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""We wondered how individuals assess the credibility of other people in simple social interactions," said Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and the Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, who led the study. "We found a strong correlation between the amygdala and a baseline level of distrust, which may be based on a person's beliefs about the trustworthiness of other people in general, his or her emotional state, and the situation at hand"

In another study, in which volunteers saw the same pictures while having their brain scanned using MRI, she found that people had a stronger response in the hippocampus and amygdala - areas of the brain associated with fear - when they were shown fearful faces at systole than when they saw them at diastole. In other words, half a heartbeat was all it took for a person to experience a significantly different response to the same scary stimulus.

While a substantial body of work has been devoted to understanding the role of negative stereotypes in racial attitudes, far less is known about how we deal with contradictions of those stereotypes. This article uses functional brain imaging with contextually rich visual stimuli to explore the neural mechanisms that are involved in cognition about social norms and race. We present evidence that racial stereotypes are more about the stereotypes than about race per se. Amygdala activity (correlated with negative racial attitudes in other studies) appeared driven by norm violation, rather than race.

"Rather, these successful men needed to also be blessed with "zeal and with capacity for hard labour." This study is a first glimpse into those essential qualities described by Galton, helping us map out the individual differences that make it slightly easier for some people to engage in hard labor. These diligent souls seem to get a bit more pleasure from the possibility of reward, but they also seem less sensitive to their inner complainer, that disruptive voice reminding them that minesweeper is more fun than editing, or that the ballgame on television is much more entertaining than their homework. At any given moment, there is a tug of war unfolding in our head, determining whether or not we're willing to put in the effort. This sentence only exists because, for a few minutes at least, I was able to win the war."

"The project was kick-started by a huge public response to the team's research into the genetics of gut bacteria. In a previous study the researchers found that certain gut-specific genetic markers were related to obesity and other diseases. "I got between 50 and 100 e-mails from regular people having problems with the stomach or diarrhoea and wondering if we can help them," Peer Bork, a biochemist and co-creator of MyMicrobes, told Nature. This new website will build on that work, whilst also providing support for concerned members of the public."

"But, "one has to be cautious. This is exciting science in rodents, but you can't just extrapolate to humans," says Emeran Mayer, a gastroenterologist and neuroscientist at UCLA's Center for Neurobiology of Stress who was not involved in the new study. Drug and food companies that make probiotics - beneficial bacteria taken in a pill or eaten in food such as yogurt - hope the products can help relieve depression, improve weight loss and cure other conditions, but there is little evidence in people that probiotics can accomplish those goals, Mayer says. "It's almost like science fiction; you can imagine the most amazing things because so little is known about it," he says. But, "So far there's really no evidence that probiotics affect emotions in humans." "

"Performing short cycle sprints three times a week could be enough to prevent and possibly treat type 2 diabetes, a study suggests. Scientists at the University of Bath asked volunteers to perform two 20-second cycle sprints on exercise bikes, three times per week. After six weeks, researchers in the university's department of health saw a 28% improvement in their insulin function."

William Gunn The Top 10 papers in Biological Sciences by Mendeley readership. With the Mendeley for Life Scientists webinar coming up on Thursday, I thought I would take a look at the readership stats for Biological Sciences. Biological Sciences has long been our biggest discipline, and having done my doctoral work in the Life Sciences, I knew this would be interesting. Overall, researchers in bioinformatics contributed most strongly to the most read papers, along with the older disciplines of micro- and molecular biology. Regardless of discipline, however, it's clear that the days of toiling away in isolation to thoroughly study one gene are over. Today, it's all about huge consortia and massive data. Here's what I found

"However, anthropological datasets show enormous complexity in how and why men and women behave the ways that they do [vi]. Studies in human biology and anthropology regularly demonstrate a dynamic flexibility and complex biocultural context for all human behavior, and this is especially true for gender.... No matter how much some want it to be true, it is just not that simple; there are no clear cut and easy answers to why we do what we do, and why men and women sometimes have problems getting along. To ignore the enormous wealth of data on how men and women are similar AND different and to try to tackle this enormously complex reality via one-dimensional approaches is just poor science."

Schizophrenie als Infektionskrankheit? "Ihre Studie sei die erste, die darauf hindeute, dass ein Parasit den Dopamin-Signalweg direkt beeinflussen und so Verhaltensänderungen des Wirtes herbeiführen könne, schließen die Wissenschaftler. "Diese Ergebnisse legen einen möglichen Mechanismus der von T. gondii ausgelösten Verhaltensänderungen nahe.""

Has a cheap and effective treatment for chronic pain been lying under clinicians' noses for decades? Researchers have found that a very high dose of an opiate drug that uses the same painkilling pathways as morphine can reset the nerve signals associated with continuous pain - at least in rats. If confirmed in humans, the procedure could reduce or eliminate the months or years that millions of patients spend on pain-managing prescription drugs. The results of the study are described today in Science1.

" Moving Beyond Belly Button Biodiversity…we will study the species living with you on your body but also in the other biomes of YOUR household. If you want to know who is hiding in your refrigerator or mating in the pillow where you rest your head, we can help you. When you look beside you in bed, you notice no more than one animal (alternative lifestyles and cats notwithstanding). For nearly all of our history, our beds and lives were shared by multitudes. Live in a mud-walled hut in the Amazon, and bats will sleep above you, spiders beside you, the dog and cat not far away, and then there are the insects beating themselves stupid against the dwindling animal-fat flame. In addition, your gut would be filled with intestinal worms, your body (and nearly everything else) covered in multitudes of unnamed microbes, and your lungs occupied by a fungus uniquely your own."

"In der neuen Studie konnte das Team um Tobias Krause von der Universität Bielefeld nun zusätzlich zeigen, dass die Singvögel aufgrund dieses Geruchs auch wissen, mit wem sie verwandt sind und mit wem nicht. "Zebrafinken eignen sich für eine solche Untersuchung besonders gut, da sie Nesthocker sind und so während ihrer Aufzucht nur mit einigen wenigen Verwandten in Berührung kommen. Im erwachsenen Alter leben sie aber in großen, miteinander verwandten Verbänden zusammen", erläutern die Wissenschaftler. Ab dann sei es für die Tiere also entscheidend, unbekannte Verwandte von Nicht-Verwandten zu unterscheiden. Da ihnen dabei Gefieder oder Gesang nicht unbedingt hilft, vermuteten die Wissenschaftler, dass die Vögel Verwandte erschnuppern."

"Die Probandinnen synchronisierten ihre Bewegungen und damit ihr gesamtes Essverhalten, berichtet Hermans (Plos One, online). Die Psychologen beobachteten insgesamt 3888 Bisse. So oft führten Frauen in dieser Studie eine Gabel oder einen Löffel mit Essen zum Mund - und sie vollführten diesen Akt weitgehend gleichzeitig. "Die Frauen imitierten unbewusst das Verhalten der jeweils anderen", sagt Hermans. Es sei wesentlich seltener vorgekommen, dass eine Frau alleine einen Bissen zu sich nahm. Menschen imitieren das Verhalten anderer in vielen Situationen - besonders wenn ihnen daran gelegen sei, dass ihr Gegenüber einen positiven Eindruck von ihnen bekomme, sagt Hermans. Und bei einem gemeinsamen Essen ist dies meist der Fall."

"Sogar kurzfristige Störungen im Schlafrhythmus können schon negative Auswirkungen haben, zeigten Studien: Probanden, deren Schlaf in drei Nächten wiederholt gestört wurde, bekamen vorübergehend Symptome von Diabetes. Die Wissenschaftler um Philippe Froguel vom Imperial College in London konnten die Verbindung zwischen Schlafrhythmus und Diabetes nun mit genetischen Studien untermauern: Die Studie belegt die Rolle des Melatonins."

"Leah Pyter: Well basically what we know is that patients with cancer have a higher likelihood of also developing depression at some point in their disease progression, so whether that occurred before and is predisposing them to cancer, or it's due to the tumours themselves, or other aspects of having the disease, we don't know. We were only studying right now whether the cancer itself can cause depression. Chris Smith: How could a tumour trigger depression, because a tumour can occur anywhere in the body, therefore at the remote sites in the brain, so how could it trigger changes in brain activity? Leah Pyter: Sure, well what we hypothesized was that the tumours themselves can produce cytokines which has been shown before. Chris Smith: These are inflammatory chemicals that drive the immune system? Leah Pyter: Right, exactly! And there is also a pile of research on how cytokines can access the brain specifically regions of the brain that are associated with depression and anxiety and emotional behaviours, and they can access the brain both tumourally through the blood, or neurally through the vegas nerves. "

"Frühere Studien hatten bereits darauf hingewiesen, dass unnatürliche Konzentrationen bestimmter weiblicher Hormone und deren Nebenprodukte Krebserkrankungen in Geweben begünstigen können, die sensibel auf Hormone reagieren, wie beispielsweise in Brust, Gebärmutter, Schilddrüse, Hoden und eben auch in der Prostata. Die Formen des Östrogens, wie sie im Zusammenhang mit der hormonellen Verhütung entstehen, werden im Körper und auch in der Umwelt nur sehr langsam abgebaut. Sie reichern sich dadurch in der Nahrungskette und im Trinkwasser an und gelangen so in geringen, aber vermutlich effektiven Dosen zurück in die Körper der gesamten Bevölkerung. Forscher hatten deshalb bereits einen ökologischen Effekt der hormonellen Verhütung vermutet. Die aktuelle Studie untermauert diesen Zusammenhang nun mit statistischen Daten. "

"Um schnell wieder auf Touren zu kommen, gilt für viele Menschen ein zuckerhaltiger Snack als hilfreich, denn er setzt schnell Energie im Körper frei. Das könnte aber genau die falsche Strategie sein, sagt nun ein internationales Forscherteam: Dessen Untersuchungsergebnisse an Mäusen legen nahe, dass die Zufuhr von Kohlenhydraten eher müde macht, wohingegen eiweißhaltige Nahrung anregt und die Verbrennung von Kalorien ankurbelt. Der Studie zufolge liegt das an der Wirkung der Eiweißbausteine auf die sogenannten Orexin-Zellen, die an der Regulation des Schlaf-Wach-Rhythmus und des Appetits beteiligt sind. Die neuen Erkenntnisse könnten demzufolge auch wichtige Informationen für das Verständnis von Schlafstörungen und Übergewicht liefern, sagen Denis Burdakov von der University of Cambridge und seine Kollegen. "

"Wie stark jemand dabei auf Oxytocin reagiert, scheint unter anderem von seiner genetischen Ausstattung abzuhängen, insbesondere der Beschaffenheit seines Oxytocinrezeptor-Gens, auch OXTR-Gen genannt. Schon in früheren Studien hatten Wissenschaftler Hinweise auf einen Zusammenhang zwischen der jeweils vorherrschenden Variante dieses Gens und der Neigung zu Empathie und anderen prosozialen Verhaltensweisen gefunden. Von allen möglichen Kombinationen - GG, AG und AA - scheint sich dabei vor allem die GG-Variante als förderlich für soziales Verhalten zu behaupten. AA-Träger haben dagegen häufiger Schwierigkeiten, elterliche Gefühle zu entwickeln und ein größeres Risiko für autistische Züge. In der aktuellen Studie wollte das Team um Aleksandr Kogan von der Universität in Toronto nun herausfinden, ob ein Fremder die Chance hat, GG-Träger nur durch eine flüchtige Beobachtung zu identifizieren"