n+1
Gleanings from empathetic ravens, lying brains, dying converence, fading vocabularies, and new books
Ravens via PDPhoto
Ravens show that consoling one another is also for the birds, Yet another finding that other species have qualities previously thought uniquely human. Our greatest distinction is that we're highly social. Yet in that we've got a lot of company.  
Human brains excel at detecting cheaters. FMRI's, not so much, says Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks-- though in yet another court case, the fMRI lie detection industry pushes another story.
Bell also has a nice write-up of of scintillating RadioLab program on how early dementia shows up in use of language. A stellar program,…