Palace intrigue

One tool to improve recall is a memory palace—a mental image of a familiar location where you can “place” information for later retrieval. Nicholas Chiang, SB’24, and Akram Bakkour, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, studied how memory palaces interact with emotion, which has also been shown to help with memory. Their findings were published in January in Emotion. Using the sandbox game Minecraft, the researchers built two memory palaces—one to evoke positive emotions (a light-filled house with lush flower beds) and one to evoke negative emotions (a dark house covered in overgrowth)—and recorded a video tour of each house. Participants were divided into three groups: positive, negative, and the control group, which did not use a memory palace. All three groups were asked to memorize a list of words, with the two test groups watching the video tour and “placing” the words around their memory palaces for retrieval during a recall test. Participants who used the negative memory palace remembered the most words, and those who used the positive memory palace remembered more words than those in the control group. This research could lead to methods to enhance recall and reduce cognitive load, which may be especially useful for neurodivergent populations.—R. L. S.

Northern exposure

A new study led by Zeresenay Alemseged, Donald N. Pritzker Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, published in Nature in January, explores the discovery of a 2.6-million-year-old partial jaw fossil in the Afar region of northeastern Ethiopia. The fossil is from the genus Paranthropus, an ancient ancestor of modern humans. Prior to this finding, researchers had unearthed hundreds of fossils in the region representing all early hominin species except Paranthropus. Many paleoanthropologists had concluded that the genus just hadn’t traveled that far north—possibly because Paranthropus was unable to compete with bipedal Homo, which had larger brains and used sophisticated tools, or because Paranthropus facial anatomy, with its large molars and powerful jaw muscles, required a specialized diet not found that far north. However, this discovery shows that the genus was just as widespread as other early hominins and provides new information on how it adapted to environmental conditions and interacted with other ancient human ancestors.—R. L. S.

Carotenoids in cancer treatment

Researchers led by Jing Chen, the Janet Davison Rowley Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine, have found that a plant-derived carotenoid called zeaxanthin supports cells’ immune response against cancer. (Carotenoids, which are known to promote eye health, include red, orange, and yellow pigments found in some algae, plants, fungi, and bacteria.) The team screened a large number of blood nutrients and found that zeaxanthin enhanced mouse T cells’ ability to fight melanoma cells. When zeaxanthin alone was given to mice as a dietary supplement, it slowed tumor growth; when it was administered to mice in combination with immunotherapy, zeaxanthin significantly boosted the efficacy of the treatment. In laboratory experiments, the researchers found that zeaxanthin also improved human T cells’ ability to fight several kinds of cancer cells. The results were published in September in Cell Reports Medicine. While clinical trials are needed to assess whether zeaxanthin supplements can improve outcomes for human cancer patients, this research opens the door to new opportunities in nutritional immunology.—C. C.