Show Notes
Why is it hard to concentrate, and why does it feel like such hard work? The CrowdScience inbox is full of questions like that, so for this show we’re concentrating on concentration and focusing on how we focus. We’ll be answering questions about the extra energy the brain uses when we’re concentrating, whether mental effort can tire you out more than physical effort, why we zone out when faced with a difficult task and how the ability to multitask is governed by our overall cognitive load. To find the answers, presenter Alex Lathbridge is paying attention to a team of experts. Psychology professor Sophie Leroy from the University of Washington in the USA studies the impact of being interrupted on our ability to perform, cognitive neuroscientist Professor Salvador Soto-Faraco from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain researches how sight, sound and touch are blended together by the brain, and psychology professor Polly Dalton runs the Attention Lab at Royal Holloway University in London, UK. We’ll be trying to distract them with gossip about what we had for lunch, finding out why the brain is like a bike and, most importantly, discovering how you can concentrate better on shows exactly like this one. Presenter: Alex Lathbridge Producer: Tom Bonnett Editor: Ben Motley (Photo: Woman with glasses thinking and pointing upward- stock photo - Credit: ismagilov via Getty Images)
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CrowdScience listener Lauren from Belgium has near-complete hearing loss in one ear, because all the sensory hair cells in her inner ear have died. This got her thinking about how complicated the human ear is and whether there are other animals with simpler ears, in particular insects. Do they even have ears? Presenter Caroline Steel hears Lauren’s call and sets off on a hunt for insect ears. She discovers that crickets have them just below their knees. In Fernando Montealegre-Zapata’s laboratory at the University of Lincoln in the UK, she serenades a cricket to test just how much of her voice it can hear. But crickets aren’t the only ones with ears. Invertebrate neurobiologist Natasha Mhatre, from Western University in Canada, explains that you can find ears almost anywhere on an insect body – from between the legs of a praying mantis to the mouthparts of a moth. So are there even simpler ears out there? Sensory biologist Joerg Albert from University College London in the UK tells Caroline how male mosquitoes use antennae to listen out for females. But they aren’t exactly simple. In fact, a mosquito probably has more sensory neurons around their antennae than you are using to hear right now. And what about the insects that can’t hear? Scientist Jayne Yack from Carleton University in Canada unveils the hidden world of vibroscapes. Caterpillars on a leaf, for example, can sense the vibrations created by peers, predators, and even airborne sounds. Which makes Caroline wonder: when does vibration sensing actually become hearing? Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Florian Bohr Editor: Ben Motley (Photo: Insect singing and playing the guitar in flamenco concert - stock photo Credit: Fernando Trabanco Fotografía via Getty Images)
Some animals lay eggs, and their young hatch out of them. Other animals give birth to live young. But which strategy is best? That’s the question that’s been bothering CrowdScience listener Sameer in Canada. Is giving birth to live young a good reproductive strategy? It takes a lot of time and effort, and it doesn’t result in that many offspring. Egg-laying, on the other hand, allows you to produce lots of young at one time to maximise the chance of survival, seems easier than giving birth, and you can lay eggs more often. So why have humans and most other mammals evolved to give birth to live young? To find the answer, presenter Anand Jagatia travels way back into the past with Paul Barrat from London’s Natural History Museum in the UK to look at the evolutionary history and advantages of egg-laying. What have gravity and moisture got to do with the success of an egg? Palaeontologist Kimi Chapelle from Stony Brook University in the US shows Anand the oldest eggs ever found, and we discover why even older eggs are missing from the fossil record. We discover how the evolution from egg-laying to birth-giving is happening right in front of our eyes, with Camilla Whittington from the University of Sydney, Australia. And we might even have an answer to the age-old question about eggs - which came first? You can see the oldest eggs ever found here: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/april/most-detailed-look-inside-worlds-oldest-dinosaur-eggs.html (Photo: A chick hatching from egg on egg tray. Credit: David Malan/Getty Images) Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Margaret Sessa-Hawkins Editor: Ben Motley
Have you ever found yourself doing something – perhaps getting a glass of water, eating a snack, or even sitting on the toilet – without remembering making the decision to do it? CrowdScience listener Mohammed certainly has. It’s left him wondering: does he really have free will, or is he a puppet of his biological processes? To try and find the answer, we start in the brain. Presenter Caroline Steel meets neuroscientist Uri Maoz, from Chapman University in the US, to explore the controversial research into what happens when we make decisions. Does neuroscience say that we are free to make our own choices, or does our brain make decisions outside of our consciousness? Then there’s our guts - they’re home to trillions of microbes; independent living creatures that we couldn’t live without. But could these tiny organisms influence more than our digestion? Harriët Schellekens, from University College Cork in Ireland, shares her cutting-edge research into the surprising ways our microbes shape us. And perhaps some of us are more "in charge" than others. Caroline visits Sarah Garfinkel at University College London in the UK, to have her interoception tested - her ability to sense what’s happening inside her body. How closely is she tuned into what's going on inside her gut, and why might that matter? Meanwhile, at King’s College London, health psychologist Lauren Heathcote is exploring how this internal sense could be used in therapy. Caroline meets cancer patient Nadia Haynes to discover how learning to listen to her body has actually changed her sense of control. Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Katie Tomsett Editor Ben Motley (Photo: Close-up Of Businessman's Hands - stock photo Credit: AndreyPopov via Getty Images)
Where do shells come from? CrowdScience listener Tamsyn got in touch, a little embarrassed, confessing that she had managed to reach her twenties without realising that shells are made by living creatures. Suddenly, her curiosity ran wild and she asked CrowdScience to investigate how these sea creatures have the architectural prowess to make shells in delicate ornamental shapes with beautiful colours and patterns. The job of sea-creature-investigator-in-chief falls to presenter Marnie Chesterton. She heads to the Natural History Museum in London, UK, where they have more shells than they can keep count of. Researcher Dr Suzanne Williams pulls out drawer after drawer of amazingly varied molluscs for Marnie to marvel at. Then, it’s off to the beach to go shell hunting with Dr Leanne Melbourne, Senior Curator of Climate Change and the Dynamic Coast for Norfolk Museums in the UK. They look at the structure of shells, and Leanne explains how a soft mollusc is able to make a hard shell so sturdy they can survive for millions of years. Marnie then gets into some mollusc maths. With shells strewn across a table, Professors Alain Goriely and Derek Moulton at the University of Oxford, UK show Marnie how they have mapped their shapes. Can Marnie uncover the formula that underpins the formation of shells, from the most basic to the inexplicably ornate? Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Tom Bonnett Editor: Ben Motley (Photo: Close up of young womans hands holding seashells, Eilat, Israel - stock photo Credit: PhotoStock-Israel via Getty Images)
CrowdScience listener Gurmeet in India wants to know if plants can sense that we're around. She started wondering about this at a wellness centre where she was encouraged to hug a tree. She enjoyed the experience, but what about the tree? Did it enjoy being touched? And is there actually evidence that hugging a tree is good for us? Anand Jagatia talks to scientists about what happens to a plant when it's touched. Molecular biologist Olivier van Aken, from Lund University in Sweden, explains what happens inside a plant's cells – from mimosa whose leaves close up when touched to a Venus flytrap that sees a good opportunity for dinner. Plant biologist Alexander Jones, from the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK, tells Anand how plants process information without a brain: when there's a threat from a hungry insect, it's their hormones that leap into action to defend it. Anand visits Wisley Garden in the UK and meets Ashby Lavelle Sachs, the Royal Horticultural Society's Wellbeing Fellow, who explains why being in nature is so good for our physical and psychological health. And he talks to South Korean researcher Sinae Park, from Konkuk University in Seoul, about the impact of touching plants with different types of foliage – in an experiment, she found that it's the soft and smooth plants that made participants feel most relaxed. It turns out that plants find the whole experience of being touched pretty stressful. So next time you hug a tree, you might be getting a whole lot more pleasure out of it than the tree does. Presenter Anand Jagatia Producer Jo Glanville Editor Ben Motley (Photo- I love you nature! Nature and people - stock photo Credit: Kieferpix via Getty Images)