By Claire Thomas In tribal societies, one might expect that the fiercest warriors get the most women and father the most children. But that's not necessarily the case, says a new study of the brutal Waorani tribe of Ecuador. The most aggressive Wao warriors have about the same number of wives and children as milder-mannered men have, and their children are less likely to survive beyond the age of 15, largely due to an endless cycle of revenge killings. The Waorani are one of the most homicidal tribes ever studied. Located in a region just south of the Napo River, the place where the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon Basin, the tribe is preoccupied with revenge. Young Wao men are encouraged to develop a ferocious reputation early on, and before long they start raiding. The tribespeople constantly recount stories of these raids in gruesome detail, noting who was responsible and who needed to be avenged. Half of all Waos die violently. Studies of a similarly murderous tribe, the Yanomamö of nearby Venezuela, suggested that such homicidal behavior conveyed an evolutionary advantage. In a 1988 paper in Science, anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, now a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that the most aggressive Yanomamö men had higher prestige within the tribe, which led to them having more wives and children, than less-aggressive men. The new study argues that the picture is not so clear-cut. Lead author Stephen Beckerman of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and colleagues interviewed 121 Waorani elders to compile histories of 95 of the tribe's warriors. (The Waorani are much more peaceful today than they were in the past, possibly due to Christian missionaries, who first made contact in 1958.) The team defined highly aggressive men as those who took part in more than four raids over their lifetimes; some of the most violent warriors fought in as many as 16 raids. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Aggression; Evolution
Link ID: 12843 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News -- From tickling to playing catch, animals engage in certain behaviors just for fun, even enjoying sensations that are unknown to humans, concludes an extensive new survey on pleasure in the animal kingdom. The findings, published in the latest Applied Animal Behavior Science, hold moral significance, argues author Jonathan Balcombe. He believes scientists, conservationists and other animal rights activists should not overlook animal joy. View a slide show about animals seeking pleasure here. "The capacity for pleasure means that an animal's life has intrinsic value, that is, value to the individual independent of his or her value to anyone else, including humans," Balcombe, a senior research scientist for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, explained to Discovery News. He determined animals experience happiness for happiness' sake related to play, food, touch and sex. Observations of herring gulls in Virginia, for example, found these birds play "drop-catch," tossing clams and other small, hard objects as though they were baseballs, just for pure enjoyment. In terms of food, green iguanas go to great lengths to find fresh, leafy lettuce, even when supplied with ample amounts of more nutritious reptile chow. Studies on other animals indicate some foods, independent of their nutrition levels, cause animals to release pleasure-producing opioids in their bodies. Language-trained apes and parrots have even told their owners they loved or hated certain edibles. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 12842 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dr. Richard Cytowic is one of the leading researchers of synesthesia, a condition in which two normally separated sensations - such as sight and sound, or touch and taste - occur at the same time. As a result, a synesthetic person might experience the taste of a dish on her fingertips, or be convinced that the letter X is a vibrant turquoise. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Cytowic about his new book, Wednesday is Indigo Blue, which he co-wrote with David Eagleman. LEHRER: What first got you interested in synesthesia? CYTOWIC: It was an accident. I like etymology and so knew the word, whereas my colleagues back in 1979 had never heard of synesthesia. In fact, they refused to believe it could be real, and warned that looking into such “weird” and “New Age” nonsense would ruin my career. Their denial was the typical reaction of orthodoxy to something it can’t explain. It is said that chance favors the prepared mind, so I guess I was ready when a dinner host apologized that there weren’t “enough points on the chicken.” For Michael Watson, who I later wrote about as “The Man Who Tasted Shapes,” flavor was more than a mouthful. Taste was also a touch sensation felt on his face and in his hands. “With an intense flavor,” he explained, “a feeling sweeps down my arm and I feel weight, shape, texture, and temperature as if I’m actually grasping something.” Fortunately, I could use university resources to quietly study Michael in depth and write papers. What interested me most was pondering an experience that “wasn’t supposed to be.” © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12841 - Posted: 06.24.2010

US scientists say they have successfully reversed the effects of Alzheimer's with experimental drugs. The drugs target and boost the function of a newly pinpointed gene involved in the brain's memory formation. In mice, the treatment helped restore long-term memory and improve learning for new tasks, Nature reports. The same drugs - HDAC inhibitors - are currently being tested to treat Huntington's disease and are on the market to treat some cancers. They reshape the DNA scaffolding that supports and controls the expression of genes in the brain. The Alzheimer's gene the drugs act upon, histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2), regulates the expression of a plethora of genes implicated in plasticity - the brain's ability to change in response to experience - and memory formation. This findings build on the team's 2007 breakthrough in which mice with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease regained long-term memories and the ability to learn. Lead researcher Professor Li-Huei Tsai explained: "It brings about long-lasting changes in how other genes are expressed, which is probably necessary to increase numbers of synapses and restructure neural circuits, thereby enhancing memory. "To our knowledge, HDAC inhibitors have not been used to treat Alzheimer's disease or dementia. But now that we know that inhibiting HDAC2 has the potential to boost synaptic plasticity, synapse formation and memory formation. In the next step, we will develop new HDAC2-selective inhibitors and test their function for human diseases associated with memory impairment to treat neurodegenerative diseases." (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12840 - Posted: 05.09.2009

Al Kooper didn’t know what to play. He’d told some half-truths to get into Bob Dylan’s recording session — the musicians were working on some song tentatively titled “Like A Rolling Stone” — and Kooper had been assigned the Hammond organ. There was only one problem: Kooper didn’t play the organ. He was a guitarist. The first takes were predictably terrible — Kooper was just trying not to get kicked out of the studio. But on take four, he suddenly found his chords. Kooper’s playing was pure improv — “I was like a little kid fumbling in the dark for a light switch,” he would later remember — but he ended up inventing one of the most famous organ riffs in modern music. There is something profoundly mysterious about this kind of creativity. Kooper didn’t have time to think — the chorus was about to happen — and so he just started banging on the ivory keys. This same impromptu process defines some of the most famous creations of modern art, from John Coltrane letting loose on “A Love Supreme,” to Jackson Pollock dripping paint haphazardly on a canvas. These are works made entirely in the moment — their beauty is spontaneous. But how does such an act of imagination happen? How does the mind create on command? William James described the creative process as a “seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity.” In the last year, two separate experiments have attempted to see inside the cauldron, to figure out how a loom of electric cells finds the exact right notes on the upright organ. ©2005-2009 Seed Media Group LLC.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12839 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO - Leo Lytel was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder. His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can “recover” from it — most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy. Skeptics question the phenomenon, but University of Connecticut psychology professor Deborah Fein is among those convinced it’s real. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here She presented research this week at an autism conference in Chicago that included 20 children who, according to rigorous analysis, got a correct diagnosis but years later were no longer considered autistic. Among them was Leo, a boy in Washington, D.C., who once made no eye contact, who echoed words said to him and often spun around in circles — all classic autism symptoms. Now he is an articulate, social third-grader. His mother, Jayne Lytel, says his teachers call Leo a leader. The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, involves children ages 9 to 18. Autism researcher Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, called Fein’s research a breakthrough. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 12838 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers in Sweden say there might be a link between constant summer sunlight and a high rate of suicide in Greenland, a finding that medical officials in northern Canada are watching. A team led by psychiatrist Karin Sparring Björkstén of the Karolinska Institutet looked at the seasonal variation of suicides throughout Greenland between 1968 and 2002. The team's findings, published in the journal BMC Psychiatry on Friday, found an increase in the number of suicides during the summer months in Greenland, with a peak in June. Björkstén told CBC News she was surprised by the findings, but believes the sunlight could be amplifying underlying mental health issues and other problems. "There are, of course, many reasons that people commit suicide. But in the summer, when you don't sleep for extended periods of time, or you sleep very little, you may lose judgment," she said. "Some people actually become manic or delirious and they really don't know what they are doing. Perhaps they didn't intend to commit suicide." In the north of the Arctic island, Björkstén said 82 per cent of suicides occurred during the long periods of 24-hour summer light. Björkstén's team also suggested that light-generated imbalances could lead to increased impulsiveness. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Depression
Link ID: 12837 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY The 10 warning signs listed online by the Alzheimer’s Association include not recognizing oneself in the mirror and giving large amounts of money to telemarketers. Also, Cognitivelabs.com offers free instant memory tests, but the scoring system at the end can be confusing. These tips are offered here because it is almost impossible to watch even a portion of “The Alzheimer’s Project” on HBO without worrying. Many viewers will be tempted to search the Internet or call 877-IS IT ALZ in a sudden panic over blank spells: “Did I already take my Lipitor?” and “That funny blond actress, you know, the one in that old movie about Washington with the guy who was in ‘Picnic’?” (Judy Holliday, “Born Yesterday,” William Holden.) Memory loss is a terrifying prospect, and “The Alzheimer’s Project,” a sober, deeply affecting four-documentary series on HBO that begins on Sunday, seeks to comfort and encourage those whose worst fears turn out to be true. The project was made in collaboration with the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, which provided scientific information and guidance, but the filmmakers had the final word on editing. And HBO chose as its marketing motto “HOPELESS,” printed with a big purple X over the “LESS.” The message conveyed by “The Alzheimer’s Project” is that a breakthrough — in prevention and treatment, and even possibly a cure — is at hand. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12836 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway In addition to checking blood pressure and heart rate, doctors may want to test their patients' IQs to get a good measure of overall health. A new study of 3654 Vietnam War veterans finds that men with lower IQs are more likely to suffer from dozens of health problems – from hernias, to ear inflammation, to cataracts – compared with those showing greater intelligence. This offers tantalising – yet preliminary – evidence that health and intelligence are the result of common genetic factors, and that low intelligence may be an indication of harmful genetic mutations. "It poses the question to epidemiologists: why is it that intelligence is a predictor for things that seem so very far removed from the brain," says Rosalind Arden, a psychologist at King's College London, who led the study. Lifestyle choices One obvious counter-argument is that intelligent people make healthier choices. "You could say: 'look, brighter people make better health decisions – they give up smoking when they find it's bad for you, they take up exercise when they find out its good for you, and they eat a lot of salad'," Arden says. That's probably true, she says, yet her team found that indicators of healthy living, such as a low body mass index and not smoking, do not correlate with overall health of veterans as well as several tests of intelligence. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 12835 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gisela Telis As anyone with a busy schedule can attest, intending to do something and actually doing it are two different things. But your brain doesn't make such neat distinctions, according to a new study. Researchers have found that when you wave at someone, for example, the intention to move your hand creates the feeling of it having moved, not the physical motion itself. The discovery sheds new light on how the brain tracks what the body does. Although neuroscience has revealed much about how the brain processes experiences, the origin of intention has remained a mystery. Past studies linked it to the posterior parietal cortex and the premotor cortex, two regions of the brain also associated with motion and awareness of movement, but each region's role and how they work together remained unclear. Neuroscientist Angela Sirigu of the Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive in Bron, France, became intrigued by the posterior parietal's role in willed actions when working with patients who had injured that part of their brains. The patients couldn't define when they began to want to move, says Sirigu, because they couldn't monitor their own intention. Sirigu joined researchers at the University of Lyon in France and neurosurgeon Carmine Mottolese of Lyon's Hôpital Pierre Wertheimer to take advantage of a common operating room practice. As part of their preparation for surgery, neurosurgeons sometimes electrically stimulate the brains of their patients, who are awake under local anesthetic, to map the brain and minimize surgical complications. During brain tumor surgery on seven patients, Mottolese stimulated their frontal, parietal, and temporal brain regions, and Sirigu's team asked the patients to describe what they felt. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12834 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Free will, or at least the place where we decide to act, is sited in a part of the brain called the parietal cortex, new research suggests. When a neurosurgeon electrically jolted this region in patients undergoing surgery, they felt a desire to, say, wiggle their finger, roll their tongue or move a limb. Stronger electrical pulses convinced patients they had actually performed these movements, although their bodies remained motionless. "What it tells us is there are specific brain regions that are involved in the consciousness of your movement," says Angela Sirigu (pdf format), a neuroscientist at the CNRS Cognitive Neuroscience Centre in Bron, France, who led the study. Brain stimulation Sirigu's team, including neurosurgeon Carmine Mottolese, performed the experiments on seven patients undergoing brain surgery to remove tumours. In all but one case, the cancers were located far from the parietal cortex and other areas that Mottolese stimulated. One patient's tumour sat near the parietal cortex, but did not interfere with the experiments, Sirigu says. And because the patients were awake during the surgery, they could answer questions. "Did you move?" a researcher asked a 76-year-old man after lightly zapping a point on his parietal cortex. "No. I had a desire to roll my tongue in my mouth," he responded. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12833 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lindsay Lyon How the body got there was a mystery. More than 12 hours earlier, the man had emerged from successful back surgery. Now, clad only in underwear, he was outside, dead, wedged between a generator and a wall. He was six floors below the hospital rooftop. Had he jumped to his death? Had he been pushed? Neither, medical investigators concluded. He'd gone sleepwalking, and his stroll took an unfortunate turn. "The autopsy showed that there were significant abrasions along this individual's back, which showed that he fell straight down," notes Michel Cramer Bornemann, an expert on sleep problems who is codirector of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis. "Suicide victims don't fall straight down. They jump." Moreover, the man had been barefoot yet not been deterred by the roof's layer of sharp stones. "Sleepwalkers don't sense pain; the sensory neural pathways are essentially off-line," says Cramer Bornemann, who was brought in by a family lawyer investigating the hospital's suggestion that the death was a suicide. Cramer Bornemann heads up Sleep Forensics Associates, a group that lawyers and law enforcement officials have turned to when investigating crimes that may be explained by a sleep problem. Since they've been together—just over two years—he and his two colleagues have fielded approximately 150 requests for case evaluations, some from as far off as New Zealand. Murder, sexual assault, DUI, child abuse, and "suicide" are just a sampling of crimes they've encountered. All have been suspected of involving sleepwalking, sleep driving, or sleep sex, among other so-called parasomnias—inappropriate, unwanted behaviors that arise during sleep. (About one third of those case referrals involve the alleged influence of the sleep aid Ambien, he says.) © 2009 U.S.News & World Report LP

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 12832 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rebecca Morelle "In the past, people thought birds were stupid," laments the aptly named scientist Christopher Bird. But in fact, some of our feathered friends are far cleverer than we might think. And one group in particular - the corvids - has astonished scientists with extraordinary feats of memory, an ability to employ complex social reasoning and, perhaps most strikingly, a remarkable aptitude for crafting and using tools. Mr Bird, who is based at the department of zoology at Cambridge University, says: "I would rate corvids as being as intelligent as primates in many ways." The corvids - a group that includes crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays and magpies - contain some of the most social species of birds. And some of their intelligence is played out against the backdrop of living with others, where being intelligent enough to recognize individuals, to form alliances and foster relationships is key. However, group living can also lead to deceptive behaviour - and western scrub jays (Aphelocoma californica ) can be the sneakiest of the bird-bunch. Many corvids will hide stores of food for later consumption, especially during the cold winter months when resources are scarce, but western scrub jays take this one step further. (C)BBC

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 12831 - Posted: 05.07.2009

Neuroscientists claim growing pains Leading neuroscientists are warning that difficulties with a staple laboratory product may be costing time and money. The scientists say that variation between batches of a growth medium designed to sustain neurons in culture can, in their experience, cause experiments to fail or give low-quality results because of the poor survival and maturation of cells. The growth medium in question is a particular formulation of B27, a mixture of proteins, hormones and vitamins, produced by laboratory supplies company Invitrogen of Carlsbad, California, now a division of Life Technologies. In 2004, a group of neuroscientists including Beth Stevens, now at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts, and Johannes Hell of the University of Iowa, Iowa City, told Invitrogen that they thought the B27 medium was producing poor results following a change in the product's ingredients. The company says that it remedied the problem, and that the number of complaints it received from scientists fell to "negligible levels". "Things were improved," says Stevens, "but over the next few years it became clear there is still a lot of variation in quality control." Hell estimates that his lab spends about US$50,000 per year on culturing neurons. "If you get mediocre cultures, that money is wasted," he says. So Hell and other colleagues developed an alternative growth medium called Neuronal Supplement 21 (NS21), which they unveiled last year (Y. Chen et al. J. Neurosci. Meth. 171, 239–247; 2008). Hell points out that NS21 is not a commercial product; the researchers who use it prepare it in their own laboratories. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12830 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Alan Boyle A songbird's brain may be programmed to gravitate toward a particular kind of tune, even if it's been taught from infancy to sing to the beat of a different warbler, researchers say. They go on to suggest that a similar neural mechanism might be behind the way our brains handle language. "I think we humans, and songbirds, are probably born with some innate predisposition to communicate in a particular way," Olga Feher, a biologist at The City College of New York, told me this week. The findings from Feher and her colleagues appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature. The experiments suggest that phenomena rooted in a species' culture - for example, singing for birds, using language for people - may be rooted in a species' genome as well. "People have theorized long and hard about how the evolutionary process applies to culture," another co-author of the study, Partha Mitra of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, said in a news release. "This experiment takes culture and puts it into a laboratory setting. We've tested some questions, asked by others over many years, in a mathematically and experimentally crisp manner and come up with a concrete answer." The experimenters started out by raising zebra finches in isolation, in soundproof boxes. For decades, scientists have known that an isolated songbird's innate song is different from the song that is "learned" from its feathered tutors as it grows up. In fact, different genes come into play as a songbird's song matures. So does the classic zebra finch song emerge merely as a cultural norm among the songbird set, or is there some sort of hard-wired inevitability about the tune? © 2009 msnbc.com

Keyword: Language; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12829 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jessica Knoblauch One night in February, high school principal Matthew Smith got a frightening wake-up call. The local fire department alerted him that the home of a student at Agua Fria High School was contaminated with liquid mercury that apparently had been taken from a science classroom. The next day, emergency crews descended on the school in haz-mat suits, discovering a toxic trail of mercury vapors in classrooms, locker rooms, and buses. The high school, in Avondale, Ariz., was shut down for a week so it could be decontaminated. The homes of six students were tainted with mercury, two so severely that the families had to be relocated for 11 days, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The total cleanup is expected to reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. The mercury mess in Arizona was only the latest in thousands of incidents where children are exposed to elemental mercury, a poison that can damage the brain, trigger respiratory failure and cause other serious health problems. Power plants are typically cast as the usual suspects of mercury contamination, since they emit mercury into the air, where it spreads globally. But many children are exposed to toxic levels of mercury much closer to home. Mercury spills inside schools and houses, often unreported, can release vapors into the air for weeks, even years. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12828 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Eric Bland -- "The alleles of my Major Histocompatibility Complex are completely opposite from yours," might not sound like pillow talk, but it is the literal basis for the "chemistry" many couples have. Two companies, Basisnote and Scientific Match, are developing technology to match couples based on the genetic components of the human immune system -- and their odor. Studies have linked odor to immune systems and shown that people are most likely to be attracted to the smells of those who have different histocompatibility genes than their own. While those who have similar immune systems tend to not be attracted to each others' odors. "The MHC helps signal whether I find someone attractive or not," said August Hammerli of the Switzerland based Basisnote. "What we have developed is a saliva assay that measures a person's MHC and how they might react to another individual's MHC profile." It works like this. Clients order a test online and receive it two days later. Then they simply swab their cheeks and put the sample into a machine. Ten minutes later out pops a code of 0's and 1's. Hammerli won't say how many 0's or 1's, or how many different chemicals are being tested. A client enters their unique code at Basisnote's Web site, and the software matches them to a person with a completely different immune system. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 12827 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Alissa Quart We don't want to be normal," Will Hall tells me. The 43-year-old has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and doctors have prescribed antipsychotic medication for him. But Hall would rather value his mentally extreme states than try to suppress them, so he doesn't take his meds. Instead, he practices yoga and avoids coffee and sugar. He is delicate and thin, with dark plum polish on his fingernails and black fashion sneakers on his feet, his half Native American ancestry evident in his dark hair and dark eyes. Cultivated and charismatic, he is also unusually energetic, so much so that he seems to be vibrating even when sitting still. I met Hall one night at the offices of the Icarus Project in Manhattan. He became a leader of the group—a "mad pride" collective—in 2005 as a way to promote the idea that mental-health diagnoses like bipolar disorder are "dangerous gifts" rather than illnesses. While we talked, members of the group—Icaristas, as they call themselves—scurried around in the purple-painted office, collating mad-pride fliers. Hall explained how the medical establishment has for too long relied heavily on medication and repression of behavior of those deemed "not normal." Icarus and groups like it are challenging the science that psychiatry says is on its side. Hall believes that psychiatrists are prone to making arbitrary distinctions between "crazy" and "healthy," and to using medication as tranquilizers. "For most people, it used to be, 'Mental illness is a disease—here is a pill you take for it'," says Hall. "Now that's breaking down." Indeed, Hall came of age in the era of the book "Listening to Prozac." He initially took Prozac after it was prescribed to him for depression in 1990. But he was not simply depressed, and he soon had a manic reaction to Prozac, a not uncommon side effect. In his frenetic state, Hall went on to lose a job at an environmental organization. He soon descended into poverty and started to hear furious voices in his head; he walked the streets of San Francisco night after night, but the voices never quieted. © 2009 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 12826 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JOHN TIERNEY Imagine that you have ditched your laptop and turned off your smartphone. You are beyond the reach of YouTube, Facebook, e-mail, text messages. You are in a Twitter-free zone, sitting in a taxicab with a copy of “Rapt,” a guide by Winifred Gallagher to the science of paying attention. The book’s theme, which Ms. Gallagher chose after she learned she had an especially nasty form of cancer, is borrowed from the psychologist William James: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” You can lead a miserable life by obsessing on problems. You can drive yourself crazy trying to multitask and answer every e-mail message instantly. Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information, accentuate the positive and achieve the satisfactions of what Ms. Gallagher calls the focused life. It can sound wonderfully appealing, except that as you sit in the cab reading about the science of paying attention, you realize that ... you’re not paying attention to a word on the page. The taxi’s television, which can’t be turned off, is showing a commercial of a guy in a taxi working on a laptop — and as long as he’s jabbering about how his new wireless card has made him so productive during his cab ride, you can’t do anything productive during yours. Why can’t you concentrate on anything except your desire to shut him up? And even if you flee the cab, is there any realistic refuge anymore from the Age of Distraction? Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention; Vision
Link ID: 12825 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Caitlin Gibson Leah's voice was calm on the phone. I'm on my way home, she said. Sarah died this morning. In the steady tone my best friend would use to say she had a flat tire or was late for class, Leah explained that she was about to board a flight to join her family as they prepared for her little sister's funeral. Leah had known on some level that this might happen. She'd read the books, done the research and understood that girls with eating disorders got better, or they didn't. She saw Sarah as what she was: the everygirl of her illness, not immune because she was smart and beautiful, popular and athletic. But the knowledge that it might happen did nothing to prepare Leah. Her false serenity lasted until the funeral, where she sat beside her parents in the synagogue and greeted a seemingly endless line of mourners. I took my place behind her, next to her aunt. Person after person shuffled forward to offer tearful embraces, and Leah's cocoon suddenly collapsed. The piercing cry that tore from her throat silenced the room. Leah's aunt and I lunged forward in the instinctive way that one body answers another: our palms pressed against her back, fingers wrapped around her shoulders. Leah's scream subsided into a whimper, then quiet. The day shuddered on. A growing consensus suggests that for young people with eating disorders, the sooner the problem is identified and aggressively treated, the better the chance of recovery. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 12824 - Posted: 06.24.2010