vertical or horizontal striped pattern.
At the same time, a distracting peripheral image, called a flanker, appeared on the screen to compete for the animal’s attention. The flanker could be congruent, meaning it shared the target’s orientation, or incongruent, meaning it displayed the opposite orientation. The authors systematically altered the visual contrast of the flanker to change its physical salience.
The researchers then used chemogenetics to bilaterally silence the PLTi neurons in six genetically modified mice. The scientists administered a specific drug that turned off these targeted brain cells while the mice performed the flanker task. With the PLTi neurons deactivated, the mice showed severely impaired performance on the incongruent trials, indicating a massive increase in distractibility. “When we inactivate these neurons, the mice become hyper distractible,” Kothari said.
“A hallmark of ADHD is that even faint distractors draw attention away, and that’s exactly what we see here when these neurons are silenced,” said Mysore. “But the very next day, when the neurons are turned back on, the same animal can ignore distractors again, even very strong ones.”
Notably, the mice still performed accurately when the flanker matched the target, or when the target appeared alone. To check if the PLTi neurons merely reacted to raw visual intensity, the researchers replaced the task-relevant flanker with a simple block of light that held no task information. Under these conditions, silencing the PLTi neurons did not harm the animals’ performance. This provides evidence that PLTi neurons evaluate both physical intensity and goal-oriented relevance to guide behavior.
Because attention is closely tied to basic sensory processing and movement, the researchers checked if silencing the PLTi neurons simply broke the animals’ ability to see or move properly. They analyzed data from four mice performing a basic single-target visual test and found no changes in visual perception. Using calibrated 3D video cameras, the authors tracked the physical head movements of the mice and their choices between the upper and lower response ports.
The physical movement trajectories and the motor choices remained entirely unchanged. The only physical difference was that the mice reacted slightly faster across all task conditions when the PLTi neurons were silenced.
“The only thing impaired was their ability to take the competing pieces of information, compare them, and pay attention to the location with the most important information,” Mysore said. “This part of the brain is like an attentional selection engine. It helps solve the question: ‘What is most important information I should pay attention to right now?'”
Using mathematical models and brain recordings, the researchers determined that this faster reaction time occurred because the superior colliculus became generally overactive without the constant, calming inhibition from the PLTi neurons. This supports the idea that the PLTi acts as a specialized module specifically designed to filter out distractions.
In natural environments, the brain must make strict choices about which stimulus is the most important. This process relies on a subjective decision boundary, which is the exact point where a distractor suddenly overrides a target. The authors analyzed the precision of this boundary in the mice, finding that healthy animals display a sharp, highly precise transition point that acts like a winner-take-all filter.
When the PLTi neurons were silenced, this decision boundary shifted significantly, allowing much weaker distractors to inappropriately capture the animals’ attention. The boundary also became wider and less precise, meaning the animals’ choices were less categorical.
To understand the underlying brain mechanisms, the scientists recorded electrical activity directly from 16 individual neurons in the superior colliculus of head-fixed mice. They presented competing visual stimuli, which consisted of expanding dark dots on a screen, to see how the neurons processed conflicting information. Normal superior colliculus neurons showed a sharp, precise transition in their firing rates when a distracting stimulus outcompeted a central target.
When the researchers silenced the PLTi neurons during these recordings, the neural signals in the superior colliculus lost their sharp precision. The neural boundary shifted in the exact same way that the behavioral boundary did, with weaker distractors heavily suppressing the main target signal. This suggests that the PLTi orchestrates competitive interactions within the superior colliculus to create a precise signal for selective spatial attention.
While the study provides detailed evidence for the role of the PLTi in attention, there are potential limitations and areas for future exploration. The authors note that entirely silencing the PLTi still allowed the mice to perform slightly above random chance. This suggests that other brain regions likely contribute to comparing competing stimuli, even if they operate at a lower resolution without the PLTi.
Another potential misinterpretation is assuming that the PLTi acts as a passive relay station rather than an active computing center. The detailed structural logic of how the mammalian PLTi and the superior colliculus circuits communicate step-by-step remains unknown. Future research will need to map these exact local connections to fully grasp the underlying neural wiring.
In addition, scientists do not yet know how this deep brainstem network interacts with the highly evolved networks in the cortex. Understanding how these different brain circuits cooperate to drive spatial attention will be necessary to build a complete picture of sensory processing. Resolving these questions might help explain the attention deficits observed in atypical cognitive conditions, such as schizophrenia, autism, and ADHD.
The researchers plan to investigate the degree to which these specific neurons are involved in human attention. If their function is affected in neurodivergent conditions, it could lead to the development of novel, targeted drugs.
“All the evidence to date suggests that these neurons exist in humans too,” said Mysore. “But are they responsible for selective spatial attention in humans? An exciting hypothesis is that they play a crucial role.”
The study, “Evolutionarily old brainstem neurons are required for the control of selective spatial attention,” was authored by Ninad B. Kothari, Arunima Banerjee, Qingcheng Zhang, Wen-Kai You, and Shreesh P. Mysore.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AttentionNeuroscience #PLTiNeurons #SuperiorColliculus #BrainstemCircuits #SelectiveAttention #NeuralInhibition #GABAergicIFT #SpatialAttention #NatureCommunications #NeuroscienceResearch
-
DATE: June 24, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Scientists identify an ancient brainstem network that acts as an attentional selection engine
A recent study published in Nature Communications provides evidence that an evolutionarily ancient group of brainstem neurons is required for the brain to filter out distractions and focus on important spatial information. The findings indicate that these specific inhibitory cells are specialized for helping animals select the correct target of attention, without affecting basic perception or physical movement. The discovery of these neurons in mice could represent an initial step toward developing targeted treatments for attention disorders.
To navigate a complex environment, animals must constantly filter sensory input to select the most important information. The importance of a stimulus, known as its priority, is a combination of two factors. One factor is physical salience, which is a bottom-up signal driven by how much an object stands out, like a bright flash of light. The other factor is behavioral relevance, which is a top-down signal driven by the animal’s current goals, such as searching for a specific shape that leads to a food reward.
Historically, the dominant view in neuroscience proposed that sophisticated spatial attention was managed primarily by advanced networks in the prefrontal cortex, a region highly developed in humans and other primates. However, animals with less developed outer brains, such as birds, fish, and rodents, still show impressive abilities to focus their attention. This observation suggests that an older, deep brain structure might be responsible for this fundamental cognitive skill across different vertebrate species.
“If we really go back in evolution, for hundreds of millions of years, birds have had this ability, fish have had this ability. And they do not typically have a highly developed prefrontal cortex, so how does the brain solve this problem?” said lead author Ninad Kothari, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. “We were able to identify an evolutionarily old region in the brainstem which affords this ability.”
The impetus to investigate these neurons in mammals stems from earlier studies of birds, frogs, and turtles conducted by Shreesh Mysore, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies neural circuits tied to behavior, and other scientists. Previous research indicates that a midbrain area called the superior colliculus is involved in processing spatial information. Because the superior colliculus is a major hub for both sensation and movement, disrupting it tends to impair basic sight and physical coordination.
This makes it difficult to determine if the superior colliculus itself computes attention, or if another specialized brain module handles the competitive filtering of distractions. The authors of the new study focused on an older group of brain cells called the parabigemino-lateral tegmental inhibitory complex, or PLTi. These specific brainstem neurons produce a chemical messenger called GABA, which tends to reduce the electrical activity of other nearby neurons.
The researchers first mapped the anatomical connections of PLTi neurons in adult mice. Using fluorescent tracers, they found that these cells receive highly organized input from the superior colliculus and send long-range projections directly back to it. By using a technique called chemogenetics, which allows scientists to selectively activate or silence specific cells using a custom drug, the authors demonstrated that activating PLTi neurons directly inhibits the superior colliculus.
To test spatial attention, the researchers trained freely moving mice on a touchscreen test known as the flanker task. The mice had to interact with a screen through a custom mask with three holes. They learned to nose-touch the screen to report the orientation of a central target image, such as a vertical or horizontal striped pattern.
At the same time, a distracting peripheral image, called a flanker, appeared on the screen to compete for the animal’s attention. The flanker could be congruent, meaning it shared the target’s orientation, or incongruent, meaning it displayed the opposite orientation. The authors systematically altered the visual contrast of the flanker to change its physical salience.
The researchers then used chemogenetics to bilaterally silence the PLTi neurons in six genetically modified mice. The scientists administered a specific drug that turned off these targeted brain cells while the mice performed the flanker task. With the PLTi neurons deactivated, the mice showed severely impaired performance on the incongruent trials, indicating a massive increase in distractibility. “When we inactivate these neurons, the mice become hyper distractible,” Kothari said.
“A hallmark of ADHD is that even faint distractors draw attention away, and that’s exactly what we see here when these neurons are silenced,” said Mysore. “But the very next day, when the neurons are turned back on, the same animal can ignore distractors again, even very strong ones.”
Notably, the mice still performed accurately when the flanker matched the target, or when the target appeared alone. To check if the PLTi neurons merely reacted to raw visual intensity, the researchers replaced the task-relevant flanker with a simple block of light that held no task information. Under these conditions, silencing the PLTi neurons did not harm the animals’ performance. This provides evidence that PLTi neurons evaluate both physical intensity and goal-oriented relevance to guide behavior.
Because attention is closely tied to basic sensory processing and movement, the researchers checked if silencing the PLTi neurons simply broke the animals’ ability to see or move properly. They analyzed data from four mice performing a basic single-target visual test and found no changes in visual perception. Using calibrated 3D video cameras, the authors tracked the physical head movements of the mice and their choices between the upper and lower response ports.
The physical movement trajectories and the motor choices remained entirely unchanged. The only physical difference was that the mice reacted slightly faster across all task conditions when the PLTi neurons were silenced.
“The only thing impaired was their ability to take the competing pieces of information, compare them, and pay attention to the location with the most important information,” Mysore said. “This part of the brain is like an attentional selection engine. It helps solve the question: ‘What is most important information I should pay attention to right now?'”
Using mathematical models and brain recordings, the researchers determined that this faster reaction time occurred because the superior colliculus became generally overactive without the constant, calming inhibition from the PLTi neurons. This supports the idea that the PLTi acts as a specialized module specifically designed to filter out distractions.
In natural environments, the brain must make strict choices about which stimulus is the most important. This process relies on a subjective decision boundary, which is the exact point where a distractor suddenly overrides a target. The authors analyzed the precision of this boundary in the mice, finding that healthy animals display a sharp, highly precise transition point that acts like a winner-take-all filter.
When the PLTi neurons were silenced, this decision boundary shifted significantly, allowing much weaker distractors to inappropriately capture the animals’ attention. The boundary also became wider and less precise, meaning the animals’ choices were less categorical.
To understand the underlying brain mechanisms, the scientists recorded electrical activity directly from 16 individual neurons in the superior colliculus of head-fixed mice. They presented competing visual stimuli, which consisted of expanding dark dots on a screen, to see how the neurons processed conflicting information. Normal superior colliculus neurons showed a sharp, precise transition in their firing rates when a distracting stimulus outcompeted a central target.
When the researchers silenced the PLTi neurons during these recordings, the neural signals in the superior colliculus lost their sharp precision. The neural boundary shifted in the exact same way that the behavioral boundary did, with weaker distractors heavily suppressing the main target signal. This suggests that the PLTi orchestrates competitive interactions within the superior colliculus to create a precise signal for selective spatial attention.
While the study provides detailed evidence for the role of the PLTi in attention, there are potential limitations and areas for future exploration. The authors note that entirely silencing the PLTi still allowed the mice to perform slightly above random chance. This suggests that other brain regions likely contribute to comparing competing stimuli, even if they operate at a lower resolution without the PLTi.
Another potential misinterpretation is assuming that the PLTi acts as a passive relay station rather than an active computing center. The detailed structural logic of how the mammalian PLTi and the superior colliculus circuits communicate step-by-step remains unknown. Future research will need to map these exact local connections to fully grasp the underlying neural wiring.
In addition, scientists do not yet know how this deep brainstem network interacts with the highly evolved networks in the cortex. Understanding how these different brain circuits cooperate to drive spatial attention will be necessary to build a complete picture of sensory processing. Resolving these questions might help explain the attention deficits observed in atypical cognitive conditions, such as schizophrenia, autism, and ADHD.
The researchers plan to investigate the degree to which these specific neurons are involved in human attention. If their function is affected in neurodivergent conditions, it could lead to the development of novel, targeted drugs.
“All the evidence to date suggests that these neurons exist in humans too,” said Mysore. “But are they responsible for selective spatial attention in humans? An exciting hypothesis is that they play a crucial role.”
The study, “Evolutionarily old brainstem neurons are required for the control of selective spatial attention,” was authored by Ninad B. Kothari, Arunima Banerjee, Qingcheng Zhang, Wen-Kai You, and Shreesh P. Mysore.
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