27
POPSSongs From The Sea: Deciphering Dolphin Language With Picture Words Dr. Horace Dobbs, a leading authority on dolphin-assisted therapy, has joined the team as consultant. "I have long held the belief that the dolphin brain, comparable in size with our own, has specialized in processing auditory data in much the same way that the human brain has specialized in processing visual data. Nature tends not to evolve brain mass without a need, so we must ask ourselves what dolphins do with all that brain capacity. The answer appears to lie in the development of brain systems that require huge auditory processing power. There is growing evidence that dolphins can take a sonic 'snap shot' of an object and send it to other dolphins, using sound as the transmission medium. We an therefore hypothesize that the dolphin's primary method of communication is picture based. Thus, the picture-based imaging method, employed by Reid and Kassewitz, seems entirely plausible."
16
POPSWhy working out may help memory Glucose metabolism naturally slows with age, and memory begins to decline in our 30s, says co-author Scott Small, an associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. The new study suggests a possible association between the two, because elevated blood sugar appears to damage the dentate gyrus, Small says. The dentate gyrus's exact function is unknown. But it's one of several circuits in the hippocampus that, if disrupted, impairs memory, such as a person's ability to learn the names of new people or to remember where they parked their car. The possible connection between its dysfunction and poor glucose regulation may explain earlier observations that exercise benefits the dentate gyrus, Small says. Until now, scientists believed that physical activity reduced the risk of age-related memory loss by allowing glucose to be absorbed more quickly into muscle cells, but were not sure why.