Animal intelligence: sheep are raising the baa

Monkeys are considered an intelligent species. However according, sheep can actually pass psychological tests that monkeys would fail...

Dr Laura Avanzo and Dr Jennifer Morton  from University of Cambrdige Scientists, were studying neurodegeneration, focusing on Huntington’s disease, and as part of their research, they were testing a new breed of sheep that was genetically modified (by carrying a defective gene that causes Huntington’s disease in humans) and were comparing data with normal sheeps as a control.

The sheep learned to recognize different color patterns -  food signals, and easily changed theirs
behavior according to the pattern that they looked at.
This type of behavior depends  on prefrontal cortex, and only humans and other primates were supposed to be able to solve these kinds of tasks.

 Dr Avanzo and Dr Morton believed that sheep, like humans, behave differently when in a flock compared to while they are alone, and this problem was underlying theirs research.

Dr Morton:...Sheep live in a flock, and in a flock they’re rather silly. When you work with them as individuals, they behave very differently...”

Tracing the Spark of Creative Problem-Solving

...In a series of recent studies, Dr. Beeman at Northwestern and John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University, have imaged people’s brains as they prepare to tackle a puzzle but before they’ve seen it. Those whose brains show a particular signature of preparatory activity, one that is strongly correlated with positive moods, turn out to be more likely to solve the puzzles with sudden insight than with trial and error (the clues can be solved either way)...

A Perk of Our Evolution: Pleasure in Pain of Chilies

Dr. Paul Rozin, University of Pennsylvania, tested chili eaters by gradually increasing the pain, or, as the pros call it, the pungency, of the food, right up to the point at which the subjects said they just could not go further. When asked after the test what level of heat they liked the best, they chose the highest level they could stand, “just below the level of unbearable pain.” As Delbert McClinton sings (about a different line of research), “It felt so good to hurt so bad.”

Social Health Rising

Zack Lynch, author of The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World: Social health is rising now because of the convergence of many forces including: the dramatic increase in connectedness as a result of the opening up of everyone's social graph across the social web; the development of inexpensive, accurate and mobile health diagnostics; new research proving the positive role social relationships play in health outcomes; advances in wellness behavioral economics; a growing emphasis on prevention as a result of healthcare reform; fresh insights into human motivation; the emergence of population level wellness metrics; a growing zeitgeist around health and wellness; and the development of new social web applications that support and motivate healthy behavior.

Having spent the past decade living at the center of neurotechnology innovation, funding, and public policy, I've had ample time to think and write about what neuroscience has to offer the future of humanity.

The Storage of Emotions

Visual, acoustic, and olfactory stimuli associated with a highly charged emotional situation take on the affective qualities of that situation. Where the emotional meaning of a given sensory experience is stored is a matter of debate.

Tiziana Sacco and  Benedetto Sacchetti have found that excitotoxic lesions of auditory, visual, or olfactory secondary sensory cortices impaired remote, but not recent, fear memories in rats. Amnesia was modality-specific and not due to an interference with sensory or emotional processes. In these sites, memory persistence was dependent on ongoing protein kinase M activity and was associated with an increased activity of layers II–IV, thus suggesting a synaptic strengthening of corticocortical connections. Lesions of the same areas left intact the memory of sensory stimuli not associated with any emotional charge.

Tiziana Sacco and  Benedetto Sacchetti  propose that secondary sensory cortices support memory storage and retrieval of sensory stimuli that have acquired a behavioral salience with the experience.

Behaviour: Brain-changing battles

A study in a territorial species of mouse shows how the brain changes after a success in physical conflict.  It can boost fighting ability in animals, possibly because of a post-bout release of testosterone. 

Highlights from The Neurotech Investing and Partnering Conference 2010: Translational Researchers Showcase Innovation

        While venture capitalists have been dialing back on potentially risky early stage investments, translational researchers have been marching ahead. Government funding is pushing new discoveries forward, but sometimes the best of these languish in academic labs where companies and more adventurous investors are less likely to discover them. This year the Neurotech Development Foundation (NDF), a new nonprofit founded to promote the advancement of translational neuroscience research, and several institutes at the NIH (including NINDS, NIMH, and NIA) teamed up to find and showcase the most promising work to Neurotech 2010 attendees in Boston on May 20, 2010.  
         The projects were selected by a steering committee including industry, government and academic representatives.