The ID Update - September 2011: "Neuroscience: At last! A science-based explanation for that awful "cute puppy" wallpaper ...
by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent
(Who said science was useless ... ?)
From "Captivated by Critters: Humans Are Wired to Respond to Animals" (ScienceDaily, Sep. 9, 2011), we learn:
... researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and UCLA report that neurons throughout the amygdala -- a center in the brain known for processing emotional reactions -- respond preferentially to images of animals.
Working with 41 epilepsy patients who were already monitored for stress, they found.
"Our study shows that neurons in the human amygdala respond preferentially to pictures of animals, meaning that we saw the most amount of activity in cells when the patients looked at cats or snakes versus buildings or people," says Florian Mormann, lead author on the paper and a former postdoctoral scholar in the Division of Biology at Caltech"
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