Religious Experiences Shrink Part of the Brain – “The study, published March 30 in PLoS One, showed greater atrophy in the hippocampus in individuals who identify with specific religious groups as well as those with no religious affiliation…. The results showed significantly greater hippocampal atrophy in individuals reporting a life-changing religious experience. In addition, they found significantly greater hippocampal atrophy among born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation, compared with Protestants not identifying as born-again.”
An Epidemic of False Claims – “Competition and conflicts of interest distort too many medical findings”
Autism May Have Had Advantages in Humans’ Hunter-Gatherer Past, Researcher Believes
Atheists and the Big 5 personality traits – “[A]theists are disagreeable and open to new things.” from the inductivist.
Scientists find BEES suffer from negative emotion
Non-independent mutations present new path to evolutionary success – “Mutations of DNA that lead to one base being replaced by another don’t have to happen as single, independent events in humans and other eukaryotes, a group of Indiana University Bloomington biologists has learned after surveying several creatures’ genomes…. [They] found that across the board, about three percent of new mutations are ‘multi-nucleotide mutations,’ or MNMs, perhaps the result of a single, error-prone DNA polymerase making two or more mistakes as it made its way down the chromosome.”
Will Neuroscience Challenge the Legal Concept of Criminal Responsibility?
Female Australopiths Left Home Once Mature, Males Didn’t – “Teeth from ancient human ancestors suggest that females joined new social groups once they reached maturity.”
Asphalt may have poisoned ancient Americans
Women have a little less sex and a couple more partners than they did 20 years ago – from the audacious.
Color Red Increases the Speed and Strength of Reactions
Researchers characterize epigenetic fingerprint of 1,628 people
Human Brain Limits Twitter Friends to 150 – “The number of people we can truly be friends with is constant, regardless of social networking services like Twitter, according to a new study of the network.” – the dunbar number again!
