Social Sciences

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have gone beyond manipulating adult stem cells cultured in the lab and achieved the same feat with adult neural stem cells - still in place in the brain. They successfully coaxed mouse brain stem cells bound to join the neuronal network to differentiate into support cells instead. The discovery not only attests to the versatility of neural stem cells but also opens up new directions for the treatment of neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, stroke and epilepsy that not only affect neuronal cells but also disrupt the…

Not many people think about what it's like to be a bat, but for those who do, it's enlightening and potentially groundbreaking for understanding aspects of the human brain and nervous system. Cynthia Moss, a member of the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program at the University of Maryland, College Park, Md., is one of few researchers who spend time trying to get into the heads of bats. Her new research suggests there is more to studying bats than figuring out how they process sound to distinguish environments. "For decades it's been recognized that a bat's voice produces sounds that give…

People who are bicultural and speak two languages may actually shift their personalities when they switch from one language to another, according to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Language can be a cue that activates different culture-specific frames," write David Luna (Baruch College), Torsten Ringberg, and Laura A. Peracchio (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). The authors studied groups of Hispanic women, all of whom were bilingual, but with varying degrees of cultural identification. They found significant levels of "frame-shifting" (changes in self perception) in…

Think an octopus is just an invertebrate mollusk with a brain that contains fewer nerve cells and a much simpler anatomical organization than that of vertebrate brains? Well, you're right, and that's what makes them important for learning studies. Octopuses and other related creatures, known as cephalopods, are considered to be the most intelligent invertebrates because they have relatively large brains and they can be trained for various learning and memory tasks, says Dr. Benny Hochner of the Department of Neurobiology at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences at the Hebrew…

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) robs the brain of a protein that plays a major role in the way neurons communicate and that is essential for brain development, learning and memory. A team of scientists has discovered new information about how FXS interferes with signaling between the nucleus of neurons and the synapse, the outer reaches of the neuron where two neurons communicate via chemical and electrical signals. The discovery should help lead the way to the development of new treatments for FXS, the most common form of inherited mental retardation and also a genetic contributor to some types of…

Practice makes perfect, but a question that still remains a mystery is why it is so difficult to transfer learning from a trained to an untrained task? Why are we no better at remembering faces when we have been training our memory for words? Scientists at Umeå University and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now show in the journal Science that the answer lies in the brain areas activated by each task. The scientists studied the brain activity of healthy subjects as they performed a task that was part of a training program and two untrained tasks. Their performance on the trained task and one…

Sometimes you just get lucky but overconfident CEOs never talk about good luck when things go well, just bad luck when there are problems, according to a paper in the current issue of Management Science. Whether to engage in mergers and acquisitions is one of the most important decisions top managers make, the authors write. While many of the factors influencing these decisions may be based on objective financial metrics, there is increasing evidence that behavioral biases play an important role in managerial decision making. Professors Matthew T. Billett and Yiming Qian of the University of…

The ruya, an inspirational night dream, is a fundamental part of the militant jihadist movement among Muslims, according to a study by Dr. Iain Edgar, a social anthropologist at Durham University. The problem? He used the reported dreams of al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders who are, after all, in the business of inspiring terrorism. It may be that militant leaders do touchy-feely things like report their dreams accurately, but unlikely. Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival on the cultural significance of sleeping and dreaming, Edgar said: "Islam is probably the largest night dream…

Until recently, the debate about intelligence had little in the way of data, with proponents of genetic factors in IQ squared off against proponents of environmental factors without any gaining much ground. But new research, led by Swiss postdoctoral fellows Susanne M. Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, working at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, suggests that at least one aspect of a person's IQ can be improved by training a certain type of memory. Most IQ tests attempt to measure two types of intelligence--crystallized and fluid intelligence. Crystallized intelligence draws on existing…

In investigating the intricacies of the body’s biological rhythms, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have discovered the existence of a “food-related clock” which can supercede the “light-based” master clock that serves as the body’s primary timekeeper. The findings, which appear in the May 23 issue of Science, help explain how animals adapt their circadian rhythms in order to avoid starvation, and suggest that by adjusting eating schedules, humans too can better cope with changes in time zones and nighttime schedules that leave them feeling groggy and jet-lagged. “…