Brain and Behavior
cortex | August 6, 2008Over at Mind Matters we recently featured an interesting article by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Adina Roskies (two philosophers at Dartmouth) reviewing a recent paper by Joshua Greene, et. al. The paper tested the dual-process model of morality, which argues that every moral decision is the result of a tug-of-war between the "rational" brain (centered in the prefrontal cortex) and the "emotional" brain, rooted in areas like the amygdala and insula.
In their study Greene et al. give subjects difficult moral dilemmas in which one alternative leads to better consequences (such as more lives…
pontiff | August 6, 2008A very cool discovery out of Caltech: auditory synesthesia. Synesthesia, you probably know, is an effect wherein the stimulation of one sense causes automatic sensations in another sense. For example, grapheme-color synesthesia is where numbers or letters appear to those observing to be shaded or tinged with different colors. Now two researchers at Caltech, Melissa Saenz (Who I know! I know someone who discovered something really cool!) and Christof Koch, have identified a new form of synesthesia, auditory synesthesia. To describe it, it's funner to read what Dr. Saenz has to say about…
clock | August 5, 2008There are 69 new articles in PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Comparison of Pattern Detection Methods in Microarray Time Series of the Segmentation Clock:
While genome-wide gene expression data are generated at an increasing rate, the repertoire of approaches for pattern discovery in these data is still limited. Identifying subtle patterns of interest in large amounts of data (tens of thousands of profiles)…
clock | July 31, 2008
What Do Squid Hear? Scientists Learn How Sensitive The Translucent Animals Are To Noise:
The ocean is a noisy place. Although we don't hear much when we stick our heads underwater, the right instruments can reveal a symphony of sound. The noisemakers range from the low-frequency bass tones of a fish mating ritual to the roar of a motorboat. The study of how underwater animals hear is a growing topic in marine science, especially with regards to naval sonar and whales.
Improved Estrogen Reception May Sharpen Fuzzy Memory:
Estrogen treatments may sharpen mental performance in women with…
clock | July 31, 2008Broca's Area, 1865:
This doesn't sound too out there to us now, but at the time it caused a lot of controversy. The problems wasn't the localization to the inferior frontal lobe, it was Broca's claim that it was the LEFT inferior frontal lobe. This didn't sit well with a lot of scientists at the time. It was pretty accepted that, when you had two sides or halves of an organ, the both acted in the same way. Both kidneys do the same thing, both sides of your lungs, and both of your ovaries or testes. Your legs and arms will do essentially the same thing, though due to handedness (or…
jstemwedel | July 31, 2008As I was looking for a good sangria recipe some weeks ago, I came upon this article in Gourmet about how our understanding of the scientific basis for "flavor" as changed, not to mention what sorts of implications this might have for those who prepare -- and sell -- food.
One of the interesting bits is how different the science on taste is from what you probably think it is:
[N]early everything humans think they understand about taste is wrong. For generations, textbooks have trumpeted two universal truths about taste. Truth No. 1: There are four basic tastes--bitter, sweet, sour, and salty…
pharyngula | July 29, 2008The warm-up act for this program was a dinosaur program called "Jurassic Fight Club", which was loaded with CGI and lots of gratuitous razzle-dazzle — but I thought it was a hoot. It also had enthusiasatic scientists talking about how they figured out what had happened (although it does bug me that they treated some speculative stuff in the narrative as if it were factual). Most of the show was taken up with glitzy animations, but it was balanced with at least some discussion of the process of science, so I'll give it a thumbs up.
Now to settle in for the story of the evolution of eyes…
Oooh…
oracknows | July 24, 2008You know, it really annoys me when I see idiocy as idiotic as the idiocy of this surgeon in New Jersey:
In a lawsuit filed yesterday, a Camden County woman accused her orthopedic surgeon of "rubbing a temporary tattoo of a red rose" on her belly while she was under anesthesia.
The patient discovered the tattoo below the panty line the next morning, when her husband was helping her get dressed to go home after the operation for a herniated disc, her attorney, Gregg A. Shivers, said in a phone interview yesterday.
"She was extremely emotionally upset by it," said Shivers. The suit, filed on…
denialism | July 24, 2008Who wrote this?
As someone who spends a substantial portion of his professional time teaching medical students, I can tell you that this kind of attitude-that physicians are gods, not mere mortals, and wield power over other human beings that no one dare question-is inculcated in them from the very beginning of medical training. It is an ugly secret of our medical training system. And the more prestigious the institutions where physicians receive their training, the more overweening is this attitude.
Anything that a physician calls a "joke" or "for the patient's benefit" simply is that, and…
thusspakezuska | July 24, 2008Blame it on Abel, who blogged his vasectomy, and Janet, who blogged her mammogram. Also blame Drugmonkey and Physioprof, who along with Abel, Janet, and others encouraged me to Blog My D&C. Yep. So here goes.
It all started innocently enough back in May with my annual exam. First appointment. My nurse practitioner was bothered by my history: no periods since September 2006, followed by the sudden surprise! of brief bleeding episodes in February and mid-May. Various doctors of mine have been debating as to whether I am in menopause, or I just have screwed up hormone levels that…
gregladen | July 24, 2008A recently published study seems to indicate that adult brain volume is reduced in individuals with significant lead exposure during childhood. While this study may lead to important findings linking lead to reduced cognitive function, it is important to note that observed effect is very small, very hard to link to specific outcomes, and may not exist. But it is worth a further look.
The study in question is summarized below and, as an Open Access publication, is totally accessible for you to read. The upshot is that individuals who were part of a long term study (also discussed here)…
oracknows | July 23, 2008I'm envious of Steve Novella. Well, just a little, anyway. The reason is that he's somehow managed to annoy David Kirby and the anti-vaccine contingent enough to provoke what appears to be a coordinated response to his debunking of anti-vaccine propaganda. For that alone he deserves some serious props.
You may have wondered why I haven't written much about Amanda Peet giving an interview in which she pointed out that she had looked into the matter and had found no reason to believe that vaccines caused autism or were unsafe. In the same interview, she referred to parents who don't vaccinate…
clock | July 22, 2008Across the Curious Parallel of Language and Species Evolution:
In February 1837--even before he sailed on the Beagle--Charles Darwin wrote to his sister Caroline, discussing the linguist Sir John Herschel's idea that modern languages were descended from a common ancestor. If this were really the case, it cast doubt on the Biblical chronology of the world: "[E]veryone has yet thought that the six thousand odd years has been the right period but Sir J. thinks that a far greater number must have passed since the Chinese [and] the Caucasian languages separated from one stock".
The Effects of…
clock | July 19, 2008Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship by James A. Evans, ironically behind the paywall, has got a lot of people scratching their heads - it sounds so counter-intuitive, as well as opposite from other pieces of similar research.
There is a good discussion on FriendFeed and another one here.
A commentary at the Chronicle of Higher Education is here, also ironically behind the paywall.
Here is the press release and here is the abstract:
Online journals promise to serve more information to more dispersed audiences and are more efficiently searched and recalled.…
jstemwedel | July 19, 2008[Pardon the delay!]
Watching the fish tank in the pediatrician's waiting room:
Younger offspring: Those fish are playing tag!
Dr. Free-Ride: It kind of looks like tag, doesn't it?
Younger offspring: Except since they don't have hands to touch each other, I think they're using their mouths.
Dr. Free-Ride: See, that's why I think that they might be having a little fight about territory rather than playing tag.
Younger offspring: But they all share the territory of the fish tank, so I think they're playing.
Elder offspring: A few of them really like to hide in the plants.
Dr. Free-Ride: I…
ejohnson | July 18, 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. Refueling a Tesla Validation Prototype 9 with electricity. From Flickr, by jurvetson
Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by Barb Henry
Reader comments of the week:
In David Brooks on Genetics and Human Intelligence, Mike the Mad Biologist posts an excerpt from a New York Times opinion piece by columnist David Brooks; Brooks ponders over the growing intersection between science and the humanities as both strive to understand human…
clock | July 17, 2008What's new in PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases this week? Among else, these papers that caught my eye:
Emergent Synchronous Bursting of Oxytocin Neuronal Network:
When young suckle, they are rewarded intermittently with a let-down of milk that results from reflex secretion of the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin is a neuropeptide made by specialised neurons in the hypothalamus, and is secreted from nerve endings in the pituitary gland. During suckling, every 5 min or so, each of these neurons discharges a brief, intense burst of action…
clock | July 16, 2008Olivia Judson is absolutely right - let's get rid of the terms "Darwinist" and "Darwinism". She writes, among else:
I'd like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually…
purepedantry | July 16, 2008Temporal discounting is our tendency to want things now rather than later. In order to encourage us to save money, banks have to offer us a reward in the form of an interest rate. In order to delay gratification, we have to be convinced that the reward in the future is going to be sufficiently large to compensate us for going without right now.
When economists talk about temporal discounting, they talk about it in terms of what is called the discount rate. The discount rate is the percentage of money that you would have to be offered after a time period to convince you to save.…
developingintelligence | July 15, 2008To enhance any system, one first needs to identify its capacity-limiting factor(s). Human cognition is a highly complex and multiply constrained system, consisting of both independent and interdependent capacity-limitations. These "bottlenecks" in cognition are reviewed below as a coherent framework for understanding the plethora of cognitive training paradigms which are currently associated with enhancements of working memory, executive function and fluid intelligence (1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
10, c.f. 11, 12, 13).
By far, the most common complaint about limitations in cognition is…