By Linda Carroll Karen Melville remembers when her son Danny was diagnosed with autism so severe that his doctor feared he might never even talk, much less go to school. “It was like a freight train hit,” said Melville, a 39-year-old mother of two who lives in Brunswick, Ohio. Five years of intensive therapy have paid off. Danny, now age 7, is OK’d to go to school next year in a mostly mainstream class that will have a total of three “high functioning” kids with autism. “Now when he finds something he thinks is really cool on the computer -- like a humpback whale swimming -- he wants to show me,” Melville said. Danny may be one of what researchers are now calling “bloomers” – kids who start out as severely affected but who manage to grow beyond most of their symptoms. About 10 percent of children who are severely affected by autism at age 3 seem to have “bloomed” by age 8, leaving behind many of the condition’s crippling deficits, a new study shows. And while these “bloomers” still retain some of autism’s symptoms, like the tendency to rock back and forth when stressed or to repeat the same behavior over and over, they become what experts dub, “high functioning,” according to the study published today in Pediatrics. That means their social skills and their ability to communicate have vastly improved. A child at the low end of the communication scale might not be able to talk, or even to make any sounds, explained the study’s lead author Christine Fountain, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Those at the other end of the scale “would have a broad vocabulary, understand the meaning of words and use them in appropriate contexts, understand the meaning of story plot and carry on complex conversations,” she explained. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 16602 - Posted: 04.04.2012

by Alison George Going bananas. Laughing your head off. Phrases that aren't literally true make no sense if you have autism, like Michael Barton Why do people with autism, like yourself, find the English language so confusing? Autistic people think in black and white and therefore interpret everything literally. Ordinary people seem to love using idioms, metaphors and figurative speech, whether to aid communication or simply to make life more interesting, whereas for autistic people they simply make no sense. Tell me about the time your teacher told you to "pull your socks up". I bent down and did just that. Of course the teacher got annoyed and thought I was being cheeky. This is a common problem with children on the spectrum and it is important that teachers understand that the student is simply obeying instructions. At junior school my pencil broke, so the teacher asked me to see if there were any in the cupboard. When I returned, pencil-less, she said "Were there any? " and I said "Yes, lots". What if you saw a sign saying "Passengers are to remain seated at all times"? I have learned that if a sign seems bizarre, it probably doesn't mean what it says, so I watch what other people do. If they are all ignoring the sign by standing up and leaving the bus, then I can assume the sign wasn't meant to be taken literally. What goes through your mind when you hear expressions like "It cost him an arm and a leg?" or "I gave him a piece of my mind"? © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 16601 - Posted: 04.04.2012

By DAVID EWING DUNCAN SAN DIEGO — Already surrounded by machines that allow him, painstakingly, to communicate, the physicist Stephen Hawking last summer donned what looked like a rakish black headband that held a feather-light device the size of a small matchbox. Called the iBrain, this simple-looking contraption is part of an experiment that aims to allow Dr. Hawking — long paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease — to communicate by merely thinking. The iBrain is part of a new generation of portable neural devices and algorithms intended to monitor and diagnose conditions like sleep apnea, depression and autism. Invented by a team led by Philip Low, a 32-year-old neuroscientist who is chief executive of NeuroVigil, a company based in San Diego, the iBrain is gaining attention as a possible alternative to expensive sleep labs that use rubber and plastic caps riddled with dozens of electrodes and usually require a patient to stay overnight. “The iBrain can collect data in real time in a person’s own bed, or when they’re watching TV, or doing just about anything,” Dr. Low said. The device uses a single channel to pick up waves of electrical brain signals, which change with different activities and thoughts, or with the pathologies that accompany brain disorders. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Robotics; ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 16600 - Posted: 04.04.2012

By John Horgan I met Christof Koch in 1994 at the first of series of big conferences on consciousness held in Tucson, Ariz. A professor at Caltech, Koch had helped popularize consciousness as a topic for serious scientific investigation—instead of windy philosophical supposition—through his collaboration with the great Francis Crick, who had already cracked the genetic code and now wanted to solve the riddle of mind as well. In Tucson Koch outlined a theory, jointly fashioned by him and Crick, that 40-hertz brain waves might be a key to consciousness. Although I was skeptical of that particular theory, I liked the hard-nosed, materialist, reductionist approach that Koch and Crick took toward consciousness. I also liked the quirky intensity that Koch brought to his scientific work. This trait was on display in Tucson during an encounter between Koch and the philosopher David Chalmers, who proposed that consciousness is such a “hard problem” that it needs new approaches, such as one incorporating ideas from information theory. Confronting Chalmers at a cocktail party, Koch declared that Chalmers’s information-based theory of consciousness was untestable and therefore useless. “Why don’t you just say that when you have a brain the Holy Ghost comes down and makes you conscious!” Koch exclaimed. Such a theory was unnecessarily complicated, Chalmers responded dryly, and it would not accord with his own subjective experience. “But how do I know that your subjective experience is the same as mine?” Koch retorted. “How do I even know you’re conscious?” © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 16599 - Posted: 04.04.2012

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE If you wear a white coat that you believe belongs to a doctor, your ability to pay attention increases sharply. But if you wear the same white coat believing it belongs to a painter, you will show no such improvement. So scientists report after studying a phenomenon they call enclothed cognition: the effects of clothing on cognitive processes. It is not enough to see a doctor’s coat hanging in your doorway, said Adam D. Galinsky, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who led the study. The effect occurs only if you actually wear the coat and know its symbolic meaning — that physicians tend to be careful, rigorous and good at paying attention. The findings, on the Web site of The Journal of Experimental Social Cognition, are a twist on a growing scientific field called embodied cognition. We think not just with our brains but with our bodies, Dr. Galinsky said, and our thought processes are based on physical experiences that set off associated abstract concepts. Now it appears that those experiences include the clothes we wear. “I love the idea of trying to figure out why, when we put on certain clothes, we might more readily take on a role and how that might affect our basic abilities,” said Joshua I. Davis, an assistant professor of psychology at Barnard College and expert on embodied cognition who was not involved with the study. This study does not fully explain how this comes about, he said, but it does suggest that it will be worth exploring various ideas.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 16598 - Posted: 04.04.2012

By Gary Stix Our current understanding of how the brain works often borrows from observations of the anomalous patient. The iron rod that penetrated Phineas Gage’s head made the once emotionally balanced railroad foreman impulsive and profane. But it gave neurologists clues as to the role of the brain’s frontal lobes in exercising self-control. The epilepsy surgery that removed Henry Molaison’s hippocampus opened a whole new line of research about memory. Still, conclusions about mental processes from single patients arrive freighted with unavoidable risk. Neuroscientists can’t replicate what they find in neurologically damaged patients by removing a frontal lobe or hippocampus from other research subjects without planning for significant downtime in a state or federal prison. That means that what we think we learn from an initial examination of a Gage or a Molaison may be less than meets the eye. The cautionary lessons of single-case neuroscience were underlined in a recent paper in Neuropsychologia by Marc Himmelbach and two colleagues at the Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, part of Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany. The team took another look at the well-known case of D.F., a woman who suffered brain damage more than 20 years ago from carbon monoxide. D.F.’s entry into the case history annals came about because, as a result of her injuries, she could not recognize everyday objects, a condition called visual agnosia, yet she was still able to grasp them. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Vision; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16597 - Posted: 03.31.2012

CBC News Having sleep apnea may be associated with major depression, a new study suggests. Research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that obstructive sleep apnea, a disorder in which a person has short pauses in breathing during sleep, may be connected to depressive symptoms. Caused by a temporary collapse of the airway, these breathing stops can last 10 to 30 seconds, and may occur dozens or hundreds of times each night. Risk factors include: Advancing age. Being male. Being obese. "Snorting, gasping or stopping breathing while asleep was associated with nearly all depression symptoms, including feeling hopeless and feeling like a failure," Anne Wheaton, lead author of the study, said in a release. "We expected persons with sleep-disordered breathing to report trouble sleeping or sleeping too much, or feeling tired and having little energy, but not the other symptoms." The study of 9,714 adults from across the U.S. was conducted between 2005 and 2008. It is in the April issue of the Journal Sleep. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 16596 - Posted: 03.31.2012

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV Don't worry, the mesmerising swirls in this video won't hypnotise you. But once the moving pattern disappears, you may be surprised when a ghostly spinning spiral appears before your eyes. The illusion was accidentally discovered by game designer Hjalmar Snoep while he was creating an animation late at night. "I realised that the after-image that appeared wasn't part of the animation," he says. "I've never come across a moving after-image even though I have collected lots of optical illusions, so it piqued my interest." After-image effects are caused by the overstimulation of photoreceptors in the eyes after staring at an image for a long time. Typically, they take on the original shape, often appearing in its complementary colours. But a recent study by Hiroyuki Ito from Kyushu University in Japan showed for the first time how an after-image can vary in shape as well as hue. Ito is now studying moving after-image illusions, since they aren't easy to explain with existing theories. After viewing Snoep's animation, he suggests that the averaged or accumulated retinal exposure to light over the clip's duration could cause the spiral after-image. "The hypothesis could be tested by calculating the averaged luminance for each pixel during the viewing period," he says. "It's a splendid demonstration as entertainment, as well as from a scientific point of view." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16595 - Posted: 03.31.2012

Sumit Paul-Choudhury, editor LOOKING at your own brain is a humbling and slightly unnerving experience. Mine, depicted in a freshly acquired MRI scan, is startlingly intricate, compact - and baffling. This is as much of a portrait of my own mind as I am ever likely to see. But to my ignorant eyes (which, by way of an eerie bonus, are now looking at their own cross-sections) it looks pretty much like any other brain. Apparently a more expert eye wouldn't help. "Whilst all my participants get very excited about seeing their brain for the first time after being scanned, and I frequently get asked 'What can you tell me about my brain?', the reality is that the brain will for a long time yet remain a mysterious mass," says the neuroscientist who scanned my brain, for research purposes. "We must be content with knowing that the 'I' is constructed in its intricacies, but we cannot explain how.” The hope of closing the gap between the physical and mental is presumably what gets neuroscientists up in the morning, but it’s frustrating for a layperson like me. Avowed materialist though I am, I nonetheless rebel against the knowledge that the impassive blob on screen is "me". This cognitive dissonance was what I took with me to the opening of Brains, a new show at London’s Wellcome Collection, whose subtitle, "The Mind as Matter", suggests that its curators sympathise with my materialist perspective. “The neurosciences hold out the prospect of an objective account of consciousness - the soul or mind as nothing more than intricately connected flesh,” reads the introduction. But the bulk of the exhibition is dedicated to whole brains, brain collectors and anatomical paraphernalia, with little explicit reference to the brain’s fine structure, or how it might give rise to thought. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Consciousness; Attention
Link ID: 16594 - Posted: 03.31.2012

By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff The number of children identified as having an autism spectrum disorder in the United States is soaring, with roughly 1 in 88 being found to have this condition, according to a study released Thursday morning by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new figure reflects a 23 percent increase compared with the autism rate the public health agency released two years ago. During a conference call with reporters, CDC officials acknowledged widespread concern among parents about why the numbers have grown so much. They said increased detection is clearly a major factor driving up the rates, though agency research is being conducted to see what other factors -- genetics or the environment -- play a role. Typically characterized by verbal delays, repetitive behaviors, and social struggles, autism is five times more common among boys than girls -- with 1 in 54 boys identified, according to the new study. It is also found more commonly in white children than black and Hispanic children. Previous reports have shown that autism is one of the few developmental disabilities in which children from higher socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to be identified. But in the new study, the researchers point out that much of the increase in identification of autism spectrum disorder in recent years came from minority communities. The largest rises were among Hispanic and non-Hispanic black children, as well as among children whose autism diagnosis did not include intellectual disability. © 2012 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 16593 - Posted: 03.31.2012

Erin Allday When her son was diagnosed with a rare chromosome defect three years ago, it was something of a relief for Theresa Mahar. Finally, she had an explanation. Christopher, now 14, had obvious developmental delays and intellectual disabilities. He had behavior problems and struggled in school. He'd been assigned so many diagnoses over the years - almost all of them related to autism - that it was sometimes hard to keep up. Then a genetic test revealed the defect to chromosome 16 - one of the 23 chromosomes that make up every person's DNA - and it explained, perhaps, the cause of Christopher's autism. "It's something to hold on to," Theresa Mahar said. "It's something to blame." Mahar and her family came to San Francisco from Hillsboro, Ore., this week to participate in an unusual study at UCSF - to map in great detail the brains of people who have a defect to chromosome 16. The study is one of the first in which autism researchers are narrowing their focus into one of the few known causes of the disorder. That's important, scientists say, because autism is such a difficult condition to define - the symptoms can vary widely from patient to patient, and the causes are often impossible to determine. Different mechanisms Autism may be a collection of similar conditions, rather than one single disorder, researchers say. That means that studying patients with autism as it's now defined often produces mixed results - the brain scan of a child with one genetic cause of autism may look very different from the scan of an autistic child with no genetic cause. © 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16592 - Posted: 03.31.2012

By Maria Popova The secret of happiness is arguably humanity's longest-standing fixation, and its mechanisms are among the most consuming obsessions of modern science. In The Happiness of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Good Life, Cornell University psychology professor Shimon Edelman takes an unconventional -- and cautiously self-aware of its own unorthodoxy -- lens to the holy grail of human existence, blending hard science with literature and philosophy to reverse-engineer the brain's capacity for well-being. What emerges is a kind of conceptual toolbox that lets us peer into the computational underbelly of our minds and its central processes -- memory, perception, motivation and emotion, critical thinking, social cognition, and language -- to better understand not only how the mind works but also how we can optimize it for happiness. As it turns out, a fundamental truth about happiness lies in the very language of the Declaration of Independence, which encouraged its pursuit: The focus on the pursuit of happiness, endorsed by the Declaration of Independence, fits well with the idea of life as a journey -- a bright thread that runs through the literary cannon of the collective human culture. With the world at your feet, the turns that you should take along the way depend on what you are at the outset and on what you become as the journey lengthens. Accordingly, the present book is an attempt to understand, in a deeper sense than merely metaphorical, what it means to be human and how humans are shaped by the journey thorough this world, which the poet John Keats called 'the vale of soul-making' -- in particular, how it puts within the soul's reach 'a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence. © 2012 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 16591 - Posted: 03.31.2012

The brain appears to be wired more like the checkerboard streets of New York City than the curvy lanes of Columbia, Md., suggests a new brain imaging study. The most detailed images, to date, reveal a pervasive 3D grid structure with no diagonals, say scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health. “Far from being just a tangle of wires, the brain's connections turn out to be more like ribbon cables — folding 2D sheets of parallel neuronal fibers that cross paths at right angles, like the warp and weft of a fabric,” explained Van Wedeen, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and the Harvard Medical School. “This grid structure is continuous and consistent at all scales and across humans and other primate species.” Wedeen and colleagues report new evidence of the brain's elegant simplicity March 30, 2012 in the journal Science. The study was funded, in part, by the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Human Connectome Project of the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, and other NIH components. “Getting a high resolution wiring diagram of our brains is a landmark in human neuroanatomy,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. “This new technology may reveal individual differences in brain connections that could aid diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders.” Knowledge gained from the study helped shape design specifications for the most powerful brain scanner of its kind, which was installed at MGH's Martinos Center last fall. The new Connectom diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner can visualize the networks of crisscrossing fibers — by which different parts of the brain communicate with each other — in 10-fold higher detail than conventional scanners, said Wedeen.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16590 - Posted: 03.31.2012

By Maria Popova The nature vs. nurture debate pitted the hard and social sciences against each other for decades, if not centuries, stirred by a central concern with consciousness, what it means to be human, what makes a person, and, perhaps most interestingly to us egocentric beings, what constitutes character and personality. In Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor of Computational Neuroscience Sebastian Seung proposes a new model for understanding the totality of selfhood, one based on the emerging science of connectomics -- a kind of neuroscience of the future that seeks to map and understand the brain much like genomics has mapped the genome. A "connectome" denotes the sum total of connections between the neurons in a nervous system and, like "genome," implies completeness. It's a complex fingerprint of identity, revealing the differences between brains and, inversely, the specificity of our own uniqueness. Seung proposes a simple theory: We are different because our connectomes differ from one another. With that lens, he argues, any kind of personality change -- from educating yourself to developing better habits -- is a matter of rewiring your connectome. That capacity is precisely what makes the connectome intriguing and infinitely promising -- unlike the genome, which is fixed from the moment of conception, the connetome changes throughout life. Seung explains: Neuroscientists have already identified the basic kinds of change. Neurons adjust, or "reweight," their connections by strengthening or weakening them. Neurons reconnect by creating and eliminating synapses, and they rewire by growing and retracting branches. Finally, entirely new neurons are created and existing ones eliminated through regeneration. © 2012 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16589 - Posted: 03.31.2012

by Virginia Morell The male dolphins of Shark Bay, Australia, are known to marine biologists for their messy social entanglements. Their relationships with each other are so unusual—they're more like the intricate webs of the Mafia than the vertical hierarchies of chimpanzees—that, in a new paper, one team of scientists argues that the dolphins live in a social system that is "unique among mammals." Intriguingly, the researchers also suggest that these complex, and often cooperative, relationships may stem in part from one simple, unexpected factor: the dolphins' low cruising speed. Mammals have evolved a variety of social structures. For example, chimpanzees live in what ethologists call "semiclosed groups"—that is, a community comprised of individuals who are well-known to each other. The members generally aren't friendly to chimps in other communities; the males practice what's known as community defense, patrolling and guarding their territory and fighting their neighbors. Inside that tight group, the chimpanzees also have male-male alliances. At first glance, dolphins seem to have a somewhat similar social system. Two or three adult males form a tight alliance and cooperate to herd a female for mating. (Female dolphins rarely form strong alliances.) Other male teams may try to spirit away the female—particularly if she is in estrus. To fight back, the first-level alliances form partnerships with other first-level alliances, thus creating a larger second-level alliance. Some of these second-level alliances have as many as 14 dolphins and can last 15 years or more. On some occasions, the second-level alliance can call in the troops from yet another group, "a third-order alliance," as the researchers call them—leading to huge battles with more than 20 dolphins biting and bashing each other with their heads and tails over the right to keep or steal a single female. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16588 - Posted: 03.29.2012

By NEIL GENZLINGER Perhaps years from now, after a scientific breakthrough has turned Alzheimer’s disease into a memory as distant as polio wards are to younger Americans today, someone will stumble upon Scott Kirschenbaum’s hard-to-watch documentary, “You’re Looking at Me Like I Live Here and I Don’t,” and be stunned. “I’ve read about Alzheimer’s,” this person will say, “but I had no idea what it was actually like.” Alzheimer’s has been a trendy topic for writers of plays and television scripts in recent years. But those stories have often been primarily about the people surrounding the patient — family members, friends — and the effect of the disease on their lives. Mr. Kirschenbaum, whose film will be broadcast nationally on PBS’s “Independent Lens” on Thursday (on Sunday on Channel 13 in New York), takes the simple but bold step of making Alzheimer’s the only thing in his tale. It’s not a plot point that propels a narrative; it’s an inescapable box. The film zeros in on one woman, Lee Gorewitz, in a residential care center in Danville, Calif., and follows her through her daily routines. There are no talking heads describing current research into the disease, no family members waxing nostalgic about Ms. Gorewitz’s life before Alzheimer’s. Mr. Kirschenbaum sprinkles in some unobtrusive music and prods with an occasional question from behind the camera, but that’s it. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 16587 - Posted: 03.29.2012

By Scicurious I’m sitting here, preparing to write a blog post on thermoregulation. I finished a good run a while ago. The temperatures outside weren’t too extreme (50ish degrees F, so comfortable for a good run), and I was sweating freely when I finished. About an hour later, here I am, in fleecey pants, shirt, socks, hoodie…and sleeping bag. And afghan. And cat. I’m freezing. Really, seriously cold. My nailbeds are almost purple, my hands are like ice, and I’ve got goosebumps all over. I’m almost too cold to shiver. This happens every time I run more than about 5 miles. It happens winter or summer (I think winter is worse, usually in summer it’s a relief!). I’ll go out, run 5 or more miles, come home sweaty and glowing with my happy runner’s high, and about 30 minutes later, once all the sweat is dried, I’ll descend into what I call the “post-run shivers”. They last up to two hours after the run, and are the reason I keep my sleeping bag close to hand. When I’ve asked other runners about it, many of them are mystified. Some of them have only experienced the hot feeling post-run, and tell me they can’t shower immediately, or they’ll come out still sweating! But a few others know what I mean. And I’ve always wondered, what is happening to me? Is it normal? Is it ok? When I learned about how humans regulate their body temperature, I learned that we have a natural temperature “set point” of around 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit), based in the hypothalamus of our brains, and your body regulates its temperature around that set point. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 16586 - Posted: 03.29.2012

by Sarah C. P. Williams Ten minutes after they play in a competitive soccer match with an audience of friends and family cheering them on, men from the Tsimane people in lowland Bolivia have testosterone levels 30% higher than they were before the game. If the players were athletes in the United States, this number wouldn't be surprising. But Tsimane men have much lower levels of testosterone throughout their lives than do men in developed countries. The findings may provide clues to how the body regulates short-term versus long-term increases in the hormone. The Tsimane, a population of 15,000 spread among small villages in the Amazon, rely on farming, hunting, and gathering to survive. With only recent exposure to immunizations and modern sanitation methods, the people are plagued by infections, pathogens, respiratory illnesses, and gastrointestinal diseases. This disease burden suggested to anthropologist Benjamin Trumble of the University of Washington, Seattle, that the men would likely have low testosterone levels. "Testosterone is quite energetically expensive and is also thought to interfere with immune functioning," he notes. "So if you're part of a population that faces lots of parasites and pathogens, generally you've adapted to have less testosterone." To confirm his hypothesis, Trumble and colleagues recruited 88 Tsimane men who were playing in a competitive inter-village soccer tournament. Despite their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the Tsimane have had increasing contact with other populations over the past few decades and have become avid fans of soccer. Men who were participating in the tournament play, on average, three times a week. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Aggression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 16585 - Posted: 03.29.2012

By Janelle Weaver Birth-control pills are known to affect women’s taste in men, at least in laboratory experiments. Now a study of real-world couples suggests that this pill-related preference change could have long-term consequences for a relationship’s quality and outcome. In the lab, women using oral contraceptives show a weaker preference for masculine men—those with high testosterone levels and the corresponding physical hallmarks—than their non-pill-using counterparts. To investigate this issue in a real-world setting, psychologist S. Craig Roberts of the University of Stirling in Scotland and his collaborators gave online surveys to more than 2,500 women from various countries. According to the results, published online October 12 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, participants who used hormonal contraceptives while choosing their partner were less attracted to him and less sexually satisfied during their relationship than were individuals who did not use hormonal birth control. Pill users were happier with their mate’s financial support and other nonsexual aspects of the relationship, however, and they were less likely to separate. This relationship stability might be caused by the bias of women on the pill toward low-testosterone men, who tend to be more faithful. Roberts suggests that women who met their mate while taking the pill might want to switch to nonhormonal contraceptives several months before getting married to test whether their feelings for their partner remain the same. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 16584 - Posted: 03.29.2012

By Bruce Bower An ancient member of the human evolutionary family has put what’s left of a weird, gorillalike foot forward to show that upright walking evolved along different paths in East Africa. A 3.4 million-year-old partial fossil foot unearthed in Ethiopia comes from a previously unknown hominid species that deftly climbed trees but walked clumsily, say anthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and his colleagues. Their report appears in the March 29 Nature. To the scientists’ surprise, this creature lived at the same time and in the same region as Australopithecus afarensis, a hominid species best known for a partial skeleton dubbed Lucy. Another recent fossil discovery in Ethiopia suggests that Lucy’s kind walked much as people do today (SN: 7/17/10, p. 5). “For the first time, we have evidence of another hominid lineage that lived at the same time as Lucy,” says anthropologist and study coauthor Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “This new find has a grasping big toe and no arch, suggesting [the species] couldn’t walk great distances and spent a lot of time in the trees.” Lucy’s flat-footed compatriot adds to limited evidence that some hominids retained feet designed for adept tree climbing several million years after the origin of an upright gait, writes Harvard University anthropologist Daniel Lieberman in a comment published in the same issue of Nature. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 16583 - Posted: 03.29.2012