Wild birds that are more clever than others at foraging for food  have different levels of a neurotransmitter receptor that has been linked with intelligence in humans, according to a study led by McGill University researchers.  The findings could provide insight into the evolutionary mechanisms affecting cognitive traits in a range of animals.

The study, published in Science Advances, was conducted by McGill biologists Jean-Nicolas Audet and Louis Lefebvre, in collaboration with researchers from Duke and Harvard universities.

Barbados birds

Are Canadians fair or is that just a story we tell ourselves? Can we reason our way to lessened inequality or are violent cataclysms the only levelling power, as Thomas Piketty and Walter Schiedel argue? How do we maintain a sense and an approximation of fairness in our globalizing and polarizing world? Certainly there can be no fairness without tax fairness: tax policy is where we negotiate the relationship between wealth and poverty.

Team leader Marta Cerruti, using the tools of the Canadian Light Source, has examined the mineralized arteries of genetically modified laboratory mice and found that the pathway in the body that leads to what laypeople call “hardening of the arteries” is not what medical experts previously assumed.

Frequently encountered in the elderly, Alzheimer’s is considered a neurodegenerative disease, which means that it is accompanied by a significant, progressive loss of neurons and their nerve endings, or synapses. A joint French and Canadian study published in Scientific Reports now challenges this view.