Increased chemosensory ability and eye regression: a "Just-So" fish story
Loss of eyes associated with increased chemosensory abilities leads to a hypothesis of increased tactile sensitivity for food choice and mate choice.
Month: December 2012
A mathematical model of phenotypic cause, effects on genes, and affects on behavior
the only thing wrong with mathematical models of cause and effect is that they attribute indirect genetic effects, direct genetic effects, and affects on behavior to something unknown
Functional vomeronasal receptor genes in primates?
Social isolation disrupts myelin production.
Non-random adaptive evolution: fast forward to March 2013
Shapiro, JA. Rethinking the (im)possible in evolution (in press) Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. The author graciously provides an open access preprint of his […]
Non random adaptive evolution
Changes in food availability, food type, or the way you get food can trigger evolutionary mechanisms to deal with those changes. The result can be increased brain size and cognition, changes in locomotion and even social changes
A newly discovered hypothalamic neurogenic niche in the brain
The authors are among many, who seem to have missed a likely epigenetic link from maternal and/or acquired ferritin deficiency to thyroxine transport, brain development, and behavior.
FDA: Just says NO — to ineffective drugs with side effects
A systems biology approach to chronic fatigue that incorporates neuroscientifically established fact is obviously required.
Random mutations theory and pervasive mosaic evolution (the brain)
“random” mutations in the genome are not quite so random after all.
Epigenetic effects underlie sexual preferences II
The difference between an accurate portrayal of epigenetic effects and those that make claims of adaptively evolved behaviors “(sans epigenetics)” is a difference between fact and story-telling that goes back to the origins of the story more than 120 years ago.
The hormone-miRNA axis, life span, and sexual orientation
Instead of simply offering more evolutionary theory, we detailed the link from the sensory environment to sexual orientation (e.g., the epigenetic effects of pheromones on the gonadotropin releasing hormone neuronal system).