By Bruce Bower Faces of people who get tarred in the press or blasted behind their backs in snarky gabfests may literally stand out in the crowd. People find it particularly easy to see the faces of individuals about whom they’ve heard nasty or unpleasant gossip, reports a team led by psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett of Northeastern University in Boston. “Encountering negative gossip about someone makes it easier to register that person’s face than neutral or positive gossip does,” says Feldman Barrett. Not only does the new study show that disapproving gossip quickly gets associated with a matching face, but that this connection operates outside conscious awareness, remarks cognitive neuroscientist Moshe Bar of Harvard Medical School. “A negative bias that originated in gossip made corresponding faces pop out in conditions where observers would have otherwise remained unconscious of those faces,” Bar says. A gossip-schooled eye for bad eggs provides social protection, the researchers propose, by extending opportunities to scrutinize potential liars and cheats. That argument fits with a previous proposal that gossip enabled the evolution of larger social groups in which people used spoken language to learn whom to befriend and whom to avoid. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 15349 - Posted: 05.21.2011

by Ann Gibbons While dinosaurs ruled the world some 200 million years ago, a group of nocturnal, shrewlike proto-mammals unwittingly sniffed out a strategy for survival that eventually led to the evolution of larger brains. Fossil skulls of two ancient, mammal-like reptiles suggest that natural selection for a keener sense of smell was the initial spur behind bigger brains in early mammals, according to a report online today in Science. “Mammals didn’t get our larger brains for thinking,” says co-author Zhe-Xi Luo, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “We got it for a more urgent and more basic need—our sense of smell was far more important.” Birds and mammals have brains that are up to 10 times larger, relative to body size, than those of reptiles and other animals. Why? Some researchers have proposed that the early, nocturnal mammals evolved larger brains to boost their hearing, because sight was less important at night. Others have suggested that mammals’ brains are proportionately larger because as many early mammals evolved smaller bodies, their brains failed to shrink to scale. By reconstructing the two oldest known skulls of proto-mammals—fossils of Morganucodon and Hadrocodium discovered in the famed Lufeng Formation in Yunnan, China, in 1986—Luo and colleagues found clues to how the mammalian brain began to enlarge. The researchers scanned the skulls with computed tomography (CT) scans, creating three-dimensional, virtual endocasts of the brain, based on the impressions brain tissue and spaces left on the inside of the skull. That gave them a detailed view of the surface of the brain and the nasal cavities. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 15348 - Posted: 05.21.2011

By DENISE GRADY A young man paralyzed by an injury to his spinal cord has regained the ability to stand for short periods, take steps with help and move his legs and feet at will, with the help of an electrical stimulator implanted in his lower back. Rob Summers, 25, paralyzed for five years, regained some ability to stand after surgeons implanted electrodes in the lower part of his back to stimulate his spinal cord. The device is experimental and not available to other patients, and because it has been studied in only one person it is not known whether it would work as well in other people with different types of spinal injury. But the researchers say that scientifically the work is an important advance, because it shows that a bit of electrical stimulation can unlock the ability of the spinal cord to control movement — even if its signals from the brain have been cut off by injury. Similar findings had been made in animals. “It’s been thought that the brain controls all our movement,” said Susan Harkema, research director at the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center in Louisville and the lead author of an article about the research being published online on Thursday in the journal Lancet. “But the spinal cord is the primary controller.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Regeneration; Robotics
Link ID: 15347 - Posted: 05.21.2011

By Jesse Bering There are so many obscure specializations, subspecializations and subcortical subspecializations within the brain sciences that even the sharpest brain has scarcely enough brainpower to learn everything there is to know about itself. But if there's one fact that the teacup-Yorkie-sized prune in your head might want to ponder, it's that it shares a peculiar past with something considerably lower in your anatomy—your genitalia. I don't mean that our brains and reproductive organs share some embryological or evolutionary history, but rather that they were once (and, to some extent, still are) entwined in the language of the body. What this odd story reveals is that the ancient anatomists were major dickheads. We all were, back then. Régis Olry, of the University of Quebec, and Duane Haines, of the University of Mississippi, brought the whole sordid tale to light in an intriguing pair of articles for the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. These "historians of neuroanatomy" (yes, there is such a profession, and we should be grateful for it) reviewed a very old, circuitous medical literature and found that the human brain was once described as comprising its very own vulva, penis, testicles, buttocks, and even an anus. In fact, part of the cerebrum is still named in honor of long-forgotten whores. In their first article from 1997, epochs ago in academic terms, Olry and Haines revealed the surprising origins of the term "fornix." For those illiterate in neuroanatomy, which I'll assume is 99.9 percent of you, the fornix is a fibrous, arching band of nerve fibers that connects the hippocampus and the limbic system, and spans certain fluid-filled chambers of the brain known as ventricles. You'd have numerous and noticeable problems if your fornix weren't functioning properly, including serious impairments in spatial learning and overall navigation. © 2011 The Slate Group, LLC

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15346 - Posted: 05.21.2011

by Carl Zimmer In the 1940s, the Nobel prize–winning neurobiologist Roger Sperry performed some of the most important brain surgeries in the history of science. His patients were newts. Sperry started by gently prying out newts’ eyes with a jeweler’s forceps. He rotated them 180 degrees and then pressed them back into their sockets. The newts had two days to recover before Sperry started the second half of the procedure. He sliced into the roof of each newt’s mouth and made a slit in the sheath surrounding the optic nerve, which relays signals from the eyes to the brain. He drew out the nerve, cut it in two, and tucked the two ragged ends back into their sheath. If Sperry had performed this gruesome surgery on a person, his patient would have been left permanently blind. But newts have a remarkable capacity to regrow nerves. A month later Sperry’s subjects could see again. Their vision, he wrote, “was not a blurred confusion.” When he dangled a lure in front of one of the newts, the creature responded with a quick lunge. It was a peculiar sort of lunge, though: The animal looked up when the lure was held below and down when it was dangled overhead. Sperry had turned the newt’s world upside down. The experiment revealed that nerve cells, or neurons, possess a tremendous capacity for wiring themselves. Neurons grow branches known as dendrites for receiving signals, and sprout long outgrowths called axons to relay the signals to other neurons. Axons in particular can travel spectacular distances to reach astonishingly precise targets. They can snake through the brain’s dense thicket, pushing past billions of other neurons, in order to form tight connections, or synapses, with just the right partners. © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Regeneration
Link ID: 15345 - Posted: 05.19.2011

Scientists believe they are a step closer to being able to read people's minds after decoding human brainwaves. Glasgow University researchers asked volunteers to identify different emotions on images of human faces. They then measured the volunteers' resulting brainwaves using a technique called electroencephalography (EEG). Once researchers compared the answers to the brainwaves recorded, they were able to decode the type of information the brainwaves held relating to vision. The research was carried out by the university's institute of neuroscience and psychology. Six volunteers were presented with images of people's faces, displaying different emotions such as happiness, fear and surprise. On different experimental trials, parts of the images were randomly covered so that, for example, only the eyes or mouth were visible. The volunteers were then asked to identify the emotion being displayed. The participants' brainwaves were measured using EEG which allowed the researchers to identify which parts of the brain were active when looking at different parts of the face. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 15344 - Posted: 05.19.2011

By Laura Sanders Wiping out chronic pain in the lower back doesn’t just dull the agony. It allows the brain to recover, too. Six months after people’s backaches were eased, their brains showed fewer signs of the abnormalities that accompany chronic pain, a new study shows. This brain recovery is “a concrete message that certainly brings hope and relief to those suffering from this condition,” says UCLA neuroscientist Dante Chialvo. In the study, neuroscientist Laura Stone of McGill University in Montreal and colleagues scanned the brains of people who had experienced back pain for at least a year. Compared to healthy controls, chronic pain sufferers had thinning in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region that’s been linked to pain modulation. This region also showed abnormal activity when people with chronic back pain took a simple cognitive test while in a brain scanner, the team found. But six months after treatment with either spine surgery or pain-relieving injections, scans revealed that the pain sufferers’ brains bounced back. Their thin dorsolateral prefrontal regions grew larger, and their brain activity began to look more normal. These brain changes depended on the level of pain relief: The less pain a person reported after treatment the greater the improvement, the team reports in the May 18 Journal of Neuroscience. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15343 - Posted: 05.19.2011

By Christof Koch The ancient debate surrounding the existence of free will appears unresolvable, a metaphysical question that generates much heat yet little light. Common sense and volumes of psychological and neuroscientific research reveal, however, that we are less free than we think we are. Our genes, our upbringing and our environment influence our behaviors in ways that often escape conscious control. Understanding this influence, the advertisement industry spent approximately half a trillion dollars worldwide in 2010 to shape the buying decisions of consumers. And extreme dictatorships, such as that in North Korea, remain in power through the effective use of insidious and all-pervasive forms of propaganda. Yet nothing approaches the perfidy of the one-celled organism Toxoplasma gondii, one of the most widespread of all parasitic protozoa. It takes over the brain of its host and makes it do things, even actions that will cause it to die, in the service of this nasty hitchhiker. It sounds like a cheesy Hollywood horror flick, except that it is for real. We know that illness in general can slow us down, incapacitate us and, in the worst case, kill us. Yet this organism is much more specific. Natural selection has given rise to pathogens that infiltrate the nervous system and change that system’s wiring to achieve its ultimate purpose, replication—like a computer virus that reprograms an infected machine. Such is the case with T. gondii. It sexually reproduces only in the intestines of cats yet can maintain itself indefinitely in any warm-blooded animal. Infected cats shed millions of their oocysts in their feces. Taken up by all kinds of animals, including dogs, rodents and humans, they infect muscle and the brain to escape attacks by the host’s immune system. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15342 - Posted: 05.19.2011

By Jamie Horder The search for the genetic roots of psychiatric illnesses and behavioral disorders such as schizophrenia, autism and ADHD has a long history, but until recently, it was one marked by frustration and skepticism. In the past few years, new techniques have begun to reveal strong evidence for the role of specific genes in some cases of these conditions but in a way few people expected. To understand what makes the new discoveries so novel, it’s necessary to appreciate how our genes can go wrong. The human genetic code can be thought of as an encyclopedia in multiple volumes. Our normal genome contains 46 chromosomes, so that’s 46 volumes. Each chromosome is a long string of the chemical DNA and the information is “written” in the form of a molecular alphabet with just four letters: A, T, C and G. There are three ways in which something can go wrong here. First, a whole chromosome can be either missing or duplicated. This drastic change is almost always fatal. (The exceptions include Downs Syndrome.) Second, single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, or “snips” as everyone calls them) are when a single base-pair is different, corresponding to a misprinted character. Finally, copy-number variants (CNVs) are when a stretch of DNA is either missing (deleted), or repeated (duplicated), a bit like a page that’s either fallen out or been printed twice. As you can imagine, CNVs tend to be more serious than SNPs, because they affect more of the DNA. This is only a general rule, however. There are plenty of serious SNPs, and plenty of harmless CNVs. It all depends on where they happen, and whether they interfere with important genes. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15341 - Posted: 05.19.2011

Adam Kepecs A surprising view has been gathering momentum in neuroscience: most of our thoughts and actions are driven by unconscious brain processes that are hidden from conscious introspection. So if consciousness is rarely in the driver's seat, and if we cannot choose our genes or the childhood experiences whose interactions form our brains, then are we responsible for our actions? In Incognito, accomplished neuroscientist David Eagleman — author of the best-selling short-story collection Sum (Canongate, 2010) — examines this gap between our conscious and unconscious selves. He offers a whirlwind of stories, from visual illusions and sleep-walking killers to ovulating strippers, all carefully chosen to drive home his main point that our brains “neurally preordain” us to make decisions. As is common in books aimed at a general readership, the intriguing and sometimes bizarre case studies create a tension between journalistic musings and more detailed arguments. Although specialists may feel that the balance tilts toward the journalistic, Eagleman's expertise comes through. Since Sigmund Freud's famous psychological framing of the unconscious in the late nineteenth century, modern neuroscience has shown that most processing in the brain is unconscious. We are unaware of routine processes and have little insight into our choices and preferences. For instance, men unknowingly prefer photographs of women with dilated pupils, presumably because male brains evolved algorithms to recognize pupil dilation as an indicator of sexual arousal. In another experiment, people's descriptions of the strategies they used to make simple economic decisions differed from the rules that they actually used, suggesting that their conscious explanations were formed post hoc and without access to their decision-making process. Through such examples, Eagleman demonstrates that unconscious processes can be clever, adaptive and even outperform the best computer algorithms. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15340 - Posted: 05.19.2011

Ker Than People may one day be able to hear what are now inaudible sounds, scientists say. New experiments suggest that just vibrating the ear bones could create shortcuts for sounds to enter the brain, thus boosting hearing. Most people can hear sounds in the range of about 20 hertz (Hz) at the low end to about 20 kilohertz (kHz) at the high end. Twenty kHz would sound like a very high-pitched mosquito buzz, and 20 Hz would be what you'd hear if "you were at an R&B concert and you just stood next to the bass," explained Michael Qin, a senior research scientist at the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory in Connecticut. "It would be the thing that's moving your pants leg." Under certain circumstances, humans can also hear frequencies outside of this normal range. For instance, divers underwater can detect sounds of up to a hundred kHz, according to Qin's recent experiments. It's unclear why the divers have enhanced hearing underwater, but it may be because the sounds travel directly through the bones to the brain, he said. In normal hearing, sound waves traveling through the air or water enter our ear canals and strike our eardrums, causing them to vibrate. Our eardrums are connected to three tiny, connected bones called the malleus, incus, and stapes—popularly known as the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, due to their shapes. © 1996-2011 National Geographic Society

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15339 - Posted: 05.19.2011

By Carolyn Y. Johnson WALTHAM — Lights dimmed, a hush fell over the hallway as Nicole Porter, cradling Ava in her arms, walked gingerly toward the powerful imaging equipment that would allow researchers to peer into her baby’s developing brain. Porter had spent hours coaxing Ava to sleep so she would lie still in the noisy scanner. Then, at the last minute, Ava’s eyes fluttered open and she gazed at the colorful ceiling. The experiment would have to start over. It was another frustrating moment in the difficult process of studying the brain during early development. Nothing was wrong with Ava; the 11-month-old from Boston was part of a study that uses brain imaging to see if early hallmarks of dyslexia can be seen years before children have trouble reading. Scientists believe that if they can identify nascent disorders such as dyslexia or autism earlier, and get a jump on therapy, they might eventually be able to prevent children from developing problems later. “We know many important pediatric disorders start to emerge early on, and some things, for example dyslexia, you might not pick up until they’re reading. But you know their brain has probably started to diverge from normal in some way early on,’’ said Dr. P. Ellen Grant of Children’s Hospital Boston, who is leading the study with Nadine Gaab, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s. The research is being done at the hospital’s Waltham clinic. © 2011 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Dyslexia; Brain imaging
Link ID: 15338 - Posted: 05.17.2011

By CARL E. SCHOONOVER and ABBY RABINOWITZ Treating anxiety no longer requires years of pills or psychotherapy. At least, not for a certain set of bioengineered mice. In a study recently published in the journal Nature, a team of neuroscientists turned these high-strung prey into bold explorers with the flip of a switch. The group, led by Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and researcher at Stanford, employed an emerging technology called optogenetics to control electrical activity in a few carefully selected neurons. First they engineered these neurons to be sensitive to light. Then, using implanted optical fibers, they flashed blue light on a specific neural pathway in the amygdala, a brain region involved in processing emotions. And the mice, which had been keeping to the sides of their enclosure, scampered freely across an open space. While such tools are very far from being used or even tested in humans, scientists say optogenetics research is exciting because it gives them extraordinary control over specific brain circuits — and with it, new insights into an array of disorders, among them anxiety and Parkinson’s disease. Mice are very different from humans, as Dr. Deisseroth (pronounced DICE-er-roth) acknowledged. But he added that because “the mammalian brain has striking commonalities across species,” the findings might lead to a better understanding of the neural mechanisms of human anxiety. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15337 - Posted: 05.17.2011

By JOHN TIERNEY Is happiness overrated? Martin Seligman now thinks so, which may seem like an odd position for the founder of the positive psychology movement. As president of the American Pyschological Association in the late 1990s, he criticized his colleagues for focusing relentlessly on mental illness and other problems. He prodded them to study life’s joys, and wrote a best seller in 2002 titled “Authentic Happiness.” But now he regrets that title. As the investigation of happiness proceeded, Dr. Seligman began seeing certain limitations of the concept. Why did couples go on having children even though the data clearly showed that parents are less happy than childless couples? Why did billionaires desperately seek more money even when there was nothing they wanted to do with it? And why did some people keep joylessly playing bridge? Dr. Seligman, an avid player himself, kept noticing them at tournaments. They never smiled, not even when they won. They didn’t play to make money or make friends. They didn’t savor that feeling of total engagement in a task that psychologists call flow. They didn’t take aesthetic satisfaction in playing a hand cleverly and “winning pretty.” They were quite willing to win ugly, sometimes even when that meant cheating. “They wanted to win for its own sake, even if it brought no positive emotion,” says Dr. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. “They were like hedge fund managers who just want to accumulate money and toys for their own sake. Watching them play, seeing them cheat, it kept hitting me that accomplishment is a human desiderata in itself.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15336 - Posted: 05.17.2011

By TARA PARKER-POPE Consumer Reports, famous for its ratings of appliances and cars, has jumped into the diet wars. In an article in its June issue, published last week, the magazine declared Jenny Craig the winner among several commercial weight-loss plans, beating out Slim-Fast, Weight Watchers, the Zone fast weight-loss plan, Dr. Dean Ornish’s “Eat More, Weigh Less” diet, the Atkins diet and Nutrisystem. Consumer Reports said it relied on the available scientific evidence. But readers who try to follow its advice will discover that a Jenny Craig diet in the real world is far different from the one studied for the article. Indeed, the findings, which generated widespread news coverage, highlight just how little weight the participants in commercial diet plans manage to lose, despite considerable expense in money and time. The magazine said Jenny Craig had “the edge over the other big names” on the basis of a two-year study published last year in The Journal of the American Medical Association. In that study, 92 percent of 442 overweight and obese women stuck with the program for two years, which Consumer Reports called a “remarkable level of adherence.” They lost an average of about 16 pounds. But the magazine failed to report that the women in the study didn’t pay a dime to sign up for the Jenny Craig program. Unlike real Jenny Craig customers, they received $6,600 worth of membership fees and food during the two-year study. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15335 - Posted: 05.17.2011

By Kate Kelland LONDON — Scientists say they have discovered the first solid evidence that variations in some peoples' genes may cause depression -- one of the world's most common and costly mental illnesses. And in a rare occurrence in genetic research, a British-led international team's finding of a DNA region linked to depression has been replicated by another team from the United States who were studying an entirely separate group of people. "What's remarkable is that both groups found exactly the same region in two separate studies," Pamela Madden, who led the U.S. team at Washington University, said in a statement. The researchers said they hoped the findings would bring scientists closer to developing more effective treatments for patients with depression, since currently available medicines for depression only work in around half of patients. "These findings ... will help us track down specific genes that are altered in people with this disease," said Gerome Breen of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, who led the other research group. The researchers said they believed many genes were involved in depression. These findings are unlikely to benefit patients immediately, with any new drugs developed from them likely to take another 10 to 15 years. However, they will help scientists understand what may be happening at the genetic and molecular levels in people with depression. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15334 - Posted: 05.16.2011

Derek Boogaard's relatives and fans shed tears Sunday as they remembered the former NHL tough guy as a "teddy bear" who was as generous and kind as he was burly and tough, a somber end to a weekend during which his distraught family agreed to donate his brain to medical researchers. The 28-year-old Boogaard was found dead in his Minneapolis apartment Friday, five months after he sustained a season-ending concussion with the New York Rangers. Boogaard's agent and a spokeswoman for the Boston University School of Medicine confirmed Sunday that his brain will be examined for signs of a degenerative disease often found in athletes who sustain repeated hits to the head. "It's an amazing thing he did and his family did. Hopefully, that'll bring some information," agent Ron Salcer said. "We don't know exactly the impact that the concussions might have played." Salcer spent three days with Boogaard in Los Angeles earlier in the week. Salcer remarked about his client's brightened demeanor, after suffering through a winter of not being able to play or even be active while his head healed. "He seemed very good, and that's what makes it more painful," Salcer said. "He was really starting to feel better about everything. He was in great shape." Minneapolis police said there were no outward signs of trauma, but results of an autopsy are expected to take several weeks. There is no known concussion connection to his death, but at Boogaard's wish his family signed papers to donate his brain to the BU Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. The donation was first reported by the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 15333 - Posted: 05.16.2011

By PAMELA PAUL NOBODY would deny that being ostracized on the playground, mocked in a sales meeting or broken up with over Twitter feels bad. But the sting of social rejection may be more like the ouch! of physical pain than previously understood. New research suggests that the same areas in the brain that signify physical pain are activated at moments of intense social loss. “When we sat around and thought about the most difficult emotional experiences, we all agreed that it doesn’t get any worse than social rejection,” said the study’s lead author, Ethan F. Kross, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. The image of a bunch of social scientists inflicting pain on laboratory volunteers seems creepily Mengelian, but in this case the experiments involved were markedly less cruel. First off, the subjects weren’t socially rejected by the laboratory technicians — each of the 40 volunteers was recruited specifically because he or she felt intensely rejected as a result of a recent (unwanted) breakup. Once in the lab, participants were hooked up to functional M.R.I. scanners, which measure brain activity. They were then asked to look at photos of their former lovers and brood over a specific rejection experience involving that person. (Sob.) Later, they were asked to look at a photograph of a friend and to think about a recent positive experience they had with that person. On to more fun! Next was the physical pain component, also in two parts. First, participants experienced noxious thermal stimulation on their left forearms (the “hot trial”), simulating the experience of spilling hot coffee on themselves. Then, they underwent a second, nonnoxious thermal stimulation (the “warm trial”). Technicians monitored their brain activity to see which areas lighted up. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15332 - Posted: 05.16.2011

By Adam Summers If you’ve ever chased a cat that’s trying to avoid a bath, you have every right to conclude that, for our size, we humans are pretty poor runners. But chasing a cat is sprinting. Where we excel is endurance running. Moreover, we run long distances at fast speeds: many joggers do a mile in seven-and-a-half minutes, and top male marathoners can string five-minute miles together for more than two hours. A quadruped of similar weight, about 150 pounds, prefers to run a mile at a trot, which takes nine-and-a-half minutes, and would have to break into a gallop to keep pace with a good recreational jogger. That same recreational jogger could keep up with the preferred trotting speed of a thousand-pound horse. Good endurance runners are rare among animals. Although humans share the ability with some other groups, such as wolves and dogs, hyenas, wildebeest, and horses, we alone among primates can run long distances with ease. But what evidence can support the idea that endurance running by itself gave early humans an evolutionary advantage, and that it wasn’t just “piggybacking” on our ability to walk? Many traits, after all, are useful for both activities; long legs, for instance, and the long stride they enable, are helpful to walking as well as to running. But running and walking are mechanically different gaits. A walking person, aided by gravity, acts as an inverted pendulum: the hip swings over the planted foot. In contrast, a runner bounces along, aided by tendons and ligaments that act as springs, which alternately store and release energy. © 2008–2011 Natural History Magazine, Inc

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15331 - Posted: 05.16.2011

By ROBERT H. FRANK THE late Amos Tversky, a Stanford psychologist and a founding father of behavioral economics, used to say, “My colleagues, they study artificial intelligence; me, I study natural stupidity.” In recent decades, behavioral economics has been the economics profession’s runaway growth area. Scholars in this field work largely at the intersection of economics and psychology, and much of their attention has focused on systematic biases in people’s judgments and decisions. They point out, for example, that people are particularly inept at predicting how changes in their life circumstances will affect their happiness. Even when the changes are huge — positive or negative — most people adapt much more quickly and completely than they expected. Such prediction errors, behavioral economists argue, often lead to faulty decisions. A celebrated example describes an assistant professor at a distinguished university who agonizes for years about whether he will be promoted. Ultimately, his department turns him down. As anticipated, he’s abjectly miserable — but only for a few months. The next year, he’s settled in a new position at a less selective university, and by all available measures is as happy as he’s ever been. The ostensible lesson is that if this professor had been acquainted with the relevant evidence, he’d have known that it didn’t make sense to fret about his promotion in the first place — that he would have been happier if he hadn’t. But that’s almost surely the wrong lesson, because failing to fret probably would have made him even less likely to get the promotion. And promotions often matter in ways that have little impact on day-to-day levels of happiness. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 15330 - Posted: 05.16.2011