By Susan Milius Acts of apparent altruism in European paper wasps can be explained by plain old self-interest, a new study finds. Polistes dominulus females can either establish their own nests to raise young or join other females for joint homemaking. In those joint nests, though, one female fights her way to the top and does most of the egg-laying while the others do most of the drudge work in taking care of the top wasp’s young. When a subordinate helps her sister, that’s not hard to explain: The underling may not end up with her own offspring, but her reproductive success includes an indirect share of her sister’s brood, because relatives share genes. Forgoing her own direct offspring counts as a kind of altruism, in which an individual helping kin trades direct for indirect benefit. Either way, the wasp’s self-interest is served. But some 15 to 35 percent of co-queens slaving away are not closely related to the top wasp, so biologists have been puzzled about why those strangely helpful females don’t go off to found their own nests. They do it because joining an unrelated queen’s nest offers a chance of grabbing the throne, says Ellouise Leadbeater of the Zoological Society of London. She and her colleagues tracked the fortunes of 1,113 foundresses in 228 nests in southern Spain. In this epic population analysis, females that started out as subordinates to a nonrelative occasionally took over the whole nest and laid their own eggs. Their triumphs were rare but dramatic enough so that, overall, the strategy worked out better than being a single mom: Lone nest foundresses hardly managed to produce any offspring, the researchers report in the Aug. 12 Science. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15672 - Posted: 08.13.2011

By Kenneth I. Kaitin and Christopher P. Milne Schizophrenia, depression, addiction and other mental disorders cause suffering and cost billions of dollars every year in lost productivity. Neurological and psychiatric conditions account for 13 percent of the global burden of disease, a measure of years of life lost because of premature mortality and living in a state of less than full health, according to the World Health Organization. Despite the critical need for newer and better medications to treat a range of psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, drugs to treat these diseases are just too complex and costly for big pharmaceutical companies to develop. The risk of spending millions on new drugs only to have them fail in the pipeline is too great. That’s why many big drug companies are pulling the plug on R&D for neuropsychiatric and other central nervous system (CNS) medicines. Our team at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development has arrived at this conclusion after conducting surveys of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies about the drug development process. These surveys allow us to generate reliable estimates of the time, cost and risk of designing new drugs. Our analyses show that central nervous system agents are far more difficult to develop than most other types. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 15671 - Posted: 08.11.2011

by Anil Ananthaswamy The able-bodied dreams of people with a variety of disabilities challenge the theory that dreams are mere echoes of your day "WE HAD to flee. After a frantic race I started walking, carrying my daughter in my arms..." No matter how exciting to the dreamer, listening to people recount their dreams is notoriously dull. But reports such as this one, from someone who was born paralysed from the waist down, are perhaps more interesting. This is because a flurry of recent dream studies in people with disabilities are challenging our understanding of why we dream. The results seem to suggest that dreams, besides being a surreal echo of our waking lives, have a reality of their own: they may even spring from innate, fully functional representations of our body and sensory perceptions that do not always match real-life situations. The idea that dreams are linked to our waking reality - known as the continuity hypothesis - can be traced back to Sigmund Freud. The basic premise is that our dreams are determined by the thoughts, feelings and events that we have experienced during our waking hours, whether recently or further into the past. While this hypothesis cannot account for everything - why we occasionally fly in our dreams, for example - it is the dominant idea, says dream researcher Martin Schredl at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. He says there is a thematic continuity between waking and dreaming: "Dreams evoke specific emotions and reactions within the dreamer, and these are very closely related to actual waking-life issues." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 15670 - Posted: 08.11.2011

By Nathan Seppa Breathing irregularities that rob the brain of oxygen during sleep may imperil a person’s ability to think straight. A study of women 65 and older finds that those with seriously disordered breathing have an increased risk of developing mild cognitive impairment or dementia in subsequent years, researchers report in the Aug. 10 Journal of the American Medical Association. Individuals with disordered breathing slow down or stop taking breaths during sleep and often must gasp to catch up. The condition includes sleep apnea, an abnormal pattern that deprives the brain of oxygen and intermittently interrupts the deep sleep needed for satisfying rest. Earlier, short-term studies linked disordered breathing to cognitive impairment, citing hypoxia, a lack of oxygen, as a culprit. But long-term data have been lacking. In the new study, physician Kristine Yaffe of the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues tested 298 women, average age 82, from 2002 to 2004 for sleep problems, monitoring each individual overnight and noting any stoppages of air flow in their breathing as well as arousals from sleep. About one-third of the patients had disordered breathing. None of these women was cognitively impaired at the time of the sleep test. After the test, patients were given their scores and told if they showed signs of severe sleep problems, says study coauthor Katie Stone, an epidemiologist at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Whether they sought treatment is unknown, she says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Sleep; Alzheimers
Link ID: 15669 - Posted: 08.11.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey Rare genetic factors that lead to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder appear to be some of the same ones that cause autism, schizophrenia and other brain disorders. Previous studies have attempted – and mostly failed – to link common genetic variants to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, better known as ADHD. A new study bolsters the idea that many different rare variants, some found only in single families or individuals, are responsible for the condition. What’s more, variants of the same genes associated with ADHD have also been linked to autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and intellectual disability. “This really gives substance to the argument that there are shared genetic links between neuropsychiatric disorders,” says child psychiatrist Russell Schachar of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, who led the study with Stephen Scherer, a geneticist at the hospital. ADHD is one of the most common neuropsychiatric disorders, affecting about 7 percent of school-age children in the United States. It persists throughout life. People with the disorder may have trouble concentrating, act impulsively and be overly active. Symptoms fall on a continuum of severity, much like high blood pressure, says Josephine Elia, medical codirector of the Center for Management of ADHD at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Up to 75 percent of people with autism spectrum disorders also have symptoms of ADHD, but researchers did not know if the genetic causes were the same as in people who have ADHD alone. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: ADHD; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15668 - Posted: 08.11.2011

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered in mice a molecular trigger that initiates myelination, the process by which brain cell networks are reinforced with an insulating material called myelin that speeds their ability to transmit messages. The myelination process is an essential part of brain development. Myelin formation is necessary for brain cells to communicate and it may contribute to development of skills and learning. The researchers showed that an electrical signal passing through a brain cell (neuron) results in the brain cell releasing the molecule glutamate. Glutamate, in turn, triggers another type of brain cell, called an oligodendrocyte, to form a point of contact with the neuron. Signals transmitted through this contact point stimulate the oligodendrocyte to make myelin protein and begin the process of myelination. In this process, the oligodendrocyte wraps myelin around axons— the long, cable-like projections that extend from each neuron. The myelination process is analogous to wrapping electrical tape around bare wires. Myelin formation Electrical signals transmitted from one neuron to the next are a basic form of communication in the brain. The myelin layers that oligodendrocytes wrap around neurons boost these signals so that they travel 50 times faster than before. The study was conducted by Hiroaki Wake, Philip R. Lee, and R. Douglas Fields.

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 15667 - Posted: 08.11.2011

Alla Katsnelson Peggy Willocks was 44 when she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. It progressed quickly, forcing her to retire four years later from her job as a primary-school principal in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Soon, her condition had deteriorated so much that she was often unable to dress and feed herself, take care of basic hygiene or walk unaided across a room. Willocks enrolled in a trial for an experimental therapy called Spheramine, developed by Titan Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company in South San Francisco, California. Spheramine consists of cultured human retinal epithelial cells bound to specialized man-made carrier molecules. The cells are implanted into the brain, where it is hoped that they will produce the dopamine precursor levodopa, which can reduce the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. In August 2000, Willocks became the second person ever to receive the treatment. After having a steel halo — a stereotactic frame — bolted to her skull, she was put under general anaesthesia. Surgeons then used the frame and coordinates obtained from numerous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to pinpoint the location at which to drill. They then snaked a catheter through her brain's white matter to deliver the cells into the striatum. At first there was no effect, but Willocks says that after 6–8 months she began to feel better. The changes were always moderate and gradual, except for once, about nine months after her surgery, when she showed what her doctor called a "radical" improvement in balance. By a year after the treatment, she and the five other patients in the phase I trial showed an improvement in motor ability of 48%, and those gains largely held 4 years later1. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 15666 - Posted: 08.11.2011

by Sara Reardon Giving birth to twins is rough, especially in rural regions. They tend to be born smaller and weaker than single babies, and their mothers have more complications during childbirth. So why did twinning evolve? A new study in Gambia finds that women who have twins also tend to have single babies that are heavier than average at birth, which makes them more likely to survive. Since the 1950s, the U.K. Medical Research Council has been collecting data and providing medical care in Gambia. It's a highly unusual data set, says evolutionary anthropologist Rebecca Sear of Durham University in the United Kingdom, with a length and thoroughness that's "unheard of for populations without good access to medical care." Evolutionary biologist Ian Rickard of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom wondered whether the data could shed light on the biology of twins. Rickard and colleagues looked at the birth weights of 1889 single babies born to Gambian women over a 30-year period. Then they examined which of these mothers also had twins. Single babies born after twins were 226 grams heavier on average than single babies whose mothers had no twins, the team reports today in Biology Letters. This wasn't surprising, Rickard says, because carrying twins is thought to improve blood flow to the uterus and "prime" it for later children, allowing them to more easily receive nutrients. What did surprise the researchers was the discovery that when single babies were born before twins, the singles tended to be 134 grams heavier than average. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15665 - Posted: 08.11.2011

By Steve Connor, Science Editor One of the biggest studies ever undertaken into multiple sclerosis has identified 29 new genetic factors that are implicated in the development of the disease. The nature of the genes that have been linked with MS has demonstrated with a high degree of certainty that the root causes of the illness can be traced to the faulty functioning of the body's immune system, scientists said. Nearly 10,000 individuals with multiple sclerosis took part in the study and their genomes were scanned to find the genetic differences with the DNA of over 17,000 healthy people. The total number of genetic faults linked with the disease now amounts to 57. Alastair Compston, of the University of Cambridge, one of the lead authors of the study published in Nature, said there have been rival theories about what are the important factors implicated in triggering the disease, one of the most common neurological conditions affecting young adults. "Our research settles a long-standing debate on what happens first in the complex sequences of events that leads to disability in multiple sclerosis," he said. "This has important implications for future treatment strategies. It puts immunology right at the front end of the disease, absolutely." The study involved a relatively new technique called genome-wide scanning, which involves analysing the entire length of a patient's DNA for anomalies that appear not to exist in healthy people and could therefore be linked with the disease. Previous research had established that multiple sclerosis has a strong genetic component. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15664 - Posted: 08.11.2011

by Robert Krulwich OK, if you've got nothing else to do for one minute, let me mess with your head. Below, you will see two circles composed of parallelograms. There's a dot in the middle of the image. Focus on the dot. Move your head in, then move it out. Here is Pinna-Brelstaff Illusion. If you focus on the dot and move your head in, then move it out the circles spin. Weird, no? The circles seem to rotate. (Of course, they don't really rotate; if you focus on a single parallelogram, you can move your head in and out all day and that sucker won't move at all.) Something curious is going on. So I went to see an eye doctor (technically, he's a "visual science" professor, Ben Backus, at the State University of New York's College of Optometry) who agreed to explain to me why the circles seem to move. Yes, he said, what you are seeing is a lie ("illusion" is the polite word) but don't blame your lying eyes. Blame your lying brain. Copyright 2011 NPR

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15663 - Posted: 08.11.2011

By SINDYA N. BHANOO Male túngara frogs gather in shallow pools of water at night and let out long mating calls. Females visit these pools, listen to a few calls and then quickly pick mates. It’s a bit like speed dating. A male call consists of a whine followed by a series of grunts, or “chucks.” New research suggests that females judge males on these chucks — not the absolute number, but the ratio of one frog’s chucks to another. During the study in Panama, many female frogs seemed to prefer two chucks over a single chuck. But most did not show a preference between three chucks and two chucks. It’s a concept humans can relate to, said Karin Akre, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Texas at Austin who led the research. “If you have a pile of three oranges and four oranges, it’s pretty easy to see that one has more,” she said. “But it’s harder to tell the difference between 50 oranges versus 60 oranges, even though the absolute difference is greater.” The frogs are not alone at night; also lurking nearby are bats that prey on the frogs. Surprisingly, the researchers found that the bats use the same strategy as female frogs when selecting prey to single out. Like female frogs, they are drawn to males emitting more chucks, and make their determinations based on the ratio, rather than the absolute difference. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hearing
Link ID: 15662 - Posted: 08.09.2011

By PERRI KLASS, M.D. Parents of children with autism often ask pediatricians like me about the cause of the condition, and parents-to-be often ask what they can do to reduce the risk. But although there is more research in this area than ever before, it sometimes feels as if it’s getting harder, not easier, to provide answers that do justice to the evidence and also offer practical guidance. Recent research has taught us more about the complexity of the genetics of autism, but the evidence also has suggested an important role for environmental exposures. It has become a very complicated picture: Genes matter, but we usually can’t tell how. Environmental exposures matter, but we usually don’t know which. In July, a study of autism in twins was published online in Archives of General Psychiatry. Researchers looked at almost 200 sets of twins in California. In each pair, one twin was autistic. The study sought to determine how likely the second twin was to have some form of autism. If autism was highly heritable, identical twins should have been far more likely to both have autism than fraternal twins. But the researchers found that fraternal twins were unexpectedly likely to both have autism. The implication is that something in their common gestational or early childhood experience may have contributed to this similarity. “The data definitely did surprise me,” said Dr. Joachim Hallmayer, the lead author of the study and an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. “I expected the fraternal twin rates to be lower than what we found.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15661 - Posted: 08.09.2011

By GINA KOLATA Does obesity spread like a virus through networks of friends and friends of friends? Do smoking, loneliness, happiness, depression and illegal drug use also proliferate through social networks? Over the past few years, a series of highly publicized studies by two researchers have concluded that these behaviors can be literally contagious — passed from person to person. And there was an important public health corollary, the researchers said: It should be possible to curb a behavior like obesity by focusing on small groups of people who would then influence their networks. But now those surprising conclusions have drawn heated criticism from other scientists who claim that the studies’ methodology was flawed and the original data completely inadequate to estimate the role that contagion might play in the spread of these behaviors. “I know that many professional statisticians felt it was all bunk from the word go,” said Russell Lyons, a mathematics professor at Indiana University, who recently published a scathing review. of the work on contagion of social behaviors. The researchers who published the original studies — Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist at Harvard, and James Fowler, a social scientist at the University of California, San Diego — say they are well aware of the limitations of their analyses but maintain that their conclusions are robust. “We have laid all our cards on the table,” Dr. Fowler said. “We have yet to see anyone who proposed a model that worked better than the one we used.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15660 - Posted: 08.09.2011

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News US scientists say they have "fundamentally transformed" the understanding of the genetics of schizophrenia. A report in the journal Nature Genetics showed that "fresh mutations" in DNA are involved in at least half of schizophrenia cases, when there is no family history of the illness. Researchers found mutations in 40 different genes. They say their findings explain the high number of cases around the world. Schizophrenia is quite common, it affects one in every 100 people during their lifetime. Genes play a part in the illness. A tenth of people with schizophrenia also have a parent with the condition. However, researchers now say there is a genetic role even in cases which have not been inherited. A person's DNA is not a perfect copy of their parents' genetic code - there are mutations when eggs and sperm are formed. A team at Columbia University Medical Center analysed the genetic code of 225 people, some with and some without the condition. They found mutations in 40 genes were linked to schizophrenia. Lead researcher Dr Maria Karayiorgou said: "The fact that the mutations are all from different genes is particularly fascinating. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15659 - Posted: 08.09.2011

By Laura Sanders A common virus may slink into the brain through the nose. After setting up shop in people’s nasal mucus, human herpesvirus-6 may travel along olfactory cells right into the brain, researchers report online the week of August 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most people’s first bout with HHV-6 comes at a tender age: It causes the common childhood infection roseola, marked by a chest rash and a high fever. “Everyone is exposed to this,” says study coauthor Steven Jacobson of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md. “You have it. I have it.” Despite its ubiquity, very little is known about the virus. HHV-6 may live in tonsils and shed in saliva, some studies suggest. And in some people (researchers don’t know how many), the virus can infect the brain, where some researchers believe it may contribute to neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, encephalitis and a form of epilepsy. Other viruses such as herpes simplex, influenza A and rabies can invade the brain by shooting through the nose, so Jacobson and his team wondered whether HHV-6 could do the same trick. The researchers found high levels of HHV-6 in the olfactory bulb, a smell-related part of the brain, in two of three autopsy brain samples. The team then looked at nose mucus and found the virus in 52 of 126 different samples. “We were surprised to find so much in the nasal mucus,” Jacobson says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 15658 - Posted: 08.09.2011

By Alexandra Witze There’s just no getting ahead when you’re a hobbit. Anthropologists are arguing yet again over whether a tiny 18,000-year-old Indonesian skull represents a separate species of little human cousins, or an ordinary Homo sapiens with an abnormally small head. New data compare the fossil to a large group of modern humans with microcephaly, a genetic condition that makes the head smaller than usual. Measurements of the hobbit skull suggest its proportions fall within the range of microcephalic Homo sapiens, researchers report August 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Previously published papers that seemed to show that it can’t be a microcephalic are open to doubt,” says coauthor Ralph Holloway, an anthropologist at Columbia University in New York. The hobbit story began in 2003, when archaeologists unearthed the skull and other bones of a female hominid on the island of Flores. Her discoverers argued she represented a member of a human genus that had survived until relatively recently, and dubbed it Homo floresiensis. But some scientists charged that because the hobbit’s skull is so small, it might have just been a microcephalic Homo sapiens. To test that question, anthropologist Dean Falk of Florida State University in Tallahassee compared the skull’s internal dimensions to those of nine microcephalic humans and 10 normal humans. In a 2007 paper, she concluded the hobbit skull was still best assigned to its own species. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15657 - Posted: 08.09.2011

by Helen Fields Despite our wars and crime, humans tend to be nice. We bake for our neighbors, give directions to strangers, and donate money to far-off disaster victims. But does the same go for our closest cousin, the chimpanzee? A new study suggests that it does. People who study chimpanzees in the field have known for a long time that the apes console their comrades when they're upset and support each other in a fight. And when one chimp has a good hunting day and kills a nice, juicy monkey, it shares the meat with the other members of its group. But scientists have found that chimps don't share in lab experiments, creating a bit of a primatology mystery. For instance, when researchers gave captive chimps the opportunity to get rewards just for themselves or for both themselves and another chimpanzee from an apparatus with multiple interconnected trays, the apes were equally likely to choose the selfish and sharing options. Comparative psychologist Victoria Horner of Emory University in Atlanta thought she knew the reason why experiments didn't find sharing: the experimental setups other scientists used to test the chimps were just too confusing—"tables with pulley systems and whatnot." For one study, she says, "I had to read it several times before I understood the apparatus, and I'm a human." She thinks the chimps didn't understand how what they did affected their partner. With her colleagues at Emory, including renown primatologist Frans de Waal, Horner devised a new way to test chimps' generosity. "We did the same basic idea but from a more chimpy perspective," she says. In each experiment, two female chimps that live at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Lawrenceville, Georgia, were put in side-by-side rooms with a mesh-covered opening between them. Both chimps had been trained to "buy" food from the researchers with tokens, colored, 5-centimeter-long pieces of PVC pipe. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Evolution; Emotions
Link ID: 15656 - Posted: 08.09.2011

Gwyneth Dickey Zakaib Margaret Gatz, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, is investigating the causes of Alzheimer's disease. To that end, she has studied the health of more than 14,000 Swedish twins for more than 25 years. On 5 August, she will tell the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Washington DC what the study has taught her about how to reduce risk for the disease. What first motivated you to study Alzheimer's disease? Before I studied aging, I was a clinical psychologist. I talked to older adults and their families, and it became clear to me that cognitive changes and memory problems were a big concern for a demographic that, at the time, was fairly neglected in terms of research. Then, when I was on a sabbatical in Stockholm, I had the opportunity to get involved with the Swedish Twin Registry, a large cohort study in which some researchers were looking at cognition. It became clear to me that some of the twins would develop dementia, and that this was a unique opportunity for a study. My lab has been working with the Swedish twins now since 1985. What does your research show? Somewhere in the ballpark of 70% of risk for Alzheimer's disease across a population is due to heredity. In each individual, there's some combination of genes and environment. But on average, genes have a greater influence than environment in explaining the disease. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 15655 - Posted: 08.08.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. — The job was gone, the gun was loaded, and a voice was saying, “You’re a waste, give up now, do it now.” Mr. Holt and his wife, Patsy, who has been one of his main resources in his struggle with mental illness. It was a command, not a suggestion, and what mattered at that moment — a winter evening in 2000 — was not where the voice was coming from, but how assured it was, how persuasive. Losing his first decent job ever seemed like too much for Joe Holt to live with. It was time. “All I remember then is a knock on the bedroom door and my wife, Patsy, she sits down on the bed and hugs me, and I’m holding the gun in my left hand, down here, out of sight,” said Mr. Holt, 50, a computer consultant and entrepreneur who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. “She says, ‘Joe, I know you feel like quitting, but what if tomorrow is the day you get what you want?’ And walks out. I sat there staring at that gun for an hour at least, and finally decided — never again. It can never be an option. Patsy deserves for me to be trying.” In recent years, researchers have begun talking about mental health care in the same way addiction specialists speak of recovery — the lifelong journey of self-treatment and discipline that guides substance abuse programs. The idea remains controversial: managing a severe mental illness is more complicated than simply avoiding certain behaviors. The journey has more mazes, fewer road signs. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 15654 - Posted: 08.08.2011

Sandrine Ceurstemont, video producer It looks like a typical face turned upside down (see video above). But keep watching as it's flipped right-side up and you'll probably be surprised by its unusual features. Produced by The Open University, the video is an example of a well-known illusion called the Thatcher effect. It was accidentally discovered by psychologist Peter Thompson in 1980, who later altered a photo of Margaret Thatcher to demonstrate how flipped features, like mouths or eyes, are difficult to detect once a face is inverted. But why does this arrangement trick our brain? It's typically thought that we make sense of what we see by comparing the overall configuration with a known mental map. Since we rarely see an inverted face, we are unlikely to know what to expect and so relate it to our model for upright faces. According to Gillian Rhodes and her team from University of Western Australia, we may not notice peculiar positioning of features because it's harder to detect facial expressions when a face is upside down. The team found that not all odd features are masked when a face is inverted. For example, they found that pulling a face or blackening a person's teeth was obvious whichever way a face was oriented. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision; Attention
Link ID: 15653 - Posted: 08.08.2011