The risk of suicide or suicide attempts by adults who start taking antidepressants does not seem to vary by the type of medication, a new study finds. Study author Dr. Sebastian Schneeweiss of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School and his co-authors aimed to find out whether the risk of suicide is equal across different classes of antidepressants or whether some classes offer safety advantages in adults. "There was no clinically meaningful difference in risk among individuals taking different classes of medications," the researchers concluded in the May issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. The researchers analyzed pharmacy and hospital records of 87,543 adults in British Columbia who started taking antidepressants between 1997 and 2005. During the first year of antidepressant use, 751 people attempted suicide and 104 committed suicide, according to a review of hospital records and death certificates. Most of the suicides and suicide attempts occurred in the first six months after starting treatment. The researchers found no clinically meaningful difference in risk among those taking different classes of antidepressants such as: © CBC 2010

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 14041 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JOHN TIERNEY The human ego has never been quite the same since the day in 1960 that Jane Goodall observed a chimpanzee feasting on termites near Lake Tanganyika. After carefully trimming a blade of grass, the chimpanzee poked it into a passage in the termite mound to extract his meal. No longer could humans claim to be the only tool-making species. The deflating news was summarized by Ms. Goodall’s mentor, Louis Leakey: “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as human.” So what have we actually done now that we’ve had a half-century to pout? In a 50th anniversary essay in the journal Science, the primatologist William C. McGrew begins by hailing the progression of chimpanzee studies from field notes to “theory-driven, hypothesis-testing ethnology.” He tactfully waits until the third paragraph — journalists call this “burying the lead” — to deliver the most devastating blow yet to human self-esteem. After noting that chimpanzees’ “tool kits” are now known to include 20 items, Dr. McGrew casually mentions that they’re used for “various functions in daily life, including subsistence, sociality, sex, and self-maintenance.” Sex? Chimpanzees have tools for sex? No way. If ever there was an intrinsically human behavior, it had to be the manufacture of sex toys. Considering all that evolution had done to make sex second nature, or maybe first nature, I would have expected creatures without access to the Internet to leave well enough alone. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 14040 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sandy Fritz Old age brings with it a host of physical woes, and among the most common is hearing loss. Forty percent of Americans older than 65 suffer from hearing loss, and by 2030 some 65 million Americans will be hard of hearing. Now joint work by researchers at the universities of Wisconsin, Florida, Washington and Tokyo has uncovered the mechanism behind age-related hearing loss, and with the help of simple chemicals, they have managed to keep old mice hearing as well as young pups. The team investigated a molecular mechanism that has been implicated in many age-related maladies but had not yet been tied to hearing loss. Our bodies are constantly exposed to short-lived organic molecules known as free radicals, which harm cells in a process called oxidation. When cells are stressed by oxi­dative damage, they release a protein called Bak, which triggers a cascade of events culminating in cell suicide. To test whether this mechanism was responsible for age-related hearing loss, the researchers compared normal mice with genetically engineered mice that do not have the gene necessary to make Bak. These Bak-deficient mice failed to develop hearing problems as they aged, but the ordinary mice, subjected to the same oxidative stress, became hard of hearing. Although most cells in the body are replaced with new cells after they die, the inner ear’s sensory nerve cells and ganglion neurons do not regenerate, so hearing loss is permanent. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Hearing; Apoptosis
Link ID: 14039 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon The immune system's cells work hard to fight off infections. But new research is uncovering their important role in cognition, and a study published online May 3 in The Journal of Experimental Medicine reveals how the immune system's T cells, which aren't present in the brain, can impact learning and memory. Inflammation around the brain can hamper thinking, and attacks by inflammatory immune cells have been linked to declines in cognitive ability in patients who have, for example, multiple sclerosis or dementia. "Unexpectedly, however, T cells were recently shown to support learning and memory, though the underlying mechanism was unclear," wrote the study's authors, led by Noël Derecki of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. To uncover the mechanisms at work, Dereki and colleagues set out to determine why mice deficient in T cells performed poorly in maze learning tests even though T cells themselves are not normally found in the brain and are generally involved with inflammatory responses. The answer lay in a series of interactions that involves the meninges, or the membranes that surround the central nervous system, where T cells have been shown to congregate after maze training in mice. Of particular interest to researchers were T cells that make the immune protein IL-4, a cytokine that inhibits other compounds that encourage swelling. When these T cells had been knocked out of mice, the area around the brain and central nervous system had more myeloid cells, which seem to spur inflammation and impair learning. © 2010 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 14038 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nathan Seppa People with post-traumatic stress disorder seem to accumulate an array of genetic changes different from those found in healthy people, researchers report online May 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The new findings, while showing differences between people with and without PTSD, don't shed light on whether these differences might play a role in PTSD, says study coauthor Sandro Galea, a physician and epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York City. Only a fraction of people who witness a traumatic event develop PTSD. In an attempt to identify what makes people who develop PTSD biologically different from those who don’t, Galea and his colleagues obtained blood samples from 100 people in the Detroit area. All had been exposed to at least one potentially traumatic event, and 23 were diagnosed with PTSD. The scientists tested 14,000 genes in these blood samples for chemical changes to DNA that can affect gene activity without altering the genetic information itself. The researchers focused on the methylation of genes, a process in which a methyl molecule is added to DNA, typically turning off a gene and inhibiting production of the protein that the gene encodes. If people with PTSD have more or less methylation in specific genes, that might somehow contribute to PTSD, Galea says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Stress; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14037 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Kathleen McGowan There is an art to removing the brain from a human cadaver. The donor should be lying faceup, and you should stand just behind the crown of the head. Carefully cut through the skin to expose the skull. Using a neurosurgery drill with a guard plate, cut the bone all the way around the head, above the ears. (It might help to pretend you are a barber giving a monk his tonsure.) This process, called fenestration, is more precise than using a saw. Out of respect for the donor, you do not want to damage the brain. Remove the top of the skull. With a small scalpel, carefully detach the cranial nerves, which emerge from the brain and thread their way through the skull to the face. As you gently lift the brain away from the skull with your left hand, cut the spinal cord with your right, releasing the brain from the skull. Once the organ is loose in your hand, you must be exceedingly gentle: At this stage it has the consistency of a ripe peach. Weigh it, then treat it with fixatives to preserve the tissue. Such is the art practiced by Jacopo Annese, a neuroanatomist at the University of California at San Diego. Annese is one of the world’s few experts in dissecting and slicing entire human brains; he has been practicing this craft since 1994. His dream is to create the world’s most complete open-access neuroanatomy library, featuring high-resolution digital images of whole human brain slices. Because of his expertise and this ambition, Annese was chosen by a group of researchers to cut, archive, and curate the most famous brain in neuroscience, that of Henry Molaison—better known to students and researchers worldwide as the legendary amnesiac patient “H. M.”

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 14036 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon The benefits of breast milk for babies are numerous. Lower rates of childhood obesity, decreased incidence of asthma and even better brain development are all linked with drinking more of mother's milk in infancy, and despite decades of research and promising marketing claims, the formula industry has not caught up to mother nature in the milk department. But even if technicians could develop a better food for infants, researchers are now realizing that skipping the lactation phase would be problematic for mothers' health. In fact, not breastfeeding after giving birth seems to put women at higher risk for breast and ovarian cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and many other serious health conditions. The mechanisms behind these increased risks are still being sorted out, but researchers think that by not engaging in the process that the body prepares for during pregnancy, many crucial systems can go out of whack. And the effects can last for decades after children are weaned. "The normal physiology is breastfeeding after pregnancy," says Alison Stuebe, an assistant professor in the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, who describes breastfeeding as the fourth trimester of pregnancy. When women cannot or choose not to breastfeed, "there are myriad consequences, and we're just figuring them out," she says. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 14035 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It is a common experience for many men: A girlfriend or wife starts crying out of nowhere and suddenly the guys are being accused of being insensitive. Women are whizzes at reading, and even predicting, emotion in others. And they often expect their partners to be, too. Scientists, however, have joined the men's side, saying such expectations are unreasonable for the male kind. A nasal spray that works like a performance enhancer for empathy brain circuits could render the bickering unnecessary, a new study suggests. Its key ingredient is oxytocin, a hormone known to promote social bonding. Men and women both have endogenous levels of oxytocin naturally created by the body — it likely helps them fall in love, spurs parenting instincts and makes orgasms, well, more orgasmic. But women tend to have a special relationship with the hormone. It reaches particular highs during pregnancy and lactation, cementing the mother-infant bond. It might also help women be so adept at reading social cues. To see whether men could acquire this same emotional expertise, the researchers gave 48 men and 26 women two empathy tests. One required using social cues (happy, angry or neutral facial expressions) to figure out the right answers in a game. The second test used pictures of various scenarios and asked subjects to rate how much the scene emotionally moved him or her (considered a test of "emotional empathy"). Participants were also asked to name the primary emotion of the main character in the scene (a test of "cognitive empathy"). © 2010 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Emotions; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 14034 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARDINER HARRIS An experimental drug succeeded in a small clinical trial in bringing about what the researchers called substantial improvements in the behaviors associated with retardation and autism in people with fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of these mental disabilities. The surprising results, disclosed in an interview this week by Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant that makes the drug, grew out of three decades of painstaking genetic research, leaps in the understanding of how the brain works, the advocacy of families who refused to give up, and a chance meeting between two scientists who mistakenly showed up at the same conference. “Just three years ago, I would have said that mental retardation is a disability needing rehab, not a disorder needing medication,” said Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, who was told of the Novartis trial results. “Any positive results from clinical trials will be amazingly hopeful.” Dr. Mark C. Fishman, president of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, cautioned against too much optimism. The trial involved only a few dozen patients, only some of whom benefited from treatment. The drug is likely to be years away from being commercially available and could fail in further clinical trials, he said. “We have been reluctant to make this public because we still need to do more experiments, do them correctly and in a bigger way,” Dr. Fishman said. “But our group feels pretty good about the data.” Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 14033 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By TARA PARKER-POPE After we hit 40, many of us begin to worry about our aging brains. Will we spend our middle years searching for car keys and forgetting names? The new book “The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind,” by Barbara Strauch, has the answers, and the news is surprisingly upbeat. Sure, brains can get forgetful as they get old, but they can also get better with age, reports Ms. Strauch, who is also the health editor at The New York Times. Ms. Strauch, who previously tackled teenage brains in her book “The Primal Teen,” spoke with me this week about aging brains and the people who have them. Here’s our conversation: Q. After exploring the teenage brain, why did you decide to write a book about grown-ups? A. Well, I have a middle-aged brain, for one thing. When I would go give talks about “The Primal Teen,” I’d be driven to the airport or back by a middle-aged person, and they’d turn to me and say: “You should do something about my brain. My brain is suddenly horrible. I can’t remember names.” That’s why I started looking into it. I had my own middle-aged issues like going into an elevator and seeing somebody and thinking, “Who are you?” Q. So what’s the bad news about the middle-aged brain? A. Obviously, there are issues with short-term memory. There are declines in processing speed and in neurotransmitters, the chemicals in our brain. But as it turns out, modern middle age is from 40 to 65. During this long time in the middle, if we’re relatively healthy our brains may have a few issues, but on balance they’re better than ever during that period. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 14032 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Dave Munger Across the animal kingdom, the decision of whether or not to be faithful to a mate often comes down to Darwinian considerations. Dear Darwin, I’m seeking the ideal mate, and I just don’t know what to do. I could mate with the biggest, strongest male in my niche, but all the other females are just as interested in him as I am, and I’m worried he won’t give our offspring and me the attention we deserve. I could have a less-attractive male all to myself, but then I run the risk of having inferior offspring. I’m half-tempted to pair up with a runt, but then mate with the hunk on the side. What do you think? Is monogamy all it’s cracked up to be? — Evolving in Evanston Dear Evolving, You said it, sister! True monogamy is actually quite rare among animals. Take birds, for example. While there are lots of socially monogamous birds, pairing up for a season or even for life, true loyalty is much more rare. As Jeremy Yoder, a graduate student who studies symbiosis in moths and Joshua trees notes on his blog, as many as 90 percent of bird species “cheat” on their mates, and about 11 percent of chicks aren’t fathered by the bird the mother has paired with. ©2005-2009 Seed Media Group LLC.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 14031 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan The argument over whether intelligence is innate or environmentally influenced has raged for more than a century. One of the most recent issues in the nature versus nurture debate is the effect of breast-feeding on IQ. Research shows that the fatty acids in human milk may influence brain development. Using that data as a springboard, a group of scientists, led by a team at the King's College London Institute of Psychiatry, set out to determine how the makeup of infants interacts with their mothers' milk to affect intelligence. Their findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA: breastfeeding can boost a baby's intelligence quotient if the newborn has a certain version of a gene, called FADS2 (fatty acid desaturase 2), which affects how fatty acids are processed. "We were searching for an empirical example that would allow us to show scientists that it is possible to use the environment as a tool, to uncover novel genes that are important for human outcomes—including diseases," says study co-author Terrie Moffitt, a psychiatry professor of at King's College. "Our chain of logic from environment to genetic marker allowed us to discover for the first time the link between the FADS2 gene and the IQ, an important child health outcome." The genetic marker that Moffitt refers to is located in the FADS2 gene, which has two primary variations. The new study, based on 1,000 New Zealander children (a portion of whom were breast-fed) in the early 1970s as well as on more than 2,000 breast-fed kids who lived in the U.K. in the mid 1990s, showed that 90 percent of the subjects had at least one copy of the more common version of FADS2 and 50 percent of them had two copies. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Intelligence
Link ID: 14030 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Yoshiaki Kikuchi and Madoka Noriuchi It’s probably not surprising that mothers excel at recognizing and interpreting the moods and emotions of their infants. Although infants can’t speak, mothers seem to know what their babies are thinking: they smile when their baby smiles and they frown when their baby is upset. Research suggests that the mother’s ability to understand the needs of her infant is very important for establishing a secure mother-infant relationship. However, the neural mechanisms that underlie these behaviors are poorly understood. Such knowledge is crucial for understanding normal as well as abusive and neglectful mothering. In recent years, several studies have been carried out using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to better understand how a mother’s brain responds to her own child’s cues. The most recent, led by neuroscientist Lane Strathearn and colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine, investigated what happens inside the brain of a mother when she looks at the facial expressions of her own infant. In the study, 28 first-time mothers were shown pictures of their seven-month old child that they had never seen before. (The pictures were taken when the mother was not present.) The pictures spanned a wide range of human emotion and included images of the child making happy, sad or neutral faces. These pictures were then matched with images of an unknown infant. The central finding was that seeing the happy face of the mother’s own infant activated all of the key areas in the brain associated with reward processing. These regions include the ventral tegmental area, substantia nigra and the striatum. This finding suggests that for mothers the sight of their smiling baby is a potent reward and represents a uniquely pleasurable experience. Furthermore, this neural response was graded, so that happy faces led to more activation than neutral faces. Sad faces generated the least activation. In other words, the response of mothers in their reward areas seemed to directly mirror the emotions the infant displayed. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 14029 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Shaoni Bhattacharya CAN'T find a mate? Try parthenogenesis. The type of asexual reproduction may be part of an extreme survival strategy for sharks. In parthenogenesis, females' eggs start dividing without being fertilised. This produces daughters that are genetically similar to the mother. It was first observed in a captive hammerhead shark in 2001, but this was an isolated incident, and the shark pup died after three days, making it difficult to say much about its evolutionary significance. Kevin Feldheim at the Field Museum in Chicago, and an international team of colleagues, have now shown that the incident was not exceptional and sharks born from a virgin mother can survive for many years (Journal of Heredity, vol 101, p 374). The team were inspired by the 2001 birth to keep eggs produced by a captive white-spotted bamboo shark at the Belle Isle Aquarium of the Detroit Zoological Institute. The female had never encountered a male during her adult life and biologists had assumed the eggs were infertile. To their surprise seven incubated eggs produced two pups that survived five years before they were transferred to another facility. Genetic analysis confirmed that they were parthenogens. "This suggests that parthenogenesis is a viable shark survival strategy," says Paulo Prodöhl of Queen's University Belfast, UK, who is investigating a possible case of virgin birth in the whitetip reef shark. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 14028 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Greg Miller For most people, it's trivially easy to reach for an object with one hand and keep the other hand still. But in people with a rare inherited condition, when the brain orders one hand to move, the other hand performs the same movement at the same time. Now scientists think they've found a gene mutation that's responsible for this "mirror movement" disorder. The find could yield insights into how the brain gets wired during development. The discovery is exciting, says Susan Ackerman, a neurogeneticist at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, who was not involved in the research. The mutation affects a receptor for a signaling molecule called netrin that is involved in one of the best-studied pathways in developmental neuroscience, she says, but all of that work has been done in animals such as mice, worms, and fruit flies. "To my knowledge, this is the first indication that it's really important in humans too." Mirror movements are a rare and puzzling phenomenon. Babies often exhibit mirror movements in which, for example, an intentional grasping movement with one hand or a kick with one leg is accompanied by a similar involuntary movement by the other side. But these anomalies almost never persist into adulthood, says Guy Rouleau, a neurologist at the University of Montreal in Canada. However, Rouleau and colleagues have recently identified two families—one in Iran and one in Canada—in which some individuals exhibit mirror movements as adults. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Laterality; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14027 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Nora Schultz HANDICRAFTS were never my strong point at school. For each project I attempted, I'd struggle with tools and techniques that didn't suit a left-hander like me, which often made me wonder why humans are wired to prefer using one side of the body over the other. Apart from a few wrist aches, though, my handedness hasn't been too much of a burden. Contrast this with the bad luck of a toad that fails to jump away from a snake approaching from its right, just because its right eye is much worse at spotting the danger than its left. Clearly, such asymmetry can have fatal consequences. All the more perplexing, then, that creatures across the animal kingdom - including mammals, birds, fish and invertebrates - prefer to use one paw, eye or even antenna for certain tasks, even though they may then be let down in crucial situations by their weaker side. The cause of this trait, called lateralisation, is fairly simple: one side of the brain, which generally controls the opposite side of the body, is more dominant than the other when processing certain tasks. Why would animal brains ever have evolved a characteristic that seems to put them in harm's way? Armed with a spate of ingenious cognitive tests, a group of animal psychologists think they've finally found the answer, in the shape of some previously overlooked benefits to a lopsided brain-body connection. Not before time. Up until the not-too-distant past, it had been broadly assumed that handedness was a uniquely human trait that evolved as a by-product of our amazing capacity for language. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Laterality; Evolution
Link ID: 14026 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Helen Briggs Brain surgery to treat Parkinson's disease is more effective than medication alone, a study has found. More than 300 patients in the UK were fitted with electrodes that deliver an electric current deep within the brain. The technique, known as deep brain stimulation, activates areas of the brain that control movement, improving symptoms such as tremors and stiffness. One person in every 500 has Parkinson's but surgery is generally used only as a last resort. Deep brain stimulation involves implanting a wire, with electrodes at its tip, into one of three areas of the brain. The wire is connected to a small "neurostimulator" unit rather like a pacemaker, which is implanted under the skin of the chest. This unit sends electrical impulses along the wire and into the brain. The impulses block the electrical signals that cause Parkinson's disease symptoms. The UK team investigated 366 patients, who received either surgery and medication, or medication alone. When followed up after a year, the researchers, based in Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Oxford and London, found those who had undergone surgery reported a better quality of life. Writing in Lancet Neurology, they say surgery is an important treatment option for patients with Parkinson's. Professor Keith Wheatley of the University of Birmingham told the BBC: "It is not a cure. What it does is help control symptoms more than medication alone." The 10-year study, funded by the charity Parkinson's UK, the Medical Research Council and the Department of Health, is said to be the largest trial of its kind in the world. (C)BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 14025 - Posted: 04.29.2010

By MAGGIE FOX WASHINGTON - Despite years of speculation about the best way to prevent Alzheimer's disease, there's no proof yet that anything can stave off the devastating and incurable brain breakdown, an expert panel has concluded. "We wish we could tell people that taking a pill or doing a puzzle every day would prevent this terrible disease, but current evidence doesn't support this," said Dr. Martha Daviglus of Northwestern University in Chicago, who chaired an independent panel meeting at the National Institutes of Health outside Washington. The group of experts looked at the dozens of studies that have suggested ways to prevent Alzheimer's — everything from doing puzzles to increasing social interaction — and found none were strong enough to constitute proof. Most of the studies that have been done show associations, but not cause and effect, Daviglus said. "These associations are examples of the classic chicken or the egg quandary. Are people able to stay mentally sharp over time because they are physically active and socially engaged or are they simply more likely to stay physically active and socially engaged because they are mentally sharp?" she asked. The 15 experts met under the NIH's state-of-the-science conference program, which aims to direct future research in an important study area. Copyright 2010 Reuters.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 14024 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Brandon Keim The most detailed genetic investigation ever of multiple sclerosis has produced more questions than answers. Using extremely fine-grained analytical tools, scientists compared genetic information in three sets of identical twins. One of each pair had MS, and the other didn’t — yet their genes proved essentially identical. “We find no smoking gun on the genetic level,” said National Center for Genome Resources geneticist Stephen Kingsmore, co-author of the study published April 28 in Nature. The research cost $1.5 million, and the scientists took 18 months to sequence 2.8 billion DNA units in each twin, and determine whether they came from the mother or father. Most genomic comparisons look for differences in a just handful of suspect genes, and even whole-genome approaches don’t differentiate between parental contributions. The researchers also analyzed the twins’ CD4 cells, a type of white blood cell that plays a central role in the development of MS. In these cells, the researchers sequenced epigenomes — chemical instructions that turn genes on and off — and transcriptomes, or a chemical record of genes that are actively coding proteins. Wired.com © 2009 Condé Nast Digital.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 14023 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Imagine seeing better by thinking differently. That’s a vision with a future, according to Harvard University psychologist Ellen Langer. Eyesight markedly improved when people were experimentally induced to believe that they could see especially well, Langer and her colleagues report in the April Psychological Science. Such expectations actually enhanced visual clarity, rather than simply making volunteers more alert or motivated to focus on objects, they assert. Langer’s new findings build on long-standing evidence that visual perception depends not just on relaying information from the eyes to the brain but on experience-based assumptions about what can be seen in particular situations. Those expectations lead people to devote limited attention to familiar scenes and, as a result, to ignore unusual objects and events. In perhaps the most eye-popping of Langer’s new findings, 20 men and women who saw a reversed eye chart — arranged so that letters became progressively larger further down the chart, with a giant “E” at the bottom — accurately reported more letters from the smallest two lines than they did when shown a traditional eye chart with the big letters on top. All volunteers had normal eyesight. These results reflect people’s expectation, based on experience with standard eye charts, that letters are easy to see at the top and become increasingly difficult to distinguish on lower lines, the researchers suggest. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2010

Keyword: Vision; Attention
Link ID: 14022 - Posted: 06.24.2010