Wired to Connect

Mothers and babies really do connect on a very fundamental level - babies and their biological mothers synchronize heartbeats when they are engaging in mutually cheerful behavior - smiling, cooing, or laughing.

The article is great, but the picture of the mother and baby smiling at each other is really priceless. Do yourself a favor and click through.

ScienceShot: Human Hearts Beat Together

Crying Means Distress

I could rant a lot more about this subject so I will restrain myself. Psychology Today has a really great article describing the impact that being left alone to "cry it out" has on babies and toddlers. In a nutshell, it makes kids grow up less intelligent, more anxious, unable to integrate socially, and highly liable to pass on those same unwanted traits to further generations.

Dangers of “Crying It Out”

Dancing Around the Subject

Psychology Today has run a really great article about dancing and how it allows us to access the wisdom of our bodies. We regularly stifle our body-wisdom in favor of our overactive minds. We're supposed to sit quietly and work only with our brains. Ugh! Kimerer LaMothe puts us right:

To Dance Is a Radical Act

Nuke Lint?

Afraid all life on earth is destined to die in a global thermonuclear holocaust? Check out the strange "lint" growing in tanks of water around spent fuel rods at the Savannah River Nuclear Site. We might bomb ourselves into oblivion, but fungus may yet prevail. Via the Augusta Chronicle.

Strange nuclear waste lint might be "biological in nature"

Bee Brains

SciGuru reports on new work showing similarities between how bees communicate and come to consensus to choose a new nesting site after a swarm, and how neurons in a human brain communicate to achieve consensus during the act of making a decision.

“This research shows that a key feature of a human brain – cross inhibition between evidence-accumulating populations of subunits – also exists in a swarm as it chooses its nesting site."

Basically, a quiet debate goes on between factions of bees - and between factions of neurons - and the process makes sure that different pros and cons are weighed before conscious choice is made. So when we spend an election season arguing with each other back and forth about the merits of any particular candidate or political stance, are we recreating the same process on a different scale? Interesting stuff.

House-hunting honey bees shed light on how human brains come to a decision

Expectations

Bobby McFerrin on the mysteries of the pentatonic scale.

The Language of Tantrums

Scientists have now studied and deconstructed the toddler temper tantrum, giving us a much better idea of what's actually going on behind all of that screaming...and a few better pieces of advice on how to deal with them. The old common wisdom is that tantrums always begin in anger and progress towards ending in tears, but vocal analysis shows that kids actually sway back and forth between anger and sadness as the tantrum goes on. There's a kind of pattern to them that can help us understand what's going on for the child a little better.

The best way to defuse a tantrum? Don't react. Rising with anger to the child's anger, or even just addressing it in any way, just prolongs it.

What's Behind A Temper Tantrum? Scientists Deconstruct The Screams