Today, you’ll learn about a high tech brain-spine interference that could revolutionize spinal injury treatments, why you might want to let your child nap as long as they want, and the ancient secrets of the smooch.
Today, you’ll learn about a high tech brain-spine interference that could revolutionize spinal injury treatments, why you might want to let your child nap as long as they want, and the ancient secrets of the smooch.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/post-paralysis-walking-important-naps-history-of-kissing
Post-Paralysis Walking
Important Naps
History of Kissing
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[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about a high tech brain-spine interface that could revolutionize spinal injury treatments, why you might want to let your child nap as long as they want, and the ancient secrets of the smooch.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: In 2011, a man named Gert-Jan Oskam suffered through a gruesome cycling accident that left him with a traumatic cervical spine injury. He lost the use of his legs, and hasn’t been able to walk…until now.
NATE: Hang on. Spinal injuries like that don’t just heal, right?
CALLI: Nope. And that’s why this is a pretty big deal.
NATE: So…what’s going on? How’d they do it?
CALLI: They used something called a ‘digital bridge.’
NATE: I think that raises more questions for me than it answers.
CALLI: Okay. But before we get into it, let’s back up a second and talk about the spine. When an injury causes paralysis in the legs, it’s not because the legs are injured. In fact, the legs could be completely free from injury and work just fine. The problem is that nothing is telling them to move. The same is true for arms. A traumatic spinal injury essentially disconnects the brain from the muscular system.
NATE: Right. I guess it’s like if you unplugged the radio. The radio itself works just fine, but it’s just not connected to the thing that would make it come alive.
CALLI: Exactly. When we walk, it’s our brain actually sending commands through neurons in our lumbosacral spinal cord that tell our leg muscles to move. If the connection is broken, the muscles never get their marching orders. And like you said, scientists haven’t had much luck getting those connections to repair themselves.
NATE: Okay. So going back to the ‘digital bridge.’ I’m assuming it’s a device that reconnects the brain and the legs…like am I close?
CALLI: Yeah, actually you are! The research team created a brain-spine interface - or a BSI. They placed electrodes on the surface of Oskam’s brain in an area associated with leg control, and connected those to other electrodes implanted in his spine. Any activity that happened in his brain was decoded by a machine-learning model that had been trained to recognize it, and then sent signals to the spine.
NATE: K, we got: Electrodes, and digital connections, machine learning and brain decoding? Like this is some pretty serious like cyborg stuff, right?
CALLI: I mean, kinda. Sorta. And it worked. Oskam was able to use his legs again after more than 10 years of paralysis.
NATE: So is he back to normal?
CALLI: I mean, he’s not running marathons just yet, but they say he can now walk over 650 feet in a day and can stand for 3 minutes without using a walker for support. But there’s an even more surprising result from all this.
NATE: More surprising than machine learning reading someone’s mind and allowing them to walk again for the first time in a decade?
CALLI: I know but, remember how I said that these neural connections don’t really repair themselves?
NATE: Sure. That’s why these injuries tend to be permanent.
CALLI: Well…after using the BSI for a few months, doctors realized that Oskam had begun using his legs without the help of the device.
NATE: No!
CALLI: Yeah! They think that the device had sorta reestablished a connection between neurons in the spine. So it’s not exactly like the old connections were being plugged back in, it’s more like the device was showing the spine how to create new connections.
NATE: Okay. So not only does this brain connection device allow people with spinal trauma to walk again, it could also help them heal?
CALLI: I mean it’s sort of mind blowing, isn’t it? Researchers see this as a proof of concept. More work is needed, obviously, and they’d like to rework the device to make it smaller. But they say there’s no reason this can’t help people restore movement to paralyzed arms or hands. Right now they’re recruiting patients for more research.
NATE: I guess you could say this is just a first step…
CALLI: Literally!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: You know the friend we all have who like can’t ever meet for lunch or do anything during a certain time of day because they’re so obsessed with their child’s nap schedule?
CALLI: I mean if you mean friend, I mean my sister who can only meet for coffee between the hours of 9 and 9:35 am and again after 1 pm, but before 3pm?
NATE: Yeah. That one. That person.
CALLI: Yeah! I’m excited to get to know my sister again once her child moves out of the napping stage!
NATE: Well…it turns out those naps could actually hold the key to their child’s brain development, especially when it comes to their ability to make lasting memories.
CALLI: I mean, all kidding aside, we’ve known that napping is good for kids for a long time, right?
NATE: Sure. As long as human kids have gotten that glassy, distant look in their eyes sometime during the day, moms and dads have let them nap. Most parents know all too well how to spot a kid who skipped her nap.
CALLI: I mean, usually you hear them before you see them.
NATE: Nothing like a crabby, sleepy baby. But here’s the thing: scientists know that babies and toddlers need a ton of sleep, but we’re still finding out all of the ways that sleep actually affects kids’ brains and their development. This study, which was published in the journal Child Development, looked at how naps work together with overnight sleeping to help kids make new memories.
CALLI: That’s pretty specific, isn’t it?
NATE: It is, but it’s incredibly important, because all learning happens when we’re able to process new ideas and remember them. So kids ability to remember new ideas and then make sense of them later is one of the keys to their early development.
CALLI: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So what did they find?
NATE: They took two groups of kids between the ages of 33 months and 67 months, aka between 2 and a half and 5 and a half and they showed each group the same set of faces, which were paired with audio descriptions of the faces that tied each face to some action. In some cases, the action was what they considered neutral, and in other cases, the description was of what they called a “rule-violating” action.
CALLI: K. Let me see if I’ve got this right. They basically showed the kids a bunch of faces. They told them some of the faces were just people being normal, but some of the faces were of naughty people.
NATE: Basically. And then…they let the kids nap. But one group was not allowed to nap.
CALLI: Oh. I bet the parents loved that!
NATE: Well…they did it for science. And it paid off, because they found that the accuracy of memory in the kids who were allowed to nap consistently improved. And not just after they napped, but over the course of a full 24-hours and beyond.
CALLI: Okay. So it’s not just that they remembered the naughty faces when they woke up from the naps.
NATE: Exactly. The naps seemed to help their brains recognize faces over the longer term. The study also found that these effects didn’t happen with nighttime sleep alone. The benefits really needed both nighttime sleep and a good nap.
CALLI: So okay, what if your kid won’t nap? Are they just doomed to be forgetful?
NATE: No absolutely not. But this study shows that if your kid is willing to nap, you should just let them.
CALLI: Okay. I’ll have to remember that.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: So… turns out what we thought we knew about kissing could be all wrong.
NATE: Did you say kissing?
CALLI: Yeah, you know, the smooch. The peck. The old smackaroo…the a snog, which, according to some recent research, might actually be older than we thought.
NATE: I will honestly say I’ve never actually thought about how long kissing has been around. But when you think about it, it… I mean… it is a pretty weird thing, isn’t it? So where did it come from? Like, why do we do it?
CALLI: Those are great questions, and researchers have been looking for the answer for ages. The problem: ancient humans didn’t really kiss and tell. For a long time, researchers believed the first written reference of the kiss came from a Bronze Age manuscript found in India dating from about 1500 BCE.
NATE: and I know that’s old - but it’s hard to imagine kissing… suddenly just being invented?
CALLI: Right. Well…it turns out there’s a large body of evidence that shows what kissing experts call “romantic kissing” or “sexual kissing” was actually referenced in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt at least a thousand years earlier. And the fact that it sprang up in different cultures in different regions means there wasn’t some single origin. So in other words…
NATE: …there wasn’t some ancient Egyptian Romeo who just invented kissing one day.
CALLI: Exactly. In fact, there’s evidence that humans kissed neanderthals over a hundred-thousand years ago.
NATE: Alright, now how on Earth would they know that? They find a little neanderthal Valentines?
CALLI: No. Unless you count passing microbes through saliva to be an appropriate Valentine.
NATE: Eeew. A caveman makeout sesh.
CALLI: Gross right. A study found that a specific microbe was transmitted from the mouths of neanderthals to the mouths of humans through their saliva.
NATE: Girls always have loved a bad boy.
CALLI: Yeah - maybe the neanderthal was the original Rebel Without a Globular Brain Cause.
NATE: So…if there’s evidence that humans have been kissing for that long, the question remains: why?
CALLI: There are a lot of possible reasons. Bonobos seem to kiss for the purpose of sexual arousal. Chimps do it to pick the right mate. It’s possible our impulse to kiss comes from those same needs. Maybe smelling a potential partner’s breath can tell us something valuable about their genetic viability. But the one thing we do know…humans have been kissing for a very, very long time.
NATE: I suddenly feel like I need a mint.
CALLI: Right? I don’t want to imagine kissing before toothbrushes!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: Scientists have developed a digital device that uses machine learning to reconnect the neural pathway between the brain and the muscular system, allowing a paralyzed man with a traumatic spinal injury to walk again ten years after his accident.
NATE: A new study has found that naps don’t just help young children avoid crabbiness, it also helps their brain create lasting memories, and could be one of the keys to brain development for kids under 6.
CALLI: Researchers once believed that the first textual reference of human kissing came in about 1500 BCE from an Indian document. But a largely unexplored body of evidence shows that romantic kissing was referenced at least a thousand years earlier in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and some researchers even believe humans and neanderthals kissed each other as far back as a hundred thousand years ago.