When vervet monkeys play follow the leader, they prefer to follow a female. That was the conclusion of Erica van de Waal, whose lengthy study of these primates in South Africa will be published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. When her team presented them with a tricky contraption they had to open to reach a tasty snack, the monkeys learned better if they watched a female from their group demonstrate the solution rather than a male.
Seeking some answers to how social learning works in monkeys, van de Waal and her colleagues headed to Loskop Dam Nature Reserve. It took four months, they say, just to acclimate the wild animals to the presence of humans. Once the monkeys were comfortable having scientists around, Van de Waal gave each group a wooden box containing a slice of apple. To get to the apple, the monkeys had to either pull open the door at one end or slide aside a door at the other. Half the box was painted black to differentiate the two ends [ScienceNOW].
College students holed up in the library or cramming for an exam have always relied on stimulants like coffee, but recently they’ve been increasingly turning to the off-label use of drugs like Ritalin and Modafinil to help them stay focused. Now scientists have found how Ritalin, a drug normally prescribed for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), helps boost learning.
In a new study of rats published online in Nature Neuroscience, scientists found that Ritalin appears to boost both attention and enhance the speed of learning by increasing the activity of the chemical messenger dopamine [Technology Review]. The study also found that one type of dopamine receptor aids the ability to focus, and another type improves the learning itself [DNA].
Forgetting an umbrella or the location of a parking spot may be annoying, but scientists have suggested that for healthy brains to function well, they need to forget. By forgetting, scientists say, the brain makes space for new memories. In an intriguing breakthrough, researchers from the United States and China have identified the protein responsible for forgetting in fruit flies. By tweaking a protein called Rac, researchers were able to speed up and slow down the erasure of painful memories [New Scientist]. The findings were published in the journal Cell.
Scientists have been unable to pinpoint why people forget. Some have suggested that new memories are ephemeral and vanish over time, while others thought that interference caused earlier short-term memories to be overridden as new information comes in [Science Daily]. While both of these notions seem to suggest that forgetting is a passive mechanism, the new study suggests that forgetting is far more active, and that Rac works to inhibit the formation of more long-term memories.
Does your first- or second-grade daughter have trouble with math? Her anxiety could be stemming not just from a genuine fear of number crunching but also, a new study indicates, from an anxious female math teacher.
The study (pdf) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that if a female teacher is anxious about math, she tends to pass on that anxiety to her female students. This can make the female students believe they aren’t hard-wired for math like the boys, and cause them to shy away from fully flexing and developing their mathematical muscles.
The findings are the product of a year-long study on 17 first-and second-grade teachers and 52 boys and 65 girls who were their students [Science Daily]. Researchers recruited the female teachers from a Midwestern school district and assessed their level of math anxiety. They also gave math tests to 117 of these teachers’ students and jotted down their beliefs about math and gender at the beginning and end of the year. By the end of the year, the more anxious teachers were about their own math skills, the more likely their female students – but not the boys – were to agree that “boys are good at math and girls are good at reading” [AP].
When your kid isn’t in class, he/she is probably listening to an iPod, flipping TV channels, or switching between tabs on their computer, which means they may be juggling between Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube–in other words, kids today are staying hyperconnected and wired through their waking hours. That reality is confirmed by a new study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which reveals that if your kids are awake, they’re probably online [The New York Times].
In the third of a series of large-scale national surveys, the Kaiser Foundation study found that kids between the ages of 8-18 years now spend an average of 7 hours, 38 minutes per day using entertainment media. That adds up to more than 53 hours of entertainment consumption in a week. And this does not include the time kids spending texting or talking on their cell phones.
One year ago today, a brain-damaged man died peacefully at the age of 82, and neuroscientists the world over learned the identity of the man who was referred to in the textbooks only as “H.M.” Henry Gustav Molaison lost much of a brain structure called the hippocampus during an operation in the 1950s. The procedure was meant to stop his epileptic seizures. However, the hippocampus is critical to memory formation, so the surgery left Molaison unable to form new long-term memories [New Scientist]. By studying Molaison’s behavior over decades, researchers learned an enormous amount about memory formation.
Today, researchers at The Brain Observatory in San Diego are taking the next step in studying the workings of Molaison’s brain: They’re slicing it up. During Molaison’s life, he and his guardian agreed that his brain should be donated to science upon his death. So his brain was frozen, and beginning today it will be cut into about 2,600 very thin slices (think deli meat). Each slice will be photographed, and many will be studied microscopically to determine exactly which parts of Molaison’s brain were damaged in that long-ago operation. The slicing operation, which began about an hour ago, is being streamed live on the Internet, although it’s hardly a gripping action sequence (it looks more like scientists going about their business in a lab). In addition, the photos of the brain slices will soon be posted online for all the world to marvel at.
Amid mounting evidence that sleep is key for your memory, researchers published a paper in the journal Science last week suggesting that playing specific sounds while a person sleeps—sounds connected to something that the person is trying to memorize—could help the memory sink in.
The researchers taught people to move 50 pictures to their correct locations on a computer screen. Each picture was accompanied by a related sound — meow for a cat, whirring for a helicopter, for example [The New York Times]. Next the test subjects lay down for a nap, and while they slept the researchers played sounds relating to half the objects. When the subjects woke up, scientists tested them on how well they remembered where each object went. Participants didn’t know they’d been subjected to the sounds while they napped, but they fared better at placing the objects for which they heard sounds in their sleep than those they didn’t.
Lead researcher Ken Paller explains: “While asleep, people might process anything that happened during the day — what they ate for breakfast, television shows they watched, anything…. But we decided which memories our volunteers would activate, guiding them to rehearse some of the locations they had learned an hour earlier” [U.S. News & World Report].
Babies pick up their parents’ accents while still in the womb, according to a new study. After studying the crying patterns of 30 French and 30 German newborns, researchers concluded that the French newborns cried with a rising “accent” while the German babies’ cries had a falling inflection [BBC News].The researchers believe that by mimicking their mothers’ inflections, the babies are attempting to form an early bond with their mothers.
Scientists already knew that a baby in the womb can memorize sounds from the outside world, and is particularly sensitive to the melodies of her mother’s language. But the new research showed an “extremely early” impact of native language and confirmed that babies’ cries are their first proper attempts to communicate specifically with their mothers [Reuters]. The data support the idea that crying seeds language development for infants, according to the scientists, who published their research in the journal Current Biology.
To hear the different between German and French crying babies for yourself, click here to listen.
Researchers have found a pharmaceutical way to clear some of the cognitive fog that results from a sleepless night. In a new study using lab mice, researchers corrected the memory problems in sleep-deprived mice through a drug that suppressed levels of a certain enzyme in a brain region called the hippocampus, which plays an important role in memory and learning.
The study, published in Nature, helps tease out the specific effects of sleep deprivation on the brain. Says lead researcher Christopher Vecsey: “One of the main problems is that sleep deprivation does a lot of things to the brain, and it’s easy to get caught in a mish-mash of different effects” [Nature News].
Inside the brain of someone who’s learning to juggle, some interesting changes take place. Researchers used MRI scans to study the brains of people before and after a six-week training course in juggling, and say they saw a 5% increase in white matter – the cabling network of the brain [BBC News].
The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, follows up on previous work that found changes in the more famous gray matter of the brain, which consists of the cell bodies of the neurons where processing and computation take place. The white matter, which consists mostly of the axons that stretch away from the cell bodies, can be thought of as the brain’s wiring, and researchers say this is the first time that changes have been observed in the white matter of a healthy adult.
Scientists recently used treadmill exercise, drugs, and electrical stimulation to train paralyzed rats to walk once again, demonstrating a way to possibly treat spinal injuries in humans, which at present are basically untreatable.
In a spinal injury, the neural circuits connecting the brain to the muscles that control walking become damaged or severed, leaving an individual paralyzed. In able-bodied people, these “walking circuits” spring into action when they receive a signal from the brain, but if the spinal cord is damaged, the message from the brain never arrives. When contact with the brain is lost, the circuits shut down [The Guardian]. In the study, published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers manipulated these circuits and produced movement that was “almost indistinguishable” from normal walking. See for yourself in the embedded video.
Some coma patients who appear to be completely unresponsive to the outside world are still capable of the most basic kind of learning, according to a small new study. Researchers found that both vegetative and “minimally conscious” patients were capable of a Pavlovian response, learning to associate a noise with a slightly unpleasant stimulus.
The researchers built on the work of 19th-century Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, who famously conditioned his dogs to salivate at the ring of a bell by associating the sound with the presentation of food. In this case, they sounded a tone, which was followed about 500 milliseconds later with a light puff of air to the eye [Scientific American]. At first the patients only responded after the puff of air by blinking or twitching or flinching. But after repeated trials, 15 of the 22 patients began to blink or flinch immediately after the tone sounded, before the puff of air. Electrodes by their eyes picked up the subtle muscle movements.
Kids suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may have altered brain chemistry that prevents them from experiencing motivation and rewards like other people, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Lead researcher Nora Volkow suggests that faulty transmission of the brain chemical dopamine may be to blame for the difficulty people with ADHD experience trying to finish tasks that have no immediate payoff — the difference between doing homework, for instance, and playing a video game [CBC News].
The researchers used PET brain scans to determine how the brains of people with and without ADHD handled the neurotransmitter dopamine, a versatile chemical that is involved in regulating mood, attention, and learning. In particular they measured levels of two proteins – dopamine receptors and transporters – without which dopamine cannot function effectively to influence mood. ADHD patients had lower levels of both proteins in two areas of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens and midbrain. Both form part of the limbic system, responsible for the emotions, and sensations such as motivation and reward [BBC News].
It may not come as much of a surprise to dog-owners, but it seems that dogs and babies share similar logical abilities, as shown by a study published in Science.
Experimenters started out with a classic logic experiment, which goes like this: researchers hide a toy in location “A” multiple times while looking at a 10-month-old baby and talking to him (“Look, I have this nice ball!”). When asked to find the toy, the baby always goes to location “A.” The experimenter then hides the toy at location “B,” again while interacting with the baby. But this time, when asked to find the toy, the baby continues to search for it at location “A.” The findings hold, even when a team changes experimenters midtest. Researchers believe that infants make this error because they believe the adults have taught them something fundamental about the world (i.e., “Your toy will always be at location ‘A’”) [ScienceNow].
Go ahead, let your teenagers play another few minutes of Tetris, that simple-yet-addictive puzzle game; it may well be good for their brain. Researchers have new evidence that playing Tetris makes a developing brain more efficient and thicker in certain regions.
The small study was conducted by neuroscientist Richard Haier, who was one of the first neuroscientists to explore the effects of video games on the brain. Back in 1992, Haier used brain scans to discover that some parts of the brain actually used less glucose as the players became more skilled at the game. The “Tetris effect” illustrated how video-game training could make brains work more efficiently – an idea that eventually led to a whole host of brain-training games [MSNBC]. For the new study, Haier updated his work by using newer, more sophisticated brain scanning technology to look for changes in the brains of adolescent girls after three months of Tetris playing. Adolescent girls were chosen because their brains were still developing, and because they were presumed to have less experience with video games than boys.
80beats is DISCOVER's news aggregator, weaving together the choicest tidbits from the best articles on the day's most compelling topics.
80beats is written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. This team darts through each day's science news faster than the ruby-throated hummingbird that beats its wings 80 times per second. Send ideas, tips, suggestions, and complaints to [azeeberg at discovermagazine dot com].
When vervet monkeys play follow the leader, they prefer to follow a female. That was the conclusion of Erica van de Waal, whose lengthy study of these primates in South Africa will be published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. When her team presented them with a tricky contraption they had to open to reach a tasty snack, the monkeys learned better if they watched a female from their group demonstrate the solution rather than a male.
College students holed up in the library or cramming for an exam have always relied on stimulants like coffee, but recently they’ve been increasingly turning to the off-label use of drugs like Ritalin and Modafinil to help them stay focused. Now scientists have found how Ritalin, a drug normally prescribed for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), helps boost learning.
Forgetting an umbrella or the location of a parking spot may be annoying, but scientists have suggested that for healthy brains to function well, they need to forget. By forgetting, scientists say, the brain makes space for new memories. In an intriguing breakthrough, researchers from the United States and China have identified the protein responsible for forgetting in fruit flies. By tweaking a protein called Rac, researchers were able 
Does your first- or second-grade daughter have trouble with math? Her anxiety could be stemming not just from a genuine fear of number crunching but also, a new study indicates, from an anxious female math teacher.
When your kid isn’t in class, he/she is probably listening to an iPod, flipping TV channels, or switching between tabs on their computer, which means they may be juggling between Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube–in other words, kids today are staying hyperconnected and wired through their waking hours. That reality is confirmed by a 
One year ago today, a brain-damaged man died peacefully at the age of 82, and neuroscientists the world over learned the identity of the man who was referred to in the textbooks only as “H.M.” Henry Gustav Molaison 
Amid mounting evidence that sleep is key for your 
Babies pick up their parents’ 
Researchers have found a pharmaceutical way to clear some of the cognitive fog that results from a sleepless night. In a new study using lab mice, researchers corrected the memory problems in 
Inside the brain of someone who’s 
Some coma patients who appear to be completely unresponsive to the outside world are still capable of the most basic kind of 
Kids suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (
It may not come as much of a surprise to dog-owners, but it seems that dogs and babies share similar logical abilities, as shown by a 
Go ahead, let your teenagers play another few minutes of Tetris, that simple-yet-addictive puzzle game; it may well be good for their brain. Researchers have new evidence that playing Tetris makes a developing brain more efficient and thicker in certain regions.
