By Katherine Harmon Chinese dyslexia may be much more complex than the English variety, according to a new paper published online today in Current Biology. English speakers who have developmental dyslexia usually don't have trouble recognizing letters visually, but rather just have a hard time connecting them to their sounds. What about languages based on full-word characters rather than sound-carrying letters? Researchers looking at the brains of dyslexic Chinese children have discovered that the disorder in that language often stems from two separate, independent problems: sound and visual perception. The pronunciation of detailed and complex Chinese characters must be memorized, rather than sounded out like words in alphabet-based languages. That requirement led researchers to suspect that disabilities in the visual realm might come into play in dyslexia in that language. "A fine-grained visuospatial analysis must be preformed by the visual system in order to activate the characters' phonological and semantic information," said lead author Wai Ting Siok of the University of Hong Kong, in a prepared statement. To see whether Chinese dyslexics had trouble comprehending visual details, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the brains of 12 Chinese children with dyslexia. When asked to complete a task that involved visually judging size, the dyslexic children had less activation in an area of the brain that is charged with visual-spatial processing (the left intraparietal sulcus) than did Chinese children with normal reading levels. Previous research had also shown that the dyslexic group had weak activation in areas that process phonological information (the left middle frontal gyrus) when tested with a rhyming task. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 13351 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Imagine what a dinner conversation would be like if you had decent table manners, but the ears of a lizard. Not only would you have to stop eating whenever you wanted to speak, but, because parts of your ears are now attached to your jaw, you’d have to stop eating whenever you wanted to hear anybody else, as well. With no fork action on your end, your waiter would soon conclude that you were obviously “done working on that” and would whisk your unbreached baked ziti away. Sometimes it’s the little things in life that make all the difference — in this case, the three littlest bones of the human body. Tucked in our auditory canal, just on the inner side of the eardrum, are the musically named malleus, incus and stapes, each minibone, each ossicle, about the size of a small freshwater pearl and jointly the basis of one of evolution’s greatest inventions, the mammalian middle ear. The middle ear gives us our sound bite, our capacity to masticate without being forced to turn a momentarily deaf ear to the world, as most other vertebrates are. Who can say whether we humans would have become so voraciously verbal if not for the practice our ancestors had of jawboning around the wildebeest spit. The middle ear also explains why mammals, as a group, have the sharpest hearing on Earth and the greatest diversity of listening styles, from the bats and dolphins that can detect pressure waves bouncing around at the spiky, ultrasonic end of the bandwidth, to elephants and humpbacked whales that can hear infrasonically, capturing the long, low sound prints muttered by their peers for miles around. All told, a new study suggests, the middle ear was such a great invention, such an essential part of being a mammal, that once evolution had seized upon it, no crude substitute or older model would do. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing; Evolution
Link ID: 13350 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Chadrick Lane My mother is a more patient human being after having raised a child who incessantly asked, “Are we there yet?” That information, often out of reach for a frustrated toddler, carries with it a feeling of reward. The majority of us are all too familiar with the urge to know more about the future, whether it is an exam grade, an experimental result, or the status of a new job. Prior knowledge frequently has no effect on the actual outcome of the event – we’ll get the same grade regardless – and yet we still desperately want to know. This leads to what scientists refer to as “information-seeking behavior” – our mind craves relevant information. The neural basis behind this seemingly universal desire has eluded scientists for some time, but the wait is over. Contemporary theories of reinforcement learning are rooted in the dopaminergic reward system. Dopamine neurons in parts of the midbrain, such as the ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra pars compacta, play a vital role in the expectation of reward. Most of what is known about these neurons comes from electrode recording experiments with rhesus monkeys. Not surprisingly, these neurons respond to primitive rewards, such as food and water. They signal a monkey’s expectation of rewards, but what was not known until now is whether these same neurons might also signal expectation of information. To test for this preference for information, which is a cognitive reward, a new paradigm needed to be put in place. Ethan Bromberg-Martin and Okihide Hikosaka, both at the National Eye Institute, developed a brilliant behavioral task that opened the door. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13349 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Children can be taught to use their imagination to tackle frequent bouts of stomach pain, research shows. A relaxation-type CD, asking children to imagine themselves in scenarios like floating on a cloud led to dramatic improvements in abdominal pain. The US researchers said the technique worked particularly well in children as they have such fertile imaginations. It has been estimated that frequent stomach pain with no identifiable cause affects up to one in five children. The research, published in the journal Pediatrics, follows on from studies showing hypnosis is an effective treatment for a range of conditions known as functional abdominal pain, which includes things like irritable bowel syndrome. In this study, the children had 20 minute sessions of "guided imagery" - a technique which prompts the subject to imagine things which will reduce their discomfort. One example is letting a special shiny object melt into their hand and then placing their hand on their belly, spreading warmth and light from the hand inside the tummy to make a protective barrier inside that prevents anything from irritating the belly. The researchers, from the University of North Carolina and Duke University Medical Center, said a lack of therapists led them to the idea of using a CD to deliver the sessions. In all 30 children aged between six and 15 years took part in the study - half of whom used the CDs daily for eight weeks and the rest of whom got normal treatment. Among those who had used the CDs, 73.3% reported that their abdominal pain was reduced by half or more by the end of the treatment course compared with 26.7% in the standard care group. In two-thirds of children the improvements were still apparent six months later. (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 13348 - Posted: 10.12.2009

by Jessica Hamzelou Juggling boosts the connections between different parts of the brain by tweaking the architecture of the brain's "white matter" – a finding that could lead to new therapies for people with brain injuries. White matter describes all areas of the brain that contain mostly axons – outgrowths of nerve cells that connect different cells. It might be expected that learning a new, complex task such as juggling should strengthen these connections, but previous work looking for changes in the brains of people who had learned how to juggle had only studied increases in grey matter, which contains the nerve cells' bodies. Now Jan Scholz and his colleagues at the University of Oxford have discovered that juggling changes white matter, too. They gave 24 young men and women training packs for juggling and had them practise for half an hour a day for six weeks. Before and after this training period, the researchers scanned the brains of the jugglers along with those of 24 people who didn't do any juggling, using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging that reveals the structure of white matter. They found that there was no change in the brains of the non-jugglers, but the jugglers grew more white matter in a part of the parietal lobe – an area involved in connecting what we see to how we move. The same transformation was seen in all the jugglers, regardless of how well they could perform. This suggests that it's the learning process itself that is important for brain development, not how good you are. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13347 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Henry Nicholls IN 2003, while geneticist Svante Pääbo was visiting Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city, he decided to look in on a famous experiment run by the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, which is based in the city. Fifty years ago, the then head of the IC&G, geneticist Dmitry Belyaev, had begun breeding silver foxes to see how easily they could be tamed. What Pääbo didn't know, though, is that Belyaev had also set up another experiment in the 1970s involving rats. This time, one line of rats was selected for tameness and another selected for aggression. When Pääbo saw them, he was stunned. After just 30 years of selection, the IC&G researchers had fashioned two populations that could hardly be more different. "I could take the tame ones out of the cage with my bare hands. They would creep under my shirt and seemed to actually seek and enjoy contact," recalls Pääbo. "The aggressive animals were so aggressive I got the feeling that 10 or 20 of them would probably kill me if they got out of the cages." The aggressive rats were so aggressive I got the feeling that 10 or 20 of them would kill me if they got out of the cage Here was a great opportunity to uncover the genetic changes responsible for the behavioural differences, Pääbo realised. Back at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, Pääbo and his team have been trying to do just this. If they succeed, their findings could have far-reaching consequences. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 13346 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Emily Anthes In his speech to America’s schoolchildren last month, President Obama had a clear directive about video games: Put them away. It wasn’t the first time he had sounded this particular alarm, warning of the dangers of days spent at gaming consoles. But the latest science shows that there’s a lot more to video games than their dark reputations suggest. “There’s still a tendency to think of video games as a big wad of time-wasting content,’’ said Cheryl Olson, co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital. “You would never hear a parent say we don’t allow books in our home, but you’ll still hear parents say we don’t allow video games in our home. “Games are a medium. They’re not inherently good or bad.’’ After years of focusing on the bad - and there are still legitimate concerns, for instance, about the psychological effects of certain violent games - scientists are increasingly examining the potential benefits of video games. Their studies are revealing that a wide variety of games can boost mental function, improving everything from vision to memory. Still unclear is whether these gains are long-lasting and can be applied to non-game tasks. But video games, it seems, might actually be good for the brain. The very structure of video games makes them ideal tools for brain training. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13345 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey For many people, days just don’t seem long enough. In order to cram everything into one 24-hour period, something has to give. Judging by many surveys of Americans, it’s sleep. Sleep is regarded by some as unproductive, wasteful downtime. People who would rather hit the hay than the dance floor are told that only losers snooze and that they can sleep when they’re dead. But new data about sleep’s benefits suggest that losing sleep might speed up death’s arrival. Recent research also shows that people who don’t snooze enough face a higher risk of losing their health than those who regularly get a good night’s sleep. “What is certain is that we can’t do without sleep,” says Peter Meerlo, a neuroscientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Some of the consequences of lost sleep are immediate, obvious and unpleasant, such as a toddler’s crabbiness after missing a nap. Older children and adults get irritable when tired, too. Sleepy students don’t learn or perform as well as their well-rested peers (SN: 09/09/06, p. 174). And nodding off at work probably won’t help anyone get a promotion. Other penalties for staying up too late can be far more serious, even deadly. Studies have linked chronic sleep loss to obesity (SN: 11/17/07, p. 318; SN: 4/1/06, p. 195), heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes (SN: 1/3/09, p. 5; SN: 1/19/08, p. 46) and shorter lives (SN: 2/8/03, p. 85) in people and laboratory animals. And now, a new study links sleep loss in mice to Alzheimer’s disease plaques (SN: 10/24/09, p. 11). And some evidence suggests that stinting on sleep night after night may cause long-term — maybe even permanent — changes in the brain, some of which may predispose people to mental disorders such as depression. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sleep; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 13344 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Laura Sanders If Ben Franklin had been able to live by his own advice, he might have been even healthier, wealthier and wiser. But he was a notorious insomniac, rumored to have been such a poor sleeper that he required two beds so he could always crawl into one with cool sheets when he couldn’t sleep. Getting a good night’s sleep turned out to be more difficult than taming lightning, heating houses or designing bifocal specs. Today millions of people afflicted by sleep disorders know how Franklin felt. Some people can’t fall asleep even when they’re exhausted. Yet other people fall asleep when they should be wide awake. Although sleep disorders take many different forms, they do have one thing in common: The more researchers learn, the more they have left to figure out. Sleep problems present a constellation of symptoms, trigger overlapping diagnoses and divulge no clear causes. “We always feel like we’re one step away from getting all of the answers,” says Adi Aran of Stanford University, “but I really believe that in the next decade we will understand much more about sleep disorders.” Already, some recent advances have brought scientists closer to discerning the ultimate causes of such disorders, even suggesting possible treatments. Masashi Yanagisawa of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas believes researchers are poised to “crack open the black box of sleep regulation.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sleep; Narcolepsy
Link ID: 13343 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey In a lab at MIT, a small black mouse named Buddy sleeps alone inside a box. A cone resembling a satellite dish sits atop his head. But the dish doesn’t receive signals from outer space. Instead it sends transmissions from deep inside Buddy’s brain to a bank of computers across the room. Scientists like Jennie Young eavesdrop on the transmissions, essentially reading Buddy’s mind, or at least that part of his mind occupied with a recent trip along a Plexiglas track littered with chocolate sprinkles. Young and her colleagues in Susumu Tonegawa’s laboratory are monitoring nerve cells inside the hippocampus, one of the brain’s most important learning and memory centers. Some of the cells in the sea horse–shaped hippocampus fired bursts of electrical energy as Buddy moved along the track. As he sleeps in his black box, those same cells spark to life again, replaying progress along the track in fast-forward or rapid reverse. By recording the slumbering Buddy’s brain cell activity, the scientists hope to glean clues to one of biology’s greatest mysteries: the reason for sleep. Although sleep is among the most basic of behaviors, its function has proved elusive. Scientists say sleep’s job is to save energy, or to build up substances needed during waking or to tear down unneeded connections between brain cells. Some emphasize sleep’s special role in learning and memory. Others suggest that sleep regulates emotions. Or strengthens the immune system. And some scientists believe sleep is simply something that emerges naturally from having networks of neurons wired together. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13342 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Susan Milius Donkeys sleep about three out of each 24 hours. Certain reef fish spend the night moving their fins as if swimming in their sleep. Some biologists argue that all animals sleep in some form or another. But identifying sleep can get complicated. Insects have brain architecture so different from humans’, for example, that electrophysiological recordings during “sleep” won’t match human patterns. The real problem may be that researchers haven’t agreed on what sleep does for people, so it’s hard to agree on the animal equivalent. Studying animal sleep, though, offers the prospect of discerning evolutionary patterns in sleep pointing to some ancient function. Fruit fly 8–10 hours of inactivity each day Lab fruit flies droop into less-responsive, sleeplike periods mostly at night. If deprived of these quiet bouts, flies spend extra time stationary later, as if catching up. Caffeine keeps them awake, and antihistamines increase downtime. Studies haven’t found REM patterns, but brain activity does shift during the droops. White-crowned sparrow 3–8 hours (depends on season) During migration season, white-crowned sparrows perplex researchers with the birds’ apparent power to cheat on sleep. Birds get not quite 40 percent as much sleep as usual, with drops in both slow-wave and REM sleep. Yet the birds don’t get stupid in performance tests. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sleep; Evolution
Link ID: 13341 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Torrice Even with their tiny bird brains, rooks comprehend basic principles of physics at the same level as a 6-month-old baby--and beyond that of chimpanzees--a new study reports. But whether this understanding conveys any advantages remains an open question. Rooks and other members of the crow family can manipulate tools and solve laboratory puzzles like those of Aesop's fables. Some scientists believe that these feats suggest the birds have a sophisticated understanding of physical principles—--an understanding that allows them to solve problems they wouldn't encounter in the real world. To further test the theory, Christopher Bird, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and his colleague Nathan Emery at of Queen Mary, University of London, "quizzed" rooks on a basic concept of physics they call "support." The duo adapted a standard experiment: Infants and other primates know that an object will fall if something is not holding it up; they stare for longer than normal at images of a ball or banana floating in mid air, for example, suggesting they know that something unusual is going on. Rooks, it turns out, do the same. The researchers set up a peep hole for the birds to peer into. (Rooks are natural peeping tToms and will spy through small holes or cracks looking for other rooks.) On the other side were images depicting eggs in various situations, both possible and impossible. Some eggs rested on a table, whilereas others floated above it. And in a more subtle twist, the researchers added a picture of an egg hovering in the air while its side or bottom touched the table's side. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 13340 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Rhesus macaque mothers and their babies like to get in each others’ faces, exchanging looks and smacking their lips. They’re neither rude nor hungry. Just as their human counterparts do, these monkeys communicate in a mutually pleasing way that prepares infants to navigate the social world, a new study suggests. Interactions between macaque moms and babies often begin with exaggerated lip smacking by the adult, who gently touches her infant’s lips and face with her mouth, ethologist Pier Ferrari of the University of Parma in Italy, and his colleagues report online October 8 in Current Biology. Mothers also lower their heads and then move them up and down while looking at babies seated nearby, as a prelude to lip smacking and mutual eye contact. For their part, macaque babies imitate lip smacking displayed by their mothers — but not by other females — within the first few days of life, Ferrari’s group reports. Infants then sometimes smack their lips at their mothers to initiate sustained eye contact. This distinctive form of communication disappears near the end of an infant’s first month of life, the researchers say. Macaque youngsters become highly mobile by that time and begin to forge peer relationships. Ferrari hypothesizes that macaque and human babies share an inborn capacity to communicate using emotional displays and gestures, to share experiences with others and to understand adults’ behaviors as having a purpose. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Language; Animal Communication
Link ID: 13339 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DENISE GRADY Many people with chronic fatigue syndrome are infected with a little known virus that may cause or at least contribute to their illness, researchers are reporting. The syndrome, which causes prolonged and severe fatigue, body aches and other symptoms, has long been a mystery ailment, and patients have sometimes been suspected of malingering or having psychiatric problems rather than genuine physical ones. Worldwide, 17 million people have the syndrome, including at least one million Americans. An article published online Thursday in the journal Science reports that 68 of 101 patients with the syndrome, or 67 percent, were infected with an infectious virus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV. By contrast, only 3.7 percent of 218 healthy people were infected. Continuing work after the paper was published has found the virus in nearly 98 percent of about 300 patients with the syndrome, said Dr. Judy A. Mikovits, the lead author of the paper. XMRV is a retrovirus, a member of the same family of viruses as the AIDS virus. These viruses carry their genetic information in RNA rather than DNA, and they insert themselves into their hosts’ genetic material and stay for life. Dr. Mikovits and other scientists cautioned that they had not yet proved that the virus causes the syndrome. In theory, people with the syndrome may have some other, underlying health problem that makes them prone to being infected by the virus, which could be just a bystander. More studies are needed to explain the connection. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 13338 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Health Canada is informing consumers and health professionals of labelling changes for certain prescription sleep-aid medications. The new labelling describes reports of patients who have walked and talked in their sleep, or who even have cooked, eaten and driven while not fully awake. Patients typically did not remember these events afterwards, said Health Canada. The department is encouraging sleeping-pill users and people close to them to be aware of these types of sleep-related behaviours. Patients should report any suspected events to their health-care professional. The drugs are often prescribed as a short-term treatment for people who have difficulty falling asleep or who wake often through the night. Health Canada wants users to read the new labels because they emphasize the proper use of these medications. If patients experience such complex sleep-related behaviours, Health Canada suggests discontinuing the drug to avoid harming themselves and others. However, patients are advised to talk to their doctor before quitting cold turkey as abrupt discontinuation may cause withdrawal symptoms. The drugs, zolpidem, and zaleplon, are also included in the warning, but are not currently sold in Canada. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 13337 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jessica Hamzelou Birds prefer not to play out of their league. Some female zebra finches have been found to choose low-quality males rather than their superior competitors. It's the first time anything like this has been observed in nature. Marie-Jeanne Holveck and Katharina Riebel of Leiden University, the Netherlands, separated zebra finch chicks into either small groups of two to three chicks or larger groups of five to six chicks. The idea is that birds that grow up in big broods have fewer resources devoted to them and will be of a lower quality: weaker, weedier and poorer singers. Once the chicks had grown up, both low and high-quality females were placed in a cage where they could choose to listen to either a low or high-quality male song by pecking one of two red buttons. Of the 24 birds observed, every low-quality female chose the low-quality male song, and the high-quality females opted for males with high-quality songs. Holveck and Riebel then tested how birds of the same and different quality mated. When in a cage together, birds of the same quality were much quicker to mate than mismatched birds. When a low-quality female did mate with a high-quality partner, her eggs were larger. The authors reckon this is because the female knows she is doing better than she deserves, and will invest more nutrients into the eggs she lays. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 13336 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes The contraceptive pill alters monthly fluctuations in hormones associated with the menstrual cycle, mimicking the more stable hormonal conditions associated with pregnancy. This might not only disrupt the natural processes which influence women's choice of partner, but it could also make them less able to compete with women who have a natural menstrual cycle, a paper published this week in Trends in Ecology and Evolution suggests. How worried should we be, and what other strategies can men and women use to tip the odds in their favour? New Scientist investigates. What do we know about how women choose a mate? Recent studies have confirmed that women tend to prefer taut bodies, broad shoulders, clear skin and defined, masculine facial features – all of which may indicate sexual potency and good genes. Women also tend to be attracted to men who look as if they have wealth, or the ability to acquire it. Smell may also be a factor: women seem to prefer the scent of men who have immune systems dissimilar to their own, as measured by genes for the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). A number of companies have sprung up recently that even claim to be able to match couples on the basis of their genes. How might the contraceptive pill interfere with this? © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 13335 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Laura Spinney EARLIER this year, a puzzling report appeared in the journal Sleep Medicine. It described two Italian people who never truly slept. They might lie down and close their eyes, but read-outs of brain activity showed none of the normal patterns associated with sleep. Their behaviour was pretty odd, too. Though largely unaware of their surroundings during these rest periods, they would walk around, yell, tremble violently and their hearts would race. The remainder of the time they were conscious and aware but prone to powerful, dream-like hallucinations. Both had been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disorder called multiple system atrophy. According to the report's authors, Roberto Vetrugno and colleagues from the University of Bologna, Italy, the disease had damaged the pair's brains to such an extent that they had entered status dissociatus, a kind of twilight zone in which the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness completely break down (Sleep Medicine, vol 10, p 247). That this can happen contradicts the way we usually think about sleep, but it came as no surprise to Mark Mahowald, medical director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis, who has long contested the dogma that sleep and wakefulness are discrete and distinct states. "There is now overwhelming evidence that the primary states of being are not mutually exclusive," he says. The blurring of sleep and wakefulness is very clear in status dissociatus, but he believes it can happen to us all. If he is right, we will have to rethink our understanding of what sleep is and what it is for. Maybe wakefulness is not the all-or-nothing phenomenon we thought it was either. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 13334 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People who believe that the mind can be replicated on a computer tend to explain the mind in terms of a computer. When theorizing about the mind, especially to outsiders but also to one another, defenders of artificial intelligence (AI) often rely on computational concepts. They regularly describe the mind and brain as the “software and hardware” of thinking, the mind as a “pattern” and the brain as a “substrate,” senses as “inputs” and behaviors as “outputs,” neurons as “processing units” and synapses as “circuitry,” to give just a few common examples. Those who employ this analogy tend to do so with casual presumption. They rarely justify it by reference to the actual workings of computers, and they misuse and abuse terms that have clear and established definitions in computer science—established not merely because they are well understood, but because they in fact are products of human engineering. An examination of what this usage means and whether it is correct reveals a great deal about the history and present state of artificial intelligence research. And it highlights the aspirations of some of the luminaries of AI—researchers, writers, and advocates for whom the metaphor of mind-as-machine is dogma rather than discipline. Conceptions of the Computer Before any useful discussion about artificial intelligence can proceed, it is important to first clarify some basic concepts. When the mind is compared to a computer, just what is it being compared to? How does a computer work? Ari N. Schulman, "Why Minds Are Not Like Computers," The New Atlantis, Number 23, Winter 2009, pp. 46-68.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 13333 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Virginia Morell A few years ago, researchers discovered that the babies of at least one species of bat make babbling sounds, much like human infants. Now, it turns out those babbling baby bats aren't just mindlessly cooing--they're imitating the songs of the big guys in their colonies: adult males with territories and harems. Such vocal imitation is rare in the animal kingdom, and it has never been found in nonhuman primates. The discovery should open a new window on the evolution of speech and language, scientists say. Scientists define complex vocal imitation as the ability to learn a call or song from a tutor--and they regard this talent as a key innovation in the evolution of speech. The rarified list of complex vocal imitators includes birds, elephants, cetaceans, seals, and humans. Researchers had long predicted that bats might also be capable of such imitation because of their extraordinary vocal flexibility; they use echolocation calls to navigate the physical world, for example, and social calls to communicate with their fellow bats. As behavioral ecologist Mirjam Knörnschild of the University of Ulm in Germany listened to sac-winged bats (Saccopteryx bilineata), she thought she heard complicated vocal imitation. These insectivorous Costa Rican bats live in harems of one male and as many as eight females, each of which can have one pup annually. The males defend small territories in their day-roosts with unique multiple-syllabic songs. Adult females don't sing, but their pups (males and females) do plenty of babbling. During such "babbling bouts," the pups often sing nearly complete renditions of the territorial songs, Knörnschild says, albeit shakier renditions. But were the pups simply combining fragments or actually listening and imitating their complete songs? © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 13332 - Posted: 06.24.2010