by Melissa Lafsky While a bouncy tune chirps in the background, Sally, an animated cable car with a live-action human face, makes her way over a viaduct, beaming as a narrator explains how “very happy” she is to carry her passengers to their destination. Midway across, her cable clamp malfunctions, leaving her stuck high above a waterway running through a quiet village. Charlie, a happy-go-lucky tram with the face of a thirtysomething man, is her only hope of rescue. In careful, simple language, the narrator explains that Sally is afraid during the experience, while Charlie is happy when he succeeds in delivering her from danger. As each emotion is named, the characters grin, frown, or grimace accordingly. No, it’s not the latest Disney project or Thomas the Tank Engine rip-off. It’s a new therapy for autism. Simon Baron-Cohen, one of the world’s preeminent autism experts, developed the DVD, and he says his research shows that it brings significant improvements to children with autism, a syndrome that has stubbornly resisted treatment after treatment. Called The Transporters, the DVD aims to teach kids on the higher level of the autistic spectrum a key skill that many of them find nearly impossible: how to understand emotions. The number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder is increasing at an astounding rate, rising approximately tenfold in the past two decades. While the cause of this huge increase is still being debated—is it an actual rise in cases or simply an expansion in awareness and diagnosis?—more and more resources are being directed toward treating the rising number of children with the disorder.

Keyword: Autism; Emotions
Link ID: 12623 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kurt Soller Last week, when a landmark nutrition study came out in The New England Journal of Medicine, many dieters were probably saying "Duh." That's because researchers finally confirmed what we all kind of knew: the way to lose weight is to eat less. No, really, it doesn't matter how you mix and match your carbohydrates, fats and proteins. The best diet, researchers found, was one that reduced calorie intake dramatically (but to no less than 1,200 calories everyday). But here's the catch. Figuring out which dieting tricks and tactics boost the kind of willpower you need to turn down those fries, Oreos or piña coladas is far more complicated than just counting calories. And, it turns out, many of the weight-loss strategies that inspire women won't work for men—and vice versa. That's because dudes diet differently. Here's why: 1. Guys can just say "No" to problem foods Earlier this year, the Brookhaven National Laboratory conducted a study where they presented male and female subjects their favorite foods, then monitored their brain activity using positron emission tomography (PET) scans. Ladies, the gents beat you: they were able to suppress their hunger and their desire to eat, while brain activity among the women showed that many continued to crave their favorite foods, even after being told to think of something else. In layman's terms, we call this "emotional eating," something that trainer and American Dietetic Association spokesman Jim White says is an "uphill battle" for his female clients, but not the male ones. The guys must be too busy thinking of something else—or nothing at all? © 2009 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Obesity; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12622 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - Optimists live longer, healthier lives than pessimists, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that may give pessimists one more reason to grumble. Researchers at University of Pittsburgh looked at rates of death and chronic health conditions among participants of the Women's Health Initiative study, which has followed more than 100,000 women ages 50 and over since 1994. Women who were optimistic -- those who expect good rather than bad things to happen -- were 14 percent less likely to die from any cause than pessimists and 30 percent less likely to die from heart disease after eight years of follow up in the study. Optimists also were also less likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes or smoke cigarettes. The team, led Dr. Hilary Tindle, also looked at women who were highly mistrustful of other people -- a group they called "cynically hostile" -- and compared them with women who were more trusting. Women in the cynically hostile group tended to agree with questions such as: "I've often had to take orders from someone who didn't know as much as I did" or "It's safest to trust nobody," Tindle said in a telephone interview. "These questions prove a general mistrust of people," said Tindle, who presented her study Thursday at the American Psychosomatic Society's annual meeting in Chicago.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology; Emotions
Link ID: 12621 - Posted: 03.07.2009

Nicholas Wade In a striking instance of biologists' new prowess at manipulating human cells, researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., have converted skin cells from people with Parkinson's disease into the general type of neuron that is destroyed in the disease. The new approach, though it requires much further work, would in principle allow the brain cells that are lost in Parkinson's to be replaced with cells that carried no risk of immune rejection because they would be the patients' own. The Whitehead scientists, reporting in Thursday's issue of the journal Cell, said that the method worked in five patients whose skin cells were transformed in the test tube into neurons that produce dopamine, a chemical that transmits messages between neurons in certain regions of the brain. It is the loss of dopamine-producing nerve cells that leads to the symptoms of Parkinson's. The immediate goal of the research, led by Frank Soldner and Rudolf Jaenisch, is to grow the dopamine-producing cells in the laboratory to seek the cause of the disease. The cells could be exposed to the various environmental toxins that have come under suspicion as possible contributory causes of Parkinson's. A longer-term goal is to prepare cells suitable for transplantation. The cells of a Parkinson's patient presumably have some innate predisposition to the disease. But because the disease generally does not show up for 50 years or more, an infusion of a new batch of cells may give the patient more useful years. © 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 12620 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Sunita Reed Scientists and physicians know some of the roles of the hormone oxytocin in people. In women, it triggers childbirth and also allows them to breast feed their babies. Research has also shown that oxytocin via nasal spray can increase people’s generosity and trust. And extensive studies in mice show that oxytocin is important in bonding between parents (including father mice) and their offspring. It also helps mice recognize each other, which is a type of “social memory.” Mice that lacked the hormone exhibited problems with social memory while other kinds of memory remained intact. It was this base of knowledge that led neuroscientist Ulrike Rimmele and colleagues at University of Zurich to study

Keyword:
Link ID: 12619 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Hazel Muir Musical training might help autistic children to interpret other people's emotions. A study has revealed brain changes involved in playing a musical instrument that seem to enhance your ability to pick up subtle emotional cues in conversation. "It seems that playing music can help you do all kinds of things better," says Nina Kraus from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. "Musical experience sharpens your hearing not just for music, but for other sounds too." Earlier studies suggested that musicians are especially good at identifying emotions expressed in speech, such as anger or sadness. But it wasn't clear what kind of brain activity makes the difference. Trained brain To find out, Kraus and her colleagues recruited 30 musicians and non-musicians, aged 19 to 35. Entertained by watching a subtitled nature film, they repeatedly heard a baby crying through earphones (hear an example). Using scalp electrodes, the team measured the electrical response to the sounds in each volunteer's brainstem, which links the auditory nerve to the cerebral cortex. In the musicians, the response to complex parts of the sound, in which the frequency rapidly changes, was especially high. But the musicians had lower responses than non-musicians to simpler sections of the baby's sound. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Emotions; Hearing
Link ID: 12618 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charlene Sadler, CBC News A chair that allows the hearing-impaired to experience music in a new way will be featured at a concert in Toronto designed for deaf people. The Emoti-Chair is a three-year venture developed at Ryerson University's centre for learning technologies in conjunction with the science of music, auditory research and technology (SMART) lab. The idea is to treat the skin as a hearing membrane, said Carmen Branje, one of the Ryerson researchers. Branje, 26, who has a bachelor's degree in computing science and a master's in management science, also plays drums in the Toronto punk rock band Hollywood Swank, one of the groups that will be performing at the concert on Thursday. David Fourney, a PhD candidate with Ryerson's mechanical engineering program, had the chance to use the Emoti-Chair. CBC News : I'm fascinated with the idea that the skin can be used to detect sound. Fourney : "The skin is the body's largest organ. One of its main properties is that is designed for touch. As a hard-of-hearing person, I can tell you that for me, hearing sound is like another form of touch. "Have you ever felt a sound that literally tickled your ear? Did you know that sound can actually move the hairs in your ear canal? I know, because I have experienced it. I have actually felt it. Sound can actually be ticklish. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Hearing; Robotics
Link ID: 12617 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The brain adapts to find new visual information when a person gets eye disease causing blindness, according to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Researchers found that when people lose their sight because of macular degeneration, the affected neurons simply start seeking visual input from other, non-affected parts of the eye. Their findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience. "This study shows us one way that the brain changes when its inputs change. Neurons seem to 'want' to receive input: when their usual input disappears, they start responding to the next best thing," wrote lead researcher Nancy Kanwisher of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. It appears the long-term change in visual behaviour is not driving the brain's remapping; rather, it's the brain's relatively passive response to visual deprivation. Macular degeneration is the most common form of adult blindness. It affects 800,000 people in Canada. Those suffering from it progressively lose vision in the central visual field of their retina, or their fovea. That means the corresponding part of the visual cortex in the brain also loses input. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 12616 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Matthias Gamer A young man steals across the hallway, slips through a door and scans the room. He opens a drawer, snatches a wristwatch inside and puts it in his pocket. Then he hurries out the door. Sixty more people perform the same drill, half of them filching a watch and the others, a ring. Psychiatrist F. Andrew Kozel, now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and his colleagues promised to give a bonus payment to anyone who could conceal the deed from the scientists, who planned to look into their brains for signs of a cover-up. Kozel and his co-workers scanned the volunteers’ brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which provides a measure of neural activity in different brain areas. During the scans, the subjects answered questions about the theft such as “Did you steal a watch?” or “Did you steal a ring?” The researchers also asked neutral yes/no queries as well as questions about minor wrongful acts. Each participant could truthfully deny stealing one of the objects but had to lie about the other to conceal the deed. (The volunteers were supposed to answer the unrelated questions truthfully.) Kozel and his team initially identified typical neural activity patterns for true and false statements. Then, in the first use of fMRI to detect deception in individuals, the researchers used the patterns they identified to correctly determine whether each of the subjects had taken a watch or a ring 90 percent of the time. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Stress; Brain imaging
Link ID: 12615 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Emily Sohn -- Around the world, increasing numbers of male fish are developing female traits -- growing new sexual organs and sometimes even producing eggs. The phenomenon has been blamed mostly on chemicals that get into the water and mimic the female hormone estrogen. But a new study puts some of the blame on an entirely different class of chemicals -- ones that block the action of male hormones called androgens. It isn't the first study to suggest that anti-androgens might be contributing to the feminization of fish. But the new research found that there are far more of these chemicals in our lakes and streams than anyone realized. And anti-androgenic chemicals in the water might affect human health as well. "They are going to be some potent players," said Charles Tyler, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Exeter in England. "It is possible that there are going to be many more chemicals that are anti-androgenic than are estrogenic." Tyler, along with Susan Jobling at Brunel University in London and other colleagues, looked at chemical run-off in 51 rivers throughout the United Kingdom. By combining concentrated water samples with cultures of yeast genetically engineered to have androgen receptors, the scientists were able to measure the amount of anti-androgen activity in each sample. The researchers' results, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, revealed a significant amount of anti-androgenic activity in nearly all of the samples tested. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12614 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- "New and improved" could describe a brush-tipped probe invented by wild chimpanzees in Africa that found it did a better job than previous versions of the tool at gathering termites for consumption, according to a new study. The discovery adds to the growing body of evidence that technological advancements are not limited to human populations. New Caledonian crows fall under the higher tech heading as well, since they too improved upon an old gadget by adding a hook that, like a fishing lure, can retrieve food from narrow spaces. The recently identified chimpanzee brush tool, described in the latest Royal Society Journal Biology Letters, requires even more effort to construct. Co-author Josep Call told Discovery News that chimps first uproot the stem of a plant "or use their teeth to clip the stem at the base and then remove the large leaf from the distal end by clipping it with their teeth before transporting the stem to the termite nest." At the termite site, "they complete tool manufacture by modifying the end into a 'paint brush' tip by pulling the stem through their teeth, splitting the probe lengthwise by pulling off strands of fiber, or separating the fibers by biting them," added Call, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology. space station © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12613 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR People with bipolar disorder are at risk for an array of fatal illnesses, according to a review of 17 studies involving more than 331,000 patients. The researchers, writing in the February issue of Psychiatric Services, looked at studies of patients whose bipolar illness was severe enough to require hospitalization. Mortality in those patients ranged from 35 percent to 200 percent higher than in comparison groups. In the larger studies, almost every cause of death was higher among bipolar patients: cardiovascular, respiratory, cerebrovascular (including strokes), and endocrine (like diabetes). In the smaller studies, mortality from cerebrovascular disease was higher among those with bipolar illness, but they showed inconsistent results, probably because they used smaller samples or less representative populations. Several markers of inflammation — often a precursor of heart attacks and strokes — are higher among bipolar patients than others. The chronic stress of bipolar illness may lead to metabolic syndrome and atherosclerosis, or to insulin resistance, which increase the risk for sudden cardiac death. And psychiatric medications, because many lead to weight gain, may increase the risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disorders. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 12612 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A top medical journal has cast doubt on whether a testosterone patch designed to boost post-menopausal women's flagging sex drive actually works. The Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB) also said the long-term safety of Intrinsa remained unproven. It criticised trials of the treatment as flawed and inconclusive. The makers, Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, said Intrinsa had been thoroughly tested, and had been shown to be effective. The falling away of sexual desire after the menopause is known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). There is some evidence that the condition may be linked to low levels of the sex hormone testosterone. Intrinsa is designed to address the problem by releasing a daily dose of the hormone into the blood stream from a patch worn on the lower abdomen. It is prescribed for women with HSDD who are also receiving therapy to top up levels of another sex hormone, oestrogen. The patch was licensed by the European Medicines Evaluation Agency in July 2006. However, the journal said that key trials of the patches involved highly selective groups of women, and excluded those with various mental or physical conditions that could also affect their sex drive. In some trials, the journal said, a diagnosis of HSDD was made on the basis of short, unvalidated questionnaires. In addition, significant numbers of women who took part in the trial reported that their sex life picked up even though they were given a dummy treatment with no biological effect. This, the journal said, suggested that low levels of testosterone might not have been the problem in the first place. In some instances women reported having sex up to three times a month before the trials - raising questions over whether they had a poor sex drive at all from the outset. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12611 - Posted: 03.03.2009

Vitamin B12 is found in meat, dairy products, eggs, fish, shellfish and fortified breakfast cerealsVitamin B12 is found in meat, dairy products, eggs, fish, shellfish and fortified breakfast cereals (CBC) Women with low levels of vitamin B12 before and after conception are at higher risk of giving birth to babies with brain or spinal cord defects, say researchers who recommend that women of childbearing age get enough of the vitamin in addition to folic acid. In the March issue of Pediatrics, Irish and American researchers said women with low B12 had at least 2.5 times the risk of giving birth to a child with neural tube defects that can lead to partial paralysis or death, compared with women with the highest levels of the vitamin. Since the vitamin is more common in meat and animal-based foods, vegans and vegetarians are at greater risk for the deficiency, the researchers said. "Vitamin B12 is essential for the functioning of the nervous system and for the production of red blood cells," said Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethseda, Md. "The results of this study suggest that women with low levels of B12 not only may risk health problems of their own, but also may increase the chance that their children may be born with a serious birth defect." © CBC 2009

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12610 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carolyn Y. Johnson Two decades ago, medicine seemed on the cusp of a revolution. Doctors would soon treat diseases at their very roots, inserting "good" genes to replace patients' faulty ones. Gene therapy was a seductively straightforward idea that offered promise for treating everything from cancer to sickle cell disease. But only now, after overcoming unexpected scientific obstacles and the high-profile death of a teenage patient, is gene therapy racking up some clear-cut successes. Promising studies are sending ripples of excitement through the field. Some researchers are daring to use the word cure. "Yes, we have endured a few more years of questions about gene therapy: Does it really work? Is it really safe?" said Savio Woo, a professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and a past president of the American Society of Gene Therapy. "Now we can show it does work, and it's safe." That doesn't mean that people will be lining up for gene therapy any time soon. No treatments have been approved yet. But researchers are finally pointing to a few inspiring successes, untainted by the kind of tragedy that cast a shadow on the field in the past. Gene therapy started the year with a bang: Researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that the technique cured eight of 10 children suffering from usually lethal "bubble boy disease," a lack of immunity that leaves children vulnerable to infections. After two to eight years, all the patients were alive, unlike a previous trial. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Vision
Link ID: 12609 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Shankar Vedantam For many years, scientists have explored how parental conflicts and other marital problems can affect the well-being of children. Far less attention has been paid to the opposite question: How do children, especially difficult children, influence the quality of married life? Couples who have a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are nearly twice as likely to divorce or separate as couples who do not have children with the psychiatric disorder, according to a definitive new study that is the first to explicitly explore the question. The reason appears simple: Having a child who is inattentive or hyperactive can be extremely stressful for caregivers and can exacerbate conflicts, tensions and arguments between parents. The research topic is sensitive because it can be easily misinterpreted to mean that scientists are blaming kids for the marital woes of their parents; that may be one reason researchers have generally avoided the topic and limited their investigations to how parental conflicts affect children. But increasingly, the evidence suggests that the lines of influence run in both directions. The study, led by psychologists Brian Wymbs and William Pelham and published last year in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, longitudinally tracked a large number of families with and without children diagnosed with ADHD, a disorder characterized by inattention and hyperactivity and often accompanied by conduct problems and oppositional behavior. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: ADHD; Stress
Link ID: 12608 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Parents often report that tummy troubles and autism go hand in hand. Some have even suggested that special diets can reduce autism symptoms. But many experts have dismissed the connection as mere coincidence or have attributed the overlapping conditions to different genetic or environmental factors. Now new research, published in the March Pediatrics, shows that there is a genetic link between autism and gastrointestinal disorders. It’s unclear whether this genetic link means that an environmental therapy such as diet could boost brain function or if just feeling better could be responsible for improved behavior. Researchers from Vanderbilt University had previously linked a genetic variant in the control panel of the MET gene to autism. In the general population, some people have the DNA letter G in a particular position in the control panel, which determines whether the MET gene is active. Other people have a C in that position. That variant of the gene, known as the MET C allele, turns down production of MET, a protein involved in brain development, gut repair and other body functions. Children who inherit copies of MET C from both parents have more than twice the risk of developing autism as children who get the G variety from both parents. In the new study, the Vanderbilt team and additional colleagues found that children with autism who have two copies of MET C are also more likely to have gastrointestinal problems than people who have two copies of the G variant or a combination of G and C. The study is the first to demonstrate a possible genetic cause for the co-occurrence of autism and digestive tract problems. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12607 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jack Penland For years, scientists have seen a link between odd hours and health-threatening conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but, according to Frank Scheer of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, “The underlying mechanism was not well understood.” “What we wanted to know,” says Scheer, was if living hours opposite from your internal body clock “would lead to physiological changes that may in the long run lead to increased risk for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.” Scheer and Steven Shea, also with Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical school, led a team that inverted the hours of ten volunteers over ten days. He says, “We were struck actually by the speed of the changes that we observed.” During the testing the scientists took hourly measurements of blood sugar and hormones such as leptin, which is important in regulating someone’s appetite and body weight. He added, “Even within a few days we observed quite dramatic changes in all these hormone systems.” The results went so far that, “three of the individuals showed blood glucose levels which were consistent with a pre-diabetic state.” In a clinical setting, ten young, healthy and normal-weight volunteers agreed to be tested over ten days. The first two were normal days where blood samples were taken and baseline blood sugar and hormone levels established. Over the next eight days the volunteers lived 28-hour days. In other words, if the normal wake time was 7 am and bed time 11 pm, then it was shifted to waking at 11 am and sleeping at 3 am on the first day, waking at 3 pm on the second and sleeping at 7 am on the third and so on until they were back to a regular day. ©2009 ScienCentral

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 12606 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Haley Stephenson If nicotine liked muscle receptors as much as it likes brain receptors, a single cigarette would kill. Scientists have finally figured out why the molecule is so picky--a finding that may shed light on the addictiveness of smoking. For nicotine--or any molecule--to interact with its receptor, the two must bind. Having opposite charges on the molecule and the receptor's binding site, referred to as the "box," helps. But the nicotine receptors in the brain and muscles are nearly identical--nicotine has a positive charge, and both receptors' boxes have a negative charge. So something else must explain why the brain loves nicotine whereas muscles shun it. After more than a decade of work, Dennis Dougherty, a chemist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and his colleagues finally have the answer. It turns out that a single amino acid makes all the difference. Near the box region, the brain receptor has a lysine molecule, whereas the muscle receptor has a glycine molecule. What the lysine does, Dougherty and colleagues report online this week in Nature, is change the shape of the brain receptor's box, effectively making its negative charge more accessible to nicotine--a situation known as a cation-pi interaction. "The box reshapes so nicotine can cozy up," Dougherty says. For its part, the box in the muscle receptor is ideally configured for a molecule known as acetylcholine, which helps muscles contract. When Dougherty's team switched out the muscle receptor's glycine for a lysine, the muscle embraced nicotine as if it were acetylcholine. It's a good thing that doesn't happen in the body, says Mark Levandoski, a chemist at Grinnell College in Iowa, who was not part of the study. Smoking would immediately trigger abnormal contractions that would paralyze muscles, like those involved in breathing. "If nicotine were lighting up our muscles the way acetylcholine does, we'd be in big trouble," Levandoski says. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12605 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER In seeking bipartisan support for his economic policies, President Obama has tried every tip on the standard hospitality crib sheet: beer and football, milk and cookies, Earth, Wind and Fire. Maybe the president needs to borrow a new crib sheet — the kind with a genuine baby wrapped inside. A baby may look helpless. It can’t walk, talk, think symbolically or overhaul the nation’s banking system. Yet as social emulsifiers go, nothing can beat a happily babbling baby. A baby is born knowing how to work the crowd. A toothless smile here, a musical squeal there, and even hard-nosed cynics grow soft in the head and weak in the knees. In the view of the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the extraordinary social skills of an infant are at the heart of what makes us human. Through its ability to solicit and secure the attentive care not just of its mother but of many others in its sensory purview, a baby promotes many of the behaviors and emotions that we prize in ourselves and that often distinguish us from other animals, including a willingness to share, to cooperate with strangers, to relax one’s guard, uncurl one’s lip and widen one’s pronoun circle beyond the stifling confines of me, myself and mine. As Dr. Hrdy argues in her latest book, “Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding,” which will be published by Harvard University Press in April, human babies are so outrageously dependent on their elders for such a long time that humanity would never have made it without a break from the great ape model of child-rearing. Chimpanzee and gorilla mothers are capable of rearing their offspring pretty much through their own powers, but human mothers are not. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Evolution
Link ID: 12604 - Posted: 06.24.2010