Fear gene discovered:

The researchers identified a gene in mice that controls reactions to impending danger by firing certain neurons in the brain. Mice that don't have the gene, called stathmin, simply don't react to situations that should scare the rodent pants off them.

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"For those who experience fear too much, stathmin-based drugs may provide an important relief," Rutgers University scientist Gleb Shumyatsky told LiveScience. "Also, after trauma these drugs may help to forget bad experiences."

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Fear plays a key role in survival, so all mammals have an efficient memory system to deal with it. While you can't recall the name of someone you just met, a memory of fright can last a lifetime.

The stathmin gene is normally prevalent in the brain's amygdala. It controls fear of predators, heights and others that are considered instinctive, as well as fears that are learned through specific events.

In the study, mice heard a tone and were given an electric shock. The mice without the stathmin gene reacted less strongly. In a second test, the stathmin-free mice were more likely to venture into open spaces that the others naturally avoided.

Meanwhile, researchers are probing a hormone that causes caring and empathy:

The lack of emotional care given to infants in some Romanian and Russian orphanages has provided researchers an opportunity to study the hormonal basis of the mother-child bond.

Researchers led by Seth D. Pollak of the University of Wisconsin have found that these children, even three and a half years after adoption into Wisconsin families, produce two critical hormones in a different pattern from children with traditional upbringings.

The hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin, are small proteins produced by the pituitary gland in the center of the brain. Although they influence bodily functions like giving milk and the water balance, they also have a range of effects on social behavior, at least in laboratory rodents and monkeys.

These include fostering positive interactions with other individuals, notably the social bonds between mother and child and the sexual bonds between male and female.

In June this year, oxytocin was reported to elevate the level of trust among people who received a nasal spray of it before playing a game created to test their tolerance for being betrayed by other players. The game was created by an economist, Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich.

Dr. Pollak and his colleagues have looked at how the two hormones are involved in shaping the bonds between mother and child. In normally raised children aged about 4½ years, they found, oxytocin levels rise after half an hour of physical interaction with their mothers.

But the previously neglected children in their study did not show this oxytocin jump, Dr. Pollak and his colleagues write in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The hormone levels were measured from samples of the children's urine.

Dr. Pollak believes that oxytocin acts through the brain's reward system and gives infants a positive feeling about social interactions. The finding that the adopted children in the study apparently get less of an oxytocin reward could explain why some children from Eastern Europe, as they grow older, have difficulty forming social relationships.

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The new finding can be interpreted in several ways. One possibility, Dr. Nelson said, is that there is a sensitive period in the first two years of life for developing a strong relationship, and that later relationships depend on the biological mechanism having been set correctly, as judged by the oxytocin response.

It could be that the previously neglected children have missed this critical window of development, Dr. Nelson said. Or, the biological system may be flexible and it will just take longer for the children to develop a normal oxytocin response. .

The best possible intervention for neglected orphan children would seem to be adoption into loving families. But maybe this is not enough and if so, the oxytocin measurements may point to the need to do something else, Dr. Nelson said.

Sociopaths and psychopaths could be cured by oxytocin therapy?

Maybe there's something to that "bad upbringing" business after all. Missing the developmental stage where human beings learn the capacity for caring and empathy, some go on to be adults capable of cruelty without the twinge of conscience.

Oxytocin, alsocalled "the trust hormone," was discussed before here.

All of this provokes an interesting discussion on the nature of evil, and whether the somewhat common description of evil or cruel individuals -- "He just has a head full of bad wiring and bad chemicals" -- is more true than we knew.

Which isn't to say anything about not jailing people who do terrible things. Even if there's a chemical basis for their cruelty, you lock them up for practical reasons, like just not wanting them to kill anymore.

But what if a genuinely evil psychopath, a butcher, undergoes oxytocin therapy and suddenly becomes a normal human being with empathy for his fellow humans and an aversion to harming them? Does that guy get paroled?

Also: Is there any sort of therapy to cure women of their need for "snuggling"? And also: "talking"?

Posted by: Ace at 05:55 AM | Comments (33)
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Basically just keeps saying we have to "understand them," and that we can't "hate them back."

We have to "understand" why many Muslims embrace a my-tribe-right-or-wrong mentality?

All right, Chris: Suppose White Christians in great numbers embraced that idea. That White Christians were to be defended and supported no matter how heinous their crimes, and that Christianity should be spread by bombs and bullets.

Would that be "evil"?

Or are white Christians the only animals on the face of the earth with the intelligence to have a moral capacity at all, whereas all the swarthier races are, essentially, below such moral considerations, just as no one blames a crocodile in moral terms for killing a child?

The link is at Lileks; tip from Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 05:38 AM | Comments (164)
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If a tree farts in the forest but there's no one to smell it, does it bother to blame the dog?

(Slublog tells me that Atrios started a new open thread. Just tryin' to keep up.)

Posted by: Ace at 05:14 AM | Comments (16)
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Thanks to the NYT for unmasking the entire CIA network of secret planes; thanks to the WaPo for revealing the CIA's secret prisons, particularly those in "two Eastern European countries."

And thanks to the CIA personnel who felt they were permitted to break their oaths of confidentiality, as well laws regarding to unauthorized disclosures of classified information, whenever their precious consciences demanded.

Are these leaks going to be investigated?

No?

Valerie Plame, Double-Oh Soccer Mom, was more important than this?

Did the outing of non-spy Valerie Plame expose two huge CIA operations? Embarass any allies? Set the Europeans off on an investigation to find where we're holding Al Qaeda terrorists?

Posted by: Ace at 07:44 PM | Comments (31)
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Blindness I was ready for. But my teeth falling out and my body covered with pustules?

Thanks to Dr. Reo Symes.

You can trust him. His fake internet name includes the word "Doctor."

Posted by: Ace at 07:18 PM | Comments (18)
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That's just how Scalia rolls:

"The election was dragged into the courts by the Gore people. We did not go looking for trouble."

...

"The issue was whether Florida's Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court [would decide the election.] What did you expect us to do? Turn the case down because it wasn't important enough?"

Oh, and I should point out that this is also another Open Thread.

Posted by: Ace at 07:00 PM | Comments (56)
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Thanks to Slublog, I can now report:

Atrios just posted again, and I'm shocked to learn it's... an Open Thread.

Open Thread

Threads speak much louder than words.

-Atrios 9:16 PM

Yep, Duncan Black -- or as I know him, "The Godfather of Open Threads, the Hardest Workin' Man In the Blogosphere" -- now has posted in the last twenty-four hours:

six open threads

two "housecleaning posts," one about comments, the other about traffic

five or so links without comment

one extended quote from a WaPo writer without any original commentary

and about 15-20 sentences, in total, of his own writing.

How the hell does he keep this kind of frenetic pace up? For god's sakes, man, you're only human-- take time to breathe!

I shit you not, this man is my new f'n' hero.

First Comments:

yes

hermes

--------------------------------------------------------

Thank you, oh great threadbot!

...

Diane

I can see why they're so happy. I mean, the guy sometimes makes them wait five, six minutes before starting a new Open Thread.

Posted by: Ace at 06:13 PM | Comments (62)
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My Atrios-like commentary: Lovely.

That's it. "Lovely." That's enough for the likes of you morons.

Posted by: Ace at 05:55 PM | Comments (12)
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Moonbat One writes that Chris Matthews is claiming he didn't mean our enemies are "not evil -- they just have a different perspective."

Chris Matthews emailed Powerline, claiming whoever said we need to be more touchy-feely and understand of Al-Qaeda totally got him wrong. He says:

"I told the students that the way to deal with terrorists is the way Golda Meir did after the attack on the Israeli Olympic athletes: hunt them down and kill them one at a time and be rough about it.

Every person in that room heard my say this. I don't know why the reporter chose to conflate my remarks about our need to get behind the forces in the Muslim world into my approach on how to deal with terrorists.

Feel free to check with the University of Toronto students who invited me to speak."

That's from PowerLine.

Sorry, Chris, but you said something almost identical a year ago.

There is a possible resolution of this, which probably makes sense to Hissy-Fit Chris, given his politics on this. Which is:

Al Qaeda is a horrible enemy which must be hunted down like animals;

but

the "insurgents in Iraq" are "not evil-- they just have a different perspective" and these are not the same as Al Qaeda, despite the fact they call themselves "Al Qaeda in Iraq."

In fact, when Chris made his previous statement calling these people "rival" who "just have a different perspective" he was, in fact, talking about the "insurgents" in Iraq, who are, I guess, in his mind different than "the terrorists."

Makes no sense, except to an idiot liberal like Matthews, but perhaps that's what he's driving at.

Posted by: Ace at 04:57 PM | Comments (23)
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Bumped so that people's blog-pimping isn't buried under the Atrios parody.

Feel free to link to your blog and best recent post. Include a good snippet to draw attention.

Phil's big Hee-Haw-funny fake news article will still be deleted, though.

That's just how I roll.

Posted by: Ace at 04:23 PM | Comments (53)
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