Kyoto, Japan -- We're all familiar with Pavlovian conditioning, in which a reward-anticipatory behavior follows a reward-predicting stimulus. Perhaps you experience it yourself when passing a café or restaurant and catching a whiff of something delectable.

Behind this mechanism is dopamine released within the striatum, the largest structure of the subcortical basal ganglia, which links motor movements and motivation. Yet it has remained unclear exactly what kind of dopamine signal is transmitted to the striatum to cause this behavior in primates.

In order to understand this dopamine signal, a team of researchers from Kyoto University and Cambridge University developed a new method of monitoring dopamine, utilizing a fluorescent dopamine sensor.

Kyoto, Japan -- As a child, did it ever occur to you that your perception of color differed from that of others? It's quite common to have this thought, but it turns out that the human color experience may be more universal than we previously believed.

In psychology and neuroscience, the relationship between subjective experience, such as how we perceive color, and physical brain activity has remained an unresolved problem. Furthermore, due to their limited language abilities, studying conscious experiences in children has posed a particular challenge.

This inspired a team of researchers at Kyoto University to establish a methodology for evaluating conscious experiences, or qualia, in young children. Focusing on their experience with color, the team developed a touch panel interface that requires only minimal language skills, making it accessible for children as young as 3 years old.

Scientists have achieved the first real-time visualization of how "excited-state aromaticity" emerges within just hundreds of femtoseconds and then triggers a molecule to change from bent to planar structure in a few picoseconds. By combining ultrafast electronic and vibrational spectroscopies, the team captured these fleeting structural changes at the molecular level and showed that aromaticity appears before--and then drives--the structural planarization. Their findings lay the groundwork for designing more efficient photoactive materials, such as sensors and light-driven molecular switches, by leveraging the power of aromaticity in excited states.

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) is a polygenic disorder influenced by multiple genes, but their specific roles in the progression of disease remain unknown. To address this gap, researchers conducted a series of experiments that identified the NACHT and WD repeat domain-containing protein 1 (Nwd1) gene and its role in liver pathogenesis. This breakthrough represents an important step toward establishing new therapeutic targets for MASH.

Polypseudorotaxanes, in which α-cyclodextrin (α-CD) rings shuttle along a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) chain, are promising candidates for molecular machines. However, their molecular dynamics have remained unclear. Researchers have now used fast-scanning atomic force microscopy (FS-AFM) to visualize α-CD rings moving along a PEG chain. This breakthrough establishes FS-AFM as a powerful tool for analyzing supramolecular polymers and paves the way for designing efficient molecular motors.

Physicists developed simplified formulas to quantify quantum entanglement in strongly correlated electron systems. Their approach was applied to nanoscale materials, revealing unexpected quantum behaviors and identifying key quantities for the Kondo effect. These findings advance understanding of quantum technologies.

By incorporating gadolinium into a catalyst, its efficiency in a reaction that produces hydrogen fuel increases. This could be the boost we need to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers from Osaka University found that plasma cells expressing high levels of the protein integrin β7 and the transcription factor KLF2 tend to leave immune tissues and migrate to the bone marrow. There, they become long-lived plasma cells that help create durable antibody responses, which are key to vaccine effectiveness.

Energy efficiency is crucial for sustainability, yet vast amounts of low-temperature waste heat remain unused in industrial processes. Now, researchers from Japan have investigated erythritol slurry as a promising heat transfer medium for thermal storage and transport. By analyzing its flow behavior and non-Newtonian properties, they developed a predictive equation for its rheological characteristics. Their findings could help guide the design of industrial waste heat recovery systems, advancing energy efficiency and carbon neutrality.