Excerpted from The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction, by Larry Young, PhD, and Brian Alexander, by arrangement with Current, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., Copyright © Larry J. Young and Brian Alexander, 2012. To investigate the rodent version of getting hugs, and what happens in the absence of hugs from a bonded partner, Bosch took virgin males and set them up in vole apartments with roommates—either a brother they hadn't seen in a long time or an unfamiliar virgin female. As males and females are wont to do, the boy-girl roommates mated and formed a bond. After five days, he split up half the brother pairs, and half the male-female pairs, creating what amounted to involuntary vole divorce. Then he put the voles through a series of behavioral tests. The first is called the forced-swim test. Bosch likens it to an old Bavarian proverb about two mice who fall into a bucket of milk. One mouse does nothing and drowns. The other tries to swim so furiously the milk turns into butter and the mouse escapes. Paddling is typically what rodents will do if they find themselves in water; they'll swim like crazy because they think they'll drown if they don't. (Actually, they'll float but apparently no rodent floaters have ever returned to fill in the rest of the tribe.) The voles that were separated from their brothers paddled manically. So did the voles who stayed with their brothers and the voles who stayed with their female mates. Only the males who'd gone through vole divorce floated listlessly as if they didn't care whether they drowned. "It was amazing," Bosch recalls. "For minutes, they would just float. You can watch the video and without knowing which group they were in, you can easily tell if it's an animal separated from their partner, or still with their partner." Watching the videos of them bob limply, it's easy to imagine them moaning out "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" with their tiny vole voices. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 17257 - Posted: 09.15.2012

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS It’s widely accepted among scientists that regular exercise transforms the brain, improving the ability to remember and think. And a growing and very appealing body of science has established that exercise spurs the creation of new brain cells, a process known as neurogenesis. But just how jogging or other workouts affect the structure of the brain has remained enigmatic, with many steps in the process unexplained. A new study published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences may fill in one piece of the puzzle, by showing that male sex hormones surge in the brain after exercise and could be helping to remodel the mind. The research was conducted on young, healthy and exclusively male rats – but scientists believe it applies to female rats, too, as well as other mammals, including humans. The decision to use only males was carefully considered. “We’ve known for a while that estrogen,” the female sex hormone, “is produced in the brain” not just of female animals but also, to some degree, in males, says Bruce S. McEwen, the director of the Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University in New York and an author of the study, which also involved scientists from the University of Tsukuba in Japan and other institutions. Estrogen has been well studied and has many effects, he said, including, scientists suspect, new brain cell growth. But far less has been known about the role of male sex hormones in mammalian brains, particularly after exercise. While both sexes produce male sex hormones, males produce far more of it – mostly in the gonads but, the researchers suspected, also in the brain. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 17250 - Posted: 09.13.2012

by Sari van Anders of the University of Michigan is an assistant professor of neurosciences; reproductive sciences; and science, technology and society. Her lecture is called “Beyond Sexual Orientation: Testosterone and Sexuality Diversity in Humans.” What do you mean by “beyond” sexual diversity? Sexual orientation is often assumed to refer to same-gender, other-gender, or mixed-gender sexual attractions. Despite this, we tend to lump sexual minority individuals and communities together whether they fit into this traditional sexual orientation model (lesbian, bisexual, gay) or not (kink, polyamory). With my talk, I plan to discuss how sexual orientation connects with other sexual minority categories and how testosterone research helps to reframe thinking about sexual diversity. What role does testosterone play in sexual orientation? I study adult circulating testosterone. I’ve found evidence that testosterone is related to something I call “relationship orientation” in men, and “relationship status” in women. In my talk I’ll be discussing how sexual diversity — including interest in multiple partners vs. one partner — might be more meaningfully studied in testosterone research. What’s the most interesting aspect of your research? My research moves across a lot of levels. I will be discussing really science-y stuff like hormones, really cultural stuff like identity and lots in between. © 2009 City Pulse

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 17249 - Posted: 09.13.2012

By Susan Milius Snakes in the wild sometimes forgo the mom-and-dad method of reproducing and have babies without having sex, researchers have confirmed with genetic testing. Occasional no-sex reproduction has been seen in captivity among snakes, Komodo dragons and sharks. But until now there has been no conclusive evidence for wild virgin birth among species that normally reproduce sexually, says Warren Booth of the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. (In about 80 kinds of vertebrates, a single sex carries on the species quite well on its own.) Booth and his colleagues examined dozens of litters of wild-caught copperheads and cottonmouths. The team found one case in each species of a male baby born without littermates. Genetic testing showed that these babies’ maternal and apparently paternal DNA was identical at multiple locations, making the chances that a daddy snake actually was involved in the reproductive process vanishingly small. The researchers report their findings online September 12 in Biology Letters. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 17248 - Posted: 09.13.2012

By Matthew Perrone, Associated Press "Do you have a decrease in libido?" "Have you noticed a recent deterioration in your ability to play sports?" "It could be Low-T." Welcome to the latest big marketing push by the nation's drug companies. In this case, it's a web page for Abbott Laboratories' Androgel, a billion-dollar selling testosterone gel used by millions of American men struggling with the symptoms of growing older that are associated with low testosterone, such as poor sex drive, weight gain and fatigue. Androgel is one of a growing number of prescription gels, patches and injections aimed at boosting the male hormone that begins to decline after about age 40. Drugmakers and some doctors claim testosterone therapy can reverse some of the signs of aging — even though the safety and effectiveness of such treatments is unclear. "The problem is that we don't have any evidence that prescribing testosterone to older men with relatively low testosterone levels does any good," says Dr. Sergei Romashkan, who oversees clinical trials for the National Institute on Aging, a part of the National Institutes of Health conglomerate of research centers. Low testosterone is the latest example of a once-natural part of getting old that has become a target for medical treatment. Bladder problems, brittle bones and hot flashes have followed a similar path: from inconvenient facts of life, to ailments that can be treated with drugs. The rise of such therapies is being fueled by both demographics and industry marketing. © 2012 NBCNews.com

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 17236 - Posted: 09.10.2012

By Susan Milius Caterpillars way too immature for actual sex turn out to detect and take an interest in adult sex pheromones. Caterpillars of the cotton leafworm moth (Spodoptera littoralis) don’t have working sex organs. They’re just long, black-green larvae eating as much as they can before transforming into the completely different body shape and lifestyle of an adult moth. Yet these caterpillars can sense, and appear to like, the adult sex pheromone of their species, an international team reports September 4 in Nature Communications. “This is a funny fact because sex pheromones are supposed to be for sex,” says coauthor Emmanuelle Jacquin-Joly of the French agricultural research agency INRA in Versailles. Adult female moths release puffs of these chemicals, and males catching a whiff — sometimes from considerable distances — sniff their way through the night to the female. Evolution may have repurposed some chemistry in this species, Jacquin-Joly and her colleagues propose. What means “come hither” to adult moths may indicate something quite different, perhaps “here’s food,” to a youngster, she says. She began looking for a cotton leafworm caterpillar pheromone response after another lab found that larval silkworm antennae make the adult-style proteins required to bind molecules of adult sex pheromones from the air and shuttle them to nerve cells. Young silkworms didn’t seem to use the information, but Jacquin-Joly wondered if young cotton leafworms, with a much broader diet, might respond differently. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Aggression
Link ID: 17227 - Posted: 09.07.2012

By Daisy Yuhas How do I love thee? When neuroscientist Young and journalist Alexander started counting, they found many molecular ways. In The Chemistry between Us, the writers highlight the complex chemical processes that create love in the brain and bolster the argument that love is an addiction. Young has devoted his career to studying the behaviors and neural circuitry of love in the prairie vole, a rodent whose monogamous tendencies resemble our own. Once a prairie vole has found “the one,” the pair will most likely remain companions for life. Young's research has implicated a range of chemical activities—mainly during sex—that build this lifelong bond. In particular, he uncovered how two hormones in the brain, vasopressin in male voles and oxytocin in female voles, regulate social behavior and memory—promoting the recognition of a loved one and the urge to cuddle or defend. In addition, the circulation of dopamine and opioids allows the vole to associate his or her partner with pleasure, thus strengthening their bond. Many of these molecules are identical to those activated in human bonding. That loving feeling comes at a price. A hormone called corticotropin-releasing factor, or CRF, builds up in the brains of paramours and parents alike. The CRF system activates a stress response, and this system elicits the painful sensations you feel when your baby cries or your boyfriend dumps you. The system may seem like a nasty trick, but it has its uses. Even when passion fades or a diaper needs changing, the sharp pangs of the CRF system keep families and loved ones together. The CRF system also contributes to the agony an addict feels after the elation wears off. Thus, the authors argue, the highs of intimacy and withdrawals of separation parallel the highs and lows that drug addicts experience. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 17199 - Posted: 08.25.2012

Steve Connor Babies of older fathers are more likely to carry genetic mutations than those of younger fathers. And the mutations could lead to illnesses such as autism and schizophrenia in later life, a landmark study has shown. Scientists have, for the first time, counted the number of new mutations linked with a father's age at the time of conception and have concluded that older men are significantly more likely to have children with potentially harmful genetic changes. The results could explain previous studies showing that certain mental and developmental illnesses with strong genetic components tend to be more common among people whose fathers were older at the time of conception. Although the age of a child's mother has been linked with problems associated with chromosomal defects, such as Down's syndrome, there has been scant information about the contribution made by older fathers to the future health of their offspring. "These observations shed light on the importance of the father's age on the risk of diseases such as schizophrenia and autism," the researchers say in their study published in the journal Nature. The scientists found that a new-born baby's genome contains around 60 new small-scale mutations compared with its parents and that the actual number of new mutations carried by each child was strongly dependent on the age of the father, rather than the mother, at the time of conception. The researchers, led by Augustine Kong and Kari Stefansson of deCode Genetics in Reykjavik, calculated that a 20-year-old father transmits about 25 new mutations to his child while a 40-year-old man will pass on 65. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Autism; Aggression
Link ID: 17196 - Posted: 08.25.2012

Kathryn Lougheed A chemical in llama semen responsible for inducing ovulation in females has been identified and, surprisingly, it is a protein already known for its role in promoting the growth and survival of nerve cells in many species1. The protein — nerve growth factor (NGF) — is also found in human semen, suggesting that it may play a previously unsuspected role in human fertility. Whereas many animals, including humans, cattle and mice, produce eggs as part of a cycle of spontaneous ovulation, others — including llamas, camels, rabbits and koalas — are ‘induced ovulators’ that need a chemical stimulus. In 2005, Gregg Adams, a veterinary surgeon and reproductive scientist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues showed that in llamas, the stimulus was in the seminal fluid2. In the latest study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, Adams led a team that identified the chemical as NGF. Although human women do not require NGF in semen to ovulate, Adams says that the protein could still have a direct effect on human fertility. Earlier this year, he published a paper3 showing that llama seminal fluid shortens the ovulation cycles of cows and seems to stimulate the development of the corpus luteum — a structure inside the ovaries that forms after an egg has been released and secretes hormones vital to pregnancy. In some cases, NGF could explain why some couples find it difficult to conceive, says Adams. A couple could have fertility problems if either the man failed to produce enough NGF in his semen or the woman lacked the receptors to detect and respond to it, he says. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 17187 - Posted: 08.22.2012

By Brett Israel and Environmental Health News A widely used pesticide – banned in homes but still commonly used on farms – appears to harm boys’ developing brains more than girls’, according to a new study of children in New York City. In boys, exposure to chlorpyrifos in the womb was associated with lower scores on short-term memory tests compared with girls exposed to similar amounts. The study is the first to find gender differences in how the insecticide harms prenatal development. Scientists say the finding adds to evidence that boys’ brains may be more vulnerable to some chemical exposures. “This suggests that the harmful effects of chlorpyrifos are stronger among boys, which indicates that perhaps boys are more vulnerable to this type of exposure,” said Virginia Rauh, a perinatal epidemiologist at Columbia University and co-author of the study published in July. Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate insecticide, a powerful class of pesticide that has toxic effects on nervous systems. It was widely used in homes and yards to kill cockroaches and other insects, but in 2001 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned its residential use because of health risks to children. Since then, levels inside U.S. homes have dropped [PDF], but residue remains in many homes. In addition, many developing countries still use the pesticide indoors. Known by the Dow trade name Lorsban, chlorpyrifos is still sprayed on some crops, including fruit trees and vegetables, and also is used on golf courses and for mosquito control. About 10 million pounds of chlorpyrifos are applied to agricultural fields annually, according to the EPA. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Aggression
Link ID: 17186 - Posted: 08.22.2012

By Jonathan Ball BBC News Young male fruit flies learn the smell of a receptive female to avoid wasting their sexual efforts, research shows. Promiscuous male flies initially court all females, but are rejected by those who have already mated. It is clear that the flies eventually learn to spot mated females, but just how they do has remained a mystery. Research published in Nature suggests that they smell a chemical signal called a pheromone left by other males during mating. The studies were performed using the common fruit fly - Drosophila melanogaster. This insect is used widely in genetic studies because they are easy to grow and they reproduce quickly - but principally because it is possible to generate and study flies that possess changes - or mutations - in their genetic material. In the study, Prof Barry Dickson and colleagues from the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, Austria, performed a series of studies to identify the mechanism that led to this change in behaviour in older flies. Using complementary approaches, the team showed that a pheromone called cVA was responsible. Pheromones are substances produced by one individual which modify the behaviour of another. They are widely known to work in the animal kingdom to warn of danger, define territories or attract mates. Mosquito The finding could be used for the control of other insects such as mosquitoes, which spread malaria BBC © 2012

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Aggression
Link ID: 17184 - Posted: 08.20.2012

Sleep apnea, a disorder characterized by snoring and daytime sleepiness that has been linked to cardiovascular disease, has primarily been viewed as a male problem, but a new Swedish study suggests the sleep disorder is also a common problem among women. Dr. Karl A Franklin of Umea University Hospital in Sweden and colleagues noted in the study released Wednesday that there have been only a few epidemiological studies conducted in women, and the frequency of the disorder in women "is still uncertain." Obstructive sleep apnea, in which a person has short pauses in breathing during sleep, may be caused by a temporary collapse of the airway. The gaps in breathing can last 10 to 30 seconds, and may occur dozens or hundreds of times each night. For their study, Franklin and the other Swedish researchers investigated 400 women from a population-based random sample of 10,000 women aged 20 to 70. The women answered a questionnaire and were monitored overnight. Obstructive sleep apnea was found in 50 per cent of the women subjects, with 14 per cent of them having a severe form of the disorder. Treatment for obstructive sleep apnea: For mild to moderate apnea, the best treatment is continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). © CBC 2012

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 17170 - Posted: 08.16.2012

by Michael Slezak A lack of anti-Müllerian hormone in boys with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) may lead to a greater number of symptoms. Michael Pankhurst and Ian McLennan from the University of Otago in New Zealand say hormones like anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) that control the speed at which the body and brain develop might play a central role in the way that ASD progresses through childhood. The pair analysed the level of AMH in 82 boys with ASD. The lower the level of AMH in their blood, the greater the number of autistic traits they displayed. In an earlier study, McLennan and his colleagues found that an increased level of AMH was associated with slower overall growth and development in boys. Together, he thinks the two studies suggest that a lack of AMH could cause the brain to develop too quickly, leading to an increased number of symptoms in boys with ASD. "Rapid development is associated with a greater frequency of developmental disorders," says McLennan. A complex system that develops quickly is more likely to contain errors than one that develops more slowly, he explains. Surprisingly, there was no difference between the average level of anti-Müllerian hormone in the children with ASD and 16 boys without autism. McLennan says this shows that the hormone doesn't cause ASD, but may increase the number of symptoms in people who have the condition. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism; Aggression
Link ID: 17167 - Posted: 08.15.2012

By ABBY ELLIN After downing 70 chicken wings in about an hour, Andrew Walen realized he had a problem. Oh, he had known something was wrong over the years. Normal people don’t consume 4,500 calories worth of food in one sitting, or order takeout for four when dining alone. But it took a maniacal feeding frenzy for him to finally accept the reality: He was a binge eater, and he had absolutely no control around food. “Ultimately, it was about numbing out and self-loathing,” said Mr. Walen, now 39 and a therapist in Columbia, Md. “There was this voice in my head that said, ‘You’re no good, worthless,’ and I turned to food.” Mr. Walen is one of an estimated eight million men and women in the United States who struggle with binge eating, defined as consuming large amounts of food within a two-hour period at least twice a week without purging, accompanied by a sense of being out of control. While about 10 percent of patients with anorexia and bulimia are men, binge eating is a problem shared almost equally by both sexes. A study published online in October and then in the March issue of The International Journal of Eating Disorders found that among 46,351 men and women ages 18 to 65, about 11 percent of women and 7.5 percent of men acknowledged some degree of binge eating. “Binge eating among men is associated with significant levels of emotional distress, obesity, depression and work productivity impairment,” said Richard Bedrosian, a study author and director of behavioral health and solution development at Wellness and Prevention Inc., which works with employers and health plans. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia; Aggression
Link ID: 17163 - Posted: 08.14.2012

by Carol Cruzan Morton Migraines are a battle of the sexes that women might prefer not winning. Each year, roughly three times more women than men—up to 18% of all women—suffer from the debilitating headaches, as tallied by epidemiological surveys in Europe and the United States. A new brain imaging study may explain the divide: The brains of women with migraines appear to be built differently than those of their male counterparts. To conduct the study, researchers headed by David Borsook, a neurologist and neurobiologist of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, recruited 44 men and women, half of whom were migraine sufferers. The women who had migraines rated them as being as intense as the men did, but they tended to find them more unpleasant. Borsook says the distinction is analogous to the loudness of fingernails scratching on a chalkboard versus the torment of hearing the sound. The team then scanned the brains of the volunteers. The researchers gathered two kinds of data sets, one that captured brain shapes and features, and one that measured brain activity. Female migraine sufferers showed slightly thicker gray matter in two regions: one, the posterior insula, is well-known in pain processing; the other, the precuneus, has been recently linked to migraines but is more widely known as a fundamental brain hub that may house a person's consciousness or sense of self. The other volunteers, including the male migraine sufferers, did not show this thickening. All of the scans were done when people did not have a migraine. To figure out what those structural changes meant, lead author Nasim Maleki, a medical physicist at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, returned to the MRI scans of only those men and women with episodic migraines. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Aggression
Link ID: 17160 - Posted: 08.14.2012

By RUTH PADAWER The night before Susan and Rob allowed their son to go to preschool in a dress, they sent an e-mail to parents of his classmates. Alex, they wrote, “has been gender-fluid for as long as we can remember, and at the moment he is equally passionate about and identified with soccer players and princesses, superheroes and ballerinas (not to mention lava and unicorns, dinosaurs and glitter rainbows).” They explained that Alex had recently become inconsolable about his parents’ ban on wearing dresses beyond dress-up time. After consulting their pediatrician, a psychologist and parents of other gender-nonconforming children, they concluded that “the important thing was to teach him not to be ashamed of who he feels he is.” Thus, the purple-pink-and-yellow-striped dress he would be wearing that next morning. For good measure, their e-mail included a link to information on gender-variant children. When Alex was 4, he pronounced himself “a boy and a girl,” but in the two years since, he has been fairly clear that he is simply a boy who sometimes likes to dress and play in conventionally feminine ways. Some days at home he wears dresses, paints his fingernails and plays with dolls; other days, he roughhouses, rams his toys together or pretends to be Spider-Man. Even his movements ricochet between parodies of gender: on days he puts on a dress, he is graceful, almost dancerlike, and his sentences rise in pitch at the end. On days he opts for only “boy” wear, he heads off with a little swagger. Of course, had Alex been a girl who sometimes dressed or played in boyish ways, no e-mail to parents would have been necessary; no one would raise an eyebrow at a girl who likes throwing a football or wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 17157 - Posted: 08.13.2012

by Sara Reardon Freedom of information requests have revealed that pregnant women may not have been given all the facts before taking an experimental treatment to prevent female fetuses from being masculinised as a result of a rare genetic disorder. Research has provided some evidence that dexamethasone, a drug normally prescribed to relieve inflammation, can prevent girls with a rare hormonal disease from developing male genitalia and same-sex attraction if they are treated as fetuses. But as yet, no clinical studies show that this treatment is safe, says Alice Dreger of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She claims that researchers have misled an unknown number of pregnant women into taking the experimental treatment without properly informing them of its risks. Since the 1980s, Maria New of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York has studied and popularised the idea of prescribing dexamethasone "off-label" to women at risk of having foetuses with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). The treatment is now taught as standard practice in medical schools. But because the drug must be given very early in pregnancy before the fetus' gender or CAH status is known, many fetuses are treated unnecessarily. A child with two carrier parents has a one-in-four chance of having the disease, and the treatment only works for girls. There is little research available on the effects of dexamethasone, which mimics a steroid hormone. And because dexamethasone doesn't cure CAH but only prevents masculinisation of girls, it can be difficult to distinguish possible effects of the drug from other treatments the children receive after birth. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 17150 - Posted: 08.11.2012

by Michael Marshall You may think you can cope without sleep, but you have nothing on male pectoral sandpipers. Some of these birds can go more than a fortnight with hardly any sleep – the most extreme case of uninduced sleep deprivation known in any animal. What's more, the males that sleep the least father the most offspring, suggesting they benefit from their lack of slumber. Pectoral sandpipers (Calidris melanotos) breed on the Arctic tundra of Asia and North America. Males don't help with childcare – instead they try to mate with as many females as possible. Bart Kempenaers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany and colleagues fitted radio tags to 149 birds – accounting for most of a population living near Barrow in Alaska. This showed that males were highly active during periods when females were fertile. One male was active 95 per cent of the time for 19 days. The team then fitted 29 of the males with devices that recorded their brain activity, something never done before with a wild bird. This allowed them to look at the active males' sleep patterns. They found that the males that slept the least slept more deeply, but calculations show that this wouldn't make up for the sleep they missed, says team member Niels Rattenborg. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sleep; Aggression
Link ID: 17146 - Posted: 08.11.2012

By Stephanie Pappas Senior Writer For women looking to pass on their genes, it pays to be short. For men, tall is the ideal. The result? An evolutionary tug-of-war in which neither gender reaches their perfect height. Those are the results of a new study published Aug. 7 in the journal Biology Letters. The research finds that an evolutionary battle of the sexes keeps the genders in an endless feedback loop of height variations across the generations. "We should not simply assume that when a trait is beneficial for one sex, that selection or evolution will necessarily favor this trait," study researcher Gert Stulp, a scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, told LiveScience in an email. In the same way, traits that harm one sex but not the other may not be "weeded out" by natural selection, Stulp said. "This may even hold for health-related traits, such that genetic underpinnings beneficial to the health of one sex may increase the susceptibility to disease in the other sex," he said. In modern western societies, studies have found that women who are on the short side tend to have more children. In contrast, average-height men do the best, reproductively speaking, outpacing short and tall men in number of children fathered, Stulp said. © 2012 NBCNews.com

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Aggression
Link ID: 17140 - Posted: 08.08.2012

By Scicurious Our brains are made of millions of neurons. Tons. A lot. We scientists spend a lot of time studying those neurons, how they function individually, and how they respond to outside stimulation. But neurons cannot function alone. What sets a neuron apart is its ability to carry electric signals and to transfer chemical signals to other neurons. The function of neurons is not in the neurons themselves, it is in the connection between them. And this incredibly complicated network, composed of billions of connections, is called the connectome. If we knew the connectome of the human, we’d know a lot more about the brain than we do now. We are learning it, little by little, but with a series of connections that are so incredibly vast, it’s just too much right now to examine every single possible connection. Right now the only way to ensure getting every single connection in painstaking detail is to use electron microscopy to view synapses, the connections between neurons. Concentrations of the little organelles which signify a synapse (such as vesicles full of neurotransmitter), can tell you where each connection is placed. But the electron microscope can only look at a very small section at a time, making the mapping of a connectome an incredibly arduous task. C. elegans, to be exact. The nematode is a darling of basic research, and for a very good reason. C. elegans is incredibly simple, having exactly 302 neurons in the entire body. Well, 302, or 383. There are two kinds of C. elegans, hermaphrodite and male (there are no females). The males mate with the hermaphrodites. But this means that the male C. elegans is slightly different from the hermaphrodite C. elegans. While the hermaphrodite has 302 neurons, the male has 383. And most of these appear to be devoted to a complex series of behaviors characteristic of mating. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Aggression
Link ID: 17138 - Posted: 08.07.2012