News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...the lateral occipitotemporal cortex prefers bodies upright and can distinguish body parts as well as whole bo...essing, disrupting recognition of inverted but not upright bodies or body parts. The results pointed to parallel cortical processing pathways for recognition o...Study identifies energy efficiency as reason for evolution of upright walking
...pothesized that the reduced energy cost of walking upright would have provided evolutionary advantages by decreasing the cost of foraging. For decades now researchers have debated the role of energetics and the evolution of bipedalism, said Raichlen. The big problem in the study of bipedalism was that the...Human ancestors learned to walk upright in the trees, say experts
...f Liverpool have found that humans ability to walk upright developed from ancestors foraging for food in fore... It was traditionally thought that humans became upright walkers in a slow process which had its origins in knuckle-walking movement on all fours just as c...Anthropologist given one of nation's top scientific honors
...ar-complete fossil of a human ancestor that walked upright more than three million years ago. He also has bee... human origins modeling, including the theory that upright walking was closely tied to monogamous mating in early hominids. Currently, Lovejoy is one of seve......could, in fact, be the reason you are able to walk upright on two legs at all! How we have evolved to walk on two legs remains a fundamental but, as yet, unresolved question for scientists. A popular explanation is that it is our ability to carry objects, particularly children, which forced early hominins on...These legs were made for fighting
...ow he argues that even though australopiths walked upright on the ground, the reason they retained short legs for 2 million years was not so much that they spent time in trees, but "the same thing that selected for short legs in the other great apes: male-male aggression and competition over access to reprod...Lessons in wood formation from Arabidopsis
.... The double mutant plants were not able to remain upright and stems were easily bent and broken. This defective phenotype could be almost completely reversed by introducing into the double mutant a genomic fragment containing either the fully functional NST1 or NST3 gene. This shows that these genes have an...Varied diet of early hominid casts doubt on extinction theory, says Colorado U study
An upright hominid that lived side by side with direct ancestors of modern humans more than a million years ago had a far more diverse diet than once believed, clouding the notion that it was driven to extinction by its picky eating habits as the African contin...Meet the earliest baby girl ever discovered
...preserve evidence that this ancient species walked upright effectively even at the age of three. However the two shoulder blades are similar to those of gorillas. The fingers are also long and curved as seen in other A. afarensis specimens. This raises old but unanswered questions. While an effective biped w...Stimulation of the semicircular canals can artificially control human walking and balance
...ing of how our vestibular system helps us maintain upright posture; at the same time, the researchers found t...exactly the same stimulus could be used to disturb upright balance, causing the subject to lean in one direction or the other, but without having any effect on...Nano machine switches between biological and silicon worlds
...s the fuel for the motor. The motor then pulls the upright DNA strand through it until it reaches the magnetic bead, like a winch lowering a weather balloon. A Hall-Effect sensor can measure the vertical movement of the magnetic bead which indicates whether the switch is on or off. That, in an over-simplifie...MNI researchers find that sense of smell is dependent on body position
...ncentrations of rose odour while they were sitting upright or lying down. The majority (63.9%) of participants were found to have a decreased sensitivity to the rose odour when lying down. "There is a clear difference in olfactory sensitivity depending on the body position of the subjects," explained Dr. Jo...Experiencing the world through the neurons of Math1
...f the location of the seats and aisles. You remain upright because you somehow know where your legs, arms and feet are. Your head remains upright. A variety of neurons or nerve cells makes it possible for you to approach the stage and even find a seat without sight. Several of those neurons migr...New genome comparison finds chimps, humans very similar at DNA level
... related to the human-specific features of walking upright on two feet, a greatly enlarged brain and complex language skills. Although the statistical signals are relatively weak, a few classes of genes appear to be evolving more rapidly in humans than in chimps. The single strongest outlier involves genes t...Positive air pressure chamber started with patients quickly after surgery
...thy male and female participants ages 20 to 55 ran upright at a speed of 5 plus kilometers an hour in the chamber, their heart rate actually decreased as the positive pressure on their lower body increased, making their steps lighter and the work of walking and running easier. More importantly for the rese......' center of gravity, making it easier to assume an upright posture and to climb trees, the researchers say. Also, in Pierolapithecus and modern great apes, only one of the two forearm bones "articulates," or attaches flexibly, to the wrist. This trait allows a relatively large degree of han......n ability to walk. Bipedalism the ability to walk upright on two legs evolved in the ape-like Australopithecus at least 4.5 million years ago while they also retained the ability to travel through the trees. Yet Homo with its "radically transformed body" did not evolve for another 3 million or more years ...