Rats have an imagination, new research finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE

 

VIDEO: 

A TEAM FROM HHMI'S JANELIA RESEARCH CAMPUS HAS DEVELOPED A NOVEL SYSTEM COMBINING VIRTUAL REALITY AND A BRAIN-MACHINE INTERFACE TO PROBE THE RAT’S INNER THOUGHTS. THE RAT IS HARNESSED IN THE VR SYSTEM. AS THE RAT WALKS ON A SPHERICAL TREADMILL, ITS MOVEMENTS ARE TRANSLATED ON THE 360-DEGREE SCREEN. THE RAT IS REWARDED WHEN IT NAVIGATES TO ITS GOAL.

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CREDIT: CHONGXI LAI

As humans, we live in our thoughts: from pondering what to make for dinner to daydreaming about our last beach vacation.

Now, researchers at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus have found that animals also possess an imagination.

A team from the Lee and Harris labs developed a novel system combining virtual reality and a brain-machine interface to probe the rat’s inner thoughts.

They found that, like humans, animals can think about places and objects that aren’t right in front of them, using their thoughts to imagine walking to a location or moving a remote object to a specific spot.

Like humans, when rodents experience places and events, specific neural activity patterns are activated in the hippocampus, an area of the brain responsible for spatial memory. The new study finds rats can voluntarily generate these same activity patterns and do so to recall remote locations distant from their current position.

“The rat can indeed activate the representation of places in the environment without going there,” says Chongxi Lai, a postdoc in the Harris and Lee Labs and first author of a paper describing the new findings. “Even if his physical body is fixed, his spatial thoughts can go to a very remote location.”

This ability to imagine locations away from one’s current position is fundamental to remembering past events and imagining possible future scenarios. Therefore, the new work shows that animals, like humans, possess a form of imagination, according to the study’s authors.

“To imagine is one of the remarkable things that humans can do. Now we have found that animals can do it too, and we found a way to study it,” says Albert Lee, formerly a Group Leader at Janelia and now an HHMI Investigator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

A novel brain-machine interface

The project began nine years ago when Lai arrived at Janelia as a graduate student with an idea to test whether an animal could think. His advisor, Janelia Senior Fellow Tim Harris, suggested Lai walk down the hall to chat with Lee, whose lab had similar questions.

Together, the labs worked to develop a system to understand what animals are thinking – a real-time “thought detector” that could measure neural activity and translate what it meant.

The system uses a brain-machine interface (BMI), which provides a direct connection between brain activity and an external device. In the team’s system, the BMI produces a connection between the electrical activity in the rat’s hippocampus and its position in a 360-degree virtual reality arena.

The hippocampus stores mental maps of the world involved in recalling past events and imagining future scenarios. Memory recall involves the generation of specific hippocampal activity patterns related to places and events. But no one knew whether animals could voluntarily control this activity.

The BMI allows the researchers to test whether a rat can activate hippocampal activity to just think about a location in the arena without physically going there – essentially, detecting if the animal is able to imagine going to the location.

Probing the rat’s inner thoughts

Once they developed their system, the researchers had to create the “thought dictionary” that would allow them to decode the rat’s brain signals. This dictionary compiles what activity patterns look like when the rat experiences something – in this case, places in the VR arena.

The rat is harnessed in the VR system, designed by Shinsuke Tanaka, a postdoc in the Lee Lab. As the rat walks on a spherical treadmill, its movements are translated on the 360-degree screen. The rat is rewarded when it navigates to its goal.

At the same time, the BMI system records the rat’s hippocampal activity. The researchers can see which neurons are activated when the rat navigates the arena to reach each goal. These signals provide the basis for a real-time hippocampal BMI, with the brain’s hippocampal activity translated into actions on the screen.  

Next, the researchers disconnect the treadmill and reward the rat for reproducing the hippocampal activity pattern associated with a goal location.  In this “Jumper” task – named after a 2008 movie of the same name -- the BMI translates the animal’s brain activity into motion on the virtual reality screen. Essentially, the animal uses its thoughts to navigate to the reward by first thinking about where they need to go to get the reward. This thought process is something humans experience regularly. For example, when we’re asked to pick up groceries at a familiar store, we might imagine the locations we will pass along the way before we ever leave the house.

In the second task, the “Jedi” task – a nod to Star Wars – the rat moves an object to a location by thoughts alone. The rat is fixed in a virtual place but “moves” an object to a goal in the VR space by controlling its hippocampal activity, like how a person sitting in their office might imagine taking a cup next to the coffee machine and filling it with coffee. The researchers then changed the location of the goal, requiring the animal to produce activity patterns associated with the new location.

The team found that rats can precisely and flexibly control their hippocampal activity, in the same way humans likely do. The animals are also able to sustain this hippocampal activity, holding their thoughts on a given location for many seconds -- a timeframe similar to the one at which humans relive past events or imagine new scenarios.

“The stunning thing is how rats learn to think about that place, and no other place, for a very long period of time, based on our, perhaps naïve, notion of the attention span of a rat,” Harris says.

The research also shows that BMI can be used to probe hippocampal activity, providing a novel system for studying this important brain region. Because BMI is increasingly used in prosthetics, this new work also opens up the possibility of designing novel prosthetic devices based on the same principles, according to the authors.

Hippocampal brain-machine interface (part 2) (VIDEO)

HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE

At the same time that the rat is navigating in the VR arena, the BMI system records the rat’s hippocampal activity. The researchers can see which neurons are activated when the rat navigates the arena to reach each goal. These signals provide the basis for a real-time hippocampal BMI, with the brain’s hippocampal activity translated into actions on the screen.  

CREDIT

Chongxi Lai

https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/1003520

Next, the researchers disconnected the treadmill and reward the rat for reproducing the hippocampal activity pattern associated with a goal location. In this “Jumper” task – named after a 2008 movie of the same name -- the BMI translates the animal’s brain activity into motion on the virtual reality screen. Essentially, the animal uses its thoughts to navigate to the reward by first thinking about where they need to go to get the reward. 

https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/1003521

In the second task, the “Jedi” task – a nod to Star Wars – the rat moves an object to a location by thoughts alone. The rat is fixed in a virtual place but “moves” an object to a goal in the VR space by controlling its hippocampal activity, like how a person sitting in their office might imagine taking a cup next to the coffee machine and filling it with coffee. The researchers then changed the location of the goal, requiring the animal to produce activity patterns associated with the new location.

https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/1003519

A new brain-machine interface and virtual reality system for rats. In this experiment, a rat uses this system to navigate to a goal solely by thinking about where it wants to go. According to the rules of this system, physical movement by the rat does not affect the rat's location in the virtual environment. Only by controlling its hippocampal brain activity can the rat control where it goes. Specifically, in this system the animal is virtually moved toward the 'decoded location' that the hippocampal activity represents.

https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/1003523

Normally, hippocampal brain activity is like a GPS that reflects one's current location. But, using a new brain-machine interface + virtual reality system, a rat can control its hippocampal activity to reflect remote locations ('decoded locations') and use this to move an object to where it wants the object to go. These experiments could reveal how our hippocampus allows us to recall memories of places we have visited before and how we can imagine being in different places. This work could also lead to new hippocampal-based neuroprosthetic devices.

https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/1003522

CREDIT

Lai et al. DOI: science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh5206

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adh5206 

ARTICLE TITLE

Volitional activation of remote place representations with a hippocampal brain-machine interface

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-Nov-2023

 

Bendy X-ray detectors could revolutionize cancer treatment

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

New materials developed at the University of Surrey could pave the way for a new generation of flexible X-ray detectors, with potential applications ranging from cancer treatment to better airport scanners.  

Traditionally, X-ray detectors are made of heavy, rigid material such as silicon or germanium. New, flexible detectors are cheaper and can be shaped around the objects that need to be scanned, improving accuracy when screening patients and reducing risk when imaging tumours and administering radiotherapy. 

Dr Prabodhi Nanayakkara, who led the research at the University of Surrey, said: 

“This new material is flexible, low-cost, and sensitive. But what’s exciting is that this material is tissue equivalent. This paves the way for live dosimetry, which just isn’t possible with current technology.”  

Most of the X-ray detectors on the market today are heavy, rigid, energy-consuming and expensive if a large area needs to be covered.  

Substances built up of hydrogen and carbon, known as organic semiconductors, offer a more flexible solution, but until now, did not allow as detailed an X-ray image to be produced as traditional detectors.  

To solve this challenge, scientists at the University of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute created devices based on an ink by adding low quantities of high atomic number elements to an organic semiconductor.

Building on the team’s previous research in this field, their new detector behaves more like human tissue under X-rays, which could lead to new, safer techniques for administering radiotherapy, mammography and radiography. Their findings are published in the journal Advanced Science. 

Professor Ravi Silva, director of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute, said: 

“This new technology could be used in a variety of settings, such as radiotherapy, scanning historical artefacts and in security scanners. The University of Surrey together with its spin out SilverRay Ltd continues to lead the way in flexible X-ray detectors – we're pleased to see the technology shows real promise for a range of uses.” 

Co-author, Professor Martin Heeney, Imperial College London, commented: 

“We have been developing heavy analogues of traditional organic semiconductors for some time, and we were intrigued when Dr Imalka Jayawardena suggested their application in X-ray detectors. These results are very exciting, especially considering this was the first material investigated, and there is plenty of scope for further improvements.” 

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JOURNAL

Advanced Science

DOI

10.1002/advs.202304261 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Tissue equivalent curved organic X-ray detectors utilising high atomic number polythiophene analogues

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Nov-2023

COI STATEMENT

K.D.G.I.J., and S.R.P.S. are inventors on a patent (Direct Conversion Radiation Detector, International Publication Number: WO2018/078372A1) which is assigned to SilverRay Ltd.

 I F...KING💓SCIENCE

Want the secret to less painful belly flops? These researchers have the answer.

Experiments by a Brown-led research team investigated belly flop mechanics and found surprising insights about air-to-water impacts that could be useful for marine engineering applications.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BROWN UNIVERSITY

 

VIDEO: 

BROWN RESEARCHERS SET UP A BELLY FLOP-LIKE WATER EXPERIMENT USING A BLUNT CYLINDER BUT ADDING AN IMPORTANT VIBRATING TWIST TO IT, WHICH ULTIMATELY LED THEM TO COUNTERINTUITIVE FINDINGS.

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CREDIT: VIDEO PROVIDED BY JOHN ANTOLIK AND DANIEL HARRIS.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Anyone who’s ever done a belly flop into a swimming pool knows it ends with a blunt-sounding splat, a big splash and a searing red sting. What most people don’t know is why.

Daniel Harris does. The assistant professor in Brown University’s School of Engineering says the physics behind the phenomenon aren’t too complex. What happens — and what makes it so painful, he explains — is that the forces from the water surface put up a fierce resistance to the body suddenly going from air to water, which is often still.

“All of a sudden, the water has to accelerate to catch up to the speed of what’s falling through the air,” said Harris, who studies fluid mechanics. “When this happens, that large reaction force is sent back to whatever's doing the impacting, leading to that signature slam.”

How and why this happens in fluid mechanics isn’t just important for developing a prize-winning belly flop for competitions, or dolling out pool-party trivia on why belly flops hurt so much — the understanding is critical to naval and marine engineering, which often have structures that need to survive high-impact air-to-water slamming forces. For that reason, the phenomenon has been studied thoroughly for the past century. But a research team led by Harris and Brown graduate student John Antolik found novel insights in a new study done in partnership with scholars at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport and Brigham Young University.

For the Journal of Fluid Mechanics study, the researchers set up a belly flop-like water experiment using a blunt cylinder but adding an important vibrating twist to it, which ultimately led them to counterintuitive findings.

“Most of the work that's been done in this space looks at rigid bodies slamming into the water, whose overall shape doesn't really change or move in response to the impact,” Harris said. “The questions that we start to get at are: 'What if the object that's impacting is flexible so that once it feels the force it can either change shape or deform? How does that change the physics and then, more importantly, the forces that are felt on these structures?”

To answer that, the researchers attached a soft “nose” to the body of their cylinder, referred to as an impactor, with a system of flexible springs.

The idea, Antolik explains, is that the springs — which act in principle similar to the suspension of a car — should help soften the impact by distributing the impact load over a longer period. This strategy has been floated as a potential solution for reducing sometimes catastrophic slamming impacts in air-to-water transitions, but few experiments have ever looked closely at the fundamental mechanics and physics involved.

For this experiment, the researchers dropped the cylinder repeatedly into still water and analyzed both the visual results and data from sensors embedded inside the cylinder.

This is where the unexpected happened.

The results show that while the strategy can be effective, surprisingly, it doesn’t always soften the impact. In fact, contrary to conventional thinking, sometimes the more flexible system can increase the maximum impact force on the body as compared to a fully rigid structure.

This forced the researchers to dig deeper. Through extensive experiments and by developing a theoretical model, they found their answer. Depending on the height from which the impactor is dropped and how stiff the springs are, the body will not only feel the impact from the slam but it will also feel the vibrations of the structure as it enters the water, compounding the slamming force.

“The structure is vibrating back and forth due to the violent impact, so we were getting readings from both the impact of hitting the fluid and an oscillation because the structure is shaking itself,” Harris said. “If you don't time those right, you can basically make the situation worse.”

The researchers found the key was the springs: they have to be soft enough to gently absorb the impact without leading to more rapid vibrations that add to the overall force.

Working in Brown’s Engineering Research Center, Antolik recorded the experiments using high-speed cameras and used an impact measurement tool called an accelerometer. “The whole back corner gets a little bit wet when I'm doing the experiments,” he joked.

The researchers are now looking at next steps in their research line, taking inspiration from diving birds.

“Biological studies of these birds have shown that they perform certain maneuvers as they enter the water to improve the conditions so they don't experience such high forces,” Antolik said. “What we're moving towards is trying to design what is essentially a robotic impactor that can perform some active maneuver during water entry to do the same for blunt objects.”

The study was supported by the Office of Naval Research and Naval Undersea Warfare Center.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Fluid Mechanics

DOI

10.1017/jfm.2023.820 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Slamming forces during water entry of a simple harmonic oscillator

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Nov-2023

Video technology could transform how scientists monitor changes in species evolution and development

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH

 

VIDEO: 

BY MEASURING TIMELAPSE VIDEOS OF EMBRYOS - SUCH AS THIS ONE OF A DEVELOPING SNAIL - SHOWING A NUMBER OF KEY DEVELOPMENTAL EVENTS, RESEARCHERS CAN CAPTURE COMPLEX DIFFERENCES IN HOW SPECIES GROW AND DEVELOP

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH

Scientists have made a major breakthrough in the study of species evolution, and provided further evidence that state-of-the-art visual technology can be used to track the tiniest changes in different organisms’ development.

New research used a combination of robotic video microscopes and computer vision to measure all of the observable characteristics of embryos of three different species.

These measurements were recorded as spectra of energy and, through this, scientists were able to compare shifts between species alongside previously documented differences in the timing of discrete developmental events.

A detailed analysis of these so-called Energy Proxy Traits (EPTs) has provided researchers with the first evidence that traditionally measured timings of developmental events are associated with far broader changes to the full set of an embryo’s observable characteristics.

They also found huge changes in an embryo’s observable characteristics before and after the onset of each developmental event.

Writing in Frontiers in Physiology, the study’s authors say that applying lessons from the research has the potential to advance how development and evolution is studied, by enabling greater depth in the assessment of biological development and the ability to combine data across a wide range of species.

This is something, they add, that is particularly crucial at a time when climate and other environmental changes are having a significant – and in many cases harmful – impact on many parts of the natural world.

The study was led by scientists from the University of Plymouth’s EmbryoPhenomics Research Group, in the School of Biological and Marine Sciences, and builds on its 15-plus years of groundbreaking research into ways of monitoring embryo development.

Dr Jamie McCoy, a postdoctoral researcher – funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council – and the study’s lead author, said: “The advances highlighted in this paper are critical to addressing the fundamental question of how species differ in the way that they develop. Measuring differences in the timings of development is one of the main ways in which researchers investigate how changes in development may drive evolution. But the results from our study suggest that measuring the timings of developmental events is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how we measure and analyse evolutionary changes. By assessing EPTs across three different species, we have seen how they could provide us with an alternative approach to understanding how development leads to evolutionary change.”

The EPT method uses timelapse video of animals during their earliest and most dynamic life stages.

Each video is composed of a series of individual pixels, whose brightness fluctuates from one frame to the next as objects – such as a beating heart, muscle contractions, or spinning of the whole embryo driven by tiny hairs – move.

Researchers can exploit these fluctuations in pixel values and convert them into frequency data, allowing them to track a huge breadth of different aspects of the biology of the animal as it develops.

The resulting visuals mean that rather than choosing individual parts of the animal to measure, scientists can capture all of its traits – such as changes in heart rate or movement – and interrogate the resulting frequency data to capture a greater breadth of its biological response.

Dr Oliver Tills, senior author on the study, has been pioneering studies into embryo phenomics since 2007 and was in 2020 awarded a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship to advance his work. He added: “Our current understanding of biology is limited by the technologies available to observe it, and we need a new technology-enabled approach to understanding the most complex period of an organism’s life history. This study has broad implications for advancing our understanding of the nexus between biological development and evolution, and marks a significant step forward in how we might monitor the development of lifeforms all over our planet.”

Two decades of expertise in developmental biology

The EPT method used in the current study builds on pioneering work started almost 20 years ago using manual measurements.

That work was led by Dr Jennifer Smirthwaite and colleagues at the University of Plymouth and the Technical University of Munich, and documented a number of heterochronies – changes in the timings of developmental events between species – in a number of species of freshwater snail.

EPTs were applied to three species of freshwater snail from that study, and aimed to understand whether these evolutionary changes in the timings of development were associated with more high-dimensional changes to the phenotype.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Physiology

DOI

10.3389/fphys.2023.1237022 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

parative phenomics: a new approach to study heterochrony

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Nov-2023

KERI developed an alternative technology for ‘SF6’, the main culprit of global warming

Business Announcement

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

CIRCUIT BREAKER FOR HIGH VOLTAGE TRANSMISSION USING ‘K6 ECO-FRIENDLY INSULATING GAS’, WHICH REPLACES SF6
CREDIT: KOREA ELECTROTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) has developed a world-class 'eco-friendly insulating gas' that replaces SF6 (sulfur hexafluoride), the main cause of global warming in the field of electric power equipment, and developed a design technology to make it applicable to ultra-high voltage transmission circuit breakers.

Of course, power devices must be able to conduct electricity well but an ‘insulation’ function to block electricity is also essential to prepare for unexpected accidents and for safety reasons. SF6 gas offers excellent insulation and with far superior arc extinguishing performance than any other gas, which interrupts fault current in the event of a system failure, it has been used in the power equipment field for over 50 years.

However, the Global Warming Potential of SF6 is 23,500 times that of carbon dioxide, and once leaked into the atmosphere, it stays for as long as 3,200 years and has a negative impact on the environment. In Korea, as SF6 gas accounts for 60% of the total greenhouse gas emissions emitted by KEPCO, research on the development of alternatives is urgently needed to respond to climate crisis and achieve carbon neutrality.

Although much effort is being made around the world to develop an eco-friendly gas that can replace SF6, it has yet to bring remarkable result, as developing a substitute gas for SF6 is more difficult and challenging than developing new drugs.*
* Difficulties in develop an alternative gas for SF6:Different regulations on the use of chemicals in each country, and as it is a sensitive chemical substance, litigations may arise due to different interests of nations, it is difficult to be developed by private companies in a short period of time (cost and time required, high possibility of failure), lack of ability to analyze gas materials, etc.

Despite this high possibility of failure, KERI embarked on the research and development with the mission of a national research institute to respond to global carbon emissions regulations and the enormous effects expected with successful development of SF6 alternative gas.

Circuit breaker for high voltage transmission using ‘K6 eco-friendly insulating gas’, which replaces SF6

First, among the gases currently used in industry, substances with a low global warming potential were sorted out, and the electrical and chemical properties of the selected primary candidates were closely analyzed to determine the 2nd round candidates. Then, final candidate materials were selected based on the results of insulation and explosion/ignition control performance tests, and the optimal ratio for application to power devices was derived to develop eco-friendly insulating gas. KERI named this independently developed gas ‘K6*.’
* K6: meaning K of KERI + final substances were derived in the 6th times in the 2nd round candidate group

K6 gas is environmentally friendly with a global warming potential of less than 1, and does not contain any serious toxic ingredients. The ‘boiling point’, which is a prerequisite for applying gas to power devices, is also low (–26°C), making the gas applicable in most areas.

KERI went further to apply K6 gas to ultra-high voltage (145kV) transmission-level circuit breakers and even passed the Interrupting performance test in accordance with the international standards of International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). In particular, ultra-high voltage transmission circuit breakers are considered to be the most difficult areas to apply insulating gas. Based on the results of the test, KERI plans to apply K6 gas to various power devices (breakers, transformers, switches, etc.) from distribution to transmission.

KERI Eco-Friendly Power Apparatus Research Center, which developed ‘K6 eco-friendly insulating gas’ to replace SF6

CREDIT

Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute

Dr. Yeon-ho Oh, head of Eco-Friendly Power Apparatus Research Center, KERI said, “K6 gas has better performance and is more environmentally friendly than other insulating gas that has been led by advanced overseas companies.” He added, “As Korea has the top-tier position in export in the global power device industry, the development of K6 gas will have a huge impact not only on the environment, but also on the economic and industrial front.”

Based on the achievement, it is planned to prepare for commercialization with technology transfer to Korean power apparatus companies. KERI is committed to contributing to strengthening the competitiveness of the domestic power apparatus industry by establishing clear design standards for the wide use of eco-friendly gas through continuous communication with the industry.

KERI is a government-funded research institute under the National Research Council of Science & Technology of the Ministry of Science and ICT. This study was conducted in collaboration with the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, Korea Research Institute of Standards, Korea Institute of Fusion Energy, and Korea Institute of Toxicology. <KERI>

 

GUN CRAZY AMERIKA

Emergency departments saw firearm injuries in children double during pandemic

Deaths from firearms after arrival to the hospital also doubled during the pandemic

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ANN & ROBERT H. LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO

Pediatric Emergency Department (ED) visits for firearm injuries doubled during the pandemic compared to earlier trends, according to a multicenter study published in the journal Pediatrics. During this time, deaths from firearm injuries in children and adolescents that occurred after arrival to the hospital also doubled – up from 3 percent of ED visits pre-pandemic to 6 percent of ED visits during the pandemic.

“With the pandemic we saw a drastic increase in firearm purchases, which might have led to the tragic spikes in injuries and deaths from firearms among children and adolescents,” said lead author Jennifer Hoffmann, MD, MS, pediatric emergency medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Dr. Hoffmann and colleagues conducted a retrospective study of firearm injury ED visits for children younger than 18 years old at nine urban U.S. hospitals participating in the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network Registry before and during the pandemic (January 2017-February 2020 and March 2020-November 2022).

There were 1904 ED visits by children for firearm injuries during the study time frame. Half were by older adolescents (15-17 years old), two out of three firearm injury visits were by Black youth, and two out of three firearm injury visits were by youth from under-resourced neighborhoods.

During the pandemic, ED visits for firearm injuries were higher than expected for youth 10 years of age and older, for both female and male patients, as well as for Latine and Black youth, while ED visits for firearm injuries did not substantially increase among White youth. Increases in firearm injury ED visits were seen in youth from under-resourced neighborhoods, as well as from wealthier areas.

“Increases in firearm injuries across socioeconomic groups indicate that no child in the U.S. is immune to the growing risks of firearm violence,” said Dr. Hoffmann. “Evidence-based policy solutions are desperately needed to tackle this crisis. For example, child access prevention laws, which hold firearm owners liable if a child can or does access a firearm, are associated with decreased firearm deaths in young people.”

Dr. Hoffmann adds, “To prevent youth firearm injuries, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends enactment and enforcement of child access prevention laws, as well as universal background checks, buyer regulations, extreme risk protection orders, and bans on semiautomatic military style weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

Dr. Hoffmann is the Children's Research Fund Junior Board Research Scholar.

Research at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute. The Manne Research Institute is focused on improving child health, transforming pediatric medicine and ensuring healthier futures through the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Lurie Children’s is a nonprofit organization committed to providing access to exceptional care for every child. It is ranked as one of the nation’s top children’s hospitals by U.S. News & World Report. Lurie Children’s is the pediatric training ground for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Emergency medicine-focused research at Lurie Children’s is conducted through the Grainger Research Program in Pediatric Emergency Medicine.

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JOURNAL

PEDIATRICS

 

Research examines why mask usage in Japan persists

Research out of Osaka University sheds light on mask usage in Japan before and after the downgrading of the legal status of COVID-19. Besides disease prevention, people use masks for sociological and psychological reasons

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OSAKA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

BI-DIRECTIONAL ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN MASK USAGE AND REASONS FOR MASKING. HIGHER ABSOLUTE VALUES FOR NUMBERS REPRESENT STRONGER ASSOCIATIONS. NUMBERS IN PARENTHESES ARE 95% CONFIDENCE INTERVALS.

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CREDIT: MICHIO MURAKAMI: BI-DIRECTIONAL ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN MASK USAGE AND THE ASSOCIATED REASONS BEFORE AND AFTER THE DOWNGRADING OF THE LEGAL STATUS OF COVID-19 IN JAPAN: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DISASTER RISK REDUCTION, 2023, DOI: HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1016/J.IJDRR.2023.104072

Osaka, Japan – When you think of Japan in the age of COVID, you might imagine a crowd of people wearing masks. But why do so many Japanese people wear masks?

In an article published this month in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, a researcher from Osaka University analyzed mask use before and after the government of Japan downgraded the legal status of COVID-19. Results showed that many people continue to wear masks for socio-psychological reasons – including reasons related to ‘relief’ and ‘norm’.

Of course, the obvious motivation for mask use is disease prevention. In the first half of 2020, masks were recommended worldwide because they help to prevent COVID-19 transmission. Japan has since had one of the highest rates of mask usage throughout the pandemic.

However, on May 5, 2023, the World Health Organization declared the end of COVID-19 as a global health emergency. Furthermore, on May 8, Japan downgraded the legal status of COVID-19 to the same level as seasonal influenza.

Michio Murakami, the study’s author, notes, “The online survey shows that 59% of Japanese participants are still wearing masks, even after the downgrading of the legal status of COVID-19. That is only slightly down from 67%, which was before the downgrading.”

The surveys were conducted among people aged 20 to 69 in Japan. The first survey was performed in April 2023, before the policy changes, while the second was performed after the changes in June 2023. A total of 291 participants completed both surveys.

So what reasons, besides disease prevention, might lead people to continue wearing masks? “One common socio-psychological reason involves what we call ‘relief’. This means that wearing a mask can help relieve anxiety for many people,” explains Murakami. “There’s a second sociological reason, too: a ‘norm’. This refers to when people think they should wear a mask because they see others wearing masks,” he explains. People that have this trait are more likely to wear a mask when others around them are wearing masks, unsurprisingly.

Murakami was also able to document correlations between mask-usage motivations and actual mask usage. For instance, citing psychological reasons for mask use in April was correlated with actually wearing a mask later on in June. Furthermore, wearing a mask in April was associated with citing infection avoidance as a reason to wear masks in June.

“So many Japanese people prefer to wear masks,” notes Murakami. “This study helps us understand why people might do so, even in light of reduced infection risk.”

 

###

The article, “Bi-directional associations between mask usage and beliefs about reasons for masking before and after the downgrading of the legal status of COVID-19 in Japan: A longitudinal study,” was published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2023.104072

 

About Osaka University

Osaka University was founded in 1931 as one of the seven imperial universities of Japan and is now one of Japan's leading comprehensive universities with a broad disciplinary spectrum. This strength is coupled with a singular drive for innovation that extends throughout the scientific process, from fundamental research to the creation of applied technology with positive economic impacts. Its commitment to innovation has been recognized in Japan and around the world, being named Japan's most innovative university in 2015 (Reuters 2015 Top 100) and one of the most innovative institutions in the world in 2017 (Innovative Universities and the Nature Index Innovation 2017). Now, Osaka University is leveraging its role as a Designated National University Corporation selected by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to contribute to innovation for human welfare, sustainable development of society, and social transformation.

Website: https://resou.osaka-u.ac.jp/e

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

DOI

10.1016/j.ijdrr.2023.104072 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Bi-directional associations between mask usage and the associated reasons before and after the downgrading of the legal status of COVID-19 in Japan: A longitudinal study