A Better Life in 100 Ways

While searching for some meaningful thing to read the other day, I came across this wonderful article by Dragos Roua.

This is a must read. Click here to read the article

Early life experience modifies gene vital to normal brain function

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2010) — Early life stress, such as an extreme lack of parental affection, has lasting effects on a gene important to normal brain processes and also tied to mental disorders, according to a new animal study in the Sept. 29 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

In the last decade, researchers have found evidence that experiences can alter the form and structure of DNA, an effect known as epigenetics. Because these changes affect genes, events early in life have the potential to make a lasting impact on behavior and health. Recent studies focused on cancer and obesity have already shown the power of epigenetics.

In a study led by Tie-Yuan Zhang, PhD, of McGill University, researchers investigated whether these changes might apply to the activity of genes in brain regions that control neural function and mental health. The authors explored how differences in a mother's attention affect the GAD1 gene, which controls the production of a chemical vital to brain cell communication called GABA. Research indicates that GABA helps to regulate emotion, and that people with schizophrenia may have GABA deficits.

The authors studied the maternal behavior of rats specifically bred to be either extremely caring or rarely affectionate. They found when the baby rats that were seldom touched grew up, specific regions of the DNA that controls the GAD1 gene were obstructed, likely leading to smaller amounts of GABA. On the other hand, adult rats coddled in the extreme as pups showed increased GAD1 gene production.

"A critical feature for the effect on gene GAD1 is that the immediate influence of maternal care is limited to a short period following birth, but the resulting changes are long-lasting, even into adulthood," Zhang said.

These findings suggest that the early life environment can drive molecular changes that affect brain function and might determine a child's predisposition to mental illness.

"We already knew that maternal care determined the stress responses of an offspring through a similar process, but this is the first time maternal care has been shown to link, via epigenetics, with a key enzyme that causes a major human disorder," said Jonathan Seckl, MD, PhD, of The University of Edinburgh, and an expert on the molecular process of hormones.

The research was supported by the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders and by funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the National Institute of Child Health and Development.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Society for Neuroscience, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

T.-Y. Zhang, I. C. Hellstrom, R. C. Bagot, X. Wen, J. Diorio, M. J. Meaney. Maternal Care and DNA Methylation of a Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase 1 Promoter in Rat Hippocampus. Journal of Neuroscience, 2010; 30 (39): 13130 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1039-10.2010

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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Monkeys in the mirror and the nature of science | The Loom

Charles Darwin wondered if animals were aware of themselves. Allowed to visit a rare orangutan in the London Zoo, he brought a mirror and observed the ape apparently make faces at its own reflection. It’s hard to say for sure that the orangutan really was aware that its reflection was its own. Over a century later, a scientist named George Gallup turned Darwin’s idea into a more rigorous test. He would secretly put a mark on an animal’s forehead and see if it noticed the difference the next time it passed a mirror.

Human adults pass this test, but young children don’t, suggesting that our self-recognition takes time to develop. Some chimpanzees (our closest relatives) seem to pass this mirror test, but others fail it. Orangutans also show mixed results. Beyond the primates, studies have indicated that magpies, dolphins, and elephants pass the mirror test. In a new paper in PLOS One, Luis Populin of the University of Wisconsin publish what may be the first compelling evidence that monkeys pass the mirror test too.

It’s a surprising result because people have tried to find evidence of self-recognition in monkeys before. Most scientists failed. The Harvard primatologist Marc Hauser claimed in 1995 that the cotton-top tamarin could pass the mirror test, but that paper was one of several that Harvard now claims were tainted by Hauser’s misconduct. Populin and his colleagues came across their first clues of self-recognition by accident. They had implanted electrodes in the skulls of rhesus monkeys for a different study. They keep mirrors in the monkey cages just to stimulate the animals, and they noticed that the monkeys started spending a lot of time looking at themselves in the mirrors after surgery.

To see if the monkeys were really aware that their appearance had changed, the scientists put different mirrors into the cages. Some were big and some were small. Some were made of ordinary glass, while others were painted glass. The monkeys looked much more often into the real mirrors than the blackened ones. The scientists then introduced an even bigger mirror into the cages, which allowed the monkeys to see their whole bodies. The mirror hung from the top of the cage so they could turn it around. The video above shows a monkey without an implant inspecting one of these big mirrors. It doesn’t use any of the gestures it might if it met another monkey. Instead, it seems to be inspecting its body. Every nook and cranny, in fact.

I asked two experts on self-recognition, Lori Marino and Frans de Waal, both of Emory University, what they thought of the paper.

Marino was enthusiastic:

I’ve been reading this article over and over again all morning and have looked at the videos. Here is my reaction: I think that this is potentially a very important study. The videos are absolutely convincing. At first I thought it was the saliency of the implanted head device that made a difference but the videos show that monkeys without the device also use the mirror and, even more importantly, the monkeys are using the mirror to explore OTHER parts of their bodies, i.e. genitals. That can’t be explained away in some sort of ’stimulus saliency’ explanation, as far as I can tell. There are two areas that I wish I had more information about. First, exactly what was their prior mirror exposure? Is there anything they can report about how long that was and if there were any interactions with the monkeys during that prior time that could have made a difference in terms of the outcome of this study? Second, they report that the monkeys “failed the mark test” but there is no information given about the methods used in the mark test. It would be important to know how that was conducted.

With all that said, this is – by far – the most compelling evidence for MSR in monkeys to date. I have been trying to find an alternative explanation for the results – and haven’t come up with one yet. I’ll continue to return to it to see if any come to mind. I think that these findings show that self-awareness is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon as Gallup has asserted. I don’t find this conclusion particularly surprising because it has been extremely difficult for anyone to come up with an explanation for the supposed “discontinuity” between great apes and monkeys. I think the reason for this is that there is none.

De Waal was more circumspect:

It is hard to say what is going on as the cap may be seen as a “supermark,” as the authors call it, but it is of course a mark that is not only seen but also felt. As a result, the monkeys have two sources of feedback at the same time, the image in the mirror and the sensation of something new on their head. This is different from the classical mark test, which has only one source of information (visual). It seems clear that the convergence of these two sources of perception is helpful to achieve self-inspection, and this is an interesting finding, but the authors still need to explain why rhesus monkeys apparently cannot do the same with just the visual information.

The hallmark of the mark test is its spontaneity, purely on the basis of visual input, so in this sense this is different. Rhesus monkeys have been tested many times and never pass the test. I think you need to talk to Dr. Gordon Gallup and see what he thinks. It is unclear to me what to conclude, but this study is quite different from e.g. the magpie study, which applied a purely visual test.

The idea that mirror self recognition is a black & white distinction (you either have it or you don’t) was first challenged in another monkey study that we conducted, in which we showed that capuchin monkeys do not seem to see a stranger in the mirror: they seem to distinguish the monkey in the mirror from another monkey, strange or familiar. As a result, we proposed a gradual scale of self awareness. The piece of intriguing information presented here may support this view, but I am sure many scientists would want more tests and more controls.

[Update: New Scientist reports that Gallup shares De Waal's reservations.]

This back-and-forth is not just interesting in itself, both for what it says about monkeys and what it says about ourselves. It also says something about science. If you read some of the more extreme comments about the Hauser affair, you’ll find some people trying to indict the entire line of research into how human and animal minds evolved. This new paper, and its reception, shows just how absurd that radical rejection is. Science is bigger than individual scientists, and the mirror test will survive.

[Update: PLOS One paper linked fixed]

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If I had my life to live over," written by Erma Bombeck near the end of her life, details the values Bombeck wished had guided her daily decisions. If you were nearing the end of your life and you were writing this, what would you include? Use those ideas to craft your mission statement.

If I had my life to live over, I would have talked less and listened more. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded. I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace. I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed. I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage. I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television - and more while watching life. I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband. I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day. I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime. Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle. When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner." There would have been more "I love you's".. More "I'm sorrys" ... But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it ... live it...and never give it back.

Source: FranklinCovey

Living For The Day

Shut off yesterday. Don't view tomorrow. Live only in the compartment called today. And surely you can do your best today. Surely you can handle any problem that comes today.

Do this everyday.

Getty on How to be a Billionaire

J. Paul Getty was billionaire before most people even heard of the word. And here is his advise on how to become one:

TRY HARDER

That is all.

An Opportunity Finding List

This list appears in Lesson 2 of A Touch of Greatness.

1. How can I improve some part of my job?
2. Does it have to be done this way?
3. How can I increase production?
4. How can I reduce cost?
5. How can I increase profits?
6. How can I save time?
7. How can I reduce friction, delays, tie-ups or accidents?
8. What ideas from some other field can I use profitably here?
9. How can I express initiative, the biggest achievement factor?

Source: A Touch of Greatness