distractable chimps, aggressive antelopes

Brief news flash from the world of animal research:

Recently, researchers reported that chimpanzees are sometimes more patient in waiting for a reward than humans are. This is surprising, given that people have long thought that our "amazing" abilities to delay gratification were due to our evolution-granted bigger foreheads. But now*, it turns out that chimps employ some of the same strategies used by kids to get more cookies by waiting - they sit on their hands, or they play with toys. If you haven't seen the videos produced by Mischel's work on delay of gratification in kids (an ability that later predicts SAT scores), you're really missing out. BUT we're all missing out on the chimp story because the researchers didn't post any videos! (I think half the reason I follow primatology research is to watch chimps doing smart things)

Usually, in those old nature documentaries, you see the males fighting for weeks for the right to inseminate the choicest females. But no one has really seen a reversal of this dynamic. Turns out, this mate competition reversal is predicted to happen when the species is promisuous, there are a lot of females, and the guy tends to run out of sperm. Here the guys want to mate with all the females so they can spread their limited seed. But the ladies want the good guys all to themselves. So, what to they do? The African topi antelope women get persistent and aggressive. Getting too angry is a turnoff, though, as the guys counterattack or run away. The researchers made an understated note that these reversed "conflicts probably often go unnoticed because males, in contrast to females, can avoid mating without conspicuous resistance."

* Chimpanzees use self-distraction to cope with impulsivity. T.A. Evans and M.J. Beran, Biology Letters 3, 2007.
+ Reversed Sexual Conflict in a Promiscuous Antelope. J Bro-Jørgense. Current Biology, December 18, 2007.

a dialogue on determinism?

I'd like to find intelligent discussions of determinism, and discuss the issue myself. But I never find anything, and I always end up keeping to myself. Sure there are (psychological) reasons why important things are ignored. This is one hell of an elephant, though. An absurd one, but are you calling all of this normal?

- now I do recall how law is one of the few places that plays with this. They like to take teeny bites, as if just a wee bit won't hurt. As far as your legal theories go, guys, with that bite you've already lost the whole house.

something about pollock

A few months ago, I found myself staring at a Jackson Pollock painting at the Met. I've done it before and didn't get anything out of it. (Well, I was amused once when a National Gallery security guard pointed out the few bugs and cigarette butts entombed in one.) But that day I just stared. Stared like I love to do with bright modernist paintings, waiting for the afterimage to show me the most vivid opposing colors this side of drugged Van Gough viewing. Of course, Pollock doesn't have much for color.

Then layers of the painting started to shift and move. You can almost direct the movement if you keep your gaze focused. This happens naturally, I think, or anyway, I remember it happening to me as a kid staring at a big plywood board. Perhaps when the visual cortex gets a fixed input of a pattern for a long enough time, the brain invents movement?

Is this something that people see in his paintings? That they are alive, and alive like others cannot be because of the pattern? If not, maybe they should, and otherwise I'm still searching for what they're worth.

The press needs a science education

Dear Sir,

The LA Times recently published an Op-ed by Mr. Amen on brain disorders and behavior, arguing that current candidates for the presidency exhibit obviously dysfunctional brains and that they should have their heads examined.

What were you thinking? As a working cognitive neuroscientist, I don't have time to
rebut everything said in the article and Amen himself, so I'm just writing to help
editorial boards learn.

But see this Slate article for a great start.

Sure, it is an opinion page. But publishing opinions by quacks on scientific areas in
which the public is extraordinarily interested is an terrible disservice to your readers.
People love to learn about the brain, but do not understand that this man is not a
scientist! You've now joined the notorious company of the New York Times in publishing pseudoscience brain Op-eds in the past weeks (and I'm sure that both of these helped the writer's company coffers). Thank you, our nation's papers of record, for helping to educate the public about what real neuroscientists do. Next time, when considering one of these pieces, do researchers and the public a favor and just say no.

p.s. - please read the New York Times letter to the editor, signed by 17 cognitive neuroscientists (a number of which I have been lucky to work with), protesting last month's atrocious political brain scan "experiment" Op-ed.

People want to learn about the brain, so please, I beg you, stop hurting america.