Researchers at Georgia State University's Language Research Center already knew their chimpanzees are pretty smart. They have good memories, can use symbolic language to communicate, and even do simple arithmetic. But it turns out that the apes can also plan for the future and devise ways to control their impulses. Michael Beran and Ted Evans were interested in how people exert impulse control. "How we deal with situations in which we might be tempted by certain kinds of things but we need to avoid those things if we can in order to benefit in the long run," explains Beran. "So, situations that are similar to people on a diet or who are trying to stop smoking." "One thing we tend to say as humans is that when we fail in these things, we say, 'Oh, we're just giving in to our animal impulses.' And so the question is, are animals always impulsive, or can they show self-control? Can they delay their own gratification?" They can, even better than young human children, the researchers say. They gave the chimps candies one at a time, and the longer the animals waited to eat them, the more candies they earned. "We taught the chimpanzees that the longer that they waited to eat the candies, the more candies they would get," Evans explains. The researchers found that when these apes had playthings like toothbrushes or magazines handy, they used them as distractions to help them delay eating the treats so they could get more. © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 11042 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas, -- Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals and, if so, did the mating result in a half-human, half-Neanderthal hybrid ? The answer is possibly yes to the interbreeding but no to the hybrid, according to the authors of a new study that is already making waves among leading anthropologists. At the center of the study, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, and the current debate, is a 29,000-year-old Romanian skull that is one of the oldest fossils in Europe with modern human features. But those features aren't quite a perfect match with us, which has led some experts to suspect it was a cross between a Neanderthal and a modern human. That's not so, according to Katerina Harvati, and her colleagues Philipp Gunz and Dan Grigorescu. "It differs from living people only in subtle ways, and always well within the range of modern human variation," Harvati, who led the recent study, told Discovery News. "It has, for instance, slightly heavier eyebrows than the average person, and is generally somewhat more robust than average," she added, explaining that modern humans have gradually evolved to become more slight and slender than Upper Paleolithic people were. © 2007 Discovery Communications

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 11041 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Phil McKenna Close family ties are important in elephant societies (Image: Lucy Bates)Elephants really do have good memories – at least when it comes to keeping tabs on where their own relatives are, suggests a new study. African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Kenya's Amboseli National Park are able to recognise up to 17 female family members based on cues they pick up from sniffing their urine. Individuals then use the information to keep track of the location of others relative to themselves as they travel over large distances. "The cliché – that elephants have great memories – seems to be true," says Lucy Bates at the University of St Andrews, UK, who led the study. "By the nature of the society they live in, where they have these close-knit family groups surrounded by so many other non family members, it is very important to recognise individuals and to respond to them appropriately," she says. Collecting urine and surrounding soil from female elephants with a hand trowel, Bates and colleagues placed fresh urine samples before individuals from 36 family groups and judged their responses. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11040 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By TARA PARKER-POPE Heather Kuzmich has the neurological disorder known as Asperger’s syndrome. She is socially awkward, has trouble making eye contact and is sometimes the target of her roommates’ jokes. But what makes the 21-year-old Ms. Kuzmich different from others with Asperger’s is that for the past 11 weeks, her struggle to cope with her disability has played out on national television. She is one of 13 young women selected by the supermodel Tyra Banks to compete on the popular reality television show “America’s Next Top Model.” The addition of Heather Kuzmich to an otherwise superficial show has given millions of viewers an unusual and compelling glimpse into the little-understood world of Asperger’s. The disorder, considered a form of autism, is characterized by unusual social interaction and communication skills. Aspies, as people with the condition like to call themselves, often have normal or above-average intelligence, but they have trouble making friends and lack the intuitive ability to gauge social situations. They fail to make eye contact and often exhibit a single-minded fixation that can be both bizarre and brilliant. By definition, people with Asperger’s are outside the mainstream. Even so, in recent months the syndrome has been cast into the limelight. “Look Me in the Eye,” a memoir about living with Asperger’s by John Elder Robison, who once created special effects for the rock band Kiss, has been a best-seller. In August, the Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page wrote a poignant article for The New Yorker about life with undiagnosed Asperger’s. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 11039 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Babies who go on to develop anorexia may be programmed in the womb by their mother's hormones, evidence suggests. Women are usually much more likely than men to have the eating disorder, but a University of Sussex study found men with a female twin were more at risk. This suggests the hormones released to aid female development may be key. Commenting on the Archives of General Psychiatry study, a UK expert said other factors in childhood and adolescence remained important. It is estimated that up to 90,000 people will be receiving treatment for eating disorders in the UK at any one time, with many other cases going undiagnosed. No-one is sure why women are more prone than men. Some experts suggest that the pressures of modern society are partly to blame while others look at brain changes much earlier in life. Research into twins is a way to examine the factors involved, as the single most important period for brain development is during the months of pregnancy. Dr Marco Procopio, from the University of Sussex, worked with Dr Paul Marriott from the University of Waterloo in Canada to look at information drawn from thousands of Swedish twins born between 1935 and 1958. Overall, as expected, female twins were more likely to develop anorexia than male twins. The only exception was among mixed-sex twins, where the male was as likely to develop anorexia as the female. The researchers wrote that the most likely reason was because of sex steroid hormones released into the womb during pregnancy. (C)BBC

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 11038 - Posted: 12.04.2007

By Alicia Ault You walk into the room, but you can't remember why. You've forgotten where you left your keys. Lapses like that seem to be happening more often. The beginnings of Alzheimer's disease? Maybe, maybe not. What's the best way to find out? Most experts say you should raise concerns with your physician. But an Alzheimer's organization and an ad hoc panel that met last month say that anyone older than 65 -- and anyone who has a family history of the disease -- should request and receive memory tests on a regular basis. The Alzheimer's Foundation of America, a nonprofit advocacy group, endorses memory tests for all older Americans. And the Alzheimer's Disease Screening Discussion Group -- sponsored by Pfizer and Esai, the makers of the Alzheimer's drug Aricept -- recently urged screening for all those 65 or older or residing in an assisted-living or long-term-care facility. But some experts worry that mass screening could do more harm than good by giving false reassurances to some and causing others needless worry. One in seven Americans over age 71, about 3.4 million, have dementia. The majority, 2.4 million, have Alzheimer's disease, according to a recently published study funded by the National Institute on Aging. © 2007 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11037 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Constance Holden People with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) hate the way they look. Even though they are as normal in appearance as anyone else, they are obsessed with features such as their skin, their noses, and their hair, which--to them--never look right. Now, the first brain-imaging study of BDD patients shows that the condition is not an emotional problem. Rather, their brains are presenting them with skewed images of themselves. Psychiatrist James Feusner and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, asked BDD subjects and controls to scrutinize images of faces while their brains were being scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Each face was presented in three versions: One was an unaltered photograph; one included only low-spatial-frequency information, resulting in a blurred image that yielded just a general impression of the face; and the third contained only high-frequency information, which exaggerated the lines of the face (see picture). Previous research has shown that different neural pathways process high- and low-frequency information. When the image is blurry, the normal brain analyzes the face as a whole, whereas with high-frequency data, it zeroes in on details. The scientists found that the control subjects used a more holistic, right-brain strategy for the unaltered face and the low-frequency one. They only moved to the high-detail strategy for the high-detail face. In the BDD group, however, subjects failed to look at the figure as a whole, instead using left-brain channels that dwell on details for all three faces. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia; Laterality
Link ID: 11036 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Diagnosing psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and depression is a difficult business – as many as 70% of people who experience a psychosis for the first time are misdiagnosed. So the need for an accurate and objective way of spotting these illnesses is much needed. John Pettrigrew, professor of physiology at the University of Queensland in Australia, has found a way that this might be done. His idea is based on a phenomenon that occurs when a viewer is presented with a different visual stimulus for each eye. When this happens, the brain switches from perceiving one image to the other, but patients suffering from conditions such as schizophrenia switch much more rapidly. Pettigrew has tested this idea for a specific type of image in which two slatted forms or "gratings" are superimposed to form a diamond-shaped pattern. When the gratings move, the viewer sees either the diamond patterns move, or the gratings move relative to each other. The rate at which the viewer's perception switches from one form of motion to the other can then be used to diagnose mood disorders, or even a predisposition to such a disorder. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 11035 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Ewen Callaway Remember this: even if the numbers flash up for only an instant, this chimp can remember where they were.Courtesy of the researchersA particularly cunning seven-year-old chimp named Ayumu has bested university students at a game of memory. He and two other young chimps recalled the placement of numbers flashed onto a computer screen faster and more accurately than humans. “It’s a very simple fact: chimpanzees are better than us — at this task,” says Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a primatologist at Kyoto University in Japan who led the study. The work doesn't mean that chimps are 'smarter' than humans, but rather they seem to be better at memorizing a snapshot view of their surroundings — whether that be numbers on a screen or ripe figs dangling from a tree. Humans may have lost this capacity in exchange for gaining the brainpower to understand language and complex symbols, says Matsuzawa. Two decades have passed since Matsuzawa’s team first taught a female chimp, Ai, to recognize and order Arabic numerals1. Later, he and Nobuyuki Kawai trained her to memorize the location of numbers as they flashed onto a computer screen. The numbers would be quickly covered with white squares, and Ai could then touch those squares in order of the numbers concealed beneath them2. After much training, chimps can be remarkably good at this task (see video, in real time). © 2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 11034 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The natural "high" produced by exercise could one day be available in a pill that targets a gene in our brains. The Yale University experts say that experiments on mice could show why regular exercise can help people suffering from depression. Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, they say it could lead to more effective drugs. Mental Health charities in the UK already back exercise programmes as a way of lifting depression. While the link between exercise and improved mood is well known, the reasons behind it are not fully understood. The latest research focuses on an area of the brain called the hippocampus, which is already established as a target for antidepressant drugs. The team developed a test to see which genes in this region were made more active during exercise, and highlighted one called VGF. This gene is linked to a "growth factor" chemical involved in the development of nerve cells. This fitted with their theory that, for depression to lift, changes in the actual structure and links between brain cells are needed, not just changes in the chemicals surrounding the cells. The next step was to make a version of that chemical, and to test it on mice, where it showed an effect on their behaviour that roughly equated to antidepressant effects in humans. The researchers believe that a drug based on VGF could offer "possibly even superior efficacy" to current antidepressants. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 11033 - Posted: 12.03.2007

Sophisticated scans have revealed the eating disorder anorexia is linked to specific patterns of brain activity. Even young women recovering from anorexia who have maintained a healthy weight for over a year had vastly different brain activity patterns. The findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry point to a brain region linked to anxiety and perfectionism. The University of Pittsburgh authors said the understanding might help with the development of new treatments. The work could also explain why people with anorexia nervosa are able to deny themselves food. It is estimated that one in 100 women between the ages of 15 and 30 has anorexia. The main symptom is the relentless pursuit of thinness through self-starvation. This may become so extreme that it is life-threatening. Dr Walter Kaye and his team studied 13 women who were recovering from anorexia and 13 healthy women. The women were asked to play a computer quiz where correct guesses were rewarded financially. At the same time, the researchers observed what was going on inside the mind using a type of brain scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging. During the game, brain regions lit up in different ways for the two groups of women. While the brain region for emotional responses - the anterior ventral striatum - showed strong differences for winning and losing the game in the healthy women, women with a past history of anorexia showed little difference between winning and losing. Dr Kaye said that, in anorexia, this might impact on food enjoyment.

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 11032 - Posted: 12.03.2007

NEW YORK - The teenage brain, Laurence Steinberg says, is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake. With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash. And, perhaps, a crime. Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor, helped draft an American Psychological Association brief for a 2005 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for crimes committed before age 18. That ruling relies on the most recent research on the adolescent brain, which indicates the juvenile brain is still maturing in the teen years and reasoning and judgment are developing well into the early to mid 20s. It is often cited as state lawmakers consider scaling back punitive juvenile justice laws passed during the 1990s. “As any parent knows,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the 5-4 majority, youths are more likely to show “a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility” than adults. “... These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions.” He also noted that “juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure,” causing them to have less control over their environment. © 2007 Microsoft

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Emotions
Link ID: 11031 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Emily Harrison For all the delights and horrors human vision provides, it has only one way of collecting information about life: cells in the retina register photons of light for the brain to interpret into images. When it comes to seeing structures too small for the eye to resolve, ones that reflect too few photons for the eye to detect, microscopy must lead the way. The images displayed here, honored in the 2007 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition for both their technical merit and their aesthetics, represent the state of the art in light micro­scopy for biological research. Call it a renaissance, call it a revolution; in the field of light microscopy, it is well under way. Palettes of light are diversifying as scientists develop new fluorescent markers and new genetic techniques for incorporating them into samples, throwing open doors to discovery. For example, the researchers responsible for this year’s first-prize image employed a new technique, called Brainbow, to turn each neuron in a mouse’s brain a distinct color under the microscope. The method allows them to trace individual axons through a dizzying neuronal mesh and to map the wiring of the brain in a way that was impossible using earlier imaging techniques. The precision of the tools is changing, too. Individual proteins can be tagged to watch how a molecule walks, and the minute details of cell division and differentiation can be witnessed live. Microscopists can paint fast in broad strokes of light to capture ephemeral events or more slowly in tiny strokes of light to see a piece of life in exquisite detail. © 1996-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 11030 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An experimental drug shows promise for people at high risk of advanced age-related macular degeneration, a condition that causes vision loss in older people, researchers say. Japanese and Harvard researchers found that endostatin significantly reduced or completely halted the abnormal growth of blood vessels within the eyes in tests on mice. Advanced age-related macular degeneration is an age-related, degenerative disease of the macula, a small area at the centre of the retina. The overgrowth of blood vessels into the retina can lead to central vision loss, preventing sufferers from seeing fine details. It can also lead to blindness. Researchers separated mice into two groups — one group of normal mice naturally produced endostatin, a protein in collagen, while the other group had endostatin removed in lab experiments. Using lasers, researchers induced new blood vessel growth in the edge of the retinas of all the mice, simulating age-related macular degeneration. The mice that had had the endostatin removed were three times as likely to develop the degenerative eye disease. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 11029 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Matt Kaplan What makes an ideal man? For some women, it's a charming personality; others just want to see a nice set of abs. Things aren't quite so complicated in the rest of the animal kingdom. In most species, every female prizes the same trait in a male, whether it be bright plumage or a pretty song. So researchers have been surprised to discover that female yellowthroats don't always agree on what turns them on--a finding that may offer a window onto speciation. Male yellowthroats sport large black masks and bright yellow bibs. Vibrant colors result from pigments called carotenoids, which are also antioxidants and thus a sign of health. So it was little surprise when biologist Corey Freeman-Gallant of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and colleagues found in 2001 that local female yellowthroats preferred males with the most vivid yellow bibs. But in the same year, biologist Peter Dunn of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, published something different about his local population of yellowthroats: Females seemed to be targeting the size of males' black masks to determine whether they were worth a fling. That didn't make sense, because the black masks are generated from melanin, which has no connection to health. "I was taken aback," says Dunn. To confirm the findings, Dunn and colleagues brought yellowthroats from the New York state and the Wisconsin populations back to aviaries near Skidmore College. They spied on the females from behind a blind a few meters away as the birds were presented with multiple bachelors, some with big masks, some with bright yellow throats. Dunn measured the amount of time females spent ogling the various males and confirms in a future issue of the Journal of Avian Biology that both he and Freeman-Gallant were correct. New York state yellowthroats want males with large yellow bibs, and Wisconsin yellowthroats prefer males with big black masks. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 11028 - Posted: 06.24.2010

LONDON - It was once scientific heresy to suggest that smoking contributed to lung cancer. Now, another idea initially dismissed as nutty is gaining acceptance: the graveyard shift might increase your cancer risk. Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will classify shift work as a "probable" carcinogen. That will put shift work in the same category as cancer-causing agents like anabolic steroids, ultraviolet radiation, and diesel engine exhaust. If the shift work theory proves correct, millions of people worldwide could be affected. Experts estimate that nearly 20 percent of the working population in developed countries work night shifts. It is a surprising twist for an idea that scientists first described as "wacky," said Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist and professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center. In 1987, Stevens published a paper suggesting a link between light at night and breast cancer. Back then, he was trying to figure out why breast cancer incidence suddenly shot up starting in the 1930s in industrialized societies, where nighttime work was considered a hallmark of progress. Most scientists were bewildered by his proposal. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Stress
Link ID: 11027 - Posted: 11.30.2007

By Diane F. Halpern, Camilla P. Benbow, David C. Geary, Ruben C. Gur, Janet Shibley Hyde and Morton Ann Gernsbacher For years, blue-ribbon panels of experts have sounded the alarm about a looming shortage of scientists, mathematicians and engineers in the U.S.—making dire predictions of damage to the national economy, threats to security and loss of status in the world. There also seemed to be an attractive solution: coax more women to these traditionally male fields. But there was not much public discussion about the reasons more women are not pursuing careers in these fields until 2005, when then Harvard University president Lawrence Summers offered his personal observations. He suggested to an audience at a small economics conference near Boston that one of the major reasons women are less likely than men to achieve at the highest levels of scientific work is because fewer females have “innate ability” in these fields. In the wake of reactions to Summers’s provocative statement, a national debate erupted over whether intrinsic differences between the sexes were responsible for the underrepresentation of women in mathematical and scientific disciplines. As a group of experts with diverse backgrounds in the area of sex differences, we welcome these ongoing discussions because they are drawing the public’s attention to this important issue. In this article, we present an analysis of the large body of research literature pertaining to the question of female participation in these fields, information that is central to understanding sex differences and any proposal designed to attract more women to the science and mathematics workforces. Contrary to the implications drawn from Summers’s remarks, there is no single or simple answer for why there are substantially fewer women than men in some areas of science and math. Instead a wide variety of factors that influence career choices can be identified, including cognitive sex differences, education, biological influences, stereotyping, discrimination and societal sex roles. © 1996-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11026 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Faye Flam, Inquirer Staff Writer While some sex differences are still up for debate, one that's hard to argue away is men's greater fondness for pornography. Over the years I've heard men explain this in various ways. One of the most popular is that men are "more visual" than women, a convenient excuse for ogling at the beach. Is there any science behind this? "More visual" is too vague to investigate, but some studies have offered insight about why men consume most of the world's vast store of Internet porn. Neurobiologist and anthropologist Michael Platt of Duke University is studying differences in how the sexes respond to pictures in general. On average, his research shows, men will pay to see images of women. But you have to pay women to look at images of men! Platt started with similar studies in monkeys. While most animals are indifferent to photos even of individuals in their own species, monkeys and apes respond to pictures much as humans do. Rhesus macaques that Platt studied, for example, easily recognized the faces of familiar monkeys. And they liked some faces more than others, though the face wasn't always the favorite part.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 11025 - Posted: 11.30.2007

By Benjamin Lester Who says males are always the persistent sex? Female topi--a type of African antelope--become so intent on mating repeatedly with the most desirable partner that males sometimes have to fend off their aggressive advances to avoid running out of sperm, a researcher reports. The study is the first to suggest that sperm depletion causes such a role reversal in a mammal. Topi are "lek" breeders. For a month and a half each year, males congregate at a mating arena, or lek, to compete for barren patches of about 30 square meters. The biggest, fittest males, known as lek males, command plots in the center of the arena, and females, which come into heat for just 1 day per year, seek them out. These prized bulls mate as many as 36 times in just 30 minutes. A female copulates with about four males during her visit to the arena, usually mating with each male multiple times. Although they prefer lek males, nearly 75% of females also mate with less hunky males. The males keep this up for the entire rut, only occasionally nipping off for a bite to eat, says behavioral ecologist Jakob Bro-Jørgensen of the Institute of Zoology in London. Bro-Jørgensen studies topi in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve, and the sheer length of the rut interested him in the role that sperm depletion might play. In related species, he says, repeated mating can deplete sperm, meaning that with each additional ejaculation, the male is less likely to fertilize the female. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 11024 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Nora Schultz There is a cure for zombies after all – if you are a cockroach. A new study has shown that cockroaches that turned into zombies after being stung by a parasitic wasp can be revived with an antidote. Cockroaches can lose their ability to walk when stung by jewel wasps (Ampulex compressa) – the females of which use the cockroaches to feed their young. The wasp, being much smaller than the cockroach, has evolved a fine sting that can deliver a venom cocktail directly into the cockroach’s brain. The poisons effectively turn the cockroach into a zombie. The cockroach is not entirely paralysed, but loses its ability to escape. The wasp then grabs it by the antennae and pulls it into its burrow and lays an egg on its abdomen. The cockroach sits still while the wasp's larva hatches, chews a hole into its belly, and slowly eats its living host from the inside over a period of eight days. To find out if he could revive the cockroaches, Frederic Libersat from Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, Israel, injected stung zombie cockroaches with candidate chemicals that resembled various neurotransmitters in the brain. Journal reference: The Journal of Experimental Biology (vol 210, p 4411) © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 11023 - Posted: 06.24.2010