Category: Science News

{It’s been suggested that women are better at giving directions than men. New research from Concordia University in Montreal, published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, shows that may be thanks to the hormones that trigger the menstrual cycle.}

“Women have sometimes reported to doctors that their memory works differently depending on which phase of the menstrual cycle they are in — even during and following pregnancy, or following menopause. This has led scientists to wonder whether estrogen and progesterone could affect memory and problem solving,” says psychology professor Wayne Brake, who co-authored the study.

“Our research shows that, rather than impairing memory in general, estrogen and progesterone may instead cause the brain to favour one memory system or strategy over another.”

Hormones influence problem-solving

For the study, researchers tested 45 women who had regular menstrual cycles. First, participants responded to a “hormonal profile” questionnaire that gathered detailed information on their periods, past pregnancies, contraceptive and synthetic hormone intake history and general life habits.

The participants were then given a verbal memory task, such as remembering a list of words, as well as a virtual navigation task, such as finding their way through a maze in a video game, that could be solved in several ways.

At the end of the experiment, participants were debriefed on how they solved the tasks from beginning to end.

Results were clear: women who were ovulating performed better on the verbal memory task. On the other hand, women tested in their pre-menstrual phase were better at solving spatial navigation tasks.

That proves that women tend to use different strategies to solve tasks — such as navigating a maze or remembering a list of words — depending on where they are in their menstrual cycle.

Essentially, the study shows that the hormonal changes women experience throughout their cycles have a broader impact than previously believed, and have significant effects on how women approach and solve problems.

“This is important scientifically. We and others have previously shown that the levels of estrogen and progesterone in rodents influence different brain regions, affecting various memory systems involved in task-solving,” says Brake.

“For example, when estrogen levels are high, female rats will use one type of memory system or strategy versus another to solve a maze. This is the first study to show that this is also true for women, who solve tasks in different ways based on their hormones”

‘Research is needed to deepen our understanding of the female brain’

For recent PhD graduate Dema Hussain, the study’s lead author, these results point to an ongoing bias in scientific research.

“Traditionally, researchers and scientists have relied on using male participants — and male rats — in studies to develop drugs and treatments for the general population. But we now know that women respond differently than men,” she says.

“I hope that this study emphasizes that more research is needed to deepen our understanding of the female brain, and that efforts must be made to tailor future research to improve our understanding of the effects of female sex hormones on cognition and memory.”

{An international research team discovered a human skeleton during its ongoing excavation of the famous Antikythera Shipwreck (circa 65 B.C.). The shipwreck, which holds the remains of a Greek trading or cargo ship, is located off the Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea. The first skeleton recovered from the wreck site during the era of DNA analysis, this find could provide insight into the lives of people who lived 2100 years ago.}

Led by archaeologists and technical experts from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the team excavated and recovered a human skull including a jaw and teeth, long bones of the arms and legs, ribs, and other remains. Other portions of the skeleton are still embedded in the seafloor, awaiting excavation during the next phase of operations.

“Archaeologists study the human past through the objects our ancestors created,” said Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist with WHOI. “With the Antikythera Shipwreck, we can now connect directly with this person who sailed and died aboard the Antikythera ship.”

The Antikythera Shipwreck is the largest ancient shipwreck ever discovered, possibly a massive grain carrier. It was discovered and salvaged in 1900 by Greek sponge divers. In addition to dozens of marble statues and thousands of antiquities, their efforts produced the Antikythera Mechanism — an astounding artifact known as the world’s first computer. In 1976, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the CALYPSO crew returned to the wreck and recovered nearly 300 more objects, including skeletal remains of the passengers and crew.

The skeleton discovered on August 31, 2016, is the first to be recovered from an ancient shipwreck since the advent of DNA studies. Ancient DNA expert Dr. Hannes Schroeder of the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, hastened to Antikythera to view the remains. Once permission is obtained from the Greek authorities, samples will be sent to his laboratory for a full suite of analyses. If enough viable DNA is preserved in the bones, it may be possible to identify the ethnicity and geographic origin of the shipwreck victim.

“Against all odds, the bones survived over 2,000 years at the bottom of the sea and they appear to be in fairly good condition, which is incredible,” said Schroeder.

The Antikythera research team generates precise three-dimensional digital models of every artifact, allowing discoveries to be shared instantly and widely even if the objects remain on the sea floor. Several 3D models of the skeletal remains are available for researchers and the public to view on the Antikythera Projectwebpage.

Jonathan Knowles, Autodesk Explorer In Residence, said, “Our reality capture technology is not only helping share the amazing story of the Antikythera wreck with the world using digital models and 3D printed artifacts, it is enabling important preservation and furthering meaningful research.”

The project is supported by corporate partners Hublot, Autodesk, Cosmote, Costa Navarino Resort and private sponsors Swordspoint Foundation, Jane and James Orr, Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, the Domestic Property Committee of Kythera and Antikythera, the Municipality of Kythera, and private sponsors of WHOI.

The research team consists of archaeologists Dr. Theotokis Theodoulou and Dr. Dimitris Kourkoumelis (Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports); Research Specialist Dr. Brendan Foley (WHOI); archaeologist Alexander Tourtas; professional technical divers Edward O’Brien (WHOI), Philip Short, Alexandros Sotiriou, Nikolas Giannoulakis, and Gemma Smith; videographer Evan Kovacs; documentary director Michalis Tsimperopoulos; supported by Michalis Kelaidis, Dimitris Romio, and Dimitris Manoliades. The robotic mapping survey was conducted by Prof. Stefan Williams, Dr. Oscar Pizarro, and Christian Lees from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney. U.S. National Parks Service underwater photographer Brett Seymour and archaeologist Dr. David Conlin volunteer their time and expertise.

The Return to Antikythera project is supervised by the Director of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities Dr. Aggeliki Simosi and is under the aegis of the President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopios Pavlopoulos.

{A research carried out by UK Biobank has found that babies born with big heads are more likely to be clever and excel in future, according to a Daily Mail report.}

The UK Biobank research suggests that babies with big heads are more likely to be intelligent due to them having a large brain volume.

In a report published in the Molecular Psychiatry journal, the researchers wrote: “Highly significant associations were observed between the cognitive test scores in the UK Biobank sample and many polygenic profile scores including….intracranial volume, infant head circumference and childhood cognitive ability.”

{Mosquitoes are more likely to feed on cattle than on humans if they carry a specific chromosomal rearrangement in their genome. This reduces their odds of transmitting the malaria parasite, according to a University of California, Davis, study published Sept. 15 in the journal PLOS Genetics.}

Rates of malaria transmission depend on whether mosquitoes bite humans or animals, and whether they rest after that meal in an area where they will encounter pesticides.

Bradley Main, a researcher in the Vector Genetics Lab at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and his colleagues investigated whether there is a genetic basis to host choice and resting behavior in Anopheles arabiensis. That species of mosquito has become the primary vector of malaria in east Africa due to its broader host range and the frequent use of pesticide-treated bed nets, which kill other species that live closely with humans.

“Whether there is a genetic basis to feeding preferences in mosquitoes has long been debated,” Main said. “Using a population genomics approach, we have established an association between human feeding and a specific chromosomal rearrangement in the major east African malaria vector. This work paves the way for identifying specific genes that affect this critically important trait.”

Using genetics to help stop malaria’s spread

Using genetics to better understand and track mosquito behavior can improve local control strategies. This knowledge may also open novel avenues for stopping malaria’s spread, such as genetically modifying mosquitoes to prefer cattle over people.

The researchers sequenced the genomes of 23 human-fed and 25 cattle-fed mosquitoes collected indoors and outdoors from the Kilobero Valley in Tanzania. They identified a genetic component that contributes to the mosquito’s host choice but not its choice of resting place.

They narrowed down the gene region associated with cattle feeding to a chromosomal rearrangement called the 3Ra inversion.

The study is the first to use genomic tools to find a genetic basis for earlier observations that inversions can be linked to a preference for cattle in mosquitoes.

While the findings provide strong support that the inversion in An. arabiensis is linked to cattle feeding, researchers need to test a larger geographic area to confirm the connection.

{Human babies and even animals have a basic number sense that many believe evolves from seeing the world and trying to quantify all the sights. But vision has nothing to do with it — Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists have found that the brain network behind numerical reasoning is identical in blind and sighted people.}

The researchers also found the visual cortex in blind people is highly involved in doing math, suggesting the brain is vastly more adaptable than previously believed. The findings are published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The number network develops totally independently of visual experience,” said lead author Shipra Kanjlia, a graduate student in JHU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. “These blind people have never seen anything in their lives, but they have the same number network as people who can see.”

The researchers had congenitally blind people and sighted people wearing blindfolds solve math equations and answer language questions while having a brain scan. With the math problems, participants heard pairs of increasingly complicated recorded equations and responded if the value for “x” was the same or different. The participants also heard pairs of sentences and responded if the meaning of the sentences was the same or different.

With both blind and sighted participants, the key brain network involved in numerical reasoning, the intraparietal sulcus, responded robustly as participants considered the math problems.

Meanwhile, in blind participants only, regions of the visual cortex also responded as they did math. And the visual cortex didn’t merely respond — the more complicated the math, the greater the activity in the vision center.

Although it had been thought that brain regions including the visual cortex had entrenched functions that could change slightly but not fundamentally, these findings underscore recent research that showed just the opposite: The visual cortex is extremely plastic and, when it isn’t processing sight, can respond to everything from spoken language to math problems.

Co-author Marina Bedny, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, says the findings here, taken together with earlier results, suggest the brain as a whole could be extremely adaptable, almost like a computer that — depending on data coming in — could reconfigure to handle almost limitless types of tasks. It could someday be possible to reroute functions from a damaged area to a new spot in the brain, she said.

“If we can make the visual cortex do math,” Bedny said, “in principle we can make any part of the brain do anything.”

This study is also the first to demonstrate that this repurposed vision center in blind people is not just responding to new functions haphazardly; the region has become specialized and segmented by function, like any other part of the brain. Some parts of the cortex are doing math, while other parts are doing language, etc. Even in a resting state, brain scans show these new brain regions connect to traditional parts of the brain responsible for math and language in sighted people.

{A study on human behavior has revealed that 90% of the population can be classified into four basic personality types: Optimistic, Pessimistic, Trusting and Envious. However, the latter of the four types, Envious, is the most common, with 30% compared to 20% for each of the other groups.}

This is one of the main conclusions of a study recently published in the journal, Science Advances by researchers from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, together with colleagues from the universities of Barcelona, Rovira i Virgili and Zaragoza. The study analyzed the responses of 541 volunteers to hundreds of social dilemmas, with options leading to collaboration or conflict with others, based on individual or collective interests.

Specifically, this work is part of game theory, a branch of mathematics with applications in sociology and economics, which examines the behavior of people when they face a dilemma and have to make decisions. These decisions will have different consequences which will also depend on what the other party involved decides to do. “Those involved are asked to participate in pairs, these pairs change, not only in each round, but also each time the game changes. So, the best option could be to cooperate or, on the other hand, to oppose or betray ….. In this way, we can obtain information about what people do in very different social situations,” explained one of the authors of the study, Anxo Sánchez, who is a professor in GISC (Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos / Interdisciplinary Group of Complex Systems), which is part of the Department of Mathematics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M).

According to Yamir Moreno, who is the coordinator of the Cosnet group (Grupo de Redes y Sistemas Complejos / Networks and Complex Systems Group) at BIFI (Instituto de Biocomputación y Física de Sistemas Complejos / Institute of Biocomputation and the Physics of Complex Systems) at the Universidad de Zaragoza, and also president of the Sociedad de Sistemas Complejos (Complex Systems Society), “The results go against certain theories; the one which states that humans act purely rationally for example, and, therefore, they should be taken into consideration in redesigning social and economic policies, as well as those involved in cooperation.” He goes on to say that, “these types of studies are important because they improve existing theories on human behavior by giving them an experimental base.”

After carrying out this kind of social experiment, the researchers developed a computer algorithm which set out to classify people according to their behavior. The computer algorith organized 90% of people into four groups: the largest group, accounting for 30%, being the Envious — those who don’t actually mind what they achieve, as long as they’re better than everyone else; next are the Optimists — who believe that they and their partner will make the best choice for both of them — on 20%. Also on 20% are the Pessimists — who select the option which they see as the lesser of two evils — and the Trusting group — who are born collaborators and who will always cooperate and who don’t really mind if they win or lose.

There is a fifth, undefined group, representing 10%, which the algorithm is unable to classify in relation to a clear type of behavior. The researchers argue that this allows them to infer the existence of a wide range of subgroups made up of individuals who do not respond in a determined way to any of the outlined models.

Anxo Sánchez explains this with an example of a specific dilemma: Two people can hunt deer together, but if they are alone, they can only hunt rabbits. The person belonging to the Envious group will choose to hunt rabbits because he or she will be at least equal to the other hunter, or maybe even better; the Optimist will choose to hunt deer because that is the best option for both hunters; the Pessimist will go for rabbits because that way he or she is sure to catch something; and the hunter who belongs to the Trusting group will cooperate and choose to hunt deer, without a second thought.

Experiment based on citizen participation

The study is based on an experiment organized by Barcelona City Council and the Barcelona Citizen Science Office, within the framework of the DAU festival, also in Barcelona. “One of main principles of this study is the fact that the experiment has been developed in such a way to encourage the participation of citizens within the framework of one of the city’s public activities,” explains Josep Perelló, leader of the group, OpenSystems in the Condensed Matter Physics Department at Universitat de Barcelona, and also coordinator of the Barcelona Citizen Science Office. In this sense, “the results have been shared with the participants, thus, the subjects of the study become active participants in the research,” concludes the researcher.

“The really funny thing is that the classification was made by a computer algorithm which could have obtained a larger number of groups, but which has, in fact, produced an “excellent “rating in four personality types,” explains Yamir Moreno. Jordi Duch, a researcher at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, and one of the authors of this study, goes on to explain, “This type of classification algorithm has previously been used with success in other fields, such as biology. However, its application to the study of human behavior is quite revolutionary, given that previous works prefixed the behaviors expected before the experiment was carried out, instead of allowing an external system to then automatically give us information about which groupings were most logical.” This is of capital importance because it isn’t something imposed by the researchers. The objective of using mathematics was precisely to guarantee impartiality,” adds Anxo Sánchez.

“Previously, the experiments were performed by dozens of people. Now, with this platform, it is possible to significantly increase the volume of participants in the study, as well as being able to test using the heterogeneous population; this also allows us to record much more specific data on how the participants behave during the experiment. This has opened up the door to setting up much more complex tests than those that have been carried out so far in this field,” says Jordi Duch.

In the same way, the research results shed light in relation to what moves the collective or individual interest in the processes of negotiation, and as such, it is useful for the management of business, organizations or for political reformulation. Furthermore, it also serves to open the door to improving machinery, to make “robots more humanized,” concludes Anxo Sanchez.

{Study explores canine reward preferences.}

{Given the choice, many dogs prefer praise from their owners over food, suggests a new study published in the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. The study is one of the first to combine brain-imaging data with behavioral experiments to explore canine reward preferences.}

“We are trying to understand the basis of the dog-human bond and whether it’s mainly about food, or about the relationship itself,” says Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University and lead author of the research. “Out of the 13 dogs that completed the study, we found that most of them either preferred praise from their owners over food, or they appeared to like both equally. Only two of the dogs were real chowhounds, showing a strong preference for the food.”

Dogs were at the center of the most famous experiments of classical conditioning, conducted by Ivan Pavlov in the early 1900s. Pavlov showed that if dogs are trained to associate a particular stimulus with food, the animals salivate in the mere presence of the stimulus, in anticipation of the food.

“One theory about dogs is that they are primarily Pavlovian machines: They just want food and their owners are simply the means to get it,” Berns says. “Another, more current, view of their behavior is that dogs value human contact in and of itself.”

Berns heads up the Dog Project in Emory’s Department of Psychology, which is researching evolutionary questions surrounding man’s best, and oldest friend. The project was the first to train dogs to voluntarily enter a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and remain motionless during scanning, without restraint or sedation. In previous research, the Dog Project identified the ventral caudate region of the canine brain as a reward center. It also showed how that region of a dog’s brain responds more strongly to the scents of familiar humans than to the scents of other humans, or even to those of familiar dogs.

For the current experiment, the researchers began by training the dogs to associate three different objects with different outcomes. A pink toy truck signaled a food reward; a blue toy knight signaled verbal praise from the owner; and a hairbrush signaled no reward, to serve as a control.

The dogs then were tested on the three objects while in an fMRI machine. Each dog underwent 32 trials for each of the three objects as their neural activity was recorded.

All of the dogs showed a stronger neural activation for the reward stimuli compared to the stimulus that signaled no reward, and their responses covered a broad range. Four of the dogs showed a particularly strong activation for the stimulus that signaled praise from their owners. Nine of the dogs showed similar neural activation for both the praise stimulus and the food stimulus. And two of the dogs consistently showed more activation when shown the stimulus for food.

The dogs then underwent a behavioral experiment. Each dog was familiarized with a room that contained a simple Y-shaped maze constructed from baby gates: One path of the maze led to a bowl of food and the other path to the dog’s owner. The owners sat with their backs toward their dogs. The dog was then repeatedly released into the room and allowed to choose one of the paths. If they came to the owner, the owner praised them.

“We found that the caudate response of each dog in the first experiment correlated with their choices in the second experiment,” Berns says. “Dogs are individuals and their neurological profiles fit the behavioral choices they make. Most of the dogs alternated between food and owner, but the dogs with the strongest neural response to praise chose to go to their owners 80 to 90 percent of the time. It shows the importance of social reward and praise to dogs. It may be analogous to how we humans feel when someone praises us.”

The experiments lay the groundwork for asking more complicated questions about the canine experience of the world. The Berns’ lab is currently exploring the ability of dogs to process and understand human language.

“Dogs are hypersocial with humans,” Berns says, “and their integration into human ecology makes dogs a unique model for studying cross-species social bonding.”

{Both heredity and environmental factors influence our risk of cardiovascular disease. A new study, by researches at Uppsala University, shows now that the memory of a heart attack can be stored in our genes through epigenetic changes. The results have been published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics.}

We inherit our genes from our parents at birth. During our lifetime, chemical modifications of DNA that turn off or on our genes, so-called epigenetic changes, occur. These changes can lead to the development of various diseases. In the current study, the researchers examined epigenetic changes in people who have had a previous heart attack.

‘During a heart attack the body signals by activating certain genes. This mechanism protects the tissue during the acute phase of the disease, and restores the body after the heart attack. It is therefore likely that it also occurs epigenetic changes associated a heart attack’, says Åsa Johansson, a researcher at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, who led the study.

The results of the study showed that there are many epigenetic changes in individuals who had experienced a heart attack. Several of these changes are in genes that are linked to cardiovascular disease. However it was not possible to determine whether these differences had contributed to the development of the disease, or if they live on as a memory of gene activation associated with the heart attack.

‘We hope that our new results should contribute to increasing the knowledge of the importance of epigenetic in the clinical picture of a heart attack, which in the long run could lead to better drugs and treatments’, says Åsa Johansson.

{The older we get, the more difficult it becomes to put the world around us in order. Yet, our brain develops remarkable strategies to slow down the effects of aging.}

In order to process the information that we receive every day, we build categories into which we sort everything that makes up the world around us. Neuroscientists from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) found out: the way we categorise things changes throughout our lifetimes. Their research results were now published in the journal Neuropsychologia.

The team surrounding Sabrina Schenk and Prof. Dr. Boris Suchan observed young and older people during a categorisation task. The participants of the study were asked to sort circles with varying colour combinations into one of two categories. Some of the circles were very similar to each other; others were distinctly different. To which category the circles belonged was indicated by a feedback during the test.

{{Brain waves and gaze direction offer insights}}

The scientists not only documented the test subjects’ answers, they also recorded their brain waves via an EEG and used an eye tracker to trace their line of vision. The results showed that both young and older subjects had no difficulties categorising the similar looking circles — the learning mechanism of both groups were comparable. It was only in the later stages of the experiment, when distinct looking circles where shown, that differences between the test groups became apparent. Older subjects found it more difficult to categorise these exceptions than their younger counterparts.

{{Brain compensates with attentiveness}}

“There are two main strategies which we use to categorise things. While we perceive similar looking members of a category holistically, we must specifically learn exceptions and memorise them,” Schenk explains. “Older people find it harder to switch from one strategy to the other.” But measurements of brain waves also showed that the elderly develop a particular selective attentiveness.

To put it simply: they pay more attention to the details and look more closely than younger people. This is also confirmed by the eye tracker, which records in which direction the participants are looking. “To a certain extent, the brain is able to slow down negative effects of aging by increasing its level of attentiveness,” summarises Schenk.

{{Further studies with gamers}}

A computer simulation at Canada’s University of Western Ontario has confirmed the results of the scientists in Bochum. In a next step the RUB team would like to test people whose attention level has been especially trained, like that of avid computer players. If these gamers do particularly well in the categorisation task, then the results may help the elderly specifically train their attentiveness.

{The way people walk can give clues to how aggressive they are, a new exploratory study from the University of Portsmouth has found.}

The researchers from the Department of Psychology assessed the personalities of 29 participants, before using motion capture technology to record them walking on a treadmill at their natural speed.

The study found that the exaggerated movement of both the upper and lower body indicated aggression.

Lead researcher Liam Satchell said: “When walking, the body naturally rotates a little; as an individual steps forward with their left foot, the left side of the pelvis will move forward with the leg, the left shoulder will move back and the right shoulder forward to maintain balance. An aggressive walk is one where this rotation is exaggerated.”

The researchers asked participants to complete a questionnaire, which measured their levels of aggression.

They also used a standard personality test called the ‘big five’ to assess personality traits including openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Together they can help map the way people think, feel and behave.

Using motion capture technology, which records the actions of humans and uses the information to bring to life digital character models in 3D computer animation, the researchers analysed thorax and pelvis movements, as well as speed of gait.

Mr Satchell said: “People are generally aware that there is a relationship between swagger and psychology. Our research provides empirical evidence to confirm that personality is indeed manifest in the way we walk.

“We know of no other examples of research where gait has been shown to correlate with self-reported measures of personality and suggest that more research should be conducted between automatic movement and personality.”

Mr Satchell said identifying the potential relationship between an individual’s biological motion and their intention to engage in aggression could be used to help prevent crime.

“If CCTV observers could be trained to recognise the aggressive walk demonstrated in this research, their ability to recognise impending crimes could be improved further.”