Brain and Behavior
gregladen | May 26, 2010According to a study just coming out in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, "variations in emotional intelligence--the ability to identify and manage emotions of one's self and others--are associated with orgasmic frequency during intercourse and masturbation."
In short, the study found:
Emotional intelligence was not associated with ... age and years of education, nor did we find a significant association between emotional intelligence and potential risk factors for [female orgasmic disorder] FOD such as age, body mass index, physical or sexual abuse, or menopause. We found emotional…
oracknows | May 24, 2010It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a Long Time Gone.
And it appears to be a long,
appears to be a long,
appears to be a long
time, yes, a long, long, long ,long time before the dawn.
- from "Long Time Gone" by Crosby, Stills & Nash
Oh, happy day!
It's finally happened, more than six years after investigative reporter Brian Deer first reported Wakefield's massive conflicts of interest and dubious activities related to his "research" suggesting a link between the measles strain in the MMR vaccine and inflammation of the gut in autistic children, nearly three years after the…
neurophilosophy | May 20, 2010OF all the techniques used by neuroscientists, none has captured the imagination of the general public more than functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The technique, which is also referred to as functional neuroimaging and, more commonly, "brain scanning", enables us to peer into the human brain non-invasively, to observe its workings and correlate specific thought processes or stimuli to activity in particular regions. fMRI data affect the way in which people perceive scientific results: colourful images of the brain have persuasive power, making the accompanying data seem more…
pharyngula | May 20, 2010Them folk are not like us folk. I really had to twist my brain to read this article from Touchstone on "contradeception", because I'm finding it hard to imagine how screwed up in the head you have to be to think that way.
It's an article against contraception. When these quiverful zealots argue that they love kids, I can sympathize; when they say they are trying to outbreed non-Christians, I can sort of understand the logic, even though I think they're wrong; but this story…children are like an afterthought. The reason you shouldn't use contraception is because getting pregnant is public…
clock | May 18, 2010Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Amy Freitag from Southern Fried Science to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is…
oracknows | May 17, 2010Last week, I did three posts about the anti-vaccine movement. (What? Only three? Well, last week was slower than usual on the anti-vaccine craziness front. It happens.) Two of them were variations on a theme, namely how the anti-vaccine movement vehemently, desperately does not want to be seen as "anti-vaccine, even though that's what many of them are. First, I pointed out how the "health freedom" movement is teaming up with the anti-vaccine movement next week in Chicago to hold an anti-vaccine rally in Grant Park as part of its annual autism quackfest known as AutismOne. My second post asked…
neurophilosophy | May 14, 2010GAMBLING is extremely popular, with lottery tickets, casinos, slot machines, bingo halls and other forms of the activity generating revenues of more than £80 billion each year in the UK alone. For most people, gambling is nothing more than an entertaining way to pass the time. But for some, it becomes a compulsive and pathological habit - they spend increasing amounts of time gambling, because tolerance builds up quickly, and experience withdrawal symptoms when they aren't gambling.
The terms "tolerance" and "withdrawal" are normally associated with drug addiction, and indeed pathological…
grrlscientist | May 13, 2010tags: Optical Illusion: Impossible Motion, optical illusion, Koukichi Sugihara, Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest 2010, vision, brain, streaming video
In this video, wooden balls roll up the slopes just as if they are pulled by a magnet. The behavior of the balls seems impossible, because it is against gravity. The video is not a computer graphic, but a real scene.
What is actually happening is that the orientations of the slopes are perceived oppositely, and hence the descending motion is misinterpreted as ascending motion. This illusion is remarkable in that it is generated by a…
clock | May 10, 2010Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Alex from Miss Baker's Biology class at Staten Island Academy to answer a few questions. You can read about Alex's experience at ScienceOnline2010 here.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about…
oracknows | May 6, 2010Anyone who's been reading this blog for any length of time longer than a few weeks knows what I think of Deepak Chopra. Indeed, he's been a recurring topic here since the very beginning (just type his name into the search box for this blog if you don't believe me). In fact, Chopra has "distinguished" himself by becoming a fairly recurring target on ScienceBlogs in general and a number of skeptical blogs, including SkepChick and NeuroLogica Blog. The reason should be obvious. No one--and I mean no one--lays down the quantum dualistic woo the way that Deepak can. Whether it be abusing genetics…
jrosenhouse | May 5, 2010As part of his ongoing campaign to make himself as buffoonish as possible, Joe Lieberman devised a brilliant idea for dealing with American terror suspects:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) thinks he's found a work-around on the whole Miranda rights debate for U.S. citizens accused of terrorism: Strip their citizenship and ship them to Guantanamo.
Lieberman plans to introduce a bill that would amend a decades-old law aimed at yanking citizenship from U.S. citizens who fight for a foreign military.
“I'm now putting together legislation to amend that to [specify that] any individual American…
oracknows | May 5, 2010With the recent passage of President Obama's health care reform bill, I can only hope that we as a nation have finally begun to address what has been a serious problem in our health care system, namely the unemployed. Although I remain somewhat skeptical of the plan as passed and remain largely agnostic about it, as a cancer physician I can't help but hope that it actually does some good. Although I can say that I have yet to see a patient with breast cancer who wasn't able to get treatment because of lack of insurance, I have seen a lot of difficulties thrown into their paths. For instance,…
bioephemera | May 4, 2010
So much to read this week! Here are a couple of quick links of interest:
Carl Zimmer on comparing the E. coli genome to Linux code:
A number of scientists have begun to compare natural and manmade networks. A lot of the same rules appear to be at work in the growth of the Internet, airport connections, brain wiring, ecosystem food webs, and gene networks. But very often, scientists are finding, it's the differences between natural and manmade networks that are most revealing, offering clues to the different ways in which people and evolution build complex things.
And the NYT Magazine has an…
cortex | May 3, 2010Gary Wolf has a fascinating and really well written article in the Times Magazine on the rise of the "quantified self," or all those people who rely on microsensors to measure discrete aspects of their lives, from walking speed to emotional mood:
Millions of us track ourselves all the time. We step on a scale and record our weight. We balance a checkbook. We count calories. But when the familiar pen-and-paper methods of self-analysis are enhanced by sensors that monitor our behavior automatically, the process of self-tracking becomes both more alluring and more meaningful. Automated sensors…
ddobbs | May 3, 2010
Newscom/Zuma, via TPM
Brains, genes, and taxes won the month.
How does Williams syndrome prevent racism? It's subtle
Ed Yong, Mo Costandi, Scientific American, and others have covered nicely a new paper finding that people with WIlliams syndrome (a condition I've been interested in since writing a long feature about it for the Times Magazine a few years back) show little or no racial bias. But I wanted to add one thought about the finding.
Most of the write-ups have emphasized, rightly, that people with Williams tend to show little or no social fear -- a lack that could explain a lack of…
bioephemera | May 1, 2010
As I mentioned last week, I spent yesterday on a panel/in a workshop at Harvard's Kennedy School, "Unruly Democracy: Science Blogs and the Public Sphere." It was an excellent day - I met many interesting people and had some great conversations. Plus, I got to meet Dr. Isis in the flesh! Woohoo! Thanks to the Intersection's Chris Mooney and everyone at the Kennedy School's Science and Technology Studies program for putting on such a great event.
Obviously, I can't speak for all science bloggers, and I didn't even try. But what I did endeavor to convey in my brief talk was the difficulty of…
ddobbs | April 30, 2010
from The Everett Collection, via Vanity Fair
Notables I didn't get to. Blog posts, MSM stories, and tweets living together.
Fron the genomics front
NOVA | Ghost in Your Genes | PBS streams some of the Skip Gates program I mentioned in my post last week on the Genomes, Environments, and Traits conference.
What can you learn from a whole genome sequence? : Genetic Future ponders just the Lancet/Quake genome
Heritable, yes, which gene...another issue Razib drills down. He argues elsewhere that The origins of morality do not matter |
AP IMPACT: Testing curbs some genetic diseases -…
oracknows | April 25, 2010I haven't mentioned this before. The reason is not because I don't find it interesting or potentially blog-worthy, but rather because it slipped my mind and other things caught my interest last week. Given that the show is going to air beginning tomorrow, I thought that a few thoughts were in order. PBS's Frontline is going to air a show entitled The Vaccine War, and here's a preview:
The press release describing the episode gives me reason for concern:
Vaccines have changed the world, largely eradicating a series of terrible diseases, from smallpox to polio to diphtheria, and likely adding…
j7uy5 | April 24, 2010The article describes a technique
that it said to show a priori which patients are at risk for
developing
suicidal thoughts after starting an antidepressant. Of course the
usual
interpretive caveats apply: it is a small study, needs to be
replicated, etc.
href="http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25171/?a=f">Brain
Waves Predict Suicide Risk
A new technique might help doctors foresee suicidal thoughts
before a patient even has them.
Over the past five years, an increasing number of studies have pointed
to the rare but serious risk of suicidal thoughts that can accompany
new…
tsmith | April 23, 2010Student guest post by Zainab Khan
Schizophrenia has puzzled and often times scared not only the scientific community, but also the general public since its emergence. Cases of schizophrenia-like behavior have been well documented in history. As this disease has been studied, factors such as genetics, environment, and even personal habits have all been associated to some degree with schizophrenia. However, evidence in past years has mounted showing an association between infectious agents and schizophrenia. The three main infections associated/studied with schizophrenia have been…