Distrust - Lap-Bands - Seeing Eyes - Internal Clocks

[Marc Breedlove]

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/10/payback-and-distrust-for-men-rou.html?ref=hp

Payback and Distrust: For Men, Rougher Childhoods Mean Less Cooperation

by Sarah C. P. Williams

All for one, or in it for yourself? That depends
on how you were brought up, according to a new
study involving the prisoner's dilemma, perhaps
the most famous scenario in game theory. In the
game, you can either cooperate or betray your
partner. And adult males who were exposed as
children to violence, crime, conflict, and
neglect turn on their partners earlier and more
often in the game than males who grew up in more
stable environments, the study finds.

Imagine that you're a thief, and you and your
partner have been nabbed by the police. If you
both stay silent, you both get a month in jail.
But if you rat out your partner, or "defect,"
while he stays silent, he gets 2 years and you go
free. Alas, if you both snitch, you both get a
year. Dreamed up decades ago, the prisoner's
dilemma has now become a staple of social
psychology experiments. "It's really an assay for
how your mind is built to tradeoff between
different ways of living in the world," says
psychologist Michael McCullough of the University
of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. "Are you going
to be tempted by short-term payoffs or are you
going to invest again and again to try to get long-term benefits?"

McCullough and colleagues wanted to explore how
these choices might vary based on a person's
background. The researchers recruited 244 male
and female undergraduate students to participate
in multiple iterations of the prisoner's dilemma
game in which points­later converted into real
money­were won in each round depending on the
choices made. Each student was told they were
playing at least 20 rounds of the game via a
computer. They were told their opponents were
human­but instead the computer was programmed to
take a "tit for tat" strategy: The computer
repeats the moves made by the player in the previous round.

© 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
--------------------


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/business/as-sales-fall-allergan-seeks-a-buyer-for-lap-band.html?ref=health&_r=0

As Sales Fall, Allergan Seeks a Buyer for Lap-Band

By ANDREW POLLACK

Allergan said Tuesday that it was looking to
divest itself of its Lap-Band, the once-popular
weight-loss device that has experienced several
years of falling sales, loss of market share and
controversies about its safety and effectiveness.

The falling sales “do not fit the profile of a
high-growth company like Allergan,” David E. I.
Pyott, the company’s chief executive, told
analysts Tuesday morning on a call announcing the
company’s third-quarter financial results.

In an interview, Mr. Pyott said Allergan had
already hired an investment banking firm, which
he would not name, and was sending letters to
other medical device companies and private equity
firms seeking a buyer for its obesity business,
which also includes a balloonlike device that is
not approved in the United States but is used in some other countries.

The Lap-Band, a silicone ring that is wrapped
around the stomach and can be inserted in an
outpatient procedure, once appeared to have a
bright future as a less drastic, if less
effective, alternative to gastric bypass, which
involves rerouting the digestive tract.

But Allergan’s obesity business sales have fallen
from a peak of $296 million in 2008 to an
expected $160 million this year. In the third
quarter, the sales fell by 25 percent to $37.4 million from a year earlier.

The obesity business, while still profitable,
represents less than 3 percent of total product
sales for Allergan, which is known most for its
Botox treatment for wrinkles, migraine headaches and other conditions.

© 2012 The New York Times Company
--------------------


http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/10/many-eyed-monsters-prove-the-eye.html?ref=hp

Many-Eyed Monsters Prove the Eyes Have It

by Rachel Nuwer

The dungeon is pitch black­until the dungeon
master blazes a torch, confirming your worst
fears. A Beholder monster lurches at you, its
eyeballs wriggling on tentacular stems. As you
prepare to wield your Vorpal sword, where do you
focus your gaze: at the monster's head or at its
tentacle eyes? Such a quandary from the
role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons may seem
like a meaningless trifle, but it holds within it
the answer to a scientific question. In fact, a
father-son team has used images of such monsters
to show that most people will look to another
creature's eyes, no matter where they are located on the body.

"Dungeons & Dragons monsters have eyes all over
the place," says Julian Levy, a ninth grader at
Lord Byng Secondary School in Vancouver, Canada.
Two years ago, Levy's knowledge of the
role-playing game led him to a unique solution
for solving a basic scientific question: Do
people focus their gaze on another person's eyes
or on the center of the head, where the eyes just happen to be located?

"We were eating dinner and my dad was talking
about how, after publishing a paper about gaze
tracking, a reviewer said that you could never
prove whether people are looking at the eyes or
the center of the face," Levy recalls. So he
piped up with an idea, offering Dungeons &
Dragons characters as an experimental solution.
Because many characters have eyes located on
their hands, torso, or other areas of the body, a
researcher could track viewers' gazes to see what
part of the characters they focus on first.

© 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
--------------------


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22446-brain-circuits-run-their-own-clocks.html

Brain circuits run their own clocks

by Douglas Heaven

Timing is everything. But exactly how the brain
keeps time, which it does very well, has been something of a mystery.

One widely held theory suggests that a single
brain region acts as a centralised timekeeper –
possibly in the basal ganglia or cerebellum.
However, a study now suggests that timekeeping is
decentralised, with different circuits having
their own timing mechanisms for each specific
activity. The finding could help explain why
certain brain conditions affect our sense of
timing, and even raise the possibility of
artificially manipulating time perception.

Geoffrey Ghose and Blaine Schneider, at the
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis,
investigated timing in the brain by training two
rhesus macaques to perform tasks in which they
moved their eyes between two dots on a screen at
regular 1-second intervals. There were no
external cues available to help them keep track of time.

After three months, the monkeys had learned to
move their eyes between the two dots with average
intervals of 1.003 and 0.973 seconds, respectively.

The researchers then used electrodes to record
brain activity across 100 neurons in the lateral
intraparietal cortex – associated with eye
movement – while the monkeys performed the task.

The activity of these neurons decreased during
the interval between each eye movement, and the
rate of decrease correlated with the monkeys'
timing. Using this information, Ghose and
Schneider were able to predict the interval
between eye movements by measuring the preceding decay rate.

© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
--------------------