Editor’s Selections: Touch, Mirror Neurons, Cat Cognition, and Smelly Lemurs
August 3rd, 2010 Editor's Selections 5 Comments
Jason Goldman selects several notable posts each week from Psychology and Neuroscience. He blogs at The Thoughtful Animal and at Child’s Play.
- “Touch imagery has always been a useful storytelling tool,” says Livia Blackburne of her eponymous blog. “We talk about warm smiles, slippery personalities, getting caught between a rock and a hard place.” But does touch imagery serve a larger purpose, perhaps helping give structure to human thought?
- “The idea that mirror neurons support action understanding is by far the dominant interpretation of the function of these cells in the monkey motor system. However, it is not the only interpretation,” according to Greg Hickock of Talking Brains. There are alternative explanations.
- Anne Corwin of Existence is Wonderful describes a study about causality inferences made by cats, and runs an experiment on her own cats.
- Hormonal Manipulation of Olfactory Cues, or How to Lose a Guy in 10 days. Body odors are important cues used for social and sexual discrimination. The Olfactics blog describes research with ring-tailed lemurs, which demonstrated that drugs can alter body scents and change behavior.
