Quite a few articles for reading this past month:

•  Starting with this article from Big Think that provides some insight about how humans can make economically irrational decisions, in this case, the tendency of people to overvalue the things that they already own, a phenomenon known as the “endowment effect”. It cites research showing how Hadza Bushmen in Tanzania who have no contact with the modern economy do not experience the effect. But once roads have been built to connect their isolated communities to tourists, they become involved in the modern economy quickly pick up the effect.
• The next one is from Bloomberg and covers research into implantable probes that can help people who have suffered memory losses to recover some of what they have lost. It’s designed for soldiers who have suffered injuries however and works only to help with lost motor skills rather than abstract knowledge-type memories, but it looks like a promising start.
• This next one is a favourite of mine. Researchers already know that when people experience art such as a painting or music, certain parts of the brain are activated and this can be detected using  MRI scans. This article from the BBC shows how the brains of mathematicians are activated in similar ways when contemplating mathematical formulas. In fact, the more aesthetically pleasing the formula is, the greater the response measured, with the most beautiful formula of all being of course Euler’s identity.
• Science has long known that more physically attractive people tend to achieve greater success in a wide variety of fields, many of which are seemingly unconnected with beauty. This article from The Economist tries to tease out these effects by studying participants in the Tour de France bicycle race. Subjects were asked to rate the attractiveness of Tour de France contestants without knowing about the performance of the contestants. The researchers found that physical attractiveness is indeed correlated with being better cyclists in a field in which there should be no bias towards attractive people. The working idea is that physical attractiveness is itself an indicator of good genes and good health, and hence better performance at sports.
• Here’s another article from the BBC that talks about research that allows one monkey to control a limb of another monkey. The monkey being controlled and electrodes were inserted in its spinal cord. The master monkey had a brain chip implanted which could monitor the activity of its neurons. The readings were then fed to the sedated monkey, allowing the other monkey to control its limb.
• This great article from BPS Research Digest goes into detail about researchers’ attempts to circumvent the inability of people to tickle oneself. They implemented a body swap illusion in which the participants wore goggles that showed video feed from a camera. They were seated opposite an experimenter and the camera would either show a normal forward facing view or a view of themselves from the perspective of the experimenter. Both the participant and the experimenter held a rod with a foam at the other end which could be used for tickling. The idea is that the subject would be confused about who was doing the actual tickling. It turns out even when the subjects were completely fooled by the illusion, they still found it impossible to feel a tickling sensation when it was really their own hand moving the rod but did feel it when it was the experimenter’s hand moving.

The first of the series for 2014. It’s a light start for the year:

•  First, we have this New York Times article covering a study that looks into how technology might be changing how people interact with each other. This one works by filming public spaces in New York and comparing them to similar footage filmed forty to fifty years ago. The researchers carefully identified persons in the footage that were observed to be using mobile phones and similar devices and tried to draw comparisons between then and now. It turned out that publicly visible usage of such technology was lower than they expected and that mostly by loners. They also found that more people are meeting and loitering in public spaces and speculate that technology may be a reason for the boost.
• Next, this Atlantic article talks about how even sleep has a placebo effect. In the study, scientists informed participants that REM sleep is more restful and getting more REM sleep is correlated with better performance on learning tests. They hooked up the participants with sensors and told them that this would measure the amount of REM sleep they had gotten the previous night. This was however a lie as the scientists had no way of knowing that fact. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that participants who were told that they had gotten more REM sleep did perform better on cognitive tests compared to those who were told that they had gotten less REM sleep than average.
• Finally, here’s a direct link to a paper that seems spurious but actually makes perfect sense. The idea is to search for time travellers from the future by searching for prescient content on the Internet. This includes content about events that preceded the date of the event and search engine queries about events before the events could possibly have been known about. Not surprisingly, the search revealed no evidence of any time travellers on the Internet.

No less than four article this month, which makes for a good store of reading materials:

• The Guardian has an article on yet another anti-ageing breakthrough. This one focuses on a compound called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide which apparently restores the communications system between the mitochondria of a cell and its nucleus. The dramatic results of trials with mice were that two-year old mice which were given the compound had their ageing indicators reversed to that of six-month old mice. As usual, this is just a very narrow result that has been vastly generalized for popular news consumption since the ageing process involves many more factors and it looks like this applies only to muscle cells. But it’s still one more step in the fight against mortality.
• It is well known that humans have specialized brain structures for facial recognition. This article from The Independent showcases research which suggests that dogs not only have similar skills to recognize the faces of other dogs, they may also be capable of recognizing the faces of their human owners. The results were based on the usual metrics of observing which images dogs’ eyes were focused on and how long their attention lingered on each image. Especially notable is the observation that dogs still preferred looking at the faces of other dogs rather than the faces of their owners.
• The Scientific American has an article that has immediate, practicable use to anyone who uses social networking. It details research on something called the cheerleader effect which causes faces shown in images to be perceived as being more attractive when they are presented in a group. In other words, you look better in a photo when you are surrounded by other people compared to when you alone in a photo. An associated effect is that the impression that viewers have on the group as a whole influences the perception of any individual who is part of the group. This means that if you want to cultivate a specific impression on other people, it would be useful to have photos taken of you in the company of other people who can convey the image you want.
• The placebo effect is something that most readers of this blog should be familiar with and it is an essential element that needs to be taken into account when considering the efficacy of drugs and medical treatment. This article from The Wall Street Journal talks about fake knee surgery seems to be work just as well as real surgery to reported pain and other symptoms in some patients suffering from torn knee cartilage. The trials involved patients who underwent the actual procedure and control patients who did not undergo the procedure, but efforts were made to make it seem like they did, for example by pressing instruments against their skin and keeping them in the operation theatre for the exact same length of time. They found that those who underwent the real procedure had slightly better short-term results but there was no difference between the two groups after one year had passed, suggesting that natural healing worked just as well.