It seems the canny cephalopods are brighter than you think

Slate Magazine has a fascinating article summarizing research on the brain power of the octopus (“How Smart Is the Octopus?”). Why, I’m not sure, but it makes for more fun reading than all the articles at the moment prophesying doom and collapse for the economies fo the Western world. Besides, on this showing, an octopus seems smarter than a good many people I’ve met.

Not only can octopuses learn, they can process complex information in their heads, and behave in equally complex ways. On available evidence, a good many people seem incapable of learning quite simple things, like not taking on debt they can never pay off or investing their life savings in some get-rich-quick scheme pushed by a slick salesperson. If you look at the media, it’s quite evident that they assume their mass audiences aren’t able to absorb or process complex information of any kind, and are willing to exist on an endless diet of simple lies and titillating trivia. As for complex behavior, the banks — who claim to employ the best and brightest — seem to have learned their business strategies from watching sheep and lemmings. Continued

Your sexual orientation may be linked to brain configuration

According to Healthzone.ca (part of the website of The Toronto Star), a study has found similarities in MRI scans both between the brains of gay men and straight women and between the brains of lesbians and straight men (“Gayness linked to brain”).

A new Swedish study shows significant similarities between the brains of homosexual men and straight women and between the brains of lesbians and heterosexual men. Some researchers are saying this provides important proof that people are born gay and don’t choose to act that way. Continued

TIME magazine’s Curious Capitalist, Justin Fox, reckons “the ugliness and the real if small risks of offshore drilling platforms strike me as pretty minor environmental threats compared with other things we tolerate with relatively little complaint.”

His off-the-top-of-the-head list of worse threats to the environment includes the Hummer division of the General Motors Corporation, suburban Phoenix (spot-on!) and subsidies for corn-based ethanol (”Six environmental threats worse than offshore oil drilling“).

Care to add your own?

The importance of an ability to notice when someone isn’t saying what they mean

Detecting social cues from words and tone of voice is essential for successful dealings with others. It seems researchers are finally starting to understand the mechanism that lets us do this.

That’s the message from this article in The New York Times (“The Science of Sarcasm (Not That You Care)”). Researchers see sarcasm as evidence of the mental skill to figure out what others are thinking, even if they say the opposite. Now Dr. Kate Rankin, a neuropsychologist and assistant professor in the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, has found that the appreciation of humor and language that is not literal — irony, sarcasm, puns and jokes — requires the right hemisphere of the brain, not the left. Continued

According to neurologist Oliver Sacks it can

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeIn an article on Huffington Post (“The Healing Power Of Music”), Sacks is reported as saying: “Even with advanced dementia, when powers of memory and language are lost, people will respond to music.”

Oliver Sacks is a professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, so what he says should carry some weight. He’s also a highly successful author, with books like The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales to his credit. Continued

How often have you decided — firmly — to do something or avoid something, only to forget all about your resolution when temptation arises? We all know how difficult it can be to stick to our decisions, but have you ever wondered why this should be. Amongst all the wonderful adaptations produced by evolution, why should humans be left with minds that seem to have minds of their own?

That’s the provoking questions posed — and answered — by Gary Marcus in this article from The Los Angeles Times (“Does your brain have a mind of its own?”).

It seems the answer probably lies in an aspect of evolution that seems curiously . . . well, human: the fact that everything is built on what went before, even if starting from scratch seems the best option, and ‘good enough’ is readily accepted. Continued

Various movements are growing in the USA to encourage children to get outside and away from computer screens and electronic games. Their proponents also claim significant health benefits, saying that their children become happier, healthier and smarter as a result of more time spent with nature.

According to this article (“Got Dirt? Beyond Nature-Deficit Disorder”), the practice has substantial backing:

Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health at Centers for Disease Control, recently describes the clear benefits of nature experiences to healthy child development, and to adult well-being.

“In the same way that protecting water and protecting air are strategies for promoting public health, protecting natural landscapes can be seen as a powerful form of preventive medicine,” he says. He believes that future research about the positive health effects of nature should be conducted in collaboration with architects, urban planners, park designers, and landscape architects. “Of course, there is still much we need to learn, such as what kinds of nature contact are most beneficial to health, how much contact is needed and how to measure that, and what groups of people benefit most. But we know enough to act.”

There’s even a teenager-founded group, Geeks in the Woods, that, “makes a U-turn back to…a balance between virtual reality and what sustains all life…nature.”

The article suggest these five steps for parents:

1. Go for a family walk when the moon is full.
2. Help your child discover a hidden universe in a piece of wood left on the ground.
3. Tell your children stories about your special childhood places in nature. Then help them find their own.
4. Revive old traditions for keeping nature collections.
5. Invent your own nature game.

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