NEWS & VIEWS

Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy (1 Feb) - Karen was allowed to hold her new-born daughter for only 20 minutes before she was taken into care. She has no idea where the child is now. Karen, Birmingham Social Services said, had Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy, the mental illness that causes parents to harm their children in an attempt to draw attention to themselves. Her child had been placed on the 'at risk' register even before she was born in December 1999. [more]

Sexual insecurity (30 Jan) - When 50 million red-blooded American men sit down to watch the Superbowl, they'll see more than the Patriots and the Panthers facing off. This year's game is also a showdown for dominance in the billion dollar battle among companies selling erectile dysfunction drugs. [more]

Science (29 Jan) - Self-taught scientist Steve Grand built his own intelligent android. Now he's seeking intelligent life among the newsreaders, television producers and yoghurt advertisers who label things as 'science'. [more]

Mental health care (29 Jan) - A state-funded report criticizes California's treatment of juvenile convicts who need mental health care. The report finds an over-reliance on punishment and a failure to track the use of mind-altering drugs. [more]

Language (28 Jan) - Imagine how different politics would be if debates were conducted in Tariana, an Amazonian language in which it is a grammatical error to report something without saying how you found it out - as Alexandra Aikhenvald tells us its speakers tell her. Tariana is in danger of dying. With each such disappearance we risk losing insights into different ways of thinking. Aikhenvald told Adrian Barnett about the race to record languages. [more]

Antidepressants (28 Jan) - Makers of popular antidepressants such as Paxil, Zoloft and Effexor have refused to disclose the details of most clinical trials involving depressed children, denying doctors and parents crucial evidence as they weigh fresh fears that such medicines may cause some children to become suicidal. [more]

Creative sleep (22 Jan) - Good news for those who find it hard to prise themselves from their duvets - new research suggests that sleep may stimulate creative thinking. Does the following sound familiar? The solution to a seemingly unfathomable problem, left unresolved in the evening, effortlessly pops into your head the following morning. The experience is common, yet anecdotal. Now, an experiment by Jan Born of Lübeck University shows whether the phenomenon stands up to scientific scrutiny. [more]

Homosexuality (28 Jan) -   Just because a gene contributes to behaviour which means that 10 per cent of the people who carry the gene do not pass it on via reproduction, that is no indication that the gene will not flourish. In combination with other genes it may produce, in the other 90 per cent of the population that carry it, those who do reproduce and pass it on - in which case, the gene will survive. [more]

Neuroaesthetics (25 Jan) - Does a Rembrandt portrait or a van Gogh still life press some special buttons in every human being's brain? Will a red painting speak to us in ways a blue one never could? Are we wired in ways that make every one of us enjoy a smiling bust and shiver at a frowning one? [more]

RESEARCH & COMMENTARY

Depression (1 Feb) - Recent experience as the target of anti-gay violence or threats, not identifying as gay, or feeling alienated from the gay community are the major predictors of depression in men who have sex with men (MSM) and public health officials should address these issues by seeking changes in social policies, say UCSF researchers. [more]

Language - primatology (30 Jan) - Scans have pinpointed circuits in the monkey brain that could be precursors of those in humans for speech and language. As in humans, an area specialized for processing species-specific vocalizations is on the left side of the brain, report Drs. Amy Poremba, Mortimer Mishkin, and colleagues in NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center (CC), components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the University of Iowa. An area near the left temple responded significantly more than the same area on the right only to monkey calls, not to other animal calls, human voices or various other sounds. The researchers published their findings in the January 29, 2004 Nature. [more]

Sexual behavior (29 Jan) - A pint-sized, tree-dwelling Brazilian monkey has proven to be strikingly similar to humans when it comes to sexual responses, a national research team has discovered. Through functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and collaborating institutions for the first time peered into the brains of fully conscious nonhuman primates to learn what's really on their minds when it comes to sex. The research appears in the February 2004 issue of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. [more]

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Development - bonding (28 Jan) - Women are more likely to cradle babies on their left-hand side because it activates bonding-related brain regions, research suggests. [more]

Depression (28 Jan) - Teenagers suffering from depression may have abnormal brain structure, according to new research. An article published in BMC Medicine this week shows that adolescents diagnosed with major depressive disorder tend to have a small hippocampus - a part of the brain associated with motivation, emotion, and memory formation. [more]

Animal behavior (27 Jan) - Mice that are born from assisted reproductive technologies behave differently when adult, research reveals. Test-tube rodents are more confident than their naturally conceived counterparts, but have a poorer memory. [more]

Genetics (22 Jan) - Researchers at the University of Chicago have discovered there is extensive gene "traffic" on the mammalian X chromosome and overturn a conventional theory about how the genes evolved on the sex chromosome. [more]

Hope - medicine - NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Dr. Jerome Groopman, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness. Groopman explains role hope plays in the practice of medicine. [interview]

Love - In a fascinating new book, evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher examines the chemistry responsible for the giddiness, fixations and overarching lunacy associated with romantic love. [review]

Psychology - Gary Marcus is a young research psychologist whose interest in the literature of biology and resulted in new and interesting ideas about the biological basis of mind. He believes that "the mechanisms that build our brains are just a special case of the mechanisms that build the rest of our body. The initial structure of the mind, like the initial structure of the rest of the body, is a product of our genes." [interview]

Personality - Patricia Ross reviews Virtue, Vice, and Personality: The Complexity of Behavior edited by Edward C. Chang and Lawrence J. Sanna. [review]

Philosophy of science - James Sage reviews Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science by Peter Godfrey-Smith. [review]