By Gary Stix They go by many names: Brain worms, sticky music (thanks Oliver Sacks), cognitive itch, stuck song syndrome. But the most common (if also the most repugnant) is earworms, a literal translation from Ohrwurm, a term used to describe the phenomenon (and perhaps bring to mind an immediate association with corn earworms). If you’re an academic, you might refer to it as Involuntary Musical Imagery, which, of course, gets condensed to INMI. What are we talking about? Again, back to the academics, specifically, C. Phillip Beaman and Tim I. Williams from the University of Reading, who in a 2010 paper, explain it like this: “Simply, an earworm is the experience of an inability to dislodge a song and prevent it from repeating itself in one’s head.” Oh, thaaat. In the last five years, earworms have become the subject of peer-reviewed scientific studies. In 2006, Steven Brown of Simon Fraser University even studied his own earworms and observed in the Journal of Consciousness Studies that they could be used as a basis for understanding how conscious experience can be split into multiple parallel streams. In 2008, moreover, Finnish researchers published a study that used the Interrnet to survey age, gender, personality and musical and linguistic competence of 12,420 countrymen who experienced the endless loops in their heads. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Hearing; Attention
Link ID: 16028 - Posted: 11.12.2011

Daniel Cressey In 2008, the world’s media was captivated by a study apparently showing that cows like to align themselves with magnetic fields. But attempts to replicate this finding have left two groups of researchers at loggerheads, highlighting the problems faced by scientists working to replicate unusual findings based on new methods of data analysis. Magneto-reception has been detected in animals from turtles to birds. Three years ago, Hynek Burda, a zoologist at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and his colleagues added cattle to the magnetic family with a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team used data from Google Earth to show that domestic cattle seem to prefer to align their bodies along Earth’s magnetic field lines1, and showed a similar phenomenon in field observations of deer. A follow-up study by Burda and his colleagues showed no such alignment near electric power lines, which might be expected to disrupt magneto-sensing in cattle2. Cow conundrum Earlier this year, a group of Czech researchers reported their failed attempt to replicate the finding using different Google Earth images3. The Czech team wrote in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A: “Two independent groups participated in our study and came to the same conclusion that in contradiction to the recent findings of other researchers, no alignment of the animals and of their herds along geomagnetic field lines could be found.” © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 16027 - Posted: 11.12.2011

by Susan Watts Yet another survey has revealed surprisingly large numbers of people using drugs to boost their mental powers. What should be done? MOST of us want to reach our full potential. We might drink a cup of coffee to stay alert, or go for a run to feel on top of the job. So where's the harm in taking a pill that can do the same thing? So-called cognitive-enhancing drugs are usually prescribed to treat medical conditions, but they are also known for their ability to improve memory or focus. Many people buy them over the internet, which is risky because they don't know what they are getting. We also know next to nothing about their long-term effects on the brains of healthy people, particularly the young. But some scientists believe they could have a beneficial role to play in society, if properly regulated. So who's taking what? The BBC's flagship current affairs show Newsnight and New Scientist ran an anonymous online questionnaire to find out. I also decided to try a cognitive enhancer for myself. The questionnaire was completed by 761 people, with 38 per cent saying they had taken a cognitive-enhancing drug at least once. Of these, nearly 40 per cent said they had bought the drug online and 92 per cent said they would try it again. Though not representative of society, the survey is an interesting, anecdotal snapshot of a world for which there is little data. The drugs people said they had taken included modafinil, normally prescribed for sleep disorders, and Ritalin and Adderall, taken for ADHD. The range of experiences is striking. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: ADHD; Attention
Link ID: 16026 - Posted: 11.12.2011

Caitlin Stier, video intern The hearts in this animation appear to have a pulse but that's only because of the changing background. Created by psychophysiologist Marcel de Heer, the shapes enlarge when a dark area is behind them and compress when a lighter shade moves in. To investigate the effect, researcher Stuart Anstis of the University of California, San Diego, made his own heart animations. In one variation, where a heart's interior changes in brightness, the shape also appears to beat (see second animation in video). "The changing gradient across the heart converts the lightening and darkening into apparent expansion and contracting," explains Anstis. The illusion is caused by the response of retinal cells in our eyes as the boundary changes in brightness. But processing in the visual cortex is also likely to play a role. Simone Gori of the University of Padua previously discovered a similar effect where a gradient affects how we perceive brightness. The smooth pulse induced by a gradual background change is also illustrated in an award-winning illusion where a pattern made up of brains appears to shift. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16025 - Posted: 11.12.2011

By Laura Sanders Instead of the indiscriminate destruction of the atom bomb or napalm, the signature weapon of future wars may be precise, unprecedented control over the human brain. As global conflicts become murkier, technologies based on infiltrating brains may soon enter countries’ arsenals, neuroethicists claim in a paper published online October 31 in Synesis. Such “neuroweapons” have the capacity to profoundly change the way war is fought. Advances in understanding the brain’s inner workings could lead to a pill that makes prisoners talk, deadly toxins that can shut down brain function in minutes, or supersoldiers who rely on brain chips to quickly lock in on an enemy’s location. The breadth of brain-based technologies is wide, and includes the traditional psychological tactics used in earlier wars. But the capacity of the emerging technologies is vastly wider — and may make it possible to coerce enemy minds with exquisite precision. In the paper, neuroscientists James Giordano of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va., and Rachel Wurzman of Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., describe emerging brain technologies and argue that the United States must be proactive in neuroscience-based research that could be used for national intelligence and security. “A number of these different approaches are heating up in the crucible of possibility, so that’s really increased some of the momentum and the potential of what this stuff can do,” Giordano says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Robotics
Link ID: 16024 - Posted: 11.12.2011

By TARA PARKER-POPE Sometimes even a healthy brain doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Nobody may know that better than Rick Perry, the Texas governor, who suffered an embarrassing memory lapse during the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday. Mr. Perry stops midsentence as he struggles to remember the name of the Department of Energy, one of three federal agencies he has often said should be eliminated. A pained look crosses his face. He stammers. He starts over. He changes the subject. But the words don’t come. How the gaffe will affect Mr. Perry’s political aspirations isn’t known. But among brain researchers, the moment is a fascinating display of a common human experience: the brain freeze. “There are a lot of potential explanations for why it happened,” said Daniel Weissman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist who studies attention. “A lot of things are going on when we try to recall memories, and problems at any stage could lead to failure.’’ Mr. Perry is not the first public figure to suffer an embarrassing memory lapse. Earlier this year, the singer Christina Aguilera forgot the words to the national anthem as she performed at the Super Bowl. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. misplaced a word in the oath at the swearing-in ceremony for President Obama, prompting him to readminister the oath the next day. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Stress
Link ID: 16023 - Posted: 11.12.2011

By RAYMOND TALLIS The world of academe is currently in the grip of a strange and worrying ¬epidemic of biologism, which has also captured the popular imagination. Scientists, philosophers and quite a few toilers in the humanities believe—and would have the rest of us believe—that nothing fundamental separates humanity from animality. Biologism has two cardinal manifestations. One is the claim that the mind is the brain, or the activity of the brain, so that one of the most powerful ways to advance our understanding of ourselves is to look at our brains in action, using the latest scanning devices. The other is the claim that Darwinism explains not only how the organism Homo sapiens came into being (as, of course, it does) but also what motivates people and shapes their day-to-day behavior. These beliefs are closely connected. If the brain is an evolved organ, shaped by natural selection to ensure evolutionary success (as it most surely is), and if the mind is the brain and nothing more, then the mind and all those things we are minded to do can be explained by the evolutionary imperative. The mind is a cluster of apps or modules securing the replication of the genes that are expressed in our bodies. Many in the humanities have embraced these views with astonishing fervor. New disciplines, prefixed by "neuro" or "evolutionary" or even "neuro-evolutionary," have been invented. "Neuro-aesthetics" explains aesthetic pleasure in terms of activity in certain parts of the brain observed when people are enjoying works of art. A propensity for aesthetic brain-tingles, implanted in us by evolution, causes us to tingle to the right kinds of things, such as pictures of landscapes loaded with food. ©2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 16022 - Posted: 11.12.2011

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel More than 10 years ago, a husband-and-wife team came up with a novel way to fight disease: Look for small bits of protein that home in on specific tissues and attach a drug to them. Now, the work has brought the researchers close to a new therapy for obesity, which they report works well in monkeys and is edging toward human testing. The couple, cancer biologists Renata Pasqualini and Wadih Arap, who run a lab together at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, has a unique way of thinking about drug development. Rather than focus on specific compounds and how they might fight disease, the researchers cast a wide net. They take massive numbers of protein bits, known as peptides, and attach each one to the shell of a bacterial virus. The combo is then injected into people who have been declared brain dead—M. D. Anderson patients who often wished to be organ donors but weren't eligible, so their families agreed to this study instead—to see which blood vessels the peptide hooks up to. The idea is that blood vessels in, say, the prostate have protein expression patterns different from those in vessels in the lung and that blood vessels in cancer tissue have expression patterns different from those in healthy tissue. Once Pasqualini and Arap know which blood vessels a peptide latches on to, they can attach a drug to that peptide; in the case of cancer, the drug might destroy the vessels that feed a tumor. Although their work focused on treating cancer, the researchers wondered about other conditions in which destroying blood vessels might help. One was obesity, in part because an earlier study had suggested that giving rodents angiogenesis inhibitors, drugs that prevent growth of new blood vessels, could help them lose weight. In 2004, Arap and Pasqualini reported in Nature Medicine that they attached a cell-killing drug to a peptide that traveled to blood vessels in fat tissue. The treatment led to weight loss in mice. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 16021 - Posted: 11.11.2011

By JOHN TIERNEY If you want a truly frustrating job in public health, try getting people to stop smoking. Even when researchers combine counseling and encouragement with nicotine patches and gum, few smokers quit. Recently, though, experimenters in Italy had more success by doing less. A team led by Riccardo Polosa of the University of Catania recruited 40 hard-core smokers — ones who had turned down a free spot in a smoking-cessation program — and simply gave them a gadget already available in stores for $50. This electronic cigarette, or e-cigarette, contains a small reservoir of liquid nicotine solution that is vaporized to form an aerosol mist. The user “vapes,” or puffs on the vapor, to get a hit of the addictive nicotine (and the familiar sensation of bringing a cigarette to one’s mouth) without the noxious substances found in cigarette smoke. After six months, more than half the subjects in Dr. Polosa’s experiment had cut their regular cigarette consumption by at least 50 percent. Nearly a quarter had stopped altogether. Though this was just a small pilot study, the results fit with other encouraging evidence and bolster hopes that these e-cigarettes could be the most effective tool yet for reducing the global death toll from smoking. But there’s a powerful group working against this innovation — and it’s not Big Tobacco. It’s a coalition of government officials and antismoking groups who have been warning about the dangers of e-cigarettes and trying to ban their sale. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16020 - Posted: 11.11.2011

By JEFF Z. KLEIN GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Concussions continued to cast a long shadow over the N.H.L. on Thursday. The Rangers said there was no update on the condition of defenseman Marc Staal, who has not played this season and is still recovering from a concussion sustained in February that the club did not disclose until September. Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, who has been sidelined by a concussion since early January, was cleared for contact a month ago and has practiced all week, including Wednesday, when he took several hard hits. Despite speculation that he would return for Friday’s home game against the Dallas Stars, Coach Dan Bylsma said Crosby would not play in either of the team’s games this weekend. That leaves Tuesday’s game against the Colorado Avalanche as the earliest possible return date for Crosby. Toronto goalie James Reimer has not played since Oct. 22, when he sustained an injury that the Maple Leafs have characterized variously as whiplash, concussion-like symptoms and an upper-body injury. The N.H.L. has earned praise this season for taking measures to reduce concussions, including introducing stronger rules against boarding and checks to the head, and strictly enforcing those rules through fines and suspensions. But questions persist about a league policy that allows teams to be vague about disclosure of injuries, and a recent incident suggested that in-game concussion protocols might be inconsistently applied. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 16019 - Posted: 11.11.2011

By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D. The middle-aged patient with long dark hair made it very clear that this was not her first urinary tract infection. “It’s because when I urinate,” she said, “I need to use a catheter.” She opened the leather satchel on her lap and, to prove her point, pulled out a thin, red sterile length of tube covered in plastic. “Just ask one of the older nurses or doctors,” she said, smiling. “They all know me.” But as I would learn, it was not because of her recurrent infections that so many of my colleagues knew her. Several years earlier, she had come in for a routine operation. The doctor had evaluated her before the operation, learned that she was a homemaker and met her husband. But on the morning of her operation, as he pulled down the sheets to begin inserting the urinary catheter into his now sleeping patient, he was startled to discover that the patient was not exactly who he had assumed she was. She was transgender, and where he had been expecting to find female genitalia, he found male genitals instead. The operation had gone well; but years later the doctor’s glaring oversight continued to haunt the rest of us. The patient had obviously not felt comfortable disclosing her transgender identify, and the doctor had clearly not asked the right questions. We knew that any one of us could have made the same mistake. While we had been trained well in treating cancer with the best chemotherapy regimen, curing flesh-eating infections with the most powerful antibiotics or transplanting organs with the greatest of ease, when it came to caring for patients who were transgender, we were lost. For many of us, the same could be said for lesbian, gay and bisexual patients as well. The only thing most of us knew how to do was ask about a single issue: “Whom are you having sex with? Men, women or both?” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16018 - Posted: 11.11.2011

by Chelsea Whyte Signs of consciousness have been detected in three people previously thought to be in a vegetative state, with the help of a cheap, portable device that can be used at the bedside. "There's a man here who technically meets all the internationally agreed criteria for being in a vegetative state, yet he can generate 200 responses [to direct commands] with his brain," says Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario. "Clearly this guy is not in a true vegetative state. He's probably as conscious as you or I are." In 2005, Owen's team, used functional MRI to show consciousness in a person who was in a persistent vegetative state, also known as wakeful unconsciousness – where the body still functions but the mind is unresponsive – for the first time. However, fMRI is costly and time-consuming, so his team set about searching for simple and cost-effective solutions for making bedside diagnoses of PVS. Now, they have devised a test that uses the relatively inexpensive and widely available electroencephalogram (EEG). Owen and his team used an EEG on 16 people thought to be in a PVS and compared the results with 12 healthy controls while they were asked to imagine performing a series of tasks. Each person was asked to imagine at least four separate actions – either clenching their right fist or wiggling their toes. Journal reference: The Lancet, DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(11)61224-5 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 16017 - Posted: 11.11.2011

by Nora Schultz Actions speak louder than words. Baby chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans – our four closest living relatives – quickly learn to use visual gestures to get their message across, providing the latest evidence that hand waving may have been a vital first step in the development of human language. After a long search for the origins of language in animal vocalisations, some evolutionary biologists have begun to change tack. The emerging "gesture theory" of language evolution has it that our ancestors' linguistic abilities may have begun with their hands rather than their vocal cords. Katja Liebal and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have found new evidence for the theory by studying how communication develops in our closest living relatives. They discovered that all four great apes – chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans – develop a complex repertoire of gestures during the first 20 months of life. Look at me Those gestures included the tactile pokes and nudges that are expected to effectively capture another's attention in any situation, but they also included visual gestures such as extending the arms towards another ape or head shaking. To be effective communication tools, these visual gestures require that a young ape be aware that another individual is paying attention before using them, if they want to get their message across. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 16016 - Posted: 11.11.2011

By Jason G. Goldman You might have more in common with the chicken on your plate than you realize. Sure, you’ve also got two thighs, two legs, two breasts, and two wings (sort of). But new research suggests that chickens might like to rock out to the same tunes you’ve got on your iPod. The kinds of sounds that humans tend to find pleasant is called consonant, which are different from from unpleasant sounds, which are called dissonant. Think of the difference between a Mozart sonata and fingernails on a chalkboard, and you’re on the right track. Consonant notes sound – to the untrained ear – as if they were a single tone, while a you can identify multiple tones within a dissonant note. This might be related to the human preference for harmonics, since in humans, the preference for consonant sounds are associated with preferences for harmonic spectra (harmonic relationships between frequencies), while dissonant sounds are not. It might be easiest to understand by listening to these melodies. The melodies are the same, but the first one is consonant (composed of minor and major thirds) and the second one is dissonant (composed of minor seconds). Turn your speakers up: Two-month-old human babies prefer to listen to consonant music rather than dissonant music. As early as one to three days after birth, human infant brains can distinguish between consonant and dissonant music – though it is unclear if there is a preference at that early age. Songbirds like Java sparrows (Padda oryzivora) and European starlings (Sternus vulgaris) can distinguish consonant from dissonant music as well, though, like day-old human infants, it is unclear if there is a preference. Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) can distinguish the two types of tones, though no preference has been observed in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus). There was one human-raised chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) that preferred consonant music. Taken together, the evidence for the musical preferences of humans and non-human animals is a bit…dissonant. No harmony to be found here. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Hearing; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16015 - Posted: 11.11.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey Researchers have grown a mouse pituitary gland for the first time from embryonic stem cells. Or rather, the pituitary gland grew itself, after Japanese researchers coaxed embryonic stem cells to form the type of tissues that normally surround the gland. The accomplishment, reported online November 9 in Nature, could be the first step toward replacement pituitary glands for people. Self-made glands growing in lab dishes may also help researchers learn how the organs develop inside the body. “There’s a lot in it to be excited about, whether you’re a developmental biologist or interested in clinical applications,” says Sally Camper, a developmental geneticist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Camper has tried, and failed, to coax embryonic stem cells to form pituitary glands. “It’s a gorgeous piece of work, and it’s just really, really exciting,” she says. Scientists have persuaded stem cells to form particular types of tissues before, but growing a whole organ in a lab dish has been an elusive goal, says pediatric endocrinologist Mehul Dattani of the University College London Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. What allowed Yoshiki Sasai of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, and colleagues to succeed where others have failed is that the group recreated conditions that exist in the part of the brain where the pituitary normally grows. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16014 - Posted: 11.11.2011

By Nick Bascom Primates may have evolved from living the lonely life to forming complex societies in two major steps, a new study of more than 200 species suggests. Understanding when and why the ancestors of Homo sapiens and its closest cousins adopted different social structures could help reveal more about the evolution of human society. About 52 million years ago, primates — an order of animals that includes, among others, humans and great apes — might have stopped foraging alone and banded together in large, loosely formed, same-sex groups to search for food, anthropologist Susanne Shultz of the University of Oxford and colleagues report in the Nov. 10 Nature. Then around 16 million years ago, primates began forming more stable social groups, such as male-female pairs and harems dominated by one male, the researchers suggest. Teaming up this way may have been prompted by a switch from a nocturnal lifestyle to moving about in the sunshine. “Being active during the day would have allowed primates to travel across larger spaces and exploit their environment more effectively, but it would have also exposed them to a huge predation risk,” says Shultz. To make it through the day, primates would have needed a new defense strategy to deal with both a greater number of predators and also new kinds of hunters. “What’s going to nail you at night is different than what’s going to nail you during the day,” says primatologist Anthony Di Fiore of the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the study. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 16013 - Posted: 11.11.2011

By Bruce Bower People with schizophrenia rapidly and intensely perceive phony replicas of hands as their own, possibly contributing to this mental ailment’s signature hallucinations, a new study suggests. In a series of tests, people with schizophrenia believed a rubber hand placed in front of them was theirs if the visible fake hand and the patient’s hidden, corresponding hand were simultaneously stroked with a paintbrush. Mentally healthy people took longer to experience a less dramatic version of this rubber-hand illusion than schizophrenia patients did, but the effect’s vividness increased among healthy volunteers who reported magical beliefs, severe social anxiety and other characteristics linked to a tendency to psychosis, psychologist Sohee Park of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and her colleagues report online October 31 in PLoS ONE. “Schizophrenia patients may have a more flexible internal representation of their bodies and a weakened sense of self,” Park says. “Even without psychosis, the rubber-hand illusion can be more pronounced in certain personality types.” Mental health clinicians have written for several decades about a disturbed sense of self in schizophrenia. A team led by psychiatrist Avi Peled of Sha’ar Menashe Mental Health Center in Hadera, Israel, first reported a powerful rubber-hand illusion in the illness in 2000. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Attention
Link ID: 16012 - Posted: 11.11.2011

Having a mini-stroke can reduce a person's life expectancy by up to 20 per cent, a new study suggests. In a mini-stroke — known in the medical world as a transient ischemic attack (TIA) — the blood flow to part of the brain is temporarily blocked or reduced. With a mini-stroke, the initial symptoms of blurred vision, numbness, sudden headache, and difficulty speaking or walking (similar to stroke symptoms) soon disappear. In a stroke, the brain incurs permanent damage because the blood flow stays blocked. Having a history of TIA has long been known as a risk factor for strokes. This new study suggests there are also serious impacts on life expectancy. Researchers identified more than 22,000 people hospitalized in Australia because of a mini-stroke between 2000 and 2007 and tracked their medical records for at least two years. Using death registry data from 2009, they then compared this population to those in the general population. Their findings were startling. For those patients who'd had a mini-stroke in 2000, their survival rate nine years later was 20 per cent lower than the population as a whole. Survival rates at the one-year and five year marks were also lower. A year after a mini-stroke, 91.5 per cent of the TIA patients were still alive, versus 95 per cent survival among the general population. Five years after a mini-stroke, 67.2 per cent of the TIA group was alive, compared to 77.4 per cent of the general population. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 16011 - Posted: 11.11.2011

Children with autism have more brain cells and heavier brains compared to typically developing children, according to researchers partly funded by the National Institutes of Health. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Nov. 9, 2011, the small, preliminary study provides direct evidence for possible prenatal causes of autism. "Earlier studies of head circumference and early brain overgrowth have pointed us in this direction, but there have been few quantitative neuroanatomical studies due to the lack of post-mortem tissue from children with autism," said Thomas R. Insel, M.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of NIH. "These new results, along with an earlier study[1] reporting altered wiring of the prefrontal cortex, focus our attention on this critical area of the brain in autism." The prefrontal cortex is involved in various higher order functions such as language and communication, social behavior, mood, and attention. Children who have autism tend to show deficits in such functions. Eric Courchesne, Ph.D., of the University of San Diego School of Medicine Autism Center of Excellence, and colleagues conducted direct counts of brain cells in specific regions of the prefrontal cortex in postmortem brains of seven boys who had autism and six typically developing males, ranging in age from 2-16 years. Most participants had died in accidents, but the researchers did not base their selection on causes of death.

Keyword: Autism; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16010 - Posted: 11.09.2011

By Bruce Bower SEATTLE — Good listeners inadvertently turn a deaf ear to unexpected sounds. Attending closely to a conversation creates a situation in which unusual, clearly audible background utterances frequently go totally unheard, says psychologist Polly Dalton of the University of London. This finding takes the famous “invisible gorilla effect” from vision into the realm of hearing, Dalton reported November 4 at the annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society. More than a decade ago, researchers observed that about half of volunteers watching a videotape of people passing a basketball fail to see a gorilla-suited person walking through the group if the viewers are instructed to focus on counting how many times the ball gets passed (SN: 5/21/11, p. 16). An ability to prioritize what sounds and sights to monitor supports daily activities, but it can also wipe out perceptions of obvious peripheral happenings. “We’re not aware of as much in the world as we think we are,” Dalton said. Dalton and her colleagues created a 69-second recording of two men talking as they prepared food for a party and two women chatting as they wrapped a party gift. Headphones delivered one conversation to each ear of 41 volunteers, creating a sense of the four characters moving around a room as they talked. Partway into the recording, a man dubbed “gorilla man” by the researchers appears in the acoustic scene for 19 seconds saying “I’m a gorilla” over and over. Participants were assigned to pay attention either to the men’s or the women’s conversation. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Attention; Hearing
Link ID: 16009 - Posted: 11.09.2011