Social Sciences

Monkeys seem to learn the same way humans do, a new research study indicates. “Like humans, monkeys benefit enormously from being actively involved in learning instead of having information presented to them passively,” said Nate Kornell, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar in psychology and lead author of the study. “The advantage of active learning appears to be a fundamental property of memory in humans and nonhumans alike.” In Kornell’s study, conducted when he was a psychology graduate student at Columbia University, two rhesus macaque monkeys learned to place five photographs in a particular…

In studies with monkeys, researchers have identified in detail the brain regions responsible for the unique ability of primates, including humans, to process visual 3D shapes to guide their sophisticated manipulation of objects. Specifically, the researchers delineated regions of the parietal cortex responsible for extracting 3D information by integrating disparities in information from the two eyes. Such integration is critical to perceiving three dimensions, because each eye receives only a two-dimensional projection of an image on the retina. The researchers performed experiments in which…

Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that causes people to fall asleep uncontrollably during the day. It also includes features of dreaming that occur while awake. Other common symptoms include sleep paralysis, hallucinations and cataplexy. About one out of every 2,000 people is known to have narcolepsy. The chance that you have narcolepsy is higher when a relative also has it. It is very rare for more than two people in the same family to have this sleep disorder. It affects the same number of men and women. Puzzling? It sure is - but Susumu Tanaka, PhD, of the Tokyo Institute of Psychiatry in…

Disorders of arousal (i.e., sleepwalking, confusional arousals and sleep terrors) have sometimes been associated with violent behaviors against other individuals. A preliminary review of possible triggers for violence during disorders of arousal finds that violent behavior most frequently appears to follow direct provocation by, or close proximity to, another individual. The review, authored by Mark R. Pressman, PhD, of Sleep Medicine Services at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood, Penn., was based on a review of 32 cases drawn from medical and legal literature. Each case contained a record of…

Neuroscientists have long believed that vision is processed in the brain along circuits made up of neurons, similar to the way telephone signals are transferred through separate wires from one station to another. But scientists at Georgetown University Medical Center discovered that visual information is also processed in a different way, like propagating waves oscillating back and forth among brain areas. “What we found is that signals pass through brain areas like progressive waves, back and forth, a little bit like what fans do at baseball games,” said the study’s corresponding author,…

Alcoholism has traditionally been considered a male disease because there are many more alcoholic males than females. But a new study by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center suggests that women are more prone to brain damage from alcohol abuse than men. The study led by Kristine Wiren, Ph.D., associate professor of behavioral neuroscience and medicine, OHSU School of Medicine, and research biologist, PVAMC Research Service, found that female mice are more susceptible to neurotoxic effects of alcohol withdrawal, including…

A century-old dream of neuroscientists to visualize a memory has been fulfilled, as University of California, Irvine researchers, using newly developing microscopic techniques, have captured first-time images of the changes in brain cell connections following a common form of learning. The study shows that synaptic connections in a region of rats’ brains critical to learning change shape when the rodents learn to navigate a new, complex environment. In turn, when drugs are administered that block these changes, the rats don’t learn, confirming the essential role the shape change plays in the…

As any child knows, to answer the question “how many,” one must start by adding up individual objects in a group. This cognitive ability is shared by animals as diverse as humans and birds. Surprisingly, the exact brain mechanisms responsible for this process remained unknown until now. Jamie Roitman, Elizabeth Brannon, and Michael Platt from the University of Illinois at Chicago report novel evidence for the existence of “accumulator neurons,” which respond to increasing numbers of items in a display with progressively increasing activity, in the parietal cortex of monkeys. Neurons in the…

Birds use songs to attract mates and mark their territory but according to University of Washington researchers, it's a naturally occurring steroid that improves their brains and not practice. Neuroscientists have long attempted to understand if structural changes in the brain are related to sensory experience or the performance of learned behavior. Eliot Brenowitz and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin have showed that the Gambel’s white-crowned sparrow uses testosterone, a naturally occurring steroid, to trigger the seasonal growth of these brain regions. Their finding is counter…

People with serious cases of writer’s cramp have brain abnormalities, according to a study published in the July 24, 2007, issue of Neurology®. People with writer’s cramp had less brain tissue than healthy people in three areas of the brain that connect the senses and movement with their affected hand. Writer’s cramp is a form of dystonia, an involuntary, sustained muscle contraction. Writer’s cramp often occurs in people who have used the same muscles repeatedly for years. The study involved 30 people who had writer’s cramp for an average of seven years with no other forms of dystonia.…