“Humans are hardwired to feel empathy, suggests a new imaging study showing that certain pain-processing regions of the brain light up when a loved-one is hurt.

But no one actually ‘feels’ the physical pain of the ones they love. The UK researchers suggest that empathy is the result of our brain running a virtual simulation that represents only part of the other person’s experience.

‘That’ s probably why empathy doesn’t feel like pain in your hand,’ says Tania Singer, a neuroscientist at the University College London, who led the study. ‘It feels like when you anticipate your own pain. Your heart races, your emotions are engaged. It’s like a smaller copy of the overall experience.'” —New Scientist I have previously written about so-called ‘mirror neurons’ discovered in othe primates and presumably active in humans as well, which activate brain regions mirroring the activity in another individual we are watching. This is more confirmation of what I suspect is a neurological basis for empathy. This New Scientist article states that humans are the only creatures capable of empathy, which has most likely been strongly selected for, given the adaptive advantages that would be provided by such a direct indication of the feelings or intentions of another with whom we are interacting. By extension, this is one of the foundations for social life. I doubt, both on the basis of the ‘mirror neuron’ evidence and the social organization of primate life, that we are the only species capable of empathy in this sense.

Meanwhile, I share the interest many behavioral scientists have in autism, which may provide crucial clues about the neurobiological fundaments of social life. The Boston Globe discusses the approach of Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, whose work I have previously discussed here and who feels that ‘mind-reading capacity’ (which he distinguishes in a not entirely convincing way from ’empathy’ by using a nonintuitive, narrow definition of the latter) is hard-wired. He also feels it is an essential basis for social interaction and ascribes the social deficits of autistic patients to defects in their mind-reading capacity. This may be the foundation for the oft-mentioned impairment in autistics’ capacity for ‘theory of mind’, in short the ability to envision others around one having internal experiences and feelings similar to one’s own. Studies have shown that autistic subjects do not use the specialized person-perception circuitry humans have evolved but rather process their perceptions of people in different brain regions which are involved in the perception of objects. Baron-Cohen feels he can measure ‘mind-reading capacity’ with a test that taps into one’s ability to decipher someone’s internal state by reading subtle clues in their eyes. Baron-Cohen also has another test you can take to measure your AQ, or autistic quotient (abit simplistic but, presumably, the higher your AQ the lower your ‘mind-reading’ ability). I recently heard Fred Volkmar, an autism researcher at Yale, present his fascinating work in this area. Using Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a source of rich emotional interplay without much ‘action’, he shows with eye-tracking cameras that autistic subjects do not follow the flow of emotion in the characters’ interaction but focus on out-of-context cues. Interestingly, they in particular do not look at the eyes of the characters, often preferring to focus on their mouths.

Medical journal says it regrets publishing Wakefield’s research on MMR. Controversy has raged for years, particularly in the UK, over reports of a link between MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) immunization and the development of autism. Now The Lancet, the British medical journal in which the original findings of Andrew Wakefield were published, finds that his report was compromised by undeclared conflict of interest and other methodological and ethical flaws in his research design which, had the editors known, should have precluded the publication of the findings. Rates of MMR vaccination in the UK have declined significantly in the wake of news of this putative association. —Nature

“A $10,000 reward offered by the “Doonesbury” comic strip for proof that President Bush (news – web sites) served in the Alabama National Guard during the Vietnam War has elicited over 1,300 responses but turned up no credible evidence yet, the cartoonist said on Friday.

With so much controversy surrounding Bush’s National Guard service, a credible witness would have turned up by now if there was one, said Garry Trudeau. ” —Yahoo! News

‘As tonight’s ceremony approaches, the foreign-language category remains Oscar’s annual head-scratcher. Ask anyone in the industry about this year’s nominees — which include one critical hit, “The Barbarian Invasions” from Canada, and four films that barely register — and you’ll find varying levels of bafflement. “For the most part, of the films that are selected, I don’t think anyone understands why,” says Ryan Werner, head of distribution at Wellspring, which releases a number of foreign titles each year. Mark Urman, of ThinkFilm, says, “I can’t tell you how many people were shocked by the nominations this year.” Both were hoping their company’s films would be included, but their sentiments are shared by executives and voters alike.’ —New York Times

A New York Times editorial comes out for not throwing the Hubble Space Telescope on the rubbish heap for Bush’s pie-in-the-sky space exploration scheme.

“Pentagon and Pakistani officials on Saturday denied an Iranian state radio report that Osama bin Laden was captured in Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan “a long time ago.”

The claim came as Pakistan’s army hunted terror suspects in a remote tribal region along the border, believed to be a possible hiding place for the al-Qaida’s leader.

The director of Iran radio’s Pashtun language service, Asheq Hossein, said the report was based on two sources — one of whom later told The Associated Press he was misquoted.

The report said bin Laden had been in custody for a period of time, but that President Bush was withholding any announcement until closer to November elections.” —Yahoo! News

Funny, at dinner just the other night, I had suggested the same paranoid conspiracy theory. My dinner companions shared the skepticism of the Pentagon and its Pakistani allies . I am not convinced.

In the nursery rhyme, Jack

fell down and broke his crown.

Why was Jack wearing a crown?

If he was a prince, why

was he fetching a pail of water?

Or was he a boy

pretending to be a prince?

Or was it rather the crown

of his head? If so it must

have been quite a fall to pitch

him that headlong. And who

was Jill and why

did she come tumbling after?

What made these two

so accident prone?

Did Jack care?

No. He was an empty boy.

—Ron Padgett