Do you remember telling a lie at 2, 3, or 4? Well, feel guilty no more! Lying is actually a reliable sign of higher cognitive functioning. It was previously accepted that children were able to start lying at 3.5 years and no earlier. However, a recent study by psychologist Angela Evans found that 25% of two-year olds, 50% of three-year olds, and 80% of four-year olds were capable of lies.

How did she manage this? Evans had a group of 41 two-year-olds and 24 three-year-olds presented with a “really tempting situation.”  The child is told to guess a toy based solely on the noise it makes. The experimenter then tells the child not to peek under the box covering the next toy, leaves, and records the child’s actions on a hidden camera. When the experimenter returns, she asks the child whether they cheated and looked at the toy. To explain why these children are lying, Evans concludes that they feel guilty for defying orders from an adult and are trying to pretend that they never did it to clear their conscience.

Study finds this two-year-old may be capable of lying to you about who really took the cookies from the cookie jar.

Children were also tested for certain cognitive abilities and found that these skills are related to their ability to tell lies. This correlation supports the theory that child liars actually have higher executive functions than those that do not lie. Interestingly enough, Evans found that at the age of three, children were able to distinguish between a lie and a truth and even labeled a lie as something bad.

So if you ever find that a child has lied to you, don’t be offended, they’re just exercising their new cognitive skills!

Check out a great interview with Brock University psychologist Angela Evans here.

Sources:

Emergence of Lying in Very young Children-PsycNET

Toddlers start Lying as Early as Age 2 -CBC News Podcast & Article

The one day of the year dreaded by the many people in, out of, and between relationships has come and passed. Being a huge neuroscience nerd, I spent much of February 14th searching for articles and scholarly papers about the neuroscience of love, sex, attraction, friend zones, what have you. But nothing really blew me away. In my third year of studying neuroscience, I have a relatively extensive knowledge of the brain. I certainly have heard all about neurochemicals being released during sex, when you’re constantly thinking (to the point of obsessing) about that special someone, and even when you just look at a photograph of them. And sure, it’s cool the first five times you read about how fascinating oxytocin and serotonin are. But I’m over hearing it.

And then I thought about long-term relationships that reach the point of boredom. We all understand the ‘honeymoon phase’ of a relationship—we all have felt those butterflies in our stomachs and remember constantly thinking of our crush *ahem* Ryan Gosling *ahem*. But only those in the very committed long-term relationships understand what happens after this phase (which generally lasts for two years, believe it or not). You get comfortable together; certain boundaries that are present in the ‘honeymoon phase’ are crossed and you’re both fine with it. You accept that those butterflies got tired of flapping their wings and they’re ready to settle down at the bottom of your stomach while you settle down with your sweetheart. So how can we rekindle these relationships that have slowed down?

Here comes the good stuff guys- no more mushy gushy relationship business; we are now approaching neuroscience territory—neuroenhancement of love. Huh? Yeah, that’s right, researchers have been trying to figure out ways to salvage a failing relationship or marriage by playing with your brain chemicals.

Some of these are expected. For example, increasing pheromones or testosterone in both men and women also increases sexual desire, activity, and satisfaction. An increase in oxytocin may ‘reinforce pair bonds by giving the right drugs to subjects while they are in close contact with their partner.’ Yet there are some that will most likely produce controversy. Entactogen drugs encourage sociability, emotional connections and openness, and a decrease in anxiety. What are entactogens, you ask? An example: ecstasy (MDMA). Considering the stigma that ecstasy has attained, it seems unlikely to me that this will ever be an option for the forborne lovers. Another interesting prospect is corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). Studies have found that ‘upregulating the CRH receptor may promote partner attachment.’ But this one seemingly works by increasing fears of separation and being alone, so it has some pretty negative psychological side effects, such as depression and anxiety.

I think it’s important to assess the neuroethics of this whole shebang. Sure, committed companionship is important. But should we be playing around with our brain chemicals because we aren’t giving off or receiving the kind of emotional response we’re looking for in a relationship?

The Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage – University of Oxford
Neuroscientist Ryan Gosling Blog – Thank you, Tumblr

A recent study found that musical aptitude seems to have a relationship with reading ability. This study directly relates literacy with inherent musical aptitude that the researchers are able to measure, which is something that you’re born with and that does not magically appear by listening to classical music on repeat. While they do examine the inherent musical aptitude, the study suggests that we might be able to prescribe some sort of musical curriculum that could potentially improve literacy in children. So, yes, all those weird to-be-moms holding heavy duty headphones up to their baby bumps blasting Mozart may be on to something.

This study prodded at the likely relationship by examining 42 normal hearing children. Each child was tested on their reading ability as well as their musical aptitude (specifically whether they can distinguish different melodies and/or rhythms). During the musical aptitude tests, brain stem activity was measured as well. After collecting all this data and completing a few statistical measures, the researchers discovered a significant relationship between musical aptitude and reading abilities.

How did the researchers end up at this finding? Well, when presented with rhythmic sounds or a melody, children with poor reading skills had less brain activity compared to those with higher reading ability. In the study, it appears that both rhythm and tone have a correlation with reading. The results show that there are “common neural and cognitive mechanisms for reading and music abilities that may operate, at least in part, via corticofugal shaping of sensory function.” They were even able to conclude that musical aptitude is estimated to predict about forty percent of the difference in reading ability between children.

Impressive, no? If researchers, educators and parents take this information to heart, we may have some super species of musical and well-versed children on our hands. But in all seriousness, this study does conclude that if we can pinpoint the parts of the brain that connect music and reading skills, we could definitively show the strong relationship between musical aptitude and reading ability.

If the relationship is concrete, maybe more arts and music education would be worked into public and private schools to improve literacy in children. And what a fine world that would be.

Subcortical processing of speech regularities underlies reading and music aptitude in children – BioMed Central

Zombies are terrifying creatures. The most panic-inducing aspect of their completely factual existence among us is that they have a taste for human blood and they will do anything  to get to it. Recently, the Zombie Research Society (ZRS) has been attempting to scan (with some difficulty due to the fact that zombies aren’t huge fans of staying still in MRIs) and create a map of the zombie brain. A leading researcher in ZRS, Dr. Bradley Voytek, lectured about these terrors at Nerd Night SF. In his presentation he gives a medical term to describe the zombie condition: “consciousness deficit hypoactivity disorder (CDHD)- the loss of rational voluntary and conscious behavior replaced by delusional/impulsive aggression, stimulus-driven attention, and the inability to coordinate motor or linguistic behaviors.” So with those messy scans and some preliminary facts we know about the living dead, researchers such as Dr. Voytek have been able to come up with multiple images of what a real zombie brain must look like.

These facts are taken from real-life documentaries of zombie pandemics, such as Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, and 28 Days Later. So let’s review the characteristics of zombies the ZRS has established by examining these accounts.

1. According to Major West in 28 Days Later, zombies “are futureless” and therefore no complicated cognitive behaviors would occur. That means no emotion, no love, and therefore no frontal lobe, which is probably why zombies are willing and able to devour humans without remorse.
2. Memory deficiencies occur in zombies, signifying a loss of the hippocampus. We often see short-term and even long-term loss (explaining why they will attack family and old friends). Yet researchers hypothesize there may be some long-term memory intact by examining the story of Shaun of the Dead, primarily the final scene where we see Shaun and his newly turned zombie pal playing video games like old times.
3. Illustrated by their stiff gait, zombies clearly have motor deficits (cerebellar ataxia). This means that the cerebellum has atrophied and they have significantly less area to their cerebellum than the normal human.
4. Zombies also exhibit extreme aggression and a lack of impulse control. These two symptoms can be explained by a lesion to the orbital frontal cortex, which regulates the amygdala, which then connects to the periaqueductal gray, the hypothalamus, and the thalamus. These parts of the brain control rage, fear, agression etc. A lesion on the orbital frontal cortex will cease all regulation of the amygdala and therefore we will observe a drastic increase in aggression and impulse control.
5. And finally we see a language deficit. Very rarely are zombies able to mutter more than a moan of “BRAINNNNSSSS!!!” (which is still relatively complex for their neuroanatomy). Due to this behavior we are able to discern that zombies lack Wernicke’s area (to comprehend speech) and Broca’s area (to relay thoughts through speech).

I’m guessing that you’re thinking Alright this is all fine and dandy, but when I’m attacked by a zombie how do I escape alive? Well you’re probably going to want to run faster and climb higher than the person next to you. Considering their memory deficit, you can hide for long enough and they’ll just forget about you and move on to the next prospective dinner. And remember: trying to talk or reason with a zombie is completely useless.

Well, no one truly knows the answer to that question until they’re looking back on their life and reminiscing about the time they spent with their partner. However, a new theory suggests that certain subtleties in language style can determine compatibility between two people. This includes speaking as well as personal writing styles, from Facebook chat to an essay sample.

Researchers have postulated that the use of common words called “function words”, including ‘me’, ‘a’, ‘and’, ‘but’, as well as a number of other prepositions, pronouns, adverbs, etc. can at least estimate the compatibility of a couple. These researchers have devised an equation using the basic-level function words to determine “language style matching” (LSM). A higher LSM means more compatible writing styles, and ergo, a more compatible couple.

A study that analyzed the writing styles of online chats of various couples over the course of ten days revealed much about this theory. According to an article about this study in The Daily Telegraph, ”almost 80 percent of the couples whose writing style matched were still dating three months later, compared with approximately 54 percent of the couples who did not match as well.”

An online LSM generator has been created by this team of researchers. You can go to this site and insert various writing samples from IM chats to poetry. But this is not solely to determine compatibility in a relationship; you are able to compare writing styles of strangers, friends, and even two of your own pieces. I’ve tried it and find it to be intriguing at least. In no way would I assert that this is a completely accurate way to determine personality similarity, but it seems to me that it has some logic to it and is not as absurd as I had originally expected.

Language Style Matching Predicts Relationship Initiation and Stability- Association for Psychological Science

Scientists find true language of love – The Telegraph

Any dog lovers out there? Have you ever wanted to refute someone who claimed “dogs can’t really understand you?”  PBS program Dogs Decoded: NOVA asserts the idea that dogs are able to communicate with and understand humans better than any other animal that we know of.

When humans express an emotion, the right and left sides of their face show very different pictures. The right half is more expressive than the left when displaying all emotions, from happiness to anger to guilt. Therefore, humans have developed something called a “natural left gaze.” This means whenever we are presented with a face, we automatically look to our left to view the right side of their face to see a better display of their emotion. Recent studies with dogs have shown that they use this same mechanism when presented with a human’s face. Yet, when presented with a picture of another dog’s face, Fido treats it as if it is a picture of an object and randomly assesses the picture with no determined natural gaze.  Dogs are the only animals known to display a natural left gaze when presented with a human face, suggesting that they have evolved to understand our facial expressions.  Scientists are becoming more convinced that dogs are able to interpret our emotions better than many people think.

There are a few unique communication tools that only humans possess, such as eye gaze. Humans have almond-shaped eyes with white sclera surrounding the pupil so others are able to follow the direction of one’s gaze. We also use pointing as another communication tool that many other species are not able to utilize or comprehend. Cognitive psychologist Dr. Juliane Kaminski has been performing experiments with both chimps and dogs studying these two communication tactics.  When a chimp is presented with two cups upside down and Kaminski points at the cup containing a reinforcer (such as a food treat), the chimp is not able follow her point nor gaze to pick up the correct cup. Instead, Kaminski notes that chimps tend to make a decision before she even points, supporting the idea that they are not wired to comprehend human gestures. Yet Kaminski performs this same task with dogs and they are able to follow to where her finger is pointing and retrieve a reinforcer. Even when presented with only a gaze at the correct cup, dogs are often able to determine which one Kaminski is urging them to choose.

It’s interesting to think that dogs have evolved to advance the way they communicate with the species that has domesticated them.

Dogs Decoded: Nova – PBS special via Netflix

Based on a video from Scientific American, it appears that magicians are pseudo-neuroscientists. In the video neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde analyze the work of street illusionist Apollo Robbins. Macknik and Martinez-Conde explain that magicians rely upon something called ‘active misdirection’ for their tricks. By using verbal cues and focusing his eyes on his left hand Apollo has directed your attention there. He then proceeds to snipe your wallet out of your back pocket with some quick movements of his right hand.

He probably threw in a couple jokes about the ol’ ball-and-chain or your hideous sweater, right? Turns out it’s difficult to pay attention to all of your surroundings while you’re laughing.

According to another slightly far-fetched theory, magicians take advantage of ‘mirror neurons’ as well. Mirror neurons help us feel sympathy or, in this case, cause us to act similarly to the person we are interacting with. So when Apollo looks at his left hand your mirror neurons fire, cause you to follow his gaze, and ‘poof’ goes your wallet.

Watch the video from Scientific American here.