Stanford Report || August 24, 2009
By Adam Gorlick

Attention, multitaskers (if you can pay attention, that is): Your brain may be in trouble. People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found.

High-tech jugglers are everywhere – keeping up several e-mail and instant message conversations at once, text messaging while watching television and jumping from one website to another while plowing through homework assignments.

But after putting about 100 students through a series of three tests, the researchers realized those heavy media multitaskers are paying a big mental price. "They're suckers for irrelevancy," said communication Professor Clifford Nass, one of the researchers whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Everything distracts them."

Social scientists have long assumed that it's impossible to process more than one string of information at a time. The brain just can't do it. But many researchers have guessed that people who appear to multitask must have superb control over what they think about and what they pay attention to.

Is there a gift?
So Nass and his colleagues, Eyal Ophir and Anthony Wagner, set out to learn what gives multitaskers their edge. What is their gift? "We kept looking for what they're better at, and we didn't find it," said Ophir, the study's lead author and a researcher in Stanford's Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab.

In each of their tests, the researchers split their subjects into two groups: those who regularly do a lot of media multitasking and those who don't. In one experiment, the groups were shown sets of two red rectangles alone or surrounded by two, four or six blue rectangles. Each configuration was flashed twice, and the participants had to determine whether the two red rectangles in the second frame were in a different position than in the first frame. They were told to ignore the blue rectangles, and the low multitaskers had no problem doing that. But the high multitaskers were constantly distracted by the irrelevant blue images. Their performance was horrible. Because the high multitaskers showed they couldn't ignore things, the researchers figured they were better at storing and organizing information. Maybe they had better memories.

The second test proved that theory wrong. After being shown sequences of alphabetical letters, the high multitaskers did a lousy job at remembering when a letter was making a repeat appearance. "The low multitaskers did great," Ophir said. "The high multitaskers were doing worse and worse the further they went along because they kept seeing more letters and had difficulty keeping them sorted in their brains."

Still puzzled
Puzzled but not yet stumped on why the heavy multitaskers weren't performing well, the researchers conducted a third test. If the heavy multitaskers couldn't filter out irrelevant information or organize their memories, perhaps they excelled at switching from one thing to another faster and better than anyone else. Wrong again, the study found.

The test subjects were shown images of letters and numbers at the same time and instructed what to focus on. When they were told to pay attention to numbers, they had to determine if the digits were even or odd. When told to concentrate on letters, they had to say whether they were vowels or consonants. Again, the heavy multitaskers underperformed the light multitaskers. "They couldn't help thinking about the task they weren't doing," Ophir said. "The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can't keep things separate in their minds."

The researchers are still studying whether chronic media multitaskers are born with an inability to concentrate or are damaging their cognitive control by willingly taking in so much at once. But they're convinced the minds of multitaskers are not working as well as they could. "When they're in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they're not able to filter out what's not relevant to their current goal," said Wagner, an associate professor of psychology. "That failure to filter means they're slowed down by that irrelevant information."

So maybe it's time to stop e-mailing if you're following the game on TV, and rethink singing along with the radio if you're reading the latest news online. By doing less, you might accomplish more.

A study by three Kansas State University graduate students finds that the 18- to 24-year-old demographic became more politically active during the 2008 U.S. election season through the use of new media, but that the young adults were not necessarily more knowledgeable about politics. The K-State study examined young adults' media consumption and the effects of new media on their political knowledge and political activism. While the study showed that 18- to 24-year-olds were actively engaging in politics through media such as blogs and YouTube, their involvement did not increase their knowledge.

The K-State researchers conducting the study, all master's students in journalism and mass communications, were Keunyeong Kim, and Sookyong Kim, both from Manhattan, and Chance York, Wamego. William Adams, K-State professor of journalism and mass communications, was the project adviser. The research was presented at the 2009 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication convention. "Politicians in general are so reliant on political polling, but politicians are not examining how much the voter knows about the issues they're voting on," York said.

The study targeted the 18- to 24-year-old demographic and examined the group's usage of new media. The researchers surveyed more than 160 undergraduate students in February about their use of both traditional media sources, including radio campaign commercials, and new media sources, like blogs, to obtain information about presidential candidates and their campaign issues. "We were trying to find what information sources 18- to 24-year olds were looking at and how that might have affected their political activism and their level of political knowledge," York said.

The survey's measures for political activism included yes or no questions that dealt with traditional and online forms of political involvement. The traditional methods of activism included volunteering for a presidential candidate's campaign or attending a candidate's rally, while online forms of involvement included checking a presidential candidate's campaign Web site. The measure for political knowledge was similar to a current events quiz with questions like the name of the U.S. secretary of defense. The survey also measured the demographics of the students, including their political affiliation and ideology and whether they voted in the 2008 election.

"We found that the students were really politically active," York said. "They talked about the campaigns with their friends, and a lot of people got online on a social networking site to talk about the campaigns. Not many wrote blogs, but a considerable amount kept up with blogs." The study also found that most students were not politically knowledgeable, York said. For instance, many students did not know what Guantanamo Bay was; some said it was a Caribbean resort.

There also was a set of people that were both politically active and knowledgeable, and there was a high correlation between those two variables and voting. "People who were actually voting were both active and knowledgeable, and that wasn't affected by whether the student was a Democrat or Republican, or liberal or conservative," York said.

Additionally, the study indicated that among the 18- to 24-year-old demographic, the individuals who voted were not the ones using new media to obtain political information. The researchers also looked at the different types of new media, such as those that would be considered "gatekeepers," where an editorial member controls the flow of knowledge, and "gatewatchers," where information flows more freely.

The study showed that the more people used new media that would be considered "gatewatched," such as blogs, the more likely they were to be politically active -- but not politically knowledgeable. New media that would be "gatekept," such as online news articles, had less of an impact on political activism and no significant effect on political knowledge. Survey respondents' use of traditional media did not play a significant role in their political activism or political knowledge.

York said the study has limitations, particularly since the students were not selected from a random sample. "What we can't say is that this is true for all 18-to 24-year-olds, and statistically we can't make a significant inference," York said. "However, there is not a lot of research in this area, and so trying to forge out that path is a good start."

Historically, many scientists have regarded itching as just a less intense version of pain. They have spent decades searching for itch-specific nerve cells to explain how the brain perceives itch differently from pain, but none have been found.

Now researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered that those itch-specific neurons do exist in mice, and their studies suggest that itch and pain signals are transmitted along different pathways in the spinal cord. Reporting in the Aug. 6 issue of Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science, the researchers say they can knock out an animal's itch response without affecting its ability to sense and attempt to avoid pain. "This finding has very important therapeutic implications," says Zhou-Feng Chen, Ph.D., the study's principal investigator. "We've shown that particular neurons are critical for the itching sensation but not for pain, which means those cells may contain several itch-specific receptors or signaling molecules that can be explored or identified as targets for future treatment or management of chronic itching."

The new finding follows research by Chen and his team in 2007 that identified the first itch gene — gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPR) — in the spinal cord. They also showed that when mice were exposed to things that make them itchy, those without a GRPR gene scratched less than their normal littermates. Chen's team also found GRPR in a group of spinal-cord cells called lamina 1 neurons that relay both itch and pain sensations to the brain. "But the identification of an itch receptor in spinal-cord neurons didn't mean those neurons were itch-specific because it was possible that they also could have pain-related genes," says Chen, associate professor of anesthesiology, of psychiatry and of developmental biology. "A key question was whether those GRPR neurons also were transmitting pain signals. We approached that question by injecting a toxic substance that binds to GRPR and then exposing mice to both itchy and painful stimuli."

Chen's team injected the spinal cords of mice with a neurotoxin called bombesin-saporin. It bound to GRPR and killed the neurons where the gene was expressed. When these mice then were exposed to things that caused itching, they didn't scratch. With an appropriate dose of the neurotoxin, their scratching could be reduced by more than 80 percent or completely eliminated in some instances. That finding proved that the neurons with GRPR were required for normal itch sensation.

There are two major types of itching that are classified according to the presence or absence of the chemical histamine. Histamine-dependent itching can be caused by bug bites or allergic reactions. It is treated with antihistamine drugs, such as Benadryl®. Most chronic, severe itching, however, is resistant to antihistamine treatment. But in this study, it made no difference whether mice were exposed to histamines or to other itch-inducing substances. Those mice whose GRPR-expressing neurons had been destroyed by the neurotoxin didn't scratch, regardless of what type of itchy agent they encountered. "However, the same mice continued to respond normally to pain," Chen says. "This is a very striking and unexpected result because it suggests there is an itch-specific neuronal pathway in the spinal cord." Further tests showed that other neurologic functions, such as motor control were not affected by the destruction of the GRPR-expressing neurons.

Whereas Chen's earlier work found that pain and itch are regulated through different molecular pathways, this study suggests they also are regulated through different cellular pathways. That, he says, could have important implications for treating itch because the neurons with GRPR may contain more itch-specific genes. "We've shown that these GRPR neurons are important for itching sensation and not for pain, but we really don't know much more about them," Chen says. "We still have a lot of questions, and we are very interested to find more answers."

Researchers say smoking, binge drinking need to be addressed together in adolescents

As teens head back to school, health teachers may want to revise their lesson plans. Temple researchers have found that kids who engage in heavy drinking will more than likely also engage in heavy smoking, and they say educators can help combat the trend by addressing both topics as one health risk. "These are important findings because they emphasize the need for education and intervention programs that target the co-occurrence of these two health risks," said Brian Daly, assistant professor of public health in the College of Health Professions and Social Work.

Daly and colleagues in the department of public health and psychology determined rates of smoking and binge drinking through the collection of anonymous survey data from 2,450 African-American, Hispanic and Caucasian students in grades 9-12 at Philadelphia public high schools. Students' responses were compiled from the 2007 Philadelphia Youth Behavioral Risk Survey (YRBS).

Respondents were asked how many cigarettes they'd had per day over 30 days, and how many days over a 30 day period they'd had 5 or more drinks in a row. Data was broken down by race/ethnicity and gender. Researchers found that while Caucasian adolescents were more likely than African-Americans to engage in either binge drinking or smoking, both groups were equally likely to engage in both at the same time.

"In the past 30 years or so, African Americans have traditionally had the lowest instance of smoking and binge drinking," said Daly, who presented his research at the American Psychological Association's annual meeting this week. "Those low numbers resulted in very few studies which looked at both smoking and binge drinking in a diverse sample; most focused only on instances of these in Caucasian or Hispanic adolescents." Daly says that the equal instances of smoking and binge drinking among both groups highlights the need for a multi-pronged approach to education and intervention. "We can't just focus on educating adolescents about the dangers of just smoking or drinking," he said. "We need to address both as one health risk, and we need to do that for all adolescents, not just one particular group." For example, Daly says that when health education teachers talk about the dangers of smoking, they should also touch on the dangers of binge drinking too, illustrating the connection.

The next phase of Daly's research will break down these rates by grade level to determine exactly when binge drinking and smoking start. "The difference in the mindset of a ninth grader versus a 12th grader is pretty vast," he said. "And if we can determine when kids start this behavior — whether it's the summer after 8th grade, or when they're a sophomore or a senior — it can help us tailor education and treatment plans even more."

Daly directs the YRBS in Philadelphia, a survey that focuses on six major areas, including unintentional injuries and violence, tobacco use, alcohol and other drug use, sexual behaviors, dietary behaviors, and physical inactivity, to determine health risk factors among young people.

Border collies are brightest

Although you wouldn't want one to balance your checkbook, dogs can count. They can also understand more than 150 words and intentionally deceive other dogs and people to get treats, according to psychologist and leading canine researcher Stanley Coren, PhD, of the University of British Columbia. He spoke Saturday on the topic "How Dogs Think" at the American Psychological Association's 117th Annual Convention.

Coren, author of more than a half-dozen popular books on dogs and dog behavior, has reviewed numerous studies to conclude that dogs have the ability to solve complex problems and are more like humans and other higher primates than previously thought. "We all want insight into how our furry companions think, and we want to understand the silly, quirky and apparently irrational behaviors [that] Lassie or Rover demonstrate," Coren said in an interview. "Their stunning flashes of brilliance and creativity are reminders that they may not be Einsteins but are sure closer to humans than we thought."

According to several behavioral measures, Coren says dogs' mental abilities are close to a human child age 2 to 2.5 years. The intelligence of various types of dogs does differ and the dog's breed determines some of these differences, Coren says. "There are three types of dog intelligence: instinctive (what the dog is bred to do), adaptive (how well the dog learns from its environment to solve problems) and working and obedience (the equivalent of 'school learning')."

Data from 208 dog obedience judges from the United States and Canada showed the differences in working and obedience intelligence of dog breeds, according to Coren. "Border collies are number one; poodles are second, followed by German shepherds. Fourth on the list is golden retrievers; fifth, dobermans; sixth, Shetland sheepdogs; and finally, Labrador retrievers," said Coren.

As for language, the average dog can learn 165 words, including signals, and the "super dogs" (those in the top 20 percent of dog intelligence) can learn 250 words, Coren says. "The upper limit of dogs' ability to learn language is partly based on a study of a border collie named Rico who showed knowledge of 200 spoken words and demonstrated 'fast-track learning,' which scientists believed to be found only in humans and language learning apes," Coren said. Dogs can also count up to four or five, said Coren. And they have a basic understanding of arithmetic and will notice errors in simple computations, such as 1+1=1 or 1+1=3.

Four studies he examined looked how dogs solve spatial problems by modeling human or other dogs' behavior using a barrier type problem. Through observation, Coren said, dogs can learn the location of valued items (treats), better routes in the environment (the fastest way to a favorite chair), how to operate mechanisms (such as latches and simple machines) and the meaning of words and symbolic concepts (sometimes by simply listening to people speak and watching their actions). During play, dogs are capable of deliberately trying to deceive other dogs and people in order to get rewards, said Coren. "And they are nearly as successful in deceiving humans as humans are in deceiving dogs."

It's easy to explain why we act a certain way by saying "it's in the genes," but a group of University of Iowa scientists say the world has relied on that simple explanation far too long. In research to be published today in Child Development Perspectives, the UI team calls for tossing out the nature-nurture debate, which they say has prevailed for centuries in part out of convenience and intellectual laziness.

They support evolution -- but not the idea that genes are a one-way path to specific traits and behaviors. Instead, they argue that development involves a complex system in which genes and environmental factors constantly interact. "You can't break it down and say there's a gene for being jealous, there's a gene for being depressed, there's a gene for being gay. Those types of statements are simplistic and misleading," said UI psychologist Mark Blumberg, a co-author of the paper. "There is no gene for any of those things. At most, one can say there's a system of which that gene and many others are a part that will produce those outcomes."

The UI team believes genes are expressed at every point in development and are affected all along the way by a gamut of environmental factors -- everything from proteins and chemicals to the socioeconomic status of a family. These ideas are unified by a perspective called developmental systems theory. "The nature-nurture debate has a pervasive influence on our lives, affecting the framework of research in child development, biology, neuroscience, personality and dozens of other fields," said lead author and UI psychologist John Spencer. "People have tried for centuries to shift the debate one way or the other, and it's just been a pendulum swinging back and forth. We're taking the radical position that the smarter thing is to just say 'neither' -- to throw out the debate as it has been historically framed and embrace the alternative perspective provided by developmental systems theory."

The UI researchers illustrate the inadequacies of the debate by examining recent studies of imprinting, spatial cognition and language development that support the nature point of view. Imprinting is a rapid form of learning in which animals develop preferences through brief exposure to things early in life. Nativists (researchers who align themselves with the 'nature' perspective) attribute the quick learning to a genetic predisposition, pointing to examples like ducklings following their mother's call as soon as they hatch. But research has shown that embryonic ducks, while still in the egg, are exposed to sounds from their embryonic siblings as well as sounds that they themselves make. When these so-called 'talking eggs' are deprived of these embryonic experiences, they do not show a preference for their mother's call upon hatching. Clearly, Blumberg said, to say that imprinting in ducks is innate does not come close to capturing the elegance and complexity of the real process.

UI researchers also raised issues with studies proposing that children and animals have a built-in sense of direction as they move through the world around them and thus exhibit an innate reliance on geometric cues. In a 2007 experiment, fish reared in a circular tank were placed in a rectangular tank to see if they would know where to find food when it was hidden in the diagonally opposite corners. They did -- which was presented as evidence of an innate ability to use geometry -- but the UI team pointed out that each fish had eight to 12 days of experience in the rectangular tank prior to the experiment and could have learned the behavior then.

"Researchers sometimes claim we're hard-wired for things, but when you peel through the layers of the experiments, the details matter and suddenly the evidence doesn't seem so compelling," Spencer said. "The problem is that it's much more complicated to explain why the evidence is on shaky ground, and often the one-liner wins out over the 10-minute explanation" [emphasis added] The challenge young children face when they encounter a new word has also been used to bolster nativist claims. When children are told a new word and shown a visual scene that contains unfamiliar objects, there are an infinite number of possible meanings for the word. But children are very good at figuring out which object in the scene the new word refers to. Given this amazing ability, researchers have suggested that kids have an innate ability to consider only some of the possible meanings of the word.

But in 2007, researchers at Indiana University placed cameras on children's foreheads to examine, from the child's perspective, how they found the correct referent for the word. They learned that a child's view of the nearby world -- which is limited by her small size and short arms -- is much more focused than originally thought. With few possibilities in sight, it's easy to figure out which object matches up with a novel word. "When people say there's an innate constraint, they're making suppositions about what came before the behavior in question," Spencer said. "Instead of acknowledging that at 12 months a lot of development has already happened and we don't exactly know what came before this particular behavior, researchers take the easy way out and conclude that there must be inborn constraints. That's the predicament scientists have gotten themselves into."

UI psychologist Larissa Samuelson, a co-author of the paper, points to the "shape bias" as evidence that word learning is a cascading developmental process -- not an ability that's there from the beginning. Babies and toddlers learn to recognize solid objects with standard shapes -- things like ball, car, or book -- and those easy-to-distinguish objects typically become their first words. "Language is so complex that people can't imagine how kids could do it so well without it somehow being innate," Samuelson said. "But if we steer clear of the nature-nurture debate and consider it from a developmental systems perspective, we can see how pieces of knowledge -- which may not even seem related to language -- build over time. It gets us closer to understanding the full complexity of language learning."

The UI authors realize their paper is raising eyebrows -- it has spurred several responses from other researchers that will be published in the same issue of the journal. And they understand that getting scientific peers to buy into their ideas will be a challenge -- after all, the debate dates back to Aristotle and Plato, and many scientists are passionately rooted on one side or the other. "This is one attempt at getting the ideas out there and starting a dialog, continuing to educate the public and the scientific community, especially the younger generation of researchers," Blumberg said. "We know we don't have a sound bite that's as clean and simple and sexy as saying 'it's genetic.' But we're working on it."

Whether it's getting a cold during exam time or feeling run-down after a big meeting, we've all experienced feeling sick following a particularly stressful time at work or school. Is this merely coincidence, or is it possible that stress can actually make us sick? In a new report in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser from the Ohio State University College of Medicine reviews research investigating how stress can wreak havoc on our bodies and provides some suggestions to further our understanding of this connection.

The field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) investigates how stress and negative emotions (such as depression and anxiety) affect our health. Over the past 30 years, researchers in this field have uncovered a number of ways that stress adversely affects our health, and specifically, how stress can damage our immune system. Numerous studies have shown that stressed individuals show weaker immune responses to vaccines, and as Kiecolt-Glaser observes, "The evidence that stress and distress impair vaccine responses has obvious public health relevance because infectious diseases can be so deadly." Stress and depression have been shown to increase the risk of getting infections and also result in delayed wound healing.

Inflammation is the body's way of removing harmful stimuli and also starts the process of healing, via release of a variety of chemicals known as proinflammatory cytokines (e.g., interleukin-6). However, too much inflammation can be damaging and has been implicated in the development of many age-related diseases, including Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's disease, arthritis, and Type II diabetes. Negative emotions and psychological stressors increase the production of proinflammatory cytokines. A recent study revealed that men and women who serve as caregivers to spouses with dementia (and thus are under constant stress) have a four times larger annual rate of increase in serum interleukin-6 levels compared to individuals without caregiving responsibilities.

What's more, the changes in interleukin-6 levels among former caregivers did not differ from current caregivers, even following the death of the impaired spouse, indicating that chronic stress may cause the immune system to age quickly. Kiecolt-Glaser notes, "These stress-related changes in inflammation provide evidence of one mechanism through which stressors may accelerate risk of a host of age-related diseases."

Kiecolt-Glaser argues that our environment should be taken into account when studying the link between stress and our health. For instance, diet may modify interactions between psychological and immunological responses: Omega-3 fatty acids (found in fish and walnuts) can reduce production of some proinflammtory chemicals and increasing levels of omega-3 fatty acids may result in positive effects on mood and the immune system. Environmental toxins (such as pesticides and air pollutants) can have extremely negative effects on the immune system and these effects may be intensified in stressed individuals, increasing their risk for developing allergies, asthma, and viral infections.

Kiecolt-Glaser suggests that to most effectively tackle the questions raised by recent PNI research, cross-discipline training needs to be emphasized for students. Psychology students who gain a strong foundation in areas such as biology and physiology will be able to enter into powerful collaborations with scientists conducting immunology research. Kiecolt-Glaser concludes that the questions answered by these collaborations will advance PNI as well as psychology in general.

"By providing key data on how stressful events and the emotions they evoke get translated into health," she suggested, "psychology will assume a more dominant role in the health sciences, in health promotion, and in public health policy."

Research confirms identity of human umami receptor

Using a combination of sensory, genetic, and in vitro approaches, researchers from the Monell Center confirm that the T1R1-T1R3 taste receptor plays a role in human umami (amino acid) taste. They further report that variations in the genes that code for this receptor correspond to individual variation in sensitivity to and perceived intensity of umami taste. "These findings bolster our understanding of human taste variation and individual differences in tastes for essential nutrients," says senior author Paul A.S. Breslin PhD, a sensory geneticist at Monell.

Umami is the taste quality associated with several amino acids, especially the amino acid L-glutamate. High levels of glutamate are present in many protein-rich foods, including meats and cheeses, in vegetables such as mushrooms, peas, and tomatoes, and in human breast milk. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein, an essential macronutrient. Commenting on clinical implications of the work, Breslin says, "Protein-energy malnutrition is one of the leading causes of death in children worldwide. Increased understanding of amino acid taste receptors may help nutritionists target the appetites of protein-malnourished children to provide good-tasting dietary supplements that kids will readily accept."

The findings, published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, strengthen the claim that umami is a fundamental human taste quality -- similar to sweet, salty, bitter and sour -- that indicates the presence of amino acids, peptides and related structures.

In the study, Breslin and his team first conducted sensory tests on 242 individuals, who were asked to discriminate the taste of weak L-glutamate from salt. Approximately 5% were unable to tell the two tastes apart, indicating that certain people are highly insensitive to umami and thus have difficulty detecting low levels of this taste quality. An additional 87 individuals were asked to assess the intensity of glutamate's umami taste. The subjects tasted five concentrations of glutamate and rated the umami intensity of each on a scale that ranged from 'no sensation' to 'the strongest imaginable.'

The researchers next examined DNA from these 87 individuals to look for variations in the genes that code for T1R1 and T1R3, two protein subunits that combine to form the G-protein coupled receptor T1R1-T1R3. Comparing DNA structure to the glutamate taste responses of each individual, they found that variations (known as SNPs; single nucleotide polymorphisms) at three sites on the T1R3 gene were associated with increased sensitivity to glutamate taste.

A fourth set of studies used in vitro cell biology techniques to provide additional evidence that T1R1-T1R3 is a human amino acid taste receptor. When human T1R1-T1R3 receptors were expressed in a host cell line, these cells were able to respond specifically to L-glutamate.

Together, the findings demonstrate that the T1R1-T1R3 receptor significantly affects human sensitivity to umami taste from glutamate, and that individual differences in umami perception are due, at least in part, to coding variations in the T1R3 gene.

"We want to further understand the degree to which these genes account for umami taste perception," said Breslin. "This will in turn help in the discovery of other taste receptors that may play a role in umami taste and aid in our understanding of protein appetites." He also speculates that because these same receptors are also found in the gastrointestinal tract, liver and pancreas, coding variation in the T1R3 gene may also influence how proteins and amino acids are processed metabolically.

Psychologist urges critical thinking to cure 'primitive' notions

We see the face of the Virgin Mary staring up at us from a grilled cheese sandwich and sell the uneaten portion of our meal for $37,000 on eBay. We believe in ESP, ghosts, and angels over the scientific theory of evolution. While science offers a wealth of rational explanations for natural phenomena, we often prefer to embrace the fantasies that reassured our distant ancestors. And we'll even go to war to protect our delusions against those who do not share them.

These are examples of what evolutionary psychologist Hank Davis calls "Caveman Logic." Although some examples are funny, the condition itself is no laughing matter. In Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World (Amazon.com, $13.59), Davis encourages us to transcend the mental default settings and tribal loyalties that worked well for our ancestors back in the Pleistocene age. Davis laments a modern world in which more people believe in ESP, ghosts, and angels than in evolution. Superstition and religion get particularly critical treatment, although he argues that religion, itself, is not the problem but "an inevitable by-product of how our minds misperform."

"Caveman Logic is a whirlwind tour through the deeper recesses of our evolved mind. Hank Davis brings to bear cutting edge research from the cognitive sciences to reveal how mental tools designed to serve the needs of our ancient ancestors continue to exert an influence, both subtle and powerful, on human thought and behavior today," said John Teehan, Associate Professor of Religion, Hofstra University and author of In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence.

Davis says Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World is the product of more than two decades of pondering, teaching and writing about "the powerful influence of irrational, delusional thinking that is anchored to our Pleistocene-era brain circuitry." He asserts that much of this primitive thinking is supported by modern social institutions. For example, a 2007 poll found that nearly 70 percent of Americans believe angels and demons are active forces in the world, while a 2009 survey concluded that only 39 percent believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. Even non-religious persons often thank God or "the heavens" in response to good news.

"Ways of thinking that were both reasonable and advantageous in caveman days become illogical—and potentially destructive—when they are overextended to modern times," says Madeleine Van Hecke, author of Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things (Amazon.com, $13.59).

Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (Amazon.com, $17.15) adds, "Hank Davis reveals the deep roots of humanity's weakness for superstitions, blind assumptions and primitive thinking, and shows how we can start to overcome 'caveman logic.'"

Davis advocates a world in which "spirituality" is viewed as a dangerous rather than an admirable quality, and suggests ways in which we can overcome our innate predisposition toward irrationality. Davis points out that, "biology is not destiny." Just as some of us succeed in watching our diets, resisting violent impulses, and engaging in unselfish behavior, we can learn to use critical thinking and the insights of science to guide individual effort and social action in the service of our whole species.

College students with depression are twice as likely as their classmates to drop out of school, new research shows. However, the research also indicates that lower grade point averages depended upon a student's type of depression, according to Daniel Eisenberg, assistant professor in the University of Michigan School of Public Health and principal investigator of the study.

There are two core symptoms of depression -- loss of interest and pleasure in activities, or depressed mood---but only loss of interest is associated with lower grade point averages. "The correlation between depression and academic performance is mainly driven by loss of interest in activities," Eisenberg said. "This is significant because it means individuals can be very depressed and very functional, depending on which type of depression they have. I think that this can be true for many high achieving people, who may feel down and hopeless but not lose interest in activities. "Lots of students who have significant depression on some dimension are performing just fine, but may be at risk and go unnoticed because there is no noticeable drop in functioning."

Students with both depression and anxiety had especially poor academic performance. "If you take a student at the 50th percentile of the GPA distribution and compare them to a student with depression alone, the depressed student would be around the 37th percentile -- a 13 percent drop," Eisenberg said. "However, a student with depression and anxiety plummets to about the 23rd percentile, a 50 percent drop."

In the study, Eisenberg and his colleagues conducted a Web survey of a random sample of approximately 2,800 undergraduate and graduate students about a range of mental health issues in fall 2005, and conducted a follow-up survey with a subset of the sample in fall 2007. The dropout rate for University of Michigan students is about 5 percent per year, which is much lower than the national average, Eisenberg says. This likely reflects the type of high-achieving students Michigan attracts, along with U-M's support network for students experiencing emotional problems or depression. "Michigan does seem to be a leader in many respects in terms of things the university has done related to student mental health," said Eisenberg, who noted that the next step in the research is a large scale study. "I see this study as suggesting that there is value in a large randomized trial of screening and treating depressed students, in which the academic outcomes are measured carefully. That's what it will take to really see what the value is in reducing the dropout rate and improving GPA. As far as I know this has not been done."

Many students with depression -- as with the general population -- remain untreated. "Maybe the biggest reason is only about 50 percent of people with depression say they think they need help," Eisenberg said. "College students in particular may feel that stress is normal." According to Eisenberg's research, certain types of students have higher levels of stigma. Males, students from lower-income backgrounds and Asian students, in particular, report higher levels of stigma about mental health.

Are you a "morning person" or a "night owl?"

Scientists at the University of Alberta have found that there are significant differences in the way our brains function depending on whether we're early risers or night owls. Neuroscientists in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation looked at two groups of people: those who wake up early and feel most productive in the morning, and those who were identified as evening people, those who typically felt livelier at night. Study participants were initially grouped after completing a standardized questionnaire about their habits.

Using magnetic resonance imaging-guided brain stimulation, scientists tested muscle torque and the excitability of pathways through the spinal cord and brain. They found that morning people's brains were most excitable at 9 a.m. This slowly decreased through the day. It was the polar opposite for evening people, whose brains were most excitable at 9 p.m.

Other major findings:
    * Evening people became physically stronger throughout the day, but the maximum amount of force morning people could produce remained the same.
    * The excitability of reflex pathways that travel through the spinal cord increased over the day for both groups.

These findings show that nervous-system functions are different and have implications for maximizing human performance.

Early childhood development researchers have discovered that a simple, five-minute self-regulation game not only can predict end-of-year achievement in math, literacy and vocabulary, but also was associated with the equivalent of several months of additional learning in kindergarten.

Claire Ponitz from the University of Virginia and Megan McClelland of Oregon State University assessed the effectiveness of a game called the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS) task, which is a new version of the Head-to-Toes task developed by researchers at the University of Michigan. Both tasks have proved effective at predicting academic skills among preschool age children. Their results were published in the newest issue of the journal, Developmental Psychology.

The researchers assessed a group of 343 kindergarteners from Oregon and Michigan. Their self-regulation, or ability to control behavior, was measured with the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task, a structured observation requiring children to perform the opposite of a response to four different oral commands. For example, children were instructed to touch their toes if told to touch their head, and vice versa. They found that students who performed well on his behavior task in the fall achieved strong scores in reading, vocabulary and math in the spring, compared to students who had low performance on the task. In addition, the research showed that the children who performed well on the task scored 3.4 months ahead of peers who performed at average levels on mathematics learning. "It's amazing that this game works as well as it does," McClelland said. "It is simple to administer, fun for the kids, and predicts children's academic achievement."

One area where the task did not make a difference was assessing children's interpersonal skills. McClelland explained that the game is not "emotion-oriented," meaning it is not set up to trigger an emotional response. Instead, the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task tests children on important classroom-related behavior such as listening, following directions and remembering instructions. "We know this task predicts end-of-year achievement," she said. "Now we want to take the game to the next level."

McClelland is planning to do an extensive evaluation of the task for her next research project, testing the task with an even larger group of children. She also has a number of research projects under way with OSU graduate students, including one that uses a variety of fun games to improve a child's ability to regulate their behavior. She said she has made a simple DVD that demonstrates the task, and in response has received requests from around the world from researchers who want to use the task with young children. "The evidence strongly suggests that improving self-regulation is directly related to academic achievement and behavior," McClelland said. "If we can make a difference early in a child's life, they have that much more of a chance at success."

A flurry of recent research has documented that talking on a cell phone poses a dangerous distraction for drivers and others whose attention should be focused elsewhere. Now, a new study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology finds that just the ring of a cell phone may be equally distracting, especially when it comes in a classroom setting or includes a familiar song as a ringtone. "In any setting where people are trying to acquire knowledge and trying to retain that information in some way, a distraction that may just seem like a common annoyance to people may have a really disruptive effect on their later retention of that information," said the study's lead author, Jill Shelton, a postdoctoral psychology fellow in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The study includes an experiment in which Shelton poses as a student seated in the middle of a crowded undergraduate psychology lecture and allows a cell phone in her handbag to continue ringing loudly for about 30 seconds. Students tested later scored about 25 percent worse for recall of course content presented during the distraction, even though the same information was covered by the professor just prior to the phone ring and projected as text in a slide show shown throughout the distraction. Students scored even worse when Shelton added to the disturbance by frantically searching her handbag as if attempting to find and silence her ringing phone. "Many of us consider a cell phone ringing in a public place to be an annoying disruption, but this study confirms that these nuisance noises also have real-life impacts," Shelton said. "These seemingly innocuous events are not only a distraction, but they have a real influence on learning."

Titled "The distracting effects of a ringing cell phone: An investigation of the laboratory and the classroom setting," the study was conducted at Louisiana State University, where Shelton received her doctoral degree. Her co-authors in the LSU psychology department include Emily Elliott, Sharon Eaves and Amanda Exner. The study explores cognitive differences in how we respond to auditory distractions, specifically whether we process these interruptions using a voluntary, top-down, executive-level shift in attention or as a more reflexive, automatic and involuntary reorientation of attention. Perhaps most surprising, the study found that unexpected exposure to snippets of a popular song, such as those often used as ringtones, can have an even-longer-lasting negative impact on attention.

In this phase of the experiment, students in a laboratory were tested on simple word-recognition tasks while exposed to a range of auditory distractions, including irrelevant tones, standard cell phone rings and parts of a song very familiar to most LSU students. The song, an instrumental version of the LSU fight song, was then being played incessantly around campus as LSU football made its fall 2007 run to the national college championship. The song also became a popular cell phone ringtone.

"When we played the fight song as part of our lab experiments, the distraction factor lasted longer," Shelton said. "It slowed down their decision-making performance for a longer time than even a standard ringtone." Thus, people who use popular songs as a personal ringtone may be increasing the odds their cell phone rings will be more distracting. "Depending on how familiar people are with these songs, it could lead to an even worse impairment in their cognitive performance," she said.

The study raises concerns for people who attempt to concentrate while being bombarded by beeps and buzzes from incoming email or text messages. Findings suggest the potential for distraction is greater if the ring tone has some special meaning or personal relevance, such as a custom tone that identifies a call as coming from a parent, close friend or boss at work. On the bright side, students in repeated trials of the experiment eventually were able to block the distracting effects of both standard and song-based cell phone rings, gradually reducing cognitive impairment caused by them. "There's definitely some evidence to suggest that people can become habituated to a distracting noise," Shelton said. "If you're in an office where the phones are just ringing all the time everyday, it may initially be distracting to you, but you will probably get over it." While these findings have plenty of real world implications, they also shed light on whether a voluntary or involuntary model best describes cognitive lapses caused by nuisance noises.

Recent research has shown that talking on a cell phone while driving results in serious consequences, such as slower braking responses and increased risks of running red lights and collisions — effects attributed to phone conversation absorbing important voluntary attentional resources needed to respond to information in the driving field. The unexpected ringing of a phone, on the other hand, might be explained using the involuntary model, one that views our response as a more automatic, almost reflexive re-orienting of attentional resources, and a process over which we have little control. Shelton suggests that our response to a ringing cell phone may involve a combination of these cognitive responses depending on the situation and whether the ring is unexpected. In one of her lab experiments, she found that participants who were warned about the potential for distraction were able to recover more quickly and moderate their levels of cognitive impairment. "Our experiments suggest that there is a benefit to prior knowledge in how we respond to nuisance noises," Shelton said. "It doesn't mean you won't experience a disruption to what you were doing for that brief period, but your cognitive system can adjust and get back on task fairly quickly."

Children entering first grade with signs of depression and anxiety or excessive aggression are at risk of being chronically victimized by their classmates by third grade. That's the finding of a new longitudinal study that appears in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Victoria, looked at more than 400 Canadian children beginning in the autumn of first grade. The children were asked about their experiences being bullied (such as being hit, pushed, and shoved, or being teased and excluded from play). Their teachers were asked to report on the children's symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as on their displays of physical aggression. The researchers returned at the end of first, second, and third grades, at which time they asked the children and their teachers to report on the same issues.

Most children (73 percent) showed few symptoms of depression and anxiety over the three years. But 7 percent of the children showed continuously high levels. The remaining 20 percent showed moderate symptoms at first, but these increased over time. Victimization by depressed and anxious children wasn't evident until third grade.

Children with more depressed and anxious symptoms in first and second grade were more likely to be victimized by third grade. Surprisingly, children who were more aggressive at the start of first grade also were prone to depression and anxiety by third grade. These children also were more likely to be victimized by their peers, perhaps in retaliation for their own acts of aggression.

"Children's early mental health problems can set the stage for abuse by their peers," according to Bonnie J. Leadbeater, professor of psychology at the University of Victoria, who led the study. "Just as some children learn to read with greater difficulty than others and require extra assistance when they begin to lag behind their peers, young children with mental health problems show signs that they cannot manage the complex social world of elementary school. Treating children's mental health problems may go a long way toward reducing bullying."

"[...] the common strategies include dismissing as "junk science" peer-reviewed studies showing a link between their products and disease; paying scientists to produce pro-industry studies; sowing doubt in the public's mind about the harm caused by their products; intensive marketing to children and adolescents; frequently rolling out supposedly "safer" products and vowing to regulate their own industries; denying the addictive nature of their products; and lobbying with massive resources to thwart regulatory action."

Big Food Is Copying Big Tobacco's Disinformation Tactics, How Many Will Die This Time?
By Fen Montaigne
Posted 11 April 2009 on AlterNet

Behavior treatment works as well as drugs for children with ADHD and bypasses the risk of medication's side effects, a meta-analysis of 174 studies on ADHD treatment conducted at the University at Buffalo, has shown. The results, published in the March issue of Clinical Psychology Review, found that teaching parents and teachers how to respond when children do things the right way -- as well as when they display harmful or aggressive behavior -- is effective, and in some cases more effective, than medication for ADHD.

"This review shows that behavioral treatments work, and in general work well," said Gregory A. Fabiano, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology in UB's Graduate School of Education, and first author on the paper. "For the past couple of decades, there has been considerable professional controversy about the role and adequacy of behavior modification treatments in the care of children with ADHD. The next step is to figure out how to make them work for individual families over the long run, because we now know that ADHD is a lifelong condition."

Through use of behavior modification, children could bypass the risk of side effects from ADHD drugs and achieve the same or better results as drug treatments, Fabiano noted. William Pelham, Jr., Ph.D., UB Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Pediatrics and Psychiatry, is co-author on the study.

Fabiano noted that ADHD is one of the most common mental health disorders among children. "Prevalence rates place at least one child with ADHD in every classroom in America, highlighting the need for effective interventions. "Our results suggest that efforts should be redirected from debating the effectiveness of behavioral interventions to dissemination, enhancing and improving the use of these programs in community, school and mental health settings." In the future, Fabiano plans to work with teachers, parents, pediatricians and clinicians in the community to emphasize the effectiveness of behavior modification treatments.

His additional research includes developing strategies to get fathers more involved in the treatment of children with ADHD, and use of driving simulators to help teens with ADHD learn to drive, while also helping parents learn to provide effective driving instruction to their teens.

Fabiano is a recent recipient of the White House's Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the nation's highest honor for professionals at the early stages of their independent scientific research careers.

Older adults with generalized anxiety disorder who received cognitive behavior therapy had greater improvement on measures of worry, depression and mental health than patients who received usual care, according to a study in the April 8 issue of JAMA.

Generalized anxiety disorder is common in late life, with prevalence up to 7.3 percent in the community and 11.2 percent in primary care. Late-life anxiety predicts increased physical disability, memory difficulties and decreased quality of life, according to background information in the article. Late-life anxiety is usually treated with medication, but associated risks (e.g., falls, hip fractures, memory problems) with some drugs and patient fears of adverse effects limit their usefulness. Two previous studies suggested benefits of cognitive behavior therapy in primary care for late-life GAD, but the studies were small and conclusions were limited. Older adults most often seek treatment for GAD in primary care.

Melinda A. Stanley, Ph.D., of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, and colleagues conducted the first randomized clinical trial of CBT for late-life GAD in primary care to examine whether CBT would improve outcomes relative to enhanced usual care. The trial included 134 older adults (average age, 67 years) in two primary care settings, with treatment provided for 3 months. Assessments were conducted at the beginning of the trial, posttreatment (3 months), and over 12 months of follow-up, with assessments at 6, 9, 12 and 15 months. Patients were randomized to either CBT (n = 70), which included education and awareness, relaxation training, cognitive therapy, problem-solving skills training and behavioral sleep management; or EUC (n = 64), in which patients were telephoned biweekly during the first 3 months of the study by the same therapists to provide support and ensure patient safety. Therapists reminded patients to call project staff if symptoms worsened.

Levels of anxiety, worry, depression and physical/mental health quality of life were measured via various tests or surveys. The researchers found that CBT, compared with EUC, significantly improved worry severity, depressive symptoms and general mental health. In intention-to-treat analyses, response rates defined according to worry severity were higher following CBT compared with EUC at 3 months (40.0 percent vs. 21.9 percent).

"This study is the first to suggest that CBT can be useful for managing worry and associated symptoms among older patients in primary care," the authors write. "This study paves the way for future research to test sustainable models of care in more demographically heterogeneous groups."

Pharmed Fish
A study presented at an American Chemical Society meeting reveals that fish from sites in various parts of the country tested positive for drugs and personal care product chemicals that wind up in the water supply.

60-Second Science from Scientific American podcasts
26 March 2009

Women experiencing physical abuse from intimate partners spent 42 percent more on health care per year than non-abused women, according to a long-term study of more than 3,000 women. And the costs don't end when the abuse does. The study revealed that women who suffered physical abuse five or more years earlier still spent 19 percent more per year on health care than women who were never abused. "Along with all the physical and emotional pain it causes, domestic violence also comes with a substantial financial price," said Amy Bonomi, co-author of the study and associate professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University.

The study is the largest to date to examine health care costs and utilization based on the timing and type of domestic violence that women suffer, Bonomi said. The study, co-authored with researchers from the Group Health Cooperative and the University of Washington in Seattle, was published online this week in the journal Health Services Research. It will appear in an upcoming print edition.

The research examined data from 3,333 randomly selected women who belonged to Group Health, a health care system in the Pacific Northwest. Women in the study were surveyed about whether they experienced any physical or emotional abuse from intimate partners and if so, when it occurred. Researchers then studied patterns of health care use and costs by the women over an 11-year period, from 1992 through 2002.

"We were able to track health care costs for quite a long time, giving us a good picture of how much domestic violence is actually costing our health care system," Bonomi said. Women experiencing ongoing physical abuse had the highest health care costs -- 42 percent higher than non-abused women. "It's likely that these women need more health care because they are seeking care for immediate injuries and associated health problems," Bonomi said. Women who had been physically abused within the last five years, but not currently, had 24 percent higher yearly health costs. Abuse that occurred more than five years ago resulted in 19 percent higher costs.

The study separately examined women who experienced psychological abuse, which included verbal threats and chronic controlling behavior. Those suffering psychological abuse within the past five years, but not currently, had yearly health care costs that were 33 percent higher than those of non-abused women. "It's possible that it takes additional time for women with psychological abuse to seek care for their experiences," Bonomi said.

Another striking finding was that all abused women, whether they experienced physical or psychological abuse, used significantly more mental health services than non-abused women, Bonomi said. Women suffering ongoing physical abuse were about 2.5 times more likely to visit a mental health provider in the past year than were non-abused women. The rate for psychologically abused women was two times higher. "This lends support to the idea that mental health providers should always ask women about their abuse history when they first come in for treatment," Bonomi said.

But mental health was just one of several areas in which abused women used more services. Physically abused women used significantly more primary care, pharmacy, specialty care, laboratory and radiology services. For psychologically abused women, more services were needed in specialty care, pharmacy, and radiology.

Group Health, the health care system whose members were surveyed for the study, provides health and insurance services to more than 500,000 people in the Pacific Northwest.

A Brown University-led research team has documented for the first time how bats land. The results are surprising: Not all bats land the same way. The findings, which appear in the Journal of Experimental Biology, could offer new insights into how the second-largest order of mammals evolved.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — People have always been fascinated by bats, but the scope of that interest generally is limited to how bats fly and their bizarre habit of sleeping upside down. Until now, no one had studied how bats arrive at their daytime perches.

A Brown University-led research team is the first to document the landing approaches of three species of bats — two that live in caves and one that roosts in trees. What they found was surprising: Not all bats land the same way.

“Hanging upside down is what bats do,” said Daniel Riskin, a postdoctoral researcher in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at Brown and lead author on a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. “We've known this. But this is the first time anyone has measured how they land.”

Using sophisticated motion capture cameras in a special flight enclosure, the team filmed each species of bat as it swooped toward a latticed landing pad and landed on it. Cynopterus brachyotis, a tree-roosting bat common in tropical parts of southeast Asia, executed a half-backflip as it swooped upward to the landing site, landing as its hind legs and thumbs touched the pad simultaneously — a four-point landing, the group observed. The landing is hard, Riskin noted, with an impact force more than four times the species’ body weight.

The team then turned its attention to two cave-roosting species, Carollia perspicillata and Glossophaga soricina. These bats, common in Central and South America, approach their landing target with a vertical pitch and then, at the last instant, yaw to the left or to the right — executing a cartwheel of sorts — before grasping the landing pad with just their hind legs. The two-point landing is much gentler than the impact force exerted by the tree-roosting bats, the researchers observed; the cave-roosting bats have a landing impact force of just one-third of their body weight.

There are about 1,200 recognized bat species worldwide, so Riskin was cautious about not drawing any grand conclusions. Still, he said, the fact that the team has documented that bats land differently could open new insights into a species that makes up roughly one-fifth of all mammals on earth. “It's opening the door to how bats evolved,” Riskin said. “You can say that bats have been hanging upside down since they first evolved, and it has probably been one of the keys to their worldwide success.”

Other Brown researchers who worked on the paper include Sharon Swartz, associate professor of biology; Tatjana Hubel, a postdoctoral researcher; and Joseph Bahlman, a graduate student. John Ratcliffe, a biologist at the University of Southern Denmark, and Thomas Kunz, a biologist at Boston University, contributed to the paper.

Native African people who have never even listened to the radio before can nonetheless pick up on happy, sad, and fearful emotions in Western music, according to a new report published online on March 19th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The result shows that the expression of those three basic emotions in music can be universally recognized, the researchers said.

"These findings could explain why Western music has been so successful in global music distribution, even in music cultures that do not as strongly emphasize the role of emotional expression in their music," said Thomas Fritz of the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

The expression of emotions is a basic feature of Western music, and the capacity of music to convey emotional expressions is often regarded as a prerequisite to its appreciation in Western cultures, the researchers explained. In other musical traditions, however, music is often appreciated for other qualities, such as group coordination in rituals.

In the new study, Fritz, Stefan Koelsch, and their colleagues wanted to find out whether the emotional aspects of Western music could be appreciated by people who had no prior exposure to it. Previous studies had asked similar questions about people with little experience with a particular musical form, for instance Westerners listening to Hindustani music, they said. But to really get at musical universals requires participants who are completely naïve to Western music.

Fritz enlisted members of the Mafa, one of about 250 ethnic groups in Cameroon. He traveled to the extreme north of the Mandara mountain ranges, where they live, with a laptop and sun collector to supply electricity in his backpack.

Their studies showed that both Western and Mafa listeners, who had never before heard Western music, could recognize emotional expressions of happiness, sadness, and fear in the music more often than would be expected by chance. However, they report that the Mafa showed considerable variability in their performance, with two of twenty-one study participants performing at chance level.

Both groups relied on similar characteristics of music to make those calls; both Mafas and Westerners relied on temporal cues and on mode for their judgment of emotional expressions, although this pattern was more marked in Western listeners.

By manipulating music, the researchers also found that both Western listeners and African listeners find original music more pleasant than altered versions. That preference is probably explained in part by the increased sensory dissonance of the manipulated tunes.

"In conclusion," the researchers wrote, "both Mafa and Western listeners showed an ability to recognize the three basic emotional expressions tested in this study from Western music above chance level. This indicates that these emotional expressions conveyed by the Western musical excerpts can be universally recognized, similar to the largely universal recognition of human emotional facial expression and emotional prosody." Prosody refers to the rhythm, stress, and intonation of connected speech.

The Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights (BCRHHR) at Boston Medical Center recently treated many of the large number of Tibetan refugee monks who fled violent religious persecution. These individuals arrived in Boston suffering from symptoms of traumatic stress, interfering with their meditative practice. The monks were diagnosed by their traditional healers as having srog-rLung, a life-wind imbalance. Recognizing that barriers exist between western and eastern medicine, the BCRHHR researched and implemented its own complementary therapy options to heal them. These findings appear online in the March issue of Mental Health, Religion and Culture.

According to Tibetan medicine, a srog-rLung disturbance has the potential to develop into a serious mental illness, leaving the victim at odds with the balance of the universe as well as jeopardizing his personal health. Symptoms of srog-rLung include uncontrollable crying, worrying, excessive mental, physical or verbal activity and an unhappy mind. Other conditions affecting the monk’s health include anxiety, depression and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Research in cross-cultural health settings, particularly refugee health services, shows that successful treatment is contingent on a combination of the patient’s interpretation of the illness and biomedical categories. This allows the patient to actively participate in his or her own healing. Cross-cultural psychiatric assessment is also necessary in determining appropriate treatment options, as treatment can be detrimental if not harmonized with the religious context in which mental illness will develop for these monks. The BCRHHR used traditional healers to obtain a dual diagnosis for the development of holistic therapy that responds to both PTSD and srog-rLung.

“This research and treatment involving patients accustomed only to traditional medicine, presented an opportunity for the acceptance of non-traditional therapeutic approaches,” explains Michael Grodin, MD, professor of health law, bioethics and human rights at Boston University School of Public Health, and professor of psychiatry, sociomedical sciences and community medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. “The difference between Tibetan and Western disease pathologies represents the need for evidence-based complementary therapies, such as the Tibetan monks in exile and other religious refugee populations,” said Grodin.

Tibetan Buddhist tradition dictates that the cure for suffering is enlightenment, attainable through meditation. When this occurs, the body is freed from anxieties and fears. The monks who were treated for PTSD and srog-rLung are finding that meditation, once second nature, has become difficult after nights filled with flashbacks that put the monks in a state of hyper-vigilance for the next day.

According to the researchers, in order to provide complimentary therapy for the monks, eastern and western medicine needed to be integrated to properly address both conditions. The spiritual aspect of the Tibetan medical model, which is at the core of the monks’ experience of illness, guided this research. Ancient Tibetan Bon tradition of yogic practice was used to induce the mind into a relaxed state necessary to purify oneself through motion. This yogic practice combines movement of the body and controlled breath with movements of the mind to bring mental stability and offers an alternative to the monks’ inability to eliminate invasive thoughts. Another therapy that was used is singing bowl therapy—a form of music therapy, as sound has a direct connection to the heart, which aligns with srog-rLung experienced by the monks.

Grodin said the refugee health center at BMC integrated techniques of western medicine, such as anti-depressant prescribing and psychotherapy, with Tibetan healing practices, including medicines prescribed by Tibetan Amchi, meditation advice, Tai Chi and Qi Gong exercises. Grodin is trained in traditional Chinese medicine, such as acupuncture and meditation.

Other authors on the publication were Adriana Lee Benedict of Harvard College and Linda Mancini of the LamRim Buddhist Center and the BCRHHR.

Researchers have found what they say is some of the first unambiguous evidence that an animal other than humans can make spontaneous plans for future events. The report in the March 9th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, highlights a decade of observations in a zoo of a male chimpanzee calmly collecting stones and fashioning concrete discs that he would later use to hurl at zoo visitors.

"These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way," said Mathias Osvath of Lund University. "It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including life-like mental simulations of potential events. They most probably have an 'inner world' like we have when reviewing past episodes of our lives or thinking of days to come. When wild chimps collect stones or go out to war, they probably plan this in advance. I would guess that they plan much of their everyday behavior."

While researchers have observed many ape behaviors that could involve planning both in the wild and in captivity, it generally hasn't been possible to judge whether they were really meeting a current or future need, he added. For instance, when a chimp breaks a twig for termite fishing or collects a stone for nut cracking, it can always be argued that they are motivated by immediate rather than future circumstances.

And that's what makes the newly described case so special, Osvath said. It is clear that the chimp's planning behavior is not based on a "current drive state." In contrast to the chimp's extreme agitation when throwing the stones, he was always calm when collecting or manufacturing his ammunition.

Osvath said he thinks wild chimps in general, as well as other animals, probably have the planning ability demonstrated by the individual described in the study. Indeed, experiments conducted recently with other captive chimpanzees have shown they are capable of making such plans. (Some have argued, however, that those findings could be the result of experimental artifacts.)

"I think that wild chimpanzees might be even better at planning as they probably rely on it for their daily survival," Osvath said. "The environment in a zoo is far less complex than in a forest. Zoo chimps never have to encounter the dangers in the forest or live through periods of scarce food. Planning would prove its value in 'real life' much more than in a zoo."

Oedipus Wrecked: Study Supporting the Mother of All Psychological Complexes Withdrawn by Brendan Borrell

A journal retracts a paper that supported the idea that your wife is likely to look like your mother, but others say that Freud's theory may still hold water

Cell phones are a danger on the road in more ways than one. Two new studies show that talking on the phone while traveling, whether you're driving or on foot, is increasing both pedestrian deaths and those of drivers and passengers, and recommend crackdowns on cell use by both pedestrians and drivers. The new studies, lead-authored by Rutgers University, Newark, Economics Professor Peter D. Loeb, relate the impact of cell phones on accident fatalities to the number of cell phones in use, showing that the current increase in deaths attributed to cell phone use follows a period when cell phones actually helped to reduce pedestrian and traffic fatalities. However, this reduction in fatalities disappeared once the numbers of phones in use reached a "critical mass" of 100 million, the study found.

These studies looked at cell phone use and motor vehicle accidents from 1975 through 2002, and factored in a number of variables, including vehicle speed, alcohol consumption, seat belt use, and miles driven.

The studies found the cell phone-fatality correlation to be true even when weighing in factors such as speed, alcohol consumption, and seat belt use.

Loeb and his co-author determined that, at the current time, cell phone use has a "significant adverse effect on pedestrian safety" and that "cell phones and their usage above a critical threshold adds to motor vehicle fatalities." In the late 1980s and part of the 1990s, before the numbers of phones exploded, cell phone use actually had a "life-saving effect" in pedestrian and traffic accidents, Loeb notes. "Cell-phone users' were able to quickly call for medical assistance when involved in an accident. This quick medical response actually reduced the number of traffic deaths for a time," Loeb hypothesizes.

However, this was not the case when cells were first used in the mid-1980s, when they caused a "life-taking effect" among pedestrians, drivers and passengers in vehicles. In those early days, when there were fewer than a million phones, fatalities increased, says Loeb, because drivers and pedestrians probably were still adjusting to the novelty of using them, and there weren't enough cell phones in use to make a difference in summoning help following an accident, he explains.

The "life-saving effect" occurred as the volume of phones grew into the early 1990s, and increasing numbers of cells were used to call 911 following accidents, leading to a drop in fatalities, explains Loeb. But this life-saving effect was canceled out once the numbers of phones reached a "critical mass" of about 100 million and the "life-taking effect" – increased accidents and fatalities -- outweighed the benefits of quick access to 911 services, according to Loeb.

"The cell phone effect on pedestrian fatalities" (Transportation Research Part E, Elsevier, Vol. 45, Issue 1, January 2009, with William A. Clarke, Bentley University, Waltham, MA,) looked at pedestrian fatalities related to cell phone use; the still-to-be-released "The impact of cell phones and BAC Laws on Motor Vehicle Fatality Rates" (Applied Economics, Loeb, Clarke and Richard Anderson, New Jersey City University), examines all cell-related traffic fatalities. Loeb and his co-authors used econometric models to analyze data from a number of government and private studies, including those by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Department of Transportation, MADD, and the U.S. Census Bureau, among others.

He and his co-authors recommend that governments consider more aggressive policies to reduce cell phone use by both drivers and pedestrians, to reduce the number of fatalities.

General anesthesia can be tolerated by patients older than 65

Contrary to conventional medical wisdom, a new study by NYU Langone Medical Center researchers shows that healthy elderly patients with severe to profound hearing loss can undergo a surgical procedure to receive cochlear implants with minimal risk. "Due to concerns about the effects of general anesthesia, many elderly people with hearing loss are not receiving the implants which can significantly improve their hearing and quality of life," according to Anil Lalwani, M.D., Mendik Foundation Professor of Otolaryngology and Chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology at NYU School of Medicine and a study co-author. "The elderly are often incorrectly considered too fragile for this life transforming technology that can deliver them from a world of silence and loneliness to a world of hearing and engagement," says Dr. Lalwani. The new study is published in the February issue of the journal The Laryngoscope.

The National Institute on Aging estimates that about one-third of Americans between ages 65 and 74 have hearing difficulty – and that number increases to 50 percent in people 85 and older. In about 10% of the elderly, the impairment is so severe that conventional hearing aids provide little benefit. The inability to communicate interferes greatly with daily living and can lead to cognitive impairment, personality changes, depression, reduced functional status and social isolation.

The researchers conducted a retrospective chart review of 70 patients over 70 years of age who received cochlear implants under general anesthesia at NYU Langone Medical Center between 1984 and 2007. The patients were divided into risk groups and intraoperative and postoperative anesthesia-related complications were identified. Most patients tolerated the procedure and there was no long-term morbidity or mortality related to the surgery or anesthesia.

The researchers concluded that general anesthesia is well tolerated by elderly patients undergoing cochlear implantation. Any pre - existing medical condition is a better predictor of intraoperative and postoperative complication than age alone, they observed. Jung T. Kim, M.D. Vice chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at NYU School of Medicine and a study co-author said "As seniors embrace a healthy and active lifestyle, it is important that age alone should not deter a person from having surgery that could potentially improve their quality of life."

Before flying off the handle the next time someone cuts you off in traffic, consider the latest research from Yale School of Medicine researchers that links changes brought on by anger or other strong emotions to future arrhythmias and sudden cardiac arrests, which are blamed for 400,000 deaths annually.

The study—led by Rachel Lampert, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, and published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology—deepens our understanding of how anger and other types of mental stress can trigger potentially lethal ventricular arrhythmias.

Lampert and her team studied 62 patients with implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) and enlarged hearts. They were monitored three months after the ICD was implanted and then given a mental stress test requiring them to recall a stressful situation that angered them.

Lampert and her team sought to discover whether T-wave alternans (TWA), which monitor electrical instability in the heart induced by anger, would predict future ventricular arrhythmias. The team found that those in the group with more anger-induced electrical instability were more likely to experience arrhythmias one year after the study than those in the control group.

"Further studies are needed to determine whether there is a role for therapies which may reduce anger and the body's response to stress, thereby preventing arrhythmias in those at risk," said Lampert.

Lampert's work builds on past research linking strong emotion to sudden cardiac death. It has been found that devastating disasters, such as earthquakes, are linked to sudden death.

The Declaration of Independence may proclaim that all men are created equal, but American whites tend to distribute their prejudice unequally toward certain members of minority groups, according to new research.

A series of six studies conducted by University of Washington and Michigan State University psychologists shows that whites react more negatively to racial minority individuals who strongly identify with their racial group than to racial minority individuals who weakly identify with their group. The research, published in the current issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, provides an explanation for why some Blacks report personally experiencing more prejudice than others.

"Research has shown that the more minorities identify with their group, the more prejudice they report experiencing," said Kaiser. "Most research has explained this finding by focusing on factors within minorities that make some individuals more susceptible to perceiving prejudice than others. Our studies provide an alternative explanation by showing that whites react more negatively toward strongly identified minorities than weakly identified ones."

The researchers believe strongly identified minorities are not paranoid in claiming they experience increased levels of prejudice and weakly identified minorities are not being self-deceptive when they report experiencing low levels of prejudice, said Cheryl Kaiser, a UW assistant psychology professor and lead author of the paper. Instead, they just may simply be reporting on reality as they experience it.

"Take a situation where a person is ambiguously rejected for a new job," she said. "A person with a strong minority identification might wonder if the rejection was due to prejudice while one with a weak minority identification might not. If you experience more prejudice you expect more prejudice. These things work in tandem and feed each other."

Kaiser and her colleague recruited nearly 400 college students for the six studies that measured whites' attitudes toward Blacks and Latinos. They also were surveyed on their general attitudes about Blacks or Latinos, depending on the study. In the studies, minorities were either described as being strongly identified (where their group was very important and a central aspect of their self) or weakly identified (where their group was less important and not at the core of their self).

She said individuals typically want to be around others who share their values and exclude people who don't share those values or world views. The research indicated that whites perceived strongly identified minorities as less likely to share similar worldviews with them relative to weakly identified minorities.

"We are not arguing that minorities should not identify with their group," said Kaiser. "Such identification can be important and provides meaning, self worth and identity. Some research about prejudice has tended to lump members of minorities into homogenous groups. But there is a lot of heterogeneity. People differ in looks, language ability, attitudes and many other ways, but we tend not to pay attention to these factors. That's why it is important to identify those subsets in groups, why people react to them and what are the active ingredients of prejudice. Whites need to understand that they distribute prejudice unevenly and target those who strongly self-identify as being Black."

Dreams can carry more weight than conscious thoughts, say researchers

While science tries to understand the stuff dreams are made of, humans, from cultures all over the world, continue to believe that dreams contain important hidden truths, according to newly published research.

In six different studies, researchers surveyed nearly 1,100 people about their dreams. "Psychologists' interpretations of the meaning of dreams vary widely," said Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the study's lead author. "But our research shows that people believe their dreams provide meaningful insight into themselves and their world."

The article appears in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

In one study that surveyed general beliefs about dreams, Morewedge and co-author Michael Norton, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, surveyed 149 university students in the United States, India and South Korea. The researchers asked the students to rate different theories about dreams. Across all three cultures, an overwhelming majority of the students endorsed the theory that dreams reveal hidden truths about themselves and the world, a belief also endorsed by a nationally representative sample of Americans.

In another study reported in the article, the researchers wanted to explore how dreams might influence people's waking behavior. They surveyed 182 commuters at a Boston train station, asking them to imagine that one of four possible scenarios had happened the night before a scheduled airline trip: The national threat level was raised to orange, indicating a high risk of terrorist attack; they consciously thought about their plane crashing; they dreamed about a plane crash; or a real plane crash occurred on the route they planned to take. A dream of a plane crash was more likely to affect travel plans than either thinking about a crash or a government warning, and the dream of a plane crash produced a similar level of anxiety as did an actual crash.

Finally, the researchers wanted to find out whether people perceive all dreams as equally meaningful, or whether their interpretations were influenced by their waking beliefs and desires. In another study, 270 men and women from across the United States took a short online survey in which they were asked to remember a dream they had had about a person they knew. People ascribed more importance to pleasant dreams about a person they liked as compared to a person they did not like, while they were more likely to consider an unpleasant dream more meaningful if it was about a person they disliked.

"In other words," said Morewedge, "people attribute meaning to dreams when it corresponds with their pre-existing beliefs and desires. This was also the case in another experiment which demonstrated that people who believe in God were likely to consider any dream in which God spoke to them to be meaningful; agnostics, however, considered dreams in which God spoke to be more meaningful when God commanded them to take a pleasant vacation than when God commanded them to engage in self-sacrifice."

The authors say more research is needed to explore fully how people interpret their dreams, and in what cases dreams may actually reveal hidden information.. "Most people understand that dreams are unlikely to predict the future but that doesn't prevent them from finding meaning in their dreams, whether their contents are mundane or bizarre," said Morewedge.

Violent video games and movies make people numb to the pain and suffering of others, according to a research report published in the March 2009 issue of Psychological Science. The report details the findings of two studies conducted by University of Michigan professor Brad Bushman and Iowa State University professor Craig Anderson.

The studies fill an important research gap in the literature on the impact of violent media. In earlier work, Bushman and Anderson demonstrated that exposure to violent media produces physiological desensitization---lowering heart rate and skin conductance---when viewing scenes of actual violence a short time later. But the current research demonstrates that violent media also affect someone's willingness to offer help to an injured person, in a field study as well as in a laboratory experiment.

"These studies clearly show that violent media exposure can reduce helping behavior," said Bushman, professor of psychology and communications and a research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research. "People exposed to media violence are less helpful to others in need because they are 'comfortably numb' to the pain and suffering of others, to borrow the title of a Pink Floyd song," he said.

In one of the studies, 320 college students played either a violent or a nonviolent video game for approximately 20 minutes. A few minutes later, they overheard a staged fight that ended with the "victim" sustaining a sprained ankle and groaning in pain. People who had played a violent game took significantly longer to help the victim than those who played a nonviolent game---73 seconds compared to 16 seconds. People who had played a violent game were also less likely to notice and report the fight. And if they did report it, they judged it to be less serious than did those who had played a nonviolent game.

In the second study, the participants were 162 adult moviegoers. The researchers staged a minor emergency outside the theater in which a young woman with a bandaged ankle and crutches "accidentally" dropped her crutches and struggled to retrieve them. The researchers timed how long it took moviegoers to retrieve the crutches. Half were tested before they went into the theater, to establish the helpfulness of people attending violent vs. nonviolent movies. Half were tested after seeing either a violent or a nonviolent movie. Participants who had just watched a violent movie took over 26 percent longer to help than either people going into the theater or people who had just watched a nonviolent movie.

Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? A new psychology study suggests that buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them. The findings will be presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting on Feb. 7. The study demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality -- a feeling of being alive.

"These findings support an extension of basic need theory, where purchases that increase psychological need satisfaction will produce the greatest well-being," said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. Participants in the study were asked to write reflections and answer questions about their recent purchases. Participants indicated that experiential purchases represented money better spent and greater happiness for both themselves and others. The results also indicate that experiences produce more happiness regardless of the amount spent or the income of the consumer.

Experiences also lead to longer-term satisfaction. "Purchased experiences provide memory capital," Howell said. "We don't tend to get bored of happy memories like we do with a material object. People still believe that more money will make them happy, even though 35 years of research has suggested the opposite," Howell said. "Maybe this belief has held because money is making some people happy some of the time, at least when they spend it on life experiences."

"The mediators of experiential purchases: Determining the impact of psychological need satisfaction" was conducted by Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University and SF State graduate Graham Hill.

Arrangement of receptors appears uniformly random across individuals and species

Despite the striking aromatic differences between coffee, peppermint, and pine, a new mapping of the nose's neural circuitry suggests a haphazard patchwork where the receptors for such disparate scents are as likely as not to be neighbors. Inexplicably, this seemingly random arrangement is faithfully preserved across individuals and even species, with cells that process the same scent located in precisely the same location on the olfactory bulb, the brain's first processing station for odors. The crazy-quilt map of odor-processing neurons on the front lines of the olfactory system is described by Harvard University neuroscientists in the February issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

"It had been thought that the layout of the olfactory bulb was variable from individual to individual, but followed a chemotopic order where cells handling similar odor responses are near each other," says Markus Meister, the Jeff C. Tarr Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Here we show that the layout is actually very precise -- the same from animal to animal -- but doesn't appear to follow any chemotopic order whatsoever."

Working with mice and rats, Meister and colleague Venkatesh N. Murthy recorded neural responses to several hundred distinct odors, including anise, beer, cloves, coffee, ginger, lemon, orange, peppermint, pine, rose, and even fox pheromones. The neuroscientists found that across individuals and even across the two species, bundles of neurons from a given type of odor receptor -- known as glomeruli -- were found in almost exactly the same spot on the olfactory bulb, a sensory structure measuring some four to five millimeters across and located at the very front of the brain.

"Glomeruli from different receptors line the surface of the olfactory bulb like an array of close-packed marbles," says Murthy, professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard. "Across individuals the location of a given glomerulus varies by only one array position. Compared to the size of the map, this represents a remarkable developmental precision of one part in 1,000." Meister and Murthy then analyzed whether nearby glomeruli detect similar odors, such as those with similar chemical structures. Neuroscientists have previously hypothesized axes of similarities along which odors might be classified. "One might expect that nearby glomeruli should have similar odor sensitivities," Meister says, "but we were surprised to find this was not the case. The odor response spectra of two neighboring glomeruli were as dissimilar as those of distant glomeruli."

This seemingly haphazard layout of sensory properties stands in marked contrast to other brain maps, such as those governing vision, touch, and hearing. In these three cases, our brains represent the outside world using ordered maps -- such as when neighboring points in visual space activate neighboring points on the retina. "That sort of arrangement makes sense, since most brain computation is local, relying on short connections between nearby cells," Murthy says. "This is necessary because the connections between neurons occupy most of the volume available to the brain, and long-distance connections require more of this volume."

Meister and Murthy suspect that the deliberate randomness in rodents' odor maps is likely also found in humans, which have only one-third as many receptors but are capable, in some extreme cases, of discerning tens of thousands of distinct smells.

Meister and Murthy's co-authors on the Nature Neuroscience paper are Edward R. Soucy, Dinu F. Albeanu, and Antoniu L. Fantana, all of Harvard's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Center for Brain Science. Their work was funded by Harvard University.

Eyewitness testimony is a crucial part of many criminal trials even though research increasingly suggests that it may not be as accurate as we (and many lawyers) would like it to be. For example, if you witness a man in a blue sweater stealing something, then overhear people talking about a gray shirt, how likely are you to remember the real color of the thief's sweater? Studies have shown that when people are told false information about an event, they become less likely to remember what actually happened - it is easy to mix up the real facts with fake ones. However, there is evidence that when people are forced to recall what they witnessed (shortly after the event), they are more likely to remember details of what really happened.

Psychologists Jason Chan of Iowa State University, Ayanna Thomas from Tufts University and John Bulevich from Rhode Island College wanted to see how providing false information following a recall test would affect volunteers' memories of an event that they witnessed. A group of volunteers watched the first episode of "24" and then either took an immediate recall test about the show or played a game. Next, all of the subjects were told false information about the episode they had seen and then took a final memory test about the show.

The results, reported in the January issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, were surprising. The researchers found that the volunteers who took the test immediately after watching the show were almost twice as likely to recall false information compared to the volunteers who played the game following the episode.

The results of a follow-up experiment suggest that the first recall test may have improved subjects' ability to learn the false information - that is, the first test enhanced learning of new and erroneous information. These findings show that recently recalled information is prone to distortion. The authors conclude that "this study shows that even psychologists may have underestimated the malleability of eyewitness testimony."

Trials showing a positive treatment effect, or those with important or striking findings, were much more likely to be published in scientific journals than those with negative findings, a new review from The Cochrane Library has found.

"This publication bias has important implications for healthcare. Unless both positive and negative findings from clinical trials are made available, it is impossible to make a fair assessment of a drug's safety and efficacy," says lead researcher, Sally Hopewell of the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford, UK.

The international team of researchers carried out a systematic review of all the existing research in this area. In addition to showing that negative results were published less often, they found that if these results were eventually published, they would take between one and four more years to appear in journals than studies showing positive results.

Results from one of the five studies in the review indicated that investigators and not editors might be to blame. The reasons most commonly given for not publishing were that investigators thought their findings were not interesting enough or did not have time. "The registration of all clinical trial protocols before they start should make it easier to identify where we are missing results," says Kay Dickersin from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, another of the researchers on this project.

One of the other researchers, Kirsty Loudon, based in Scotland, adds, "Registration of trials and their results would help people conducting systematic reviews to look at both published and unpublished evidence, to reach reliable conclusions."

The researchers say their study also highlights the need for a worldwide commitment to the disclosure of the findings of clinical trials. Mike Clarke of Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, says, "The World Health Organisation recently found widespread support for the development of such a process."

Andy Oxman from the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services concludes, "Healthcare decisions need to be based on all the evidence, not just the most exciting results."

New research helps explain link between social rejection and aggressive behavior

People who feel socially rejected are more likely to see others' actions as hostile and are more likely to behave in hurtful ways toward people they have never even met, according to a new study. The findings may help explain why social exclusion is often linked to aggression – which sometimes boils over dramatically, as in the case of school shootings, for example.

"Prior case studies show the majority of school shooters have experienced chronic peer rejection," said the study's lead author, C. Nathan DeWall, Ph.D., from the University of Kentucky. "And while not everyone who feels rejected reacts violently, we found they tend to act out aggressively in other ways. We wanted to help explain psychologically why this happens." A full report of the study appears in the January issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

DeWall conducted four separate experiments with 190 participants, all college students.

In one experiment, 30 participants completed a personality test and were given bogus feedback about the results. A third of the participants, the excluded group, were told their personalities would mean they would probably end up alone later in life. The rest of the participants, the control group, were either told they would have many lasting and meaningful relationships or were given no feedback at all.

All participants were then instructed to read a personal essay supposedly written by another participant, whom they did not know. The essay was about an event in which the author's actions could be perceived as either assertive or hostile and the participants rated their impression of the author's actions. They were also told that the author was up for a research assistant position and were asked whether they thought the author would be a good candidate, based on what they had read.

Participants who were told they were going to have a lonely life perceived the author's actions as significantly more hostile and gave a much more negative evaluation than those in the control groups. The authors also note that the participants' moods did not seem to differ among the different groups, which led them to conclude that the participants' emotional response to their personality results did not play a role in how they performed in the experiments.

In another experiment, 32 students underwent the same bogus personality evaluation and rated the same essay from the previous experiment. Again, some were told they would lead a lonely life while others were assigned to the control groups. This time, participants were led to believe they were playing a reaction-time computer game with another person in the lab whom they could not see and had never met. During the game, the loser of each trial was forced to listen to a blast of white noise through headphones. The participants could set the noise's intensity level and duration.

Those who were told they were going to have a lonely life blasted a higher level of the painful noise than those in the control groups. "Across all experiments, the participants who experienced some form of social rejection acted in similar ways," said DeWall. "This suggests these people feel betrayed by others. In turn, they see otherwise neutral actions as hostile and behave badly towards others."

Prior research has examined whether emotions play a role in this type of aggression, but this study's researchers say their findings do not support this idea. "Excluded people see the world through blood-colored glasses and it is our hope that this research can lead to a better understanding of why rejection causes aggression and what we can do to prevent such unwanted and harmful behavior," said DeWall.

The Persistence of Racism

Recent research concludes that while people predict they will react negatively to racial slurs, their behavior proves otherwise.

60-Second Psych from Scientific American podcasts
13 January 2009

No such gender disparity exists for younger women

Younger women have equivalent access to kidney transplants compared with their male counterparts, but older women receive transplants much less frequently than older men, according to a study appearing in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). The results suggest that steps are needed to ensure that women are provided with equal opportunities to receive kidney transplants as they age.

Researchers have reported that women have less access to kidney transplants than men, but this recent study indicates that this disparity does not affect all women. Dorry Segev, MD, of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, MD, and his colleagues discovered this by studying the United States Renal Data System, which collects, analyzes, and distributes information about end-stage kidney disease in this country. Their analysis included 563,197 patients with end-stage kidney disease diagnosed between 2000 and 2005.

The investigators found that while young women in this group had equivalent access to transplantation when compared with their male counterparts, access for older women decreased significantly. Specifically, women aged 18 to 45 years had access to transplantation that was equivalent to men, women aged 46 to 55 years had 3% less access, women aged 56 to 65 years had 15% less access, women aged 66 to 75 had 29% less access, and women over 75 years had 59% less access.

These disparities existed for both access to the deceased donor waiting list as well as access to live donations. However, the gender disparities were limited to referral to the waiting list—once a woman was on the transplant list, her chances of receiving a transplant were equivalent to a man's. This is very different from other disparities in transplantation such as race disparities, in which African Americans are less likely to be referred to the waiting list and are also less likely to receive a transplant once on the list.

Dr. Segev and his team also found that for every age group analyzed in this study, women had a similar or slightly higher survival benefit from transplantation compared with men, indicating that there is no reason to deny women transplants as they age.

These findings could help researchers develop ways to reduce disparities in kidney allocation. "Knowing that the gender disparity is limited to older women indicates that efforts should be made to identify specific differences between older men and older women—rather than general differences between all men and women—in an effort to minimize the gender disparity in access to transplantation," said Dr. Segev.

The Art of Diagnosis (~ 18 min. podcast)

Does very severe PMS constitute a mental disorder? That's one of many questions facing psychiatrists as they work to revise the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM, the definitive compendium of our psychic maladies. Because the DSM influences not just doctors and patients but medical research, insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, advertising and the culture at large, controversy surrounding its new edition abounds. Brooke looks at this powerful book

On the Media: This Week from NPR
December 26, 2008

Sexual abuse in childhood increases the risk of suicide in men by up to ten times, say researchers from the University of Bath. A recent study of Australian men has found that those who were sexually abused as children are more likely than women to contemplate taking their own lives. Whilst gender and mental health problems are the most important risk factors for contemplating suicide, it is increasingly acknowledged that traumatic experiences such as childhood sexual abuse may be a significant risk factor.

Dr Patrick O'Leary and Professor Nick Gould from the University's Department of Social & Policy Sciences conducted a series of surveys and face-to-face interviews with men in a study funded by the University of South Australia. The findings have been published online in the peer-reviewed British Journal of Social Work.

They found that men who were sexually abused as children were up to ten times more likely to have suicidal tendencies; many of these men had not been clinically diagnosed as depressed. Dr O'Leary said: "Childhood sexual abuse is an under-recognised problem in men - most of the studies exploring the link with suicide have been in women. "Men are particularly vulnerable because they don't like to talk to others about their problems. It's difficult for anyone to come to terms with traumatic experiences such as childhood sexual abuse, but for men the stigma is worse because they don't tend to confide in their friends as much.

"Many suffer feelings of failure and isolation and think that it is a sign of weakness to discuss their past abuse with others. Men also tend to visit their doctors less frequently, so those who are at risk of suicide often slip under the radar of the healthcare system. Men are particularly vulnerable to suicide and are three and a half times more likely than women to end their own lives, with more than 2,000 men dying as a result of suicide in the UK each year. However it is estimated that for every suicide, there are between 20 and 25 failed attempts. We carried out the study in Australia, which shares a similar 'stiff upper lip' culture that we see in the UK. We're planning to do our next study in the UK to see if there are any differences."

Dr O'Leary suggested that lives could be potentially saved if abuse victims are identified earlier. He explained: "The abuse that these men have suffered as children often sees them attempting to cope by suppressing the experience through substance abuse, alcohol abuse and obsessive behaviour, with many ending up in the criminal justice system. "Greater awareness in the healthcare and criminal justice systems will help identify those who are at risk and give them treatment before it is too late."