Facial expressions of emotion are innate, not learned, says new study

piggy submitted, created time 1 week 2 days (www.eurekalert.org)

Facial expressions of emotion are hardwired into our genes, according to a study published today in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The research suggests that facial expressions of emotion are innate rather than a product of cultural learning. The study is the first of its kind to demonstrate that sighted and blind individuals use the same facial expressions, producing the same facial muscle movements in response to specific emotional stimuli

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Pavlov's Neurons: Brain Cells That Are a Key to Learning Discovered

piggy submitted, created time 4 weeks 1 day (www.sciencedaily.com)

More than a century after Ivan Pavlov's dog was conditioned to salivate when it heard the sound of a tone prior to receiving food, scientists have found neurons that are critical to how people and animals learn from experience.

Using a new imaging technique called Arc catFISH, researchers from the University of Washington have visualized individual neurons in the amygdalas of rat brains that are activated when the animals are given an associative learning task

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Brain reorganizes to make room for math

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 month 2 weeks (www.sciencenews.org)

It takes years for children to master the ins and outs of arithmetic. New research indicates that this learning process triggers a large-scale reorganization of brain processes involved in understanding written symbols for various quantities.

According to this article, when adults work on math problems, they show activity in a part of the brain known to be associated with linking written symbols to the things they represent, like numerical values, words, and musical notes

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Bacteria can foresee the danger and respond ahead of time

Bacteria can learn to anticipate changes in their environments

Study proves that intelligence can be a detriment to survival in some species

Darkfrog submitted, created time 8 months 1 day (www.nytimes.com)

Okay, it's been fairly obvious for some time that humans' large and shapely brains involve some kind of evolutionary tradeoff. What is it, a third or a fourth of our blood flow that goes directly to the brain? I don't know. Well, this study shows that intelligence does not always increase an organism's odds for survival. Fruit flies bred to learn faster and surer were consistently larva-slapped by their troglodytic brethren.

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Gender Differences In Language Appear Biological

Eric wu submitted, created time 10 months 21 hours (www.sciencedaily.com)

Although researchers have long agreed that girls have superior language abilities to boys, until now no one has clearly provided a biological basis that may account for their differences.

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How We Learn from Our Mistakes

Eric wu submitted, created time 1 year 1 month (www.time.com)

Everyone can learn from their mistakes — but some people have genes that may make it harder. That's the message from German researchers, writing in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science, who have shown how a common gene variant affects some people's ability to respond to, and learn from, the negative repercussions of their actions.

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The gene that makes us once bitten, twice shy

jane2007 submitted, created time 1 year 1 month (www.nature.com)

Most people tend to learn from their mistakes and avoid making the same blunder twice. Now research reveals a genetic mutation that helps to determine the extent to which certain people are doomed to repeat history.

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Bond to a "Mother" from a Different Species

The Formation of Abnormal Associations in Schizophrenia: Neural and Behavioral Evidence

penguin submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.nature.com)

The main finding in this article is that patients with schizophrenia, when exposed to neutral stimuli in a threatening situation, show an abnormal pattern of learning. The aberrant activations and response are consistent with the idea that patients aberrantly assign motivational salience to neutral stimuli, and this process may be one of the aberrations that predisposes them to psychosis.

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