Recent news from The Johns Hopkins University
This section contains regularly updated highlights of the news from around The Johns Hopkins
University. Links to the complete news reports from the nine schools,
the Applied Physics Laboratory and other centers and institutes are to
the left, as are links to help news media contact the Johns Hopkins
communications offices.
Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have found that introducing testosterone in select areas of a male canary’s brain can affect its ability to successfully attract and mate with a female through birdsong. They also found that enhancing song activity based on testosterone in one brain area can change the size of a separate brain area that regulates song quality.
December 18, 2013 Tags: birds, birdsong, canary, mating, medial preoptic nucleus, POM, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, singing, testosterone
| Category: Environment, Natural Sciences, Psychology, Uncategorized
A first-of-its kind study using the World Wide Web to collect data from more than 10,000 study subjects ages 11 to 85 found that humans’ inborn “number sense” improves during school years, declines during old age, and remains linked throughout the entire lifespan to academic mathematics achievement. The study, led by psychologist Justin Halberda of The Johns Hopkins University and published in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of June 25, is groundbreaking for presenting a picture of how our basic cognitive abilities may change across our lifetime.
June 25, 2012 Tags: ANS, Approximate Number Sense, citizen science, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Internet, Johns Hopkins University, Justin Halberda, Krieger School of Arts and Science, mathematics achievement, National Science Foundation, number sense, PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, psychological and brain sciences, World Wide Web
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Psychology, Social Sciences
Led by neuroscientist Steve Yantis, a team from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Krieger School has found that insignificant objects that have come to be associated with a “reward” of some kind inadvertently capture people’s attention. The research, published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may eventually contribute to the development of more effective treatments for addiction, obesity and ADHD.
June 7, 2011 Tags: addiction, attention, attention capture, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, distraction, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, rewards, Steven Yantis
| Category: Academic Disciplines, Homewood Campus News, Psychology, Public Health
If you think summer in your hometown is hot, consider it fortunate that you don’t live in the Turkana Basin of Kenya, where the average daily temperature has reached the mid-90s or higher, year-round, for the past 4 million years. The need to stay cool in that cradle of human evolution may relate, at least in part, to why pre-humans learned to walk upright, lost the fur that covered the bodies of their predecessors and became able to sweat more, Johns Hopkins University earth scientist Benjamin Passey said.
June 8, 2010 Tags: Benjamin Passey, bipedalism, caliche, Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, carbonate materials, climate, fossils, fur, geochemical, hot climate, Human evolution, ice age, Johns Hopkins University, Kenya, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, National Science Foundation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sedimentary rock, sweating, thermal hypothesis, Turkana Basin, walking upright
| Category: Environment, Natural Sciences
