By Michael Balter Don't take that hammer for granted. Using tools may seem like second nature, but only a few animals can master the coordination and mental sophistication required. So how did primates learn to use tools in the first place? A new study in monkeys suggests that the brain's trick is to treat tools as just another body part. Primates, with their four flexible fingers and opposable thumbs, have a highly evolved ability to grasp and manipulate objects. Previous research has shown that many of these actions are controlled by an area of the brain called F5. As the hand opens and closes to grasp an object, neurons in area F5 fire in a predictable sequence. In the parlance of neuroscientists, the neurons are "coded" to control the hand movements. When a primate learns to use a tool, its brain must code neurons not only to move the hand but also to make the tool manipulate an object, a much more cognitively complex task. To investigate how the brain performs this sleight of hand, a team led by neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti of the University of Parma in Italy recorded brain activity in two macaque monkeys. Each was trained for 6 to 8 months to grasp items of food with pliers. The team documented the activity of 113 neurons in F5 and in a brain area called F1, which has also been implicated in the manipulation of objects. The researchers first established the brain's firing sequence when the monkeys grasped only with their hands. The experiment was then repeated while the monkeys used normal pliers that required first opening the hand and then closing it to grasp the food. The same neurons fired in the same order. Remarkably, the same neurons also fired, in the same order, when the monkeys used "reverse pliers" that required them to close their fingers first and then open them to take the food, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 11250 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- Feline defensive rage, the aggressive cat behavior that recently led to the death of a California zoo visitor by a tiger that felt threatened, is comparable to human rage, both in the way that it emerges and unleashes in the brain, suggests a new study. Because scientists are gaining a better understanding of the mammalian brain's recipe for rage, violent behavior in humans and other mammals may one day be quelled with improved drug therapies. For cats, such a drug could prevent the hissing, back arching, ear retraction, claw extensions and fur standing-on-end that are typical indicators of feline defensive rage. In humans, related anger reveals itself with road rage, an impulsive form of anger that involves little or no thought. "In road rage, the person never thinks about what he is doing but just acts in the way he does because he feels that he has been threatened by someone else and the impulsive behavior represents a way by which he can protect himself from such a threat," co-author Allan Siegel told Discovery News. "In reality, his actions are usually much more dangerous to him than to the person whom he perceived cut him off on the road," added Siegel, a professor in the Department of Neurology & Neurosciences at New Jersey Medical School in Newark. © 2008 Discovery Communications,

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 11249 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Debora MacKenzie Chameleons are famed for changing colour to blend in with their surroundings and hide from predators – but new research on chameleons in their native habitat shows some of their colour changes evolved for exactly the opposite purpose – attracting attention. African dwarf chameleons live in habitats in southern Africa ranging from grassland to rainforest. They engage in complex social signalling, with bright colour changes along their flanks used by females to signal interest or rejection to males, and by males to signal aggression or submission to other males, and interest towards females. Males even square off in rapid-fire, colourful signalling duels. "Chameleons use colour change for camouflage and communication, but we don't know why some species change colour much more than others", says Devi Stuart-Fox of the University of Melbourne in Australia. She and colleague Adnan Moussalli reasoned that if these differences evolved solely to enable the chameleon to match itself to its surroundings, chameleons living in backgrounds that vary a lot in colour should produce a wider palette, whereas chameleons in less colourful environments should not. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 11248 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Andy Coghlan An internal clock hidden in human skin cells could reveal whether your body clock is out of sync with your lifestyle, say researchers. Steven Brown of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and his colleagues knew that the brain’s circadian clock causes a gene called Bmal1 to be more active in the body’s other cells during the daytime. To find out how closely matched this activity was, they used a virus to equip skin cells taken from 11 early-rising people dubbed "larks" and 17 late-rising "owls" with a firefly gene that would produce a visible glow whenever Bmal1 was active. “The result is light coming out of the cell in a 24-hour rhythm,” says Brown. By monitoring the times when the cells glowed, they demonstrated that skin cells showed the same sleep-wake patterns as those reported in questionnaires by at least half the donors. There were discrepancies too, however, most notably in three individuals with seasonal affective disorder. This suggested that skin biopsies might be useful for diagnosing sleep and circadian disorders. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 11247 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anna Petherick Researchers have added to the list of biological curiosities about mole-rats: the animals do not feel all types of pain. The discovery could eventually help humans who are battling chronic discomfort. African naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber ) are unusual creatures — they are cold-blooded mammals, have a long lifespan, and live in co-operative societies of hundreds of individuals in a manner more typical of bees and wasps than moles or rats. The animals react normally to the mechanical pain caused by pinching and prodding, but are insensitive to a suite of other normally nasty stimuli, according to Thomas Park of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Gary Lewin at the Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, and their colleagues. Those stimuli include acid and capsaicin, the ingredient in chilli peppers that causes a burning sensation in many animals. These mole-rats are also odd in that their skin, when inflamed, does not become hypersensitive when exposed to unpleasantly hot objects, even though they react to excessive heat in the same way that other mammals do, the researchers report in PloS Biology 1. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Evolution
Link ID: 11246 - Posted: 06.24.2010

If you need another reason to keep that New Year's resolution to quit smoking, here it is: a U.S. researcher says he has discovered smoking can disable a gene that protects against premature aging. The gene, SIRT1 is one of a group that regulates chronic inflammation, cancer and aging. When it is highly active, or over-expressed in mice, worms and fruit flies, their lifespans are greatly increased. Recent studies also show that SIRT1 helps ease the negative effects of stress, cell death and other processes involved in premature aging. According to University of Rochester associate professor of Environmental Medicine, Irfan Rahman, the toxins in cigarette smoke can decrease production of SIRT1 in the lungs. His research was published in two separate studies, in the American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine, appearing online Jan. 3, 2008, and in the American Journal of Physiology, appearing Dec. 27, 2007. Rahman has spent years studying how the 4,700 toxic chemical compounds in cigarettes assault lung tissue. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11245 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Contrary to some reports, taking statins, which are cholesterol-lowering drugs, offers no protection against Alzheimer’s disease, according to research published in the January 16, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study involved 929 Catholic clergy members who were an average of 75 years old, free of dementia at the beginning of the study and enrolled in the Religious Orders Study, an ongoing study of aging and Alzheimer’s disease. All of the participants agreed to a brain autopsy at the time of their death and underwent annual cognitive tests for up to 12 years. At the beginning of the study, 119 people were taking a statin. During the 12-year follow-up period, 191 people developed Alzheimer’s disease, of whom 16 used statins at the start of the study. “Some studies have suggested people taking cholesterol-lowering drugs are less likely to have Alzheimer’s disease, but our longitudinal findings found no relation between statin use and Alzheimer’s,” said study author Zoe Arvanitakis, MD, MS, Associate Professor of the Department of Neurological Sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and member of the American Academy of Neurology. “The study also found no association between taking statins and a slower cognitive decline among older people.”

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 11244 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan Aha! Eureka! Bingo! "By George, I think she's got it!" Everyone knows what it's like to finally figure out a seemingly impossible problem. But what on Earth is happening in the brain while we're driving toward mental pay dirt? Researchers eager to find out have long been on the hunt, knowing that such information could one day provide priceless clues in uncovering and fixing faulty neural systems believed to be behind some mental illnesses and learning disabilities. Researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London report in the journal PLoS ONE that they monitored action in the brains of 21 volunteers with electroencephalography (EEG) as they tackled verbal problems in an attempt to uncover what goes through the mind—literally—in order to observe what happens in the brain during an "aha!" moment of problem solving. "This insight is at the core of human intelligence … this is a key cognitive function that the human can boast to have," says Joydeep Bhattacharya, an assistant professor in Goldsmiths's psychology department. "We're interested [in finding out] whether—there is a sudden change that takes place or something that changes gradually [that] we're not consciously aware of," he says. The researchers believed they could pin down brain signals that would enable them to predict whether a person could solve a particular problem or not. © 1996-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Attention; Intelligence
Link ID: 11243 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Shauna Rempel Name: Jennifer Gutsell Program: First-year master's student in psychology at the University of Toronto. Research: Prejudice and the Mirror Neuron System. The goal: "I'm looking for the reason why people are prejudiced," says Gutsell. While it's understood that people are capable of prejudice, and that they are more likely to exhibit bias toward people who are different from themselves, little is known about how the brain contributes to these feelings. The mirror neuron system: This recently discovered system in the brain may have something to do with prejudice. The mirror neuron system is so named because researchers think it explains why humans and some animals "mirror" the behaviour that they see in others. This system, which is linked to feelings of empathy, may also offer a clue as to why prejudice evolved – by looking at situations where people are less empathetic to some people and more empathetic to others. "The mirror neuron system is less responsive to people we don't like," says Gutsell. In other words, you're less likely to shed a tear if you see your enemy sobbing than if you saw your best friend crying. Research on prejudice shows that people tend to show bias toward ethnic and racial groups that are not our own, and Gutsell decided to see if the mirror neuron system was involved. © Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2008

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 11242 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Premature babies who receive morphine may grow up to be more sensitive to pain, a study on rats suggests. US researchers found rodents given the drug just after birth later needed higher doses of morphine to kill pain than counterparts in a placebo group. Morphine is a standard part of care for premature babies, who may need hundreds of painful treatments and tests. The study reported in New Scientist, raises questions, if not answers, about the practice, experts say. Researchers at the University of South Carolina treated newborn rats with morphine injections for the first nine days of life and tested their pain responses a few weeks later. Rats are born so immature that their early development is comparable with that of a premature baby. After nearly six weeks, broadly equivalent to a human becoming a teenager, the morphine rat appeared to be more sensitive to be pain than the rat given the placebo. For instance it withdrew it paws more readily when these were heated with a lamp, and when pain was induced appeared to need more morphine to quell it. About 3% of babies in the US and UK are born so prematurely they need treatments which in turn are believed to require pain relief. Their pain is judged on their physical response, and the drug is administered accordingly. (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 11241 - Posted: 01.25.2008

The Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park and the surrounding Virunga volcanoes region are home to more than half of the world's population of mountain gorillas. To ensure the long-term survival of this threatened species, teams of rangers monitor and patrol the park's Gorilla Sector. Two of the rangers, Diddy and Innocent, have been keeping a weekly diary for the BBC News website that offers an insight into life on the frontline of conservation. Here, they also share video footage that they have been recording over the past few months. MEET THE GORILLAS Here is footage of some of the park's gorilla groups, known as "families", which are named after the dominant male or "silverback". Innocent, head of gorilla monitoring, is able to recognise every gorilla within the sector. Each animal has a unique "nose print" that enables rangers to tell them apart. (C)BBC

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 11240 - Posted: 01.25.2008

David Perlman The human mind does strange and wondrous things: Its 100 billion nerve cells packed into a single, lumpy gray organ called the brain can think faster than a computer, ponder the mysteries of life with excruciating slowness, control every movement of the body and command it to fight, flee or stand its ground in defiance. Now, at San Francisco's Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina, a team of neuroscientists, artists, mechanics and builders has created a varied collection of exhibits - many weird as can be - that allow visitors to watch their own minds at work. The interactive exhibits will have visitors use their minds for speed-thinking competitions, to catch a liar in a simulated poker game, to conceal their thoughts when they themselves lie, or to react to emotional conflicts: One, for example encourages visitors to drink from a water fountain that's actually a toilet. A major feature of the show is the first public showing ever of a black-and-white movie that Paul Ekman, the famed UCSF psychologist, made 40 years ago in New Guinea to prove that Charles Darwin was right and modern anthropologists like famed Margaret Mead were wrong when they argued that facial expressions of human emotions differed among people in different cultures. Darwin published his seminal book, "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," in 1872 and argued that human facial expressions mirrored emotions regardless of the culture in which a person lived. They were part of humanity's evolutionary endowment, Darwin maintained. © 2008 Hearst Communications Inc

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 11239 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan Blood racing through a brain region's web of vessels is a sign that nerve cells in that locale have kicked into action. The blood rushes to active areas to supply firing neurons with the oxygen and glucose they need for energy. It is this blood flow, which can last up to a minute, that scientists track in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine which brain areas are responding to different stimuli. But a new theory could pave the way for a reinterpretation of fMRI images, elevating their measurements to the evaluation of actual neuronal processing rather than the subsequent blood flow that indirectly indicates it, and thereby enhancing the fMRI's usefulness in diagnosing neurological problems. Christopher Moore, an assistant neuroscience professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, detailed his hypothesis in a recent article published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. In essence, it suggests blood's role in the cortex (a key brain processing center), specifically, is more than just bringing nutrients to the cell, it can also alter the activity of local neuronal circuits. For instance, in experiments in his lab, Moore has seen that there is more blood flow can arrive in an area that processes information from a presented stimulus to a certain sense (e.g. touch, visual, auditory) prior to the appearance of the stimulus, implying that the flow can prime a circuit for activity, as well. © 1996-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging; Alzheimers
Link ID: 11238 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Mason Inman Passport and ID card photos could be more effective if they were averages of several snapshots, say researchers who have shown that approach allows facial recognition software to spot familiar faces as well humans do. Psychologists Rob Jenkins and Mike Burton of the University of Glasgow, UK, were inspired by studying how we recognize familiar faces. They found humans are much better at recognizing averaged faces than if shown an individual photo. The duo argues that as we see a person from different angles and in varied lighting, we build a mental image of their face that averages out all those experiences. They went on to show that averaging multiple photos of a person can also help facial recognition software work better. The researchers plugged individual photos of male celebrities into an online genealogy service, MyHeritage.com. The website allows people to compare their photos against a large database of celebrity images to see which famous people they most closely resemble. The site is powered by a facial recognition program called FaceVACS. It is one of the best available, according to a 2006 test by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 11237 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Matt Kaplan Male lark buntings don't know what to expect from the ladies.Alexis ChaineMost animals look for the same things in a mate year after year: the peahen wants the peacock with the most extravagant tail, the doe opts for the stag with the biggest antlers, and the blue-footed booby looks for the bluest feet. But things are more complicated for male lark buntings. Each year the females seem to be after a different sort of mate. Evolutionary theory says that females can drive the evolution of some sexual characteristics in males by consistently selecting one characteristic in a mate. The peacock tail is a prime example, as the biggest and brightest feathers are indicative of the healthiest and 'best' males. Now a study by Alexis Chaine and Bruce Lyon at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has revealed a situation in which this theory does not apply. During their 5-year study, Chaine and Lyon noted the plumage and size characteristics of 384 lark buntings (an average of about 80 per year) in Colorado. They tracked how these physical characteristics related to male reproductive success by monitoring the male’s offspring each year, with genetic tests to confirm paternity. They expected to find only one or two characteristics that were selected above all others, but they report in Science that the characteristics that were selected changed from year to year1. © 2008 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11236 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Winter got you feeling like you don't want to get out of bed? That's probably nothing to worry about — unless you find your mood slipping around the time the clocks go back in October until they spring ahead in March. You could be suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a form of depression that follows a seasonal pattern. The Canadian Mental Health Association estimates that one to three per cent of Canadians suffer from cases of SAD that are bad enough to affect their ability to cope with life. Of patients suffering from a major depression, 11 per cent are also likely to develop SAD as the longer daylight hours of spring and summer fade into autumn and winter's longer hours of darkness. "As the days get shorter, you are more vulnerable," Dr Roger McIntyre, head of the mood disorders unit at the University Health Network in Toronto, told CBC News. "It is not the cold weather." SAD was recognized as a disorder in the early 1980s, but researchers have been aware of its symptoms for 150 years. One of the problems with diagnosing SAD is that its symptoms are similar to other types of depressions. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Depression; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 11235 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- Want to produce a clone? If so, you would have the best chance if you were a rare, aquatic plant living in an undisturbed, geographically marginal habitat, according to a new study on asexual reproduction. Since the combination of circumstances is so narrow, the findings suggest that sexual failure winds up being the key component for cloning success. "I suggest that clonal reproduction is not a substitute for success, but merely prolongs the time to extinction when sex is absent," Jonathan Silvertown wrote in his paper, which has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Plant Sciences. Silvertown, a professor of ecology at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England, told Discovery News that both plants and animals can become natural clones. Certain sharks and lizards, for example, may reproduce asexually, as can microscopic organisms called rotifers. Corals, sponges and other "modular animals" can also break off into clones. Plants, however, represent the vast majority of clones, "because growth in plants takes place in a modular way, so modules, such as stems, twigs, shoots, and repeated units like that are half-way to cloning," he said. © 2008 Discovery Communications

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 11234 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A Montreal researcher has received a prestigious Alberta prize for his work on how a parent's touch can help shape a child's ability to cope with stress. Michael Meaney was awarded the inaugural $100,000 Lougheed Prize from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Wednesday morning in Calgary. Meaney's research with rodents suggests how parents groom and care for their offspring can change the chemistry of the DNA in certain genes involved in the body's responses to stress. Meaney, a professor at McGill University, said rats who were frequently licked by their mothers were calmer and less fearful while those who did not receive as much attention were nervous and cautious. The research also concluded rats who received plenty of grooming and stroking from their moms were able to perform certain tasks better. Sabina Harris-Lucier already knows how quickly her own mother's touch can affect her 16-month-old daughter, Solah. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 11233 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charles Q. Choi The area of the brain that controls whether you keep rooting around the refrigerator or actually start chowing down has now been discovered. This brain region — which seems to help govern the "eureka" moment or turning point between exploration and mulling over one's discovery — is also linked to urges that malfunction in addiction and certain mental disorders, scientists added. The scientists presented two rhesus monkeys with a choice of four targets on a computer touch screen. The animals spent time exploring which target would trigger a juice reward by trial and error. Once the monkeys found the right target, the researchers then gave the monkeys a few seconds, during which they could repeatedly touch the rewarding target, exploiting their discovery to get more juice. The experiments mimicked nature, where an animal might search "which hole is hiding food, and then go back to that hole if it proved to be a good source," said researcher Emmanuel Procyk, a neuroscientist at the University of Lyon in France. During the experiments, Procyk and his colleagues recorded the electrical activity of hundreds of neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex. This brain region helps assess the rewards and costs of an action. © 2008 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 11232 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Catherine Brahic Male guppies may sexually harass females of another fish species to prevent them from reproducing, researchers suggest. They believe the guppies – which have invaded Mexican rivers and lakes – are using sex as a way of suppressing one native fish population. The researchers also think the guppies may physically harm the native females so they are unable to reproduce with males of their own species, or shy away from further interactions with males. Guppies, originally from Trinidad, invaded Mexican waters in the 1950s. The pet trade is generally blamed for introducing them around the world as aquarium owners wanting to get rid of fish, sometimes dump them into rivers. In Mexico and elsewhere, the released guppies rapidly reproduced. "Male guppies are very sexually active," explains Alejandra Valero at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, who led the new study. She says guppies are "like sex machines". One species that suffered from the invasion of the guppies was Skiffia bilineata, a fish native to Mexican waters which is threatened with extinction. Female skiffia look like female guppies, so Valero and her colleagues wanted to find out if this was contributing to the species' decline. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 11231 - Posted: 06.24.2010