Saturday Quote: We praise dogs; development of brown fat; how SSRIs relieve depression. Plus: Boeing Starliner

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about dogs, it’s that praise is super effective for training; a new Hungarian study confirms these anecdotal findings and reinforces the view that praise is more effective as a pedagogical approach than, for example, reprimanding or criticizing or deliberately placing one infraclass of mammals above another with a childish insult like this:

Placental mammals rule, marsupials drool

Brown adipose tissue, unlike white adipose tissue, burns calories instead of storing them. It’s essentially a body-warming organ that scientists believe evolved in mammals to allow them to survive and diversify into colder environments. Its calorie-burning function has also inspired YouTube influencers of the keto-stoicism-deadlift variety to take a daily dip in ice water, a “Jackass”-like activity aimed at shedding excess body fat, leading to the discovery that the metabolic effects of cold immersion of water includes that you will be ravenously hungry. Life, ah, finds a way.

Anyway, a new study from Stockholm University shows that brown fat evolved exclusively in modern placental mammals. The researchers found that marsupials have a form of brown fat that hasn’t evolved to the sophisticated degree enjoyed by winter-sport-loving placental mammals like humans and killer whales. After the divergence of placental and marsupial mammals, a heat-producing protein called UCP1 was activated.

Many but not all genes expressed in brown fat are present in the opossum UCP1 transcript, suggesting that marsupials have not evolved a fully evolved form that warms placental mammals. Additionally, the marsupial proto-form of brown fat is not thermogenic. The researchers hope that their findings can contribute to a better understanding of mammalian evolution and medical applications related to metabolic disorders.

Praise effective

A study by scientists from ELTE Eötvös Loránd University found that dogs are more successful in a training scenario if they are rewarded with petting and praise in addition to food rewards. Researchers have investigated the relationship between learning, emotions and sleep, and the results of the study indicate that learning style and sleep influence both behavior and learning success.

In two experimental sessions conducted in the presence of the dog owners, the trainers taught the dogs new commands for tricks the dogs already knew. One was conducted in a “permissive” style, where the trainers gave the dogs praise and petting in addition to the food reward; the dogs were never warned. In the second session, dogs received only a treat, no verbal praise, and were reprimanded for unwanted behavior. After these sessions, the dogs slept in a sleep lab while being monitored with EEG scans.

“Control” style training produced more stress in the dogs; they tended to sleep longer after training in the control style, confirming previous findings that sleep is important for emotional processing. Dr. Márta Gácsi, lead researcher of the Comparative Ethology Research Group of HUN-REN-ELTE, said: “The most interesting result is that sleep improved the learning performance of the dogs only in one particular case, when the group that received the ‘control’ during the first training was expected to that they undergo similar training a second time, but then we trained them in a “slow” style, we believe that the combined effect of positive surprise and sleep improved their learning success.

A rare mistake by Boeing

Boeing’s new Starliner space capsule was delayed by last-minute problems with its thrusters as it prepared to land on the International Space Station on Thursday. The capsule had already leaked helium when it reached orbit, and two more leaks occurred hours into its flight. Then four of the Starliner’s 28 thrusters failed. After recovering three of them and orbiting Earth for an additional time after passing the first docking window, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were able to dock the ship with the space station.

Pills explained

How do antidepressants work? Is it a placebo effect? Do they really affect serotonin? Is it witchcraft? Classic selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors increase serotonin levels in the brain, and for a while scientists thought that antidepressants might be restoring the neurochemical imbalance. But later research showed no reduced levels of serotonin in people with major depressive disorder.

So SSRIs are basically witchcraft, but researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have published a new framework for understanding how classic SSRIs work; clarifies the benefits of antidepressants even when MDD is not characterized by low serotonin. The researchers explain that according to current evidence, MDD is linked to areas of the brain that fail to communicate properly.

Scott Thompson, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and lead author, said, “When the parts of the brain responsible for reward, happiness, mood, self-esteem, even problem solving sometimes don’t communicate properly , then they can’t do their job properly. There is good evidence that antidepressants that increase serotonin, such as SSRIs, all work by restoring the strength of the connections between these areas of the brain. .”