sagansense:

Scientists Come to Grips with Seahorse Armor (Scientific American)

via currentsinbiology

(Source: yobaba)

Human brain recognizes and reacts to race, UTSC researchers discover

The human brain fires differently when dealing with people outside of one’s own race, according to new research out of the University of Toronto Scarborough.

This research, conducted by social neuroscientists at U of T Scarborough, explored the sensitivity of the “mirror-neuron-system” to race and ethnicity. The researchers had study participants view a series of videos while hooked up to electroencephalogram (EEG) machines. The participants – all white – watched simple videos in which men of different races picked up a glass and took a sip of water. They watched white, black, South Asian and East Asian men perform the task.

Typically, when people observe others perform a simple task, their motor cortex region fires similarly to when they are performing the task themselves. However, the UofT research team, led by PhD student Jennifer Gutsell and Assistant Professor Dr. Michael Inzlicht, found that participants’ motor cortex was significantly less likely to fire when they watched the visible minority men perform the simple task. In some cases when participants watched the non-white men performing the task, their brains actually registered as little activity as when they watched a blank screen. 

“Previous research shows people are less likely to feel connected to people outside their own ethnic groups, and we wanted to know why,” says Gutsell. “What we found is that there is a basic difference in the way peoples’ brains react to those from other ethnic backgrounds. Observing someone of a different race produced significantly less motor-cortex activity than observing a person of one’s own race. In other words, people were less likely to mentally simulate the actions of other-race than same-race people”

The trend was even more pronounced for participants who scored high on a test measuring subtle racism, says Gutsell. 

“The so-called mirror-neuron-system is thought to be an important building block for empathy by allowing people to ‘mirror’ other people’s actions and emotions; our research indicates that this basic building block is less reactive to people who belong to a different race than you,” says Inzlicht. 

However, the team says cognitive perspective taking exercises, for example, can increase empathy and understanding, thereby offering hope to reduce prejudice. Gutsell and Inzlicht are now investigating if this form of perspective-taking can have measurable effects in the brain.

The team’s findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

“Daniel C. Dennett favours the theory (first suggested by Richard Dawkins) that our social learning has given us a second information highway (in addition to the genetic highway) where the transmission of variant cultural information (memes) takes place via differential replication. Software viruses, for example, can be understood as memes, and as memes evolve in complexity, so does human cognition: “The mind is the effect, not the cause.” (…)

Daniel Dennett: “Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes, our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture. Words are memes that can be spoken and words are the best example of memes. Words have a genealogy and it’s easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.”

Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor, Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, Daniel Dennett: ‘I don’t like theory of mind’ – interview, The Guardian, 22 March 2013.
See also: ☞ Daniel C. Dennett on an attempt to understand the mind; autonomic neurons, culture and computational architecture, Lapidarium notes (via amiquote)
mothernaturenetwork: Bushmeat trade is transforming rain forest When hunters kill primates, the animals no longer disperse the seeds of some fruit- and nut-bearing trees, and wind-dispersed seedlings take root instead.

mothernaturenetwork:

Bushmeat trade is transforming rain forest

When hunters kill primates, the animals no longer disperse the seeds of some fruit- and nut-bearing trees, and wind-dispersed seedlings take root instead.

A HISTORY OF EXISTING LIFE - JENNIFER BERLINGER This high quality, giclée print is filled with the broad spectrum of life on earth. Bacteria, fungi, insects, mammals and more are rendered in watercolor with startling detail. The limbs of an ancient tree help guide the eyes through the related families, helping observers of all ages visually explore the connections and differences between each. A timeline along the side illustrates how long ago each new branch appeared. The illustration is thoroughly researched, and based on the most up-to-date scientific understanding, but truly reveals the exquisite beauty that grows throughout the diversity of life.  Framed: $275.00 Unframed: $150.00 

A HISTORY OF EXISTING LIFE - JENNIFER BERLINGER

This high quality, giclée print is filled with the broad spectrum of life on earth. Bacteria, fungi, insects, mammals and more are rendered in watercolor with startling detail. The limbs of an ancient tree help guide the eyes through the related families, helping observers of all ages visually explore the connections and differences between each. A timeline along the side illustrates how long ago each new branch appeared. The illustration is thoroughly researched, and based on the most up-to-date scientific understanding, but truly reveals the exquisite beauty that grows throughout the diversity of life. 

Framed: $275.00 
Unframed: $150.00 

RSA Animate - Language as a Window into Human Nature: Steven Pinker

Includes Alan Fiske’s theory of the three major human relationship types: dominance, commonality, reciprocity  

!!! One rat brain 'talks' to another using electronic link: Scientists have connected the brains of lab rats, allowing one to communicate directly to another via cables.

Wired brain implants allowed sensory and motor signals to be sent from one rat to another, creating THE FIRST EVER BRAIN-TO-BRAIN INTERFACE.

The experiment: 

The researchers first trained pairs of rats to solve a simple problem - pressing the correct lever when an indicator light above the lever switched on, to obtain a water sip.

The researchers then placed the rodents in separate chambers and connected their brains using arrays of microelectrodes - each roughly one hundredth the diameter of a human hair - inserted into the area of the cortex that processes motor information.

One rat was designated as the “encoder”. Once this rat pressed the correct lever, its brain activity was delivered as electrical stimulation into the brain of the second rat - designated the “decoder”.

The decoder rat had the same types of levers in its chamber, but it did not receive any visual cue indicating which lever it should press to obtain a reward.

In order to receive the reward, the decoder rat would have to rely on the cue transmitted from the encoder via the brain-to-brain interface. “Basically [the second rat] is working as… a biological computer.”

The team members then conducted trials to determine how well the decoder animal could decipher the brain input from the encoder rat to choose the correct lever. The decoder rat ultimately achieved a maximum success rate of about 70%.

[Professor Nicolelis] also thinks the idea could be extended to humans.

“We will have a way to exchange information across millions of people without using keyboards or voice recognition devices or the type of interfaces that we normally use today,” he said.

“It’s an exciting paper which basically shows that it is possible to take information out of the brain, and it is possible to take information and pump it into the brain.”

New Science: You Can Have Limitless Love, If You Know Where to Look

loveloaveluff:

We tend to think of emotions as private events, confined to one person’s mind and skin. Yet this upgraded view of love defies that logic. Scientific evidence suggests that when you really “click” with someone else, a discernible yet momentary synchrony emerges between the two of you, as your gestures and biochemistries, even your respective neural firings come to mirror one another in a pattern I call positivity resonance. Love is a biological wave of good feeling and mutual care that rolls through two or more brains and bodies at once.

The latest science shows thatyour body has a built-in ability to “catch” the emotions of those around you, making your prospects for love – defined as micro-moments of positivity resonance – nearly limitless. As hopeful as this sounds, science also shows that you can thwart this natural ability if you don’t make eye contact with the other person. Meeting eyes is one of the key gatekeepers to the neural synchrony of love.

And we now know that love, seen as these micro-moments of positive connection, fortifies the connection between your brain and your heart and makes you healthier.  Decades of research show that people who are more socially connected live longer and healthier lives. Yet precisely how your social ties influence your health has remained one of the great mysteries of science. My research team and I recently learned that when we randomly assign one group of people to learn ways to create more micro-moments of love in daily live, we lastingly improve the function of the vagus nerve, a key conduit that connects your brain to your heart. This discovery provides a new window into how micro-moments of love serve as nutrients for your health.  Further evidence suggests that your immune cells reflect your past experiences of love.Too often you get the message that your future prospects hinge on your DNA. Yet the ways that your genes get expressed at the cellular level depends mightily on many factors, including whether you consider yourself to be socially connected or chronically lonely.  My team is now investigating the cellular effects of love, testing whether people who build more micro-moments of love in daily life also build healthier immune cells.

Decision-Making Mapped in the Brain

Behavioral control and decision-making take part in different regions of the brain’s frontal lobe, new research shows. The study effectively created a map of the frontal lobes, making it possible for patients with brain injuries to get an accurate prognosis early in treatment.

“That knowledge will be tremendously useful for prognosis after brain injury,” Ralph Adolphs, Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Caltech and a coauthor of the study published in this week’s issue of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), said in a press release.

“Many people suffer injury to their frontal lobes — for instance, after a head injury during an automobile accident — but the precise pattern of the damage will determine their eventual impairment,” he added.

When you’re making a decision, several different parts of the brain might be activated. How a person functions after a brain injury depends on precisely where a brain injury occurs. Other parts of the brain might compensate, allowing the person to function typically, or the person might be left with a lifelong hardship in making decisions.

“We can use our lesion maps and compare the location of damaged brain areas in new patients,” Jan Glascher, lead author of the study and a visiting associate in psychology at Caltech, said in an email interview. “This way we can predict what impairments these new patients will likely have. This can facilitate medical diagnoses and spark ideas for treatment strategies.”

To tease apart which regions of the brain are responsible for what, the researchers analyzed data that University of Iowa scientists had accumulated over a period of 30 years. (Another brain study published this week also involved research from the University of Iowa.) The university has the world’s largest lesion patient registry, so researchers were able to map brain activity in about 350 people with lesions in their frontal lobes.

“This is first large-scale study to map specific areas that are necessary to perform certain high-level control functions — for instance, flexibly switching between two different tasks,” Glascher said.

kqedscience: A Mysterious Patch Of Light Shows Up In The North Dakota Dark “What we have here is an immense and startlingly new oil and gas field — nighttime evidence of an oil boom created by a technology called fracking. Those lights are rigs, hundreds of them, lit at night, or fiery flares of natural gas. One hundred fifty oil companies, big ones, little ones, wildcatters, have flooded this region, drilling up to eight new wells every day on what is called the Bakken formation. Altogether, they are now producing 660,000 barrels a day, double the output two years ago, so that in no time at all, North Dakota is now the second largest oil producing state in America. Only Texas produces more, and those lights are a sign that this region is now on fire … to a disturbing degree — literally.”

kqedscience:

A Mysterious Patch Of Light Shows Up In The North Dakota Dark

“What we have here is an immense and startlingly new oil and gas field — nighttime evidence of an oil boom created by a technology called fracking. Those lights are rigs, hundreds of them, lit at night, or fiery flares of natural gas. One hundred fifty oil companies, big ones, little ones, wildcatters, have flooded this region, drilling up to eight new wells every day on what is called the Bakken formation. Altogether, they are now producing 660,000 barrels a day, double the output two years ago, so that in no time at all, North Dakota is now the second largest oil producing state in America. Only Texas produces more, and those lights are a sign that this region is now on fire … to a disturbing degree — literally.”

theweekmagazine: Which one of these drinks is more processed?  The Coca-Cola Company spent $114 million in recent years expanding its juice bottling plant in Auburndale, Fla., and developing a high-tech process for homogenizing juice, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. The operation includes use of satellite imagery, a 1.2-mile juice pipeline, and a complex “Black Book” algorithm which helps juice-makers manage weather patterns, predict crop yields, and measure acidity and sweetness of the crop — all to achieve absolute consistency from batch to batch. Keep reading…

theweekmagazine:

Which one of these drinks is more processed? 

The Coca-Cola Company spent $114 million in recent years expanding its juice bottling plant in Auburndale, Fla., and developing a high-tech process for homogenizing juice, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. The operation includes use of satellite imagery, a 1.2-mile juice pipeline, and a complex “Black Book” algorithm which helps juice-makers manage weather patterns, predict crop yields, and measure acidity and sweetness of the crop — all to achieve absolute consistency from batch to batch.

Keep reading…

scienceisbeauty:

Which Came First: The Chicken or the Egg?

Brilliant. Submitted by asapscience.tumblr.com

diablosita:

Bat Embryo. The most precious thing

(Source: zoo-gallery)

Study: Romance Trumps Friends With Benefits PROBLEM: Eternal question, how good or bad are friends with benefits (“two individuals have a rather typical friendship except that they also occasionally have sex”) situations? METHODOLOGY: Researchers at Harvard, Syracuse, and Purdue conducted an online survey of 376 individuals, mostly college students. Half of them was in a FWB relationship, and the other half was in a traditional romantic relationship. They were also mostly white, female, and heterosexual. All were asked about the exclusivity of their relationship, the frequency with which they had sex with their friend/romantic partner, how they divided their time between sexual and friendship activity and their satisfaction with both. The researchers also obtained information on the nature of their sexual contact (everything from kissing to anal), frequency of condom use, and openness talking with one another about sexuality-related topics. RESULTS: Those in FWB relationships had a lot more sex — an average of 6.37 lifetime sex partners to date, over the others’ 1.9. To a lesser degree, those in traditional relationships had more frequent sex with their significant other, and they also spent more non-sex time together — and they reported having greater satisfaction with both. Everyone was more or less having the same kind of sex (lots of kissing, not much anal). Although both groups discussed condom use equally, people in FWBRs reported higher levels of condom or other barrier use both during intercourse and oral sex. But for the most part, people in romantic relationships were more open with one another about sex, including their needs, desires, and boundaries, but also STIs, contraception, and rules about having sex outside of the relationship. FWB relationships scored higher only in their discussions of the details of outside-the-relationship sex, and of their condom use therein. IMPLICATIONS: The results weren’t clear enough for the authors to reach clear conclusions about which is better in terms of sexual health. But as the authors points out, they highlight some of the potential consequences of both. And even though the people who were having more casual sex were also more likely to use protection, their record of condom use was far from stellar. The full study, “ Sexual Communication, Satisfaction, and Condom Use Behavior in Friends with Benefits and Romantic Partners,” is published in the Journal of Sex Research.

Study: Romance Trumps Friends With Benefits

PROBLEM: Eternal question, how good or bad are friends with benefits (“two individuals have a rather typical friendship except that they also occasionally have sex”) situations?

METHODOLOGY: Researchers at Harvard, Syracuse, and Purdue conducted an online survey of 376 individuals, mostly college students. Half of them was in a FWB relationship, and the other half was in a traditional romantic relationship. They were also mostly white, female, and heterosexual. All were asked about the exclusivity of their relationship, the frequency with which they had sex with their friend/romantic partner, how they divided their time between sexual and friendship activity and their satisfaction with both. The researchers also obtained information on the nature of their sexual contact (everything from kissing to anal), frequency of condom use, and openness talking with one another about sexuality-related topics.

RESULTS: Those in FWB relationships had a lot more sex — an average of 6.37 lifetime sex partners to date, over the others’ 1.9. To a lesser degree, those in traditional relationships had more frequent sex with their significant other, and they also spent more non-sex time together — and they reported having greater satisfaction with both. Everyone was more or less having the same kind of sex (lots of kissing, not much anal).

Although both groups discussed condom use equally, people in FWBRs reported higher levels of condom or other barrier use both during intercourse and oral sex.

But for the most part, people in romantic relationships were more open with one another about sex, including their needs, desires, and boundaries, but also STIs, contraception, and rules about having sex outside of the relationship. FWB relationships scored higher only in their discussions of the details of outside-the-relationship sex, and of their condom use therein.

IMPLICATIONS: The results weren’t clear enough for the authors to reach clear conclusions about which is better in terms of sexual health. But as the authors points out, they highlight some of the potential consequences of both. And even though the people who were having more casual sex were also more likely to use protection, their record of condom use was far from stellar.

The full study, “ Sexual Communication, Satisfaction, and Condom Use Behavior in Friends with Benefits and Romantic Partners,” is published in the Journal of Sex Research.