Science Friday - The US Battles RSV, Neural Connections, La Brea Tar Pits. Nov 11, 2022, Part 2

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

How Past Extinctions At The La Brea Tar Pit Can Teach Us About Our Climate Future If you drive through Los Angeles, you’ll pass by some of California’s most iconic sites—the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Universal Studios, the Santa Monica Pier. But if you don’t look for it, you may miss the La Brea tar pits—a place where Ice Age life from around 50 thousand years ago got trapped and preserved in sticky black ooze. Visitors can see megafauna, including skeletons of saber tooth cats and dire wolves, along with a vast collection of specimens, including things as small as beetle wings and rodent dung. La Brea was recently named as one of the world’s most important geological heritage sites by the International Union of Geological Sciences. The museum is currently planning an extensive redesign that will seek to connect visitors to research, offering lessons about climate, extinction, and survival. Dr. Lori Bettison-Varga, president and director of the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, joins Ira to explain the significance of the site, and how a trove of Ice Age specimens can serve as a modern-day climate laboratory.   Across The Country, RSV Is Overwhelming Medical Systems If you have a child—or interact with children on a regular basis—odds are you’ve heard about a very contagious virus: RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus. This isn’t a new illness, but it has been surging across the country. This has left parents and caretakers stressed about how to keep their kids safe. Hospitals across the country are having trouble coping with this year’s surge, which has come earlier and stronger than normal. This week, Science Friday is spotlighting two regions affected by the wave: Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. The two regions have their own challenges when it comes to the RSV surge. In Wisconsin, care deserts and a large elderly population make containing this virus important to avoid dangerous consequences. In Washington, D.C., hospitals are feeling the effects of years of shutting down pediatric units to make room for adult beds. Joining Ira to talk about RSV in Wisconsin and Washington D.C. are two journalists who have been following this: Jenny Peek, news editor for Wisconsin Public Radio and Aja Drain, reporter at WAMU public radio.   What You Should Know About This RSV Surge Respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, is the number one cause of infant hospitalizations in the United States, and cases are soaring this year. Because young children have spent part—if not most—of their childhoods isolated, masking, or staying home due to the pandemic, many of their immune systems haven’t been exposed to RSV until now. It’s caused a huge surge in cases, and placed a heavy burden on pediatric clinics and hospitals. What do you need to know about the spike in infections? Ira talks with Dr. Carol Kao, a pediatrician and assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who has treated RSV for years. They dig into why this surge is happening now, the basics of the virus, how RSV is treated, and where we stand with an RSV vaccine.   Mapping Brain Connections Reinforces Theories On Human Cognition Brain regions are associated with different functions—the hippocampus is responsible for long-term memory, for example, and the frontal lobe for personality, behavior, and emotions. After decades of research using sophisticated brain imaging, there’s a growing consensus among neuroscientists that understanding the connections between brain regions may be even more important than the functions of the regions themselves. When it comes to understanding human cognition, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Ira speaks with Dr. Stephanie Forkel, assistant professor at the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, who wrote a review article in the journal Science about the importance of brain connectivity, and what it means for the future of neuroscience. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, how places around the country are dealing with the surge in RSV cases and the importance of the connections between parts of the brain. Yeah, but first, if you drive through the heart of Los Angeles, you're going to pass some of the most iconic sites, right? You've got the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Universal Studios, the Santa Monica Pier. But if you don't look for it, you may miss one of my favorite places to visit when I'm in L.A., the La Brea tar pits. It's a place where life from around 50,000 years ago got trapped and preserved.

It's right there on Wilshire Boulevard. Look for the bubbling black ooze. You can't miss it. But La Brea is more than just a sticky time capsule. La Brea was recently named as one of the most important geological heritage sites by the International Union of Geological Sciences. And the Black Bubbly Landscape has important lessons to teach about climate change. Joining me now to talk about their plans to teach about climate change from the past is Lori Bettison Varga, president and director of the LA Museum of Natural History, which includes the tar pits. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This is really one of my favorite places in L.A. I've been going there for decades. And for those who haven't been there, can you describe it for them? So it's about a 12 to 13 acre park and museum, but in the park are these incredible

asphaltic deposits that have trapped the most amazing animals that used to be around Los Angeles to 50,000 to 12,000 years ago. And it gives us the clue to what the landscape used to look like. We get anything from, you know, mammoths and mastodons and saber-toothills to micro fossils, pollen, beetle wings, little bones from different mammals, small mammals. So it's an incredible location. And you're still digging up stuff there, right? Absolutely. We're slowly working through 23 large boxes of material that were recovered from the excavation of the parking lot for the LA County Museum of Art. And their recent project also has revealed additional fossils for us to

continue working on. So there's lots of material and continued excavation going on. So as the song goes, they paved paradise, they put up a parking a lot, but you're digging it up. That's right. Just to be clear, there are no dinosaurs there, right? This doesn't go back that far. No dinosaurs. Or as my scientists over there like to remind me, no non-avian dinosaurs. Not that old, right? So we're really looking at material from, you know, the last major climate change event coming out of the Ice Age. You're working on a redesign of the place. Tell me about that. We are. We're working on a redesign because, obviously, people come to the tarpets because they want to know about these incredible charismatic animals that used to roam L.A. And we like to say it's like

the Serengeti, but with larger animals. So just to give you an image of that. And there's lots of skeletons to see at the current museum, which opened in the mid-70s, but we're not really telling the full story of the location that we think about today and about that particular extinction event and how it can help us understand what's happening right now. And so the new museum will continue to tell that story of extinction, but also of survival and place it in the context of climate and ecological change in LA. Let's talk about that link to climate and ecological change. Yes, so, you know, we know worldwide that megafauna, about 60 species, when extinct

around, you know, 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, the question is, Ben, is this related to climate, or is it related to humans coming into the scene, or is it a combination of both? The wonderful thing about the targets is that you can see this event happening. We've got fossils. Most of them go from about 45,000 years ago to about 12,000 years ago. And you can see the variation in the animals during the change of climate, the natural change, right? So we have a great backdrop to understand rate of change today. and to think about what it takes for Flor and Fonda to survive a climate change like that.

How soon do you think we might see that? Well, it's a big process. We're just through the conceptual design and we're in an environmental impact review process, which is really important to all major development projects in Los Angeles. And then, of course, fundraising. So we hope that we will be able to do this in one. It's probably a four-year project, but if we need to phase it, it'll take longer. But we don't have any start date yet as we're putting together the funding required to do this

major intervention in the site and make sure that it really highlights the indoor and outdoor connectivity of the space and the story. Yeah. So how do you use your collections and research to be more than just a bunch of skeletons or specimens under glass? Yeah. Well, the great thing about going to the tarpice is you can see as a visitor, not only the excavation outside, but you can see the scientists and volunteers working in the museum. So we were one of the original, well, we call it the fishbowl, where you can actually look in and see folks working on the fossils and separating, particularly micro fossils right now, or cleaning up some of the bones.

And so really telling that visitorship that this is an active place for science from, you know, excavation to identification to putting the story together and sharing it with not only disciplinary experts, over 400 scientific articles have come out of the tar pits fossils, but also with the public. So there's so many different ways to do that. We've been using AR and VR to VR to showcase what these. extinct animals would look like in the environment. We've also had scientists working using new technologies like CT scanning, which a recent study revealed that saber-toothed cats. We had one that suffered from hip dysplasia in our collection. Wow.

Yeah, it's really kind of shocking. Originally, we thought this was, you know, a harm that had caused the individual to pass away, right? But now we know from the CT scanion, there was hip dysplasia. And the age of the animals suggests that there was a support of social structure, right, that allowed this animal to live in community instead of, you know, getting killed. So it's amazing what kinds of things were able to continue to learn about these animals. What can you tell us then about the snapshot, let's say a snapshot in time about Labrea that tells us now about the present world? Well, our scientists there are really working to understand how humans coming into Los Angeles might have impacted the animals, certainly, but also trying to see from pollen and other aspects of the record and the material in the asphalt that is maybe not as exciting as what people think of with the megafauna, but gives us a lot of environmental information.

So they're looking at, you know, what the timing was in relationship to extinction of the animals and when humans came in and what was happening within the environment at the time. So if you build it, they will come, so to speak. Well, they should, right? The Geomachian site designation is, I think it's really important, obviously. It's a statement to the world, but also to Angelina's, that, you know, they're. drive by on Wiltshire daily and may not really understand that this is such an important location in the world. People don't think of LA that way, right? No, no. But it is, when I was researching this and I went to, you know, top tourist attractions in L.A., you were rated by one of the

rankers as number eight in the city. Right. It's, we get a lot of tourism. It's been interesting. During the pandemic, we had a lot of folks rediscovering L.A. and, because, because we're indoor, outdoor, even though the museum itself was closed, a lot of folks were able to walk through the park and learn. Because, you know, we have did addictics up in the park so people can get a snapshot of what's going on, just walking around outside. Of course, it's a better experience to get the museum inside as well. But that has been really interesting. I think a lot of Angelinos were rediscovering this incredible world gem. And, you know, we'll see the tourism starting to come back.

but we just hope that more and more Angelinos get familiar with what is in their literally their home backyard. Yeah, I love walking around the grounds because you're actually still walking around active oozing. Yes. Coming up through the grass. Yeah, and it does kind of, you know, it kind of brings out the kid in you, right? People like to poke around in it.

Wow, don't step in there. And you haven't marked off in little spots. Don't step on this thing. Exactly. We have lots of cones around, you know, orange cones. don't put you put in this. And I will say that one of the misconceptions, along with the thought that there are dinosaurs

instead of these, you know, manis and mastodons and other large animals that are more recent is that that big kind of lake pit in the front, you see the bubbling nothing. That's actually not an asphaltic deposit. That is an industrial excavation and filled in with groundwater, but it's very intriguing.

Let me ask you before we run out of time, Do you have a favorite find from the collection? That's so hard. But in the museum, I really love the dire wolf wall. I think it's just a representation of variation, subtle variation to the eye, but it tells us about the importance of collections, and we have a tremendous collection,

you know, the largest collection of ice-age fossils in the world in L.A. and to me, the dire wolf, I think, you know, I'm a little bit of a game of Thrones geek, So I think it's pretty amazing that we have such a fantastic collection. So I love the Dider Wolf Wall, but I also think it's pretty awesome that you can get beetle wings preserved in the asphalt. Yeah. I think you have your selling point there.

You know, you saw the movie. Now come see the real thing. Winter is coming. Yes. And one last question. I could talk about the pits all day. Why should we care about them? Why should we care about the La Brea Tar pits?

Well, we should care about them because they really are the backdrop for us understanding what's happening in our world today. And what we can learn from the Tar Pits about survival of our species and other species that we live with as the climate is changing very rapidly in comparison to the past. But we should also care just because, I mean, pretty awesome. Yeah. You know what I think? you know, L.A. is so famous for human-made glitzy things, artificialness. Here you

have something that is real. Yes. Right. Right down there in downtown L.A. Exactly. Well, good luck to you and good luck to your projects and your fundraising. Well, thank you so much, Iro. Nice to speak with you. Nice to have you.

Lori Bettison Varga, president and director of the L.A. Museum of Natural History. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we'll see how two different parts of the country are handling this fall's surge of RSV. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. If you have a child or someone close to you has a child, odds are you've heard

about a very contagious virus, RSV. Respiratorious and syscial virus. This is not a new virus, but it has been surging across the country, leaving parents and caretakers stressed about how to keep their kids safe. And hospitals around the nation are having trouble coping with this new surge, as they were with the original outbreak of COVID. Joining me are two reporters who are watching and reporting. Jenny Peek, news editor for Wisconsin Public Radio, based in Madison. Asia Drain, reporter at WAMU Public Radio in Washington, D.C. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

Hi, Ira. Thanks for having me, too. You're all welcome. All right, Jenny, let's begin with you. What's the surge been like in Wisconsin? It's been significant. Just last week, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services counted more than 2,000 cases of the virus, up from about an average of 800 just a few weeks ago. From what I've heard, RSV is the predominant virus affecting the state right now,

And as usual, it's hitting the youngest residents particularly hard. And Asia, what about D.C.? Same story? Yeah, pretty similar. So D.C. is kind of unique because we have D.C., parts of Maryland and parts of Virginia, when we're thinking about health issues, right? And so in D.C. specifically, Children's National Hospital has reported about more than a thousand R.S.V. cases as far as hospitalizations go.

And capacity is changing hour to hour, but they're fluctuating between being at or near capacity. pretty consistently. You know, I remember during COVID, we talked about reporting of cases, right, and it was hard to get accurate numbers. Is that the same thing in this case, Asia? It's pretty accurate, too, here. So if experts were telling me that when it comes to RSV or with most respiratory viruses, since those symptoms are really similar, the focus is on treatment first, right? So you have a patient coming in, they're trying to treat them as quickly as possible, and testing isn't as much of a priority. So those numbers kind of come with a cap. yeah, but there's still enough to indicate that there is a surge happening.

And Jenny, what have you been hearing from the experts in Wisconsin? Yeah, something really similar. I would also just say that one thing that's setting this respiratory season apart from others is how early it's arrived. It began in October when it usually starts in the middle of December and peaks toward the end of January. One thing health experts aren't sure of is how long the RSV season is going to last, but having it start this early is definitely unusual. Well, I know that D.C. is a huge metropolitan area. It has some massive hospitals. Asia, why is it still having such a hard time dealing with this RSV surge? Yeah. So similar to what Jenny was saying, like, we have the same issue. We're not expecting a surge of this size this early.

We were having cases as early as this summer. But one of the biggest reasons that even in a big metropolitan area this is a problem. The virus itself isn't actually the issue. Like doctors know what to do. They're prepared. They've seen it before. But the biggest problem, at least in our region and somewhat nationally too, is there's been a decrease in the amount of pediatric inpatient units there are. And so what that means is when you typically go to a hospital to bring your kid to the doctor, you don't go straight to a children's hospital. You have adult hospitals with pediatric inpatient units that you go to first. And that kind of helps with the doctor. distribution. But now because of a bunch of closures in the region, all of that is causing a

bottleneck, which an expert, Dr. Eric Biondi, who's the division director of Johns Hopkins Children's Center, explained to me. It surprises most people to learn that most pediatric care in the country is not done at large children's hospitals. It's done at small community sites, which are often pediatric units within larger adult hospitals. And so those small units, you know, over the last couple years, we've seen a lot of them closed down as they've needed more adult beds. Yeah, that's interesting. And Jenny, Wisconsin has some large rural areas. Is there concern that some kids, what, may be too far from hospitals? Yeah, and this is a concern that isn't specific to RSV, but there are only a handful of children's hospitals with ICU's in the state. And as for clinics,

there are a lot of rural communities in Wisconsin that are at least 30 minutes or more. away from the nearest health care facility. Rural hospitals struggled with capacity during the peak of COVID and sometimes sending patients up to several hours away to receive care. And so that's absolutely a concern with RSV in the state right now as clinics and hospitals are reaching capacity or are at capacity already. Yeah, you know, we've been talking about kids so far, but RSV can be dangerous and older people too, right? How big of a concern is this in Wisconsin, Jenny? So the focus tends to be on children, like you said. But with RSV COVID-19 influenza, older people are at a significant risk too. It can turn into bronchiolitis,

making it harder to breathe, requiring hospitalization. In general, Wisconsin's population skews slightly older than the national average, with about 18% of the state's population 65 years and up. And so health officials in Wisconsin are warning families, to be careful in terms of spreading RSV to grandparents or other older people in congregate health care settings and nursing homes. You know, with all these hospitals overloaded, I sort of referred to it before. It feels like virus deja vu all over again. I mean, we just dealt with this with COVID.

And this winter is expected to be bad for the flu and COVID as well. Any idea how this might go in Wisconsin, Jenny? Yeah, so like I said, there's already quite a bit of concern about hospital. capacity. And just today on Tuesday, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and Milwaukee announced it was going to be rescheduling all of its wellness visits and minor surgeries just to handle the surge of RSV cases because they're so full. Tom Hopped is the respiratory disease epidemiologist for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. And he says it's something they're keeping a really close eye on. This could be a potentially very serious respiratory season, especially for the children in Wisconsin.

And we are not aware of any deaths from RSV yet. We're hoping that we don't get any. But as I said, the hospitals are becoming more and more crowded as we speak. Some of them are very near capacity. Asia, same question for you in D.C. What are you hearing about how this trifecta of viruses may play out? Well, Children's National was telling me they haven't seen an increase in COVID hospitalization so far, which is kind of nice to hear.

But the flu seems like the next challenger approaching, if you will, and there are big concerns about that. By mid-October of this year, Children's was telling me that they've already seen 10 times the amount of cases that they saw a year ago. Wow. And we just did some reporting already, like anticipating an influenza surge like upcoming. So not great. Not great. Asia, what will you be keeping an eye out then for as you keep reporting on this? Yeah.

I think the one thing I'm really fascinated about, and from the doctors I talk to, there's a little bit of mixed opinions about whether or not patients are sicker this year, from RSV specifically. And so I'm really curious if kids are actually getting sicker and what role changed immunity has for at-risk populations for RSV and other respiratory viruses, especially since COVID has happened. So I'm keeping an eye on that. And Jenny, you? Yeah, I think just really tracking the intersection of RSV influenza, and COVID-19 and how they're going to be interacting as it gets colder in Wisconsin and more and more things move inside. We often have an increase in illnesses because those viruses are spreading just that much easier. So looking at that and keeping a track of how vaccines are going in terms

of both influenza and COVID-19 for the younger kids. That seems like we're in for an interesting winter. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you so much, Ira. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Jenny Peek, news editor at Wisconsin Public Radio in Madison and Asia Drain, a reporter at WAMU Public Radio in Washington, D.C. We've been talking about hospitals and pediatric clinics inching towards maximum capacity as RSV surges among children. But how much do you really know about the virus? How did this surge even happen? How do we treat RSV? And the big question, where do we stand on a vaccine? Here with RSV,

101 is someone who treats it year after year, Dr. Carol Cow, a pediatrician and assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Cow, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Nice to have you. RSV isn't a new virus, right? It's been going around for decades. Why are we seeing such a big surge now? Correct. RSV is a very old virus. It's very common, typically causes mild cold-like symptoms, and almost everybody has had it by the time they're two years of age. And as you may have seen in the news, we have had an unusually early and severe RSV season here in St. Louis and also across the country. We think this is because of a lot of the social distancing measures that were implemented early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

We saw virtually no RSV during the winter of 2020 to 21. So many times. So many kids didn't get exposed to it when they normally would have this created this immunity gap. And this year, with almost everybody back to in-person learning and social activities, we had a pool of kids whose immune systems hadn't seen viruses, and it's causing this increase in hospitalizations across the country. And how severe is it getting in these kids? Yeah. So we have had an increase in five times of hospitalizations for RSV compared to this. time last year. About half of the kids in our hospital are requiring intensive care unit or ICU care. So we are definitely seeing just greater numbers and increased severity.

Most kids are fine with it, correct? Correct. You are absolutely correct. RSV is the number one cause of hospitalizations, but worldwide it causes over 30 million infections in kids less than five years of age per year. And for the majority of those kids, it is a mild cold-like symptom. and they get over it like they do any other cold. So who is most at risk then? Small infants in particular can get into a lot of trouble with RSV because of their small

airways. So they can get plugged with mucus and then that leads to trouble breathing and sometimes severe infections such as pneumonia. They can also get into trouble if they get dehydrated and they may need a little bit of intravenous fluids and help with. their breathing to get them through. We've been talking about kids mostly now, but older people can get it too, especially the elderly, and it may be difficult for them?

You are absolutely correct. We are increasingly understanding that RSV can definitely affect adults, and in particular, older adults can also get severe RSV and are also at higher risk of getting an RSV. It's just that we don't test them as much, so we don't always know that that's what they have. RSV can also cause severe infection in kids and adults with certain medical conditions such as underlying heart or lung issues. Well, we've got a whole slew of viruses going around now, right? RSV, the flu, COVID.

How do you know a kid or an adult has RSV and not something else? There is not necessarily a telltale sign. However, if you know that there's a lot of RSV in your community, or that your kid's classroom had an RSV exposure, then odds are your kid's symptoms are probably due to RSV. Symptoms of RSV, COVID-19, flu, a bunch of other respiratory viruses are very similar. So the really only way to determine which virus is causing an infection

is by using some sort of test. The majority of kids do recover on their own, and for RSV, there really are no specific. treatments so testing is not always necessary. Treatments for COVID-19 and influenza are available. So testing for those may potentially be beneficial. So there's no real drug to take for RSV is what you're saying? Correct. Unfortunately right now, all we can offer is supportive care, meaning supplemental oxygen or breathing support. Sometimes if they're really sick, kids may need a breathing tube. And really, we can only wait until they get better. If parents are,

ensure whether their kid needs more help, they should definitely start with their pediatrician. However, if your kid is visibly having a lot of difficulty breathing, meaning that they're struggling to breathe, they have loud wheezing or very rapid breathing, or you just think they are not doing well, and you should seek emergency help, definitely, because, again, kids can get into a lot of issues with RSV. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. I'm talking with pediatrician Dr. Carol Cow about where we stand with, RSV. We know that RSV circulates every fall and winter. That's not a surprise. But what is surprising

to me is how we've gone this long without a vaccine, right? Where do we stand on getting an RSV vaccine? In the 1960s, there was a vaccine that actually led to worse disease in babies due to an imbalanced immune response, and that really halted the RSV vaccine field for a very long time. Then in 2013, researchers at the NIH made a very key discovery of the virus, and that really reinvigorated the whole RSV vaccine field. And so there are multiple RSV vaccines, therapeutics, antivirals, and lawn-acting monoclonal antibodies in development currently. They are in phase two and three trials. Very recently, Pfizer announced preliminary results of their phase three study looking at an RSV vaccine given to pregnant women,

and it was found to be highly effective at preventing severe RSV in babies in the first six months of life. They did announce they plan to seek approval by the FDA at the end of this year. So we are hopeful vaccine will be available by next fall. and that will be seeing a very different RSV season next year. Are kids being used in these trials? And would that be one of the reasons why trials are taking so long? That is a good question. There is studies of the vaccines given to children,

but because we know RSV impacts infants the most, a lot of the vaccine trials are actually targeted towards pregnant women to then generate immune response that can be passed on to the baby. And we see this strategy used for influenza, pertussis, and most recent the COVID-19 vaccines. Interesting. One more thing before we go, Dr. Cow, let's talk about what tips you have for how to stay RSV-free this season. One of the best ways to keep you and your loved one safe this winter is to make sure you get your flu vaccine this year. and also that you're up to date on your COVID-19 vaccines.

You know, I hear a lot of people say that the flu vaccine doesn't work, but you put your seatbelt on when you get in your car, even though it may not fully protect you from a severe accident. So why not get the flu and the COVID-19 vaccine shots, which have been shown to prevent you from being hospitalized and getting very, very sick? Also, just very simple things you can do to prevent getting sick, like washing your hands, disinfecting, frequently touched surfaces,

staying home when you're not feeling well, masking if you have to go out, and then covering your coughs and your sneezes in the tissue or the elbow of your shirt sleeve. Where have I heard all of this before? We should be primed for this by now, right? Yes, you would think so, yes. All right. Thank you very much for taking time to talk with us today. It was great to be on this. Thanks so much. You're welcome.

Dr. Carol Cow, a pediatrician and assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. We have to take a break, and when we come back, the latest in mapping the human brain, and why understanding a network of connections is more important than identifying specific brain regions, new stuff. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. For the rest of the hour, we'll be focusing on a paradigm shift in the field of neuroscience. You know, your standard textbook maps out the brain into regions of the body. Your hearing is here, your left leg there, the hippocampus responsible for a long time.

memory, the frontal lobe responsible for your personality, behavior, and emotions. But now, after decades of research, using precision brain imaging, there's a growing consensus among neuroscientists that understanding the connections between brain regions may be even more important than the regions themselves. Basically, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. My next guest recently wrote a review article in the journal Science about the importance of brain connectivity and what it means for the future of neuroscience. Dr. Stephanie Forkel is an assistant professor at the Dunders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Rabrard University based in Namogen in the Netherlands.

Welcome to Science Friday. Hello. Nice to have you. How much of a paradigm shift is going on here? I mean, haven't neuroscientists known that brain connections were really important for decades, patients who have had brain injuries in one part of the brain, other parts of the brain, brain compensate for that? Why now are we closing in on this brain connectivity model? So you're absolutely right. We knew for decades or even centuries that we had those white matter

connections, which are basically the super high ways of signal propagation in the brain, and they connect different parts of the brain. But only now do we actually have the large enough data sets and the new tools to measure what those white matter connections actually do and what they connect in the living human brain. So should we now throw out those old models of brain regions or is that still part of the equation? That's still part of the equation. So we're not going from one extreme to the other. And the truth is somewhere in the middle. So you still need those brain areas. I mean, there's a reason we have the cortex of the brain. So the surface areas. but an area in itself can't really perform all the functions that we know we can do.

So if we take the example of language, there is a part in the frontal lobe. It's important for articulation and there's a part of the brain and the temporal lobes or close to your ears. That is important for understanding language. Now, if we talk in a normal conversation, we need both of these areas to react very quickly and dynamically in a conversation. and this dynamic interaction of areas is facilitated by the white matter connections. So those are the connections you're talking about, something called white matter. What is that? What's the difference between white matter and, let's say, something else we hear about in the brain, gray matter.

So generally speaking, the gray matter is the surface of the brain, the outside. So when we talk about the brain, the picture that comes to your mind of that classic, They call half a hemisphere looking at the brain from the outside. That's the gray matter. And the gray matter is composed of brain cells. So those neurons are in the gray matter. And then we have the white matter, which is the connective tissues. All those brain connections, the highways, as I said, that connect those different parts of the cortex together.

They must be pretty fast connections. I mean, they must be able to talk quickly with each other, right? Yes, absolutely. So it's estimated that the speed of signal conduction along the white matter is about 300 kilometers an hour, which is equivalent to a bullet high-speed train. Wow. Did we always know that, or did it take modern brain imaging to figure that out? Well, that you actually would figure out with electrophysiology. So you actually can follow the electrical signals that are sent along the white matter to measure the speed. So you can basically input in one part of the brain and see how long it takes for it to be received at the other end of the brain.

But you use other types of imaging, don't you, to do your work and to study the brain? Correct. So we use a method called diffusion weighted imaging tractography, which is based on an MR scanner, so that big tube that many people probably are familiar with, to look inside the living human brain and look at the structure of those connections. So not so much the function that you would get when you measure the speed of conduction, but really the anatomy of those connections, where they are, what they connect to. Are you putting living, breathing people in this MRI? Or what else might you be doing?

Yes, we do most the time, not all the time. But ideally, we would image living, breathing people in the MRI scanner. And it's completely non-invasive. So you can go in there. You can even have a nap. whilst we take those pictures. So it's, for some people, it's quite a pleasant environment. Wow, I cannot imagine that.

I've had a brain scan an MRI. It is not a pleasant situation. I have claustrophobia, so that would do it, right? Yeah, that doesn't help. But you also look at post-mortem brains too, right? Correct. So we look at post-mortem brains sometimes in the MR scanner, but we also actually look at them in the morgue and do actual Klingler post-mortem

dissections and that lets you really carve out the white matter connections between those brain areas in the actual brain. So when we use the diffusion weighted imaging trotography, it's a proxy of the anatomy because it's based on how water molecules move around in the brain. And if you have areas where there's no restrictions, so for example, there's these holes basically in the brain that are filled with liquid to cushion the brain when we walk or hit our head. Then the water molecule can freely move around in all different directions, and there's no restriction. The water molecules within those white matter connections, however, they're limited by the surface of those connections.

So it's basically like a straw, and they travel faster along the direction of the axon, so that connection, and they're hindered in the perpendicular direction. And this is what we actually pick up with the MRI machine. So it's an indirect estimate of where those connections are, is cling the post-mortem dissection actually lets you see them in real life. How did you discover or how did people discover that this technique you're using would be a good way of studying the connections in the brain? So there's this famous saying that someone's noise is someone else's signal. And what that means is that when you acquire images in an MRI machine, there is a lot of noise in the data.

And for many years, we thought we need to get rid of. of this noise. It's disturbing the signal that we're interested in, which is the anatomy. And then people started realizing that actually within this noise that is in the images, there is some patterns. There's some information that we could actually use and study. And this is how diffusion trotography was invented or resting state imaging these days, for example. Now, that reminds me in physics and astronomy of accidentally discovering the cosmic background radiation because they thought there was noise in the receiver. So this is an interesting parallel. Yeah, exactly. The idea of defining the functions of brain regions, let's talk about how old that is, right? Where did it come from?

So defining the function of brain regions is actually a very old way of doing clinical and atomic correlation studies. And that really comes from seeing patients in the beginning. So So we have a series of famous cases to actually establish the neurosciences, as we know them today. And that is because those famous cases had a damage to their brain. So quite famous, for example, is Finia's Gate, who had an iron rod that flew through his skull and his brain, and then landed a couple of meters behind him. And that part of that, that iron rod damaged a part of his brain in the frontal lobe, he could still talk. but what had changed was his personality, his inhibition.

So that is one of the famous cases that plays personality and so-called executive functions in the frontal lobe. Another famous case is patient ta. And he's known as patient ta because he suffered a stroke to the frontal lobe, again, a different part. And he could only utter the word ta. He was French, hence the slight imitation of an accent here. and that placed the articulation of language in the posterior frontal lobe.

What these patients allowed people to do is to look at the brain and look at what function the patient lost. And that was then put together as in if you lose the function after damage to this part of the brain, then this part of the brain is responsible for this kind of function. And this is where this area to function mapping originated. Quite interesting. Can you also, using this model, help us better understand how the human brain evolved? Yes, absolutely.

So as we said before, ideally we put living, breathing humans in the MRI scanner, but we don't do this all the time. So you can also put non-human primates in the scanner, for example, marcox or sometimes even chimps. and that lets us study the white matter in different species, and then by proxy you can make deductions about when the white matter changed between the species, and that would give you a indication of when certain cognitive functions may have evolved in the human brain. Such as language? Such as language, for example, yes.

So some monkeys may have some but not all the connections in the brain, so to speak, we have. Correct. So there's a very prominent language connection that we call the arched fasciculus, which means the arching fiber bundle. And you can see a precursor of that in the monkey brain, but it's not the full connection. So it doesn't reach exactly the same cortical areas, and it's not as prominent as it is in the human brain, for example. You know, of course everybody's brain, everyone's brain is a little bit different, right? How, kind of this networking idea, help you understand the individual differences between the brains, all of our brains?

So what we have done for decades of neuroimaging is that we wanted to know how the brain works, what's the function and the structure of the typical brain. And in order to do that, you take a picture of a lot of individual brains and then you bring them all together in a reference space where they all look the same. so you can then compare them across the group. Now, what we can do nowadays is because we have a lot more data available and we have new analysis tools available. We can actually look a lot more into detail into each and every single individual brain.

And what we have done back in 2008, for example, is look at the variability of the white matter. And what we could see is that there is a gradient in the brain, whereby older parts of the brain tend to be less variable, meaning they're more alike between us, and newer parts of the brain and the areas that are related to cognitive functions using functional imaging studies or lesion studies, were actually highlighted as being more variable.

So there's this beautiful gradient of variability in the brain. Yeah, so would it be possible then to map, how, say, a mental health issue or someone's personality, changes the structure of the brain? To a certain extent, yes. So there's already group studies that would compare people with certain neurological or psychiatric disorders to so-called healthy controls and see what is different in those brains. What you can also do is look at clinical populations. Again, this could be a neurological or psychiatric patients and follow them over time. So in a longitudinal study design and see how the brain, that could be the gray matter or the white matter, changes

throughout time. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. In case you're just joining us, I'm talking with my guest, Dr. Stephanie Forkel, about the importance of understanding how brain regions are connected. Now, of course, we have those two hemispheres of the brain, as you mentioned. What can looking at these connections help us better understand about the functioning, but possibly the different functions of the left and right brain. So there's this conception that we have a left brain and a right brain,

and the functions are dramatically different. So classically speaking, the left hemisphere is important for language, and the right hemisphere is more important for things like visual, spatial attention, for example. Now, one thing that we need to consider is that those two hemispheres are densely connected by white matter. So they're not freely floating around in our skull, but they're actually densely connected. And every part of the left hemisphere is connected to every part in the right hemisphere, pretty much. And that means that some of the functions can be traced in both hemispheres. Now, obviously, the way we look at function these days, for example, at language, we often look at the production and the comprehension of language.

But language is a lot more, right? there's intonation, there's prosody, there's understanding humor, for example, or when we think about idioms, you understand a meta meaning of the words. And some of those functions are actually performed by the right hemisphere and not the left hemisphere. So what we sometimes see, for example, is that patients who suffer a lesion to the right hemisphere, they can articulate themselves, they can understand language, but when they talk is very monotonous. So there's this clear-cut division of this is what the left does and this is what the right does is not really appropriate.

And also when it comes to recovering from brain damage, we can see that there's also some dynamic interaction between the left and the right trying to recover some of the function. So how can your network model help scientists come up with better treatments for people with brain injuries or neurodegenerative disorders? So what we have seen in clinical studies is that when you only look at the gray metal lesions, so where the lesion is located on the surface of the brain, we can explain some of the variants that we see in the recovery of people, but not all of it.

Whereas if we look at the networks that are actually disconnected by a lesion, that explanationary power increases tremors. And we still can't explain all of the recovery that we see, but at least a larger part than just looking at the lesion location itself. Let's talk about what the next big question, I'm always interested in where you're heading with your research. What's the next big question you're looking to understand about the brain? So in my own research, I'm currently trying to understand the magnitude of our ability. So it's well established that our brains are different. And we have beautiful map showing the variability of certain parts of the brain. And we, as I mentioned, did this

study in 2018 where we looked at the variability at the group level. But I'm really trying to bring this to the individual brain now and map the magnitude of variability and what that magnitude then means for our cognition in health and in disease. Do you think it's possible the brain has got what, how many billions and billions of cells in it? Is it possible to understand our brain, do you think completely and even get to consciousness someday? The holy grail. I had to ask that question. I think I'd be surprised if we managed to get there during my career, but it's worth trying. Good answer. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. My pleasure. Thank you. Dr. Stephanie Farkle, assistant professor at the Dunders Center for Cognitive

neuroimaging at Rabard University based in Nimigin in the Netherlands. And that does it for this week. If you missed any part of the program or you would like to hear it again, sure, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And of course, you can say hi to us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email us, yes, the old-fashioned way. SciFri at ScienceFriday.com. Please send us feedback.

Tell us what you'd like us to cover. weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.