Angela Mulholland, CTVNews.ca Mark Lewis spent 15 years hooked on just about any drug you can think of: alcohol, LSD, cocaine, heroin, opium, prescription painkillers. Today, he is a neuroscientist and professor of applied psychology at the University of Toronto, who had just written a new memoir, entitled "Memoirs of an Addicted Brain." But this is no drug addict tell-all. Instead, Lewis details honestly his life as an addict, while drawing on his knowledge of neuroscience and the brain's workings to try to explain it. Lewis says he wanted to explain why brains get addicted and says it seemed only natural to use his own experience to do so. "Your moment-to-moment experience: your thoughts and your feelings are all paralleled by things happening in your brain, of course. And it seemed possible to weave the two together and that's what I was going for," he told CTV's Canada AM Wednesday. Lewis believes the roots of his addiction trace back to his adolescence, when his parents sent him away for two years to a boarding school in Massachusetts. That's where he began drinking and experimenting with getting high off cough syrup. But it was when he went away to university in Berkeley, California, that he got completely sucked in. That's when he began dabbling in psychedelic drugs and heroin. He was able to finish his degree, but returned to Toronto with a BA in music and a serious drug problem. Even after he got accepted into graduate school to study psychology, he found he couldn't break his drug problem. © 2011 CTV

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15887 - Posted: 10.08.2011

Andrew J. Lawrence One of the reasons there’s considerable polarisation whenever the subject of addiction is raised is the stereotyped associations of addicts with illegality. In reality, this is the thin end of the wedge; by far the most harm and mortality is related to alcohol and tobacco use, both of which are legal. While one can question the motivations driving people to experiment with drugs/alcohol in the first instance, addiction, once developed, can be regarded as a chronic, relapsing disorder. Most people know somebody who has repeatedly tried, but failed, to stop smoking with periods of abstinence in-between relapses – that’s addiction in a nutshell. Despite this, only a relatively small number of people who ever use a drug actually become addicted to it. Why? This is a difficult question to answer, but pieces of the puzzle are gradually coming together. Some genes have been implicated in addiction; but, unlike other disorders (Huntington’s disease, for example), there’s no single causative gene that can be labelled as an addiction gene. It’s most unlikely there ever will be. Also, many addicts are what is known as “dual diagnosis” patients with co-morbid (co-existent) psychiatric problems that add a further layer of complexity. Nevertheless, an individual with one or more alterations in specific genes may be more vulnerable to developing addiction after experimenting with drug use. © 2010–2011, The Conversation Media Group

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15886 - Posted: 10.08.2011

By Linda Searing THE QUESTION Do lifelong musicians face the same hearing problems that other people do as they age? THIS STUDY involved 163 adults, including 74 characterized as lifelong musicians because they started music training by age 16, had at least six years of formal lessons on a musical instrument and were continuing to practice at the time the study began. The group included both amateurs and professionals, who played a variety of instruments. All participants took a series of hearing tests that checked such things as the ability to detect sounds that grew increasingly quiet, to detect short gaps in otherwise continuous sound, to hear sound variations in a noisy environment and to distinguish words in the presence of background noise. Little difference was found between the groups in hearing diminishing sounds. But in all other auditory tests, musicians processed sound better than non-musicians, with the gap widening with age. For instance, a 70-year-old musician understood speech in a noisy environment as well as a 50-year-old non-musician. Among the musicians, the more they practiced, the better they scored on the hearing tests. WHO MAY BE AFFECTED? Anyone who wants to stave off hearing loss. With age, hearing tends to dim overall, and many people have trouble hearing certain sounds and following conversations in a noisy place, such as a restaurant. This affects about a third of people by age 60, and nearly half by age 75. © 1996-2011 The Washington Post

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15885 - Posted: 10.06.2011

By Nick Bascom Scientists on the trail of treatments for Huntington’s disease may have found a way to track their success. A new study reports that patients with Huntington’s disease have higher levels of expression of a gene called H2AFY in their blood compared with healthy people. What’s more, patients treated with a drug that slows the effects of the disease had reduced levels of H2AFY activity compared with people given a placebo. The results suggest that H2AFY could serve as a tool for monitoring the progression of the disease and an indicator of whether prospective treatments are working, researchers report online October 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Biomarker identification for Huntington’s disease is critically important for clinical trials,” says Leslie Thompson, director of the Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study. Huntington’s disease is a hereditary movement disorder marked by involuntary bodily twitches and jerks. The damage the disorder does to nerve cells also causes severe depression and impairs a patient’s ability to reason clearly. “It’s a devastating disease,” and one for which there is no cure, says neurologist Clemens Scherzer of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who led the new study. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 15884 - Posted: 10.06.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey Broken biological clocks in blood vessels may contribute to hardened arteries, even if the main timer in the brain works fine. The finding, from transplant experiments with mice, suggests that throwing off the daily rhythms of the body’s organs can have serious health consequences. A wealth of evidence shows that skimping on sleep and working against the body’s natural daily, or circadian, rhythms can raise the risk of developing illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes. Scientists assumed that the diseases resulted from malfunctions in a master clock in the brain, which synchronizes sleeping, waking and other body functions with the rising and setting of the sun. But recently, scientists have discovered that the liver and other organs have their own internal clocks that may work independently of the brain clock and are set by meal times or other cues (SN: 4/10/10, p. 22). It wasn’t clear until now whether disrupting these body clocks could also contribute to disease, says Satchidananda Panda, a circadian rhythm researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. The finding may help explain why shift workers, people with sleep disorders and others who disrupt their circadian rhythms by staying up late or eating meals at the wrong time tend to be more vulnerable to heart disease.“If you want to prevent people from getting heart attacks, you have to know whether to treat the clock in the brain or the clock in the heart,” Panda says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 15883 - Posted: 10.06.2011

By Rachael Rettner and MyHealthNewsDaily Feelings of hate may be different for those with depression, a new study suggests. The results show depressed people have abnormalities in the brain's so-called "hate circuit." Normally, brain activity is synchronous across this circuit's three regions. But in depressed patients, activity in these regions is out of sync, said study researcher Jianfeng Feng, a professor in computer studies at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. These differing activity levels, which the researchers referred to as an "uncoupling" of the circuit, may explain why depressed people experience self-loathing, they said. Depressed people may not be able to deal appropriately with feelings of hate, and as a consequence, develop self-hatred and withdraw from social situations, the researchers said. However, much work is needed to conclusively show that depressed patients do indeed have problems with their hate control that are tied to this brain circuit. Patients in the study were not doing anything in particular while they had their brains scanned, so it's impossible to know what their feelings were at the time. In addition, it's not clear whether the brain abnormalities are a cause or a consequence of depression, Feng told MyHealthNewsDaily. In the study, researchers scanned the brains of 39 depressed patients and 37 healthy people using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fRMI).The researchers used the scans to create maps of networks in the brain. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Depression; Emotions
Link ID: 15882 - Posted: 10.06.2011

by Ferris Jabr Monkeys have feelings too. In a mind-meld between monkey and computer, rhesus macaques have learned to "feel" the texture of virtual objects without physically touching a thing. In the future, prosthetic limbs modelled on similar technology could return a sense of touch to people with amputations. Using two-way communication between brain and machine, the monkeys manoeuvred a cursor with their minds and identified virtual objects by texture, based on electrical feedback from the computer. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues implanted electrodes into the brains of two monkeys. The electrodes recorded activity in the motor cortex and somatosensory cortex (SSC) – brain areas that orchestrate voluntary movement and sense of touch. Electrical activity from the motor cortex was sent to a computer, which translated the neural chatter into instructions that moved a cursor on screen. The monkeys learned what patterns of thought reliably changed the cursor's position. The team then assigned a unique texture to each of three identical circles on the screen. When the cursor hovered over each circle, the computer zapped the monkeys' SSCs with the same electrical impulses that occurred when they touched each texture in real life. Finally, the team taught the monkeys to associate a particular texture with a reward. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Robotics; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15881 - Posted: 10.06.2011

Boston University researchers have found a degenerative disease linked to head trauma in the brain tissue of the late NHL great Rick Martin, the first 50-goal scorer for the Buffalo Sabres and a member of their famed French Connection line. Martin, who died in March of hypertensive heart disease at age 59, becomes the third former NHL player found by researchers to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a disease that causes cognitive decline, behavioural abnormalities and ultimately dementia. After his death, Martin's family donated his brain to the Centre for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, a collaboration between Boston University Medical School and the Sports Legacy Institute. All three former NHL players who agreed to have their brains studied post-mortem at the centre — Martin, Bob Probert and Reggie Fleming — have now been shown to have had CTE, but Martin is the first who did not play an enforcer role and regularly participate in on-ice fights, the centre says. Neurosurgeon Robert Cantu, who co-founded the institute and is co-director of the CTE centre, told CBC News the findings in Martin's case are alarming because he only suffered perhaps one concussion in his career, unrelated to fighting. "What I can tell you bothers me: The first two cases in the National Hockey League, Reggie Fleming and Bob Probert [were] renowned fighters, 400 recognized fights during their ice hockey career, God knows how many in bars," Cantu told CBC's Stephanie Jenzer in an documentary airing Wednesday on The National, in which CBC News was granted rare access to the brain centre's lab. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 15880 - Posted: 10.06.2011

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Provocative new research suggests the brain has an optimal rhythm or frequency that influences how we remember things. The brain learns through changes in the strength of its synapses — the connections between neurons — in response to stimuli. Now, in a discovery that challenges conventional wisdom on the brain mechanisms of learning, UCLA neurophysicists have found there is an optimal brain “rhythm,” or frequency, for changing synaptic strength. And, like stations on a radio dial, each synapse is tuned to a different optimal frequency for learning. Researchers believe the findings may lead to a unified theory of the mechanisms that underlie learning in the brain – a discovery that could possible lead to new therapies for treating learning disabilities. The study appears in the current issue of the journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. “Many people have learning and memory disorders, and beyond that group, most of us are not Einstein or Mozart,” said Mayank R. Mehta, Ph.D., the paper’s senior author. “Our work suggests that some problems with learning and memory are caused by synapses not being tuned to the right frequency.” © 1992-2011 Psych Central.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15879 - Posted: 10.06.2011

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Researchers from the University of Leicester have identified a particular protein that the brain produces in response to stress, an important step forward in understanding molecular mechanisms of anxiety. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), are potentially important for understanding stress-related psychiatric diseases in humans. Neuroscientist Robert Pawlak, M.D., Ph.D., said the study had determined that production of the protein by the brain may help to protect individuals from “too much anxiety” and help organisms to cope with various adverse life events. Pawlak believes that everyday stress “reshapes” the brain – nerve cells change their morphology, the number of connections with other cells and the way they communicate with other neurons. And, in most cases these responses are adaptive and beneficial – they help us to cope with stress and shape adequate behavioral reaction. “However, upon severe stress things can get out of control, the brain ‘buffering’ capacity is exhausted and the nerve cells in the hippocampus – an area of the brain responsible for learning and memory – start to withdraw their processes, don’t effectively communicate with other cells and show signs of disease,” Pawlak said. In response to stress, neurons often change the shape of tiny structures they normally use to exchange information with other neurons, called dendritic spines. Spines can be as small as 1/1000 of a millimeter and have various shapes. © 1992-2011 Psych Central.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 15878 - Posted: 10.06.2011

Catherine de Lange, contributor As curator Alex Julyan stepped up to the podium to introduce the speakers for the first talk of the evening, she looked composed and at ease. But as she opened her mouth to make the introductions, some of the words came out slightly muddled. It was a tiny mistake, one that most people in the audience are unlikely to have noticed. To those who did, however, her words had betrayed her ever so slightly, suggesting she was perhaps more nervous than she seemed. However composed she looked on the outside, her mouth told a different story. Poignantly, this was the very subject of the talk that Julyan was introducing. "When we speak, we tend to think about the words we say telling people what we want them to know," said Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist from University College London who studies the perception of speech, as she began her talk, "but, of course, when we speak, we unavoidably and continuously tell people about who we are, the origins of where we come from, our aspirations, who we would like to sound like, our emotions, our age and our health." Scott was speaking at a special one-off event put on by the Wellcome Collection in London. She kicked off the celebration of our oral orifice, titled Get Mouthy, with the help of actor Julian Rhind Tutt, who she has been experimenting on using an MRI scanner. From these scans, which she displayed for the audience, one of the most obvious things we could see is that Julian has a big head. That, Scott told us, is no coincidence. Most actors and singers have big heads - and that's not a reference to ego size. She explained that a larger noggin means performers have more room in their mouths to generate accurate sounds. "Amy Winehouse had a massive face," she pointed out. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Language; Attention
Link ID: 15877 - Posted: 10.04.2011

By Juliet Eilperin, Several deepwater sharks have evolved specialized visual abilities that allow them to detect both predators and prey in areas of low visibility to a greater degree than previously known, according to an Australian researcher who shared her findings last week at a conference in Aberdeen, Scotland. Amy Newman, a graduate student at the University of Western Australia, studies the eye and visual center of the brain of several shark species. By examining sharks caught accidentally off the northwestern cost of New Zealand at depths of 2,460 to 3,609 feet, she determined that they had photoreceptors in their retinas that would allow them to spot specific threats. The beige catshark and McMillan’s catshark — both rare species — had an unusually high density of light-detecting cells in a small part of the retina, which would allow them to detect animals approaching them from behind. That’s a major advantage in avoiding predators to species as small as these; a McMillan’s catshark reaches an average 1.6 feet in length as an adult. “The environmental conditions an animal is exposed to are reflected in the animal itself, so by investigating eye structure we can find out more about how deep-sea animals use the available light for survival and to predate,” said Newman, who presented her findings at the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity. © 1996-2011 The Washington Post

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 15876 - Posted: 10.04.2011

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA SAN DIEGO — Imagine a vaccine against smoking: People trying to quit would light up a cigarette and feel nothing. Or a vaccine against cocaine, one that would prevent addicts from enjoying the drug’s high. Though neither is imminent, both are on the drawing board, as are vaccines to combat other addictions. While scientists have historically focused their vaccination efforts on diseases like polio, smallpox and diphtheria — with great success — they are now at work on shots that could one day release people from the grip of substance abuse. “We view this as an alternative or better way for some people,” said Dr. Kim D. Janda, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute who has made this his life’s work. “Just like with nicotine patches and the gum, all those things are just systems to get people off the drugs.” Dr. Janda, a gruff-talking chemist, has been trying for more than 25 years to create such a vaccine. Like shots against disease, these vaccines would work by spurring the immune system to produce antibodies that would shut down the narcotic before it could take root in the body, or in the brain. Unlike preventive vaccines — like the familiar ones for mumps, measles and so on — this type of injection would be administered after someone had already succumbed to an addictive drug. For instance, cocaine addicts who had been vaccinated with one of Dr. Janda’s formulations before they snorted cocaine reported feeling like they’d used “dirty coke,” he said. “They felt like they were wasting their money.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 15875 - Posted: 10.04.2011

By PAM BELLUCK and SALVADOR RODRIGUEZ For the Betancur family, it was a kind of pilgrimage, an act of faith in science. In September, four family members traveled from Medellin, Colombia, to the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix, along with eight distant relatives. There are many more where they came from, about 5,000 — all members of the largest extended family linked to an inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease. “There’s no words to describe seeing a loved one decay to the point where you no longer recognize them,” said Blanca Nelly Betancur, 43, whose mother and, so far, three siblings have inherited the disease. “To see them as a cadaver.” Banner’s researchers and a Colombian neurologist are studying the extended family, planning a clinical trial to determine whether Alzheimer’s can be prevented by giving drug treatment years before dementia begins. The Colombian relatives are considered ideal for testing preventive treatments, because scientists can tell which family members will develop Alzheimer’s and approximately when. Those getting the disease carry a genetic mutation causing memory loss in their early to mid-40s and often loss of most cognitive functions by their early 50s. The trial is not expected to begin until 2012 because researchers are applying for federal financing and have not yet decided which drug to test. Testing will occur in the region where most relatives live, Antioquia, which includes Medellin and many isolated mountain villages. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15874 - Posted: 10.04.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY People with severe schizophrenia who have been isolated, withdrawn and considered beyond help can learn to become more active, social and employable by engaging in a type of talk therapy that was invented to treat depression, scientists reported on Monday. These new findings suggest that such patients have far more capability to improve their lives than was previously assumed and, if replicated, could change the way that doctors treat the one million patients for whom the disorder is profoundly limiting. The therapy — a variant of cognitive behavior therapy, which focuses on defusing self-defeating assumptions — increased motivation and reduced symptoms. In previous studies, researchers have used cognitive techniques to help people with schizophrenia manage their hallucinations and sharpen their attention and memory. The new study is the first to rigorously test using the therapy to combat so-called negative symptoms — the listlessness, exhaustion and emotional flatness that trap many people in solitary lives, playing out their days smoking in front of the TV or holed up in their homes. Dr. Bob Buchanan, a psychiatrist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who was not involved in the study, said the results looked impressive. “This is a group of patients who have tried just about everything — drug treatments as well as psychosocial ones — and many clinicians and systems of care have essentially given up on them. If there’s an intervention out there that can make a difference, I think that’s an incredibly important development.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 15873 - Posted: 10.04.2011

By SAM BORDEN WASHINGTON — The N.F.L’s first attempt at a long-range study on the effects of concussions was riddled with problems from the manner in which data was collected to conflicts of interest for those overseeing it. After criticism from outside experts and even members of Congress, the study was shut down by the league in late 2009. Nearly two years later, however, the N.F.L.’s committee on concussion research is planning a considerably broader study — an effort that could begin gathering data as soon as next season, according to one of the doctors involved. The doctor, Mitchel S. Berger, the chairman of the neurological surgery department at the University of California San Francisco, said Monday that he and the N.F.L.’s subcommittee on former players and long-term effects of brain and spine injury had been holding conference calls regarding the study every two weeks with representatives from the players’ union. He added that he hoped to make a final presentation to the union and Commissioner Roger Goodell “in the near future.” Berger said he was aware of the issues surrounding the previous study, and said the latest model was completely different. “There was no science in that,” Berger said in reference to the study coordinated by Dr. Ira Casson, who was also the league’s primary voice in discrediting outside research on concussions. Asked if he might use any of the data from Casson’s work, Berger shook his head. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 15872 - Posted: 10.04.2011

By Katherine Harmon In the first week of the trial of Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson's physician, Los Angeles jurors heard audio recordings of the late pop star's slurred speech, in addition to the litany of prescription drugs he had taken in the hours and weeks prior to his June 25, 2009, death. It will be up to them to decide if they agree with the Los Angeles County coroner's office, which labeled Jackson's death a homicide. According to the 2009 autopsy report (pdf), "the cause of death is acute propofol intoxication," which caused the singer to stop breathing. In addition to propofol (a hypnotic drug used for general anesthesia, sedation and in veterinary medicine) the examiner also found traces of lorazepam (a benzodiazepine drug used to treat anxiety and insomnia); midazolam (another benzodiazepine, indicated for insomnia and medical sedation); lidocaine (a local anesthetic often included with propofol to relieve injection pain); diazepam (a benzodiazepine to treat anxiety, insomnia and alcohol withdrawal); and nordiazepam (a benzodiazepine-derived sedative, often used to treat anxiety) in Jackson's bloodstream. To support the weighty pronouncement of homicide, the medical examiner concluded that: "circumstances indicate that propofol and the benzodiazepines were administered by another. The propofol was administered in a nonhospital setting without any appropriate medical indication. The standard of care for administering porpofol was not met." © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Sleep; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15871 - Posted: 10.04.2011

by Sara Reardon As the Thirty Years' War between Europe's ruling dynasties dragged on during the 17th century, soldiers suffered through the coldest few decades Europe had experienced for some time. Far to the east, armies from Manchuria (present day northern China) swept down from the snowy north and breeched the Great Wall of China. Not long after, a plague swept Europe. Why so much tumult? A controversial new study suggests that most of humankind's maladies—from wars to epidemics to economic downturns—can be traced to climate fluctuations. Advances in paleoclimatology have enabled researchers to look back further in time than they ever could before. One of these scientists, geographer David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong, was particularly interested in how hot and cold spells affect human civilization. He and colleagues loaded a powerful statistical analysis tool with socioeconomic, ecological, demographic, and other data. They collected data on 14 variables, such as human height, the price of gold, tree ring width, and temperature from preindustrial Europe between the years 1500 and 1800. The team then performed a statistical analysis called a Granger causality analysis to establish whether cause-effect relationships existed between any of them. This type of powerful analysis allows researchers to look at a time series of data and form relationships in which one type of event consistently leads to another. Finally, the researchers divided the time period into four smaller slices, ranging from 40 to 150 years each, to ascertain whether major events during these eras are actually caused by temperature differences within a given period, not just correlated with it. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 15870 - Posted: 10.04.2011

By Ella Davies Reporter, BBC Nature The secret to social dominance for bank voles appears to be the size of their genitals, according to scientists. The link was made by researchers from Europe who were studying the small brown mammals' reproductive behaviour. The study, in Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, found dominant males had wider penis bones, also called baculum. Although not present in humans, these bones are found in many other species of mammal but their exact function has not been confirmed. A scan of the baculum bone (c) Jean-Francois Lemaitre The bank vole's penis bone is trident-shaped with a wide base The study was conducted by Dr Jean-Francois Lemaitre from the University of Liverpool with colleagues in France and Switzerland. Bank voles live for a maximum of 18 months and females give birth to four or five litters per year. "This species is particularly interesting for study... because females mate with several males during a single reproductive bout," explained Dr Lemaitre. Researchers suggest that this competition may have driven evolutionary adaptations in genital anatomy to improve males' chances of reproduction. To test their theory, the team collected wild bank voles in Cheshire and studied their lab-reared offspring to understand which were dominant and which were subordinate. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Aggression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15869 - Posted: 10.04.2011

By Eric Michael Johnson Charles Darwin had more in common with chimpanzees than even he realized. Before he was universally known for his theory of natural selection, the young naturalist made a decision that has long been hailed as the type of behavior that fundamentally separates humans from other apes. In 1858, before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, his friend Alfred Russel Wallace​ mailed Darwin his own theory of evolution that closely matched what Darwin had secretly been working on for more than two decades. Instead of racing to publish and ignoring Wallace’s work, Darwin included Wallace’s outline alongside his own abstract so that the two could be presented jointly before the Linnean Society the following month. “I would far rather burn my whole book than that [Wallace] or any man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit,” Darwin wrote. This kind of prosocial behavior, a form of altruism that seeks to benefit others and promote cooperation, has now been found in chimps, the species that Darwin did more than any other human to connect us with. (This month's Science Agenda, about medical testing in chimps, notes other similarities that have been documented in chimps and humans.) In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, primatologist Frans de Waal and his colleagues at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University presented chimps with a simplified version of the choice that Darwin faced. Pairs of chimps were brought into a testing room where they were separated only by a wire mesh. On one side was a bucket containing 30 tokens that the chimpanzee could give to an experimenter for a food reward. Half of the tokens were of one color that resulted in only the chimpanzee that gave the token receiving a reward. The other tokens were of a different color that resulted in both chimpanzees receiving a food reward. If chimpanzees were motivated only by selfish interests, they would be expected to choose a reward only for themselves (or it should be 50–50 if they were choosing randomly). But individuals were significantly more likely to choose the prosocial outcome compared with the no-partner control. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15868 - Posted: 10.04.2011