Brain and Behavior
gregladen | June 26, 2009The new study identifies 27 loci that have rare copy number variations, where there are more or fewer repeated DNA segments than expected, common to the genomes of several children with autism spectrum disorder. These variations are not present in controls without autism spectrum disorder.
The peer reviewed paper is available in the Open Access journal PLoS Genetics.
The sample included 2,832 individuals distributed among 912 families that had multiple autistic children. The control group consisted of 1,070 samples of disease-free children who presumably are not clustered from a smaller…
j7uy5 | June 25, 2009PhysioProf commented about this back in 2006 after Alex Palazzo 's
post,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/transcript/2006/12/silent_mutations_inactivates_p.php">A
silent mutation affects pain perception? That post discussed
mutations that affect pain perception. Now, there is a bit
more information available about potential commercial developments
stemming from this line of genetic research.
href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aC2haw8NOHW0">Firewalker's
Faulty Gene May Shake Up Market for Painkillers
By Dermot Doherty
June 25 (Bloomberg)
A Pakistani…
developingintelligence | June 25, 2009By many current theories, we accomplish control over behavior by using the prefrontal cortex to "bias" the competitive dynamics playing out in the rest of the brain. By some models, this bias is positive - it helps the goal-relevant representations win the competition. By other models, the bias is also negative - it can help the goal-irrelevant representations lose the competition. Regardless, this "prefrontal biasing" is usually considered in terms of the amount of activity in a particular area (higher when that area is under a positive bias, and lower when under a negative bias). But…
purepedantry | June 24, 2009I wanted to draw attention to a new paper in JAMA recently because it reveals a lot about how conditional most of the statements we make in behavioral genetics are. Every time you hear a news article that says, "Gene for depression found," I want you to think about this case.
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Risch et al. performed a meta-analysis on 14 studies that were looking at Serotonin Transporter (5-HTTLPR) genotype and number of stressful life events. These two factors were related to the subsequent risk for developing clinical depression. Their analysis found -- contrary to a very well known study,…
pharyngula | June 23, 2009Even here in Minnesota, we get creationists ranting in the newspapers. This one is in the Brainerd Dispatch.
In response to a previous writer's statement " ... modern neo-Darwinian synthesis of organic evolution is supported by more compelling and intellectually satisfying empirical evidence that any other idea ever advanced by the world's scientific community ... "
The retort to this statement is simple: hogwash! Remember, the neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory is not "change over time" or "modifications through natural selection within an existing species", nor dynamics of cellular…
clock | June 22, 2009
Dinosaurs May Have Been Smaller Than Previously Thought:
The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published June 21 in the Zoological Society of London's Journal of Zoology. Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.
Boy Or Girl? In Lizards, Egg Size Matters:
Whether baby lizards will turn out to be male or female is a more complicated question than scientists would have ever guessed, according to a new…
razib | June 21, 2009
A few weeks ago I commented on Richard Wrangham's discussion with Robert Wright. Though most of the conversation was given over to the arguments in Wrangham's latest book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, I focused on the older Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. One of the main reasons is that the latter was a book I had read. A few days ago I managed to get through Catching Fire. Though the content wasn't particularly surprising or novel, Wrangham has been articulating the general model for years, the details were of interest and at ~200 pages it was a quick…
terrasig | June 19, 2009RethinkingAutism.com is the brainchild of Dana Commandatore, a friend of one of my high school classmates. Dana is a former NYC advertising guru and the mother of Michaelangelo, a child with autism. His story inspired her to write the children's book, Michaelangelo the Diver.
Dana has now taken her creativity and contacts in her new home of Los Angeles to produce a series of controversial public service announcements to combat misinformation about the causes and treatment of autism and the acceptance and celebration of neurodiversity. Here is the spirit in which they are presented:
All too…
clock | June 18, 2009Fossil Teeth Of Three-toed Browsing Horse Found In Panama Canal Earthworks:
Rushing to salvage fossils from the Panama Canal earthworks, Aldo Rincon, paleontology intern at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, unearthed a set of fossil teeth. Bruce J. MacFadden, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida in Gainesville, describes the fossil as Anchitherium clarencei, a three-toed browsing horse, in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Paleontology.
Why Do We Choose Our Mates? Ask Charles Darwin, Prof Says:
Charles Darwin wrote…
thusspakezuska | June 16, 2009What does it mean when a woman ogles a man in the patriarchy?
Reader RichB commented:
...men being looked at as sexual objects increases their power, but women being looked at as sexual objects decreases their power.
Reader Hope isn't buying it:
Really? So if I ogle a man, I'm increasing his power? If a man ogles another man, he's increasing that other man's power? Or is it just that I, as a woman, have no power to objectify a man? No power, period?
What's the answer? Can a woman objectify a man, or not?
Yes, she can - under certain conditions. If she's his supervisor or superior in a…
clock | June 15, 2009There are 18 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Variable Food Begging Calls Are Harbingers of Vocal Learning:
Vocal learning has evolved in only a few groups of mammals and birds. The developmental and evolutionary origins of vocal learning remain…
laelaps | June 14, 2009
The skull of the Taung child (Australopithecus africanus); the fragmentary remains of Orrorin; the scattered bones of Homo erectus from Dragon Bone Hill; a skullcap of a young Paranthropus from Swartkrans, South Africa. What do all these hominin fossils have in common? They all bear the tell-tale marks of predators, from birds of prey to gigantic hyenas, and run distinctly against the notion that humans have always dominated the landscape. There have always been toothy shadows that stalked the night during our history, and the significance of this fact is the focus of Donna Hart and Robert…
clock | June 11, 2009There are 16 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
A Standard System to Study Vertebrate Embryos:
Staged embryonic series are important as reference for different kinds of biological studies. I summarise problems that occur when using 'staging tables' of '…
cpikas | June 10, 2009This is the first in a series discussing things that librarians do.
Stephanie
Willen Brown pointed me to this hilarious video from UT Arlington.
Actually, the other librarian's reference interview isn't the model of
perfection, either, but we'll talk about that.
The purpose of a reference interview is for the librarian to understand
the patron's information need - what information will be useful to them
to resolve a problem or learn about something or whatever.
When done right, the patron can go from a sort of general
unease (anomalous state of knowledge[1]) to information in hand/on…
cortex | June 10, 2009Here's a question I get quite a bit, which usually goes something like this:
Is ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) real? Or is it a made-up diagnosis for misbehaving kids?
The short answer is that ADHD (and its precursor, ADD) are absolutely real disorders. They have real neurological underpinnings (including a large genetic component) and real, consistent symptoms. That, I think, is the current scientific consensus.
That said, there is far more controversy over many other pertinent ADHD questions, such as whether or not it's overdiagnosed (approximately 4 percent of show ADHD…
clock | June 9, 2009Today, we unveil a brand new PLoS ONE Collection - the Prokaryotic Genome Collection. The Collection was edited by Niyaz Ahmed, who wrote an introductory Overview.
In other news, there are 17 new articles published last night and another 17 new articles published tonight in PLoS ONE. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go…
razib | June 9, 2009
Domestication has a long history. It predates the invention of writing by thousands of years. In the history of biology the study of domestication is closely connected to the emergence of experimental and theoretical biology out of the shadow of natural history. Chapter I of The Origin of Species is preoccupied with animal breeding. The various modifiers of selection, artificial, natural and sexual, are to some extent human constructions. When the constraint of human preferences and needs are removed feral populations of dogs and pigs tend to shift back toward an ancient modal wild type. I…
dmunger | June 8, 2009Here at Encephalon's temporary North Carolina headquarters, we were miffed to learn that our long-scheduled Keynote address has been upstaged by some upstart computer company's manufactured "event" in California.
Not to be outdone, we're giving Encephalon an upgrade of our own. Encephalon is now iCephalon. And boy, do we have an exciting lineup of products for you!
First up, iPeople. Our Neurocritic division discusses the exciting discovery touted as the "people person brain area." Really? That almost sounds too good to be true! If you're skeptical, all we ask is that you follow the link.…
cwilcox | June 7, 2009 Our emotions are strongly tied to our morals. We're more likely to think something is wrong if it repulses us, even if we can't describe exactly why or how it is wrong. For example, most people would disapprove of consensual adult incest between siblings, but few would be able to articulate exactly why it is 'wrong.' This is very different from moral beliefs deduced from reasoning. These moral intuitions, which are highly motivated by emotional response or learned associations, are quick and require little supporting evidence in the person's mind.
Since emotions affect our morals, it easily…
pharyngula | May 29, 2009The more sophisticated creationists like to toss the name "Alvin Plantinga" into arguments — he's a well-regarded philosopher/theologian who favors Intelligent Design creationism, or more accurately, Christian creationism. I've read some of his work, but not much; it's very bizarre stuff, and every time I get going on one of his papers I hit some ludicrous, literally stupid claim that makes me wonder why I'm wasting time with this pretentious clown, and I give up, throw the paper in the trash, and go read something from Science or Nature to cleanse my palate. Unfortunately, that means that…