Friday, October 3, 2008

Singing to females makes male birds' brains happy.


This is cute. And maybe it explains why hearing Geddy Lee singing makes my brain happy.
"The melodious singing of birds has been long appreciated by humans, and has often been thought to reflect a particularly positive emotional state of the singer. In a new study published in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE on October 1, researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have demonstrated that this can be true. When male birds sang to attract females, specific "reward" areas of their brain were strongly activated. Such strong brain activation resulted in a similar change in brain reward function to that which is caused by addictive drugs."
Full article here.

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