bright 4.bri.000203 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Progressively larger brains evolved in primates of all stripes, not just humans. We can thank a common capacity for solving a broad range of problems, from coordinating social alliances to inventing tools, according to a new study.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com

This conclusion challenges a popular theory that big, smart brains arose primarily because they afforded advantages when it came to negotiating complex social situations during human evolution.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com

"The ability to learn from others, invent new behaviors, and use tools may have [also] played pivotal roles in primate-brain evolution," say Simon M. Reader of McGill University in Montreal and Kevin N. Laland of the University of Cambridge in England. In an upcoming report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two zoologists chronicle links between an array of intelligent behaviors and enhanced brain size in primates.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com

Reader and Laland examined approximately 1,000 scientific studies of behavior in 116 of the world's 203 known primate species. They identified 553 instances of animals discovering new solutions to survival-related problems, 445 observations of individuals learning skills and acquiring information from others, and 607 episodes of tool use.

The researchers then consulted previously obtained data on brain size relative to body size in different primates. In particular, they focused on the volume of the structures that make up what scientists call the executive brain, a frontal region thought to be crucial for complex thinking.

Species that have the proportionately largest executive brains are the ones that most often innovate, learn from others, and use tools, Reader and Laland contend. These three facets of intelligence vary together as primate brains enlarge, they say. There's no evidence in any species of an evolutionary trade-off between these traits, such as an increase in innovation accompanying a decline in social learning.

A related report by neuroscientist Barbara L. Finlay of Cornell University and her colleagues concluded that different brain regions in mammals enlarged all together during mammalian evolution, not in piecemeal fashion related to specific functions. Whole-brain evolution was driven by changes in the timing of early brain development in individuals, says Finlay. In all species, late-generated structures�including the executive brain�have grown the largest, Finlay's team asserted in the April 2001 Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Reader and Laland provide "important new evidence" that wide-ranging thinking skills shared by many primate species encouraged the evolution of large brains, comment psychologist Robert M. Seyfarth and biologist Dorothy L. Cheney, both of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in a comment published with the new report.

They suggest that intellectual accomplishments unique to people, such as language use, may have playe

panic 55.2.pan.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

“I was driving home after work,” David reported. “Things had been very stressful there lately. I was tense but looking forward to getting home and relaxing. And then, all of a sudden—boom! My heart started racing, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was sweating and shaking. My thoughts were racing, and I was afraid that I was going crazy or having a heart attack. I pulled over and called my wife to take me to the emergency room.”

David’s fears turned out to be unjustified. An emergency room doctor told David, a composite of several therapy patients seen by one of us (Arkowitz), that he was suffering from a panic attack.

The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) defines a panic attack as an abrupt and discrete experience of intense fear or acute discomfort, accompanied by symptoms such as heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, and worries about going crazy, losing control or dying. Most attacks occur without obvious provocation, making them even more terrifying. Some 8 to 10 percent of the population experiences an occasional attack, but only 5 percent develops panic disorder. Contrary to common misconception, these episodes aren’t merely rushes of anxiety that most of us experience from time to time. Instead patients who have had a panic attack typically describe it as the most frightening event they have ever undergone.

Research has provided important leads to explain what causes a person’s first panic attack—clues that can help ward off an attack in the first place. When stress builds up to a critical level, a very small additional amount of stress can trigger panic. As a result, the person may experience the event as coming out of the blue.

Some people may have a genetic predisposition toward panic, as psychologist Regina A. Shih, then at Johns Hopkins University, and her colleagues described in a review article. The disorder runs in families, and if one identical twin has panic disorder, the chance that the other one also has it is two to three times higher than for fraternal twins, who are genetically less similar. Although these findings do not rule out environmental factors, they do strongly suggest a genetic component. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Panic disorder imposes serious restrictions on patients’ quality of life. They may be plagued by a persistent concern about the possibility of more attacks and may avoid situations associated with them. To receive a diagnosis of panic disorder, patients must also worry that they might have another attack where it would be embarrassing (say, in a public setting such as a classroom), difficult to escape (such as when one is stuck in traffic), or difficult to find help (for example, in an area with no medical facilities nearby). Panic disorder accompanied by extensive avoidance of these situations results in a diagnosis of panic disorder with agoraphobia; in extreme cases, sufferers may even become housebound.

From Normal Anxiety to Crippling Fear
What are the roots of such incapacitating attacks? Psychologist David H. Barlow of Boston University, who has conducted pioneering research on understanding and treating panic disorder and related disorders, and others believe that panic attacks result when our normal “fight or flight” response to imminent threats—including increased heart rate and rapid breathing—is triggered by “false alarms,” situations in which real danger is absent. (In contrast, the same response in the face of a real danger is a “true alarm.”) Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

When we experience true or false alarms, we tend to associate the biological and psychological reactions they elicit with cues that were present at the time. These associations become “learned alarms” that can evoke further panic attacks.

Both external situations and internal bodily cues of arousal (such as increased breathing rate) can elicit a learned alarm. For example, some people experience panic attacks when they exercise because the physiological arousal leads to bodily sensations similar to those of a panic attack.

Why do some people experience only isolated attacks, whereas others develop full-blown panic disorder? Bar­low has synthesized his research and that of others to develop an integrated theory of anxiety disorders, which states that certain predispositions are necessary to develop panic disorder:

• A generalized biological vulnerability toward anxiety, leading us to overreact to the events of daily life.
• A generalized psychological vulnerability to develop anxiety caused by early childhood learning (such as overprotection from our parents) that the world is a dangerous place and that stress is overwhelming and cannot be controlled.
• A specific psychological vulnerability in which we learn in childhood that some situations or objects are dangerous even if they are not.

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Panic disorder develops when a person with these vulnerabilities experiences prolonged stress and a panic attack. The first attack activates the psychological vulnerabilities, creating a hypersensitivity to external and internal cues associated with the attack. As a result, even medication containing a mild stimulant can provoke an ­attack.

Still, there is good news. Two findings in particular can provide reassurance for those with panic disorder. The first is that all panic attacks are triggered by known events, even though the sufferer may be unaware of them. This knowledge can reduce the anxiety associated with the sense of unpredictability. Second, it can be reassuring to learn that a panic attack is a misfiring of the fight-or-flight response in the absence of danger. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Basic research not only has helped us understand panic disorder but also has led to effective treatments. In particular, Barlow and his associates developed panic-control treatment, described in their 2006 book Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic. It involves education about panic disorder and somewhat gradual exposure to the internal and external cues that trigger panic attacks, along with changing the catastrophic interpretations of bodily cues so that they no longer trigger the attacks. This treatment has in most instances surpassed drug therapies for the disorder over the long term. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

color

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

For an enlightening perspective on how primates acquire color vision, consider baby monkeys. These infants' ability to recognize basic colors in different environmental settings depends on their prior exposure to a full spectrum of colors in natural light, a new study suggests.http://louis-j-sheehan.net

Although the colors in an image shift as available light intensifies or diminishes, people, as well as monkeys, usually recognize a particular hue throughout that change. For instance, an observer perceives a dog's red collar as the same color on a dark, cloudy day as on a sunny day. Scientists refer to this crucial visual adjustment as color constancy.

Prior investigations have failed to clarify whether color constancy is an innate capability of the retina's cone cells or it's acquired only with help from the brain's visual system.

Yoichi Sugita of the Neuroscience Research Institute in Tsukuba, Japan, explored color constancy in four macaque monkeys that had been raised from age 1 month to 1 year in a room illuminated by light with a highly restricted range of wavelengths, which ensured that the animals couldn't discern a normal array of colors.

After age 1, the monkeys couldn't usually identify colors they had just seen on a computer screen when the on-screen illumination of those colors changed, even after intensive training designed to overcome this problem, Sugita reports in the July 27 Current Biology. In contrast, four macaque monkeys that had been raised in a room illuminated by sunlight and fluorescent lamps recognized colors in a variety of lighting conditions.

Over 3 days of training, all the year-old animals learned to identify matching pairs of black, white, or gray rectangles. After another 3 days of training, the monkeys identified pairs of equally illuminated rectangles with common colors—blue, green, yellow, or red.

After 10 days of training and 3 weeks of further testing, however, those monkeys raised under restricted-illumination conditions still had great difficulty recognizing different shades of the same color as well as identifying the same color illuminated to varying degrees. These problems remained 9 months after the monkeys had been moved to a room illuminated by sunlight and fluorescent lamps.http://louis-j-sheehan.net

"These results indicate that early visual experience is indispensable for normal color perception," Sugita says.

His report is the first clear demonstration that animals can perceive colors, which indicates working cone cells in the retina, but that they lack the capacity for color constancy, comments Stanford University vision researcher Brian A. Wandell. This implies that the brain, not the retina, assumes substantial responsibility for performing color judgments under different lighting conditions, in his view.

Brain-imaging studies are needed to pinpoint disrupted parts of the brain's visual system in monkeys without color constancy, Wandell says.

Pakefield

लुईस जे। शीहन Scientists excavating ancient river sediment along England's southeastern coast have unearthed stone tools from roughly 700,000 years ago, the earliest evidence of human ancestors in northern Europe।

A team led by Simon A. Parfitt of University College London found 32 pieces of worked flint, including a cutting implement with a sharpened edge and a fist-size rock from which smaller, tool-size pieces had been hammered. These unexpected discoveries occurred near the village of Pakefield, Suffolk, and near the base of an eroding cliff that has been combed by fossil hunters for the past 200 years.

Fossils of extinct animals found near the artifacts, as well as measurements of Earth's magnetic field within the sediment, guided the scientists' age estimate. Remnants of cold-averse animals, insects, and plants in the tool-bearing deposit further indicate that a warm, Mediterranean climate prevailed there 700,000 years ago, the researchers report in the Dec. 15, 2005 Nature. At that time, a land bridge connected England to northwestern Europe.

The Pakefield finds show that human ancestors reached northern and southern parts of Europe at around the same time, remarks John McNabb of the University of Southampton in England. Other researchers previously uncovered remains of Homo species that inhabited Mediterranean areas, such as Spain and Italy, by at least 800,000 years ago। Until now, the earliest evidence of human ancestors in England dated to about 500,000 years ago. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Faced with a climate that fluctuated dramatically every few thousand years, our evolutionary forerunners probably spread northward during warm times and retreated south during cold phases, says University College's Anthony J। Stuart, a coauthor of the new study.

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bees Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Bees play an important role in pollinating flowering plants, and are the major type of pollinator in ecosystems that contain flowering plants. Bees either focus on gathering nectar or on gathering pollen depending on demand, especially in social species. Bees gathering nectar may accomplish pollination, but bees that are deliberately gathering pollen are more efficient pollinators.http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com




It is estimated that one third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination, most of which is accomplished by bees, especially the domesticated Western honey bee. Contract pollination has overtaken the role of honey production for beekeepers in many countries. Monoculture and pollinator decline (of many bee species) have increasingly caused honey bee keepers to become migratory so that bees can be concentrated in seasonally-varying high-demand areas of pollination. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Recently, many such migratory beekeepers have experienced substantial losses, prompting the announcement of investigation into the phenomenon, dubbed "Colony Collapse Disorder," amidst great concern over the nature and extent of the losses. Many other species of bees such as mason bees are increasingly cultured and used to meet the agricultural pollination need. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.comMost native pollinators are solitary bees, which often survive in refuge in wild areas away from agricultural spraying, but may still be poisoned in massive spray programs for mosquitoes, gypsy moths, or other insect pests.