Nature Matters – Page 83 – David Bradley Science Writer

Face Off

Our brains have a specific mechanism for recognising human faces that is separate from the mechanism that allows us to recognise objects like houses, cars, horses or even
parts of the body, according to Brad Duchaine of University College London. In a forthcoming paper in the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology, he shows how we recognise faces by analysing
one man, who cannot tell one face from another.

I assume he’s not generalising from this one case to the whole human race, but it’s an intriguing piece of work nevertheless.

Duchaine said: ‘There have been many theories about whether there is a part of the brain that deals specifically with faces or whether faces and other objects are handled by the same brain areas. We’ve found that there is a different, very separate, bit of the brain that lets you recognise faces. If those cells aren’t working, someone may not be able to tell two faces apart but they
will recognise two horses apart. This indicates that we go about looking at, analysing and recognising faces in a different way from how we recognise objects.

‘There are many theories out there about how we recognise faces and whether there is a separate social bit of the brain. So that we could draw firm conclusions to prove our facial recognition theory, we addressed all the alternatives in a single case study — Edward, a 53 year-old married man with a PhD in theology and physics, who happens to be unable to
recognise faces.’

For more than 35 years, researchers have debated whether face recognition is carried out by face-specific mechanisms or whether it involves more generic mechanisms that are also used for objects. Prosopagnosic patients (people who have difficulty recognising faces) have been some of the most powerful sources of evidence for there being face-specific mechanisms.

Scientists have put forward a number of different theories about why some people can’t recognise faces. One theory states that people with face recognition just have problems with objects that have a lot of curved surfaces (Curvature explanation); another theory states that it’s caused by problems with perceiving distances between parts such as judging the distance between eyes (Configural-processing explanation); another puts it down to a problem in recognising any individual item in a class — objects and faces (individuation explanation); another points to an inability to develop expertise with regularly encountered objects
(Expertise explanation).

But, for each case of prosopagnosia that has been scientifically tested there have always been several untested alternative explanations that could account for the inability to recognise faces. Each of these individuals has not been sufficiently tested to provide conclusive evidence for face-specific processes.

This study addresses all the existing theories that make a case against there being a specific mechanism in the brain that deals just with faces. Duchaine said: ‘We reject each in turn and eliminate all alternative accounts. The results show that face recognition uses mechanisms in the
brain that are different from those used in recognising anything else.’

The tests at UCL were done using a variety of types of objects — horses, guns, cars, greebles (novel objects). Edward performed just as well on as the test group people at differentiating between different objects but he just couldn’t tell faces apart.

Open Access Referees

The new journal (Biology Direct), hopes to revolutionise the peer review process by placing the burden of selecting “referees” for a paer on the shoulders of the authors themselves and removing the protection of referee anonymity that has been the mainstay of the scientific publication system for decades, if not centuries.

The journal suggests that such an approach to peer review will increase “both the responsibility and the reward of the referees…eliminating sources of abuse in the refereeing process” and presumably reducing the risk of fraudulent results entering the scientific literature.

It remains to be seen whether referees will voluntarily expose themselves to the criticism of their peers for those papers they review, whether that’s authors wishing they’d picked someone else when a paper is slated, or rivals suggesting that a referee is at fault when a paper receives a positive review.

Worms Survived Shuttle Disaster

Nathaniel Szewczyk and colleagues are experts in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, this popular little organism has been the subject of countless biological studies including Nobel-prize winning efforts. As such, it is being developed as a model system for space biology.

According to Szewczyk, the chemically defined liquid medium, C. elegans Maintenance Medium (CeMM), allows it to be cultivated automatically and experiments to be carried out on it during spaceflight research. His team grew CeMM for experiments to be carried out on board STS-107, space shuttle Columbia.

When tragedy struck Columbia, a massive recovery effort was started and hardware containing the CeMM experiment was actually retrieved from the debris.

Szewczyk explains that live animals were observed in four of the five recovered canisters, which had survived on both types of media. “These data demonstrate that CeMM is capable of supporting C. elegans during spaceflight. They also demonstrate that animals can survive a relatively unprotected reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, which has implications with regard to the packaging of living material during space flight, planetary protection, and the interplanetary transfer of life,” Szewczyk explains.

You can read more about this rather unusual rescue mission in the journal Astrobiology 5, 690—705
Astrobiology.

Fierce Biotech

I’ve mentioned the Fierce Biotech freebie email biotech industry newsletter before, but it’s well worth reminding Sciencebase readers of what a great resource it is. It’s now available for free in the USA, Canada, Mexico, and the UK. All you have to do to qualify for a free year’s subscription is fill in your details on the form and provide a little feedback on your job function (so they can decide whether you qualify). Once you’ve done that, you’ll starting receiving the free email newsletter within a day or two. The Fierce Biotech ezine covers the latest industry news on a daily basis and your acceptance for a free subscription helps support Sciencebase.

Newsletter description – “FierceBiotech is an easy to read daily email service that brings must read biotechnology news to senior executives in the biotech industry…one quick email per day keeps you up to speed on biotech companies and the biotech industry.” This newsletter will save you time and effort in keeping ahead of the competition.

Fishy Smaller Fish

We reported on claims to have found the world’s smallest fish that appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. The aquatic critter measured just 7.9 mm apparently and was found in a peat swamp in Southeast Asia. However, it seems the authors of the paper failed to note that a much, much smaller sexually mature angler fish was reported in the autumn of 2005 at just 6.2 mm to 7.4 mm in length.

So, what’s a few millimetres between friends? The female of the species in question, Photocorynus spiniceps presumably sees the significance, she comes in at a wopping 46 mm (some 7 seven times longer than her mate).

The smaller fish was reported in the journal Ichthyological Research and according to the study, the male is essentially a sexual parasite. He fuses for life to the back of his mate by biting on and turns the female into a hermaphrodite, providing her body with everything she needs to reproduce, she provides the food and navigational skills.

Again, size is everything for this arduous task, male spiniceps have testes so unfeasibly large that they almost fill his entire body cavity, even to the point of crowding out his other internal organs. Still, what fish is going to care about his internal organs when he’s perpetually mating and getting fed in the process?

Zoo Watch

London Zoo is carrying out an animal inventory, according to the BBC. Counting the fish, ants, spiders, even the grass snakes might present quite a task, but the BBC news anchor mentioned specifically that they would be counting the elephants too.

So, that’s going to be: one, two, three, er, come out from behind that bush Jumbo, five, six.

Accelerated Aging

Chemical analysis spots malfunctioning protein.

Jin-Shan Hu and colleagues at the University of Maryland, National Cancer Institute, the National Centre for Scientific Research, France, have used NMR to determine the structure of the protein thought to malfunction in premature aging conditions, such as Werner syndrome. The structure might one day lead to a better understanding of this rare genetic disorder as well as other aging-related diseases.

Who Needs Genes?

It seems that a meeting underway in Exeter this week may very well draw the conclusion that genes, the mainstay of the whole of the last half century or more of biological science, don’t actually exist, at least according to the published abstract from UPenn’s Karola Stotz and colleagues (link died since time of writing).

Stotz explains that daily findings from the life sciences continually imply that the gene as a particulate entity in the genome is not supported by the evidence. They also suggest that science journalists, as both reporters and critics, perhaps have a role to play in the public understanding of post-genomic science. Presumably, this means we should somehow be mediating the discovery of a supposed gene for this disease or that behaviour, and explaining clearly that there are very few biologists now who see “genes” as the particulate entities that explained Mendel’s findings all those years ago. Indeed, headlines shouting about an “asthma gene”, “a gene for homosexuality”, or “the gene controlling suicidal tendencies” must be spiked as of now (and maybe always should have been). I’ll be on my best behaviour in this regard from now on, although I cannot promise I don’t have the gene for being contrary and so might renege on my promise…

The Taxonomy of Daftodils

No sooner had I blogged my daftodils photo than answers to my species query started to arrive. Science librarian Rebecca Hedreen, of the Buley Library (presumably digging deep for useful horticultural information for her readers), was first in, suggesting that the plant in question is actually Narcisssus photoshopia. Apparently, this species comes in a variety known as Narcisssus photoshopia elementis, which is available to the virtual gardener on a budget!

Rational Drug Design

Science Writer David Bradley is currently working on an RSS newsfeed for Simulated Biomolecular Systems, better known as SimBioSys Inc, a Canadian company that specialises in chemistry software with a difference.

UPDATE: Keen-eyed readers will probably have noticed that Sciencebase is no longer working on this project with the chemistry software company. However, I can point you to some exciting developmental work between my co-workers at Chemspider.com and Symbiosis.

Symbiosis is working with ChemSpider on the LASSO project with ChemSpider. Indeed, LASSO descriptor is now available for almost all 18+ million structures in the Chemspider structure database. They have also added the virtual screening results for all ligands against 40 target families, from the DUD database of decoys.

Chemspider recently revealed the preliminary results of this very large cross screening work and the two businesses are now working together to clean up the interface and more powerful search capabilities.