Friday, March 31, 2006
In a new study forthcoming in the May 2006 issue of The American Naturalist, Mark A. Changizi and his coauthors, Qiang Zhang, Hao Ye, and Shinsuke Shimojo, from the California Institute of Technology explore the hypothesis that human visual signs have been cross-culturally selected to reflect common contours in natural scenes that humans have evolved to be good at seeing.
Read the full article at EurekAlert!
Thursday, March 30, 2006
New research reveals that songbirds add style to their songs using the same mechanism as humans. In humans, an “ah” sound originating from the vocal cords can be turned into an “ooh” by moving the lips, tongue, and jaw. Birds mostly communicate using a variety of up and down sweeping tones and crescendos or decrescendos. The most efficient way to produce these sounds, said study leader Tobias Riede, is to change the shape of the vocal tract, which includes the mouth cavity, pharynx cavity, trachea (or windpipe), and esophagus.
Read the full article at LiveScience.com
Monday, March 27, 2006
In a study published in the open access journal PLoS Biology, Philippe Peigneux and colleagues at the University of Liege demonstrate for the first time that the brain doesn’t wait until night to structure information. Day and night, the brain doesn’t stop (re)working what we learn.
Read the full article at EurekAlert
A feature article by Carel van Schaik on the question why some animals are more intelligent than others.
Read the full article at Scientific American
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Infants are listening and learning their first words as young as 10 months, but they are only learning the words for objects that are of interest to them, not for objects of interest to the speaker, according to researchers at Temple University, University of Delaware and University of Evansville.
Read the full article at EurekAlert
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
It was once thought that only humans gestured to direct another person’s attention, but such “referential” gesturing was recently observed in wild chimpanzees.
Read the full article at EurekAlert
A Scotsman with a heavy brogue may speak the same language as a Texas cowboy, but each has a distinct accent; now researchers have discovered that female whipbirds in Australia sing the same basic songs, but with regional accents.
Read the full article at Animal Planet
The songs of the humpback whale are among the most complex in the animal kingdom. Researchers have now mathematically confirmed that whales have their own syntax that uses sound units to build phrases that can be combined to form songs that last for hours. Until now, only humans have demonstrated the ability to use such a hierarchical structure of communication.
Read the full article at Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Friday, March 17, 2006
In a groundbreaking new study, researchers from the University of Michigan and Harvard University use cutting-edge brain-scanning technology to explore how different regions of the brain are activated when we think about certain qualities of brands and products. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, is the first to use fMRI to assess consumer perceptions and has important implications for the use of metaphorical human-like traits in branding.
Read the full article at EurekAlert
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
It has long been known that effective language learning is correlated with the efficient storing of linguistic material in short-term memory. Those who can repeat long series of numbers or multisyllabic nonsense words without making errors, are typically good at learning languages. Recent studies indicate that this is not a causal relationship. It would seem that a good short-term memory is not a prerequisite for long-term learning, rather, it is the case that both short-term and long-term memory tasks tap the same ability of the nervous system to create representations of sufficient quality to support the maintenance of several of them at once.
Read the full article at EurekAlert
Friday, March 10, 2006
The vast differences between humans and chimpanzees are due more to changes in gene regulation than differences in individual genes themselves, researchers from Yale, the University of Chicago, and the Hall Institute in Parkville, Victoria, Australia argue in the March 9 issue of the journal Nature.
Read the full article at Yale University
Monday, March 6, 2006
Gorana Pobric of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, and Dr. Antonia Hamilton of Dartmouth College have used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, which disrupts brain function in healthy volunteers for less than a second, to test the role of frontal cortex in tasks other than language. The findings are reported in the March 7th issue of Current Biology.
Read the full article at EurekAlert
Thursday, March 2, 2006
Our closest relative the chimpanzee is capable of sophisticated cooperative behaviour and even rudimentary altruism, two new studies reveal. The discovery suggests that some of the underpinnings of human sociality may have been present millions of years ago.
Read the full article at New Scientist
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
A study from the April issue of Current Anthropology explores the evolution of handedness, one of few firm behavioral boundaries separating humans from other animals. As researchers find new cultural behaviors among chimpanzees and other primates, language is the only other characteristic accepted to be unique to humans, and both language and handedness appear to relate to the separation of functions between the two halves of the human brain, also known as lateralization.
Read the full article at EurekAlert
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