By Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz On May 22, 2001, radio talk show personality Laura Schlessinger, better known as Dr. Laura, received a call from a woman who was distressed by her sister’s decision to exclude their nephew from an upcoming family wedding. When the caller mentioned that the boy suffered from Tourette’s disorder (also sometimes called Tourette syndrome), Dr. Laura berated her for even thinking that it might be appropriate to invite a child who would “scream out vulgarities in the middle of the wedding.” As we’ll soon explain, Dr. Laura’s comments embody just one of several common myths regarding Tourette’s. Tourette’s disorder is the eponymous name for the condition first formally described in 1885 by French neurologist Georges Gilles de la Tourette, who dubbed it maladie des tics (“sickness of tics”). According to the current edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s di­agnostic manual, Tourette’s disorder is marked by a history of both motor (movement) tics and phonic (sound) tics. Motor tics include eye twitching, facial grimacing, tongue protrusion, head turning and shrugging of the shoulders, whereas phonic tics encompass grunting, coughing, throat clearing, yelling inappropriate words and even barking. Some tics are “complex,” meaning they are coordinated series of actions. For example, a Tourette’s patient might continually pick up and smell objects or repeat what someone else just said (echolalia). Often a tic is preceded by a “premonitory urge”—that is, a powerful desire to emit the tic, which some have likened to the feeling we experience immediately before sneezing. Tourette’s patients typically report short-term relief following the tic. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Tourettes
Link ID: 13091 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers have confirmed what parents have long believed - running around in the day means your child may well fall asleep faster at night. But the study of 500 children provides a figure: for every hour they sit, they need three minutes longer to nod off. Interestingly, it was not relevant what the child did while they sat. TV was no more detrimental than quietly reading. And the Archives of Disease in Childhood found those who took longer to get to sleep were no worse behaved. Experts from Monash University in Melbourne and the University of Auckland looked at 519 seven-year-olds. The majority fell asleep within 45 minutes, and the average "sleep latency" - the time it took - was 26 minutes. Children who were very physically active during the day tended to take less time to fall asleep, but the more prominent association was between being sedentary and taking longer to drift off. Those who fell asleep faster also tended to sleep for longer. There has been much discussion about the impact of reduced sleep duration on children. "As short sleep duration is associated with obesity and lower cognitive performance, community emphasis on the importance of promoting healthy sleep in children is vitally important," the researchers wrote. "This study emphasises the importance of physical activity for children, not only for fitness, cardiovascular health and weight control, but also for sleep." (C)BBC

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13090 - Posted: 07.23.2009

By RONI CARYN RABIN Many studies have suggested that a diet rich in fish is good for the heart. Now there is new evidence that such a diet may ward off dementia as well. One of the largest efforts to document a connection — and the first such study undertaken in the developing world — has found that older adults in Asia and Latin America were less likely to develop dementia if they regularly consumed fish. And the more fish they ate, the lower their risk, the report found. The findings appeared in the August issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study, which included 15,000 people ages 65 and older in China, India, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru and the Dominican Republic, found that those who ate fish nearly every day were almost 20 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who ate fish just a few days a week. Adults who ate fish a few days a week were almost 20 percent less likely to develop dementia than those who ate no fish at all. “There is a gradient effect, so the more fish you eat, the less likely you are to get dementia,” said Dr. Emiliano Albanese, a clinical epidemiologist at King’s College London and the senior author of the study. “Exactly the opposite is true for meat,” he added. “The more meat you eat, the more likely you are to have dementia.” Other studies have shown that red meat in particular may be bad for the brain. Fish, especially oily fish, may be protective against dementia because it is rich in omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which studies suggest may have numerous health benefits, among them anti-inflammatory properties. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 13089 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Steve Connor, Science Editor The number of animals used in scientific research last year rose by 15 per cent on the previous year bringing the total to nearly 3.6 million - the greatest number of animals involved in laboratory experiments for almost 20 years. Statistics released today by the Home Office showed that the number of experiments involving animals that were started in 2008 also rose by about 14 per cent to just under 3.7 million "procedures", an increase that closely matched the total number of animals used. This represents a 39 per cent increase in animals experiments since Labour came to power in 1997. The number of animals used in experiments had begun to fall in the 1990s but in the past decade it has increased steadily each year largely due to the rise in the number of genetically modified mice used in biomedical research. Last year's increase in the number of animal experiments was the biggest for more than two decades. Lord West, the Home Office minister responsible for regulating animal research, said that an overall increase in the amount of biomedical research carried out in Britain largely explains why there has been such a large rise in the number of animals used in experiments as well as the increase in procedures. "Today's statistics show an increase in the number of procedures being undertaken, and the overall level of scientific procedures is determined by a number of factors, including the economic climate and global trends in scientific endeavour," Lord West said. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 13088 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Edmund S. Higgins A few years ago a single mother who had recently moved to town came to my office asking me to prescribe the stimulant drug Adderall for her sixth-grade son. The boy had been taking the medication for several years, and his mother had liked its effects: it made homework time easier and improved her son’s grades. At the time of this visit, the boy was off the medication, and I conducted a series of cognitive and behavioral tests on him. He performed wonderfully. I also noticed that off the medication he was friendly and playful. On a previous casual encounter, when the boy had been on Adderall, he had seemed reserved and quiet. His mother acknowledged this was a side effect of the Adderall. I told her that I did not think her son had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and that he did not need medication. That was the last time I saw her. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder afflicts about 5 percent of U.S. children—twice as many boys as girls—age six to 17, according to a recent survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As its name implies, people with the condition have trouble focusing and often are hyperactive or impulsive. An estimated 9 percent of boys and 4 percent of girls in the U.S. are taking stimulant medications as part of their therapy for ADHD, the CDC reported in 2005. The majority of patients take methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta), whereas most of the rest are prescribed an amphetamine such as Adderall. Although it sounds counterintuitive to give stimulants to a person who is hyperactive, these drugs are thought to boost activity in the parts of the brain responsible for attention and self-control. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13087 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lauran Neergaard WASHINGTON -- The best time to learn a foreign language: Between birth and age 7. Missed that window? New research is showing just how children's brains can become bilingual so easily, findings that scientists hope eventually could help the rest of us learn a new language a bit easier. "We think the magic that kids apply to this learning situation, some of the principles, can be imported into learning programs for adults," says Dr. Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington, who is part of an international team now trying to turn those lessons into more teachable technology. Each language uses a unique set of sounds. Scientists now know babies are born with the ability to distinguish all of them, but that ability starts weakening even before they start talking, by the first birthday. Kuhl offers an example: Japanese doesn't distinguish between the "L" and "R" sounds of English -- "rake" and "lake" would sound the same. Her team proved that a 7-month-old in Tokyo and a 7-month-old in Seattle respond equally well to those different sounds. But by 11 months, the Japanese infant had lost a lot of that ability. Time out -- how do you test a baby? By tracking eye gaze. Make a fun toy appear on one side or the other whenever there's a particular sound. The baby quickly learns to look on that side whenever he or she hears a brand-new but similar sound. Noninvasive brain scans document how the brain is processing and imprinting language.

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13086 - Posted: 07.23.2009

by Ewen Callaway For all their cognitive prowess, chimpanzees will never build four-stroke engines, stone pyramids, or even a simple wheel. Technological innovation and improvement seem to be uniquely human traits, despite culture and ample tool use in chimpanzees and other animals. New research on children and chimpanzees might explain why. "For culture to accumulate – to become more and more complex – requires innovations and one of the first ways in which hominins clearly went beyond chimpanzees was in making stone tools," says Andrew Whiten, a psychologist at St Andrew's University, UK. He and researchers in Germany argue that this difference comes down to the distinct ways in which humans and chimpanzees learn new tricks from others. Eyes on the prize For chimpanzees, culturally transmitted skills tend to focus on food, whether cracking nuts with rocks, or fishing insects out of the dirt with sticks. Overwhelming evidence now suggests that chimpanzees pass these traditions onto their brethren. For instance, individuals in Taï National Park in Ivory Coast feast on nuts, while chimpanzees in Gombe National Park in Tanzania ignore them. Less clear is what chimpanzees learn by watching another animal demonstrate a new trick. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 13085 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes YOU may be tempted to think men are becoming an optional extra in the mating game, but biochemical evidence in mice and people suggests that fathers may play a key role in the rearing of offspring. Previous studies have hinted at the importance of fathers in child-rearing. Some have shown that girls reach puberty younger, become sexually active earlier and are more likely to get pregnant in their teens if their father was absent when they were young. Others have suggested that the sons of absent fathers display lower intimacy and self-esteem. To investigate the biological basis of such differences, Gabriella Gobbi at McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, Canada, and colleagues turned to "California mice", which, like people, are monogamous and tend to rear their offspring together. The researchers removed the fathers but not the mothers from some of the mouse pups, from three days after birth until they were weaned at 30 to 40 days old. Then they looked at the activity of brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, an area involved in social interaction and expression of personality, in response to the hormone oxytocin and other neurotransmitters, including serotonin, dopamine and NMDA. Cells in pups deprived of fathers had a blunted response to oxytocin - the "cuddle chemical", which is normally released during social interactions and pair bonding. They also had an increased response to NMDA, which is involved in memory. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 13084 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Torrice Classical philosophers called humans "the rational animal." Clearly, they never looked closely at ants. A new study suggests that ant colonies avoid irrational decisions that people and other animals often make. Consider the following scenario: You want to buy a house with a big kitchen and a big yard, but there are only two homes on the market--one with a big kitchen and a small yard and the other with a small kitchen and a big yard. Studies show you'd be about 50% likely to choose either house--and either one would be a rational choice. But now, a new home comes on the market, this one with a large kitchen and no yard. This time, studies show, you'll make an irrational decision: Even though nothing has changed with the first two houses, you'll now favor the house with the big kitchen and small yard over the one with the small kitchen and big yard. Overall, scientists have found, people and other animals will often change their original preferences when presented with a third choice. Not so with ants. These insects also shop for homes but not quite in the way that humans do. Solitary worker ants spread out, looking for two main features: a small entrance and a dark cavity. If an ant finds an outstanding hole--such as the inside of an acorn or a rock crevice--it recruits another scout to check it out. As more scouts like the site, the number of workers in the new hole grows. Once the crowd reaches a critical mass, the ants race back to the old nest and start carrying the queen and larvae to move the entire colony. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 13083 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nathan Seppa Elderly people with mild cognitive losses are at a heightened risk of progressing to Alzheimer’s disease if they have a combination of telltale compounds in their spinal fluid, researchers report in the July 22/29 Journal of the American Medical Association. By testing for a shortage of a sticky compound called amyloid-beta in the spinal fluid and for excess amounts of two kinds of a protein called tau, the scientists could identify people at greatest risk. The test isn’t foolproof, and a positive reading still warns of a disease for which there is no cure. But scientists are heartened by this and earlier studies (SN: 9/20/03, p. 179)because Alzheimer’s disease is difficult to foresee and its early symptoms are often mistaken for routine cognitive losses caused by aging. Niklas Mattsson of a Gothenburg University-affiliated hospital in Mölndal, Sweden, and an international group of scientists recruited 750 elderly people in Europe and the United States from 1990 to 2007. At the time of enrollment, the volunteers had mild cognitive impairment — a loss of memory or other mental faculties — that wasn’t attributable to aging alone but fell short of Alzheimer’s disease. Each volunteer contributed a cerebrospinal fluid sample by undergoing a spinal puncture. The participants, average age 69, were monitored for about three years during the study. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 13082 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Celeste Biever If there's one thing worse than being in a coma, it's people thinking you are in one when you aren't. Yet a new comparison of methods for detecting consciousness suggests that around 40 per cent of people diagnosed as being in a vegetative state are in fact "minimally conscious". In the worst case scenario, such misdiagnoses could influence the decision to allow a patient to die, even though they have some vestiges of consciousness. But crucially it may deprive patients of treatments to make them more comfortable, more likely to recover, or to allow them to communicate with family, say researchers. In a vegetative state (VS), reflexes are intact and the patient can breathe unaided, but there is no awareness. A minimally conscious state (MCS) is a sort of twilight zone, only recently recognised, in which people may feel some physical pain, experience some emotion, and communicate to some extent. However, because consciousness is intermittent and incomplete in MCS, it can be sometimes very difficult to tell the difference between the two. In 2002 Joseph Giacino at the JFK Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey and colleagues released the first diagnostic criteria for MCS. Then in 2004, Giacino released a revised coma recovery scale (CRS-R) – a series of behavioural tests based on criteria that can be used to distinguish between the two states. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13081 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An immune system therapy given to cancer patients could have the added benefit of reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease, a study suggests. A US team found patients who had received antibody treatment had more than 40% less risk of Alzheimer's than people who had not. Writing in Neurology, they said a bigger study was needed to confirm their findings. UK experts said immunotherapy was an important area of research. So far, scientists have been looking at it as a way of treating people who already have Alzheimer's. The idea is that immune based therapies affect the formation of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain, which are characteristic of Alzheimer's, possibly by suppressing the inflammatory response in the brain. People with the disease have lower levels of anti beta-amyloid antibodies, so experts are looking at ways of boosting levels - including immunisation. But this study investigated whether or not people who had been given the treatment already, for another condition, had some protection. The team from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York looked at the records of 847 people who had been given at least one intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) treatment for cancers, such as leukaemia, or immune system disorders. All were over 65 and had received the treatment between April 2001 and August 2004. Their records were then compared with those of 847,000 people who had not needed the therapy who were similar Alzheimer's risk factors to the treated group. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 13080 - Posted: 07.21.2009

Lizzie Buchen A once-promising clinical therapy for Huntington's disease needs to head back to the lab, research suggests. Huntington's disease is an inherited, untreatable and fatal disease in which patients develop severe movement and cognitive problems. One approach to treating the disease that picked up steam in the 1990s was the transplantation of healthy neural tissue from the fetuses of women who had undergone elective abortions into the patient's striatum — the brain region most severely affected in the disease. Now the results of the first long-term clinical follow-up of this approach are in1, and they don't bode well. Neurosurgeon Thomas Freeman of the University of South Florida in Tampa and his colleagues have analysed the brains of three people with Huntington's disease who received fetal striatal-tissue transplants a decade before they died. But instead of slowing or stopping the progress of the disease, the grafts degenerated even more severely than the patients' own tissue. "Based on our earlier results we were expecting that the grafts would endure," says Freeman. "This tells us we'll have to do a lot of work in the laboratory before going back to the clinic." © 2009 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 13079 - Posted: 06.24.2010

With 3- and 5-year-old daughters in the house, Dr. Atul Malhotra, 40, knows what it’s like to go without sleep. And as medical director of Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s sleep disorders research program, he gets an earful about sleep problems at work. Malhotra diagnoses and studies patients with disorders including insomnia and sleep apnea, which causes a person to briefly and frequently stop breathing while they sleep. The dangers of undiagnosed sleep apnea were highlighted last week when investigators said the operator of a Green Line train that crashed into another train, killing her, might have suffered from the disorder and fallen asleep for several seconds. Malhotra spoke to reporter Liz Kowalczyk about sleep disorders and how to treat them. Here is an edited version of their conversation. Q. How many people have sleep disorders? A. Four percent of American men and 2 percent of American women have sleep apnea, based on a study published in 1993. But obesity has gotten a lot worse since 1993 and obesity is a major risk factor. Insomnia is also a very common sleep problem. After Sept. 11, no one slept well the next day. People who have chronic insomnia where it’s a sustained problem, that’s 5 to 10 percent of the population. Q. Is chronic insomnia dangerous? A. The short answer is that several studies, including our own, suggest that short sleep is deleterious to your health. If you sleep five hours per night, your risk of heart attack, diabetes, obesity, and mortality are all increased compared with someone who sleeps seven to eight hours a night. © Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 13078 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE Learning to move a computer cursor or robotic arm with nothing but thoughts can be no different from learning how to play tennis or ride a bicycle, according to a new study of how brains and machines interact. The research, which was carried out in monkeys but is expected to apply to humans, involves a fundamental redesign of brain-machine experiments. In previous studies, the computer interfaces that translate thoughts into movements are given a new set of instructions each day — akin to waking up each morning with a new arm that you have to figure out how to use all over again. In the new experiments, monkeys learned how to move a computer cursor with their thoughts using just one set of instructions and an unusually small number of brain cells that deliver instructions for performing movements the same way each day. “This is the first demonstration that the brain can form a motor memory to control a disembodied device in a way that mirrors how it controls its own body,” said Jose M. Carmena, an assistant professor of computer and cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the research. The experiments were described Monday in the journal PloS Biology. The results are very “dramatic and surprising,” said Eberhard E. Fetz, an expert in brain-machine-interface technology at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the research. “It goes to show the brain is smarter than we thought.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 13077 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lindsey Tanner CHICAGO - Researchers for the first time have linked air pollution exposure before birth with lower IQ scores in childhood, bolstering evidence that smog may harm the developing brain. The results are in a study of 249 children of New York City women who wore backpack air monitors for 48 hours during the last few months of pregnancy. They lived in mostly low-income neighborhoods in northern Manhattan and the South Bronx. They had varying levels of exposure to typical kinds of urban air pollution, mostly from car, bus, and truck exhaust. At age 5, before starting school, the children were given IQ tests. Those exposed to the most pollution before birth scored on average four to five points lower than children with less exposure. That’s a big enough difference that it could affect children’s performance in school, said Frederica Perera, the study’s lead author and director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health. Dr. Michael Msall, a University of Chicago pediatrician not involved in the research, said the study doesn’t mean that children living in congested cities “aren’t going to learn to read and write and spell.’’ But it does suggest that you don’t have to live right next door to a belching factory to face pollution health risks, and that there may be more dangers from typical urban air pollution than previously thought, he said. © Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 13076 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway A 10-year old girl born with half of her cerebral cortex missing sees perfectly because of a massive reorganisation of the brain circuits involved in vision, a new study finds. "It was quite a surprise to see that something like this is possible," says Lars Muckli, a neuroscientist at the University of Glasgow, UK, who was part of the team that imaged the girl's brain. Doctors discovered that she was missing the right half at the age of three, after she began suffering from seizures. Normal life However, the seizures proved treatable and the girl – known as AH – lives an otherwise normal life. The left side of her body is slightly weaker than the right, but this hasn't stopped her from bicycling or roller-skating. But what's most amazing, Muckli says, is her ability to see out of the left and right visual fields. Patients who have half of their cortex removed to treat epilepsy invariably lose half of their visual field. "They would only see half of the world; this is what's expected," he says. That's because, each eye sends visual signals to two different halves of the brain via two distinct bundles of nerves. The nerves on the side of the eye nearest the nose are routed to the opposite side of the brain. The nerves nearest the temple, however, send information to the same side of the brain as the eye. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13075 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ibby Caputo After Marine Cpl. Mike Jernigan was blinded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, he said, not much was done for him. "I returned back from Iraq and [Veterans Affairs] gave me a stick. A stick and a tap on the butt and they said, 'Go ahead.' " Five years later and thanks to the ambitions of a handful of people, Jernigan has more than a walking cane. He has been given a special "lollipop," a device that uses his tongue to stimulate his visual cortex and send sensory information to his brain. Also called the intra-oral device, or IOD, the lollipop is an inch-square grid with 625 small round metal pieces. It is connected by a wire to a small camera mounted on a pair of sunglasses and to a hand-held controller about the size of a BlackBerry. The camera sends an image to the lollipop, which transmits a low-voltage pulse to Jernigan's tongue. With training, Jernigan has learned to translate that pulse into pictures. He can now identify the shapes of what is in front of him, even though both of his eyes have been removed. "It's kind of like Braille that you use with your fingers," said Amy Nau, an optometrist who is researching the effectiveness of the device at the University of Pittsburgh. "Instead of symbols, it's a picture, and instead of your fingertips, it's your tongue." The machine is called the BrainPort vision device and is manufactured by Wicab, a biomedical engineering company based in Middleton, Wis. It relies on sensory substitution, the process in which if one sense is damaged, the part of the brain that would normally control that sense can learn to perform another function. In Jernigan's case, the visual cortex is recruited to take on tactile recognition. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Vision; Robotics
Link ID: 13074 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nicole Branan Close but no cigar, the saying goes. But new research shows that when it comes to gambling, the human brain seems to take a very different approach. In our head, near misses, such as a lottery ticket just one number away from the jackpot, are interpreted as wins. Using functional MRI, Luke Clark of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues looked at the brains of 15 volunteers who were playing a computerized slot machine. Unsurpri­singly, wins activated the players’ reward system, whereas complete misses did not. When the wheel stopped just one position from the pay line, however, the reward system of volunteers’ brains got excited the same way it did after a win—there was much activity in the striatum and the insula, areas involved in reinforcing behavior with positive feedback. This type of reinforcement makes sense in behaviors that involve actual skill, such as target shooting, because a sense of reward provides encouragement to keep practicing, Clark says. “A near miss in a game of chance doesn’t mean that you are getting better,” he notes, yet it seems that the brain mistakenly activates the same type of reinforcement learning system in these situations. The findings expose the underpinnings of gambling addiction, according to Clark. Even though all volunteers were nongamblers, those whose brain showed a greater response in the scanner also reported feeling more desire to continue trying after near misses. Excessive recruitment of these reward areas, therefore, may be a risk factor for compulsive gambling, Clark says. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13073 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Certain things should never be taken for granted, among them your spouse, your mother, the United States Constitution, and the precise meaning of words that are at the heart of your profession. Daniel Levitis was working as a teaching assistant for an animal behavior course at the University of California in Berkeley, and on the first day of class, the professor explained that the shorthand definition of a “behavior” is “what animals do.” O.K., that’s the freshman-friendly definition, Mr. Levitis thought. Now how about the unabridged, professional version? What is the point-by-point definition of a behavior that behavioral biologists use when judging whether a particular facet of the natural world falls under their purview? After all, animals digest food and grow fur, yet few behavioral researchers would count such physiological and anatomical doings as behaviors. Mr. Levitis asked the professor for the full definition of a behavior. She referred him to their textbook, with its promising title, “Animal Behavior.” To his surprise, neither that textbook nor any other reference he consulted bothered to spell it out. “It was assumed that everyone knew what the word meant,” said Mr. Levitis, who is completing his doctorate at Berkeley. Mr. Levitis decided to ask the people who should know best: working behavioral biologists. The provocative and crisply written results of his quest, carried out with his colleagues, William Lidicker Jr. and Glenn Freund, appear in the current issue of the journal Animal Behaviour. Among the highlights of the report: biologists don’t agree with one another on what a behavior is; biologists don’t agree with themselves on what a behavior is; biologists can be as parochial as the rest of us, meaning that animal behaviorists tend to reflexively claim the behavior label for animals only, while botanists sniff that, if the well-timed unfurling of a smelly, colorful blossom for the sake of throwing your seed around isn’t the ultimate example of a behavior, then there’s no such thing as Valentine’s Day; and, finally, words may count, but thoughts do not. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13072 - Posted: 06.24.2010