by Elsa Youngsteadt The temperature of a nest can affect a hatchling lizard's size, speed, and sex. Now, the reptiles can add smarts to the list. Researchers have found that lizards incubated in warmer environments may learn faster than others. The results are preliminary, but they suggest that a hotter climate could give some lizards a cognitive edge, potentially helping them escape predators. Among the species poised to sharpen up is the three-lined skink (Bassiana duperreyi), a small, bug-eating lizard native to southeast Australia. The female skinks lay clusters of eggs under sunny rocks and logs, and their nests are heating up. University of Sydney herpetologist Richard Shine and his colleagues found that between 1997 and 2006, the lizards' nest temperatures increased by about 1.5°C—despite females' tendency to dig deeper nests and lay eggs earlier in the spring. Lizard moms might do well to accept the climbing temperatures—at least for now. Nests at the hot end of normal are more likely to produce fast-running hatchlings with an even sex ratio. (Cooler nests have more males, which are hardier in the cold—but an equal ratio could lead to more baby lizards overall.) Joshua Amiel, a Ph.D. student in Shine's lab, wondered if the warmer embryos' brains might develop differently, too. He collected wild females and nestled their eggs in individual glass dishes of sand and vermiculite (a common potting mix ingredient). Half went to a warm chamber with an average temperature of 22°C, the others to an incubator averaging 16°C, until they hatched. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Evolution
Link ID: 16245 - Posted: 01.12.2012

By Jason G. Goldman Classical conditioning is one of those introductory psychology terms that gets thrown around. Many people have a general idea that it is one of the most basic forms of associative learning, and people often know that Ivan Pavlov’s 1927 experiment with dogs has something to do with it, but that is often where it ends. The most important thing to remember is that classical conditioning involves automatic or reflexive responses, and not voluntary behavior (that’s operant conditioning, and that is a different post). What does this mean? For one thing, that means that the only responses that can be elicited out of a classical conditioning paradigm are ones that rely on responses that are naturally made by the animal (or human) that is being trained. Also, it means that the response you hope to elicit must occur below the level of conscious awareness – for example, salivation, nausea, increased or decreased heartrate, pupil dilation or constriction, or even a reflexive motor response (such as recoiling from a painful stimulus). In other words, these sorts of responses are involuntary. The basic classical conditioning procedure goes like this: a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditional stimulus (UCS). The neutral stimulus can be anything, as long as it does not provoke any sort of response in the organism. On the other hand, the unconditional stimulus is something that reliably results in a natural response. For example, if you shine a light into a human eye, the pupil will automatically constrict (you can actually see this happen if you watch your eyes in a mirror as you turn on and off a light). Pavlov called this the “unconditional response.” (UCR) © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16244 - Posted: 01.12.2012

By Ferris Jabr At the backs of your eyeballs, on the living projector screens called retinas, your corneas display upside-down 2-D images of the world around you. With some complex mental origami, your brain transforms those flat worlds into a beautiful 3-D model of everything you see. In a new study, researchers changed how monkeys perceived 3-D optical illusions by stimulating particular clusters of neurons in their brains. The researchers think the region they tweaked is where 3-D modeling happens. Peter Janssen of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and his colleagues trained two rhesus macaques to recognize 3-D shapes created by an arrangement of dots on a computer screen—somewhat like the illusions in the popular Magic Eye book series, except that the monkeys wore goggles called stereoscopes to make the images pop. Sometimes the 3-D image seemed to bend into the computer screen, as though the monkeys were peering into the mouth of a gramophone speaker (a concave image); other times the image bulged out toward the monkeys like the protruding end a traffic cone (a convex image). Janssen made it easier or more difficult to recognize the 3-D images by changing the density of dots on the screen, sharpening or blurring the images. First, Janssen trained the monkeys to move their eyes to the left when they saw a concave image and to the right when they saw a convex image. Then he probed their brains with microelectrodes while they completed their visual tasks, searching for groups of neurons that fired in response to either a convex or a concave image. Previously, Janssen and others had found that neurons in a brain region called the inferotemporal cortex respond to complex features of images and objects, like their shape, so Janssen probed this region specifically. Sure enough, he found clusters of neurons that fired when the monkeys saw a concave image, and others that responded to a convex shape, and Janssen stimulated those clusters with a mild electric current. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16243 - Posted: 01.12.2012

By Nathan Seppa People who smoke marijuana for recreational or medical purposes might now breathe easier. Scientists report in the Jan. 11 Journal of the American Medical Association that occasional cannabis users don’t experience any loss of lung function. In a 20-year study that included lung tests and a specific accounting of marijuana use, scientists also found that people who smoke more than 20 times a month and accumulate many years of use might have a slight drop in lung capacity over time. But the researchers are unsure of that finding since it was based on scant data. The study is the longest ever conducted that measures cannabis smoking and lung function, uses standard lung measurements and includes thousands of volunteers, says Donald Tashkin, a pulmonologist at UCLA who wasn’t involved in the study. “That makes it important,” he says. The data, he says, also suggest that marijuana is not a significant risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which includes emphysema. COPD is marked by loss of lung function and is typically caused by tobacco smoking. The researchers tapped into a health study of 5,115 young adults recruited in 1985 and given lung tests periodically until 2006. The volunteers revealed whether and how often they smoked tobacco, marijuana or both. Most marijuana users in the study reported light use — a few times a month on average during the two decades. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16242 - Posted: 01.12.2012

Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer It's no big secret that alcohol makes most people feel pretty good, but scientists at UCSF and UC Berkeley have for the first time found evidence that liquor triggers the release of pleasure-inducing endorphins in the brain - and that heavy drinkers are especially influenced by those endorphins. Studies of alcohol's effect on animal brains have shown for decades that endorphins - the body's tiny, natural proteins that behave like opiates - play a key role in the appeal of alcohol and why it can be addictive. But the UC study is the first to demonstrate, using brain-imaging technology, what actually happens in human brains while a person is drunk, or at least tipsy. The findings, while not necessarily shocking, could help researchers develop more focused drug treatments for fighting alcoholism, said scientists involved with the study released Wednesday. "Over the years, people have come up with a variety of hypotheses about how alcohol works in the brain. We know that it induces this endorphin release, and that's sort of unequivocal now," said Jennifer Mitchell, clinical project director of UCSF's Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center and lead author of the study. "Heavy drinkers report a lot of pleasure from a drink of alcohol," she said. "That's why we think drug treatment could be effective - if we can block that high, eventually they'll learn that drink isn't worth it anymore." © 2012 Hearst Communications Inc

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16241 - Posted: 01.12.2012

By Susan Milius CHARLESTON, S.C. — The greeneye fish views its stygian home through fluorescent lenses that turn one color into another, researchers propose, making glowing green images of hard-to-see violet objects. “Crazy” is what Yakir Gagnon of Duke University cheerfully called the fish-vision idea he and his colleagues presented January 4 at the annual meeting of Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Fluorescent materials known to science so far, he explained, respond to incoming light by glowing in a different color in all directions. Yet lenses on the bulging, upward-looking Chlorophthalmus fish appear to have materials that direct that fluorescent glow in the same direction and pattern as incoming light. Like many deep-sea fishes, greeneyes have only one kind of light-detecting pigment in the retina, the surface at the back of the eye that catches images. That pigment is optimized to pick up a particular wavelength of green light. Alone, the pigment doesn’t even detect blue-violet light. Yet greeneyes’ fluorescent, glowing lenses appear to translate blue-violet light into a more detectable green color. The Duke team has found that incoming blue-violet light (with a short wavelength of 410 nanometers) zaps lens substances into fluorescing a blue-green that’s just a twinkle away from the color the retinal pigment sees best. The lens glow peaks mostly at 485 nanometers, and the retinal pigment picks up light best at 488 nanometers. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 16240 - Posted: 01.12.2012

by Kai Kupferschmidt Those palm readers predicting your age from your lifeline are making it up. But now scientists say they have found a true lifeline in the cells of Zebra finches. The birds with the longest telomeres—the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes—live the longest, according to a new study. "It is the first time this has been shown for any species," says María Blasco, a telomere researcher at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, who was not involved in the work. Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences that, together with some proteins, sit at the ends of chromosomes to keep them from fraying. They have long been known to shorten with age, and when they reach a critical length, cells stop dividing. While abnormally short telomeres have been implicated in some diseases, studies investigating whether longer telomeres lead to a longer life have shown mixed results. Now biologist Pat Monaghan and her colleagues at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom have come up with the best evidence yet that telomere length correlates with life span. The scientists measured telomere length in red blood cells of 99 captive zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). The birds resemble long-lived animals in that there is little restoration of telomeres in body cells as they age. The first measurement was taken at 25 days; the researchers then followed the birds over their natural life span, ranging from less than a year to nearly 9 years, and measured telomeres again at various time points. They found a highly significant correlation between telomere length at 25 days and life span; birds with longer telomeres lived longer. Length measured at 1 year also predicted life span, but the relationship was weaker, whereas at later time points (after 3, 4, 6, and 7 years) there was no correlation, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16239 - Posted: 01.10.2012

By Alice Reid Well before sunup, Chuck Linderman launches his daily workout at the Alexandria boat house: 30 minutes pulling hard on a Concept 2 rowing machine, an equal stint lifting free weights and 30 minutes pedaling a stationary bike. He drives himself to sweaty, breathless exhaustion, for Linderman is training for the race of his life — a race against Parkinson’s disease. Linderman is one of a million Americans afflicted by this neurodegenerative disease that kills off the brain cells responsible for the body’s ability to move. His diagnosis came six years ago, when his wife noticed that his right arm was moving weirdly and that he was having trouble fastening the top button on his dress shirts. His doctor recommended seeing a neurologist. “It took the guy less than 15 minutes to make the diagnosis,” said Linderman, 64. Rowing already played a role in his life. For nearly a decade, he had been active in Alexandria Community Rowing’s masters program. So his response to Parkinson’s was immediate. Fight back with what he knew best: strenuous exercise. “What is the alternative? A descent into invalidism?” said Linderman, who retired two years ago from his job as director of a power company association. Exercise of any sort has long been known to be helpful for Parkinson’s. Before the development of effective drug therapy in the ’60s, patients often improved with any exercise, even the act of folding laundry, according to Michael Okun, national medical director of the Parkinson’s Foundation, which emphasizes exercise as an important tool to fight the disease. © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 16238 - Posted: 01.10.2012

Tomorrow, mBio—an online journal by the American Society for Microbiology—will publish new results that show that many autistic children harbor Sutterella bacteria in their digestive tract, contrary to non-autistic children. While this research provides a clear correlation, further study is needed to determine if this difference in digestive tract microorganisms is a cause or effect of autism and what role it plays in this developmental disorder. The underlying reason autism is often associated with gastrointestinal problems is an unknown, but new results to be published in the online journal mBio on January 10 reveal that the guts of autistic children differ from other children in at least one important way: many children with autism harbor a type of bacteria in their guts that non-autistic children do not. The study was conducted by Brent Williams and colleagues at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Earlier work has revealed that autistic individuals with gastrointestinal symptoms often exhibit inflammation and other abnormalities in their upper and lower intestinal tracts. However, scientists do not know what causes the inflammation or how the condition relates to the developmental disorders that characterize autism. The research results appearing in mBio® indicate the communities of microorganisms that reside in the gut of autistic children with gastrointestinal problems are different than the communities of non-autistic children. Whether or not these differences are a cause or effect of autism remains to be seen. “The relationship between different microorganisms and the host and the outcomes for disease and development is an exciting issue,” says Christine A. Biron, the Brintzenhoff Professor of Medical Science at Brown University and editor of the study. “This paper is important because it starts to advance the question of how the resident microbes interact with a disorder that is poorly understood.” SciTechDaily Copyright © 1998 - 2012.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 16237 - Posted: 01.10.2012

By Scicurious The idea of using deep brain stimulation for treatment of major depressive disorder is one that’s been brewing for a while. Every so often I see another followup or report of a long-term study on deep brain stimulation. A followup came out recently in Nature News, documenting the long term success of a small clinical study. These studies are only going to get more press as deep brain stimulation treatment is investigated, and it’s worth asking now: is this the miracle that depressed patients have been looking for? Or is it only another therapy, with another low chance of success? Deep brain stimulation (DBS) involves the implantation of a small stimulating electrode into a specific area of the brain. It’s not always for depression, doctors use DBS for treatment of other disorders such as Parkinson’s and essential tremor as well. In all cases, a small electrode array of four individual electrodes gets implanted into the brain area of choice. A tiny insulated wire connects the array to an impulse generator, a battery powered device that will generate the stimulation. This is usually placed under the skin (usually near your collarbone), while the wire connecting the two runs under the skin as well, around your ear, and into the top of your head. Once implanted and turned on, the impulse generator will send either constant or intermittent stimulation to the electrodes at a specific frequency and strength, which will result in the depolarization of a local group of neurons near the electrode. The effects of the implant depends on where in your brain it is place. The devices can last for years (as long as you replace the generator batteries, anyway), and the implantation procedure is some pretty major surgery. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 16236 - Posted: 01.10.2012

By Michelle Clement I like video games (I will rip up some Assassin’s Creed whenever I get a long weekend, do NOT get me started). My cat likes video games too, even though she doesn’t understand that she’s playing them. On a whim not too long ago, I downloaded a “games for cats” app on my iPad that simulates a dancing laser pointer or a skittering mouse, and my cat gets so into the game that she’ll push my iPad all the way across the floor in her excitement. Here’s a video of someone else’s kitten playing the same game: The phenomenon isn’t restricted to domesticated cats, either: Cats aren’t the only animals that are mentally stimulated by flashing and dancing lights, though. As it turns out, researchers at Wageningen University, in the course of their research on ethical livestock farming, noticed that pigs like to play with dancing lights as well. European regulations currently require that pig farmers provide mentally-stimulating activity for their pigs in order to reduce boredom, which leads to aggression and biting, and researchers at Wageningen University, in collaboration with the Utrecht School of the Arts, are currently developing a video game called “Pig Chase” for livestock pigs that is not unlike my cat’s iPad app. The key difference, however, is that this game would be an interspecies two-player game. [EDIT: I was contacted this afternoon by Nate at Hiccup, and he informed me that Game For Cats has also recently incorporated interspecies functionality. I didn't know that, so thanks for the update!] © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Evolution; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16235 - Posted: 01.10.2012

By Virginia Hughes Among the bloodletting boxes, ether inhalers, kangaroo-tendon sutures and other artifacts stored at the Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis are hundreds of scuffed-up canning jars full of dingy yellow liquid and chunks of human brains. Until the late 1960s the museum was the pathology department of the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane. The bits of brain in the jars were collected during patient autopsies performed between 1896 and 1938. Most of the jars sat on a shelf until the summer of 2010, when Indiana University School of Medicine pathologist George Sandusky began popping off the lids. Frustrated by a dearth of postmortem brain donations from people with mental illness, Sandusky—who is on the board of directors at the museum—seized the chance to search this neglected collection for genes that contribute to mental disorders. Sandusky is not alone. Several research groups are now seeking ways to mine genetic and other information hidden in old, often forgotten tissue archives—a handful of which can be found in the U.S., along with many more in Europe. Several technical hurdles stand in the way, but if these can be overcome, the archives would offer several advantages. Beyond supplying tissues that can be hard to acquire at a time when autopsies are on the decline, the vintage brains are untainted by modern psychiatric drugs and are often paired with detailed clinical notes that help researchers make more accurate post hoc diagnoses. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 16234 - Posted: 01.10.2012

Heidi Ledford Protective caps known as telomeres that help to preserve the integrity of chromosomes can also predict lifespan in young zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata), researchers have found. Telomeres are stretches of repetitive DNA sequence that are found at the ends of chromosomes, where they help to maintain cell viability by preventing the fraying of DNA and the fusion of one chromosome to another. The relationship between normal ageing and telomere decline has long been suspected — and even asserted by some companies that measure customers’ telomere length — but the link remains unproven in humans (see 'Spit test offers guide to health'). Most studies of longevity and telomere length have relied on only one or two measurements from an individual during their lifespan. But population ecologist Pat Monaghan of the University of Glasgow, UK, and her colleagues found that measuring telomere length periodically over the course of a zebra finch’s life revealed a tight association between length and lifespan — particularly when those measurements were taken when the birds were only 25 days old. The results are reported online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1. “This study is important,” says María Blasco, a telomere researcher at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid. “It’s the first time that normal differences in telomere length have been shown to be predictive of longevity.” Blasco was not involved in the current study, but serves as chief scientific adviser for Madrid-based company Life Length, which advertises telomere length measurements as a service for determining an individual’s "biological age". © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16233 - Posted: 01.10.2012

By SARAH WHEATON At a crowded vigil on Sunday night in Tucson, Representative Gabrielle Giffords held her husband’s hand as she stepped up to the lectern to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. It had been one year since a shooting at a Tucson supermarket killed six people, injured 12 others and left her with a severe brain injury. Ms. Giffords’s appearance was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd that applauded her remarkable progress toward recovery. The man next to her, fighting tears, offered his own remarks. “For the past year, we’ve had new realities to live with,” said her husband, the astronaut Mark E. Kelly. “The reality and pain of letting go of the past.” Captain Kelly was speaking of the survivors of the shooting. But his words echoed the sentiments of many brain injury survivors and their spouses as they grapple with interpersonal challenges that take much longer than a year to overcome. Until recently, there had been little evidence-based research on how to rebuild marriages after such a tragedy. Indeed, doctors frequently warn uninjured spouses that the marriage may well be over, that the personality changes that can result from brain injury may do irreparable harm to the relationship. Captain Kelly and Ms. Giffords largely have kept private their own experiences in this regard, and they declined to be interviewed for this article. Still, therapists are beginning to understand the obstacles that couples like them face, and what they are learning may lead to new counseling techniques to help restore the social links that give lives meaning. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Stress
Link ID: 16232 - Posted: 01.10.2012

By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News Nicotine patches may improve the memory of elderly people experiencing the earliest symptoms of dementia, researchers suspect. The patches appear to give a cognitive boost to people with mild memory impairment. The findings, published in the journal Neurology, come from a small study of 67 people over a period of six months. Experts say the results are not conclusive, merely hinting of a benefit and do not mean people should smoke. The health risks of smoking massively outweigh any potential nicotine benefits. And nicotine is known to be addictive. Longer and larger studies are now needed to fully assess nicotine's effect on memory and whether it might point the way to new treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, they say. There are some 820,000 people in the UK living with dementia. Although some drugs are already available that can lessen some of the symptoms of the disease, there is no cure for this progressive disorder. Memory and cognition are some of the first functions that begin to fail in a person with dementia. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 16231 - Posted: 01.10.2012

By BENEDICT CAREY The nicotine gum and patches that millions of smokers use to help kick their habit have no lasting benefit and may backfire in some cases, according to the most rigorous long-term study to date of so-called nicotine replacement therapy. The study, published Monday in the journal Tobacco Control, included nearly 800 people trying to quit smoking over a period of several years, and is likely to inflame a long-running debate about the value of nicotine alternatives. In medical studies, the products have proved effective, making it easier for people to quit, at least in the short term. Those earlier, more encouraging findings were the basis for federal guidelines that recommended the products for smoking cessation. But in surveys, smokers who have used the over-the-counter products, either as part of a program or on their own, have reported little benefit. The new study followed one group of smokers to see whether nicotine replacement affected their odds of kicking the habit over time. It did not, even if they also received counseling with the nicotine replacement. The market for nicotine replacement products has taken off in recent years, rising to more than $800 million annually in 2007 from $129 million in 1991. The products were approved for over-the-counter sale in 1997, and many state Medicaid programs cover at least one of them. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16230 - Posted: 01.10.2012

By Lauren F. Friedman More than 100 years ago Ivan Pavlov famously observed that a dog salivated not only when fed but also on hearing a stimulus it associated with food. Since then, scientists have discovered many other seemingly autonomous processes that can be trained with sensory stimuli—including, most recently, our immune system. Researchers have long been able to train an animal’s immune system to respond to a nonpathogen stimulus. Pavlov’s students even did so in the early 20th century, but the famous dogs overshadowed their work. Then, in the 1970s, researchers trained rats and mice to associate a taste, such as sugar water, with an immunosuppressive drug. They found that after repeated conditioning, ingest­-ing the sugar water alone could tamp down the animals’ immune response. In 2002 a small study showed that the effect could be replicated in humans—at least on a onetime basis. By then, this training had already been used to prolong the survival of rats with heart transplants and slow the progression of lupus, arthritis and other autoimmune disorders in lab animals. But could human immune systems be trained to mimic a drug again and again? “If it can be done only once, that’s a very nice phenom­enon for understanding the relation between the brain and the immune system,” says Manfred Schedlowski, a medical psychologist at the University of Duisberg-Essen in Germany and a co-author of the 2002 paper. “But that’s clinically useless.” Last year Schedlowski published a study in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity that aimed to find out whether the trained immunosuppressive response in humans could be sustained. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Neuroimmunology; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 16229 - Posted: 01.09.2012

Posted by Sarah Kliff Wired flags a new study that proves many mothers across the country right: For your own sake, you should call home more often. The research comes from Evolution and Human Behavior. It finds that a phone call to mom provides significant stress relief while instant message conversations won’t quell the nerves. The conversations happened after research subjects took a stressful test. As subjects spoke (or typed) with their mothers, the researchers measured changes in levels of cortisol (generally linked to stress) and oxytocin (a hormone linked to pleasure). When subjects talked on the phone, cortisol levels dropped and oxytocin went up. But IMing with Mom looked the same as having no contact at all: The study author tells Wired, “the results suggest that mom’s voice — its tones and intonations and rhythms, known formally as prosodics — trigger soothing effects, rather than what she specifically says.” To summarize in non-chart form: Call your mother! © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

Keyword: Stress; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 16228 - Posted: 01.09.2012

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS Though Shani Gofman had been teased for being fat since the fourth grade, she had learned to deal with it. She was a B student and in the drama club at school. She had good friends and a boyfriend she had met through Facebook. She even showed off her curves in spandex leggings and snug shirts. When her pediatrician, Dr. Senya Vayner, first mentioned weight-loss surgery, Ms. Gofman was 17, still living with her parents in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, her bedroom decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars because she was afraid of the dark. There was no question, at 5-foot-1 and more than 250 pounds, she was overweight. But she resisted, saying she could diet. “I’ll lose weight,” Ms. Gofman assured her doctor. Dr. Vayner said, prophetically, “It’s not your fault, but you’re not going to be able to do it.” Along with the obesity epidemic in America has come an explosion in weight-loss surgery, with about 220,000 operations a year — a sevenfold leap in a decade, according to industry figures — costing more than $6 billion a year. And the newest frontier is young patients like Ms. Gofman, who allowed The New York Times to follow her for a year as she had the operation and then embarked on a quest to lose weight, navigating challenges to her morale, her self-image and her relationships with family members and friends. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 16227 - Posted: 01.09.2012

by Sarah C. P. Williams Sit a dog in front of a television screen, and it may not always look intently at what it sees. But show a person on that screen who looks directly at the dog and says "hello," and the canine will pay attention. In fact, a new study shows that a dog will go so far as to follow the gaze of the human on screen when he or she looks to one side or the other—something not even chimps can do. Researchers already knew that dogs were attuned to human communication signals. In addition to their obvious facility at learning commands, dogs, like young children, can signal where a human puts an object if the human feigns ignorance, even if it's been moved, and they follow the direction of our finger when we point at things, a task chimps fail at. But are dogs capable of following more subtle cues, such as our shifting gaze? To find out, cognitive scientist Ernő Téglás of the Central European University in Budapest adapted a technique that had previously been used only on children. In one example of the test, a child watches a woman on a video screen who has toys on either side of her. The woman then either looks straight toward the camera and says "hello" in a high-pitched voice known to engage children or looks downward and says "hello" in a more dull, low-pitched voice. Then the person looks to the toy on one side or the other for 5 seconds. Whether a child also looks at the toy on the same side is recorded. To modify this experiment for dogs, Téglás substituted empty plastic pots for the children's toys and had a stranger on the screen say "hi, dog!" in one of the two intonations while looking at the camera or downward. As each dog watches the video, a specially programmed camera below the television screen follows, and records, the dog's eye movements. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 16226 - Posted: 01.07.2012