A ‘motivation brake’ in our brains makes taking that first step towards a task less appealing. Plus, US scientists have signed an open letter in solidarity with Greenland and what Wikipedia can teach us about trust.
Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here.
Greenland is a major place of climate research.Credit: Lukasz Larsson Warzecha/Getty
In response to threats by US President Donald Trump to somehow acquire Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), US scientists have drafted what they call a statement in solidarity with the island, open to any US-based researchers who have conducted research there. “A lot of people in the US — not just scientists — are very upset about the rhetoric directed towards Greenland. But scientists who work there feel it very personally,” says palaeoclimatologist Yarrow Axford, who is one of the creators of the initiative. “We want to let our colleagues and friends in Greenland know we’re thinking about them right now, and that we stand with them.”
Nature | 6 min read
Read more: UK glaciologist Martin Siegert writes that Greenland is indispensable to global climate science (The Conversation | 7 min read)
Scientists have identified a neural circuit that seems to act as a ‘motivation brake’, dampening the drive to begin a difficult or unpleasant task. When the team selectively suppressed this circuit in macaque monkeys (Macaca fuscata), the animals were more willing to start a potentially unpleasant job. If confirmed in humans, the findings could shift how clinicians approach the debilitating lack of motivation associated with depression. But any easing of the motivational brake will require care to prevent inadvertent overwork and burnout, says neuroscientist and study co-author Ken-ichi Amemori.
Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Current Biology paper
Last week, the US Congress published a spending bill that effectively axes NASA’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) programme, which was supposed to ferry Martian material collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth. Among the MSR projects that the bill brings to a halt is the chemical analysis of a rock sample that contains compounds that could be a fingerprint of ancient microbial life. There might be other ways to get the samples to Earth, such as the involvement of private aerospace companies, but “the programme — as we know it — is dead”, says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a non-profit organization.
... continue reading