NEWS & VIEWS

Homicide (26 Feb) - Sometimes we act like animals and sometimes we act like sophisticated animals. And sometimes, even the most sophisticated animals commit murder. It is the question of when, why, and under what conditions humans murder each other that informs the research of professors Margo Wilson and Martin Daly, world-renowned researchers and professors in the field of evolutionary psychology and homicide. [more]

Suicide (25 Feb) - The official number of military suicides in Iraq is set at 22; but some veteran advocacy groups charge that the number is much higher and doesn't include the soldiers who take their lives after returning home. Longer deployments and a controversial war they say, can lead to increased anxiety and depression. But can it also lead to suicide? That's what some families and veteran advocates want to know. [more]

Psychoanalysis (25 Feb) - Contemporary Anglophone philosophy often draws upon the resources of psychoanalysis. But is there a real connection between the two disciplines or are philosophers with an interest in psychoanalysis just trawling for ideas, critical openings, or catchy titles? [more]

Mental health (25 Feb) - Although mental health care for returning soldiers has vastly improved in the past 30 years, many within the government's medical community say they are barely able to treat veterans from previous conflicts. Funding for Veterans Affairs' mental health services has been slashed since the mid-1990s, and more cuts are looming. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reports. [more]

Chimpanzees (25 Feb) - On the heels of the recent controversy over teaching evolution in Georgia schools, the Fernbank Museum is celebrating one of humankind's closest living relatives. [more]

Heroin (23 Feb) - Cheap and very pure heroin is creating a growing addiction crisis across America. Heroin -- much of it from Colombia -- is replacing crack cocaine as the drug of choice, particularly among the young. In Massachusetts, for example, more than 4 percent of high school boys report having used heroin. [more]

Adolescence (23 Feb) - Scientists had believed for years that the brain was almost structurally mature at about age 5. But several studies, using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, found that it continues to mature throughout adolescence into adulthood, especially in the frontal lobes. That's meaningful and important, says University of California, Los Angeles neuroscientist Elizabeth Sowell, because the frontal lobes are the executive seat of the brain, the area that is responsible for decision-making, problem solving, planning and other functions. It controls behavior, too, helping to inhibit inappropriate responses. It also is the area responsible for personality. [more]

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Politics (24 Feb) - David Goodhart's essay challenging liberals to rethink their attitudes to diversity and the welfare state has provoked a bitter debate among progressive thinkers. [more]

Mindreading (22 Feb) - Because a talent for mindreading is something all humans share -- it's as much a part of our nature as is converting oxygen into carbon dioxide -- we don't bother to teach it in schools, or test for an aptitude in it. Yet it is a skill, and like all skills it is unevenly distributed through the general population. And neuroscience can help us understand, and perhaps improve it. [more]

Psychiatry (22 Feb) - There is almost certainly a spectrum from sanity to madness, and different kinds of madness are not discrete from each other. Overall, 60 per cent of people who meet the strict criteria for one mental illness also meet those for another. This hardly suggests a watertight schema. [more]

Brain scanning (17 Feb) - Human beings are the only animals that have asymmetrical brains, this is thought to be the result of us having the capacity for language. However some people do have symmetrical brains and new research suggests they are much more likely to suffer from psychoses like schizophrenia and manic depression. [more] [audio]

Left-handedness (13 Feb) - The fraction of left-handed people today is about the same as it was during the Ice Age, according to data from prehistoric handprints. They were found in caves painted during the Upper Palaeolithic period, between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago. [more]

Evolutionary psychology (12 Feb) - What's the real reason for the tiny audiences at concerts of contemporary music? Evolution - according to psychologists at Duke University in the United States. Their studies suggest the human brain is hard-wired to reject dissonant sounds. It favours harmonious tones because they are the stuff of the sounds of human speech - Homo sapiens most important evolutionary adaptation. [more] [audio]

Sleep - mental health (11 Feb) - A new study finds that the tendency for some children in their early adolescence to sleep less presents a danger to their mental health. The study, in the recent issue of the journal Child Development, says children who get less sleep may develop symptoms of depression and low self-esteem. NPR's Michelle Trudeau reports. [more]

Psychopaths (10 Feb) - Professor Robert Hare has researched psychopaths for more than 25 years. His latest work looks at psychopathic behaviour in the workplace and suggests that a psychopath's superficial charm and ability to manipulate other people, enables them to be successful in many walks of life. [more] [audio]

RESEARCH & COMMENTARY

Evolutionary psychology (1 Mar) - Perhaps music serves as a mating display or a means of coordinating social interactions. Maybe religiosity serves as a group-level adaptation, allowing some to persevere over others. Some researchers, known generally as evolutionary psychologists, seek rigorous ways to investigate such complex human traits. In so doing, they're pushing the boundaries of scientific explanation and addressing aspects of human behavior once believed to be off-limits for scientists. [more]

Neuroscience (27 Feb) - When a new mom gazes at her baby, it's not just her mood that lights up - it's also a brain region associated with emotion processing, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. [more]

Schizophrenia (26 Feb) - Detecting and treating schizophrenia rapidly, following the onset of a first psychotic episode, improves the patients' response to treatment, according to a study by a Yale researcher. Thomas McGlashan, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, said the length of time between the onset of psychosis and detection and treatment can stretch from several weeks to several years. This time span is a concern because the patient is sick and untreated and because there is some indication that the untreated psychotic state itself may increase the risk of a poor outcome. [more]

Digit ratio (24 Feb) - The next time you're nibbling your lover's fingers, or scoping hands for wedding bands, you might want to pay more attention to length. A McMaster University evolutionary psychologist has found the length ratio of a woman's ring to index finger points to her sexual behaviour -- from fantasies to the number of partners she might have. [more]

Rivalry (22 Feb) - Changes in hormone levels cause many women to be more critical of other women, according to a recent study, believed to be the first of its kind. The study, published in the current Royal Society Biology Letters, supports the theory that evolution drives women to compete with each other for resources. In this case, the resource is desirable, eligible men. Participants in the study included 57 college aged women and 47 men, all of whom were heterosexual. Women were divided into groups based on what stage they were at in their menstrual cycle. [more] and [more]

Taste (22 Feb) - People on diets should be forgiven for moaning that chocolate tastes better when you're hungry. Just missing breakfast makes you more sensitive to sweet and salty tastes, according to research published in BMC Neuroscience. Hunger could increase your ability to taste, by increasing the sensitivity of the taste receptors on your tongue, or by changing the way you perceive the same taste stimuli, the author suggests. [more]

Pain - empathy (20 Feb) - The ability to appreciate other people's agony is achieved by the same parts of the brain that we use to experience pain for ourselves. Nature Science Update, EurekAlert.

Schizophrenia (19 Feb) -  People with a history of the digestive disorder celiac disease are three times more likely to develop schizophrenia than those without the disease, according to a report by Danish researchers and a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The report is published in the February 21, 2004, edition of the British Medical Journal. [more]

Brain evolution (17 Feb) - The human brain may have started evolving its unique characteristics much earlier than has previously been supposed, according to new research. Hominid brains were being reorganised before the growth in brain size thought to have established a gulf between human and ape abilities, it is claimed. The conclusions come from analysis of a small-brained fossil hominid - or human-like primate - from South Africa. The authors report their findings in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol. [more]

Pointing (17 Feb) - New research suggests that pointing enhances understanding In some cultures, pointing is a faux pas, sometimes even insulting. New research is turning this social don't on its head, showing that hand gestures, such as pointing, can enhance the understanding of messages. [more]

Language (15 Feb) - The ability to develop a form of communication that becomes an actual language is apparently innate, new University of Chicago research on the use of gestures among deaf children and experiments with adults shows. [more]

Love (13 Feb) - A new study of young mothers by researchers at University College London (UCL) has shown that romantic and maternal love activate many of the same specific regions of the brain, and lead to a suppression of neural activity associated with critical social assessment of other people and negative emotions. The findings suggest that once one is closely familiar with a person, the need to assess the character and personality of that person is reduced, and bring us closer to explaining why, in neurological terms, 'love makes blind.' [more]

Language and theory of mind (13 Feb) - Psychologists, linguists, cognitive scientists and philosophers discuss about the coevolution of these two uniquely human capacities, their co-dependence and interaction. The conference is organized by the Institut des Sciences Cognitives CNRS, Lyon. Starting from February 2004, a new paper will be put on line and open to discussion every two weeks. [more]

Autism (12 Feb) - Scientists trying to understand and treat autism have discovered that the brains of people with autism function differently than those of normal people when they view pictures of unfamiliar people. However, when people with autism look at a picture of a very familiar face, such as their mother's, their brain activity is similar to that of control subjects. [more]

Brain - Health and Science writer Carl Zimmer's new book is Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain-and How it Changed the World. It's about Thomas Willis, the scientist whose research on the workings of the brain during the 17th century became the basis of modern neurology. [review]

Friends - Alex Clark reviews Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family? by Ethan Watters. [review]

Sibling rivalry - Jonathan Yardley reviews The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why by Dalton Conley. [review]

Brain - Steven Johnson is author of the new book, Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life. He writes the monthly "Emerging Technology" column for Discover and is contributing editor at Wired. [interview]

Animal language - Clive D. L. Wynne reviews Animal Talk: Breaking the Codes of Animal Language by Tim Friend. [review]

Intelligence - Nathan J. Emery reviews Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings by Duane M. Rumbaugh and David A. Washburn. [review]

Probability theory - Tommaso Toffoli reviews Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by E. T. Jaynes. [review]

Memory - Joseph E. LeDoux reviews Memory and Emotion: The Making of Lasting Memories by James L. McGaugh. [review]

Poverty - Eric Stover reviews Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer. [review]

Psychiatry - Matt Lee reviews Narratives in Psychiatry edited by Maurice Greenberg, Suhkwinder Singh Shergill, George Szmukler and Digby Tantam. [review]

Freedom - Daniel Cohen reviews A Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency by Philip Pettit. [review]

Intellectual history - Denis Dutton reviews Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 by Charles Murray. [review]

Philosophy - Neil Levy reviews Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change by Joseph LaPorte. [review]

NEWS & VIEWS

Interview (8 Feb) - Philip Kitcher is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and one of the most influential philosophers of science of the past two decades. His writings have been distinguished by the depth clarity of his analysis and the broad range of the questions on which he has written. [more]

Cheating (8 Feb) - We'd never lie or cheat, would we? A growing body of research suggests that in fact, we would, and do, on a regular basis. Doctors prescribe drugs that patients don't need. Students lie about that advanced tutorial in ancient Greek on a college application. Ever padded an expense report? You get the idea. All deceptions big and small, some say, are evidence that the land of the free, and home of the brave, is more like the land of greed, home of the depraved. [more]

War (7 Feb) - Why did Colin Powell say of Saddam on February 24, 2001: "He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."? [more]

Interview (6 Feb) - Dr. David Buss is one of the most highly regarded names in the field of evolutionary psychology.  He is so well-known that it is practically impossible to find an evolutionary work that does not in some way allude to him. [more]

Evolution (6 Feb) - According to the Georgia Department of Education, the word evolution is a "controversial buzzword" that should be removed from the state's biology curriculum. In this hour, we'll take a look at science education in schools. Should evolution be out? And what should science class teach us about the age and origins of the universe? Join NPR's Ira Flatow for a look at new challenges to teaching evolution in public schools. [more]

Pain (5 Feb) - Pain hurts less when it is inflicted by a woman, researchers have found. Students were asked to put their fingers in a clamp which was tightened until the pain was unbearable. Researchers from the University of Westminster found that people allowed women to turn the clamp much further than men. [more]

Sex - mass media (5 Feb) - Janet Jackson's two seconds of bare flesh at the Super Bowl have launched a new rocket in the culture wars. The heads of CBS and MTV say they were shocked, shocked to find nudity had made its way into the Superbowl. The media moguls are repenting, making amends, kicking Janet out of the Grammies and even editing out a scene from ER that reveals the breast of an 80 year old woman. [more]

Antidepressants (5 Feb) - The British government, looking at suicide in its drug trials has told its doctors not to medicate children with most antidepressants on the market. The FDA is now doing its own investigation. Anti-depressants. Are they a chance at a better life, or do they raise the risk of losing it? [more]

Science (5 Feb) - A lot of scientific papers are inherently incomprehensible and dull. But cancer researcher Chris McCabe has plans to change all that. [more]

Neanderthals (5 Feb) - NPR's Madeleine Brand talks with Ira Flatow, host of NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday, about the fate of the Neanderthals. The species vanished about 30,000 years ago -- and now scientists think they have finally figured out why. [more]

RESEARCH & COMMENTARY

Sperm competition (8 Feb) - We examine some of the implications of the possibility that the human penis may have evolved to compete with sperm from other males by displacing rival semen from the cervical end of the vagina prior to ejaculation. The semen displacement hypothesis integrates considerable information about genital morphology and human reproductive behavior, and can be used to generate a number of interesting predictions. [more]

Language (7 Feb) - For more than 60 years, scientists have known that a strip of neural tissue that runs ear-to-ear along the brain's surface orchestrates most voluntary movement, from raising a fork to kicking a ball. A new brain-imaging study has revealed that parts of this so-called motor cortex also respond vigorously as people do nothing more than silently read words. [more] and [more]

Babytalk (4 Feb) - Some parents may think it is undignified or detrimental, but babytalk is essential to the full development of a baby's brain, says a researcher at the University of Alberta. [more]

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Cognitive performance - genetics (4 Feb) - As the US population ages, there is an increasing effort to understand the underlying mechanisms that contribute to learning and memory. This effort could be of critical importance to scientists trying to decipher how the molecular genetic mechanisms of learning and memory are disrupted or impaired. The results of a new study provide evidence that individual differences in some cognitive functions may have a genetic basis. [more]

Depression (3 Feb) - Twenty-five per cent of females between the ages of 16 to 19 will experience an episode of major depression and smokers are more likely to become depressed, according to a unique study led by a University of Alberta researcher. [more]

Adolescence (2 Feb) - Nine experts at a November symposium spoke on what's driving some young people to abuse substances, court legal trouble, bully peers and attempt suicide. [more]

Mental Illness (2 Feb) - Under the leadership of Tom Insel, the National Institute of Mental Health will direct its dollars toward research relevant to the treatment of mental illness. [more]

Violence - Melvin Konner reviews Evolutionary Psychology and Violence edited by Richard W. Bloom and Nancy Dess. [review]

Thinking - human evolution - Andreas Wilke and Rui Mata review How Homo Became Sapiens: On the Evolution of Thinking by Peter Gärdenfors. [review]

Social theory - Marlene Zuk reviews Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers. [review]

Science - David Barash reviews A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins. [review] A review by H. Allen Orr. [review]

Consciousness - Bernard Baars reviews The Quest for Consciousness: A neurobiological approach by Christof Koch. [review]

Sex - Be Reid reviews The Trouble with Nature: Sex in Science and Popular Culture by Roger Lancaster. [review]

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]

NEWS & VIEWS

PTSD (25 Jan) - Up to one in five of the American military personnel in Iraq will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, say senior forces' medical staff dealing with the psychiatric fallout of the war. This revelation follows the disclosure last month that more than 600 US servicemen and women have been evacuated from the country for psychiatric reasons since the conflict started last March. At least 22 US soldiers have killed themselves - a rate considered abnormally high. [more]

Genetics (22 Jan) - The honeybee has been sequenced - and nobody noticed. Opening a six-page special, Steven Rose asks why we no longer care about genes. [more]

Shyness and sickness (23 Jan) - In the midst of a flu epidemic, some good news-researchers think they've solved the age-old medical mystery of why shy, sensitive people are more vulnerable to infectious disease. [more]

Prisons - mental illness (22 Jan) - On any given day, it is estimated that about 70,000 inmates in U.S. prisons are psychotic. Anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 male and female prison inmates suffer from mental disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression. Prisons hold three times more people with mental illness than do psychiatric hospitals, and U.S. prisoners have rates of mental illness that are up to four times greater than rates for the general population. [more]

Neanderthals (21 Jan) - It is possibly the longest-running murder mystery of them all. What, or even who, killed humankind's nearest relatives, the Neanderthals who once roamed Europe before dying out almost 30,000 years ago? [more]

Neuroscience (15 Jan) - Are you having trouble keeping that New Year's resolution to get more exercise? As this ScienCentral News video reports, scientists are finding more reasons you should stick to it. We already know that exercise is good for the heart and the body. But now there's more evidence that it's good for the brain too. [more]

Traumatic stress (19 Jan) - Soon after the collapse of the World Trade Center, experts predicted that one out of five New Yorkers-some one and a half million people-would be traumatized by the tragedy and require psychological care. Within weeks, several thousand grief and crisis counsellors arrived in the city. [more]

Cheating (18 Jan) - Researchers ask if Americans are cheating more often -- and what can be done about it. [more]

IQ (20 Jan) - As it reaches its centenary, Wendy Berliner asks if the intelligence test is back in vogue. [more]

Economics - evolutionary psychology (20 Jan) - Anthropologist Alan Fiske has pointed out that there are four ways in which humans transact: on the basis of authority; on the basis of communal sharing; on the basis of equality matching; and on the basis of market pricing. In the era of small hunter-gatherer tribes in which our brains evolved, only the first three were needed. Market pricing is required once you start to interact with strangers. [more]

Death (19 Jan) - Michael Ignatieff has studied and written about wartime atrocities as a journalist and a researcher. But in his latest book, "Charlie Johnson in the Flames," he has summoned the power of fiction to explore conflict's many faces of death. [more]

Imperialism (19 Jan) - The Saddam saga is only a small part of wider narrative of modernity which has been based on imposition of an imperial world order where order is privileged over justice, where stability is promoted over people, where liberation, human rights and democracy remain a convenient tool in the hands of the privileged. [more]

Pollution (19 Jan) - Our pharmaceutical drugs are turning up in the environment and in animals. What will the consequences be? [more]

RESEARCH & COMMENTARY

Journal Clubs (21 Jan) - New research findings are generally published in academic journals, where they become part of the vast record of scientific data and ideas. But as medical student and commentator Joe Wright tells us, scientific journal articles have another life beyond news reports and library shelves. Just as literature aficionados have book clubs, people who care about research have journal clubs. [more]

Sexual behaviour (21 Jan) - Researchers have suggested that size matters when it comes to sex - the size of part of the brain, that is. According to David Reutens at the University of Melbourne, Australia, a person's sex drive may be proportional to the size of their amygdala, a small 'emotion' centre nestled at the base of the brain. [more]

Addiction (21 Jan) - The discovery of a molecular "addiction switch" in the mammalian brain has the potential to control the addiction process in drug addicts. [more]

Stress (21 Jan) - High levels of estrogen may enhance the brain's response to stress, making women more vulnerable to mental illnesses such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a Yale study. [more]

Panic disorder (20 Jan) - Three brain areas of panic disorder patients are lacking in a key component of a chemical messenger system that regulates emotion, researchers at the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered. [more] Data from large scale epidemiological surveys suggest that panic disorder is more common in women than in men (Joyce et al., 1989; Katerndahl and Realini, 1993; Reed and Witchen, 1998). [more]

Learning - sleep (22 Jan) - "Sleep on it" is standard advice to anyone agonizing over a tricky puzzle. A study of mathematical problem-solving has now shown that a good night's rest really does give you a fresh perspective. The discovery lends credence to the popular maxim that sleep stimulates lateral thinking, says Jan Born of the University of Lübeck, Germany, who led the project. Nature Science Update, Associated Press, 

Reward - addiction (20 Jan) - The reward mechanism involved in addiction appears to regulate lifelong social or pair bonds between monogamous mating animals, according to a Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) study of prairie voles published in the January 19 edition of the Journal of Comparative Neurology. [more]

Primate evolution (20 Jan) - Yoav Gilad and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthology in Germany and the Weizmann Institute in Israel have found a correlation between the loss of olfactory receptor (OR) genes, which are the molecular basis for the sense of smell, and the acquisition of full trichromatic color vision in primates. [more] and [more]

Memory (20 Jan) - Long-lasting neuronal reverberation following novel waking experiences can occur in several forebrain sites and is strongly enhanced during slow-wave sleep. Because neuronal reverberations are sustained for long periods, this may support a mechanism to recall and amplify memories until they are effectively stored. [more] and [more]

Personality (20 Jan) - A test that can assess a dog's personality has helped to prove what pet owners know, but many psychologists deny: pooches have personality. The test, developed by Sam Gosling from the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues, may help researchers to unravel the biology of animal and human character. [more]

Memory (18 Jan) - Cypin is found throughout the body, but in the brain it regulates nerve cell or neuron branching. Branching or dendrite growth is an important process in normal brain function and is thought to increase when a person learns. A reduction in branching is associated with certain neurological diseases. [more] and [more]

Complexity - Rainer Kamber reviews From Complexity to Life: On the Emergence of Life and Meaning edited by Niels Henrik Gregersen. [review]

Science on stage (23 Jan) - From Proof to Copenhagen, plays starring science have met with critical acclaim. But what makes for a good science drama? A look at how science is being brought to the stage. Have we moved beyond the stereotype of the crazy-haired professor? Plus, we'll hear songs from two science musicals: Fermat's Last Tango and Einstein's Dreams. [more]

Development - Peter B. Raabe reviews The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others by Ervin Staub.  [review]

Neuroscience - Steven Rose reviews The Space Between Our Ears: How the Brain Represents Visual Space by Michael Morgan. [review]

Sexual health (13 Jan) - Britain is in the grip of an epidemic of sexually transmitted infections. The number of cases of gonorrhoea has doubled in the last 5 years - the number of confirmed syphilis cases has risen tenfold! But Chlamydia remains the most worrying infection. [more] [audio]

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Self - The idea of the self as something wholly constructed out of the narratives we create about our lives has become a staple across the humanities. But it's utter nonsense, says Galen Strawson, considering Making Stories by Jerome Bruner. [review]

NEWS & VIEWS

Foreign aid (17 Jan) - It's axiomatic that foreign aid benefits the recipient and not the donor - isn't it? Spare a thought this bleak new year for all those who rely on charity and open your hearts, for example, to a group of people who, though they live in London, are in such desperate need of handouts that last year they received 7.6 million pounds in foreign aid from the British government. [more]

Sex (15 Jan) - A new survey from the University of Chicago finds that average, single, city dwellers spends most of their adult lives unmarried and the study goes on to identify the marketplaces where singles search for various sorts of companionship, from true love to something less lasting. The survey's findings reveal an ongoing sexual evolution that could also be the harbinger of a social revolution, with American singles on the verge of becoming the new majority. But whether that's by accident or design is another question. [more]

Language (16 Jan) - How do animals think and communicate with each other? And what can studying animals tell us about the evolution of language in humans? In this hour, NPR's Ira Flatow and guests look at thought and communication in apes, gorillas and monkeys. What can non-human primates tell us about communication in humans? [more]

Face - emotion (15 Jan) - Some people say a face is like an open book. For psychologist Paul Ekman, the face is more than that, it's the Rosetta stone of human evolution. Ekman has spent his life studying the language of facial expressions, identifying, mapping, and interpreting the emotions they reveal. [more]

Race relations (13 Jan) - The meeting of 33 elected leaders of the Americas continues Tuesday in Monterrey, Mexico. What are the challenges facing Afro-Latin Americans in the region, particularly regarding race matters? NPR's Tavis Smiley gets analysis from Melissa Nobles, associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Anani Dzidzienyo, associate professor of Africana Studies and Portuguese-Brazilian Studies at Brown University. [more]

Behavioural problems (14 Jan) - Since a compelling experiment was shown on the BBC's Child of Our Time last week, sales of Omega-3 supplements have rocketed. But, asks Ian Sample, are behavioural problems so easily solved? [more]

Peer review (8 Jan) - Expert review of scientific information is usually a good thing. But as a recent White House proposal to expand peer review of government regulatory science shows, there are big exceptions. [more]

Ethics (15 Jan) - NPR's Alex Chadwick speaks with NPR's Ira Flatow, host of Talk of the Nation Science Friday, about the evolving ethical standards of museums concerning the acquisition and preservation of rare artifacts. [more]

Psychopathy (13 Jan) -   Millions of harassed workers could have their worst fears confirmed about their bosses thanks to a new test to weed out the 'corporate psycho'. [more]

Conservation (13 Jan) - The world, if the biologists' projections turn out to be correct, will soon begin to revert to the Bible's fourth day of creation. There will be grass and "herb-yielding seed" and "the fruit tree yielding fruit". But "the moving creature that hath life", the "fowl that may fly above the Earth", or the "great whales, and every living creature that moveth" may one day be almost unknown to us. [more]

Experimental psychology (22 Dec) - Stanley Milgram wanted to test the limits of authority in a supposedly civilized country to see just how much cruelty would average people inflict on their fellow citizens just because they were told to. In the famous electroshock experiment, 65 percent of the volunteers -- some of them clean-cut Yale men -- believed they were torturing Milgram's test subjects, and did so just because a man in a lab coat told them to. The famous experiment is still Exhibit A in every college psychology course. But what did it prove? [more]

Archaeology - development (12 Jan) - Scientists describe Ethiopia as the cradle of humanity. It is home to perhaps the most famous prehistoric remains ever found, and the world's oldest human remains. Now the country is turning to its prehistoric finds to use them as a catalyst for promoting tourism as a means of boosting its development. [more]

RESEARCH & COMMENTARY

Language - human evolution (15 Jan) - The key cognitive step that allowed humans to become the only animals using language may have been identified, scientists say. A new study on monkeys found that while they are able to understand basic rules about word patterns, they are not able to follow more complex rules that underpin the crucial next stage of language structure. [more] and [more]

Media - Logical Media Lunacy involves ignoring known facts and documented history, and violating elementary norms of rational debate to the point of insanity, but in a way that consistently benefits powerful interests. Thus media performance might be likened to a series of insane fits of irrational behaviour - but with every 'fit' nevertheless manifesting a consistent pattern benefiting the same vested interests in the same way. [more] The BBC's former Middle East Correspondent explains why the corporation ducks the story of the Palestinians. [more]

Disgust (14 Jan) - The purpose of disgust has been quantitatively demonstrated for the first time - it is an evolved response that protects people from disease or harm. [more] and [more]

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Genetics - brain evolution (13 Jan) - Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have identified a gene that appears to have played a role in the expansion of the human brain's cerebral cortex -- a hallmark of the evolution of humans from other primates. [more] and [more]

Human evolution (12 Jan) - For years, scholars regarded the appearance of figurative art as the initiation of an evolutionary process -- that art became progressively more sophisticated as humans experimented with styles and techniques and passed this knowledge to the next generation. But a growing body of evidence suggests that modern humans, virtually from the moment they appeared in Ice Age Europe, were able to produce startlingly sophisticated art. [more]

Intelligence (11 Jan) - Intelligence in the workplace is not that different from intelligence at school, according to the results of a meta-analysis of over one hundred studies involving more than 20,000 people. The findings contradict the popular notion that abilities required for success in the real world differ greatly from what is needed to achieve success in the classroom. The results are published in the January issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. [more]

Psychotherapy (10 Jan) - Cognitive behaviour therapy triggers a different pattern of changes in brain activity than that triggered by the antidepressant paroxetine, according to a small pilot study that provides the first scan based evidence that the treatments work in different ways. [more]

Intellectual history - John McWhorter reviews Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 by Charles Murray. [review]

Choice - Jonathon Keats reviews The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by by Barry Schwartz. [review]

Progress - In his new book, "The Progress Paradox" Gregg Easterbrook says Americans are better off than they've ever been before, but they just don't know it. The solution he says if for people to wake up and smell the prosperity. [more]

Pheromones - James V. Kohl reviews Pheromones and Animal Behaviour: Communication by Smell and Taste by Tristram D. Wyatt. [review] [sample chapter]

Emotional intelligence - Kamuran Godelek reviews The Wisdom in Feeling: Psychological Processes in Emotional Intelligence edited by Peter Salovey and Lisa Feldman Barrett. [review]

Religion - Fritz Allhoff reviews Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society by David Sloan Wilson.  [review]

Psychiatry - philosophy - Duncan Double reviews Nature and Narrative: An Introduction to the New Philosophy of Psychiatry edited by Bill Fulford, Katherine Morris, John Sadler, Giovanni Stanghellini. [review]

NEWS & VIEWS

Biological electronics (9 Jan) - Electronic devices are getting ever smaller, but there may be a limit to what regular silicon technology will allow. In this hour, we'll talk about how researchers are trying to move computing beyond silicon, using the world of biology. Some are using DNA or proteins built by viruses to form the basis of electronic parts. Others are trying to compute with DNA itself. [more]

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Autism (8 Jan) - Historical figures including Socrates, Charles Darwin, and Andy Warhol probably had a form of autism, says a leading specialist. Professor Michael Fitzgerald, of Dublin's Trinity College believes they showed signs of Asperger's syndrome. [more]

Statistics (5 Jan) - A growing school of thought suggests that precise statistical formulas may be more reliable than human intuition in predicting behavior. The perception could affect the workings of groups like parole boards, which often factor in gut instincts to decide whether an inmate is ready for release. NPR's Alix Spiegel reports. [more]

Archaeology (9 Jan) - A world-renowned ancient burial site at Kow Swamp on the Victorian side of the Murray River is nearly 10,000 years older than first thought, according to two Melbourne University scientists. The revised figure places the age of about 40 skeletons excavated from the site at 19,000-22,000 years rather than 9000-15,000 years. The revised figure was a time of climatic upheaval spawned by the last ice age, which helps explain why the skulls appear so primitive, say the scientists, Tim Stone and Matthew Cupper from the school of earth sciences. [more]

War - genetics (7 Jan) - Research into the aggressive behaviour of male chimpanzees, our closest biological ally, suggests that the urge to go to war is in our DNA and that only women can stop it, says Sanjida O'Connell. [more]

Propaganda (6 Jan) - In last night's one-hour documentary on the bombing of Hiroshima, Days That Shook The World, the BBC spent 35 seconds examining the justification for the attack. This involved presenting, unchallenged, the unfounded claim that the attack was required to avoid one million US combat casualties in the event of an invasion of the Japanese mainland. This was then followed by a supportive quote from the US Army Chief of Staff in 1945. [more]

RESEARCH & COMMENTARY

Genetics (9 Jan) - A team of California geneticists has found that many of the world's peoples are genetically adapted to the cold because their ancestors lived in northern climates during the Ice Age. The genetic change affects basic body metabolism and may influence susceptibility to disease and to the risks of the calorie-laden modern diet. [more] and [audio]

Memory - repression (8 Jan) - For the first time, researchers at Stanford University and the University of Oregon have shown that a biological mechanism exists in the human brain to block unwanted memories. The findings, to be published Jan. 9 in the journal Science, reinforce Sigmund Freud's controversial century-old thesis about the existence of voluntary memory suppression. [more] and [more]

Hyperlexia (7 Jan) - Georgetown University Medical Center researchers today published the first ever fMRI study of hyperlexia, a rare condition in which children with some degree of autism display extremely precocious reading skills. Appearing in Neuron, the case study uncovers the neural mechanisms that underlie hyperlexia, and suggest that hyperlexia is the true opposite of the reading disability dyslexia. [more]

Gender and suicide (5 Jan) - Relationships with friends play a significant role in whether teenage girls think about suicide, but have little impact on suicidal thoughts among boys, according to a new nationwide study. [more]

Depression (5 Jan) - An imaging study by neuroscientists in Canada has found that patients who recover from depression with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) show a pattern of brain changes that is distinct from patients who recover with drug therapy. [more] and [more]

Addiction (5 Jan) - Results of a new study indicate that people who have recently stopped abusing the powerfully addictive drug methamphetamine may have brain abnormalities similar to those seen in people with mood disorders. The findings suggest practitioners could improve success rates for methamphetamine users receiving addiction treatment by also providing therapy for depression and anxiety in appropriate individuals. [more]

Ethics (2 Jan) - Over the years, valid concerns have been raised whether research should be allowed in prison settings, based on ethical problems in the past and the fact that prisoners inherently have less free will while incarcerated. However, a University of Iowa study indicates that even prisoners with mental illness, compared to non-prisoners without mental illness, generally are competent to decide to be in a study and do not feel coerced. [more]

Emotions - Alex Sager reviews Emotions and Life: Perspectives from Psychology, Biology, and Evolution by Robert Plutchik. [review]

Psychology - Marcel Scheele reviews Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition edited by Bertram F. Malle, Louis J. Moses, and Dare A. Baldwin. [review]

Biography - Marek Kohn reviews Niko's Nature by Hans Kruuk. [review]

Human evolution - John McCrone reviews How Homo Became Sapiens: On the evolution of thinking by Peter Gärdenfors. [review]

Darwinism - Michael Cross reviews Darwin's Legacy: What evolution means today by John Dupré. [review]

Biology - anthropology - Richard Wrangham reviews The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit by Melvin Konner. [review]

Literature - Gary Cox reviews Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin’s We by Brett Cooke. [review]

NEWS & VIEWS

Science (2 Jan) - From mad cow, SARS and the flu, to dark energy and the Columbia shuttle disaster -- what were the big science stories of 2003? We'll look back at the science stories that made headlines. [more]

Ancient cosmology (1 Jan) - From our earliest moments, mankind has sought to find meanings in the stars. But the heavens are mute, and can only reflect our own mortal desires and aspirations. [more]

History - Molekul Gospodar begins with the father of genetics, with Mendel and his garden peas. A logical place to start, but this potted cartoon history would have been a dangerous heresy during Lysenko's reign. Dangerous enough for a Gulag reward. [more]

Stress (1 Jan) - Behavior and biology both suggest that females respond to environmental stress by redoubling efforts to care for offspring and creating social support networks, said psychologist Shelley E. Taylor, PhD, at a Nov. 13 lecture, presented as part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) behavioral and social sciences research lecture series. [more]

Psychology and genetics (1 Jan) - A science working group's recommendations have led to plans to further psychologists' knowledge of and involvement in genetics research. [more]

Life (3 Jan) - One tenth of the stars in our galaxy might provide the right conditions to support complex life, according to a new analysis by Australian researchers. And most of these stars are on average one billion years older than the Sun, allowing much more time, in theory, for any life to evolve. [more]

Archaeology (3 Jan) - Humans colonised the Siberian Arctic more than 30,000 years ago, according to Russian discoveries reported today. Flint tools and spear shafts made from mammoth ivory and rhinoceros horn have been found near the Yana river inside the Arctic Circle. [more]

Schizophrenia (1 Jan) - A fuller understanding of signaling in the brain of people with this disorder offers new hope for improved therapy. [more]

Human cloning (30 Dec) - Several fertility doctors around the world maintain they are planning to clone a human baby. For a time late last year, it seemed possible that human cloning had been accomplished. On Dec. 27, 2002, Brigitte Boisselier held a press conference in Florida, announcing the birth of the first human clone, called Eve. A year later, Boisselier, who directs a company set up by the Raelian religious sect, has offered no proof that the baby Eve exists, let alone that she is a clone. NPR's Joe Palca reports on what's happened in the field of cloning since Boisselier's 2002 announcement. [more]

Memory (30 Dec) - That schoolyard fight. That first date. That wild night in Vegas. Such memories seem immutable, like videotapes that can be taken down from a shelf in the mind and played over and over, always the same, until death or dementia erases them. [more]

Anorexia (30 Dec) - Anorexia, the most lethal of psychiatric disorders, afflicts as many as 1 percent of young women and about a tenth as many men, and casts a Svengalian spell, leading its victims to willingly starve themselves in the midst of plenty. Now, psychologist Shan Guisinger has developed a radical new view of anorexia that she says explains both the bizarre features of the illness -- self starvation and hyperactivity -- and its resistance to treatment by traditional psychotherapy. [more]

Bipolar disorder (27 Dec) - A study in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry says MRI images reveal a common physical abnormality in the brains of people of various ages who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive illness. NPR's Michelle Trudeau reports. [more] and [more]

Science (25 Dec) - NPR's Alex Chadwick chats with NPR's Ira Flatow about science highlights in 2003. [more]

"Holiday blues" (25 Dec) - The holiday season is viewed as a time for joy, celebration and cozy family gatherings. Between family obligations and botched travel plans, even those who are usually cheerful might be hit hard by the holiday blues. NPR's Tony Cox talks about maintaining mental well-being during this season with family psychologist Brenda Wade and Dr. Curley Bonds is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Neuropsychiatric Institute. [more]

Neanderthals (24 Dec) - Neanderthals were shedding their sturdy physique and evolving in the direction of modern humans just before they disappeared from the fossil record. [more]

Neurophysiology (20 Dec) - Scientists have found an explanation for those mornings where you put coffee on your cornflakes and the cat in the washing machine.  They say it is because of a change in the kind of brainwaves someone produces. [more]

Depression (19 Dec) - Depression affects millions of adults -- and children -- in the United States. What are the causes, and might there one day be a cure that works for all sufferers? In this hour, we'll get an update on the science of depression -- including what scientists are learning about the genetic components of the disease. Will we one day be able to test for a depression gene? Is enough research being done on children? Plus, one father's battle to find treatment for his children. [more]

Human evolution (18 Dec) - In an essay from a new book charting the 20th century's greatest scientific discoveries, CK Brain describes how Raymond Dart found proof that human life began in Africa. [more]

Mental health in the military (17 Dec) - NPR's Juan Williams talks with Doctor Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, an Army psychologist, about ways the U.S. military is caring for the mental health of those in combat. [more] and [more]

Love (14 Dec) - That crazy little thing called love. It can make you, it can break you, but what is it exactly? From infatuation to friendship, therapist Andrew G Marshall analyses the many faces and descriptions of that overused four-letter word. [more]

Psychopharmacology (10 Dec) - Modern antidepressant drugs which have made billions for the pharmaceutical industry will be banned from use in children today because of evidence, suppressed for years, that they can cause young patients to become suicidal. [more]

Medical publishing (7 Dec) - Hundreds of articles in medical journals claiming to be written by academics or doctors have been penned by ghostwriters in the pay of drug companies, an Observer inquiry reveals. [more]

Paleontology (5 Dec) - Scientists have identified the oldest male fossil animal yet discovered. It is an ocean-dwelling creature from 425-million-year-old rocks in the UK. [more]

False memories (4 Dec) - You were abducted by aliens, you saw Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, and then you went up in a balloon. Didn't you? Laura Spinney on our remembrance of things past. [more]

Athletics (3 Dec) - We all know the goals... stronger, higher, faster. But what is it exactly that comes together to make a great athlete? What combination of genetics, determination, work ethic, muscle memory and intelligence does it take to be the best? Join Neal Conan and his guests for a discussion. [more]

Animal cognition (3 Dec) - Monkeys can manage mathematics. Dolphins can be decisive. But US psychologists have broken new ground in the animal intelligence challenge. They have proved that animals are also smart enough to join the "don't-knows". [more]

Archaeology (2 Dec) - A flint object with a striking likeness to a human face may be one of the best examples of art by Neanderthal man ever found, the journal Antiquity reports. [more]

Science and religion (2 Dec) - In western eyes, science and religion don't mix. But Muslims see no contradiction in a belief system that embraces both science and religion. [more]

RESEARCH & COMMENTARY

Bipolar disorder (1 Jan) - A rarely used combination of magnetic fields generated with a conventional MRI scanner immediately and significantly improved the mood of subjects with bipolar disorder, according to researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. [more]

Postpartum depression (1 Jan) - The children of mothers who experience depression up to three months after giving birth are at greater risk than other children for exhibiting serious violent behavior as 11-year-olds, according to a new study in APA's Developmental Psychology. [more]

Biography (1 Jan) - George Udny Yule was born February 18, 1871 in Beech Hill near Haddington, Scotland and died June 26, 1951 in Cambridge, England. He was a member of an established Scottish family composed of army officers, civil servants, scholars, and administrators. Both his father and a nephew were knighted. At the age of 16, he began the formal study of engineering at University College, London. George later moved to Bonn, Germany, where he studied under the famous scientist Heinrich Herz. A great influence in Yule's academic life was the well-known statistician, Karl Pearson, who lured him back to London, awarding him a directorship. George Udny Yule was prolific in journal and book publications and in activities related to the Royal Statistical Society, the highlight of his publications being perhaps the book, Introduction to the Theory of Statistics, which went through fourteen editions. [more]

Archaeology (31 Dec) - A skull and jawbones recently found in China is the oldest well-preserved primate fossil ever discovered - as well as the best evidence of the presence of early primates in Asia. But the fossil raises the tantalizing possibility that remote human ancestors may have originated in Asia and stirs up debate about the nature of early primates. [more]

Violence (30 Dec) - Children who observe violence or are victims of it show more behavior problems than other children, according to a study of 175 children aged 9 to 12. [more]

Development (22 Dec) - The brains of mums and dads are tuned in to the sound of toddlers' cries, reveals a brain-imaging study. Non-parents, on the other hand, remain largely oblivious. [more]

Psychiatric protection orders (20 Dec) - Psychiatric patients are routinely treated against their will. Legally enforceable psychiatric protection orders would protect patients from coercive psychiatric interventions. [more]

Comparative genomics (18 Dec) - Nearly 99 percent alike in genetic makeup, chimpanzees and humans might be even more similar were it not for what researchers call "lifestyle" changes in the 6 million years that separate us from a common ancestor. Specifically, two key differences are how humans and chimps perceive smells and what we eat. [more]

Archaeology (17 Dec) - Humans have had a refined artistic bent for at least 33,000 years, according to the discovery of three deftly carved ivory figurines in a cave in southwestern Germany. The miniature statues include a horse, a diving waterfowl, and a half-man, half-lion. [more]  and [more]

Genetics (16 Dec) - A study of coral suggests that ancient members of the animal kingdom slithered through the Precambrian mud with a hefty cache of genes in common with humans. [more]

Shyness (15 Dec) - How you react to stress influences how easily you resist or succumb to disease, including viruses like HIV, discovered UCLA AIDS Institute scientists. Reported in the Dec.15 edition of Biological Psychiatry, the new findings identify the immune mechanism that makes shy people more susceptible to infection than outgoing people. [more]

Addiction (15 Dec) - The anti-spasticity medication baclofen holds promise for helping cocaine abusers overcome their addiction, a study by a UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute researcher finds. No medication currently holds U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for treatment of cocaine addiction. [more]

ADHD (11 Dec) - Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disability (RD) are common disorders of childhood that often co-occur. About 20-25% of children and adolescents with ADHD have a reading disability but the cause of this association is unknown. Twin and family studies suggest that genes, strongly indicated for both conditions, may underlie their association. [more]

Depression (9 Dec) - Many people suffering from untreated and undiagnosed depression are turning to Internet communities for help, according to a study published this week in BMC Psychiatry. Scientists believe these virtual communities could be used to offer diagnosis and support to people that are depressed, and offer the possibility of online therapy. [more]

Bullying (9 Dec) - More than one in five 12-year-olds are repeatedly either bullies, victims or both, and bullies are often popular and viewed by classmates as the "coolest" in their classes, according to new UCLA research from the most comprehensive study on young adolescent bullying in an ethnically diverse, large urban setting. [more]

PTSD (7 Dec) - Over one percent of the American population is involved in a serious (causing personal injury) motor vehicle accident (MVA) each year and a majority will experience at least a minor MVA by the age of 30. MVAs are considered the leading cause of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the general population and car accidents are the number one trauma for men and the second most frequent trauma for women, according to a new book that examines updated research on PTSD among car accident victims and some effective treatments for the disorder. [more]

Evolutionary biology (4 Dec) - In what has been described as the "perfect experiment," evolutionary biologists at the University of Chicago replaced a single gene in fruit flies and discovered a mechanism by which two different "races" begin to become different species, with one group adapted to life in the tropics and the other suited to cooler climates. [more]

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ADHD (4 Dec) - Children with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may have significantly altered levels of important neurotransmitters (biochemicals that carry signals to and from cells) in the frontal region of the brain, according to a study publishing in the December issue of the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. [more]

Social behavior (3 Dec) - An unusual experiment with monkeys who were switched between mothers shortly after birth has demonstrated the importance of nature over nurture in behavior. Young monkeys reared by a mother other than their own are more likely to exhibit the aggressive or friendly behavior of their birth mothers rather than the behavior of their foster mothers, a University of Chicago researcher has shown for the first time. [more]

Laughter (3 Dec) - There's truth in the maxim 'laughter is a drug'. A comic cartoon fired up the same brain centre as a shot of cocaine, researchers are reporting. [more]

Neurobiology of reward (3 Dec) - By studying how monkeys choose to look at lighted targets for juice rewards, neurobiologists have identified a still-mysterious region of the cerebral cortex as an area that judges the value of rewards, and adjusts that value as circumstances change. [more]

IQ tests (2 Dec) - The year in which IQ is tested can make the difference between life and death for a death row inmate. It also can determine the eligibility of children for special services, adults' Social Security benefits and recruits' suitability for certain military careers, according to a new study by Cornell University researchers. [more]

Sex research (1 Dec) - During a budget debate in the US House of Representatives on July 10, Rep. Patrick Toomey (R-Pa.) proposed an amendment to defund five NIH grants, four of which would examine aspects of human sexuality. "Who thinks this stuff up?" Toomey asked. [more]

Thought sciences (1 Dec) - You see a sweater for sale and think, "I have to have that!" Clint Kilts wants to know why. Kilts, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, is investigating the underlying neural organization that governs personal preferences and the decision-making process. Regarding a product, there's not a lot of conscious deliberation, he says. People decide quickly whether they like something. [more]

Politics - Samantha Power reviews Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky. [review] [more] [more] and [more]

Medical enhancement - Stephen Hall reviews The Pursuit of Perfection: The Promise and Perils of Medical Enhancement by Sheila M. Rothman and David J. Rothman. [review] [first chapter]

Philosophy of biology - Rob Wilson reviews In Mendel's Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology by Philip Kitcher. [review]

Development - Maria Trochatos reviews The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought by Susan A. Gelman. [review]

Synergy - David Sloan Wilson reviews Nature's Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind by Peter Corning. [review] A review by James Brody. [review]

Development - Polly Toynbee reviews Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley. [review]

Psychotherapy - Christian Perring reviews Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain: Becoming Conscious in an Unconscious World by Elio Frattaroli. [review]

Parenting - Mark Daims reviews Liberation's Children: Parents and Kids in a Postmodern Age by Kay S. Hymowitz. [review]

Philosophy - Mathilde Jacobsen reviews Strawson and Kant edited by H-J. Glock. [review]

Bullying - Mark Daims reviews Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls by Rachel Simmons.  [review]

Mate choice - James Brody reviews The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating by David Buss.  [review]

History - Tom Shellberg reviews Fossils, Finches, and Fuegians: Charles Darwin's Adventures and Discoveries on the Beagle, 1832-1836 by Richard Keynes. [review]

Body technology - Carl Elliott reviews Our Own Devices: The Past and Future of Body Technology by Edward Tenner. [review]

Freud - Justin Wintle reviews Killing Freud: 20th-century culture and the death of psychoanalysis by Todd Dufresne. [review]

Genetics - David W. Pfennig reviews Developmental Plasticity and Evolution by Mary Jane West-Eberhard. [review]

Science - Peter Pesic reviews Einstein's Luck: The Truth Behind Some of the Greatest Scientific Discoveries by John Waller. [review]

Literature - David P. Barash reviews A Scream Goes Through The House by Arnold Weinstein. [more] [review]

Nature vs. nurture - Iver Mysterud reviews Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience and What Makes us Human by Matt Ridley. [more] [review]

NEWS & VIEWS

Therapy (7 Sep) - Pouring your emotions out on paper could help wounds heal quicker, researchers say. It is thought that writing about troubling experiences helps people deal with them. [more]

Ecstasy (7 Sep) - Experts who gave a dramatic warning that ecstasy led to brain damage based their study on a huge blunder, reports health editor Jo Revill. [more]

Archaeology (4 Sep) - Fossilized skulls from a long-extinct tribe found in Mexico have reignited a debate about how Homo sapiens colonized the Americas after his emergence from Africa and long trek across Asia. [more]

Browse a list of articles - or search the Human Nature Review:

Ideological software agents (2 Sep) - A futurist at a pioneering new technology school in Italy has envisioned a piece of software that could help you weed through all the political issues without picking up a newspaper, visiting a Web site, or even, someday, stepping into a voting booth. [more]

Profile (4 Sep) - A critic of modern jazz, a key theoretician of the left and a leader in the most celebrated academic institute of the last century, Theodor Weisengrund Adorno combined the intense speculative focus of a German academic with the feel for the concrete of a French aesthete. Along the way, he also unwittingly became a model - and a foil - for Anglo-American culture critics. [more]

Interview (3 Sep) - Elizabeth Loftus was enjoying her life researching the unreliability of memory in adults and children, and was often called as an expert witness in major trials such as that of OJ Simpson. By the mid-1980s those cases increasingly involved sexual abuse. But when her own work questioned the theory of repressed memory of sexual abuse, all hell broke loose. A woman hit her with a rolled-up newspaper. Worse, as she told Wendy M. Grossman, the controversy made her enemies - and propelled her out of her much-loved job. [more]

Politics and the Life Sciences (3 Sep) - The Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS), is dedicated to the proposition that analyzing politics and philosophy without reference to human biology and evolutionary history would be like deliberately ignoring general relativity and quantum mechanics when discussing physics. Nevertheless, injecting human biology into political discussions still makes most political scientists come down with the vapors. [more]

Self-harm (2 Sep) - Self-harm is increasing among children as young as six. Hilary Freeman reports on why so many are turning to the razor, and one teenager tells her story. [more]

Pheromones (2 Sep) - Pheromones are airborne, mostly odorless chemicals that alter sexual behavior, mark territory, and influence reproduction throughout the animal kingdom. But whether humans send and receive "sex chemicals" is a hot and bothered topic. [more]

Genetics (2 Sep) - Mice with virtually identical genes can grow into quite different-looking animals-fat and yellow, or lean and brown-depending on what their mothers ate during pregnancy. As this ScienCentral News video reports, researchers are studying a twist to heredity that goes beyond our genes. [more]

Memory (1 Sep) - When evidence in a criminal trial is improperly presented, judges can instruct jurors to "disregard" or intentionally forget it. But a new study suggests that even jurors who do forget a piece of evidence--not an easy thing to do--can be unconsciously influenced by it. [more]

Mental health (1 Sep) - President Bush's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has recommended strategies to improve the quality of mental health services, including making early mental health screening common practice. [more]

Evolutionary psychology (25 Aug) - New findings suggest male scientists tend to do their greatest work as young men because of evolutionary psychology: they are trying to attract a mate. The study's author, psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics, says that the output of married scientists tends to decline. Hear Kanazawa. [more]

Eugenics (28 Aug) - The world thought Hitler was mad and barely understood his rationales. But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race was not Adolf Hitler's. The idea was created in the United States at least two decades before Hitler came to power. [more] and [more]

Belief (29 Aug) - Ever consulted a pet psychic? Swear you saw a UFO? Think you met Elvis and Bigfoot at the local convenience store? In this hour of Science Friday, we talk about science, pseudoscience and the nature of scientific proof. Why do we believe in strange things? Are we skeptical enough? [more]

Culture (3 Sep) - Images of heavily-armed Marines patrolling Iraq may not be winning the US many friends in the Islamic world. So it could be time to enlist the soft and fluffy inhabitants of Sesame Street in the battle against anti-Americanism. [more]

Software - artificial intelligence (3 Sep) - The work of a shy and reclusive Bulgarian-born writer may seem like a strange source of inspiration for a computer game. But the writings of Elias Canetti about the nature of power are behind a complex and ambitious game called Republic: The Revolution, which has just gone on sale in the UK. Republic is a strategy simulation game that puts you in the role of a budding revolutionary, out to overthrow a despotic and corrupt regime.  Much of the artificial intelligence in the game is based on the book, Crowds and Power, by the 1981 Nobel Laureate in Literature. [more]

RESEARCH & COMMENTARY

Aging (7 Sep) - Never good with numbers? The bad news: As you age, you may still not be good with them. The good news: You'll still be good at what you're good at today. New research reveals that, contrary to prior thinking, even the very old retain their distinctive patterns of cognitive strengths and weakness. The findings are published in the September issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: [more]

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Schizophrenia (5 Sep) - Faulty brain cells may cause schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to a UK study. The report is helping to rewrite scientists' view of the diseases. The world's 24 million schizophrenia sufferers experience disrupted thoughts and behaviour and sometimes psychotic episodes such as delusions. For years doctors suspected that abnormal levels of certain brain chemicals underlie the disorder because antipsychotic drugs to treat the condition alter activity of these molecules. The latest report backs the idea that a class of brain cells called oligodendrocytes, which help nerves to transmit electrical pulses, are to blame instead. [more]

Anger (4 Sep) - Research into how people recognize emotion has identified a brain region that seems to be involved in the perception of anger. It could be part of an extended circuit of specialized emotion-response areas, suggest the investigators. [more]

Happiness (4 Sep) - What do social survey data tell us about the determinants of happiness? First, that the psychologists' setpoint model is questionable. Life events in the nonpecuniary domain, such as marriage, divorce, and serious disability, have a lasting effect on happiness, and do not simply deflect the average person temporarily above or below a setpoint given by genetics and personality. [more] When it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in the future, you are most likely wrong. [more]

Motivation - employment (4 Sep) - Forget performance related pay and flexi-time, new research by Martin Corbett from Warwick Business School reveals large corporations increasingly use hip pop music to develop loyal, hard-working employees, and encourage workers, literally, to sing from the same hymn sheet. However, despite encouragement, not all employees dance to the same tune. [more]

Archaeology (4 Sep) - Intricate ivory carvings said to be the oldest known examples of figurative art have been uncovered in a cave in southwestern Germany. Researchers say that the finding could change our understanding of early man's imaginative endeavours. The artefacts - including a figurine depicting a Lowenmensch ('lion man') - have been carbon-dated to around 30,000 years ago, when some of the earliest known relatives of modern humans populated Europe. [more]

Handedness (4 Sep) - Right-handed people tend to have hair that swirls clockwise, a US researcher has discovered. Amar Klar of the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, surreptitiously inspected people's pates by spying on them in airports and shopping malls - ignoring the long-haired and the bald. More than 95% of right-handers' hair whorls clockwise on the scalp, he found. The locks of lefties and the ambidextrous are equally likely to coil either way. Nature Science Update, Genetics.

Human evolution (3 Sep) - Humans evolved beyond their vegetarian roots and became meat-eaters at the dawn of the genus Homo, around 2.5 million years ago, according to a study of our ancestors' teeth. In 1999, researchers found cut marks on animal bones dated at around 2.5 million years old. But no one could be sure that they were made by meat-eating hominids, because none appeared to have suitable teeth. Now an analysis by Peter Ungar of the University of Arkansas has revealed that the first members of Homo had much sharper teeth than their most likely immediate ancestor, Australopithecus afarensis, the species that produced the famous fossil Lucy. [more]

Obsessional thoughts (2 Sep) - Both fathers and mothers have distressing thoughts after the birth of a baby, according to a new Mayo Clinic study published in the Sept. 3 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings. In a survey mailed to 300 childbearing women and their partners, participants were asked to report distressing thoughts, such as "My baby is going to die from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)" or "What if I drown my baby while bathing her?" [more]

Mind-body - health (3 Sep) - Staying healthy may involve more than washing hands or keeping a positive attitude. According to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it also may involve a particular pattern of brain activity. By monitoring activity levels in the human brain's prefrontal cortex, the researchers demonstrate for the first time that people who have more activity in the left side of this area also have a stronger immune response against disease. The findings, soon to be published in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pinpoint one of the mechanisms underlying the link between mental and physical well-being. EurekAlert, The Independent, New York Times.

Self-awareness - consciousness - Alain Morin reviews The Face in the Mirror: The Search for the Origins of Consciousness by Julian Paul Keenan with Gordon C. Gallup Jr. and Dean Falk.  [more] [review]

Happiness - Peter Crabb reviews Darwinian Happiness: Evolution as a Guide for Living and Understanding Human Behavior by Bjørn Grinde. [more] [review]

Medicine - enhancement technologies - Ross Upshur reviews Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream by Carl Elliott.  [more] [review]

Parenting - Mark Daims reviews Raising America: Experts, Parents and a Century of Advice About Children by Ann Hulbert. [more] [review]

Neuroeconomics - Paul A. Wagner reviews Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain: The Science of Neuroeconomics by Paul W. Glimcher. [more] [review]

Human evolution - Steve Moxon reviews The Eternal Child: An Explosive New Theory of Human Origins and Behaviour by Clive Bromhall. [review]

Philosophy - Ann Whittle reviews Powers: A Study in Metaphysics by George Molnar, edited by Stephen Mumford. [more] [review]

Eugenics - history - David Plotz reviews War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black. [more] [review]

Nature vs. nurture - Philip Gerrans reviews Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley. [more] [review]

NEWS & VIEWS

Schizophrenia (29 Aug) - About one in a hundred people worldwide suffer from schizophrenia. Now neuroscientists may have found a gene variation that predisposes people to this brain disease. As this ScienCentral News video reports, it could lead to genetically targeted drugs for schizophrenia. [more]

Psychiatry (28 Aug) - Richard Bentall is an unusual clinical psychiatrist. After experimenting with medication on himself, he has concluded that much of psychiatry is no more useful than astrology. [more]

Men (28 Aug) - The Y-chromosome - the ultimate symbol of machismo - is in a bad way. But, asks Bryan Sykes, apart from breeding, what real use is the male to the human race? [more]

Stress (1 Sep) - An emerging understanding of the brain's stress pathways points toward treatments for anxiety and depression beyond Valium and Prozac. [more]

Human evolution (1 Sep) - "Like the foxes, humans have become more agreeable as we've become more domesticated. Whereas humans are like chimpanzees when it comes to between-group aggression, when it comes to levels of aggression among members of the same social group, we are much more like peaceful, highly sexual bonobos. Harvard University anthropologist Richard W. Wrangham proffers a plausible theory: as a result of selection pressures for greater within-group peacefulness and sexuality, humans and bonobos have gone down a different behavioral evolutionary path than chimps have," writes Michael Shermer. [more]

Writing (25 Aug) - When a system of writing begins to die, people probably don't even notice at first. Maybe the culture that spawned it loses its vitality, and the script decays along with it. Maybe the scribes or priests decide that most ordinary people aren't able to learn it, so they don't teach it. Or a new, simpler system may show up -- an alphabet, perhaps -- that can be easily learned by aggressive upstarts who don't speak the old language and don't care to learn its fancy pictographic forms. [more]

Moral sense (26 Aug) - "The Moral Sense Test is a Web-based study into the nature of moral intuitions. How do humans, throughout the world, decide what is right and wrong? To answer this question, we have designed a series of moral dilemmas designed to probe the psychological mechanisms underlying our ethical judgments. By putting these questions on the Web, we hope to gain insight into the similarities and differences between the moral intuitions of people of different ages, from different cultures, with different educational backgrounds and religious beliefs, involved in different occupations and exposed to very different circumstances." [more]

Moral maze (6 Aug) - Are we are witnessing a tragedy of epic proportions working itself out, or the beginnings of a true democracy taking shape. What now is the West's moral duty to the Iraqi people? [more] [audio]

Human evolution (24 Aug) - The most improbable item in science fiction movies is not the hardware - the faster-than-light travel, the tractor beams, the levitation - but the people. Strangely, they always look and behave just like us. Yet the one safe prediction about the far future is that humans will be a lot further along in their evolution. [more]

Guilt (20 Aug) - Dostoevsky's books abound in protagonists who are tortured by their conscience and characters who act out of irresistible compulsion. The gamblers in his stories often embody both types at once. Through them, he explored the concept of guilty pleasure at the highest level possible, vividly rendering the facet of human psychology that allows gambling and countless other activities to make us feel simultaneously delighted and ashamed. [more]

Architecture (22 Aug) - In this hour of Science Friday, we look at the influence of architecture and design on the mind. Though a gloomy basement office room filled with drab cubicles might make you want to call in sick rather than work late, can architecture and design help improve your mental processes while you area at work? Can architecture make you feel better? Think more creatively? Be a better scientist? We'll talk about it, and the idea that optimal design may be more than just an efficient floorplan. [more]

Manhood (8 Aug) - After years of creeping feminization, manhood and masculinity appear to have made a significant comeback in American society. Since the national security crisis of 9/11, America has rediscovered the virtues of soldiers, firemen, policemen and other traditionally male (and masculine) professions that require courage and physical strength. What explains this phenomenon? Why is manhood, once again, being held in high esteem? Or is this all just a mirage, destined to vanish in the near future? [more]

Perception (26 Aug) - The case of Michael May, the blind man who can now "see" gives us a fascinating instance of the mind-brain conundrum and how habits shape perception. [more]

Depression (19 Aug) - NPR's Steve Inskeep talks with Kenneth Kendler, professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and co-author of a new study on the relationships between loss, humiliation and depression. Findings from the study suggest that major depression in people is not only caused by loss, but humiliating events like being abandoned by a romantic partner. The study was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. [more]

Psychiatry (18 Aug) - Robert Spitzer is the man who's defined more mental disease than any other person living on the face of the earth. Now an old professor who works out of a shabby office on the Upper West Side of New York, Spitzer is the creator of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the American Psychiatric Association's official listing of mental disease. NPR's Alix Spiegel reports. [more]

Robotics (25 Aug) - Scientists have been given the biggest ever grant to build a "conscious robot". The work will not only bring the scores of intelligent, self-aware machines that populate science fiction a step closer, it could also provide valuable clues on how human consciousness develops. [more]

Obituary (25 Aug) - The Rev. Walter Jackson Ong, a Jesuit scholar of language and its evolution as a means of communication, died on Aug. 12 in St. Louis. He was 90. [more]

Animal cognition (22 Aug) - Scientists have long believed that animals do not have so-called episodic memory-the kind that allows humans to remember past events. But recent experiments with scrub jays, chimpanzees, and gorillas have led to rethinking of the nature of memory in animals. [more]

Open access (21 Aug) - Debate over open access to scientific articles is steadily moving into the mainstream, with the publication this month of an editorial in The New York Times, a recently introduced Congressional bill to promote open access publishing, and a television commercial sponsored by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a California-based group that plans to launch an open-access journal in October. [more]

Human genetics - ethics (21 Aug) - A decision by the New Zealand government to introduce a bill that some say will promote human germline modification -- genetic engineering of the species -- has sparked debate among experts around the world. [more]

Mental illness (22 Aug) - The brief was tough: write a romantic Hollywood drama about mental instability and one of the most controversial literary marriages ever. But when John Brownlow's first draft got the green light, his problems were only beginning. Here he tells a true story of crashing egos, crazy deadlines and booze-fuelled, red-eyed nights working out how poets talk. [more]

Science and democracy (1 Sep) - Does the pursuit of pure science make sense in a world of scarcity and strife? With so much poverty on the planet, why spend vast sums of money on, say, the James Webb Space Telescope, due to replace the Hubble at the end of the decade and observe the first stars and galaxies in the universe; or the Terrestrial Planet Finder, whose mission is to detect other habitable worlds-discoveries that, however astounding, can bring no tangible benefits here on this barely habitable world called Earth? [more]

Gender identity disorder (20 Aug) - What do you do when your child wants to be the opposite sex? Naomi Coleman examines the rise of gender identity disorder. [more]

Addiction (19 Aug) - The road from Dr. Nora Volkow's childhood home in Mexico to the director's office at the National Institute on Drug Abuse here was surprisingly short and straight. From the time she entered medical school, at 18, Dr. Volkow devoted herself to the study of addiction. A research psychiatrist known for her brain-imaging studies, she has published hundreds of papers, including many that demonstrate how dopamine, a brain chemical linked to pleasure and motivation, plays a major role in addictions of all kinds: to drugs, to alcohol and even, some say, to food. [more]

Prehistoric art (17 Aug) - In the 19th century, scientists finally junked the Biblical idea of a seven-day divine Creation -- with man, at the pinnacle of the process, being fashioned from clay on the sixth day. Ever since, it seems, we haven't stopped searching for our secular version of the "sixth day": the dawn of modern humans. [more]

Genetic profiles (17 Aug) - Plans for every baby to be genetically screened at birth came under fierce attack yesterday from the Government's advisory watchdog on the new science. Ministers unveiled a genetics strategy earlier this summer, including proposals for the DNA of every newborn to be stored on a database. It could eventually form a vast reservoir of knowledge about their future health, enabling doctors to tailor treatment to each individual. [more]

Sex differences (16 Aug) - Women empathise, men systemise. So the basic brain function goes. It's only a social problem in extreme cases, though especially for analytical men who lean towards autism, writes Simon Baron-Cohen. [more]

 Animal rights (16 Aug) - "Pressured by animal rights activists and by growing public support for the humane treatment of animals, these companies have financed research into, among other things, the emotional, mental and behavioural states of our fellow creatures. What the researchers are finding is unsettling. It appears that many of our fellow creatures are more like us than we had ever imagined. They feel pain, suffer, experience stress, affection, excitement - and even love," writes Jeremy Rifkin. [more]

Homosexuality (14 Aug) - On a sweltering day in June 1997, a gay pride parade passed down Market Street San Francisco. Among the thousands marching was Joan - then Jonathan - Roughgarden, a theoretical ecologist and marine biologist of some repute. A few months later, at 52, she underwent a sex change to become a transgendered woman. But that day was a turning point of a different sort. "I was looking at all these people and realising that my discipline said they weren't possible," she recalls. "Homosexuality is not supposed to exist, according to biology." [more]

Depression (13 Aug) - In their search for the roots of depression, psychiatrists have long focused on the experience of loss -- the jarring loss of a loved one, the lost haven of a relationship, or the more primal feelings of loss that can be traced back to the mother's breast. But a new study of more than 7,000 adult twins calls into question assumptions about depression that date to Sigmund Freud. The events that send people into major depression, the authors found, are not merely losses, but humiliating ones that drive at a person's self-esteem -- most typically, being abandoned by a romantic partner. [more]

Celebrity (13 Aug) - Those hours spent poring over the exploits of J-Lo and Ben, Posh and Becks or Robbie Williams could be time well spent - scientists say celebrity worship could help us live our lives more successfully. [more]

Diet (13 Aug) - By understanding how diet developed throughout the history of our species, these researchers hope to offer insight on how the food we eat affects our health and bodies today. [more] and [more]

Anorexia (12 Aug) - The age of anorexia sufferers in Australia is dropping alarmingly, according to research published yesterday, with doctors saying they are treating nine-year olds for the condition and even, in one case, a child of four. Anorexia is now the third-biggest health problem for girls under 18 in Australia, and one in 20 women has suffered from it at some point. [more]

Fear - desire (11 Aug) - The sex hormone oestrogen plays a crucial role in a wide variety of human emotional responses, say experts. It not only has a part in generating feelings of sexual desire, claim scientists, but is also at the root of other types of arousal - producing alertness or even fear. [more]

Archaeology (10 Aug) - Prehistoric fire starters may have unwittingly killed off the big beasts that once roamed Australia. Analysis of ancient eggshells suggests that the animals suddenly became extinct about 50,000 years ago because people burned up their habitat. [more]

Networks (8 Aug) - How connected are we in this connected world? A famous experiment by psychologist Stanley Milgram created the idea of 'six degrees of separation' -- the thought that a message could be passed between two people who didn't know each other by handing it along a chain of an average of just six connected people. But does that result still hold true in the hyper-connected Internet world? A recent experiment says it does -- replacing the movement of a paper message with the forwarding of an email, researchers found that it still took 5 to 7 steps to complete a message chain. We'll talk about it, and about ways in which the theory of networks can be applied to practical problems. [more]

Human evolution (7 Aug) - The Leakey family is synonymous with the search for the origins of mankind. The late Louis Leakey, born 100 years ago today, started a dynasty of fossil hunters who still explore the sediments of East Africa. For National Geographic Radio Expeditions, NPR's Christopher Joyce reports on the legacy of the Leakey family patriarch. [more]

Neanderthals (5 Aug) - Aubrey Manning returns with more archaeological mysteries and this week visits a site in Norfolk that is littered with the bones of great mammoths and the flint tools of our Neanderthal cousins. But were they lucky scavengers or were they hunting down the great beasts? [more] [audio]

Violence (5 Aug) - More and more girls under 18 are being arrested for violent crimes. They're still far less likely than boys to get picked up for things like robbery and assault. But the gap is narrowing. That's led to the perception that girls have become much more violent in recent decades. But as NPR's Jonathan Hamilton reports in Part Three of the series Girls and the Juvenile Justice System, experts on juvenile crime have another theory. [more]

RESEARCH & COMMENTARY

Prisons - mental health (29 Aug) - A study in this week's British Medical Journal suggests that many aspects of prison life damage the mental health of both prisoners and prison staff and that a better understanding of the prison environment is needed if prisoners are to be successfully rehabilitated into society. [more]

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Mental health (29 Aug) - Research in this week's British Medical Journal reveals that being one of the youngest children in your school year puts you at greater risk of developing mental health problems. British Medical Journal, BBC News Online, New Scientist.

Genetics (28 Aug) - Increasingly, researchers believe that the mechanisms that govern gene activity themselves resemble a complicated non-DNA code - an intricate pattern of activity among the molecules that package and control access to the DNA. They suspect that the coordinated interplay of a number of specific enzymes is required to turn on a particular gene. [more]

Browse a list of articles - or search the Human Nature Review:

Neuroscience - learning (28 Aug) - Scientists have directly demonstrated in rats that one area of the brain can support the creation of memories by changing nerve cell firing patterns in another part of the brain, aiding the animal's efforts to predict the outcome of an action based on past experience and act on that prediction. The process, one scientist says, is something like what happens when a comic strip character sees something and is immediately reminded of something else. [more]

Family (28 Aug) - What's really happening to family and other intimate relationships? Commonly made claims about changes in family and other intimate relations are not supported by actual research, according to a new working paper sponsored by the ESRC. [more]

Development (26 Aug) - Scott Johnson of New York University reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that babies learn to follow objects with their eyes at between four and six months old. They even work out where the objects are going to end up when they go out of view. The Guardian, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Depression (25 Aug) - Evidence is growing that a key mechanism underlying major depression--a sometimes heritable, often lifetime illness, with repeated remissions and relapses--involves dysregulation of the signaling proteins called cytokines. [more]

Addiction (25 Aug) - Researchers know that certain kinds of experiences, such as those involved in learning, can physically change brain structure and affect behavior. Now, new research in rats shows that exposure to stimulant drugs such as amphetamine or cocaine can impair the ability of specific brain cells to change as a consequence of experience. EurekAlert, BBC News Online, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Depression (25 Aug) - A new analysis of the media’s coverage of depression, anti-depressant drugs and related issues over the past 15 years shows a significant shift in how newspapers and magazines portray mental health problems. Instead of describing depressive illnesses in terms of specific symptoms and medical terms, as they did when the era of Prozac began in the late 1980s, the printed news media are now far more likely to depict women’s mental issues in relation to gender-stereotyped roles, such as marriage, motherhood, and menopause. But during the same time, descriptions of depression in men have not shifted in the same way. [more]

Laughter (25 Aug) - Appreciation of humor doesn't change with age. Older adults still enjoy a good laugh. But ability to comprehend complex humor diminishes in later years. A Canadian study of humor in older adults has found that appreciation and emotional reactiveness to humor doesn't change with age. Older adults still enjoy a good laugh. [more]

Applied psychology (24 Aug) - A new study on managerial pay involving more than 2,000 managers from more than 500 organizations finds that not only do women managers earn approximately nine percent less than male managers, but that pay of both men and women managers is also related to the gender and age of those they work with. The study finds that managerial pay is lower when the manager’s referent group (subordinates, peers or supervisors) is largely female, when subordinates are outside the prime age group, and when peers and supervisors are younger. The findings are published in the August issue of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Journal of Applied Psychology. [more]

Depression (24 Aug) - Young adults who experienced an episode of major depression in adolescence may be more vulnerable to a relapse in adulthood that could significantly affect their quality of life, say researchers in a study on the psychosocial functioning of adults who have recovered from major depression. [more]

Diet (21 Aug) - The "French paradox" -- the perplexing disconnect between France's rich cuisine and slender population -- can be explained in part by portions that are significantly smaller in French restaurants and supermarkets than in their American counterparts. So say researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and CNRS in Paris, who compared the size of restaurant meals, single-serve foods and cookbook portions on both sides of the Atlantic. [more]

Memory (21 Aug) - Is it possible to intentionally forget specific memories, without affecting other memories? Many would undoubtedly be happy to learn that unpleasant memories might be erased. This ability could be especially significant when it comes to the kind of traumatic memories that are debilitating to those experiencing them. It may well be that in the future, we will be able to wipe out, or at least dim, certain types of memories with controlled accuracy. A new fundamental rule governing the workings of the brain, recently discovered by a team of scientists in the Weizmann Institute of Science, headed by Prof. Yadin Dudai of the Neurobiology Department, constitutes a step towards reaching this goal. [more]

Genetics (21 Aug) - With the human genome in hand, scientists now know the roughly 30,000 words making up the language of the human body. But what do those words mean? Stuart Kim, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology and genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine, has created the first dictionary that defines them. [more]

Behaviorism (21 Aug) - Findings reported in Science may offer clues to eating disorders, addiction. There's a little of Pavlov's dog in all of us, according to new research. Instead of using meat and a ringing bell, scientists have trained humans to hunger for vanilla ice cream, at the sight of an abstract computer image. Not only do we mentally connect the enjoyment of certain foods with unrelated stimuli, our brains can also relax these connections once we're full of that food, the researchers discovered. EurekAlert, New Scientist.

Social behavior - human genetics (20 Aug) - A rare genetic disorder may lead scientists to genes for social behavior, a Salk Institute study has found. The study zeros in on the genes that may lead to the marked extroverted behavior seen in children with Williams syndrome, demonstrating that "hyper-sociability" - especially the drive to greet and interact with strangers -- follows a unique developmental path. [more]

Biology - publishing (19 Aug) - As you know, the first issue of PLoS Biology will be unveiled in October 2003. In the meantime, we would like you to be the first to see a preview of two research articles from the inaugural issue that exemplify the outstanding quality and diversity of the articles that will appear in PLoS Biology. [more]

Human evolution (18 Aug) - Adam and Eve may have put on fig leaves while still in the Garden of Eden but a study that looked at the most intimate of pests -- body lice -- suggests that humans started wearing clothes 70,000 years ago, scientists said on Monday. Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, Nature Science Update, Current Biology.

Political psychology (18 Aug) - The ordering of candidates' names on ballots in the upcoming California recall election will likely affect the outcome, if the state's presidential election is a guide. In the 2000 presidential race, George W. Bush received 9 percent more votes among Californians when he was listed first on the ballot than when he was listed later, a new study found. [more]

Religion (18 Aug) - As the German saying goes, there was only one thing the Communists accomplished in their part of the country - driving out God. More than a dozen years after reunification, the Easterners are as godless as before, according to new survey commissioned by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is close to the opposition Christian Democratic Union. [more]

Human genetics - athletics (14 Aug) - Athletes and coaches long have assumed that talented runners are gifted with exceptional genes. Now scientists have identified a specific gene that conceivably could push a runner over the line between good and great. Wired, The Guardian, BBC News Online, New Scientist.

Crime (17 Aug) - Computer forecasts that predict where and when crimes will happen by analysing past patterns should help police channel resources where they are needed most. The technique, now under trial in the US, could be available for routine use within a year. [more]

ADHD (17 Aug) - Scientists tracking the progress of children diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as they became teenagers have shed new light on the link between ADHD and the risk of developing alcohol and substance use problems. The researchers found that individuals with severe problems of inattention as children were more likely than their peers to report alcohol-related problems, a greater frequency of getting drunk, and heavier and earlier use of tobacco and other drugs. The findings indicate that childhood ADHD may be as important for the risk of later substance use problems as having a history of family members with alcoholism and other substance use disorders. The study appears in the August issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. [more]

Alcoholism (14 Aug) - Previous research has found a significant degree of sensation-seeking behavior in male patients with a particular subtype of alcoholism called Cloninger's type I. A study in the August issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research has found for the first time an association between the DdeI polymorphism of the D1 dopamine receptor (DRD1) gene and sensation seeking among alcoholic men. [more]

Suicide (14 Aug) - Researchers in Denmark identified 21,653 same sex twins born from 1870 to 1930 and established date and cause of death from 1943 to 1993. They compared suicide rates with the general population. Twins (both men and women) had a substantially lower suicide rate compared with the general population. This supports the view that strong family ties reduce the risk for suicidal behaviour, say the authors. [more]

Artificial intelligence (14 Aug) - A new type of "smart" machine that could fundamentally change how people interact with computers is on the not-too-distant horizon at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories. [more]

Psychology -personality (13 Aug) - A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity". The Guardian, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Press release, Psychological Bulletin.

Drug addiction (13 Aug) - Relapse among recovering drug addicts can now be linked to specific nerve cells in a particular region of the brain, according to a team of researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The discovery may help pave the way for new addiction therapies and intervention strategies. [more]

Development (13 Aug) - They might not normally merit a second glance, but those everyday objects around the house are constantly undergoing intense scrutiny, categorization and classification by babies trying to make sense of a world only months new to them. [more]

Cognitive psychology (12 Aug) - People change the rate at which they speak or play music to more closely match speakers or musicians they have just heard, new research suggests. One study found that musicians played faster or slower than their normal tempo depending on the tempo of music they listened to immediately before playing. A related study found that people read a sentence faster or slower depending on the speaking rate of a recording they had just heard. [more]

Human evolution (13 Aug) - An examination of tooth shape in the earliest members of the human genus reveals a change in diet to tougher foods - possibly the first anatomical evidence of a shift toward regular meat eating, says University of Arkansas anthropologist Peter Ungar. [more]

Crime (10 Aug) - Programmes aiming to change young offenders and those that support victims need to be re-thought because they are often the same people, according to new research sponsored by the Economic & Social Research Council. This latest in a series of reports tracking 4,300 young people who started secondary school in Edinburgh in August 1998, shows that victimisation and offending are closely linked. [more]

Body image (8 Aug) - While eating disorders among athletes are often seen as a problem mainly for women, some male athletes may also have their own issues regarding body image, new research suggests. But the eating and body image problems for men may be different than they are for women. [more]

Neuroscience - depression (8 Aug) - Blocking the formation of neurons in the hippocampus blocks the behavioral effects of antidepressants in mice, say researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Their finding lends new credence to the proposed role of such neurogenesis in lifting mood. It also helps to explain why antidepressants typically take a few weeks to work, note Rene Hen, Ph.D., Columbia University, and colleagues, who report on their study in the August 8th Science. EurekAlert, Nature Science Update.

Evolution (7 Aug) - Like the snap of a clothespin, the sudden mixing of closely related species may occasionally provide the energy to impel rapid evolutionary change, according to a new report by researchers from Indiana University Bloomington and three other institutions. [more]

Autism (7 Aug) - A new study provides confirmation that some young autistic children can make remarkable progress when they participate in a specially designed intensive behavioral intervention program. [more]

Human evolution (7 Aug) -  Our earliest ancestors probably behaved in a much more “human” way than most scientists have previously thought, according to a recent study that looked at early hominid fossils from Ethiopia. Previously skeptical, an Ohio State University anthropologist now supports the idea that the minimal size differences between male and female pre-hominids suggest that they lived in a more cooperative and less competitive society. [more]

Human evolution - Meredith Small reviews Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution by Leonard Shlain. [more] [review]

Eugenics - history - Roderick T. Long reviews War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black. [more] [review]

Thinking - Ray Rennard reviews The Structure of Thinking: A Process-Oriented Account of Mind by Laura E. Weed. [more] [review]

Mind - Daniel Callcut reviews Life of the Mind: An Essay on Phenomenological Externalism by Gregory McCulloch. [more] [review]

Mathematics - Jonathan Heawood reviews The Music of the Primes: Why an unsolved Problem in Mathematics Matters by Marcus du Sautoy. [more] [review]

Man-Eating Predators - Michiko Kakutani reviews Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind by David Quammen. [more] [review]

Psychiatry - Christian Perring reviews Rethinking the DSM: A Psychological Perspective edited by Larry E. Beutler and Mary L. Malik. [more] [review]

Mental health - Peter B. Raabe reviews Women's Mental Health: A Comprehensive Textbook edited by Susan G. Kornstein and Anita H. Clayton. [more] [review]

Human nature - Brian Fagan reviews Quest: The essence of humanity by Charles Pasternak. [more] [review]