by Sandrine Ceurstemont Malte Andersson from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden has been testing whether Norwegian lemmings (Lemmus lemmus), like the one in the video above, deter predators by warning them of their aggressive nature with their shrieks. The vivid markings on the fur also indicate to predators that this critter isn't for eating. Having such warning colours – a phenomenon known as aposematism – is common in insects, snakes and frogs, but unusual in herbivorous mammals. This combination of hues made the lemmings easier to spot than their plain-looking neighbours, grey-sided voles. When a predator, played by humans in Andersson's test, is far away, these lemmings prefer to go unnoticed, he found. But when predators get closer, to within a few metres, these lemmings were much more likely to give out a warning call than their browner relatives. The conspicuous colours, aggressive calls and threatening postures together let predators know to expect a fight, and potentially damage, if they attempt to eat a Norwegian lemming. In contrast with the voles, these lemmings aggressively resist attacks by predatory birds. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 20558 - Posted: 02.07.2015

Criminal psychopaths learn to respond differently to punishment cues than others in jail and may need more reward-focused treatments, new research suggests. Criminals such as Paul Bernardo, Ted Bundy and Clifford Olson, who scored high on psychopathy checklists, were known to be callous and unemotional. Psychopaths derive pleasure from being manipulative and use premeditated aggression to get what they want with no regard for those who are hurt. The search for what makes them tick has shown some physical differences in their brains such as reductions in grey matter. Now researchers in London, Montreal and Bethseda, Md., have used functional MRI imaging to assess how the brains of 12 violent criminals with psychopathy, 20 violent criminals with antisocial personality disorder but not psychopathy (such as those with a history of impulsivity and risk-taking), and 18 healthy people who were not criminals responded differently to rewards and punishment. "In the room with them, there's the sense that the weight of what they've done and the deleterious effect this is having on their lives doesn't really hold for them," said Dr. Nigel Blackwood of King's College London, a senior author of the paper in Wednesday's issue of Lancet Psychiatry. It's only at the moment in the scanner when the sanction of lost points cues them to change their behaviour that the differences between violent psychopaths and those with antisocial personality disorder appear. ©2015 CBC/Radio-Canada

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 20531 - Posted: 01.29.2015

David Cox Bernd Heinrich was on a hike through the woods of New England when he observed something which would go on to change our perception of animal psychology. A group of ravens had gathered to feed on a dead moose. But rather than choosing to keep the bounty for themselves, they were making a strange call, one which seemed to be deliberately attracting more ravens to the feast. A biologist at the University of Vermont, Heinrich was initially confused. By helping their competitors, the ravens appeared to be defying all natural biological instinct. But as it transpired, their motivation was actually deeply selfish. The birds were juveniles who had discovered the moose in an adult raven’s territory. By inviting other ravens to join them, their intrusion was more likely to go unchallenged. Last month, an astonishing video emerged of a rhesus macaque successfully resuscitating another of its species which had been electrocuted at a train station in India. It is tempting to describe the sustained display of persistence and apparent concern as almost human. But there is a danger in viewing animal behaviour through the misty lens of human emotion. What both Heinrich’s “sharing ravens’ and the macaques of Kampur do provide is a window into the gradual evolution of one of the most human of traits – altruism. Altruism in its purest form should be an entirely selfless action. “If there’s any kind of selfish interest at stake, like secretly hoping for a return favour or even doing it deliberately because you know it will make you feel good, then that doesn’t really count at all,” says psychologist Michael Platt of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, North Carolina.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 20522 - Posted: 01.27.2015

By ERICA GOODE A goat frolics with a baby rhinoceros. A pig nestles up to a house cat. A rat snake makes nice with the dwarf hamster originally intended as its lunch. Few things seem to capture the public imagination more reliably than friendly interactions between different species — a fact not lost on Anheuser-Busch, which during Sunday’s Super Bowl will offer a sequel to “Puppy Love,” its wildly popular 2014 Budweiser commercial about friendship between a Clydesdale and a yellow Labrador puppy. The earlier Super Bowl spot has drawn more than 55 million views on YouTube. Videos of unlikely animal pairs romping or snuggling have become so common that they are piquing the interest of some scientists, who say they invite more systematic study. Among other things, researchers say, the alliances could add to an understanding of how species communicate, what propels certain animals to connect across species lines and the degree to which some animals can adopt the behaviors of other species. “There’s no question that studying these relationships can give you some insight into the factors that go into normal relationships,” said Gordon Burghardt, a professor in the departments of psychology and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, who added that one video he liked to show students was of a small and persistent tortoise tussling over a ball with a Jack Russell terrier. “Even one example raises the possibility that there’s something interesting going on here,” Dr. Burghardt said. Science has not entirely ignored unusual interactions between species. Biologists have described relationships formed to achieve a specific goal, like the cooperative hunting between groupers and moray eels. And in the mid-1900s, Konrad Lorenz and other ethologists demonstrated that during critical periods after birth, certain birds and other animals would follow the first moving object they saw, whether animal, human or machine, a phenomenon known as imprinting. Dr. Lorenz was famously photographed with a gaggle of “imprinted” geese trailing behind him. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 20521 - Posted: 01.27.2015

By Susan Chenelle and Audrey Fisch “Lord of the Flies” has been a classroom staple for decades, perhaps because the issues of bullying and male aggression remain central concerns in the lives of adolescents, even if they aren’t stranded on a desert island. “To Study Aggression, a Fight Club for Flies” zeros in on the issue of male aggression, but in fruit flies, rather than humans. The connections, beyond the titular, are tantalizing. James Gorman, the science reporter, is focused on research about the neuropeptide tachykinin, produced in the brains of male fruit flies only. When researchers manipulated the neurons, they could decrease aggression in the flies. What does this suggest about the neuroscience of aggression? And what is the relationship between aggression and gender? Below, we match Mr. Gorman’s article with a passage from Chapter 8 of “Lord of the Flies” in which Jack leads his peers in the hunt of a sow. At this point in the novel, Jack has overthrown Ralph and Piggy’s attempts to establish order and civility among the boys. Jack has won over a majority of the boys, and in this scene the group engages in a collective hunt for food that transforms itself into a kind of orgy of male violence. The gender politics of the scene are striking: The attack on the mother pig calls out for careful analysis. The boys are, for example, “wedded to her in lust” and climactically “heavy and fulfilled upon her” at the moment of her killing. What point is William Golding trying to make, here and elsewhere in the novel, about the nature of these young men and the ways in which they turn to and relish in aggression and violence? Key Question: What is the relationship between aggression and gender? © 2015 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 20511 - Posted: 01.23.2015

By Susan Milius Whole scientific careers have gone into understanding why a harmless handful of fluff like a California ground squirrel taunts rattlesnakes. Now Rulon Clark and his team at San Diego State University are exploring the puzzle of why the squirrels also seem to taunt rocks, sticks and the occasional shrub. On spotting a snake, a California ground squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi) stares and sniffs, or if the snake is uncoiled, may even kick sand at it. And in bursts, the squirrel flags its tail left and right “like a windshield wiper,” Clark says. A rattler can strike a target 30 centimeters away in less than 70 milliseconds. But ground squirrels twist and dodge fast enough to have a decent chance of escape. Also, adult squirrels from snake country have evolved some resistance to venom. So taunting is worth the risks as a signal to neighboring squirrels and to the snake that its ambush attempt has been discovered. After getting publicly and lengthily squirreled, snakes often just slip away. Yet the squirrels also nyah-nyah tail flag at places where snakes might be but aren’t. To see if flagging indicates wariness, Clark and his colleagues built a squirrel startler that shoots out a cork using the classic spring that launches gag snakes out of cans (see video below). At spots with no sign of real snakes, squirrels mostly nibbled seeds in apparent tranquility with only a rare tail flag. The pop of a cork typically sent these squirrels scampering off on four speed-blurred paws. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2014.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 20453 - Posted: 01.06.2015

By John Bohannon If you had the choice between hurting yourself or someone else in exchange for money, how altruistic do you think you’d be? In one infamous experiment, people were quite willing to deliver painful shocks to anonymous victims when asked by a scientist. But a new study that forced people into the dilemma of choosing between pain and profit finds that participants cared more about other people’s well-being than their own. It is hailed as the first hard evidence of altruism for the young field of behavioral economics. Human behavior toward others is hard to predict. On the one hand, we stand out in the animal world for our altruism, often making significant sacrifices to help out a stranger in need. And all but the most antisocial people experience psychological distress at witnessing, let alone causing, pain in others. Yet study after study in the field of behavioral economics has demonstrated that we tend to value our own needs and desires above those of others. For example, researchers have found that just thinking about money makes people behave more selfishly. To try to reconcile the angels and devils of our nature, a team led by Molly Crockett, a psychologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, combined the classic psychological and economics tools for probing altruism: pain and money. Everyone has their own pain threshold, so the first task was a pain calibration. Researchers administered electric shocks with electrodes attached to the wrists of 160 subjects, starting at an almost imperceptible level and amping up until the subject described the pain as intolerable. (For most people, that threshold for pain is similar to holding your wrist under a stream of 50°C water.) © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 20320 - Posted: 11.18.2014

By Melissa Hogenboom Science reporter, BBC News A genetic analysis of almost 900 offenders in Finland has revealed two genes associated with violent crime. Those with the genes were 13 times more likely to have a history of repeated violent behaviour. The authors of the study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, said at least 4-10% of all violent crime in Finland could be attributed to individuals with these genotypes. But they stressed the genes could not be used to screen criminals. Many more genes may be involved in violent behaviour and environmental factors are also known to have a fundamental role. Even if an individual has a "high-risk combination" of these genes the majority will never commit a crime, the lead author of the work Jari Tiihonen of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden said. "Committing a severe, violent crime is extremely rare in the general population. So even though the relative risk would be increased, the absolute risk is very low," he told the BBC. The study, which involved analysis of almost 900 criminals, is the first to have looked at the genetic make-up of so many violent criminals in this way. Warrior gene Each criminal was given a profile based on their offences, categorising them into violent or non-violent. The association between genes and previous behaviour was strongest for the 78 who fitted the "extremely violent offender" profile. This group had committed a total of 1,154 murders, manslaughters, attempted homicides or batteries. A replication group of 114 criminals had all committed at least one murder. BBC © 2014

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 20252 - Posted: 10.28.2014

By Linda Carroll The debate over whether violent movies contribute to real-world mayhem may have just developed a wrinkle: New research suggests they might enhance aggression only in those already prone to it. Using PET scanners to peer into the brains of volunteers watching especially bloody movie scenes, researchers determined that the way a viewer’s brain circuitry responds to violent video depends upon whether the individual is aggressive by nature. The study was published Wednesday in PLOS One. “Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, environmental stimuli are in the brain of the beholder,” said Nelly Alia-Klein, the study’s lead author and an associate professor at the Friedman Brain Institute and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. To test the importance of personality, Alia-Klein and her colleagues rounded up 54 healthy men, some of whom had a history of getting into physical fights, while the others had no history of aggression. The researchers scanned the volunteers three times: doing nothing, watching emotionally charged video and viewing a violent movie. “It wasn’t the whole [violent] movie,” Alia-Klein said, “just the violent scenes, one after another after another.” Along with the brain scans, the researchers monitored blood pressure and asked about the viewers’ moods every 15 minutes.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 20132 - Posted: 09.30.2014

By JAMES GORMAN Are chimpanzees naturally violent to one another, or has the intrusion of humans into their environment made them aggressive? A study published Wednesday in Nature is setting off a new round of debate on the issue. The study’s authors argue that a review of all known cases of when chimpanzees or bonobos in Africa killed members of their own species shows that violence is a natural part of chimpanzee behavior and not a result of actions by humans that push chimpanzee aggression to lethal attacks. The researchers say their analysis supports the idea that warlike violence in chimpanzees is a natural behavior that evolved because it could provide more resources or territory to the killers, at little risk. But critics say the data shows no such thing, largely because the measures of human impact on chimpanzees are inadequate. While the study is about chimpanzees, it is also the latest salvo in a long argument about the nature of violence in people. In studying chimpanzee violence, “we’re trying to make inferences about human evolution,” said Michael L. Wilson, an anthropologist at the University of Minnesota and a study organizer. There is no disagreement about whether chimpanzees kill one another, or about some of the claims that Dr. Wilson and his 29 co-authors make. The argument is about why chimpanzees kill. Dr. Wilson and the other authors, who contributed data on killings from groups at their study sites, say the evidence shows no connection between human impact on the chimpanzee sites and the number of killings. He said the Ngogo group of chimpanzees in Uganda “turned out to be the most violent group of chimpanzees there is,” even though the site was little disturbed by humans. They have a pristine habitat, he said, and “they go around and kill their neighbors.” © 2014 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 20094 - Posted: 09.19.2014

By John Horgan On this blog, in my book The End of War and elsewhere (see Further Reading and Viewing), I have knocked the deep roots theory of war, which holds that war stems from an instinct deeply embedded in the genes of our male ancestors. Inter-community killings are rare among chimpanzees and non-existent among bonobos, according to a new report in Nature, undercutting the theory that the roots of war extend back to the common ancestor of humans and chimps. Proponents of this theory—notably primatologist Richard Wrangham—claim it is supported by observations of inter-community killings by chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, our closest genetic relatives. Skeptics, including anthropologists Robert Sussman and Brian Ferguson, have pointed out that chimpanzee violence might be not an adaptation but a response to environmental circumstances, such as human encroachment. This “human impacts” hypothesis is rejected in a new report in Nature by a coalition of 30 primatologists, including Wrangham and lead author Michael Wilson. In “Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts,” Wilson et al. analyze 152 killings in 18 chimpanzee communities and find “little correlation with human impacts.” Given that the primary interest in chimp violence is its alleged support of the deep-roots theory, it might seem odd, at first, that Wilson et al. do not mention human warfare. Actually, this omission is wise, because the Nature report undermines the deep-roots theory of war, and establishes that the “human impact” issue is a red herring. © 2014 Scientific American,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 20092 - Posted: 09.18.2014

by Bethany Brookshire When a laboratory mouse and a house mouse come nose to nose for the first time, each one is encountering something it has never seen before. They are both Mus musculus. But the wild mouse is facing a larger, fatter, calmer and less aggressive version of itself that’s the result of brother-to-sister inbreeding for generations, resulting in mice that are almost completely genetically identical. Laboratory mice are incredibly valuable tools for research into diseases from Alzheimer’s to Zellweger syndrome. Scientists have a deep understanding of lab mouse DNA, and can use that knowledge to study how specific genes may control certain behaviors and underlie disease. But with all the inbreeding comes some traits that, while desirable in a lab mouse, may not reflect the behavior of an animal in the wild. So for some questions, and some behaviors, scientists might need something a bit wilder. A new study takes lab mice back to their roots and along the way uncovers a new gene function. Lea Chalfin and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rohovot, Israel, bred laboratory mice with wild mice for 10 generations. The result was a mouse with wild mouse genes and wild mouse behavior — with a few important lab mouse genes mixed in. The technique allows scientists to place specific mutations in a wild mouse. The results have interesting implications for studying the mouse species, and might provide some new ways to study human disease as well. Chalfin and her colleagues were especially interested in behaviors linked to female aggression. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 19980 - Posted: 08.20.2014

By NATALIE ANGIER SOUTH LUANGWA NATIONAL PARK, ZAMBIA — We saw the impala first, a young buck with a proud set of ridged and twisted horns, like helical rebar, bounding across the open plain at full, desperate gallop. But why? A moment later somebody in our vehicle gasped, and the answer became clear. Rising up behind the antelope, as though conjured on movie cue from the aubergine glow of the late afternoon, were six African wild dogs, running in single file. They moved with military grace and precision, their steps synchronized, their radio-dish ears cocked forward, their long, puppet-stick legs barely skimming the ground. Still, the impala had such a jump on them that the dogs couldn’t possibly catch up — could they? We gunned the engine and followed. The pace quickened. The dogs’ discipline held steady. They were closing the gap and oh, no, did I really want to watch the kill? To my embarrassed relief, the violence was taken off-screen, when prey and predators suddenly dashed up a hill and into obscuring bushes. By the time we reached the site, the dogs were well into their communal feast, their dark muzzles glazed with bright red blood, their white-tipped tails wagging in furious joy. “They are the most enthusiastic animals,” said Rosie Woodroffe of the Institute of Zoology in London, who has studied wild dogs for the last 20 years. “Other predators may be bigger and fiercer, but I would argue that there is nothing so enthusiastic as a wild dog,” she said. “They live the life domestic dogs wish they could live.” In 1997, while devising an action plan to help save the wild dog species, Lycaon pictus, Dr. Woodroffe felt anything but exuberant. Wild dogs were considered among the most endangered of Africa’s mammals; Dr. Woodroffe had yet to see one in the wild, and she feared she never would. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 19941 - Posted: 08.12.2014

From David Beckham’s infamous kick at France '98 to Luis Suárez chomping Giorgio Chiellini's shoulder in Brazil last week, the history of the World Cup is littered with moments of impulsive aggression that appear to defy all rational explanation. The story of human impulsivity stretches back deep into our evolutionary past. By nature, we are all prone to making quick, rash decisions that may lead to regret, and in some cases a four-month ban from international football. Impulsivity is actually a survival mechanism and was essential in the African savanna where our species evolved around a million and a half years ago. For our ancestors, the ability to make split-second decisions could make the difference between life and death. All of us have deep primal instincts but over the several hundred million years of evolution separating our reptilian ancestors from the first mammals, and eventually primates, the cognitive ability to exercise self-restraint has increased. While most living things make this decision purely as a trade-off between risk and reward, only humans can decide to exercise self-restraint on the basis of how they think they will be perceived by others – an ability that emerged some time in the past 100,000 years or so. “We evolved to be very social animals, living in large groups, and so we have developed inhibitory mechanisms in the more recently evolved parts of the prefrontal cortex,” explains Michael Price of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Brunel. “This is the social centre of the brain. Our big reason not to be impulsive is because of your reputation and how other people are going to judge you and perhaps ostracise you as we saw with Beckham in the aftermath of France ’98.” © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 19784 - Posted: 07.03.2014

By Jonathan Webb Science reporter, BBC News A new theory suggests that our male ancestors evolved beefy facial features as a defence against fist fights. The bones most commonly broken in human punch-ups also gained the most strength in early "hominin" evolution. They are also the bones that show most divergence between males and females. The paper, in the journal Biological Reviews, argues that the reinforcements evolved amid fighting over females and resources, suggesting that violence drove key evolutionary changes. For many years, this extra strength was seen as an adaptation to a tough diet including nuts, seeds and grasses. But more recent findings, examining the wear pattern and carbon isotopes in australopith teeth, have cast some doubt on this "feeding hypothesis". "In fact, [the australopith] boisei, the 'nutcracker man', was probably eating fruit," said Prof David Carrier, the new theory's lead author and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah. Masculine armour Instead of diet, Prof Carrier and his co-author, physician Dr Michael Morgan, propose that violent competition demanded the development of these facial fortifications: what they call the "protective buttressing hypothesis". In support of their proposal, Carrier and Morgan offer data from modern humans fighting. Several studies from hospital emergency wards, including one from the Bristol Royal Infirmary, show that faces are particularly vulnerable to violent injuries. BBC © 2014

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 19710 - Posted: 06.09.2014

Bullying casts a long shadow. Children who are bullied are more prone to depression and suicidal tendencies even when they grow up; they're also more likely to get sick and have headaches and stomach troubles, researchers have discovered. A new study may have found the underlying cause: A specific indicator of illness, called C-reactive protein (CRP), is higher than normal in bullying victims, even when they get older. In contrast, the bullies, by the same gauge, seem to be healthier. The researchers focused on CRP because it's a common, easily tested marker of inflammation, the runaway immune system activity that's a feature of many chronic illnesses including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic pain, and depression, explains lead author William Copeland, a psychologist and epidemiologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. To link inflammation to bullying, the researchers asked 1420 youngsters between the ages of 9 and 16 whether, and how often, they had been bullied or had bullied others. Interviewers asked participants whether they felt more teased, bullied, or treated meanly by siblings, friends, and peers than other children—and whether they had upset or hurt other people on purpose, tried to get others in trouble, or forced people to do something by threatening or hurting them. The researchers took finger stick blood tests at each assessment. Interviews took place once a year until the participants turned 16, and again when they were 19 and 21. The children interviewed were participants in the larger Great Smoky Mountains Study, in which some 12,000 children in North Carolina were assessed to track the development of psychiatric conditions. In the short term, the effect of bullying on the victims was immediate. CRP levels increased along with the number of reported bullying instances, and more than doubled in those who said they'd been bullied three times or more in the previous year, compared with kids who had never been bullied. No change was seen in bullies, or in kids who hadn't been involved with bullying one way or the other, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 19610 - Posted: 05.13.2014

by Colin Barras PICTURE the scene: a weak leader is struggling to hold onto power as ambitious upstarts plot to take over. As tensions rise, the community splits and the killing begins. The war will last for years. No, this isn't the storyline of an HBO fantasy drama, but real events involving chimps in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park. A look at the social fragmentation that led to a four-year war in the 1970s now reveals similarities between the ways chimpanzee and human societies break down. Jane Goodall has been studying the chimpanzees of Gombe for over 50 years. During the early 1970s the group appeared to split in two, and friendliness was replaced by fighting. So extreme and sustained was the aggression that Goodall dubbed it a war. Joseph Feldblum at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues have re-examined Goodall's field notes from the chimp feeding station she established at Gombe to work out what led to the conflict. In the past, researchers have estimated the strength of social ties based on the amount of time two chimps spent together at the station. But the notes are so detailed that Feldblum could get a better idea of each chimp's social ties, for instance, by considering if the chimps arrived at the same time and from the same direction. His team then plugged this data into software that can describe the chimps' social network. They did this for several periods between 1968 and 1972, revealing when the nature of the network changed. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 19591 - Posted: 05.10.2014

By JAMES GORMAN Males’ aggression toward each other is an old story throughout the animal kingdom. It’s not that females aren’t aggressive, but in many species, male-on-male battles are more common. Take fruit flies. “The males are more aggressive than females,” said David J. Anderson, a California Institute of Technology neuroscientist who knows their tussles well. Dr. Anderson runs a kind of fight club for fruit flies in his lab at Caltech, with the goal of understanding the deep evolutionary roots of very fundamental behaviors. Dr. Anderson, Kenta Asahina and a group of their colleagues recently identified one gene and a tiny group of neurons, sometimes as few as three, present only in the brains of male fruit flies, that can control aggression. The gene is also found in mammals, and has also been associated with aggression in some mammalian species, perhaps even in humans, although that is not clear. The discovery, reported in the journal Cell last month, does not tell the whole story of fly aggression. Some fighting is inextricably linked to food and mating, while the mechanism the scientists found is not. But it is a striking indication of how brain structure and chemistry work together, as well as a reminder that as different as humans and flies are, they are not always very far apart. The painstaking process of discovery, recounted step by step in the paper, gives a glimpse of modern brain research and the lengths to which scientists must go if they want to get down to the level of how neurons control behavior. “They did a huge amount of experiments,” said Ulrike Heberlein at the Janelia Farm research campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Heberlein also studies fly behavior and recently demonstrated another human-fly connection, showing that jilted male flies will turn to drink. © 2014 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 19203 - Posted: 02.04.2014

|By Meredith Knight When most of us imagine someone in pain, we feel uncomfortable and want to help. Psychopaths do not: a callousness toward others' suffering is the central feature of a psychopathic personality. Now an imaging study finds that psychopathic inmates have deficits in a key empathy circuit in the brain, pointing to a potential therapeutic target. Jean Decety, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues used functional MRI to scan the brains of 121 male prison inmates while they looked at photos of a painful moment, such as a foot stepping on a nail or a finger being smashed in a drawer. The inmates were instructed to imagine the scenario happening to themselves or to another person, a perspective-switching technique that easily elicits empathy in most people. Inmates who scored the highest on a standard psychopathy test showed a normal response in pain perception and brain centers for emotion when imagining the pain for themselves. Yet when asked to imagine the scenario happening to others, their brains did not show typical connectivity between the amygdala, an area important for fear and emotional processing, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region vital for emotion regulation, empathy and morality. Some results even indicated that pleasure regions might have become active instead. The brain areas that are undercommunicating in psychopathy “are key for experiencing empathetic concern and caring for one another, which is what empathy is all about and what individuals who score high on psychopathy do not have,” Decety says. © 2014 Scientific American

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 19162 - Posted: 01.25.2014

Tim Phillips, GlobalPost As we begin 2014, we still haven’t engaged in a conversation about gun control that brings both sides together. Polls indicate a country more or less divided over how to prevent another school shooting. And while legislation has been proposed to reign in the gun lobby, sales of guns have soared. This debate is not a new one in the United States, and while it intensifies with each tragic mass shooting, the conversation rarely advances. Frustration sets in as each new action causes the other side to dig in their heels even further. We wonder: Is there another way to frame this issue? For the last 20 years I have led an international organization that works in war torn countries to negotiate an end to conflict. In places like Northern Ireland, El Salvador, South Africa and the Balkans, groups once driven to violence to defend their beliefs have put down their weapons, sat down at a table, overcome their differences and negotiated. Moving beyond conflict is, indeed, possible. One dynamic I have observed present in all successful negotiations — which is missing from our current debate over gun control — is a recognition of the role of sacred values. Social scientists define sacred values as a set of values or principles that individuals and communities hold dear to their idea of right and wrong, that define who they are and help guide their daily lives. We first came to see the critical role played by sacred values in the 1990s in dealing with the bloody conflict in Northern Ireland in which thousands of people were killed. No one used the term sacred values back then, but we could see clearly that one of the reasons negotiations to end sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland were failing was because they were not recognizing or respecting the deep differences in values, cultures and identities that each side held. © 2014 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 19119 - Posted: 01.11.2014