By Moheb Costandi In the 1920s the behavioral psychologist Karl Lashley conducted a now famous series of experiments in an attempt to identify the part of the brain in which memories are stored. He trained rats to find their way through a maze, then made lesions in different parts of the cerebral cortex in an attempt to erase what he called the "engram," or the original memory trace. Lashley failed to find the engram—his experimental animals were still able to find their way through the maze, no matter where he put lesions on their brains. He therefore concluded that memories are not stored in any single area of the brain, but are instead distributed throughout it. Subsequent work on amnesics—most notably the studies of the recently deceased patient known only as H.M. carried out by Brenda Milner—implicated a part of the brain called the hippocampus as being crucial for memory formation. More recently, it was established that the frontal cortex is also involved; current thinking holds that new memories are encoded in the hippocampus and then eventually transferred to the frontal lobes for long-term storage. A new study, led by Christine Smith and Larry Squire at the University of California at San Diego, now provides evidence that the age of a memory determines the extent to which we are dependent on the frontal cortex and hippocampus for recalling it. In other words, the location of a recollection in the brain varies based on how old that recollection is. Smith and Squire assessed the brain activity associated with the recollection of old and new memories. They recruited 15 healthy male participants, and used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan their brains while they answered 160 questions about news events that took place at different periods of time during the past 30 years. The study sounds simple, but the design of the experiments was actually somewhat complex, because the researchers had to overcome a number of confounding variables. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12543 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MATTHEW PERRONE WASHINGTON -- Two drugmakers spent hundreds of millions of dollars last year to raise awareness of a murky illness, helping boost sales of pills recently approved as treatments and drowning out unresolved questions _ including whether it's a real disease at all. Key components of the industry-funded buzz over the pain-and-fatigue ailment fibromyalgia are grants _ more than $6 million donated by drugmakers Eli Lilly and Pfizer in the first three quarters of 2008 _ to nonprofit groups for medical conferences and educational campaigns, an Associated Press analysis found. That's more than they gave for more accepted ailments such as diabetes and Alzheimer's. Among grants tied to specific diseases, fibromyalgia ranked third for each company, behind only cancer and AIDS for Pfizer and cancer and depression for Lilly. Fibromyalgia draws skepticism for several reasons. The cause is unknown. There are no tests to confirm a diagnosis. Many patients also fit the criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome and other pain ailments. Experts don't doubt the patients are in pain. They differ on what to call it and how to treat it. Many doctors and patients say the drugmakers are educating the medical establishment about a misunderstood illness, much as they did with depression in the 1980s. Those with fibromyalgia have often had to fight perceptions that they are hypochondriacs, or even faking their pain. © 2009 The Associated Press

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 12542 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Andy Coghlan Injections of a natural growth factor into the brains of mice, rats and monkeys offers hope of preventing or reversing the earliest impacts of Alzheimer's disease on memory. The benefits arose even in animals whose brains contained the hallmark plaques that clog up the brains of patients. By delivering brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) directly into the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, the parts of the brain where memories are formed then consolidated, the researchers successfully tackled damage exactly where Alzheimer's strikes first. "We're administering BDNF directly to the degenerating neurons in memory systems of the cortex, and preventing their death," says Mark Tuszynski of the University of California at San Diego. The substance, which naturally supports brain cells throughout life, also amplified the numbers of connections, or synapses, between neurons. "Our most compelling evidence was the observation that brain cell death was prevented, and that connections between neurons rose in density by about 25%," says Tuszynski. Improvements on this scale happened in all the animals, including mice with a version of human Alzheimer's disease, elderly rats and monkeys with natural degeneration, plus rats and monkeys given brain lesions similar to those seen in Alzheimer's. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers; Trophic Factors
Link ID: 12541 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Frequent or long-term marijuana use may raise a man's risk of testicular cancer, American research suggests. The study of 369 men, published in the journal Cancer, found being a regular marijuana user doubled the risk compared to those who never smoked it. The results suggest that it may be linked to the most aggressive form of the cancer. A spokesman for Cancer Research UK said that no previous studies had found a link between marijuana and the disease. Testicular cancer is one of the most common cancers in younger men, with approximately 2,000 new cases each year in the UK. Incidence in Europe and North America is far higher than in some other parts of the world, and has been rising steadily for no apparent reason. Known risk factors for the cancer include previous injuries to the testicles, a family history of the disease, or suffering from undescended testicles as a young child. The study from scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle is the first to look specifically at marijuana use in relation to the disease. They studied 369 men aged 18 to 44, who had been diagnosed with testicular cancer, and quizzed them about marijuana use. Their replies were compared to those from almost 1,000 apparently healthy control subjects. Even after adjusting the figures to take account of the other known risk factors, marijuana use remained a clear risk factor for testicular cancer. Just being a marijuana smoker seemed to carry a 70% extra risk, while those who smoked it regularly, or had smoked from an early age, had twice the risk compared to those who had never smoked it. A connection was made to nonseminoma, a fast-growing form of testicular cancer which accounts for approximately 40% of all cases, and tends to strike younger. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12540 - Posted: 02.09.2009

TAKE Ritalin for fun and you run the risk of addiction. That's if the drug causes the same chemical and structural changes in human brains as it does in mice. Ritalin is prescribed to children with hyperactivity disorders, but many American teenagers also take it without a prescription to boost academic performance, or for pleasure. When Yonk Kim and his colleagues at the Rockefeller University in New York gave mice the drug for a fortnight, a greater number of spiny neurons formed in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region stimulated by all addictive drugs (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0813179106). "These changes in neuronal structure and brain chemistry are known to be associated with the process of drug addiction," warns Kim. The finding is backed up by previous studies that found signs of addiction in recreational users. In contrast, hyperactive children prescribed the drug don't usually show signs of addiction. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12539 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have perfected a highly sensitive test to detect vCJD-causing proteins on surgical instruments. The test, which picks up the presence of prions on metal surfaces quickly and accurately, could help show whether decontamination processes are working. Although there is no recorded case of a patient developing vCJD after surgery, experts say it is possible. The test has been developed by the Medical Research Council Prion Unit at University College London. Details are featured in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As well as causing vCJD, prions are also responsible for a disease called kuru in humans, BSE in cattle and scrapie in sheep. They are known to be able to survive conventional hospital sterilisation methods. Professor John Collinge, director of the MRC Prion Unit, said: ''The presence of prions in blood and body tissues beyond the brain make many surgical and dental procedures a potential risk factor for transmission of prion diseases. "Research has found that prions can withstand many sterilisation techniques, are very sticky and, when attached to a metal surface like a surgical instrument, are even more resistant to both chemical and heat treatments.'' The new test is much faster, and 100 times more sensitive than the existing test which involves injecting samples of suspect tissue into the brain of a mouse or hamster, and waiting for the animal to develop symptoms of disease. It also makes it possible to test many samples at once at a relatively low cost. The new test uses steel wires to enhance the sensitivity of a standard cell-based prion detection test called SCEPA (scrapie cell endpoint assay). The prions present even in a very dilute sample bind tightly to the surface of the steel wires. The wires are then covered with special cells that are very susceptible to prion infection. (C)BBC

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 12538 - Posted: 02.07.2009

Alison Abbott Researchers in Sweden have revealed a surprising change in brain biochemistry that occurs during the training of working memory, a buffer that stores information for the few second required to solve problems or even to understand what we are reading. The discovery may have implications for understanding disorders in which working memory is deficient — such as schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Working memory depends on the transmission of signals in certain parts of the brain by the chemical dopamine and one of its receptors, the D1 receptor, particularly in the parietal and frontal regions of the cortex. The efficiency of working memory drops off as people age. But the 'use-it-or-lose-it' adage holds true — working memory can be improved through training. Torkel Klingberg, a neurologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and his colleagues studied what happened to D1 receptors in the brains of healthy young men during such training1. In particular, the researchers wanted to see whether the density of the receptors changes, because when dopamine is plentiful, dopamine receptors 'downregulate' — that is, move from the nerve-cell membrane to the inside of the cell, where they cannot be activated. This is a normal 'tune-down' mechanism to avoid overstimulation. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 12537 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Lengthy television viewing in adolescence may raise the risk for depression in young adulthood, according to a new report. The study, published in the February issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry, found a rising risk of depressive symptoms with increasing hours spent watching television. There was no association of depression with exposure to computer games, videocassettes or radio. Researchers used data from a larger analysis of 4,142 adolescents who were not depressed at the start of the study. After seven years of follow-up, more than 7 percent had symptoms of depression. But while about 6 percent of those who watched under three hours a day were depressed, more than 17 percent of those who watched more than nine hours a day had depressive symptoms. The association was stronger in boys than in girls, and it held after adjusting for age, race, socioeconomic status and educational level. “We really don’t know what it was specifically about TV exposure that was associated with depression, whether it was a particular kind of programming or some contextual factor such as watching alone or with other people,” said Dr. Brian Primack, the lead author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. “Therefore, I would be uneasy to make any blanket recommendations based on this one study.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12536 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Melinda Wenner Suicide rates in the U.S. have increased for the first time in a decade, according to a report published in October by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. But what leads a person to commit suicide? Three new studies suggest that the neurological changes in a brain of a suicide victim differ markedly from those in other brains and that these changes develop over the course of a lifetime. The most common pathway to suicide is through depression, which afflicts two thirds of all people who kill themselves. In October researchers in Canada found that the depressed who commit suicide have an abnormal distribution of receptors for the chemical GABA, one of the most abundant neurotransmitters in the brain. GABA’s role is to inhibit neuron activity. “If you think about the gas pedal and brakes on a car, GABA is the brakes,” explains co-author Michael Poulter, a neuroscientist at the Robarts Research Institute at the University of Western Ontario. Poulter and his colleagues found that one of the thousands of types of receptors for GABA is underrepresented in the frontopolar cortex of people with major depressive disorder who have committed suicide as compared with nondepressed people who died of other causes. The frontopolar cortex is involved in higher-order thinking, such as decision making. The scientists do not yet know how this abnormality leads to the type of major depression that makes someone suicidal, but “anything that disturbs that system would be predicted to have some sort of important outcome,” Poulter says. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Depression; Aggression
Link ID: 12535 - Posted: 06.24.2010

LA JOLLA, CA—"Remember when…?" is how many a wistful trip down memory lane begins. But just how the brain keeps tabs on what happened and when is still a matter of speculation. A computational model developed by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies now suggests that newborn brain cells—generated by the thousands each day—add a time-related code, which is unique to memories formed around the same time. "By labeling contemporary events as similar, new neurons allow us to recall events from a certain period," speculates Fred H. Gage, Ph.D., a professor in the Laboratory for Genetics, who led the study published in the Jan. 29, 2009, issue of the journal Neuron. Unlike the kind of time stamp found on digital photographs, however, the neuronal time code only provides relative time. Ironically, Gage and his team had not set out to explain how the brain stores temporal information. Instead they were interested in why adult brains continually spawn new brain cells in the dentate gyrus, the entryway to the hippocampus. The hippocampus, a small seahorse-shaped area of the brain, distributes memory to appropriate storage sections in the brain after readying the information for efficient recall. "At least one percent of all cells in the dentate gyrus are immature at any given time," explains lead author Brad Aimone, a graduate student in the Computational Neuroscience Program at the University of California, San Diego. "Intuitively we feel that those new brain cells have to be good for something, but nobody really knows what it is." © 2009 Eureka! Science News

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 12534 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charles Q. Choi Teens are notoriously self-conscious. Now brain-imaging experiments are revealing how this adolescent predilection might be the result of changes in brain anatomy linked with the self, and the findings may hint at how the sense of self develops in the brain. One way we build a sense of self is by reflecting on how others perceive us, a concept psychologists have dubbed “the looking-glass self.” To see how teenagers reacted to what other people thought of them, researchers asked adolescent girls ages 10 to 18 to imagine a variety of scenarios involving onlookers that were designed to evoke social emotions such as guilt or embarrassment—for example, “You were quietly picking your nose, but your friend saw you.” Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of University College London and her colleagues found that when compared with scenarios describing basic emotions that did not involve the opinions of others, such as fear and disgust, girls who thought about onlookers’ opinions engaged a brain region known as the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) more during social emotional scenarios than adult women did. This area is one of the last regions to develop before adulthood, and it is known to activate in adults when they think about themselves, about other people and even about the personality traits of animals. It makes evolutionary sense for teenagers to be highly concerned about what others think, Blakemore suggests. Adolescence requires becoming more independent because one’s parents might not be around much longer. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12533 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Everyone oohs and ahs over babies. Ironically, new research suggests that young women taking oral contraceptives are especially good at picking out babies with the most adorable little mugs. Female sex hormones sensitize women to differences in babies’ cuteness, propose psychologist Reiner Sprengelmeyer of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and his colleagues. When given choices between computer-manipulated images of a baby’s face, premenopausal women discern gradations in the cuteness of the face better than either postmenopausal women or men of all ages, Sprengelmeyer’s group reports in the February Psychological Science. In the new study, young women taking hormone-boosting contraceptive pills outdid those not taking contraceptives, as well as premenopausal women in general, at detecting babies’ cuteness. Women of all ages identified subtle size differences between pairs of squares with comparable skill, indicating that hormone levels had no effects on basic visual faculties, the researchers assert. Instead, relatively high reproductive hormone levels in premenopausal women make them more emotionally responsive to cute babies, the team suggests. access © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12532 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anna Salleh -- The molecular answer to a 30-year puzzle over what triggers birds to breed in spring has been solved by U.K. researchers. Russell Foster of the University of Oxford unveiled his team's latest findings at a meeting of the Australian Neuroscience Society being held in Canberra. Scientists have long been puzzled how birds know when it's spring breeding time, said Foster, who is a circadian neuroscientist, studying how body clocks are regulated by light. The main way birds could know that it is spring is by detecting the changes in the number of daylight hours. But experiments in the 1930s showed that birds who had their eyes covered or removed still knew when to breed, said Foster. Later experiments implanted fiber optics in birds to simulate a spring-like day and tested the responses of various parts of the brain to this. "These studies found the birds' reproductive system was triggered to become active when the hypothalamus was illuminated," said Foster. Although the hypothalamus is deep in the base of the brain, it can still detect light because, as any child who has ever shone a torch through their hand knows, light penetrates tissue. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Vision
Link ID: 12531 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Though they wouldn't win much applause at a karaoke lounge, the infant forms of blue butterflies can belt out a convincing cover version of a tune favoured by red ants - which show their appreciation by protecting and feeding the butterfly larvae. Researchers have found that the larvae and pupae of Maculinea rebeli - a parasitic butterfly native to western Europe, though threatened with extinction - impersonate red ants so faithfully that worker ants worship them as if they were queens, caring for the developing caterpillar even at the expense of their own lives. "They appeared to be treating the caterpillars as if they were the holiest of holiest, the pinnacle of power, the queen ant," says Jeremy Thomas, an entomologist at the University of Oxford who led the new study. Listen to caterpillars imitating ants here, pupae making ant-noises here, the noise of the queen ant here and a worker ant here Playing queen As young caterpillars, M. rebeli spend their days gorging on leafy greens. When they're nearly ready to begin their transformation into a butterfly, the caterpillars descend to the forest floor and secrete ant-like chemicals. Duped worker ants ferry the caterpillar to its colony, where it is accepted as another ant, based on its smell alone. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Animal Communication; Hearing
Link ID: 12530 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Greg Miller If you're thinking of hiring a tax accountant, you might want to note the color of his office. According to a new study, the color red can improve performance on detail-oriented tasks--a desirable thing if your goal is an accurate return. However, if you're hoping to pare down your tax bill with any possible deductions, no matter how far-fetched, you might look for an accountant with a blue office--that color boosts creativity, the researchers report. Previous research on how color affects cognition has yielded inconsistent findings, says Rui (Juliet) Zhu, a consumer psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Some studies find that red enhances cognition, for example, while other studies suggest the opposite. Zhu suspected this might be because the work didn't pay enough attention to which types of cognition were being affected. Red might enhance performance on some tasks, she reasoned, while impairing performance on others. To investigate, Zhu and graduate student Ravi Mehta manipulated the background color on a computer screen while volunteers, mostly undergraduate students, performed a variety of tasks. For those that required attention to detail--such as proofreading a list of addresses--participants were slightly more accurate when the background was red, compared to blue or white. Blue, on the other hand, stimulated creativity. When subjects were asked to name as many uses for a brick as they could think of in a minute, they came up with more creative responses (such as "to use it as a scratch post for animals") and earned higher creativity scores from a jury of their student peers when the background was blue, Mehta and Zhu report online today in Science. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions; Vision
Link ID: 12529 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Nick Lane IF YOU stopped eating today, you wouldn't survive more than two months. A crocodile, on the other hand, might live for a year or more. Why the difference? You waste most of the food you eat generating heat. The evolution of warm-bloodedness, or endothermy, is one of life's great mysteries. Sure, there are some advantages - staying active in the cold, keeping young cosy and warm, and avoiding having to go out into the open to soak up heat from the sun. The thing is, you could get much the same advantages by turning up the heat only when and where in the body it is needed, as many animals do. So why do most birds and mammals keep the furnaces burning 24/7? Staying warm - which for birds means 40 °C on average - comes at a price. Some warm-blooded animals have to eat as much in one day as similarly sized reptiles do in a month, a dangerous and time-consuming strategy. Biologists have long struggled to understand why we mammals and our feathery cousins are warm-blooded. The standard explanation is that it evolved in small carnivores to enable an active, predatory lifestyle. Last year, however, a radical new idea was put forward: warm blood evolved not in carnivores but in herbivores, as a way of balancing their nutrient requirements. Though it is early days, this idea could explain not only why we have such an apparently wasteful lifestyle, but also a long-standing question about the dinosaurs (see "Why did dinosaurs grow so big?"). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12528 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Simon Crompton A magic pill that makes you slim with no side-effects would be the 21st century's goose that lays the golden egg. With 13 million people forecast to become obese by 2010, the market for a miracle cure is huge. Dieters spent £47million last year on pills and diet aids, just one segment of an industry with a turnover of £1 billion a year. It's no wonder that so many companies want to jump on this lucrative bandwagon. “I achieved the impossible,” ran the headline after a woman in America claimed that Alli, an anti-obesity drug to be made available in British pharmacies this spring, had enabled her to lose 4st (25.4kg) in 18 months. Last week came the news that we're using eight times the number of slimming tablets than we were seven years ago. But their ingredients do not include miracles. The singer Kelly Osbourne checked into rehab last week, rumoured to be addicted to weight-loss pills. And the news that Alli will be available over the counter in the UK has also sparked tales of bouts of diarrhoea from those who have tried it, and warnings from doctors that weight loss with the drug is likely to be small and will occur only if people also make big changes to their lifestyles. This follows concerns from consumer groups that other types of slimming pills, sold at healthfood shops as herbal remedies and supplements, are for the most part useless. Loopholes in British regulation allow the makers of such pills to make claims about weight loss that are scientifically unsubstantiated. Then there are pills that are available online, subject to no controls and sometimes dangerous. Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12527 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By KAREN BARROW Dr. Margaret Gatz, a professor of psychology, gerontology and preventative medicine at the University of Southern California, conducts research on interventions that may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. In a recent study, published in the January 2009 issue of the journal Diabetes, Dr. Gatz and her team tracked rates of dementia and diabetes in Swedish twins and discovered that developing diabetes before the age of 65 was associated with a 125 percent increased risk of subsequently developing Alzheimer’s disease. 1. How did you become interested in the relationship between diabetes and dementia? Our research began with the question why some people develop dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease, in old age, whereas others do not. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia, followed by vascular dementia, which is generally caused by the same things that are risk factors for stroke. Recently, a number of researchers have begun to show that vascular risk factors are important not only for increasing risk of vascular dementia but also for increasing risk of Alzheimer’s disease. This observation is particularly interesting because vascular risk factors are potentially modifiable. In other words, people might be able to reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s disease by attending to the kinds of health behaviors that reduce vascular risk, such as controlling blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes. What led our research group to be interested in diabetes was the search for potential ways to lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. We were fortunate to be able to launch the Study of Dementia in Swedish Twins, building on the Swedish Twin Registry, to identify a population of twins where one or both members of the pair have developed dementia. Because the participants are twins, they are genetically similar, and that permits us to ask specifically what is different in the lives of those twins when one has dementia and the other does not. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12526 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Children who are born in late summer or early autumn are often taller and stronger than peers born in spring and winter, a large study suggests. The results from the Children of the 90s project - which involved 7,000 youngsters - says the reason may lie in their mothers' exposure to the sun. The body makes Vitamin D, crucial for bone-building, from sunlight. The Bristol University study suggests that this process may even occur in babies while still in the womb. By the age of 10, those children born in the summer and autumn months were on average half a centimetre taller and had nearly 13 cm sq of extra bone area than those born in the winter months. "Wider bones are thought to be stronger and less prone to breaking as a result of osteoporosis in later life, so anything that affects early bone development is significant," said Professor Jon Tobias, one of the researchers. Mothers entering the late stages of pregnancy in the summer can attain the necessary vitamin D levels by walking around outside or even sunbathing, the researchers suggested. People should not panic about skin cancer as a result of controlled exposure, as some sun was much better than none, they added. And if there was not much sun to be seen, "women might consider talking to their doctor about taking Vitamin D supplements, particularly if their babies are due between November and May," said Professor Tobias. In winter months at latitudes of 52 degrees north (above Birmingham), there is no ultraviolet light of the appropriate wavelength for the body to make vitamin D in the skin, research shows. The Arthritis Research Campaign is currently running a trial to establish whether giving vitamin D to pregnant women increases the bone density of their babies at birth and in childhood and reduces the risk of developing osteoporosis in later life. "Although most people in the UK can can get the essential nutrients they need from their diet, and don't need to take extra supplements, the exception is vitamin D," a spokeswoman for the charity said. (C)BBC

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 12525 - Posted: 02.05.2009

by Michael Brooks WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance. This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods. Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. "It's not that religion is not important," says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, "it's that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress." The origin of religious belief is something of a mystery, but in recent years scientists have started to make suggestions. One leading idea is that religion is an evolutionary adaptation that makes people more likely to survive and pass their genes onto the next generation. In this view, shared religious belief helped our ancestors form tightly knit groups that cooperated in hunting, foraging and childcare, enabling these groups to outcompete others. In this way, the theory goes, religion was selected for by evolution, and eventually permeated every human society (New Scientist, 28 January 2006, p 30) © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12524 - Posted: 06.24.2010