Brain and Behavior

One thing has become very clear: you can always count on Kevin McCullough to bring the crazy when it comes to gay rights (and pretty much anything else). Take a gander at this column responding to the New Jersey gay marriage ruling. Despite all that their angry-mob front groups argue in front of television cameras to the contrary, radical homosexual activists despise the institution, and more importantly the sanctity, of marriage. That is the fundamental reason why they are seeking to destroy the institution. Of course, Kevin, you've cracked the code and you've got it all figured out. Jason…

The Frontal Cortex has an interesting post about a recent study conducted by psychologists at the University of Toronto on the effects of reading fiction. (Full disclosure here: I haven't read the entire study, which was published in the October issue of The Journal of Research in Personality. I just can't bring myself to fork over the money for a subscription at the moment. So, the following observations are based solely on the abstract, which you can read here.) The thrust of the study appears to be this: researchers found that avid fiction readers are more socially adept and empathetic…

Last week, I was told that I have a "god-shaped hole in my heart." My first thought was to reply that no, I have a perfectly intact heart thick with good strong sheets of muscle, but of course, that would have proven his point, that I've willingly replaced the Holy Ghost with actin and myosin, and the sacraments with Hodgkin and Huxley's sliding filament theory. So I have to confess that my email correspondent was correct in his sentiment, at least: I lack any feeling for god, religion, and superstition. It's simply true, and freely admitted. Although if I were to digest the idea down into a…

Vegetables, Not Fruit, Help Fight Memory Problems In Old Age: Eating vegetables, not fruit, helps slow down the rate of cognitive change in older adults, according to a study published in the Oct. 24, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology Honey Bee Genome Holds Clues To Social Behavior: By studying the humble honey bee, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have come a step closer to understanding the molecular basis of social behavior in humans. More links a couple of posts below. Sunflower Speciation Highlights Roles…

As I promised, here is the email I received from President Lewis Duncan of Rollins College after I wrote a blog post on his comments on the Karpova-Tonegawa affair. My commentary on his email is in brackets and italicized. Email and my commentary after the jump. Dear Ms. Frank, [sic] I take strong exception to your misleading interpretation and extrapolation of my quote in the Boston Globe. How disappointing that a fellow scientist would be so presumptuous in her perspectives. [This is lame. 'You're a scientist, so you're supposed to be rational, and you aren't being rational, so are…

As the paper linked to in the previous post explains, everything is connected - clocks, sleep, hunger, obesity and diabetes. An important part of understanding all these interconnections between clocks and food is to understand the food-entrainable clocks, i.e., how timing of meals affects the performance of the circadian clock. A new paper provides a molecular link between scheduled meals and circadian timing, implicating our old friend PERIOD2 as part of the mechanisms by which timing of the meal entrains the brain clock (but not the mutual entrainment of peripheral clocks): Circadian gene…

Psychologists are now fairly confident that humans have an agency-detection mechanism, and an itchy agency-detection trigger finger. This is because the consequences of not detecting agency are often greater than those of agency-detection false positives. As Atran and Norenzayan put it: From an evolutionary perspective, it's better to be safe than sorry regarding the detection of agency under conditions of uncertainty. When it looks like there's a shape moving in the tall grass, it's better to infer agency and run away than end up being eaten by a lion when it jumps out of the grass. Thus,…

Given the ubiquitousness of weight, obesity, and eating discussions these days, I thought I'd talk about some research that has, for some reason, stuck in my mind since I first heard about it a few years ago. It concerns the relationship between memory and eating. We all know that the desire to eat isn't just about the physiological condition of being hungry. Stress, depression, loneliness, and all sorts of other psychological states can make us want to eat more than we otherwise would. So it should come as no surprise that eating has "psychological" components. It may surprise you to learn,…

Todays entry isn't so much a pathological language itself as it is a delightful toy which can be used to *produce* pathological languages. I'm looking at Chris Pressey's wonderful language [ALPACA](http://catseye.mine.nu:8080/projects/alpaca/), which is a meta-language for describing different kinds of cellular automata. Frankly, I'm very jealous of Alpaca. I started writing a cellular automata language something like this on my own; I spent about two weeks of my free time working on it, and got it roughly 90% finished before I found out that he'd already done it, the bastard! Alpaca…

Randy Nelson is a wonderful person, an engaging speaker and the author of the best textbook on Behavioral Endocrinology. I heard that he is also a great teacher which does not surprise me and he has a talent for attracting some of the best students and postdocs to work in his lab. Oh, by the way, he also does some great research. For decades, the study of seasonality and photoperiodism was a hustling bustling field, until everyone jumped on the clock-gene bandwagon. Randy Nelson is one of the rare birds to remain in the photoperiodism field, coming out every year with more and more…

Is there a connection between omega-3 fatty acids and violence? Does a shortage of essential nutrients cause thuggish behavior? I'm skeptical of any direct causal connection - human behavior just isn't that simple - but I'm still going to eat more fatty fish. The evidence is tantalizing: The UK prison trial at Aylesbury jail showed that when young men there were fed multivitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, the number of violent offences they committed in the prison fell by 37%. Although no one is suggesting that poor diet alone can account for complex social problems, the former…

In response to my recent post on governmental regulation and energy conservation, an excellent debate has started in the comments. On the one hand, there is a long list of areas in which governmental regulation has forced corporations into making decisions that are beneficial for society at large: Catalytic converters? Mileage requirents on cars? Unleaded gasoline? Clean water act? Clean air act? Endangered species act? Vaccination requirements for public schools? Building codes? OSHA regulations? Fire codes? Why do we have these things? Were they decided on by consumers? Nope. Nearly every…

It seems like only yesterday that I was fisking yet another piece of seriously irritating woo from that expert purveyor of woo, Deepak Chopra. In fact, it was only yesterday that I was fisking part two of Chopra's woo-filled The Trouble With Genes series. As I mentioned in my previous fisking, I had thought that Dr. Chopra might lay low for a while, and was surprised that he popped up again so soon. So color me even more surprised that Chopra wasted no time in wading back in again with yet more of his tradmark brand of woo (which I like to call Choprawoo) in a post entitled The Trouble With…

Meandering Musings on evolutionary psychology and many other things (from February 15, 2005)... I remember when PZ Myers posted this exercise on his blog. The point was to show how much all of modern biology is based on and dependent on evolutionary theory because of oft-repeated bizzare claim by Creationists that this is not so. Now Josh Rosenau has embarked on expanding this project and has started a pair of blogs just for this purpose. One blog, The Evolution Project will track recently published scientific papers that more or less explicitely are based on evolutionary theory, while its…

Frontal Cortex, reviewing An Elephant Crackup in the Times, writes about Elephants Gone Wild: This shouldn't be too surprising. The neurobiology of stress is an extremely well conserved biological pathway. Our brain experiences stress in much the same way as a chimp, or an elephant, or a rat. And since Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder is now a well documented phenomenon in humans - up to 40 percent of all soldiers coming home from Iraq experience some of PTSD - we should expect that other animals also display abberant behavior in response to chronic levels of elevated stress. What I find odd…

A January 20, 2006 post placing a cool physiological/behavioral study into an evolutionary context. There are two main hypotheses - not mutually exclusive - for the adaptive value of having a circadian clock. One is the Internal Synchronization hypothesis, stating that the circadian clock serves to synchronize biochemical and physiological processes within the body. The second is the External Synchronization hypothesis, stating that the circadian clock serves to syncronize the physiology and behavior to the natural environment. The prediction from the Internal Hypothesis is that circadian…

Shrinking natural habitats are driving elephants crazy, and it all seems to be due to excess stress. Charles Siebert reports: Since the early 1990's, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behavior, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in "a number of reserves" in the region. In July of last year, officials in Pilanesberg shot three young male elephants who were responsible for the killings of 63 rhinos, as well as attacks on…

As I have written so much about Lakoff before, I feel I should say something - anything - to defend him from the onslaught he's seen lately on Seed's scienceblogs here, here, here, here and here. What I think is important is to distinguish between several different things that Lakoff does. It appears that the word "Lakoff" triggers different frames in different people! 1. Theory of metaphors. As I stated repeatedly before, I am agnostic about his science. I defer to Chris on that issue. It is possible that Lakoff is wrong on his ideas about mind, language and metaphor. Future research…

Animals Resistant To Drunken Behavior Offer Clues To Alcoholism's Roots: Animals with a remarkable ability to hold their liquor may point the way toward the genetic underpinnings of alcohol addiction, two separate research teams reported in the October 6, 2006 issue of the journal Cell. Earlier studies have shown that people with a greater tolerance for alcohol have a greater risk of becoming alcoholics, according to the researchers. What about natural species differences? Home, Home On The Range: How Much Space Does An Animal Really Need?: Instead of wandering around aimlessly, most animals…

As a medical oncologist I'm not particularly a fan of cigarette smoking. In fact I have been known to try to coerce people to cease and desist from the smelly habit. Because of the siren song of nicotine and its addictive properties, however, I realize that many smokers are both mentally and physically unable to simply walk away from a luscious pack of cigarettes. Perhaps they lie awake in bed at night, frustrated with their addiction and vowing to throw away the coffin nails for good cometh the dawn. Perhaps they invest in stop-smoking classes, nictotine-replacement products, pills or…