The New York Times, August 9, 2005

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Malaria is a staggeringly devastating disease, striking an estimated 300 million to 500 million people a year and killing more than a million of them. Scientists have long wondered how the parasite that causes malaria — a single-cell creature, plasmodium, carried by mosquitoes — manages to be so successful.

New research has shown an unexpected source of its success. The parasite makes infected humans smell more attractive to mosquitoes.

Continue reading “Manipulative Malaria Parasite Makes You More Attractive (to Mosquitoes)” →

The New York Times, August 2, 2005

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Richard Prum, a Yale ornithologist, was hiking through an Ecuadorean forest 18 years ago when he had one of the strangest experiences an ornithologist can have. He watched a bird sing with its wings.

Dr. Prum was observing a male club-winged manakin. The tiny red-headed bird was hopping acrobatically from branch to branch in order to attract female manakins. And from time to time, the male would wave its wings over its back. Each time the manakin produced a loud, clear tone that sounded as if it came from a violin.

“I was just utterly stunned,” Dr. Prum said. “There’s literally no bird in the world that does anything that prepares you for it. It’s totally unique.”

Continue reading “A New Kind of Birdsong: Music on the Wing in the Forests of Ecuador” →

The New York Times, July 12, 2005

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Seven years ago Reginald King was lying in a hospital bed recovering from bypass surgery when he first heard the music.

It began with a pop tune, and others followed. Mr. King heard everything from cabaret songs to Christmas carols. “I asked the nurses if they could hear the music, and they said no,” said Mr. King, a retired sales manager in Cardiff, Wales.

“I got so frustrated,” he said. “They didn’t know what I was talking about and said it must be something wrong with my head. And it’s been like that ever since.”

Continue reading “Neuron Network Goes Awry, and Brain Becomes an IPod” →

The New York Times, June 21, 2005

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Jellyfish have traditionally been considered simple and primitive. When you gaze at one in an aquarium tank, it is not hard to see why.

Like its relatives the sea anemone and coral, the jellyfish looks like a no-frills animal. It has no head, no back or front, no left or right sides, no legs or fins. It has no heart. Its gut is a blind pouch rather than a tube, so its mouth must serve as its anus. Instead of a brain, it has a diffuse net of nerves.

A fish or a shrimp may move quickly in a determined swim; a jellyfish pulses lazily along.

Continue reading “Plain, Simple, Primitive? Not the Jellyfish” →

The New York Times, May 10, 2005

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HANOVER, N.H. – If you walk into the office of a scientist, chances are you’ll see a white board hanging on the wall covered in scrawls. A molecular biologist’s white board might be covered by hideous tangles of protein chains. A geophysicist might doodle India crashing into southern Asia.

The scribbles of Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth, are more metaphysical. Arrows travel from a pair of eyes into a cartoon brain, finally ending at the word “Apple.” Another picture bluntly sums up the modern debate over free will, with a stick figure’s head labeled “Brain,” and two bubbles point toward it — one labeled “Judge” and the other “Neu” — short for neuroscience. Floating uncertainly off to one side is a third bubble that asks, “Mind?”

Continue reading “A Career Spent Learning How the Mind Emerges From the Brain” →