This Week in Science: a new way to detect cancer, brain regions responsible for paranoia, and why after reading this highlight you should take a nap

Please welcome our weekly highlight of the latest news in life sciences. Enjoy the read (and take the title of this edition very seriously)!

How honeybees can smell cancer. Michigan State University researchers have discovered that honeybees can detect lung cancer biomarkers in human breath and differentiate between lung cancer cell types by their smell. This research, led by Assistant Professor Debajit Saha, highlights the exceptional olfactory abilities of honeybees, comparable to dogs. The team of researchers developed synthetic breath mixtures mimicking the chemical composition of healthy and lung cancer-affected human breath. 

In their experiments, approximately 20 honeybees were tested using a 3D-printed harness that held each bee while tiny electrodes attached to their brains recorded neural responses to the breath mixtures. The bees demonstrated a strong ability to detect even minute concentrations of cancer-indicating compounds, with neural signals showing distinct patterns between cancerous and healthy breath samples. The bees' sensitivity extended to concentrations in the parts per billion range.

Further research involved testing honeybees with different human lung cancer cell cultures. The bees' brain-based sensors successfully distinguished between small cell lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and healthy cells. This capability suggests significant potential for precise and rapid cancer diagnosis, essential for appropriate treatment.

These findings open up a possibility to develop a noninvasive diagnostic test where patients breathe into a device containing honeybee-based sensors. These sensors would analyze the breath and provide real-time feedback on the presence of cancer biomarkers. This innovative approach could revolutionize early cancer detection and pave the way for new biological and smell-based disease detection technologies.

Source: Biosensors and Bioelectronics

Feeling forgetful? Lack of sleep might be to blame. Sleep is important for memories, and reactivating and replaying experiences during special brain waves called hippocampal sharp-wave ripples (SWRs) helps with this. However, we don't know much about how missing sleep affects these brain patterns. In a recent study by Bapun Giri and colleagues, researchers recorded brain activity in rats over 12 hours while they explored a maze, slept, stayed awake without sleep, and then slept again to recover.

The study found that during sleep deprivation, the SWRs occurred more often or at the same rate but were weaker and faster. The brain cells kept firing during sleep deprivation but fired less during sleep. The firing rates were the same during SWRs, no matter the sleep state. Despite the high activity and many SWRs during sleep deprivation, the replay of experiences was reduced or even stopped compared to normal sleep. Reactivation improved somewhat after recovery sleep but didn't return to normal levels.

This research shows that lack of sleep negatively affects how the hippocampus, a part of the brain, works. There were many SWRs during sleep deprivation, but very few replays of experiences, highlighting the problems caused by sleep loss.

Source: Nature

Brain region that may be responsible for paranoia. A Yale study has identified a specific brain region that may cause feelings of paranoia, enhancing our understanding of advanced cognition. This research aligns data from both monkeys and humans, creating a new framework for studying human cognition through other species, as detailed in Cell Reports.

Advanced cognition involves adapting beliefs about actions and consequences in changing environments. Disruptions in this ability can lead to paranoia, where individuals believe others intend to harm them. The study analyzed existing data from various labs, where both humans and monkeys performed a task assessing their perception of environmental stability. Participants chose between options with varying reward probabilities, requiring them to adapt to changes when probabilities flipped.

The researchers applied the same computational analysis to both human and monkey data. They found that lesions in the orbitofrontal cortex or mediodorsal thalamus of monkeys affected behavior. Monkeys with orbitofrontal cortex lesions stuck to the same choices despite no rewards, while those with mediodorsal thalamus lesions showed erratic behavior, perceiving their environment as highly volatile. This erratic behavior mirrored that of humans with high paranoia.

The study reveals how the mediodorsal thalamus might contribute to paranoia in humans and provides a method for translating findings from simpler animals to understand human cognition. This approach could also help assess the effectiveness of treatments for paranoia and potentially lead to new ways to reduce such states in humans.

Source: Cell Reports

Cover image: Sleep is crucial for correct memory functioning. Image generated by Dall-E 3.

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