By Rachel Ehrenberg Eating fatty foods may give you the munchies. A new study shows that when rats taste fat, it stimulates the same cellular buttons triggered by the active ingredient in marijuana, telling the body to keep on eating. Uncovering the events that lead to this molecular “eat, eat” missive will make it easier to develop drugs that curb binge eating and other weight related-problems, says pharmacologist Daniele Piomelli, who led the new work. Piomelli and his colleagues were interested in compounds known as endocannabinoids — the body’s version of the active ingredient in marijuana — and the role they play in overeating. Several kinds of endocannabinoids are released in the brain and body, but researchers are still discovering the nitty-gritty of where and when these compounds regulate mood and behavior. So the researchers fed rats one of four liquid diets: fat (in the form of corn oil), protein, sugar or a nutrition shake combination of fat, protein and sugar. To ensure that the body’s digestive signals wouldn’t interfere with the experiments, a surgically implanted valve in the rats’ upper stomach drained the food once eaten. Then the team measured endocannabinoid activity in the brain and other tissues. Compared with rats eating sugar or protein alone, rats on the fat diet had a surge of endocannabinoid activity in their gut, the team reported online July 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And these rats wouldn’t stop slurping their corn oil. When given a compound that blocked the cellular buttons that the endocannabinoids typically hit, the fat-eating rats immediately stopped eating. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15541 - Posted: 07.09.2011

By Hal Arkowitz and Scott O. Lilienfeld Earlier this year a 22-year-old college dropout, Jared Lee Loughner, shot Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords through the head near a Tucson supermarket, causing significant damage to Giffords’s brain. In the same shooting spree, Loughner killed or wounded 18 others, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl. Information from Loughner’s postings on YouTube and elsewhere online suggests that he is severely mentally ill. Individuals with serious mental illnesses have perpetrated other recent shoot-ings, including the massacre in 2007 at ­Virginia Tech in which a college senior, ­Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people and wounded 17. These events and the accompanying media coverage have probably fed the public’s perception that most profoundly mentally ill people are violent. Surveys show that 60 to 80 percent of the public believes that those diagnosed with schizophrenia, in particular, are likely to commit violent acts. Although studies have pointed to a slight increase in the risk of violent behaviors among those afflicted with major psychiatric ailments, a closer examination of the research suggests that these disorders are not strong predictors of aggressive behavior. In reality, severely mentally ill people account for only 3 to 5 percent of violent crimes in the general population. The data indicate that other behaviors are likely to be better harbingers of physical aggression—an insight that may help us prevent outbursts of rage in the future. Not all psychological and emotional disorders portend violence, even in society’s eyes. In this column, we refer only to severe mental illness—meaning schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or psychotic depression. Symptoms of schizophrenia include marked disturbances in thoughts, emotions and behaviors; delusions (fixed false beliefs); hallucinations (perceiving things that are not physically present); disorganization; and withdrawal from social activities. Bipolar disorder is usually characterized by swings between depression and mania, which involves euphoria and grandiosity, a boost in energy and less need for sleep. Psychotic depression includes acute depressive symptoms, along with delusions or hallucinations, or both. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Aggression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 15540 - Posted: 07.09.2011

by Rebecca Kessler While exploring Australia's Great Barrier Reef, professional diver Scott Gardner heard an odd cracking sound and swam over to investigate. What he found was a footlong blackspot tuskfish (Choerodon schoenleinii) holding a clam in its mouth and whacking it against a rock. Soon the shell gave way, and the fish gobbled up the bivalve, spat out the shell fragments, and swam off. Fortunately, Gardner had a camera handy and snapped what seem to be the first photographs of a wild fish using a tool. Tool use, once thought to be the distinctive hallmark of human intelligence, has been identified in a wide variety of animals in recent decades. Although other creatures don't have anything quite like a circular saw or a juice machine, capuchin monkeys select "hammer" rocks of an appropriate material and weight to crack open seeds, fruits, or nuts on larger "anvil" rocks, and New Caledonian crows probe branches with grass, twigs, and leaf strips to extract insects. In addition to primates and birds, many animals, including dolphins, elephants, naked mole rats, and even octopuses, have shown forms of the behavior. Tool-using fish have been few and far between, however, particularly in the wild. Archerfish target jets of water at terrestrial prey, but whether this constitutes tool use has been contentious. There have also been a handful of reports of fish cracking open hard-shelled prey, such as bivalves and sea urchins, by banging them on rocks or coral, but there's no photo or video evidence to back it up, according to Culum Brown, a behavioral ecologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and a co-author of the present paper, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Coral Reefs. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15539 - Posted: 07.09.2011

by Daniel Strain A protein in the brain that has been linked to the development of human language may push developing neurons to reach out and touch someone—or, at least, other brain cells, according to a new study. Such early links could organize the cell-to-cell connections critical for learning complex tasks later in life, including reciting Dr. Seuss, researchers say. Researchers first identified the FOXP2 gene and its protein in 2001. The study involved a family that had difficulty pronouncing and understanding words, and since then scientists have suspected that the gene may have played a role in the evolution of human language. It even appears to be important to "speech" in other animals: zebra finches with low levels of the FOXP2 protein, for example, can't learn the songs that other birds sing. Most studies of FOXP2 have focused on its effects post-birth, says Simon Fisher, a neurogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands. So scientists have been unclear about its role in very early brain building. To tease this out, Fisher and colleagues turned to embryonic mice. The team screened thousands of known genes in whole mice brains, looking for those switched on or off by the FOXP2 protein. In brain tissue bathed in high concentrations of FOXP2, the protein kicked about 160 genes into gear. Another 180 genes in these cells slowed down protein production. All of this suggests that FOXP2 is a "hub in a network of genes which might be important," Fisher says. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15538 - Posted: 07.09.2011

by Kat McGowan The woman in the wheelchair wearing burgundy scrubs is lovely, with full eyebrows arching over her closed eyes. Joseph Giacino, director of rehabilitation neuro­psychology at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, squats beside her, looking into her face. “Hi, Kellie, it’s Dr. Giacino. How are you? Can you open your eyes?” No response. Two and a half months ago, during what was supposed to be a simple nasal operation for sinusitis, Kellie’s left carotid artery was accidentally sliced open, starving half her brain of blood and oxygen. Since that day, she has not spoken or clearly responded in any way. She opens her eyes, and sometimes she groans or gropes toward people nearby. Most of the time she seems to be asleep. Is Kellie still in there? Giacino, 52, an expert in disorders of consciousness, will establish her condition more precisely with this exam. First, though, he needs Kellie to be more alert. He rubs her arm and her leg firmly, applying deep-muscle pressure, and her dark eyes pop open. She begins to breathe heavily and to shake. Giacino soothes her. “I’m just waking you up,” he says gently. “You had some bleeding in your brain, and we’re trying to help you get better.” The expression on her face is intense and hard to read. It mixes fear with annoyance, as if she has just woken from a nightmare. “Every kid has a dad and a…” he prompts. She moans, or is she trying to say “mom”? It is difficult to tell whether she is oblivious or struggling to respond. When she makes eye contact and holds it, she seems just as aware as anyone else in the room. By her fierce expression, she looks as if she is about to tell Giacino to buzz off. Yet she does not speak. That is why this exam, calibrated to distinguish between reflexes and real cognition, is so important. When Giacino hands her a toy ball, she grabs it, smoothly and naturally. It is a good sign. Copyright © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15537 - Posted: 07.07.2011

by Andy Coghlan People with Parkinson's disease might one day be treated with brain cells made from their own skin. Two teams of researchers have independently worked out how to turn skin cells into specialised neurons that make dopamine. This neurotransmitter, which is vital for mobility, is depleted in the brains of people with Parkinson's. The studies raise the possibility of improving mobility in people with Parkinson's by restoring dopamine production to normal. At present, most patients take a drug called L-dopa to readjust levels, but with varying levels of success. Both techniques avoid the initial step of converting skin cells into embryo-like pluripotent cells – a technique which poses a possible cancer risk. Vania Broccoli of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, and colleagues, first reprogrammed mouse skin cells using three transcription factors – proteins previously linked with the development of the neurons. The same trio of factors transformed skin cells taken from human embryos, healthy adults and people with Parkinson's. The only drawback is that Broccoli's team first had to infect the skin cells with viruses carrying genes to make the transcription factors, although the viruses used are not ones that might disrupt DNA and cause cancer. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 15536 - Posted: 07.07.2011

by Duncan Graham-Rowe The latest brain-computer interfaces meet smart home technology and virtual gaming TWO friends meet in a bar in the online environment Second Life to chat about their latest tweets and favourite TV shows. Nothing unusual in that - except that both of them have Lou Gehrig's disease, otherwise known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and it has left them so severely paralysed that they can only move their eyes. These Second Lifers are just two of more than 50 severely disabled people who have been trying out a sophisticated new brain-computer interface (BCI). Second Life has been controlled using BCIs before, but only to a very rudimentary level. The new interface, developed by medical engineering company G.Tec of Schiedlberg, Austria, lets users freely explore Second Life's virtual world and control their avatar within it. It can be used to give people control over their real-world environment too: opening and closing doors, controlling the TV, lights, thermostat and intercom, answering the phone, or even publishing Twitter posts. The system was developed as part of a pan-European project called Smart Homes for All, and is the first time the latest BCI technology has been combined with smart-home technology and online gaming. It uses electroencephalograph (EEG) caps to pick up brain signals, which it translates into commands that are relayed to controllers in the building, or to navigate and communicate within Second Life and Twitter. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 15535 - Posted: 07.07.2011

By Linda Carroll What finally washed away Kari Adams’s denial was the flood of tears streaming down her dad’s face. Frightened by Kari’s plunging weight, her family had been begging the 41-year-old mother of two to seek help for months. But nobody could convince Kari that anything was wrong – until she saw her dad’s tears. “That’s when it hit me,” she said. “He never cried before in my whole life.” Kari’s story echoes that of many other middle-aged women in America. Major transitions and traumatic mid-life events — crumbling marriages, job losses or kids going off to college — can rekindle eating disorders that had begun years before. “It’s rare that an eating disorder shows up completely out of the blue in mid-life,” said Douglas Bunnell, vice president and director of out-patient clinical services at The Renfrew Center, where Kari eventually sought help. The more common scenario, Bunnell said, is the resurgence of a life-long problem. Eating disorder experts are seeing more and more patients like Kari these days. The Renfrew Center has seen a 42 percent increase in the number of women over the age of 35 seeking help. That’s prompted the center to come up with a special program geared to their older patients. Therapists focus on stressors that trigger eating disorders in adults and on the underlying issues inflaming the problem, such as anxiety. “For these people, there’s something soothing about not eating,” Bunnell said. “The eating disorder has become embedded in the way they manage anxiety.” © 2011 MSNBC Interactive

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 15534 - Posted: 07.07.2011

A chemical in the body that triggers pain from sunburn has been pinpointed by UK experts in a discovery that could lead to new painkillers. Scientists hope one day to be able to knock out the substance with drugs, helping people who suffer from chronic pain. Tests on volunteers showed CXCL5, as it is called, is produced when skin is burnt by UV rays from the sun. The research is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Exposure to ultraviolet light from sunlight causes premature skin ageing, cancer and other skin changes. UVB affects the outer layer of skin, and is the main agent responsible for sunburn. In the study, scientists at King's College London exposed small patches of the 10 volunteers' skin to UVB. Areas of sunburn were produced which became increasingly tender over a few days. The scientists took small samples of sunburnt skin and screened them for hundreds of known pain molecules. They discovered unusually high levels of CXCL5. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15533 - Posted: 07.07.2011

By Tia Ghose Blocking a death receptor causes damaged myelin, the protective coating surrounding nerve cells, to repair itself, according to a study published Sunday (July 3) in Nature Medicine. The finding suggests that drugs targeting the receptor could help treat multiple sclerosis by reversing the myelin damage characteristic of the disease. “Showing remyelination, as they do in vivo and in vitro, is a pretty cool result,” said Richard Ransohoff, a Cleveland Clinic neuroscientist who was not involved in the work. The new receptor is a novel first step in potentially repairing damaged nerves of multiple sclerosis patients, he said. Current multiple sclerosis drugs slow the disease’s progression by quieting the inflammatory response of the immune system, which attacks the myelin surrounding nerve cells and kills oligodendrocytes, brain cells that make and repair myelin. Without their myelin, nerve cells gradually lose their ability to send electrical signals. But because they suppress the immune response, these drugs make patients more susceptible to rare infections such as viral brain inflammation and diseases such as leukemia. They also cannot undo existing damage, leading scientists to seek out approaches that stimulate the growth of new myelin or the restoration of existing myelin. Though research has identified several candidate molecules that promote myelin survival, none have yet proven to do so successfully in patients. © 1986-2011 The Scientist

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Apoptosis
Link ID: 15532 - Posted: 07.07.2011

By Nathan Seppa A nutritional supplement that is free of charge, offers a wide range of health benefits and poses little risk sounds like fodder for a late-night TV commercial. But proponents of vitamin D are increasingly convinced that the sunshine vitamin delivers the goods, no strings attached. It offers a safe route to better health, these advocates say, by promoting proper function of the bones, heart, brain, immune system, you name it. Yet, the proponents claim, most people don’t get enough. Whereas humans’ pre­historic ancestors lived outdoors and made oodles of vitamin D in their sun-exposed skin, people today have become shut-ins by comparison — and scant sun exposure means low vitamin D. Of course, not everyone sees such a grand reach for the vitamin. While scientists concur that it is essential for bone maintenance, some stop right there. The skeptics note that vitamin D’s other promising qualities have shown up largely in studies that fall short of the gold standard of medicine — the randomized controlled trial, in which groups of people get either a placebo or the real thing. While a handful of randomized trials have shown additional benefits, others have not, leaving a gap in the vitamin’s otherwise sterling reputation. This debate came to a head last November, when an Institute of Medicine panel of scientists announced new vitamin D recommendations. The old intake levels were barely high enough to prevent rickets, a bone condition associated with the Industrial Revolution. The IOM panel boosted the recommended daily intake of the vitamin from 200 to 600 international units per day for most of the population. The new dose is about 15 micrograms, in the range of vitamin D found in most multivitamins. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Parkinsons; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15531 - Posted: 07.05.2011

Rowan Hooper, news editor Poor old Carolyn. Six of her previous babies have been taken away from her, and, as this film opens, men are coming to take her seventh. Her son, a chimpanzee named Nim, is two weeks old and is about to be transplanted from his birthplace at a primate research centre in Oklahoma into - wait for it - a large brownstone on the upper west side of Manhattan. There he will live with a human family and be raised as a human child. Thus begins the stranger than fiction true story that's explored in James Marsh's new documentary, Project Nim. What on earth were they thinking of? Nim was put in diapers and dressed in clothes. He was breastfed by his human surrogate mother, Stephanie Lafarge. "It seemed natural," she says. Lafarge's daughter, Jenny Lee, has a better explanation: "It was the seventies". Jenny was 10-years-old when Nim came to live with her family. The film, assembled from archive footage shot at the time, recreated scenes and interviews with the main characters, tells the story of Nim's chaotic life. In the mid 1970s a scientific debate was raging over the origin of language. There were two camps: those who held that human language was part of a continuum, in which case we'd expect other primates to have the rudiments of language, and those who thought language was uniquely human and there would be no evolutionary trace of it in other apes. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 15530 - Posted: 07.05.2011

By NATALIE ANGIER Among the Ache hunter-gatherers in eastern Paraguay, healthy adults with no dependent offspring are expected to donate as much as 70 to 90 percent of the food they forage to the needier members of the group. And as those strapping suppliers themselves fall ill, give birth or grow old, they know they can count on the tribe to provide. Among the !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari in Africa, a successful hunter who may be inclined to swagger is kept in check by his compatriots through a ritualized game called “insulting the meat.” You asked us out here to help you carry that pitiful carcass? What is it, some kind of rabbit? Among the Hadza foragers of northern Tanzania, people confronted by a stingy food sharer do not simply accept what’s offered. They hold out their hand, according to Frank Marlowe, an anthropologist at Durham University in England, “encouraging the giver to keep giving until the giver finally draws the line.” Among America’s top executives today, according to a study commissioned by The New York Times, the average annual salary is about $10 million and rising some 12 percent a year. At the same time, the rest of the tribe of the United States of America struggles with miserably high unemployment, stagnant wages and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Now, maybe the wealth gap is a temporary problem, and shiny new quarters will soon rain down on us all. But if you’re feeling tetchy and surly about the lavished haves when you have not a job, if you’re tempted to go out and insult a piece of corporate meat, researchers who study the nature and evolution of human social organization say they are hardly surprised. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15529 - Posted: 07.05.2011

By PAM BELLUCK People in a large area of the American South have long been known to have more strokes and to be more likely to die from them than people living elsewhere in the country. Now, a large national study suggests the so-called stroke belt may have another troubling health distinction. Researchers have found that Southerners there also are more likely to experience a decline in cognitive ability over several years — specifically, problems with memory and orientation. The differences to date in the continuing study are not large: Of nearly 24,000 participants, 1,090 in eight stroke-belt states showed signs of cognitive decline after four years, compared with 847 people in 40 other states. But the geographic difference persisted even after the researchers adjusted for factors — like age, sex, race and education — that might influence the result. The most recent data from the study were published in Annals of Neurology. None of the people with cognitive decline in the study had had detectable strokes. But some experts believe their memory problems and other mental issues could be related to the same underlying risk factors, including lifestyle patterns that contribute to hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and obesity. Is it the fried food beloved by Southerners? Limited access to doctors? Too little exercise? Researchers are investigating those and other possible causes. Some experts also suggest that the participants could have had small, undetectable strokes that subtly affected brain function. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15528 - Posted: 07.05.2011

By LAURA BEIL Just as the ear has two purposes — hearing and telling you which way is up — so does the eye. It receives the input necessary for vision, but the retina also houses a network of sensors that detect the rise and fall of daylight. With light, the body sets its internal clock to a 24-hour cycle regulating an estimated 10 percent of our genes. The workhorse of this system is the light-sensitive hormone melatonin, which is produced by the body every evening and during the night. Melatonin promotes sleep and alerts a variety of biological processes to the approximate hour of the day. Light hitting the retina suppresses the production of melatonin — and there lies the rub. In this modern world, our eyes are flooded with light well after dusk, contrary to our evolutionary programming. Scientists are just beginning to understand the potential health consequences. The disruption of circadian cycles may not just be shortchanging our sleep, they have found, but also contributing to a host of diseases. “Light works as if it’s a drug, except it’s not a drug at all,” said George Brainard, a neurologist at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and one of the first researchers to study light’s effects on the body’s hormones and circadian rhythms. Any sort of light can suppress melatonin, but recent experiments have raised novel questions about one type in particular: the blue wavelengths produced by many kinds of energy-efficient light bulbs and electronic gadgets. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Vision
Link ID: 15527 - Posted: 07.05.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY Researchers have long known that the brain links all kinds of new facts, related or not, when they are learned about the same time. Just as the taste of a cookie and tea can start a cascade of childhood memories, as in Proust, so a recalled bit of history homework can bring to mind a math problem — or a new dessert — from that same night. For the first time, scientists have recorded traces in the brain of that kind of contextual memory, the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of thoughts and emotions that surrounds every piece of newly learned information. The recordings, taken from the brains of people awaiting surgery for epilepsy, suggest that new memories of even abstract facts — an Italian verb, for example — are encoded in a brain-cell firing sequence that also contains information about what else was happening during and just before the memory was formed, whether a tropical daydream or frustration with the Mets. The new study suggests that memory is like a streaming video that is bookmarked, both consciously and subconsciously, by facts, scenes, characters and thoughts. Experts cautioned that the new report falls well short of revealing how contextual memory and different cues interact; some words might throw the mind into a vivid reverie, while others do not. But the report does provide a glimpse into how the brain places memories in space and time. “It’s a demonstration of this very cool idea that you have remnants of previous thoughts still rattling around in your head, and you bind the representation of what’s happening now to the fading embers of those old thoughts,” said Ken Norman, a neuroscientist at Princeton who did not participate in the study. “I think they have very good evidence that this process is crucial to time-stamping your memories.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15526 - Posted: 07.05.2011

By Stephanie Pappas It's hard to eat just one potato chip, and a new study may explain why. Fatty foods like chips and fries trigger the body to produce chemicals much like those found in marijuana, researchers report today (July 4) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). These chemicals, called "endocannabinoids," are part of a cycle that keeps you coming back for just one more bite of cheese fries, the study found. "This is the first demonstration that endocannabinoid signaling in the gut plays an important role in regulating fat intake," study researcher Daniele Piomelli, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, Irvine, said in a statement. The study found that fat in the gut triggers the release of endocannabinoids in the brain, but the gray stuff between your ears isn't the only organ that makes natural marijuana-like chemicals. Human skin also makes the stuff. Skin cannabinoids may play the same role for us as they do for pot plants: Oily protection from the wind and sun. Endocannabinoids are also known to influence appetite and the sense of taste, according to a 2009 study in PNAS, which explains the munchies people get when they smoke marijuana. © 2011 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15525 - Posted: 07.05.2011

By LAURIE TARKAN A new study of twins suggests that environmental factors, including conditions in the womb, may be at least as important as genes in causing autism. The researchers did not say which environmental influences might be at work. But other experts said the new study, released online on Monday, marked an important shift in thinking about the causes of autism, which is now thought to affect at least 1 percent of the population in the developed world. “This is a very significant study because it confirms that genetic factors are involved in the cause of the disorder,” said Dr. Peter Szatmari, a leading autism researcher who is the head of child psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at McMaster University in Ontario. “But it shifts the focus to the possibility that environmental factors could also be really important.” As recently as a few decades ago, psychiatrists thought autism was caused by a lack of maternal warmth. And while that notion has been discarded in favor of genetic explanations, there has been growing acceptance that genes do not tell the whole story, in part because autism rates appear to have increased far faster than our genes can evolve. “I think we now understand that both genetic and environmental factors have to be taken seriously,” said Dr. Joachim Hallmayer, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and the lead author of the new study, which is to be published in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15524 - Posted: 07.05.2011

by Sally Adee ROSALIND PICARD'S eyes were wide open. I couldn't blame her. We were sitting in her office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and my questions were stunningly incisive. In fact, I began to suspect that I must be one of the savviest journalists she had ever met. Then Picard handed me a pair of special glasses. The instant I put them on I discovered that I had got it all terribly wrong. That look of admiration, I realised, was actually confusion and disagreement. Worse, she was bored out of her mind. I became privy to this knowledge because a little voice was whispering in my ear through a headphone attached to the glasses. It told me that Picard was "confused" or "disagreeing". All the while, a red light built into the specs was blinking above my right eye to warn me to stop talking. It was as though I had developed an extra sense. The glasses can send me this information thanks to a built-in camera linked to software that analyses Picard's facial expressions. They're just one example of a number of "social X-ray specs" that are set to transform how we interact with each other. By sensing emotions that we would otherwise miss, these technologies can thwart disastrous social gaffes and help us understand each other better. Some companies are already wiring up their employees with the technology, to help them improve how they communicate with customers. Our emotional intelligence is about to be boosted, but are we ready to broadcast feelings we might rather keep private? © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions; Robotics
Link ID: 15523 - Posted: 07.05.2011

by Michael Balter Most researchers regard language as unique to humans, something that makes our species special. But they fiercely debate how the ability to speak and listen evolved. Did speech require our species to evolve novel capabilities, or did we simply combine and enhance various abilities that other animals have, too? A new study with a language-trained chimp suggests that when it comes to understanding speech, the basic equipment might already have been present in our apelike ancestors. The notion that language evolved only in the human lineage and has no parallels in other animals has long been attributed to the linguist Noam Chomsky, who argued beginning in the 1960s that humans had a special "language organ" unique to us. But more recent studies have shown that other species are surprisingly good at communication, and many researchers have abandoned this idea—even Chomsky himself no longer holds to it strictly. However, some scientists continue to argue that humans have evolved unique ways to perceive and understand speech that allows us to use words as symbols for complex meanings. These contentions are based in part on a notable human talent: We can recognize words and understand entire sentences, even if the sounds of the words have been dramatically altered until they are a pale shadow of their linguistically meaningful selves. So a team of researchers turned to Panzee, a 25-year-old chimpanzee, to test the assumption that only humans have this talent. Humans raised Panzee from the age of 8 days, and her caregivers exposed her to a rich diet of English language conversation about food, people, objects, and events. Panzee can't talk, so she communicates with those around her using a lexigram board of symbols corresponding to English words (see photo). She can point to 128 different lexigrams when she hears the corresponding spoken word. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 15522 - Posted: 07.02.2011