Major Niger uranium mine back in public control: govt

Niamey (Niger) (AFP) – Niger on Monday confirmed one of the world's biggest uranium mines had returned to public control after revoking the operating licence of French nuclear fuel producer Orano.


Issued on: 25/06/2024

Niger's military rulers have have broken ties with France, the former colonial power and traditional partner 

The company last week said it had been excluded from the Imouraren mine in northern Niger, in a move that highlighted tensions between France and the West African country's military rulers.

The government had not reacted before releasing a statement on Monday saying the Imouraren mine had returned "to the public domain of the state".

It justified revoking the licence by saying Orano "never honoured its commitments" despite two "formal notices" handed to it by the mines ministry in February 2022 and March this year.

Orano on Thursday said it had "taken note" of the withdrawal of the licence from its subsidiary Imouraren SA.

The move came despite its recent resumption of "activities" at the site, which had been fulfilled in line with the government's wishes, according to Orano.

The company added that it was "prepared to keep open all channels of communication" with the authorities while reserving the right to contest the decision in national or international courts.

The Imouraren mine sits on an estimated 200,000 tonnes of uranium, used for nuclear power and weapons.

But development was frozen after the collapse in world uranium prices following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

Niger's military rulers have vowed to review mining concessions in the country since taking power in a July 2023 coup, as part of its focus on national sovereignty.

They have also broken ties with France, the former colonial power and traditional partner, and turned towards Russia which is seeking to extend its influence in the region.

Niger in 2022 accounted for about a quarter of the natural uranium supplied to European nuclear power plants, according to data from the atomic organisation Euratom.

© 2024 AFP

UNESCO wants to add Stonehenge to list of endangered heritage sites

Paris (AFP) – The UN's cultural organisation said Monday it recommended adding Stonehenge, the renowned prehistoric site in England, to its world heritage in danger list, in what would be seen as an embarrassment for London.

Issued on: 25/06/2024

Stonehenge in southwest England -- carved and constructed at a time when there were no metal tools -- symbolises Britain's semi-mythical pre-historic period, and has spawned countless legends 

© William EDWARDS / AFP

The site has been in the UN organisation's sights because of British government plans to construct a controversial road tunnel near the world heritage site in southwestern England.

In a written decision seen by AFP, the World Heritage Committee recommended that Stonehenge be added to the UN body's heritage in danger list "with a view to mobilising international support".

The decision will have to be voted upon by the member states of the World Heritage Committee at a meeting in New Delhi in July.

One diplomat told AFP that the decision will likely be approved.

Stonehenge has had UNESCO world heritage status since 1986.

Placement on the UN body's heritage in danger list is seen as a dishonour by some countries.

Last July the British government approved the construction of a controversial road tunnel near Stonehenge despite efforts by campaigners to halt the £1.7 billion ($2.2 billion) project.

The diplomat pointed out that London had decided to approve the project "despite repeated warnings from the World Heritage Committee since 2017."

The planned tunnel is intended to ease congestion on an existing main road to southwest England that gets especially busy during the peak holiday periods.

Experts have warned of "permanent, irreversible harm" to the area.

Druids have held protests against the tunnel at a site they consider sacred and where they celebrate the summer and winter solstice -- the longest and shortest days of the year.

Built in stages between around 3,000 and 2,300 BCE, Stonehenge is one of the world's most important prehistoric megalithic monuments in terms of its size, sophisticated layout and architectural precision.

UNESCO runs a list of sites with World Heritage status around the world, a prestigious title that countries compete to bestow on their most famous natural and man-made locations.

A listing can help boost tourism -- but it comes with obligations to protect the site.

The port city of Liverpool in northwest England lost its World Heritage status for its docks in 2021 after UNESCO experts concluded that new real estate developments in the city had taken too much of a toll on its historical fabric.

© 2024 AFP

'Urgent' for Australia to protect Great Barrier Reef: UNESCO

Sydney (AFP) – Australia must take "urgent" action to protect the Great Barrier Reef, including setting more ambitious climate targets, the UN's cultural organisation has warned.

Issued on: 25/06/2024 

Large parts of the Great Barrier Reef have bleached and risk dying 

© DAVID GRAY / AFP

In a draft decision, UNESCO also asked Australia to submit an update on protection efforts early next year, but stopped short of recommending the reef be placed on its list of endangered heritage sites.

The decision, released late Monday, was welcomed by Australia's Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek as a "huge win".

"We are acting on climate change, improving local water quality, protecting our marine life, dealing with invasive species, and investing a record amount of money into reef programs," she said in a statement Tuesday.

But the UNESCO decision, which will guide a meeting of the World Heritage Committee in New Delhi next month, warns the world's largest coral system "remains under serious threat."

"Urgent and sustained action is of utmost priority," it added.

The fate of the reef has been a recurrent source of tension between UNESCO and Australian authorities, with the World Heritage Committee threatening to put the world's largest coral system on its list of "in danger" global heritage sites.

Behind-the-scenes diplomacy and lobbying from Australia have avoided such a move and commitments from the Labour government of Anthony Albanese have drawn praise from the Paris-based organisation.

The draft decision welcomed some of the steps taken by Australia, including on water quality around the reef and restrictions on gill-net fishing.

But it expressed "high concern" about land clearing threatening water quality, and said Australia should "set more ambitious emission reduction targets."

Citing the ongoing mass bleaching of the reef, it asked for an update by next February, rebuffing Australia's request to wait until 2026.

It also urged Australia to make public "as soon as possible" details on reef mortality rates in the latest round of bleaching.

Plibersek said the agency had recognised Australian efforts to protect the reef.

"Today's draft decision is a huge win for Queensland, a huge win for the thousands of people who rely on the reef for work, and a huge win for all the plants and animals that call it home," she said.

Environmental groups, however, said the UNESCO decision should be a "wake-up call".

"UNESCO has asked Australia to set more ambitious climate targets, and given us a February 2025 deadline to submit a progress report -- the clock is ticking," said Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO David Ritter.

The World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia also released new images on Tuesday showing bleached and dead coral on the reef.

The group urged Australia to commit to a federal emissions reduction target of at least 90 percent below 2005 levels by 2035 and to stop approving new fossil fuel projects.

Australia currently targets reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2050.

© 2024 AFP

World not ready for climate change-fuelled wildfires: experts

Paris (AFP) – The world is unprepared for the increasing ferocity of wildfires turbocharged by climate change, scientists say, as blazes from North America to Europe greet the northern hemisphere summer in the hottest year on record.


Issued on: 25/06/2024 - 

While extra resources have been poured into improving firefighting in recent years, experts said the same was not true for planning and preparing for such disasters 

© Darren HULL / AFP/File

Wildfires have already burned swathes through Turkey, Canada, Greece and the United States early this season as extreme heatwaves push temperatures to scorching highs.

While extra resources have been poured into improving firefighting in recent years, experts said the same was not true for planning and preparing for such disasters.

"We are still actually catching up with the situation," said Stefan Doerr, director of the Centre for Wildfire Research at the UK's Swansea University.

Predicting how bad any one blaze will be -- or where and when it will strike -- can be challenging, with many factors including local weather conditions playing into calculations.

But overall, wildfires are getting larger and burning more severely, said Doerr, who co-authored a recent paper examining the frequency and intensity of such extreme events.

A separate study published in June found the frequency and magnitude of extreme wildfires appeared to have doubled over the past 20 years.

By the end of the century, the number of extreme wildfires around the globe is tipped to rise 50 percent, according to a 2022 report by the UN Environment Programme.

Doerr said humanity had not yet faced up to this reality.

"We're clearly not well enough prepared for the situation that we're facing now," he said.

Climate change is a major driver, though other factors such as land use and the location of housing developments play a big part.

- 'We cannot fight the fires' -

Fires do not respect borders so responses have evolved between governments to jointly confront these disasters, said Jesus San-Miguel, an expert for the European Commission Joint Research Centre.

The EU has a strong model of resource sharing, and even countries outside the bloc along the Mediterranean have benefited from firefighting equipment or financial help in times of need, San-Miguel said.

But as wildfires become increasingly extreme, firefighting simply won't be a fix.

"We get feedback from our colleagues in civil protection who say, 'We cannot fight the fires. The water evaporates before it reaches the ground,'" San-Miguel said.

"Prevention is something we need to work on more," he added.

Wildfires have already burned swathes through Turkey as extreme heatwaves push temperatures to scorching highs © Mahmut BOZARSLAN / AFP

Controlled burns, grazing livestock, or mechanised vegetation removal are all effective ways to limit the amount of burnable fuel covering the forest floor, said Rory Hadden from the University of Edinburgh.

Campfire bans and establishing roads as firebreaks can all be effective in reducing starts and minimising spread, said Hadden, an expert on fire safety and engineering.

But such efforts require funding and planning from governments that may have other priorities and cash-strapped budgets, and the return is not always immediately evident.

"Whatever method or technique you're using to manage a landscape... the result of that investment is nothing happens, so it's a very weird psychological thing. The success is: well, nothing happened," said Hadden.
'Short memories'

Local organisations and residents often take the lead in removing vegetation in the area immediately around their homes and communities.

But not everyone is prepared to accept their neighbourhood might be at risk.

"People don't think that it will happen to them, but it eventually will," San-Miguel said, pointing to historically cold or wet climates like the US Pacific Northwest that have witnessed major fires in recent years.

'People don't think that it will happen to them, but it eventually will,' fire expert Jesus San-Miguel said © ETIENNE TORBEY / AFP/File

Canada has adapted to a new normal of high latitude wildfires, while some countries in Scandinavia are preparing for ever-greater fire risk.

But how best to address the threat remains an open question, said Guillermo Rein from Imperial College London, even in places where fire has long been part of the landscape.

Even in locations freshly scarred by fire, the clearest lessons are sometimes not carried forward.

"People have very short memories for wildfires," said Rein, a fire science expert.

In July 2022, London witnessed its worst single day of wildfires since the bombings of World War II, yet by year's end only academics were still talking about how to best prepare for the future.

"While the wildfires are happening, everybody's asking questions... When they disappear, within a year, people forget about it," he said.

© 2024 AFP

Science of beverage sipping: Is coffee good for you or bad for you?


By Dr. Tim Sandle

June 23, 2024

DIGITAL JOURNAL

Morning coffee. — Image © Tim Sandle

One scientific study about the benefits of drinking coffee tends to be counterbalanced by another that draws out neutral or ill-health effects. What is the right answer? When it comes to your genetics, the answer is complicated.

Of course, such an answer depends on how much coffee is consumed, with six cups of coffee a day were considered the upper limit of safe consumption. But is it more complicated than that and does the answer relate to the individual?

While the effects of coffee consumption on human health remains a knotty question, but one thing is certain: coffee is a psychoactive substance.

Researcher Dr. Sandra Sanchez-Roige, from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, has been leading a team examining coffee-consumption characteristics of people from a 23andMe database.

The research team collected genetic data as well as self-reported coffee-consumption numbers to assemble a genome-wide association study. The idea was to make connections between the genes that were known to be associated with coffee consumption and the traits or conditions related to health.

The researchers used these data to identify regions on the genome associated with whether somebody is more or less likely to consume coffee. From this they proceeded to identify the genes and biology that could underlie coffee intake.

The data suggests the particular gene variants that a person inherits from their parents influence how much coffee they are likely to consume.

Sanchez-Roige says the genetic influence on coffee consumption was the first of two questions the researchers wanted to address.

“The second is something that coffee lovers are really keen on learning,” she explains. “Is drinking coffee good or bad? Is it associated with positive health outcomes or not?”

The answer is not definitive. The group’s genome-wide association study of 130,153 U.S.-based 23andMe research participants was compared with a similar UK Biobank database of 334,649 Britons, revealing consistent positive genetic associations between coffee and harmful health outcomes such as obesity and substance use.

A positive genetic association is a connection between a specific gene variant (the genotype) and a specific condition (the phenotype).

Conversely, a negative genetic association is an apparent protective quality discouraging the development of a condition. The findings get more complicated when it comes to psychiatric conditions.

It was also found that the relationship between genotype and phenotype is more different than the relationship between coffee and tea.

One factor influencing the interpretation of the data is that coffee comes in a variety of forms, from instant to frappuccino, and is consumed amid cultural norms that differ from place to place.

The researchers conclude that to unravel the relationships between genetics and the environment, more research is needed, research focusing not only on coffee/caffeine intake but also other substance-use issues.

So, for the time being the question of coffee and the impact on health remains unanswered.

The research appears in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, titled “Genome-wide association studies of coffee intake in UK/US participants of European ancestry uncover cohort-specific genetic association

Time to ‘spruce up’ your pathogen safety measures with wooden surfaces?


ByDr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
PublishedJune 23, 2024


Panshanger Park woodland. — image by © Tim Sandle.

Viruses, including the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, can get passed from person to person via contaminated surfaces. Depending on the type of surface, enveloped viruses, like the coronavirus, can survive up to five days on surfaces; whereas, nonenveloped viruses, including the enteroviruses linked to the common cold, can survive for weeks even if the surfaces are disinfected.

Healthcare facilities have for a long time been concerned about surface transmission and this has been met by the use of different surface finishes and disinfection regimes.

Over the past few decades wooden surfaces have been removed from clinical practices, with such surfaces being considered challenging to disinfect. In some cases, antimicrobial surfaces have been installed, such as those based on copper or with silver ions added.

However, it appears that wood might not be the unsuitable surface for wood has been found to possess anti-viral properties. Wood has natural antiviral properties that can reduce the time viruses persist on its surface — and some species of wood are more effective than others at reducing infectivity.

New research has considered for how long enveloped and nonenveloped viruses remained infectious on the surface of six types of wood: Scots pine, silver birch, grey alder, eucalyptus, pedunculate oak and Norway spruce.

To determine viral activity, the virologists flushed a wood sample’s surface with a liquid solution at different time points and then placed that solution into a Petri dish that contained cultured cells.

After incubating the cells with the solution, the scientists measured the number of cells (if any) infected with the virus.

Results from the study with an enveloped coronavirus showed that pine, spruce, birch and alder need one hour to completely reduce the virus’ ability to infect cells, and with eucalyptus and oak needing two hours.

Overall, pine had the fastest onset of antiviral activity, beginning after five minutes. Spruce came in second, showing a sharp drop in infectivity after 10 minutes.

For a nonenveloped enterovirus, the researchers found that incubation on oak and spruce surfaces resulted in a loss of infectivity within about an hour, with oak having an onset time of 7.5 minutes and spruce after 60 minutes. Pine, birch and eucalyptus reduced the virus’ infectivity after four hours, and alder showed no antiviral effect.

Across both types of virus, spruce emerges as the best ‘all-rounder’.

The research appears in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, titled “Tree Species-Dependent Inactivation of Coronaviruses and Enteroviruses on Solid Wood Surfaces..”

Adidas scores success with pink Germany shirt


AFP
June 24, 2024


Midfielders Ilkay Gundogan Jamal Musiala in Germany's pink and purple jerseys after winning the UEFA Euro 2024 Group A football match against Hungary on June 19 - Copyright AFP/File Philippe LOPEZ

Derided at its unveiling, Germany’s pink-and-purple away kit has become the breakout style star of Euro 2024, where it has added a splash of colour to the stands at the host’s fixtures.

The gaudy number has sold “almost as much” as Germany’s traditional white home strip, Adidas spokesman Stefan Pursche told AFP.

Under normal circumstances, four out of every five shirts sold would be the home kit, but the pink change has had “exceptional” success, Pursche said.

The huge demand has made it Germany’s “best-selling away kit in history”, ahead of previous iconic green or black jerseys.

Despite initial scepticism over the away shirt’s daring palette — and some homophobic or sexist commentary about the choice of colours — the kit has been embraced by fans.

“I think it is courageous to choose such a colour,” fan Alex Mueller, 39, told AFP outside Germany’s game against Switzerland on Sunday, sporting a pink shirt received as a gift.

The shirt was out-of-stock on Adidas’s website on Monday morning, with new supplies to be put online at 0830 GMT on Tuesday.

Most of the Adidas’s stores in Germany were also running very low, with only a few very small sizes or children’s models still available.

The popularity of the shirt has made it a hot commodity. Leo, 17, told AFP by Adidas’s Frankfurt shop on Friday that he would take the four pink shirts he had put his hands on to “resell on eBay” at a markup.

“They are the most difficult to get, so it’s there that I can make the biggest gains,” he said.

Sales of the pink kit could continue to rise if Germany progresses deeper into the tournament.

Julian Nagelsmann’s side sealed a first-placed finish in the group stage on Sunday with a 1-1 draw against Switzerland.

For the 2014 World Cup, Adidas sold some three million Germany shirts, with around half-a-million being sold in the days following Germany’s final victory over Argentina.

The pink strip however figures to be one of the last kits Adidas makes for their home team after decades during which the sportswear company’s three stripes were a fixture on German kits.

US rival Nike has secured the contract to outfit the German national team from 2027.

On Dobbs anniversary, advocates mark '2 years of outrage' and rally for abortion rights

Julia Conley, Common Dreams
June 24, 2024 

Abortion rights activists rally in Miami in June 2022 after the US Supreme Court struck down the right to abortion

Exactly two years after the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for nearly half of U.S. states so far to ban or severely restrict abortion care, reproductive justice advocates convened in Washington, D.C. on Monday to mark the anniversary and speak out ahead of another ruling that could have deadly consequences for pregnant people across the country.

As the country marks two years since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which overturned the 1973 ruling that affirmed Americans have the constitutional right to obtain abortions, advocates expressed a need to acknowledge the harm caused by Dobbs while also looking ahead to the pro-forced pregnancy movement's desire to further restrict reproductive rights.

"Women shouldn't have to wait to see if the Supreme Court will decide if they can get lifesaving healthcare in all states. This is a direct result of the disastrous Dobbs decision two years ago," said Margaret Viggiani, a campaigner who joined the National Mobilization for Reproductive Justice Monday at the rally and press conference in the nation's capital.

The decision expected by the end of the month is Idaho and Moyle, et al. v. United States, which stems from Idaho's near-total ban on abortion care. In August 2022, a federal judge barred the state from enforcing the ban due to its conflict with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospital emergency departments that accept Medicare to provide treatment to any patient with an emergency medical condition, including people facing pregnancy complications who need abortions.


Since the Dobbs decision was handed down two years ago, the real-world implications of abortion bans have become clear to many Americans as advocates have shared the stories of women like Kate Cox, who was forced to flee Texas to obtain abortion care when she learned her fetus had a fatal condition; Anya Cook and Shanae Smith-Cunningham, who faced the dangerous condition preterm prelabor rupture of the membranes (PPROM) but were unable to receive the standard of care recognized by obstetricians under Florida's 15-week abortion ban; and Amanda Zurawski, who was forced to become "sick enough" from a rapidly spreading infection before doctors would provide an abortion in Texas.

The life-threatening experiences of those women and others, said Human Rights Watch on Monday, exemplify "two years of outrage" since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

"The Supreme Court's revocation of national protections for abortion access, and the restrictive state laws that followed, means the United States is violating the rights to life, health, privacy, nondiscrimination, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, among others," said the global organization. "Access to legal abortion is essential to achieve gender equality. Every year, more leaders, legislatures, and courts abroad understand this. U.S. states should repeal restrictions on abortion, enshrine access to abortion in state constitutions, and advance the global trend of recognizing women's autonomy."

Last month, polling from the Pew Research Center suggested the stories of Zurawski, Cox, and other women have struck a chord with many Americans; more than 60% said they believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a four-percentage-point jump from 2021.

At the rally in Washington on Monday, reproductive rights advocates joined union members in calling on the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to convene a national labor conference for reproductive justice, arguing that the largest federation of unions in the U.S. "is in the most powerful position to mobilize thousands of workers in defense of this fundamental right."

With 1 in 3 women of reproductive age in the U.S. now living in states with abortion bans, Reproductive Justice Maryland executive director Jakeya Johnson said at the rally that the Dobbs decision has "disproportionately impacted those who are marginalized and struggling to make ends meet."

"Today we're here to say, enough is enough," said Johnson. "The power of our collective voices cannot be underestimated. When labor and reproductive justice movements join forces, we are unstoppable. We're a force for change, and our strength lies in our numbers."

Meanwhile, groups including Reproductive Freedom for All, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the National Women's Law Center, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America marked the Dobbs anniversary by launching their Abortion Access Now campaign, pledging a $100 million investment to advance abortion rights and access through lobbying, grassroots organizing, public education, and other communications strategies.

"We envision a future where abortion, and all sexual and reproductive healthcare, is not only legal but also accessible, affordable, and free from stigma or fear," said the campaign. "This campaign is committed to building and leading a broad, inclusive vision for abortion access, ensuring everyone can make fundamental decisions about their health and bodies with dignity and support. Together, we will secure the freedom to control our own bodies and care for ourselves, our families, and our communities."

A separate campaign launched by the judicial reform group Stand Up America similarly marked the Dobbs anniversary and focused on warning U.S. voters that a victory by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in November would "ensure MAGA control of the [U.S. Supreme] Court for decades to come," with an impact on abortion rights and other crucial issues.


"We can't let that happen," said executive director Christina Harvey.

Egypt tomb find may shed light on ancient diseases: ministry

Agence France-Presse
June 24, 2024

The top fragment of a sarcophagus discovered at the Aswan site © - / Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities/AFP

A new discovery of 33 ancient tombs in Egypt's southern city of Aswan could reveal "new information on diseases" prevalent at the time, the tourism and antiquities ministry said Monday.

The tombs date back to the Ancient Egyptian Late Period and the Greco-Roman Periods, which collectively lasted from the seventh century BC until around the fourth century AD.

The burials were found by a joint Egyptian-Italian archaeological mission.

Ayman Ashmawy, who heads the Supreme Council of Antiquities' Egyptian Antiquities Division, said studies of the mummies "indicate that 30 to 40 percent of those buried died in their youth, as newborns or as adolescents".

Patrizia Piacentini, professor of Egyptology and archaeology at the University of Milan, headed the Italian side of the mission.

She said preliminary studies on the remains showed that "some suffered from infectious diseases, while others had bone disorders".

The remains of several adult women showed signs of pelvic bone trauma.

Other mummies indicated "anemia, malnutrition, chest diseases, tuberculosis and signs of osteoporosis", Piacentini said in a ministry statement.

Since 2018, the mission has been excavating the area around the Aga Khan mausoleum where Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah is buried, on the west bank of the Nile River just across from Aswan city centre.

Among the remains found were "an adult, perhaps a woman, and a child who may have died at the age of one or two", said Abdelmoneim Said, General Director of Aswan and Nubia Antiquities.

"The two bodies were still attached to each other inside a stone coffin," he added.

Dopamine: brain chemical helps us understand other people

The Conversation
June 24, 2024 

Brain

The neurotransmitter dopamine is commonly known for its role in brain networks regulating pleasure and reward.

But many people with disorders that affect the dopamine system, such as Parkinson’s disease or schizophrenia, also struggle with social abilities. These include recognizing or understanding the emotions and mental states of others, something scientists call the “theory of mind”.

These social difficulties can significantly impact the social relationships and quality of life of those affected. However, it has remained unclear whether these challenges are directly caused by dopamine imbalances or by other factors that co-occur with these disorders.

Now our new research, published in PLOS Biology, shows that a lack of dopamine seems to directly cause social difficulties. This suggests that dopamine-based drugs could one day also help treat the social difficulties in disorders with dopamine imbalances.

People with Parkinson’s disease often display fewer facial expressions than healthy individuals. Others may respond to this in negative ways – eventually leading sufferers to withdraw from social situations altogether. And people who are socially withdrawn for a long time can struggle more with social interactions as they don’t get a chance to practice (remember how difficult it was to return to the social world after lockdown?).

This is one possible explanation for why people with Parkinson’s might experience difficulties in understanding others.

However, it is not the only explanation. Parkinson’s is linked to the death of dopamine neurons in the brain. So some scientists have suspected that dopamine plays a key role in our ability to understand others.
Experimental design

Our latest study tested this latter explanation in 33 healthy individuals. We did this by giving people a drug intended to lower dopamine levels in parts of the brain by blocking the receptors that the neurotransmitter binds to.

We then assessed their theory of mind abilities by using an adaptation of a classical scientific experiment. In the original study introducing this experiment, the authors observed that when people are shown short videos of interacting triangles, they readily attribute social roles and mental states to the moving objects.

We used similar videos. Some were “mental state interactions”, which involved one triangle acting upon or causing a mental state in the other triangle, such as “surprising” it. We also had control videos, involving simpler, action-based interactions, such as one triangle following the other. This is a great way to investigate people’s ability to understand others because you exclude other factors that may influence participants’ performance, such as how they process language or faces.




Triangle gets surprised. Bianca Schuster, CC BY-SA

All participants completed the test twice, once after receiving the dopamine drug, and once after receiving a placebo pill. The order in which they received the interventions was randomised.

We found that taking the drug, in comparison to the placebo, reduced participants’ ability to accurately label both types of triangle videos. This suggests that dopamine is crucial for interpreting social interactions, whether they involve understanding mental states (such as surprise) or not (following).


Interestingly, those participants who showed reduced ability to accurately attribute mental states to triangles were also more likely to struggle with recognising emotions (as measured by another test showing a human form walking in angry, sad and happy emotional states) after receiving the drug.

This indicates that there might be a shared mechanism underlying both emotion recognition and theory of mind abilities in the brain. It is possible that dopamine regulates these abilities via its reward network, encouraging us to seek out those things that make us feel good, and repeating those behaviours. In the social context, dopamine might help us to pay specific attention to the subtle social cues communicated by other people.

Our results suggest that people who suffer from dopamine imbalances might find it hard to adequately recognise the social signals communicated by others. But we also discovered a second possibility. Beside its role in processing rewards, dopamine is well known to play a crucial role in movement. This is why the main symptoms of Parkinson’s disease include difficulties in this domain, such as problems with initiating movements.


Previous research suggests that we use (representations of) our own movements to understand others’ movements. The way people move is often a telltale sign of their emotions and mental states. We typically move slower, and slouch, if we’re sad and walk faster if we’re happy.

We showed that people were better at interpreting triangle movements when the triangles moved around in a way that was similar to their own movements. This suggests that people who struggle with movements may find it harder to interpret the movements of others, and therefore their mental states.

That said, the drug we used in the study made them move more slowly. But this did not have any effect on participants’ ability to interpret the triangle videos.


This is likely because, over a lifetime, we associate our own movements with certain mental states and use these patterns to understand others’ movements. This means that if someone gives you a drug that temporarily changes your movements, you still continue to use your long-held patterns to interpret other people’s actions.

But it is possible that in the later stages of Parkinson’s, long-term dopamine depletion might change their stored movement patterns – making it harder to interpret them in others.

Possible treatments


We believe these new insights represent a significant step forward in our understanding of the neurochemical bases of social cognition.

Our results can also help us better understand the social effects of dopaminergic drugs, which are prescribed to millions of people every day, including to people with Parkinson’s and schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia, for example, have too much dopamine in some parts of their brain. And research suggests this may also lead to problems with understanding others – with balanced levels being optimal. What we previously didn’t know is that the dopamine blockers aimed at treating hallucinations and delusions may also help with their mentalising abilities.

Our study will hopefully pave the way for future studies aiming at the development of new therapeutic interventions for people who find it hard to understand others. Besides people with Parkinson’s and schizophrenia, this might be beneficial for a range of other conditions affected by dopamine imbalances, such as Huntington’s disease or Tourette’s syndrome.


Bianca Schuster, Postdoctoral Reseracher in cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Universität Wien and Jennifer Cook, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.