Brain and Behavior
clock | August 28, 2008Unusual Ultrasonic Vocalization Patterns In Mice May Be Useful For Modeling Autism:
Scientists have found novel patterns of ultrasonic vocalizations in a genetic mouse model of autism, adding a unique element to the available mouse behaviors that capture components of the human disease, and representing a new step towards identifying causes and better treatments.
New Concepts In Contraception:
Latest research into dual-purpose contraceptives and non-hormonal contraception will be presented August 27 at a major scientific conference in Melbourne.
Heart Attack Prevention: Potential New Use For…
clock | August 26, 2008Small Scattered Fragments Do Not a Dwarf Make: Biological and Archaeological Data Indicate that Prehistoric Inhabitants of Palau Were Normal Sized:
Current archaeological evidence from Palau in western Micronesia indicates that the archipelago was settled around 3000-3300 BP by normal sized populations; contrary to recent claims, they did not succumb to insular dwarfism. Previous and ongoing archaeological research of both human burial and occupation sites throughout the Palauan archipelago during the last 50 years has produced a robust data set to test hypotheses regarding initial…
clock | August 25, 2008Monday night - time to check out the new articles in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine:
Is Sleep Essential?:
Everybody knows that sleep is important, yet the function of sleep seems like the mythological phoenix: "Che vi sia ciascun lo dice, dove sia nessun lo sa" ("that there is one they all say, where it may be no one knows," Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte [1790], Così fan tutte). But what if the search for an essential function of sleep is misguided? What if sleep is not required but rather a kind of extreme indolence that animals indulge in when they have no more pressing…
clock | August 25, 2008Tiny Cellular Antennae Trigger Neural Stem Cells:
Yale University scientists today reported evidence suggesting that the tiny cilia found on brain cells of mammals, thought to be vestiges of a primeval past, actually play a critical role in relaying molecular signals that spur creation of neurons in an area of the brain involved in mood, learning and memory.
Picking Out Specific Sounds In A Complex Scene: Researchers Study 'Cocktail Party Effect', Measure Auditory Dynamics Of Selective Attention:
Call it the cocktail party effect: how an individual can participate in a one-on-one conversation…
oracknows | August 24, 2008You may recall that on Friday afternoon, I posted a bit of a rant about how a certain liberal blogger named Matt Stoller had disparagingly and contemptuously referred to Presidential Candidate John McCain as a "crazy, cancer-ridden dishonest madman." It turns out that Mr. Stoller was displeased by my much-justified rebuke. His response is an example of the most studiously, intentionally obtuse avoidance of answering what my real criticism was, including an elaborately constructed straw man, some quote mining, and one really dumb additional statement that reveals Mr. Stoller to be far more…
ejohnson | August 22, 2008In this post: the large version of the Brain & Behavior and Technology channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Technology. Reflections from the nose cone of a propeller plane. From Flickr, by Katie@!
Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by jamesfischer
Reader comments of the week:
On the Brain & Behavior channel, Steve of Of Two Minds shares a video in which one man recreates The taste of the Star Wars Imperial March - if you had synaesthesia. Using the tastes corresponding to different musical intervals reported by an actual musical synaesthete in…
sa smith | August 21, 2008Edited 8-22-08 to contain MORE win
Its going to be a slow blag week. Im trying to cram as many experiments as possible into this last week before school starts again. The last major experiment I want to finish (have to finish) this summer is a 'pulse-->chase' to watch how fast each of my chimeras process gp160 into gp120 and gp41. I do this by 1-- transfecting cells with my clones, 2-- starving the cells of cystine and methionine, 3-- giving the cells radioactive food (sulfur-35), 4-- waiting a set period of time, and blowing up the cells.
While blowing up radioactive things is one of…
clock | August 20, 2008As I announced this morning, there will be several guest posts here over the next several weeks. The first one, by Barn Owl of the lovely Guadalupe Storm-Petrel blog, is likely to appeal to a lot of my readers as it combines several of my own interests:
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In this guest-post for A Blog Around the Clock, I'll combine three things that Coturnix especially likes: horses, circadian biology, and an Open Access research paper. For the equestrian, there are two main seasonal issues, controlled primarily by photoperiod, or day length, which must be considered, especially if one…
cortex | August 20, 2008Over at Mind Matters, we've got an interesting article on how believing in free will can affect our ethical behavior:
In a clever new study, psychologists Kathleen Vohs at the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler at the University of California at Santa Barbara tested this question by giving participants passages from The Astonishing Hypothesis, a popular science book by Francis Crick, a biochemist and Nobel laureate (as co-discoverer, with James Watson, of the DNA double helix). Half of the participants got a passage saying that there is no such thing as free will. The passage…
grrlscientist | August 19, 2008tags: cognition, behavior, self-recognition, self awareness, tool use, memory, brain architecture, birds, European magpie, Pica pica, researchblogging.org
Figure 1. European magpie, Pica pica, with yellow mark [larger view].
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060202.
Birds have been disparaged publicly as "bird brains" for so long that most people have lost the ability to view them as intelligent and sentient beings. However, a group of researchers in Germany have conducted a series of studies with several captive European magpies, Pica pica, that challenge the average person's view of birds and…
neurophilosophy | August 19, 2008Self-recognition was long believed to be unique to humans. However, it was established more than 30 years ago that the great apes are capable of recognizing themselves in the mirror, and more recently it has been found that dolphins and elephants can too.
Now Prior et al provide the first evidence of mirror self-recognition in a non-mammalian species. In this film clip from the supplementary materials which accompany the paper, a magpie (which is actually a female) realizes that it has a mark on the side of its head after seeing its relection in the mirror. It then removes the mark by…
cortex | August 19, 2008I had an article this weekend in the Washington Post looking at the recent spate of "age defiance" - Dara Torres, Madonna, John McCain, etc. - and some recent neuroscience research:
A s a 27-year old science writer who still gets carded at bars, I often find discussions of the aging process pleasantly abstract. I'm more likely to use Clearasil than anti-wrinkle cream. But the spectacle of Torres's competing and McCain's campaigning has rekindled an important scientific debate about the inevitability of the aging process and what even young and middle-aged people can do to blunt the adverse…
clock | August 18, 2008Light Receptors In Eye Play Key Role In Setting Biological Clock, Study Shows:
Biologists at the University of Virginia have discovered a switching mechanism in the eye that plays a key role in regulating the sleep/wake cycles in mammals.
A Therapy For Baby Boomers To Sleep On: New Drug For Insomniacs Over 55:
If you're over 55 and have spent more than a few sleepless nights, you're not alone -- insomnia affects about half of all people over 55 -- but you may also be at increased risk for physical and mental ailments.
Why An Exciting Book Is Just As Thrilling As A Hair-raising Movie:
Watching…
clock | August 18, 2008Some really cool stuff just got published a few minutes ago in PLoS Biology:
A cool paper: Mirror-Induced Behavior in the Magpie (Pica pica): Evidence of Self-Recognition:
A crucial step in the emergence of self-recognition is the understanding that one's own mirror reflection does not represent another individual but oneself. In nonhuman species and in children, the "mark test" has been used as an indicator of self-recognition. In these experiments, subjects are placed in front of a mirror and provided with a mark that cannot be seen directly but is visible in the mirror. Mirror self-…
ejohnson | August 15, 2008In this post: the large version of the Medicine & Health, Brain & Behavior and Technology channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by jamesfischer
Technology. From Flickr, by jurvetson
Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by Pathfinder Linden
Reader comments of the week:
In dopes, Steinn Sigurðsson of Dynamics for Cats considers the case for allowing performance enhancing drugs in athletic arenas. While there are certainly risks involved, he believes, particularly for long-term health and with new and untested…
razib | August 15, 2008Brain Size and the Diversification of Body Size in Birds:
Large brains are associated with increased cognitive skills, enabling animals to use new environments and resources more successfully. Such behavioral flexibility is theoretically expected to have macroevolutionary consequences. First, populations of big-brained individuals should more easily become established in new locations, increasing opportunities for allopatric speciation and decreasing chances that the species as a whole becomes extinct. Second, the ability to use new resources should place new selection pressures on…
sciencetolife | August 13, 2008This article was brought to my attention by the male minority (we have 2 men and 8 women) in my lab. They suggested that the article supports their plea to recruit more men into the lab in order to neutralize the excessive female-ness that they are exposed to every day. They are grossly exaggerating, of course. Nevertheless, here are excerpts from the article.
University of Illinois researchers report this week that chronic exposure to estradiol, the main estrogen in the body, diminishes some cognitive functions. Rats exposed to a steady dose of estradiol were impaired on tasks involving…
sa smith | August 11, 2008Like any curious pup, the second Arnie encounters hedging/bushes/shrubbery, his first instinct is to dive right in in the hopes of flushing out some yummy yummy bunnies/kittens/boars.
Like any over-protective owner, I run after him screaming "GET OUTTA THERE YER GUNNA GET BITTEN BY A SNAKE!!!"
Cause when you start poking your nose in places you arent supposed to be-- you dont always find yummy squirrels. Sometimes you flush out bad things... like rabies infected vampire bats. Thats exactly what logging/mining expeditions in Venezuela have done. Theyve displaced colonies of vampire bats...…
ejohnson | August 8, 2008In this post: the large version of the Brain & Behavior and Technology channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Technology. From Flickr, by mugley
Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by woodleywonderworks
Reader comments of the week:
In Lunch with Heather Perry, Neurophilosophy interviews a woman who underwent a voluntary trepanation—that is, she had a hole drilled in her head. Heather cites one of her reasons for undergoing the procedure as wanting "more mental energy and clarity."
Reader Ian isn't exactly compelled by that:
I think people need…
purepedantry | August 7, 2008Yet another piece of evidence for the futility of abstinence education. Masters et al., publishing in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, show that an adolescent's attitude about sex is a much stronger indicator that they will actually have it than their attitudes about abstinence.
The study followed around 300 teenagers from Seattle over a year after interviewing them about their attitudes about sex and abstinence and their intentions to have sex or abstain. They wanted to know how their initial attitudes and intentions about sex and abstinence interacted over time…