Rowan Hooper Gina gestured for the banana. When Erica offered her a stick of celery instead, single mother Gina, 42, impatiently gestured again. When Erica held up the banana, Gina clapped. She's better behaved than Theodora, a feisty teenager who throws sand when she is misunderstood. Gina and Theodora are orang-utans, two of six females that have now been found to communicate with gestures in the same way as people do when playing the game charades. Erica Cartmill and Richard Byrne at the University of St Andrews, UK, presented the apes with one tasty and one not-so-tasty food item that could only be reached with human help. As in charades, when the orang-utans' signals were completely misunderstood, they broadened the range of signals used and avoided the one that had "failed". When they were partially understood – when they were offered celery instead of a banana, for example – they narrowed down the range of signals used and repeated them. "The different communication strategies employed by the orang-utans in our study demonstrated that our subjects were acting on the mental state of the experimenter," says Cartmill, who designed the experiment to study whether the animals could modify their communication when misunderstood. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 10561 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Hannah Devlin If you have ever wondered at the expert hand-eye coordination of a professional juggler, you are not alone. Neuroscientists have long been puzzled by how our brains work out the three-dimensional (3D) shape and position of objects from 2D retinal images, a talent needed to plan precise hand movements such as catching a ball midflight. Now a research team has identified the brain region responsible for 3D visual processing. In order to guess the depth and 3D shape of objects, primates rely on two principal visual cues: first, the slightly different image seen by each eye, a phenomenon known as spatial binocular disparity, and second, the way the perceived shape of an object changes as it moves. It has been unclear how our brains integrate these two pieces of information, however. In a study in the 2 August issue of Neuron, neuroscientist Guy Orban of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and his colleagues show that a brain region known as the anterior intraparietal cortex (AIP) is uniquely sensitive to both these visual cues. The researchers conducted two separate experiments in which the brains of monkeys were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while the animals viewed images of 3D objects. In the first experiment, Orban and his colleagues studied the influence of motion on 3D perception. The monkeys viewed rotating images of connected lines, such as partially unfolded paper clips, that only appeared in the field of view of one eye at a time. In the second experiment, the monkeys used both eyes to view computer simulations of small complex objects, a task that required them to rely upon binocular disparity to perceive depth structure in the images. "We found that these different bits of processing converged on one brain region: the AIP," says Orban, who notes that the AIP lit up in fMRI during both tasks. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 10560 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Maia Szalavitz Just what did a new study on marijuana and schizophrenia actually say – and what did the media leave out? Watching the media cover marijuana is fascinating, offering deep insight into conventional wisdom, bias and failure to properly place science in context. The coverage of a new study claiming that marijuana increases the risk of later psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia by 40% displays many of these flaws. What are the key questions reporters writing about such a study needs to ask? First, can the research prove causality? Most of the reporting here, to its credit, establishes at some point that it cannot,though you have to read pretty far down in some of it to understand this. Second – and this is where virtually all of the coverage falls flat –, if marijuana produces what seems like such a large jump in risk for schizophrenia, have schizophrenia rates increased in line with marijuana use rates? A quick search of Medline shows that this is not the case-- in fact, as I noted here earlier, some experts think they may actually have fallen. Around the world, roughly 1% of the population has schizophrenia (and another 2% or so have other psychotic disorders), and this proportion doesn’t seem to change much. It is not correlated with population use rates of marijuana. Since marijuana use rates have skyrocketed since the 1940’s and 50’s, going from single digit percentages of the population trying it to a peak of some 60% of high school seniors trying it in 1979 (stabilizing thereafter at roughly 50% of each high school class), we would expect to see this trend have some visible effect on the prevalence of schizophrenia and other psychoses.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 10559 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By William J. Kole VIENNA, Austria - Ever whacked your thumb with a hammer, or wrenched your back after lifting a heavy box, and blamed the full moon? It’s a popular notion, but there’s no cosmic connection, Austrian government researchers said Tuesday. Robert Seeberger, a physicist and astronomer at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, said a team of experts analyzed 500,000 industrial accidents in Austria between 2000 and 2004 and found no link to lunar activity. “The full moon does not unfavorably affect the likelihood of an accident,” Seeberger said. The study, released Tuesday by the General Accident Insurance Office, said that on average there were 415 workplace accidents registered per day. Yet on days when the moon was full, the average actually dipped to 385, though the difference was not statistically significant. The lunar influence theory dates at least to the first century A.D., when the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder wrote that his observations suggested “the moon produces drowsiness and stupor in those who sleep outside beneath her beams.” Seeberger, who advises the Austrian government on accident prevention, said he and fellow researcher Manfred Huber decided to take a closer look because the full moon theory kept surfacing “again and again.” © 2007 MSNBC.com © 2007 Microsoft

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 10558 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By WILLIAM GRIMES All branches of science search for origins. Biologists want to know how life on earth began. Astronomers want to know how the universe got started. Even in mathematics, questions about how different numerical systems came to be constitute a legitimate line of inquiry. Linguists are different. In the middle of the 19th century, the main professional bodies governing linguistic research formally banned any investigation into the origins of language, regarding it as pointless. The topic remained disreputable for more than a century, but in the last decade or so, language evolution has eased toward the front burner, attracting the attention of linguists, neuroscientists, psychologists and geneticists. Their search is the subject of “The First Word,” Christine Kenneally’s lucid survey of this expanding field, dedicated to solving what she calls “the hardest problem in science today.” One nut to crack is the nature of language itself, and here Ms. Kenneally introduces the unignorable presence in virtually every linguistic debate, Noam Chomsky. Mr. Chomsky and his many adherents regard language as a uniquely human endowment, centered in a specific area of the brain. It gives every living person the ability, unsought, to generate infinite strings of sentences in infinite combinations. Animals, in this view, do not have language, nor do they think. The reasons that humans speak, or how language might have made its way to the human brain, do not matter. It may simply be that in a linguistic version of the big bang, a language mutation suddenly appeared, and that was that. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 10557 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heidi Ledford Barn owls are better at tracking sounds that move horizontally than those that move vertically, researchers have found. The technique used to make the discovery could one day be used to assess hearing and cognitive skills in humans who cannot communicate. The work, published in PLoS ONE1, relies on a phenomenon noted by Ivan Pavlov, of salivating dog fame, in the 1920s. Pavlov saw that animals respond to stimuli such as sudden movements or novel noises with a set of automatic responses, including muscle tensing and pupil dilation. Avinash Bala, a neurologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, and his colleagues have used this response to monitor when barn owls (Tyto alba) recognize a new sound. The researchers played the owls sounds whose positions differed either horizontally or vertically, and measured the birds' pupil dilation using a beam of infrared light bounced off the cornea. Owls were about twice as sensitive to horizontal shifts compared with vertical changes. The birds could detect a change in location as small as 3º when the source was moved horizontally, compared with 7.5º when the source was moved vertically. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 10555 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists have found a second gene that helps predict whether people with depression will respond to a commonly prescribed antidepressant, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. On its own, the gene variation plays only a small role in predicting a patient's response to Forest Laboratories Inc.'s Celexa, known generically as citalopram. But when a patient also had a variation of another gene, they were 23 percent more likely to benefit, according to the study which appears in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The finding may one day give doctors a better shot at choosing the right antidepressant for the right patient, helping to eliminate the trial-and-error process many people undergo before they find an effective treatment. "This is definitely a step ahead," said Dr. Gonzalo Laje, a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, in a telephone interview. He said depression will be the second-leading cause of disability by the year 2020. "It's huge. It costs the U.S. over $43 billion every year in terms of direct and indirect medical costs." © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 10554 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR A young cigarette smoker can begin to feel powerful desires for nicotine within two days of first inhaling, a new study has found, and about half of children who become addicted report symptoms of dependence by the time they are smoking only seven cigarettes a month. “The importance of this study is that it contradicts what has been the accepted wisdom for many decades,” said Dr. Joseph R. DiFranza, the lead author, “which is that people had to smoke at least five cigarettes a day over a long period of time to risk becoming addicted to nicotine. Now, we know that children can be addicted very quickly.” Dr. DiFranza is a professor of family medicine at the University of Massachusetts. The researchers recruited 1,246 sixth-grade volunteers in public schools in Massachusetts, interviewing them 11 times over a four-year period. They also took saliva samples to determine blood levels of nicotine and link them to addictive behavior. At some time during the four years almost a third of the children puffed on a cigarette, more than 17 percent inhaled, and about 7.5 percent used tobacco daily. Since inhaling is required for sufficient drug delivery to cause dependence, the researchers limited their analysis, published in the July issue of The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, to the 217 inhalers in the group. Their average age when they first inhaled was 12.8 years. Of these, almost 60 percent had lost some control over their smoking, and 38 percent developed tobacco dependence as defined by the widely used diagnostic manual published by the World Health Organization. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 10553 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have discovered the first gene which appears to increase the odds of being left-handed. The Oxford University-led team believe carrying the gene may also slightly raise the risk of developing psychotic mental illness such as schizophrenia. The gene, LRRTM1, appears to play a key role in controlling which parts of the brain take control of specific functions, such as speech and emotion. The study appears in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. The brain is set up in an asymmetrical way. In right-handed people the left side of the brain usually controls speech and language, and the right side controls emotions. However, in left-handed people the opposite is often true, and the researchers believe the LRRTM1 gene is responsible for this flip. They also believe people with the LRRTM1 gene may have a raised risk of schizophrenia, a condition often linked to unusual balances of brain function. Lead researcher Dr Clyde Francks, from Oxford University's Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, said the next step would be to probe the impact on the development of the brain further. He said: "We hope this study's findings will help us understand the development of asymmetry in the brain. Asymmetry is a fundamental feature of the human brain that is disrupted in many psychiatric conditions." However, Dr Francks said left-handed people should not be worried by the links between handedness and schizophrenia. (C)BBC

Keyword: Laterality; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 10552 - Posted: 07.31.2007

By JOHN TIERNEY Scholars in antiquity began counting the ways that humans have sex, but they weren’t so diligent in cataloging the reasons humans wanted to get into all those positions. Darwin and his successors offered a few explanations of mating strategies — to find better genes, to gain status and resources — but they neglected to produce a Kama Sutra of sexual motivations. Perhaps you didn’t lament this omission. Perhaps you thought that the motivations for sex were pretty obvious. Or maybe you never really wanted to know what was going on inside other people’s minds, in which case you should stop reading immediately. For now, thanks to psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin, we can at last count the whys. After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons — everything from “I wanted to feel closer to God” to “I was drunk.” They even found a few people who claimed to have been motivated by the desire to have a child. The researchers, Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss, believe their list, published in the August issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, is the most thorough taxonomy of sexual motivation ever compiled. This seems entirely plausible. Who knew, for instance, that a headache had any erotic significance except as an excuse for saying no? But some respondents of both sexes explained that they’d had sex “to get rid of a headache.” It’s No. 173 on the list. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 10551 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee. The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup. That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java. Findings like this one, as improbable as they seem, have poured forth in psychological research over the last few years. New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it. Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 10550 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CARL ZIMMER When Martin Nowak was in high school, his parents thought he would be a nice boy and become a doctor. But when he left for the University of Vienna, he abandoned medicine for something called biochemistry. As far as his parents could tell, it had something to do with yeast and fermenting. They became a little worried. When their son entered graduate school, they became even more worried. He announced that he was now studying games. In the end, Dr. Nowak turned out all right. He is now the director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard. The games were actually versatile mathematical models that Dr. Nowak could use to make important discoveries in fields as varied as economics and cancer biology. “Martin has a passion for taking informal ideas that people like me find theoretically important and framing them as mathematical models,” said Steven Pinker, a Harvard linguist who is collaborating with Dr. Nowak to study the evolution of language. “He allows our intuitions about what leads to what to be put to a test.” On the surface, Dr. Nowak’s many projects may seem randomly scattered across the sciences. But there is an underlying theme to his work. He wants to understand one of the most puzzling yet fundamental features of life: cooperation. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 10549 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Kerri Smith A single gene can influence how clearly you recall emotionally intense memories, neuroscientists have shown. This finding could aid the search for therapies for people traumatized by horrific experiences. People with a particular gene variant are better at remembering emotionally laden memories than people with the more common version of the gene, research shows. The gene, called ADRA2B, is involved in detecting brain chemicals related to emotional arousal. This effect is specific to memories with emotional overtones, and does not affect emotion or memory by themselves. What matters is whether the event provokes an emotion — good or bad — and not how distressing the incident is. People's memories of scenes or events without emotional significance is not affected. The research highlighted the effect of the gene in stark terms: survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide were more likely to harbour persistent memories of the conflict if they had the variant version of the gene. The variant is present in 12% of people of African ancestry and in 30% of Causasians. Researchers led by Dominique de Quervain of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, made the discovery by presenting Swiss volunteers with emotionally neutral, positive or negative images — such as a family laughing together or a picture of an accident. They then asked them to write a description of the pictures ten minutes later. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Emotions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 10548 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People who spend more time in the sun as children subsequently have a lower risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS), a US study shows. The University of Southern California team suggest UV rays offer protection by altering the cell immune responses or by boosting vitamin D levels. An earlier study found women who took vitamin D supplements were 40% less likely to develop MS. The latest research is published in the journal Neurology. MS is among the most common neurological diseases affecting around two million people worldwide. However, it is more common at higher latitudes, which generally have lower levels of ultraviolet radiation - the type produced by the sun. People in these countries are exposed to less sunlight, which triggers a chemical reaction in the body leading to vitamin D production. For the study, researchers surveyed 79 pairs of identical twins who had the same genetic risk of MS. In each pair, one of the twins had MS. The twins were asked to specify whether they or their twin spent more time outdoors during hot days, cold days, and summer, and which one spent more time basking in the sun, going to the beach and playing team sports as a child. The researchers found the twin with MS spent less time in the sun as a child than the twin who did not have MS. (C)BBC

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 10547 - Posted: 07.30.2007

By NICHOLAS WADE Medical researchers have made a significant advance in understanding multiple sclerosis, a common neurological disease that causes symptoms ranging from muscle weakness to paralysis. The disease is one in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the electrical insulation of nerve fibers. The cause is part genetic and part environmental, but researchers trying to identify the relevant genes have endured repeated frustration. Their approach has been to guess what genes might be involved and see if patients have abnormal versions. This guesswork has produced more than 100 candidate genes in recent years, none of which could be confirmed except for long-known variants in the mechanism used by the immune system to recognize proteins that are foreign to the body. In three articles published online yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine, three teams of researchers say they have identified, by separate routes, new genetic variants that contribute to the disease. One team used a new, advanced gene-hunting method called Whole Genome Association, which has racked up a string of successes with major diseases in the last few months. The other teams used the candidate gene approach, but because all three teams identified the same gene, the researchers say they are confident they have opened a new window into the cause and possible treatment of multiple sclerosis. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 10546 - Posted: 06.24.2010

SEATTLE: – One of the greatest medical mysteries of our time has taken a leap forward in medical understanding with new study results announced by Dr. Daniel D. Rubens of Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle. Rubens’ study published in July, 2007 in Early Human Development found all babies in a Rhode Island study group who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) universally shared the same distinctive difference in their newborn hearing test results for the right inner ear, when compared to infants who did not have SIDS. This is the first time doctors might be able to identify newborns at risk for SIDS by a simple, affordable and routine hearing test administered shortly after birth. In the study, medical records and hearing tests of 31 babies who died from SIDS in Rhode Island were examined and compared to healthy babies. Rhode Island has a particularly robust database of newborn hearing test data. The cause of SIDS, known around the world as “crib death” and “cot death,” has eluded physicians and grieving parents for centuries. Responsible for many previously unexplainable deaths of infants usually two to four months old and striking boys more than girls, SIDS causes tragic, sudden death in approximately 1 in 1,000 newborns world-wide, making it the largest cause of death in young infants. In the United States approximately 3,600 deaths each year were attributed to SIDS from 1992-1999, according to an April, 2004 article in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. Death occurs during sleep, seemingly with no warning and no previous symptoms. Changes in infant care have been promoted including the “Back to Sleep” program discouraging sleeping on the stomach, and avoiding exposure to cigarette smoke. Various causes have been suggested, including disturbances in respiratory control and infant overheating, but to date nothing has proven conclusive.

Keyword: Hearing; Sleep
Link ID: 10545 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heidi Ledford People with one of two common gene variants may be at increased risk of developing the autoimmune disorder multiple sclerosis (MS), researchers say. Both variants encode components of the immune system that are involved in preventing the body from attacking its own cells. Two papers1,2 published today in Nature Genetics independently pinpoint one of the variants, in the 'interleukin-7 receptor alpha chain' (IL7R) gene. A third research team scanned the full genome for variants associated with MS, and found both IL7R and another interleukin receptor gene — 'interleukin-2 receptor alpha' (IL2R) — among the top hits3. In MS the body's immune system attacks the insulating sheath that surrounds and protects neurons, leading loss of motor function and cognitive decline. Interleukin-2 and interleukin-7 are immune system proteins that play a role in the function of regulatory T-cells, which help suppress autoimmunity. The three research teams analyzed thousands of patients of European descent, and found that a single base pair difference in the IL7R gene increased the risk of having MS by about 20%. That risk is too low to make IL7R useful for a genetic test, cautions Margaret Pericak-Vance, a geneticist at the University of Miami in Florida, and an author on one of the studies. "A lot of people carry this particular variant, and they don't get multiple sclerosis," she says. Roughly 70% of the European population is likely to have the variant. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 10544 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Paul Marks Your ability to recall emotional events – such as meeting the love of your life, or the trauma of a painful car crash – is governed by a common variation in a single gene, according to a new study. We recall emotionally charged events far more than mundane ones because they tend to be advantageous in evolutionary terms. Remembering favourable or dangerous events helps our survival far more than recalling the daily commute to work, for example. Highly emotive incidents trigger the brain to release the hormone and neurotransmitter noradrenaline. This stimulates the amygdala – part of the brain involved with processing emotional reactions – to store memories in the hippocampus and other parts of the brain, says Dominique de Quervain, a neuroscientist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Yet for some reason, recall of emotional events varies a great deal from person to person. So de Quervain wondered if common variations in a gene called ADRA2B, which codes for the noradrenaline receptor, could be responsible. Some 30 per cent of Caucasians and 12 per cent of Africans possess this variant, he says. To find out, he and colleagues in Germany and Uganda showed photos of strongly positive, neutral and strongly negative emotional events to two large groups of people. They later asked the group members to recall them and describe them in writing. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 10543 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charles Q. Choi A male crayfish with larger-than-normal claws typically needs only to flash his menacing weapons to drive opponents away. Now researchers find these critters are frequently bluffing — the enlarged claws often aren't stronger at all. These findings raise the question of how often males in the animal kingdom are just bluffing with their natural weaponry. "Dishonesty during disputes may be far more prevalent that we previously imagined," said researcher Robbie Wilson, a zoologist at the University of Queensland in Australia. Wilson and an international team of researchers investigated the Australian slender crayfish (Cherax dispar). The small, lobster-like crustaceans are extraordinarily aggressive beasts, with combat often resulting in death or the loss of a limb. "When you pick them up, they'll want to take your finger off right away," Wilson said. These two- to three-inch long creatures were collected from the creeks on the sand islands off southeast Queensland. Crayfish are freshwater creatures, while lobsters are marine animals. The bluffing finding emerged when the scientists randomly pit 32 adult male crayfish against each other, two at a time, in plastic aquariums. © 2007 MSNBC.com © 2007 Microsoft

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 10542 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Balter Humans are highly social, but we don't get pally with just anybody. Before forming relationships with other people, we normally size them up to see how trustworthy they are. A new study suggests that this behavior stems from an evolutionary reorganization in a part of the brain responsible for detecting other people's emotions. The amygdala, a small, almond-shaped area deep within our brains, appears to be essential in helping us read the emotions of others. Research shows that the structure is crucial for detecting fear, but scientists have also found evidence that it can help spot a wide variety of mental states (ScienceNOW, 7 April 2006). Last year, for example, scientists noted that the amygdalas of patients with autism, which is characterized by decreased social interaction and an inability to understanding the feelings of others, have fewer nerve cells, especially in a subdivision called the lateral nucleus. To see how the amygdala varies in different primate species, a team led by anthropologist Katerina Semendeferi of the University of California, San Diego, measured brain area in autopsy material from 12 ape and human specimens. The researchers found that although the human amygdala was much larger than those of the apes, it was actually the smallest when compared to overall brain size. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 10541 - Posted: 06.24.2010