Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — What do dog barks have in common with bird tweets and human baby cries? All appear to communicate basic emotions, such as fear, aggression and submission, in somewhat the same acoustic way, according to a new Applied Animal Behavior Science study that suggests a primitive communication system may unite virtually all mammals. The theory could help explain why previous research has found that many mammals, including humans, understand the vocalizations of different species. For example, a Language Communication study determined young children can identify simple emotions conveyed in macaque calls. Another study, published in Primate Cognition, indicated that an African grey parrot could communicate with a bonobo. For the recent research, Péter Pongrácz and colleagues studied how well people with varying dog experience could describe the emotional content of several artificially assembled bark sequences. The barks, which were based on sounds made by a Mudi (a Hungarian herding dog), covered five emotional states: aggressiveness, fear, despair, playfulness and happiness. Pongrácz, a professor of ethology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, and his team found that even people with little prior dog experience could correctly match the bark sequences with the previously determined emotional intent of the original barks. © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Language; Animal Communication
Link ID: 9708 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Narelle Towie Bats have a novel device for guiding them home on starless nights. In addition to their well-known sensory talents, it seems that big brown bats can tune into the Earth's magnetic field, using it as a compass to guide them to roost. This ability comes in handy on long-distance flights, where their usual mode of navigation — bouncing sounds waves off objects using ultrasound — doesn't do much good. Richard Holland from Princeton University, New Jersey, and colleagues looked at 15 North American big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus), which travel up to 100 kilometres to find hibernation sites for the winter. To first test the animals' natural navigational abilities, they attached small radio transmitters to the bats and transported them 20 kilometres from their roost. One by one they let them go, and tracked them from a small aircraft. All of them headed directly back to their roost. How did they do this? Researchers have previously suggested that bats might use the direction of the sunset to set their compass. Others have found traces of magnetic materials within bats, suggesting that they might use the planet's magnetic fields to find north. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 9707 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Peter Aldhous It is a brain map like no other, has been three years in the making, and promises a revolution in neuroscience: a genomic atlas of the mouse brain has been crafted. Unveiled in its full glory today, the Allen Brain Atlas contains 85 million images, and enough data to fill 20,000 iPods. It documents the activity of more than 21,000 genes across the entire mouse brain in such fine detail that it is possible pick out individual cells. Already, the atlas has revealed that the mammalian brain contains “hidden” structures, defined by common patterns of gene activity. “It is a profound enabling tool that is going to dramatically facilitate and accelerate research,” says Marc Tessier-Lavigne, senior vice-president of the biotech firm Genentech in South San Francisco, US. “By having all of the information collated in one place, you can do all of the searching that would not otherwise be possible.” Ed Lein and colleagues at the Allen Institute Brain Science in Seattle, US, created the atlas using a technique called "in situ hybridisation". This involves bathing thin slices of brain tissue in chemically labelled RNA probes that bind to sequences, called messenger RNA, produced by individual genes. The process had to be repeated for each gene, and for slices of tissue taken from different parts of the brain, to build a 3D map of gene activity that can be navigated using software available on the web. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9706 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Pallab Ghosh A UK company is applying for permission to transplant stem cells made from human foetal tissue into the brains of stroke patients. Guildford-based ReNeuron has told the BBC it has convincing lab evidence that the cells could potentially regenerate brain cells damaged by a stroke. It has applied to the US Food and Drug Administration to carry out human trials on 12 stroke patients. However, opponents have said it is a "sick proposal". The ReNeuron team have successfully extracted stem cells from the developing brain area of a 12 week old aborted foetus. These cells have begun to specialise into brain cells and have the ability to rapidly generate brain tissue. According to Dr Eric Miljan, Reneuron's head of stem cell discovery, when the foetal stem cells were injected into the brains of rats in which a stroke had been induced their movement recovered. Tests showed that blood flow and brain activity were restored in the damaged area. Dr Miljan said: "We're very excited. There have been a battery of tests. There have been a series of animal safety experiments. And they work." The company is to submit its research results to the FDA, and if the human trial is approved it could begin early next year. But the regulators will want to be satisfied that the trials will be safe and hold out a realistic chance of doing some good. In particular they will want to look closely at a crucial part of the treatment which involves genetically modifying the foetal brain cells. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stroke; Stem Cells
Link ID: 9705 - Posted: 12.06.2006

By BENEDICT CAREY In a long-awaited analysis, health officials reported yesterday that antidepressant medications appeared to increase significantly the risk of suicide attempts and related behaviors in adults under 25, while reducing such risks in older people. The analysis, the most comprehensive and rigorous to date, found that suicidal behavior of any kind was rare, and that people taking the medications were no more likely to kill themselves than those taking placebo pills. But adults under 25 taking the drugs were more than twice as likely as those on placebos to report a suicide attempt, or to prepare for one by, say, writing a suicide note. The report, which included more than a dozen medications, was compiled by the Food and Drug Administration and posted on its Web site. The findings are the latest chapter in a yearslong debate that has recently focused on children and adolescents. In 2004, after doing a similar analysis, the F.D.A. required drug makers to include on their labels prominent warnings that the drugs were associated with an increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in minors. The new study is likely to shift the same attention to young adults, experts said, and may encourage patient advocates who believe that antidepressants like Prozac have hidden dangers, and psychiatrists who insist that the medications are safe. Dr. Kelly Posner, an assistant professor of child psychiatry at Columbia, who helped the F.D.A. analyze the data, said the findings should be treated with caution, because the drug trials studied were not designed to evaluate suicide risk. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9704 - Posted: 12.06.2006

(PHILADELPHIA) -- Of the five senses, taste is one of the least understood, but now researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have come one step closer to understanding how the sense of taste develops. They have pinpointed a molecular pathway that regulates the development of taste buds. Using genetically engineered mice, they discovered that a signaling pathway activated by small proteins called Wnts is required for initiating taste-bud formation. They have also determined that Wnt proteins are required for hooking up the wiring of taste signals to the brain. Senior author Sarah E. Millar, PhD, Associate Professor in the Departments of Dermatology and Cell and Developmental Biology, Penn postdoctoral fellow Fei Liu, PhD, and colleagues report their findings in the most recent online issue of Nature Genetics. "The developmental biology of taste is underexplored," says Millar of her team's impetus for the study. The researchers demonstrated that blocking the action of Wnt proteins in surface cells of the developing tongue prevents taste-bud formation, while stimulating Wnt activity causes the formation of excessive numbers of enlarged taste papillae that are able to attract taste-related nerve fibers. This study represents the first genetic analysis of taste-organ initiation in mammals. While these studies were performed in mice, the researchers believe that their findings will also hold true for understanding the basis of taste-bud development in humans.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Development of the Brain
Link ID: 9703 - Posted: 12.06.2006

When faced with a depressed patient, clinicians often have to choose a proper course of treatment based on a guess as to which neurotransmitter in the brain is being disrupted--serotonin, noradrenaline or both. According to Jan Melichar, a psychiatrist at the University of Bristol, doctors "get it right about 60 to 80 percent of the time," but they have to wait up to one month to see if they chose correctly. A report appearing in the December 6 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience could result in an easier way of putting patients on a path to mental stability. The authors, coauthored by Melichar and Lucy Donaldson, a neuroscientist and physiologist also at the University of Bristol, found that a person's sense of taste--known to be genetic and once thought to be fixed--is in fact plastic and responds to changes in neurotransmitter levels as well as to different moods. The research group gave 20 volunteers either one of two classes of common antidepressants--serotonin specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (NARIs)--or a placebo. (Each drug increases the level of its specific neurotransmitter in the brain.) Before taking the treatments and then again two hours after, the subjects took taste tests where researchers gave them solutions of tastants in different concentrations and told them what taste to expect: sour, salt, sweet or bitter. The participants then had to indicate at what concentration they could detect taste. The team discovered that those who took SSRIs reported an increased sensitivity to sweet and bitter tastes, detecting them at concentrations of 27 percent and 53 percent lower, respectively, than before ingestion of the drug. © 1996-2006 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Depression; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 9702 - Posted: 06.24.2010

If I can’t remember this morning where I put my car keys last night, it’s due to my memory failing me again. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg have been investigating how memories might be consolidated. Their new study offers the hitherto strongest proof that new information is transferred between the hippocampus, the short term memory area, and the cerebral cortex during sleep. According to their findings and contrary to previous assumptions, the cerebral cortex actively controls this transfer. The researchers developed a new technique for their investigations which promises previously impossible insight into the largely under-researched field of information processing in the brain (Nature Neuroscience, November 2006). The question of how the brain stores or discards memories still remains largely unexplained. Many brain researchers regard the consolidation theory as the best approach so far. This states that fresh impressions are first stored as short-term memories in the hippocampus. They are then said to move within hours or a few days - usually during deep sleep - into the cerebral cortex where they enter long-term memory. Investigations by Thomas Hahn, Mayank Mehta and the Nobel Prize winner Bert Sakmann from the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg have now shed new light on the mechanisms that create memory. According to their findings, the areas of the brain work together, but possibly in a different way from that previously assumed. "This is a technically sophisticated study which could have considerable influence on our understanding of how nerve cells interact during sleep consolidation," confirmed Edvard Moser, Director of the Centre for the Biology of Memory in Trondheim, Norway.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Sleep
Link ID: 9701 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Narelle Towie The more severe the social dysfunction of an autistic patient, the smaller the part of their brain that governs fear-response, according to a new study. The results have scientists wondering whether some of the symptoms of severe autism are due to the brain becoming so overworked that it attacks its own cells. The amygdala — a small part of the brain that governs emotional responses, such as fear — is thought to be important in autism, as it helps to govern social behaviour. To examine the relationship, Richard Davidson and his team at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, decided to try and match amygdala size to the development of autism. They took MRI scans of 28 male autistic participants ranging in age from 8 to 25 years, and calculated the volume of their amygdala. The researchers then looked at whether the patients tended to avoid eye contact — a well-known symptom of autism. Eye-tracking equipment was used to watch how the participants reacted when looking at images of emotional faces: autistic children tend to avoid the eyes in such pictures, and are slower at distinguishing facial expressions. They then compared the extent of eye-contact avoidance and the particpant's age with the size of their amygdala. The results showed that the most severely affected, older subjects had the smallest fear centres in their brain. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Autism; Emotions
Link ID: 9700 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Catherine Brahic Some animals stand to gain from warming climates, say researchers who have looked at the effect of changing rainfall on mating and sexual selection in grey seals in Scotland. Sean Twiss, at Durham University, UK, and his colleagues studied the grey seals that mate at the North Rona colony in Scotland. They found that the reduction in freshwater pools in dry years forced females to wander away from their usual breeding spots, and the watchful eye of their dominant male. This allowed a greater number of previously unsuccessful males to copulate with them, and decreased the dominant males' access to females. The result is an increase in genetic diversity in these populations of grey seals. Every year, from September to mid-November, heavily pregnant females return to North Rona for 18 days. During this time, they give birth to a pup. Then, on about day 16, they mate, before setting off to sea again. The females each have preferred spots, gathered around pools of rainwater which keep them cool and supplied in drinking water. This clustering makes it easy for dominant, polygamous males to keep an eye on their 10 to 15 females and mate with them when they are ready. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9699 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY It is that time of year again, when despite the ratcheting up of festivities for the holidays, fully one person in five in the United States ratchets down. The cause is a now well-known but still infrequently treated disorder, winter blues or SAD, for seasonal affective disorder. There are several remedies to help those affected by SAD escape an affliction that leaves many wanting to climb into bed, put their heads under the covers and not come out until spring. Indeed, some experts refer to SAD as a form of hibernation. The problem typically starts gradually as the days become shorter in late summer or fall and peaks in midwinter in regions where there may be just 9 or 10 hours of daylight, if that. For the estimated 14 million severely affected American adults, SAD can send them into a tailspin that makes it difficult if not impossible to fulfill daily responsibilities and derive any joy from life. An additional 33 million people are less severely affected but may experience declines in energy, cheerfulness, creativity or productivity in the dark days of winter. The most commonly used treatment is exposure for up to several hours a day to high-intensity artificial light, in an effort to simulate the longer days of summer when people with SAD function at top speed. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Depression
Link ID: 9698 - Posted: 12.05.2006

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Whales do it. Chickens do too. And now chimpanzees can be added to the list of animals that appear to produce distinctive word-like calls for specific things, according to a study in this month’s Animal Behavior. If such vocalizations indicate what’s on the animals’ minds, then for zoo chimps it’s bananas, mangos and bread. Researchers Katie Slocombe and Klaus Zuberbühler discovered that captive chimps likely create referential, vocal labels for these particularly coveted foods. "Our analyses surprisingly showed that grunts to banana, bread and mango were acoustically distinct," Zuberbühler, a researcher in the School of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told Discovery News. "It is very possible, therefore, that recipients can use this information to draw inferences about the type of food encountered by the caller." The scientists studied 11 chimpanzees at the Edinburgh Zoo, as well as a community of chimps in the wild at the Budongo Forest Reserve, Uganda. For each group, the researchers first identified the chimps' favorite foods. For the zoo animals, the scientists were even able to determine their medium-preferred foods (grapes, plums and chow) and their least faves among food regularly offered (apples, greens and carrots). The wild chimps seemed to feed most often on certain trees, including a type of uncultivated fig tree. © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 9697 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Nashville, TN, – Preliminary new research discussed today at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology's Annual Meeting finds that oxytocin, when administered using intravenous fluid and nasal technology may have significant positive effects on adult autism patients. The study, funded by the Seaver Foundation, examined the effects of oxytocin on repetitive behaviors and aspects of social cognition in adults with autism. Investigators Eric Hollander, MD and Jennifer Bartz, PhD presented results of both intravenous and intranasal administration of oxytocin in high-functioning adult autism patients and discussed the implications of this research for the treatment of autism. Dr. Hollander is Chairman of Psychiatry and at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, NY and Director of the Seaver and New York Autism Center of Excellence, one of eight NIH-funded (STAART) centers devoted to the study of autism. Dr. Bartz is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Seaver Center at the Mt., Sinai School of Medicine. "Studies with animals have found that oxytocin plays a role in a variety of behaviors, including parent-child and adult-to-adult pair bonding, social memory, social cognition, anxiety reduction and repetitive behaviors," explained Dr. Bartz. "However," adds Dr. Hollander, "we have only recently considered that administration of oxytocin can have behavioral effects. Autism is a particularly ripe neuropsychiatric disorder for studying this approach because it presents with the types of symptoms that have been found to be associated with the oxytocin system."

Keyword: Autism; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 9696 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Results of a new genetic study bring scientists one step closer to understanding why some smokers become addicted to nicotine, the primary reinforcing component of tobacco. The research, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, represents the most powerful and extensive evidence to date of genetic risk factors for tobacco addiction. The study not only completed the first scan of the human genome to identify genes not previously associated with nicotine dependence (or addiction), it also focused on genetic variants in previously suspected gene families. The research results will appear December 1 in the online issue of the Journal of Human Molecular Genetics. “This genome wide association scan is an important step in a large-scale genetic examination of nicotine addiction,” says Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, Director of the NIH. “As more genomic variations are discovered that are associated with substance abuse, including smoking, we will be better able to understand how to prevent and treat human addictive disorders.” Smoking behaviors, including the onset of smoking, smoking persistence (current smoking versus past smoking), and nicotine addiction, cluster in families. Studies of twins indicate that this clustering partly reflects genetic factors. To identify those genes that could potentially contribute to nicotine dependence scientists combined a comprehensive genome-wide scan with a more traditional approach that focuses on a limited number of candidate genes, using unrelated nicotine-dependent smokers as cases and unrelated non-dependent smokers as controls. A candidate gene has one or more variant forms, which, according to current scientific evidence, appear to be linked to a genetic disease. “When two teenage friends experiment with smoking at the same age, one can become addicted and the other might not,” says NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow. “We want to know why. This systematic survey of the genome coupled with the ongoing identification of variants in candidate genes brings us closer to understanding what factors increase a person’s risk of transitioning from experimentation to nicotine addiction.”

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 9695 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Worker bees, wasps, and ants are often considered neuter. But in many species they are females with ovaries, who although unable to mate, can lay unfertilized eggs which turn into males if reared. For some species, such as bumble bees, this is the source of many of the males in the species. But in others, like the honeybee, workers "police" each other – killing eggs laid by workers or confronting egg-laying workers. In 1964 the English biologist William Hamilton put forward his "relatedness hypothesis", a major landmark in kin selection theory. His hypothesis was that worker bees, wasps and ants do not reproduce because most workers are half sisters. Instead the workers favor the queen's male progeny, since she has mated with multiple males, ensuring variation in the species. According to this theory, a species where the mother queen mates with multiple males would have more worker policing. This theory is widespread and in animal behavior textbooks. However, Hamilton's relatedness hypothesis was challenged in 2004 by researchers from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. They compared 50 species and found no evidence that multiple mating by the queen correlated with reduced rearing of workers' sons or greater worker reproductive policing. Were the textbooks wrong" A new study appearing in the current issue of The American Naturalist strongly supports Hamilton's original theory. Tom Wenseleers and Francis Ratnieks (University of Sheffield) compared 90 species and found that workers' sons are reared 100 times less in species with a queen mated to multiple males.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 9694 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Catherine Brahic It is well-established that some birds are able to modulate their songs to adapt to different environments. In 2004, for instance, researchers showed that individual nightingales made their songs very much louder so they could be heard over urban noise (see Urban nightingales' songs are illegally loud). Now, researchers have shown this adaptation is happening on a population level, as well in cities around Europe. Hans Slabbekoorn and Ardie den Boer-Visser, at Leiden University in the Netherlands, recorded and compared great tits (Parus major) singing in 10 European cities and in nearby forests. They found that in all the cities, songs were sung faster and in higher pitches than in nearby forests. (Listen to recordings from Brussels and the nearby Rivière forest.) Slabbekoorn says the differences between the urban and rural songs are "remarkably" consistent across all the sites surveyed. The researchers say this is explained by the fact that urban noise pollution, most of which comes from traffic, tends to be at a lower pitch. This drowns out low-pitched birdsong notes. In contrast, noise in natural environments is not biased towards one end of the frequency spectrum. (Listen to an isolated song, the same song in a noisy urban setting, and in a forest setting.) © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 9693 - Posted: 06.24.2010

There are biological brain differences that mark out psychopaths from other people, according to scientists. Psychopaths showed less activity in brain areas involved in assessing the emotion of facial expressions, the British Journal of Psychiatry reports. In particular, they were far less responsive to fearful faces than healthy volunteers. The Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London team say this might partly explain psychopathic behaviour. Criminal psychopaths are people with aggressive and anti-social personalities who lack emotional empathy. They can commit hideous crimes, such as rape or murder, yet show no signs of remorse or guilt. It has been suggested that people with psychopathic disorders lack empathy because they have defects in processing facial and vocal expressions of distress, such as fear and sadness, in others. Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues set out to test this using a scan that shows up brain activity. They showed six psychopaths and nine healthy volunteers pictures of faces showing different emotions. Both groups had increased activity in brain areas involved in processing facial expressions in response to happy faces compared with neutral faces, but this increase was smaller among the psychopaths. By contrast, when processing fearful faces compared with neutral faces, the healthy volunteers showed increased activation and the psychopaths decreased activation in these brain regions. (C)BBC

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 9692 - Posted: 12.04.2006

By JOHN LANCHESTER Popular science books have a set form, which in its way is as strict as the sonnet. They begin with some personal history of how the author became interested in a subject, move on to an explanation of the generally agreed science of the subject, and then describe the specific angle taken by the author on the subject’s remaining mysteries. Add a judicious sprinkling of personal history throughout, and voilà, the formula covers everything from quantum physics to geology to evolution. Luca Turin’s engaging new book follows this form, but doesn’t feel at all like something we’ve read before — which is a tribute both to its subject and to its author. “The Secret of Scent” is about one of the great mysteries in science, one that is not just under our noses (like all the best mysteries), but actually inside the nose. That mystery is smell, and specifically the way the brain interprets molecules as smells. No two molecules, however similar their chemical structure, smell identical. Why not? As Turin asks, “What is this chemical alphabet that our noses read so effortlessly from birth?” Science thinks that it has answered this question, and that the answer has to do with the shape of a molecule: the geometric arrangement of its atoms determines its smell. Turin disagrees. He thinks smell is determined by something else; but to rush too quickly to his hypothesis would be to miss the fun of “The Secret of Scent,” most of which lies in the incidental details of the journey and in Turin’s sharply expressed opinions about more or less everything — Moscow in the ’80s, peer review in science, the modern university system and why biologists “were never the pick of the intellectual crop. I should know — I’m one of them.” Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 9691 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Michael Chorost Review by Jackie Leach Scully, Ph.D. First things first. The subtitle is wrong. This book is not about a journey back to the world of normal hearing. What it is about is the process of learning how to "hear" in a completely novel way, as you have to when damaged organic structures are replaced by electronic ones: when, in fact, you become a sensory cyborg. Michael Chorost was hearing impaired from childhood, but at the age of 36 a viral infection reduced his residual hearing to almost zero. With his hearing aids no longer adequate for the life he had built, he elected to have a cochlear implant. A CI is a complex device that converts soundwaves into electrical impulses (like a conventional hearing aid) and then into computer code to trigger the auditory nerves directly via a microelectrode array implanted in the cochlea. In the first chapter, Chorost outlines his position starkly: he is worried not just about whether the implant will work (and thus allow him to go back to something like his former life), but what it will be like, experientially, to become part-computer. The implant "really is a computer. It's cold, angular and digital, yet it's going to be embedded in my flesh, which is warm, squishy and wet...The computer would decide what I heard and how I heard it...It would be the sole mediator between the auditory world and myself. Since I would hear nothing but what its software allowed, the computer's control over my hearing would be complete." (p. 8) In the following chapters Chorost describes the surgery, his physical recovery, the activation of the implant (when he is switched on), and the tortuous process of learning -- often this means observing his brain learning -- how to hear again. © CenterSite, LLC, 1995-2006

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 9690 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN OAKLAND, Calif— Until recently, many children who did not conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or behavior modification. But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights, evidenced most recently by New York City’s decision to let people alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental health professionals. Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to advise families to let these children be “who they are” to foster a sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents’ decisions. “First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies,” said Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive private school in Oakland. “Now it’s kids who come to school who aren’t gender typical.” Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 9689 - Posted: 06.24.2010