Short-term memory is based on synchronized brain oscillations

A monkey has to carry out a classic memory task: The animal is shown two consecutive images and then has to indicate whether the second image was the same as the first one. Credit: Stefanie Liebe, MPI for Biological Cybernetics

Scientists have now discovered how different brain regions cooperate during short-term memory.

Holding information within one's memory for a short while is a seemingly simple and everyday task. We use our short-term memory when remembering a new telephone number if there is nothing to write at hand, or to find the beautiful dress inside the store that we were just admiring in the shopping window. Yet, despite the apparent simplicity of these actions, short-term memory is a complex cognitive act that entails the participation of multiple brain regions. However, whether and how different brain regions cooperate during memory has remained elusive. A group of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany have now come closer to answering this question. They discovered that oscillations between different brain regions are crucial in visually remembering things over a short period of time.

It has long been known that brain regions in the frontal part of the brain are involved in short-term memory, while processing of visual information occurs primarily at the back of the brain. However, to successfully remember visual information over a short period of time, these distant regions need to coordinate and integrate information.

In each of the two brain regions (IPF and V4) brain activity shows strong oscillations in a certain set of frequencies called the theta-band. Credit: Stefanie Liebe, MPI for Biological Cybernetics

To better understand how this occurs, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Biological Cybernetics in the department of Nikos Logothetis recorded electrical activity both in a visual area and in the frontal part of the brain in monkeys. The scientists showed the animals identical or different images within short intervals while recording their brain activity. The animals then had to indicate whether the second image was the same as the first one.

The scientists observed that, in each of the two brain regions, brain activity showed strong oscillations in a certain set of frequencies called the theta-band. Importantly, these oscillations did not occur independently of each other, but synchronized their activity temporarily: "It is as if you have two revolving doors in each of the two areas. During working memory, they get in sync, thereby allowing information to pass through them much more efficiently than if they were out of sync," explains Stefanie Liebe, the first author of the study, conducted in the team of Gregor Rainer in cooperation with Gregor Hörzer from the Technical University Graz. The more synchronized the activity was, the better could the animals remember the initial image. Thus, the authors were able to establish a direct relationship between what they observed in the brain and the performance of the animal.

The study highlights how synchronized brain oscillations are important for the communication and interaction of different brain regions. Almost all multi-faceted cognitive acts, such as visual recognition, arise from a complex interplay of specialized and distributed neural networks. How relationships between such distributed sites are established and how they contribute to represent and communicate information about external and internal events in order to attain a coherent percept or memory is still poorly understood.

More information: Stefanie Liebe, Gregor M Hoerzer, Nikos K Logothetis & Gregor Rainer (2012) Theta coupling between V4 and prefrontal cortex predicts visual short-term memory performance. Nature Neuroscience, 29 January 2012, doi: 10.1038/nn.3038

 

Provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

"Short-term memory is based on synchronized brain oscillations." January 31st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-short-term-memory-based-synchronized-brain.html

 

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Gene mutation in autism found to cause hyperconnectivity in brain's hearing center

New research from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) might help explain how a gene mutation found in some autistic individuals leads to difficulties in processing auditory cues and paying spatial attention to sound.

The study has found that when a suspected autism gene called PTEN is deleted from auditory cortical neurons—the main workhorses of the brain's sound-processing center—the signals that these neurons receive from local as well as long-distance sources are strengthened beyond normal levels. These effects, the study shows, can be blocked by a drug currently in use as an immunosuppressant.

"It's long been hypothesized that autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) arise from a partial disruption of long-range connections in the brain during development," explains Professor Tony Zador, who led the study. "Our finding that PTEN-deficient neurons receive stronger inputs suggests that one way this disruption can be caused is by signal enhancement." His team's work appears in the Journal of Neuroscience on February 1.

Although ASDs could arise from mutations in any of dozens of candidate genes, a core triad of symptoms defines all cases: impaired language, impaired social interaction, and restricted and repetitive behaviors. "The challenge therefore has been to understand how this diverse set of candidate genes and the pathways they control converge to cause the common signature of ASDs," Zador says.

The auditory cortex, which plays a critical role in auditory attention and perception, forms functional connections with other sensory cortices and critical brain areas. The neural network within the auditory cortex has therefore been a target of studies aimed at understanding how alterations in neural circuits contribute to dysfunction in ASDs.

Zador's team focused for several reasons on the role of one suspected autism candidate gene, PTEN, on circuit alterations within the auditory cortex. Well known for its role as an anti-cancer gene that powers down cell growth, proliferation and survival, this gene has also been linked to ASDs by a slew of studies in humans and mice. PTEN mutations have been found in autistic individuals with extreme macroencephaly – an increase in brain volume. PTEN loss in mice has been found to boost cell size and the number of neuronal connections in the brain.

To decipher the role of PTEN on functional connectivity in the auditory cortex, Zador's group selectively disrupted the function of the PTEN gene in adult mice, only in a subset of neurons of the auditory cortex, while leaving the gene intact in neighboring neurons. The scientists then assessed the effect of the loss of PTEN on connectivity within the auditory cortex using techniques that involve stimulation by laser or flashes of blue light to trigger neuronal activity either locally or in other brain areas that send neuronal projections into the auditory cortex.

The rapid and robust increase in the strength of both long-range and local inputs observed following PTEN loss could possibly be explained by an increase that the scientists observed in the length and density of dendritic spines – the tiny, knob-like structures jutting out of a neuron that act like signal-receiving antennae.

These effects could be blocked, however, by chemically negating the effect of PTEN loss. One of the pathways regulated by the PTEN protein involves shutting down an intracellular enzyme called mTORC1, which promotes cell growth, among other things. Zador's group found that treating the PTEN-deficient mice for 10 days with the mTORC1-inhibitor rapamycin prevented an increase in dendritic spine number and signal strength.

While Zador is excited about "this finding that suggests that mTORC1 could be a good therapeutic target for some cases of PTEN-mediated brain disorders," he is also keen to further pursue his team's new evidence that cortical hyperconnectivity could be the "final pathway" by which diverse ASD genetic pathways lead to a single ASD phenotype. "Using cortical connectivity as a paradigm for assessing ASD candidate genes could provide insights into the mechanisms of the disorders and perhaps even give us clues to formulate new therapeutic strategies," he states.

More information: "PTEN regulation of local and long-range connections in mouse auditory cortex" appears in the Journal of Neuroscience on February 1.

Provided by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

"Gene mutation in autism found to cause hyperconnectivity in brain's hearing center." January 31st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-gene-mutation-autism-hyperconnectivity-brain.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Decoding brain waves to eavesdrop on what we hear

Neuroscientists may one day be able to hear the imagined speech of a patient unable to speak due to stroke or paralysis, according to University of California, Berkeley, researchers.

These scientists have succeeded in decoding electrical activity in the brain's temporal lobe – the seat of the auditory system – as a person listens to normal conversation. Based on this correlation between sound and brain activity, they then were able to predict the words the person had heard solely from the temporal lobe activity.

"This is huge for patients who have damage to their speech mechanisms because of a stroke or Lou Gehrig's disease and can't speak," said co-author Robert Knight, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience. "If you could eventually reconstruct imagined conversations from brain activity, thousands of people could benefit."

"This research is based on sounds a person actually hears, but to use it for reconstructing imagined conversations, these principles would have to apply to someone's internal verbalizations," cautioned first author Brian N. Pasley, a post-doctoral researcher in the center. "There is some evidence that hearing the sound and imagining the sound activate similar areas of the brain. If you can understand the relationship well enough between the brain recordings and sound, you could either synthesize the actual sound a person is thinking, or just write out the words with a type of interface device."

This video is not supported by your browser at this time.

These are frequency spectrograms of the actual spoken words (top) and the sounds as reconstructed by two separate models based solely on recorded temporal lobe activity in a volunteer subject. The words -- Waldo, structure, doubt and property -- are more or less recognizable, even though the model had never encountered these specific words before. Credit: Brian Pasley, UC Berkeley

In addition to the potential for expanding the communication ability of the severely disabled, he noted, the research also "is telling us a lot about how the brain in normal people represents and processes speech sounds."

Pasley and his colleagues at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, University of Maryland and The Johns Hopkins University report their findings Jan. 31 in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.

Help from epilepsy patients

They enlisted the help of people undergoing brain surgery to determine the location of intractable seizures so that the area can be removed in a second surgery. Neurosurgeons typically cut a hole in the skull and safely place electrodes on the brain surface or cortex – in this case, up to 256 electrodes covering the temporal lobe – to record activity over a period of a week to pinpoint the seizures. For this study, 15 neurosurgical patients volunteered to participate.

Pasley visited each person in the hospital to record the brain activity detected by the electrodes as they heard 5-10 minutes of conversation. Pasley used this data to reconstruct and play back the sounds the patients heard. He was able to do this because there is evidence that the brain breaks down sound into its component acoustic frequencies – for example, between a low of about 1 Hertz (cycles per second) to a high of about 8,000 Hertz –that are important for speech sounds.

Pasley tested two different computational models to match spoken sounds to the pattern of activity in the electrodes. The patients then heard a single word, and Pasley used the models to predict the word based on electrode recordings.

"We are looking at which cortical sites are increasing activity at particular acoustic frequencies, and from that, we map back to the sound," Pasley said. He compared the technique to a pianist who knows the sounds of the keys so well that she can look at the keys another pianist is playing in a sound-proof room and "hear" the music, much as Ludwig van Beethoven was able to "hear" his compositions despite being deaf.

The better of the two methods was able to reproduce a sound close enough to the original word for Pasley and his fellow researchers to correctly guess the word.

"We think we would be more accurate with an hour of listening and recording and then repeating the word many times," Pasley said. But because any realistic device would need to accurately identify words heard the first time, he decided to test the models using only a single trial.

"This research is a major step toward understanding what features of speech are represented in the human brain" Knight said. "Brian's analysis can reproduce the sound the patient heard, and you can actually recognize the word, although not at a perfect level."

Knight predicts that this success can be extended to imagined, internal verbalizations, because scientific studies have shown that when people are asked to imagine speaking a word, similar brain regions are activated as when the person actually utters the word.

"With neuroprosthetics, people have shown that it's possible to control movement with brain activity," Knight said. "But that work, while not easy, is relatively simple compared to reconstructing language. This experiment takes that earlier work to a whole new level."

Based on earlier work with ferrets

The current research builds on work by other researchers about how animals encode sounds in the brain's auditory cortex. In fact, some researchers, including the study's coauthors at the University of Maryland, have been able to guess the words ferrets were read by scientists based on recordings from the brain, even though the ferrets were unable to understand the words.

The ultimate goal of the UC Berkeley study was to explore how the human brain encodes speech and determine which aspects of speech are most important for understanding.

"At some point, the brain has to extract away all that auditory information and just map it onto a word, since we can understand speech and words regardless of how they sound," Pasley said. "The big question is, What is the most meaningful unit of speech? A syllable, a phone, a phoneme? We can test these hypotheses using the data we get from these recordings."

More information: Pasley BN, David SV, Mesgarani N, Flinker A, Shamma SA, et al. (2012) Reconstructing Speech from Human Auditory Cortex. PLoS Biol 10(1): e1001251. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001251

Provided by University of California - Berkeley

"Decoding brain waves to eavesdrop on what we hear." January 31st, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-scientists-decode-brain-eavesdrop.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Scientists build working model of life's engine

Research associate Shayantani Mukherjee and USC Dornsife professor Arieh Warshel liken the rotation of F1-ATPase to that of a fan.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of Southern California have built a theoretical working model of the cellular engine that powers all life.

The model will allow scientists to better understand the forces of life at the molecular level and potentially replicate them, including designing miniscule mechanical motors for nanomachines and nanorobots. The work was published online last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We were able to take a system that is very complicated and reproduce the crucial action in the system,” said Arieh Warshel, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry in USC Dornsife. “We still have a lot of questions, but this is clearly a large step toward understanding the action of such ubiquitous engines in living systems.”

The body’s cellular engine is a protein molecule whose rotation generates the universal “fuel” — adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — that powers processes in living cells. The 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the scientists who elucidated the structure of this protein and outlined the principles of how it may operate.

The protein rotates, drawing in raw materials and synthesizing them into ATP. This fuel-generating engine can be divided into two parts, one of which is a rotating piece called F1-ATPase.

Warshel and research associate Shayantani Mukherjee built a computer-generated model of F1-ATPase that was remarkably successful at replicating the essential physical forces underlying the workings of the engine, mirroring the cellular motor’s unique unidirectional rotation.

Previous attempts to build such models relied on complex systems in which every atom was represented — making it difficult to determine why the motor is working, Warshel said.

Instead, Warshel and Mukherjee took a bare-bones approach, simplifying the structure — a strategy known in the computational biology world as “coarse-graining.”

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler,” Warshel said.

Their simplified model rotated in the same manner as F1-ATPase, even pausing at exactly the same places. It also provided the clearest description yet of how the chemical energy of the ATP is used to rotate the motor and why the motor actually works.

Provided by University of Southern California

"Scientists build working model of life's engine." January 31st, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-scientists-life.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Shirdi Sai Vishwa Sai - Ep - 04.mpg

Making Work Pay

“When Lord Krishna was present in this material world to manifest His eternal pastimes of the transcendental realm of Goloka Vrindavana as an attraction for the people in general, He displayed a unique picture of subordination before His foster mother, Yashoda. The Lord, in His naturally childish playful activities, used to spoil the stocked butter of mother Yashoda by breaking the pots and distributing the contents to His friends and playmates, including the celebrated monkeys of Vrindavana, who took advantage of the Lord's munificence.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Shrimad Bhagavatam, 1.8.31 Purport) Mother Yashoda works so hard during the day to maintain the household. A good mother never gets the proper credit she deserves. Selfless in motive, the mother runs the household, attends to the needs of the children, both large and small. There are the children designated by nature, who need help in doing everything from getting up in the morning to dressing properly for school. Then there is the biggest child in the husband, who needs help in similar areas and also admonishment with respect to errant and forgetful behavior. Yet the leader of the family assumes her duties in stride, not asking for anything in return. She wants everyone else to be happy, and for this so much work needs to be completed every single day. Bearing this in mind, it’s a little strange that the person who created this and many other universes, a person who is all-knowing, would delight in foiling a good mother’s work, in making her tasks a little more difficult to complete. Through the elation that would result, the hidden meaning to the plan of the greatest plan-maker would be revealed. “Mom, I’m hungry. Mom, I need something good to eat. Mom, can you make my favorite dish tonight? Mom, I need a ride to such and such place, can you take me?” For such statements to be uttered by children is not out of the ordinary, but if you look at them on the surface, they indicate odd behavior. The human being craves freedom, for the many violent uprisings throughout the course of human history have revealed this fact. Without freedom of action, man feels trapped, made to work against his will and restricted from doing those things that he likes to do. Yet concomitant with freedom is responsibility. If I want to be able to do whatever I want, I should at least know how to do what it is I am desirous of. With each pursuit that freedom enables comes responsibility. If I want the freedom to be able to play sports, I should take the responsibility to prepare myself for the games. Preparation doesn’t just involve the action on the field of play. One must additionally eat and sleep properly, which requires consideration to both time and quantity of consumption. Ideally, my exercise of freedom should not impose on the ability of others to enjoy life. I may want the freedom to go places and experience new things, but if others are obligated to take me from one place to another and manage my wellbeing, where is the question of theirfreedom? The head of the household takes all of this into consideration when the dependents want this thing or that. Freedom is wonderful, but the good mother knows that the children shouldn’t have too much of it. Rather, accepting responsibility during childhood bodes well for the individual when they mature into adulthood. Nevertheless, the specific requests made by the children are more times than not granted by the mother. Though they may specifically ask for things, she doesn’t consider her child to be spoiled. Rather, the opportunity to serve is the greatest reward, for that is the way the parent offers love. If the child were completely self-sufficient or if they never asked for anything, how could the parents show their love? Shri Krishna, the Supreme Lord, knows these ins and outs of human behavior. In the science that describes the interactions the living beings have with God, the exchanges of transcendental emotions are known as rasas. The offering of paternal affection is known as vatsalya-rasa, which was particularly enjoyed by mother Yashoda. The living being gets its yearning for freedom from its identifying aspect: the spirit soul. Lord Krishna    is intimately familiar with the properties of the soul, so for those who are desirous of exercising their freedom in the spiritual arena, He creates a playing field filled with circumstances just suitable for the occasion. Some five thousand years ago, the ideal playing field on this earth was Vrindavana   . It is still the best place to interact with Krishna, but during the Dvapara Yuga the conditions were the most auspicious, as the object of service had personally descended to earth. The idea that the Divine can make appearances before us and not become tainted by the material elements and their inhibiting influence requires some faith to be extended by the sincere listener in the beginning. This shouldn’t be too foreign a practice, as the first day in every new class in college requires the same trust. The professor hands out the syllabus, and even though the required work may appear daunting, based on the credentials of the instructor the student understands that if they follow the coursework and complete the necessary assignments, they will be better off for it. In a similar manner, accepting the statements found in Vedic texts like the Shrimad Bhagavatam    and Bhagavad-gita    on faith in the beginning can only lead to a better condition in the future. Even if one is of a different religious persuasion or not spiritually inclined at all, just hearing from these works will delight the mind, carrying it to a time and place of supernatural purity. Vrindavana is the home of homes, and its caretaking mother is Vrinda Devi, the goddess of devotion who creates circumstances favorable for the exchange of transcendental mellows. The manager of the most sacred home in Vrindavana is the person who Shri Krishna especially blessed. How did He arrange for this? If Jesus were to come up to us, would we not feel a tremendous thrill? If the Supreme Lord in our worshipable form of choice were to bestow His glance upon us, revealing His identity and form, should that not be enough to fulfill the mission of life? While seeing God is wonderful, the spirit soul still craves action under conditions of freedom. Better than seeing God is being able to interact with Him. Better than interacting with Him is serving Him with every thought, word and deed. This is precisely what mother Yashoda did. Under the pretense of motherly duties completed to maintain a family consisting of the child Shri Krishna and the father Nanda, Yashoda went to work every day. Though these were traditional times, where the women weren’t formally educated or allowed to freely intermingle with other men not their husbands, mothers like Yashoda worked very, very hard. Everything they did was for the benefit of their household. Shri Krishna enjoyed mother Yashoda’s cooking very much, but since He also took delight in enchanting the other residents of Vrindavana, He would sometimes steal from the stocks of butter in the homes of the neighbors. The mothers would complain to Yashoda, but they secretly loved the fact that the adorable Krishna was attracted to their homes. They would find new places to hide their butter so that Shyamasundara    and His friends would think of more elaborate plots for how to get to the secret stash. Mother Yashoda took Krishna’s activity as impetus to work harder at churning butter in her own home. In addition to cooking and caring for her dependents, Yashoda would sit down peacefully and churn butter in a pot; all the while singing of her beloved son’s most cherished activities. Aside from His playful pastimes, Krishna had thwarted the attacks of several ghoulish creatures who had infiltrated Vrindavana. As a child killing powerful creatures is completely out of the ordinary, Yashoda decided she wanted to remember those incidents all the time. What better way to immortalize a set of activities than to put them into song format that can be sung over and over again? Since Yashoda worked so hard for His satisfaction, you would think that Krishna would oblige by being a well-behaved son. On the contrary, under the pretense of feigned anger over having been neglected for a moment while feeding, Krishna broke the pot of butter His mother took so much time to fill. To make matters worse, He ate some of the butter and distributed the rest to monkeys, animals who are known for stealing others’ food. It may sound strange to those who have never been in India for too long, but in places like Vrindavana and Chitrakuta, monkeys roam the streets just like ordinary citizens. They cause a disturbance by sneaking up on people and stealing whatever they have in their hands, hoping it is food. The unsuspecting visitors have to pay attention especially to their eyeglasses, as monkeys are fond of taking these. As monkeys are already prone towards theft, the fact that Krishna was voluntarily handing over Yashoda’s wonderful butter was a brave act of defiance. Yet the mother delighted in this naughty behavior of her son. As He was playing the part of a delightful child, Yashoda made sure to stay true to the role of a caring mother. She chased Krishna with a whipping stick and then bound Him to a mortar as punishment. Rather than child abuse, this was a sparkling display of divine love, for the event is so wonderful that people still sing about it to this day. When Krishna was caught He faked tears of fear, which rolled down His face, mixing with the anjana, or eye-ointment, so carefully applied by His mother. This scene of Krishna crying after being caught by mother Yashoda was appreciated by Kunti Devi, the mother of the famous Pandava brothers. During adulthood, Krishna was particularly favorable to the Pandavas. After the brothers survived numerous attempts made on their lives and eventually reclaimed the throne of Hastinapura that was rightfully theirs, Kunti Devi offered a set of prayers to Krishna, thanking Him for His kindness and attention. In these wonderful offerings, she remarked on the good fortune of Yashoda, who was able to tie up the Supreme Lord with ropes of affection. Mother Yashoda worked hard to keep her family happy, and the young Krishna made sure she worked even harder. While carrying out duties it is easy to forget the purpose behind them, the tie that holds all the actions together. Shri Krishna purposefully created situations where His mother could stop working for a few brief moments and give Him personal attention. That same opportunity is created for every living entity desirous of transcendental association, freedom of spiritual movement. Through the excuse of following a routine in bhakti-yoga, the devoted soul can take time out of their busy day to give attention to Krishna. By regularly chanting   , “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare   ”, the beloved darling of Vrindavana will play regularly on the field of your mind. In Closing: Have to take care of my duties you’ll say, But how to make this work actually pay? From Shri Krishna’s charming glance you’ll find, Supreme wisdom, tie that everything binds. Children, young and old, to ask have the nerve, Mother responds, never gets credit she deserves. Yashoda to Krishna’s welfare was dedicated, Lord acted like her efforts not appreciated. All done for transcendental love to increase, In caring for Krishna Yashoda never to cease.

HOW TO SPOT A SRI LANKAN...!!!!

This is so true and so funny. You know that you are definitely a Sri
Lankan if:

          * Everything you eat is flavored with garlic, onion and
            Chilies.

          *You  try  and  re-use  gift  wrappers  ,  gift boxes,
            aluminum foil  and of course disposable cups & plates.

            *You  try to eject food particles from between your teeth
            by  pressing  your  tongue  against  them  and  making a
            peculiar noise like, tshick, tshick!

            * You are standing next to the two largest size suitcases
              at the Airport.

          * You  arrive  one or two hours late to a party, and think
            it's normal.

            * Your toilet has a plastic bowl next to the commode.

            * You  name  your  children  in  rhythms (example, Honey &
            Money, Sita & Gita, thunga & --singhe, Nimal & Vimal)

            * All  your  children  have pet names, which sound nowhere
             close to their real names.

            * You  take  Sri  Lankan  snacks anywhere it says 'No Food
            Allowed'  

            * You  talk  for an hour at the front door when
              leaving someone's house.

            * You  load  up  the  family  car  with  as many people as
                 possible.

            * You  use  plastic  to  cover  anything new in your house
              whether  it's  the  remote  control,  VCR, carpet or new
              couch.

            * Your  parents  tell  you  to  not  care  about what your
              friends  think, but they won't let you do certain things
              because  of  what  the  other  Uncles And Aunties' will
              think.

            * You  teach  you  kids  to say uncle and auntie to anyone
              older related or not.

            * Owning a rice cooker is a top priority.

            * Use  the  dishwasher  to  store dishes - use it only for
              special occasions.

            * Say  'NO'  after  every  sentence. i.e . that's good NO,
              very expensive NO...etc

            * Men use the word 'PUT' frequently i.e PUT a drink, PUT a
              Jump !


            * You live with your parents even if you are 40 years old.
              (And they like it  that way).

            * If she is NOT your daughter, you always take interest in 
               knowing whose daughter  has run with whose son and feel it's your duty
              to spread the word.

            *  If  you don't live at home, when your parents call, they
              ask if you've eaten, even if it's midnight

            * When  your parents meets a Sri Lankan for the first time
              and  talk for a few  minutes, you soon discover they are
              your relatives..

          * Your  parents don't realize phone connections to foreign
            countries  have  improved  in  the last two decades, and
              still  scream  at  the top of their lungs while talking.

          * You  have  bed  sheets  on your sofas so as to keep them
             away  from  getting  dirty but the sheet on your bed has
              not seen water for months!

            * It  is  embarrassing  if  your wedding has less than 500
            people. (How abt ur wedding... hehe)

            * You  list  your  daughter  as  'fair  and  slim'  in the
              matrimonial    no    matter  What  she  looks  like.

            * You  have a big cabinet in your hall to keep glass wares
                & ceramic  utensils  (you  have  never  used)

            * You  have  really  enjoyed reading this mail because you
              know some, or most of  them apply to you.

Monkeys pick up local "accents"

Courtesy of BioMed Central

and World Science

 

 staff

Apes and monkeys have regional "accents"-and as with people, this behaviour is learnt rather than genetically programmed, a study suggests.

To what extent animal communication is learnt rather than inborn is hotly debated. Monkeys and apes, some of the closest evolutionary relatives to humans, are born with various calls and sounds specific to the species. But overlying this there is some flexibility: for example, you can tell where a gibbon, a type of ape, is from by its accent.

In the new research published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, scientists studied free-living monkeys of the species Cercopithecus campbelli campbelli, also known as Campbell's monkeys. They observed social interactions, particularly in mutual grooming, and recorded "contact calls" made by females to stay in touch with other monkeys while travelling, foraging or resting.

The investigators used DNA tests from monkey droppings to determine how closely related different individuals were. Their social structure and family groups were well known because they have lived near a research station at Taï National Park, Ivory Coast, for over a decade. Groups comprised one male, four or six females, and their offspring.

"Each female has its own distinctive vocalisation but they appear to pick up habits from each other," said Alban Lemasson of the University of Rennes in France, who led the research.

Similarities between "contact calls" depended on the length of time adult females spent grooming each other and who their grooming partner was, rather than genetic relatedness, he observed. He explained that while the general call repertoire depends on genes, "the fine structure within this is influenced by the company they kept."

"This behaviour also fits with the theory that human speech has evolved gradually from ancestral primate vocalisations and social patterns," he added. Primates are the evolutionary lineage of animals comprising humans and their close relatives, such as apes.

Source: World Science

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/111216_accents

  

 

Posted by

Robert Karl Stonjek

A human bias against creativity is hindering science, research claims

Special to World Science

 

  

Most us us profess to love creativity. But we recoil when it stares us in the face, according to a new study that seems to seems lodge a quiet indictment against the whole human race.

Jennifer S. Mueller of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues, who conducted the work, say their study both demonstrates and helps explain the phenomenon. The problem that perhaps most interferes with our recognition and appreciation for real-life creativity, they claim, is that creativity usually comes with a side dish of uncertainty: Will this new idea actually work? What will people think of me if I accept it?

One of many scientists ridiculed in his time for work now considered seminal-the American physicist Robert Goddard (1882-1945)

Our love of creativity is what we profess in public-but our dread of it is what we tend to hide from the world, and often even from ourselves, they add.

The study is important, they continue, because society lovingly expends resources to foster creativity in each new generation-then often turns around and squashes the new ideas that result. It's time to figure out ways to put a stop to this, they say.

"Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocket propulsion, endured ridicule and derision from his contemporary scientific peers who stated his ideas were ludicrous and impossible," they noted as an example, in a report on their findings. The paper appears in the Nov. 29 advance online issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Scientists in every generation from Galileo to Daniel Shechtman-2011 Nobel laureate in chemistry-were initially ridiculed for now-famous work. The same can be said of a legion of artists.

"The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identifying how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity," Mueller and colleagues wrote. "If people hold an implicit bias against creativity, then we cannot assume that organizations, institutions or even scientific endeavors will desire and recognize creative ideas even when they explicitly state they want them."

Mueller and colleagues paid a group of participants to take a series of tests designed to reveal both conscious and unconscious attitudes toward creativity. 

In one test that took the form of a word-association game, they found that participants seemed to display an unconscious negative attitude toward creativity if the experimenters had made an attempt to plant thoughts of uncertainty in their heads. They tried to seed this uncertainty by promising that some participants would later receive an additional payment based on a lottery. In the word game-similar to a type of test previously used to reveal unconscious racial attitudes-researchers sought to measure whether participants took a little longer to associate words related to creativity with positive things than with negatives ones, or vice-versa.

In a second experiment, the researchers found that negative feelings about creativity also disrupted the ability to recognize that quality. In this part, they presented participants with an idea for an invention that had been judged creative by a group of college students. It involved a sneaker with a nanotechnology that supposedly adjusted fabric thickness to cool the foot and reduce blisters.

Mueller and colleagues pointed to one possible route through which scientific institutions are stifling their own ability to recognize creativity.

"When journals extol creative research, universities train scientists to promote creative solutions, R&D companies commend the development of new products, pharmaceutical companies praise creative medical breakthroughs, they may do so in ways that promote uncertainty by requiring gate-keepers to identify the single 'best' and most 'accurate' idea thereby creating an unacknowledged aversion to creativity," they wrote.

"Future research should identify factors which mitigate or reverse the bias against creativity."

 

Source: World Science
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/111212_creativity

 

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Why men overestimate their sexiness: it's evolution, study proposes

Courtesy of the Association for Psychological Science
and World Science

 

 staff

Does she or doesn't she...? Sexual cues are ambiguous and confounding. We-especially men-often read them wrong. But a new study hypothesizes that the men who get it wrong might be those that evolution has favored. 

"There are tons of studies showing that men think women are interested when they're not," said psychologist Carin Perilloux of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass, who conducted the research with colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin. "Ours is the first to systematically examine individual differences." 

The findings are to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.

The research involved 96 male 103 female undergraduates, who were put through a "speed-meeting" exercise-talking for three minutes to each of five potential opposite-sex mates. Before the conversations, the participants rated themselves on their own attractiveness and were assessed for the level of their desire for a short-term sexual encounter. After each "meeting," they rated the partner on a number of categories, including physical attractiveness and sexual interest in the participant.

The results: Men looking for a quick hookup were found to be more likely to overestimate the women's desire for them. Men who thought they were "hot" also thought the women were hot for them-though men who were actually attractive, by the women's ratings, did not make this mistake. The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest. And women tended to underestimate men's desire.

A hopeless mess? Evolutionarily speaking, maybe not, say the psychologists. Over millennia, these errors may in fact have enhanced men's reproductive success.

"There are two ways you can make an error as a man," said Perilloux. "Either you think, 'Oh, wow, that woman's really interested in me'-and it turns out she's not. There's some cost to that," such as embarrassment or a blow to your reputation. The other error: "She's interested, and he totally misses out. He misses out on a mating opportunity. That's a huge cost in terms of reproductive success." The researchers theorize that the kind of guy who went for it, even at the risk of being rebuffed, scored more often-and passed on his overperceiving tendency to his genetic heirs. 

The casual sex seekers "face slightly different adaptive problems," said Perilloux. "They are limited mainly by the number of consenting sex partners-so overestimation is even more important." Only the actually attractive men probably had no need for misperception, she adds.

The research contains some messages for daters of both sexes, said Perilloux: Women should know the risks and "be as communicative and clear as possible." Men: "Know that the more attracted you are, the more likely you are to be wrong about her interest." Again, that may not be as bad as it sounds, she said-"if warning them will prevent heartache later on."

Source: World Science
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/111213_evolution

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek