A gene that may give you an increased risk of a distressing early form of dementia has been identified by Cambridge scientists. Fronto-temporal dementia (FTD) is the second most common type of dementia in the under 65s and can result in a complete personality change. The researchers studied the brains of 515 people with FTD and found the gene on chromosome 7. A charity said this could open the door to new treatments for the disease. Writing in the journal Nature, Professor Maria Grazia Spillantini, of the University of Cambridge, said her team had established an international collaboration with investigators in 11 countries including the UK, the US, Belgium and Spain. The Cambridge team compared the brains of 515 people with known FTD with 2,509 brains of people without the condition. They found several different mutations on chromosome 7 which are thought to affect around half of the people with FTD. These mutations increase the amounts of the protein the gene codes for. About 20% of individuals with FTD have another kind of genetic mutation known as a GRN mutation. Professor Spillantini thinks that the new gene accelerates the harm caused by the GRN mutation and makes the disease progress faster: "We found a specific gene that was associated with an increased risk of the disease. "A better understanding of how the gene is involved could identify a new approach to tackle this disease." (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13773 - Posted: 02.15.2010

Jennifer S. Altman A stand-up comedian, a ventriloquist who performs for children and a high school sophomore are among the people who share their stories about living with Tourette’s syndrome in the latest installment of Patient Voices. The often misunderstood condition can cause a range of tics, including sudden jerking movements, grunting, snorting and clearing the throat, which typically first appear during childhood. This week, Dr. Robert A. King and Dr. James F. Leckman of the Yale School of Medicine join the Consults blog to answer readers’ questions about Tourette’s syndrome. “Once thought to be a rare, severe and lifelong condition, Tourette’s is now known to be relatively common, affecting up to one percent of school-age children,” Dr. King says. “Symptoms are often mild and can spontaneously, and markedly, improve by later adolescence.” Dr. King is professor of child psychiatry and medical director of the Yale Child Study Center’s Tourette’s/Obessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic. Dr. Leckman is the Neison Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Yale, where he also serves as the center’s director of research. Both doctors have been intensively involved in the clinical care of individuals with Tourette’s syndrome and early onset obsessive-compulsive disorder for more than two decades. Do you have a question about Tourette’s syndrome? Post your comments and questions in the comments box below. Drs. King and Leckman will be responding to readers next week. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Tourettes
Link ID: 13772 - Posted: 06.24.2010

BY ERIC FERRERI, Staff Writer Kevin LaBar needed to provoke emotional highs in his research subjects. So the Duke neuroscientist turned to what else? A Duke/UNC basketball game. The result: a paper in an academic journal peeling back the cover on the brain's tendency to recall happy moments better than disappointing ones. LaBar and his research team took two dozen college-age men - half Duke fans, half UNC fans - and had them watch a Duke/UNC game from Feb. 3, 2000, a nail-biter at the Dean Smith Center that Duke pulled out 90-86 in overtime. "The question is, how do you ethically manipulate people's emotions to the extreme?" LaBar said. "A Duke/UNC rivalry is rife with emotion." The research subjects - who first had to prove their fan cred by filling out a college hoops questionnaire - watched the game three times in the course of the week. Then, they were put into an MRI machine and shown clips from the game that stopped just before the ball reached the hoop. The subjects were then quizzed on whether the shots went in or not. The conclusion: The UNC fans remembered more of the big shots the Tar Heels made. The Duke fans remembered more of the Blue Devil highlights. The explanation: A big, emotional moment in a game triggers a higher level of brain processing. Essentially, the brain works harder when something good happens. "It's like for the spectacular shot, you sort of put yourself in the shoes of the player," LaBar said. "And if your team isn't doing well, you kind of tune it out." © Copyright 2010, The News & Observer Publishing Company,

Keyword: Emotions; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13771 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Delays at crucial points during the development of the brain in the womb may explain why people with a condition linked to autism do not like hugs. A study in mice with fragile X syndrome found wiring in the part of the brain that responds to touch is formed late. The findings may help explain why people with the condition are hypersensitive to physical contact, the researchers wrote in Neuron. It also points to key stages when treatment could be most effective. Fragile X syndrome is caused by a mutant gene in the X chromosome that interferes in the production of a protein called fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). Under normal circumstances, the protein directs the formation of other proteins that build synapses in the brain. Boys are usually more severely affected with the condition - which is the leading known cause of autism - because they have only one X chromosome. In addition to mental impairment, hyperactivity, emotional and behavioural problems, anxiety and mood swings, people with fragile X also show what doctors call "tactile defensiveness", which means they do not make eye contact and do not like physical contact and are hypersensitive to touch and sound. By recording electrical signals in the brains of mice, bred to mimic the condition, the researchers found that connections in the sensory cortex in the brain were late to mature. This "mistiming" may trigger a domino effect and cause further problems with the correct wiring of the brain, they concluded. The study also found these changes in the brain's connections occur much earlier than previously thought, midway through a baby's development in the womb. (C)BBC

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13770 - Posted: 02.13.2010

Maybe everyone could use a gay uncle. A new study found that homosexual men may be predisposed to nurture their nieces and nephews as a way of helping to ensure their own genes get passed down to the next generation. Research has confirmed that male homosexuality is at least partly hereditary – it tends to cluster in families, and identical twin brothers of gay men are more likely to be gay than fraternal twin brothers, who do not share identical DNA. But scientists have been puzzled about how these genes are perpetuated, since homosexual males are less likely to reproduce than straight males. Basically, why haven't gay people gone extinct? One idea is called the "kin selection hypothesis." Perhaps gay men are biologically predisposed to help raise the offspring of their siblings and other relatives. "Maybe what's happening is they're helping their kin reproduce more by just being altruistic towards kin," said evolutionary psychologist Paul Vasey of the University of Lethbridge in Canada. "Kin therefore pass on more of the genes which they would share with their homosexual relatives." Vasey and his student Doug VanderLaan tested this hypothesis among a group of men called fa'afafine on the Pacific island of Samoa. Fa'afafine are effeminate men who are exclusively attracted to men as sexual partners, and are generally recognized and tolerated as a distinct gender category — neither male nor female. © 2010 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 13769 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Adam Hadhazy As Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of "butterflies" in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our "second brain". A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body. Although its influence is far-reaching, the second brain is not the seat of any conscious thoughts or decision-making. "The second brain doesn't help with the great thought processes…religion, philosophy and poetry is left to the brain in the head," says Michael Gershon, chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, an expert in the nascent field of neurogastroenterology and author of the 1998 book The Second Brain (HarperCollins). Technically known as the enteric nervous system, the second brain consists of sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, or alimentary canal, which measures about nine meters end to end from the esophagus to the anus. The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system, Gershon says. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13768 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Anil Ananthaswamy A SIGN of a cell's age could help predict the onset of dementia. Elderly people are more likely to develop cognitive problems if their telomeres - the stretches of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes - are shorter than those of their peers. The shortening of telomeres is linked to reduced lifespan, heart disease and osteoarthritis. Telomeres naturally shorten with age as cells divide, but also contract when cells experience oxidative damage linked to metabolism. Such damage is associated with cognitive problems like dementia. Thomas von Zglinicki at Newcastle University, UK, showed in 2000 that people with dementia not caused by Alzheimer's tended to have shorter telomeres than people without dementia. To see if healthy individuals with short telomeres are at risk of developing dementia, Kristine Yaffe at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues, followed 2734 physically fit adults with an average age of 74. Yaffe's team tracked them for seven years and periodically assessed memory, language, concentration, attention, motor and other skills. At the start, the researchers measured the length of telomeres in blood cells and grouped each person according to short, medium or long telomeres. After accounting for differences in age, race, sex and education, the researchers found that those with long telomeres experienced less cognitive decline compared to those with short or medium-length telomeres (Neurobiology of Aging, DOI: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2009.12.006). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13767 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Melinda Wenner Americans take more antidepressants than they do any other type of prescription drug, and pregnant women are no exception. One out of every eight pregnant women in the U.S. takes selective serotonin re­up­take inhibitors (SSRIs) to treat depression or other mood disorders. A handful of recent studies suggest that these drugs could have adverse effects on infant health: they may increase the risk for rare heart defects, premature delivery, low birth weight and withdrawal symptoms. Nevertheless, some doctors argue that the benefits these drugs provide still outweigh the potential risks. Worries over the use of SSRIs during pregnancy first surfaced in journal articles published in the 1980s, but it was not until 2005 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration conceded that babies born of mothers who take paroxetine (sold as Paxil and Seroxa) during their first trimester are up to twice as likely to exhibit fetal heart defects. A 2005 study published in the Lancet also found that some newborns born of mothers taking paroxetine suffer from withdrawal symptoms such as convulsions and abnormal crying for several days. More recently, pregnancy risks associated with other SSRIs have also come to light. A study published in the September 26 issue of the British Medical Journal monitored nearly 500,000 Danish children from nationwide registries and found that women who take sertraline (Zoloft), citalopram (Celexa) and fluoxetine (Prozac) are more likely to give birth to babies with heart defects, although the overall risk is still quite low. A study in press in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology notes that women treated with SSRIs during late pregnancy are more likely to give birth to small and premature babies. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 13766 - Posted: 06.24.2010

More than 55% of multiple sclerosis patients have been found to have constricted blood vessels in their brains, a US study says. The preliminary results are from the first 500 patients enrolled in a trial at the University of Buffalo. The abnormality was found in 56.4% of MS patients and also in 22.4% of healthy controls. The MS Society said it was intriguing but not proof that this caused MS - as one leading expert claims. The New York researchers were testing a theory from Italian researcher, Dr Paolo Zamboni who claims that 90% of MS is caused by narrowed veins. He says the restricted vessels prevent the blood from draining fast enough and injure the brain by causing a build up of iron which leads to MS. He has already widened the blockages in a handful of patients including his wife. MS is a long-term inflammatory condition of the central nervous system which affects the transfer of messages from the nervous system to the rest of the body. The Buffalo team used Doppler ultrasound to scan the patients in different body postures to view the direction of venous blood flow. The 500 MS patients, both adults and children, also underwent MRI scans of the brain to measure iron deposits in surrounding areas of the brain. The full results will be presented at an American neurology conference in April. There were 161 healthy controls. Robert Zivadinov who led the study at the University of Buffalo, said he was "cautiously optimistic and excited" about the preliminary data. "They show that narrowing of the extracranial veins, at the very least, is an important association in multiple sclerosis. We will know more when the MRI and other data collected in this study are available." (C)BBC

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 13765 - Posted: 02.11.2010

Characterized by sudden jerking movements and uncontrollable tics and vocalizations, Tourette’s syndrome is a strange, often misunderstood condition. What is it like to live without full control of your body? Seven men and women talk about living with the twitches of Tourette’s. What is it like to live with a chronic disease, mental illness or confusing condition? In Patient Voices, we feature first person accounts of the challenges patients face as they cope with various health issues. Interactive Feature Patient Voices: Migraine Almost 30 million Americans suffer from migraines. What is it like to live with migraine pain? Six men and women speak about their experiences. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Tourettes
Link ID: 13764 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Last week, the British medical journal the Lancet, which had originally published a controversial 1998 study by British researcher Andrew Wakefield that implied a link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, formally retracted that study. In the wake of this, one of the tantalizing areas to be explored is the role diet might play in the lives of children with autism. Research published in October showed that 1 in 91 children has a disorder somewhere along the autism spectrum, with degrees of severity ranging from mild to major. (Federal figures released in December put that number at 1 in 110.) For now, the only treatment known to help kids with autism -- the most common of the conditions that make up what is known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) -- is placement in an education program that's appropriate to their specific needs, providing speech and language therapy to boost their ability to communicate, and helping them develop social skills, according to Susan Levy, director of the Regional Autism Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' autism subcommittee. But legions of worried and desperate parents and even some physicians have put stock in other remedies, many of them food-related. Some have believed there's a connection between autism and gastrointestinal problems, which was first suggested in the discredited 1998 paper. "The presumed mechanism of action was that people with autism have a leaky gut, which led to abnormal absorption of some of the breakdown products of gluten and casein," Levy explains. That abnormality, in the leaky-gut theory, would allow those byproducts to be absorbed into the bloodstream and somehow cross into the brain. © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13763 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katie Moisse Imagine you've lost your job. You have some money saved, and a chance to double it with a gamble. But if you lose the bet, you'll forfeit everything. What would you do? Most people would not gamble their savings, according to Benedetto De Martino of California Institute of Technology, author of a study published February 8 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. People tend to choose avoiding losses over acquiring gains—a behavior known as loss-aversion. But people with damage to the amygdala—an almond-shaped part of the brain involved in emotion and decision-making—are more likely to take bigger risks with smaller potential gains, De Martino's study found. Two women with bilateral amygdala damage showed a dramatic reduction in loss aversion compared with age-matched control subjects on a series of experimental gambles, despite understanding full well the values and risks involved. De Martino already suspected that the amygdala was crucial for loss-aversion based on earlier studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). But these two rare cases with damage to the very structure in question allowed De Martino to directly test his hypothesis. "In functional MRI, you never know if the response is reflecting something else. With the amygdala injury, you have an on "off" response," De Martino says. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Emotions; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13762 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Greg Miller People of many religious faiths share the belief that there is a reality that transcends their personal experience. Now, a study with brain cancer patients hints at brain regions that may regulate this aspect of spiritual thinking. The researchers found that some patients who had surgery to remove part of the parietal cortex became more prone to "self transcendence." Scientists have grown increasingly interested in the origins and neural underpinnings of religious faith. Yet, contrary to some overenthusiastic media reports, brain scans of people of various faiths asked to ponder their relationship with God have so far failed to turn up a "God spot," suggesting instead that many regions of the brain are involved. In the new study, psychologist Cosimo Urgesi of the University of Udine in Italy and colleagues took a different approach, asking 88 brain cancer patients to fill out a widely used personality questionnaire before and after surgery to remove their tumors. One section of the test measures "self transcendence." It asks respondents, for example, about their tendency to become so absorbed in an activity that they lose track of time and place and whether they feel a strong spiritual connection with other people or with nature. Patients with malignant tumors in posterior brain regions, including the temporal and parietal cortex, scored higher on the self-transcendence scale on average than did those with tumors in the frontal cortex, Urgesi and colleagues report today in Neuron. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13761 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Stuttering may be the result of a glitch in the day-to-day process by which cellular components in key regions of the brain are broken down and recycled, says a study in the Feb. 10 Online First issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, led by researchers at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health, has identified three genes as a source of stuttering in volunteers in Pakistan, the United States, and England. Mutations in two of the genes have already been implicated in other rare metabolic disorders also involved in cell recycling, while mutations in a third, closely related, gene have now been shown to be associated for the first time with a disorder in humans. “For hundreds of years, the cause of stuttering has remained a mystery for researchers and health care professionals alike, not to mention people who stutter and their families,” said James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. “This is the first study to pinpoint specific gene mutations as the potential cause of stuttering, a disorder that affects 3 million Americans, and by doing so, might lead to a dramatic expansion in our options for treatment.” Stuttering is a speech disorder in which a person repeats or prolongs sounds, syllables, or words, disrupting the normal flow of speech. It can severely hinder communication and a person’s quality of life. Most children who stutter will outgrow stuttering, although many do not; roughly 1 percent of adults stutter worldwide. Current therapies for adults who stutter have focused on such strategies as reducing anxiety, regulating breathing and rate of speech, and using electronic devices to help improve fluency.

Keyword: Language; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13760 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes WE'D booked the venue, chosen the bridesmaids' dresses and even decided on the colours of the table decorations. But finding a refrigerated centrifuge and a ready supply of dry ice in rural south-west England was proving tricky. Then there were the worries about getting blood on my silk wedding dress, and what to do if someone fainted. Organising a wedding can be stressful enough, but we had a whole extra dimension to consider. We were turning it into a science experiment to probe what happens in our bodies when we say the words "I do". Our focus was the hormone oxytocin, sometimes dubbed the "cuddle chemical" for its role in promoting bonding, trust and generosity. The usual setting for investigating its effects is a lab where volunteers may be asked to play games that involve trust and generosity, for example. But how well do these contrived tests reflect what happens in real life? I had written several articles about this hormone before, so my wedding last July seemed the perfect chance to see if it would surge in the ultimate public display of affection. I contacted leading oxytocin researcher Paul Zak, head of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies in Claremont, California, and he leapt at the opportunity to translate his lab studies into real life. The plan was to measure blood levels of oxytocin in the bride, groom, three close members of our families and eight friends both before and after the ceremony. OK, it was a small sample size, but Zak (pictured above) saw this as a pilot study that might point the way for future research, and perhaps even shed some light on why people stage public weddings in the first place. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 13759 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By RONI CARYN RABIN Older mothers are more likely than younger ones to have a child with autism, and older fathers significantly contribute to the risk of the disorder when their partners are under 30, researchers are reporting. In a study published online on Monday in the journal Autism Research, the researchers analyzed almost five million births in California during the 1990s, and 12,159 cases of autism diagnosed in those children — a sample large enough to examine how the risk of autism was affected when one parent was a specific age and the other was the same age or considerably older or younger. Previous research found that the risk of autism grew with the age of the father. The new study suggested that when the father was over 40 and the mother under 30, the increased risk was especially pronounced — 59 percent greater than for younger men. By contrast, for women 30 and older, the risk of autism rose 13 percent when the father was over 40. Every five-year increase in a mother’s age raised her risk of having a child with autism by 18 percent; a 40-year-old woman’s risk was 50 percent greater than that of a woman who became a mother in her late 20s, and 77 percent higher than that of a woman under 25. But while the number of California women giving birth in their 40s rose sharply in the 1990s, the researchers said that could not account for the sevenfold rise in autism during the decade. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13758 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Lindsey Tanner, Associated Press A woman's chance of having a child with autism increase substantially as she ages, but the risk may be less for older dads than previously suggested, a new study analyzing more than 5 million births found. "Although fathers' age can contribute risk, the risk is overwhelmed by maternal age," said University of California at Davis researcher Janie Shelton, the study's lead author. Mothers older than 40 were about 50 percent more likely to have a child with autism than those in their 20s; the risk for fathers older than 40 was 36 percent higher than for men in their 20s. Even at that, the study suggests the risk of a woman over 40 having an autistic child was still less than 4 in 1,000, one expert noted. The new research suggests the father's age appears to make the most difference with young mothers. Among children whose mothers were younger than 25, autism was twice as common when fathers were older than 40 than when dads were in their 20s. autism The findings contrast with recent research that suggested the father's age played a bigger role than the mother's. Researchers and other autism experts said the new study is more convincing, partly because it's larger. Older mothers are known to face increased risks for having children with genetic disorders, and genes are thought to play a role in autism. The study was released Monday in the February issue of the journal Autism Research. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13757 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Steve Connor The brains of people who risk everything when gambling may be wired up differently to those of the naturally cautious, according to a study that appears to have discovered a neurological basis for reckless behaviour. The research found that people were far more gullible to high-risk gambling when a small but distinct part of their brain had been damaged as a result of a rare genetic disorder. They showed little of the natural aversion to losing something of value that most people are born with. Tests on two otherwise healthy women who had suffered damage to a part of the brain called the amygdala, which has already been implicated in the arousal of fear and anxiety, revealed that they were far more ready to lose money through risky gambling behaviour compared to healthy individuals with no such brain damage. The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure deep inside the core of the brain and it is sometimes referred to as the "seat of fear" because of its important role in controlling this basic, primal emotion. It is an ancient part of the brain, existing long before the evolutionary development of the outer "higher cortex" which controls more sophisticated emotional states. "A fully functioning amygdala appears to make us more cautious. We already know that the amygdala is involved in processing fear, and it also appears to make us afraid of losing money," said Professor Ralph Adolphs of University College London. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Emotions; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13756 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Alice Park To curb the childhood-obesity epidemic, health experts have long urged parents to make healthy changes to their family's lifestyle — such as eating nutritiously, reducing TV time, exercising and getting a good night's sleep. Individually, these behaviors have been linked to a lower risk of obesity in kids, but researchers at Ohio State University were interested in learning whether their effect might be cumulative — that is, whether families who adopted not just one but two or more of these behaviors could reduce their children's risk of obesity even further. (See how to prevent illness at any age.) Led by epidemiologist Sarah Anderson, researchers analyzed data on 8,550 4-year-olds in a national study and found that, indeed, children who practiced two healthy lifestyle behaviors were slimmer than those who adopted only one behavior, while youngsters who implemented three beneficial habits were the least likely to be overweight. "The more of these routines the children had, the lower was their risk of obesity," Anderson says. "If children had all three routines, their risk of obesity was 40% lower than children who had none of the routines." The three behaviors Anderson studied were eating dinner regularly with the family, limiting the amount of time spent in front of the TV, and getting enough sleep. The children who were least likely to be obese ate dinner with their families six or seven times a week, slept for at least 10.5 hours each night and watched less than two hours of television per day. © 2010 Time Inc.

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13755 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Melody Dye At every stage of early development, human babies lag behind infants from other species. A kitten can amble across a room within moments of birth and catch its first mouse within weeks, while its wide-eyed human counterpart takes months to make her first step, and years to learn even simple tasks, such as how to tie a shoelace or skip a rope, let alone prepare a three-course meal. Yet, in the cognitive race, human babies turn out to be much like the tortoise in Aesop’s fable: emerging triumphant after a slow and steady climb to the finish. As adults, we drive fancy sports cars, leap nimbly across football fields and ballet stages, write lengthy dissertations on every conceivable subject, and launch rockets into space. We have a mastery over our selves and our environments that is peculiar to our species. Yet, this victory seems puzzling. In the fable, the tortoise wins the race because the hare takes a nap. But, if anything, human infants nap even more than kittens! And unlike the noble tortoise, babies are helpless, and more to the point, hopeless. They could not learn the basic skills necessary to their independent survival even if they tried. How do human babies manage to turn things around in the end? In a recent article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, Sharon Thompson-Schill, Michael Ramscar and Evangelia Chrysikou make the case that this very helplessness is what allows human babies to advance far beyond other animals. They propose that our delayed cortical development is precisely what enables us to acquire the cultural building blocks, such as language, that make up the foundations of human achievement. Indeed, the trio makes clear that our early vulnerability is an evolutionary “engineering trade-off,” much like the human larynx—which, while it facilitates the intricate productions of human speech, is actually quite a precarious adaptation for anyone trying to swallow safely. In the same way, they suggest, our ability to learn language comes at the price of an extended period of cognitive immaturity. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Evolution
Link ID: 13754 - Posted: 06.24.2010