Accidental Blogger

"The Way To A Man's Heart ...

... Is through his stomach."  Apparently this age old adage may have more to it than just a gastronomical angle.  Men, it seems are attracted to women of differeng body shapes depending on how hungry they are.  Satiated men with full stomachs find slender women appealing. Hungry men on the other hand, are attracted to the more zaftig types. So says a study in The British Journal of Psychology.  I tend to not take such socio-psychology /biology too seriously. But such studies shine the light on interesting evolutionary aspects of our sexual aesthetics and culture which can also sometimes be quite amusing.

I have no quarrel with the conclusions derived at by the researchers. But they raised a pair of perplexing questions in my mind. First, do men look at women and think of morsels of food? If so, that is mildly disturbing but not wholly surprising. Secondly, most women meet their future mates during the younger, leaner years - presumably after the men have had a satisfying lunch. With child birth and advancing years, many women gain weight. In order to keep their men interested, should they see to it that their partners remain slightly hungry in middle age? On the other hand, why bother?

"How full a man's stomach is can dictate the type of woman he will fancy, UK research suggests.

A study of 61 male university students found those who were hungry were attracted to heavier women than those who were satiated. The hungry men also paid much less attention to a woman's body shape and regarded less curvy figures as more attractive.

The study appears in The British Journal of Psychology.

Food lust

Although it is not clear exactly how hunger exerts an influence on attraction, past research suggests social, cultural and psychological factors are involved. In some societies where food is a limited resource, such as the South Pacific, higher body weights are revered. In others where food is abundant, such as the West, lower female body weights are preferred.

Evolutionary psychologists believe this is a survival preference. What you are looking for in a mate is the best chance of healthy offspring and in an environment where food is scarce, a heavier woman is deemed a safer bet for this.

What can be regarded as a normal and acceptable body size is also influenced by what we see, including advertising, and can change. For example, migrants from rural to urban societies show an increasing idealisation of thinner figures.

Dr Viren Swami from University College London and Dr Martin Tovée from Newcastle University believe there are biological factors at work too.

Dr Tovée explained: "Your cognitive state, your drives and your interests are dependent on your underlying physiology, your blood sugar levels and your hormone levels and these depend upon hunger."

They recruited male university students as they entered or exited a campus dining hall during dinner time. They asked the men to rate how hungry they were on a scale of one to seven. Using these responses, the researchers selected 30 hungry and 31 satiated men to take part in the study.

The men were then asked to rate the attractiveness of 50 women of varying weights, all within a healthy range, who had been photographed wearing tight grey leotards and leggings.

The hungry men rated more of the heavier women as attractive than the men who were full up."

Catastrophes Need A Mustache

In the Indian epic Mahabharat (ought to be required reading for all warmongers), Yudhisthir, the protagonist known for his uncommon wisdom and integrity was asked to name the most confounding conundrum of human existence. He replied that it was the fact that humans, aware of their eventual, unavoidable death, spend their entire lives devising ways to stay alive.

Well, I guess it is true that we do our best to avert danger, disease and calamity.  We fasten our seat belts, watch our diet, go to the doctor when sick. When our life, wealth or way of life is threatened, we set our burglar alarms, call the police or go to war. When the foundations of our moral and religious values are shaken we write letters to the editor or push lawmakers to change the constitution. But we react with greatest alacrity when danger has a human face even if the precautions we take are for the most part useless or of little effect.

We are not so diligent or sagacious when it comes to slow and creeping perils whose progress is not easily recorded by our brain. And we are particularly apathetic to slowly advancing  natural catastrophes which we see as an act of god rather than man. Which is why the Bush administration plays so successfully on our fears of Islamic terrorism for repeated polical gain at the polls but gets away with its utterly callous attitude towards global warming.

After all, we have put a bearded, turbaned, Muslim face on global terrorism which we hope to recognize on the subway and at airports but global warming is something nebulous in the future whose effects don't capture our imagination with the same spectacular urgency as a pair of speeding and tilting airplanes flying into tall towers.

If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming Why we're more scared of gay marriage and terrorism than a much deadlier threat. by Daniel Gilbert

No one seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won't involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium... And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year to prevent global terrorism and … well, essentially nothing to prevent global warming. Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features — features that terrorism has and that global warming lacks. First, global warming lacks a mustache. No, really. We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. Understanding what others are up to — what they know and want, what they are doing and planning — has been so crucial to the survival of our species that our brains have developed an obsession with all things human. We think about people and their intentions; talk about them; look for and remember them. If two airplanes had been hit by lightning and crashed into a New York skyscraper, few of us would be able to name the date on which it happened.  Global warming isn't trying to kill us, and that's a shame. If climate change had been visited on us by a brutal dictator or an evil empire, the war on warming would be this nation's top priority. The second reason why global warming doesn't put our brains on orange alert is that it doesn't violate our moral sensibilities. It doesn't cause our blood to boil (at least not figuratively) because it doesn't force us to entertain thoughts that we find indecent, impious or repulsive. When people feel insulted or disgusted, they generally do something about it, such as whacking each other over the head, or voting. Moral emotions are the brain's call to action. And so we are outraged about every breach of protocol except Kyoto... The fact is that if climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets. The third reason why global warming doesn't trigger our concern is that we see it as a threat to our futures — not our afternoons. Like all animals, people are quick to respond to clear and present danger, which is why it takes us just a few milliseconds to duck when a wayward baseball comes speeding toward our eyes. There is a fourth reason why we just can't seem to get worked up about global warming. The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to changes in light, sound, temperature, pressure, size, weight and just about everything else. But if the rate of change is slow enough, the change will go undetected. The human brain is a remarkable device that was designed to rise to special occasions. We are the progeny of people who hunted and gathered, whose lives were brief and whose greatest threat was a man with a stick. When terrorists attack, we respond with crushing force and firm resolve, just as our ancestors would have. Global warming is a deadly threat precisely because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed. Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of "Stumbling on Happiness," published in May by Knopf.

East, West, Math and Old age

Two stories related to brain function. One did not come as much of a surprise - the other did. 

The first one claims that how you solve math problems may depend on the language you speak. I wonder what Thomas Friedman will make of these findings. He will probably clamor for making Mandarin compulsory in America, starting at age 3!

"Things add up differently for native English speakers compared with people who learned Chinese as a first language.  Simple arithmetic was easily done by both groups, but they used different parts of the brain, a new study shows.

Researchers used brain imaging to see which parts of the brain were active while people did simple addition problems, such as 3 plus 4 equals 7. All participants were working with Arabic numerals which are used in both cultures.

Both groups engaged a portion of the brain called the inferior parietal cortex, which is involved in quantity representation and reading. But native English speakers also showed activity in a language processing area of the brain, while native Chinese speakers used a brain region involved in the processing of visual information, according to the report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The difference "may mean that Chinese speakers perform problems in a different manner than do English speakers," said lead author Yiyuan Tang of Dalian University of Technology in Dalian, China.

"In part that might represent the difference in language. It could be that the difference in language encourages different styles of computation and this may be enhanced by different methods of learning to deal with numbers," Tang said in an interview via e-mail. "We believe language plays a role in the calculation," Tang said. But Tang added that cultural factors may also play a part, such as math learning strategies and school training.....

Richard E. Nisbett, co-director of the Culture and Cognition Program at the University of Michigan, said "the work is important because it tells us something about the particular pathways in the brain that underlie some of the differences between Asians and Westerners in thought patterns."

Nisbett last year reported on differences in the way Asians and North Americans view pictures. He tracked eye movements and determined that, when shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene.

"They literally are seeing the world differently," he said."

The second finding describes the biological basis for something we are more or less familiar with. The reason that older people seem to mellow with age, doesn't just have to do with their decreasing physical vigor to fight a good fight. The human brain apparently finds a way to focus more on positive thoughts as we age.

With maturity, emotional activity appears to shift to the medial prefrontal cortex the part of the brain associated with conscious thought. Younger people on the other hand, feel emotions mostly in the amygdala, the area also associated with fear responses.  Experience and a longer memory help put the ups and downs of life in proper logical perspective for the grown ups. Hmm... did they study the brain patterns of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld?  I bet they would be all amygdala!

"Given all the bad news that science has delivered about brain cells withering and memory waning as the years mount, older people have a right to be cranky. But, instead, the over-50 crowd handles life's rotten realities and finds life's bright side more effectively than whippersnappers do. In no small part, that's because the aging brain makes critical emotional adjustments, a new study indicates.

Advancing age heralds a growth in emotional stability accompanied by a neural transition to increased control over negative emotions and greater accessibility of positive emotions, according to a team led by neuroscientist Leanne M. Williams of Westmead (Australia) Hospital. A brain area needed for conscious thought, the medial prefrontal cortex, primarily influences these emotional reactions in older adults, Williams and her colleagues say.

In contrast, people under age 50 experience negative emotions more easily than they do positive ones. These younger adults' emotion-related activity centers on the amygdala, a brain structure previously implicated in automatic fear responses.

This gradual reorganization of the brain's emotion system may result from older folk responding to accumulating personal experiences by increasingly looking for meaning in life, the researchers propose in the June 14 Journal of Neuroscience.

Evidence that emotional functions improve in older brains "indicates that our ability to register the significance of information is preserved, and even enhanced, as we age," Williams says. Older people may benefit from associating information they need to remember with personally significant matters, such as a favorite tune, he adds."

Oh Brother!

Scientists are going to report in this week's  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that men's chances of being gay may be influenced by birth order and the gender of the preceding siblings. Apparently, the prenatal conditions in the mother's womb after she has given birth to multiple sons, increases a younger son's chances of being gay. So, men with older brothers (the more the number of brothers, the greater the likelihood) are more likely to have homosexual orientation than men in the general population.  It is not the social influence of having older brothers either. Older half brothers born of different mothers or older adoptive brothers, do not appear to affect the sexuality of a younger brother. Neither does living away from blood brothers. The statistical finding relates specifically to the number of older brothers, born of the same mother and is therefore thought to point to a (at least one) biological basis for homosexuality. 

"The number of biological older brothers a boy's mother has carried--whether they live with him in the same household or not--affects his chances of being gay. The findings, reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by Anthony Bogaert of Brock University, lend credence to the theory that it's not the social or rearing factors that influence a man's sexual orientation, but rather prenatal mechanisms that begin in the womb.

The idea that prenatal mechanisms may influence sexual orientation has been around for a couple of decades. In 1996, Bogaert along with colleague Ray Blanchard correlated sexual orientation in men with the number of older brothers, but it wasn't clear if that influence was occurring because the boys shared the same household or because they had shared the same womb.

He reasoned that if the social or rearing factor theories were correct, he would expect to see certain things. First, it wouldn't matter whether a gay man's older brothers had been biologically related or not, the social influence would be there. Second, the amount of time the young boy lived with his older brothers, biological or not, should affect his sexual orientation. Third, if the boy did not live with older brothers, then the numbers should not impact his sexual preference.

Bogaert found the opposite to be true. First, he found that only the number of biological older brothers predicted sexual orientation in men--even when the number of non-biological older brothers was significantly higher. Second, his study showed that the amount of time reared with older brothers--either related or not--did not predict a young boy's becoming homosexual. And surprisingly, Bogaert discovered that even if a young man did not grow up in the same house as his older brothers, the fact that he had older biological brothers increased his odds of being gay. .."

Rocked, Rolled N' Stoned

This report combines a couple of peculiar and oddly unexpected (for different reasons) stories that were recently in the news - one from the world of entertainment and the other from the annals of medical research.

Contrary to what scientists have long suspected, smoking marijuana does not appear to cause any increase in the risk of developing lung cancer.

"The smoke from burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50 percent more of some of the chemicals linked to lung cancer than tobacco smoke. A marijuana cigarette also deposits four times as much of that tar as an equivalent tobacco one. Scientists were therefore surprised to learn that a study of more than 2,000 people found no increase in the risk of developing lung cancer for marijuana smokers."

Marijuana's usefulness in the alleviation of pain for cancer patients has long been touted by those who have lobbied for the legalization of medical marijuana.  The illegal but tantalizing weed has also shown promise in arresting cancer of the brain.

"The current debate over medical marijuana hinges on its use as pain medication. But an extract of the plant could one day form the basis of cancer treatments. New findings indicate that Cannabis extracts can shrink brain tumors by blocking the growth of blood vessels that nourish them. ..... The scientists also tested the therapy on tumors taken from two patients who had not responded to conventional therapy for their glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer. After the cannabinoid injections, both tumors exhibited decreased VEGF levels. Writing in the current issue of the journal Cancer Research, the team notes, however, that a combination of therapies will most likely be required to obtain significant clinical results." 

Potheads, please pause and think before celebrating by rolling out the joint and firing up the bong. A serious study needs to be conducted on how marijuana affects the normal brain and judgement of long term users. After all, if it can cut off blood supply to tumors, then in all likelihood it does the same to healthy brain tissue.

If the following report is any indication, the effects of long term drug use are not encouraging at all ! I admit that the conclusion here is based on a one man study.  But the man in question is a veritable walking laboratory. Keith Richards, the inimitable guitarist for the Rolling Stones who gives new meaning to familiar terms like "Rock n' Roll" and "potted palm," recently made news by hurting his head (how can one tell?) by first falling off a palm tree and soon thereafter from a jet ski, while vacationing in Fiji.  Richards is the withered and by far the weirdest member of the Stones and that is a feat in itself when you are competing against Mick Jagger.  He has defied all actuarial odds of longevity for a man whose life has been somewhat on the wild side, to say the least. The story is a few weeks old but I am still puzzling over why anyone, let alone a 62 year old aging hipster, would climb a coconut tree unless he was totally bananas!

"Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who fell out of a palm tree and was later involved in a jet-ski crash while vacationing in Fiji, has been airlifted to a hospital in New Zealand, local media reported on Sunday. According to New Zealand's Sunday Star-Times, the palm-tree plunge left Richards with a serious headache, but he still had the energy to jump on a jet ski -- and get into another accident.

The paper provided no details on the jet-ski crash, but quoted Suva Private hospital spokesperson Dr Uzzel Kanti Dhar as saying that Richards was admitted to the hospital, in the Fijian capital, last Thursday, the day of his fall from the coconut palm."

But Richards, in spite of his drug addled mind, remains sober (shrewd) enough to remember that he has an unorthodox public image to maintain. He does not like to wear shiny new shoes (or new anything) - they don't go with his rebellious persona.  So Richards has good friend, ardent fan and fellow rebel, Johnny Depp break in his size 10s for him, until they are scruffy enough for the fastidious fashion standards of the frenzied guitarist !

"The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is such a fan of Johnny Depp that he asked the Hollywood star to break in his shoes for him. And the Pirates of the Caribbean actor, who famously drew on Richard's trademark appearance for his role as Captain Jack Sparrow, is happy to help his idol out."

Richards' wardrobe designer Robert Cary-Williams says, "Johnny idolizes Keith. Everyone knows Depp modeled his character in 'Pirates' on Keith, so he's happy to oblige. The thing with Keith is that he doesn't like things to be new or too obvious. Sometimes you have to leave clothes about the place for him to find, as opposed to just offering them to him."

A Bloodless Coup

News of innovations in drug and medical research including those affecting women's health make for interesting reading. While I do not take an academic interest in all pharmaceutical R&D, I do pay a fair amount of attention to what is reported in the popular news outlets. A story on the front page of Houston Chronicle this morning, caught me by extreme surprise - both because I had never heard about this new trend and for its possible implications. 

I have known for a long time that women athletes who train very hard for strenuous competitive sports and experience drastic loss of body fat, often stop menstruating ( as also do some anorexics). Most resume their regular menstrual rhythm once they gain back a "normal" feminine physique.  The cessation of the natural periodic cycle, known as " Athletic-induced amenorrhea" is considered a very significant physiological change and is believed to put affected young women at increased risk of heart disease, osteoperosis and infertility. What I learnt in today's report is that young, non-athlete women are choosing to eliminate menstruation altogether from their lives by means of certain birth control medications.

"For young women with a world of choices, even that monthly curse, the menstrual period, is optional.  Thanks to birth control pills and other hormonal contraceptives, a growing number of women are taking the path chosen by 22-year-old Stephanie Sardinha. She hasn't had a period since she was 17.

"It's really one of the best things I've ever done," she says.

A college student and retail worker in Lisbon Falls, Maine, Sardinha uses Nuvaring, a vaginal contraceptive ring. After the hormones run out in three weeks, she replaces the ring right away instead of following instructions to leave the ring out for a week to allow bleeding. She says it has been great for her marriage, preventing monthly crankiness and improving her sex life.

"I would never go back," said Sardinha, who got the idea from her aunt, a nurse practitioner.

Using the pill or other contraceptives to block periods is becoming more popular, particularly among young women and those entering menopause, doctors say.

"I have a ton of young girls in college who are doing this," says Dr. Mindy Wiser-Estin, a gynecologist in Little Silver, N.J., who did it herself for years. "There's no reason you need a period."

Such medical jury rigging soon will be unneeded. Already, the Seasonale birth control pill limits periods to four a year. The first continuous-use birth control pill, Lybrel, likely will soon be on the U.S. market.  The idea gained momentum after Barr Pharmaceuticals launched Seasonale in November 2003. It's a standard birth control pill taken for 12 weeks, with a break for withdrawal bleeding every three months. Amid wide acceptance by doctors, sales shot up 62 percent last year, to $110 million.

Publicity for Seasonale made women wonder, if just four periods a year are OK, why have any at all?

Users of Pfizer Inc.'s Depo-Provera, a progestin-only contraceptive shot lasting three months, usually are period-free after a year or two. And many women have been getting extra prescriptions so they could continuously stay on birth control pills, the Ortho Evra patch or the vaginal ring, rather than bleeding every fourth week to mimic normal menstrual cycles. But the extra prescriptions have led to insurance company hassles.

"What Seasonale did is get rid of that nuisance," says Dr. Peter McGovern of University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. New extended-cycle contraceptives will do the same. Wyeth is hoping by late June to get Food and Drug Administration approval to sell Lybrel, its low-dose, continuous birth control pill.

Dr. Patricia Sulak, who researches extended contraception at Texas A&M College of Medicine, applauds this new trend. "This redesign is way overdue," she says. "It's going to be the demise of 21-7." Most doctors say they don't think suppressing menstruation is riskier than regular long-term birth control use, and one survey found a majority have prescribed contraception to prevent periods."

I can understand pre-menopausal women who often go into irregular and spotty menstrual cycles, using the drugs for a short time. I can also understand that for younger women with busy lives, menstruation is a nuisance with its accompanying physical and mental discomforts of cramps, PMS and other symptoms. But is the choice of totally eliminating an inconvenient but natural physical process completely safe?  I am usually for any innovation that makes women's lives healthier, safer and hassle free. However unlike Dr. Sulak, I will hold my applause on this one until there are enough studies to show what the long term effects are on women's heart, bone, uterine and ovarian health.

Pregnancy As Punishment

I have previously spoken out about the need for safe and sensible measures to promote womens's reproductive health and the immeasurable harm done to progress in this field by meddlesome religious bigots. Two of my angrier comments are here and here.

This morning at Leiter Reports, I came across yet another evidence of the foolish and mischievous attempts by social conservatives to derail all attempts to properly educate American teenagers about responsible sex - a precursor to the healthy physical and emotional futures of adult women. Like most sensible adults, I believe that  young children have no business indulging in sexual activity. I also believe that prevention is always easier than the cure. Instead of lying and talking down to our children, we must address issues such as unwanted pregnancy, STD and the emotional harm resulting from careless and degrading sexual experience with our kids - both boys and girls. And we have to do it accurately, carefully and compassionately. Information about both abstinence AND safe and proper contraception is an integral part of that education.

One would assume that given their vehement opposition to abortion, conservatives would support contraception which when practiced properly prevents a majority of unwanted pregnancies.  But astonishingly enough, they also oppose all effective contraceptive methods BEFORE and AFTER sexual activity that can prevent a pregnancy, insisting only on teaching abstinence, fear and divine retribution. Do they not know that even a chaste teenager may get pregnant against her wishes? Have they not heard of rape?  Also, not just teenagers face unwanted pregnancies.  Sometimes so do twenty four and thirty year olds and many of them may be "married" women. 

Recently, the religious conservatives' opposition to the Plan B method of contraception and the FDA's feet dragging in making this drug available over the counter made national news. Disgusted by an FDA that takes its health & safety guidelines straight out of Jerry Falwell's Medical Handbook (1692, Salem edition), The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has decided to speak out. Physicians plan to advise women to stock up on their Plan B medication and prescriptions. Predictably enough, some conservatives are up in arms and fuming. The fundamentalists' contradictory positions on abortion and contraception confirms my long held suspicion that chastity is not their goal.  They WANT  women to become pregnant - as often as possible. A pregnant woman is vulnerable, dependent and in case of an unwanted pregnancy, frightened  - therefore easier to control. 

"Doctors raised the stakes in the nation's ongoing battle over emergency contraception Monday with a new campaign that encourages women to get an advance prescription for the "morning-after pill," so it will be readily available later if they have unprotected sex.  The "Ask Me" campaign is organized medicine's most aggressive effort yet to ensure that women have access to emergency contraception when they think they need it. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which represents nearly 50,000 physicians, is the sponsor.... "Accidents happen. Morning afters can be tough," reads a poster for the new campaign. "Ask me today — so you can have it when you need it. Be prepared."

The morning-after pill — a high dose of the same hormones found in birth control pills —work s largely by preventing ovulation or fertilization of an egg, but it may also interfere with a fertilized egg becoming implanted in a woman's womb. The pill must be taken within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse but is most effective within the first 24 hours. The difficulty is that many women can't get to their physicians on short notice to ask for a prescription, and large numbers of low-income women don't have a regular doctor. Some pharmacists have stopped dispensing emergency contraception, citing abortion opposition.

The campaign is in response to the Food and Drug Administration's refusal to let the morning-after pill, also known as Plan B, be sold over-the-counter. "Many of us feel the FDA's actions have been unfair, unkind, unconscionable, unsafe and biased," said Dr. Iffath Hoskins, of the ob-gyn department at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Conservatives fumed at the medical group's initiative. "We think this is a totally irresponsible move on the part of the doctors," said Jim Sedlak, vice president of the American Life League, an organization that says emergency contraception is a form of abortion.

Conservatives have mobilized opposition to emergency contraception because they say it is a form of abortion and that it could lead to more promiscuous sexual behavior.  With their new campaign, ob-gyn doctors "will be pushing products that kill babies in the womb," Sedlak said. Instead of being backup protection against an unwanted pregnancy, Plan B will likely become a "primary method of birth control" for many young people, he said."

Women, listen to your doctors.

Pain Preferable To Dread For Some

Many of us find waiting in the doctor's office for a surgical procedure more stressful than the procedure itself. Most of us prefer to remove a band-aid with a quick yank rather than a slow pull.  Sometimes the human brain dislikes waiting for an unfavorable outcome more than it does the outcome itself. The cost of waiting is dread. The extreme dreaders are those who concentrate on the outcome more. (Which is also why some of us look away when being given a shot or poked by a needle for blood draw.) Dread is the result of what our brain sees as "the disutility" of waiting for an unavoidable and unfavorable outcome. Hence given the choice of waiting and the outcome, many among us just prefer to "get it over with."

"Deciding between two choices can be difficult, particularly when they are separated in time. Economic theory accommodates the calculation by discounting the future outcome by the amount of time, most simply via a hyperbolic function. An additional factor is the cost of waiting, which can be represented clearly when the outcomes are unpleasant (electric shocks to one's foot), and the choice is between a stronger shock in a few seconds versus a weaker shock a half minute later. Many people will opt to "get it over with," primarily, one assumes, to avoid the anticipation of future pain, which is used as an operational definition by Berns et al. in examining the neural basis of dread."

.....  "First, they put volunteers into a brain scanner and gave them something to dread: an electric shock to their feet. In the first part of the experiment, the 32 subjects were informed when the shock was coming and how big it would be. In the second part, they could choose between a big shock with a short time delay, or a smaller shock that they had to wait longer to experience.

Nine subjects went for more pain right away to avoid the agony of waiting. The functional magnetic resonance imaging showed heightened activity in the area of the brain responsible for perceiving pain, specifically in the region that pays attention to stimuli. In other words, these extreme dreaders focused so much on the impending shock that the wait was as unpleasant as the shock itself, Berns explains. Twenty-three were willing to wait longer for a smaller shock, and the same part of their brains showed no spike in activity. The team publishes their results in the 5 May Science.a"

The full news article about decision and dread here.

A Links Potpourri

No time for real blogging.  Here are links to some interesting stories without the benefit of my wisdom - at least not the usual dose.

A Painful Aural Memory:  Author Nadeem Aslam recalls growing up in a fundamentalist Muslim family in Pakistan where learning the Quran in Arabic was accompanied by beatings and scoldings -resulting in an aversion for the Arabic language itself. The revulsion grew stronger when Pakistan turned increasingly towards fundamentalist Islam and in an effort to minimize its South Asian heritage, became increasingly "Arabized."  Years later, as an adult living in Europe, Aslam heard a Syrian poet recite a verse about love in Arabic.  Although he did not understand a word, the childhood memory of pain and humiliation brought tears to his eyes. (via Amardeep Singh)

I found this story fascinating. The few languages that I know, have no unpleasant associations. But I remember an Israeli friend saying something similar to me years ago. Both her parents had lost their entire families in the Holocaust. As a young college student she visited Germany. Upon her arrival at the airport and hearing German spoken all around her, she remembers that her blood ran cold and she was gripped with panic.

"In Turin, Italy, in the spring of 2005, I went to a reading given by the Syrian poet Adonis. He would read a few verses in Arabic and then pause while they were translated into Italian for the audience. I know neither language and yet, not long into the reading, I discovered that my eyes were full of tears and realized that if I did not exert control I would be weeping openly. I was puzzled and when I told my friends about it later, they were amused. It is only now, months later, that I think I know what made me cry.

As a child I was made to read the Qur'an without any understanding of the grammar or idiom of Arabic. I had to learn the words by heart simply because they were sacred. My mind, even then, did not work like that, and I was regularly slapped or beaten with a cane on the hands and body by the clerics for not having memorized the verses. Even more frightening than the thought of being punished myself, was the thought that my brother would be beaten. I remember him crying out under the blows one day at the mosque. My uncle, who was feared by everyone, including my mother, would sometimes wake me at dawn with his loud chanting of the Qur'an. As a result of such associations, the very sound of Arabic came to sicken me.

I have read widely in Arabic literature, beginning, yes, with the Thousand Nights and A Night. I have read the Qur'an several times as an adult, and of course there are the novels of the magnificent Naguib Mahfouz; pre-Islamic pagan poetry; the wounded and wounding lines of Mahmoud Darwish. But I have read them all in English, silently in my study. The aural connection was severed long ago. Until that day sitting in front of Adonis. And then there was confusion because how could a sound that spoke to me of brutality, express words of love, of kindness, of longing? There lay the source of my tears."

The Texans lose again? : Over the weekend, I was preoccupied with the Stephen Colbert eruption. I didn't have time to report that the Houston Texans, the losingest team in the NFL for two years running, created an earthquake of sorts here by hopscotching over the top two draft picks and going for the third. The Texans opted for Mario Williams of North Carolina State, bypassing Reggie Bush (whom most Texans fans wanted) and Vince Young (the hometown hero who would have liked to play here). Sports commentators and fans went ballistic. Who knows, may be the Texans want to retain their spot at the bottom of the NFL ranking for some more time to come. Many are wondering if the Williams pick will qualify as one of the worst in Major League draft - in the same league as the Portland Trail Blazers picking Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan in 1984. Only time will tell. (I couldn't care less).

The five worst draft picks in sports history (according to the sportswriters):

1. Sam Bowie, Portland Trail Blazers, 1984

2. Tony Mandarich, Green Bay Packers, 1989

3. Steve Chilcott, New York Mets, 1966

4. David Clyde, Texas Rangers, 1973

5. Dan Wilkinson, Bengals, 1994

Shorter widowhood and more meals to cook:  Men are catching up with women in the longevity department. If true, old age dynamics and demographics will change in some interesting ways -apparently more so for women than men.

"MEN are catching up to women in the life expectancy game; the National Center for Health Statistics reports this month that the gap between them has shrunk to five years, the narrowest since 1946. If current trends continue, in 50 years men and women will live the same length of time.

This is better news for men than for women, if you believe some economists and therapists. It's not just the extra years; it's all those extra meals to prepare.

"Men have this expectation that women should take care of them," Dr. Gray said. "And she has her own expectations, that she should be there for him." Particularly after retirement, she is not used to having him around quite so much. "It's different taking care of him for dinner, as opposed to him being home all the time, and expecting her to make every meal," Dr. Gray said.

Though some may object to the assumption that sex roles will be this traditional by 2040, recent studies have shown that among husbands and wives who both work, the woman still does the much larger share of the housework. As one Connecticut woman in her 70's was heard to retort recently when her husband asked if they were ready to move to an assisted-living facility, "You've had assisted living for 40 years."

This dynamic is reflected in the statistics: men are four times as likely as women to remarry after the death of a spouse, experts on aging say. (Men who divorce also remarry faster; within three years, compared with nine for women.) They're looking for love, Dr. Gray said, but they're also looking for lunch.

People have traditionally felt sorry for older widows, thinking they had so few prospects for remarrying, she said. The truth is, they may not want to remarry.

Disappearing Acts

(Originally posted on December 2, 2005)

If you could choose between extraordinary fame and fortune or the ability to turn invisible at will, which one  would you opt for?  A tough choice for most of us.

All through life, we struggle between the twin tugs of seeking recognition and craving privacy.  We spend much of our lives competing with our siblings, classmates and colleagues - at home, in school , at work and on the playing field, making ourselves conspicuous. At other times we like to pull down the curtain to hide even from those we have sought out, befriended, courted or married. We dress up and go to public places to be seen and admired by friends and strangers. For the perfect vacation, we seek out remote islands or foreign lands where nobody knows us. And what are the two most universally popular childhood pastimes across all cultures? One is some variation of a game invloving a group of youngsters collectively vying for the successful control of a ball and the other is the thrill and solitary cunning of "hide and seek".

We are fascinated with people who disappear. Amelia Earhart flew into the horizon of our imagination - we are still looking for clues. And what happened to Jimmy Hoffa?  Celebrities like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, President Kennedy, John Lennon and Princess Diana who die young, acquire great mystique because an untimely death is like a vanishing act - you expected that person to be around much longer.  Howard Hughes is a legend not just due to his extraordinary success in acquiring fame, riches and beautiful women, but also because his last days were veiled in paranoid mystery, so much so that he did not bother leaving a will for his vast wealth. Monks, nuns and yogis are figures of admiration, not simply because we expect from them rare spiritual insights but because we are in awe of their ability to walk away "from it all". Bill Watterson, the author of the hugely successful syndicated cartoon, Calvin and Hobbes packed up his pen, ink and drawing board and disappeared from the comic pages about ten years ago. There have been other celebrities who lowered the curtain before their last act.

What makes a successful person want to hide from an adoring public ?  Most public figures continue to seek recognition and approval of their audience till the very end. But a handful, some at the pinnacle of fame and at the prime of their creative lives, decide to call it quits.  We rarely know what the last straw was for them because very few recluses care to explain. But have you noticed that a politician rarely leaves the public stage unless compelled by voters, scandal, ill health or old age?  I suspect that is because power is more addictive than fame, wealth and creative success. 

The Brain of the Beholder

  A little more than a week ago I posted an article here about a book by John Carey - "What Good Are Arts?" in which the author questions the value/ futility of defining "art".  Carey surmises that the definition of good or bad art is best left to the consumer until there is a scientific yardstick to measure what indeed constitutes an artistic experience. ( The blog post generated a lively discussion between me and a reader.) 

Here is a follow up to the previous post explaining the "scientific basis" of art.  Researcher and neuroscientist, V.S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego declares that while 90% of art is culture driven (put that in the category of "art history /appreciation), 10% is universal human reaction rooted in the brain. Ramachandran discussed the biological rationale of art on BBC's Reith Lectures series on The Emerging Mind.  If you have the time and the inclination, read about his views on The Artful Brain here.

".. I'd like to take up one of the most ancient questions in philosophy, psychology and anthropology, namely what is art? When Picasso said: "Art is the lie that reveals the truth" what exactly did he mean? In particular what I'd like to do is raise the question: "Are there such things as artistic universals?"

When I speak of artistic universals I am not denying the enormous role played by culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role, otherwise you wouldn't have different artistic styles - but it doesn't follow that art is completely idiosyncratic and arbitrary either or that there are no universal laws.
Let me put it somewhat differently. Let's assume that 90% of the variance you see in art is driven by cultural diversity or - more cynically - by just the auctioneer's hammer, and only 10% by universal laws that are common to all brains. The culturally driven 90% is what most people already study - it's called art history. As a scientist what I am interested in is the 10% that is universal - not in the endless variations imposed by cultures. The advantage that I and other scientists have today is that unlike we can now test our conjectures by directly studying the brain empirically. There's even a new name for this discipline. My colleague Semir Zeki calls it Neuro-aesthetics - just to annoy the philosophers."

IRS : An Early Diagnostic Tool for Alzheimer's

Filing for taxes is hard enough for the mentally sound.  Ploughing through tax forms, available deductions, hidden loopholes and the fear of a tax audit can turn most people quite batty around this time of the year.  But for those whose mental faculties may be failing, the tax season can be especially taxing. In fact, extreme confusion and disarray during tax time may signal the early onset of Alzheimer's disease for some elderly citizens.

"Jim Saye first realized his mother had Alzheimer's disease when he found her unfinished and error-riddled income tax forms spread across her table. His father-in-law, before being diagnosed years later, had made so many mistakes in his tax forms that the Internal Revenue Service sent letters threatening to seize his property. It was all a wake-up call for Saye, now on the board of directors for the Alzheimer's Association in Houston.

As this year's April 17 tax-filing deadline approaches, Saye and experts familiar with Alzheimer's say it's a good time to reach out to elderly family members who may be in the early stages of the dread disease. "This," said Saye, "is a typical threshold moment for Alzheimer's families.

Tax time is daunting enough for the mentally acute. For people in the early throes of dementia, finding all the documents and receipts they need to complete the tedious IRS forms can be a near-impossible task.

Stephen McConnell, vice president of advocacy and public policy for the Alzheimer's Association, said that managing finances is often one of the earliest skills to be compromised by the disease.

"Many people with this disease are able to mask it. They have developed patterns and ways of getting by that can disguise the disease," said McConnell, whose office is in Washington, D.C. "What the tax filing does is it makes public to the IRS that there is a problem."

IRS officials say they have no idea how many people miss the deadline or file erroneous forms because of Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia. They say they can waive penalties and collection actions if they are informed about the impairment."

Pray For My Health? May Be Not

Here is something to ponder.

"In the largest scientific test of its kind, heart surgery patients showed no benefit when strangers prayed for their recovery. And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications. Doctors in the $2.4 million study could only guess why.

The researchers emphasized that the study could not address God's existence or answer prayers made on another's behalf. It looked only for an effect from the specific prayers offered in the research, they said.

Researchers also said they didn't know why patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of complications than patients who only knew that such prayers were a possibility.

Maybe they became anxious by the knowledge that they'd been selected for prayers, Bethea said: "Did the patients think, 'I am so sick that they had to call in the prayer team?' "

The study followed about 1,800 patients at six medical centers. It was financed by the Templeton Foundation, which supports research into science and religion, and one of the participating hospitals. It will appear in Tuesday's issue of the American Heart Journal.

Researchers tested the effect of having three Christian groups pray for particular patients, starting the night before surgery and continuing for two weeks.

The study looked for complications within 30 days of the surgery. Results showed no effect of prayer on complication-free recovery.

But 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being prayed for developed a complication, versus 52 percent of those who were told it was just a possibility."

Andrea Yates : Five Years Later

Remember Andrea Yates?  The Houston woman who on June 20, 2001 systematically drowned her five young children in the bath tub and then calmly called the police?  She is up for retrial. She will be tried a second time for the murders and her insanity or the lack of it will again be an issue. The defense lawyers are expected to argue aggressively that Andrea needs treatment, not incarceration.  The prosecution will argue that she knew what she was doing. The most damning evidence against Andrea is the 911 phone call she made after she killed the children. Much more has become known about the Yates family in the intervening years. But there is no change in Texas insanity laws. So Andrea will be retried with the same evidence under the same laws.

"Between 2001 and 2004, four Texas women became famous — notorious, actually — for the deaths they inflicted on their children. Two opted for drowning, one grabbed a knife and the other used a heavy rock. But their choice of method was less significant than the method in their madness. All were convinced they were doing right by their children, according to their attorneys. So intense was their disturbed mental state that it was capable of overpowering the strongest, most basic human instinct.

In the aftermath of their horrific acts, the most pertinent question was not the most obvious one. Why they did it was not really answerable except in the vaguest of ways: They're insane. Of greater urgency was the one thrown in the lap of the legal system: What to do with them?  In each case, prosecutors offered the same response: Try them, convict them, send them to prison — save for the case of Andrea Yates, where they chose the extreme option of attempting to have her executed. Even a Harris County jury would not agree to that, convicting her of capital murder and giving her a life sentence for drowning her children in the bathtub of their Clear Lake home.

This week a new jury is expected to begin wrestling with that issue again as Yates stands trial a second time. Her 2002 conviction was thrown out because of erroneous testimony by a psychiatrist.

Although they won a conviction in the Yates case, prosecutors have had less luck with the others. Deanna Laney, who bludgeoned two sons to death outside of their Tyler home in 2003, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Lisa Diaz of Plano, who drowned her two daughters later that year, received the same verdict. Last month, Dena Schlosser's trial ended in a hung jury, with 11 voting for acquittal. Prosecutors intend to retry Schlosser, also from Plano, who cut off her infant daughter's arms in 2004.

"The fact that you have different results in these cases is itself a problem," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has written about the insanity defense. "I've yet to meet anyone who seriously argues Andrea Yates was not insane. But by sticking to a rigid standard of only knowing right and wrong, you exclude the most common forms of insanity: people responding to evil voices."

Damning phone call

Texas law requires only that the jury find that the defendant knew his or her conduct was wrong. The fact that Yates called police after drowning her children indicates that, at least, she understood that society considered it wrong. Such knowledge often trumps an otherwise delusional state.

"People like Yates may very well be able to articulate that they knew what they were doing was wrong," Turley said, "yet they were unable to keep from yielding to an irresistible impulse."

Turley and others argue that the insanity definition should be broadened to where it used to be. Juries used to be allowed to consider irresistible impulse. That was the basis upon which John Hinckley was found not guilty of the attempted assassination of President Reagan."

From the very beginning public opinion about Andrea Yates has been evenly divided between those who saw  a monstrous murderer and those who recognized in Andrea a severely disturbed individual who needed psychiatric care urgently. No one doubts Andrea's sickness - she had attempted suicide twice and had been treated for mental illness several times. No one questions the fact that she killed her children. The disagreement is over "why". Andrea's husband Rusty Yates is the most enigmatic character in this sordid saga. It is very puzzling why Rusty - a seemingly clean cut, sane, devoutly Christian NASA engineer who lived day in and day out with this woman, did so little to help her. Family members and friends of the Yates saw a zoned out, paranoid Andrea who for some time before the murders, had even stopped caring for her personal hygiene. Many of them alerted Rusty to the alarming deterioration in Andrea's personality and asked him to take her to the doctor.

"You've got a pre-June 20th Rusty and a post-June 20th Rusty," said Bob Holmes, who met Yates in 1989, when the couple was dating. Holmes is counted among those who knew the couple and who question the way he dealt with his wife's mental illness, which seemed to materialize in their marriage after the birth of their fourth child, Luke.

"Did he lose his children? Yes. Do I feel bad for him? Absolutely," said Holmes, who along with his wife, Debbie, met then-Andrea Kennedy 20 years ago. "But he's the one person who could have stopped it."

Thirteen days before she systematically drowned her children, Bob Holmes saw the Yates family in the grocery store. The woman he had known for years as a "24/7" mom was alone with a cart. Her children, who had always gathered around her, grouped around their father.

"She looked like a paranoid animal," Holmes recalled. "A dangerous animal. If you see a dog in the corner, with that kind of look, do you care what's going on in his head? She was very scary during that period."

The second criminal trial of Andrea Yates begins this Monday.  Houstonians will be watching it with as much interest as the Enron trial which is currently under way.  And what about Rusty?  Well, he just got married again.

Coerced Rape

I wrote this at my blog a day or two ago, and I'm going to reproduce it here--it sparked a couple of interesting comments, and I suspect Ruchira has a larger readership than I do:

In light of this story, Tigtog poses this question:

Should men who are not soldiers be held to the same standards [as the Nuremberg precedent]? It's tempting when one feels oppressed by our rape culture to say yes, always. But is it ethically defensible, in either the war crime situation or the gang leader coercing rape situation, to demand that someone die to save another from assault?

After all, the bank manager who is coerced at gunpoint to open the safe for the armed robbers is not considered to be an accomplice to the crime, let alone charged with the crime itself.

My own gut reaction to rapists is to grab the blunt butter knife and fantasise about castration. In terms of social order I feel that even men who are coerced into rape should be punished for the greater good of women's safety in society. It's entirely justified pragmatically, but that's not always the same thing as ethical.

I left a brief comment at her blog stating my opinion that it would be unjust to punish people who are forced to commit crimes (reasonable minds may differ as to whether the defendants in the linked story were truly "forced," however--not all coercion is created equal). That the law has it right in this case. That furthermore I question the premise that punishment of men who are coerced into rape would even prove beneficial for women's safety (the reasoning being essentially that [a] I don't think it would be an effective deterrent and [b] if we don't punish people for coerced crimes, I still don't see this leading to an increase in those crimes or people staging coercion to get away with sexual assault).

I think the understanding (including but not limited to the legal understanding) of offences committed when forced under threat of death would be that these offences are not crimes. And no just society can punish its citizens for crimes they did not commit, right? I mean, that's just a little too close to George Orwell's 1984.  So where's the problem?

Well the problem is that we may want to hold these fellows morally responsible for these actions which in all other circumstances are criminal. I know that my knee-jerk reaction is certainly to say that nothing, not even coercive force, justifies rape (or, say, murder--it certainly would justify Tigtog's example of a banker giving the bank-robber money). I tend to be a deontologist like that. But my personal moral philosophy may be incoherent, because sometimes I also want to be a consequentialist. And if a guy holds a gun up to my head and says "shoot that dude or I'll kill you," and if I refuse, I'm probably going to end up dead and so is that dude. So what real good did sticking to my principle out of some sort of Kantian childish fit actually accomplish? Tigtog also seems to raise the interesting related question of if it would be ethically justifiable for X to sexually assault Y to save X's own life (which would draw a distinction with the scenario of X killing Y to save X's own life if we look at this like a utilitarian). Ordinarily I would say that rape is probably just as bad as murder, but in a very narrow situation like that maybe it weights out differently. As a man maybe it's not my place to say. Hell, as a human being maybe it's not my place to say, maybe the question's too difficult, and hence the sticking to my deontological principles.

Happy Pills - not just for failures and weaklings

Author and journalist Maia Szalavitz has a guest column up at the London Times.  Part confession, part social criticism, the piece is a moving look at the stigma attached to antidepressant use.  Our culture--and I know, there is no "our culture," no "American culture" or "western culture"; there are too many subcultures, and this generalization will not uniformly hold true throughout all of them--doesn't like antidepressant use.  It's easy for people who aren't depressed to demand of others (voiced or silently), "Why are you depressed?  Get over it!"  But depression is real, it's not something you just "get over," and sometimes talk therapy isn't the answer.  Szalavitz wonders why the use of antidepressant medication in particular is seen as some sort of moral failing:

IF A PILL WAS developed that could restore the body after spinal injury without painful physical therapy, everyone would rejoice; well, everyone except unemployed physiotherapists. But the reaction is so very different to pills that restore the depressed mind without a need for emotionally-harrowing therapy.

Antidepressants are routinely dismissed as “Band-Aids” that merely hide the real problem, or they get smeared as being nothing more than nice little earners for “Big Pharma”. On the other hand, the talk therapists who oppose medication are portrayed as standing up for their patients, rather than as professionals protecting their own jobs and interests.

But why should those who already suffer from an illness have to suffer more to recover? Why, if medication works, shouldn’t they take a chemical shortcut to a healthier mind? Since mental health is not a struggle for most people, why do we demand extra work from those for whom it is? As a former addict who now takes antidepressants, I have long pondered this. My own story illustrates that suffering for its own sake can be counterproductive, while medication can ease pain without blocking emotional progress.

When I first snorted heroin I felt like one of the patients that the psychiatrist Peter Kramer quotes in his classic book Listening to Prozac, “better than well”. I was safe, warm, perfectly nurtured — for once, comfortable in my own skin....

Unsurprisingly, I soon added heroin to my coke habit and began a three-year descent that left me weighing 80lb and taking both drugs up to 40 times a day. I realised that I had to stop when I found myself begging a man I despised for heroin; I knew that the next step would be exchanging sex for drugs — that, somehow, jarred me into recognising the severity of my addiction.

[...]

[Cognitive therapy, effective at kicking the drug habits,] did not eliminate my bouts of depression, during which my self-hatred would return as furious as ever....

I began taking antidepressants about seven years after I kicked cocaine and heroin. Before that, both the self-help groups I attended and my individual therapist had discouraged medication. But I decided to try antidepressants when I declined into a state in which my ability to function at work was seriously threatened because I could not experience anything other than constant dread. Certainly, I thought, it was more likely to help than heroin, which was beginning to seem like a good alternative again.

Ten days after starting Zoloft I felt the first therapeutic effects. Soon, I again felt transformed, as I had in that seedy hotel, so many years before. Unlike heroin, Zoloft did not make me euphoric, but it provided a similar sense of comfort and safety. I felt like “myself again”, as another of Kramer’s patients reported. With antidepressants, I wasn’t “better than well”; I was the way I am when I’m OK.

[...]

Other opponents of antidepressants point to their side-effects, which can be a real problem, but the critics skate over that their preferred option of talk therapy can harm, too. Many widely used talk therapies for depression have been shown to backfire; while “recovered memory” therapy has split countless families by conjuring up false memories of abuse and “rebirthing” has killed people.

[...]

There is no moral superiority to talk therapy: sometimes “happy pills” really are the best fix.

The Bird, The Brain and The Bird Brained

A few interesting and uplifting items from the world of science. Always refreshing to get away from the acrimonious world of politics, war and religious cartoons.

A Found World : A team of scientists from the US, Inonesia and Australia have discovered a patch of pristine natural world tucked away in the Foja Mountain region of Papua - New Guinea.  This may be one of the very few places on earth which has seen little or no human impact and as a result, could well be a preserved image of what New Guinea was like 50,000 years ago. Unmolested as it is suspected to be, the investigating scientists believe that they have indeed stumbled upon an ecological treasure trove or a Garden of Eden. They have discovered a world " of rare plants, giant flowers and bizarre animals -- including a new species of honeyeater bird, a tree kangaroo and an egg-laying mammal -- on a mist-shrouded mountaintop in a remote province of Indonesia". When you read the story, please make sure to watch the accompanying slide show. Now let's hope that  builders of luxury resorts and condos can be kept away from Foja Mountains!

Forget The Steelers - It was Budweiser and Michelob: Last Sunday's Super Bowl win by the Pittsburgh Steelers is riddled with controversy about bad referee calls. Many are still questioning the outcome and are demanding better "Instant Replay" rules for the NFL. But alongside football, another competition takes place every Super Bowl Sunday - for the best/funniest /most memorable/ most expensive TV commercial and the winners in that arena are beyond dispute. The purpose of advertisement is to make suckers or believers out of  viewers and if those empathy neurons in our brain are to be believed, this year's winners for the "most effective" ads were Disney and beer.   According to the "Instant Science" experiment conducted on viewers of the Super Bowl, Marco Iacoboni a neuroscientist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and his team came to the following conclusion.

"Who won the Super Bowl ads competition? If a good indicator of a successful ad is activity in brain areas concerned with reward and empathy, two winners seem to be the 'I am going to Disney' ad and the Bud 'office' ad. In contrast, two big floppers seem to be the Bud 'secret fridge' ad and the Aleve ad. What is quite surprising, is the strong disconnect that can be seen between what people say and what their brain activity seem to suggest. In some cases, people singled out ads that elicited very little brain responses in emotional, reward-related, and empathy-related areas.

Among the ads that seem relatively successful, I want to single out the Michelob ad. Above is a picture showing the brain activation associated with the ad. What is interesting is the strong response indicated by the arrow in 'mirror neuron' areas, premotor areas active when you make an action and when you see somebody else making the same action. The activity in these areas may represent some form of empathic response. Or, given that these areas are also premotor areas for mouth movements, it may represent the simulated action of drinking a beer elicited in viewers by the ad. Whatever it is, it seems a good brain response to the ad."

Global Warming:  Two new developments on the global warming front - both encouraging. One involves the departure of George C. Deutsch, the 24 year old Bush political appointee at NASA whose job description appeared to be the "Politicization of Science - Bush-Cheney style". Now it has been revealed that he also lied about his science degree from Texas A&M  (remember the resume padding by Michael Brown(ie) of FEMA?). Here are a few examples of Deutsch's ham handed efforts at serving his master's political agenda:

"....(Deutsch) tried to prevent senior NASA career scientists from speaking and writing freely, especially when their views on the realities of climate change differed from those of the White House. Mr. Deutsch prevented reporters from interviewing James E. Hansen, the leading climate scientist at NASA, telling colleagues he was doing so because his job was to "make the president look good." Mr. Deutsch also instructed another NASA scientist to add the word "theory" after every written mention of the Big Bang, on the grounds that the accepted scientific explanation of the origins of the universe "is an opinion" and that NASA should not discount the possibility of "intelligent design by a creator."  Congratulations to all the scientists who raised a hullaballoo about the presence of an ignoramus like Deutsch among them.

The other news (unqualified good or not - my jury is out on this one) on the "global warming / climate change / trash the earth" front is that Bush and many of his right wing supporters who treat the world like a grab bag of goodies for themselves and their cronies, have a new set of challengers. No, they are not tree huggers, liberal scientists or even Al Gore. A group of evangelical Christian pastors and their flock have come out in favor of earth friendly Christianity. They believe that humans, while benefiting from the earth's resources, must also act as its steward. This group operates under the banner of "Creation Care" as distinct from "Environmentalism" which connotes liberals, secularists and Democrats. Will wait to see where this one is leading and not without some trepidation.

"Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility"  for the first time, emphasized every Christian's duty to care for the planet and the role of government in safeguarding a sustainable environment.

"We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part," said the statement, which has been distributed to 50,000 member churches. "Because clean air, pure water, and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order, government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."

Cancer death lowest in 70 years:  And last of all, there is a downward turn in the number deaths from cancer in the USA. This is the first time that a decline in cancer deaths has been recorded in seventy years.  Experts credit advances in early  detection, cure and changes in life style. The decrease although slight, is remarkable because of the increase in the percentage of the aging and the elderly (the group most susceptible) in the general population.

What's Your Voting Bias?

That Red and Blue divide in our national politics may be more of a Black and White one, suggest studies of political behavior. Society for Personality and Social Psychology had a conference last week that showcased several provocative psychological studies about the nature of political belief.

Some highlights from the studies:

Emory University psychologist Drew Westen put self-identified Democratic and Republican partisans in brain scanners and asked them to evaluate negative information about various candidates. Both groups were quick to spot inconsistency and hypocrisy -- but only in candidates they opposed.When presented with negative information about the candidates they liked, partisans of all stripes found ways to discount it, Westen said.

Another study presented at the conference, which was in Palm Springs, Calif., explored relationships between racial bias and political affiliation by analyzing self-reported beliefs, voting patterns and the results of psychological tests that measure implicit attitudes -- subtle stereotypes people hold about various groups.

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did.

Republicans are not happy of course.

Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said he disagreed with the study's conclusions but that it was difficult to offer a detailed critique, as the research had not yet been published and he could not review the methodology. He also questioned whether the researchers themselves had implicit biases -- against Republicans -- noting that Nosek (University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek) and Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji had given campaign contributions to Democrats.

"There are a lot of factors that go into political affiliation, and snap determinations may be interesting for an academic study, but the real-world application seems somewhat murky," Jones said.

Nosek said that though the risk of bias among researchers was "a reasonable question," the study provided empirical results that could -- and would -- be tested by other groups: "All we did was compare questions that people could answer any way they wanted," Nosek said, as he explained why he felt personal views could not have influenced the outcome. "We had no direct contact with participants."

The analysis found that substantial majorities of Americans, liberals and conservatives, found it more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts than white faces -- evidence of implicit bias. But districts that registered higher levels of bias systematically produced more votes for Bush.

"Obviously, such research does not speak at all to the question of the prejudice level of the president," said Banaji, "but it does show that George W. Bush is appealing as a leader to those Americans who harbor greater anti-black prejudice."

"If anyone in Washington is skeptical about these findings, they are in denial," he (Jon Krosnick, a psychologist and political scientist at Stanford University) said. "We have 50 years of evidence that racial prejudice predicts voting. Republicans are supported by whites with prejudice against blacks. If people say, 'This takes me aback,' they are ignoring a huge volume of research."

Mirroring Sleepy Kid

I had been toying with the idea of this post for a while and today I discovered that the Sleepy Kid has beaten me to it. Described here are some details of an interesting discovery (almost ten years ago, but only recently in the news) in neuroscience with possible implications for ethics, morality and possibly the development of language. It appears that the area of the brain that is stimulated when we ourselves perform a particular action is also stimulated when we watch, hear or feel someone ELSE perform the same action.

"The researchers, led by Giacomo Rizzolatti, a neuroscientist at the University of Parma, had earlier noticed the same strange phenomenon with peanuts. The same brain cells fired when the monkey watched humans or other monkeys bring peanuts to their mouths as when the monkey itself brought a peanut to its mouth. Later, the scientists found cells that fired when the monkey broke open a peanut or heard someone break a peanut. The same thing happened with bananas, raisins and all kinds of other objects.

"It took us several years to believe what we were seeing," Dr. Rizzolatti said in a recent interview. The monkey brain contains a special class of cells, called mirror neurons, that fire when the animal sees or hears an action and when the animal carries out the same action on its own.

The human brain has multiple mirror neuron systems that specialize in carrying out and understanding not just the actions of others but their intentions, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions.... "

Read more about this and its social and evolutionary implications here in another ( long !) article by V.S. Ramachandran

"Researchers at UCLA found that cells in the human anterior cingulate, which normally fire when you poke the patient with a needle ("pain neurons"), will also fire when the patient watches another patient being poked. The mirror neurons, it would seem, dissolve the barrier between self and others.  I call them "empathy neurons" or "Dalai Llama neurons". (I wonder how the mirror neurons of a masochist or sadist would respond to another person being poked.) Dissolving the "self vs. other" barrier is the basis of many ethical systems, especially eastern philosophical and mystical traditions. This research implies that mirror neurons can be used to provide rational rather than religious grounds for ethics (although we must be careful not to commit the is/ought fallacy)."

Is this also why we yawn when others are yawning ? And did you know that contagious yawning may be a useful way of locating a potential mate - at least for some humans and penguins?

Ranking empathy

"Only now are researchers beginning to understand why we yawn, when we yawn and why we yawn back. Steven M. Platek, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Drexel, studies the act of contagious yawning, something done only by people and other primates.

In his first study, published in 2004, the former jazz guitar major (he wasn't doing so well and switched to psychology), used a psychological test to rank people on their empathic feelings. He found that participants who didn't score high on compassion didn't yawn back...  Now he's studying yawning in those with brain disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, in which victims have difficulty connecting emotionally with others

One species of penguins yawns as part of mating. Although the act itself is automatic, it can be kind of sexy, the researchers say. Platek spoke to one person who would go to a bar and yawn; if the woman he was eyeing yawned back, he knew she was watching him and would go over to her and start chatting."

Anthropomorphism and Empathy

For animal lovers, the joy of living with a companion animal is tempered by the knowledge that our pets most likely will die before us. We also know when we bring animals into our lives that some day we ourselves may be the instrument of their death - when disease, old age or some other consideration will compel us to euthanize them. Knowing this does not make the decision of putting a pet to sleep any easier ... ever.

While most pets are euthanized because of disease or debilitation, dogs sometimes are put to sleep because they become a danger to us even when they are young and healthy.  There was a moving essay in Newsweek a week ago by Jonathan Cooperman who had to put his beloved Doberman, Jack to sleep because Jack had become a threat to the safety of his family. Dogs of aggressive breeds like Doberman, Rottweiler and to some extent German Shepherds, sometimes imperceptively cross the line between frisky, exuberant and playful, to dangerous. The pet owner is often slow to recognize the transformation because the dog can remain docile and obedient to one human in the household whom it regards as the alpha animal. Cooperman's dog was one such tragic case. Jack, whom Cooperman called "My Boy" had to be euthanized at the age of four, in the prime of his healthy life when it became clear that he had become a potential threat to his human companions.

"Sometimes there are no words—just a look. Upon my command, my Doberman, Jack, sat obediently in the vet's examining room. Four years old and in his prime, with 115 pounds of strapping muscle, he was at once impressive and intimidating. He sat between the vet and me, wagging his tail.

When I gave him the instruction "paw," he offered that big foot to the vet, who placed a tourniquet on his leg. The medicine was drawn into the syringe and pushed into Jack's vein. Two seconds elapsed, and it was during this extraordinarily brief space of time that Jack gave me that look, one I'd never seen before. I couldn't turn away. Then all that bulk went lifeless, and he was gone.

There were no words. There was no quote that I could take home and put in a diary. There was just that look.

Earlier that morning, Jack had jumped onto the bed (something he was not allowed to do) and attacked my wife, Tracy. He'd given no warning. Even as an experienced Doberman owner, I was amazed by his lightning speed as he bit Tracy three times. I rushed her, shaken and bloody, to the hospital, and it was later that day that Jack and I ended up at the vet's office.

.....We forge special bonds with our pets, and my relationship with Jack was no exception. I called him "my boy," having raised him since he was a pup. When I first got Jack, I owned a sports car, and his idea of going for a ride was jumping into the trunk, then crawling Army style half-way through the dropped-down back seat, so that his hindquarters remained in the trunk as we drove around town. My decision to buy a Jeep as my next vehicle was pretty much influenced by imagining Jack as a passenger. He deserved to be transported in style.

Just before Jack and I went to the vet's, I took him for a long walk and one of our car rides. We played Frisbee and I let him chase squirrels in the park. I wanted his last moments to be normal—and fun. Two hours later he was gone.

So what was Jack trying to convey with that unforgettable look he gave me in the last seconds of his life? Hard to say. Like most pets, he had an assortment of expressions and sounds that spoke loud and clear to me: a quick bark meant he had to go out; pushing his bowl across the floor meant "feed me"; wide paws and a low stance meant "play with me," and my favorite—jumping six feet in the air while banging all four paws against the sliding glass door—meant "I want to come in."

But that last look was something altogether different, and like most people who have been left with a hole in their lives, I find myself filling in the words that were never said. I'd like to believe Jack was saying, "It's OK. I had a good time."

All of us who have gone through the heart wrenching experience of putting a beloved animal to sleep, have wished that we could have fathomed what went through the mind of our pet at the moment before the lethal injection was administered - to know whether they understood.  I know that this will be dismissed by many as unnecessary sentimentality of projecting "human" feelings on to animals. But the very essence of our empathy is to be able to humanize an event and a relationship. How else do we bond with our animals?

Sugar & Spice and Everything Nice - Not Necessarily

This story has been making the rounds of the blogosphere, although it is not breaking news in India.  In the last two decades or so, the ancient practice of female infanticide in rural India has more or less been supplanted by selective abortion of female fetuses. Technology - ultrasound and other sex selection tests have made it possible for parents to "choose" the gender of the child they wish to give birth to.  Other Asian countries like China, South Korea, Pakistan and Nepal show a similar bias says the United Nations Population Fund.  In most of the world, female to male ratio in the general population is greater than one (believed to be mother nature's way).  In many parts of Asia however, the ratio is less than one because of the bias against female babies - the imbalance being most noticeable in India and China. In India the ratio is decreasing with passing years.

Indian females born as a percentage of males born.

1981; 96.2%

1991; 94.5%

2001; 92.7%

Here are some further facts and a glimpse into a cultural mindset that makes possible these "unnatural" numbers. And it is not just the rural poor who are responsible.

".... if the first-born was a girl, the number of girls born subsequently fell off precipitously. Among second children, only 759 girls were born for every 1,000 boys, and among third children, there were 719 girls for every 1,000 boys.

Although anti-girl bias is usually associated with the rural poor, the study shows it is far more widespread among more well-to-do urban dwellers.

Households where the mother had a better education -- and presumably an income that would allow her family to afford testing -- were significantly less likely to give birth to a second daughter if their first child was a girl.

The study did not find differences among religious groups.

India's patriarchal society emphasizes the need for male heirs, and a son is considered an extra pair of hands to earn income for the family. Girls are viewed as economic and social burdens because they will eventually marry and leave home, taking a large dowry with them. An Indian maxim states: "Grooming a girl is like watering a neighbour's garden."

There are further thoughts and analysis of this matter by Progressive Indian-American Woman who argues that it is not abortion rights but gender bias which is the central issue here.

What Is Wrong With This Picture?

Where are all the sexy scientists?  Or the scientists who love poetry, ride motorcyles, paint, play music, are social activists?  And those who are loving fathers and mothers? Could it be that there are no scientists who fit the bill?  Or is it that they exist but we just don't associate these "human" qualities and pastimes with the pursuit of science?

Although we routinely enjoy the mundane and the spectacular fruits of scientifc research in our daily lives, most people do not give much thought to what scientists DO or what they are as persons. The common image of a scientist in an average person's mind is an archaic one - that of the mad professor with wild hair, bewildered expression and ill fitting clothes covered by a lab coat. In the realm of mass imagination, the scientist as an individual, evokes the visions of a somewhat sinister, withered alchemist at worst, or the benignly batty "Absent Minded Professor" at best.

While most people acknowledge that their lives are better as a result of scientific progress, there are widespread suspicions about scientists themselves. This may be explained by the fact that in the mind of the general public, the word "science" conjures up images of nuclear explosions, dangerous drugs and genetically  manipulated food or cloned animals. Professor Christopher Frayling, head of the Royal College of Art in England is conducting a "scientific" experiment about scientists. Here is the gist of his observations and some arcane facts about the mysterious world of scientific research. ((If you have a few minutes, please read the whole article)

"He's (Frayling) been going into primary schools and asking the pupils to draw a picture of a scientist.

Examining the sketches afterwards, he is surprised to discover that the children consistently draw images from a bygone age long before they were born: with wild hair, lab coat, staring eyes, coke-bottle glasses, a withered hand; in some cases they've even written the word "MAD" with an arrow pointing at the scientist.

Sir Christopher has replicated this study several times and concludes that, "in the tests I'vea done about 80 to 90% are mad scientists with one of more aspects of the iconography of the 1960s alive and well".

The stereotype of the unhinged and dangerous scientist isn't only held by school children. He believes that this is part of a "funny sort of schizophrenia in the public understanding of science".

On one hand there is a desire to believe in scientific progress, particularly in the field of medicine, and an admiration of everything that science has made possible; on the other a suspicion that the scientists themselves are "Mad, bad and dangerous to know".

This anxiety stems, perhaps, from a sense that science affects people in ways they can't control. And yet they may take comfort from the fact that it's a two-way street. Public support or public hostility towards a given area of science does in fact filter through to the daily lives of scientists. The idea of scientific "fashion"- what's considered cutting-edge at any given moment, plays a major role in the granting of research funding, which is the life blood of science"

What is interesting about this article is that such a concrete personality profile persists in the public mind regarding practitioners of what is essentially an intellectual pursuit that is not partial to any particular physical (or psychological) attributes. There are many jobs that are physical in nature and favor a certain kind of physique or personality.  When we hear "NBA player", "NFL linebacker", "ballerina", "super model", "gymnast", or even "soldier", we visualize a person of a certain height, bulk, muscle tone or physical proportions and the reality in such cases generally lives up to the expectation. But we also attribute imaginary physical and personality traits to other non-physical professions and groups even when real life specimens often belie that image. Scientists are not the only group targeted for faulty stereotyping.  We describe people as "presidential", "senatorial", "professorial" "motherly" or "All American".  So, what do presidents, senators, professors and moms look like?  And for that matter, which phenotype describes a true blue American?

Self Righteous Smoke Screen

Why don't they just ban tobacco?  Smoking is bad but this is going too far - as long as it is legal. Well meaning nanny do-gooders are just as intrusive as self righteous moral arbiters, says Leonard Glantz.  Glantz is a professor of health law, bioethics and human rights at the Boston University School of Public Health. I agree. Perhaps some legal eagles will weigh in here.

"THE World Health Organization, the health branch of the United Nations, has announced that it will no longer hire smokers. Its spokeswoman said, "As a matter of principle, WHO does not want to recruit smokers." The "principle," according to the spokeswoman, is: "WHO tries to encourage people to try and lead a healthy life."

By this action WHO has transformed its war against smoking to a war against smokers. On its new job application, WHO asks applicants if they are smokers. If the applicant answers "yes," the application will be discarded.

With the hanging of the "No Smokers Need Apply" sign on its door, WHO has joined a long line of bigots who would not hire people of color, members of religious minorities, or disabled or gay people because of who they are or what they lawfully do.

Under WHO's policy, if Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler applied for a job, only Hitler, the sole nonsmoker in the group (and someone who would not allow anyone to smoke near him), would be eligible for consideration.

In adopting this policy, WHO is not acting in its capacity as a health care organization but rather as an employer. And the principle that it argues for is that employers can impose job requirements based on what its employees do off the job. One can only imagine WHO's reaction to a tobacco company that requires all its employees to smoke or a gun company that requires them all to keep a gun and ammunition in their homes. The position that WHO has adopted would neatly support such ludicrous employment requirements......"

Masculinity, War & SUV's

Here is a study that speaks volumes about aggression and the perception of masculinity.

"A Cornell University study has demonstrated that men who feel their masculinity threatened overcompensate by adopting hypermasculine stances such as homophobia, support for the Iraq war, and a desire to buy a SUV:

Willer administered a gender identity survey to a sample of male and female Cornell undergraduates in the fall of 2004. Participants were randomly assigned to receive feedback that their responses indicated either a masculine or a feminine identity. While women's responses were unchanged regardless of the feedback they received, men's reactions "were strongly affected by this feedback," Willer said.

He questioned subjects about their political attitudes, including how they felt about a same-sex marriage ban and their support for President Bush's handling of the Iraq War. "I created composites from subjects' answers to these and other questions," he said. "I also gave subjects a car-buying vignette, presented as part of a study of purchasing a new car."

With this in mind, perhaps SUV manufacturers will start running ads, with no brand names on them, impugning their audience's masculinity. I can see them now: "Hey you," a crew-cut, neckless drill-sergeant type shouts from the TV, "you call yourself a man? You ain't a man, you're a big girl's blouse!" Two ads later, a spot for the Hummer or the latest ultra-macho urban assault vehicle appears. Within the next week, sales go through the roof as office drones compensate for their perceived emasculation.

Meanwhile the researchers in question next intend to measure respondents' testosterone levels and also test their attitudes to violence against women."

A more detailed report here.

I have often heard media commentators assert that voters perceive the Democratic Party as the "touchy feely Mommy party" whereas the Republicans come across as the more muscular "Daddy" party.  Really?  Does Daddy hide in the closet while Mommy goes to fend off a dangerous intruder in the house, with a baseball bat in her hand?  I recently received an e- mail from a Democrat friend. The e-mail contains the service records of some Democrats and Republicans. It was sent out by  Illinois State Sen. Howard W. Carroll for circulation. If you examine this list even cursorily, the Cornell study appears valid and rather illuminating.

Some Democrats Who Served:

Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71. * David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72. Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.  * Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an  army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.  * Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.  * Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.  * John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.  * Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.  * Max Cleland: Captain, army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star,Vietnam Paraplegic from war injuries.  * Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.  * Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74. * Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.  * Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons. * Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit. * Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.  * Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze  Star with Combat V.  * Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.  * Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57  * Chuck Robb: Vietnam  * George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.  * Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.  * Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953  * John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and AirMedal with 18 Clusters. * John Murtha (35 years in the Marines and Marine Reserves, Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts - Vietnam).

Republicans who did not serve at all or avoided combat:

Dick Cheney:  (Several deferments, the last by marriage). * Dennis Hastert: * Tom De Lay: * Roy Blunt:  * Bill Frist: * Mitch McConnell:  * Rick Santorum:  * Trent Lott:  * John Ashcroft: (Seven deferments to teach business).  * Jeb Bush: * Karl Rove: * Saxby Chambliss: (Bad knee. This is the man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism). * Paul Wolfowitz: * Vin Weber:  * Richard Perle:  * Douglas Feith:  * Eliot Abrams: * Richard Shelby: * Jon! Kyl:  * Tim Hutchison: * Christopher Cox: * Newt Gingrich:  * Don Rumsfeld: (served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor. No combat experience)  * Ronald Reagan:(due to poor eyesight, served in a non- combat role making movies).  * B-1 Bob Dornan: (Intentionally enlisted after fighting was over in Korea). * Phil Gramm:  * Dana Rohrabacher:  * John M McHugh: * JC Watts:  * Jack Kemp: (Knee problem,  although he continued in the NFL for 8 years as quarterback) * Dan Quayle: (Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard). * Rudy Giuliani:  * George Pataki:  * Spencer Abraham:  * John Engler: * Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer. * Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base. And.... * George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard duty; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.

Right Wing Pundits, Preachers & Icons who DID NOT serve:

* Sean Hannity:  * Rush Limbaugh: (did not serve (4-F with a pilonidal cyst.) * Bill O'Reilly:  * Michael Savage:  * George Will:  * Chris Matthews:  * Paul Gigot:  * Bill Bennett:  * Pat Buchanan:  * John Wayne:  * Bill Kristol:  * Kenneth Starr:  * Antonin Scalia:  * Clarence Thomas:  * Ralph Reed: * Michael Medved:  * Ted Nugent: (He only shoots at things that don't shoot back.)

The Way To A Liar's Heart May Be Through His Stomach

"Gut Reaction" is much more than just a colorful and imprecise expression.  It is a very real and measurable physiological phenomenon connected to our brain ... and now it appears, also to our conscience.  Researchers at the American College of Gastroenterology conference recently presented a paper showing that compared to the standard polygraph which measures the heart rate, an "electrogastrogram", which monitors changes in the gastrointestinal tract, is a more accurate indicator of one's truthfulness.  But the wrinkle here is that just as with the polygraph, a very accomplished liar (or a sociopath) could conceivably bluff the "gut check" machine.

"When a person is lying, distinctive changes occur in the digestive tract, researchers have determined. The standard polygraph test, often criticized as inaccurate, may be improved if it is combined with a test for the stomach changes, they say.

One author of the study, Dr. Pankaj J. Pasricha of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, said the test for changes in the gastrointestinal tract, an electrogastrogram, was painless and simple to perform. It measures activity in the digestive tract.

"We expected to see an effect because we know that stress does affect GI function," Dr. Pasricha said.

But when 16 volunteers were hooked up to heart and digestive tract monitors, the researchers were surprised to find that lying had a closer correlation with stomach changes than with heart changes.

When the subjects lied, their heart rates increased, but it also did so at other times. On the other hand, lying was consistently associated with a decrease in the slow waves of the digestive tract."

The report does not indicate if gut reaction to lying could be either masked or enhanced by the kind of food one ate before testing - say a bland "soup & salad", as opposed to a fiery Mexican or Indian meal. If research can establish a correlation between the choice of food and accuracy of lie detection, it might give rise to a whole new practice in crime investigation - "The First Meal". Only, in this case, the prosecutor and the detectives, not the suspect, would pick the menu.

Misinterpreters of Maladies

In the early 1980's, my husband and I and our two small children lived in Germany for two years. Our daughter attended grade school there and was fluent in German while my own grasp of the language was rudimentary. I remember occasionally seeking my six year old daughter's help with translation in dealing with workmen, shopkeepers and strangers on the street when my own vocabulary of German proved inadequate. It was amusing and slightly unnerving at the same time, to have a small child act as a conduit for communication between adults. Fortunately, our German friends and doctors spoke English and I did not require the intervention of my children in talking to them.

In many immigrant families, children are often the ones fluent in the local language and they act as a window to the world for the adults. In states with high immigrant populations, the use of children as medical interpreters is common. The adult language barrier has poignant and sometimes lethal consequences when sick parents or older family members must rely on the immature minds and faulty translations of their children for medical care and advice. Now the state of California may seek legislation banning the use of child interpreters in most hospitals and clinics. Exceptions will be permitted for emergencies. Many US hospitals provide translators for patients who speak no English. Members of large immigrant groups such as Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese speakers, can usually find interpreters in most medical facilities. But speakers of more uncommon languages will find it very difficult to talk to their doctors if their children are barred from speaking for them and no other translator is available.

Sleep - So You Won't Eat or Be Eaten

It is possible that our sleeping habits may be related to the kind of food we eat, its availability and ease of procurement. The need and ability to hide from predators may also dictate how and how much different species sleep. Psychiatrist Jerome Siegel of UCLA makes an evolutionary connection between the "ecological niche" of carnivores, herbivores and marine animals and their sleep patterns. His theory does not contradict other explanations of the why's and how's of sleep, such as  the"down time" needed for brain cells to convert information into learning.

According to Siegel, the theory does not so much contradict other theories about the role of sleep as much as place them in context: "What I am saying is that it is not that sleep has been adapted to allow some vital function to be fulfilled, but the core function of sleep is to adapt animals to their ecological niche," Siegel said. "Given the animal is inactive for a certain period of the day, certain functions will migrate to that period because it is more efficient" to perform them at that time."

A Leg Up In The Birth Order

Being the first born in any family brings with it some universal advantages and drawbacks.

_ You get the undivided attention of the parents for a while. But first time parents tend to make some mistakes which they don't repeat with subsequent children.

_ You have more early baby pictures but in the later ones, are often seen holding the "baby".

_ You have the prerogative of bullying the younger siblings but more often than not, also get blamed for their mistakes because being older, "you should have known better".

_ Recent research shows that you are also more likely to live to be "centenarians" . This is either an advantage or a disadvantage depending on your views on excessive longevity.

The centenarians researched in the above study were all understandably  born more than a hundred years ago when pre and post natal care of mother and baby were less rigorous. Scientific data on diet and supplements were sketchy. Things have changed - so perhaps have also the environmental advantage enjoyed by the first borns of yore.  The other interesting fact to emerge in the study is that your chances of living long were further augmented if you were born some time around Halloween. 

Another Bizarre Hurricane Story

Reports about possible mercy killings in a New Orleans hospital in the aftermath of Katrina have been circulating for some time. Given the explosive nature of the allegations involved, it has been a surprisingly low key story so far. A few weeks ago, it was even suggested that charges of doctors killing their patients, may be another urban myth spawned by Katrina. But there obviously is more to it than just wild allegations because the Lousiana Attorney General has opened an investigation. All deaths involved critically ill patients at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans. Hospital personnel, along with patients, were confined within the hospital under very bleak conditions, with few prospects of evacuation in sight.

From time to time, we hear about "Angel of Death" killings by individual medical care givers who go on killing rampages motivated by a delusional sense of merciful mission. But the New Orleans case appears to be different - several seemingly rational individuals - doctors and nurses, may have been involved. I wonder what the investigation will reveal. More likely than not, if true, this bizarre event will prove once again the fragility of the human condition - under extreme stress caused by hopelessness, even sane people will sometimes do insane things.

Sameness, Same As Success?

The latest issue of Newsweek has a column by a reader who extols the virtues of her sixteen years of "all girls" education. The debate is very old and I don't know if we will ever have the right answer. I myself went to a girls' school and my children to integrated public schools. Although the social pressures we faced were different, I am not sure that the quality of education was related to the presence or absence of the opposite sex.  I know from experience that there are many social pressures in an all-girls school which can be just as stressful as having an obnoxious (or very cute) boy sitting next to you. If stress is created by having to share a classroom with the opposite sex, can the same not be said about mixing of race, class, religion and other social and biological attributes? I would like to hear the opinions of readers- those who went to schools with a homogenous (sex,religion, ethnicity) student body and wished for a more diverse experience and vice-versa . And is being comfortable the only predictor of success in school?

Familiarity Breeds Contempt and Illness

Japanese women are developing new sicknesses after their husbands retire and start hanging around the house full time. The phenomenon RHS mostly afflicts women over 55 who have spent their lives in the traditional role of stay-at-home wives. 

Comments especially welcome from middle aged women and those with retired husbands.