by David Robson The oldest known memory aid is the method of loci, invented by the ancient Greeks at least 2000 years ago. These days there are any number of mnemonics, but while memory champions may swear by them, how useful are they in day-to-day life? Two psychologists, James B. Worthen and R. Reed Hunt, attempt to answer this question in their recently published book Mnemonology (Psychology Press, 2010). "We tried to cover everything that's out there," says Worthen, of Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. So what did they find? Disappointingly, many mnemonics fail to live up to their reputation. Take the keyword method, which is often taught to language students. To help remember an unfamiliar word, the student creates an elaborate image based on the sound - the Spanish word for moustache, bigote, might be visualised as a big goat with a handlebar moustache, for example. Although widely used, several studies suggest that this method is of little value to experienced language learners, and even beginners reap minimal benefits. While it slightly improves the accuracy of their memory compared to rote repetition, it also slows down the speed at which they can recall a word. The phonetic system, in which numbers are encoded as letters, fared little better. Developed in the Renaissance, it is often touted in books on memory improvement, which suggest using it to create memorable phrases from strings of numbers. While there is good evidence that it improves recall, the difficulties of applying the technique led Worthen and Hunt to conclude that it would often be impractical in everyday situations. Even more disappointingly, their analysis revealed that the rhymes and acronyms you might have been taught at school often fail, unless they are particularly witty or apt. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15184 - Posted: 04.07.2011

By Daniel Strain If a tree falls on you in the forest while you’re meditating, does it still hurt? Well, yes. But maybe not quite as much as it would if you weren’t meditating, researchers from North Carolina and Wisconsin report in the April 6 Journal of Neuroscience. Individuals who practiced mindfulness meditation, or samatha, during a pain experiment reported much less discomfort than they did in earlier, meditation-free sessions. Samatha, the team says, flipped switches on or off in diverse regions of the brain underlying attention, expectation and even the awareness of thoughts themselves. Getting hit by a tree limb will hurt, but it won’t hurt everyone in the same way, says study coauthor Robert Coghill, a neuroscientist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. The conscious mind, which is informed by personal experience and context, is an expert at deciding which sensations to take note of and which to ignore. “All the time we’re hanging out, our brain is being bombarded with all sorts of information,” he says. “But we let it go.” A falling tree is more jarring than the tickle of a forearm hair, but meditation may help people to similarly let “ouch!” and “yowza!” reflexes go. In the study, Coghill and his colleagues prodded 15 volunteers with a hot poker of sorts, then used MRI to watch their brains respond to the hot but humane torture. Subjects found the 49⁰ Celsius pulses, on average, 57 percent less unpleasant and 40 percent less intense while meditating as opposed to resting normally. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Attention
Link ID: 15183 - Posted: 04.07.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey A spoonful of sugar may be a remedy for diabetes. The more glucose that insulin-producing cells in the pancreas use, the faster those cells reproduce, a new study in mice shows. The findings, published in the April 6 Cell Metabolism, may help researchers devise new treatments for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes by harnessing the mechanism that leads to sugar-fueled cell growth. Such a strategy could help restore function to the cells in the pancreas damaged in diabetes while avoiding the toxic effects of high blood sugar. Giving animals more food to eat or bathing cells with glucose — the type of sugar that cells burn for energy — can increase the amount of insulin-producing pancreatic cells known as beta cells. But exactly how the sugar increases the number of beta cells has not been clear. “It was not a simple question to unravel,” says Patricia Kilian, director for regeneration at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. “There are just so many moving parts.” In fact, many researchers doubted glucose was the factor responsible for beta cell growth because the sugar can kill cells (that’s why high blood sugar is so bad for diabetics). The new study “uncovers the black box” and is an important contribution toward learning how to restore the function of the pancreas, she says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15182 - Posted: 04.07.2011

by Andrew Moseman Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter are accustomed to making others feel the heat as they blaze through Jeopardy clue after Jeopardy clue. But tonight, the quiz show's two greatest champions will oppose a player who can't be psyched out. It's time for the world to meet Watson. IBM's Jeopardy-playing computer system appears to viewers at home as an avatar of the Earth on a black screen. In fact, it is a system years in the making, and perhaps the most impressive attempt ever to create a question-answering computer that understands the nuances of human language. Watson is not connected to the Internet, but its databases overflow with books, scripts, dictionaries, and whatever other material lead researcher David Ferrucci could pack in. Storing information is the computer's strong suit; the grand artificial intelligence challenge of Jeopardy is the subtlety of words. When the bright lights of Jeopardy go up tonight, there will be no human handler to tell Watson where inside its mighty databases to seek the answers. It must parse each clue and category title to figure out what it's being asked. It must race through its databases, find relevant search terms, and pick out the right response with a high level of confidence. It must understand the puns and geeky quirks of America's Favorite Quiz Show. It must beat two Jeopardy champions to the buzzer. And it too must voice its responses in the form of a question. © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Intelligence; Robotics
Link ID: 15181 - Posted: 04.07.2011

By Jane Hughes Health correspondent, BBC News People with autism use their brains differently from other people, which may explain why some have extraordinary abilities to remember and draw objects in detail, according to new research. University of Montreal scientists say in autistic people, the brain areas that deal with visual information are highly developed. The National Autistic Society says the findings significantly increase understanding of the condition. The research, published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, pulls together 15 years of data on the way the autistic brain works. It suggests that the brains of autistic people are organised differently from those of other people; the area at the back of the brain, which processes visual information, is more highly developed. That leaves less brain capacity in areas which deal with decision-making and planning. Autistic brain Areas where autistic brains are more active That may be why people with autism can be better than others at carrying out some types of visual tasks. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 15180 - Posted: 04.05.2011

By Jennifer LaRue Huget A study published online yesterday in the Archives of General Psychiatry showed that the brains of women who have symptoms of food addiction respond to the prospect of delicious food in much the same way that the brain of a drug addict responds to the prospect of drugs. Researchers at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Obesity Research and Policy set out to probe the potential parallel between food addiction and substance dependence. The former isn’t yet recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a psychiatric disorder, while the latter is defined by a set of clear criteria. Before this study, Ashley Gearhardt, a doctoral student at Yale, had devised a tool for assessing food addiction. She based her 25-point questionnaire (“I have found that I have elevated desire for or urges to consume certain foods when I cut down or stop eating them,” for instance, and “My behavior with respect to food and eating causes significant distress.”) on that used to diagnose substance dependence. According to the Yale Food Addiction Scale, as the instrument is called, some of the 39 young women included in the study showed signs of being addicted to food. While some were lean, some obese, and some in between, their weight wasn’t related to their likelihood or degree of food addiction. Gearhardt and her team used functional MRI to record brain activity as the women were shown images of yummy chocolate shakes and of a clear, taste-free solution. MRI images were also recorded while the women actually sampled those beverages. (The study explains that the clear formula was made to replicate saliva, as the taste of water actually triggers activity in some brain receptors.) © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15179 - Posted: 04.05.2011

by Duncan Graham-Rowe COCHLEAR implants have helped thousands of deaf people around the world hear for the first time. Now a tiny microphone implanted in a person's ear will provide them with continuous hearing day and night. Existing implants can't be worn all the time because only a small part of the device is actually inside the cochlea. A fragile external unit containing the power supply, processors and microphone has to be hooked onto the ear and linked magnetically to the implant beneath the skin. "Patients can't normally wear them in their sleep, in the shower, the rain or when they swim," says Herman Jenkins, chair of otolaryngology at the University of Colorado in Aurora. "A fully implanted system would get rid of all that because you could wear it round the clock," Jenkins says. But developing an internal microphone for such a system is quite a challenge. Four years ago Cochlear, a firm based in Sydney, Australia, ran trials of a prototype implant in three patients, with mixed results, says Jan Janssen, head of Cochlear's design and development. "People clearly appreciated the ability to hear 24/7," he says. But because the microphone was actually inside the ear it would pick up not just external sounds but also a wide range of bodily noises, including the sound of eating, swallowing, the rustling of hair and the beating of the heart. So Cochlear turned to Otologics, a company in Boulder, Colorado, that was developing a fully implantable hearing aid with a new microphone that incorporates two sensors. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing; Robotics
Link ID: 15178 - Posted: 04.05.2011

By Francie Diep One of the top worries for parents of kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the long-term consequences of this condition. "Families want to know, 'So what does this mean?'" says Alice Charach, head of the neuropsychiatry team at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Two recent, large reviews of previous studies reveal one disquieting answer: Getting an ADHD diagnosis in childhood is associated with nicotine and alcohol dependence in adulthood. The two studies' results on marijuana and other drugs, however, were more mixed. One review—a meta-analysis published in the April issue of Clinical Psychology Review by a team of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, (U.C.L.A.) and the University of South Carolina, Columbia—concluded that children with ADHD also have a strong risk of abusing marijuana, cocaine and other unspecified drugs. In contrast, Charach's team—which published its review in the January issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry—also found an increased risk for marijuana and other drugs, but decided the results of the individual studies examined were too varied to reach a strong conclusion. Overall, however, "the similarities outweigh the differences" between the two meta-analyses, Charach says. Steve Lee, lead researcher on the U.C.L.A. review, agrees, "I think both studies are collectively persuasive." © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15177 - Posted: 04.05.2011

By Christof Koch In philosophy of mind, a “cerebroscope” is a fictitious device, a brain–computer interface in today’s language, which reads out the content of somebody’s brain. An autocerebroscope is a device applied to one’s own brain. You would be able to see your own brain in action, observing the fleeting bioelectric activity of all its nerve cells and thus of your own conscious mind. There is a strange loopiness about this idea. The mind observing its own brain gives rise to the very mind observing this brain. How will this weirdness affect the brain? Neuroscience has answered this question more quickly than many thought possible. But first, a bit of background. Epileptic seizures—hypersynchronized, self-maintained neural discharges that can sometimes engulf the entire brain—are a common neurological disorder. These recurring and episodic brain spasms are kept in check with drugs that dampen excitation and boost inhibition in the underlying circuits. Medication does not always work, however. When a localized abnormality, such as scar tissue or developmental miswiring, is suspected of triggering the seizure, neurosurgeons may remove the offending tissue. To minimize side effects, it is vital to pinpoint the location from which the seizures originate; neuropsychological testing, brain scans and EEGs aid this determination. But if no structural pathologies are apparent from the outside, doctors begin with an invasive procedure. The neurosurgeon inserts a dozen or so electrodes into the soft tissue of the brain, via small holes drilled through the skull, and leaves them in place for a week or so. During this time, the patient lives and sleeps in the hospital ward, and the signals from the wires are monitored continuously. When a seizure occurs, doctors triangulate the origin of the aberrant electrical activity. Subsequent destruction or removal of the offending chunk of tissue reduces the number of seizures—sometimes eliminating them entirely. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Attention; Robotics
Link ID: 15176 - Posted: 04.05.2011

by Rebecca Kessler Killer whales living off Antarctica have come up with an ingenious and deadly seal-hunting maneuver. After locating a seal loafing on an ice floe, groups of whales rush the floe, their tails pumping in sync to generate a wave that washes the seal into the water. If at first they don't succeed, the whales return relentlessly to deliver a barrage of waves—and they'll even reposition the ice floe or break it up to improve their odds of success. Once the hapless seal is in the water, the whales gang up to hunt it down, confusing it by blowing swarms of bubbles at it and dragging it below by its hind flippers until it's exhausted and drowns. Then, off they carry their catch to dismember it with remarkable precision and share it. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in San Diego, California, describe 22 wave-washing attacks in Marine Mammal Science. Only five instances of wave-washing had previously been documented, and researchers had presumed it uncommon. But the new paper reports that wave-washing appears to be the main hunting tactic of a group of whales the authors call "pack ice killer whales"—and is probably unique to them. In fact, it may be a defining feature of this group. In a 2010 paper, the authors and colleaguesdescribed genetic evidence suggesting that there are at least three distinct species of killer whales rather than just one, as had been supposed. Pack ice killer whales belong to one of the proposed new species. These photographs show the pack ice killer whales' distinctive hunting behavior: how they spot a seal, how they wash it into the sea, and evidence of their extraordinary butchery. (Warning: Some images are graphic.) © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 15175 - Posted: 04.05.2011

By KAREN BARROW It is classified as a rare disease, but the chronic condition called Charcot-Marie-Tooth is one of the most common inherited nerve-related disorders, with an estimated 150,000 patients in the United States. It can be devastating to patients and their families, with crippling effects on balance and the ability to walk and grasp objects. Nor does it help that few people have heard of it, unless they are directly affected. “It’s like the hidden secret,” said Allison Moore, chief executive of the Hereditary Neuropathy Foundation, who has the disease. “And when you mention, ‘I have C.M.T.,’ people look at you like you have three heads.” The disease — named for Jean-Martin Charcot, Pierre Marie and Howard Henry Tooth, the researchers who first described it in 1886 — is actually a group of neurodegenerative conditions that gradually degrade the nerves in the feet, legs, arms and hands, usually starting in childhood. There is no medical treatment, though orthopedic braces and corrective surgery can help. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15174 - Posted: 04.05.2011

By TARA PARKER-POPE Meet Zach Anner, a 26-year-old filmmaker from Austin, Tex., who just won his own television show on Oprah Winfrey’s new network. He’s handsome, smart and funny — oh, and he gets around in a wheelchair. Mr. Anner has cerebral palsy, “the sexiest of the palsies,” as he puts it in his audition video. That line, along with a spoof of a failed TV show about yoga, has won him legions of online fans. (“This isn’t yoga,” he tells the camera as he writhes on the floor. “I’m just putting on pants.”) In an online contest for a spot on “Your Own Show” on OWN, the video received more than nine million votes — and not because of Mr. Anner’s disability, according to Lee Metzger, the show’s executive producer. “You do see the chair, and he has some erratic movements, ” Mr. Metzger said. “But once you start to talk to him, you see that his chair and his body are not what he’s all about. He’s a bright guy with a lot of great ideas, and he’s funny.” Cerebral palsy is caused by abnormalities in parts of the brain that control muscle movements. In mild cases, patients may have slurred speech and motor impairments; in severe ones, the symptoms include irregular posture, spasticity and inability to walk. Other performers have had cerebral palsy, among them RJ Mitte, who plays a teenager on the AMC series “Breaking Bad”; Josh Blue, who won the NBC reality show “Last Comic Standing” in 2006 with routines that mocked his own lack of motor control; and Geri Jewell, who had a recurring role on “The Facts of Life” in the 1980s. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 15173 - Posted: 04.05.2011

By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D. Does the reading public really need yet one more rundown of the repeatedly debunked claims linking childhood vaccinations and autism? The positions of those who uphold vaccine safety and those who assail it have at this point thoroughly saturated the news media; what more is there to say? Or so I thought before opening Seth Mnookin’s new book. Barely a dozen pages in, I began to reconsider, and by the end I had completely changed my mind: Mr. Mnookin’s passionate defense of vaccination may be just what the public needs, in equal parts because of what it says and because of who is saying it. Mr. Mnookin is no expert in the field — at least he wasn’t when he entered the fray. Neither a doctor nor a scientist, he has no vested interest in upholding the medical status quo (thus avoiding an accusation regularly flung at vaccine proponents). He hails instead from what might be called, sadly enough, exactly the opposite demographic: he is young and hip, got a good liberal arts education, lives in an upscale enclave and works in another, as a contributing editor of Vanity Fair. He is the father of a young child. And it is people of precisely this description who are slowly picking apart the safety net that protected their own childhoods, prompted by a well-intentioned mixture of arrogance, ignorance and confusion. It is not that these parents buy into some of the more lurid accusations out there, like the one floated by a British doctor that all pediatric vaccinations cause some degree of neurologic damage. It is more that the parents are alarmed by the hubbub and prefer to play it safe — but wind up defining “safe” in exactly the wrong way. In some communities nonvaccination rates have hit the double digits — well into the danger zone. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 15172 - Posted: 04.05.2011

By Laura Sanders SAN FRANCISCO — The next time you watch that guy on the dance floor do the robot to Mr. Roboto, his automatonic, jerky moves will speak to a surprising part of your brain: a region scientists thought was reserved for making sense of actions by others that you too are able to perform. New experiments challenge a common view of this “mirror system” by showing that it’s not just a copycat, but is able to respond to a much wider range of actions than what an observer can perform himself. This broadened capacity of the brain system may help explain how humans are able to quickly and effortlessly understand other people’s (and robot’s) actions, study coauthor Emily Cross of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands said April 2 in a presentation at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. “There are a lot of situations where you see actions that you can’t do with your own body,” Cross said. “If you think about watching a gymnast at the Olympics, watching a break dancer, or even watching Star Wars or Wall-E, we see all sorts of actions and agents that we can’t readily map onto our own motor systems.” To see just how the mirror systems responded to unnatural movements, Cross and her colleagues scanned the brains of 22 people as they watched a video of a man performing a natural, fluid dance or a machinelike robot dance. Researchers thought that parts of the mirror system, which includes parts of the parietal lobe at the top back of the head and the premotor cortex just in front of that, would show higher activation in an fMRI scan when the subjects watched the natural dance. Instead, parts of the mirror system showed a very strong signal when subjects watched the robot dance, a result that was “quite a surprise,” Cross said. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15171 - Posted: 04.05.2011

A new report from the drug company GlaxoSmithKline concludes that its antidepressant Paxil might make adults with major depression more likely to become suicidal. But the rate of suicide attempts was low, at 0.34 percent for people on Paxil and 0.05 percent for people who got sham treatment with a placebo pill in clinical trials. And it couldn't be entirely ruled out that the difference was due to chance, according to the report, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. "The scientific evidence does not establish that paroxetine" - the ingredient in Paxil -- "causes suicide, suicide attempts, self-harm or suicidal thinking," said Sarah Alspach, a spokeswoman for the drug company. "Nonetheless, all patients who are started on antidepressant therapy should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior." In general, antidepressants can be extremely helpful for people with depression. The American Academy of Family Physicians says on its web site, "Most people who have depression get better with treatment that includes these medicines." But the link between suicide risk and antidepressants has long been a thorny issue for regulators and drugmakers alike. The current data were initially published in 2006 on GlaxoSmithKline's website in response to widespread concern. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/hADiCH Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, online February 22, 2011. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 15170 - Posted: 04.04.2011

by Andy Coghlan An ingenious set of experiments has teased apart the mind-altering and pain-relieving effects of the main component of cannabis. This could open the way to cannabis-like drugs that provide pain relief without causing unwanted highs. Cannabis is taken as a painkiller – to dull pain in cancer for example – but it can produce unpleasant side effects such as hallucinations and impaired mobility. Now, a team led by Li Zhang of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Maryland, has shown that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the active component in cannabis that makes people high but that is also thought to dull pain – binds to different molecular targets on cells to produce these two effects. It has long been known that THC gives people a high by binding to a molecular anchor on cells called the cannabinoid type-1 (CB1) receptor. Zhang and his team discovered that THC relieves pain by binding instead to receptors for the brain-signalling compound glycine and increasing their activity. Through experiments on mice, they then confirmed that if the glycine receptor is absent or if its activity is blocked by another drug, the animals experienced pain in a standard "tail-flick" test even when given THC, confirming that the drug's pain-relief and psychotropic effects can be decoupled. "We found that this glycine receptor could be a primary target for developing non-psychoactive forms of cannabis," says Lhang. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15169 - Posted: 04.04.2011

By GINA KOLATA The two largest studies of Alzheimer’s disease have led to the discovery of no fewer than five genes that provide intriguing new clues to why the disease strikes and how it progresses. Researchers say the studies, which analyzed the genes of more than 50,000 people in the United States and Europe, leave little doubt that the five genes make the disease more likely in the elderly and have something important to reveal about the disease’s process. They may also lead to ways to delay its onset or slow its progress. “The level of evidence is very, very strong,” said Dr. Michael Boehnke, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Michigan and an outside adviser on the research. The two studies are being published Monday in the journal Nature Genetics. For years, there have been unproven but persistent hints that cholesterol and inflammation are part of the disease process. People with high cholesterol are more likely to get the disease. Strokes and head injuries, which make Alzheimer’s more likely, also cause brain inflammation. Now, some of the newly discovered genes appear to bolster this line of thought, because some are involved with cholesterol and others are linked to inflammation or the transport of molecules inside cells. The discoveries double the number of genes known to be involved in Alzheimer’s, to 10 from 5, giving scientists many new avenues to explore. One of the papers’ 155 authors, Dr. Richard Mayeux, chairman of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center, said the findings would “open up the field.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15168 - Posted: 04.04.2011

The brains of some aggressive and antisocial teenage boys look different than those of normal teenagers, British researchers have found. Conduct disorder is psychiatric condition characterized by higher than normal levels of aggressive and antisocial behaviour. It can develop in childhood or in adolescence and affects around five out of every 100 teenagers in the UK, researchers say. People affected by conduct disorder run a greater risk of further mental and physical health problems in adulthood. The new brain scan findings published in Friday's online issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry suggest adolescents who develop conduct disorder have differences in their brain and are not merely imitating misbehaving peers. "Changes in grey matter volume in these areas of the brain could explain why teenagers with conduct disorder have difficulties in recognizing emotions in others. Further studies are now needed to investigate whether these changes in brain structure are a cause or a consequence of the disorder," said Prof. Ian Goodyer of the University of Cambridge. For the study, scientists used MRIs to look at the brains of 65 teenage boys with conduct disorder and 27 healthy teenage boys.The volume of the insula, in yellow, was smallest in those with the most severe behaviour problems.The volume of the insula, in yellow, was smallest in those with the most severe behaviour problems. University of Cambridge © CBC 2011

Keyword: Aggression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15167 - Posted: 04.02.2011

By RONI CARYN RABIN Older lesbian, gay and bisexual adults in California are more likely to suffer from chronic physical and mental health problems than their heterosexual counterparts, a new analysis has found. They also are less likely to have live-in partners or adult children who can help care for them. The research brief was based on data from the California Health Interview Survey, the nation’s largest state health survey, gathered in 2003, 2005 and 2007 by the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. Older gay and bisexual men — ages 50 to 70 — reported higher rates of high blood pressure, diabetes and physical disability than similar heterosexual men, according to the researchers. Older gay and bisexual men also were 45 percent more likely to report symptoms of psychological distress and 50 percent more likely to rate their health as fair or poor. In addition, one in five gay men in California was living with H.I.V. infection, the researchers found. Yet half of California’s older gay and bisexual men lived alone, compared with 13.4 percent of older heterosexual men. Older lesbian and bisexual women experienced similar rates of diabetes and hypertension compared with straight women of their age, but reported significantly more physical disabilities and psychological distress and were 26 percent more likely to say their health was fair or poor. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Stress
Link ID: 15166 - Posted: 04.02.2011

by Deborah Kotz I can completely understand how this babbling baby video went viral. There's really no way to watch it without smiling in wonder at whether they're having a meaningful conversation and contemplating how language develops even before words are learned. Children's Hospital Boston did a fabulous analysis of the science of babbling babies on its health blog. In the post, Hope Dickinson, coordinator of the Speech-Language Pathology Services at Children’s Hospital, says the babies -- who are twins -- are engaging in conversational babbling and even displaying turn tallking where one "speaks," pauses and lets the other respond. (I love how they find each other humorous.) The babies even use various intonations. "There is a fantastic rise and fall to their pitch and tones," says Dickinson in the blog post. Sentences end with emphasis, and sometimes end with an upward inflection as if asking a question. The babies also gesture with their hands, which grownups -- myself included -- do all the time. And they look like they're understanding each other. Dickinson says this sort of babbling is normal for babies who will eventually replace all the da-da-da-ing with words. These babies seem to already have a few. One says "mama," and the other repeatedly says "up" when lifting a foot. Parents should expect to hear their babies babble by around 8 to 10 months or so and should begin to hear a few words by 12 to 14 months, according to Dickinson. If these milestones aren't being reached, they should speak to their child's pediatrician. © 2011 NY Times Co

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15165 - Posted: 04.02.2011