What's it like to be a dog-cognition scientist?

"I can't imagine not living with dogs. That would be really sad for me," says Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns, with Callie (left) and Cato. His latest book is called "What It's Like to Be a Dog."

Five years ago, Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns became the first to capture images of actual canine thought processes. To explore the minds of the oldest domesticated species, the Berns lab trained dogs to remain still and alert while undergoing functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) — the same tool that is unlocking secrets of the human brain. The project opened a new door into canine cognition and social cognition of other species.

Berns went on to conduct a series of experiments on dogs, gathering both behavioral and fMRI data on questions such as: How capable are dogs of self-restraint? Do dogs prefer praise from their owners or food? How do dogs process faces in their brains? What’s going on in a dog’s brain when it smells the scent of its owner?

In 2013, Berns wrote a New York Times bestseller called “How Dogs Love Us.” He described how the death of his beloved pug Newton planted the seeds for his eventual switch from the studying the human brain to focus on non-invasive studies of the cognition of dogs and other animals.

In the following Q&A, Berns talks about his new book, “What It’s Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience,” just published by Basic Books. The book focuses on his hopes that understanding how animals think will revolution how we treat them.

Question: Can you talk about all the dogs you’ve had as pets during your life? 

Gregory Berns: When I was a child growing up in Southern California we had two golden retrievers, Pretzel and Popcorn. It’s embarrassing, but my parents always named their dogs after food. I’m not sure why. Most of the children in the area had dogs and horses and we would go traipsing around the hills. Kids and dogs go together.

Berns and Callie

After I was done with medical school and stopped moving around, my wife and I had three pugs, Simon, Newton and Dexter, and then a golden retriever, Lyra.

We now live with our two daughters and have three dogs: Callie, a Feist, which is a Southern squirrel hunting dog; Cato, a Plott hound, which is the state dog of North Carolina; and Argo, a yellow dog of some kind of mix. We also have two bearded dragons and a chameleon.

I can’t imagine not living with dogs. That would be really sad for me.

Q: “What It’s Like to Be a Dog” describes all the experimental work you have done so far with canine cognition. What’s the biggest surprise to come out of your research? 

GB: If you take language out of the picture, what we’re finding is that we see a lot of similarities between dogs and humans. In one study, for instance, we used fMRI to measure the relative value of food versus praise to the dogs and found that almost all the dogs’ brains responded to praise as much, and sometimes more, than to food. We ourselves know how it feels when someone praises us, there’s a positive feeling associated with it. That’s perhaps similar to what dogs are feeling.

We also did a study on dogs and delayed gratification. We found that part of the prefrontal cortex is more active in dogs during self-control. And, just like experiments with humans have found, we showed that the dogs who are better at this task use more of their prefrontal lobes.

Now that we are gaining a basic understanding of canine cognition, we are starting to focus more on the individuality of dogs — what it’s like to be this dog, as opposed to that dog.

Q: You’re also using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to study the brains of other mammals, mapping the neural pathways in brains from animals that are long deceased and stored in museum collections. How did this project come about? 

GB: It started in 2015 when we gained access to the brains of two dolphins that had died, and we showed that we could use DTI to map their sensory and motor systems. Dolphins are incredibly intelligent, social animals but they’ve remained relatively mysterious. We provided the first picture of the entire dolphin brain and all the white matter connections inside of it.

This year, we reconstructed the brain architecture and neural networks of the extinct Tasmanian tiger, also known as a thylacine, using two brain specimens from museums, both of which were about 100 years old.

Through a project I call the Brain Ark we’re collecting a digital archive of high-resolution, three-dimensional brain structures of megafauna. It’s publicly available to other researchers to contribute to and draw data from.

Q: What is the ultimate goal of your animal neuroscience research? 

GB: The Brain Ark is an attempt to catalog and study brains of large mammal species before they are gone. Or, as in the case of the Tasmanian tiger, after they’re gone. Many megafauna are in danger of extinction because their habitats are being chopped up in ways that don’t allow them to sustain themselves or to migrate.

In the grand scheme of things, I’d also like to explore the commonalities that we have with other animals. That has important ethical implications for how we treat them and for their right to exist in the first place. Animal welfare laws cover things like abuse — pain and suffering. I think we should go beyond that and acknowledge that animals also have a right to lead a good life — whatever that means for that animal.

Related:
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Do canine's prefer praise or food?
Neuro-imaging maps brain wiring of extinct Tasmanian tiger
First images of dolphin brain circuitry hint at how they sense sound

Solar eclipse adds cosmic spin to Emory orientation

“It’s a strange coincidence that the moon at its distance and size almost perfectly covers the sun at its distance and size,” says Emory physicist Sidney Perkowitz. “It makes you stop and wonder — is it just a coincidence? Some people call an eclipse a religious experience. I call it cosmic.” (NASA photo)

By Carol Clark

The Emory University class of 2021 already has a unique distinction: The campus orientation day for the first-year students will occur beneath a nearly total solar eclipse. From about 2:38 to 2:41 pm on Monday, August 21, the moon will cover 97.7 percent of the sun over Atlanta.

A couple of solar telescopes will be set up on the roof of the Mathematics and Science Building between 1 and 4 pm for staff, faculty, students and their family members who want to observe the sun through them — weather permitting. But a pair of certified solar eclipse glasses, a simple pinhole camera — or even the leaves of a tree — will also make it possible to safely view the eclipse anywhere on campus where the sun is visible.

Emory first-year students plan to gather on the Quad between 2:15 and 3 pm for eclipse watching. At the Oxford campus, first-year students will gather in front of the Oxford Science Building starting at 2 pm where there will be music, a solar telescope and sun-themed snacks and drinks. The Emory Police Department will also host group eclipse viewing on the field of the Student Activity and Academic Center at the Clairmont Campus. All students, faculty and staff are welcome to attend these events.

Atlanta Science Tavern has also compiled this list of solar eclipse events in and around Atlanta. 

A total solar eclipse will sweep across a 70-mile-wide area of the United States, starting on the Pacific coast of Oregon and continuing all the way to South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean. Even though Atlanta lies just beyond the path of totality, if the weather is clear the near-total eclipse will be worth pausing from work or school to go outside and experience.

To begin with, it’s rare. The last time the sun over Atlanta was nearly obscured by the moon was on May 31, 1984, when it was 99.7 percent covered. The New York Times described what happened as the skies began to darken about 20 minutes after noon: “The temperature dropped six degrees, flowers closed their petals, dogs howled, pigeons tucked their heads under their wings as if to sleep and the whole city was bathed in a kind of diffused light, not unlike that accompanying the approach of a severe storm.”

Emory senior  Raveena Chhibber tests out a pair of solar eclipse glasses. The neuroscience and behavioral biology major is on campus this summer working in a psychology lab and plans to take a break to witness the celestial event.

Sidney Perkowitz, Emory emeritus professor of physics, was on campus that day in 1984. He stood outside near the old physics building, now Callaway Hall, beneath a large white oak on the Quad.

“I remember a lot of people came out on the Quad, particularly around this tree,” he says. “It was a joint social experience.”

The darkening effect as the moon began to cover the sun was “eerie,” he says. “It didn’t feel exactly like twilight, it felt like something weirder was going on. It just seemed abnormal.”

Perkowitz watched the light as it passed through the leaves of the tree. “As the ambient light gets reduced, you begin to see multiple images of the crescent sun on the ground below,” Perkowitz says, explaining that each tiny space between the leaves acted as a pinhole-like opening, similar to a camera. “It’s spectacular because you see dozens and dozens of the images, filtered through the leaves.”

Aristotle observed this same phenomenon beneath a tree during a solar eclipse in the fourth century BC. The Greeks were debating at the time whether light moves in straight lines. The projection of the image of the sun through the leaves was evidence that it does, although the principles behind it would remained unresolved for nearly 2,000 years.

The white oak that Perkowitz stood beneath 33 years ago was struck by lightning in 2016 and is no longer there. There are plenty of other trees on campus, however, where eclipse watchers can stand to experience the event.

"An eclipse is a chance to stop and perceive and reflect," says Emory astronomer Erin Bonning. "It proceeds slowly and deliberately, which is not exactly the pace of modern society." (NASA graphic)

Or you can make your own pinhole projector by poking a hole in a piece of cardboard. NASA provides directions and some templates. During the eclipse, you stand with your back to the sun and hold up the cardboard so that light passes through it and hits a wall, the ground or a piece of paper that you hold up to capture a projection of the image of the sun.

Sunglasses do not provide enough protection to look directly at the sun at any time during a partial eclipse. You need special solar viewing glasses, which are available free at Fulton County libraries or can be purchased online. Beware of fakes — the American Astronomical Society provides guidance to help ensure that solar glasses are certified and safe to wear.

Horace Dale, director of the Emory Observatory, will have a limited number of solar-viewing glasses available and will set up two solar telescopes between 1 and 4 pm on the roof of the Mathematics and Science Center — if the weather holds. Take the elevator to the fifth floor of the building and follow the signs to get to the rooftop.

“If it’s just partly cloudy, we should be able to see through the breaks in the clouds,” Dale says. But even the threat of a storm, he adds, will mean having to pack up the expensive equipment to avoid it getting damaged by rain.

The special filters on the solar telescopes will make it possible to directly view the sun safely. “You’ll be able to see the filamentary structure of the sun and any flare activity on the edge of the sun,” Dale says. “There might even be a few planets that pop out.”

An Atlanta native, Dale experienced a partial eclipse here in 1970 when he was six. “I remember my dad telling me not to look at the sun,” he says. “It was a really interesting experience for me.”

Which is why Dale has already explained to the teachers of his son Joey, six, and his daughter Emma, five, that his children will not attend school on August 21. Instead they will be getting an eclipse lesson from their father. Their mother, Jessica, will also be present. A dental hygienist, she has the day off since the dentist is heading for the path of totality and will close the office.

Psychology graduate student Katy Renfroe will pause from working on her thesis to observe the partial eclipse on campus.

Astronomer Erin Bonning, director of the Emory Planetarium, will be in Clayton, Georgia — in the path of totality — during the eclipse. She will be giving a presentation for Goizueta Business School’s orientation of incoming Emory juniors at a retreat center in north Georgia. The BBA class of 2019 not only holds the distinction of being Goizueta Business School’s 100th-anniversary class — it enjoys the bonus of entering orientation with great timing in a great location.

“This will be my first total solar eclipse and I’m excited,” Bonning says. She quickly adds: “I’m cautiously excited because all astronomers know that when something really big is about to happen you don’t want the clouds to hear you talking about it. Clouds are the great enemies of astronomers.”

When Bonning was in fifth grade, in Maryland, she had fervently anticipated a near total-eclipse event. When the big moment finally arrived, it was cloudy and rainy.

She did get to witness a lunar eclipse in Atlanta around 5 am on October 8, 2014. “I got up early and walked around downtown to find a good view,” she says. “It’s breathtaking to see the Earth cast a shadow in space and the moon pass through it. It’s one thing to write down an equation for curving space time, but when you see a visual illustration of these facts it’s so much more moving. It made me feel connected to the universe.”

A woman standing near her during the lunar eclipse had a different reaction. “She said, ‘Huh. I thought it would be more impressive than that,’” Bonning recalls. “I took a deep breath and held my tongue.”

The August 21 solar eclipse is particularly special since the path of totality will stretch from sea to shining sea, across the United States. “It’s unusual because it’s taking place over such a large inhabited stretch of land,” Bonning says. “The last time we had such a grand solar eclipse across America was a century ago.”

Following are Bonning’s tips for observing the solar eclipse, whether you stay in Atlanta or travel to totality.

Plan your activity. “Don’t just hop in the car on August 21 and spontaneously head for the path of totality, or you’re going to see a partial eclipse in a traffic jam,” Bonning says. You can read more about traffic predictions here.

Don’t worry about height. “You don’t need to go to the top of a mountain or the top of a building,” Bonning says. “If you can see the sun, you can see the eclipse. It’s not like getting closer to it will give you a better view.”

Manage your expectations. “While it will be extremely cool to see the eclipse, it’s not going to look like a dragon came out of the sky and devoured the sun. That’s a myth,” Bonning says. “An eclipse is a chance to stop and perceive and reflect. It proceeds slowly and deliberately, which is not exactly the pace of modern society.”

Be in the moment. If you’re not an expert at photographing eclipses, forget trying to get the perfect selfie for social media. “You’ll be better off being open to the experience,” Bonning says. “Observe shifts in the light. Feel the temperature drop. You may notice animals behaving differently.”

Make it a fun, educational experience for kids. While you need to emphasize to young children the importance of not staring directly at the sun with the naked eye during the eclipse, you can do so in a fun way that helps them understand why. Bonning recommends parents visit this Planetary Society site, which includes directions for how to make pinhole projectors, including ones in fancy, pinhole-punched shapes.

“We’re very lucky on Earth,” Perkowitz says. “We have the largest moon of all the planets and it has all kinds of connections to love and romance and poetry. And on top of that, it has this amazing alignment with the sun that provides this incredible sight every so often.”

The moon is only a quarter of a million miles away and much smaller than Earth, he notes, while the sun is 93 million miles distant and is huge — far bigger than all of the planets in the solar system put together.

“It’s a strange coincidence that the moon at its distance and size almost perfectly covers the sun at its distance and size,” Perkowitz says. “It makes you stop and wonder — is it just a coincidence? Some people call an eclipse a religious experience. I call it cosmic.”

What UFO conspiracy theories reveal about American culture

Last spring, historian Felix Harcourt taught a class at Emory on how conspiracy theories about UFOs have shaped American culture. He began the class with a question: “How many people believe alien life exists?”

Most people in the class raised their hand. “I think so, too,” Harcourt said. “Stephen Hawking thinks so. In a giant universe there is a distinct probability that somewhere alien life has evolved. It probably looks pretty different from us, but it might be out there.”

But what about the idea that aliens have visited Earth? And stories of human complicity in those visits — usually of government complicity?

The multitude of UFO conspiracy theories are considered laughable and serious discussion of them is labeled as a cultural taboo, Harcourt said. “Even as they are treated as laughable, they’re some of the most widely believed conspiracy theories. If we go back to the sixties, Gallup polls find 96 percent of Americans had heard of UFOs, 46 percent believed that they were real. By 1973, 57 percent believed that UFOs were real. By the nineties, 71 percent believed that the government was at least hiding information about UFOs: 'They may or may not be real, but there’s definitely more going on there than the government is letting us know.' And those numbers remain relatively stable.”

A 2015 poll showed that 56 percent of American believe that UFOs are real and 45 percent believe aliens have visited Earth. “To put that into context,” Harcourt said, “in that same survey, 57 percent said that the Big Bang theory was real.”

Harcourt goes on to discuss how various UFO conspiracy theories in the 20th century have changed, often paralleling societal anxieties at the time. Click here to watch the entire class on C-SPAN’s lectures in history series.

Harcourt taught the class as part of a course, “Politics and Paranoia,” while he was a post-doctoral fellow at Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry.

A disarming comedian interviews an Emory psychologist loaded with facts about the brain

Comedian Jordan Klepper, center, takes a break from filming in the Emory psychology department. He interviewed Emory psychologist Stephan Hamann, left, about the brain science involved in trying to understand the U.S. political divide and culture wars. (Photo by Carol Clark)

By Carol Clark

Why do some people have a liberal mindset while others seem set on conservatism? And what makes it so difficult to find common ground? Those are some of the questions explored in a one-hour special, “Jordan Klepper Solves Guns,” which aired recently on Comedy Central.

Comedian Jordan Klepper and a camera crew came to the Emory campus last October to film part of the program in the Department of Psychology. Klepper interviewed psychologist Stephan Hamann about his research into how the brain may influence whether people are on one end of the political spectrum or the other, and how we might use this knowledge to better understand one another. 

“People develop their beliefs over a lifetime,” Hamann explains, “and when you tell them something that they feel challenges those core beliefs, they can have a threat response and just shut down. Brain research shows how they stop processing information on a rational level and begin operating on a more emotional level. Of course, that’s the exact opposite of what you want them to do.”

The best way to try to discuss an idea that counters someone’s convictions is to go slow and lay the ground work, he adds. “You have to be as empathetic and compassionate as possible. That’s the first step. You have to earn someone’s trust before you jump to the argument.”

Klepper also underwent an fMRI scan of his own brain in Emory’s Facility for Education and Research in Neuroscience (FERN).

“The program did a good job of conveying a little bit of the science involved in brain imaging,” Hamann says. “These are challenging times, so it’s gratifying to be part of something aiming 5o help Americans find common ground. I like the way the program ended on a positive note, trying to get people to connect up with the political process.”

If you missed the broadcast, you can watch it on Klepper’s web site, JordanKlepperSolves.com.

The neuroscience of learning across borders

Brains without borders: Emory Laney Graduate School student Charlie Ferris, from psychologist Stephan Hamann's lab, poses with a brain sculpture at the Institute of Neurobiology in Querétaro, Mexico, during the recent Binational Mechanisms of Learning Forum. (Photo by COMEXUS) 

By Carol Clark

Jessica Dugan sits at a computer in the Emory University psychology department in Atlanta, training a rhesus monkey in a lab at a university in Querétaro, Mexico, on the concept of transitive inference. 

She watches the monkey in real-time on her screen. With a few clicks on her keyboard she can present the monkey with random images on a computer attached to its cage and see which image it chooses. The monkey is automatically rewarded with food pellets for correct choices. Eventually, the monkey begins to grasp that the computer “game” is based on a concept of transitive inference — the idea of a hierarchy based on a shared property.

“It’s pretty cool,” Dugan says. “As long as there’s a wi-fi connection, we can remotely put a monkey on task and conduct a training exercise or an experiment. Technology can make collaboration across countries a lot easier.”

The joint project between Emory and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Institute for Neurobiology is just one more in a series of doors opening for Dugan, leading to new ways of learning science and conducting research.

She entered Emory’s Laney Graduate School under the mentorship of psychologist Patricia Bauer, who focuses on human development of memory from infancy through childhood. Dugan is particularly passionate about designing and conducting experiments with children to get at some of the key questions surrounding metacognition — introspection about thought processes.

“Basically, I’m interested in how someone thinking about thinking may be able to improve their ability to learn new information,” she explains. “Self-generation of new knowledge is something that we use every day. It’s a process that’s critical to success in education and beyond.”

Dugan is simultaneously working with rhesus monkeys in the lab of Emory psychologist Robert Hampton. “Studying the cognition of the relatives of our earliest ancestors may help us understand if there was some evolutionary demand that led to us being able to perform certain cognitive tasks,” she says.

And now she’s broadened her horizons by working across countries through the UNAM collaboration.

In May, Dugan was part of a group of 15 Emory graduate students who traveled to Mexico for the UNAM Binational Mechanisms of Learning Forum. The forum was the capstone of a year-long graduate seminar held at both Emory and UNAM called “Mechanisms of Learning Across Species and Development.”

Emory psychologist Patricia Bauer, left, listens as Maria Jose Olvera, a graduate student from the Institute of Neurobiology, explains her research. (Photo by COMEXUS)

“It was an amazing experience,” Dugan says of the nearly week-long forum. “The neuroscience they are doing in Mexico is impressive. It makes me wonder why in the United States we tend to mainly focus on science done here or in Europe. It was as though I was watching a documentary about the cosmos and someone started describing our place on Earth and the camera zoomed out so you realized how small that we are. The Mexico forum gave me a much more universal perspective.”

“We want our students to have an international appreciation for science, so they’re not so America-centric,” Bauer says. “There are lots of things to learn from other parts of the world.”

Bauer co-taught the Mechanisms of Learning seminar in Atlanta this year with Emory psychologist Joseph Manns, and both also traveled to Mexico to participate in the forum. 

Meanwhile, Hampton co-taught the seminar to graduate students in Mexico with UNAM neuroscientist Hugo Merchant, who also researches rhesus monkeys. Hampton is on sabbatical from Emory and has been living in Querétaro and working at the Institute of Neurobiology for the past academic year, funded by the Fulbright Scholars Program.

“The idea is not just to exchange information that makes our science stronger,” Hampton says. “Mexico is a country with a huge border with the United States. We need to have more contact with one another so that we understand each other better and reduce the potential for conflicts between our two countries.”

Emory graduate student Kelly Chong, a member of the lab of biologist Robert Liu, discusses her research with Arturo Gonzalez Isla, a graduate student at the Institute of Neurobiology in Mexico. (Photo by COMEXUS)

UNAM, based in Mexico City, is one of the largest universities in the world, with nearly 400,000 students and faculty. Its Institute for Neurobiology is about three hours north in Querétaro, a small but growing city in the highlands of central Mexico.

“The air is a little bit thinner and the sun’s a bit stronger than in Atlanta,” Hampton says. “It’s ‘tranquillo’ — a calm place — with a high quality of life.”

The institute “is doing the full spectrum of neuroscience,” he adds, “from high-level primate cognition work to molecular biology, neuroanatomy, neurodevelopment and more.”

While most classes are taught in Spanish, the Mexican students are required to both read and publish scientific papers in English.

Emory has hosted the Mechanisms of Learning Forum for the past three years as a capstone to the graduate seminar and as part of a training program co-directed by Bauer and Hampton, funded by the National Institutes of Health.

This year, with Hampton based in Mexico, the decision was made to hold the forum in Querétaro, with funding from the Institute of Neurobiology and Emory's Halle Institute, Department of Psychology and Emory College. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico, Mexico’s National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education (ANUIES), and COMEXUS — the Fulbright Scholars Program supporting Hampton’s sabbatical — also pitched in to support the event.

Thirty-three graduate students from the U.S. and Mexico came together with nine faculty guest speakers from institutions in both countries to discuss their work. The speakers covered topics ranging from human language learning, avian song learning, rodent motor learning and the electrophysiology of memory in adult humans.

“It was a phenomenal opportunity,” says Emory graduate student Emily Brown, who had never been to Mexico. “The best part of the experience for me was meeting the other graduate students and expanding my scientific network to another country. It was neat to see that they are facing similar challenges as graduate students in the United States, and doing similar research.”

A central part of the forum is an open-ended hypothesis-generating exercise. “You get together with people from different backgrounds whom you don’t normally get to bounce ideas off,” Brown explains. “It’s a chance to play with ideas across boundaries and disciplines. The aim is to be creative and to not reject something that may sound a little crazy at first. Instead, you brainstorm about possible techniques or strategies that might make it work. It’s expansive thinking that you don’t necessarily get to do on a day-to-day basis.”

“It’s a great exercise,” Dugan adds, “because as a graduate student you spend a lot of time cranking out things that have to be immediately useful. You can get stuck in a mindset of what won’t work. It’s beneficial to get together with people who have different passions and just think creatively.”

Emory graduate student Emily Brown in the Advanced Facility for Avian Research in Ontario with one of her research subjects — a black-capped chickadee. "The people more likely to make the big discoveries are those willing to talk to each other across labs, institutions and countries," Brown says.

Creative thinking has already led Brown into unexpected places. She began her graduate school career studying memory systems of rhesus monkeys in the Hampton lab, and thought she would stick to that path. Then she began hearing about memory work with wild birds and proposed a research project in collaboration with Hampton and Emory psychologist Donna Maney, who is focused on how genes, hormones and the environment affects the brains of birds.

One of the guest speakers at the 2014 Mechanisms of Learning Forum was David Sherry, an expert on bird cognition from the University of Western Ontario’s Advanced Facility for Avian Research in London, Ontario. Brown was inspired by his talk and ultimately able to expand her collaboration to include Sherry. She is now continuing as a graduate student at Emory while in the Sherry lab in Canada.

“It’s one of the top avian research facilities in the world,” Brown says. “I’m developing a technique to study memory and cognition in wild, free-living birds. Right now, I’m working with black-capped chickadees, which are known for taking bits of food, hiding them for later, and then using their memory to locate them. Ideally, the techniques I’m developing could be used with any small songbirds that you see coming to a feeder in your yard.”

Birds make a good model species because they are so widespread and their behavior in the wild is well-documented, she says. “You have some bird species that are closely related living in dramatically different ecosystems and those that are not closely related at all operating in similar ecosystems. So you can compare which cognitive functions of species might be more driven by the environment and the pressures that they’re facing there.”

Adding Mexico to the mix of her graduate school experiences seemed like a natural progression to Brown. “Scientists are doing science everywhere and we shouldn’t be closed off to each other because of some borders on a map,” she says. “Science is advanced by communication. The people more likely to make the big discoveries are those willing to talk to each other across labs, institutions and countries.”

And the talk doesn’t always have to be about work.

A highlight for Brown in Mexico was a social outing — a hike through a wildlife preserve with the host students. “I had a chance to see a lot of the local flora and fauna,” she says. “It’s a really different ecosystem than Atlanta or Ontario. It’s dry, full of cactuses and vermillion flycatchers. They’re very pretty birds.”

Dugan agrees that breaking down barriers is important to the future of science. “The science community is all over the world,” she says. “Science in general is in jeopardy right now but we’re stronger together. People around the world are benefitting from — and contributing to — scientific progress.”

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Dads show gender biases, in both brain responses and behaviors, toward toddlers

“Our study provides one of the richest datasets for fathers now available,” says Emory neuroscientist Jennifer Mascaro. (Stock image) 

By Carol Clark

A toddler’s gender influences the brain responses as well as the behavior of fathers — from how attentive they are to their child, to the types of language that they use and the play that they engage in, a new study by Emory University finds.

The journal Behavioral Neuroscience published the study, the first to combine brain scans of fathers with behavioral data collected as fathers interacted with their children in a real-world setting.

One of the more striking behavioral differences was the level of attention given a child.

“When a child cried out or asked for Dad, fathers of daughters responded to that more than did fathers of sons,” says Jennifer Mascaro, who led the research as a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Emory anthropologist James Rilling, senior author of the study. “We should be aware of how unconscious notions of gender can play into the way we treat even very young children.”

Mascaro is now an assistant professor in Family and Preventive Medicine at the Emory School of Medicine.

In addition to being more attentive, fathers of daughters sang more often to their child and were more likely to use words associated with sad emotions, such as “cry,” “tears” and “lonely.” Fathers of daughters also used more words associated with the body, such as “belly,” “cheek,” “face,” “fat” and “feet.”

Fathers of sons engaged in more rough-and-tumble play with their child and used more language related to power and achievement — words such as “best,” “win,” “super” and “top.” In contrast, fathers of daughters used more analytical language — words such as “all,” “below” and “much” — which has been linked to future academic success. 

“It’s important to note,” Rilling says, “that gender-biased paternal behavior need not imply ill intentions on the part of fathers. These biases may be unconscious, or may actually reflect deliberate and altruistically motivated efforts to shape children’s behavior in line with social expectations of adult gender roles that fathers feel may benefit their children.”

The study showed that fathers of sons engaged in more rough-and-tumble play with their child, a finding consistent with previous research by others. (Stock image)

Most parental studies draw from data gathered in a lab, where parents answer questions about their behavior and where they may be observed briefly as they interact with their children. This study collected behavioral data in a real-world setting through an electronic activated recorder (EAR), which was developed in the lab of co-author Matthias Mehl at the University of Arizona.

The participants included 52 fathers of toddlers (30 girls and 22 boys) in the Atlanta area who agreed to clip a small personal digital assistant equipped with the EAR software onto their belts and wear it for one weekday and one weekend day. The fathers were also told to leave the device charging in their child’s room at night so any nighttime interactions with their children could be recorded. The device randomly turned on for 50 seconds every nine minutes to record any ambient sound during the 48-hour period.

“People act shockingly normal when they are wearing the device,” Mascaro says. “They kind of forget they are wearing it or they say to themselves, what are the odds it’s on right now. The EAR technology is a naturalistic observation method that helped us verify things about parental behavior that we suspected based on previous research. It also uncovered subtle biases that we didn’t necessarily hypothesize in advance.”

In addition, fathers underwent functional MRI brain scans while viewing photos of an unknown adult, an unknown child and their own child with happy, sad or neutral facial expressions. Fathers of daughters had stronger responses to their daughters’ happy expressions in areas of the brain important for processing emotions, reward and value. In contrast, the brains of fathers of sons responded more robustly to their child’s neutral facial expressions.

“Most parents really are trying to do the best they can for their children,” Mascaro says. “A take-home point is that it’s good to pay attention to how your interactions with your sons and daughters may be biased." (Stock image)

The study focused on fathers because there is less research about their roles in rearing young children than mothers. “Our study provides one of the richest datasets for fathers now available, because it combines real-world assessments of behavior with brain responses,” Mascaro says. “It appears that men’s brain responses to their children may be related to their behaving differently with sons compared to daughters.”

The findings are consistent with other studies indicating that parents — both fathers and mothers — use more emotion language with girls and engage in more rough-and-tumble play with boys. It is unclear whether these differences are due to biological and evolutionary underpinnings, cultural understandings of the way one should act, or some combination of the two.

“We also don’t know the long-term child outcomes,” Mascaro says. “But future research can test the hypothesis that these differences have demonstrable impacts on things like empathy, emotional regulation and social competence.”

The use of more emotion language with girls by fathers, for example, may help girls develop more empathy than boys. “The fact that fathers may actually be less attentive to the emotional needs of boys, perhaps despite their best intentions, is important to recognize,” Mascaro says. “Validating emotions is good for everyone — not just daughters.”

Restricted emotions in adult men is linked to depression, decreased social intimacy, marital dissatisfaction and a lower likelihood of seeking mental health treatment.

Research also shows that many adolescent girls have negative body images. “We found that fathers are using more language about the body with girls than with boys, and the differences appear with children who are just one-to-three years old,” Mascaro says.

And while they use more words about the body with girls, fathers engage in more physical rough-and-tumble play with boys, an activity that research has shown is important to help young children develop social acuity and emotional regulation.

“Most parents really are trying to do the best they can for their children,” Mascaro says. “A take-home point is that it’s good to pay attention to how your interactions with your sons and daughters may be biased. We need to do more research to try to understand if these subtle differences may have important effects in the long term.”

The American Psychological Association contributed to this story.

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Testes size correlates with men's involvement in toddler care

Climate change is in Atlanta's air

"We're all partly responsible for our local air quality," says Emory graduating senior Emily Li. "Even if we don't hold ourselves accountable, our health will." (Emory Photo/Video)

By Carol Clark

Emory 2017 graduate Emily Li is leaving Atlanta this summer, but her student research will continue to have a presence here. For her undergraduate thesis, Li investigated the effects of shifting weather patterns on the air quality of Atlanta and the region — and how that relates to human health. She’s compiled her findings into a web site, Climate Change is in the Air, as a resource for local residents. 

“The web site explains some of the science involved, but it’s not just statistics,” Li says. “It also tells stories of real people. I wanted to put faces on these complex, scientific processes and explain how individuals are being directly affected by climate change, right now.”

In addition to science and stories from real people, the site offers solutions — what communities and individuals can do to address the issue.

Li, who majored in Environmental Sciences and English, sampled classes from a range of disciplines during college. No matter what the course, however, climate change kept coming up. “I think that it’s the most important issue that we face today, and I want to be part of the solution,” she says.

As a junior, Li took a course called Environmental Journalism, taught by Sheila Tefft, and realized that she could combine her two passions: Science and communication.

The web site focuses on how climate change is connected to Atlanta’s air quality, and how air quality is connected to the health of everyone living here. “Everybody has to breathe the air,” Li says. “We each need about 50 pounds of air a day and we can only go without it for about five minutes. Air is what we use the most and need the most to survive.”

The air pollutants that are contributing to a warming climate also contribute to problems of human health across the body — from the functions of lung and bronchial airways to cardiovascular diseases and central nervous system disorders. For the web site, Li concentrated on the respiratory health impacts of aeroallergens, wildfire emissions and ground-level ozone.

In lush Atlanta, a city famous for its “pollen explosions,” a warming climate may mean a longer exposure to pollen from many plants. Li tells the story of a fellow Emory student with a range of plant allergies to show the impact that high pollen counts can have on an individual’s life. “It’s hard to enjoy a nice spring day when you have to take a nap afterwards just for breathing the air,” she writes.

Hot, dry conditions also contribute to wildfires in Georgia, including an ongoing blaze in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. Hundreds of firefighters are currently battling the fire as it threatens to spread beyond the swamp to nearby communities.

To personalize the impact of the wildfire emissions, Li interviewed a firefighter from north Georgia. She described his experience of a minor smoke inhalation episode: “The condition is first initiated by a deep-set exhaustion: He’s already usually hot, sweaty and tired out from the firefighting work. Overwhelmed, his respiratory system begins to let down its defenses. Then he starts to get a tightness in his chest, like his upper body is being squeezed by an invisible fist. It becomes hard for him to fully catch his breath, and he can feel a distinct obstruction in his windpipe with every attempt to suck air into his lungs. At the same time, his energy levels plummet dangerously.”

The firefighter explained to Li: “With wildfire, typically there’s a lot of walking that has to happen and a lot of strenuous activity getting to remote areas. It’s just not possible or feasible to carry air packs or self-contained breathing apparatus into the wilderness or remote areas and sustain that air supply.”

The topic of ground-level ozone is also covered on the web site, although the personal story for that section remains under construction.

Li is leaving Atlanta to pursue a masters degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania, but she plans to keep adding to the site — and perhaps expand it to encompass other cities across the country.

“My goal is to create an immersive experience that people can not just learn from, but connect to,” Li says. “I want to bridge the emotional distance between people and the science of climate change.” 

The solutions offered on the site are a critical part of that goal, she adds. “One of my main suggestions is to just stay informed and aware and spread that awareness any way that you can,” Li says. “The more people that understand the problem, the better.”

Atlanta residents also have a chance to make a difference as the Atlanta Regional Commission works on a Regional Transportation Plan aimed at meeting Clean Air Act requirements. “Anyone can join the conversation to help make the plan a reality,” Li says.

Researching the potential impacts of climate change was overwhelming at times but ultimately rewarding, Li says. “Working on this project has made me much more deliberate in my actions. It’s also made me aware of not only how I can contribute to solutions to climate change, but how I can help other people stay hopeful and helpful so they can take action as well.”

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For Emory students, 'a lifestyle approach to health'

First-year student Jessie Brightman participates in a class discussion in Health 200. Emory's peer-taught Health 1,2, 3 Program opens avenues for students to have stewardship of their own health. Emory Photo/Video

By April Hunt
Emory Report

If you’re going to change the way that college students talk about health, the first step is for students to do the talking.

It didn’t take long for Michelle Lampl to realize that. As director of Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health, Lampl saw the success in a pilot “health partner” initiative conducted at the Center for Health Discovery and Well-Being, and turned it into the Human Health 1,2,3 Program for Emory College undergraduates.

The peer-taught program draws on the principles of predictive health and opens avenues for students to have stewardship of their own health. And, because Health 100 is required for every first-year Emory College student, the success of that foundational course has helped bolster student understanding of health.

“Emory is a leader in the paradigm shift in the science of health,” Lampl says. “Medicine is defined by disease. We focus on health. Our program is about changing the culture.”

Launched in 2012, human health is an interdisciplinary degree that has exploded in demand, from four majors its first year to 250 now. It has also attracted the notice of peer schools and beyond for its innovative approach that connects the liberal arts focus of Emory College with the groundbreaking research in public and global health sciences happening across the university.

Health 1,2,3 offers undergraduates the sort of education often reserved for graduate students: a framework to understand not only the science needed in health-related careers, but also the physical, mental and spiritual components of health.

Here’s how it works: All first-year students must take Health 100, which includes the study of timely health topics, such as getting enough sleep, and training for each student to set specific goals. 

Students who find Health 100 informative can enroll in Health 200, where they get training on the science of health and how to lead peers in discussions. Health 300 is the course where trained students become peer health partners for Health 100, overseeing the course with faculty supervision. 

“The way I describe it is, this is a lifestyle approach to health,” says Dylan Hurley, a first-year student who enrolled in Health 200 this spring.

“This is an integration of science and discussion, to make the concepts come to life,” Hurley adds. “That’s what makes it so essential.”

Read the whole article in Emory Report.

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Human health major aims at culture change
New health course shifts to peer-led, personalized approach

How dads bond with toddlers: Brain scans link oxytocin to paternal nurturing

The findings show that "fathers, and not just mothers, undergo hormonal changes that are likely to facilitate increased empathy and motvation to care for their children," says Emory anthropologist James Rilling.

By Carol Clark

Fathers given boosts of the hormone oxytocin show increased activity in brain regions associated with reward and empathy when viewing photos of their toddlers, an Emory University study finds. 

“Our findings add to the evidence that fathers, and not just mothers, undergo hormonal changes that are likely to facilitate increased empathy and motivation to care for their children,” says lead author James Rilling, an Emory anthropologist and director of the Laboratory for Darwinian Neuroscience. “They also suggest that oxytocin, known to play a role in social bonding, might someday be used to normalize deficits in paternal motivation, such as in men suffering from post-partum depression.”

The journal Hormones and Behavior published the results of the study, the first to look at the influence of both oxytocin and vasopressin – another hormone linked to social bonding – on brain function in human fathers.

A growing body of literature shows that paternal involvement plays a role in reducing child mortality and morbidity, and improving social, psychological and educational outcomes. But not every father takes a “hands-on” approach to caring for his children.

“I’m interested in understanding why some fathers are more involved in caregiving than others,” Rilling says. “In order to fully understand variation in caregiving behavior, we need a clear picture of the neurobiology and neural mechanisms that support the behavior.”

Researchers have long known that when women go through pregnancy they experience dramatic hormonal changes that prepare them for child rearing. Oxytocin, in particular, was traditionally considered a maternal hormone since it is released into the bloodstream during labor and nursing and facilitates the processes of birth, bonding with the baby and milk production.

More recently, however, it became clear that men can also undergo hormonal changes when they become fathers, including increases in oxytocin. Evidence shows that, in fathers, oxytocin facilitates physical stimulation of infants during play as well as the ability to synchronize their emotions with their children.

In order to investigate the neural mechanisms involved in oxytocin and paternal behavior, the Rilling lab used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to compare neural activity in men with and without doses of oxytocin, administered through a nasal spray. The participants in the experiment were all healthy fathers of toddlers, between the ages of one and two. While undergoing fMRI brain scans, each participant was shown a photo of his child, a photo of a child he did not know and a photo of an adult he did not know.

When viewing an image of their offspring, participants dosed with oxytocin showed significantly increased neural activity in brain systems associated with reward and empathy, compared to placebo. This heightened activity (in the caudate nucleus, dorsal anterior cingulate and visual cortex) suggests that doses of oxytocin may augment feelings of reward and empathy in fathers, as well as their motivation to pay attention to their children.

Surprisingly, the study results did not show a significant effect of vasopressin on the neural activity of fathers, contrary to the findings of some previous studies on animals.

Research in prairie voles, which bond for life, for instance, has shown that vasopressin promotes both pair-bonding and paternal caregiving. “It could be that evolution has arrived at different strategies for motiving paternal caregiving in different species,” Rilling says.

Co-authors of the study include Ting Li (Emory Anthropology), Xu Chen (Emory Anthropology and the School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences), Jennifer Mascaro (Emory School of Medicine Department of Family and Preventive Medicine) and Ebrahim Haroon (Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences)

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A brainy time traveler

Companies pushing 'toddler milk' for 'growth' need oversight, experts warn

"Parents are commonly concerned about the size of their children and how well they are doing developmentally," says Emory's Michelle Lampl, MD, PhD, adding: "Not all kids who are smaller than average have a problem."

By Carol Clark

Liquid-based nutritional supplements, originally formulated for malnourished or undernourished children, need more regulatory oversight as they are increasingly marketed to promote growth in children generally, warn researchers at Emory University.

The journal Healthcare published their commentary article, citing the lack of scientific evidence to support marketing claims of the benefits for growth of giving healthy children liquid-based nutritional supplements, commonly known as “toddler milks.”

“A plumper baby is not necessarily a healthier baby,” says Michelle Lampl, who is the lead author of the article, director of the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory University and an internationally recognized expert in human growth.

In fact, toddler milk supplements may actually be doing harm by fueling rapid, unnecessary weight gain in young children in the midst of a global obesity epidemic, she adds.

She notes that the liquid supplements may have as much as 240 calories per serving and have the potential to turn a healthy, lean toddler into an overweight one. “Healthy developmental growth does not mean gaining weight and getting fat,” she says. “It is primarily measured by whether a child is growing a stronger, longer skeleton.”

Liquid-based nutritional supplements fall into a regulatory loophole, because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not consider supplements to be a drug or a “conventional” food. “When a mother goes into a store and sees a toddler milk supplement on a shelf, she has no idea that it falls into a less rigorous FDA category than those covering so-called conventional food and medicine,” Lampl says. “We have a product aimed at a vulnerable population – infants and young children – that does not have adequate oversight.”

Co-authors of the commentary article are: Meriah Schoen, a research assistant at Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health and a graduate student focused on nutrition at Georgia State University; and Amanda Mummert, who recently received a PhD in Anthropology from Emory's Laney Graduate School.

The commentary appears in a special issue of Healthcare, dedicated to the physician-scientist David Barker, who died in 2013. He originated the Barker Hypothesis, also known as the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease model, linking fetal and early infant experiences to an individual’s health status across the lifespan.

“David Barker opened the door to the importance of early influences, including nutrition and other environmental factors, for lifelong health,” Lampl says. “He believed that we have an ethical responsibility to ensure that the next generation is as healthy as it can be.”

Companies have marketed infant formulas for decades. In 1981, however, the World Health Organization (WHO) voted to recommend banning marketing of formulas for babies under six months, since the formulas were associated with lower rates of breastfeeding, and increased disease and malnutrition in the developing world.

Countries around the world adopted the rules and breastfeeding rates went up globally. The formula industry responded by focusing on toddler milk supplements, aimed at children ages six months and up.

Liquid-based supplements containing vitamins and minerals may be beneficial to children that are malnourished, or suffering from chronic diseases that prohibit their ability to consume solid foods, Lampl says. The problem, she adds, is that toddler milks have grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry that is expanding internationally to encompass healthy children.

Rapidly boosting the weight of children who are simply smaller than average but healthy could have lifelong consequences, she says. Barker, for instance, found a direct link to higher rates of metabolic disorders among individuals who were born relatively small and grew rapidly in the first few years of life.

“Parents are commonly concerned about the size of their children and how well they are doing developmentally,” Lampl says, adding that the growth charts used in pediatrician offices are often misunderstood. “Not all kids who are smaller than average have a problem.”

Busy mothers on the go, who may be consuming “energy drinks” and liquid supplements themselves, are primed to buy toddler milk for young children under the assumption that they are healthy choices, particularly for children who may be picky eaters.

“Although it can take a picky eater up to 20 times of trying a food to decide if they like it, most mothers offer a food fewer than five times before switching to something more convenient,” Lampl says. “It’s much easier to hand your child a sugary ‘toddler milk,’ thinking it’s healthy and it helps them grow.”

The WHO is set to consider recommendations concerning calorie amounts and ingredients for liquid-based nutritional supplements marketed to toddlers and older children during a meeting in early December.

Those recommendations will not have teeth, however, and it will be up to individual governments whether they decide to adopt them and enforce them.

“We are really behind when it comes to regulatory oversight for the marketing of these supplements, and for rigorous scientific research showing the impact of their widespread use on children,” Lampl says.

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Biology professor holds meetings on the run

Emory biology lecturer Patrick Cafferty (left, blue shorts and shirt) takes one of his weekly office hours on the road for a three-mile run through campus. Emory Photo/Video

By April Hunt
Emory Report

There’s a very good chance Patrick Cafferty runs a different meeting than you do.

The Emory University biology lecturer takes one of his weekly office hours on the road, heading out for a three-mile run through campus with students. It’s part of an overarching goal to truly connect with students in his human physiology class as a teacher and mentor.

“I invite every student to just come in and chat,” says Cafferty, decked out in running shorts and a tank top before one of the weekly runs. “Some are too shy to do it, but they can join a run and just listen, and we get to know each other on a personal level. There is an equalizing aspect of sport.”

Early in the semester, Cafferty is the one doing most of the talking. Part of that is his 10-minute mile pace — slow for a serious triathlete like him but a challenge for some students. But it also lets Cafferty discuss class topics, such as the neurobiology behind cramped muscles or the dilatation of blood vessels serving muscles during exercise, as they are happening to some of the runners.

“This is great for me, because it’s an outlet to exercise, study and develop a relationship with faculty and students all at once,” says Amancio Romero, a junior behavioral biology and neuroscience major who last ran regularly, as a sprinter, in high school.

Call it active learning, something Cafferty has experienced personally. He grew up in Canada, interested first in exploring wildlife and later, studying life from the molecular level. At the same time he grew to understand complex cellular behavior from a biology perspective, he was applying those lessons to his training in Iron Man competitions and cycling. But it was not until graduate school at McGill University in Montreal, when he joined a swim club that welcomed students, staff and faculty, that he realized the value of linking those two worlds.

At McGill, Cafferty ended up in the pool with some professors he never would have otherwise met. He also connected with a professor who ended up being a doctoral mentor.

“There is a reason we have business meetings at lunch or over golf. It’s about being comfortable and being able to have natural conversations,” Cafferty says.

Those realizations prompted Cafferty to launch a run club when he came to Emory as a faculty-in-residence in 2011. Students, faculty and community members participated in that club, which became the model for what he calls his Active Office Hours.

Students who have participated so far include an Emory swimmer who gave up the sport to make time for studying, students who last ran during high school track or cross country, and even one person who had never run before.

One of the students has joined while listening to Cafferty’s lectures on an MP3 device, asking questions as they arise in his headphones.

Another, senior Maiya Smith, came with a screenshot of questions to ask Cafferty during the run through Lullwater Preserve.

“I never heard of a professor doing this before, and I love it,” says Smith, an anthropology and human biology major who ran marathons in high school. “I can see our runs directly connecting to class, and that just makes me want to ask even more questions.”

Like typical desk-bound office hours, the active versions are also a valuable resource for students beyond the classroom.

Cafferty welcomes students outside his class to the runs. He also plans on interval training runs, which will help some runners improve their times while letting everyone regroup to chat.

Conversations vary from campus gossip to current TV shows to classroom lessons, he says. Inevitably, questions come up about fitness or diet trends, issues directly linked to classroom work on nutrition and exercise.

“Running is completely new to me,” says Luke Roberts, a junior biology major who spent a year on Emory’s swim team. “I don’t have any breath left to ask questions, but it’s interesting just to listen and put it all together.”

The benefits spill over to students who don’t want to run, too. More of those students appear to have noticed Cafferty’s passion for biology in general and physiology in particular, and they are showing up more often in his Rollins Research Center office to talk.

“I hope to share something I’m kind of good at and enjoy with them, because I want them to know me,” Cafferty says. “And I think students see if you have a genuine interest in getting to know them.”

Status drives men's reproductive success across non-industrial world

The reproductive benefits of status reached their peak in pre-modern empires. A genetic study, for instance, found that 8 percent of men in populations spanning Asia shared nearly identical Y-chromosome sequences with Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan (shown entering the city of Beijing).

By Carol Clark

The reproductive success of men in non-industrialized societies is closely tied to their social status, finds a new meta-analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The analysis looked at studies of 33 non-industrial societies from around the globe, including hunter-gatherers, nomadic pastoralists and agriculturalists.

“We were surprised to learn that the correlation held up for a range of societies and their different measures for status,” says Adrian Jaeggi, an anthropologist at Emory University focused on primate and human behavioral ecology. “It doesn’t matter whether a man is a better hunter, owns more land or more livestock – men with high social status had more children compared to men with low status.”

Jaeggi co-authored the study with Christopher von Rueden, an anthropologist specialized in leadership studies at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia.

Their findings go against the egalitarian hypothesis, the idea that status was a relatively weak target of selection for modern humans, since most of that evolutionary period involved living as egalitarian hunter-gatherers.

The !Kung bushmen of the Kalahari serve as a classic example of the egalitarianism associated with hunter-gatherer societies. “They are not allowed to brag about their hunting success, it’s not culturally acceptable,” Jaeggi says. “When one of them kills a large animal, he comes back to camp and sits down quietly by the fire and he is modest about it. Their society is built on mutual help. Sometimes a hunter may only be successful one out of every 10 days. But if they all support each other and share their game, on average they eat every day.”

Bushmen in Botswana demonstrate how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together. Such hunter-gatherer societies do not amass material wealth and are built on mutual help and support. Photo by Ian Sewell.

The egalitarian hypothesis posits that it was not until humans shifted from primarily hunter-gatherer societies toward pastoralism, agriculture and industrialization that status became a key driver for male reproductive success. “Once you start acquiring property and other forms of material wealth, you have assets to transmit to your offspring, so you would expect to see status more closely tied to reproductive success,” Jaeggi explains.

In humans, these reproductive benefits of status reached their peak in pre-modern states and empires that enabled powerful rulers to have access to large numbers of women. A genetic study, for instance, found that 8 percent of men in populations spanning Asia shared nearly identical Y-chromosome sequences with Genghis Khan, the Mongolian ruler who died in 1227.

The current meta-analysis suggests that status-seeking was not just a consequence of more formal social hierarchies and the rise of greater inequalities, but an evolved trait.

While a good hunter may not have material wealth, he carries “embodied capital,” measured by qualities like intelligence, skill, good health and reliable social connections, Jaeggi explains.

“Hunter-gatherer societies may actively work towards leveling any hierarchy, but at the same time people are aware of which men are better hunters and that appears to give them a reproductive edge,” he says. “And the relationship between status and reproductive success is as strong for a hunter as it is for a farmer or pastoralist. That indicates a biological basis for striving for status: It’s universally rewarded with the only currency that matters in biology – children.”

Wealthy men across most of the modern, industrialized world, however, tend to have fewer children than poor men. The link between male status and reproductive success is broken, due to women’s rights and access to contraception.

“Women can be more independent and successful in modern society,” Jaeggi says. “They get to decide if they want to continue to reward status-seeking in men by allowing them to have more children. Or whether they want to reward men who are more compliant with what women want.”

Related:
Conspicuous consumption may drive fertility down

Set phasers to stun: Star Trek turns 50

Star Trek blasted audiences with important social messages and fired up enthusiasm for space exploration and science. Among the iconic characters in the series are, from left: Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (James Doohan). 

Sidney Perkowitz, Emory emeritus professor of physics, wrote an article for Nature about the impacts of Star Trek on science, technology and society as the science fiction series turns 50. Below is an excerpt:

“Half a century ago, in September 1966, the first episode of Star Trek aired on the US television network NBC. NASA was still three years short of landing people on the Moon, yet the innovative series was soon zipping viewers light years beyond the Solar System every week. After a few hiccups it gained cult status, along with the inimitable crew of the starship USS Enterprise, led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner). It went into syndication and spawned 6 television series up to 2005; there are now also 13 feature films, with Star Trek Beyond debuting in July this year.

“Part of Star Trek's enduring magic is its winning mix of twenty-third-century technology and the recognizable diversity and complexity enshrined in the beings — human and otherwise — created by the show's originator Gene Roddenberry and his writers. As Roddenberry put it, ‘We stress humanity.’ The series wore its ethics on its sleeve at a time when the Vietnam War was raging and anti-war protests were proliferating, along with racial tensions that culminated in major US urban riots in 1967–68.”

Read the whole article in Nature.

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Chasing fire: Fever and human mobility in an epidemic

Dengue fever is common in Iquitos, Peru, a densely packed city surrounded by the Amazon. With the imminent arrival of Zika virus to Iquitos, the researchers expect that the data they have collected on dengue transmission will also add to the understanding of how Zika spreads through a population.

By Carol Clark

Disease ecologists working in the Amazonian city of Iquitos, Peru, have quantified for the first time how a fever affects human mobility during the outbreak of a mosquito-borne illness. The findings were published by Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“When you are sick with dengue, or another illness causing fever, your behavior can change,” says Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, an assistant professor in Emory University’s Department of Environmental Sciences, and senior author of the study. “We’ve found that people with a fever visit 30 percent fewer locations on average than those who do not have a fever, and that they spend more time closer to home. It may sound like stating the obvious, but such data have practical applications to understand how human behavior shapes epidemics. No one had previously quantified how a symptom such as fever changes mobility patterns, individually and across a population, in a tropical urban setting like Iquitos.”

An issue in tracking an infectious disease like dengue, chikungunya and Zika is that most of the people infected are asymptomatic, or do not have symptoms severe enough to trigger a doctor visit. “They may not feel sick at all, and yet they could be infecting others, which could help explain how these pathogens move explosively across a population,” Vazquez-Prokopec says. “We need to rethink the way we do disease surveillance and control if asymptomatic people are important drivers of transmission.”

Trying to control the spread of a disease is like chasing a fire, he adds. “You know that a fire may be at the home of a sick person but, using the data we have for current models, you don’t really know where the fire is going next.”

About 550 people from Iquitos participated in the study. They included subjects who did not have a fever at the time of the study and those who did. The feverish subjects were also divided into those who tested posted for dengue and those who did not. Data on the movement of participants was collected through interviews and validated using wearable global positioning system loggers.

The study was part of a major research project in Iquitos, which began in 2008, to study the ecology of dengue fever. Dengue is spread by the Aedes aegypi mosquito, the same species that spreads the chikungunya and Zika viruses.

With the imminent arrival of Zika virus to Iquitos, the researchers expect that the data they have collected on dengue transmission will also add to the understanding of how Zika and chikungunya spread through a population.

During the first phase of the project, the researchers showed that human movement is a major driver of the spread of a vector-borne disease like dengue in an urban environment. They are now trying to learn more details about how symptoms and behavior are coupled to drive disease outbreaks.

Symptoms of people infected with a disease fall on a continuum, from no symptoms at all, to so severe they are hospitalized. For the current study, the researchers focused on the impacts of fever, since it is a classic marker of disease, and it is objective and easy to quantify.

The researchers are continuing to investigate how variation in symptoms of illness affects human mobility, using both objective and subjective signs, to refine the data and hone in on more detailed patterns of disease transmission.

“The more we learn about the role of human movement in the transmission of a mosquito-borne disease, the more we realize that we need to change the way we approach controlling these diseases,” Vazquez-Prokopec says.

The Iquitos project is supported by funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Department of Homeland Security. Co-authors of the study include researchers from the University of Notre Dame, the University of California, Davis, the National Institutes of Health, Tulane University, the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru, Andrews University and San Diego State University.

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Zeroing in on 'super spreaders' and other hidden patterns of epidemics
Human mobility data may help curb epidemics

Adding anthropology to genetics to study ancient DNA

Kendra Sirak, an Emory PhD candidate in anthropology, is working as a visiting researcher at the Earth Institute at University College Dublin.

By Leslie King
Emory Report

Kendra Sirak, a PhD candidate in anthropology in the Laney Graduate School, is currently working in Ireland, testing the DNA of people ranging from medieval Nubians to an ancient Chinese specimen to an Irish rebel.

Originally from the small town of Dallas, Pennsylvania, Sirak attended Northwestern University on an athletic scholarship for field hockey. "Starting out in psychology, I was inspired by an amazing young professor and became hooked after writing a research paper about the allegedly extinct subspecies Homo sapiens idaltu," Sirak recalls. "I wanted to study the past of humanity so I added anthropology for a double major."

Sirak came to Emory in 2012, drawn by the opportunity to work with George Armelagos, Goodrich C. White Professor of Anthropology (who passed away in 2014).

"I emailed George, who was one of the gods of anthropology, not expecting an answer," she says. "He responded in 37 minutes."

Now, Sirak is working as a visiting researcher at the Earth Institute at University College Dublin. Her research has also taken her to Russia, Hungary, Romania, China, India and Italy to access DNA in human skeletons and train other researchers in those techniques.

In an interview from Ireland, Sirak talks about her work and how she came to add genetics to anthropology, resulting in fascinating research and career paths.

What led you to add genetics to anthropology? 

I had no interest in genetics, being totally dedicated to the study of human osteology and paleopathology. But George [Armelagos] believed DNA was going to become a critical part of anthropological research — and he couldn’t have been more right.

He proposed that I take some Nubian skeletal remains he had excavated in the 1970s to Ireland and learn how to do ancient DNA analysis at Trinity College Dublin.

I went home and cried because I didn’t want to say no, but I really, really did not want to go. However, I decided to just go anyway. It was the best academic decision I could have ever made. I stepped into the ancient DNA lab at Trinity and realized that I had been spelling “chromosome” wrong for as long as I could remember, which was where my knowledge of DNA was then.

What do you gain by combining anthropology with genetics in your research?

Genetics provides really fantastic, concrete data. However, it doesn’t provide the context that anthropology does. I like to think of genetics giving me the hard scientific data that I want, but anthropology adding in the human context and making the molecular data a human reality.

At Emory, I have learned how to think from a “biocultural” point of view. While many other anthropology programs stress only either a “biological” or a “cultural” approach, Emory combines the two.

I study the biology of past populations and I think about the way their culture and social environment could have influenced individual health and well-being, population demographics, patterns of morbidity and mortality, etc.

What have you been working on in Ireland? 

Primarily extracting and sequencing DNA from skeletal remains from two socially disparate medieval cemeteries at the site of Kulubnarti in Sudanese Nubia. I am also part of a collaboration between University College Dublin and Harvard Medical School’s Department of Genetics lab.

We were recently contacted by the Irish National Police to help identify the remains of Thomas Kent, executed by the British for his part in the Easter Rising insurrection in 1916 and buried in a shallow grave on the grounds of Cork Prison; however, his body could not be positively identified. Collaborating with another team, we came up with this novel method to compare genetic data collected from two of Kent’s known living relatives and confirm his identity. He was given an honorable burial and a big state parade.

What other projects do you have in the works? 

We hope to become involved in the Duffy’s Cut Project. Duffy’s Cut is the location of railroad tracks west of Philadelphia built by 57 Irish immigrants in the mid-1800s. All 57 are thought to have died from cholera. However, forensic evidence suggests that some might have been murdered, perhaps because of fear of contagion. We are hoping a DNA analysis on these samples will help identify these men and their family relationships.

We are in conversation with an Irish human rights group about identifying the remains of more than 800 Irish babies uncovered in a mass grave in western Ireland. This grave was a consequence of the period when it was not socially acceptable for a woman to have a baby out of wedlock. The ultimate goal would be a database of the unidentified infants’ genetic information. Then people who believe they might have some relative in this mass grave could be tested for a genetic match. This project was presented at the United Nations.

What are your post-Emory plans and goals?

My goal is to start writing my dissertation, a bioethnography of the ancient Nubians, this fall and be graduated from Emory in June 2018. Post-Emory, I can see myself applying for a postdoc position to expand my research, or I might like to get involved with scientific communication to the lay public. After taking a human genetics course taken at Emory, I’m really interested in genetic counseling. I’ve been thinking about becoming a certified genetic counselor.

What do you like to do in your “off” time? 

I am a world traveler, marathon runner and craft beer connoisseur. Studying anthropology and working in ancient DNA has given me incredible opportunities to travel around the world to collect samples for our analyses.

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Bone to be wild: Every skeleton has a story to tell