Home alone : A population neuroscience investigation of brain morphology substrates

As a social species, ready exchange with peers is a pivotal asset - our “social capital”. Yet, single-person households have come to pervade metropolitan cities worldwide, with unknown consequences in the long run. Here, we systematically explore the morphological manifestations associated with singular living in ∼40,000 UK Biobank participants. The uncovered population-level signature spotlights the highly associative default mode network, in addition to findings such as in the amygdala central, cortical and corticoamygdaloid nuclei groups, as well as the hippocampal fimbria and dentate gyrus. Both positive effects, equating to greater gray matter volume associated with living alone, and negative effects, which can be interpreted as greater gray matter associations with not living alone, were found across the cortex and subcortical structures Sex-stratified analyses revealed male-specific neural substrates, including somatomotor, saliency and visual systems, while female-specific neural substrates centered on the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. In line with our demographic profiling results, the discovered neural pattern of living alone is potentially linked to alcohol and tobacco consumption, anxiety, sleep quality as well as daily TV watching. The persistent trend for solitary living will require new answers from public-health decision makers

3.B. The Nature of Life

The Crater vs. The Snowflake: Johannes Kepler on Signs of Intelligent Life / Sarah ReynoldsJohannes Kepler discussed the possibility of extraterrestrial life multiple times throughout his published work in the early 1600s. While Kepler’s ideas about extraterrestrial life were tied to his theological understanding of the universe, he also took the circular lunar features (now known to be impact craters) seen through the telescope as possible evidence of such life, bringing his speculations into the realm of science. His analysis of the lunar craters provided one of the first scientifically-grounded and evidence-based arguments for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. However, Kepler’s discussion raises the question of how he saw the lunar “circles” as different from other phenomena, such as the six-sided snowflake, that he believed reflected a divine intelligence expressed in nature itself. We’ll consider what this early historical example reveals about the challenges of interpreting possible signals of extraterrestrial intelligence and the underlying assumptions embedded in such analyses. Re-imaging the Concept of Life: William James, Hans Driesch, and Swami Vivekananda / Chris Zajner Inquiries surrounding the question of what constitutes life have waned tremendously since the beginning of the twentieth century as a result of the productive success of mechanistic scientific investigation. Explorations beyond our planet have however opened up a new front to repose these types of questions. A novel scientific precipice, with little else but imagination to mediate its possibilities, confronts humankind with radical possibilities of extra-terrestrial ‘life’ forms. Assuming the inevitability of coming into contact with novel extra-terrestrial entities, profound questions on how to interact with them are pressing. In this paper, I wish to investigate the notion of ‘life’ in multiple aspects through the thought of the early 20th century philosophers William James, Hans Driesch and Swami Vivekananda. The pansyschist leaning of James provides an enlightening investigation into what entities may be conscious and our responsibilities to various types of consciousness. On the other hand, the vitalist ideas of Driesch provide the most thorough alternative to imagining a different perspective to life outside of the modern mechanistic model in science. And the Vedantic thought of Vivekananda provides a greater examination of the interrelation of life and spirituality. Looking into these thinkers is particularly productive as it allows reconstituting the question of life, through thinkers where the ‘scientific’ evidence of the day was an open question. With the possibility of encountering future entities which challenge the modern framework, having the imaginative capacity to creatively reconstitute our conception of life will be potentially very fruitful and there is no better way to do so by building upon past thought. Life on the Edges: A Neo-Eliminativist Approach to the Definition of Life / Shawn SimpsonOne of the central questions of biology is “What is life?” or put another way “What is it for something to be a living thing?”. The question has obvious importance for research in biology generally, but it becomes uniquely relevant when we start to ask questions about whether life exists on other planets. Humans and tigers are clearly living things, so are trees and algae, but what about cases on the borderline such as viruses? Many definitions of life have been proposed over the years. Some lean on growth or metabolism for identifying life (Miyakawa et al. 2002); others on the idea that a living thing must be part of the process of natural selection (Dawkins, 1976). Even NASA (2021) has proposed a rough definition. In this talk, I’ll look at the most prominent proposals for a definition of life and present some problems for each of them. In the end, I’ll argue, it turns out that none of these definitions will withstand careful scrutiny. What we should do instead is take a sort of “spectrum” view of life. In other words, there are paradigm and less paradigm cases of life but no real hard-and-fast boundaries. This view takes a sort of eliminativist approach to the concept of life but still leaves room for use of the term in less- precision demanding contexts. What this ultimately entails for astrobiology i a reorientation in the way we investigate the question of whether there really is life on other planets

APOE alleles are associated with sex-specific structural differences in brain regions affected in Alzheimer's disease and related dementia.

Alzheimer's disease is marked by intracellular tau aggregates in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and extracellular amyloid aggregates in the default network (DN). Here, we examined codependent structural variations between the MTL's most vulnerable structure, the hippocampus (HC), and the DN at subregion resolution in individuals with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD). By leveraging the power of the approximately 40,000 participants of the UK Biobank cohort, we assessed impacts from the protective APOE ɛ2 and the deleterious APOE ɛ4 Alzheimer's disease alleles on these structural relationships. We demonstrate ɛ2 and ɛ4 genotype effects on the inter-individual expression of HC-DN co-variation structural patterns at the population level. Across these HC-DN signatures, recurrent deviations in the CA1, CA2/3, molecular layer, fornix's fimbria, and their cortical partners related to ADRD risk. Analyses of the rich phenotypic profiles in the UK Biobank cohort further revealed male-specific HC-DN associations with air pollution and female-specific associations with cardiovascular traits. We also showed that APOE ɛ2/2 interacts preferentially with HC-DN co-variation patterns in estimating social lifestyle in males and physical activity in females. Our structural, genetic, and phenotypic analyses in this large epidemiological cohort reinvigorate the often-neglected interplay between APOE ɛ2 dosage and sex and link APOE alleles to inter-individual brain structural differences indicative of ADRD familial risk

Association Between Sociodemographic Factors and Vision Difficulty in the National Health Interview Survey: A Population-Based Analysis

•Sex, sex orientation, race, education, and income are associated with vision difficulty in the United States population•Low income more than doubles the odds of self-reported vision difficulty•Black race is associated with 1.5 times the odds of self-reported vision difficulty To investigate the relationship between social determinants of health (SDH) with self-reported vision difficulty. Cross-sectional, population-based analysis. The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) is an annual survey based on the U.S population age 18 and older. It provides self-reported data on demographic characteristics, socioeconomic factors, health status, and health care access. The 2021 NHIS database was used in this study. Adult participants of the NHIS who responded to the vision difficulty question “Do you have difficulty seeing, even when wearing glasses or contact lenses?” were included in this analysis. The outcome of interest was self-reported vision difficulty by participants. Analysis was done through univariable and multivariable logistic regression. Overall, there were 29,464 participants included in the analysis. Univariable logistic regression showed an increased odds of self-reported vision difficulty among female (OR 1.28; 95% CI, 1.20-1.38; p<0.001), gay, lesbian, or bisexual participants (OR 1.24; 95% CI, 1.04-1.49; p=0.02), those who possessed public compared to private insurance (OR 1.83; 95% CI, 1.69-1.99; p<0.001), those with less than a high school education (OR 1.88; 95% CI, 1.67-2.13; p<0.001), and those with an income below the poverty threshold (OR 2.22; 95% CI, 1.96-2.51-0.67; p<0.001). Multivariable analysis revealed an increased risk of vision difficulty reported amongst non-Hispanic Black participants (OR 1.65; 95% CI, 1.21-2.25; p=0.002). A multitude of sociodemographic factors are associated with self-reported vision difficulty in the United States population. Our findings emphasize the importance of considering SDH factors in clinical practice and policymaking for patients with vision loss