By Natalia Sylvester My parents refused to let my sister and me forget how to speak Spanish by pretending they didn’t understand when we spoke English. Spanish was the only language we were allowed to speak in our one-bedroom apartment in Miami in the late 1980s. We both graduated from English as a second language lessons in record time as kindergartners and first graders, and we longed to play and talk and live in English as if it were a shiny new toy. “No te entiendo,” my mother would say, shaking her head and shrugging in feigned confusion anytime we slipped into English. My sister and I would let out exasperated sighs at having to repeat ourselves in Spanish, only to be interrupted by a correction of our grammar and vocabulary after every other word. One day you’ll thank me, my mother retorted. That day has come to pass 30 years later in ordinary places like Goodwill, a Walmart parking lot, a Costco Tire Center. I’m most thankful that I can speak Spanish because it has allowed me to help others. There was the young mother who wanted to know whether she could leave a cumbersome diaper bin aside at the register at Goodwill while she shopped. The cashier shook her head dismissively and said she didn’t understand. It wasn’t difficult to read the woman’s gestures — she was struggling to push her baby’s carriage while lugging the large box around the store. Even after I told the cashier what the woman was saying, her irritation was palpable. The air of judgment is one I’ve come to recognize: How dare this woman not speak English, how dare this other woman speak both English and Spanish. It was a small moment, but it speaks to how easy it would have been for the cashier to ignore a young Latina mother struggling to care for her child had there not been someone around to interpret. “I don’t understand,” she kept saying, though the mother’s gestures transcended language. I choose not to understand is what she really meant. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 26629 - Posted: 09.21.2019

By Knvul Sheikh One afternoon in April 1929, a journalist from a Moscow newspaper turned up in Alexander Luria’s office with an unusual problem: He never forgot things. Dr. Luria, a neuropsychologist, proceeded to test the man, who later became known as subject S., by spouting long strings of numbers and words, foreign poems and scientific formulas, all of which S. recited back without fail. Decades later, S. still remembered the lists of numbers perfectly whenever Dr. Luria retested him. But S.’s ability to remember was also a hindrance in everyday life. He had a hard time understanding abstract concepts or figurative language, and he was terrible at recognizing faces because he had memorized them at an exact point in time, with specific facial expressions and features. The ability to forget, scientists eventually came to realize, was just as vital as the ability to remember. “We’re inundated with so much information every day, and much of that information is turned into memories in the brain,” said Ronald Davis, a neurobiologist at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla. “We simply cannot deal with all of it.” Researchers like Dr. Davis argue that forgetting is an active mechanism that the brain employs to clear out unnecessary pieces of information so we can retain new ones. Others have gone a step further, suggesting that forgetting is required for the mental flexibility inherent in creative thinking and imagination. A new paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, points to a group of neurons in the brain that may be responsible for helping the brain to forget. Akihiro Yamanaka, a neuroscientist at Nagoya University in Japan, and his team stumbled across the cells, known as melanin-concentrating hormone, or M.C.H., neurons, while studying sleep regulation in mice. Unlike most of the brain’s neurons, which are active when animals are awake, M.C.H. neurons in the hypothalamus start firing electrical signals most actively when a sleeping animal is in a stage called R.E.M. sleep. This phase of sleep is characterized by rapid eye movement, an elevated pulse, unique brain waves and, in humans, vivid dreams. When the researchers tracked M.C.H. signals in mice, they found that the cells were suppressing neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region known to play a role in the consolidation of memory. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 26628 - Posted: 09.20.2019

The mysterious ailments experienced by some 40 Canadian and U.S. diplomats and their families while stationed in Cuba may have had nothing to do with sonic "attacks" identified in earlier studies. According to a new Canadian study, obtained exclusively by Radio-Canada's investigative TV program Enquête, the cause could instead be neurotoxic agents used in pesticide fumigation. A number of Canadians and Americans living in Havana fell victim to an unexplained illness starting in late 2016, complaining of concussion-like symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty concentrating. Some described hearing a buzzing or high-pitched sounds before falling sick. In the wake of the health problems experienced over the past three years, Global Affairs Canada commissioned a clinical study by a team of multidisciplinary researchers in Halifax, affiliated with the Brain Repair Centre, Dalhousie University and the Nova Scotia Health Authority. "The working hypothesis actually came only after we had most of the results," Dr. Alon Friedman, the study's lead author, said in an interview. The researchers identified a damaged region of the brain that is responsible for memory, concentration and sleep-and-wake cycle, among other things, and then looked at how this region could come to be injured. "There are very specific types of toxins that affect these kinds of nervous systems ... and these are insecticides, pesticides, organophosphates — specific neurotoxins," said Friedman. "So that's why we generated the hypothesis that we then went to test in other ways." Twenty-six individuals participated in the study, including a control group of people who never lived in Havana. ©2019 CBC/Radio-Canada

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Attention
Link ID: 26627 - Posted: 09.20.2019

By Matt Richtel and Sheila Kaplan The number of vaping-related lung illnesses has risen to 530 probable cases, according to an update on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a Missouri man became the eighth to die from the mysterious ailments. During a news briefing, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the C.D.C., said officials expect more deaths because some people are suffering from severe lung illnesses. But the nation’s public health officials said they still were unable to pinpoint the cause, or causes, of the sicknesses that have resulted in hundreds of hospitalizations, with many in intensive care units. Dr. Schuchat said some patients are on ventilators and therefore are unable to tell investigators what substances they vaped. “I wish we had more answers,” she said. The C.D.C. provided the first demographic snapshot of the afflicted: Nearly three-quarters are male, two-thirds between 18 and 34. Sixteen percent are 18 or younger. “More than half of cases are under 25 years of age,” Dr. Schuchat said. Illnesses have now been reported in 38 states, and one United States territory. In the most recent case, in St. Louis, officials said on Thursday that a man in his mid-40s who had chronic pain had begun vaping last May. He was hospitalized Aug. 22 with respiratory problems and died on Wednesday. “He started out with shortness of breath and it rapidly progressed and deteriorated, developing into what is called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS),” said Dr. Michael Plisco, a critical care pulmonologist at Mercy Hospital St. Louis. “Once the lungs are injured by vaping, we don’t know how quickly it worsens and if it depends on other risk factors.” He and other officials said they did not know what substance the patient had been vaping, but Dr. Plisco said in an interview that tissue samples from his lungs showed cells stained with oil. Some products include oils that if inhaled — even small droplets — can cling to the lungs and airways and cause acute inflammation, doctors have said. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26626 - Posted: 09.20.2019

Heidi Ledford Tumour cells can plug into — and feed off — the brain’s complex network of neurons, according to a trio of studies. This nefarious ability could explain the mysterious behaviour of certain tumours, and point to new ways of treating cancer. The studies1,2,3, published on 18 September in Nature, describe this startling capability in brain cancers called gliomas, as well as in some breast cancers that spread to the brain. The findings bolster a growing realization among doctors and scientists that the nervous system plays an important role in the growth of cancers, says Michelle Monje, a paediatric neuro-oncologist at Stanford University in California and lead author of one of the studies1. Even so, finding cancer cells that behave like neurons was a surprise. “It’s unsettling,” Monje says. “We don’t think of cancer as forming an electrically active tissue like the brain.” Feeding off the brain Frank Winkler, a neurologist at Heidelberg University in Germany and a lead author on another of the Nature studies2, stumbled on the phenomenon in 2014 while studying communication networks established by cells in some brain tumours. He and his team discovered synapses, structures that neurons use to communicate with one another, in the tumours. It was “crazy stuff”, Winkler says. “Our first reaction was, ‘This is just difficult to believe.’” The researchers assumed that the tumour synapses would be a random occurrence. But as Winkler and his colleagues report in their latest study, they found synapses in glioma samples taken from cancer cells grown in culture, human glioma tumours transplanted into mice and glioma samples taken from ten people.

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 26625 - Posted: 09.19.2019

Lindsey Bever An autistic “Sesame Street” muppet is caught in a conflict between the most prominent autism organization in the United States advocating for early intervention, and autistic adults who see the condition as a difference, not a disease needing to be cured. Since 2017, a Muppet named Julia has given children on the spectrum a role model and helped parents and peers understand the condition. The red-haired, green-eyed 4-year-old flaps her hands when she gets excited, cries when loud noises overwhelm her, strokes her stuffed rabbit for comfort and communicates in her own way and her own time, sometimes using a communication device. Autistic self-advocates, who were consulted in her creation, have applauded how she is not only depicted but also accepted by other human and Muppet characters on the show. Over the summer, Julia became embroiled in a controversy over a partnership with Autism Speaks, an influential and well-funded organization that some autistic adults say has promoted ideas and interventions that have traumatized many people in their community. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), an organization run by and for autistic people, announced it had cut ties with “Sesame Street” after the children’s program partnered with Autism Speaks to make the Muppet the face of a public service campaign encouraging early screening and diagnosis of autism. ASAN has accused Autism Speaks of using “language of acceptance and understanding to push resources that further stigma and treat autistic people as burdens on our families.” It contends that resource materials from Autism Speaks encourage parents “to view autism as a terrible disease from which their child can ‘get better.’ ”

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 26624 - Posted: 09.19.2019

Shawna Williams Pain, unpleasant though it may be, is essential to most mammals’ survival, a warning to back off before we lose a limb or worsen a wound. So it was curious when, in a 2008 study, molecular physiologist Gary Lewin and his colleagues found that, unlike most mammals, naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) didn’t lick or flick a limb that had been injected with a small amount of capsaicin—the hot in hot chili pepper. The mole rats turned out to be similarly nonchalant when exposed to dilute hydrochloric acid. “We wondered, first of all, how they became insensitive to these things,” says Lewin, who heads up a lab at Berlin’s Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. The team took an evolutionary approach to finding the answer. Several group members traveled to the naked mole rat’s native territory of East Africa to try out three common pain-causing substances on seven other mole rat species, plus the more distantly related East African root rat. They found that, in addition to the naked mole rat, the Natal mole rat was insensitive to capsaicin, while the Cape mole rat and the root rat didn’t seem to feel a burn from the hydrochloric acid. Most startlingly, one species, the highveld mole rat (Cryptomys hottentotus pretoriae), didn’t flinch when injected with a few milliliters of a highly diluted solution of an irritant present in mustard and wasabi known as AITC—an agent that even the naked mole rat reacted to. When team member Karlien Debus donned a gas mask to inject a similar amount of 100 percent AITC under the skin of a highveld mole rat, there was still no response. “Probably the AITC was the most interesting because AITC is a substance that actually every [other] animal in the entire animal kingdom avoids,” Lewin says. An electrophilic compound, AITC can crosslink an animal’s proteins and damage its cells. © 1986–2019 The Scientist.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Evolution
Link ID: 26623 - Posted: 09.19.2019

By Kim Tingley Men have a far greater appetite for sex and are more attracted to pornography than women are. This is the timeworn stereotype that science has long reinforced. Alfred Kinsey, America’s first prominent sexologist, published in the late 1940s and early 1950s his survey results confirming that men are aroused more easily and often by sexual imagery than women. It made sense, evolutionary psychologists theorized, that women’s erotic pleasure might be tempered by the potential burdens of pregnancy, birth and child rearing — that they would require a deeper emotional connection with a partner to feel turned on than men, whose primal urge is simply procreation. Modern statistics showing that men are still the dominant consumers of online porn seem to support this thinking, as does the fact that men are more prone to hypersexuality, whereas a lack of desire and anorgasmia are more prevalent in women. So it was somewhat surprising when a paper in the prestigious journal P.N.A.S. reported in July that what happens in the brains of female study subjects when they look at sexual imagery is pretty much the same as what happens in the brains of their male counterparts. The researchers, led by Hamid Noori at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany, weren’t initially interested in exploring sexual behavior. They were trying to find ways to standardize experiments that use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fM.R.I.) to observe how the brain responds to visual stimuli. In order to do that, they needed to compare past studies that used similar methods but returned diverse results. They happened to choose studies in which male and female volunteers looked at sexual imagery, both because doing so tends to generate strong signals in the brain, which would make findings easier to analyze, and because this sort of research has long produced “inconsistent and even contradictory” results, as they note in their paper. Identifying the reasons for such discrepancies might help researchers design better experiments. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 26622 - Posted: 09.18.2019

Damian Carrington Environment editor Air pollution particles have been found on the foetal side of placentas, indicating that unborn babies are directly exposed to the black carbon produced by motor traffic and fuel burning. The research is the first study to show the placental barrier can be penetrated by particles breathed in by the mother. It found thousands of the tiny particles per cubic millimetre of tissue in every placenta analysed. The link between exposure to dirty air and increased miscarriages, premature births and low birth weights is well established. The research suggests the particles themselves may be the cause, not solely the inflammatory response the pollution produces in mothers. Damage to foetuses has lifelong consequences and Prof Tim Nawrot at Hasselt University in Belgium, who led the study, said: “This is the most vulnerable period of life. All the organ systems are in development. For the protection of future generations, we have to reduce exposure.” He said governments had the responsibility of cutting air pollution but that people should avoid busy roads when possible. A comprehensive global review concluded that air pollution may be damaging every organ and virtually every cell in the human body. Nanoparticles have also been found to cross the blood-brain barrier and billions have been found in the hearts of young city dwellers. While air pollution is reducing in some nations, the evidence of harm caused by even low levels is rapidly increasing and 90% of the world’s population live in places where air pollution is above World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 26621 - Posted: 09.18.2019

/ By Gitit Ginat In 1978, at the age of 18, Celine Sabag took a trip to Israel. There, she met a 25-year-old bus driver and spent three weeks touring Jerusalem with him. “He was nice and polite,” she recalls. When the man invited her to his parents’ empty apartment, she accepted the invitation. The pair had been sitting together and laughing for about an hour when the door opened. “I turned to look,” says Sabag, “and my gut told me: ‘Something awful is about to happen.’” Four young men were standing in the doorway. They entered the living room, the fourth locking the door behind him. “I believe they had done it before,” she says. At first, Sabag was dubious. “I said: ‘Fighting? No way. What do I have to do with fighting?’” Sabag returned that night to her hotel, and then fled back to her home in France. She felt guilt and shame, and did not tell anyone that five men had raped her that night in the apartment. Shortly after her homecoming, she tried to commit suicide, the first of many attempts. Desperate for help, Sabag entered therapy. She saw psychiatrists and psychologists and started taking psychiatric medication. She also tried alternative approaches like movement therapy. Though some of the treatments helped, they didn’t eliminate the relentless flashbacks of the rape, her overwhelming fear of unknown men in corridors and on elevators and stairways, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Copyright 2019 Undark

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 26620 - Posted: 09.18.2019

By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online A drug used to treat enlarged prostates may be a powerful medicine against Parkinson's disease, according to an international team of scientists. Terazosin helps ease benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) by relaxing the muscles of the bladder and prostate. But researchers believe it has another beneficial action, on brain cells damaged by Parkinson's. They say the drug might slow Parkinson's progression - something that is not possible currently. Cell death They studied thousands of patients with both BPH and Parkinson's. Their findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, suggest the alpha-blocker drug protects brain cells from destruction. Parkinson's is a progressive condition affecting the brain, for which there is currently no cure. Existing Parkinson's treatments can help with some of the symptoms but can't slow or reverse the loss of neurons that occurs with the disease. Terazosin may help by activating an enzyme called PGK1 to prevent this brain cell death, the researchers, from the University of Iowa, in the US and the Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, China, say. When they tested the drug in rodents it appeared to slow or stop the loss of nerve cells. To begin assessing if the drug might have the same effect in people, they searched the medical records of millions of US patients to identify men with BPH and Parkinson's. They studied 2,880 Parkinson's patients taking terazosin or similar drugs that target PGK1 and a comparison group of 15,409 Parkinson's patients taking a different treatment for BPH that had no action on PGK1. Patients on the drugs targeting PGK1 appeared to fare better in terms of Parkinson's disease symptoms and progression, which the researchers say warrants more study in clinical trials, which they plan to begin this year. Lead researcher Dr Michael Welsh says while it is premature to talk about a cure, the findings have the potential to change the lives of people with Parkinson's. © 2019 BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 26619 - Posted: 09.17.2019

Teen girls — but not boys — who prefer to go to bed later are more likely to gain weight, compared to same-age girls who go to bed earlier, suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings by researchers at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, and other institutions appear in JAMA Pediatrics. A total of 804 adolescents (418 girls and 386 boys) ages 11 to 16 took part in the study. The children responded to questionnaires on their sleep habits and wore an actigraph — a wrist device that tracks movement. Researchers measured their waist size and calculated their proportion of body fat using a technique called dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. They also estimated the children’s social jet lag — the difference between their weeknight and weekend bedtimes. Those who stayed up far later on weekends than weeknights were considered to have high social jet lag. The authors noted that previous studies had found that adults who preferred to stay up late and had high social jet lag were more likely to gain weight than those who went to be earlier and did not have social jet lag. The researchers undertook the current study to determine if the same associations would be seen in young people. For girls, staying up later was associated with an average .58 cm increase in waist size and a .16 kg/m2 increase in body fat. Each hour of social jet lag was associated with a 1.19 cm larger waste size and a 0.45 kg/m2 increase in body fat. These associations were reduced—but still remained—after the researchers statistically adjusted for other factors known to influence weight, such as sleep duration, diet, physical activity and television viewing. Although the researchers found slight associations between these measures and waist size and body fat in boys, they were not statistically significant. The researchers concluded that improving sleep schedules may be helpful in preventing obesity in childhood and adolescence, especially in girls.

Keyword: Obesity; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 26618 - Posted: 09.17.2019

Scott Neuman New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday he will push for a ban on some electronic cigarettes amid a health scare linked to vaping — a move that would follow a similar ban enacted by Michigan and a call from President Trump for a federal prohibition on certain vaping products. Speaking in Manhattan, Cuomo, a Democrat, said the state's Public Health and Health Planning Council and state health commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker would issue an emergency regulation banning flavored e-cigarette products. "Vaping is dangerous," the governor said. "At a minimum, it is addicting young people to nicotine at a very early age." The push at the state and federal levels to ban certain vaping products comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that 380 confirmed or probable cases of lung disease associated with e-cigarettes had been identified in 36 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with six confirmed deaths. Earlier this month, Michigan imposed a similar ban. Bills to halt the sale of flavored vaping products have been introduced in California and Massachusetts. Last week, Trump, appearing beside Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, announced that his administration would move toward a federal ban of flavored vaping products. "Vaping has become a very big business, as I understand it, but we can't allow people to get sick and allow our youth to be so affected," the president said. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26617 - Posted: 09.17.2019

By Jane E. Brody Late one morning in June, L.J.’s husband got a distressed call from one of his wife’s colleagues. “You’d better come here right away. Your wife is acting weird,” the colleague said. Ms. J., who had just returned from a doctor visit during which she underwent a minor painful procedure, kept asking her colleague for a password despite being told each time that there was none. Ms. J., a 61-year-old arts administrator in New York who did not want her full name used, seemed physically O.K., her colleague recalled. She knew who she was, she walked and talked properly, but what she said made no sense. Plus, Ms. J. could remember nothing that happened after she left the doctor’s office and made her way to work. When Ms. J. continued to behave oddly, the alarmed colleague called 911 and paramedics took her to Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital. The next thing Ms. J. remembers is waking up hours later in a hospital bed and asking, “Where am I? Why am I here?” In the interim, Dr. Carolyn Brockington, a vascular surgeon and director of the hospital’s stroke unit, had examined her and ordered a CT scan and M.R.I. of her brain. All the results were normal. There was no physical weakness, no structural abnormality, no evidence of a stroke, seizure or transient ischemic attack. So, what had happened? A diagnosis of exclusion: Transient global amnesia, often called T.G.A. It is a temporary lapse in memory that can never be retrieved. “It’s as if the brain is on overload and takes a break to recharge,” Dr. Brockington said in an interview. She likened it to rebooting a computer to eradicate an unexplainable glitch. Those with T.G.A. do not experience any alteration in consciousness or abnormal movements. Only the ability to lay down memories is affected. All other parts of the brain appear to be working normally. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Stroke
Link ID: 26616 - Posted: 09.16.2019

By Ioanna Roumeliotis On any day, at any moment, Toronto’s subway can transform into a tragic stage. It's a place where every year people try to end their lives. Those acts of private despair become public spectacles that force transit workers and commuters to bear horrible witness, a collective trauma that for decades was shrouded in silence. A silence the Toronto Transit Commission is breaking. Talking openly about suicide is incredibly difficult and some consider it nothing short of dangerous. The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has a different perspective — that acknowledging what's going on is a crucial part of preventing people from taking their own lives, and showing how simple things can head off tragedy. "We are worried," says John O’Grady, who's been in charge of safety at the TTC for the past 21 years, referring to the fear of a contagion effect if people talk about suicide. "But not talking about it hasn’t worked." It was the death of 27-year-old Michael Padbury three years ago that marked a cautious turning point for the TTC. In a series of tweets, a spokesperson told frustrated commuters the delays were the result of someone’s mental health anguish. It was a nod to the fact Padbury’s death was a deliberate act. And for his mother, it was an acknowledgement that her son existed. ©2019 CBC/Radio-Canada

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 26615 - Posted: 09.16.2019

Randi Hagerman Fragile X syndrome is caused by an expansion of CGG nucleotide repeats in the FMR1 gene at the end of the long arms of the X chromosome. To identify the mutation, researchers culture cells in media deficient in folic acid, which causes the ends of the X chromosome to appear as though they are about to break off. Before molecular testing, this was the only way to see the mutation. The FMR1 gene encodes the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP), which regulates gene expression and protein translation in the brain. FMRP is important for maintaining synaptic plasticity and the ability to make new neurons. Levels of FMRP associated with disease severity in patients with FXS. © 1986–2019 The Scientist

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26614 - Posted: 09.16.2019

By Lateshia Beachum A Tokyo-based cashier allegedly stole credit card information from 1,300 customers. According to police, he used only his brain to take the information. Yusuke Taniguchi, 34, was arrested Thursday when police said they discovered he used the stolen information to purchase bags worth an estimated $2,600 in March, according to CNN. The police intercepted that order and delivered Taniguchi’s bags themselves to catch the alleged thief, according to Vice. People close to the investigation have told news media that Taniguchi has a “photographic memory.” Police say the part-time cashier retained customer credit card information in the short amount of time it took for them to purchase their goods, according to SoraNews24. He remembered all the details until he was able to write down the information, which he would later use to shop online, police said. But science doesn’t really back the claims of his photographic memory. Scientists have not found evidence of photographic memories, but there are people with very good memories who can recall information in astounding detail — an eidetic memory — according to Daniel Burns, a professor of psychology at Union College in New York. Most people conflate having an eidetic memory with a photographic memory, but scientists who study memory draw a hard line between the two, he said. A person with an eidetic memory is able to recall an image in great detail after seeing it once, with the ability to remember the image up to four minutes. But the eidetic image is not identical even though it has many perceptual similarities, according to Burns. Furthermore, eidetic memory is most commonly found in children between the ages of 6 and 12, and it’s hardly ever found in adults, according to research. “In our mind, a ‘photographic memory’ is being able to look at something and days later call up a picture that’s identical to the actual image,” he said. “That doesn’t seem to exist.” © 1996-2019 The Washington Post

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 26613 - Posted: 09.15.2019

By Olga Perepelkina, Kristina Astakhova We all remember “the dress.” An illusion like this shows that even a phenomenon as basic as color perception can be ambiguous. Emotions are much more complex entities than colors and thus can lead to even more confusion. Our perception of emotional expressions is related not only to the physical properties of a face, but also to a bunch of other factors affecting both the percipient (for example, a person's past experience, cultural background, or individual expectations) and the situation itself (the context). To test that idea, researchers at Neurodata Lab created a short test and asked more than 1,400 people from 29 countries to have a look at four pairs of photographs, or eight in total. The first image in each pair showed a woman with a certain facial expression. The second was identical to the first, except that it had an object added to it: a mascara brush, a book and glasses, a toothpick or a guitar. These objects added context. People then had to look at every image and indicate if the facial expressions looked emotional to them. Responses differed significantly between the photos with an added object and those without one. On average, people responded that the faces were “emotional” in most images without any additional context (in 3.52 out of four). After an object was added, subjects frequently changed their opinions and instead responded that emotions were present in only one about photo out of four (to be precise, it was 1.2 out of four). Emotional perception depends on context in the broadest sense of this word. The way we express ourselves nonverbally is affected by an array of factors, such as individual differences in age, gender, society or culture, and differences in various situational factors. © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 26612 - Posted: 09.15.2019

Ariana Eunjung Cha BARTLETT, Ill. — Danielle Rizzo’s son is screaming. He is planted in the middle of the lobby of his elementary school, clinging to rainbow-colored blocks as she gently explains that she is here — off schedule, in the middle of the day — to take him to a doctor’s appointment. But the first-grader is not listening. “Happy Meal,” he repeats over and over again. “Happy Meal!” His little brother, who is also going to the appointment, is nearby, not moving. Rizzo is relieved that the two of them are not melting down at the same time, which happens all too often, and firmly guides them out the door. Rizzo’s children, ages 7 and 6, were at the center of one of the most ethically complex legal cases in the modern-day fertility industry. Three years ago, while researching treatment options for her sons, Rizzo says she made an extraordinary discovery: The boys are part of an autism cluster involving at least a dozen children scattered across the United States, Canada and Europe, all conceived with sperm from the same donor. Many of the children have secondary diagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia, mood disorders, epilepsy and other developmental and learning disabilities. The phenomenon is believed to be unprecedented and has attracted the attention of some of the world’s foremost experts in the genetics of autism, who have been gathering blood and spit samples from the families. Autism, which affects an estimated 1 of 59 children in the United States, is a “spectrum disorder” characterized by difficulties navigating social situations and restricted or repetitive behavior. Some people who have it never speak and need daily care, while others, like actress Daryl Hannah and Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri, are highly successful in their fields. In recent years a growing movement has been challenging the notion that autism is a disorder at all. Rather, advocates argue, it’s a difference that should be celebrated as adding diversity to human communities.

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 26611 - Posted: 09.15.2019

Ed Yong Annika Reinhold says that she likes playing with animals (she has two cats) and “doing unconventional things that no one has done before.” When the chance came up to teach rats to play hide-and-seek, she was a natural candidate. One might question the wisdom of training rats to hide, but there’s a good reason to do so. In neuroscience, animal research is traditionally about control and conditioning—training animals, in carefully regulated settings, to do specific tasks using food rewards. But those techniques aren’t very useful for studying the neuroscience of play, which is universal to humans, widespread among animals, and the antithesis of control and conditioning. Playing is about freedom and fun. How do you duplicate those qualities in a lab? After watching YouTube videos of pets and their owners, Michael Brecht, a neuroscientist at the Humboldt University of Berlin, came up with the idea of using hide-and-seek. Reinhold, a master’s student in his lab, jumped at the chance. She knew that rats are social, intelligent, and playful, and will chase, roughhouse, and wrestle with one another, much like human children do. Perhaps they’d play with her. “I was optimistic enough to try it,” she says. She began by getting six adolescent rats accustomed to a 300-square-foot room fitted with boxes and barriers behind which they (or Reinhold) could hide. She also habituated the animals to her by stroking them, chasing them with her hands, and tickling them.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 26610 - Posted: 09.13.2019