By Ingrid Wickelgren Peter West makes his living working with explosives, but for a long time he did his job despite a terrifying handicap: tremors. His hands would twitch and shake, his head would bob, his speech would become garbled. Sometimes he could barely pour milk from a pitcher—the milk slopping over the side of the glass. “At that time, I was mixing high explosives,” West says. “I knew it was a matter of time before I dropped one.” Luckily the most significant thing West, 54, dropped was his golf ball. In 2003, while on the links, a doctor in West’s party noticed he was having trouble balancing the ball on the T. One thing led to another, and West was diagnosed with essential tremor, a neurological disorder characterized by shaking of the hands and other body parts. The main treatment option was drugs that would make him sleepy—a hazardous side effect in his line of work. West, however, hooked up with doctors at Rhode Island Hospital who performed deep brain stimulation. In 2004, they opened West’s skull and implanted an electrode in his thalamus, a structure in the center of the brain just above the brainstem. They ran a wire to another device, inserted under the skin of his collarbone, that generated pulses of electrical current. The treatment reduced West’s tremors to manageable levels, and allowed him to continue his work. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 16157 - Posted: 12.17.2011

by Helen Shen SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—Underwater earthquake recordings could help track the endangered and poorly understood fin whale, according to research presented here last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Most quake researchers cull the whale's booming calls from their seafloor recordings. But one group of seismologists has flipped things around to harvest an extensive repertoire of fin whale songs. The second-largest among whales, fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) live in many of the world's oceans. Yet, relatively little is known about their social habits, breeding grounds, and seasonal migration paths. The animals stick mostly to deep waters far offshore, so following them by visual surveys and radio tagging can be difficult and costly. Seismologist William Wilcock of the University of Washington, Seattle, wondered if there was a better way. From 2003 to 2006, his group had measured undersea earthquakes that occur as new sea floor forms. Implanted in the ocean floor, their seismic detectors also picked up fin whale calls, which—at 17 to 35 hertz—overlap in frequency with Earth's rumblings. To extract earthquake information efficiently, the group developed computer programs to detect and filter out whale songs. Using a similar strategy to weed out seismic vibrations brought the singing whales to center stage. "We just turned the code around," says Dax Soule, a graduate student in Wilcock's lab. In 3 years, the researchers recorded about 300,000 fin whale calls near the Endeavour hydrothermal vents on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, near Vancouver Island in Canada. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 16156 - Posted: 12.15.2011

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Can a cup of coffee motivate you to relish your trips to the gym this winter? That question is at the heart of a notable study of caffeine and exercise, one of several new experiments suggesting that, whatever your sport, caffeine may allow you to perform better and enjoy yourself more. Scientists and many athletes have known for years, of course, that a cup of coffee before a workout jolts athletic performance, especially in endurance sports like distance running and cycling. Caffeine has been proven to increase the number of fatty acids circulating in the bloodstream, which enables people to run or pedal longer (since their muscles can absorb and burn that fat for fuel and save the body’s limited stores of carbohydrates until later in the workout). As a result, caffeine, which is legal under International Olympic Committee rules, is the most popular drug in sports. More than two-thirds of about 20,680 Olympic athletes studied for a recent report had caffeine in their urine, with use highest among triathletes, cyclists and rowers. But whether and how caffeine affects other, less-aerobic activities, like weight training or playing a stop-and-go team sport like soccer or basketball, has been less clear. So researchers at Coventry University in England recently recruited 13 fit young men and asked them to repeat a standard weight-training gym regimen on several occasions. An hour before one workout, the men consumed a sugar-free energy drink containing caffeine. An hour before another, they drank the same beverage, minus the caffeine. Then the men lifted, pressed and squatted, performing each exercise until they were exhausted. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16155 - Posted: 12.15.2011

By Charles B. Brenner and Jeffrey M. Zacks The French poet Paul Valéry once said, “The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.” In that spirit, consider a situation many of us will find we know too well: You're sitting at your desk in your office at home. Digging for something under a stack of papers, you find a dirty coffee mug that’s been there so long it’s eligible for carbon dating. Better wash it. You pick up the mug, walk out the door of your office, and head toward the kitchen. By the time you get to the kitchen, though, you've forgotten why you stood up in the first place, and you wander back to your office, feeling a little confused—until you look down and see the cup. So there's the thing we know best: The common and annoying experience of arriving somewhere only to realize you've forgotten what you went there to do. We all know why such forgetting happens: we didn’t pay enough attention, or too much time passed, or it just wasn’t important enough. But a “completely different” idea comes from a team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame. The first part of their paper’s title sums it up: “Walking through doorways causes forgetting.” Gabriel Radvansky, Sabine Krawietz and Andrea Tamplin seated participants in front of a computer screen running a video game in which they could move around using the arrow keys. In the game, they would walk up to a table with a colored geometric solid sitting on it. Their task was to pick up the object and take it to another table, where they would put the object down and pick up a new one. Whichever object they were currently carrying was invisible to them, as if it were in a virtual backpack. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16154 - Posted: 12.15.2011

By Christof Koch Sigmund Freud popularized the idea of the unconscious, a sector of the mind that harbors thoughts and memories actively removed from conscious deliberation. Because this aspect of mind is, by definition, not accessible to introspection, it has proved difficult to investigate. Today the domain of the unconscious—described more generally in the realm of cognitive neuroscience as any processing that does not give rise to conscious awareness—is routinely studied in hundreds of laboratories using objective psychophysical techniques amenable to statistical analysis. Let me tell you about two experiments that reveal some of the capabilities of the unconscious mind. Both depend on “masking,” as it is called in the jargon, or hiding things from view. Subjects look but don’t see. The first experiment is a collaboration among Filip Van Opstal of Ghent University in Belgium, Floris P. de Lange of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and Stanislas Dehaene of the Collège de France in Paris. Dehaene, director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, is best known for his investigations of the brain mechanisms underlying counting and numbers. Here he explored the extent to which a simple sum or an average can be computed outside the pale of consciousness. Adding 7, 3, 5 and 8 is widely assumed to be a quintessential serial process that requires consciousness. Van Opstal and his colleagues proved the opposite in an indirect but clever and powerful way. A quartet of single-­digit Arabic numbers (1 through 9, excluding the numeral 5) are projected onto a screen. Volunteers had to indicate as quickly as possible whether or not the average of the four projected numbers exceeded 5. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 16153 - Posted: 12.15.2011

By Katherine Harmon Medical school might be a long, slow slog, but once doctors have their training, they can often make diagnoses in a matter of moments. New research suggests that doctors actually identify an abnormality in less than two seconds—not much longer than it takes them to name an animal or a letter of the alphabet. Twenty-five radiologists submitted to having their brains scanned while performing visual diagnoses of chest x-rays. Mixed in with images of abnormal chest x-rays were clean ones on which the outline of an animal or consonant had been superimposed to test the speed with which doctors recognized familiar objects. The researchers, led by Marcio Melo, of the Laboratory of Medical Informatics at the University of São Paulo, found that the same regions of the brain were active when doctors correctly identified any of the three objects. The findings were published online Wednesday in PLoS ONE. “Diagnostic hypotheses in medical practice are often made by physicians in the first moments of contact with patients; sometimes even before the report of symptoms,” Melo and the team wrote in their paper. Indeed, the doctors in the study—who had been prepared to see the variety of images—named the type of abnormality—such as cavitation or cardiomegaly—in an average of 1.33 seconds. Animals got named in 1.23 seconds. The well-trained brains still had to work a little harder to come up with the medical terms for the conditions than for the more common visual clues, according to the study. The fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans showed that although the diagnoses called on the same collection of areas around the brain as did animals and letters, they also put a much higher demand on the left inferior frontal sulcus and posterior cingulate cortex, which are areas of higher cognitive processing. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16152 - Posted: 12.15.2011

Allen Frances, contributor "WE DON'T see things as they are, we see things as we are." This simple Talmudic saying summarises the essence of epistemology. Psychiatric disorders provide a striking example: they are not real things in nature, but labels we create to describe troubling aspects of human experience. Sometimes labels take on a life of their own. People mistakenly think that naming a psychiatric problem shapes it into a simple disease with a reductionist, biological explanation. Labelling mental disorders is useful in providing a common language and guide to treatment. But psychiatric disorders are remarkably heterogeneous and overlapping in their presentations and complex in their causation. The human brain rarely reveals its secrets in simple answers. All of which brings us to the wonderful book, American Madness, an artful analysis of the rise and fall of the label "dementia praecox" from its promising birth in 1896 to its unlamented death in 1927. Introduced by the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, the term was used to describe an early onset of psychotic symptoms that presaged a tragic downhill course and poor outcome - as distinct from manic depressive illness, which has a more variable age of onset, cyclical course, and greater chance for a good outcome. The label dementia praecox spread like wildfire and was briefly the darling of psychiatry until it lost out to schizophrenia, a broader concept that included milder and earlier cases and did not necessarily imply such a bleak future or bad outcome. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 16151 - Posted: 12.15.2011

by Peter Aldhous Itsy bitsy spiders have a big problem: where to store their bulging brains. For Anapisona simoni and other arachnid lightweights, the problem is so acute that their brains have literally spilled out of their body cavities and into their legs. Tiny creatures' brains and microelectronics have something in common, it turns out: ultimately, attempts to miniaturise the circuitry will hit a wall. Once the axons that transmit neural signals get down to 0.1 micrometre in diameter, for instance, channels that move ions across cell membranes get so "noisy" that signalling becomes unreliable. What's more, nervous tissue demands a lot of energy, and if nerve cells get too small they simply don't contain enough mitochondria – organelles that act as cellular power plants – to meet their needs. As a result, animals face a trade-off as natural selection pushes them towards the minuscule: either dumb down, or lug around brains that are much bigger, proportionate to body size, than those needed by a larger creatures with similar smarts. Weaving websMovie Camera is not for dullards, so tiny spiders haven't taken the evolutionary road to stupidity. In 2007, William Eberhard of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and the University of Costa Rica found that the smallest spiders weave webs that are just as complex as those made by larger relatives. "There was no correlation between the size of the spider and the precision with which it built the sticky spiral in the web," he says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 16150 - Posted: 12.15.2011

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR One out of every 15 high school students smokes marijuana on a near daily basis, a figure that has reached a 30-year peak even as use of alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine among teenagers continues a slow decline, according to a new government report. The popularity of marijuana, which is now more prevalent among 10th graders than cigarette smoking, reflects what researchers and drug officials say is a growing perception among teenagers that habitual marijuana use carries little risk of harm. That perception, experts say, is fueled in part by wider familiarity with medicinal marijuana and greater ease in obtaining it. Although it is difficult to track the numbers, “we’re clearly seeing an increase in teenage marijuana use that corresponds pretty clearly in time with the increase in medical marijuana use,” said Dr. Christian Thurstone, medical director of the adolescent substance abuse treatment program at Denver Health and Hospital Authority, who was not involved in the study. Medical marijuana is legal in 16 states, including Colorado, and the District of Columbia. The long-running annual report, called the Monitoring the Future survey and financed by the National Institutes of Health, looked at more than 46,000 students nationwide. Over all, about 25 percent of 8th, 10th and 12th graders who took part in the study reported using marijuana in the past year, up from about 21 percent in 2007. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16149 - Posted: 12.15.2011

The FINANCIAL -- Georgia State University neuroscientists have found that there are differences between male and female hormonal and behavioral responses to physical abuse early in life - an insight that might one day lead to gender-specific treatments for mood disorders. The team of Bradley Cooke, assistant professor at GSU's Neuroscience Institute, and graduate students Jill M. Weathington and Amanda R. Arnold explored the subject by exposing young male and female rats to aggressive acts by adult male rats. When the rats grew into adulthood, the scientists found that the female rats were more severely affected by the experience, showing both behavioral changes as well as lasting hormonal changes as a result. The findings will appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Hormones and Behavior. The rats were tested behaviorally through using a swim test, an elevated 'plus' maze, and a social interaction test. In the swim test, females were more likely to stop swimming sooner than the males, reflecting a greater tendency to depression among the abused females. The findings are important in expanding scientists' understanding of how abuse during childhood may affect the development of mood disorders later in life. Child abuse and neglect are major risk factors for depression and anxiety. Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression, according to statistics. The results from Cooke's team, which found that abused females had very high stress hormone responses, have also been observed in humans, with women showing the same pattern. © 2007 The FINANCIAL,

Keyword: Stress; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16148 - Posted: 12.15.2011

Advances in neuroscience suggest the age of criminal responsibility - 10 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland - might be too low, according to a study. The Royal Society report considers areas where recent scientific findings could have an impact on the law. At the age of 10 parts of the brain connected with decision-making and judgement are still developing, the study says. But it says there are limits to how the science can be used in court. Professor Nicholas Mackintosh, who chaired the working group that compiled the study, said: "There's now incontrovertible evidence that the brain continues to develop throughout adolescence." He said some regions of the brain - including parts responsible for decision-making and impulse control - are not fully mature "until at least the age of 20". "Now that clearly has some implications for how adolescents behave," he said. The report notes the concern of some neuroscientists that the current age of criminal responsibility in the UK is set too low. In most European countries it is far higher - 18 in Belgium and 16 in Spain. It also suggests that because of differences between individuals a cut-off age may not be justifiable. Professor Mackintosh said it was for policy makers to decide on altering the age of responsibility, but the changing science meant it should at least be reviewed. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16147 - Posted: 12.15.2011

by Sara Reardon LONDON—The tantalizing prospect of using a brain scanner to determine whether a witness is lying, or a genetic analysis to determine whether a murder suspect is predisposed to commit violent crimes, are premature and unrealistic, according to a new report on neuroscience and the law presented today by the U.K. Royal Society. But neuroscientists might be able to provide evidence for determining whether head injuries are accidental, and whether a violent offender is likely to strike again. As neuroscience advances, it's easy to see why lawyers are tempted to bring its tools into play on their clients' behalf, the report's authors say. "Neuroscience is engaged in understanding behavior and the law is engaged in regulating behavior," experimental psychologist Nicholas Mackintosh of the University of Cambridge, who headed the Royal Society's working group on neuroscience and the law, said at a press briefing last week. Although it's not known whether lawyers have brought mental health reports or brain imaging into U.K. courtrooms as evidence, mental health is used as a defence about 200 times per year in the United States, the report noted, especially in murder trials where the defendant may receive the death penalty. One useful application of neuroscience in the courtroom would be the ability to detect lies by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). But at best, Mackintosh said, such imaging might be able to detect deliberate lies; it would be useless if a witness truly believed that he was telling the truth. That limitation hasn't stopped at least two U.S.-based companies from marketing such lie detectors, however, and "we take a singularly skeptical view of that," Mackintosh said. "Neuroscience, although very promising, is very young." © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Brain imaging; Stress
Link ID: 16146 - Posted: 12.13.2011

By Scicurious Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children, and is becoming a big deal in adults as well. ADHD is a pile of related symptoms, most of them dealing with motivation, impulsivity, inattention, and, you know hyperactivity (they call it ADHD for a reason). Right now, we treat ADHD with stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall, which in low doses and when they act over a long period of time can increase focus and help people with ADHD function better. But the question remains as to what CAUSES ADHD, what abnormalities are going on in the brain that cause the symptoms. There are several hypotheses as to what’s going on. One of them is the dopamine hypothesis, that dysfunctions in dopamine systems are responsible some of the symptoms. But in order to prove this, we have to find evidence for it in humans. There is some evidence that dopamine dysfunction contributes, and now we have a little bit more. Volkow et al. “Motivation deficit in ADHD is associated with dysfunction of the dopamine reward pathway” Molecular Psychiatry, 2011. (I should note here that Dr. Nora Volkow is the current head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and is also one of the foremost researchers on ADHD in humans). In this case, the authors wanted to look at how dopamine system function was related to scores of motivation in adults with ADHD. The problem with this is how to measure “motivation”. In this case, they looked at people’s ADHD scores (compared to non-ADHD controls), and looked at scores on personality tests, particularly those related to “achivement”. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: ADHD; Attention
Link ID: 16145 - Posted: 12.13.2011

By Lindsey Tanner CHICAGO—Ritalin and other drugs used to treat attention deficit disorder are safe for adults' hearts, even though they can increase blood pressure and heart rate, according to the largest study of these medicines in adults. The results echo findings in a study of children with ADHD, by the same researchers, published last month. The review of health records for more than 440,000 adults aged 25 to 64 showed those taking ADHD drugs had about the same number of heart attacks, strokes and sudden heart-related deaths as adults who didn't use those drugs. Although attention deficit disorder is usually thought of as a condition in childhood, many continue to have symptoms as adults, including impulsive, fidgety behavior and difficulty focusing or paying attention. ADHD affects about 4 percent of U.S. adults, roughly 9 million. About 8 percent of U.S. children aged 3 to 17, or 5 million kids, have ever been diagnosed with the disorder, government statistics show. More than 1.5 million U.S. adults were taking stimulants used for ADHD in 2005, and use of ADHD drugs increased more rapidly in adults than in kids over the past decade, the study said. The research will be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association's Dec. 28 print edition, but was released online Monday because of its public health importance, journal editors said. © Copyright 2011 Associated Press.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 16144 - Posted: 12.13.2011

By Larry Greenemeier Promising treatments for those blinded by an often-hereditary, retina-damaging disease are expanding throughout Europe and making their way across the pond, offering a ray of hope for the hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. left in the dark by retinitis pigmentosa. The disease—which affects about one in 4,000 people in the U.S. and about 1.5 million people worldwide—kills the retina's photoreceptors, the rod and cone cells that convert light into electrical signals, which are transmitted via the optic nerve to the brain's visual cortex for processing. There is no effective treatment for the condition, but researchers are making great strides to remedy this through implants that stimulate still-active nerves in the retina, the layer of tissue at the back of the inner eye. In mid-November Retina Implant, AG, got approval to extend the yearlong phase II human clinical trial of its retinal implant outside its native Tübingen, Germany, to five new sites—Oxford, London and Budapest, along with two additional locations in Germany. The company's implant is a three- by three-millimeter microelectronic chip (0.1-millimeter thick), containing about 1,500 light-sensitive photodiodes, amplifiers and electrodes surgically inserted beneath the fovea (which contains the cone cells) in the retina's macula region. The fovea enables the clarity of vision that people rely on to read, watch TV and drive. The chip helps generate at least partial vision by stimulating intact nerve cells in the retina. The nervous impulses from these cells are then led via the optic nerve to the visual cortex where they finally lead to impressions of sight. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 16143 - Posted: 12.13.2011

By Tom Fields-Meyer, My son Ezra was 4 or 5 when he began asking people their birthdays. At first it seemed like a typical child’s question. But then months later he would encounter acquaintances — or even whole families — and reel off the birth months with perfect recall as he pointed at each person. “Steve, April. Janice, November. Shayna, August.” Driving him to school one morning, I heard him in the back seat reciting what at first sounded like random dates and names. Then I realized what he was doing: listing the months in calendar order, each followed by the names of everyone he had encountered whose birthday fell in that month. It was an early glimpse of what I came to realize was an extraordinary — even superhuman — memory. Ezra, now 15, has high-functioning autism. Experts will tell you that the disorder’s most significant characteristic is difficulty communicating and forming relationships. Ezra knows he has autism, but to him one of its primary characteristics is that he can remember things better than most people. Of course, autism is a spectrum disorder; not every person with the condition has an uncanny memory. Researchers aren’t certain what proportion of people with autism possess powerful recall, nor can they pinpoint exactly what about the brain wiring of people such as Ezra gives them this ability. But many, like Ezra, display remarkable recall that can leave mere mortals floored. © 1996-2011 The Washington Post

Keyword: Autism; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16142 - Posted: 12.13.2011

By Bruce Bower Culturally speaking, ancient East Africans were a stone’s throw away from southern Arabia. Stone tools collected at several sites along a plateau in Oman, which date to roughly 106,000 years ago, match elongated cutting implements previously found at East African sites from around the same time, say archaeologist Jeffrey Rose of the University of Birmingham, England, and his colleagues. New finds also include cores — or rocks from which tools were pounded off with a hammer stone — that correspond to East African specimens, the researchers report online November 30 in PLoS ONE. East African sites that have yielded these distinctive stone artifacts extend southward along the Nile River to the Horn of Africa. “In the mountain of papers speculating about human dispersal out of Africa, a link between southern Arabia and the Nile Valley has never been considered,” Rose says. Either Africans crossed the Red Sea and trekked into southern Arabia well before an African exodus around 60,000 years ago, or ancient people from Arabia influenced African toolmaking, the scientists suggest. “The finds in Oman are rather spectacular,” comments archaeologist Michael Petraglia of the University of Oxford, England. “They have a date that is earlier than similar African artifacts, which could imply a migration back to Africa, or at least a flow between African and Arabian populations.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 16141 - Posted: 12.13.2011

by Jessica Hamzelou IT'S true - sex does change things, including the structure of rats' brains. And another thing - it really is different for males and females. There are several brain regions linked to sexual behaviour that differ in size between the sexes in humans and other mammals. To find out whether a region known to be bigger in males was altered by sex, Shinji Tsukahara and his colleagues at Saitama University near Tokyo, Japan, compared the brains of male rats who had never had sex before with their more experienced counterparts. They found that the number of spiny structures located at the neuronal synapses was significantly lower in rats that had copulated. Tsukahara, who presented the findings at the recent Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington DC, thinks that the decrease in spines may have been caused by hormonal changes triggered by the presence of the female, as well as sensory inputs from the penis. These regions may serve as "a one-way road to learn how to mate", he suggests. Once they have been activated for the first time, they may be lost as they are no longer needed. The spines also play a part in the sexual behaviour of female rats. In a separate study, Paul Micevych and his colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, investigated the effect on the brain of the female rat's sexual cycle - characterised by an increase in oestradiol production every four days. To control the cycle, the team removed the rats' ovaries and injected them with oestradiol. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16140 - Posted: 12.13.2011

By Jennifer Welsh Many explanations for the gender gap in math skills don't hold up, suggests new research on math skills and gender in 86 countries. Math has traditionally been seen as a man's game, and the statistics often indicate that there are differences between males and females in their math skills, participation in math activities and performance on tests — called the gender gap in math. Some researchers have proposed this gap is natural — that men are just better at math than women — while others say it's a cultural difference, whereby society somehow keeps girls from pursuing or excelling in math. The new research points to culture as the culprit, finding that certain countries showed less of a gap between males and females in math. Specifically, these female-math friendly countries have more gender equality, better teachers and fewer students living in poverty. In many countries, there isn't a gender gap in mathematics performance, the researchers said. As for the United States, they say the gap has greatly narrowed in recent decades as more females are considered "highly gifted mathematicians" (3 to 1 now, instead of 13 to 1 in the 1970s) and more women are getting graduate degrees in math, though 70 percent are still men. "This is not a matter of biology: None of our findings suggest that an innate biological difference between the sexes is the primary reason for a gender gap in math performance," study researcher Janet Mertz, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a statement. The study suggests that "the math-gender gap, where it occurs, is due to sociocultural factors that differ among countries, and that these factors can be changed." © 2011 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16139 - Posted: 12.13.2011

By Bella English Jonas and Wyatt Maines were born identical twins, but from the start each had a distinct personality. Jonas was all boy. He loved Spiderman, action figures, pirates, and swords. Wyatt favored pink tutus and beads. At 4, he insisted on a Barbie birthday cake and had a thing for mermaids. On Halloween, Jonas was Buzz Lightyear. Wyatt wanted to be a princess; his mother compromised on a prince costume. Once, when Wyatt appeared in a sequin shirt and his mother’s heels, his father said: “You don’t want to wear that.’’ “Yes, I do,’’ Wyatt replied. “Dad, you might as well face it,’’ Wayne recalls Jonas saying. “You have a son and a daughter.’’ That early declaration marked, as much as any one moment could, the beginning of a journey that few have taken, one the Maineses themselves couldn’t have imagined until it was theirs. The process of remaking a family of identical twin boys into a family with one boy and one girl has been heartbreaking and harrowing and, in the end, inspiring — a lesson in the courage of a child, a child who led them, and in the transformational power of love. Wayne and Kelly Maines have struggled to know whether they are doing the right things for their children, especially for Wyatt, who now goes by the name Nicole. Was he merely expressing a softer side of his personality, or was he really what he kept saying: a girl in a boy’s body? Was he exhibiting early signs that he might be gay? Was it even possible, at such a young age, to determine what exactly was going on? © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16138 - Posted: 12.13.2011