For years, the advice of psychologists and mothers alike has been to express your emotions in order to achieve a balanced mental state. This might bring up some problems when your anxiety is going to make that presentation look shoddy, but hey, it's better to show emotions than be like Spock, right? Not quite. A new hypothesis on the issue of emotional expression is that we're actually better off being flexible about how much we show our feelings – neither letting it all out nor keeping it all in. In order to test this hypothesis, George Bonanno of Columbia University's Teachers College compared college students' distress to their ability to control their expression of emotions in a study to be published in the July issue of Psychological Science, a publication of the American Psychological Society. Soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks, he measured New York City college freshmen's psychological distress at the attacks as well as the transition to college life, and had them participate in a procedure that had them demonstrate heightened, suppressed, and normal levels of emotion. A year and a half later, the subjects came back and Bonanno once again measured their distress. Bonanno found that the students who were the least distressed after one and a half years were the same students who were able to both express and suppress their emotions on command. He also found these students to be better adjusted. So maybe a little bit of suppression is healthy once in a while, just like a little bit of emoting is healthy once in a while. The key, according to Bonanno's study, is to know when to let it show.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 5563 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY Sex education in American middle and high schools has taken on new meaning. At institutions that accept government money, teachers must advocate abstinence until marriage as the only certain way to prevent unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, and may not mention contraception except to point out the failure rates of various methods. On its face, this may seem perfectly logical, because if a teenager refrains from sexual activity, it is highly improbable that either pregnancy or an S.T.D. can result. But is the policy realistic? Experts who have spent decades studying teenage sexual activity have gathered ample evidence to refute the basic premise of abstinence-only sex education. They say this approach is not adequate to protect youngsters from unwanted pregnancies and disease. "There is nothing in any peer-reviewed scientific journal to suggest that teaching abstinence-only is effective in getting teens to delay sexual activity," said one expert, Cynthia Dailard, a lawyer and senior public policy associate at the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights. In contrast, Ms. Dailard has reported, considerable evidence shows that sex education promoting abstinence, but also providing information on the benefits of contraception for those who do not remain abstinent, does delay the start of sexual activity. Such programs also reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancies and S.T.D.'s, she has found. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5562 - Posted: 06.01.2004

Dolphin DNA Shows Dads Leave Home By Heather Catchpole, ABC Science Online — The first use of genetic testing to study dolphin social behavior shows males are not the homebodies once thought, new Australian research shows. Male dolphins swim away from home to reduce the chance of inbreeding, and competition with relatives for food and sex. Luciana Moeller and Luciano Beheregaray from Sydney's Macquarie University published their research in the latest issue of the journal Molecular Ecology. Their research contradicted earlier studies on dolphins off the coast of Florida and in Shark Bay in Western Australia, which showed males and females were loyal to the place they were born. The researchers studied bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) resident at Port Stephens and Jervis Bay, about 200 kilometers north and south of Sydney respectively. They took small biopsy samples from the dolphins and used the same genetic testing technique used in human paternity testing to see which dolphins were related. The genetic tests showed that females were more closely related to the rest of the group than the males. Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Animal Migration
Link ID: 5561 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Brain scans show how sights and smells evoke the past. Michael Hopkin Marcel Proust reflected that "the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, ready to remind us... the immense edifice of memory". It's a familiar phenomenon: a single smell or sound has the power to conjure up entire scenes from the past. Now a British-led group of neuroscientists has come up with an explanation. The key, the researchers claim, is that memories relating to an event are scattered across the brain's sensory centres but marshalled by a region called the hippocampus. If one of the senses is stimulated to evoke a memory, other memories featuring other senses are also triggered. This explains why a familiar song or the smell of a former lover's perfume has the power to conjure up a detailed picture of past times, says Jay Gottfried of University College London's Department of Imaging Neuroscience, who led a recent study of memory retrieval. "That's the beauty of our memory system," he says. "Imagine a nice day on the beach. The smell of sun lotion, the friends you were with, the beer you were drinking; any of these could trigger memories of the whole thing." © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Attention
Link ID: 5560 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MIAMI -- Rats with spinal cord injuries regained 70 percent of their normal walking function with a three-part treatment hailed as a breakthrough in paralysis research at the University of Miami School of Medicine. The study at the university's Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, to be published on Monday in the June issue of the journal Nature Medicine, produced results "by far greater than what we've seen in anything else," said the principal researcher, Dr. Mary Bartlett Bunge. "It opens up a potential new avenue of treatment for human spinal cord injury," said Bunge, who declined to speculate when human trials might be attempted. The spinal cord carries messages between the brain and the muscles through a network of nerve cells. Normally, chemical signals prevent those nerves from regrowing, resulting in paralysis when the network is severed by an injury. Regrowing nerve cells and reconnecting them is the holy grail of spinal cord research. © Copyright 2004, Lycos, Inc.

Keyword: Regeneration; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 5559 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Debra Sherman CHICAGO (Reuters) - A 44-year-old architect endured impotence and gastrointestinal disorders as he tried for more than two years to find out which medicine could cure his depression. His own brain might provide the answer. The Chicago resident, who has given up his search, is one of millions of people who might benefit from technology that allows scientists to peer inside patients' brains in hopes of cutting down the arduous process of evaluating antidepressants. Scientists can use at least three methods -- positron emission topography (better known as PET), functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), or electroencephalogram (EEG) -- to study the brain and its functions. Aspect Medical Systems Inc. has developed a system based on the EEG, which records the firing of brain cells, blood flow and other activity, to gauge the effectiveness of antidepressants. The Newton, Massachusetts, company's device, developed with the University of California at Los Angeles, is a disposable strip of electrodes that affixes to the forehead and feeds electronic signals into a monitor. It measures activity in the frontal lobe, where depression often manifests itself. Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc.

Keyword: Depression; Brain imaging
Link ID: 5558 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Cells derived from the inside of a tooth might someday prove an effective way to treat the brains of people suffering from Parkinson's disease. A study in the May 1 issue of the European Journal of Neuroscience shows dental pulp cells provide great support for nerve cells lost in Parkinson's disease and could be transplanted directly into the affected parts of the brain. The study's lead author is Christopher Nosrat, an assistant professor of biological and materials sciences at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. This is not the first test of stem cells as a therapy for Parkinson's disease-type illnesses, known as neurodegenerative diseases, but Nosrat noted that it is the first to use post-natal stem cells grown from more readily available tooth pulp in the nervous system. Using dental pulp has other advantages besides its availability, Nosrat said. The cells produce a host of beneficial "neurotrophic" factors, which promote nerve cell survival.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 5557 - Posted: 05.31.2004

Talk of the Nation audio on NPR A new study in rats shows that taking aspirin during pregnancy reduces the libido of male offspring. Guests: Margaret M. McCarthy, Ph.D. *Professor, Program in Neuroscience and the Department of Physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5556 - Posted: 05.31.2004

Sex offenders could be made to take lie detector tests, as part of Home Secretary David Blunkett's plans to keep closer tabs on them. But while the polygraph is for some a truth serum, to others it's a big fib. It's an almost mythical machine, a bundle of wires and metal with the ability to read minds. On the surface, the lie detector could solve a myriad of problems. Cheating husband? Dishonest employee? Potential terrorist? Just hook them up to the polygraph and let science be the judge. A polygraph machine can't actually tell what a person is thinking, of course. But it does measure heart rate and blood pressure, respiratory rate and sweatiness. It's through these responses that the examiner determines whether a subject is answering truthfully. While some praise the polygraph for the investigative latitude it provides, critics say there is no magic bullet, and that all too often the lie detector gets it wrong. "The polygraph is the translation of a mythological device into a technological idiom," says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Sciences told the Boston Globe. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 5555 - Posted: 05.29.2004

By William H. Calvin Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain—and How It Changed the World by Carl Zimmer Free Press, 2004, $26.00 The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought by Gary Marcus Basic Books, 2004; $26.00 IF ANY ORGAN COULD CLAIM to be the seat of feeling and intellect, surely it was the heart. Until three centuries ago, that seemed a fact too obvious to contest. Unlike other organs, you can feel your heart pounding away inside you. If you start thinking exciting thoughts, it beats even faster. If it stops beating, you are animated no more. And so the heart seemed to be the seat of the soul. “Soul” was the name for what animated something, what gave it goals and the ability to make things happen. Just as people now distinguish hardware from software, anatomy from physiology, brain from mind, nouns from verbs, and form from function, it was once commonplace to distinguish body from soul. Besides The Soul, philosophers also believed in various “little souls,” which made the bodily organs into something more than meat. The stomach’s soul, for instance, was said to attract food down from the mouth. Once seventeenth-century science began to realize the heart is just a humble pump, it was as if the soul had suddenly fled the chest like a restless ghost to lodge itself in the head. Today we physiologists would point out that the “little soul” animating an organ is simply its function, which arises from the emergent properties of a “committee” of cells. And we would suggest that the big, catchall Soul is one of the brain’s higher functions. Copyright © Natural History Magazine, Inc., 2004

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 5554 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Can the behaviorist's insistence on distinguishing animal from human cognition be reconciled with evolutionary continuity? By Frans B. M. de Waal Do Animals Think? by Clive D.L. Wynne Princeton University Press, 2004; $26.95 Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings by Duane M. Rumbaugh and David A. Washburn Yale University Press, 2003; $35.00 IF YOUR DOG DROPS A TENNIS BALL in front of you and looks up at you with tail wagging, do you figure she wants to play? How naive! Who says dogs have desires and intentions? Her behavior is merely the product of reinforcement: she has been rewarded for it in the past. Many scientists have grown up with the so-called law of effect, the idea that all behavior is conditioned by reward and punishment. This principle of learning was advocated by a dominant school of twentieth-century psychological thought known as American behaviorism. The school’s founders, John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, were happy to explain all conceivable behavior within the narrow confines of what Skinner called “operant conditioning.” The mind, if such a thing even existed, remained a black box. In the early days, the behaviorists applied their doctrine in equal measure to people and other animals. Watson, for instance, to demonstrate the power of his methods, intentionally created a phobia for furry objects in a human baby. Initially “little Albert” was unafraid of a tame white rat. But after Watson paired each appearance of the rat with sharp noises right behind poor Albert’s head, fear of rats was the inevitable outcome. Even human speech was thought to be the product of simple reinforcement learning. The behaviorists’ goal of unifying the science of behavior was a noble one—but alas, outside academia the masses resisted. They stubbornly refused to accept that their own behavior could be explained without considering thoughts, feelings, and intentions. Don’t we all have mental lives, don’t we look into the future, aren’t we rational beings? Eventually, the behaviorists caved in and exempted the bipedal ape from their theory of everything. Copyright © Natural History Magazine, Inc., 2004

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 5553 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Nathan J. Emery Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings. Duane M. Rumbaugh and David A. Washburn. xvii + 326 pp. Yale University Press, 2003. $35. How can you tell whether an animal is intelligent? Perhaps this is an impossible question to answer for species as different from us as honeybees and fish, but what about our closest relatives, the great apes? Shouldn't their cognitive abilities be easier to comprehend because of our anatomical and genetic similarities? Or does the degree of similarity cause biases in our thinking that may cloud our understanding? Ever since Darwin, biologists have been interested in the minds of these animals. But we are still far from discovering the real similarities and differences between ape and human intelligence—despite a wealth of important recent research, some of which is documented in Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings, by Duane M. Rumbaugh and David A. Washburn. There are two ways to approach the investigation of mental ability in primates. Comparative psychologists conduct laboratory tests of learning, memory and problem solving. In the first half of the 20th century, Robert Yerkes in the United States and Wolfgang Köhler in Europe were among the first to confront apes with problems whose solution required complex cognitive skills (how to traverse a maze, for example, or to obtain food that they cannot grab directly). Yerkes and Köhler wanted to determine whether apes had the mental equipment to solve such problems and to find out whether in attempting a solution they would employ the same processes or psychological mechanisms as humans. © Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 5552 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Stan Persky Clive D.L. Wynne, Do Animals Think? (Princeton, 268 pages, 2004) The answer to the title question of Clive Wynne’s book, Do Animals Think?, is: Not very much. I mention this right off the bat not only to dispel unnecessary suspense but because Wynne, a University of Florida psychology prof and the author of an earlier textbook on animal cognition, writes so charmingly about the behaviour of honeybees, bats, pigeons, and dolphins that one almost forgets that for considerable stretches of Do Animals Think? he says very little about thinking at all. But his survey of what we do and don’t know about non-human animal thinking and doing is a useful antidote to widespread sentimentality about what goes on in the brains of birds, beasts, and the rest of us. Students in the first-year university philosophy classes that I teach often believe that their dogs, cats, budgies, and goldfish are thinking pretty much the same thoughts they are. Unfortunately, some of them are right, I point out—but I point it out only when I’m in a grumpy mood. Copyright © 2002 Dooney's Cafe

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 5551 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Now, it seems, even the bird-brained have theories of mind HUMANS like to regard themselves as exceptional. Other animals do not have complex, syntactical languages. Nor do most of them appear to enjoy the same level of consciousness that people do. And many philosophers believe humans are the only species which understands that others have their own personal thoughts. That understanding is known in the trade as having a “theory of mind”, and it is considered the gateway to such cherished human qualities as empathy and deception. Biologists have learned to treat such assertions with caution. In particular, they have found evidence of theories of mind in a range of mammals, from gorillas to goats. But two recent studies suggest that even mammalian studies may be looking at the question too narrowly. Birds, it seems, can have theories of mind, too. In the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Bernd Heinrich and Thomas Bugnyar of the University of Vermont, in Burlington, describe a series of experiments they have carried out on ravens. They wanted to see how these birds, which are known to be (at least by avian standards) both clever and sociable, would respond to human gaze. Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2004.

Keyword: Autism; Animal Communication
Link ID: 5550 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Robert Lanza and Nadia Rosenthal Stem cells raise the prospect of regenerating failing body parts and curing diseases that have so far defied drug-based treatment. Patients are buoyed by reports of the cells' near-miraculous properties, but many of the most publicized scientific studies have subsequently been refuted, and other data have been distorted in debates over the propriety of deriving some of these cells from human embryos. Provocative and conflicting claims have left the public (and most scientists) confused as to whether stem cell treatments are even medically feasible. If legal and funding restrictions in the U.S. and other countries were lifted immediately, could doctors start treating patients with stem cells the next day? Probably not. Many technical obstacles must be overcome and unanswered questions resolved before stem cells can safely fulfill their promise. For instance, just identifying a true stem cell can be tricky. For scientists to be able to share results and gauge the success of techniques for controlling stem cell behavior, we must first know that the cells we are studying actually possess the ability to serve as the source, or "stem," of a variety of cell types while themselves remaining in a generic state of potential. But for all the intensive scrutiny of stem cells, they cannot be distinguished by appearance. They are defined by their behavior. © 1996-2004 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 5549 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New research may provide a key insight into how the brain switches from sleep to wakefulness. Studying the brains of narcoleptic dogs, they've identified a class of neurons that seems to determine when the animals are alert and attuned to their surroundings. During sleep, the body goes limp and the mind drifts off. Researchers regard these processes as two separate phenomena, and to study them, they often turn to specially bred dogs with narcolepsy--a disorder characterized by uncontrollable sleepiness. Like many human narcoleptics, the dogs also suffer bouts of cataplexy, episodes in which intense emotions (brought on by rough play, tasty treats, or other stimuli) cause them to lose all muscle tone and collapse in a heap, unable to move but wide-eyed and alert. This condition mimics the physical aspect of sleep, without the mental aspect. By recording the electrical chatter of neurons in the dogs' brains, Jerry Siegel and his colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, previously found that in cataplexy, certain neurons in a brain region called the hypothalamus reduce their activity. These neurons release one of two neurotransmitters, noradrenaline or serotonin, suggesting that these neurotransmitters are important for maintaining the physical side of wakefulness. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 5548 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers at Edinburgh University have claimed they can predict who is susceptible to obesity. They said their work explains how some people can consume high-fat food without putting on weight. They have been working with mice which, like humans, are prone to becoming fat when given a rich diet. The study discovered that some of the mice have a natural ability to deal with a "junk food" diet without suffering ill-effects. The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust and led by endocrinologist Dr Nik Morton. It involved feeding mice a diet of "mouse hamburgers" to simulate the food consumed by many humans. Dr Morton said: "Until now we knew little about why some of us can follow this lifestyle and stay lean and healthy, whereas others pile on the pounds. "This research has shown one of the possible reasons why individuals have such differing responses to the intake of too much fatty food: an enzyme we express in our fat stores and liver." Some of the mice were found to have a higher level of the enzyme (11-HSD-1) which made them more prone to becoming obese.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 5547 - Posted: 05.28.2004

By ELIZABETH OLSON - Four decades after the surgeon general's first report on smoking and health linked cigarette use to lung cancer, larynx cancer and bronchitis, the latest annual report has further expanded the list of smoking-related diseases. The new report, issued Thursday by Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, concludes that in addition to the many other diseases listed in the intervening years, smoking can cause cancers of the cervix, kidney, pancreas and stomach, as well as abdominal aortic aneurysms, acute myeloid leukemia, cataracts, pneumonia and gum disease. The report, Dr. Carmona said at a news briefing, "documents that smoking causes disease in nearly every organ in the body at every stage of life." Among the other disorders listed since the first report, in 1964, are cancers of the esophagus, throat and bladder; chronic lung disease; and chronic heart and cardiovascular diseases. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5546 - Posted: 05.28.2004

by John Tidwell So there you are, gazing proudly at all those cute, colorful reef fish in your saltwater aquarium, serene in the knowledge that you know precisely which fish is what, right down to the species’ names and the individuals’ genders. But wait—weren't there supposed to be two red female stoplight parrotfish? How the heck did a green male get in there? Better get used to it—he used to be a she. In the wild, gender ambiguity is natural and practically anything goes, as long as it works. For the past couple billion years, plant and animal species have tried all sorts of ways to solve the problem of how to survive and make as many babies as possible. In that time, they evolved a mind-reeling array of solutions. From protozoa to pill bugs to porgies, changing from one sex to another is not just biological ingenuity, it’s a way of life. It’s also shocking proof that gender is a much more versatile, flexible tool in Mother Nature’s kit than anyone had previously realized—and is kinkier than you ever imagined. Your very green, very male stoplight parrotfish eyes you knowingly through the glass, as if to say “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” What in the name of Charles Darwin is going on here? Copyright 2004 Friends of the National Zoo.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 5545 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Is being fearful or shy actually bad for your health? Two researchers are studying the effect of these states of mind on our stress levels, and, in turn, our health. Sonia Cavigelli, a biological psychologist at the University of Chicago, studied 14 pairs of brother rats, with each pair consisting of one brave rat and one fearful rat (or, one neophilic and one neophobic), and exposed them to new environments with unfamiliar objects. The brave rats explored quickly and willingly, but the fearful rats froze up and did not explore much. She told Discover Magazine that it's bad news to be a scaredy rat. "What we found was that the fearful animals are dying at a rate approximately 60 percent faster than the non-fearful animals," says Cavigelli. "The difference in age between the two kinds of animals, if you compare it to humans, was approximately a difference of about 10 years." © ScienCentral, 2000-2004.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 5544 - Posted: 06.24.2010