Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy all his life. It is known that the characters with epilepsy and the epileptic seizure held an important key in his story. While interpreting his illness and works ...from a neuroscience perspective, this short essay goes further and examines the structure of polyphony advocated by Bakhtin about Dostoevsky's works. Neuroscientific significance could be found in the polyphonic structure of his work consisting of the multi-layered structure of dialogue and narrative.
•We show that, 50 years after first formulated, Tinbergen's four questions remain valid.•We update Tinbergen's four questions in the light of recent findings.•We stress how the questions may ...sometimes need to be considered together.•We point to questions additional to those of Tinbergen such as ‘How is the behaviour inherited?’, ‘What is the character?’, and ‘Of what is an animal seemingly aware?’.
This year is the 50th anniversary of Tinbergen's (1963) article ‘On aims and methods of ethology’, where he first outlined the four ‘major problems of biology’. The classification of the four problems, or questions, is one of Tinbergen's most enduring legacies, and it remains as valuable today as 50 years ago in highlighting the value of a comprehensive, multifaceted understanding of a characteristic, with answers to each question providing complementary insights. Nonetheless, much has changed in the intervening years, and new data call for a more nuanced application of Tinbergen's framework. The anniversary would seem a suitable opportunity to reflect on the four questions and evaluate the scientific work that they encourage.
Following the 1898 Battle of Omdurman in Sudan, Winston Churchill, then a second lieutenant in the British army, donated a skin graft to Richard Molyneux, a wounded fellow officer. This contribution ...tells the story of Churchill's skin graft donation within the context of the development of skin grafting as a viable treatment for serious wounds and burns.
We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain ...of 'culturomics,' focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. Culturomics extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.
The history of medicine makes it possible to understand both the evolution of the conceptualization of pathological processes, but also the modification of therapeutic principles and patient ...management. In the context of dermatology, we are interested here in the case of Jean-Paul Marat, who was murdered in his bathtub at the end of the 18th century in France and had severe dermatosis. Examination of deposits of pharmaceutical products inside the bathtub in which he spent most of his time made it possible to reconstruct the nosological and therapeutic framework of his dermatosis.
Social media have permeated the lives of adolescents and may be altering the way that teens engage with their favorite media celebrities and characters. This study surveyed 316 adolescents to examine ...the relationship between social media surveillance and the strength of adolescents' parasocial relationships (PSRs) with media personae they follow on social media. Results indicated a significant positive relationship between exposure to media personae on Twitter and strength of PSRs. Adolescents who had experienced social interactions with their favorite media personae on Twitter in the form of retweets or responses to tweets had stronger PSRs than adolescents who had no such interactions. The realism of the media personae did not moderate findings as expected. The findings suggest that Twitter provides intimate glimpses into the personal lives of media personae that increase audiences' feelings of connectedness to those celebrities and characters, an important finding given that teens are more likely to learn from media personae with whom they have PSRs.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) remains among the most influential and popular classical music composers. Health problems significantly impacted his career as a composer and pianist, including ...progressive hearing loss, recurring gastrointestinal complaints, and liver disease. In 1802, Beethoven requested that following his death, his disease be described and made public. Medical biographers have since proposed numerous hypotheses, including many substantially heritable conditions. Here we attempt a genomic analysis of Beethoven in order to elucidate potential underlying genetic and infectious causes of his illnesses. We incorporated improvements in ancient DNA methods into existing protocols for ancient hair samples, enabling the sequencing of high-coverage genomes from small quantities of historical hair. We analyzed eight independently sourced locks of hair attributed to Beethoven, five of which originated from a single European male. We deemed these matching samples to be almost certainly authentic and sequenced Beethoven’s genome to 24-fold genomic coverage. Although we could not identify a genetic explanation for Beethoven's hearing disorder or gastrointestinal problems, we found that Beethoven had a genetic predisposition for liver disease. Metagenomic analyses revealed furthermore that Beethoven had a hepatitis B infection during at least the months prior to his death. Together with the genetic predisposition and his broadly accepted alcohol consumption, these present plausible explanations for Beethoven’s severe liver disease, which culminated in his death. Unexpectedly, an analysis of Y chromosomes sequenced from five living members of the Van Beethoven patrilineage revealed the occurrence of an extra-pair paternity event in Ludwig van Beethoven’s patrilineal ancestry.
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•Eight locks of hair attributed to Ludwig van Beethoven underwent genomic analyses•We deemed five of these authentic and sequenced Beethoven’s genome to high coverage•Beethoven had a predisposition for liver disease and became infected with hepatitis B•We also discovered an extra-pair-paternity event in Beethoven’s paternal line
Begg et al. perform genomic analyses of eight locks of hair attributed to composer Ludwig van Beethoven. They sequence a high-coverage genome, finding strong genetic risk for liver disease that may have been compounded by alcohol and an infection with hepatitis B. An extra-pair paternity event is discovered in Beethoven’s direct patrilineage.
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