Young Blood – Put Your Order Into The Blood Bank For Your Memory’s Sake


Young blood may be to way to go for bright outlook on life. Of course, we aren’t full up of that young vital fluid pulsing through our veins after we see our 30-th birthday come and go. Looking out, things may look the same, but looking in, well let’s not pull any punches, we look progressively challenged in jeunesse doreé stakes.

After accidents in which we leak, or if we want to get a boost in a cycle race, blood transfusions are a good thing. The Guardian has a news item on the work reported by Villeda et al at the at the New Orleans meet of the Society of Neuroscience (1). They gave old mice transfusions of blood from young mice and that young blood perked the old fellas up no end.

Apparently, the scuttlebutt is that Kim Jong-Il was into young blood transfusions to aid his youthful outlook. The young blood he chose, was said to be from healthy young virgins (female I assume), but we don’t have confirmed data on this. So back to mice and science.

The old mice got their shots of young blood and their memories improved and the ageing process had slowed. There were 20% more neuron connections and that’s important for a mouse if you’re looking for your cheese. It’s even more important if it’s you or me and we’re looking for our car keys.

In addition to improved connectivity, they found an increase in stem cells and that’s really important for keeping your brain plump and healthy.

The question on all your lips is of course was it the young cells in the blood or proteins in the plasma. Well, after plasma injections our old-fella mice were repeatedly tossed into a swimming pool with islands and they learned to find the islands and remembered where they were a lot better than un-transfused fellows.

Clearly, there is something in the plasma that makes them more difficult to drown. Definitely we old fogies need to sign up with groups of teens to get transfusions of their plasma just in case we fall into a swimming pool with islands. BUT it may also help us to remember where on earth we put those car keys.

  1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/17/young-blood-reverse-effects-ageing

Good Mates = True Love? Or Just Strong Mates, Big Mates and Noisy Mates

European Tree Frog         Creative Commons – Christian Fischer




Good mates are often judged as being “good” because they are more attractive because of strength as judged by size or the noise that they produce. This has nothing to do with logical choice or that advice that they were given at the proverbial maternal knee, but is simply hormone driven.

The problem is not all mates are what they may seem. In the animal world, the prospective mate isn’t brought home to be introduced to disapproving parents. It’s all out there to play for. So are many of the females out there fooled by male subterfuge?

This question of ‘true’ love was asked by Brepson et al from the U of Lyon and is in the online edition of Animal Behaviour (1). The team decided to put the question to the diminutive European Treefrog. At one and a half inches long it doesn’t take up much space in the lab, but it can make quiet a decent croak when it is in the mood for love.

Male frogs, the European Treefrog included, announce their availability to the female population by spending the night hours croaking. Large males with a booming croak are the focus of adoration by the females who eschew the weaker, shaky croaks of the little fellas.

The team of course asked “does size matter?” to a female frog. Deeper louder voices of course, but is that the only criterion for a good mate? What about being well fed and ready to go?

A corner of the lab was turned into a frog only mating arena, but the nasty trick was to install a loudspeaker which could play macho male croaks. So what’s a little frog to do? Frog or not, what do you expect of a Latin lover? They will cheat of course if they have to. The spirit of Casanova is not dead. They will sidle up to be close to the big boy, but strike faster and stealthier as soon as the opportunity arises so the love–lorn female is unaware that the big booming voice wasn’t their young lover’s.

The finer points of gastronomy being of great importance in that area of the world, the question popped up as to how did being well fed affect cheating behavior, less or more? So the next batch of frogs had their stomachs extensively pumped and half of the batch were then stuffed full of cordon blue bottles and crickets. It had no effect on the tendency to cheat to get laid.

Clearly the way to a frog's heart is not through its stomach.

  1.  
  2. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347212004010
  3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19886131

Anticipating Your Robot For The Best Human Robot Interaction


The Human Robot Interaction is a major challenge, but an important one, as we get more robots interacting with us in our homes and they are built with humanoid features. You see, we prefer to share our homes with things that we perceive as biological rather than unfeeling machines if we are going to have more complex helpful relationships than we do with our toaster.

We do have to be careful that we don’t make them too human-like, but don’t quite make it. Then we could end up with a creepy, zombie-like butler that would fit right in the dip in the Uncanny Valley Theory (1). Cuteness has its merits.

When we interact with another person, we anticipate and tend to copy their action as our mirror neurons fire away. That yawning spread like wildfire in that boring class we have all sat through, didn’t it? This interaction is also known as motor resonance (2). We have two things going on. We have a proactive gaze and then automatic imitation. Thus we anticipate and accommodate the motion. The result is that we feel comfortable as long as the action isn’t threatening.

Our robot butler/caregiver shouldn’t be threatening, so we have to avoid the uncanny valley with no zombies making unexpected moves. The key is to get that motor resonance functioning well when we design our humanoid helpers, but the challenge is then to find experimentally what works best with us humans in an everyday environment.

A review of methods for measuring motor resonance with the human robot interaction has been published by Scuitti et al and they show that the behavioral methodologies such as studying predictive gaze and automatic imitation measurements fit the bill much better than PET, fMRI or EEG scans.

If we can get the right human robot interaction, the advent of rent-a-robot stores may not be far away. It could work out better and more economical than have to pay for a place in a care home.

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
  2. A.Sciutti, A.Bisio, F.Nori, G.Metta,L.Fadiga, T.Pozzo and G.Sandini, Int. J. Soc. Robot., 223, 4, (2012)., http://www.springerlink.com/content/g82v75n437259607/fulltext.pdf

Climate Change Games


Climate change games are being played for very high stakes. With Arctic ice shrinking, sea levels rising, weather patterns changing leading to greater storm activity in some places and prolonged droughts in others, the threshold for serious change appears close.

The price to cut back on pollution is high and our politicians are representing our interests if I may put that politely. Clearly with my thin wallet, my interests aren’t as exciting as some with much thicker wallets, but when push comes to shove, we would all like our wallets to grow plumper rather than slimmer. Slimming is for our belly in the gym so we can fit into our fat cat suits more easily.

Nevertheless we recognize that the issue is important and many of us thought that in 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol was announced that we had had serious negotiations leading to a serious action plan. But the game goes on.

 In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Barrett and Dannenberg have had a look at the business of climate negotiations from a Games Theory perspective and an uncomfortable perspective it is (1). It is a serious multiplayer game in which a dangerous change threshold could be reached if the players don’t cooperate.

Games theory is a fun activity of many psychologists who set up lab experiments around cooperative games. The ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ game is a classic (2).  Recall that cooperation means a light sentence (cost) for both players while betrayal means that the betrayer goes free (rewarded) and the betrayed gets a heavy sentence (pays a big cost). Mathematical analysis shows that on repeat plays with a group, the player who betrays does best. (Psychologist don’t send anyone to jail, they pay out cash in various amounts.)

When there is a big gain by cooperating (see the stag hunting game of Rousseau or just the Battle of the Sexes Game (2)) that is the stable equilibrium setting. That is, the best thing is cooperation and everybody wins.

 Climate change should fit that cooperation scenario as there is a big gain and a serious loss at that dangerous threshold. The problem comes into these climate change games as the threshold for disaster become less well defined. Barrett and Dannenberg crunched numbers and found that when the dangerous threshold of the games was uncertain, the game switched from a cooperative win type of game to a Prisoner’s Dilemma result where betrayal (self-interest) is the winning strategy.

A disappointing result, but a rationalization for why so many politicians say one thing and do another over this issue.

  1. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/09/1208417109.abstract
  2. http://www.econ.uzh.ch/faculty/jgoeree/publications/CG.pdf

Nice Or Nasty – I Bark As I Find


Being nice or nasty to a strange dog is going to fix its opinion of you in short order. But that is direct experience. Now the big question is do our doggy friends decide on your reputation by watching your behavior to others?

We take a lot of effort to establish and maintain our reputations. Apparently chimpanzees can make judgments on people’s reputations depending on if they are willing to give a grape to a fellow (1).

Chimpanzees, though, are not close companions for most of us, so we won’t normally be worried about what the chimp down the road thinks of us. Dogs, on the other hand, abound and are treated as least as well as many of our children are treated. So when you venture out of your front door and all those attentive ears pick up the sound of your key in the lock and those noses start misting up the windows as pairs of eyes follow you down the driveway and along the sidewalk, noting that you ignore that hydrant which is the neighborhood message board, do they think nice or nasty?

This is clearly too good a question for any dyed-in-the-wool psychologist to leave on their lab bench.  Nitzschner et al of Leipzig’s Max Planck have risen to the challenge with interrogating 32 mature dogs after their lab experiments (1). The experimenters were matched women in terms of clothing, hairstyle and glasses so the dogs wouldn't be distracted by different physical attributes. Perfume wasn’t mentioned, so sniff tests were discounted.

The experimenters sat on the floor and each dog was shoved into the lab. In one case  (nice) the experimenter made a fuss of the dog. With the other case, the nasty, the experimenter ignored the dog. Of course the dogs liked being interacted with and spent a lot of time communicating with the experimenter.

The second experiment was the key one. The dog under study watched the experimenter with another dog, either fussing and cuddling it or ignoring it. Afterward they were allowed to interact with the experimenter directly. The result was that they spent as much time trying to discuss their affairs of the day with Ms. Nasty as with Ms. Nice; reputation was of no importance.

It seems that dogs decide about people by direct contact and don’t come to a relationship with a lot of prejudged baggage.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0046880