Brain and Behavior
clock | March 1, 2009Desert Ants Smell Their Way Home:
Humans lost in the desert are well known for going around in circles, prompting scientists to ask how desert creatures find their way around without landmarks for guidance. Now new research shows that Desert Ants input both local smells and visual cues into their navigation systems to guide them home.
Controversy Over World's Oldest Traces Of Life:
The argument over whether an outcrop of rock in South West Greenland contains the earliest known traces of life on Earth has been reignited, in a study published in the Journal of the Geological Society. The…
developingintelligence | February 27, 2009A principal insight from computational neuroscience for studies of higher-level cognition is rooted in the recurrent network architecture. Recurrent networks, very simply, are those composed of neurons that connect to themselves, enabling them to learn to maintain information over time that may be important for behavior. Elaborations to this basic framework have incorporated mechanisms for flexibly gating information into and out of these recurrently-connected neurons. Such architectures appear to well-approximate the function of prefrontal and basal ganglia circuits, which appear…
clock | February 26, 2009Molecule Helps Sleep-deprived Rebound Mentally:
Sleep experts know that the mental clarity lost because of a few sleepless nights can often be restored with a good night's rest. Now, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have identified a key molecular mechanism that regulates the brain's ability to mentally compensate for sleep deprivation. Working with mice, they found that a molecule called an adenosine receptor is necessary for sleep-restricted animals to attain adequate levels of slow-wave activity in the brain once normal sleep resumes. It is this increase in slow-wave activity, or…
gregladen | February 25, 2009The 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 lack thereof ... to bear offspring. But this is hardly ever considered in the parodies we see of these differences.
[Repost from Gregladen.com]
You have all seen the sometimes funny, sometimes not cartoon depictions of these differences, for example this one:
Obviously,…
ksharpe | February 25, 2009Originally posted by Seth Herd at Developing Intelligence
On February 24, 2009, at 12:00 PM
I disagree with many of Gary Marcus's theories, but I think that his book Kluge is important, entertaining, and even accurate. The book's main thesis is that if God had designed the human mind, He would've done a better job. I'm not all that interested in arguments about intelligent design, but Kluge also has a lot to say about the human brain/mind and even the human condition.
I've frequently baffled and offended my students by saying "people are stupid!" Kluge is about how, exactly, we are…
thusspakezuska | February 24, 2009As a graduate student, I observed the nascent field of functional magnetic resonance imaging and thought to myself with some amusement "modern phrenology! Now with big, fancy, expensive equipment!" Count me among those who have never been terribly impressed with fMRI, and certainly not with its applications in what is known as social neuroscience.
Now we have this:
Late last year, Ed Vul, a graduate student at MIT working with neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher and UCSD psychologist Hal Pashler, prereleased "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience" on his website. The journal Perspectives…
developingintelligence | February 24, 2009Guest Post by Seth Herd.
I disagree with many of Gary Marcus's theories, but I think that his book Kluge is important, entertaining, and even accurate. The book's main thesis is that if God had designed the human mind, He would've done a better job. I'm not all that interested in arguments about intelligent design, but Kluge also has a lot to say about the human brain/mind and even the human condition.
I've frequently baffled and offended my students by saying "people are stupid!" Kluge is about how, exactly, we are stupid. In large part the book echoes introductory cognitive…
gregladen | February 24, 2009
Why did the evolution of a large brain happen only once (among mammals, and in particular, primates?)
Larger brains have evolved a number of times. It seems that there has been a trend over several tens of millions of years of evolution of larger brains in various clades, such as carnivores and primates. There is probably a kind of arms race going on among various species in which a larger brain is an asset.
However, as you imply, a really large brain (like the extraordinarily large human brain) seems to be very rare. One of the reasons for this is that there are at least two major kinds…
cortex | February 24, 2009One of the frustrations with writing a science book is that you keep on bumping into brand new research that you want to include. That's precisely what happened to me when I read this just published paper in the Journal of Consumer Research by Leonard Lee, Dan Ariely, and On Amir. The behavioral economists were interested in evaluating which decision-making system - the slow rational, deliberate approach (System 1) or the fast, emotional, instinctive approach (System 2) - was best suited for everyday consumer choices. The question, of course, is how one defines a "superior" decision. Who's to…
gregladen | February 23, 2009My student, Marta, exploded the other day.
She was sitting there in class two weeks ago and exploded. She does not know that I know this, but I noticed it happen. Since she was sitting, as usual, in the front row, and it was all in her face, the other students did not see it but I definitely did.
By "exploding" in this case I mean that her brain suddenly filled with unanswered questions, which she then started sending me in frantic emails. Many of these questions are about things we will eventually get to in class, but some are on issues that we won't touch on at all. I decided, and I…
clock | February 23, 2009Monday night - the day when four of the PLoS journals publish new articles - here is a sample. 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, 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:
Wings, Horns, and Butterfly Eyespots: How Do Complex Traits Evolve?:
Throughout their evolutionary history, organisms have evolved numerous complex morphological,…
terrasig | February 23, 2009Welcome 4 March readers of The Daily Grail - please be sure to also click on the original post about the DMT article by my colleague, Laura Mariani.
Thanks to Dave Munger & Co's ResearchBlogging.org, I just found a fabulous neuroscience grad student blogger from Emory University: Laura E Mariani at Neurotypical?
Doctor-to-be Mariani blogged last Monday about a paper in Science where the endogenous ligand of the orphan sigma-1 receptor was identified as the hallucinogen, N,N'-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. The work originated with the group of Arnold Ruoho and colleagues at the University…
bioephemera | February 22, 2009
Essays are like cupcakes: they're tasty, abundant, idiosyncratic, and small enough to finish without feeling you've overindulged - which leaves you vulnerable to the self-deception that just one more is a good idea. So here are some weekend reading suggestions for a lazy Sunday.
--At SEED, Carl Zimmer's love letter to natural history museums as functional wonder cabinets:
Gradually, royalty's cabinets of wonders turned into libraries of flesh and rock, where scholars could research the workings of the world. Ole Worm, a 17th-century anatomist, became famous for his collection of narwhal…
oracknows | February 20, 2009I knew it. I just knew it.
I just knew that when I finally decided to come back from my absence from this blog that something very unpleasant and sad would be waiting for me. True, there had actually been one very nasty thing that I simply had to deal with a few days ago, but that was a particularly vile and despicable human being who, believe it or not, was not John Best. That is not the case here, although the misinformation being pushed is truly disturbing.
Not surprisingly, what awaited me upon my decision to come back was posted earlier this week on that repository of antivaccine…
oracknows | February 19, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging, and even if I did my wife needs me more. Because I foresaw this coming, however, I do have a series of "Best of" reposts lined up. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. If not, I hope you enjoy them again. I don't know when I'll be back, other than maybe a brief update or two…
clock | February 19, 2009Buying Experiences, Not Possessions, Leads To Greater Happiness:
Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? A new psychology study suggests that buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them.
Surfing The Net Helps Seniors Cope With Pain:
Surfing the Internet could provide significant relief for seniors with chronic pain, according to new research reported in The Journal of Pain, published by the American Pain Society.
Multilingualism Brings Communities Closer Together:
Learning their…
denialism | February 18, 2009What to say about psychiatry that isn't already completely covered by television and movies? It's unique among the specialties for its coverage in the media. Maybe because we're such social animals, or maybe because such shows about psychiatry or therapy appeal to a voyeuristic impulse in us to peer into people's most private thoughts and feelings.
Our exposure to psychiatry in medical school, however, is primarily with inpatient psychiatry - people who for whatever reason require hospitalization to deal with their mental illnesses. Reasons may range from soul-crushing anxiety attacks, to…
sb admin | February 18, 2009Last week, Salon.com published a disturbing in-depth series, called âComing Home,â about the tragic consequences of the Armyâs inability to provide adequate care to soldiers returning from Iraq. Focusing on just one base â Fort Carson, Colorado â they found the following:
Salon put together a sample of 25 suicides, prescription overdoses and murders among soldiers at Colorado's Fort Carson since 2004. Intensive study of 10 of those cases exposed a pattern of preventable deaths, meaning a suicide or murder might have been avoided if the Army had better handled the predictable, well-known…
cortex | February 16, 2009The brain is like a Swiss Army knife, stuffed full of different mental tools that are well suited to different situations. Sometimes, we want to flex the prefrontal cortex, and really exert our rational muscles. And then there are other situations (like picking a strawberry jam) where thinking too much can be a real problem, and we should rely instead of the subtle signals emanating from the emotional brain.
It's no surprise that how we think - the particular mode of thought that we lean on at any given moment - can be influenced by our surroundings. For instance, when men are shown revealing…
cwilcox | February 14, 2009If I ask you what group of organisms is an exhibition of evolution at its finest, what would you say? Most people, I think, would say human beings, or at least apex predators. After all, we have staggering intellect compared to our prey items and clearly dominate the planet, eat what we will, etc. Not only that, we're insanely complex. Ask some scientists, and they might give you any number of answers. Cockroaches are likely to exist long after we do, as are rodents, so maybe they get the title. Or, being scientists, they might be biased to whatever organism they study. Maybe algae and plants…