In the quest to discover the human spark, researchers often rely on volunteers who let them investigate their behavior, inclinations, and abilities. Average, everyday people… just like you!

A couple of labs at Harvard University have created a Web site called Test My Brain, where the public can participate in online experiments.  Find out how good your “gut number sense” is or how skilled you are at recognizing faces — and contribute to the advance of science at the same time!

Visit Test My Brain

Anthropologists recently announced they’ve discovered the first example of footprints from the early human species Homo erectus. The trail of prints uncovered in Kenya were made by feet remarkably like ours, but 1.5 million years ago.

Unlike the 3.75-million-year-old footprints found in Tanzania and attributed to Australopithecus afarensis (the same species as Lucy), these trails are markedly different from the tracks of apes. All of the toes are parallel and relatively short and there’s an arch. This anatomy implies a bipedal species that had a similar gait to that of modern humans. Footprint trails like this one provide a rare glimpse of our ancient ancestors’ soft tissues – as opposed to the fossilized bones we usually rely on to answer questions about their bodies.

Check out the abstract of the research published in Science.

These articles provide more information about the latest discovery:

• New York Times: “Prints Show a Modern Foot in Prehumans“
• Wired Science Blog: “Walk Like Us: 1.5 Million-Year-Old Footprints Look Modern“
• CNN: “Ancient footprints: Earliest signs of modern feet“
• Reuters: “Footprints show human ancestor with modern stride“

Tanya explaining her mimicry work to Alan

Duke University: The Fuqua School of Business

When I first heard about the Human Spark project, I was excited.  What makes us uniquely human is a question that has intrigued social scientists for over a century. Much of my work over the years has focused on aspects of social interaction that occur outside of conscious awareness, including behavioral mimicry (picking up the mannerisms and gestures of others without awareness or intent).  When I first talked with Graham about covering this research in his program, it was clear that he and Alan had in mind a very different kind of television program from what I’d seen in the past.  They truly wanted to dig in to what it means to be human, exploring perspectives from the neurological to the anthropological.  As a scientist, I’ve always been impressed with the collaborative work that Graham and Alan have done in the past, so I was thrilled to be included in this project.

Tanya watched the action from next door, via hidden cameras in the experiment room. Note the Human Spark crew filming Alan being subtly mimicked.

The day of taping was fun and interesting for me.  I don’t often directly observe my participants interacting with the confederates in my studies.  But we had Alan go through one of my typical experiments as if he were a participant.  My graduate students played the roles of the confederate and experimenter and interacted with Alan.  One of them mimicked his nonverbal behaviors, including his mannerisms, posture, gestures, and other motor movements.  Alan didn’t notice the mimicry (as our participants never do), but at the end of the interaction it was clear that he and the confederate were having a good time and enjoying the task together.  In fact, our research has found that mimicry during social interactions leads to more enjoyment of the task and liking between interaction partners.

My participation in this project has energized me to think at a broader level, connecting research on nonverbal behaviors to more micro and macro perspectives in an effort to better understand what it means to be human.

- Tanya Chartrand, Duke University

Watch Tanya describe what it was like for her as a scientist to be involved in a television shoot for The Human Spark.

Alan Alda takes turns describing photos with Tanya’s confederate, Amy Dalton, who is discreetly mimicking his postures and movements. Photo by Larry Engel

Durham, NC

Today we’ve just finished shooting here at Duke University a series of experiments with Tanya Chartrand on how we humans unconsciously mimic each other, and how doing so helps us become more social.

Our social nature will be a major theme of The Human Spark – and it came up again today when Tanya made Alan the unwitting participant in a study of social mimicry. I’d kept Alan in the dark about today’s filming, so he had no idea what to expect when we sat him down in a room with a graduate student, who was described for him as a fellow participant in a study in interpreting pictures. In fact she subtly mimicked Alan’s body language – so subtly that he never caught on, but that should, if he was typical of the subjects in Tanya’s study, have made him feel more benign.

Alan and Tanya discuss her mimicry study while viewing footage from the hidden cameras in the testing room. Photo by Larry Engel

Alan and Tanya got so into the findings and implications of her research that it was hard knowing when to call cut, and when I did they’d simply set off on a new tack that soon had us rolling the camera again.

The day finished as days on the road with Alan usually do, dinner with the crew, going over what had happened during the shoot, enjoying the things that had gone both right and not quite as we expected – often the best moments – and speculating about the next shoot, which will be yet another angle on the Spark; a day at the North Carolina Zoo about an hour and half’s drive from here talking with Brian Hare about cooperation among chimpanzees, and how it is similar or different from human cooperation.

– Graham Chedd