a head full of symphonies

radiolab |  Bob Milne is one of the best ragtime piano players in the world, and a preternaturally talented musician -- he can play technically challenging pieces of music on demand while carrying on a conversation and cracking jokes. But according to Penn State neuroscientist Kerstin Betterman, our brains just aren't wired to do that. So she decided to investigate Bob's brain, and when she did, she discovered that Bob has an even more amazing ability... one that we can hardly believe, and science can't explain. Reporter Jessica Benko helps us get inside Bob's remarkably musical mind.

identify, profile, lockdown, don't play...,

nola |  Stanley Gaye, president of the Liberian Community Association of Dallas-Fort Worth, said the 10,000-strong Liberian population in North Texas is skeptical of the CDC's assurances because Ebola has ravaged their country.

"We've been telling people to try to stay away from social gatherings," Gaye said at a community meeting Tuesday evening. Large get-togethers are a prominent part of Liberian culture.

"We need to know who it is so that they (family members) can all go get tested," Gaye told The Associated Press. "If they are aware, they should let us know."

Ebola symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding, and can appear as long as 21 days after exposure to the virus. The disease is not contagious until symptoms begin, and it takes close contact with bodily fluids to spread.

The association's vice president encouraged all who may have come in contact with the virus to visit a doctor and she warned against alarm in the community.

"We don't want to get a panic going," said vice president Roseline Sayon. "We embrace those people who are coming forward. Don't let the stigma keep you from getting tested."

Frieden said he didn't believe anyone on the same flights as the patient was at risk.

"Ebola doesn't spread before someone gets sick and he didn't get sick until four days after he got off the airplane," Frieden said.

attributing awareness to oneself and to others

princeton |  This study tested the possible relationship between reported visual awareness (“I see a visual stimulus in front of me”) and the social attribution of awareness to someone else (“That person is aware of an object next to him”). Subjects were tested in two steps. First, in an fMRI experiment, subjects were asked to attribute states of awareness to a cartoon face. Activity associated with this task was found bilaterally within the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) among other areas. Second, the TPJ was transiently disrupted using single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). When the TMS was targeted to the same cortical sites that had become active during the social attribution task, the subjects showed symptoms of visual neglect in that their detection of visual stimuli was significantly affected. In control trials, when TMS was targeted to nearby cortical sites that had not become active during the social attribution task, no significant effect on visual detection was found. These results suggest that there may be at least some partial overlap in brain mechanisms that participate in the social attribution of sensory awareness to other people and in attributing sensory awareness to oneself. 

Significance:  What is the relationship between your own private awareness of events and the awareness that you intuitively attribute to the people around you? In this study, a region of the human cerebral cortex was active when people attributed sensory awareness to someone else. Furthermore, when that region of cortex was temporarily disrupted, the person’s own sensory awareness was disrupted. The findings suggest a fundamental connection between private awareness and social cognition.

attention-seeking in canines creates a stronger bond

dailymail |  Badly behaved dogs can be a source of embarrassment for their owners.

But if your canine companion displays attention-seeking behaviour, you may have a better bond with them than owners with perfectly-mannered pooches, a new study claims.

The research looked at human-animal attachment among 60 dog-owning families, including parents and children. It is the first study to examine attachment in children in this way.

Participants completed questionnaires to provide details about their attachment to their pet dogs, how responsible they feel towards them, and how often they feed and walk their canines.

They were also asked to rate their dogs on behavioural characteristics such as excitability, trainability, stranger fear and aggression, separation problems and attention-seeking behaviour.

Christy Hoffman, assistant professor of animal behaviour at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, said that people who care for their dogs well and take more responsibility for them are more attached to their pets than those who have a more hands-off approach.

While this is not surprising, her study also found that the more dogs act out and try to catch their owners’ attention, the more their owners are likely to love them. Interestingly, children were not affected by this behaviour.