By Katie Moisse Sprawling blooms of cyanobacteria have swathed the surfaces of lakes and oceans around the world for billions of years. But the serene, blue-green algae may be leaching a neurotoxin into the aquatic food chain, according to a study published May 3 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ). The report revived a nearly 50-year-old debate over the role, if any, of the toxin in the process of neurodegeneration. In the wake of World War II a deadly neurological disease plagued the small island of Guam. The natives called it lytico-bodig (from the Spanish paralytico, meaning weakness) and it had features of Lou Gehrig's (ALS), Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Endemic to the native population (called Chamorros), the syndrome was 100 times more prevalent on Guam than anywhere else. After ruling out a genetic cause, scientists began the hunt for an environmental trigger that made Chamorros, but not immigrants, susceptible. A staple of the local cuisine raised suspicion. Chamorros made tortillas using flour ground from the seeds of cycads—plants often confused for ferns or palms and distantly related to both. The seeds were meticulously washed to remove toxins, such as beta-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA), produced by cyanobacteria that inhabit cycad roots. Scientists wondered if BMAA could be causing neurodegeneration, but the concentrations ingested by the Chamorros were not sufficient to harm neurons in animal models. Huge concentrations, however, were. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 14121 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Analysis by Tracy Staedter Fruit flies usually avoid light. But these larvae flock to it. That's because genetic scientists from Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum Germany spliced a gene for a protein that activates under light into cells in the flies olfactory system that responds to smells. So when the light is turned on, the protein activates, but sends the signals through the fly larva's smell system. The fly perceives the odor of banana, marzipan or glue, normal smells present in rotting fruit, and go into the light. The researchers are able to activate single receptor neurons out of 28 olfactory neurons in the larvae for this sensory perception. That gives them control over turning on cells that normally register repulsive odors and ones that register attractive odors. The experiment doesn't hurt the flies but could give scientists more insight into how the smell sense works. Next, they try the experiment on adult flies and mice. This experiment reminds me of a human condition called synesthesia, which causes people to hear colors or smell music. Perhaps this condition has a genetic source. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Vision; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 14120 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jessica Hamzelou Pond snails make unlikely speed freaks. But dosing the gastropods on methamphetamine is helping us understand how certain "pathological memories" form in human addicts. Meth users develop long-term memories of their highs, which is why the sight of places and people connected with a high can cause recovering addicts to relapse into taking the drug. "It's hard to get rid of those memories in addicts," says Barbara Sorg at Washington State University in Pullman. So potent is meth's effect on memory that, in low doses, the drug can be used as a "cognitive enhancer" in kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. To probe the drug's effect on memory, Sorg's team placed pond snails in two pools of low-oxygen water, one of which was laced with meth. In low-oxygen conditions snails will surface and use their breathing tubes to access more oxygen. By poking the snails, Sorg's team trained them to associate using the tubes with an unpleasant experience, and so keep them shut. Only the snails on speed remembered their training the following morning, and in a separate experiment it took longer for them to "unlearn" the memory. Humans are obviously more complicated, says Sorg, but "the snails still provide a model of how meth affects memory". The team's goal is to work out how to diminish specific memories, helping addicts recover. Journal reference: Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.042820 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 14119 - Posted: 06.24.2010

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor "Ardi," the fossil female whose discovery is thought to stretch our human ancestry back more than 4 million years, has been challenged by specialists who discount the evidence of how she lived and maintain she was never a forerunner of the human line. Last October, Tim D. White, the noted UC Berkeley paleoanthropologist, and his colleagues announced in the journal Science their analysis of a partial female skeleton they had discovered after 17 years excavating her fossils in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert. They named her Ardipithecus ramidus and estimated that she lived 4.4 million years ago. The journal where the analysis appeared hailed it as the "Breakthrough of the Year." Today that same journal is publishing two "technical comments" which raise strong doubts about Ardi's environment and her membership in the human line - as well as two responses from White and his colleagues. One group of scientists led by Thure E. Cerling, a geochemist at the University of Utah, maintains that Ardi's habitat was an open savanna with few trees, where she and her kind would have evolved the ability to walk and run in search of food. It was not the grassy woodland dotted with clumps of trees that White's team had concluded, Cerling and his colleagues said. © 2010 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 14118 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Mitch Leslie Some people just can’t help themselves. They wash their hands over and over, scrubbing their skin raw. Or they lock and relock doors, pull out their own hair, or obsessively rearrange the contents of their closet. Now, a study of mice suggests that faulty immune cells prompt such compulsive behaviors. The results raise the possibility of treating obsessive-compulsive disorder by targeting the immune system rather than the brain. Mice are fastidious, regularly cleansing their bodies from nose to tail. But animals with a defective version of the gene Hoxb8 groom themselves so much that they tear out patches of fur and develop skin sores. The behavior resembles a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder called trichotillomania, in which people tug out their own hair. The Hox family of genes is best known for helping to organize the embryo’s body, but Hoxb8 has several effects. The protein encoded by the gene functions in neural development, so mice lacking it have abnormal spinal cords and sensory ability, including pain sensitivity. This defect could in theory provoke the rodents to wash excessively, although molecular geneticist Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City and colleagues note that Hoxb8-lacking mice also obsessively groom other mice. That suggests that overcleaning is not a sensory problem but a behavioral one originating in the brain. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14117 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower BOSTON — Young children have a gift for doing things that adults find disgusting. But kids themselves take a surprisingly long time, until about age 5, to grasp the meaning of adults’ facial expressions of disgust, according to evidence presented May 28 at the Association for Psychological Science annual meeting. This conclusion flies in the face of a popular idea that evolution has produced an innate facial expression for this emotion that even infants should comprehend, said Boston College psychologist James Russell. Theoretically, an ingrained recognition of adults’ disgusted expressions would keep youngsters from eating poisonous and potentially fatal items or putting them in their mouths. “From that traditional view, it’s surprising that kids don’t understand facial expressions of disgust until age 5,” Russell says. “But we find that, until then, they see a ‘disgust’ face as being angry.” Russell regards the new results as consistent with his controversial rejection of an influential theory that six emotions that are built in from birth — happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust — appear in distinctive facial expressions displayed by people everywhere. Instead, Russell proposes that two core feeling dimensions, high arousal to low arousal and positive reaction to negative reaction, provide the building blocks for emotions that get elaborated in each culture. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Emotions; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14116 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR For people suffering from sleep apnea, specialized breathing machines are the standard treatment. The machines use a method called continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, which keeps the airway open and relieves potentially dangerous pauses in breathing during the night. But the machines are expensive, and some people complain that the mask and headgear cause uncomfortable side effects, like congestion. One free and fairly simple alternative may be exercises that strengthen the throat. While they aren’t as established or as well studied as breathing machines, some research suggests they may reduce the severity of sleep apnea by building up muscles around the airway, making them less likely to collapse at night. In a study published last year in The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, scientists recruited a group of people with obstructive sleep apnea and split them into two groups. One was trained to do breathing exercises daily, while the other did 30 minutes of throat exercises, including swallowing and chewing motions, placing the tip of the tongue against the front of the palate and sliding it back, and pronouncing certain vowels quickly and continuously. After three months, subjects who did the throat exercises snored less, slept better and reduced the severity of their condition by 39 percent. They also showed reductions in neck circumference, a known risk factor for apnea. The control group showed almost no improvement. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 14115 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Most of us think that exercise improves sleep. But it may be that thinking that exercise improves sleep improves sleep. That, at any rate, is the provocative finding of a new study completed recently in Switzerland and published last month in the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine. For the study, 862 Swiss college students were asked to record how much they exercised, how fit they believed themselves to be (on a scale from 1 to 10) and how well they slept (on a scale from 1 to 8). The correlations between how much some of the students exercised and how fit they believed themselves to be was not very precise. More than 16 percent of the students who rated themselves low on the fitness scale actually exercised the most. In other words, they worked out more than many of the other students but felt they weren’t doing enough. Those students who perceived that they weren’t exercising enough also tended to report sleeping less well, even though they were exercising more than some of the other students. In the end, the researchers found almost no correlation between how much students exercised and how well they slept. What mattered was whether they believed that they were being active enough. Those students who perceived that they were fit slept well. Those who didn’t, did not. As Markus Gerber, a researcher at the Institute of Exercise and Health Sciences at the University of Basel and lead author of the study told me in an e-mail message that the findings suggest that, when it comes to the role of exercise and sleep, “what people think is more important than what they do.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 14114 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Squires SANTA CRUZ -- A vandal cut the brake lines on a UC Santa Cruz researcher's SUV late Saturday or early Sunday, and the Police Department has called in the FBI to help investigate. However, unlike prior attacks on UCSC staff, the scientist's work did not involve medical testing on animals, police reported. About seven FBI agents were at the researcher's Westside home Monday afternoon. Some agents peered under the sport utility vehicle to inspect the damage and collected pieces of snipped brake lines in plastic evidence bags. Other agents canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses. The 55-year-old researcher, whose name was not released, called police around 11 a.m. Sunday to report the vandalism to his SUV, which was parked in front of the researcher's house on the 1200 block of Laurent Street, according to Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Rick Martinez. "It's not something we see every day," Martinez said, referencing the cut brake lines. "Why was this one vehicle specifically targeted? ... Was this to injure the driver? Was it to send a message? Was it a threat? These are all questions we're trying to sort out right now." University officials had no comment about the incident and referred all questions to Santa Cruz police. A public records search of the house's address cross-referenced with the UCSC faculty directory showed the researcher works in the biology department at UCSC. The Sentinel is not naming the researcher. © 2010 - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 14113 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Emily Sohn Exercising boosts your ability to burn fat by anywhere from 50 percent to more than 1,000 percent, depending on how fit you are to begin with and how long you exercise, found a new study. What’s more, this accelerated burn lasts long after the workout ends. The study was the first to look in detail at how exercise affects more than 200 molecules in the body that are related to metabolism. Besides helping explain why exercise is good for us, the findings might lead to better tests for assessing fitness, new ways to diagnose heart problems, and better nutritional supplements that replenish what’s lost during heavy exercise. Eventually, the work might even inspire a magic exercise pill. “This notion of changing metabolism by exercising is something that is very much confirmed by our paper,” said Gregory Lewis, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “Even after a 10-minute bout of exercise, when people’s heart rate is back to normal and their blood pressure is back to normal and they’re going about other activities, the metabolites that change during peak exercise persist for at least an hour afterwards.” “By virtue of taking the stairs at work or doing the treadmill for as little as 10 minutes, you’re altering your metabolism for a significant period of time that extends beyond that period of exercise,” Lewis said. “You’re going from a fuel-storage to a fuel-burning state.” © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 14112 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Michael Marshall In one of history's earliest recorded bioterrorist threats, Moses warned a recalcitrant pharoah: "I will bring locusts into your country… They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left…" Moses might have added, "and their brains will be freakishly enlarged". It turns out that swarming locusts have brains almost a third larger than their solitary cousins – brains that have also been radically redesigned. Locusts are essentially grasshoppers gone bad. Most of the time they lead solitary lives, but under certain conditions they gather into swarmsMovie Camera that can cover hundreds of square kilometres and devour everything in their path, including vast swathes of crops. This change in lifestyle, it seems, demands a new brain. Young solitary locusts, known as hoppers, are green, which camouflages them when they are feeding on plants. They are picky eaters, sticking to a limited range of plants, perhaps to better monitor their nutritional intake. Eventually the hoppers develop wings and change colour from green to brown. They are now adults, but will still avoid each other except when they are attempting to mate. The regular insect life cycle changes only after the rains come and vegetation blooms. Faced with a feast, the population swells, but the locusts remain fairly well isolated from each other – until the land dries out again and the vegetation dies back. As the area available for feeding shrinks, the locusts are driven together. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 14111 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gary Stix The search for new drugs that can reverse the course of Alzheimer's has frustrated pharmaceutical companies, with several failures reported in recent years. Research advances have arrived, not in the form of new drugs but, rather, in technologies that track the underlying biology of the disease before the first symptoms appear. The capacity to track things early underlines the growing recognition that the disease process begins many years before a diagnosis, a realization that has placed new emphasis on the need for preventive measures to ward off the leading cause of dementia. Unfortunately, this understanding cannot immediately be translated into a series of recommendations that a 50- or 60-year-old can adopt with reasonable certainty to fend off Alzheimer's. In late April a panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including gerontologists, nutritionists, neurologists and geneticists, found that various postulated approaches to prevention, ranging from use of prescription drugs, dietary supplements and avoidance of toxins, have "no evidence considered to be of even moderate scientific quality" to back recommendations that these steps can be used to stop the onset of the disease. The panel called for more studies that can identify risk factors by tracking large groups over a lifetime, similar to the famed Framingham study, and also gold-standard, "randomized" clinical trials that test subjects pursuing a particular preventive approach against those in a placebo group. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 14110 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Nora Schultz SINGING to elderly people with dementia helps them form new memories, one of the first skills they tend to lose. Music is known to aid memory, especially recalling autobiographical information. For example, people with Alzheimer's disease are better at remembering events from their own past when music is playing in the background. It was less clear whether tunes could also help them learn. Brandon Ally at Boston University and his team were inspired by the report of a man with Alzheimer's who could recall current events if his daughter sang the news to him to the tune of familiar pop songs. They decided to try it out for themselves. They gave 13 people with Alzheimer's and 14 healthy seniors the lyrics from 40 unfamiliar children's songs to read, half accompanied by the actual song and half by the spoken words. All the participants saw the lyrics again without audio and mixed in with lyrics from a further 40 unknown songs. Those with Alzheimer's were able to recognise 40 per cent of the original lyrics that had been accompanied by song but only 28 per cent of those read to them. The healthy seniors recognised 80 per cent of lyrics, regardless of whether they had been sung or spoken (Neuropsychologia, DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.04.033). Very few things enhance new learning in people with dementia, says Ally. "It's really cool that hearing the lyrics sung did." He suggests that teaching patients new medication regimes via a song in the early stages of dementia might enable them to live independently for a bit longer. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Language
Link ID: 14109 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The stress caused by the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center may have led to an increase in miscarriages of male foetuses, US researchers say. A study in the BioMed Central Journal found 12% more male babies were lost in September 2001 after the 20th week of pregnancy than in a "normal" September. Data says fewer boys were born in all states three to four months after 9/11. The review by the University of California, Irvine, is said to support the theory of "communal bereavement". This is defined as acute mental distress related to a major national event, like 9/11, even if there is no direct connection to those who died or were involved in these events. Pregnant mothers are thought to be particularly prone to this experience, as are unborn baby boys. In order to analyse male foetal death rates, the researchers gathered data for the years 1996-2002. When they analysed the data, they found that the average number of reported male foetal deaths per month in the US for that period was 995. Female foetal deaths numbered 871 on average per month. In September 2001, however, their research showed an additional 120 male foetal losses, equivalent to a 12% increase. Dr Tim Bruckner, who led the research at the University of California, Irvine, said that miscarriages were grossly under-reported in the US and that the real figure of male foetal losses was likely to be much higher. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stress; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14108 - Posted: 05.25.2010

By Rachael Rettner Trusting women become more skeptical when they are given doses of the sex hormone testosterone, a new study suggests. In the study, these "socially naïve" women rated pictures of faces as less trustworthy after they were given testosterone compared with when they received a placebo. However, testosterone did not appear to have an effect on those who were naturally less trusting, the researchers say. Testosterone could serve as a balance to oxytocin, a hormone that has been implicated in human social bonding and trust, the researchers figure. The study also adds support to the idea that testosterone influences human behavior, not necessarily by increasing aggression, but by motivating people to raise their status in the social hierarchy or become more socially dominant. Testosterone might boost social watchfulness, making those who are most trusting a little more vigilant and better prepared for competition over rank and resources, the researchers say. "To be more successful in competition you have to be sharp ... you have to be also socially sharp," researcher Jack van Honk of the University of Cape Town, South Africa told LiveScience. "And to be socially sharp it's not smart to trust people you don't know," he said. © 2010 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14107 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ When B. J. Upton hit a home run last Thursday night to help the Tampa Bay Rays defeat the New York Yankees, it was not the first time that day that Upton had gone deep. Just a few hours earlier, chatting in front of his locker, he had helped confirm the results of a recent study of sibling risk-taking behavior. In the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review, Frank J. Sulloway and Richard L. Zweigenhaft went digging for evidence of siblings behaving differently in the vast database of baseball statistics. Given how younger siblings have been shown to take more risks than their older counterparts — perhaps originally to fight for food, now for parental attention — Drs. Sulloway and Zweigenhaft examined whether the phenomenon might persist to the point that baseball-playing brothers would try to steal bases at significantly different rates. In fact they did: For more than 90 percent of sibling pairs who had played in the major leagues throughout baseball’s long recorded history, including Joe and Dom DiMaggio and Cal and Billy Ripken, the younger brother (regardless of overall talent) tried to steal more often than his older brother. B. J. and his younger brother, Justin, a slugger for the Arizona Diamondbacks, are actually among the 1 in 10 exceptions (B. J., who at 25 is 3 years older than Justin, has been more of a speedy leadoff hitter, a position in the batting order often associated with base stealing). Yet B. J. nodded thoughtfully when told that scientists have found younger brothers tend to take more risks. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14106 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lenny Bernstein I do some of my best writing on the run. I mean literally. When the words won't come, when the syntax doesn't feel right, when I just can't figure out what angle to take on a column, I'll often go for a good, hard run. And usually it works. With the sweat pouring and lungs working overtime, the mental fog lifts. I make connections I hadn't seen earlier. How to be clear becomes, well, a little more clear. If you work out routinely, I bet you've had the same experience. Three researchers I interviewed for this story say they have achieved it regularly, on a treadmill, on outdoor runs and on a bicycle, respectively. A couple of studies seem to confirm it. The tantalizing question for those of us in middle age and beyond (I am 52) is whether this short-term cognitive benefit can be replicated over the long haul. Can exercise help keep our minds sharp? And if so, can it help delay or prevent the truly terrifying mental deterioration of dementia, most commonly seen as Alzheimer's disease? Researchers studying both animals and humans increasingly say the answer is yes. Because the science of this mind-body connection is only about 15 years old, there are many caveats and a wide range of opinion on how effective exercise is. At one end of the continuum are people such as John J. Ratey, a Harvard University psychiatrist who synthesized volumes of research for his intriguing 2008 book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain." Ratey says flatly that there is overwhelming evidence that exercise produces large cognitive gains and helps fight dementia. © 2010 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Attention; Alzheimers
Link ID: 14105 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ferris Jabr Charles Darwin is famous for his prolific writing about biology. In addition to publishing his theory of evolution, Darwin wrote books about coral reefs, earthworms and carnivorous plants. But the eminent naturalist made important contributions to more than just the life sciences. It turns out Darwin was also an early experimental psychologist. Darwin conducted one of the first studies on how people recognize emotion in faces, according to new archival research by Peter Snyder, a neuroscientist at Brown University. Snyder's findings rely on biographical documents never before published; they now appear in the May issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. While looking through Darwin's letters at the University of Cambridge in England, Snyder noticed multiple references to a small experiment on emotion that Darwin had performed in his house. With the help of librarians, Snyder uncovered the relevant documents—research notes and tables filled with the illegible scrawl of Darwin's elderly hands and the neater writing of his wife Emma. Although Darwin's fascination with emotional expression is well documented, no one had pieced together the details of his home experiment. Now, a fuller narrative emerges. "Darwin applied an experimental method that at the time was pretty rare in Victorian England," Snyder said. "He pushed boundaries in all sorts of biological sciences, but what isn't as well known are his contributions to psychology." © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 14104 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Teresa Shipley Do you know that feeling you get when you're done with work for the day and take those first few steps out the office door? I always thought that happy, alert sensation was simply the satisfaction of being done with work for the day or feeling the sun on my face. Research, however, suggests it may be all about the bacteria. Tiny organisms living naturally in the soil and carried in the air can actually make us more positive and alert when ingested or breathed in, say researchers from the Sage Colleges of Troy, N.Y. At the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego today, scientists presented research that showed a particular bacterium increased learning abilities in mice when ingested. Studies had already shown that the bacterium could increase serotonin levels and decrease anxiety, but the researchers wanted to know if it could improve learning as well as mood. The team fed Mycobacterium vaccae to a group of mice and compared the animals' ability to navigate a maze to those who had not eaten the bacteria. "We found that mice that were fed live M. vaccae navigated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors as control mice," said Dorothy Matthews in a press release. "Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breath in when they spend time in nature." The researchers tested the mice a couple more times, once after immediately stopping the bacteria meals, and once after three weeks of no bacteria. © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Intelligence
Link ID: 14103 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Dr. David Rock A new study about the impact of free will on success at work recently caught my attention. It's by one of my favorite researchers, Roy Baumeister. The authors discovered that a belief in free will predicted better career attitudes and actual job performance, at levels greater than well-established predictors. This appears a little crazy at first. Why would a philosophical stance influence how well you perform at work? The answer is complex but worth exploring. The debate about free will has raged for centuries, embroiling philosophers, psychologists and religious academics. The advent of neuroscience has only made the arguments more fierce, as there was more ambiguous data to argue about. Benjamin Libet in 1983 undertook a now famous experiment which showed that some time before we are aware of taking a voluntary action, a brain signal relating to that action, called an 'action potential' shows up in an EEG. This would seem to claim that we don't have free will, and our perception of choice is only a mirage. Others scientists, such as Jeffrey Schwartz, author of 'The Mind and the Brain', (and the scientists who I co-wrote the 'Neuroscience of Leadership' paper with) argue that the time gap between observing an internal urge and then taking action on that urge, is long enough to be able to thwart the original urge. Schwartz says we may not have free will, but we have 'free wont', which is as good as saying we're not totally deterministic. So far so good. Schwartz and others like him are up against a large body of neuroscientists who think that the mind is only an ephemeral by-product of the brain, that the mind is 'reducible' to only the brain. It's like the physicist's search for the ultimate particle. The trouble with this stance is it makes the idea of human agency false, or at best an illusion. Because it's an illusion, the logic goes, we shouldn't believe in it. There's another group of people also fighting against the idea of free will. If you are a deeply religious person of certain faiths, then you might believe that god knows everything, in which case there is not much role for free will either. © Copyright Sussex Publishers, LLC

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 14102 - Posted: 06.24.2010