closer look
Songbirds can make new sounds. And they can stutter
Patrick Pleul/DPA / AFP via Getty Images
For neuroscientist Erich Jarvis, the neural pathways he finds most interesting inside a birds' brain are those that enable the bird to make new sounds from listening to their environment. Known as vocal learning, it's the foundation of human language, too. He spoke recently with STAT's Nicholas St. Fleur.
From the neurobiological perspective, what is so fascinating to you about vocal learning in birds, and in us?
We have an extra brain pathway that controls our vocal organs and oral facial musculature for sound production that you do not find in other mammals or other birds like chickens. Spoken language is really a body movement pathway controlling the muscles of the larynx, producing all these interesting cognitive sounds and thoughts.
This research offers insight into disorders like stuttering. So birds can also stutter?
Vocal-learning birds can stutter, that's right. They will stutter with brain lesions in certain areas where the lesions in humans also cause stuttering.
Read the full interview (and listen to a bird stutter).
politics
HHS secretary gets an earful on fallout from Change HealthCare cyberattack
Patience is wearing thin on the Biden administration's response to a recent cyberattack that has frozen millions of hospital and physician insurance claims, senators told health secretary Xavier Becerra at a hearing yesterday. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) urged him to institute cybersecurity requirements for both hospitals and insurers and to "start holding these executives [accountable] who are not doing their job in line with the kind of safety standards Americans have the right to expect on cyber."
HHS has launched a probe of the attack, focusing on whether Change HealthCare and its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, complied with federal law protecting patients' health information. "Every sector within health care has to get into this, because no one could keep their data doors unlocked with these cyberattacks that are occurring," Becerra said. "We're trying to get the best information we can to know exactly how to proceed." Read more from STAT's Sarah Owermohle.
covid-19
Kids are still developing a rare inflammatory illness after Covid-19
Covid-19 cases may be falling, but an alarming side effect of the disease in children is still here. Almost four years after the first cases of a condition called multisystem inflammation syndrome, or MIS-C, were reported, a CDC analysis published yesterday says cases are still occurring, especially among kids who are unvaccinated. MIS-C typically develops in the two to six weeks following SARS-CoV-2 infection. Marked by fever and inflammation of the child's heart, skin, GI tract, and other organs, MIS-C is rare but serious.
MIS-C incidence was highest in late 2020 and early 2021 but continued to rise in step with Covid case levels, as it did in fall 2023. More than 80%, or 92 of 112 MIS-C cases, were in vaccine-eligible but unvaccinated children. Among the 20 vaccinated children who had MIS-C, immunity had likely waned in 60% of those children by the time of their illness.
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