by Catherine de Lange In an unlikely marriage of quantum physics and neuroscience, tiny particles called quantum dots have been used to control brain cells for the first time. Having such control over the brain could one day provide a non-invasive treatment for conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, depression and epilepsy. In the nearer term, quantum dots could be used to treat blindness by reactivating damaged retinal cells. "Many brain disorders are caused by imbalanced neural activity," says Lih Lin at the University of Washington, Seattle. "Manipulation of specific neurons could permit the restoration of normal activity levels." Methods to stimulate the brain artificially already exist, though each has its drawbacks. Deep brain stimulation is used in Parkinson's disease to trigger brain cell activity and prevent the abnormal signalling that causes debilitating tremors, but placing the electrodes required is highly invasive. Transcranial magnetic stimulation can stimulate brain cells from outside the head, but is not highly targeted and so affects large areas of the brain at once. Researchers in optogenetics can control genetically modified brain cells using light but because of these modifications, the technique is not yet deemed safe to use in humans. Lin's team has now come up with an alternative using quantum dots – light-sensitive, semiconducting particles just a few nanometres in diameter. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16382 - Posted: 02.16.2012

I am a neuroscientist, doing research and living in The Bronx. I study the brain systems of love and relationships, which are curiously related to brain systems of hunger and thirst. Valentine's Day is special for me. I live in a small town area in the Bronx called City Island. City Island resembles an old New England shipbuilding village, has many fish restaurants, boats and a nice place for exercise and personal training. As I walk through my neighborhood these days to get to the exercise place, I am charmed by exuberant shiny red hearts streaming down a front-steps railing. At another house a large Valentine heart hangs over a Christmas wreath, as if to seamlessly spread joy and gifts from one holiday to another. A flower basket of shiny red hearts hangs on another door as a reminder that the month of May and flowers will come. Romantic love knows no season, but it's great to celebrate it in the middle of winter when some of us crave a little warmth, temperature-wise and relationship-wise. What is love? How about a simpler question -- Is romantic love an emotion? I bet you would say it is. I thought so before I started my research, but now I have a different answer for the question. But also, I constantly ask, how can research on the brain physiology of love be relevant to my neighbors on City Island behind the doors with hearts, and the doors without? I love my work. There is no greater fascination for me than how the brain organizes behavior. Physiology of mind. What a concept! Even the cells of the brain have a raw beauty and instant fascination for me. It may be their complexity and likeness to trees, stars and planets. Scientists label brain cells to study them with shiny fluorescent colors of green and blue -- even red. When I look through the microscope at the brain, I see a universe in each square millimeter of tissue. For me, it is this brain-universe that underlies behavior, even romantic behavior and feelings. © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Keyword: Emotions; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16381 - Posted: 02.16.2012

By JOHN TIERNEY Do you make decisions quickly based on incomplete information? Do you lose your temper quickly? Are you easily bored? Do you thrive in conditions that seem chaotic to others, or do you like everything well organized? Those are the kinds of questions used to measure novelty-seeking, a personality trait long associated with trouble. As researchers analyzed its genetic roots and relations to the brain’s dopamine system, they linked this trait with problems like attention deficit disorder, compulsive spending and gambling, alcoholism, drug abuse and criminal behavior. Now, though, after extensively tracking novelty-seekers, researchers are seeing the upside. In the right combination with other traits, it’s a crucial predictor of well-being. “Novelty-seeking is one of the traits that keeps you healthy and happy and fosters personality growth as you age,” says C. Robert Cloninger, the psychiatrist who developed personality tests for measuring this trait. The problems with novelty-seeking showed up in his early research in the 1990s; the advantages have become apparent after he and his colleagues tested and tracked thousands of people in the United States, Israel and Finland. “It can lead to antisocial behavior,” he says, “but if you combine this adventurousness and curiosity with persistence and a sense that it’s not all about you, then you get the kind of creativity that benefits society as a whole.” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 16380 - Posted: 02.14.2012

by Andy Coghlan Maltreatment of children may stunt growth of the hippocampus, a brain region vital for memory. That's the conclusion of a study of 193 outwardly healthy adults aged 18 to 25 from the Boston area. The stunted hippocampi could help explain how childhood stress raises the risk of psychiatric disorders in adulthood, ranging from depression, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder to personality disorders, drug addiction and even suicide. Martin Teicher of McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and colleagues used standard questionnaires to reveal which volunteers had suffered abuse as children, and found size differences in regions of the hippocampus through detailed MRI brain scans. Big differences were seen in people who said that as children they had experienced verbal, physical or sexual abuse, physical or emotional neglect, bereavement, parental separation or parental discord. Three sub-regions of the hippocampus were between 5.8 and 6.5 per cent smaller in such volunteers, compared with those who reported no maltreatment. The three sub-regions – the dentate gyrus, the cornu ammonis and the subiculum – are all known to be vulnerable to the effects of stress hormones, which probably interfere with the formation of cells and new tissue as the immature brain develops. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stress; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16379 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Bruce Bower By age 6 months, infants on the verge of babbling already know — at least in a budding sense — the meanings of several common nouns for foods and body parts, a new study finds. Vocabulary learning and advances in sounding out syllables and consonants go hand in hand starting at about age 6 months, say graduate student Elika Bergelson and psychologist Daniel Swingley of the University of Pennsylvania. Babies don’t blurt out their first words until around 1 year of age. Bergelson and Swingley’s evidence that 6-month-olds direct their gaze to images of bananas, noses and other objects named by their mothers challenges the influential view that word learning doesn’t start until age 9 months. “Our guess is that a special human desire for social connection, on the part of parents and their infants, is an important component of early word learning,” Bergelson says. The work is published online the week of February 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the study, 33 infants ages 6 to 9 months and 50 kids ages 10 to 20 months sat on their mothers’ laps in front of a computer connected to an eye-tracking device. Even at 6 months, babies looked substantially longer, on average, at images of various foods and body parts named by their mothers when those items appeared with other objects. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16378 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Laura Sanders Of the 100,000 nerve cells in the fruit fly brain, two have a special role in memory. Positioned on the front of the brain, one on each side, this duo of nerve cells (shown in pink) churns out proteins that are essential for fruit flies to form, store and retrieve long-term memories, Chun-Chao Chen of National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and colleagues report in the Feb. 10 Science. When the researchers prevented these two nerve cells from making proteins after a training session, the flies’ ability to remember an odor diminished. Surprisingly, these two large nerve cells, called the dorsal-anterior-lateral neurons, reside outside brain regions that are typically thought of as the fruit fly’s memory centers — L-shaped structures called the mushroom bodies (shown in green). © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16377 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Mark Fischetti Love, Explained: The Science of Romance Sex, speed dating, monogamy--for Valentine's Day, we look at the science behind the mating game » February 13, 2012 A dozen brain regions, working together, create feelings of passionate love. Stephanie Ortigue of Syracuse University and her colleagues worldwide compared MRI studies of people who indicated they were either in love or were experiencing maternal or unconditional love. The comparison revealed a "passion network"—the red regions shown here at various angles. The network releases neurotransmitters and other chemicals in the brain and blood that create the sensations of attraction, arousal, pleasure…and obsession. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16376 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Carolyn Butler, This Valentine’s Day, as our collective thoughts shift to tender cards, heart-shaped chocolates, overpriced bouquets and other extravagant gestures of love, I can’t help but wonder what really attracts us to one mate over another. Is it hot sex? Fairy-tale romance? Destiny? Or are we merely at the beck and call of our hormones and brain circuitry? Online dating sites trumpet their knack at identifying “chemistry,” but it turns out that basic biology may play at least as strong a role in love as do socialization, environment, fate and other factors. “We like to feel independent and free of the brain systems that regulate the mating habits and regimens of animals, but the fact is that we’re not,” says neuroendocrinologist Tom Sherman, an associate professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine. “The latest research indicates that some of our very complex behaviors — like love, courtship and pair bonding — are still regulated, to some degree, by a fairly simple set of neurochemicals.” Indeed, researchers have now identified three brain systems that are at work in mating and reproduction: lust, which is primarily mediated by the sex hormone testosterone; romantic love, which is primarily mediated by dopamine, a neurotransmitter that drives the brain’s reward and pleasure centers, and is characterized by craving and focused attention for just one person at a time; and attachment, which is primarily mediated by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin and is associated with the bonding and security you often feel with a long-term partner. © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

Keyword: Emotions; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16375 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Adam Hadhazy Love might be in the air on Valentine's Day, metaphorically speaking. But scientists have long debated whether love—or, at least, sexual attraction—is literally in the air, in the form of chemicals called pheromones. Creatures from mice to moths send out these chemical signals to entice mates. And if advertisements about pheromone-laden fragrances are to be believed, one might conclude that humans also exchange molecular come-hithers. Still, after decades of research, the story in humans is not quite so clear. Rather than positing that single, pheromone-esque compounds strike us like Cupid's arrow, investigators now suggest that a suite of chemicals emitted from our bodies subliminally sways potential partnerings. Smell, it seems, plays an underappreciated role in romance and other human affairs. "We've just started to understand that there is communication below the level of consciousness," says Bettina Pause, a psychologist at Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf (H.H.U.), who has been studying pheromones and human social olfaction for 15 years. "My guess is that a lot of our communication is influenced by chemosignals." Animals, plants and even bacteria produce pheromones. These precise cocktails of compounds trigger various reactions in fellow members of a species—not all of which are sexual. Pheromonal messages can range from the competitive, such as the "stink fights" of male lemurs, to the collaborative, such as ants laying down chemical trails to food sources. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16374 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Jeanna Bryner Managing editor Give a male garter snake a taste of estrogen and watch out, as the hormone turns these lads into the sexiest thing on the block, attracting dozens of other males eager to mate. The finding, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, has implications for understanding the environmental impact of compounds that mimic the effect of estrogen, found in some chemicals and pesticides. Estrogen, the researchers found, is key to a female's release of pheromones and thus, reproduction. Here's how it works: For the red-sided garter snake, picking up a mate takes but a second and a flick of the tongue. When a male detects a possible mate nearby, he licks the female with a quick flick of his tongue. Researchers say that the chemical cues exuded by the females, called pheromones, are so strong that it takes but an instant for the male to determine the other snake's species, sex, population, reproduction condition, size and age. In fact, the males are totally dependent on these pheromones for snake reproduction. Every spring, tens of thousands of these garter snakes emerge from their limestone caves north of Manitoba, Canada, for mating. Intense competition ensues, as males swarm (and tongue) female snakes in an effort to be the first to mate with her. The frenzy appears as twisting balls of snakes called mating balls. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 16373 - Posted: 02.14.2012

By Tina Hesman Saey On February 2, groundhog weatherman Punxsutawney Phil roused from hibernation to predict six more weeks of winter. Scientists may snicker at people who think they can learn about the arrival of spring from a furry rodent, but researchers aren’t laughing when it comes to learning about human health from animals that check out for the winter. Understanding how hibernators, including ground squirrels, marmots and bears, survive their long winter’s naps may one day offer solutions for problems such as heart disease, osteoporosis and muscular dystrophy. Despite appearances, hibernation is not the same as going to sleep for a long time. It is extreme living by any measure. For about half the year, hibernating animals stay in their dens or burrows in a state of suspended animation, waking up every now and again to go to the bathroom. Most hibernators eat or drink nothing, living solely off the fat they built up before winter began. To make fat stores last, animals lower their metabolism and body temperatures. Black bear body temperatures drop to about 33º Celsius (about 91º Fahrenheit), but the bodies of most small mammal hibernators, such as ground squirrels and woodchucks, plunge to nearly freezing. Some Arctic ground squirrels hold steady at subzero temperatures. For all these animals, heartbeats and breathing nearly cease. These are feats of physiological daring that non-hibernators, including humans, could never survive. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 16372 - Posted: 02.14.2012

by Andy Coghlan THE once paralysed limb began to twitch just minutes after the operation. It was an early sign that the rat was on a fast track to recovery that would see it up and running within weeks. The rodent is one of more than 200 to have undergone a new surgical procedure for nerve repair that provides faster - and better - results in animals than existing techniques. The crucial question is: can it work as well in humans with the sorts of injuries that the real world inflicts upon us? "In animal models, the results are better than any current techniques used for nerve repair," says Wesley Thayer of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, a member of the team behind the new procedure. So far, Thayer and team leader George Bittner of the University of Texas at Austin have used the new technique to treat rats after severing their sciatic nerve, which mediates leg movement and feeling. With plans afoot to begin clinical trials and work also under way to see if the procedure can heal spinal cord injuries in rats, nerve specialists are cautiously optimistic that Bittner and Thayer are on to something. When a nerve is severed through injury, surgeons must suture the two stumps together as quickly as possible. Yet even under controlled lab conditions, Bittner's tests in rats suggest that these conventional sutures restore little more than 30 per cent of previous mobility, even three months after surgery. His new technique helps to restore twice that, in as little as two weeks. The secret, he says, is to prevent the body lending a helping hand. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 16371 - Posted: 02.11.2012

Caitlin Stier, video intern You may want to get your rulers out: although this oversized chessboard seems to slant when animated, its rows and columns are always perfectly parallel. The animation, developed by Sinji Nonaka, tricks your brain when alternating rows are shifted horizontally or vertically, skewing the grid pattern. The unusual effect was discovered by a member of vision researcher Richard Gregory's team as he looked at the brick tiling of a Bristol café in the 1970s. Gregory was inspired to recreate the design for a party organised by the BBC TV programme Tomorrow's World. But during the process he made a key discovery: the illusion was dependent on the shade of the mortar between the rows. To test the effect, Gregory worked with Priscilla Heard, now at the University of the West of England, to develop a customisable version of the wall using reflective surfaces, adjustable lights and moving tiles. By varying the brightness of the mortar, they found that it had to fall in between the contrast of the black and white tiles for the effect to occur. A thinner lining also produced steeper slopes. But in addition to the brightness of gaps between rows, the offset of the chessboard is also responsible for the effect. The shift causes like-shaded squares to overlap which affects the perceived brightness of the tiny space in between. The gap appears to be lighter for two dark squares and darker where white ones meet, causing a striation that's processed by our brain as a single line indicating slope. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16370 - Posted: 02.11.2012

Smoking marijuana a couple of hours before you drive almost doubles your chances of having a serious car crash, say Canadian researchers. The study led by Associate Professor Mark Asbridge from Dalhousie University in Halifax, is the first to review of data from drivers who had been treated for serious injuries or died in car accidents. "To our knowledge this meta-analysis is the first to examine the association between acute cannabis use and the risk of motor vehicle collisions in real life," the researchers write in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal. The researchers reviewed nine observational studies with a total sample of 49,411 accident victims. To rule out the effects of alcohol or other drugs the researchers calculated the odds for cases where cannabis — but no alcohol or other drugs — was detected in blood test or the driver had reported smoking three hours before crash. They found that smoking cannabis three hours before driving nearly doubled a driver's risk of having a motor vehicle accident. But the level of tetrahydrocannabionol (THC) — the active compound in marijauna — in the blood that leads to impairment is unclear as most of the studies just measured for the presence of THC in the blood. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16369 - Posted: 02.11.2012

By Nathan Seppa Twice-a-week tai chi lessons can help people with Parkinson’s disease maintain their footing and lessen the risk of falls, a new study finds. Training in the Chinese martial art seems to improve ankle stability, posture control and walking ability in these patients. Tai chi includes exercises and posture changes by which the body flows slowly from one position into another, with heightened awareness of balance, coordination and weight shifting. “We’re hoping that physical therapy will pick up some of these movements” for Parkinson’s patients, says study coauthor Fuzhong Li, a behavioral researcher at the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene. “They are very easy to incorporate into PT sessions.” The study appears in the Feb. 9 New England Journal of Medicine. Parkinson’s disease gradually destroys brain cells that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter essential for delivering brain signals that control muscle movement. People with the disease risk falling every day as they struggle to maintain balance in walking and performing common tasks. Many Parkinson’s patients improve with medication or brain surgery (SN: 9/2/2006, p. 149). But those benefits have limits. “Surgical treatment and drugs make a person more mobile but don’t improve the ability to control balance,” says Lee Dibble, a physical therapist and Parkinson’s researcher at the University of Utah. The new report suggests that tai chi and to some extent resistance training do aid balance and limit falls. “You really need an intervention like this to improve and maintain function,” Dibble says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 16368 - Posted: 02.11.2012

By Gary Stix A nearly 13-year-old skin cancer drug rapidly alleviates molecular signs of Alzheimer's disease and improves brain function, according to the results of a new mouse study being hailed as extremely promising. Early-stage human clinical trials could begin within months. In the study, published online February 9 by Science, researchers from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and colleagues used mice genetically engineered to exhibit some of the symptoms of Alzheimer's. Most notably, the mice produced amyloid beta peptides—toxic protein fragments that gum up neurons and lead to cell death—and showed signs of forgetfulness. The Case Western team, led by Gary Landreth, decided to try the drug bexarotene (Targretin), approved in 1999 for cutaneous T cell lymphomas. The team chose this drug because of its long experience working with proteins in the nucleus of brain cells that can induce biochemical processes that affect amyloid beta. Landreth and his colleagues fed bexarotene to the demented mice, and with just a single dose it lowered the most toxic form of the amyloid beta peptide by 25 percent within six hours, an effect that lasted for up to three days. Mice that were cognitively impaired by the amyloid buildup resumed normal behaviors after 72 hours: They began to crinkle toilet paper placed nearby to make nests, a skill lost as amyloid increased in their brains. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 16367 - Posted: 02.11.2012

By Laura Sanders In one of science’s most iconic moments, Isaac Newton’s eye caught the red glint of an apple as it plunged toward the ground. He heard the leaves rustle in the light breeze and felt the warmth of the tea he was drinking at the time. These sensory inputs streamed into his brain, where they met his vast stores of knowledge, his internal musings, his peculiar brand of curiosity and perhaps even a fond recollection of escaping the ground’s hold while climbing a tree as a boy. All at once, sights, sounds, emotions and memories converged to form a whole, rich experience in the garden that day. It was this fortuitous experience — perfectly ripe for a big idea — that (legend has it) caused Newton to wonder why the apple fell not sideways or even upward, but straight down. Inspiration struck, ushering in a new understanding of gravity. Newton gets the glory for figuring out that the same mysterious force pulls planets toward the sun and apples toward Earth, but how he did it hinges on an even deeper mystery: How his brain created a single, seamless experience from a chaotic flux of internal and external messages. And that mystery isn’t confined to brains like Newton’s. In all conscious people, the brain somehow gives meaning to the external environment, allowing for thought, self-reflection and discovery. “It’s not that conscious experience is one little interesting phenomenon,” says neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs of Caltech. “It’s literally the whole world.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Consciousness; Attention
Link ID: 16366 - Posted: 02.11.2012

Christian Keysers Every time my 18-month-old daughter sees me using a tool, she tries to copy me. She steals my pen to write, and excitedly brushes the few teeth she has when I brush mine. Such a capacity for connecting with and learning from other minds also manifests itself in the empathy we feel with other people's emotions, and in our ability to understand others' goals and help them. Through that ability, we can create and manage the complex social world that is arguably the key to our species' dominance. Ten years ago, human minds were thought to be unique in their ability to connect. But as The Primate Mind shows, there has been a revolution in our understanding. This collection of essays, the result of a 2009 conference organized by primatologist Frans de Waal and ethologist Pier Francesco Ferrari, presents an authoritative, surprising and enriching picture of our monkey and ape cousins. We now know that they have remarkably sophisticated social minds, and that their poor performance in social tasks set by humans was more a result of researchers asking the wrong questions than deficiencies in their experimental subjects. For example, a chapter by psychologists April Ruiz and Laurie Santos explores whether non-human primates can monitor where others are looking and use that information in their own decision-making — a test of whether the animal understands what another perceives. Primatologists first tested this by seeing whether monkeys followed an experimenter's gaze to find a box containing food. The animals performed unexpectedly poorly. But changing the task from cooperation to competition unleashed the primates' true potential: macaques readily stole food from humans who looked away, but refrained from doing so when watched. Placing the task in a setting more relevant to macaque social life, which is less cooperative than our own, emphasized the continuity between our social mind and that of our primate ancestors. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Evolution; Attention
Link ID: 16365 - Posted: 02.11.2012

By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL THE word “dyslexia” evokes painful struggles with reading, and indeed this learning disability causes much difficulty for the estimated 15 percent of Americans affected by it. Since the phenomenon of “word blindness” was first documented more than a century ago, scientists have searched for the causes of dyslexia, and for therapies to treat it. In recent years, however, dyslexia research has taken a surprising turn: identifying the ways in which people with dyslexia have skills that are superior to those of typical readers. The latest findings on dyslexia are leading to a new way of looking at the condition: not just as an impediment, but as an advantage, especially in certain artistic and scientific fields. Dyslexia is a complex disorder, and there is much that is still not understood about it. But a series of ingenious experiments have shown that many people with dyslexia possess distinctive perceptual abilities. For example, scientists have produced a growing body of evidence that people with the condition have sharper peripheral vision than others. Gadi Geiger and Jerome Lettvin, cognitive scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used a mechanical shutter, called a tachistoscope, to briefly flash a row of letters extending from the center of a subject’s field of vision out to its perimeter. Typical readers identified the letters in the middle of the row with greater accuracy. Those with dyslexia triumphed, however, when asked to identify letters located in the row’s outer reaches. Mr. Geiger and Mr. Lettvin’s findings, which have been confirmed in several subsequent studies, provide a striking demonstration of the fact that the brain separately processes information that streams from the central and the peripheral areas of the visual field. Moreover, these capacities appear to trade off: if you’re adept at focusing on details located in the center of the visual field, which is key to reading, you’re likely to be less proficient at recognizing features and patterns in the broad regions of the periphery. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Dyslexia; Attention
Link ID: 16364 - Posted: 02.11.2012

by Gisela Telis The right turn of phrase can activate the brain's sensory centers, a new study suggests. Researchers have found that textural metaphors—phrases such as "soft-hearted"—turn on a part of the brain that's important to the sense of touch. The result may help resolve a long-standing controversy over how the brain understands metaphors and may offer scientists a new way to study how different brain regions communicate. Scientists have disagreed for decades about how the brain processes metaphors, those figures of speech that liken one thing to another without using "like" or "as." One camp claims that when we hear a metaphor—a friend tells us she's had a rough day—we understand the expression only because we've heard it so many times. The brain learns that "rough" means both "abrasive" and "bad," this camp says, and it toggles from one definition to the other. The other camp claims the brain calls on sensory experiences, such as what roughness feels like, to comprehend the metaphor. Researchers from both camps have scanned the brain for signs of sensory activity triggered by metaphors, but these past studies, which tested a variety of metaphors without targeting specific senses or regions of the brain, have come up dry. Neurologist Krish Sathian of Emory University in Atlanta wondered whether using metaphors specific to only one of the senses might be a better strategy. He and his colleagues settled on touch and asked seven college students to distinguish between different textures while their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging. This enabled them to map the brain regions each subject used to feel and classify textures. Then they scanned the subjects' brains again as they listened to a torrent of textural metaphors and their literal counterparts: "he is wet behind the ears" versus "he is naïve," for example, or "it was a hairy situation" versus "it was a precarious situation." © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Language; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 16363 - Posted: 02.09.2012