Testosterone Makes Us Less Cooperative and More Egocentric

Testosterone makes us overvalue our own opinions at the expense of cooperation, research from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) has found. The findings may have implications for how group decisions are affected by dominant individuals.  Problem solving in groups can provide benefits over individual decisions as we are able to share our information and expertise. However, there is a tension between cooperation and self-orientated behaviour: although groups might benefit from a collective intelligence, collaborating too closely can lead to an uncritical groupthink, ending in decisions that are bad for all.  Attempts to understand the biological mechanisms behind group decision making...

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Music training has biological impact on aging process

Age-related delays in neural timing are not inevitable and can be avoided or offset with musical training, according to a new study from Northwestern University. The study is the first to provide biological evidence that lifelong musical experience has an impact on the aging process.  Measuring the automatic brain responses of younger and older musicians and non-musicians to speech sounds, researchers in the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory discovered that older musicians had a distinct neural timing advantage.  "The older musicians not only outperformed their older non-musician counterparts, they encoded the sound stimuli as quickly and accurately as the younger non-musicians," said Northwestern neuroscientist Nina Kraus. "This...

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Body clock receptor linked to diabetes in new genetic study

A study published in Nature Genetics today has found new evidence for a link between the body clock hormone melatonin and type 2 diabetes. The study found that people who carry rare genetic mutations in the receptor for melatonin have a much higher risk of type 2 diabetes. People who carry rare genetic mutations in the receptor for melatonin have a much higher risk of type 2 diabetes, according a study published in Nature Genetics The findings should help scientists to more accurately assess personal diabetes risk and could lead to the development of personalised treatments. Previous research has found that people who work night shifts have a higher risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Studies have also found that if volunteers...

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Making memories last

Memories in our brains are maintained by connections between neurons called "synapses". But how do these synapses stay strong and keep memories alive for decades? Neuroscientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered a major clue from a study in fruit flies: Hardy, self-copying clusters or oligomers of a synapse protein are an essential ingredient for the formation of long-term memory.  Drosophila Orb2 plays an important role in the persistence of memory. Upon stimulation, Orb2 (shown in yellow) forms amyloid-like oligomers (shown in red), which are an essential ingredient for the formation of long-term memory [Credit: Illustration: Nicolle Rager Fuller, Sayo-Art] The finding supports a surprising new theory...

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'Genetic programming': The mathematics of taste

The design of aromas — the flavors of packaged food and drink and the scents of cleaning products, toiletries and other household items — is a multibillion-dollar business. The big flavor companies spend tens of millions of dollars every year on research and development, including a lot of consumer testing.  [Graphic: Christine Daniloff] But making sense of taste-test results is difficult. Subjects’ preferences can vary so widely that no clear consensus may emerge. Collecting enough data about each subject would allow flavor companies to filter out some of the inconsistencies, but after about 40 flavor samples, subjects tend to suffer “smell fatigue,” and their discriminations become unreliable. So companies are stuck making decisions...

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Lifelong brain-stimulating habits linked to lower Alzheimer’s protein levels

A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, provides even more reason for people to read a book or do a puzzle, and to make such activities a lifetime habit.  PET scans reveal amyloid plaques, which appear as warm colors such as red and orange. The middle scan is from a person with no symptoms of cognitive problems, but with evident levels of amyloid plaque in the brain [Credit: Susan Landau and William Jagust] Brain scans revealed that people with no symptoms of Alzheimer’s who engaged in cognitively stimulating activities throughout their lives had fewer deposits of beta-amyloid, a destructive protein that is the hallmark of the disease.  While previous research has suggested that engaging in...

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The price of your soul: How the brain decides whether to 'sell out'

An Emory University neuro-imaging study shows that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered cash to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold.  "Our experiment found that the realm of the sacred – whether it's a strong religious belief, a national identity or a code of ethics – is a distinct cognitive process," says Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and lead author of the study. The results were published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.  Sacred values prompt greater activation of an area of the brain associated with rules-based, right-or-wrong thought processes, the study showed, as opposed to the...

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Genetic study offers clues to how intelligence changes through life

Scientists have estimated for the first time the extent to which genes determine changes in intelligence across the human life course. The study found that genetic factors may account for about 24 per cent of changes in intelligence between childhood and old age. The findings also suggest that many of the genes that affect intelligence in childhood also influence intelligence in old age, according to the study published in Nature. The study, by researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Queensland and Aberdeen suggests that the largest influence on changes in intelligence is probably environmental.  DNA from cool angle [Credit: © Dmitry Sunagatov/Fotolia.com] Identifying genetic influences on intelligence could help us to understand...

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Biologists a Step Nearer to Solving the Parkinson's Conundrum

Scientists at the University of York have made a significant step forward in isolating the cause of Parkinson's disease in younger adults.  Parkinson's disease occurs when some nerve cells in a part of the brain called the substantia nigra die or become impaired. Normally, these cells produce dopamine - a vital chemical that allows smooth, coordinated function of the body's muscles and movements [Credit: iStockphoto/Martí Sáiz] Research by a team in the University's Department of Biology found evidence that movement disorders, including tremor and slowness of movement (bradykinesia), associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) may be due to a defect in energy production in the nervous system. The advance may help to identify young adults...

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Scientists identify gene crucial to normal development of lungs and brain

Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a gene that tells cells to develop multiple cilia, tiny hair-like structures that move fluids through the lungs and brain. The finding may help scientists generate new therapies that use stem cells to replace damaged tissues in the lung and other organs.  The Salk researchers discovered the master gene that tells cells to develop multiple hair-like cilia, such as those seen in pink in this false-colored electron microscope image of the surface of a frog embryo [Credit: Courtesy of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies; Chris Kintner, Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, and Matthew Joens and James Fitzpatrick, Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center] "Cells with...

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Moderate marijuana use doesn’t damage lung function

Occasional and low cumulative marijuana use is not associated with adverse effects on pulmonary function, a new study has found.  Exposure to tobacco smoke causes lung damage with clinical consequences that include respiratory symptoms, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer.  Mark J. Pletcher and his colleagues from the University of California examined associations between marijuana, both current and lifetime exposure, and pulmonary function.  The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study is a longitudinal study collecting repeated measurements of pulmonary function and smoking over 20 years (March 1985-August 2006) in a group of 5,115 men and women in 4 U. S. cities.  Lifetime...

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Permafrost bacteria may slow down aging

A hardy type of bacteria recently discovered in the permafrost of Siberia could help slow down the ageing process, Russian scientists claimed on Tuesday.  The species of bacteria -- given the name Bacillius F -- was found in laboratory tests to have shown signs of slowing down the process of ageing on mice, the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) said.  The Siberian branch of the RAN said Bacillius F lags 3 million years behind similar bacteria in evolutionary terms, according to the characteristics of proteins and some other factors.  "Taking into consideration the unusual living environment, one can only marvel at the resilience of these bacteria," it said.  It added that the organisms found in Russia's northern...

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Opioids Erase Memory Traces of Pain

A team of researchers at the MedUni Vienna's Department of Neurophysiology (Centre for Brain Research) has discovered a previously unknown effect of opioids: the study, which has now been published in the journal Science and was led by Ruth Drdla-Schutting and Jurgen Sandkuhler, shows that opioids not only temporarily relieve pain, but at the right dose can also erase memory traces of pain in the spinal cord and therefore eliminate a key cause of chronic pain.  The scientists recreated a surgical procedure in vivo in which pain fibres were stimulated under controlled conditions.  Says Sandkuhler: "Although deep anaesthesia prevents any sensations of pain, we were able to reserve long-term synaptic potentiation in the spinal...

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Powerful people overestimate their height

The psychological experience of power makes people feel taller than they are, according to research by ILR School associate professor of organizational behavior Jack Goncalo and a Washington University colleague.  "Although a great deal of research has shown that physically imposing individuals are more likely to acquire power, this work is the first to show that the powerful may actually feel taller than they are," Goncalo and Michelle Duguid write in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science.  So a 5-foot-4-inch woman might actually sprout an inch or two in her own mind when she's having an empowered moment. In other words, there is actually a physical experience that goes along with feeling powerful.  Three experiments...

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Getting Cancer Cells to Swallow Poison

Honing chemotherapy delivery to cancer cells is a challenge for many researchers. Getting the cancer cells to take the chemotherapy "bait" is a greater challenge. But perhaps such a challenge has not been met with greater success than by the nanotechnology research team of Omid Farokhzad, MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) Department of Anesthesiology Perioperative and Pain Medicine and Research.  Ligand-nanoparticle components (in green) targeting and binding to cells [Credit: Image courtesy of Brigham and Women's Hospital] In their latest study with researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Massachusetts General Hospital, the BWH team created a drug delivery system that is able to effectively deliver a...

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Unique Protein Organization in Arteries Associated With Cardiovascular Disease

Human arteries -- some smaller than a strand of hair -- stiffen as a person ages. This stiffening is a factor in cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, because it contributes to the circulatory complications in disorders such as high blood pressure and diabetes. University of Missouri researchers have now used advanced 3-D microscopic imaging technology to identify and monitor the proteins involved in this stiffening process. These findings could eventually help researchers and physicians understand and treat complications associated with cardiovascular disease.  "A majority of the scientific knowledge of how blood vessels are put together is based on older methodologies that only measured the amount...

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