By Victoria Gill Wild chimpanzees use at least 66 distinct gestures to communicate with each other, according to scientists. A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews in Scotland filmed a group of the animals in order to decipher this "gestural repertoire". The team then studied 120 hours of footage of the chimps interacting, looking for signs that the animals were intentionally signalling to each other. The findings are published in the journal Animal Cognition. Previous studies on captive chimps have suggested the animals have about 30 different gestures. "So this [result] shows quite a large repertoire," lead researcher Dr Catherine Hobaiter told BBC News. "We think people previously were only seeing fractions of this, because when you study the animals in captivity you don't see all their behaviour. "You wouldn't see them hunting for monkeys, taking females away on 'courtships', or encountering neighbouring groups of chimpanzees." Dr Hobaiter spent 266 days observing and filming a group of chimpanzees in Budongo Conservation Field Station, Uganda. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 15299 - Posted: 05.07.2011

by Jessica Hamzelou Those who are easily distracted from the task in hand may have "too much brain". So says Ryota Kanai and his colleagues at University College London, who found larger than average volumes of grey matter in certain brain regions in those whose attention is readily diverted. To investigate distractibility, the team compared the brains of easy and difficult-to-distract individuals. They assessed each person's distractibility by quizzing them about how often they fail to notice road signs, or go into a supermarket and become sidetracked to the point that they forget what they came in to buy. The most distractible individuals received the highest score. The team then imaged the volunteers' brains using a structural MRI scanner. The most obvious difference between those who had the highest questionnaire scores – the most easily distracted – and those with low scores was the volume of grey matter in a region of the brain known as the left superior parietal lobe (SPL). Specifically, the easily distracted tended to have more grey matter here. To find out whether activity in the left SPL plays a role in distractibility, the team turned to transcranial magnetic stimulation. This hand-held magnet dampens the activity of the part of the brain beneath it for around half an hour. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: ADHD; Attention
Link ID: 15298 - Posted: 05.07.2011

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. A fiercely independent and active 76-year-old woman spent the past decade caring for her aged mother, who died at 99. Weeks after her mother’s death, the woman collapsed at home. She was found to have bleeding from a collection of abnormal blood vessels (known as AVMs, or arteriovenous malformations) in her colon. In the months after, the patient’s red-blood-cell count returned to normal, but she never regained her old energy and strength. She told her daughters that she was weaker and more tired than she had ever been in her life. Dr. Susan Wiskowski, a family physician in Hartford, was the woman’s doctor. Until recently, the patient was in good health for her age, with only a few medical problems: high blood pressure, which was controlled with one medication; hypothyroidism, treated with Synthroid; and cataracts, which had been surgically repaired. Now, out of the blue, she was experiencing rapid weight gain, swelling and weakness in her legs, which made it hard to walk. A couple of weeks after the cardiac work-up, the patient’s behavior became erratic and strange. Despite her complaints of weakness, she veered between bursts of activity — endlessly cleaning her house, giving large dinner parties — and days of isolation and fatigue. She was sometimes elated, telling her four daughters that she’d found where heaven was located. She began to talk about giving away her possessions. One afternoon she seemed completely out of control. A neighbor called 911, and the patient was rushed by ambulance to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15297 - Posted: 05.07.2011

by Laurent Banguet and Marlowe Hood, AFP Chimpanzees are self-aware and can anticipate the impact of their actions on the environment around them, an ability once thought to be uniquely human, according to a study released Wednesday. The findings, reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, challenge assumptions about the boundary between human and non-human, and shed light on the evolutionary origins of consciousness, the researchers said. Earlier research had demonstrated the capacity of several species of primates, as well as dolphins, to recognize themselves in a mirror, suggesting a fairly sophisticated sense of self. The most common experiment consisted of marking an animal with paint in a place -- such as the face -- that it could only perceive while looking at its reflection. If the ape sought to touch or wipe off the mark while facing a mirror, it showed that the animal recognized itself. But even if this test revealed a certain degree self-awareness, many questions remained as to how animals were taking in the information. What, in other words, was the underlying cognitive process? To probe further, Takaaki Kaneko and Masaki Tomonaga of the Primate Research Institute in Kyoto designed a series of three experiments to see if chimps, our closest cousins genetically, to some extent "think" like humans when they perform certain tasks. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Attention; Evolution
Link ID: 15296 - Posted: 05.05.2011

By Laura Sanders Easily distracted people can stop blaming their lack of focus on the royal wedding, Facebook feeds and hilarious YouTube videos of honey badgers. Rather, a small network of cells in the back left part of the brain may be the culprit, researchers report in the May 4 Journal of Neuroscience. Knowing how the brain focuses on what’s important — and filters out noise — may help scientists come up with ways to counteract attention disorders. “Attention has a huge effect on our lives,” says cognitive neuroscientist Carmel Mevorach of the University of Birmingham in England, who was not involved in the study. “Everything we do — literally, everything we do — is affected by attention.” In this age of information overload, appropriating attention is a challenge, says study coauthor Ryota Kanai of University College London, and some people are much more susceptible to distractions. Kanai and his colleagues wanted to know if brain differences could explain why some people are easily distracted while others stay focused. For the study, 145 volunteers filled out a survey called the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire, which asks people to rate how frequently they experience mental lapses such as forgetting what they came to a shop to buy or bumping into people. Volunteers’ answers were used to calculate each person’s overall susceptibility to distraction in everyday life. (Incidentally, scores on the same questionnaire also predict how many car accidents someone has.) © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Attention; ADHD
Link ID: 15295 - Posted: 05.05.2011

By Rebecca Tuhus-DubrowPosted Last week, new guidelines for diagnosing Alzheimer's defined a "preclinical" stage of the dreaded disease. Evidently, the telltale pathology—in particular, the plaques that encroach on the brain—can be detected years, if not decades, before the patient ever forgets a familiar name or neglects to feed a pet. The announcement renewed a debate that has flared in recent months: Since there's no cure, critics believe that an early diagnosis of Alzheimer's would serve only sadistic doctors, masochistic patients, and greedy business interests. They worry that Big Pharma will sell snake oil to a huge, desperate market, and that health insurance companies and employers could use the information against patients. Others, however, point to the benefits of advance notice. You might take that long-deferred trip to Antarctica, for example, or try to squeeze in extra visits to the elliptical machine. (There is some evidence, albeit inconclusive, that exercise helps stave off the mind's deterioration.) Complicating matters, the "bio-markers" that show up in an early diagnosis do not necessarily lead to symptoms. For unclear reasons, some brains seem to function well despite the incursion, while others succumb more readily. In many cases, patients die from other causes before the plaques wreak havoc. Given the gaps in knowledge, the guidelines stress that the tests are for research purposes only. (The idea is that studying the earliest manifestations of the disease will illuminate its genesis and ultimately yield therapies that keep symptoms at bay.) Yet some are concerned that before long, bio-markers will be used to test regular patients. What are the implications of diagnosing an incurable disease in seemingly healthy people? © 2011 The Slate Group, LLC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 15294 - Posted: 05.05.2011

Lucas Laursen Nuclear accidents can have devastating consequences for the people and animals living in the vicinity of the damaged power plants, but they also give researchers a unique opportunity to study the effects of radiation on populations that would be impossible to recreate in the lab. Tim Mousseau, who directs the Chernobyl Research Initiative at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, together with an international team, is studying the long-term ecological and health consequences of the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. Mousseau has been studying Chernobyl since 1998 and his latest work, carried out with colleagues in France and published in Oecologia last month, finds that bird species with orange feathers living in the fallout zone seem to be more susceptible to radiation than their drabber gray and black fellows1. They suggest that production of the more colourful pigments consumes antioxidant molecules that would otherwise confer protection against radiation damage, and that this molecular trade-off is shaping bird populations around the former nuclear power plant. One of the team, Anders Møller from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, donned a radiation-protection suit to make four bird-watching trips between 2006 and 2009 to the Red Forest and other locations around Chernobyl. In a 2007 analysis of the data from the first bird counts made in spring 2006, Mousseau and Møller found that birds whose feathers were coloured with bright yellow and red carotenoid-based pigments showed a decline in abundance as radiation levels increased, though there was no comparable correlation for bird species with melanin-based colouring, such as brown, black and reddish-brown2. The new study takes the analysis a step further by teasing out the different protective effects of different types of melanin pigment. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15293 - Posted: 05.05.2011

by Burkhard Bilger When David Eagleman was eight years old, he fell off a roof and kept on falling. Or so it seemed at the time. His family was living outside Albuquerque, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. There were only a few other houses around, scattered among the bunchgrass and the cholla cactus, and a new construction site was the Eagleman boys’ idea of a perfect playground. David and his older brother, Joel, had ridden their dirt bikes to a half-finished adobe house about a quarter of a mile away. When they’d explored the rooms below, David scrambled up a wooden ladder to the roof. He stood there for a few minutes taking in the view—west across desert and subdivision to the city rising in the distance—then walked over the newly laid tar paper to a ledge above the living room. “It looked stiff,” he told me recently. “So I stepped onto the edge of it.” In the years since, Eagleman has collected hundreds of stories like his, and they almost all share the same quality: in life-threatening situations, time seems to slow down. He remembers the feeling clearly, he says. His body stumbles forward as the tar paper tears free at his feet. His hands stretch toward the ledge, but it’s out of reach. The brick floor floats upward—some shiny nails are scattered across it—as his body rotates weightlessly above the ground. It’s a moment of absolute calm and eerie mental acuity. But the thing he remembers best is the thought that struck him in midair: this must be how Alice felt when she was tumbling down the rabbit hole. Eagleman is thirty-nine now and an assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston. Physically, he seems no worse for the fall. He did a belly flop on the bricks, he says, and his nose took most of the impact. “He made a one-point landing,” as his father puts it. The New Yorker © 2011 Condé Nast Digital.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15292 - Posted: 05.03.2011

By NATALIE ANGIER Just when you thought that serotonin was passé, and you’d tossed all your half-used bottles of S.S.R.I.-type antidepressants because the ones that didn’t give you nausea or smother your libido left you wondering whether you were in the placebo arm of a clinical trial, here comes a raft of new discoveries that sweeps the small, evolutionarily ancient and slyly powerful signaling molecule back on to center stage. Researchers lately have learned that serotonin plays an impressive number of critical roles throughout the body, both below the neck and above it, and from the earliest days of prenatal pre-sentience. One team has found that serotonin starts seeping into the embryonic forebrain during the first trimester of pregnancy, helping to shape the basic neural circuitry that later in life will be applied to learning, emoting and consulting a psychiatrist. More surprising still, Pat Levitt of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at the University of Southern California and his colleagues reported in the April 21 issue of the journal Nature, the creator of all that architectonic prenatal serotonin turns out to be an organ long dismissed as a passive sieve: the placenta. Other researchers have determined that serotonin in the gut helps orchestrate the remodeling of bone, the lifelong buildup and breakdown of osteoclasts and osteoblasts that make the human skeleton such an exciting organ system to own. The latest findings may never lead to a satisfying pharmacologic fix for what the psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison has called “ordinary existential angst” and others “terminal you-ness,” but they may someday help stiffen the spine, and they remind us that it’s worth listening to serotonin no matter what it has to say. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Depression
Link ID: 15291 - Posted: 05.03.2011

By JANE E. BRODY Steve Riedner of Schaumberg, Ill., was a 55-year-old tool-and-die maker, a job that involves difficult mental calculations, and a frequent speaker at community meetings when he found himself increasingly at a loss for words and unable to remember numbers. He even began to have difficulty reading his own written comments. The neurologist he consulted thought Mr. Riedner had suffered a stroke and for three years treated him with cholesterol-lowering medication. But instead of his language ability stabilizing or improving, as should happen following a stroke, it got worse. A second neurologist concluded after further testing that Mr. Riedner might have a condition called primary progressive aphasia, or P.P.A., a form of dementia affecting the brain’s language center. Having seen only one other case in his career, the neurologist referred Mr. Riedner and his wife, Mary Beth, to the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Northwestern University, whose director, Dr. M. Marsel Mesulam, is perhaps the world’s leading expert on this relatively rare disorder. P.P.A. is a clinical syndrome, one of several forms of brain disease lost in the medical shadow of their much better known relative Alzheimer’s disease. While hardly as common as Alzheimer’s, P.P.A. is often misdiagnosed, and many patients like Mr. Riedner lose valuable time trying inappropriate and ineffective treatments. Though there is no cure, patients and families can learn ways to minimize the disabilities it causes. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Alzheimers
Link ID: 15290 - Posted: 05.03.2011

by John Travis Researchers this morning confirmed what former National Football League player Dave Duerson must have feared when he shot himself in the abdomen back in February, killing the 51 year old who had starred for several teams as a safety. An autopsy study showed that Duerson’s brain was riddled with classic signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a form of brain damage that is becoming an increasing concern among athletes in violent contact sports. Duerson’s form of suicide was apparently carefully chosen to preserve his brain as he had texted his family that he wanted the organ to be examined at the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE). At a press conference there today, researchers reported that there was evidence of moderately advanced CTE in several regions of Duerson’s brain, including the frontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus, which play roles in impulse control, mood, memory, and other cognitive functions. “Dave Duerson had classic pathological CTE and no sign of any other disease,” neuropathologist and CSTE Co-Director Ann McKee told the press conference. McKee notes that there’s evidence suggesting CTE predisposes people to suicide, although how remains unclear; a colleague called it a “chicken and the egg problem,” explaining that CTE may cause problems in life that encourage suicides rather than specifically promote suicidal behavior by altering the working of the brain. Collisions that cause concussions and even lesser hits appear to spur the development of CTE. At the press conference CSTE Co-Director Chris Nowinski, a former college football player and professional wrestler, urged youth football coaches to carefully control how much violent contact there is during practices as to reduce the overall number of hits. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 15289 - Posted: 05.03.2011

By Phyllis Richman, With apologies to Michael J. Fox, I must say Parkinson’s disease is not the best thing that ever happened to me. Picture this: One Sunday evening I walked up the street for a “meet the neighbors” party, eager to make connections in my new neighborhood. My husband decided to stay home. No problem, the party was nearby. I didn’t even take my purse: 11 years into Parkinson’s, I’ve pared down what I carry. I was burdened enough with my walking stick, a house key and a covered tray of chocolate mousses I’d made for the potluck. I’d verified on MapQuest that the address was no more than a couple of blocks away, the outer limit of my walking ability nowadays. I was looking for house number 425. It didn’t exist. The house numbers jumped from 423 to 500. I grew anxious. With Parkinson’s, stress seems to instantly drain my brain of half of its dopamine. It makes my back ache, my legs weaken and my foot curl. I tried to relax as I rested my tray on the hood of a parked car. Surely some other partygoers would come by and direct me. This is who came by: A woman with a couple of children and an apple pie, on her way to a dinner. Two passersby who wished they knew where a party was. An energetic woman with a dog. Two men carrying fishing gear, who thought I might be looking for 525. * © 1996-2011 The Washington Post

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 15288 - Posted: 05.03.2011

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News Middle aged people who are overweight but not obese, are 71% more likely to develop dementia than those with a normal weight, according to research. Previous studies have indicated a link between obesity and dementia. But a study 8,534 of Swedish twins, in the journal Neurology, suggests just being overweight is also a risk factor. About one out of every 20 people above the age of the 65 has dementia. The Alzheimer's Society said a healthy lifestyle could reduce the risk. Those with a body mass index (BMI) - which measures weight relative to height - greater than 30, who are classified as obese, were 288% more likely to develop dementia than those with a BMI between 20 and 25, according to the study. The clinically overweight, who have a BMI between 25 and 30, were 71% more likely. Dr Weili Xu, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told the BBC: "We found in this study that being overweight is also a risk for dementia later in life." "The risk is not as substantial as for [the] obese, but it has public health importance because of this large number of people worldwide who are overweight," Dr Xu added. The study says 1.6 billion adults are overweight worldwide. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Obesity; Alzheimers
Link ID: 15287 - Posted: 05.03.2011

By Steve Connor, Science Editor Scientists believe that the widespread use of antibiotics may be playing a significant role in exacerbating the obesity epidemic. Growing evidence suggests that oral antibiotic medicines may be affecting the growth of beneficial bacteria in the human intestine which is influencing whether some people put on weight when they overeat or take too little exercise, they said. The latest study, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, centres on a technique for counting the bacterial genes in the human intestine. It found that lean people are likely to have a more diverse community of gut flora compared to obese individuals. Previous work has already established a difference in the gut bacteria of lean and overweight people, but the latest work is being seen as lending support to the controversial idea that bacteria-killing antibiotics may be playing a role in predisposing some people to being fat. "It is a very real possibility," said Stanislav Dusko Ehrlich, a microbiologist at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research in Jouy-en-Josas, who was part of the Meta-HIT consortium of pan-European scientists who carried out the work. "What we have found is that bacterial communities in the gut appear to be different between lean and obese people. We can't be certain whether that perturbation is the cause, contribution or consequence of being overweight. But these bacteria are candidates for being a cause and that must be investigated," he said. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15286 - Posted: 05.03.2011

Exposure to secondhand smoke, such as a person can get by riding in an enclosed car while someone else smokes, has a direct, measurable impact on the brain — and the effect is similar to what happens in the brain of the person doing the smoking. In fact, exposure to this secondhand smoke evokes cravings among smokers, according to a study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The study, published today in Archives of General Psychiatry, used positron emission tomography (PET) to demonstrate that one hour of secondhand smoke in an enclosed space results in enough nicotine reaching the brain to bind receptors that are normally targeted by direct exposure to tobacco smoke. This happens in the brain of both smokers and non-smokers. Previous research has shown that exposure to secondhand smoke increases the likelihood that children will become teenage smokers and makes it more difficult for adult smokers to quit. Such associations suggest that secondhand smoke acts on the brain to promote smoking behavior. The Surgeon General's Report concluded in 2006 that secondhand smoke causes heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults and many serious health conditions in children, including sudden infant death syndrome, respiratory infections, and more severe asthma. According to the CDC, almost 50,000 deaths per year can be attributed to secondhand smoke. For more information or for resources to help quit smoking, go to http://www.nida.nih.gov/DrugPages/Nicotine.html. The study can be found online at: http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15285 - Posted: 05.03.2011

By Victoria Gill It is a true picture of contentment, and now a scientist is suggesting that a pig's love of mud is more than just a way to keep cool. A researcher in the Netherlands has looked at wallowing behaviour in pigs' wild relatives to find out more about what motivates the animals to luxuriate in sludge. His conclusions suggest that wallowing is vital for the animals' well-being. The study is published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science. It is already well accepted that pigs use wallows to keep cool. The animals do not have normal sweat glands, so they are unable, otherwise, to regulate their body temperature. The scientist who carried out the study, Marc Bracke from Wageningen University and Research Centre, trawled the scientific literature for evidence of what motivates other animals to carry out similar behaviours. He examined closely related "wallowers", including hippos, which spend their time in water to keep cool. Dr Bracke also looked at other hoofed animals, such as deer. Although these animals do not wallow, they roll on the ground in order to "scent mark", which has an important role in attracting a mate. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15284 - Posted: 05.02.2011

Analysis by Jennifer Viegas Some animals and plants that reproduce asexually "can in principle achieve essentially eternal life," according to a University of Gothenburg press release. Scientists at the university are studying such species to find out how they avoid aging. So far, one chemical appears to be key: telomerase. This is an enzyme that protects DNA. It is more active in the longest-lived people, so its benefits likely extend throughout the animal kingdom. The animals that can possibly achieve immortality under ideal conditions, such as sea squirts, certain corals, Hydra, and Turritopsis nutricula (the immortal jellyfish), often activate telomerase. Helen Nilsson Sköld of the Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg, and colleague Matthias Obst are studying sea squirts and starfish to learn more about how these marine creatures seem to ward off aging. Out of the animal immortality A-list, sea squirts and starfish have genes that most closely resemble those of humans. “Animals that clone themselves, in which part of an individual’s body is passed on to the next generations, have particularly interesting conditions related to remaining in good health to persist," Sköld was quoted as saying in the press release. "This makes it useful to study these animals in order to understand mechanisms of aging in humans.” © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15283 - Posted: 05.02.2011

By GINA KOLATA THE woman’s hips bulged in unsightly saddlebags. Then she had liposuction and, presto, those saddlebags disappeared. Photo after photo on plastic surgery Web sites make liposuction look easy, its results transformative. It has become the most popular plastic surgery, with more than 450,000 operations a year, each costing a few thousand dollars. But does the fat come back? And if it does, where does it show up? Until now, no one knew for sure. But a new study, led by Drs. Teri L. Hernandez and Robert H. Eckel of the University of Colorado, has answered those questions. And what he found is not good news. In the study, the researchers randomly assigned nonobese women to have liposuction on their protuberant thighs and lower abdomen or to refrain from having the procedure, serving as controls. As compensation, the women who were control subjects were told that when the study was over, after they learned the results, they could get liposuction if they still wanted it. For them, the price would also be reduced from the going rate. The result, published in the latest issue of Obesity, was that fat came back after it was suctioned out. It took a year, but it all returned. But it did not reappear in the women’s thighs. Instead, Dr. Eckel said, “it was redistributed upstairs,” mostly in the upper abdomen, but also around the shoulders and triceps of the arms. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15282 - Posted: 05.02.2011

By Cari Nierenberg Brides and bashful types aren't the only ones who blush. Most of us have felt our cheeks burn up at least occasionally. But next time a rush of blood and heat give your face and neck a crimson glow, don't feel embarrassed. A new study suggests some unexpected benefits of blushing: It found that people who turn red after making a mistake or social blunder were considered more trustworthy and judged more positively than those who did not. In the research, published in the April issue of the journal Emotion, 196 college students (ages 17 to 44) played a prisoner's dilemma game online. During the game's first round, a virtual opponent cooperated with the participant's playing strategy and each shared the winnings. But after the second round, the opponent defected and earned a bigger payout than the participant. After both rounds, participants were shown photographs of their virtual female opponent bearing one of four expressions: neutral, neutral with a blush, embarrassment, and embarrassment plus blush. When students were asked to do a "trust task" at the end of the game, they judged the defector less harshly when she blushed and thought she was less likely to defect again. Participants even gave a blushing, neutral faced opponent more prize money during the trust task and rated her more honest than someone without rosy cheeks. "After you do something wrong, people like you more when you blush," says Corine Dijk, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and the study's lead author. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15281 - Posted: 04.30.2011

By Katherine Harmon Most dog and cat owners will happily describe their pet's disposition down to the smallest, human-like detail. But how much of that is over-reaching anthropomorphizing and how much is an individual animal's actual "personality" shining through? Researchers in the U.K. devised a series of tests to see how individual animals respond—both behaviorally and biologically—to different situations, choosing as their subjects 22 captive greenfinches (Carduelis chloris). Test 1: Who's scared of a cookie cutter? Each hungry greenfinch must face a small brightly colored cookie cutter in their food bowl. Some brave birds disregarded the novel intrusion and dived right into their feed within seconds. Other finches tarried for more than half an hour without working up the courage to eat from the adorned dish. Test 2: What's so interesting about Q-tips? With no food or water in the cage to distract the birds, a bundle of white Q-tips, tied together with string, is placed near one of four perches. Most birds declined to touch the new object, but some curious birds did flit to the nearby perch for a closer look. Test 3: How stressed are you, really? A behavioral reaction to a new situation only tells part of the story. To hunt for the physiologic response during these actions, the researchers screened the birds for their oxidative profiles, a blood-based measure of metabolites that can boost energy but can ultimately hamper cell repair. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 15280 - Posted: 04.30.2011