2025-09-05
31 分钟Welcome to the world of the universe and us, the weekly news podcast from you, scientist.
I'm Dr. Rowan Hooper.
And I'm Dr. Penny Sarge.
On today's show, we hear about an ant species where the queen ant lays eggs of another species.
And we're also going to hear about the perils of using your smartphone on the toilet.
And it's not that you might drop it in the can.
It's not that particular peril, though.
OK, I'm looking forward to that.
We're going to start with news that scientists have made the first complete activity map of a mammalian brain.
Yes, this is a big study.
It took place across a dozen labs and it has revealed unprecedented insights into how decisions are made.
The big takeaway from this study is that they found that decision making is a process that's distributed across the brain rather than in a particular area,
which is what they were expecting.
And then also this study may even hint at the roots of intuition,
that feeling that you know something.
And there's a really interesting sort of element here about what that might then mean
for developing artificial consciousness.
business.
Alexandra Thompson is here, Alex.
First of all, we should say this is a mouse, not a human.