By SUSAN DOMINUS Before the media vans took over Main Street, before the environmental testers came to dig at the soil, before the doctor came to take blood, before strangers started knocking on doors and asking question after question, Katie Krautwurst, a high-school cheerleader from Le Roy, N.Y., woke up from a nap. Instantly, she knew something was wrong. Her chin was jutting forward uncontrollably and her face was contracting into spasms. She was still twitching a few weeks later when her best friend, Thera Sanchez, captain of one of the school’s cheerleading squads, awoke from a nap stuttering and then later started twitching, her arms flailing and head jerking. Two weeks after that, Lydia Parker, also a senior, erupted in tics and arm swings and hums. Then word got around that Chelsey Dumars, another cheerleader, who recently moved to town, was making the same strange noises, the same strange movements, leaving school early on the days she could make it to class at all. The numbers grew — 12, then 16, then 18, in a school of 600 — and as they swelled, the ranks of the sufferers came to include a wider swath of the Le Roy high-school hierarchy: girls who weren’t cheerleaders, girls who kept to themselves and had studs in their lips. There was even one boy and an older woman, age 36. Parents wept as their daughters stuttered at the dinner table. Teachers shut their classroom doors when they heard a din of outbursts, one cry triggering another, sending the increasingly familiar sounds ricocheting through the halls. Within a few months, as the camera crews continued to descend, the community barely seemed to recognize itself. One expert after another arrived to pontificate about what was wrong in Le Roy, a town of 7,500 in Western New York that had long prided itself on the things it got right. The kids here were wholesome and happy, their parents insisted — “cheerleaders and honor students,” as one father said — products of a place that, while not perfect, was made up more of what was good about small-town America than what was bad. Now, though, the girls’ writhing and stuttering suggested something troubling, either arising from within the community or being perpetrated on it, a mystery that proved irresistible for onlookers, whose attention would soon become part of the story itself. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Keyword: Stress; Tourettes
Link ID: 16499 - Posted: 03.10.2012

by Jane J. Lee Like a football player who just scored a touchdown, male white-flippered penguins (Eudyptula minor albosignata) perform triumph displays after defeating an opponent. Now, researchers in New Zealand have found that those victory dances, complete with a braying, donkeylike call and flipper waving, make it less likely that nearby penguins will challenge the winner. "Scientists have spent a lot of time studying antagonistic interactions, but quite often, they turn the camera off after the fight, so they miss a lot," says Tom Sherratt, an evolutionary ecologist at Carleton University in Ottawa, who was not involved in the current study. Researchers have investigated the effects of triumph displays on the loser, but because this is a fairly recent field of study, the new research is probably the first published account of its effects on nearby birds, he added. Explanations for the function of triumph displays include browbeating an opponent so that he doesn't forget who beat him and signaling to an audience not to mess with you. Researchers at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, wanted to know whether penguins near a fight picked up on those signals. So they studied the effects of triumph displays on nesting white-flippered penguins in a colony at Flea Bay in New Zealand. These penguins were ideal study subjects because they're really aggressive and squabble frequently, says Joseph Waas, a behavioral ecologist and a co-author on the study. Only about 5% to 10% of their aggressive encounters lead to a full-fledged fight, complete with slashing bill hooks and flipper bashing, he says. But it's not unusual to see male penguins that are missing an eye. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Keyword: Emotions; Animal Communication
Link ID: 16498 - Posted: 03.10.2012

By Ferris Jabr As a baby bird develops, its body contorts to fit within the confines of its egg. The bird's neck twists so that one side of its head is tucked against its chest. In this position, the bird's left eye remains nestled among sprouting feathers—where it does not receive much light from the outside world—whereas the right eye is pressed up against the eggshell, glimpsing flickers of light and shadow through a veil of calcium carbonate. Even though this uneven stimulation of the eyes lasts only one or two days before the chick hatches, it seems to be crucial for typical brain development. Pigeons incubated in the dark have a much harder time solving puzzles as adults than pigeons exposed to light before hatching. The reason, some researchers think, is that the brain's two hemispheres cannot properly integrate information if they miss a critical window period of learning in the egg. Martina Manns of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany has been studying pigeon brains for the past 20 years. For a new study published in the February issue of Nature Communications, Manns and her colleague Juliane Römling focused on 14 domestic pigeons raised in normal lighting conditions by local breeders and another eight pigeons raised in dark incubators in their lab. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Through various memory tests and logic puzzles, Manns and Römling compared the problem-solving abilities of the two groups of birds. One by one, Manns and Römling presented each pigeon with different pairs of plastic cups filled with colorful aquarium gravel, only one of which concealed a kernel of corn. There were four pairings: red and blue, blue/green, green/yellow and yellow/violet. Through trial and error the pigeons learned to prefer one color in each pair, because gravel of that color always contained the tasty snack. Given a choice between blue and green gravel, for instance, blue was always the right answer; green gravel always contained the reward when matched with yellow, etcetera. © 2012 Scientific American

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Keyword: Laterality
Link ID: 16497 - Posted: 03.10.2012

By JESSE McKINLEY Of the many roles Pat Robertson has assumed over his five-decade-long career as an evangelical leader — including presidential candidate and provocative voice of the right wing — his newest guise may perhaps surprise his followers the most: marijuana legalization advocate. “I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.” Mr. Robertson’s remarks echoed statements he made last week on “The 700 Club,” the signature program of his Christian Broadcasting Network, and other comments he made in 2010. While those earlier remarks were largely dismissed by his followers, Mr. Robertson has now apparently fully embraced the idea of legalizing marijuana, arguing that it is a way to bring down soaring rates of incarceration and reduce the social and financial costs. “I believe in working with the hearts of people, and not locking them up,” he said. Mr. Robertson’s remarks were hailed by pro-legalization groups, who called them a potentially important endorsement in their efforts to roll back marijuana penalties and prohibitions, which residents of Colorado and Washington will vote on this fall. “I love him, man, I really do,” said Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of current and former law enforcement officials who oppose the drug war. “He’s singing my song.” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16496 - Posted: 03.10.2012

Arran Frood The powerful hallucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) has potential as a treatment for alcoholism, according to a retrospective analysis of studies published in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The study1, by neuroscientist Teri Krebs and clinical psychologist Pål-Ørjan Johansen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, is the first-ever quantitative meta-analysis of LSD–alcoholism clinical trials. The researchers sifted through thousands of records to collect data from randomized, double-blind trials that compared one dose of LSD to a placebo. Of 536 participants in six trials, 59% of people receiving LSD reported lower levels of alcohol misuse, compared to 38% of people who received a placebo. “We were surprised that the effect was so clear and consistent,” says Krebs. She says that the problem with most studies done at that time was that there were too few participants, which limited statistical power. “But when you combine the data in a meta-analysis, we have more than 500 patients and there is definitely an effect,” she says. In general, the reported benefits lasted three to six months. Their findings are published today in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. Psychedelics were promoted by psychiatrists in the 1950s as having a range of medical uses — to treat conditions such as schizophrenia, for example — before political pressures in the United States and elsewhere largely ended the work. “Alcoholism was considered one of the most promising clinical applications for LSD,” says Johansen. Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson is said to have espoused the benefits of LSD in the book Pass It On: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the AA Message Reached the World. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16495 - Posted: 03.10.2012

Powerful but misleading marketing that for years pushed the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin has left potentially tens of thousands of Canadians with the burden of addiction, critics claim. OxyContin helped transform the medical landscape after it was introduced in the late 1990s, touted by doctors and pitched as a less addictive alternative to other opioids. Cancer patients and others suffering from chronic pain considered the pill — twice as strong as morphine — to be a godsend. But the CBC's The Fifth Estate found that as soon as several provinces dropped OxyContin this year as a publicly funded medication and it vanished from shelves, the drug once praised as a blessing became a curse for some addicts. Watch The Fifth Estate Unknown to some doctors and pharmacists when OxyContin debuted were its extremely addictive properties, a fact that may have contributed to its becoming an international best-selling painkiller. OxyContin was taken off the Canadian market this month. To replace the drug, Purdue Pharma, the company that makes OxyContin, began manufacturing a new formulation called OxyNeo. The replacement pill can't be crushed or liquefied and has thus been promoted as less prone to abuse. There are otherwise no clinical differences between the two brand names. © CBC 2012

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 8: General Principles of Sensory Processing, Touch, and Pain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 16494 - Posted: 03.10.2012

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV It seems like it would be hard to miss the face of an actress morphing into another. But a new animation by psychologist Sebastiaan Mathôt from VU University in Amsterdam shows that Natalie Portman can turn into Leighton Meester right before your eyes and you won't notice when there's motion in the scene. In the first clip, fix your eyes on the cross in the centre of the video. As the changing faces rotate, you probably won't notice that they're morphing. But when they stop turning, the transformation becomes apparent. A second example shows that the faces themselves don't need to move to trick your brain. As you stare at a green dot in the centre, a rapidly-changing background makes you blind to the shifting face. When the motion stops, the creepy metamorphosis is obvious once again. The illusion is a version of a novel brain trick, devised last year by Jordan Suchow and George Alvarez from Harvard University, which won first place at the Best Illusion of the Year contest. It occurs due to a phenomenon called change blindness, where you can completely miss an obvious change when looking at a busy scene. When nothing much is happening, your visual system is more sensitive to change, but as the action increases, a transformation needs to be more dramatic to be detected. "In a sense, we protect ourselves from being overwhelmed by too much change," says Mathôt. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 10: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 7: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16493 - Posted: 03.10.2012

By Rachel Ehrenberg That honeybee lazily probing a flower may actually be a stealth explorer, genetically destined to seek adventure from birth. Bees who consistently explore new environments for food have different genetic activity in their brains than their less-adventurous hive mates, scientists report in the March 9 Science. This genetic activity relates to making particular chemical signals, some of which are linked to behaviors such as thrill-seeking in people. “This is an exciting paper that raises a lot of interesting questions,” says neurobiologist Alison Mercer of the University of Otago in New Zealand. To test the notion of whether bees have personality, scientists led by entomologist Gene Robinson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign focused on scout bees that embark on reconnaissance missions for food. The team, which included bee expert Tom Seeley of Cornell University, placed a hive in an enclosure with a brightly colored feeder full of sugar water and marked the bees that visited. A few days later, the researchers added a new feeder to the enclosure, while keeping the original one full of fresh sugar water. Some of the bees discovered the new feeder and were also marked. Then the researchers removed the new feeder and added a different one in a new place. Again, some of the bees discovered this new feeder. The bees that found the new feeder both times were considered scouts, while the bees that ate only at the same old feeder were considered nonscouts. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 16492 - Posted: 03.10.2012