Brain and Behavior
clock | December 21, 2008Say It In Song: Researcher Deciphers Meaning Within Bird Communication:
To many people, bird song can herald the coming of spring, reveal what kind of bird is perched nearby or be merely an unwelcome early morning intrusion. But to Sandra Vehrencamp, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior, bird song is a code from which to glean insights into avian behavior.
Pain Hurts More If Person Hurting You Means It:
Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that our experience of pain depends on whether we think someone caused the pain intentionally. In their study, participants who…
oracknows | December 18, 2008You may have noticed that I've been laying off the antivaccination movement recently. Indeed, it's been over two weeks since I last mentioned the topic, and then I only did so by briefly citing a post by Steve Novella. For this blog, aside from vacations, that has to be a record.
Truth be told, periodically I get really burned out on the topic, as I've pointed out from time to time. I frequently make jokes about the thermonuclearly burning stupid that regularly emanates from such "luminaries" of the antivaccine movement as Jenny McCarthy, David Kirby, Dan Olmsted, J. B. Handley, and others.…
clock | December 17, 2008Hmmm so it seems that we have to abandon some old cherished beliefs:
Scientists debunk the myth that you lose most heat through your head:
When it comes to wrapping up on a cold winter's day, a cosy hat is obligatory. After all, most of our body heat is lost through our heads - or so we are led to believe.
Closer inspection of heat loss in the hatless, however, reveals the claim to be nonsense, say scientists who have dispelled this and five other modern myths.
They traced the origins of the hat-wearing advice back to a US army survival manual from 1970 which strongly recommended covering the…
grrlscientist | December 17, 2008tags: yawning, thermoregulation, budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus, animal behavior
Yawning human, Homo sapiens serving as a perch for a domestic budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulatus.
Image: Wendy (Creative Commons License).
Yawning. Everybody does it. In fact, I am yawning now as I write this piece. Yawning is interpreted to have a variety of meanings, ranging from tiredness to boredom. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that yawning is contagious among humans, at least: watching someone else yawn, seeing a photograph or reading about -- and even the mere thought of -- yawning is…
ddobbs | December 16, 2008Good stuff from Zimmer:
You go for a swim, and you don't even notice the tiny worm that burrows into your skin. It slips into a vein and surges along through the blood for a while. Eventually it leaves your blood vessels and starts creeping up your spinal cord. Creep creep creep, it goes, until it reaches your head. It curls up on the surface of your brain, forming a hard cyst. But it is not alone%u2013every time you've gone for swim, worms have slithered into you, and now there are thousands of cysts peppering your brain.
And they are all making drugs that are seeping into your neurons.…
cortex | December 15, 2008I find the epic Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff morbidly fascinating. He managed to lose 50 billion dollars, which can't be easy:
A busy stock-trading operation occupied the 19th floor, and the computers and paperwork of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities filled the 18th floor.
But the 17th floor was Bernie Madoff's sanctum, occupied by fewer than two dozen staff members and rarely visited by other employees. It was called the "hedge fund" floor, but federal prosecutors now say the work Mr. Madoff did there was actually a fraud scheme whose losses Mr. Madoff himself estimates at $50…
clock | December 14, 2008More Than Just Being A Sentimental Fool: The Psychology Of Nostalgia:
In the 17th and 18th centuries, nostalgia was viewed as a medical disease, complete with symptoms including weeping, irregular heartbeat and anorexia. By the 20th century, nostalgia was regarded as a psychiatric disorder, with symptoms such as insomnia, anxiety and depression and was confined to a few groups (e.g. first year boarding students and immigrants). Only recently have psychologists begun focusing on the positive and potentially therapeutic aspects of nostalgia, report University of Southampton psychologist…
purepedantry | December 11, 2008I caught this article on ScienceDaily about the work of Professor Bart Hoebel at Princeton who has been attempting to show that sugar is an addictive substance like a drug. He presents data at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology meeting to suggest that sugar fulfills the criterion for substances that we traditionally define as addictive:
Professor Bart Hoebel and his team in the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute have been studying signs of sugar addiction in rats for years. Until now, the rats under study have met two of the three elements of…
clock | December 10, 2008Why Some Bird Species Lay Only One Egg:
Why do some species of birds lay only one egg in their nest, while others lay 10 or more? A global study of the wide variation among birds in this trait, known as the "clutch size," now provides biologists with some answers. The study, published in the current issue of the journal PLoS Biology, combined data on the clutch sizes of 5,290 species of birds with information on the biology and environment of each of these species.
Secret Ingredient For The Health Of Tropical Rainforests Discovered:
A team of researchers led by Princeton University scientists…
developingintelligence | December 10, 2008In an update to their groundbreaking earlier demonstration that high-IQ children initially show a thinner cortex, and later show an initially thicker one than their average-IQ peers, Shaw et al. have now documented those trajectories of cortical thickening which are invariant to socio-economic status and IQ, but vary between regions of the brain. These videos show the peak in gray matter in cortex between the ages of 5 and 15 years, as assessed from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of 375 subjects of varying ages.
And another video below the fold...
Dark red areas indicate those…
cwilcox | December 10, 2008Mind Control. Body-Snatchers. They sound like they're straight out of a science fiction novel, but the truth is parasites have been ahead of us in manipulatory technology for eons. They're the best of the best at making another species bend to their will. Here are some examples of some science facts that sound like they belong in science fiction - all courtesy of your everyday parasite.
So, since I already have a weekly does of cute, I figure I'll balance it out with a weekly dose of something that's about as far from cute as I can find - a really awesome parasite.
The most familiar example…
neurophilosophy | December 9, 2008In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin noted that facial expressions vary little across cultures. We all recognize that someone whose eyes and mouth are wide open, and whose eyebrows are raised, is afraid. This characteristic expression is a social signal, which warns others of a potential threat and serves as a plea for help. It also enhances our ability to sense potential threats, by increasing the range of vision and enhancing the sense of smell.
Recognizing fear in others involves perceiving cues which we are consciously aware of as well as subliminal…
cwilcox | December 9, 2008Women know this is true. Men know it, too, I think, they just don't want to admit it. Now it's supported scientifically. New research out of the University of Michigan suggests that the economic crisis could really be the fault of you horny dogs - so there!
The study sought to determine if men's financial habits, aka overspending and conspicuous consumption, were related to his desire to impress possible mates. They compared data taken from men aged 18-45 about their past, current, and desired future physical encounters with their degree of financial consumption.
"It gives an ultimate…
oracknows | December 2, 2008Well, it looks as though I've stepped into it yet one more time.
Believe it or not, I hadn't intended to stir up trouble among the ScienceBlogs collective, both English- and German-speaking. Really. Oh, I'll admit that there are occasionally times when I actually do mean to stir up trouble. One recent example is when it was rumored that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might be chosen to be Secretary of the Interior or, even worse, Director of the EPA. Much to my surprise, I actually did manage to stir up a goodly amount of blogospheric reaction, too. Although I believed it to be a good cause, this…
clock | December 1, 2008Let's see what is new in PLoS Medicine, PLoS Biology and PLoS ONE today:
Time-of-Day-Dependent Enhancement of Adult Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus:
Adult neurogenesis occurs in specific regions of the mammalian brain such as the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. In the neurogenic region, neural progenitor cells continuously divide and give birth to new neurons. Although biological properties of neurons and glia in the hippocampus have been demonstrated to fluctuate depending on specific times of the day, it is unclear if neural progenitors and neurogenesis in the adult brain are temporally…
cortex | December 1, 2008Now that the broken windows theory of crime has been experimentally validated - disorderly streets really do make people more likely to steal - Jason Kottke wonders if the theory also applies to online spaces:
Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to "own" their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that…
grrlscientist | November 27, 2008Here are the latest blog carnivals that have been published for you to enjoy. Since I was traveling, I have included all the blog carnivals that I am aware of that were published during that time period;
I and the Bird, issue 89. This blog carnival focuses on wild birds and bird watching.
Encephalon, issue 59. This blog carnival focuses on the brain and neurobiology and how they interact to produce behaviors. I will be hosting this blog carnival in a couple weeks, so be ready to help me by contributing your writings to it!
Carnival of Conservatism, a blog carnival that actually focuses on…
clock | November 26, 2008
Jurassic Turtles Could Swim:
Around 164 million years ago the earliest aquatic turtles lived in lakes and lagoons on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, according to new research. Recent scientific fieldwork led by researchers from UCL and the Natural History Museum on Skye, an island off the north-western coast of Scotland, discovered a block of rock containing fossils that have been recognised as a new species of primitive turtle Eileanchelys waldmani.
'Gray's Paradox' Solved: Researchers Discover Secret Of Speedy Dolphins:
There was something peculiar about dolphins that stumped prolific British…
neurophilosophy | November 25, 2008For most of us, visual perception is crucial for spatial navigation. We rely on vision to find our way around, to position ourselves and localize objects within the surroundings, and to plan our trajectory on the basis of the layout of the environment. Blind people would therefore seem to be at a disadvantage. Unable to rely on vision, they depend instead upon different sorts of cues to form their representations of space. They rely, for example, on proprioception, which provides a sense of the location, movement and posture of one's own body through space, and on vestibular information…
amillikan | November 23, 2008Brain & Behavior
An African gray parrot. From Flickr, by The G-tastic 7
“Imagine you wake up and have a new sense. No, you can't imagine! If you try, you'll be trapped thinking in terms of your existing senses.“
Rafael C. P. on Can a blind person whose vision is restored understand what she sees?