Empathy? Let's yawn together! NEUROSCIENCE Rocks

Chimpanzees' Contagious Yawning Evidence of Empathy, Not Just Sleepiness, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2011) — Contagious yawning is not just a marker of sleepiness or boredom. For chimpanzees, it may actually be a sign of a social connection
New research at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, may help scientists understand empathy, the mechanism thought to underlie contagious yawning, in both chimpanzees and humans. The research also may help show how social biases strengthen or weaken empathy.
Scientists at Yerkes discovered chimpanzees yawn more after watching familiar chimpanzees yawn than after watching strangers yawn. The Public Library of Science One (PLoS ONE) is publishing the study online on April 6, 2011.
Yerkes researchers Matthew Campbell, PhD, and Frans de Waal, PhD, propose that when yawning spreads between chimpanzees, it reflects an underlying empathy between them.
"The idea is that yawns are contagious for the same reason that smiles, frowns and other facial expressions are contagious," they write. "Our results support the idea that contagious yawning can be used as a measure of empathy, because the biases we observed were similar to empathy biases previously seen in humans."
Campbell is a FIRST postdoctoral fellow at Yerkes and Emory (Fellowship in Research and Science Teaching). De Waal is director of the Living Links Center at Yerkes and C.H. Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory.
They studied 23 adult chimpanzees that were housed in two separate groups. The chimpanzees viewed several nine-second video clips of other chimpanzees, in both groups, either yawning or doing something else. They yawned 50 percent more frequently in response to seeing members of their group yawn compared to seeing others yawn.
In humans, scientists have identified certain parts of the brain that are activated both when someone experiences pain and when they see someone else experiencing pain. In these experiments, people tend to show more sensitivity for members of the same social group.
The results raise the question of whether contagious yawning among humans shows the same biases: favoring members of the same social group over different social groups.
The authors note one complication: chimpanzees live in small communities where unfamiliar individuals are by definition seen as members of a separate social group. In contrast, humans do not necessarily see strangers as belonging to an "outgroup." For this reason, the in-group/out-group distinction may be more absolute in chimpanzees than in humans. Chimpanzees in the wild are known to be extremely hostile to external groups, which probably adds to the effects found in this study.
The authors say that contagious yawning could be a window into social and emotional connections between individuals, and suggest that insight into barriers to chimpanzee empathy may help break down those barriers for humans.

Anorexia and Spring birth date? SCIENCE rocks at Oxford

Dr Lahiru Handunnetthi and team gathered data including birth dates of 1,293 individuals who had been diagnosed with anorexia. They discovered that a disproportionately high number of patients (15% excess) were born between March and June, for every seven anorexia cases expected, there were eight. They also found fewer-than-expected births in September/October (20% deficit).

The researchers explain that previous studies had indicated a risk between developing an eating disorder and when the person is born. However, they were small studies involving few people - making it difficult to come to any conclusions.

Dr Handunnetthi said:

"We meta-analysed four cohorts of anorexia nervosa patients from the UK, making this the largest ever study to assess the presence of a season of birth effect in anorexia. We found that susceptibility to anorexia nervosa is significantly influenced by a person's season of birth, being higher in those people born in the spring and lower in those born in the autumn.

A number of previous studies have found that mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression are more common among those born in the spring - so this finding in anorexia is perhaps not surprising. However, our study only provides evidence of an association. Now we need more research to identify which factors are putting people at particular risk."


The scientists say that perhaps environmental factors which are present when conception occurs, or during fetal development in the uterus, may have an impact.

Dr Handunnetthi said:

"Seasonal changes in temperature, sunlight exposure and vitamin D levels, maternal nutrition and exposure to infections are all possible risk factors. Identifying these risk factors is important in helping us understand and maybe even prevent illness in future."

Too big a price for Beauty!

Botox Can Dull Ability To Read Emotion In Others

What Else is New?

Men Tend to Leap to Judgement Where Women See More Shades of Grey, Research Shows

Science Daily (Apr. 18, 2011) — An experiment by researchers at the University of Warwick has found the first real evidence that men tend to make black-or-white judgements when women are more prone to see shades of grey in choices and decisions.

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The research paper, entitled Sex Differences in Semantic Categorization, is about to be published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Authors Vickie Pasterski, Karolina Zwierzynska, and Zachary Estes are all from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick.
The researchers asked 113 people whether each of 50 objects fitted partially, fully, or not at all into certain categories. The 50 objects were ones likely to stimulate debate or disagreement about which category they fitted into. For instance: Is a tomato a fruit? Is paint a tool?
The researchers found that men were more likely to make absolute category judgments (e.g., a tomato is either a fruit or not), whereas women made less certain category judgments (e.g., a tomato can "sort of" belong in the fruit category). The women surveyed tended to be much more nuanced in their responses and were 23% more likely to assign an object to the "partial" category.
While it has been a popular belief that such a male/female split exists, as far as the researchers are aware, this is the first time such a sex difference in categorization has been shown experimentally.
University of Warwick psychologist Dr Zachary Estes says:
"Of course, simply because we have found a significant sex difference in how men and women categorize does not mean that one method is intrinsically better than the other. For instance, male doctors may be more likely to quickly and confidently diagnose a set of symptoms as a disease. Although this brings great advantages in treating diseases early, it obviously has massive disadvantages if the diagnosis is actually wrong. In many cases, a more open approach to categorizing or diagnosing would be more effective."

amazing

http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?id=820057168001

My Gut Hurts When I read This! Science Rocks

The Neuroscience of the Gut

Strange but true: the brain is shaped by bacteria in the digestive tract

By Robert Martone  | April 19, 2011 | 3

Researchers track the gut-brain connection Image: dyoma

People may advise you to listen to your gut instincts: now research suggests that your gut may have more impact on your thoughts than you ever realized. Scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Genome Institute of Singapore led by Sven Pettersson recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that normal gut flora, the bacteria that inhabit our intestines, have a significant impact on brain development and subsequent adult behavior.
We human beings may think of ourselves as a highly evolved species of conscious individuals, but we are all far less human than most of us appreciate. Scientists have long recognized that the bacterial cells inhabiting our skin and gut outnumber human cells by ten-to-one. Indeed, Princeton University scientist Bonnie Bassler compared the approximately 30,000 human genes found in the average human to the more than 3 million bacterial genes inhabiting us, concluding that we are at most one percent human. We are only beginning to understand the sort of impact our bacterial passengers have on our daily lives.
Moreover, these bacteria have been implicated in the development of neurological and behavioral disorders. For example, gut bacteria may have an influence on the body’s use of vitamin B6, which in turn has profound effects on the health of nerve and muscle cells. They modulate immune tolerance and, because of this, they may have an influence on autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. They have been shown to influence anxiety-related behavior, although there is controversy regarding whether gut bacteria exacerbate or ameliorate stress related anxiety responses. In autism and other pervasive developmental disorders, there are reports that the specific bacterial species present in the gut are altered and that gastrointestinal problems exacerbate behavioral symptoms. A newly developed biochemical test for autism is based, in part, upon the end products of bacterial metabolism.
But this new study is the first to extensively evaluate the influence of gut bacteria on the biochemistry and development of the brain. The scientists raised mice lacking normal gut microflora, then compared their behavior, brain chemistry and brain development to mice having normal gut bacteria. The microbe-free animals were more active and, in specific behavioral tests, were less anxious than microbe-colonized mice. In one test of anxiety, animals were given the choice of staying in the relative safety of a dark box, or of venturing into a lighted box. Bacteria-free animals spent significantly more time in the light box than their bacterially colonized littermates. Similarly, in another test of anxiety, animals were given the choice of venturing out on an elevated and unprotected bar to explore their environment, or remain in the relative safety of a similar bar protected by enclosing walls. Once again, the microbe-free animals proved themselves bolder than their colonized kin.
Pettersson’s team next asked whether the influence of gut microbes on the brain was reversible and, since the gut is colonized by microbes soon after birth, whether there was evidence that gut microbes influenced the development of the brain. They found that colonizing an adult germ-free animal with normal gut bacteria had no effect on their behavior. However, if germ free animals were colonized early in life, these effects could be reversed. This suggests that there is a critical period in the development of the brain when the bacteria are influential.

Consistent with these behavioral findings, two genes implicated in anxiety -- nerve growth factor-inducible clone A (NGF1-A) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) -- were found to be down-regulated in multiple brain regions in the germ-free animals. These changes in behavior were also accompanied by changes in the levels of several neurotransmitters, chemicals which are responsible for signal transmission between nerve cells. The neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin and noradrenaline were elevated in a specific region of the brain, the striatum, which is associated with the planning and coordination of movement and which is activated by novel stimuli, while there were there were no such effects on neurotransmitters in other brain regions, such as those involved in memory (the hippocampus) or executive function (the frontal cortex).

When Pettersson’s team performed a comprehensive gene expression analysis of five different brain regions, they found nearly 40 genes that were affected by the presence of gut bacteria. Not only were these primitive microbes able to influence signaling between nerve cells while sequestered far away in the gut, they had the astonishing ability to influence whether brain cells turn on or off specific genes.  
How, then, do these single-celled intestinal denizens exert their influence on a complex multicellular organ such as the brain? Although the answer is unclear, there are several possibilities: the Vagus nerve, for example, connects the gut to the brain, and it’s known that infection with the Salmonella bacteria stimulates the expression of certain genes in the brain, which is blocked when the Vagus nerve is severed. This nerve may be stimulated as well by normal gut microbes, and serve as the link between them and the brain. Alternatively, those microbes may modulate the release of chemical signals by the gut into the bloodstream which ultimately reach the brain. These gut microbes, for example, are known to modulate stress hormones which may in turn influence the expression of genes in the brain.
Regardless of how these intestinal “guests” exert their influence, these studies suggest that brain-directed behaviors, which influence the manner in which animals interact with the external world, may be deeply influenced by that animal’s relationship with the microbial organisms living in its gut. And the discovery that gut bacteria exert their influence on the brain within a discrete developmental stage may have important implications for developmental brain disorders.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Robert Martone is the Neuroscience therapeutic area lead for The Covance Biomarker Center of Excellence located in Greenfield, Indiana. He is a research scientist with extensive experience in drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases.

It is not your fault

Genetic Link to Attempted Suicide Identified

ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2011) — A study of thousands of people with bipolar disorder suggests that genetic risk factors may influence the decision to attempt suicide.

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Johns Hopkins scientists, reporting in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, have identified a small region on chromosome 2 that is associated with increased risk for attempted suicide. This small region contains four genes, including the ACP1 gene, and the researchers found more than normal levels of the ACP1 protein in the brains of people who had committed suicide. This protein is thought to influence the same biological pathway as lithium, a medication known to reduce the rate of suicidal behavior.
The researchers say the findings could lead to better suicide prevention efforts by providing new directions for research and drug development.
"We have long believed that genes play a role in what makes the difference between thinking about suicide and actually doing it," says study leader Virginia L. Willour, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Willour and her colleagues studied DNA samples from nearly 2,700 adults with bipolar disorder, 1,201 of them with a history of suicide attempts and 1,497 without. They found that those with one copy of a genetic variant in the region of chromosome 2 where ACP1 is located were 1.4 times more likely to have attempted suicide, and those with two copies were almost three times as likely.
Willour and her colleagues were able to replicate their findings in another group of samples: This one comprised DNA from more than 3,000 people with bipolar disorder. By using only DNA from people with bipolar disorder, the researchers say they were able to control for mental illness and narrow in on what may cause one group to attempt suicide and another to control those urges.
Suicide is estimated to kill 1.4 percent of the U.S. population, and roughly 4.6 percent of the population has attempted suicide at least once, Willour says. Among people with bipolar disorder, 47 percent think about killing themselves while 25 percent actually try to do it, she says.
Willour says the next steps are to replicate these findings and to determine the exact biological mechanisms through which these genetic risk factors increase the risk for suicidal behavior.
"What's promising are the implications of this work for learning more about the biology of suicide and the medications used to treat patients who may be at risk," Willour says. "Not everyone with bipolar disorder can take lithium because of its side effects. If we could give them another option, that would be fantastic."
The study was funded by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Other Hopkins researchers who participated in the study are Fayaz Seifuddin, M.S.; Pamela B. Mahon, Ph.D.; Dubravka Jancic, Ph.D.; Mehdi Pirooznia, M.D., Ph.D.; Barbara Schweizer, R.N., B.S.; Fernando S. Goes, M.D.; Francis Mondimore, M.D.; Dean F. MacKinnon, M.D.; J. Raymond DePaulo Jr., M.D.; Peter P. Zandi, Ph.D.; and James B. Potash, M.D., M.P.H.

Not all can verbalize their pain away

Patients' own cells yield new insights into the biology of schizophrenia

Underwater Sculpture Park!

Pictures: "Bodies" Fill Underwater Sculpture Park

Is everything Neurobiology?

Neurological basis for embarrassment described

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. Mark Twain

It is ok to be Weird or Weirder!

 Scientific American Mind » May 2011

Brain  Mind

The Unleashed Mind: Why Creative People Are Eccentric

Highly creative people often seem weirder than the rest of us. Now researchers know why

By Shelley Carson  | April 14, 2011 |

People who score high for creative achievement in the arts are more likely to believe in telepathic communication, dreams that foretell the future, and past lives. Image: GETTY IMAGES

In Brief

• People who are highly creative often have odd thoughts and behaviors—and vice versa.
• Both creativity and eccentricity may be the result of genetic variations that increase cognitive disinhibition—the brain’s failure to filter out extraneous information.
• When unfiltered information reaches conscious awareness in the brains of people who are highly intelligent and can process this information without being overwhelmed, it may lead to exceptional insights and sensations.

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  He is one of the world’s best known and most successful entrepreneurs, with hundreds of patents to his name—including the Segway scooter. But you will never see Dean Kamen in a suit and tie: the eccentric inventor dresses almost exclusively in denim. He spent five years in college before dropping out, does not take vacations and has never married. Kamen presides (along with his Ministers of Ice Cream, Brunch and Nepotism) over the Connecticut island kingdom of North Dumpling, which has “seceded” from the U.S. and dispenses its own currency in units of pi. Visitors are issued a visa form that includes spaces on which to note identifying marks on both their face and buttocks.

Kamen, who works tirelessly at inspiring kids to pursue careers in science and engineering, is one of many highly creative people whose personal behavior sometimes strikes others as odd. Albert Einstein picked up cigarette butts off the street to get tobacco for his pipe; Howard Hughes spent entire days on a chair in the middle of the supposedly germ-free zone of his Beverly Hills Hotel suite; the composer Robert Schumann believed that his musical compositions were dictated to him by Beethoven and other deceased luminaries from their tombs; and Charles Dickens is said to have fended off imaginary urchins with his umbrella as he walked the streets of London. More recently, we have seen Michael Jackson’s preoccupation with rhinoplasty, Salvador Dalí’s affection for dangerous pets and the Icelandic singer Björk dressed for the Oscars as a swan.