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Trees will help find the bodies of people missing in the forest

02.09.2020

Forensic botanists at the University of Tennessee have come up with a way trees and shrubs can be used to search for the bodies of people who have gone missing in the woods. They note that a decaying body changes the chemical and microbiological composition of the soil, which can be tracked using spectral analysis of plant leaves.

People often disappear in the forest, in order to find them, as a rule, they comb the area and use aerial photography. But the dense canopy of trees and shrubs complicates this task. Now, forensic botanists have suggested using markers on trees and shrubs that can point to the body that lies underneath.

The decomposing body has a serious impact on the environment over an area of about three square meters. In particular, the chemical composition of the soil and local bacterial communities are transformed around it.

Changes in trees and shrubs, the roots of which are near the body, are especially noticeable. The authors illustrate this by the example of one chemical element - nitrogen. The body of an average person contains 2,6 kilograms of nitrogen, which, when decomposed, turns into ammonium.

Calculations show that the concentration of this compound in the soil around the body will increase by 50 times relative to the norm. As a result of additional feeding, plants will be able to produce more chlorophyll, which will be reflected in the color of their leaves. These and other changes can be detected using spectral analysis of the leaves.

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Transcranial magnetic stimulation improved short-term verbal memory 04.10.2021

Transcranial magnetic stimulation at a frequency of one hertz, applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during word memorization, is associated with improved verbal memory. Moreover, this effect is associated with a well-known physiological correlate of memory formation - a decrease in beta waves observed in the posterior cortex.

The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays an important role in the formation of verbal memory: if this area is stimulated while memorizing words, any text, or a passage of it, then later, when trying to reproduce the memorized memory, a decrease in memory performance will be found. Moreover, such a decrease in performance is mainly observed when using excitatory transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with an oscillation frequency of 20 hertz. Thus, it appears that the activity of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may have an inverse relationship with memory performance.

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In the first experiment of the study, 40 healthy participants and in the second - 24 looked through two lists of 10 words per series, and there were 12 such series in total. The participants were faced with the task of either remembering both lists, or only one. At the same time, in each experiment, while memorizing the second list, half of the participants received repetitive TMS with a frequency of one hertz of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the other half, which became the control group, received it in the region of the crown of the head, since, according to previous studies, stimulation of these zones has a relatively small effect. influence on the current brain processes involved in most experimental tasks.

It turned out that with free recall, compared with the control group, participants in the experimental group remembered significantly more words, but only words from those lists, during the memorization of which they received stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Simultaneously recorded EEG data for the first experiment showed that one hertz TMS was associated with a subsequent decrease in beta waves, a condition known to be beneficial for memory formation. This decrease was noted in the parietal and occipital regions, which are involved in the processes of information perception, which is critical for memorization, because it is impossible to remember correctly what is perceived incorrectly or not perceived at all.

In addition to the effect that TMS has on memory, it has helped scientists intercept memories on the way from short-term to long-term memory. And this is important for studying the mechanisms of memory formation, and the transfer of information from working memory to long-term storage.

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