One simple brain hack might boost learning and improve mental health

Curiosity supercharges people’s memory for paintings they saw while pretending to be an art thief

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: “WATCH OUT FOR THE SECURITY GUARD!” A VIDEO OF THE COMPUTER GAME SHOWS HOW PARTICIPANTS CHOSE BETWEEN FOUR DIFFERENT COLORED DOORS TO REVEAL DIFFERENT PAINTINGS (AND THEIR VALUE). PARTICIPANTS HAD TO AVOID BEING SPOTTED BY A SECURITY GUARD BY QUICKLY PRESSING SPACE BAR WHEN HE POPPED UP, AS AN ATTENTION CHECK. view more 

CREDIT: ALYSSA SINCLAIR - DUKE INSTITUTE FOR BRAIN SCIENCES

DURHAM, N.C. – Shifting from a high-pressure mindset to a curious one improves people’s memory.

New research from Duke found that people who imagined being a thief scouting a virtual art museum in preparation for a heist were better at remembering the paintings they saw, compared to people who played the same computer game while imagining that they were executing the heist in-the-moment.

These subtle differences in motivation — urgent, immediate goal-seeking versus curious exploration for a future goal — have big potential for framing real-world challenges such as encouraging people to get a vaccine, prompting climate change action, and even treating psychiatric disorders.

The findings appeared online July 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Alyssa Sinclair, Ph.D. ’23, a postdoctoral researcher working in the lab of Duke Institute for Brain Sciences director Alison Adcock, Ph.D., M.D., recruited 420 adults to pretend to be art thieves for a day. The participants were then randomly assigned to one of two groups and received different backstories.

“For the urgent group, we told them, ‘You’re a master thief, you're doing the heist right now. Steal as much as you can!’,” Sinclair said. “Whereas for the curious group, we told them they were a thief who's scouting the museum to plan a future heist.”

After getting these different backstories, however, participants in the two groups played the exact same computer game, scored the exact same way. They explored an art museum with four colored doors, representing different rooms, and clicked on a door to reveal a painting from the room and its value. Some rooms held more valuable collections of art. No matter which scenario they were pretending to be in, everyone earned real bonus money by finding more valuable paintings.

The impact of this difference in mindset was most apparent the following day. When participants logged back in, they were met with a pop quiz about whether they could recognize 175 different paintings (100 from the day before, and 75 new ones). If participants flagged a painting as familiar, they also had to recall how much it was worth.

Sinclair and her co-author, fellow Duke psychology & neuroscience graduate student Candice Yuxi Wang, were gratified after they graded the tests to see their predictions had played out­­.

“The curious group participants who imagined planning a heist had better memory the next day,” Sinclair said. “They correctly recognized more paintings. They remembered how much each painting was worth. And reward boosted memory, so valuable paintings were more likely to be remembered. But we didn’t see that in the urgent group participants who imagined executing the heist.”

Urgent group participants, however, had a different advantage. They were better at figuring out which doors hid more expensive pieces, and as a result snagged more high value paintings. Their stash was appraised at about $230 more than the curious participants’ collection.

The difference in strategies (curious versus urgent) and their outcomes (better memory versus higher-valued paintings) doesn’t mean one is better than the other, though.

“It’s valuable to learn which mode is adaptive in a given moment and use it strategically,” Dr. Adcock said.

For example, being in an urgent, high-pressure mode might be the best option for a short-term problem.

“If you're on a hike and there's a bear, you don't want to be thinking about long-term planning,” Sinclair said. “You need to focus on getting out of there right now.”

Opting for an urgent mindset might also be useful in less grisly scenarios that require short-term focus, Sinclair explained, like prompting people to get a covid vaccine.

For encouraging long-term memory or action, stressing people out is less effective.

“Sometimes you want to motivate people to seek information and remember it in the future, which might have longer term consequences for lifestyle changes,” Sinclair said. “Maybe for that, you need to put them in a curious mode so that they can actually retain that information.”

Sinclair and Wang are now following up on these findings to see how urgency and curiosity activate different parts of the brain. Early evidence suggests that, by engaging the amygdala, an almond-shaped brain region best known for its role in fear memory, “urgent mode” helps form focused, efficient memories. Curious exploration, however, seems to shuttle the learning-enhancing neurochemical dopamine to the hippocampus, a brain region crucial for forming detailed long-term memories.

With these brain results in mind, Dr. Adcock is exploring how her lab’s research might also benefit the patients she sees as a psychiatrist.

“Most of adult psychotherapy is about how we encourage flexibility, like with curious mode” Dr. Adcock said. “But it’s much harder for people to do since we spend a lot of our adult lives in an urgency mode.”

These thought exercises may give people the ability to manipulate their own neurochemical spigots and develop “psychological maneuvers,” or cues that act similar to pharmaceuticals, Dr. Adcock explained.

“For me, the ultimate goal would be to teach people to do this for themselves,” Dr. Adcock said. “That’s empowering.”

Support for the research came from a Duke Health Scholars Award from Duke University.

CITATION: “Instructed Motivational States Bias Reinforcement Learning and Memory Formation,” Alyssa H. Sinclair, Yuxi C. Wang, R. Alison Adcock. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 25 2023. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2304881120

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2304881120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Instructed Motivational States Bias Reinforcement Learning and Memory Formation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jul-2023

 

Study offers objective insights to near-miss collisions between drones, airplanes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

EMBRY-RIDDLE AERONAUTICAL UNIVERSITY

Researchers have developed a new way to accurately count and objectively analyze close encounters between drones and airplanes — without depending solely on pilot sightings.

In a peer-reviewed study published by the Society of Automotive Engineers in the “SAE International Journal of Aerospace,” researchers looked at more than 1.8 million piloted aircraft operations and nearly 460,000 flights by small-uncrewed aerial systems (sUAS) around Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, a major hub.

Between August 2018 and July 2021, researchers with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Unmanned Robotic Systems Analysis (URSA) identified 24 near-midair collisions (NMACs) in which sUAS or “drones” came within 500 feet of piloted aircraft.

Given that most air carrier close calls happened within 1.5 miles of a runway approach or departure zone, researchers recommended extending the runway exclusion zone for drones at the ends of high-risk runways, from about 1 mile to 3.5 miles.

“That modification would provide enhanced protection for piloted aircraft operating at less than 500 feet above ground level during approach or departure,” said Ryan Wallace, associate professor of Aeronautical Science. “Typically, small uncrewed aircraft don’t fly above 400 feet.”

Gathering Objective Evidence

Up to this point, information about narrow escapes between sUAS and airplanes has been based on subjective reports from pilots who must simultaneously identify and evade drones in the air. Existing information does not include sUAS not spotted by pilots. Yet, the FAA received an alarming 2,596 pilot reports in 2021 — more than double the 1,210 reports during the first full calendar year of tracking in 2015.

Now, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University researchers have devised an objective way to gather detailed information about NMACs between drones and airplanes.

They analyzed sUAS and aircraft telemetry data collected using an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) detection device connected to an antenna atop Dallas-Fort Worth Airport’s busy Terminal C concourse. For each sUAS within a 30-mile radius, the device captured telemetry, altitude, launch location and other details.

Researchers combined that information with ADS-B (automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast), as well as Mode S messages transmitted by airplanes and tracked by the OpenSky Network. To better understand and visualize the resulting data, all information was fed into URSA’s Airspace Awareness Platform, or AAP-NMAC — a proprietary data analytics software.

“We hope that our findings will help improve aviation safety by reducing the risk of collisions between unmanned aircraft systems and piloted aircraft operating in the National Airspace System,” Wallace said.

Understanding Near-Miss Events

Over the nearly three-year study period, researchers detected 24 close-call events, including two in 2018, one in 2019, 14 in 2020 and seven in 2021. Across all of the NMACs, the mean lateral distance between the drone and the airplane was only about 215 feet. Commercial air carriers were involved in 11 NMACs, while seven incidents involved helicopters and six involved general aviation aircraft.

All of the helicopter encounters happened within 1.25 miles of a heliport. Similarly, in 10 of the 11 air carrier encounters, the aircraft was within 1.5 miles of approach or departure and lower than 500 feet above the ground.

“Operations within the vicinity of an airport are critical flight phases for pilots with high workload levels. It is within these areas where aircraft have added susceptibly of a collision with sUAS,” said Scott Winter, associate professor of Graduate Studies and associate dean for research, who was a co-author of the research article. “The findings from this study provide objective data for operators, government agencies and airlines to understand sUAS operations better and prevent possible conflicts.”

As of 2020, an estimated 1.46 million sUAS were operating in the National Airspace System, the FAA has reported. By 2025, the FAA predicts the small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUAS) fleet will include nearly 2.4 million units.

“The proliferation of drones, particularly ones available to the general public, poses obvious risks,” said research collaborator and professor of Human Factors Dr. Stephen Rice. “Unfortunately, not all drone operators are responsible, knowledgeable or safety-minded. Many of them are not even aware of the rules they must follow.”

Of the 24 NMACs identified by Embry-Riddle researchers, Rice noted, the same three sUAS were responsible for more than half (13) of the encounters. Further, in 96% of the cases (23), the drone was operating in excess of the maximum permissible altitude for that area.

Though rare, NMACs between drones and piloted aircraft have happened. On Sept. 18, 2020, a Los Angeles police helicopter hit a drone, requiring an emergency landing. A second helicopter-sUAS collision over Los Angeles had been reported nine months earlier.

This fall, the FAA will implement a new requirement so that all drone operators will need a remote identification or RID signal to enhance safety and security. For those drone operators who comply with the requirement, Wallace noted, “RID signals should further enhance objective information about near-miss encounters between drones and airplanes.”

The journal article describing these findings is entitled “Three Case Studies on Small Uncrewed Aerial Systems Near Midair Collisions with Aircraft: An Evidence-Based Approach for Using Objective Uncrewed Aerial Systems Detection Technology” (DOI: 10.4271/01-16-03-0023), in the SAE [Society of Automotive Engineers] International Journal of Aerospace. In addition to Wallace, Winter and Rice, co-authors include graduate student Sang-A Lee and David C. Kovar of Unmanned Robotics Systems Analysis, USA.

About Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Reporters worldwide contact Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for content experts in all aspects of aviation, aviation business, aerospace, engineering and STEM-related fields. Our faculty experts specialize in unmanned and autonomous systems, security and intelligence, air traffic and airport management, astronomy, human factors psychology, meteorology, spaceflight operations, urban air mobility and much more. Visit the Embry-Riddle Newsroom for story ideas.

Embry-Riddle educates 31,300+ students at its residential campuses in Daytona Beach, Florida and Prescott, Arizona, at approximately 110 Worldwide Campus locations and through online degree programs. In 2023, U.S. News & World Report named Embry-Riddle Worldwide the nation’s No. 2 provider of online bachelor’s degree programs. The university has ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 in this category every year since 2016. Our residential campuses hold multiple Top 10 rankings. All of our campuses have been ranked Best for Veterans.

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JOURNAL

SAE International Journal of Aerospace

DOI

10.4271/01-16-03-0023 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

“Three Case Studies on Small Uncrewed Aerial Systems Near Midair Collisions with Aircraft: An Evidence-Based Approach for Using Objective Uncrewed Aerial Systems Detection Technology

 

Dune restoration could increase the resilience of Southern California's urban beaches to sea level rise

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA BARBARA

 

IMAGE: BEACH BUR, A NATIVE PLANT THAT HELPED TO FORM DUNES ON A SECTION OF SANTA MONICA BEACH IN LOS ANGELES view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO CREDIT: KARINA JOHNSTON

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Over the last several years, the residents of Santa Monica, a coastal city on the edge of Los Angeles, saw something neither they, their parents, or perhaps even their grandparents had ever seen before: a three-foot-tall dune system rising gently from the flat, groomed expanse of one of the world’s most famous urban beaches. It’s a six year alliance between sand, wind and vegetation, and, according to UC Santa Barbara researchers, it’s one way to enlist nature to help protect the coast from the impacts of climate change.

“The project was really to assess whether we could naturally grow dunes on a heavily urbanized, mechanically raked beach that had been that way for more than 70 years,” said Karina Johnston, a doctoral student at UCSB’s Marine Science Institute (MSI) and the Bren School for Environmental Science & Management, and lead author on a paper in Frontiers in Marine Science. “Could it work? Could it inform natural solutions to help protect our coastline from sea-level rise?” The short answer: quite possibly.

The threat of sea-level rise has become an issue for all coastal cities around the world as they grapple with warming oceans, more intense storms and flooding events. For heavily populated stretches of coast, such as Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles, the issue is especially nuanced: City planners have to walk the line between protecting the coast and keeping it available to the millions of visitors it receives each year.

“At the start of the project, considerations were centered around balancing ecology, beach access and the needs of local residents and businesses,” said Shannon Parry, chief sustainability officer for the City of Santa Monica. “Given the popularity of Santa Monica Beach, the project needed to be interactive and accessible.” 

Beach grooming (or raking) is a coastal management measure undertaken generations ago to pick up trash, remove seaweed and make the beach more appealing for visitors. 

“Those management activities have been in place for decades on urban beaches, so it’s created an institutionalized construct of what a beach should look like,” Johnston said. 

Though well-intentioned, the practice of heavily raking the top few inches of sand several times a week and picking up kelp wrack does keep the beach free of debris, but it also flattens the natural landscape of wind-swept dunes held together by natural vegetation, impacts biodiversity and reduces habitat for wildlife. These unnaturally wide stretches of sand have since become the iconic look of southern California beaches, with coastal cities spending millions of dollars each year to maintain it.

But with the growing threats of climate change and sea level rise, people who study and manage California’s urban beaches are taking another look at beach grooming. In collaboration with the City of Santa Monica and The Bay Foundation and other partners, Johnston and MSI researchers Dave Hubbard and Jenifer Dugan started a long-term experiment, sectioning off three sides of a 1.2 hectare (about 3 acre) stretch of Santa Monica Beach with sand fencing, and sowing native dune plant seeds (red sand verbena, beach bur, beach salt bush and beach evening primrose). Then they waited. 

And waited. 

And waited, conducting scientific surveys throughout the study period, and turning to UCLA postdoctoral researcher Kyle Emery to document the long-term results via drone surveys.

“The success of the project was evident on the ground, but the aerial view from the drone provided an entirely different perspective in which the restoration site stood out like an island within a groomed landscape,” Emery said. “The data we collected with the drone surveys allowed us to build digital elevation models and estimate the sand accumulation and increase in elevation of the restoration site relative to the adjacent beach.” Six years after it began, the general elevation across their pilot study area increased by about 0.3 meter (about 1 foot), including a higher foredune ridge with a 0.9 m maximum elevation and 1-m dunes along the perimeter.  The accumulation of sand into dune forms was assisted by native vegetation, which trapped sand as it blew into the area, forming hummocks and dunes . 

Humans weren’t the only ones who noticed the new landforms; shorebirds, and especially the threatened western snowy plover, had started to make use of the new dune landscape to roost. 

Waiting for nature and conducting scientific research was probably the easier job. The collaborators simultaneously undertook a massive information campaign aimed at the local beach community, explaining what the project was for and what they could expect.

“The City of Santa Monica was a fantastic partner,” Johnston said. “They are very forward-thinking about climate change.” City staff dedicated time and effort to sending out mailers, building a website, generating blogs and leveraging social media. They also added informative signs at the site to explain the importance of coastal resilience and set up meetings so the researchers could directly answer any questions from the public.

What’s important to remember, according to the researchers, is that human involvement was also part of the vision. “What we really wanted to do was to let people interact with the site and to not impact recreational opportunities,” Johnston said. Hence, while the area was marked off with signs requesting minimal disturbance, the oceanward side of the plot was unfenced to open it to recreation. 

The public response was “incredibly positive,” according to the researchers, due in large part to the access provided for recreation, and to a walkway through the experimental plot. It became so popular that that people would go out of their way to walk through the middle of the site on their way to the water’s edge and take pictures or birdwatch. 

Not everyone was enthusiastic about the project from the start. One longtime resident was vocal in her opposition to the project at the beginning of one public comment gathering session.

“We started giving a presentation about why the project was happening, and our goals, and we started showing pictures of other places that had dunes and vegetation along the beaches, and she stands up in the middle of the presentation. I froze: What was she going to say?” Johnston recalled.

“And she turns to the City of Santa Monica and stares at them and says, ‘Why is this project not bigger?’ She became one of our staunchest supporters, and we recognized the important value of community input throughout the process.”

“The Santa Monica Beach Pilot Project is a successful proof of concept for scalable, affordable coastal adaptation solutions that address the risks from climate change and coastal sea level rise,” Parry noted. “Through dedicated public engagement and thoughtful ecological design, the project was able to strike a balance between allowing sensitive natural processes to take place and achieving accessibility for Santa Monica beachgoers and residents.”

For all this effort, however, are the new dunes going to do what everyone hopes they will do?

“The dune building is going faster than the current rate of sea level rise,” Hubbard said. “So that’s really good. You could even have a disturbance and it could rebuild itself and catch up again.” 

The last round of winter storms provided some evidence of this resilience, something the researchers hope will buy time as Santa Monica adapts to coastal erosion and climate change. But time, and even bigger storms and wave action will tell whether Nature can rise to the challenge of protecting the urban coast.

Not all groomed beaches will respond to nature-based interventions such as this. Santa Monica Beach is part of a local littoral cell that naturally receives sand cycled in by wave and wind. “This approach is going to be suitable in some areas,” Hubbard said. “It’s not appropriate for other areas that are narrower.”

However, the success of this venture so far is something the scientists hope will inspire other sandy beach researchers and managers to investigate as a possibility for nature-based coastal adaptation. Ideally, field experiments and monitoring should last as long as it takes to gauge factors such as how large dunes can get, whether or not vegetation can re-seed itself and if the dune can self-repair after a significant disturbance. This could take up to a decade.

“One of the highlights of this study is that we actually tracked this project from the beginning and out to more than six years,” Dugan said. Most of the studies they encountered in preparation for this project had done only a few years of monitoring and thus provided incomplete knowledge on the effects of rewilding sections of beach. She suspects that some of these short-term projects could have reported higher levels of response had there been a longer period of monitoring. 

“Now we have all this rich information,” she said. “We know which plants really built the dunes, and where the foredune was likely to form on this groomed beach. All these findings  can be applied to other coastal dune restoration projects.”

For now, the collaboration will continue to monitor the experimental site, especially as this ongoing El Niño weather cycle brings higher sea levels and bigger waves. More information means more options for adaptation.

“We’re not doing this project in a prescriptive way,” Hubbard said. “We’re trying to create an alternative vision of what southern California beaches can be and people can choose for themselves what kind of beach they can have.”

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JOURNAL

Frontiers

ARTICLE TITLE

Using dune restoration on an urban beach as a coastal resilience approach

 

Consequences of premature parental death seemingly greater for boys than for girls

But strongly linked to worse mental health and lower earnings in adulthood for both sexes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

The cumulative health and economic consequences of the premature loss of a parent may be greater for boys than for girls, suggest the findings of a large long term study published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

Experiencing the death of a parent before the age of 21, however, is strongly linked to poor mental health and lower earnings/unemployment in adulthood for both sexes, the data indicate.

Previously published research has pointed to a link between premature parental death and the child’s subsequent health and prosperity. But no studies have drawn on high quality registry data, and few have looked at the cumulative effects or the potential impact of gender, say the researchers.

They therefore used nationwide registry data from Finland to work out if experiencing the death of a parent before the age of 21 was associated with any of several measures of poor mental health and labour market outcomes between the ages of 26–30, and what influence, if any, gender might have.

They included nearly 1 million Finns (962,350) born between 1971 and 1986, who had reached at least the age of 30 by 2016.

The relevant registry data included parental death certificates; and medical and educational records, periods of sick leave, and tax returns for their children, nearly all of whom had completed their education and entered the labour market by the age of 30. 

Around 1 in 6 (15%; 145,673) people had lost a parent before the age of 31. Less than 5% had experienced the death of their mother; nearly 12% had experienced the death of their father.

The likelihood of a parental death rose sharply with age, from under 1% before the child had reached the age of 6 to just under 5% when they were aged between 26 and 30. Fathers were nearly 3 times as likely as mothers to die before their children turned 21.

Some 65,797 people lost a parent before the age of 21, and this was associated with greater odds of a hospital admission for mental ill health than it was for those who experienced this after the age of 30. 

Men seemed to be more vulnerable than women. They were 70% more likely to be admitted to hospital; the equivalent figure for women was 52%. Substance use disorders and intentional self-harm were the most common reasons for hospital admission. But this varied by gender.

Boys and young men who lost their mothers prematurely had nearly 2.5 times the odds of a hospital admission for intentional self-harm as those who lost their mothers in their 30s.

Similarly, girls and young women who lost their father prematurely were around twice as likely to have a substance use disorder than those who hadn’t experienced this. Early maternal death was also associated with a substantial (88%) increase in stress disorders.

The use of medication for mental health disorders among those who lost a parent prematurely was between 18% and 33% higher for both sexes than for those who hadn’t experienced this. Sick leave was also more likely among both sexes.

Losing a parent before the age of 21 was also associated with fewer years of schooling, lower annual earnings, and more periods of unemployment at ages 26–30 for both sexes.

The largest reduction in years of schooling (4%)—equivalent to more than half an academic year—was among girls who had lost their mothers prematurely. 

The estimated effects on earnings and employment were generally larger for men, among whom the early death of a father was associated with an almost 16.5% reduction in annual earnings and 6% lower likelihood of regular employment. The corresponding estimates for women were 11% and 4%, respectively.

The key strengths of the study lie in the use of nationwide population data, comprehensive monitoring, and both secondary and primary care psychiatric health records, say the researchers.

But they acknowledge that this is an observational study, which can’t account for all potentially influential factors, such as personality traits that may have affected the associations found. 

And the analysis didn’t capture mild mental health issues nor account for (shared) genetic and environmental factors in childhood, all of which may have been influential, they admit.

Nevertheless they conclude: “Early parental death is strongly associated with a higher risk of children’s poor mental health in adulthood for both males and females, but the estimated odds ratios are usually quantitatively larger for males.” 

Similarly, losing a parent prematurely “is negatively associated with children’s labour market outcomes (ie, employment and earnings) in adulthood, and these associations are quantitatively larger for males.”

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JOURNAL

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health

DOI

10.1136/jech-2023-220692 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Early parental death and its association with children’s mental and economic well- being in adulthood: a nationwide population- based register study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jul-2023

Egg ‘signatures’ will allow drongos to identify cuckoo ‘forgeries’ almost every time, study finds

African cuckoos may have met their match with the fork-tailed drongo, which scientists predict can detect and reject cuckoo eggs from their nest on almost every occasion, despite them on average looking almost identical to drongo eggs.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

 

IMAGE: A SELECTION OF FORK-TAILED DRONGO CLUTCHES THAT HAVE BEEN PARASITISED BY AFRICAN CUCKOOS. IN EACH PHOTO, THE RIGHT-MOST EGG IS THE CUCKOO EGG view more 

CREDIT: CLAIRE SPOTTISWOODE

Images and paper available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mPYnFKIEArlXUAaFk5H7YTepezntqerj?usp=sharing

African cuckoos may have met their match with the fork-tailed drongo, which scientists predict can detect and reject cuckoo eggs from their nest on almost every occasion, despite them on average looking almost identical to drongo eggs.

Fork-tailed drongos, belligerent birds from sub-Saharan Africa, lay eggs with a staggering diversity of colours and patterns. All these colours and patterns are forged by the African cuckoo.

African cuckoos lay their eggs in drongos’ nests to avoid rearing their chick themselves (an example of so-called brood parasitism). By forging drongo egg colours and patterns, cuckoos trick drongos into thinking the cuckoo egg is one of their own.

But drongos use knowledge of their own personal egg ‘signatures’ – their eggs’ colour and pattern –to identify cuckoo egg ‘forgeries’ and reject them from their nests, say scientists. These ‘signatures’ are like the signatures we use in our daily lives: unique to each individual and highly repeatable by the same individual.

Through natural selection, the African cuckoo’s eggs have evolved to look almost-identical to drongo eggs – a rare example of high-fidelity mimicry in nature.

A team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Cape Town, working in collaboration with a community in Zambia, set out to explore the effectiveness of ‘signatures’ as a defence against highly accurate mimicry.

They found that despite near-perfect mimicry of fork-tailed drongo eggs, African cuckoo eggs still have a high probability of being rejected.

The findings are published today in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Researchers carried out field work in the Choma district of Zambia during September to November across four years. The first step was to measure the differences in colour and pattern of the fork-tailed drongo eggs and cuckoo eggs. The team found that the colour and pattern of cuckoo eggs was, on average, almost identical to that of drongo eggs, and that all the broad types of drongo egg ‘signatures’ were forged by the cuckoos.

“It is incredible how perfect the mimicry is. We have occasionally missed cuckoo eggs in the field because they looked exactly like the drongo clutch that they were found in,” said lead researcher and Zoology PhD student Jess Lund.

The second step involved ‘egg rejection’ experiments in which the researchers simulated cuckoo visits by ‘parasitising’ drongo nests with foreign eggs from other drongo nests (as a proxy for African cuckoo eggs). They then checked the nest daily to see whether the drongo parents accepted the foreign egg as one of their own, or realised it was an imposter and rejected it by removing it from their nest. The team could then test what differences in colour and pattern between the foreign egg and the drongo’s own eggs best predicted whether or not the drongo parents were tricked.

By combining results from both steps of the study, the researchers were able to create a model that predicted how often, on average, an African cuckoo would have its eggs rejected by a fork-tailed drongo host. They found the predicted rate of rejection to be 93.7%.

“We were surprised to see that so many of the cuckoo eggs were predicted to be rejected”, said Lund “Our additional simulations show this is likely due to drongos having evolved ‘signatures’ on their eggs. Even though cuckoos have evolved excellent ‘forgeries’, individual cuckoos don’t target individual drongo nests that match their own eggs. This means that for each cuckoo egg laid, the likelihood that it will be a good enough match to that drongo’s ‘signature’ is very low.”

Fork-tailed drongos have likely honed these ‘signatures’ and detection abilities through natural selection, explains Lund. “It’s very costly for drongo parents if they don’t have these skills. If they can’t tell a ‘forgery’ from their ‘signature’ their own chicks will be killed by the cuckoo when it hatches, and they will be stuck raising a ravenous cuckoo for a whole breeding season.”

The results of the study suggest that a female cuckoo may only fledge two chicks in her lifetime – only just replacing herself and her mate. Researchers say that this would not amount to a sustainable population, which presents a puzzle because African cuckoos remain a common bird in many parts of Africa.

The researchers think that the fork-tailed drongos where the research took place could be particularly good at spotting ‘forgeries’. “Perhaps this part of Zambia is a hotspot for parasitism, where drongos have particularly fine-tuned defences, and against which cuckoos stand little chance,” said Lund.

The research was supported by the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence at the FitzPatrick Institute at the University of Cape Town, the BBSRC, the Royal Society, and the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, and carried out with the crucial support of a community in Zambia who find and access drongo nests.

ENDS.

Reference:

Lund et al. When perfection isn’t enough: host egg signatures are an effective defence against high-fidelity African cuckoo mimicry, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.1125

 

CAPTION

Two drongo clutches parasitised by different African cuckoo females. In each clutch of eggs the cuckoo egg is on the right.

A fork-tailed drongo nest that has been parasitised by an African cuckoo (cuckoo egg on the bottom right).

A selection of fork-tailed drongo eggs, each laid by a different female, arranged in a circle.

CREDIT

Jess Lund

African Cuckoo chick.

CREDIT

Claire Spottiswoode

About the University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is one of the world’s leading universities, with a rich history of radical thinking dating back to 1209. Its mission is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

Cambridge was second in the influential 2023 QS World University Rankings, the highest rated institution in the UK.

The University comprises 31 autonomous Colleges and over 100 departments, faculties and institutions. Its 20,000 students include around 9,000 international students from 147 countries. In 2022, 72.5% of its new undergraduate students were from state schools and more than 25% from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Cambridge research spans almost every discipline, from science, technology, engineering and medicine through to the arts, humanities and social sciences, with multi-disciplinary teams working to address major global challenges. In the Times Higher Education’s rankings based on the UK Research Excellence Framework, the University was rated as the highest scoring institution covering all the major disciplines.

The University sits at the heart of the ‘Cambridge cluster’, in which more than 5,200 knowledge-intensive firms employ more than 71,000 people and generate £19 billion in turnover. Cambridge has the highest number of patent applications per 100,000 residents in the UK.

www.cam.ac.uk

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2023.1125 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

When perfection isn’t enough: host egg signatures are an effective defence against high-fidelity African cuckoo mimicry

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Jul-2023

 

International trial shows that interferon could help reduce the spread of COVID-19

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TELETHON KIDS INSTITUTE

 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR STEPHEN STICK, DIRECTOR OF THE WAL-YAN RESPIRATORY RESEARCH CENTRE - A POWERHOUSE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE TELETHON KIDS INSTITUTE, PERTH CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL FOUNDATION AND PERTH CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL, CO-LED THE CONCORD-19 STUDY. view more 

CREDIT: TELETHON KIDS INSTITUTE

Results of an innovative clinical trial led by Perth researchers have shown that the drug interferon could help reduce the spread of COVID-19 from a positive person to their household contacts, with the study helping to inform treatment options for a future pandemic.

The trial - CONCORD-19 - tracked 1,172 participants in 341 households in Santiago, Chile where there was a positive COVID-19 case between December 2020 and June 2021.

Researchers tested the effectiveness of treating the infected people and their uninfected household contacts with interferon, with the aim of evaluating whether this drug reduces the severity of the disease and the spread of COVID-19 within families and communities.

Interferon is a naturally occurring protein that is known to boost the immune system and help the body fight infection, and it is commonly used to treat people with multiple sclerosis. In addition, interferons have been shown to be very safe and to have positive effects in clinical trials against other coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS.

Households were randomly assigned to receive treatment with either three doses of interferon-beta 1a via an injection - administered by a mobile health team member on days one, six and 11 of the isolation period - or the standard care for COVID-19.

Each household was closely tracked over a month to see whether interferon beta treatment can reduce the spread, severity and duration of COVID-19.

As published in eClinicalMedicine on 20 July 2023, the study Interferon β-1a ring prophylaxis to reduce household transmission of SARS-CoV-2: a cluster randomised clinical trial showed that where the person infected with COVID-19 had a high viral load there was a reduction in spread of the virus to household contacts in the households who received interferon.

Interferon did not however reduce severity of infection in people infected with COVID-19.

Co-lead of the CONCORD-19 study Professor Stephen Stick, Director of the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre, said there are currently no drugs to prevent COVID-19 transmission, but this study demonstrated it is possible with available drugs.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed over six million lives. Despite the rapid development and deployment of vaccines in many countries, the number of new cases worldwide is around 500,000 daily.

“Whilst widespread vaccination has had success in reducing the severity of the disease, and measures such as healthy hygiene, self-isolation when sick, physical distancing and use of face masks have all been effective, the solution to halting any pandemic is ending community transmission,” Professor Stick said.

“While interferon is unlikely to be used for the COVID-19 pandemic, results from this study can help inform treatment options for a future pandemic, and observations should be considered when designing future clinical trials aimed at preventing the transmission of highly contagious viruses.”

The CONCORD-19 study was made possible thanks to a $2.665 million donation to the Telethon Kids Institute from BHP Australia’s Vital Resources Fund.

The international trial was led by the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre – a powerhouse partnership between the Telethon Kids Institute, Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation and Perth Children’s Hospital based in Western Australia. In Chile, it was led by the School of Medicine at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

CONCORD-19 was co-led by Dr Castro-Rodríguez and Professor Stephen Stick, and with a multidisciplinary team of co-investigators including Dr Arturo Borzutzky, RN Carolina Iturriaga; Dr Cecilia Perret and Dr Diego García-Huidobro from Chile; Professor Tobias Kollmann, of Telethon Kids Institute; and Dr Eleanor Fish from University Health Network and University of Toronto, Canada. 

ENDS

Media Contact

Jacqui Caldwell, Communications Specialist
Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre, Telethon Kids Institute
E: jacqui.caldwell@telethonkids.org.au         M: 0434 193 818

About the Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre

The Wal-yan Respiratory Research Centre is a global epicentre for paediatric respiratory research informing clinical practice and driving a new research agenda for childhood lung health. A powerhouse partnership between the Telethon Kids Institute, Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation and Perth Children’s Hospital, the Centre aims to prevent and cure respiratory illness in children and ensure that all children have healthy lungs for life. The Centre has a 30-year history of globally competitive research from diverse groups of internationally acclaimed researchers in Western Australia, working in paediatric research. For more information, visit: walyanrespiratory.org.au

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JOURNAL

EClinicalMedicine

DOI

10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.102082 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Interferon β-1a ring prophylaxis to reduce household transmission of SARS-CoV-2: a cluster randomised clinical trial

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Jul-2023