Contrary to popular notions about what is normal or healthy, new research has found that it is okay not to express one's thoughts and feelings after experiencing a collective trauma, such as a school shooting or terrorist attack.

What are the genes implicated in upright walking of humans? The discovery of four families in which some members only walk on all fours (quadrupedality) may help us understand how humans, unlike other primates, are able to walk for long periods on only two legs, a scientist will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics tomorrow (Monday 2 June).

According to some experts, newly born neuronal stem cells in the adult brain may provide a therapy for brain injury. But if these stem cells are to be utilized in this way, the process by which they are created, neurogenesis, must be regulated.

Nautiloids are the sole surviving family of externally-shelled cephalopods that thrived in the tropical oceans 450–150 million years ago. However, in the intervening years their modern soft bodied relatives dumped the shell and developed complex central nervous systems; which makes Nautilus ideally suited to discover the ‘evolutionary pathways that led to the development of the complex coleoid [soft bodied cephalopod] brains’ say Robyn Crook and Jennifer Basil.

By Peter Hankins

Knud Thomsen has put a draft paper (pdf) describing his ‘Ouroboros Model’ -- an architecture for cognitive agents -- online. It’s a resonant title at least -- as you may know, Ouroboros is the ‘tail-eater’; the mythical or symbolic serpent which swallows its own tail, and in alchemy and elsewhere symbolises circularity and self-reference.