Fascinating Article on Infant Cognition...

... and creativity/ Zen "beginner's mind" in adults.

Inside the Baby Mind

The Intricate Dance of Nature and Nurture

from Newsweek, on parenting and DNA

The Undervalued Role of Play

Not to sound too crotchety, but every time I see a DVD player in the back of an SUV, presumably lulling the kids back there either to sleep or into docile DVD-consciousness, I wonder what's going to become of the imagination in generations to come.
Apparently, Alix Spiegel of NPR's Morning Edition wondered the same thing.
Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills

Brain Fitness

Speaking of brain stuff, I was just watching this fascinating program on PBS. Here's a clip.
While the implications of "neuroplasticity" offer hope particularly to seniors, it's never too early to start taking care of the ol' gray matter and forming beneficial habits, not just to keep it fit longer, but to improve its function in the here and now.

Some People Never Learn

Interesting cognitive-behavioral study on the role of genes affecting dopamine reception on learning, with possible implications for addiction and obsession/compulsion.

(One month) older than my years...

... that's how I scored on the RealAge Test. I know this has been out a while, and I think I took it a few years ago, actually (and scored better, I think) but anyway, I guess it could be worse.
Positive factors included daily flossing, not smoking or eating much red meat, good BMI, education level, wearing my seatbelt and taking a vitamin every day.
Negatives included not enough exercise, never having lifted a weight in my life (okay, maybe once) not enough vitamin C, not enough Omega-3 (I try, but tuna has mercury in it and salmon is so darn expensive; back to stocking up on walnuts) and too small a social network.
Most of these things I knew, but good to have them reinforced, to motivate me to kick my age down to what I get mistaken for when ordering liquor (and not ordering liquor would probably kick it down even further, unless it's red wine ;)

You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Hear Voices...

... although, no doubt, it helps.
But that cheap joke aside, Daniel B. Smith, who was on The Colbert Report last night, has written what looks like a fascinating book on the phenomenon of auditory hallucination through the ages, centered around the story of his own father, an otherwise normally functioning attorney who heard voices throughout his life.

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination

Death of Panda Released into Wild: Sad, but not surprising...

... the strategy of protecting the habitats in the first place seems the better and more cost-effective approach, as a WWF director notes.

Chimeras Among Us

MIT scientist offers help to cyclist accused of blood doping.
Apparently, DNA tests to look for chimerism have found that about 50 to 70 percent of healthy people are chimeras, a medical term meaning that their blood may have originally mingled with a vanished twin in utero, early on, or with their mother's own blood.

Sunshine, in moderation...

... can prevent cancer, cutting the risks quite significantly, according to this Canadian article discussing U.S. research that will be announced in June.

The conclusions about the higher rates of cancer in northern industrialized countries is interesting, too.

And if, like me, you have reason to fear skin cancer in particular, there's always vitamin D supplements + a bit more sunshine.

I like excuses to get a bit more sunshine, though.

Research suggests intelligence does not predict wealth

Well, that explains things, I guess ;)

from New Scientist

It looks like lifestyle factors, some but not all of which are correlated, trump sheer IQ.

Interesting: the role of emotion in moral judgment

This article in New Scientist discusses research on why, apparently, both Kant and Hume may be vindicated by neuroscience with regard to how impaired emotional processing affects moral judgments.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day...

... or perhaps dishonor, this was interesting. Apparently the current inhabitants of the British Isles (does Ireland resent being called a "British" Isle? I bet they do; can't they come up with a more, or would that be less, inclusive term?) Anyway, apparently, the British, Scottish, Welsh and Irish all share the majority of their genes, owing to a prehistoric population, speaking a language similar to Basque, that have lived there for the last 16,000 years.

Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford, introduces several theories that would turn long-held assumptions about British history on their head if they are further verified.

But he doesn't hold out much hope for shared ancestry healing old rivalries (maybe policymakers should take a hint from this kind of pessimism when considering other populations, say, in the Middle East):

If the people of the British Isles hold most of their genetic heritage in common, with their differences consisting only of a regional flavoring of Celtic in the west and of northern European in the east, might that perception draw them together? Geneticists see little prospect that their findings will reduce cultural and political differences.

The Celtic cultural myth “is very entrenched and has a lot to do with the Scottish, Welsh and Irish identity; their main identifying feature is that they are not English,” said Dr. Sykes, an Englishman who has traced his Y chromosome and surname to an ancestor who lived in the village of Flockton in Yorkshire in 1286.

Dr. Oppenheimer said genes “have no bearing on cultural history.” There is no significant genetic difference between the people of Northern Ireland, yet they have been fighting with each other for 400 years, he said.

As for his thesis that the British and Irish are genetically much alike, “It would be wonderful if it improved relations, but I somehow think it won’t.

Mood lifters for the winter blues

Depression may have been an evolutionary adaptation, and "paleolithic therapies" (coinage mine) may be the new "paleolithic diets," according to evolutionary psychopathologists.

And here are eight enviable brain diseases, according to one blogger.

The Justice Cortex

Interesting...
Based merely on the study as it is summarized in this article, though, should the region of the brain that apparently evaluates fairness be associated with "morality" (in the form of righteous indignation) or simply delayed gratification?
(Although I believe some have argued that delayed gratification is synonymous with morality, so maybe that's a moot point.)
But a long-term strategist somewhere back in our evolutionary history may have been clever enough to punish unfair division of resources by refusing his or her sliver of woolly mammoth meat with a huff and roll of the eyes -- maybe even a prehistoric temper tantrum -- cunningly wagering that it might be worth it in the long run if, next time, it paid off with a bigger share of the pie.
I also wonder if self-conceived notions of where one stands in a group hierarchy might play into one's reactions to being apparently cheated.

So what's up with all these shootings?

Having grown up close enough to Pennsylvania Amish country that the sight of horse-and-buggies clopping down the street between cars and trucks was not a novelty, I could picture the scene of a national cable news convergence on a quiet Amish schoolyard even before it was conjured up on each of the major news channels, in one case with an unidentified white-bearded Amish man being interviewed in a split-screen shot alongside a scene of the schoolhouse.
I think I had fallen prey to the prevailing pessimism that's been brooding in the country, with yesterday's incident marking the third so-called "school shooting" in a week. What's going on here?
Tonight's NewsHour interview with forensic psychologist and juvenile violence expert Dewey Cornell shed a little light, as Dr. Cornell noted that, overall, violence at schools in the U.S. has gone down over the last several years, although there have obviously been a number of sensational cases that seem to suggest it is becoming some kind of epidemic. He made the point that coining and throwing around the term "school shooting" has the potential to create an arbitary category that may serve as a lure for desperate people looking for the maximum notoriety for their violent fantasies.
As someone who works, to cite my bio, in the communications/media industry, I'm certainly not one of those who believes the media is the root of all evil; certainly not in the sense that violent video games or pornography incite normal, well-adjusted people to violence. And I don't believe that 24-hour cable news channels are slowly devouring the brains of those who watch them (provided those viewers take occasional breaks to eat, sleep and other things essential to life in the three-dimensional world.)
However, I do think it would be productive to examine the larger implications of 24-hour, internationally broadcast cable news, whose bread and butter, is, to be brutally honest, the "big stories" (which never tend to be the warm and fuzzy kind) on psychologically unstable individuals desiring to write their pain in a large hand across the world they feel has wronged them.
When you have people, whether kids or adults, with violent tendencies, either due to childhood abuse, relationships gone bad, school bullying or simply unmedicated psychopathology, offering them the promise of posthumous gratification of a megalomaniacal desire for instant, worldwide notoriety, while it is far from the cause of such behavior (these are people who, unless they got help or found a way to help themselves, would inevitably act out in some way, at some time) but I'm just thinking that the lure of those 15 minutes probably doesn't help much.

Everything, indeed everything in moderation

Too much testosterone kills brains cells

And as a chick, the results of the estrogen test conducted "to be fair" made me chuckle quite daintily.

Indeed, the scientist who conducted the study happens to be a woman. But I don't find it surprising that the hypothesis may not have occurred as naturally to some of her male colleagues, particularly the ones who have been busy conducting tests like this, which I hate to say seem to depend for their conclusions on much fuzzier, or "softer," if you will, data and methodology.

Not that there's anything wrong with being fuzzy, of course, in moderation.