This month\u2019s \u201cInsights & Outcomes\u201d features research that either zooms in or zooms out for answers to pressing questions about life, the mind, and the\u00a0universe.<\/p>\n
There are items about the intrusion of mental illness in the developing brain, a high-speed fuel-up for a supermassive black hole, insights into why some brain seizures cause a loss of consciousness, and a new proposal for studying dark matter and dark\u00a0energy.<\/p>\n
As always, you can find more science and medicine research news on Yale News\u2019 Science & Technology<\/a> and Health & Medicine<\/a> pages.<\/p>\n Brain disorders take root early in\u00a0development<\/p>\n A new Yale study suggests that mental illnesses may begin in the developing brain before birth \u2014 possibly even in the first trimester of pregnancy \u2014 much earlier than previously\u00a0believed.<\/p>\n Using human stem cells grown in the lab to mimic early brain development, along with data from prenatal human brains, researchers tracked markers in neural stem cells (the special fetal cells that build the brain, producing more mature cells such as neurons) that may be a root cause of\u00a0disorders.<\/p>\n They found that many genes linked to disorders such as autism and schizophrenia are switched on surprisingly early, during the first stages of brain growth, long before neural stem cells become mature cells. This finding, researchers say, suggests that these early periods may be especially vulnerable to genetic\u00a0disruptions.<\/p>\n \u201cThis research offers new clues about the origins of cortical disorders,\u201d said study author Nicola Micali, an associate research scientist in neuroscience in the laboratory of Pasko Rakic, the Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and professor of neurology at Yale School of Medicine (YSM), who led the\u00a0study.<\/p>\n \u201cWe demonstrated that many risk genes involved in neuropsychiatric disorders are already active before birth, in the very early phases of brain development when neural stem cells are functional,\u201d Micali said. \u201cThe dysfunction of these genes may alter brain assembly, potentially leading to manifestations later in\u00a0life.\u201d<\/p>\n The team also mapped the regulatory networks of key genes involved in disorders such as ADHD and depression, and malformations like microcephaly. The study was published in the journal Nature<\/a> Communications.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fast gas \u2014 in\u00a0space<\/p>\n F1 pit crews can only dream of being this\u00a0fast.<\/p>\n In a new study in The Astrophysical Journal<\/a>, a research team including Yale scientists reports the discovery of a possible \u201cultra-fast inflow\u201d \u2014 gas falling into a supermassive black hole at about 15% to 20% of the speed of light \u2014 in a distant\u00a0galaxy.<\/p>\n \u201cThis could represent a rare glimpse into how black holes pull in matter, offering valuable insight into chaotic accretion processes,\u201d said first author Alessandro Peca, a researcher at Eureka Scientific and laboratory associate in Yale\u2019s Department of\u00a0Physics.<\/p>\n The gas inflow appeared in two separate observations by NASA\u2019s NuSTAR X-ray space telescope, in 2023 and 2024, in a galaxy designated \u201cESP 39607.\u201d The inflow was occurring at about 100 to 134 million miles per\u00a0hour.<\/p>\n Documented cases of ultra-fast inflows are rare, astronomers say, due to their short-lived\u00a0nature.<\/p>\n Meg Urry, the Israel Munson Professor of Physics in Yale\u2019s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is a co-author of the new study, along with colleagues from Eureka Scientific, Diego Portales University in Chile, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the California Institute of\u00a0Technnology.<\/p>\n Seizure spread marks loss of\u00a0consciousness<\/p>\n Loss of consciousness can pose real dangers for people with seizure disorders. And while not all seizures cause loss of consciousness, Yale researchers have now discovered how one common type of seizures\u00a0do.<\/p>\n Frontal lobe seizures are classified as \u201cfocal\u201d seizures, a subtype in which the problematic activity generates in a single region of the brain. In the case of frontal lobe seizures, activity originates in the brain\u2019s frontal lobes, located behind the\u00a0forehead.\u00a0<\/p>\n But while some cause loss of consciousness, others\u00a0don\u2019t.<\/p>\n The reason, researchers found, is that not all frontal lobe seizures are\u00a0equal.<\/p>\n For the study, primary author and former Yale postdoc Elaheh Salardini, working with Yale\u2019s Hal Blumenfeld, analyzed a trove of data of human brain activity recordings collected from three different medical facilities \u2014 including 65 seizure episodes in 30 different\u00a0patients.<\/p>\n \u201cWe discovered a subset that cause impaired consciousness by spreading to other large areas of the brain,\u201d said\u00a0Blumenfeld, the lead author, who is the Mark Loughridge and Michele Williams Professor of Neurology at YSM and a professor in neuroscience and neurosurgery and director of the Yale Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center.\u00a0\u201cThe activity invades much wider areas that are thought to be important for consciousness, whereas activity from other frontal lobe seizures remains restricted to the frontal\u00a0lobe.\u201d<\/p>\n The findings were\u00a0published in the journal Neurology<\/a>.<\/p>\n This new understanding may help scientists better predict seizure activity and develop treatments, including brain stimulation, that can restore consciousness during\u00a0seizures.<\/p>\n FINESST winner will explore dark matter, dark energy\u00a0models<\/p>\n Isaque Dutra, a Ph.D. student in physics in Yale\u2019s Graduate of Arts and Sciences, recently won a NASA FINESST award for graduate student-designed research\u00a0projects.<\/p>\n The Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) competition, which recognizes research projects across five divisions of the agency\u2019s Science Mission Directorate, provides up to $150,000 in funding for the winning projects, spread over three years. This year, FINESST received 456 proposals for astrophysics \u2014 and selected 24 of them to\u00a0support.<\/p>\n Dutra\u2019s proposal, which will be overseen by Priyamvada Natarajan, the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor and Chair of Astronomy and professor of physics in FAS,\u00a0will probe the fundamental nature of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter, which has yet to be detected, is theorized to constitute the majority of matter in the universe; dark energy is a theorized force that appears to defy gravity and is believed to be powering the measured accelerating expansion of the\u00a0universe.<\/p>\n While the mechanics of dark matter and dark energy are not known, researchers like Dutra, Natarajan, and their collaborators suspect they may be at the heart of several persistent, small-scale discrepancies in the Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmological model (the current standard model for understanding the universe\u2019s evolution) \u2014 such as cases where observed gravitational lensing signals have drastically exceeded theoretical predictions. Likewise, recent data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument hint at the need for new physics beyond the standard\u00a0model.<\/p>\n Dutra and Natarajan plan to use observed strong lensing by galaxy clusters as astrophysical laboratories to simultaneously probe the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Dutra will compare high-resolution simulations with data to constrain alternatives to cold dark matter. He and Natarajan will also leverage observations to probe the time evolution of dark energy, one of the fundamental open questions in\u00a0cosmology.<\/p>\n Karen Guzman and Jim Shelton contributed to this\u00a0report.<\/p>\n Research\u00a0Redux:<\/p>\n Timing is everything: Finding treatment windows in genetic brain\u00a0disease<\/a><\/p>\n Yale engineers develop breakthrough method for practical nanowire\u00a0materials<\/a><\/p>\n As the world churns \u2014 a history of ecosystem engineering in the\u00a0oceans<\/a><\/p>\n