Babies can follow a beat just days after birth, and they can notice when a rhythm pattern is disrupted, according to study results presented by Discover. Some scientists believe the ability to recognize steady rhythms, called beat induction, could be unique to humans. Some, including the study’s authors, also think it’s innate. Lead researcher Istvan Winkler suggests that a sense of rhythm helps newborns process and respond to repetitive baby talk, paving the way for language acquisition. If he’s right, our affinity for music may be a happy evolutionary accident, a byproduct of other essential learning processes.

Image by Kamal Aboul-Hosn, licensed under Creative Commons.

Scientists think that human facial expressions have evolved over millions of years for better communication and empathy, Carl Zimmer writes for Discover. Babies instinctively mimic other people’s facial expressions, and some think this is helps them understand what grownups are thinking. Some go further, postulating that facial expressions actually create emotions. “When humans mimic others’ faces,” Zimmer writes, “we don’t just go through the motions. We also go through the emotions.”

It makes sense, then, that emotional exchanges would be irrevocably altered by drugs like Botox. Plastic surgeons use Botox to make people look younger, but the drug also paralyzes facial muscles and inhibits facial expressions. Neuroscientists have tested patients using Dysport, a Botox-like drug found in Europe, by showing them images of angry faces and asking them to mimic or observe the expressions. Using brain scans, the scientists found that Dysport patients had weaker activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that is key to experiencing emotions. This signals a change in the way that the Dysport patients experience emotions. Zimmer writes that through drugs like Botox and Dysport, “we’re tampering with the ancient lines of communication between face and brain that may change our minds in ways we don’t yet understand.”

Sitting on their hairy haunches, peering into a rousing fire, a pair of newly-evolved humans named Ugg and Ook munch thoughtfully on the raw flesh of a recent kill. Ugg accidentally drops a nugget of flesh into the fire, and grabs it as quickly as he can:

“Hey, Ook,” Ugg calls out to his dining companion. “This burnt meat actually tastes pretty good.”

“It’s good, yeah,” Ook says. “But what would you think about adding some cilantro salsa or a nice mango chutney? Maybe you could serve a little bit of red wine to wash it down?”

Since humanity’s first, stumbling attempts at cookery, people have been chemically altering food. Lately, a new branch of food preparation—known by the pretentious moniker “molecular gastronomy”—has begun to baffle and amuse diners with foodstuffs like fried mayonnaise, knotted foie gras, and foam. Writing for Discover Bruno Maddox explains that molecular gastronomy is the logical next step in the long relationship between cooking and science. In fact, cavemen like Ugg and Ook started to experiment with a kind of molecular gastronomy thousands of years ago.

“It’s a point so obvious one feels silly making it,” Maddox writes. “The relationship of cooking to Science is the same as that of engineering to Science: an intimacy that approaches identity.”

Molecular gastronomy simply pushes the envelope a little bit. Even when the food—all decked out in foam and gimmicks—doesn’t taste especially good, it’s something new. For all its pretentiousness, Maddox hopes that molecular gastronomy will make us think about our food in new ways, and continue Ook and Ugg’s important work.

—Brendan Mackie

In a perfect world, film buffs and science geeks would live together in sublime harmony. Thanks to the November issue of Discover (article not available online), it seems we’re making significant progress on that front as physics professor Sidney Perkowitz pins down the best and worst science-themed films of all time. Both popular (Contact, 1997, and A Beautiful Mind, 2001) and artsy-sounding (Metropolis, 1927) titles crack the top five. Perkowitz’s favorites, which he dubs “Golden Eagles,” are lauded for thoughtful, scientifically accurate storylines—though he does concede, in his discussion of Contact, that “not many actual scientists would bet their careers on the slim chance of finding advanced aliens.”

In the “Golden Turkey” department, I’m happy to see The Core (2003) take its rightful place as the most odious. This film, which I found too unbearable to finish on an international flight some years ago, sends a group of scientists drilling a dangerous path to the earth’s core; Perkowitz notes that it “manages to impart record-setting amounts of scientific misinformation about basic physics (like elementary magnetism, electricity, and heat) in a mere 134 minutes.” He’s also not a fan of The 6th Day (2000), a Schwarzenegger action vehicle with a plot “so far off-base that you just can’t suspend enough disbelief.” —Danielle Maestretti