|
Past Shows
February 14, 2009
 Download an MP3 of the entire program (22MB).
Your Brain on Love
Listen to or download the mp3 or Ogg files.  (what's ogg?)
|
Tired of all that mushy nonsense that comes with Valentine's Day - the schmaltzy cards, the heart-shaped box of chocolates, the earnest whispers and secret nothings? It's about time someone took a cold, harsh look at love and expose it for what it really is: chemistry. That's right, forget about magic - when you boil it down, love is nothing more than a molecular stew, sloshing around inside our skulls. Researchers have begun to identify these compounds and understand exactly what they do.
Kristina Durante, a PhD. Candidate at the University of Texas, Austin, studies how the human sex hormones influence our behaviour. She's found a link between a woman's level of estrogen and the likelihood they'll dump their current partner and move on to a more appealing mate. Ms. Durante also explains how both testosterone and estrogen send out subtle sexual signals, signifying our genetic fitness.
Dr. Sarah Woodley, a neuroendocrinologist at Duquesne University, studies how nature's original perfume, pheromones, influence animal behaviour. Dr. Woodley discusses some of the evidence suggesting that humans may use these powerful chemical attractors too and, if we do, just how they work. She also explains the secret to wooing an amourous pig.
Dr. Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University and she has studied love in over thirty cultures across the world. She believes that love isn't so much an emotion as it is a powerful drive. Dr. Fisher has done MRI scans of people in love and has found their brains look remarkably similar to the brains of people on addictive drugs.
Dr. Larry Young, a molecular neurobiologist at Emory University, studies the neuro-chemistry of long-term commitment. He's discovered a couple of chemicals -- oxytocin and vasopressin -- that seem to be the glue that helps us stick it out for the long-term. Dr. Young explains how a genetic variation in males might explain why some men are better at commitment than others.
Related Links
Flighty Songbirds
Listen to or download the mp3 or Ogg files. (what's ogg?)
Purple Martin with geolocator - courtesy Tim Morton
|
Following birds during their impressive migrations has been beyond the ability of biologists, so the details of how birds perform these remarkable journies have been a mystery. Dr. Bridget Stutchbury, a professor of Biology at York University, has finally figured out how to do it with a simple sensor. By tagging birds with a tiny chip that records the time of sunrise and sunset, she was able to quite accurately track the birds as they travel down to South America in the Fall and back to Canada again in the Spring. Among the surprises was just how quickly the birds did their spring migration - covering up to 500km per day in their race back North to breed.
Related Links
Titanoboa - The Greatest Snake
Listen to or download the mp3 or Ogg files. (what's ogg?)
Dr. Head with vertebrae from modern Anaconda and ancient Titanoboa
|
Snake... It had to be a Snake... When Dr. Jason Head, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Toronto at Mississauga first saw the giant vertebrae that had been found in a cave in Colombia, he knew it was from a snake, and knew that the animal was the largest snake that ever lived. Titanoboa might have been as long as fifteen meters, weighed more than a tonne, and was, perhaps, three-quarters of a meter in diameter. And when it slithered across the Earth, sixty million years ago, it's likely that this fearsome predator quite literally ate crocodiles for breakfast.
Related Links
Colouring your Cognition
Listen to or download the mp3 or Ogg files. (what's ogg?)
There's no doubt colours influence the feel of a place. After all, it would be odd to paint a daycare centre black. Well, Dr. Juliet Zhu, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of British Columbia, has found that colours influence how we think, as well. Dr. Zhu tested people as they did a series of problem-solving exercises; some of them creative, some of them more detail-oriented. She found that people were much better at doing creative tasks while looking at a blue computer screen, and much better at doing analytical tasks while looking at a red screen. Dr. Zhu believes this is because we learn to associate colours with specific concepts -- such as a red stop sign with alertness -- and this, in turn, influences the way we think
Related Links
Theme music bed copyright Raphaël Gluckstein.
Creative Commons License by-nc-nd-2.0
Last week Next week
|
