What sets humans apart from other animals is our ability to create culture; however, a new study from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior focusing on chimpanzees is challenging how researchers define culture in the animal kingdom.

Digging deeper into chimpanzee behavior, the new findings indicate that wild chimpanzees learn dozens of everyday behaviors from one another, many of which are essential for survival but have not traditionally been recognized as “cultural.”

The study took place in the Budongo Forest region at the Budongo Conservation Field Station in Uganda. Over two years, the team followed 28 wild chimpanzees of different ages, recording more than 1,000 hours of detailed observations of their daily behavior.

“Animal culture doesn’t have to be rare or complex. It can include basic skills used every day, like finding food and knowing how to eat it,” says first author Nora Slania from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in a statement.

Researchers focused on a behavior called “peering,” in which one chimpanzee closely watches another’s actions. This attention-based learning technique has been studied in other primates, but its broader role in chimpanzee cultural transmission had not been fully explored. The team documented 366 instances of peering and found that chimpanzees selectively observed others during important learning moments, such as when acquiring complex or rare skills.

“In humans, our everyday lives are full of culture, including the way we speak, dress, or eat. We don’t require behaviors to be especially remarkable or independent of our environment,” says Dr. Caroline Schuppli, senior author of the study.

 “Animals, however, have long been held to stricter standards. By adopting a more inclusive view of culture—and standards more comparable to those applied to humans—future research may reveal that many animals possess richer cultures than previously recognized,” she adds. 

During the long-term observations, the research team identified 69 distinct behaviors that chimpanzees appeared to learn socially. Surprisingly, only a small subset of those behaviors would have been classified as cultural under previous definitions. Most of the observed activities involved feeding, grooming, playing, and basic environmental exploration.

One of the study’s most important findings involved the central role food plays in chimpanzee culture. Around 60% of the observed behaviors involved identifying, processing, or consuming plant foods such as fruits and leaves. These observations suggest chimpanzees rely not only on instinct, but also on social learning through “peering” to locate and process food sources.

Notable researchers such as Jane Goodall previously linked chimpanzee culture primarily to tool use, identifying 39 cultural behaviors across chimpanzee populations. However, the new findings suggest that a narrower definition may have underestimated the true scale of cultural learning in chimpanzees.

“The fact that so much of a chimpanzee’s diet is socially learned highlights how important social learning is for their development,” Schuppli said in a statement.

“While some behaviors may be simple and learned quickly, acquiring the full range of their culture still takes young chimpanzees many years,” she adds.

These everyday practices are very similar to human culture, like eating habits, communication styles, and social norms. The study proposes that chimpanzee culture is more continuous and embedded in daily life than previously recognized. 

“Behavior allows animals to respond flexibly to the world around them, and cultural transmission offers a fast way to learn new behaviors. Ultimately, understanding the full scope of animal culture will help us protect the diverse ways these species adapt to changing environments,” Slania added

This study was previously published in iScience. 

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

When most people think of visual art, they don’t usually think of math at the same time. One primary reason for this is that mainstream culture has framed art and math as two separate functions of the brain.

However, because the brain works as a whole when creating art and solving mathematical problems, a new study suggests that abstract art may follow hidden mathematical principles that influence how people perceive and respond to it.

For years, researchers have wondered why certain types of art move people more than others. Until now, however, there has been no direct explanation.

Using a sophisticated method from computational topology, researchers discovered that famous abstract artists appear to share a common structural pattern in their work. Researchers are calling this a mathematical “golden rule” that can distinguish real art from AI-generated “slop.”

Led by Jacek Rogala of the University of Warsaw and Shabnam Kadir of the University of Hertfordshire, the research team used a technique called persistent homology to analyze visual compositions. Persistent homology is a mathematical tool that breaks down how structures within an image change across multiple scales, revealing patterns that the human eye cannot see.

Patterns Hidden in Abstract Imagery

The team compared two sets of images: authentic abstract paintings created by celebrated artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, and “pseudo-art” produced by AI to mimic abstract styles.

The findings suggested the topological method could distinguish real art from AI-generated images. According to the researchers, the structural organization of authentic paintings changed in consistent, measurable ways compared to the computer-generated alternatives.

Senior author Jacek Rogala said in a statement, “What struck me most is that we could actually see the gallery environment doing something measurable. It wasn’t just a backdrop — it changed which images held attention and for how long. That’s a result you can put numbers on, and it still feels surprising.”

When examining the works of Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock more closely, the researchers discovered that the artists’ paintings tended to converge on a similar rate of violation of a mathematical relationship called Alexander duality. This concept describes the balance between structures near the edges of an image and what is happening in the middle.

“An important part of our study was to explore the relationship between topologically derived image features, eye movement, and aesthetic experience,” the authors say in a co-statement. “Our research showed that our newly developed method not only clearly distinguished between two sets of images but also allowed us to map topological features onto gaze fixation heat maps.”

The Hidden Mathematics Behind Works of Art

Researchers think many abstract artists may naturally arrange shapes and patterns in similar ways, even without knowing the mathematics behind them. This hidden structure could help explain why certain artworks feel more pleasing or emotionally engaging to viewers.

The researchers also took the study a step further by examining how people respond physically and mentally to abstract art. Participants studied both authentic and AI-generated images while researchers tracked their eye movements and monitored brain activity in laboratory and gallery settings. The results revealed noticeable behavioral differences. Real artworks produced more stable, integrated patterns of brain activity, while AI-generated art elicited more exploratory eye movements.

Overall, the study suggests that abstract art is not purely subjective or random. Instead, abstract art may follow hidden mathematical patterns that naturally connect with the way our brains interpret and understand images.

The study, “Art’s Hidden Topology: A Window into Human Perception,” was published in PLOS Computational Biology.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

A recent fossil discovery in Canada is reshaping scientists’ understanding of early animal evolution. 

Deep in the Canadian Northwest Territories, researchers from the American Museum of Natural History and Dartmouth College have uncovered more than 100 fossils belonging to the Ediacaran biota, a group of soft-bodied organisms that lived over 500 million years ago.

The new finding suggests evolutionary developments such as movement, sexual reproduction, and complex body structures appeared millions of years earlier than previously thought. 

The Ediacaran Period, which lasted from about 635 to 538 million years ago, marks an important stage in Earth’s history when multicellular life first became widespread. Before then, life mainly consisted of microscopic organisms.

The newly discovered fossils give scientists a closer look at this complex transition from simple microbial life to large, complex marine animals.

Found in the Mackenzie Mountains (traditional lands of the Sahtú Dene and Métis peoples), scientists researching the area discovered fossils belonging to the White Sea assemblage, a group of Ediacaran organisms previously found only in Europe, Asia, and Australia. 

A First-of-Its-Kind Discovery in North America

What makes the discovery even more impressive is the age of the fossils. Some scientists estimate the specimens are about 567 million years old, making them 5–10 million years older than any previously known White Sea fossils. The time overlap with the Avalon assemblage points to communities that existed earlier than researchers suggested.

Among the most important fossils found was Dickinsonia, a flat, oval-shaped organism believed to move across the seafloor while feeding on bacteria and algae. Scientists consider it one of the earliest animals capable of movement. Another fossil, Funisia, provides the oldest known evidence of sexual reproduction. This is a tubular organism that releases sperm and eggs into the water during reproduction. 

“For 3 billion years, life on Earth was dominated by microbes,” said the study’s lead author, Scott Evans, in a statement. “Then, all the sudden, we get these strange-looking marine animals big enough to see and capable of behaviors we would find familiar today.” 

Evans, who is the assistant curator of invertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, also emphasized the site’s importance in advancing understanding of the changes organisms were undergoing during this period in our planet’s deep history.

“If we want to understand this transition, when life first became large, complex and unmistakenly animal, this new site has tremendous potential,” Evans said. 

Researchers also uncovered Kimberella, an organism thought to be an early relative of mollusks. It has a muscular foot used for scraping food from the ocean floor and could be the oldest known bilaterian. Another interesting fossil is the Eoandromeda, which may be an ancient comb jelly with eight spiral arms.

“Not only is this new site highly diverse, but also it is from a part of the rock succession where we have previously lacked fossil remains,” said study co-author Justin Strauss, an associate professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences from Dartmouth. “This is really exciting. Given our understanding of the regional geology in northwestern Canada, there is great potential here to revisit our understanding of Ediacaran Earth history.”

The fossils also challenge assumptions about where early animals first evolved. Scientists had previously believed shallow coastal waters were the main environment for early animal life. However, the Canadian fossils suggest otherwise, indicating that these organisms lived in deeper marine settings. 

Evans believes the results “suggest a pattern where evolutionary innovation begins in deeper environments and later spreads toward the coast.”

“We think of the deep ocean as a dark, inhospitable place, but it is also relatively stable, with few fluctuations in things like temperature and oxygen essential to most animal life,” Evans said. “This stability may have provided key opportunities to support early animal life.”

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

Neuralink’s first female PRIME trial participant, Audrey Crews, is now creating abstract art using the company’s brain-computer interface.

Crews, who was paralyzed from the neck down at age 16, has been creating memorable abstract art with her mind using an innovative brain-computer interface (BCI) technology.

Crews is the 9th Neuralink participant and the first woman to receive the implantable device in the PRIME clinical trials.  

With fewer than 100 people worldwide with BCIs, Crews has found herself at the intersection of art and the future of bneuroscience. By using only the power of thought, Crews has created vibrant abstract art with rich color and shapes.

On her website, she explains why creating this art is important to her: “My mission is to expand the boundaries of human expression and share the u

nseen landscapes of the mind,” Crews says. 

Her artwork has evolved stylistically since her first showcase on X in 2025, at which time she was learning to draw her name.

“I tried writing my name for the first time in 20 years. Im working on it,” Crews said in a post on X. 

“I’ll never forget the moment I used my thoughts to write my name, ‘Audrey,’ on a laptop screen for the first time in two decades. I even drew hearts and a slice of pizza, which felt like a small miracle! I shared that moment on X, laughing about my progress,” Crews said on her website.

“It’s humbling to know my journey is helping Neuralink refine this technology, which could one day let millions control devices with their minds,” she added.  

Since then, Crews’ art has evolved, and she has also launched her online NeuraArt Studio, where fans can purchase limited-edition prints of her artwork.

Amid the BCI company’s efforts, Neuralink states that its devices are still “investigational and not FDA approved.” 

However, in January of this year, the company said in a statement that a “primary ‌aim of our expanding clinical trials is to better understand these variations and improve both our hardware and the overall procedure for every participant.”

Neuralink began human trials of its brain implant in 2024 after resolving safety concerns raised by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had previously declined to approve its initial application in 2022.

For Crews, what she has achieved lies at the intersection of current implantable BCI technology and fine abstract art, signaling a fundamental reframing of what it means to create, perceive, and even experience such creative products—a shift from something merely observed to something partially constructed by BCI users through thought.

“This breakthrough didn’t just restore my ability to create—it ignited a passion for art that had been dormant for too long,” she says. Crews’ art can be viewed, and prints are available for purchase, on her NeuraArt Studio website.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

A former Harvard chemistry professor convicted in the United States for concealing ties to a Chinese talent program is now leading a state-backed brain-computer interface laboratory in Shenzhen, raising fresh concerns about the geopolitical race for emerging technologies.

Former Harvard scientist Charles Lieber, 67, has rebuilt his research career in China, where he currently directs the Institute for Brain Research, Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies (i-BRAIN). In 2021, he was convicted in the United States for lying to federal investigators about his financial ties to a Chinese talent recruitment program, as well as for tax-related offenses. He was sentenced to prison and later placed under home confinement before relocating to Shenzhen in 2025.

Considered a leading authority in BCI research and development, Lieber now serves as director of i-BRAIN, a laboratory operating under the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART), a government-backed institution. The laboratory’s primary focus includes primate research and BCI chip development.

Lieber said during a Shenzhen government news conference in December, “I arrived on April 28, 2025, with a dream and not much more, maybe a couple bags of clothes.” He added, “Personally, my own goals are to make Shenzhen a world leader.”

According to Reuters, the lab provides Lieber with resources beyond what he had access to in the United States, including dedicated nanofabrication equipment and extensive primate research facilities.

Experts have previously warned U.S. officials and Congress about the privacy implications of BCI technologies, as well as potential military applications that enhance cognitive performance on and off the battlefield. Lieber’s return to cutting-edge research has renewed debate in the United States over technology security and scientific cooperation with China.

“China has weaponized against us our own openness and our own efforts for innovation,” Glenn Gerstell, an advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former general counsel for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), told Reuters on  May 1. “They’ve flipped that and turned it around against us, and they’re ​taking advantage of it.”

China’s policy of “military-civil fusion,” which encourages collaboration between civilian research institutions and the military, has increased those concerns in the United States. In July 2025, the Chinese government announced its goal of becoming the “gold standard” for BCI competitors worldwide. 

At i-BRAIN, Lieber’s team is reportedly currently hiring international researchers to conduct experiments involving rhesus monkeys, which have been used for BCI testing at many other companies, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

In recent years, Neuralink employees have reported ongoing mistreatment and deaths of rhesus monkeys, where death certificates are openly available to see. But Musk took to the popular social media outlet X, stating that “No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant. First, our early implants, to minimize risk to healthy monkeys, we chose terminal monkeys (close to death already).”

The i-BRAIN lab also offers chip-manufacturing tools, including ultraviolet lithography systems used to create tiny electronic circuits. 

Washington and Wall Street Brace for the BCI Era

In October of last year, Morgan Stanley released a private report titled, “Neuralink: AI in your brAIn” addressing that Elon Musk and Neuralink are at the forefront of a larger technological shift that society may not be ready for: one with staggering implications that could ultimately impact everything from healthcare to gaming, defense, investing, and society at large. The report also addressed the challenges of a potential “neuro-elite” evolving over time. 

“As AI moves into the physical world through expressions ranging from robotaxis to humanoids and autonomous weapons systems, we recommend paying closer attention to developments in brain-computer interface,” a portion of the paper states, under a section titled “Prometheus Shrugged.”

A month before this report was released, on September 24, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with Senators John Cornyn and Ron Wyden, proposed legislation to regulate BCIs, requesting that the FTC review the policy for long-term use.

Named the MIND Act, guidelines should be created alongside a framework to address ethical concerns and safeguard American interests.

Altogether, as the race to merge minds and machines intensifies, the broader consequences of who controls these technologies—and how they are used—remain in question.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

Researchers at Rutgers University have found that frequent exposure to real-world gun violence through the media may affect our mental health. The research suggests that regularly viewing firearm-related news and social media content is linked to higher levels of depression and emotional distress among adults throughout the United States.

The study examined 5,000 adults nationwide. Throughout the study, the research team focused on exposure to real-world firearm violence through popular media outlets such as Instagram, cable television news, newspapers, and other related media. Unlike fictional violence seen in movies, video games, or television dramas, the study took a direct look at the reactions to actual incidents of gun violence reported in the media throughout the United States.

“One of the most critical elements is ‘threat system activation,’ essentially how the brain’s survival system (fear/vigilance) gets activated again and again from violent images/narratives,” according to Niloufar Esmaeilpour, a Registered Clinical Counselor and the Founder of Lotus Therapy & Counseling Center.

Esmaeilpour, who was not connected to the study, told The Debrief in an email that “Although an individual might not be at risk personally, seeing shootings, victims, police/emergency response, etc., repeatedly in the media could cause individuals to inaccurately judge their personal safety,” invoking a cognitive bias known as “availability heuristic.”

“Chronic activation of the body’s threat response through repeated viewing could result in chronic stress responses (sleep disturbances, irritable mood, emotional numbing), and potentially later symptoms of anxiety/depression,” Esmaeilpour said.

Another outside perspective was provided by Dr. Clint Salo, a Board-Certified Psychiatrist at The Grove Recovery Community. “What’s happening neurologically is that the brain doesn’t fully distinguish between witnessing violence directly and consuming it repeatedly through a screen,” Salo said. “The threat response activates either way.”

“So chronic exposure to graphic news content keeps the nervous system in a low-grade state of vigilance, and over time, that contributes to anxiety, depression, and a distorted sense of how dangerous the world actually is,” Salo said. “Algorithms make this significantly worse because they’re optimized for engagement, and fear and outrage drive engagement.”

The Findings  

The researchers found that people who watch or frequently encounter firearm-related content reported more days when they experienced poor mental health and a higher rate of depression symptoms. Researchers used statistical models to compare levels of media exposure with personal emotional well-being, revealing a connection between repeated exposure and negative emotional or mental health outcomes.  

Devon Ziminski, a postdoctoral fellow at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at the Rutgers School of Public Health, says in a statement that the findings  “support existing research that repeated exposure to firearm violence may negatively affect well-being, and that real-world media firearm violence exposure may also have negative implications.”

Even watching highly-publicized firearm violence events like mass shootings, how the event is shaped, its narrative, the volume of coverage, and how it’s framed in the media—even if the outlet is credible—can all lead to negative mental health outcomes. Fundamentally, the idea is that the coverage could reinforce perceptions of threat and harm. 

The overall outcome is that large amounts of gun voilence consumed can contribute to poor mental health. Researchers believe the emotional effects of repeatedly watching violent real-world events should be part of a broader discussion about how people receive their news and are exposed to information.  

“While much work focuses on direct victimization, these findings suggest that cumulative media exposure to real-world firearm violence could contribute to a mental health burden, even for those not personally involved in an incident,” Ziminski says. 

While researchers are not suggesting we turn off all our media devices, they are encouraging people to be well-informed and to work toward a better understanding of how negative media can shape emotional well-being. Strategies such as limiting repetitive exposure to distressing content, taking breaks from it, and balancing news consumption with positive activities may help reduce emotional strain.

“When consuming news, I recommend creating a ‘news dosing schedule,’ setting aside specific times each day (e.g., 20-30 min once/twice per day) for news consumption instead of constant browsing,”  Esmaeilpour suggests. “Browsing continuously can overwhelm emotions, making it difficult to manage one’s mental health.”

“Intentional selection of high-quality news sources that include contextual information and do not repeatedly present graphic detail will also help mitigate the emotional response to news stories,”  Esmaeilpour added. “In addition, taking some type of physical/cognitive break immediately following exposure (i.e., going for a walk, listening to music, talking with others) is beneficial because it changes the state of the nervous system away from being in a continued threat state.”

The recent study, “Associations between media gun violence exposure (GVE) and mental health: a national cross-sectional study,” was published in BMC Public Health.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

Language is ever evolving—from ancient dialects to modern slang, the words and accents people use are not only expressions of culture and personal identity, but also reflections of our past.

Now, a new study from the University of Portsmouth suggests that these changes may not be as random as first thought. Instead, they may follow predictable patterns.

James Burridge, Professor of Probability and Statistical Physics at the University’s School of Mathematics and Physics, and his team developed a framework to forecast how language patterns spread across regions and generations.

By leveraging statistical physics, scientists are beginning to map the movement of words and accents in ways that are similar to weather forecasting.

“Just as meteorologists use mathematical models to forecast tomorrow’s weather, the same kind of thinking can be applied to language,” Burridge said in a statement. 

“Where you are affects how you speak, and if you map how people use certain words, you see clear geographic patterns—just like a weather map. However, the physics of language is closer to crystals and magnets than the atmosphere.”

“Language change can seem mysterious,” Burridge said, “but my research argues that as well as being driven by individual human behavior it may also obey some of the same broad rules that govern physical systems like magnets, bubbles, and fluids.”

The result looks something like a  “language weather map,” revealing clear geographic patterns in speech. In their research, Burridge and his colleagues decided to focus their study on regional dialects in the United States, using data from the University of Cambridge’s Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes, created by linguist Bert Vaux.

This large-scale survey enabled Burridge to examine how different terms compete and spread across various communities. Specifically, Burridge looked at common pop culture terms we use daily or weekly, like the word “soda,” while others use the term “pop,” and why some of these popular words spread while others retreat. 

One interesting example is the word used for a small crustacean commonly found in gardens. Depending on the region and area someone lives in, they might call it a “woodlouse” or a “roly-poly.” In the 1950s, “roly-poly” was mainly used in parts of the American South. But by 1995, the term had spread widely across the United States. This rapid spread of common words shows how local expressions can spread far beyond their origins and become the dominant word in that area or region. 

The model also helps explain why some regional terms survive while others die out. In earlier research, Burridge studied the spread of the word “splinter” across England. While “splinter” became standard across most of the country, in the northeast (in regions like Newcastle upon Tyne), the local term “spelk” stayed strong as a word. According to the model, local isolation of a term and low population in those areas can help preserve the local words. 

“Splinter is used across almost all of England, except around Newcastle, where people still say spelk,” says Burridge. “Although Newcastle itself is densely populated, it is surrounded by more sparsely populated areas, which helps the local form hold its ground and prevents splinter from taking over.”

One of the study’s most important findings is the idea of a linguistic “horizon.” Like weather forecasts, language predictions become less trustworthy over time as they keep being picked up by the new generation.

Burridge notes, “My research suggests that language may be much more law-like than it first appears. Beneath the creativity and messiness of human speech, there may be hidden statistical forces shaping how we all end up talking.” 

“For physicists like me, this is particularly exciting, as it suggests that the elegant tools of statistical field theory may help explain not just the natural world, but patterns in human communication as well,” he adds. 

The new framework could have implications beyond linguistics. For example, understanding how language evolves may help sociologists study cultural change and improve technologies such as speech recognition and translation systems.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.