Hannah Devlin Forget negotiations over who takes out the bin, new research suggests that the ideal home temperature is the vexed question most likely to split households down gender lines. A study found that one third of couples dispute this issue and that four in 10 women covertly turn up the heating behind their partner’s back. The research, which was sponsored by Corgi Homeplan, a company that installs and maintains boilers and thermostats, probably falls short of the rigours of peer-reviewed science. However, there is strong evidence to back up the idea that women are more sensitive to the cold. A 2015 study by Dutch scientists, for instance, found that women are comfortable at a temperature 2.5C warmer than men, typically between 24-25C. Men and women have roughly the same core body temperature, at over 37C; in fact, some studies have found the female core body temperature is slightly higher. However, our perception of temperature depends more on skin temperature, which, for women, tends to be lower. One study reported that the average temperature of women’s hands exposed to cold was nearly 3C degrees lower than that observed in men. The female hormone oestrogen contributes to this because it slightly thickens the blood, reducing the flow to capillaries that supply the body’s extremities. This means that, in women, blood flow to the tips of fingers and toes tends to shut off more readily when it is cold. Research has shown that women tend to feel colder around ovulation, when estrogen levels are high. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 24181 - Posted: 10.12.2017

By Jessica Hamzelou For the first time, researchers have shown that being born by C-section can contribute to obesity in mice. This probably happens because the procedure disrupts a newborn’s microbiome. Until fairly recently, babies were thought to be born with sterile guts free from bacteria. But we now know that babies are born with a gutful of microbes, and that at least some of these come from a mother’s vaginal canal during birth. Babies born by C-section are thought to miss out on these bacteria, which could explain why their microbiomes look different. The ecosystem of microbes that live inside us has been implicated in a range of health issues, so this may explain why babies born by C-section are more likely to grow up overweight, and to develop allergies and asthma in later life. To test if C-sections really do lead to heavier babies, Maria Dominguez-Bello at New York University and her colleagues performed C-sections on 34 pregnant mice, and compared the resulting pups to 35 that were born vaginally. By the time the mice had grown into adults 15 weeks later, there were stark difference in body weight between the two groups. The mice born by C-section were, on average, 33 per cent heavier than those born vaginally. Females seemed particularly affected, says Dominguez-Bello. While the C-section males were around 20 per cent heavier than their vaginally-born counterparts, the females were 70 per cent heavier, she says. “We were very surprised to see this,” she says. “We have no idea why it’s happening.” © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 24180 - Posted: 10.12.2017

Rae Ellen Bichell Abstinence may have found its most impressive poster child yet: Diploscapter pachys. The tiny worm is transparent, smaller than a poppy seed and hasn't had sex in 18 million years. It's basically just been cloning itself this whole time. Usually, that's a solid strategy for going extinct, fast. What's its secret? "Scientists have been trying to understand how some animals can survive for millions of years without sex, because such strict, long-term abstinence is very rare in the animal world," says David Fitch, a biologist at New York University. Most plants and animals use sex to reproduce. As he and his colleagues report in the recent issue of Current Biology, this seemingly unimpressive roundworm seems to have developed a different way of copying its genes — one that leads to just enough mutations to give the worms room to adapt, but not enough to cause crippling defects. Sex is pretty great for a lot of reasons (unless, perhaps, you're a duck), but one is that's it's a good way to dodge the effects of bad mutations. "All organisms accumulate mutations," says Kristin Gunsalus, a developmental geneticist at New York University and a co-author of the study. Usually, the machinery that copies DNA makes a few mistakes each time a cell divides. In humans, says Gunsalus, there are about six errors per cell division. © 2017 npr

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 24179 - Posted: 10.12.2017

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK Dr. Michel Jouvet, a neurophysiologist who discovered the region of the brain that controls rapid eye movement, and who helped define REM sleep as a unique state of consciousness common to humans and animals alike, was found dead on Oct. 3 in Villeurbanne, France. He was 91. Pierre-Hervé Luppi, a fellow researcher who worked with Dr. Jouvet for many years, said he had died overnight at a hospital. The curious physiological phenomenon known as REM sleep was first reported in the early 1950s by Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman, researchers at the University of Chicago. They noticed that people who appeared to be sleeping soundly sometimes moved their fully lidded eyes, and that electroencephalogram recordings showed that brain activity during periods of eye movement was closer to that of someone awake than someone unconscious. They and another colleague, William C. Dement, eventually determined that sleepers had intermittent periods of REM during which they often dreamed. Dr. Jouvet was a researcher at the University of Lyon in France, studying how sleeping cats react to stimuli, before he turned his attention to REM in the late 1950s. In deep, or slow-wave, sleep, both cats and humans show slight muscle tension and low brain activity. But Dr. Jouvet found that during periods of REM sleep the muscles of cats were completely slack, even though their brain waves suggested physical activity. He called the REM state “paradoxical sleep,” since the brain is active even though the body is virtually still. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 24177 - Posted: 10.12.2017

By Esther Landhuis Among hundreds of genes that might nudge your risk of Alzheimer's up or down, Apolipoprotein E (APOE) has the strongest effect. Scientists discovered a quarter century ago that people with the APOE ε4 version of this gene are four to 15 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s, a deadly brain disorder that afflicts more than five million Americans. Yet how APOE actually sets off dementia has been somewhat of a mystery—and efforts to use it as a drug target have floundered. The field’s attention has focused on another “A” word—amyloid beta (Aβ). This protein can unwittingly accrue in the brain for years, disrupting nerve connections essential for thinking and memory. APOE has been thought of as a co-conspirator in this process, but finding ways to undermine its collusion have proved challenging. Anti-amyloid drugs have consumed the labors of pharmaceutical companies. If a drug could break those insidious clumps of protein or keep them from forming, drug developers reasoned, it could in theory halt the progression of the disease. But billions of dollars have poured into large-scale clinical trials of amyloid-lowering therapies that so far have failed. Advertisement APOE has hovered on the periphery as far as drug development, but this could soon change. Connections have emerged between the functioning of APOE and Aβ. In 2012 Boston scientists studying autopsy tissue from Alzheimer’s patients found APOE ε4 individuals had unusually high levels of brain Aβ. And they noticed Aβ clumped more readily in test tubes if mixed with ApoE proteins, especially ApoE4. Mouse data from teams at Washington University in Saint Louis and the University of California, San Francisco—suggested a similar relationship. Each lab worked with existing Alzheimer’s mouse models and further modified their genomes to make different types and amounts of ApoE proteins. In both studies animals with less ApoE had fewer Aβ plaques in their brains. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 24176 - Posted: 10.12.2017

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Women with high blood pressure in their 40s are at increased risk for dementia in later years, researchers report. But the finding does not hold for men. Beginning in 1964, investigators collected health and lifestyle information on 5,646 men and women when they were 30 to 35 years old, and again when they were in their 40s. From 1996 to 2015, 532 of them were found to have Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. The study is in Neurology. Hypertension in women in their 30s was not associated with dementia. But women who were hypertensive at an average age of 44 had a 68 percent higher risk for dementia than those who had normal blood pressure at that age, even after adjusting for B.M.I., smoking and other risk factors. High blood pressure in men in their 30s or 40s was not associated with later dementia, but the study’s senior author, Rachel A. Whitmer, said that studies have tied hypertension in men in their 50s to later dementia. Dr. Whitmer, a senior research scientist at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., added that hypertension is more common in men, and the hypertensive men in the study tended to die at a younger age than the women. “The big picture here is that brain health is a lifelong issue,” she said. “What you do in young adulthood matters for your brain in old age.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 24175 - Posted: 10.12.2017

By BENOIT DENIZET-LEWIS The disintegration of Jake’s life took him by surprise. It happened early in his junior year of high school, while he was taking three Advanced Placement classes, running on his school’s cross-country team and traveling to Model United Nations conferences. It was a lot to handle, but Jake — the likable, hard-working oldest sibling in a suburban North Carolina family — was the kind of teenager who handled things. Though he was not prone to boastfulness, the fact was he had never really failed at anything. Not coincidentally, failure was one of Jake’s biggest fears. He worried about it privately; maybe he couldn’t keep up with his peers, maybe he wouldn’t succeed in life. The relentless drive to avoid such a fate seemed to come from deep inside him. He considered it a strength. Jake’s parents knew he could be high-strung; in middle school, they sent him to a therapist when he was too scared to sleep in his own room. But nothing prepared them for the day two years ago when Jake, then 17, seemingly “ran 150 miles per hour into a brick wall,” his mother said. He refused to go to school and curled up in the fetal position on the floor. “I just can’t take it!” he screamed. “You just don’t understand!” Jake was right — his parents didn’t understand. Jake didn’t really understand, either. But he also wasn’t good at verbalizing what he thought he knew: that going to school suddenly felt impossible, that people were undoubtedly judging him, that nothing he did felt good enough. “All of a sudden I couldn’t do anything,” he said. “I was so afraid.” His tall, lanky frame succumbed, too. His stomach hurt. He had migraines. “You know how a normal person might have their stomach lurch if they walk into a classroom and there’s a pop quiz?” he told me. “Well, I basically started having that feeling all the time.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Stress
Link ID: 24174 - Posted: 10.11.2017

Nicola Davis When it comes to understanding how another person thinks and feels, it might be best to close your eyes and listen. A study by an American psychologist suggests that people are better able to pick up on the emotions of others when simply focusing on their voice, compared with both watching and listening to them, or just watching them. “Humans are actually remarkably good at using many of their senses for conveying emotions, but emotion research historically is focused almost exclusively on the facial expressions,” said Michael Kraus, a social psychologist at Yale University and author of the study. While combining information from a person’s voice with their facial expressions and other cues might at first seem like a way to boost understanding of their thoughts and feelings, Kraus says pooling the senses divides attention. What’s more, he notes, facial expressions can mask a person’s true feelings – something that he says is harder to do with the voice – while language plays a key role in how people understand and label their emotions. The upshot, he says, is that what people say, and the way they say it, offers the clearest insights into the emotions of others. “Listening matters,” said Kraus. “Actually considering what people are saying and the ways in which they say it can, I believe, lead to improved understanding of others at work or in your personal relationships.” © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Attention; Hearing
Link ID: 24173 - Posted: 10.11.2017

By Lise Eliot As efforts to improve diversity in science, technology, engineering and maths accelerate, so the voices of those who question those efforts seem to get louder. They say the STEM gender gap has its roots in innate biology, that men are inherently better at or more interested in these subjects. One of their favourite supporting arguments is that differences in male and female brains are clearly influenced by prenatal testosterone. Is there any truth in this claim? As a biologist, I appreciate that genes and hormones are important in brain and behavioural development. But my research over the past 20 years indicates that the differences between boys’ and girls’ brains are subtle, and that testosterone isn’t a key determinant of interest in or aptitude for STEM subjects. First, in spite of decades of MRI studies, there is little evidence that boys’ higher prenatal exposure to testosterone affects their brain structure or function. Most recently, the two largest studies of the brains of newborns found no difference between boys’ and girls’ functional brain networks and that prenatal testosterone exposure had a surprisingly weak effect on specific neural structures. Even the most clear-cut gender difference in infant behaviour – verbal ability, which develops more slowly in boys – hasn’t been linked to prenatal testosterone. Of course, male and female brains are different, but not in the way the diversity critics claim. At birth, boys’ brains are 6 per cent larger on average than those of girls, but boys’ birthweight is also typically about 7 per cent heavier. This difference in brain size has long been known to parallel sex differences in height and weight across the lifespan. Every other organ, such as the heart and kidneys, is also some 15 per cent larger in males. © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 24172 - Posted: 10.11.2017

By Toni Clarke, (Reuters) - Spark Therapeutics Inc’s experimental gene therapy for a rare inherited form of blindness is effective, though it is unclear whether the benefit lasts over time, according to a preliminary review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The therapy, Luxturna, or voretigene neparvovec, would be the first-ever gene therapy for any inherited disease to be approved in the United States. The FDA’s review, posted on Tuesday on the agency’s website, comes two days ahead of a meeting of outside advisers who will discuss the treatment and recommend whether it should be approved. Advertisement Michael Yee, an analyst at Jefferies, said the FDA documents “look fairly benign and as expected,” and said he expects the advisory panel is likely to vote in favor of approval. The FDA noted there is no available long-term data to show whether the effectiveness of the therapy is maintained after a year, so the clinical benefit beyond that “is unclear.” Inherited retinal diseases are a group of rare conditions caused by mutations in one or more than 220 different genes, including one known as RPE65, which tells cells how to produce a crucial enzyme needed for normal vision. Spark studied Luxturna in people with one of these conditions, Leber congenital aumaurosis, whose disease was mediated by defects in the RPE65 gene. Clinical trial results showed 93 percent of participants experienced some improvement in their functional vision as measured by their ability to navigate obstacles in poor light. © 2017 Scientific American,

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 24171 - Posted: 10.11.2017

By Josh Gabbatiss Some female dolphins have evolved a secret weapon in their sexual arms race with males: vaginas that protect them from fertilisation by unwelcome partners. Penises come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, especially in dolphins and other cetaceans. That seems to imply a similar diversity in vaginas, but Dara Orbach of Dalhousie University, Canada, says there is “a huge lag” in our understanding of female genitalia. That is partly because it is tricky to visualise vaginal structure. To overcome this problem, Orbach has created silicone moulds of cetaceans’ vaginas, revealing complex folds and spirals. “There’s this unparalleled level of vaginal diversity that we had no idea existed before,” Orbach says. Similarly complex vaginal structures are found in several species of duck. Orbach’s collaborator Patricia Brennan of Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, has previously found evidence that duck vaginas have evolved to make it harder for males to force copulation. So Orbach wondered if female cetaceans’ unusual vaginas had also evolved to keep out unwanted sperm. Orbach, Brennan and their colleagues obtained genitals from marine mammals that had died of natural causes: common and bottlenose dolphins, common porpoises and common seals. They inflated the males’ penises with saline to see how they looked when they were erect, and compared them with the vaginal moulds. They also took CT scans of penises inserted into the corresponding vaginas, to determine whether they fitted in easily and the best positions. © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 24170 - Posted: 10.11.2017

Nicola Davis “Woman seems to differ from man in mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less selfishness,” wrote Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man. Now scientists claim that the stereotype is supported by evidence that the brain’s reward system may be geared towards more “prosocial” behaviour in women. “It was known that women and men behave differently, but it was not known why, or how this comes about in the brain,” said Philippe Tobler, associate professor of neuroeconomics and social neuroscience at the University of Zurich, and co-author of the research. The team note it is not clear whether the gender differences they see in the brain’s reward system are in any way “innate”, or whether they are the result of social pressures, but in short: women seem to get more of a chemical reward for being generous than men do. “It is known that girls receive different kinds of feedback than boys for being prosocial,” said Tobler. “It is perfectly conceivable that [the root of the differences here are] only cultural – we simply don’t know.” Writing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, Tobler and colleagues from Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands carried out two studies looking at whether dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a crucial role in the brain’s reward system, is linked to different social behaviours in men and women. In the first, a group of 56 men and women were randomly allocated to two groups, and either given a placebo or amisulpride – a drug that blocks the action of dopamine in the brain. Neither the scientists nor the participants knew which pill was taken. © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 24169 - Posted: 10.10.2017

By Jessica Wright No one except Gregory Kapothanasis knows exactly what upset him today. On this hot day in July, he went to his day program for adults with developmental disabilities, as he has done without incident five days a week for the past four years. But then things unraveled. According to the program’s report, he grabbed a staff member’s arm hard enough to bruise it. Then, on the bus during the daily outing, he started screaming and hitting his seat. Now, several hours later, he is finally home, but there is a stranger in his living room. Bouncing from one couch to another, clutching a faded beige blanket stolen from his aunt’s dog, Kapothanasis still seems out of sorts. His mother, Irene — who has cared for him, with the help of home aides, for all of his 24 years — is playing over the day’s events, trying to figure out what triggered him. His outburst is disturbingly reminiscent of a difficult period that peaked six years ago but is uncharacteristic of the young man today. Kapothanasis loves interacting with other people, going to the beach and dining at DiMillo’s, a floating restaurant in a decommissioned car ferry in Portland, Maine. Kapothanasis has autism and speaks only a few words: He can’t explain what happened this morning. Did he have constipation and discomfort, as his doctor suggested? Did he get bored of the day’s program, causing him to act out? Had something occurred on the bus previously that made him fear that part of his day? All his mother can do is wonder — and try to make his evening better. © 2017 Scientific American,

Keyword: Autism; Stress
Link ID: 24168 - Posted: 10.10.2017

By HEATHER MURPHY Michal Kosinski felt he had good reason to teach a machine to detect sexual orientation. An Israeli start-up had started hawking a service that predicted terrorist proclivities based on facial analysis. Chinese companies were developing facial recognition software not only to catch known criminals — but also to help the government predict who might break the law next. And all around Silicon Valley, where Dr. Kosinski works as a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, entrepreneurs were talking about faces as if they were gold waiting to be mined. Few seemed concerned. So to call attention to the privacy risks, he decided to show that it was possible to use facial recognition analysis to detect something intimate, something “people should have full rights to keep private.” After considering atheism, he settled on sexual orientation. Whether he has now created “A.I. gaydar,” and whether that’s even an ethical line of inquiry, has been hotly debated over the past several weeks, ever since a draft of his study was posted online. Presented with photos of gay men and straight men, a computer program was able to determine which of the two was gay with 81 percent accuracy, according to Dr. Kosinski and co-author Yilun Wang’s paper. The backlash has been fierce. “I imagined I’d raise the alarm,” Dr. Kosinski said in an interview. “Now I’m paying the price.” He’d just had a meeting with campus police “because of the number of death threats.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 24167 - Posted: 10.10.2017

By Frances Stead Sellers October 8 at 9:00 AM One late-summer day last year, my surroundings started playing tricks with me. The letters I typed on my computer screen looked fuzzy. Objects on my desk seemed to slip sideways, escaping their own outlines. My colleagues, viewed across the room, appeared to have shifted slightly so that now they stood or sat as ghostly silhouettes beside themselves. I put it down to fatigue or lack of food. The next morning, neither sleep nor sustenance had cured me. I squinted my way out of my apartment and reached for the handrail that runs alongside the front steps. As my left arm extended, my forearm divided somewhere between my elbow and my wrist, so that now I had two left hands and 10 fingers, groping for two railings that ran not parallel to one another but diverged into the distance. Below my four feet, the neat brick geometry of a Capitol Hill sidewalk had become a muddled mosaic. I looked up to see two identically dressed men, swinging their arms in unison as they marched, lockstep, toward me. I closed one eye and then the other. Both worked well. In fact, each restored reassuring order to the world: One man. One left hand. One railing. But when I tried to walk with only my right eye open, I keeled over to the side. I lost my balance — and a little confidence. “Not good,” the ophthalmologist murmured later that morning as he tracked the movement of my eyes from left to right and back again. Diplopia was his diagnosis. Greek for double vision. How did I feel? he asked. Had I had a virus? I needn’t go to the ER, he said, unless I developed a splitting headache or started vomiting. But I should see a neuro-ophthalmologist. Soon. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Vision; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 24166 - Posted: 10.09.2017

By Leslie Kaufman It is 7 p.m. on a spring Friday, and the Highland Hospital emergency room in Oakland, one of the busiest trauma centers in northern California, is expecting. When the patient—a young bicyclist hit by a car—arrives, blood is streaming down his temples. From a warren of care rooms, a team of nearly a dozen doctors and nurses materializes and buzzes around the patient. Amelia Breyre, a first-year resident who looks not much older than a college sophomore, immediately takes charge. As soon as the team finishes immobilizing the victim, Breyre must begin making split-second decisions: X-ray? Intubate? Transfusion? She quickly determines there is no internal bleeding or need for surgery and orders up neck X-rays after bandaging the patient’s head. Breyre will make a half-dozen similar critical choices tonight. Highland, a teaching hospital, is perhaps the most selective emergency-medical residency in the nation. To be here, she must be outstanding. To succeed, though, she must stay sharp. That quality of focus—amid the chaos and battered ­humanity that comes through Highland’s doors—is itself in need of urgent care. Andrew Herring, an emergency-room doctor who supervises Breyre and 40 other residents, is worried about the team. ER doctors are shift workers, and their hours are spread over a dizzying, ever-changing schedule of mornings, afternoons, and nights that total 20 ­different shifts a month. That’s meant to equally distribute the burden of nocturnal work across an entire team of physicians. But despite those good intentions, Herring says, the result is that every single one of them is exhausted and sleep ­deprived. That’s dangerous for doctor and patient alike.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 24165 - Posted: 10.09.2017

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may fidget, tap and swivel around in a chair much more than normally developing children because it helps them to learn complex material, psychologists have found. ADHD is often perceived as a behavioural problem because it can result in symptoms such as inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity that can affect social interaction and learning. Scientists increasingly recognize ADHD as a brain disorder that affects about five per cent of the school-age population. Now brain tests show children with ADHD tend to learn less when sitting still compared to when they're moving. It is not for lack of motivation, says Prof. Mark Rapport, a child psychopathology researcher who focuses on ADHD at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Rapport and his colleagues set out to test an observation made by many parents — that children with ADHD can pay attention if they are doing an activity they enjoy. They put 32 boys aged eight to 12 with ADHD and 30 of their peers who are not affected by the disorder through a battery of memory and other tests. Participants watched two videos on separate days: an instructional math lesson without performing the calculations, and a scene from Star Wars Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace. During the Star Wars movie, the boys with ADHD did not squirm more than other children, but when asked to concentrate on the math lesson, there was a difference between the two groups. "All children and all people in general, moved more when they were engaged in a working memory task. Kids with ADHD move about twice as much under the same conditions," Rapport said. ©2017 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: ADHD; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 24164 - Posted: 10.09.2017

By Frank Swain Just what you need in the age of ubiquitous surveillance: the latest cochlear implants will allow users stream audio directly from their iPhone into their cochlear nerve. Apple and implant manufacturer Cochlear have made “Made for iPhone” connectivity available for any hearing implants that use the next-generation Nucleus 7 sound processor. The advance means that these implants can also stream music and Netflix shows. The technology was first unveiled in 2014 when it was added to hearing aids such as the Starkey Halo and ReSound LiNX. But this is the first time it’s been linked into the central nervous system. While some cochlear implants already offer Bluetooth connectivity, these often require users to wear extra dongles or other intermediary devices to pick up digital signals, and then rebroadcast them to the hearing aid as radio. This technology simply beams the signal right into the brain. It’s also a better way to use Bluetooth. Bluetooth headsets have been commonplace since the early 2000s, but the energy-sapping technology has meant they are typically clunky devices with poor battery life. In 2014, Apple technicians developed a way to stream audio over the low energy Bluetooth format used by wearables such as FitBits. Now, tiny devices like hearing aids – and Apple’s Airpods — can stream audio signals for up to a week on a battery the size of an aspirin. © Copyright New Scientist Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 24163 - Posted: 10.09.2017

By Neuroskeptic A curious flurry of headlines in praise of beer appeared this week: Beer really DOES make you happier! Key molecule boosts brain’s reward centre Drinking Beer Makes You Really Happy, Confirms Awesome New Study Drinking beer can make you happy, researchers claim It was reported that scientists from Germany have discovered that a molecule in beer called hordenine activates dopamine receptors in the brain, and thus produces a positive mood. The research in question was published back in March of this year, so I’m not sure why it only made the headlines this week – maybe Oktoberfest had something to do with it. Either way, the study did indeed find that hordenine is a dopamine D2 receptor agonist, but it’s not clear this has any relevance to beer drinkers. The German researchers, Sommer et al., are chemists, not neuroscientists. They used computational simulations to model whether 13,000 known ‘food-derived’ molecules would bind to the D2 receptor. The hordenine molecule was predicted to fit the receptor, and follow-up experiments showed that it does indeed bind to it, suggesting possible psychoactive properties.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 24162 - Posted: 10.09.2017

By HEATHER MURPHY Well done -- you are an atypical person. Usually people notice the other, smaller toothbrush first. Most people will quickly spot the toothbrush on the front of the counter, but take longer — or even fail to find — the much bigger one behind it. The oversight has to do with scale. People have a tendency to miss objects when their size is inconsistent with their surroundings, according to a recent study in Current Biology. This is just the latest in a robust body of research that reveals how expectations dramatically affect our ability to notice what’s around us. Though the image above was provided by the authors of the study to illuminate their point, the study was set up slightly differently. The researchers were interested not only in what people saw — but also in how their performance compared with computers. Flesh-and-blood participants and a deep neural network, a computer system with advanced machine vision, were given one second to select an object in a computer-rendered scene, such as the one below. The object could be absent, presented at scale or featured at four times scale. Is there a parking meter in this image? Once you know what to expect, of course, it's easier. In the study, the object was either absent, presented at scale or featured at four times scale. Humans missed giant objects about 13 percent more than normal-sized objects, the researchers found. Scale had no impact on machine performance. “We were surprised about how compelling of an effect it is,” said Miguel Eckstein, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Vision and Image Understanding Laboratory and one of the authors. In particular, the first time a person examined a photo with a giant object, the object often seemed to be invisible. But it’s not a deficiency, he said: “This is a useful trick the brain does to rapidly process scenes and find what we are looking for.” © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 24161 - Posted: 10.07.2017