Wolves Are Smart, but Dogs Look Back [The Thoughtful Animal]

Dogs are pretty smart. They can have huge vocabularies, they can infer meaning in the growls of other dogs, and they can effortlessly figure out if other dogs want to play or fight with them. But their intelligence might be limited to the social domain; indeed, while they outperform chimpanzees in social tasks, chimpanzees outperform them in many other tasks. And they might have developed their impressive social skills as merely an accident of natural and artificial selection.

Previous research has shown that dogs can use lots of different forms of human communicative signals to find food, and they can also inform humans of the location of hidden food, by looking back and forth between that human and a second location. But what is it about dogs that allows them to comprehend and invoke human social communication?

Hungarian canine cognition researcher Adam Miklosi has written that “the genetic divergence of the dog from its ancestor was [presumably] accompanied by important behavioral changes that could have a genetic basis because of a selection pressure for dogs that were able to adapt better to the human social setting.” If that was the case (and it probably is), then it follows that while some natural variation in performance on a given task requiring the use of human social communicative cues may be seen in wolves, it should be a lot stronger in dogs. Comparing wolves and dogs is the obvious way to address this question, but wolves and dogs differ both in genetics as well as in environment. While most dogs are raised in houses as pets, most wolves live in the wild, or in zoos, or occasionally in conservation parks. Adam Miklosi and colleagues, of Eotvos University in Budapest, took advantage of a very unique situation. Thirteen wolves were hand-raised and socialized in human homes, just as dogs would be. By raising both dogs and wolves similar contexts, the effects of rearing environment can be minimized, allowing the researchers to infer that differences in behavior are more likely due to genetic differences.

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Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior

Wolves Are Smart, but Dogs Look Back [The Thoughtful Animal]

Dogs are pretty smart. They can have huge vocabularies, they can infer meaning in the growls of other dogs, and they can effortlessly figure out if other dogs want to play or fight with them. But their intelligence might be limited to the social domain; indeed, while they outperform chimpanzees in social tasks, chimpanzees outperform them in many other tasks. And they might have developed their impressive social skills as merely an accident of natural and artificial selection.

Previous research has shown that dogs can use lots of different forms of human communicative signals to find food, and they can also inform humans of the location of hidden food, by looking back and forth between that human and a second location. But what is it about dogs that allows them to comprehend and invoke human social communication?

Hungarian canine cognition researcher Adam Miklosi has written that “the genetic divergence of the dog from its ancestor was [presumably] accompanied by important behavioral changes that could have a genetic basis because of a selection pressure for dogs that were able to adapt better to the human social setting.” If that was the case (and it probably is), then it follows that while some natural variation in performance on a given task requiring the use of human social communicative cues may be seen in wolves, it should be a lot stronger in dogs. Comparing wolves and dogs is the obvious way to address this question, but wolves and dogs differ both in genetics as well as in environment. While most dogs are raised in houses as pets, most wolves live in the wild, or in zoos, or occasionally in conservation parks. Adam Miklosi and colleagues, of Eotvos University in Budapest, took advantage of a very unique situation. Thirteen wolves were hand-raised and socialized in human homes, just as dogs would be. By raising both dogs and wolves similar contexts, the effects of rearing environment can be minimized, allowing the researchers to infer that differences in behavior are more likely due to genetic differences.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior

Editor’s Selections: Psychedelic Drugs, Narcissism, Cephalopods, and Friendship [The Thoughtful Animal]

Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week:

• “Distorted perceptions and an altered state of mind: two reasons why psychedelics have always attracted not only fascination, but also controversy for decades.” Noah Gray at Nature Blogs has curated a mini-carnival of sorts centering around a new paper called “The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders.” Included are posts by Mo at Neurophilosophy, the Neuroskeptic, the Neurocritic, and Vaughan of Mind Hacks. (Note: Only Neuroskeptic’s and Neurocritic’s posts are indexed by Research Blogging, but all are being included for completeness.)
• John M. Grohol at World of Psychology tells us that Narcissistic College Students Spend More Time on Facebook.
• Mike Lisieski of Cephalove concluded a short series about octopodes with The Case for Cephalopod Consciousness.
• At the Mind Matters blog, David Berreby explains Why A Good Friend Has the Same Effect As a Warm Fire.

Read the comments on this post…

Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior

Editor’s Selections: Psychedelic Drugs, Narcissism, Cephalopods, and Friendship [The Thoughtful Animal]

Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week:

• “Distorted perceptions and an altered state of mind: two reasons why psychedelics have always attracted not only fascination, but also controversy for decades.” Noah Gray at Nature Blogs has curated a mini-carnival of sorts centering around a new paper called “The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders.” Included are posts by Mo at Neurophilosophy, the Neuroskeptic, the Neurocritic, and Vaughan of Mind Hacks. (Note: Only Neuroskeptic’s and Neurocritic’s posts are indexed by Research Blogging, but all are being included for completeness.)
• John M. Grohol at World of Psychology tells us that Narcissistic College Students Spend More Time on Facebook.
• Mike Lisieski of Cephalove concluded a short series about octopodes with The Case for Cephalopod Consciousness.
• At the Mind Matters blog, David Berreby explains Why A Good Friend Has the Same Effect As a Warm Fire.

Read the comments on this post…

Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior

Editor’s Selections: Psychedelic Drugs, Narcissism, Cephalopods, and Friendship [The Thoughtful Animal]

Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week:

• “Distorted perceptions and an altered state of mind: two reasons why psychedelics have always attracted not only fascination, but also controversy for decades.” Noah Gray at Nature Blogs has curated a mini-carnival of sorts centering around a new paper called “The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders.” Included are posts by Mo at Neurophilosophy, the Neuroskeptic, the Neurocritic, and Vaughan of Mind Hacks. (Note: Only Neuroskeptic’s and Neurocritic’s posts are indexed by Research Blogging, but all are being included for completeness.)
• John M. Grohol at World of Psychology tells us that Narcissistic College Students Spend More Time on Facebook.
• Mike Lisieski of Cephalove concluded a short series about octopodes with The Case for Cephalopod Consciousness.
• At the Mind Matters blog, David Berreby explains Why A Good Friend Has the Same Effect As a Warm Fire.

Read the comments on this post…

Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior

The secret history of psychedelic psychiatry [Neurophilosophy]

This post is part of a Nature Blog Focus on hallucinogenic drugs in medicine and mental health, inspired by a recent Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper, The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders, by Franz Vollenweider & Michael Kometer. This article will be freely available, with registration, until September 23. For more information on this Blog Focus, see the Table of Contents.

___________________________

ON August 15th, 1951, an outbreak of hallucinations, panic attacks and psychotic episodes swept through the town of Saint-Pont-Esprit in southern France, hospitalizing dozens of its inhabitants and leaving five people dead. Doctors concluded that the incident occurred because bread in one of the town’s bakeries had been contaminated with ergot, a toxic fungus that grows on rye. But according to investigative journalist Hank Albarelli, the CIA had actually dosed the bread with d-lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD), an extremely potent hallucinogenic drug derived from ergot, as part of a mind control research project.

Although we may never learn the truth behind the events at Saint-Pont-Esprit, it is now well known that the United States Army experimented with LSD on willing and unwilling military personnel and civilians. Less well known is the work of a group of psychiatrists working in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, who pioneered the use of LSD as a treatment for alcoholism, and claimed that it produced unprecedented rates of recovery. Their findings were soon brushed under the carpet, however, and research into the potential therapeutic effects of psychedelics was abruptly halted in the late 1960s, leaving a promising avenue of research unexplored for some 40 years.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior

The secret history of psychedelic psychiatry [Neurophilosophy]

This post is part of a Nature Blog Focus on hallucinogenic drugs in medicine and mental health, inspired by a recent Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper, The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders, by Franz Vollenweider & Michael Kometer. This article will be freely available, with registration, until September 23. For more information on this Blog Focus, see the Table of Contents.

___________________________

ON August 15th, 1951, an outbreak of hallucinations, panic attacks and psychotic episodes swept through the town of Saint-Pont-Esprit in southern France, hospitalizing dozens of its inhabitants and leaving five people dead. Doctors concluded that the incident occurred because bread in one of the town’s bakeries had been contaminated with ergot, a toxic fungus that grows on rye. But according to investigative journalist Hank Albarelli, the CIA had actually dosed the bread with d-lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD), an extremely potent hallucinogenic drug derived from ergot, as part of a mind control research project.

Although we may never learn the truth behind the events at Saint-Pont-Esprit, it is now well known that the United States Army experimented with LSD on willing and unwilling military personnel and civilians. Less well known is the work of a group of psychiatrists working in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, who pioneered the use of LSD as a treatment for alcoholism, and claimed that it produced unprecedented rates of recovery. Their findings were soon brushed under the carpet, however, and research into the potential therapeutic effects of psychedelics was abruptly halted in the late 1960s, leaving a promising avenue of research unexplored for some 40 years.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior

The secret history of psychedelic psychiatry [Neurophilosophy]

This post is part of a Nature Blog Focus on hallucinogenic drugs in medicine and mental health, inspired by a recent Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper, The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders, by Franz Vollenweider & Michael Kometer. This article will be freely available, with registration, until September 23. For more information on this Blog Focus, see the Table of Contents.

___________________________

ON August 15th, 1951, an outbreak of hallucinations, panic attacks and psychotic episodes swept through the town of Saint-Pont-Esprit in southern France, hospitalizing dozens of its inhabitants and leaving five people dead. Doctors concluded that the incident occurred because bread in one of the town’s bakeries had been contaminated with ergot, a toxic fungus that grows on rye. But according to investigative journalist Hank Albarelli, the CIA had actually dosed the bread with d-lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD), an extremely potent hallucinogenic drug derived from ergot, as part of a mind control research project.

Although we may never learn the truth behind the events at Saint-Pont-Esprit, it is now well known that the United States Army experimented with LSD on willing and unwilling military personnel and civilians. Less well known is the work of a group of psychiatrists working in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, who pioneered the use of LSD as a treatment for alcoholism, and claimed that it produced unprecedented rates of recovery. Their findings were soon brushed under the carpet, however, and research into the potential therapeutic effects of psychedelics was abruptly halted in the late 1960s, leaving a promising avenue of research unexplored for some 40 years.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior

Nobody Ever Remembers Being a Cow [Uncertain Principles]

There was a deeply silly New York Times article about “Past Life Regression” over the weekend:

In one of his past lives, Dr. Paul DeBell believes, he was a caveman. The gray-haired Cornell-trained psychiatrist has a gentle, serious manner, and his appearance, together with the generic shrink décor of his office — leather couch, granite-topped coffee table — makes this pronouncement seem particularly jarring.

In that earlier incarnation, “I was going along, going along, going along, and I got eaten,” said Dr. DeBell, who has a private practice on the Upper East Side where he specializes in hypnotizing those hoping to retrieve memories of past lives. Dr. DeBell likes to reflect on how previous lives can alter one’s sense of self. He, for example, is more than a psychiatrist in 21st-century Manhattan; he believes he is an eternal soul who also inhabited the body of a Tibetan monk and a conscientious German who refused to betray his Jewish neighbors in the Holocaust.

At least this is in the Style section, aka “Stuff Wealthy White People in the Northeast Like,” (the hook here is that well-to-do doctors in Manhattan have gotten into this stuff) but still, this is a bit much. As silly as it is, though, this at least represents a small amount of progress in dippy New Age thinking– they don’t quote anybody “remembering” being somebody famous in a past life. At the same time, though, nobody “remembers” a past life where they were anything disreputable.

Which is kind of remarkable, given how this is supposed to work.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior

Nobody Ever Remembers Being a Cow [Uncertain Principles]

There was a deeply silly New York Times article about “Past Life Regression” over the weekend:

In one of his past lives, Dr. Paul DeBell believes, he was a caveman. The gray-haired Cornell-trained psychiatrist has a gentle, serious manner, and his appearance, together with the generic shrink décor of his office — leather couch, granite-topped coffee table — makes this pronouncement seem particularly jarring.

In that earlier incarnation, “I was going along, going along, going along, and I got eaten,” said Dr. DeBell, who has a private practice on the Upper East Side where he specializes in hypnotizing those hoping to retrieve memories of past lives. Dr. DeBell likes to reflect on how previous lives can alter one’s sense of self. He, for example, is more than a psychiatrist in 21st-century Manhattan; he believes he is an eternal soul who also inhabited the body of a Tibetan monk and a conscientious German who refused to betray his Jewish neighbors in the Holocaust.

At least this is in the Style section, aka “Stuff Wealthy White People in the Northeast Like,” (the hook here is that well-to-do doctors in Manhattan have gotten into this stuff) but still, this is a bit much. As silly as it is, though, this at least represents a small amount of progress in dippy New Age thinking– they don’t quote anybody “remembering” being somebody famous in a past life. At the same time, though, nobody “remembers” a past life where they were anything disreputable.

Which is kind of remarkable, given how this is supposed to work.

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

Source: Science Blogs: Brain & Behavior