DISCOVER :Science, Technology and the Future

Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey Connect

We often think if ourselves as Robinson Crusoes sitting on separate islands, we’re all interconnected, both bodily and emotionally. This may be an odd thing to say in the West, with its tradition of individual freedom and liberty, but Homo sapiens is remarkably easily swayed in one emotional direction or another by its fellows. This is precisely where empathy and sympathy start—not in the higher regions of imagination, or the ability to consciously reconstruct how we would feel if we were in someone else’s situation. It began much more simply, with the synchronization of bodies: running when others run, laughing when others laugh, crying when others cry, or yawning when others yawn. Most of us have reached the incredibly advanced stage at which we yawn even at the mere mention of yawning—as you may be doing right now!—but this is only after lots of face-to-face experience. Yawn contagion, too, works across species. Virtually all animals show the peculiar “paroxystic respiratory cycle characterized by a standard cascade of movements over a five- to ten-second period,” which is the way the yawn has been defined. I once attended a lecture on involuntary pandiculation (the medical term for stretching and yawning) with slides of horses, lions, and monkeys—and soon the entire audience was pandiculating. Since it so easily triggers a chain reaction, the yawn reflex opens a window onto mood transmission, an essential part of empathy. This makes it all the more intriguing that chimpanzees yawn when they see others do so. Yawn contagion reflects the power of unconscious synchrony, which is as deeply ingrained in us as in many other animals. Synchrony may be expressed in the copying of small body movements, such as a yawn, but also occurs on a larger scale, involving travel or movement. It is not hard to see its survival value. You’re in a flock of birds and one bird suddenly takes off. You have no time to figure out what’s going on: You take off at the same instant. Other wise, you may be lunch.

The Brain: Humanity's Other Basic Instinct: Math

New research suggests that math has evolved its way right into our neurons—and monkeys', too.

Brain-Like Chip May Solve Computers' Big Problem: Energy

Kwabena Boahen is working to create a computer that will fulfill his boyhood vision—a new kind of computer, based not on the regimented order of traditional silicon chips but on the organized chaos of the human brain. Designing this machine will mean rejecting everything that we have learned over the past 50 years about building computers. But it might be exactly what we need to keep the information revolution going for another 50. The human brain runs on only about 20 watts of power, equal to the dim light behind the pickle jar in your refrigerator. By contrast, the computer on your desk consumes a million times as much energy per calculation. If you wanted to build a robot with a processor as smart as the human brain, it would require 10 to 20 megawatts of electricity. “Ten megawatts is a small hydroelectric plant,” Boahen says dismissively. “We should work on miniaturizing hydroelectric plants so we can put them on the backs of robots.” You would encounter similar problems if you tried to build a medical implant to replace just 1 percent of the neurons in the brain, for use in stroke patients. That implant would consume as much electricity as 200 households and dissipate as much heat as the engine in a Porsche Boxster. “Energy efficiency isn’t just a matter of elegance. It fundamentally limits what we can do with computers,” Boahen says. Despite the amazing progress in electronics technology—today’s transistors are 1/100,000 the size that they were a half century ago, and computer chips are 10 million times faster—we still have not made meaningful progress on the energy front. And if we do not, we can forget about truly intelligent humanlike machines and all the other dreams of radically more powerful computers.

I Didn't Sin—It Was My Brain

Brain researchers have found the sources of many of our darkest thoughts, from envy to wrath.

Is Alzheimer's Like a Strange Form of Brain Cancer?

Biochemist Peter Davies suspects the vast majority of research is on the wrong track: The disease is caused by improper cell division, not plaques or tangles.

The Brain: Where Does Sex Live in the Brain? From Top to Bottom.

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Image: iStockphoto

On April 11, 1944, a doctor named T. C. Erickson addressed the Chicago Neurological Society about a patient he called Mrs. C. W. At age 43 she had started to wake up many nights feeling as if she were having sex—or as she put it to Erickson, feeling “hot all over.” As the years passed her hot spells struck more often, even in the daytime, and began to be followed by seizures that left her unable to speak. Erickson examined Mrs. C. W. when she was 54 and diagnosed her with nymphomania. He prescribed a treatment that was shockingly common at the time: He blasted her ovaries with X-rays.

Despite the X-rays, Mrs. C. W.’s seizures became worse, leaving her motionless and feeling as if an egg yolk were running down her throat. Erickson began to suspect that her sexual feelings were emanating not from her ovaries but from her head. Doctors opened up her skull and discovered a slow-growing tumor pressing against her brain. After the tumor was removed and Mrs. C. W. recovered, the seizures faded. “When asked if she still had any ‘passionate spells,’” Erickson recounted, “she said, ‘No, I haven’t had any; they were terrible things.’”

The Brain: The Dark Matter of the Human Brain

Meet the forgotten 90 percent of your brain: glial cells, which outnumber your neurons ten to one. And no one really knows what they do.

How Much of Your Memory Is True?

Is memory permanent and fixed? Not so much, according to new research. In fact, our brains are constantly re-writing the stories of what happened—and can even erase them.

What Do Urban Sounds Do to Your Brain?

A sonic tour of New York, from the agonizing screech of the Union Square subway station to one of the quietest rooms in the city: Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center

Why Ghost Hunters Is the Best Science Show on TV

No matter how silly and misguided, Ghost Hunters captures an element of science that Numb3rs, House, and even Mythbusters miss.