Word: humanism
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Most previous research on oxytocin has focused on animals. (Prairie voles are famous for their oxytocin-inspired behavior: they're fiercely monogamous lovers and caring parents.) But more recently, scientists have begun to determine how oxytocin functions in the human brain - or, more specifically, how it malfunctions. Studies have shown that people with autism tend to have low levels of oxytocin, as well as hyperactivity in the amygdala, where most oxytocin receptors are located. The amygdala is also where memories are formed, and where our brains process and assign emotional meaning to sensory information - that is, where we turn perception...
...husky whisper or drawls syllables to wring nuance from every note. Painful memories appear without warning. On A Stranger's Car, Jones promises a young runaway that ''There is no one here to beat out your brains/ There's no one here who'll make you cry.'' Ultimately, though, human anguish gives way to understanding and compassion, and the demons that haunt Traffic from Paradise are banished by the angels of redemption that hover overhead. On the standout cut, Beat Angels, Jones' voice shines like a beacon over roiling seas as she asks, ''Don't you wonder where one goes...
There are three compelling reasons to see Gettysburg. The first is General Robert E. Lee, the second is Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, and the last is Brigadier General Lewis Armistead. They don't embrace all the contortions imposed on the human spirit by the military necessity, but they'll do for a potent, dramatic start. And their existence as well-drawn figures amid the hubbub of a four-hour epic speaks well for writer-director Ronald Maxwell's sober intentions and very creditable achievements in this film. Of the three, Martin Sheen's Lee is the most startling...
While I was reading the report on Margie Profet's ''radical theory,'' which proposes that menstruation protects against sperm-borne infection ((HEALTH, . Oct. 4)), an obvious hole came to mind. Human females may engage in sexual intercourse, and thereby expose themselves to potentially harmful micro- organisms, at any time during their menstrual cycle. If a woman were to have sex the day after her menstrual period ended, it would be another three weeks before her uterine lining was again sloughed off, which is more than enough time for an infection to set in. Because of this constant risk of exposure...
...think Profet is strongly influenced by modern human sex practices: women receiving sperm without getting pregnant. This very new behavior, in the biological time scale, will have to continue for tens of thousands of years before it affects natural selection. Dan Sandberg, M.D. Uppsala, Sweden