Brain and Behavior
Category archives for Brain and Behavior
Male vs. Female Brains
Posted by Greg Laden on February 25, 2009 The male and female human brains are different. Some of the better documented differences are similar to differences seen in other mammals. They are hard to find, very small, and may or may not be of great significance. Obviously, some are very important because they probably relate to such things as the ability … or…
Great Moments in Human Evolution: The Invention of Chipped Stone Tools
Posted by Greg Laden on February 12, 2009 Or not. Much is made of the early use of stone tools by human ancestors. Darwin saw the freeing of the hands ad co-evolving with the use of the hands to make and use tools which co-evolved with the big brain. And that would make the initial appearance of stone tools in the archaeological record…
Some people tell me I have the mentality of a 13 year old…
Posted by Greg Laden on February 10, 2009 But according to this scientific diagnostic tool, I have the brain of a 25 year old. How old is your brain????? You’ll have to know how to read Japanese to make this work, or you can just follow these instructions: 1) Click on start. The diagnostic tool will count down from 3 and show you…
Altered brain activity in schizophrenia may cause exaggerated focus on self
Posted by Greg Laden on January 26, 2009 I thought we already knew this, but here goes: Schizophrenia may blur the boundary between internal and external realities by over-activating a brain system that is involved in self-reflection, and thus causing an exaggerated focus on self, a new MIT and Harvard brain imaging study has found. The traditional view of schizophrenia is that the…
The natural basis for gender inequality
Posted by Greg Laden on December 31, 2008 Naturalism is a potential source of guidance for our behavior, morals, ethics, and other more mundane decisions such as how to build an airplane and what to eat for breakfast.1 When it comes to airplanes, you’d better be a servant to the rules of nature or the airplane will go splat. When it comes to…
H.M. has died
Posted by Greg Laden on December 4, 2008 “Henry G. Molaison, 82, of Windsor Locks, CT died on Tuesday. He is known in the medical and scientific literatures as “the amnesic patient, H.M.” He was born in Manchester, CT and graduated from East Hartford High School. In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation at the Hartford Hospital to relieve his seizure disorder.…
If I Were You: Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping
Posted by Greg Laden on December 3, 2008 Everybody’s talking about the Body Swap Illusion. So why should I bother. Here’s what you need to know: The original paper is here, at PLoS. Here are some blog posts on the topic: Neurophilosophy: The Body Swap Illusion Not Exactly Rocket Science: The Quantum Leap effect.
Ana, this is for you ….
Posted by Greg Laden on November 18, 2008 Just when you think you should not go back into the water, something like this comes along and tells you….
Losing the Big Picture: How Religion May Control Visual Attention
Posted by Greg Laden on November 15, 2008 Atheists are smarter than Calvinists in Dutch Study. But, the Calvinists are quicker at identifying small shapes than the Atheists. Despite the abundance of evidence that human perception is penetrated by beliefs and expectations, scientific research so far has entirely neglected the possible impact of religious background on attention. Here we show that Dutch Calvinists…
Cultural Evolution from Mosquitos to Worm Grunting
Posted by Greg Laden on October 13, 2008 A very good day of grunting worms. Credit: Ken Catania So-called Gene-Culture Co-Evolution can be very obvious and direct or it can be very subtle and complex. In almost all cases, the details defy the usual presumptions people make about the utility of culture, the nature of human-managed knowledge, race, and technology. I would like…
Culture Shapes How We Look at Faces
Posted by Greg Laden on October 4, 2008 Constructivism. Determinism. It is all a bunch of hooey. A recent paper published by PLoS (Culture Shapes How We Look at Faces) throws a sopping wet blanket on widely held deterministic models of human behavior. In addition, the work underscores the sometimes spooky cultural differences that can emerge in how people see things, even how…
Precarious Pettiness of Sexual Politics In the Blogosphere: An uppity response to the perspicacious Dr. Isis and an appeal to get serious about sexual aggression and exploitation
Posted by Greg Laden on September 11, 2008 Dr. Isis the Scientist at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, has written an open letter to our sister, Zuska, regarding (in part) the exchanges between my Sbling and myself. Dr. Isis points out that she has had a long term academic interests in breasts, which is primarily political and pragmatic as it turns…
A Portrait of The Brain by Adam Zeman
Posted by Greg Laden on August 15, 2008 Published by Yale University Press A Portrait of the Brain by Adam Zeman is a new book describing how the brain works (and does not work) in something of an Oliver Sack’s experiential manner, but with a twist. Zeman is a Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Nerology at the Pininsula Medical School. A Portrait of…
Does lead exposure cause decreased brain size?
Posted by Greg Laden on July 24, 2008 A recently published study seems to indicate that adult brain volume is reduced in individuals with significant lead exposure during childhood. While this study may lead to important findings linking lead to reduced cognitive function, it is important to note that observed effect is very small, very hard to link to specific outcomes, and may…
When Joe Cocker says “Cry Like a River” you do. Why?
Posted by Greg Laden on July 10, 2008 Well, I can’t answer that question. But in a related matter, Koelsch et al. ask, in a new paper published in PLoS ONE, Why Musicians Make Us Weep and Computers Don’t? … obviously, they have not met my computer. The study investigates the somatic effects of “…unexpected chords of piano sonatas as they were originally…
How brains work, how brain imaging works: Astrocytes
Posted by Greg Laden on June 20, 2008 Blood flow in the brain is linked to neuronal activity. Therefore, various ‘brain scanning’ techniques can be used to observe neuronal activity in the brain. This has led to an astonishing revolution in knowledge of how the brain works. Of course, you knew that already. Also astonishing is that the reason for changes in blood…
Female Coders Do It With Consideration
Posted by Greg Laden on June 17, 2008 Check it out: Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres-and one of Silicon Valley’s highest-ranking female programmers-insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They’ll intersperse their code-those strings of instructions that result in nifty…
Joshua Klein: The amazing intelligence of crows
Posted by Greg Laden on May 17, 2008 Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he’s come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal (repost)
Stigma and Mental Illness
Posted by Greg Laden on May 13, 2008 There is an interesting and important follow up related to a TED Talk that a lot of readers of this blog found interesting (Sherwin Nuland: A history of electroshock therapy) at The Corpus Callosum: Grappling With Stigma: Influence of Social Media A while back, Gred Laden and Dr. Shock independently linked to a remarkable video.…
Fun And Instructive Classroom Exercise
Posted by Greg Laden on May 7, 2008 Your brain … to explore the nature of the conscious mind. You are the teacher, and you’ve got a classroom full of reasonably well behaved students. Tell them: “I want you to close your eyes, and I’m going to ask you a question. … Quietly work out the answer to the question and keep your…
New Research on How Visual Memory Works
Posted by Greg Laden on April 25, 2008 Life is complex. The way a living system works can be described in a series of increasingly refined models, each fleshing out details of the previous model. Typically, description at one level raises questions about what is happening at the finer level. These questions induce hypotheses which drive experimental work which produces ever more detailed…
Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
Posted by Greg Laden on April 5, 2008 Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how…
I think therefore I … am a curmudgeon
Posted by Greg Laden on March 18, 2008 SciBarCamp is a gathering of scientists and others, in an effort to create connections across diverse interests, and, wherever possible, annoy the heck out of Larry Moran.
How Processing Neural Data Works: A Blowfly Perspective
Posted by Greg Laden on March 13, 2008 Blowflies. They are nearly impossible to swat dead, because they are so good at getting out of the way, and they are very very fast. For this reason, the blowfly, while an annoying creature, is an excelent model for research into rapid sensory information processing. A team of scientists from Indiana University, Princeton University and…
Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
Posted by Greg Laden on March 13, 2008 Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how…
Why the Hobbits of Flores Were Probably Not Broken People
Posted by Greg Laden on March 6, 2008 There is a new paper out suggesting that the Flores hominids, known as Hobbits, were “human endemic cretins.” From the abstract of this paper: … We hypothesize that these individuals are myxoedematous endemic (ME) cretins, part of an inland population of (mostly unaffected) Homo sapiens. ME cretins are born without a functioning thyroid; their congenital…
New-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression
Posted by Greg Laden on February 27, 2008 In this open access publication in PLoS it is …suggest that, compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression, but show significant effects only in the most severely depressed patients. The findings also show that the effect for…
Jason McElwain, Autistic Basketball Hero
Posted by Greg Laden on February 16, 2008 [Hat Tip: Dan H.]
Michael Pollan: The omnivore’s next dilemma
Posted by Greg Laden on February 15, 2008 What if human consciousness isn’t the end-all and be-all of Darwinism? What if we are all just pawns in corn’s clever strategy game, the ultimate prize of which is world domination? Author Michael Pollan asks us to see things from a plant’s-eye view — to consider the possibility that nature isn’t opposed to culture, that…
Brilliant chimp
Posted by Greg Laden on February 13, 2008 OK, here’s a quiz for you. You have a tube that is fixed in space. You cannot move it. It is too small for you to get your hands into it, and there is a peanut in the bottom. You want the peanut. How do you extract the peanut? Have a look at how this…
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