By Christof Koch The ancient debate surrounding the existence of free will appears unresolvable, a metaphysical question that generates much heat yet little light. Common sense and volumes of psychological and neuroscientific research reveal, however, that we are less free than we think we are. Our genes, our upbringing and our environment influence our behaviors in ways that often escape conscious control. Understanding this influence, the advertisement industry spent approximately half a trillion dollars worldwide in 2010 to shape the buying decisions of consumers. And extreme dictatorships, such as that in North Korea, remain in power through the effective use of insidious and all-pervasive forms of propaganda. Yet nothing approaches the perfidy of the one-celled organism Toxoplasma gondii, one of the most widespread of all parasitic protozoa. It takes over the brain of its host and makes it do things, even actions that will cause it to die, in the service of this nasty hitchhiker. It sounds like a cheesy Hollywood horror flick, except that it is for real. We know that illness in general can slow us down, incapacitate us and, in the worst case, kill us. Yet this organism is much more specific. Natural selection has given rise to pathogens that infiltrate the nervous system and change that system’s wiring to achieve its ultimate purpose, replication—like a computer virus that reprograms an infected machine. Such is the case with T. gondii. It sexually reproduces only in the intestines of cats yet can maintain itself indefinitely in any warm-blooded animal. Infected cats shed millions of their oocysts in their feces. Taken up by all kinds of animals, including dogs, rodents and humans, they infect muscle and the brain to escape attacks by the host’s immune system. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15342 - Posted: 05.19.2011

By Jamie Horder The search for the genetic roots of psychiatric illnesses and behavioral disorders such as schizophrenia, autism and ADHD has a long history, but until recently, it was one marked by frustration and skepticism. In the past few years, new techniques have begun to reveal strong evidence for the role of specific genes in some cases of these conditions but in a way few people expected. To understand what makes the new discoveries so novel, it’s necessary to appreciate how our genes can go wrong. The human genetic code can be thought of as an encyclopedia in multiple volumes. Our normal genome contains 46 chromosomes, so that’s 46 volumes. Each chromosome is a long string of the chemical DNA and the information is “written” in the form of a molecular alphabet with just four letters: A, T, C and G. There are three ways in which something can go wrong here. First, a whole chromosome can be either missing or duplicated. This drastic change is almost always fatal. (The exceptions include Downs Syndrome.) Second, single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, or “snips” as everyone calls them) are when a single base-pair is different, corresponding to a misprinted character. Finally, copy-number variants (CNVs) are when a stretch of DNA is either missing (deleted), or repeated (duplicated), a bit like a page that’s either fallen out or been printed twice. As you can imagine, CNVs tend to be more serious than SNPs, because they affect more of the DNA. This is only a general rule, however. There are plenty of serious SNPs, and plenty of harmless CNVs. It all depends on where they happen, and whether they interfere with important genes. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15341 - Posted: 05.19.2011

Adam Kepecs A surprising view has been gathering momentum in neuroscience: most of our thoughts and actions are driven by unconscious brain processes that are hidden from conscious introspection. So if consciousness is rarely in the driver's seat, and if we cannot choose our genes or the childhood experiences whose interactions form our brains, then are we responsible for our actions? In Incognito, accomplished neuroscientist David Eagleman — author of the best-selling short-story collection Sum (Canongate, 2010) — examines this gap between our conscious and unconscious selves. He offers a whirlwind of stories, from visual illusions and sleep-walking killers to ovulating strippers, all carefully chosen to drive home his main point that our brains “neurally preordain” us to make decisions. As is common in books aimed at a general readership, the intriguing and sometimes bizarre case studies create a tension between journalistic musings and more detailed arguments. Although specialists may feel that the balance tilts toward the journalistic, Eagleman's expertise comes through. Since Sigmund Freud's famous psychological framing of the unconscious in the late nineteenth century, modern neuroscience has shown that most processing in the brain is unconscious. We are unaware of routine processes and have little insight into our choices and preferences. For instance, men unknowingly prefer photographs of women with dilated pupils, presumably because male brains evolved algorithms to recognize pupil dilation as an indicator of sexual arousal. In another experiment, people's descriptions of the strategies they used to make simple economic decisions differed from the rules that they actually used, suggesting that their conscious explanations were formed post hoc and without access to their decision-making process. Through such examples, Eagleman demonstrates that unconscious processes can be clever, adaptive and even outperform the best computer algorithms. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15340 - Posted: 05.19.2011

Ker Than People may one day be able to hear what are now inaudible sounds, scientists say. New experiments suggest that just vibrating the ear bones could create shortcuts for sounds to enter the brain, thus boosting hearing. Most people can hear sounds in the range of about 20 hertz (Hz) at the low end to about 20 kilohertz (kHz) at the high end. Twenty kHz would sound like a very high-pitched mosquito buzz, and 20 Hz would be what you'd hear if "you were at an R&B concert and you just stood next to the bass," explained Michael Qin, a senior research scientist at the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory in Connecticut. "It would be the thing that's moving your pants leg." Under certain circumstances, humans can also hear frequencies outside of this normal range. For instance, divers underwater can detect sounds of up to a hundred kHz, according to Qin's recent experiments. It's unclear why the divers have enhanced hearing underwater, but it may be because the sounds travel directly through the bones to the brain, he said. In normal hearing, sound waves traveling through the air or water enter our ear canals and strike our eardrums, causing them to vibrate. Our eardrums are connected to three tiny, connected bones called the malleus, incus, and stapes—popularly known as the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, due to their shapes. © 1996-2011 National Geographic Society

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15339 - Posted: 05.19.2011

By Carolyn Y. Johnson WALTHAM — Lights dimmed, a hush fell over the hallway as Nicole Porter, cradling Ava in her arms, walked gingerly toward the powerful imaging equipment that would allow researchers to peer into her baby’s developing brain. Porter had spent hours coaxing Ava to sleep so she would lie still in the noisy scanner. Then, at the last minute, Ava’s eyes fluttered open and she gazed at the colorful ceiling. The experiment would have to start over. It was another frustrating moment in the difficult process of studying the brain during early development. Nothing was wrong with Ava; the 11-month-old from Boston was part of a study that uses brain imaging to see if early hallmarks of dyslexia can be seen years before children have trouble reading. Scientists believe that if they can identify nascent disorders such as dyslexia or autism earlier, and get a jump on therapy, they might eventually be able to prevent children from developing problems later. “We know many important pediatric disorders start to emerge early on, and some things, for example dyslexia, you might not pick up until they’re reading. But you know their brain has probably started to diverge from normal in some way early on,’’ said Dr. P. Ellen Grant of Children’s Hospital Boston, who is leading the study with Nadine Gaab, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s. The research is being done at the hospital’s Waltham clinic. © 2011 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Dyslexia; Brain imaging
Link ID: 15338 - Posted: 05.17.2011

By CARL E. SCHOONOVER and ABBY RABINOWITZ Treating anxiety no longer requires years of pills or psychotherapy. At least, not for a certain set of bioengineered mice. In a study recently published in the journal Nature, a team of neuroscientists turned these high-strung prey into bold explorers with the flip of a switch. The group, led by Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and researcher at Stanford, employed an emerging technology called optogenetics to control electrical activity in a few carefully selected neurons. First they engineered these neurons to be sensitive to light. Then, using implanted optical fibers, they flashed blue light on a specific neural pathway in the amygdala, a brain region involved in processing emotions. And the mice, which had been keeping to the sides of their enclosure, scampered freely across an open space. While such tools are very far from being used or even tested in humans, scientists say optogenetics research is exciting because it gives them extraordinary control over specific brain circuits — and with it, new insights into an array of disorders, among them anxiety and Parkinson’s disease. Mice are very different from humans, as Dr. Deisseroth (pronounced DICE-er-roth) acknowledged. But he added that because “the mammalian brain has striking commonalities across species,” the findings might lead to a better understanding of the neural mechanisms of human anxiety. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15337 - Posted: 05.17.2011

By JOHN TIERNEY Is happiness overrated? Martin Seligman now thinks so, which may seem like an odd position for the founder of the positive psychology movement. As president of the American Pyschological Association in the late 1990s, he criticized his colleagues for focusing relentlessly on mental illness and other problems. He prodded them to study life’s joys, and wrote a best seller in 2002 titled “Authentic Happiness.” But now he regrets that title. As the investigation of happiness proceeded, Dr. Seligman began seeing certain limitations of the concept. Why did couples go on having children even though the data clearly showed that parents are less happy than childless couples? Why did billionaires desperately seek more money even when there was nothing they wanted to do with it? And why did some people keep joylessly playing bridge? Dr. Seligman, an avid player himself, kept noticing them at tournaments. They never smiled, not even when they won. They didn’t play to make money or make friends. They didn’t savor that feeling of total engagement in a task that psychologists call flow. They didn’t take aesthetic satisfaction in playing a hand cleverly and “winning pretty.” They were quite willing to win ugly, sometimes even when that meant cheating. “They wanted to win for its own sake, even if it brought no positive emotion,” says Dr. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. “They were like hedge fund managers who just want to accumulate money and toys for their own sake. Watching them play, seeing them cheat, it kept hitting me that accomplishment is a human desiderata in itself.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15336 - Posted: 05.17.2011

By TARA PARKER-POPE Consumer Reports, famous for its ratings of appliances and cars, has jumped into the diet wars. In an article in its June issue, published last week, the magazine declared Jenny Craig the winner among several commercial weight-loss plans, beating out Slim-Fast, Weight Watchers, the Zone fast weight-loss plan, Dr. Dean Ornish’s “Eat More, Weigh Less” diet, the Atkins diet and Nutrisystem. Consumer Reports said it relied on the available scientific evidence. But readers who try to follow its advice will discover that a Jenny Craig diet in the real world is far different from the one studied for the article. Indeed, the findings, which generated widespread news coverage, highlight just how little weight the participants in commercial diet plans manage to lose, despite considerable expense in money and time. The magazine said Jenny Craig had “the edge over the other big names” on the basis of a two-year study published last year in The Journal of the American Medical Association. In that study, 92 percent of 442 overweight and obese women stuck with the program for two years, which Consumer Reports called a “remarkable level of adherence.” They lost an average of about 16 pounds. But the magazine failed to report that the women in the study didn’t pay a dime to sign up for the Jenny Craig program. Unlike real Jenny Craig customers, they received $6,600 worth of membership fees and food during the two-year study. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15335 - Posted: 05.17.2011

By Kate Kelland LONDON — Scientists say they have discovered the first solid evidence that variations in some peoples' genes may cause depression -- one of the world's most common and costly mental illnesses. And in a rare occurrence in genetic research, a British-led international team's finding of a DNA region linked to depression has been replicated by another team from the United States who were studying an entirely separate group of people. "What's remarkable is that both groups found exactly the same region in two separate studies," Pamela Madden, who led the U.S. team at Washington University, said in a statement. The researchers said they hoped the findings would bring scientists closer to developing more effective treatments for patients with depression, since currently available medicines for depression only work in around half of patients. "These findings ... will help us track down specific genes that are altered in people with this disease," said Gerome Breen of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, who led the other research group. The researchers said they believed many genes were involved in depression. These findings are unlikely to benefit patients immediately, with any new drugs developed from them likely to take another 10 to 15 years. However, they will help scientists understand what may be happening at the genetic and molecular levels in people with depression. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15334 - Posted: 05.16.2011

Derek Boogaard's relatives and fans shed tears Sunday as they remembered the former NHL tough guy as a "teddy bear" who was as generous and kind as he was burly and tough, a somber end to a weekend during which his distraught family agreed to donate his brain to medical researchers. The 28-year-old Boogaard was found dead in his Minneapolis apartment Friday, five months after he sustained a season-ending concussion with the New York Rangers. Boogaard's agent and a spokeswoman for the Boston University School of Medicine confirmed Sunday that his brain will be examined for signs of a degenerative disease often found in athletes who sustain repeated hits to the head. "It's an amazing thing he did and his family did. Hopefully, that'll bring some information," agent Ron Salcer said. "We don't know exactly the impact that the concussions might have played." Salcer spent three days with Boogaard in Los Angeles earlier in the week. Salcer remarked about his client's brightened demeanor, after suffering through a winter of not being able to play or even be active while his head healed. "He seemed very good, and that's what makes it more painful," Salcer said. "He was really starting to feel better about everything. He was in great shape." Minneapolis police said there were no outward signs of trauma, but results of an autopsy are expected to take several weeks. There is no known concussion connection to his death, but at Boogaard's wish his family signed papers to donate his brain to the BU Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. The donation was first reported by the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 15333 - Posted: 05.16.2011

By PAMELA PAUL NOBODY would deny that being ostracized on the playground, mocked in a sales meeting or broken up with over Twitter feels bad. But the sting of social rejection may be more like the ouch! of physical pain than previously understood. New research suggests that the same areas in the brain that signify physical pain are activated at moments of intense social loss. “When we sat around and thought about the most difficult emotional experiences, we all agreed that it doesn’t get any worse than social rejection,” said the study’s lead author, Ethan F. Kross, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. The image of a bunch of social scientists inflicting pain on laboratory volunteers seems creepily Mengelian, but in this case the experiments involved were markedly less cruel. First off, the subjects weren’t socially rejected by the laboratory technicians — each of the 40 volunteers was recruited specifically because he or she felt intensely rejected as a result of a recent (unwanted) breakup. Once in the lab, participants were hooked up to functional M.R.I. scanners, which measure brain activity. They were then asked to look at photos of their former lovers and brood over a specific rejection experience involving that person. (Sob.) Later, they were asked to look at a photograph of a friend and to think about a recent positive experience they had with that person. On to more fun! Next was the physical pain component, also in two parts. First, participants experienced noxious thermal stimulation on their left forearms (the “hot trial”), simulating the experience of spilling hot coffee on themselves. Then, they underwent a second, nonnoxious thermal stimulation (the “warm trial”). Technicians monitored their brain activity to see which areas lighted up. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15332 - Posted: 05.16.2011

By Adam Summers If you’ve ever chased a cat that’s trying to avoid a bath, you have every right to conclude that, for our size, we humans are pretty poor runners. But chasing a cat is sprinting. Where we excel is endurance running. Moreover, we run long distances at fast speeds: many joggers do a mile in seven-and-a-half minutes, and top male marathoners can string five-minute miles together for more than two hours. A quadruped of similar weight, about 150 pounds, prefers to run a mile at a trot, which takes nine-and-a-half minutes, and would have to break into a gallop to keep pace with a good recreational jogger. That same recreational jogger could keep up with the preferred trotting speed of a thousand-pound horse. Good endurance runners are rare among animals. Although humans share the ability with some other groups, such as wolves and dogs, hyenas, wildebeest, and horses, we alone among primates can run long distances with ease. But what evidence can support the idea that endurance running by itself gave early humans an evolutionary advantage, and that it wasn’t just “piggybacking” on our ability to walk? Many traits, after all, are useful for both activities; long legs, for instance, and the long stride they enable, are helpful to walking as well as to running. But running and walking are mechanically different gaits. A walking person, aided by gravity, acts as an inverted pendulum: the hip swings over the planted foot. In contrast, a runner bounces along, aided by tendons and ligaments that act as springs, which alternately store and release energy. © 2008–2011 Natural History Magazine, Inc

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15331 - Posted: 05.16.2011

By ROBERT H. FRANK THE late Amos Tversky, a Stanford psychologist and a founding father of behavioral economics, used to say, “My colleagues, they study artificial intelligence; me, I study natural stupidity.” In recent decades, behavioral economics has been the economics profession’s runaway growth area. Scholars in this field work largely at the intersection of economics and psychology, and much of their attention has focused on systematic biases in people’s judgments and decisions. They point out, for example, that people are particularly inept at predicting how changes in their life circumstances will affect their happiness. Even when the changes are huge — positive or negative — most people adapt much more quickly and completely than they expected. Such prediction errors, behavioral economists argue, often lead to faulty decisions. A celebrated example describes an assistant professor at a distinguished university who agonizes for years about whether he will be promoted. Ultimately, his department turns him down. As anticipated, he’s abjectly miserable — but only for a few months. The next year, he’s settled in a new position at a less selective university, and by all available measures is as happy as he’s ever been. The ostensible lesson is that if this professor had been acquainted with the relevant evidence, he’d have known that it didn’t make sense to fret about his promotion in the first place — that he would have been happier if he hadn’t. But that’s almost surely the wrong lesson, because failing to fret probably would have made him even less likely to get the promotion. And promotions often matter in ways that have little impact on day-to-day levels of happiness. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 15330 - Posted: 05.16.2011

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff Getting baby to sleep through the night is one of the biggest challenges new parents face. We agonize over the right methods to employ and when to start employing them. Over my husband's objections, I "Ferberized" our first child at less than three months old, letting her cry herself to sleep, after reading "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" by Dr. Richard Ferber, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Boston. It worked like a dream. But my daughter developed some issues with insomnia in early elementary school just around the time my marriage had hit a rough patch. I never made the connection between the two -- since they were both temporary -- but perhaps I should have. An intriguing new study published online yesterday in the journal Child Development finds that marital problems can cause sleep problems in children as young as nine months of age. The researchers initially looked at 357 babies at 9 months of age and found that those whose parents reported high levels of marital instability -- having frequent fights or contemplating divorce -- were more likely to have trouble falling and staying asleep than those whose parents didn't report marriage problems. They were also more likely to have those problems persist at 18 months of age. (Interestingly, the study didn't find that poor-sleeping children triggered marital conflict in their sleep-deprived parents -- which is surprising news to me.) © 2011 NY Times Co

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15329 - Posted: 05.14.2011

By LESLEY ALDERMAN WHEN Liz Goldberg, 53, was growing up, she always felt “a little off.” She received good grades and even completed a master’s degree in health administration, but it was always a struggle. In school, she would procrastinate and then pull desperate all-nighters to study for an exam. She’d become hyperfocused on a project and let everything else fall by the wayside. Maintaining relationships was tricky. “I would concentrate intensely on a friend and then move on,” she said. She commuted to college one year simply because she had missed the deadline to apply for housing. “I managed to achieve a lot, but it was difficult,” said Ms. Goldberg, a mother of three who lives near Philadelphia. “I sensed something was wrong, but others would always talk me out of it.” Finally, in her late 40s, Ms. Goldberg was given a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a condition caused by signaling problems in the brain. The primary symptoms are impulsiveness, inattention, restlessness and poor self-regulation. Children with the condition tend to be hyperactive, but adults who have it often just seem distracted and disorganized. Undiagnosed, A.D.H.D. can wreak havoc on relationships, finances and one’s self-esteem. Adults with the disorder are twice as likely as those without it to be divorced, for instance, and four times as likely to have car accidents. It’s no surprise that they also tend to have poor credit ratings. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 15328 - Posted: 05.14.2011

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Ants called Pseudomyrmex triplarinus live inside the leaves and trunk of Triplaris americana trees, where they take shelter and eat sugars, fats and proteins supplied by the tree. In return, they bite animals that try to eat the trees’ leaves, and they prune away plants that grow near them. Now researchers have figured out one way in which they can distinguish a foreign plant from their own. A study showed that Pseudomyrmex triplarinus ants were able to recognize extract from different types of trees independent of the shape or texture of the material that carried it. The scientists, working in Peru, found that the ants consistently pruned foreign seedlings that sprouted near their tree. They also removed 80 to 100 percent of foreign leaves experimentally pinned to the trunk, compared with only 10 to 30 percent of T. americana leaves. Then the investigators treated identical strips of filter paper with leaf wax extracts from T. americana; with extracts from T. poeppigiana, a closely related species; or with plain solvents as a control. The ants attacked the control strips more often than the T. poeppigiana, and the T. poeppigiana more often than the T. americana strips. This suggests the ants could, to a significant degree, recognize the extract independent of the shape or texture of the material that carried it. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Evolution
Link ID: 15327 - Posted: 05.14.2011

Amber Dance Consciousness is not all or nothing: some people languish for months or years in a middling state. A person could have some sense of and interaction with the world, or could be completely unconscious of their surroundings. But today in Science, researchers report a test that can distinguish between states of consciousness using a simple electroencephalogram (EEG) and some mathematics1. The test suggests that the key difference between minimally conscious and totally unconscious non-coma states is communication between the frontal cortex — the planning, thinking part of the brain — and the temporal cortex, where sounds and words are processed. The researchers say that the technique could help doctors to make accurate diagnoses about consciousness, and better predict how a patient will recover. Having this extra information might help families to make difficult decisions about a loved one's care or end of life in cases such as that of Terri Schiavo, who was removed from life support in 2005 after several years in a vegetative state. A person in a vegetative state will open their eyes spontaneously and make reflexive movements, but has no cognitive function and likely does not feel pain. Recovery is possible, but the chances of improvement are greatly diminished after a year. Someone in a minimally conscious state, by contrast, has intentional, non-reflexive but inconsistent responses to stimuli. They might speak a few words or track their image in a mirror, and they feel pain. The category has only been an official diagnosis since 2002, so the likelihood of recovery is not established, but again it decreases after one year in the state. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15326 - Posted: 05.14.2011

By Daniel Strain Talk between the brain’s decision-making center, or frontal cortex, and other brain regions might distinguish aware individuals from those stripped of conscious thought. Identifying such signaling malfunctions could speed the diagnosis of vegetative states and give scientists insight into such devastating disorders, an international team of researchers reports May 12 in Science. Today, diagnosing a vegetative brain is an uncertain enterprise, says John Whyte, director of the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in Elkins Park, Pa. Patients classified as vegetative can’t act in any purposeful way under any observable circumstances. Patients deemed minimally conscious, however, show some capacity to understand and interact with the world — for instance, by moving a finger on command. Distinguishing between the two can take weeks of behavioral testing, and misdiagnoses are common. With better diagnostics in mind, Mélanie Boly of the University of Liège in Belgium and colleagues monitored the brain responses of 22 healthy volunteers, 13 patients previously diagnosed as minimally conscious and eight diagnosed as vegetative to fluctuating blips of sound. Minimally conscious and healthy subjects responded to a surprising change in the pitch of the sounds with bursts of brain activity about 170 milliseconds long. Responses from vegetative patients lasted less than 100 milliseconds. Using statistical tools, the researchers filtered through a number of possible causes of such shortened brain activity before determining the most likely culprit. The team concluded that damage to communication paths within the brain, not just to individual regions like the frontal cortex, seemed to typify the vegetative state. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15325 - Posted: 05.14.2011

By John Roach "Blueberry!" I tell my 15-month-old son as I hand him one, hoping that he makes the connection between the piece of fruit and its name as I daydream about the glorious day when he says, "Please, Dad, can I have another blueberry?" For now, he points at the bowl full of tasty morsels and babbles something incomprehensible. His pediatrician, family and friends all assure me that he's on the right track. Before I know it, he'll be rattling off the request for another blueberry and much, much more. This pointing and babbling is all a part of the language learning process, they say, even though the process itself remains largely a mystery. One prominent, though controversial, hypothesis is that some knowledge of grammar is hardwired into our brains. "There's some knowledge that the learner has that actually makes this process easier," Jennifer Culbertson, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rochester, explained to me today. This hypothesis was originally proposed 50 years ago by philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Culbertson recently confirmed it with an experiment featuring a virtual green blob for a teacher named Glermi who speaks a nonsensical language called Verblog. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15324 - Posted: 05.14.2011

By Daniel Bates The key to being intelligent could be a thick ‘insulation’ on the brain’s wires, scientists have discovered. A fatty layer covering the neural wires helps brain signals travel faster and makes the brain work more quickly. Just as a thick coating on an electrical wire stops current leaking out, a good layer of insulation helps the brain’s ‘circuits’ function more efficiently. A magnified portion of the brain created using diffusion imaging. The bright red areas show the thick fibre tract - the corpus callosum - which transfers information between the left and right sides of the brain A magnified portion of the brain created using diffusion imaging. The bright red areas show the thick fibre tract - the corpus callosum - which transfers information between the left and right sides of the brain The research is among the first to link ‘neural architecture’ to the health of individuals. It also suggests that this characteristic is something we are born with, indicating that intelligence is something we inherit. The researchers from the University of California in Los Angeles studied images of brain scans from 92 sets of identical twins to determine the amount of myelin - a fatty layer - around the brain’s neural wires. © Associated Newspapers Ltd

Keyword: Intelligence; Brain imaging
Link ID: 15323 - Posted: 05.14.2011