In the original study, conducted by Yale researchers in 2007, groups of 6-month-olds and 10-month-olds watched a puppet show with neutral wooden figures, where one figure, the climber, was trying to get up a hill. In one scenario, one of the other figures, called the helper, assisted the climber up the hill. In the other scenario, a third figure, called the hinderer, pushed the climber down. Babies were then presented with the helper and hinderer figures so they could pick which one they preferred, and 14 out of 16 babies in the older group (10 months old) and all 12 of the 6-month-olds picked the helper. The study, which was published in the journal Nature, seemed to imply that infants could be good judges of character. [In Photos: How Babies Learn]

discrepancies would seem to make it tricky for infants to know that the climber needed help, and if they did, for them to know that the helper was helping. As such, it's possible the infants in the new study looked to these other variables (collisions and bounces) to make their decisions, Hamlin suggests.

Even if flaws did exist in their study, Hamlin and her colleagues point to various independent studies, one of which uses a similar setup without the "bouncing" of the climber, that support the "babies have a moral compass" theory. The researchers go on to note they have replicated their findings, that infants prefer prosocial others, in a range of social scenarios that don't include climbing, colliding or bouncing. Hamlin's other studies have shown babies are good judges of character.

The youngest kids in the study will routinely choose to get fewer prizes for themselves just to get more than the other kid

Around age 8, they start choosing the equal, fair option more and more. And by 9 or 10, we saw kids doing something really crazy --

-- deliberately giving the other kid more.

From this Wynn concludes that infants prefer those "who harm... others" who are unlike them.

We are predisposed to break the world up into different human groups based on the most subtle and seemingly irrelevant cues, and that, to some extent, is the dark side of morality.

Karen Wynn: I think, we are built to, you know, at the drop of a hat, create us and them.

Study after study after study, the results are always consistently babies feeling positively towards helpful individuals in the world. And disapproving, disliking, maybe condemning individuals who are antisocial towards others.

first published their findings about baby morality in the journal "Nature" in 2007, and they've continued to publish follow-up studies in other peer-reviewed journals ever since

babies seem to view the ball thief "as deserving punishment."

It's a question people have asked for as long as there have been people: are human beings inherently good? Are we born with a sense of morality or do we arrive blank slates, waiting for the world to teach us right from wrong? Or could it be worse: do we start out nasty, selfish devils, who need our parents, teachers, and religions to whip us into shape?

The philosopher Rousseau considered babies "perfect idiots...Knowing nothing,"

for most of its history, her field agreed.

To find a good strategy to use in such situations, I invited experts in game theory to submit programs for a computer Prisoner’s Dilemma tournament – much like a computer chess tournament.

the winner was the simplest of all candidates sub- mitted. This was a strategy of simple reciprocity which cooperates on the first move and then does whatever the other player did on the previous move. Using an American colloquial phrase, this strategy was named Tit for Tat.

face of an uncalled-for defection by the other, forgiveness after responding to a provocation, and clarity of behavior so that the other player can recognize and adapt to your pattern of action.

This journey led her to emphasize in all her scientific work two phenomena -- the fusing of distinct beings into a single being: symbiosis; and the interaction of organisms and their environments to create relational "loops" that led to regulation of many Earth systems: Gaia Theory.

Bacteria were here first and are with us still, comprising a major part of the biosphere.  They are unseen with the naked eye, they lack nuclei (for this reason, they are called prokaryotes -- "pro" = before,  "karyon" = nucleus). Their forms were legion and their metabolisms were (and continue to be) strange.

What is known is that the spirochete didn't digest the thermoplasmid and the thermoplasmid did not digest the spirochete.  As Margulis was fond of saying, "1 + 1 = 1."  There was a union of the two, resulting in an entirely new being.  They were inseparable, literally.  The thermoplasmid had a rotor now, and the spirochete had a "head".

Protests like this one, fueled by social media and erupting into spectacular mass events, look like powerful statements of opposition against a regime

Yet often these huge mobilizations of citizens inexplicably wither away without the impact on policy you might expect from their scale.

Now movements can rush past that step, often to their own detriment.

Psychologists and neurobiologists have begun studying what goes on in our minds as we read literature, and what they’re discovering lends scientific weight to Emerson’s observation.

“aesthetic emotions” that we feel when we view art from a distance, as a spectator:

We create our own version of the piece of fiction, our own dream, our own enactment.” Making sense of what transpires in a book’s imagined reality appears to depend on “making a version of the action ourselves, inwardly.”

Listen before you speak. Collect trends, news, competition information, business intelligence, the voice of the consumer.

Make some conclusions about what topics your target audiences want to hear about,

Your objective is to listen, find some content of interest, give your opinion or summarise the key items, to share to your target audiences (Peers, press, clients, MEPs, prospects, evangelists), then you need to use Scoop.it.

UCLA psychologists have taken a significant step toward answering these questions, identifying for the first time the brain regions associated with the successful spread of ideas, often called "buzz."

"Our study suggests that people are regularly attuned to how the things they're seeing will be useful and interesting, not just to themselves but to other people,"

We always seem to be on the lookout for who else will find this helpful, amusing or interesting, and our brain data are showing evidence of that.

The discussions during Mind and Life XVIII primarily focus on the subjective phenomenology, information-processing operations, and neural mechanisms of attention, memory and conscious awareness from both scientific and Buddhist perspectives. Venue: His Holiness's Residence, Dharamsala, India Date: 6-10 April 2009 Duration: 9 sessions (each approx. 2 hours) Languages: English, Tibetan

David Eagleman is about as close to a rock star that a neuroscientist can be.

Eagleman was excited to talk to SmartPlanet about his work at both the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law, a national, interdisciplinary organization he founded that’s looking at how to remake the U.S. legal system; and the Laboratory for Perception and Action, at Baylor College of Medicine. The former initiative tackles topics such as how brain imaging and analyses of “Big Data” on crime patterns can help communities better understand and prevent violent behavior in new ways. The latter looks broadly at how individual brains are not at all alike — and how the differences might be significant for how we construct and manage our societies.

His work is particularly relevant in policy-related discussions in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Connecticut.

In 2007, there were 150 workshops and courses about digital media and technology but none specifically about social media, according to Carmen Scheidel, Mediabistro’s vice president for education and events.

“In general, the digital natives are earlier in their careers, and they are not the ones taking these types of classes,” Ms. Scheidel said. “It tends to be people who are very accomplished in their careers but are new to social media. It is an interesting mix.”

reminding us that the tools we have available to us, for the most part free (given internet access), are fantastic compared to what we had in the early 1990s -a search engine like Google was the stuff of dreams ‘back then.’ The technological progress is happening so fast that many people may not know how to make use of all these great tools that are becoming available.

we are humans because we’re social learners

He defines the Personal Learning Networks (PLN) as “Not just a network of sources to learn from, but  a network that learns together.”

Kim Peek, who lent inspiration to the fictional character Raymond Babbitt—played by Dustin Hoffman—in the movie Rain Man, was a remarkable savant.

He could read both pages of an open book at once, one page with one eye and the other with the other eye

He would retain 98 percent of the information he read.

Savants can perform extraordinary cognitive feats much like trained experts, but unlike experts they usually cannot describe what makes them so talented, seemingly relying on intuition rather than conscious deliberation to quickly make choices.

he consensus among many researchers is that intuitions are judgments made by unconscious processes in the brain.

Studies have shown that inhibiting activity in certain areas of the brain can facilitate solving geometric puzzles.

his contention that consciousness is not merely a by-product of brain activity, but is a necessary function of the body as a whole, including the brain.

he proposes at least four levels of self, from least complex to most complex:1. Neural Self (or proto-self) - a short term collection of neural patterns of activity which represent the current state of the organism2. Core Self - a second-order entity which maps the state of the proto-self in rather the same way the proto-self maps the current state of the body: whenever an encounter with an object impinges on the proto-self, the change is registered by activity in the core self3. Autobiographical Self - draws on permanent (though modifiable) memories instead of just the immediate experiences which power the core self. At this point, there is a real, though still pre-linguistic, sense of self. Damasio thinks chimpanzees and probably dogs enjoy this level of consciousness4. Reflective Self - greater use of longer-term memory, delivers the kind of foresighted, reflective consciousness which we typically associate with human beings

In Damasio's view, one which I share, emotions are body states that then are interpreted by the brain to assign a label based on memory and previous learning.