Welcome to eLife Magazine Highlights – a fortnightly newsletter featuring some of the latest content published in our magazine. In today’s newsletter, read about hidden hearing loss, a new approach to fighting harmful bacteria, and where to start when learning about neurodiversity. Plus, dive into the resurgence of research into non-model organisms in neuroscience.
— Elsa Loissel, Associate Features Editor
Image caption: A group of Mongolian gerbils. Credit: H. Zell (CC BY-SA 3.0)
How does the brain process an abstract concept like democracy or love? And what about something concrete, such as a chair? This study suggests that the line between the two may be less rigid than previously thought.
Mongolian gerbils need to quickly distinguish family members from other conspecifics in the darkness of their busy burrows. By establishing a way to bridge the methodological gap between field and laboratory research, this study sheds light on the complex communication skills these animals exhibit.
Two individuals born on the same day may still have bodies which differ in their level of ‘wear and tear’. Estimating this biological age provides valuable information on the social and environmental factors that influence aging, but it often relies on obtaining tissue or blood samples. In this Insight article, Amanda Melin explains how a new approach published in eLife could change the game by allowing researchers to infer biological age from a widely available resource: poop.
The first vertebrates to take to the skies looked very little like the flying species we know today – raising many questions as to how their various appendages and body structures performed during flight. A laser-based imaging technique that uncovers soft tissue structures in fossils helps provide new answers.
Bacteria compete with each other to capture iron from their environment, using compounds known as siderophores to trap this precious nutrient. Researchers have found that pyoverdines, a type of siderophore, have antibacterial properties that could be used to target pathogens that are resistant to antibiotics.
As people get older, they may start to struggle to understand speech in noisy environments. Yet current clinical tests often fail to detect these types of hearing difficulties, which are also challenging to study in the laboratory. In this Insight article, Emmanuel Ponsot discusses the impact of an eLife study investigating how problems in speech perception can be linked to a pathology that affects the connections between inner ear cells and auditory neurons.
While discussions around neurodiversity have come to the fore in recent years, knowing where and how to begin educating oneself on the topic can still feel daunting. In nine themes and eighteen recommended articles, this reading list provides a much-needed starting point.
What can octopuses teach us about death? Or sandpipers about sleep? In this article published in The Transmitter, ten neuroscientists explain why they have left the ‘old mouse club’ behind to pursue research in animals less often found in the laboratory.
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