Bow-and-arrow, technology of the first modern humans in Europe 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

If the emergence of mechanically propelled weapons in prehistory is commonly perceived as one of the hallmarks of the advance of modern human populations into the European continent, the existence of archery has always been more difficult to trace. The recognition of these technologies in the European Upper Paleolithic has been hampered by ballistic overlaps between weapons projected with a thruster or a bow. Archery technologies are essentially based on the use of perishable materials; wood, fibers, leather, resins, and sinew, which are rarely preserved in European Paleolithic sites and make archaeological recognition of these technologies difficult. It is the flint armatures that constitute the main evidence of these weapon technologies. Based on the analysis of these stone armatures, the recognition of archery is now well documented in Africa dating back some 70,000 years. Some flint or deer antler armatures suggest the existence of archery from the early phases of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe more than 35,000 years ago, but the morphology and the hafting modes of these ancient armatures do not allow them to be linked to a distinct mode of propulsion, making the possible existence of archery during the European Paleolithic nearly invisible. The demonstration of Paleolithic archery has been established only on the basis of the discovery of the oldest bows and arrows found in peat bogs of Northern Europe (at the Stellmoor site in Germany, for example) and dated from the 10 to 12 millennium.

The data from Mandrin cave in Mediterranean France, presented in an article published Wednesday, February 22, 2023 in the journal Science Advances, profoundly enriches our knowledge of these technologies in Europe and now allows us to push back the age of archery in Europe by more than... 40 millennia! The study is based on the functional analysis of thousands of flint artifacts from the same archaeological level that revealed in February 2022 the oldest occupation of modern humans on the European continent. This very rich level, attributed to the Neronian culture, testifies to Homo sapiens occupations dating back to the 54th millennium and is interposed between numerous Neanderthal occupations occupying the cave before and after the modern human installations. The excavation of the Neronian settlement phases has revealed no less than 1500 flint points. Their analysis shows that a significant number of them were used as armatures for arrows propelled with a bow. It is the very small size and more precisely the small width of these armatures, of which some 30% weigh hardly more than a few grams, which allows us to exclude any other mode of ballistic propulsion for these very small weapons. If thanks to this study, archery in Europe, and more broadly throughout Eurasia, makes a remarkable leap back in time, it also sheds light on the weaponry of Neanderthal populations. The study shows that Neanderthals, contemporaries of Neronian modern humans, did not develop mechanically propelled weapons (like technologies using bows or thrusters) and continued to use their traditional weapons based on the use of massive spear-shaped points that were thrusted or thrown by hand, and thus requiring close contact with their game. The traditions and technologies mastered by these two populations were thus profoundly distinct, illustrating a remarkable objective technological advantage to modern populations during their expansion into the European continent. However, in their article, the authors place this debate in a much broader context in which technical choices cannot be limited solely to the cognitive capacities of differing human populations, referring us to the weight of traditions within these Neanderthal and modern human populations as well as to ethologies that may have been profoundly divergent between them.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.add4675 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Bow and arrow, technology of the first Modern humans in Europe 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Feb-2023

ArticlePDF Available

The Bow: A Techno-Mythic Hermeneutic--Ancient Greece and the Mesolithic

• September 1981
• Journal of the American Academy of Religion XLIX(3)

DOI:10.1093/jaarel/XLIX.3.425

Authors:

James B. Harrod

• Jim's Lab for Research on the Origins of Art Religion and Symbols

Archaeologists uncover early evidence of brain surgery in Ancient Near East

A recent excavation in Megiddo, Israel, unearthed the earliest example of a particular type of cranial surgery in the Ancient Near East — and potentially one of the oldest examples of leprosy in the world.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BROWN UNIVERSITY



IMAGE: A-B: MAGNIFIED EDGES OF THE TREPHINATION, EACH WITH A 2 MM SCALE BAR. C: ALL FOUR EDGES OF THE TREPHINATION, SCALE BAR IS 1 CM. D: RECONSTRUCTED LOCATION OF TREPHINATION ON HEAD. view more

CREDIT: RACHEL KALISHER ET AL

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Archaeologists know that people have practiced cranial trephination, a medical procedure that involves cutting a hole in the skull, for thousands of years. They’ve turned up evidence that ancient civilizations across the globe, from South America to Africa and beyond, performed the surgery.

Now, thanks to a recent excavation at the ancient city of Megiddo, Israel, there’s new evidence that one particular type of trephination dates back to at least the late Bronze Age.

Rachel Kalisher, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, led an analysis of the excavated remains of two upper-class brothers who lived in Megiddo around the 15th century B.C. She found that not long before one of the brothers died, he had undergone a specific type of cranial surgery called angular notched trephination. The procedure involves cutting the scalp, using an instrument with a sharp beveled edge to carve four intersecting lines in the skull, and using leverage to make a square-shaped hole.

Kalisher said the trephination is the earliest example of its kind found in the Ancient Near East.

“We have evidence that trephination has been this universal, widespread type of surgery for thousands of years,” Kalisher said. “But in the Near East, we don’t see it so often — there are only about a dozen examples of trephination in this entire region. My hope is that adding more examples to the scholarly record will deepen our field’s understanding of medical care and cultural dynamics in ancient cities in this area.”

Kalisher’s analysis, written in collaboration with scholars in New York, Austria and Israel, was published on Wednesday, Feb. 22, in PLOS ONE.

Two brothers, up close

Israel Finkelstein, who co-authored the study and serves as director of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa, said that 4,000 years ago, Megiddo stood at and controlled part of the Via Maris, an important land route that connected Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. As a result, the city had become one of the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan cities in the region by about the 19th century B.C., with an impressive skyline of palaces, temples, fortifications and gates.

“It’s hard to overstate Megiddo’s cultural and economic importance in the late Bronze Age,” Finkelstein said.

According to Kalisher, the two brothers whose bones she analyzed came from a domestic area directly adjacent to Megiddo’s late Bronze Age palace, suggesting that the pair were elite members of society and possibly even royals themselves. Many other facts bear that out: The brothers were buried with fine Cypriot pottery and other valuable possessions, and as the trephination demonstrates, they received treatment that likely wouldn’t have been accessible to most citizens of Megiddo.

“These brothers were obviously living with some pretty intense pathological circumstances that, in this time, would have been tough to endure without wealth and status,” Kalisher said. “If you’re elite, maybe you don’t have to work as much. If you’re elite, maybe you can eat a special diet. If you’re elite, maybe you’re able to survive a severe illness longer because you have access to care.”

In her analysis, Kalisher spotted several skeletal abnormalities in both brothers. The older brother had an additional cranial suture and an extra molar in one corner of his mouth, suggesting he may have had a congenital syndrome such as Cleidocranial dysplasia. Both of the brothers’ bones show minor evidence of sustained iron deficiency anemia in childhood, which could have impacted their development.

Those developmental irregularities could explain why the brothers died young, one in his teens or early 20s and the other sometime between his 20s and 40s. But Kalisher said it’s more likely that the two ultimately succumbed to an infectious disease. A third of one brother’s skeleton, and half of the other brother’s, shows porosity, legions and signs of previous inflammation in the membrane covering the bones — which together suggest they had systemic, sustained cases of an infectious disease like tuberculosis or leprosy.

Kalisher said that while some skeletal evidence points to leprosy, it’s tough to deduce cases of leprosy using bones alone. She’s currently working with researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to conduct DNA analyses of specific lesions in the bones. If they find bacterial DNA consistent with leprosy, these brothers will be among the earliest documented examples of leprosy in the world.

“Leprosy can spread within family units, not just because of the close proximity but also because your susceptibility to the disease is influenced by your genetic landscape,” Kalisher said. “At the same time, leprosy is hard to identify because it affects the bones in stages, which might not happen in the same order or with the same severity for everyone. It’s hard for us to say for sure whether these brothers had leprosy or some other infectious disease.”

It’s also difficult to know, Kalisher said, whether it was the disease, the congenital conditions or something else that prompted one brother to undergo cranial surgery. But there’s one thing she does know: If the angular notched trephination was meant to keep him alive, it didn’t succeed. He died shortly after the surgery — within days, hours or perhaps even minutes.

Digging into medical history

Despite all the evidence of trephination uncovered over the last 200 years, Kalisher said, there’s still much archaeologists don’t know. It’s not clear, for example, why some trephinations are round — suggesting the use of some sort of analog drill — and some are square or triangular. Nor is it clear how common the procedure was in each region, or what ancient peoples were even trying to treat. (Doctors today perform a similar procedure, called a craniotomy, to relieve pressure in the brain.) Kalisher is pursuing a follow-up research project that will investigate trephination across multiple regions and time periods, which she hopes will shed more light on ancient medical practices.

“You have to be in a pretty dire place to have a hole cut in your head,” Kalisher said. “I’m interested in what we can learn from looking across the scientific literature at every example of trephination in antiquity, comparing and contrasting the circumstances of each person who had the surgery done.”

Aside from enriching colleagues’ understanding of early trephinations, Kalisher said she hopes her analysis also shows the general public that ancient societies didn’t necessarily live by “survival of the fittest” principles, as many might imagine.

“In antiquity, there was a lot more tolerance and a lot more care than people might think,” Kalisher said. “We have evidence literally from the time of Neanderthals that people have provided care for one another, even in challenging circumstances. I’m not trying to say it was all kumbaya — there were sex- and class-based divisions. But in the past, people were still people.”

In addition to Kalisher and Finkelstein, other authors of the analysis included Melissa Cradic from the University at Albany; Matthew Adams of the W.F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem; and Mario Martin from the University of Haifa and University of Innsbruck. The study’s associated excavation was funded by the Shmunis Family Foundation.

JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0281020

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Cranial trephination and infectious disease in the Eastern Mediterranean: The evidence from two elite brothers from Late Bronze Megiddo, Israel

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Feb-2023

COI STATEMENT

The study’s associated excavation was funded by the Shmunis Family Foundation.

Two high status brothers had access to “brain surgery” in Bronze Age Israel

Both brothers suffered chronic illness, and one underwent rare trephination around 1500 BC

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF THIS STUDY. A: THE AREA H (H-15) DOMESTIC STRUCTURE, WITH TOMB 45 HIGHLIGHTED IN YELLOW. B: IN-SITU PHOTOGRAPH OF EARLY EXPOSURE OF BURIAL CONTEXT. C: COMPOSITE DRAWING FEATURING ALL LAYERS. INDIVIDUAL 1 IS BLUE, INDIVIDUAL 2 IS GREEN, FAUNAL REMAINS ARE ORANGE. view more 

CREDIT: KALISHER ET AL., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Two high status brothers buried in a Bronze Age tomb in Israel were severely ill but apparently had access to rare treatments including trephination, according to a study published February 22, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Rachel Kalisher of Brown University, Rhode Island, and colleagues.

In this study, authors examined the remains of two individuals buried in a tomb beneath an elite residence in the archaeological site of Tel Megiddo in Israel. The tomb dates to the Late Bronze Age (around 1550-1450 BC), and DNA testing suggests the buried individuals are brothers. Both skeletons show evidence of disease, providing an opportunity to study how illness was treated during this time period.

Extensive lesions on the bones of both individuals are evidence of chronic, debilitating disease, possibly a condition to which the brothers shared susceptibility. The advanced state of the lesions indicates that, despite the severity of the condition, these individuals survived many years, possibly due to the privileges of wealth and status.

Additionally, one of the individuals has a ~30mm square hole in the frontal bone of the skull where a piece of bone was surgically removed, a procedure known as trephination which has been used to treat various medical disorders by relieving pressure buildup in the skull. This was likely intended to treat the patient’s ailment, but the lack of bone healing suggests the individual died during or shortly after surgery.

It is notable that the brothers’ tomb was adorned with high quality food and fine ceramics similar to other nearby high-status tombs. This suggests these individuals were not “othered” nor excluded from burial traditions due to their poor health. This serves as an important case study for continuing investigation into the intersections of status, illness, and treatment in societies through time.

The authors add: “Among the study’s multiple findings, we wish to highlight the special type of cranial trephination, the earliest of its kind in the region. This uncommon procedure was done on an elite individual with both developmental anomalies and infectious disease, which leads us to posit that this operation may have been an intervention to deteriorating health.”

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0281020

Citation: Kalisher R, Cradic MS, Adams MJ, Martin MAS, Finkelstein I (2023) Cranial trephination and infectious disease in the Eastern Mediterranean: The evidence from two elite brothers from Late Bronze Megiddo, Israel. PLoS ONE 18(2): e0281020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281020

Author Countries: USA, Israel, Austria

Funding: The excavation of Burial 16/H/45 was funded by the Shmunis Family Foundation. In 2016 the Megiddo Expedition was also supported by the Dan David Foundation, Mr. Jacques Chahine and Mr. Mark Weissman. Finally, the purchase of the Leica microscope used in this study was possible through the support of the Society for Classical Studies, Women’s Classical Caucus. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0281020 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Cranial trephination and infectious disease in the Eastern Mediterranean: The evidence from two elite brothers from Late Bronze Megiddo, Israel

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Feb-2023

COI STATEMENT

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Stanford-led analysis could help forecast malaria outbreaks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

As with COVID, public health agencies around the world have struggled to predict which communities will be hit the hardest with malaria, a life-threatening disease that infected an estimated 247 million people in 2021. A new Stanford-led study done in collaboration with local scientists and health care experts in Madagascar paves the way to using easily obtainable data to accurately predict malaria outbreaks in communities. The analysis, published Feb. 22 in PLOS Global Public Health, is the first such study to show these relationships in fine detail and could inform efforts to combat malaria more efficiently and affordably.

“We can predict which villages will have the most malaria cases, even when these villages are only a few miles apart,” said study lead author Julie Pourtois, a PhD student in biology at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. “These predictions could help distribute limited health care resources where they are most needed, which is particularly valuable in countries with limited access to health care.”

Predicting a heavy burden

Nearly half of the world’s population was at risk of malaria – an acute febrile illness transmitted by mosquito bites – and approximately 619,000 people died from it in 2021, the most recent year for which the World Health Organization provides such statistics. Its burden falls hardest on people living in poverty impoverished communities in Africa, where children under 5 accounted for about 80% of all malaria deaths in 2021.

While health care agencies have a good sense of what drives malaria at national scales, including warm weather and rain patterns that facilitate mosquito breeding and activity, factors like microclimates and land use make local-scale predictions much more complex and uncertain. Health system data can also provide an inaccurate picture of community burden because people who are less able to access health care are not represented.

In collaboration with Madagascar’s national malaria control program and Pivot, a local health care organization, the researchers focused on a region in southeastern Madagascar. They built upon a previous Stanford-led study that looked at malaria incidence data collected by health care centers in the district and adjusted to correct for reporting biases derived from financial and geographic barriers to health care. To this, the researchers combined satellite information on climate, land use maps as well as socioeconomic data from household surveys conducted by the Madagascar National Institute of Statistics.

With this blend of data, the researchers asked which of these variables best explained malaria patterns and trained a model to predict the monthly malaria cases across 195 villages.

The researchers found malaria burden is low in residential areas and high in areas with flooded rice fields, suggesting that malaria is more of a rural disease in the study area – something that’s not always true elsewhere. They also found a strong relationship between poverty and reported malaria cases, indicating that many people living in poverty were not getting care at health centers, and making clear the need to improve health care access.

The analysis was able to predict relatively well which villages were going to be hit the hardest with malaria. In fact, the approach correctly identified more than half of communities in the top 20% for malaria transmission, and explained over three-quarters of the variation in malaria incidence rank.

“We have shown that the new generation of satellite and land use data, integrated with socio-economic and public health data gathered on the ground allows to describe heterogeneity in malaria incidence at a very fine spatial scale,” said study co-author Giulio De Leo, a professor of oceans and Earth system science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “That was impossible until recently.”

“This is an important first step towards bringing advances in disease ecology and modeling for disease prediction to local communities in settings that need them the most: those with high burdens of malaria, widespread poverty and low access to health care,” said senior author Andres Garchitorena, a researcher at the French Research Institute for Sustainable Development and associate scientific director at Pivot.

De Leo is also a professor, by courtesy, of Biology in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, a senior fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, codirector of the Stanford Program for Disease Ecology, Health and the Environment; a member of Bio-X, and a faculty affiliate in the Center for Innovation in Global Health and the King Center on Global Development.

Study co-authors also include senior author Andres Garchitorena of the Research Institute for Sustainable Development, (France) and Pivot (Madagascar); Krti Tallam, a PhD student in biology at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences; Isabel Jones, a PhD student in biology at the time of the research; Elizabeth Hyde, an MD student in the Stanford School of Medicine at the time of the research; Andrew Chamberlin, a research professional at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station; Susanne Sokolow, codirector of the Stanford Program for Disease Ecology, Health and the Environment; and researchers at the Université de Montpellier (France), Harvard Medical School, Pivot (Madagascar), Programme National de Lutte contre le Paludisme (Madagascar), and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

This study was funded by PIVOT; the National Research Agency (France); The Research Institute for Development (France); the Herrnstein Family Foundation; the National Science Foundation; the Belmont Collaborative Forum on Climate, Environment and Health; and the Stanford Graduate Fellowship.

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JOURNAL

PLOS Global Public Health

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Feb-2023

ECOLOGY

Sea stars able to consume kelp-eating urchins fast enough to protect kelp forests, research shows

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A research team including a scientist from Oregon State University has provided the first experimental evidence that a species of endangered sea star protects kelp forests along North America’s Pacific Coast by preying on substantial numbers of kelp-eating urchins.

The study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, are important because kelp, large algae with massive ecological and economic importance around the world, are under siege from environmental change and overgrazing by sea urchins.

The findings by a collaboration that also featured scientists from the University of Oregon and The Nature Conservancy suggest that the sunflower sea star likely plays a much stronger role in kelp forest health than had been previously thought.

Lab experiments showed that sea stars, known scientifically as Pycnopodia helianthoides, consume urchins at rates sufficient to maintain and perhaps reset the health of kelp forests. The authors are calling for active management and a coordinated sunflower sea star recovery.

“What we saw suggests a clear link between the crash of sea stars, the explosion in sea urchin populations and the decline in kelp,” said Sarah Gravem, a research associate in the Oregon State College of Science. “It also points to sea star recovery as a potential key tool for kelp forest recovery.”

Kelp are a foundation species that occupy nearly 50% of the world’s marine ecoregions. They especially thrive in cold water, where they form large aquatic forests that provide essential habitat, food and refuge for many species. Their sensitivity to certain growing conditions means climate change and a warming ocean are particularly problematic for them.

Kelp are often harvested for use in products ranging from toothpaste and shampoos to puddings and cakes, and they also help support nutrient cycling, shoreline protection and commercial fisheries such as rockfish. Economists place kelp’s value in the range of billions of dollars annually.

In 2020, the sunflower sea star was listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature following a population study led by OSU and The Nature Conservancy.

Populations of the sunflower sea star suffered dramatic downturns because of a marine wildlife epidemic event, referred to as sea star wasting syndrome, that began in 2013, Gravem said.

In the population study, scientists used more than 61,000 population surveys from 31 datasets to calculate a 90.6% decline in sunflower sea stars and estimated that as many as 5.75 billion animals died from the disease, whose cause has not been determined.

Moreover, the research produced no indications of population recovery in any region in the years since the outbreak.

Sunflower sea stars are now nearly absent in Mexico as well as most of the contiguous United States, the scientists say. No stars have been seen in Mexico since 2016, and only a handful have been found in Oregon and California since 2018.

Researchers have thought that the sea star decline helped fuel an explosion in the urchin population in many regions, with an overabundance of urchins placing added pressure on kelp forests already being challenged by marine heat wave events.

But prior to the latest study, the relationship between sea stars, urchins and kelp had not been quantified, Gravem said.

“This study addresses that gap, and the findings are significant and somewhat surprising,” said principal investigator Aaron Galloway of the University of Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. “We found that these stars are eager consumers of purple urchins and, most importantly, they even eat the nutritionally poor, starving ‘zombie’ urchins.”

Other important predators of purple sea urchins, such as sea otters, are generally known to avoid eating starving urchins from “barrens” – massive underwater carpets of urchins that have devoured their food supply and can live for years in an emaciated state until kelp grow back.

The new study, funded by The Nature Conservancy and the National Science Foundation, shows that a sunflower sea star on average eats about 0.68 sea urchins per day, and that they eat starved urchins, the ones associated with barrens, 21% faster than they consume the well-fed urchins typical of healthy kelp forests.

“Eating less than one urchin per day may not sound like a lot, but we think there used to be over 5 billion sunflower sea stars,” Gravem said. “We used a model to show that the pre-disease densities of sea stars on the U.S. West Coast were usually more than enough to keep sea urchin numbers down and prevent barrens.”

Because sunflower sea star recovery is unlikely to happen in the near term without intervention, Gravem said, researchers have developed a “Roadmap to Species Recovery” that includes the world’s first captive breeding program for the species and a pathway to re-introduction.

Also collaborating on the study were scientists from the University of Washington and Florida State University.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2022.1897 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Sunflower sea star predation on urchins can facilitate kelp forest recovery

Researchers identify breakthrough in understanding fentanyl abuse

A new study from the Texas A&M School of Medicine uncovers a brain circuit involved in opioid addiction and relapse, paving the way for better treatments.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

The ongoing opioid epidemic continues to take a heavy toll on American communities, with more than 80,000 opioid-related deaths reported in 2021, according to the National Institutes of Health. Despite the severity of this issue, the neurological mechanisms underlying opioid addiction, withdrawal and relapse are not fully understood.

A study recently published in Cell Reports sheds light on the subject. Jun Wang, associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics at the Texas A&M University School of Medicine, and members of his laboratory have identified a specific brain circuit that characterizes how fentanyl (a synthetic opioid) affects the brain. Specifically, they looked at the striatum, which is a brain region that controls voluntary behaviors and is heavily implicated in drug relapse.

Even after a long period of abstaining from opioids, many people relapse as a result of the depression, anxiety and other negative emotions that accompany withdrawal. Suppressing these negative emotional states could greatly increase a person’s chance of overcoming opioid use disorder.

Opioid addiction is mainly mediated by mu-opioid receptors (MORs), which are expressed in the midbrain and the striatum on a type of neuron called direct pathway medium spiny neurons (dMSNs). Previous studies from the Wang lab showed these dMSNs control “go” actions in the brain that promote drug-seeking behaviors. The striatum contains two distinct sub-compartments, the patch and matrix compartments. The patch compartments primarily contain MOR-expressing dMSNs and are widely studied for their roles in emotional processing and decision-making.

The study aimed to look at how withdrawal from chronic opioid exposure alters the activity of patch dMSNs and their outputs to generate the negative emotional states which may cause relapse. The researchers discovered that fentanyl enhances the activity of dMSNs in the striatum, and during the early stages of withdrawal, inhibitory signals from these dMSNs to downstream targets, such as dopaminergic neurons, were significantly enhanced. Dopaminergic neurons play a major role in addiction as they control motivation, rewarding behavior and emotions. The enhanced suppression of dopaminergic neurons likely contributes to the negative emotions that arise during acute fentanyl withdrawal, as the researchers found that inhibiting these dMSNs can reduce withdrawal symptoms and anxiety-like behaviors.

The findings of this research provide new insights into the mechanism underlying opioid-induced negative emotional states, and pave the way for potential treatments for opioid use disorders. By reducing the negative emotional states that accompany withdrawal, it may be possible to reduce the risk of relapse and decrease the number of lives lost to opioids.

In summary, the study provides new understanding of the brain circuits involved in opioid addiction and withdrawal and could lead to the development of new treatment for opioid use disorders.

By Valerie Vierkant, Texas A&M Health

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JOURNAL

Cell Reports

DOI

10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112089 

ARTICLE TITLE

Striatal μ-opioid receptor activation triggers direct-pathway GABAergic plasticity and induces negative affect

NO LAUGHING MATTER

Surge in nitrous oxide abuse: New guidelines to help clinicians recognise cases and prevent spinal cord damage

Peer-Reviewed Publication

QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

 

IMAGE: EMPTY NITROUS OXIDE DISPENSERS IN LONDON PARK view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF ANNA BILLINGTON, WOLFSON INSTITUTE OF POPULATION HEALTH, QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Recommendations from research published today on the diagnosis and treatment of spinal cord damage caused by nitrous oxide abuse have been simultaneously adopted as official clinical practice guidelines by the Association of British Neurologists. The unprecedented speed in translating research into practice is necessary as medical cases of nitrous oxide abuse surge in parallel with increased use of what is now the second most popular recreational drug among young people in the UK.

Recreational use of nitrous oxide (N2O - also known as laughing gas) can lead to subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord (N2O-SACD), a condition that can cause serious and permanent disability in young people. While it may be treated effectively if recognised early, it is commonly misdiagnosed and inappropriately treated. No agreed treatment guidelines have previously existed.

The new research is based on a project to improve diagnosis and treatment of N2O-SACD at the Royal London Hospital, where a new case presents, on average, once a week. A large majority of patients present with inability to walk, falls, and tingling or loss of sensation in their feet and hands. Other symptoms included weakness and bladder or bowel urgency or incontinence. Importantly, patients often do not mention nitrous oxide use, possibly because they do not connect it with their symptoms, or because they feel there is stigma associated with disclosing its use. Authors suggest that clinicians should be aware of the prevalence of nitrous oxide abuse in their local area, and make careful enquiries to determine whether nitrous oxide abuse may be causing the symptoms.

Senior author Alastair Noyce, Professor in Neurology and Neuroepidemiology at Queen Mary and Consultant Neurologist, said:

“We developed these practical guidelines to try to standardise care for patients who have come to harm from recreational nitrous oxide use. If implemented correctly, they will ensure that patients get the treatment they need. We hope they will also alleviate pressure on hospitals by improving efficiency in the emergency department and reducing unnecessary admissions.”

Professor Tom Warner, President of the Association of British Neurologists, said:

“Recreational use of nitrous oxide carries a significant risk of damage to the nervous system, particularly the spinal cord, which is treatable if picked up. These important clinical practice guidelines lay out how to recognise, diagnose and, most importantly, treat those people attending emergency departments with such symptoms, and prevent long-term neurological disability.”

The paper was led by researchers from the Preventive Neurology Unit (Queen Mary University of London) and the Royal London Hospital (Barts Health NHS Trust), in collaboration with colleagues from University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust; Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology Research Centre, NIHR Birmingham; Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust; School of Medicine, University of Nottingham; Manchester Centre for Clinical Neurosciences,  Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust; Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust.

The Preventive Neurology Unit is funded by Barts Charity.

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JOURNAL

Practical Neurology

DOI

10.1136/pn-2022-003631 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Nitrous oxide-induced subacute combined degeneration of the cord: diagnosis and treatment

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Feb-2023

The world’s fastest 2D movie of laser-particle interactions and temperature in flames

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LIGHT PUBLISHING CENTER, CHANGCHUN INSTITUTE OF OPTICS, FINE MECHANICS AND PHYSICS, CAS

 

IMAGE: A, A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE KEROSENE FLAME STUDIED IN THIS WORK. B, ILLUSTRATION OF THREE OPTICAL SIGNALS WHEN NANOPARTICLES (E.G. SOOT, PAH MOLECULES) IN THE FLAME INTERACT WITH THE NANOSECOND LASER-SHEET. THESE SIGNALS INCLUDE LASER-INDUCED FLUORESCENCE, LASER-INDUCED INCANDESCENCE, AND SCATTERING. C, SCHEMATIC OF THE LS-CUP IMAGING SYSTEM. view more 

CREDIT: BY YOGESHWAR NATH MISHRA, PENG WANG, FLORIAN BAUER, YIDE ZHANG, DAG HANSTORP, STEFAN WILL, AND LIHONG V. WANG

Burning hydrocarbon fuels produces nano-sized soot particles and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) - harmful emissions that impact our environment. The carbon-made particles make up 70% of our interstellar space, and black carbon particles from flames are exciting nanomaterials for electronic devices and sustainable energy applications – making their study important. The lifetimes of soot and PAHs are extremely short (sub nanoseconds to hundreds of nanoseconds, 1 ns = 10-9 second) in turbulent flames. Therefore, it requires ultrafast imaging approaches to resolve combustion both in space (2D/3D) and time.

The current state-of-the-art planar imaging systems are limited to just a few million (106) frames per second. To extract 2D maps of flame species, they also require multiple consecutive laser pulses, causing undesired thermal issues. Further, the traditional pump-probe ultrafast imaging methods can only capture the processes which are “repeatable” because several images of the same process are taken at different time instances to extract a complete picture of spatiotemporal dynamics. Therefore, researchers in the field of combustion science have long awaited a game changing tool that can overcome the limitations of the current systems.

In a new paper published in Light: Science & Application, a team of scientists, led by Dr. Yogeshwar Nath Mishra, Dr. Peng Wang and Professor Lihong V. Wang,  from California Institute of Technology and their collaborators from University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen in Germany, have developed the world’s fastest planar imaging camera: laser-sheet compressed ultrafast photography (LS-CUP). Using LS-CUP, they have captured the entire movies of laser-flame dynamics at a record imaging speed of 12.5 billion (109) frame per second (Gfps), which is at least three orders of magnitude higher than the current state-of-the-art systems. Using only one single laser pulse, LS-CUP enabled wide-field real-time imaging of laser-induced fluorescence from PAHs, elastic light scattering and laser-induced incandescence from soot particles.

Dr. Yogeshwar Nath Mishra, one of the leading authors of this paper said: “Laser sheet imaging is one of the most popular techniques for characterizing flows and combustion in two-dimension (2D) because it preferably resolves a plane in both time and space. Using LS-CUP, we can perform many exciting studies and “film” fast chemical reactions and non-repeatable flame-laser interactions using a single laser pulse in real-time beyond the MHz imaging range. We can combine it with pre-existing planar imaging methods for combustion research. Further, we can apply LS-CUP for real-time observation of hydrogen combustion, plasma-assisted combustion, and metal powder combustion - some of the recent hot topics in the field. Temperature is a crucial property in many thermodynamic systems, and to the best of our knowledge, we have reported its fastest wide-field measurements.”

Dr. Peng Wang, the other major contributor to this work, said: “LS-CUP is perfect: it is single-shot, only needs a single laser pulse, has a wide field-of-view, and can be easily adapted to observe all kinds of laser-induced signals over the entire lifetime of soot particles. We extracted critical parameters from the fast dynamics, such as fluorescence lifetimes of PAH molecules, soot nanoparticle sizes and cluster sizes, particle temperature, etc. LS-CUP, in general, allows us to study extremely fast phenomena from a completely new and unique perspective. Reaching far beyond combustion research, the applications of our technique are extremely broad in physics, chemistry, biology and medicine, energy, and environmental research. The capability of capturing ultrafast phenomena represents an important metric of our human’s technology development, which is also driven by the curiosity and needs of scientists and engineers across various fields.”

Ultrafast 2D maps of flame temperature imaged by LS-CUP at 1.25-Gfps. 

 

a, Spatiotemporal dynamics of flame temperature when excited by a single nanosecond light pulse. The temperature is calculated by taking laser-induced incandescence signals from two distinct color channels.

 b, Spatially averaged temperature evolution and its exponential fit, showing a rapid cooling after laser excitation.

CREDIT

by Yogeshwar Nath Mishra, Peng Wang, Florian Bauer, Yide Zhang, Dag Hanstorp, Stefan Will, and Lihong V. Wang

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JOURNAL

Light Science & Applications

DOI

10.1038/s41377-023-01095-5