She says she's not ready for a relationship.

Ah, the classic escape route; women often use this one when they feel cornered by someone they are not interested in. It's clean, requires no preparation and leaves no room for a counterargument. But if a woman says this to you, what she really means is that she does not want to be in a relationship with you. For whatever reason, she doesn't see you as relationship material for her, so don't stick around hoping she will be ready someday. She might get into a relationship eventually, but it probably won't be with you.

You're always the one calling her and/or she doesn't return your phone calls.

Watch out, she may be avoiding you; and if she's not avoiding you, you are not on her mind and she simply forgot. Either way, this means that she has less invested than you and doesn't care enough to actively seek out your company.

Here's a rule of thumb: If she doesn't return your first call, call a second time, as she may be playing hard to get. If she doesn't return your second call, you can rightly conclude that she's not into you. (Do allow a certain amount of leeway on this point; women have been told by umpteen dating books to let the man do the pursuing. She should be calling you at least once for every three times you call her.)

She avoids eye contact and physical proximity.

This is an obvious sign that many men overlook. If she is attracted to you, she will naturally want to be close to you and make eye contact. If she is evading your gaze, however, she may be consciously trying to avoid leading you on and having to turn down your advances later. It'sa sneaky little trick, but it usually works. Take it as a sign that you're not her type. If she keeps you at arm's length at all times, she may also be protecting her personal space, so make sure you don't get too close.

She mentions other guys she finds attractive.

No, she's probably not trying to make you jealous (unless we are dealing with an ex-girlfriend, a situation that belongs in another category altogether). Most likely, though, you are in the "friend zone," which means that you are just like one of her girlfriends that she shares her thoughts with. Ergo, it has never even crossed her mind to date you. Not good.

She tries to set you up with another woman.

She might do this because, like in signal No. 4, it never crossed her mind to date you. Alternatively, she might do this because she likes you as a friend but wants to make certain you don't hit on her. Either way, the message is clear: She definitely doesn't want you for herself.

She doesn't laugh at your jokes.

If she is consistently stone-faced when you crack jokes, then you can conclude two important things. First, she doesn't find your sense of humor engaging, and second, she doesn't like you enough to bother to pretend otherwise. Here's a shocker: Whether or not she laughs at your jokes doesn't necessarily have to do with whether or not she finds them funny. Laughing is a form of flirting, and if she isn't doing it, you can be pretty sure her mind isn't on you.

She is always vague about making plans.

If she really wants to see you, she'll make firm plans. If she doesn't want to see you, or doesn't care one way or another, you can be pretty sure that she's not into you. If she is vague about making plans, it probably means that she is neutral about being in your company, or even worse, that she doesn't want to commit in case something better comes up. Ouch.

She regularly cancels plans with you.

Let me break it to you gently: You are the fall guy, the "just in case she doesn't have anything better to do" guy. It is certainly fair to cancel plans occasionally for a legitimate reason, but if she bails consistently, ditch her, even as a friend. If she does this, it not only shows that she's not interested, but that she holds little respect for you at all. Move on, and do it quickly.

Her description of the perfect man sounds nothing like you.

She tells you she wants a Mediterranean man who can dance salsa. You are Swedish and can only square dance. I know; women rarely stick to what they say are the perfect traits they are looking for in a man. And indeed, she may actually end up with a square-dancing Swede, but in all likelihood, it won't be with you. Take this as a kind hint on her part that you, for whatever reason, are not her perfect man.

If she exhibits one of the above signs, it doesn't bode well for your cause. If she exhibits two to three of these signs, you can be pretty certain that she's not interested. If you are noticing more than three of the above signs, listen carefully, because it's never going to happen.

I know from experience that an unreciprocated crush can be a big blow to one's self-esteem. So do yourself a favor and don't prolong the inevitable. If, after reading the above list, you can gather that she isn't going to respond to your advances, put yourself out of your misery -- just cut your losses and move on. Repeat this mantra to yourself until it sticks: She's just not into you.

Millions of people around the world begin their day with a cup of coffee, believing that they cannot wake up without it. However, there are other ways to get going in the morning - to wake up naturally, without a dependence on coffee.

Instructions

• STEP 1: Motivate yourself to give up coffee. Keep in mind that coffee drinkers tend to be more groggy and sleepy in the morning than nondrinkers. You will eventually feel more awake and energetic than when you needed coffee to start the day.
• STEP 2: Wean yourself slowly, especially if you drink several cups throughout the day.
• STEP 3: Caffeine is addictive, and you may have withdrawal symptoms if you stop too abruptly. Symptoms are usually mild to severe headaches, fatigue, nausea and depression.
• STEP 4: Gradually halve the amount of coffee you drink each day. For example, if you drink six cups a day, cut back to three, then one and a half, and so on. If you get withdrawal symptoms, do it more gradually.
• STEP 5: As another approach, gradually replace your caffeinated coffee with decaf. Drink the same number of cups, but increase the decaf and decrease the regular coffee until you are drinking 100 percent decaf.
• STEP 6: Get enough sleep at night. Most people need between 7 and 9 hours a night to feel rested.
• STEP 7: Maximize your sleep. Keep your room dark and cool, eliminate or minimize noise, and sleep on a comfortable bed.
• STEP 8: Speak to your doctor if you have problems with insomnia or other sleep disorders. Not sleeping soundly will keep you feeling groggy and tired in the morning.
• STEP 9: Open the shades and turn on the lights when you get up in the morning.
• STEP 10: Bright light signals your brain that it's time to wake up.
• STEP 11: Eat a high-protein breakfast. Some researchers believe that protein will wake you up and keep you energized.
• STEP 12: Avoid sugary pastries. They give you an energy surge and then a rapid slump.
• STEP 13: Work out in the morning. Exercise will give you more energy.
• STEP 14: Drink green tea if you still want some morning caffeine. It contains a much smaller amount than coffee, particularly drip coffee, and is a potent antioxidant and an all-around healthful drink.

Tips & Warnings

• Having an occasional cup of coffee will not get you hooked on the coffee habit again.

Sleep may be as natural as breathing and eating, but many of us find ourselves tossing and turning instead. Sleepless nights can be caused by a wide variety of factors, especially stress and your sleep environment.

Preparations

Instructions

• STEP 1: Avoid drinking coffee or other caffeinated beverages after noon.
• STEP 2: Eat dinner at least 3 hours before you go to bed, especially if it's a large meal. For a before-bed snack, try warm milk, yogurt or a banana.
• STEP 3: Relax. If you're tense at bedtime, take a warm bath with aromatherapy soaps, stretch, listen to music, meditate - whatever works for you.
• STEP 4: Stay away from the evening news right before bed. Stories of disasters and corruption can be stimulating and disruptive to sleep.
• STEP 5: Avoid the nightcap. Alcohol may help you fall asleep faster, but it can interfere with the quality of sleep.
• STEP 6: Don't drink any fluids right before going to bed. A full bladder may awaken you.
• STEP 7: Try to go to sleep at the same time every night to get your body into a routine.

Tips & Warnings

• Napping can interfere with nighttime sleep. If you're very tired, take a short nap before 2 p.m., but don't sleep for more than 30 minutes.
• Even though vigorous exercise should be avoided before bedtime, mild exercise, such as an after-dinner walk, may help you sleep better.
• If you're feeling very tense, try drinking herbal teas made from valerian, chamomile, oats, passionflower or balm, which are said to be natural sleep aids.

The Sleep Environment

Instructions

• STEP 1: Adjust the room temperature so it's slightly on the cool side. Rooms that are too hot or cold are less conducive to sleep.
• STEP 2: Darken the room. Draw your blinds or curtains to keep out streetlights.
• STEP 3: Sleep on a comfortable bed that gives you good support. Sleeping on a bed that's too hard, too soft or lumpy will have you waking up fatigued and with a backache.
• STEP 4: Use earplugs if the environment is noisy, or use a fan or a Sound Soother that creates "white noise." White noise is a soothing sound that blocks out more noxious noises.
• STEP 5: Focus your mind on pleasant thoughts as you drift off to sleep. Count sheep, count backward, or do whatever works best, but keep your mind off personal and work-related worries.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have trouble falling asleep, get up and do some light activity until you feel sleepy.
• Keep the light dim. Bright light will make you more alert.

Overall Tips & Warnings

• If you have any questions or concerns, contact a physician or other health care professional before engaging in any activity related to health and diet. This information is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment.

The brain is a three-pound supercomputer. It is the command and control center running your life. It is involved in absolutely everything you do. Your brain determines how you think, how you feel, how you act, and how well you get along with other people. Your brain even determines the kind of person you are. It determines how thoughtful you are; how polite or how rude you are. It determines how well you think on your feet, and it is involved with how well you do at work and with your family. Your brain also influences your emotional well being and how well you do with the opposite sex.

Your brain is more complicated than any computer we can imagine. Did you know that you have one hundred billion nerve cells in your brain, and every nerve cell has many connections to other nerve cells? In fact, your brain has more connections in it than there are stars in the universe! Optimizing your brain's function is essential to being the best you can be, whether at work, in leisure, or in your relationships.

From my work as a clinical neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and brain-imaging expert, here are 7 ways to enhance the functioning of your own brain and enhance your life.

1. Protect Your Brain

Protecting the brain from injury, pollution, sleep deprivation, and stress is the first step to optimizing its function. The brain is very soft, while the skull is really hard. Inside the skull there are many sharp bony ridges. Several brain areas are especially vulnerable to trauma, especially the parts involved with memory, learning, and mood stability. In order to be your best it is essential to protect your brain from injury. Wear your seatbelt when you're in a car, and wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle, motorcycle, or go snowboarding. Make sure children wear helmets. My eleven-year-old knows that if she rides her bicycle without a helmet she'll be grounded from it for a month. One head injury can ruin a life. Along the same lines, do not let children hit soccer balls with their heads. Soccer balls are heavy. Repeatedly slamming a child's head against a soccer ball may cause minor repetitive trauma to the brain. At this time there are not enough studies to say heading soccer balls is safe. I encourage my children to play golf, baseball, and tennis, rather than football, soccer, or hockey.

Current brain imaging research has shown that many chemicals are toxic to brain function. Alcohol, drugs of abuse, nicotine, much caffeine, and many medications decrease blood flow to the brain. When blood flow is decreased the brain cannot work efficiently. In one study done at UCLA, cocaine addicts had 23% less overall brain blood flow compared to a drug free control group. Those cocaine addicts who smoked cigarettes had 45% less blood flow than the control group. In a study I performed on chronic marijuana users, 85% had less activity in their temporal lobes than the control group. The temporal lobes are involved with memory and mood stability. Caffeine constricts blood vessels and has been shown to decrease brain activity. A little bit of caffeine probably doesn't hurt much. Unfortunately, many people use excessive amounts, such as 6 to 10 cups of coffee, tea, or sodas a day. It is hard to be your best when brain activity is diminished. Stay away substances known to be toxic or those that decrease brain activity.

In a similar way, sleep deprivation also decreases brain activity and limits access to learning, memory, and concentration. A recent brain imaging study showed that people who consistently slept less than 7 hours had overall less brain activity. Sleep problems are very common in people who struggle with their thoughts and emotions. Getting enough sleep everyday is essential to brain function.

Scientists have only recently discovered how stress negatively affects brain function. Stress hormones have been shown in animals to be directly toxic to memory centers. Brain cells can die with prolonged stress. Managing stress effectively is essential to good brain function.

2. Feed Your Brain

The fuel you feed your brain has a profound effect on how it functions. Lean protein, complex carbohydrates, and foods rich in omega 3 fatty acids (large cold water fish, such as tuna and salmon, walnuts, Brazil nuts, olive oil, and canola oil) are essential to brain function. Unfortunately, the great American diet is filled with simple sugars and simple carbohydrates, causing many people to feel emotional, sluggish, spacey, and distracted.

What do you have for breakfast? Do you even have breakfast? Today, many children, teens, and adults start the day with either nothing at all or by loading up on simple carbohydrates, such as sugar cereals, Pop Tarts, muffins, bagels, waffles, pancakes, or donuts. In our fast paced society these foods are simple to prepare for the family rushed in the morning, but they cause brain fog and lower performance in many people. Start the day with a healthy breakfast that includes protein, such as eggs, lean meat, or dairy products.

Many people struggle with energy and mental clarity after lunch. I have found that eliminating all simple carbohydrates at lunch (sugar, white bread or other products made from white flour such as bagels and white pasta, potatoes, and rice) can make a dramatic difference in energy and focus in the afternoon. An additional benefit of skipping sugar and simple carbohydrates at lunch is that most people do not feel hunger until dinnertime. I also believe taking a 100% vitamin and mineral supplement is important. Many people do not eat like they should on a regular basis.

3. Kill the ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts) That Invade Your Brain

The thoughts that go through your mind, moment by moment, have a significant impact on how your brain works. Research by Mark George, MD and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health demonstrated that happy, hopeful thoughts had an overall calming effect on the brain, while negative thoughts inflamed brain areas often involved with depression and anxiety. Your thoughts matter.

I often teach my patients how to metaphorically kill the ANTs that invade their minds. ANTs stand for Automatic Negative Thoughts. The ANTs are automatic. They just happen. But they can ruin your whole day, maybe even your life. For example, I once treated a college student who was ready to drop out of school. He thought he was stupid because didn't do well on tests. When his IQ (intelligence level) was tested, however, we discovered that he had an IQ of 135 (in the superior range). He just wasn't a good test taker. I have identified nine different kinds of ANT species, or ways your thoughts can distort incoming information to make you feel bad. Here are four ANT species:

Mind reading --- predicting you know that another person is thinking something negative about you without them telling you. I often tell my patients that, "A negative look from someone else may mean nothing more than he or she is constipated. You don't know. You can't read minds. I have 25 years of training in human behavior and I still can't read anyone's mind."

Fortune telling -- predicting a bad outcome to a situation before it has occurred. Your mind makes happen what it sees. Unconsciously, predicting failure will often cause failure. For example, if you say, "I know I will fail the test," then you will likely not study hard enough and fail the test.

Always or never thinking - this is where you think in words like always, never, every time, or everyone. These thoughts are overgeneralizations which can alter behavior. For example, I have a friend who asked out an attractive woman. She turned him down. He told himself that no one will ever go out with him again. This ANT prevented him from asking out anyone else for over nine months.

Guilt beatings -- being overrun by thoughts of "I should have done... I'm bad because…. I must do better at… I have to…). Guilt is powerful at making us feel bad. It is a lousy motivator of behavior.

You do not have to believe every thought that goes through your head. It's important to think about your thoughts to see if they help you or they hurt you. Unfortunately, if you never challenge your thoughts you just "believe them" as if they were true. ANTs can take over and infest your brain. Develop an internal anteater to hunt down and devour the negative thoughts that are ruining your life.

Once you learn about your thoughts, you can chose to think good thoughts and feel good or you can choose to think bad thoughts and feel lousy. You can train your thoughts to be positive and hopeful or you can just allow them to be negative and upset you. That's right, it's up to you! You can learn how to change your thoughts and optimize your brain. One way to learn how to change your thoughts is to notice them when they are negative and talk back to them. If you can correct negative thoughts, you take away their power over you. When you think a negative thought without challenging it, your mind believes it and your brain reacts to it.

4. Work Your Brain

Your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more you can use it. Every time you learn something new your brain makes a new connection. Learning enhances blood flow and activity in the brain. If you go for long periods without learning something new you start to lose some of the connections in the brain and you begin to struggle more with memory and learning.

Anatomist Marian Diamond, PhD, from the University of California at Berkely studied aging in rats. Those rats who were allowed an easy life without any new challenges or learning had less brain weight than those rats who were challenged and forced to learn new information in order to be fed. New learning actually caused increased brain density and weight. Strive to learn something new everyday, even if it is just for a short period of time. Einstein said that if a person studies a subject for just 15 minutes a day in a year he will be an expert, and in five years he may be a national expert. Learning is good for your brain.

5. Make Love For Your Brain

In a series of studies by Winnifred B. Cutler, PhD and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and later at Stanford University it was found that regular sexual contact had an important impact on physical and emotional well being of women. Sexual contact with a partner at least once a week led to more fertile, regular menstrual cycles, shorter menses, delayed menopause, increased estrogen levels, and delayed aging. Brain imaging studies at UCLA have shown that decreased estrogen levels are associated with overall decreased brain activity and poor memory. Enhancing estrogen levels for women through regular sexual activity enhances overall brain activity and improves memory.

In Dr. Cutler's study the occurrence of orgasm was not as important as the fact that sex was with another person. Intimacy and emotional bonding may be the most influential factors in the positive aspects of sex. As a psychiatrist I have seen many people withhold sex as a way to show hurt, anger, or disappointment. Dr. Cutler's research suggests that this is self-defeating behavior. The more you withhold the worse it may be for you. Appropriate sex is one of the keys to the brain's fountain of youth.

6. Develop A "Concert State" For Your Brain

Optimal performance is best achieved when a "concert state" exists in the brain. By "concert state" I mean "a relaxed body with a sharp, clear mind," much as you would experience at an exhilarating symphony. Achieving this state requires two simultaneous skills: deep relaxation and focus.

Deep relaxation is easily achieved by most people through diaphragmatic breathing exercises (learning how to breathe with your belly). This is the most natural, efficient way to breathe. Have you ever seen how a puppy or a baby breathes? They breathe almost exclusively with their bellies. A quick way to learn belly breathing is to lay on the floor and put a book on your belly. As you breathe in make the book rise as you fill your lower lungs with air. As you breathe out make the book fall as you use your belly to exhale all the air out of your lungs. Take slow, deep breaths, less than 7 a minute. One of my patients told me that it was impossible for him to be anxious or mad when he breathed in this way.

Use music to help develop concentration skills. In a famous study at the University of California at Irvine, students who listened to Mozart's Sonata for 2 Pianos (k448) increased visual-spatial intelligence by about 10 percent. Another recent study demonstrated that students who play a musical instrument scored higher on average on the SAT than children who did not play music. Music can either help or hurt concentration. In a recent study from my clinic, we had 12 teenagers play the game Memory while they listened to different types of music: rock, rap, classical, and no music. Rap was associated with the worst performance. The rock group also scored poorly. Interestingly, the group did slightly better with classical music than no music at all.

Another technique for developing clear focus is the "One Page Miracle." On one piece of paper write down the following headings:

• relationships,
• work/school
• money
• physical health
• emotional health
• Spiritual health

Next to each heading write down what you want in each area. For example, under relationships, "I want to have a kind, loving, connected relationship with my children." When you finish writing all of your goals make multiple copies of it and prominently display it where you can see it several times each day. Frequently ask yourself, "Is my behavior getting me what I want?" This exercise helps to keep you focused on the things that are most important in your life.

Work to develop a "concert state" by relaxing your body and developing mental clarity.

7. Treat Brain Problems Early

Many people sabotage themselves by denying they have brain problems until significant damage has been done to their lives. Most psychiatrists feel that there is a significant brain component to depression, anxiety problems, attention deficit disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, substance abuse problems, and even violence. Unfortunately, the stigma associated with seeing a psychiatrist still prevents people from seeking help for obvious problems.

Clearly, the earlier people seek help for these problems the less negative impact they will have on their lives. If you struggle with any of these problems you are not alone. According to the National Institutes of Health 49% of Americans will have a psychiatric illness (depression, anxiety, ADD, OCD, substance abuse problems, etc.) at some point in their lives. Successful people have problems, they are smart enough to seek help. The earlier the better.

Your life can only improve with an optimized brain.

The busier life becomes, the easier it is to forget names, numbers and important dates. These mnemonic tricks can help you out.

People's names

Instructions

• STEP 1: Repeat the name when you first hear it: "Nice to meet you, Harold."
• STEP 2: Think of a relative or friend who has the same name: "This fellow has the same name as Uncle Harry."
• STEP 3: Make a mental joke about this person's name: "This fellow is quite bald to be named Harry." Keep the joke to yourself, though.
• STEP 4: Find a melody or rhyme in the name, as both aid memory: "Anne Maureen plays the tambourine."
• STEP 5: Ask the person to spell the name, if it is unique, to etch it into your memory.

Phone numbers

Instructions

• STEP 1: Look for a connection between the numbers and your life (ages, birth dates, number of siblings) to anchor it to your memory. Also see if the numbers resemble a historical date, such as 1492.
• STEP 2: Find a formula that fits the number. For example, 347-8643 could be "3 plus 4 equals 7, and 1/2 of 8 and 6 are 4 and 3."
• STEP 3: If you have a phone nearby, examine the keys to see if the phone number spells anything memorable.
• STEP 4: Sing the number to a familiar tune until you've memorized it.

Birthdays and anniversaries

Instructions

• STEP 1: Fill in all important dates on a calendar at the beginning of every year. Hang the calendar in a prominent position and check it on a weekly basis.
• STEP 2: Set up the reminders available on many e-mail systems so you receive an e-mail message to prompt you on an especially important day.
• STEP 3: To remember the general time frame of a birthday, imagine the person in a costume appropriate to the birthday month. For example, imagine him or her in a pilgrim outfit if the birthday is in November or in leprechaun attire for a March baby.
• STEP 4: Use your sense of smell to remember your wedding anniversary. If you got married in May, perhaps the scent of lilacs will remind you of that special day.

Overall Tips & Warnings

• Employ as many senses as possible to fix an item in your memory. Sight and smell are especially effective at anchoring memories.
• Regular exercise, a balanced diet and adequate sleep increase your overall alertness and make it easier to remember things.
• The use of alcohol, drugs or medications can decrease memory performance.

Every season has its colors. I love driving in New England in the early autumn to appreciate the aesthetics of their foliage with my radio tuned to WCRB, a classical music station. The colorful sights against the background of classical music seems like watching a ballet performance all around me. How can it not cheer me?

Every plate of food has its colors. Many chefs prepare food not only to tease you with the aromas or please your taste buds when eating, but rather to make you conscious of the final presentation of colors on the plate that the various foods represent to the naked eye. How about those fancy desserts with colorful designs mixed on the plate? My favorite restaurant to catch eye candy in all their dishes reflected by stain glass windows is The Abby located in Atlanta. I just wish the lights inside were a little brighter.

Every school has its colors. School Bus Yellow. Red Brick Buildings. Blackboards— although there are electronic whiteboards too!

So does marketing have its colors. You may not realize the psychological impact colors have on our lives. I once played the role of George Washington in Stan Freeberg's 1776 satire where I sang off-key to Betsy Ross while she was creating the American flag: “Take note of the colors you choose...the best you could do I suppose.”

Below is a guide to help you pick out the right colors for your logos, ads, and literature to represent your company. At least you don't have to worry about representing a country.

YELLOW – Stimulating. Expansive. This bright color is frequently used when highlighting knowledge, displaying ideas, and supporting creativity. “School bus” yellow provides great eye-catching appeal to educators. Ads from FirstStudent generate high attention-getting scores!

ORANGE – Reflecting. Pleasant. This warm hue is often seen when a subject is explored in depth or a structure is created. District Administration recently published a customized supplement for Aramark Enterprises called Partners for Progress. “Carrot orange” was effectively used on the cover to symbolize the structure of the healthy choices menu available for schools from this food service division. It may also be used when the intent is to show a “search for solutions.” SolidWorks recently used the color orange quite successfully in their ad as a highlighter to mark classified ads in a newspaper.

RED – Activating. Dynamic. “Seeing red” is effectively used when defining measures, setting rules, and working with emotional topics. Stop sign red cannot be overlooked in Brother International’s recent ad to help promote a special education offer.

BLUE – Concentrating. Restful. This serene color is often utilized when presenting and explaining facts, giving information, and working as an individual unit. Think cool IBM Blue!

GREEN – Harmonizing. Hope. Green is a popular earth color that is great to profile science topics or themes! LeapFrog SchoolHouse uses the color green to grab the reader's attention and match their mascot at the same time.

WHITE – Orderly. Clarifying. Edison Schools has been running black-and-white ads with classic photography in four-color magazines to stand out from the clutter! Extra white space always seems to give an organized feel to a marketing piece. And just for fun…how about those black-and-white cow boxes from Gateway?

You can also use shapes to communicate information about your company’s objective for a particular promotion. Below is a guide using shapes and their effects:

RECTANGLE – This is a popular shape for cards used in visualized discussions (i.e., flash cards). It's also seen when the objective is to explain details.

OVAL – This shape is often used to show headings of clusters and for emotional statements, as in cartoon bubbles.

CIRCLE – This form is used to present ideas to substructure topics and to mark individual contributions. Try using circles next time rather than squares to highlight an educator testimonial with a picture and comments. You’ll be surprised at how effective it will be.

RHOMBUS – This quadrilateral shape is an effective way to illustrate structures and show interdependence between topics. It’s ideal for publishers to display teaching across the curriculum.

HEXAGON – This six-sided shape can illustrate variations of a topic by clustering them as a honeycomb to explain ideas or profile solutions.

Does she want you, or doesn't she? Her words may be ambiguous, but her body language says it all.

Imagine this: You're saying goodnight to a terrific woman you've just met and hope to see again. "I'll call you in a couple of days," you say enthusiastically.

"That would be great," she replies, raising her left hand in front of her face, then fluttering her fingers in what looks like a sexy little au revoir wave as she slowly backs away.

You stand there grinning as she turns and strides quickly toward her car. You're excited about all the possibilities - until two days later, when you make the promised phone call and hear, "You know, I don't think we really have enough in common to see each other again."

Huh?

Where did that come from? Didn't she say it would be great if you called? So what's the story?

The problem is, in the euphoric haze of what you thought wasa very promising encounter, you heard her words but tuned out the cues she was giving you in the language of inescapable truth: her body language.

You didn't notice that by backing away from you, by using her hand as a subtle barrier to keep you at bay, and by fanning the air with her "goodbye" message, her body contradicted every word her lips formed. Maybe she didn't consciously know she had reservations about seeing you until much later, but her body knew from the get-go and was letting you know with key rejection signals. And since you weren't reading her completely, you wound up getting blindsided.

When it comes to understanding a woman, what she's doing is just as important as what she's saying - sometimes more so. After all, she can't be totally honest; if she comes out and tells you she's hot for you, she might seem desperate or easy. Or if she isn't interested in what you're selling, she might not want to hurt your feelings by saying so. Luckily, her body's messages are a lot less coy, which means that understanding them will give you a better idea of what she's really thinking and feeling. And then you'll know when you need to change your approach or move on to someone else, and when it's time to go in for the kill.

The next time you meet a woman you're interested in, watch for the following physical signals. (Of course, don't concentrate so hard that you forget to listen to what she's actually saying, too.) The more you practice, the better you'll become at figuring out what's really going on in a woman's head. And who knows? She might be happy to have finally met a man who truly understands her.

1. If she makes direct, steady eye contact, she's interested. (You may be able to stir her on with a few lingering gazes of your own, but don't overdo it - staring will just make her uncomfortable, especially if you forget where her eyes are.)

2. If she leans in close to you, she's attracted. And if she gets close enough to whisper in your ear, she's really saying that she wants to be even closer.

3. If she leans away from you, she's distancing herself from what you're talking about - or from you. Change your approach immediately.

4. If she smiles with her mouth but not her eyes, it's likely that she's just trying to be polite.

5. But if you can see both rows of teeth when she smiles, she's genuinely happy to be with you.

6. If her palms are open, it shows sincerity and receptivity - she isn't hiding anything from you.

7. If her fists are closed or clenched, she's angry or she's protecting herself from you (or she's about to take a swing at you).

8. If she tilts her head, she's creating a sultry, affectionate gaze that shows her interest.

9. If she tosses or touches her hair, this is classic "preening" behavior and is clearly flirtatious in a social setting.

10. if she lifts her hair off her neck and stretches, baring her neck, she's displaying submissive behavior that leaves her vulnerable to you - a telltale sign of attraction.

11. If she taps or drums her fingers, she's bored, impatient or annoyed.

12. If her legs are crossed in your directions, she's inviting you to stay put.

13. But if she's swinging her foot in your direction, consider that she's actually making a kicking motion.

14. If she hides her face with her hand or a menu, she's protecting herself from you, or she's keeping something from you.

15. If her hand is on her cheek, she's still evaluating the situation.

16. If her hand is over her mouth, she disapproves of you or is reluctant to say what's on her mind.

17. If she blushes, or her ears or chest redden, she's nervous, excited and possibly quite attracted to you.

18. If she moistens her lips with the tip of her tongue, that's a very good thing. If she applies lipstick in your presence, that's even better ... especially if she does it slowly.

19. If her arms are crossed, she's defensive and guarded.

20. If she touches your arm, even very casually, that's a very good sign. Even if she touches everybody that way, this signal may not mean she's crazy about you, but she certainly isn't repulsed by you.

21. If she touches any other part of your body, she definitely wants to get to know you better.

22. If she rubs up against you with her body, she really wants you - unless, of course, she just had to squeeze by you in order to get to the bathroom.

23. If she seems generally tense, ask her nicely if she's hada bad day. If she hasn't, it's you. Now is the time to get her to laugh, ask her to dance or at least have another drink before she bolts.

24. If she seems generally relaxed, you're doing fine - she's enjoying being with you and is open to future possibilities. If you keep doing what you've been doing, she'll be putty in your hands.

Seattle-based therapist Joy Davidson, PhD, answers your sex questions in our "Ask Dr. Joy" column.

Pick-up lines

If you're at a bar or a party and have been together for more than 10 minutes, ask if you can buy her a drink. (This may seem rudimentary, but you'd be surprised how many men ignore basic boy-girl etiquette.

If you want to spark a woman's welcoming body signals, you'll need to use that other language - English - to get her interested. Here are few ways to tune up your conversational skills and keep the electricity flowing during that all-important first encounter.

• Use your sense of humor. If you can make her laugh, you're halfway home. (But if you think a joke might offend her, forget it. There's no faster way to make her think you're a jerk.)
• If you're at a bar or a party and have been together more than 10 minutes, ask if you can buy her a drink. (This may seem rudimentary, but you'd be surprised how many men ignore the basics of boy-girl etiquette.)
• Introduce her to people who come by to say hi to you, and include her in the conversation. Be friendly toward her pals, too, but not too friendly toward the female ones.
• Be enthusiastic about the aspects of your life you really enjoy. If there are aspects you hate, don't bring them up.
• Women often complain that men talk about themselves too much, so make a focused effort to explore her interests, too. Try posing highly specific, open-ended questions, such as: "What's it like to be a broker in this roller-coaster market?" Or, "How was it growing up with three brothers?"
• Respond to her answer by adding a least one follow-up question that reveals your genuine interest.
• If you really don't give a hoot about what she said, instead of taking it, try smoothly drifting to another topic that ignites some mutual enthusiasm. (And if you can't find one, maybe you should drift to another woman.)
• Maintain eye contact while she speaks, and be sure not to interrupt her.
• Speak neutrally or positively about other women, especially your ex-girlfriends.
• Compliment her ideas, her way of expressing herself, her laugh, her wit ... in short, anything you especially like about her that doesn't pertain to her looks or her body. (Save that sort of flattery for your first date, where you tell her how terrific she looks as soon as you see her.)

Body language is the meaning behind the words or the “unspoken” language. Surprisingly, studies show that only up to an estimated 10 percent of our communication is verbal.

The majority of the rest of communication is unspoken. This unspoken language isn’t rocket science. However, there are some generalizations or basic interpretations that can be applied to help with the understanding or translating of these unspoken meanings. Here are some basics below.

1. Smile

Women like warm smiles. Think of a heartfelt warm-fussy, maybe your favourite pet, and smile.

2. Eyes

If you don’t look a woman in the eyes while speaking, this can be interpreted as dishonesty or hiding something. Likewise, shifting eye movement or rapid changing of focus/direction can translate similarly.

If more than one woman is present in a group, look each in the eye as you speak, slowly turning to face the next with eye contact as well. Continue on so that each one has felt your warm, trusting glance. Some suggest beginning with one person and moving clockwise around the group so that no one is missed, and so that you are not darting around, seemingly glaring at people.

3. Attention Span / Attitude

Women can tell what type attitude you have by your attention span. If you quickly lose focus of what is being said, and if your attention span wanders, this shows through and makes you seem disinterested, bored, possibly even uncaring.

4. Attention Direction

If you sit or stand so that you are blocking another in the party, say someone is behind you, this can be interpreted as rude or thoughtless. So be sure to turn so that everyone is included in the conversation or angle of view, or turn gently, at ease and slowly, while talking, so that everyone is incorporated, recognized and involved in the conversation. Again some suggest the clockwise movement when working a group.

5. Arms Folded / Legs Crossed

This can be seen as defensive or an end to the conversation. So have arms hang freely or hold a glass of water, a business card or note taking instruments while communicating with women. Be open with open arms. Note: If you need to cross legs, cross at your ankles and not your knees. Sitting tightly folded up says that you are closed to communications.

6. Head Shaking

If women are shaking their heads while you speak, they are in agreement. If they are shaking, “no,” disagreement reigns in their minds.

7. Space / Distance

On the whole, women like their own personal body space. Give women room and keep out of their space. Entering to close can be intrusive and viewed as aggressive. Leaning – Sitting or standing, leaning is viewed as interest. In other words, an interested listener leans toward the speaker. Note women's body language – While you are with women, note how their bodies read. If a woman suddenly folds her arms across her chest and begins shaking her head “no,” you’ve probably lost her. You might try taking a step back and picking up where the conversation began this turn for the negative and regroup. It’s all about strategic planning!

You can tell a lot from a persons body language. In the right conditions, you can tell if someone is sad, shy, angry, tired, bored or even interested.

Some body language is automatic, and nearly impossible to control. If something is very funny, it is hard to stop at least a smile from crossing your face. Other body language is easy to control if you are aware of it. Try to be aware of the following examples of body language when you are on your next date.

• Eye contact. Make sure that you are not avoiding eye contact. Try to look people in the eyes when you are greeting, listening or talking to them.

• Speak clearly. If you are tired or a bit shy, you can start to mumble. Try to think what you are going to say and then say it clearly.

• Relax. Try to avoid drumming your fingers, excessively scratching, fiddling with items in your pocket and always looking around the room. This makes you look like you are not enjoying yourself.

• Posture. Stand tall and proud. If you do not feel confident about yourself and what you are saying, why should anyone else?

• Use your hands. Hands and gestures are a great tool to help you explain yourself and communicate. Evasive or secretive people do not tend to show their hands as much.

• Maintain non-defensive body language. Actions like folding your arms across your chest when the room is not cold, and having your body facing towards a door can be seen as defensive body language. Try to avoid this.

• Keep your hands away from your face. Resting your head on your hands makes you look bored and rubbing your nose, ears, eyes, neck or head has been shown to indicate doubt.

• Use facial expressions. Try to vary your facial expressions a bit to make her aware that you are listening to her. Also be careful you do not stop blinking when you gaze into her eyes.

A bond with no maturity date. Perpetual bonds are not redeemable but pay a steady stream of interest forever. Some of the only notable perpetual bonds in existence are those that were issued by the British Treasury to pay off smaller issues used to finance the Napoleonic Wars (1814). Some in the U.S. believe it would be more efficient for the government to issue perpetual bonds, which may help it avoid the refinancing costs associated with bond issues that have maturity dates.

Since perpetual bond payments are similar to stock dividend payments - as they both offer some sort of return for an indefinite period of time - it is logical that they would be priced the same way. The price of a perpetual bond is therefore the fixed interest payment, or coupon amount, divided by some constant discount rate, which represents the speed at which money loses value over time (partly because of inflation). The discount rate denominator reduces the real value of the nominally fixed coupon amounts over time, eventually making this value equal zero. As such, perpetual bonds, even though they pay interest forever, can be assigned a finite value, which in turn represents their price.

Evaluate a number of factors before you decide it is time to sell some of your shares.

Instructions

1. Consider selling if the price has dropped substantially or remained stagnant for several months.

2. Think about selling if the price has risen to or beyond a target that you established when you bought the shares.

3. Note whether the company's fundamentals remain strong..

4. Evaluate earnings trends, management changes, revenue growth and other basics to determine whether fundamentals are sound. Even if the share price is sluggish or, for that matter, has hit new highs, you might want to hang on to the shares if fundamentals remain sound and growth prospects look good.

5. Visit your public library's business reference section and review reports by Standard & Poor. Do they project no price appreciation for the shares?

6. Consider changes in the competition. If an effective new player or several hot new players have entered the market, your share growth prospects could be in jeopardy.

7. Think about the company's product line. If the company depends on one product alone and has no plans of broadening its base, perhaps you should think about selling.

Tips & Warnings

• Consider the tax consequences of selling shares. If you have taxable capital gains, you might want to take some losses to reduce your taxes.

Whether you are a first-time investor or a savvy investment guru, know that mistakes happen. The key to avoiding mishaps is to keep on top of investment rules, tax codes and annual reports.

Instructions

• STEP 1: Study. Read financial news, personal-finance magazines, corporate annual and quarterly reports, proxy statements, registration statements and prospectuses.
• STEP 2: Develop goals and strategies for meeting your goals and for picking stocks and other investments. Ask for professional advice in these areas if you are uncomfortable.
• STEP 3: Diversify. Avoid putting large portions of your portfolio in a single stock or industry.
• STEP 4: Take advantage of tax breaks. Your employer might offer a 401(k) plan. If not, you might be able to set up an Individual Retirement Account or, for self-employed people, a Keogh plan.
• STEP 5: Buy stocks that you will want to keep for three to five years. Remember that "good" stocks at unrealistically high prices are a bad buy.
• STEP 6: Invest in what you know. Conversely, avoid buying stocks in industries and companies with which you are unfamiliar.
• STEP 7: Shop for total value. That means learning to calculate key financial figures such as price-earnings ratios so that you can compare one stock with others.
• STEP 8: Resist fads. If everyone is buying gold, variable annuities or some other faddish investment, watch out. The herd soon will change direction.
• STEP 9: Know when to fold. Your objective may be to hold a particular stock or mutual fund for three to five years, but if it appears to be on terminal descent, bail out.

Tips & Warnings

• Know your appetite for risk. 
• Avoid putting all your money in individual stocks. Consider mutual funds, bonds, money market accounts and other instruments as well.

Saving money when you're young age is an important lesson. All good lessons and habits begin early, and saving is a skill that everyone needs. Many people - adults included - do not have a good sense of saving for the long run. Besides being a great way to ensure you have enough money for your old age, saving money when you are young can only help your future.

I have been lucky to learn this lesson early because I have had a lawn business since I was ten years old. Of the money I make, I spend approximately ten percent and save the other ninety.

Making sure you don't spend too much and continuing to save is a good way to accumulate wealth. I have put my earnings in a bank, and with investments and regular interest rates, have almost doubled my savings. Your money will double after twelve years at a modest rate of six percent interest. Many teens I know spend all the money they earn so it never has a chance to grow.

Teens should realize that now is a prime time to begin saving. In high school many parents pay for almost everything, so expenses can be small. If you have a job, you should have fun with some of the money. But you should also save some so that it will grow for you without your working, and begin planning for your future. When you spend money, you not only lose that money, but also the interest you could have accumulated by saving it.

After high school, college is expensive and then "real" life begins, with expenses such as food and rent. If you can hold onto a good portion of the money you earn as a teen, going to college and buying a house will be much easier. The earlier you begin saving, the more time the money has to grow.

If you are in your thirties without any savings, you will always have to play catch up. If you can just save $100 a month for five years at a ten percent interest rate, that money will be worth $7,750 in five years. After 25 years continuing to save $100 each month, your savings will be worth $132,000. These statistics show that the earlier you begin saving the easier it is to create a nest egg.

Later in life it can be hard to start saving because life is more expensive and you may only have enough to pay your bills. If you want to buy a house and have a family, you need capital, which comes from savings.

Many say money cannot make you happy (which is true), but money can help you lead a stable life.

Saving early will mean you will have to work fewer years when you are older and allow you to spend time doing things you want. You also want to be financially secure so you can live the way you want without worrying. Also, you will be able to retire at a reasonable age.

Think: if you have two million dollars capital when you retire, that money growing at a modest five percent annual interest rate will produce an income of $100,000 a year without you working an hour. That is without even mentioning the possibilities of wise investing in the stock market or mutual funds, where sometimes you can increase your capital by a hundred percent!

One of the most important parts of 'playing the market' is researching companies.

Instructions

• STEP 1: Obtain corporate financial statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You can get such documents without charge via www.freeedgar.com.
• STEP 2: Analyze quarterly statements covering two or three years, noting trends in earnings per share and revenue.
• STEP 3: Look for a trend of consistent growth in earnings per share.
• STEP 4: Calculate the company's price-earnings (PE) ratio, a measure of a stock's value. (Divide the stock price by annual earnings per share.)
• STEP 5: Compare the PE ratio with industry norms and with the S&P 500's ratio. The lower the ratio, the less expensive the stock is relative to earnings.
• STEP 6: Beware of debt. Check out the company's balance sheet, looking for the extent of its long-term debt.
• STEP 7: Check cash flow - the movement of cash through the company. You'll want the company to have positive cash flow.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure the company isn't giving short shrift to its research and development budget.
• Calculate a sales-per-employee figure and compare the company with its competitors.
• Assess management. Find out where managers worked before they joined the company by reading proxy statements, registration statements and annual reports.

Research has shown that music has a profound effect on your body and psyche. In fact, there’s a growing field of health care known as Music Therapy, which uses music to heal. Those who practice music therapy are findinga benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits that music and music therapy can bring. This is not surprising, as music affects the body and mind in many powerful ways. The following are some of effects of music, which help to explain the effectiveness of music therapy:

• Brain Waves: Research has shown that music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state. Also, research has found that the change in brainwave activity levels that music can bring can also enable the brain to shift speeds more easily on its own as needed, which means that music can bring lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you’ve stopped listening.
• Breathing and Heart Rate: With alterations in brainwaves comes changes in other bodily functions. Those governed by the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be altered by the changes music can bring. This can mean slower breathing, slower heart rate, and an activation of the relaxation response, among other things. This is why music and music therapy can help counteract or prevent the damaging effects of chronic stress, greatly promoting not only relaxation, but health.
• State of Mind: Music can also be used to bring a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can help prevent the stress response from wreaking havoc on the body, and can help keep creativity and optimism levels higher, bringing many other benefits.
• Other Benefits: Music has also been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering blood pressure (which can also reduce the risk of stroke and other health problems over time), boost immunity, ease muscle tension, and more. With so many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many are seeing music as an important tool to help the body in staying (or becoming) healthy.

New research suggests that we like music that sounds just like us.

Music is one of the human species's relatively few universal abilities. Without formal training, any individual, from Stone Age tribesman to suburban teenager, has the ability to recognize music and, in some fashion, to make it.

Why this should be so is a mystery. After all, music isn't necessary for getting through the day, and if it aids in reproduction, it does so only in highly indirect ways. Language, by contrast, is also everywhere -- but for reasons that are more obvious. With language, you and the members of your tribe can organize a migration across Africa, build reed boats and cross the seas, and communicate at night even when you can't see each other. Modern culture, in all its technological extravagance, springs directly from the human talent for manipulating symbols and syntax.

Scientists have always been intrigued by the connection between music and language. Yet over the years, words and melody have acquireda vastly different status in the lab and the seminar room. While language has long been considered essential to unlocking the mechanisms of human intelligence, music is generally treated as an evolutionary frippery -- mere "auditory cheesecake," as the Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker puts it.

But thanks to a decade-long wave of neuroscience research, that tune is changing. A flurry of recent publications suggests that language and music may equally be able to tell us who we are and where we're from -- not just emotionally, but biologically. In July, the journal Nature Neuroscience devoted a special issue to the topic. And in an article in the August 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, David Schwartz, Catherine Howe, and Dale Purves of Duke University argued that the sounds of music and the sounds of language are intricately connected.

To grasp the originality of this idea, it's necessary to realize two things about how music has traditionally been understood. First, musicologists have long emphasized that while each culture stamps a special identity onto its music, music itself has some universal qualities. For example, in virtually all cultures sound is divided into some or all of the 12 intervals that make up the chromatic scale -- that is, the scale represented by the keys on a piano. For centuries, observers have attributed this preference for certain combinations of tones to the mathematical properties of sound itself.

Some 2,500 years ago, Pythagoras was the first to note a direct relationship between the harmoniousness of a tone combination and the physical dimensions of the object that produced it. For example, a plucked string will always play an octave lower than a similar string half its size, and a fifth lower than a similar string two-thirds its length. This link between simple ratios and harmony has influenced music theory ever since.

This music-is-math idea is often accompanied by the notion that music, formally speaking at least, exists apart from the world in which it was created. Writing recently in The New York Review of Books, pianist and critic Charles Rosen discussed the long-standing notion that while painting and sculpture reproduce at least some aspects of the natural world, and writing describes thoughts and feelings we are all familiar with, music is entirely abstracted from the world in which we live.

Neither idea is right, according to David Schwartz and colleagues. Human musical preferences are fundamentally shaped not by elegant algorithms or ratios but by the messy sounds of real life, and of speech in particular -- which in turn is shaped by our evolutionary heritage. Says Schwartz, "The explanation of music, like the explanation of any product of the mind, must be rooted in biology, not in numbers per se."

Schwartz, Howe, and Purves analyzed a vast selection of speech sounds from a variety of languages to reveal the underlying patterns common to all utterances. In order to focus only on the raw sound, they discarded all theories about speech and meaning and sliced sentences into random bites. Using a database of over 100,000 brief segments of speech, they noted which frequency had the greatest emphasis in each sound. The resulting set of frequencies, they discovered, corresponded closely to the chromatic scale. In short, the building blocks of music are to be found in speech.

Far from being abstract, music presents a strange analog to the patterns created by the sounds of speech. "Music, like the visual arts, is rooted in our experience of the natural world," says Schwartz. "It emulates our sound environment in the way that visual arts emulate the visual environment." In music we hear the echo of our basic sound-making instrument -- the vocal tract. The explanation for human music is simpler still than Pythagoras's mathematical equations: We like the sounds that are familiar to us -- specifically, we like sounds that remind us of us.

This brings up some chicken-or-egg evolutionary questions. It may be that music imitates speech directly, the researchers say, in which case it would seem that language evolved first. It's also conceivable that music came first and language is in effect an imitation of song -- that in everyday speech we hit the musical notes we especially like. Alternately, it may be that music imitates the general products of the human sound-making system, which just happens to be mostly speech. "We can't know this," says Schwartz. "What we do know is that they both come from the same system, and it is this that shapes our preferences."

Schwartz's study also casts light on the long-running question of whether animals understand or appreciate music. Despite the apparent abundance of "music" in the natural world -- birdsong, whalesong, wolf howls, synchronized chimpanzee hooting -- previous studies have found that many laboratory animals don't show a great affinity for the human variety of music making.

Marc Hauser and Josh McDermott of Harvard argued in the July issue of Nature Neuroscience that animals don't create or perceive music the way we do. The fact that laboratory monkeys can show recognition of human tunes is evidence, they say, of shared general features of the auditory system, not any specific chimpanzee musical ability. As for birds, those most musical beasts, they generally recognize their own tunes -- a narrow repertoire -- but don't generate novel melodies like we do. There are no avian Mozarts.

But what's been played to the animals, Schwartz notes, is human music. If animals evolve preferences for sound as we do -- based upon the soundscape in which they live -- then their "music" would be fundamentally different from ours. In the same way our scales derive from human utterances, a cat's idea of a good tune would derive from yowls and meows. To demonstrate that animals don't appreciate sounds the way we do, we'd need evidence that they don't respond to "music" constructed from their own sound environment.

No matter how the connection between language and music is parsed, what is apparent is that our sense of music, even our love for it, is as deeply rooted in our biology and in our brains as language is. This is most obvious with babies, says Sandra Trehub at the University of Toronto, who also published a paper in the Nature Neuroscience special issue.

For babies, music and speech are on a continuum. Mothers use musical speech to "regulate infants' emotional states," Trehub says. Regardless of what language they speak, the voice all mothers use with babies is the same: "something between speech and song." This kind of communication "puts the baby in a trance-like state, which may proceed to sleep or extended periods of rapture."So if the babies of the world could understand the latest research on language and music, they probably wouldn't be very surprised. The upshot, says Trehub, is that music may be even more of a necessity than we realize.

Scientists are trying to understand why music - a pleasurable but seemingly unnecessary part of life - is universal in all human societies, ancient and modern.

Archaeologists have found evidence of musical activity dating back at least 50,000 years. Even babies as well as some animals, such as birds, whales and monkeys, have a built-in sense of tone and rhythm, according to a set of six papers on the origin and function of music in the July edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

"Every culture we've ever looked at has music of some sort," Marc Hauser, a neuroscientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and author of the leading paper, said in a telephone interview. "But why that is so is a puzzle."

Researchers expect their music studies - aided by the latest techniques of genetics and brain imaging - to shed new light on the way brains work and help people suffering from brain damage or disease.

Music also offers scientists another way to explore the unsolved mysteries of human consciousness. It can help explain how the brain processes external signals - in this case sound waves - that lead people to perform actions such as toe tapping, dancing and singing.

"Music provides a panoramic window through which we can examine the neural organization of complex behaviors that are at the core of human nature," wrote Petr Janata, a brain scientist at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H.

Isabelle Peretz, a psychology professor at the University of Montreal, reported that the human brain has a special "module," or network of cells, for music, separate from but overlapping with the areas that handle language. The module has distinct subsystems for melody and for rhythm.

The music module is not a little organ like a gland, Peretz said, but "a mental information processing system" composed of circuits of cells scattered through the brain that are specialized for processing music.

A major riddle is why humans developed the capacity to enjoy and perform music - from humming to composing a symphony - since these activities seem to have little or no practical value.

Scientists think most human skills, such as language and walking on two legs, evolved because they gave their possessors an advantage over rival creatures.

"Because of its lack of obvious utility, music is typically viewed by scientists as an interesting but evolutionarily irrelevant artifact," said Sandra Trehub, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto.

Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, wrote in 1871: "As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed."

Experts have proposed various explanations for the universality of music.

Darwin suggested it evolved in our animal ancestors as a sexual system, designed to attract mates. "In this view, animal song became part of courtship, and then part of human nature," Hauser said.

Others observe that music creates social cohesion, strengthening group bonds against outsiders. School pep songs or military marches are obvious applications.

Many assert that the most important function of music is to regulate or influence emotions. "Some sequences of notes are happy, some are sad," said Hauser. "Music affects our emotional response."

It isn't clear which of these theories about the origin of music is correct. "We really can't distinguish between these hypotheses," Hauser acknowledged. "Everything is open to debate."

Researchers are particularly interested in studies comparing the musical abilities of adults with those of human babies and animals. For example, experiments with very young infants showed that they react differently to harmonious and discordant chords, demonstrating that a sense for music is inherited.

According to Trehub, 4-month-old infants are content to listen to unfamiliar folk melodies, but show signs of distress - fussing, squirming, turning away - when dissonant notes are introduced into the melody.

"Toddlers commonly invent songs before they can reproduce conventional songs," she noted. "Similarly, school-age children create songs and chants, such as `eenie-meenie-miney-mo,' that share a number of features across cultures, including repetition, rhythmic patterning, rhyme and alliteration."

Even monkeys apparently sense the concept of a musical octave - notes separated by five or seven grades of pitch.

According to Anthony Wright, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, rhesus monkeys, like humans, tended to judge a tape-recorded song, such as "Old McDonald Had a Farm," to be the same when it was shifted up or down by one or two octaves.

But when the melody was transposed by a half-octave, thereby changing its key, the monkeys no longer recognized the tune, a fact they showed by failing to turn their heads toward the speaker.

Comparisons between music and language offer fresh insights into brain function.

Hauser pointed out that music resembles language in that most people in all cultures instinctively know whether a sentence in their language is grammatical or not. Similarly, almost everyone can tell whether certain patterns of sound are music or mere noise, even if these sounds have never been heard before.

"There are other stimuli that nearly everyone recognizes as unmusical, such as a `sour' note in a melody," he said.

"For too long, the neuroscience of language has been studied in isolation," wrote Aniruddh Patel, a scholar at The Neuroscience Institute in San Diego. "Music is now stepping into this breach, and via comparative analysis with language, providing a more complete and coherent picture of the mind than can be achieved by studying either domain alone."

In lovers' songs, military marches, weddings and funerals — every occasion where a degree of emotion needs to be evoked — music is an indispensable ingredient.

Yet the ability to enjoy music has long puzzled biologists because it does nothing evident to help survival. Why, therefore, should evolution have built into the human brain this soul-stirring source of pleasure? Man's faculties for enjoying and producing music, Darwin wrote, "must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed."

Music is still a mystery, a tangle of culture and built-in skills that researchers are trying to tease apart. No one really knows why music is found in all cultures, why most known systems of music are based on the octave, why some people have absolute pitch and whether the brain handles music with special neural circuits or with ones developed for other purposes. Recent research, however, has produced a number of theories about the brain and music.

It could be that the brain perceives music with the same circuits it uses to hear and analyze human speech, and that it thrills to its cadences with centers designed to mediate other kinds of pleasure. Dr. Anne Blood and Dr. Robert J. Zatorre, of the Montreal Neurological Institute, recently took PET scans of musicians' brains while they listened to self-selected pieces of music that gave them "chills" of euphoria. The works included Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 and Barber's Adagio for Strings. The music, the researchers reported, activated similar neural systems of reward and emotion as those stimulated by food, sex and addictive drugs.

If music depends on neural circuits developed for other reasons, then it is just a happy accident, regardless of evolution, that people enjoy it. This is the position taken by Dr. Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University. Music, he writes in his 1997 book "How the Mind Works," is "auditory cheesecake" — it just happens to tickle several important parts of the brain in a highly pleasurable way, as cheesecake tickles the palate. These include the language ability (with which music overlaps in several ways); the auditory cortex; the system that responds to the emotional signals in a human voice crying or cooing; and the motor control system that injects rhythm into the muscles when walking or dancing.

That music can activate all these powerful systems at once is the reason it packs such a mental oomph, in Dr. Pinker's analysis. But since each of these systems evolved for independent reasons, music itself is no more an evolutionary adaptation than is the ability to like dessert, which arises from intense stimulation of the taste buds responsive to sweet and fatty substances.

But other evolutionary psychologists believe the faculty of enjoying music is no accident. Darwin suggested that human ancestors, before acquiring the power of speech, "endeavored to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm." It is because of music's origin in courtship, Darwin believed, that it is "firmly associated with some of the strongest passions an animal is capable of feeling."

In his theory of sexual selection, Darwin proposed that traits found attractive in courtship would enable their owners to get more genes into the next generation. The upshot would be the emergence of adornments that had no immediately obvious survival value in themselves, like the peacock's tail or the troubadour's ballads.

Darwin's ideas about music have been extended by Dr. Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Miller notes their potency in pointing to the opportunities open to popular musicians for transmitting their genes to the next generation. The rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, for instance, had "sexual liaisons with hundreds of groupies, maintained parallel long-term relationships with at least two women, and fathered at least three children in the United States, Germany, and Sweden. Under ancestral conditions before birth control, he would have fathered many more," Dr. Miller writes.

Why on earth would nubile young women choose a rock star as a possible father of their children instead of more literary and reflective professionals such as, say, journalists? Dr. Miller sees music as an excellent indicator of fitness in the Darwinian struggle for survival. Since music draws on so many of the brain's faculties, it vouches for the health of the organ as a whole. And since music in ancient cultures seems often to have been linked with dancing, a good fitness indicator for the rest of the body, anyone who could sing and dance well was advertising the general excellence of their mental and physical genes to a potential mate.

"Music evolved and continues to function as a courtship display, mostly broadcast by young males to attract females," Dr. Miller writes in "The Origins of Music," a collection of essays by him and others.

But other psychologists argue that Dr. Miller's courtship theory does not do full justice to another important dimension of music, its role in cementing social relationships and coordinating the activities of large groups of people. Dr. Robin Dunbar, of Liverpool University, has shown that monkeys spend a large amount of time grooming other members of their social group, so much so that they would scarcely have time to look for food if their 50-strong groups were to grow any larger.

Dr. Dunbar believes that the much larger human groups, of 150 members or so, overcame the grooming barrier by developing a new kind of social glue, namely language. Group singing, or chorusing, may have been an intermediate step in this process, he suggests. He has preliminary evidence that singing in church produces endorphins, a class of brain hormone thought to be important in social bonding, he said in an e-mail message.

Others, like Dr. Edward Hagen of Humboldt University in Berlin and Dr. Gregory A. Bryant of the University of California at Santa Cruz, believe the role of music in human evolutionary history was not to create social cohesion but to signal it to rival groups. By putting ona better song-and-dance display, a group could show it had the coordination to prevail in a scrap, and could thus avoid a fight altogether, they write in an article available on the Web.

Male chimpanzees sometimes chorus in a call known as a pant-hoot, though usually to attract females to a new source of fruit they have found. For human ancestors, musical displays of this kind "may have formed the evolutionary basis for the musical abilities of modern humans," Dr. Hagen and Dr. Bryant write. The Pentagon's vigorous support of military bands — $163 million in 1997 — lends a certain resonance to this view.

The courting and social cohesion theories of music's origins assume that there are structures in the human brain that have evolved specifically to handle music. If no such structures exist, then Dr. Pinker's theory or something like it is correct.

A leading clue that points to music-specific structures, yet is so far not conclusive, is that many features of music are universal as well as apparently innate, meaning present at birth. All societies have music, all sing lullaby-like songs to their infants, and most produce tonal music, or music composed in subsets of the 12-tone chromatic scale, such as the diatonic or pentatonic scales. Some of the earliest known musical instruments, crane bone flutes from the Jiahu site in China, occupied from 7000 to 5700 B.C., produce a tonal scale.

Dr. Sandra Trehub, of the University of Toronto, has developed methods of testing the musical preferences of infants as young as 2 to 6 months. She finds they prefer consonant sounds, like perfect fifths or perfect fourths, over dissonant ones. A reasonable conclusion is that "the rudiments of music listening are gifts of nature rather than products of culture," she wrote in the July issue of Nature Neuroscience.

But although certain basic features of music, such as the octave, intervals with simple ratios like the perfect fifth, and tonality, seem to be innate, they are probably not genetic adaptations for music, "but rather appear to be side effects of general properties of the auditory system," conclude two Cambridge scientists, Josh McDermott of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dr. Marc Hauser of Harvard, in an unpublished article.

The human auditory system is probably tuned to perceive the most important sounds in a person's surroundings, which are those of the human voice. Three neuroscientists at Duke University, Dr. David A. Schwartz, Dr. Catherine Q. Howe and Dr. Dale Purves, say that on the basis of this cue they may have solved the longstanding mysteries of the structure of the chromatic scale and the reason why some harmonies are more pleasing than others.

Though every human voice, and maybe each utterance, is different, a certain commonality emerges when many different voices are analyzed. The human vocal tract shapes the vibrations of the vocal cords into a set of harmonics that are more intense at some frequencies than others relative to the fundamental note. The principal peaks of intensity occur at the fifth and the octave, with lesser peaks at other intervals that correspond to most of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, the Duke researchers say in an article published last month in the Journal of Neuroscience. Almost identical spectra were produced by speakers of English, Mandarin, Persian and Tamil.

The Duke researchers believe the auditory system judges sounds to be pleasant the closer they approximate to this generalized power spectrum of the human voice. "A musical tone combination whose power is concentrated at the same places as a human speech sound will sound more familiar and more natural," Dr. Schwartz said.

Some people are unable to appreciate music, raising the question of whether some music-specific faculty has been damaged. People who are tone deaf also fail to hear pitch changes in the human voice, so this deficit does not seem specific to music. Some patients have music agnosia, an inability to recognize familiar melodies, even ones to which they know the lyrics. But the brain has to store memories about music somewhere, and the music agnosia patients could have incurred memory damage that just happened to hit the music archive, Mr. McDermott, of M.I.T., said.

"Any innate biases on music must derive from something in the brain, but at present there is little evidence for neural circuitry dedicated to music," Mr. McDermott and Dr. Hauser conclude.

Dr. Zatorre, of the Montreal institute, takes a similar view. The brain has evolved faculties for perceiving sounds, organizing events in time and maintaining memory stores, he said. "Once you've got all that hardware in place, it can be used for a lot of different purposes. But I don't think it follows that music was selected for."

Whether music is cheesecake, courtship or cohesion, its mystery remains unbreached.

Classic English and French composers influenced by their language.

Would Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance or Debussy's Clair de Lune have sounded the same if the composers had been born in different countries? Probably not, according to researchers who have found that the melodies composers write are influenced by the language they speak.

The team's analysis shows that fluctuations in pitch in music written by classic French composers vary much less than in British music. The difference mirrors the patterns of pitch found in the corresponding languages.

Musicologists and linguists have tried to connect cultures' speech with their music in the past but have only had luck with tonal languages, such as Chinese, which assign meaning to words based on their pitch.

The new work is the first to connect melody with non-tonal speech. Aniruddh Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues used advanced computer software to analyse recordings of people saying different sentences in British English and in French. The software measures the pitch of each vowel, then works out the size of the jump in pitch between one syllable and the next.

For example, in the word "finding", the second vowel typically registers about 4 semitones higher than the first.

The researchers carried out the same analysis on musical notes from pieces by English and French composers such as Edward Elgar and Claude Debussy. The researchers avoided modern composers, because they would probably have been exposed to a range of cultures and languages.

Whereas previous work has compared the range of different pitches in languages and their associated music, Patel and his colleagues looked at the size of the jumps from note to note.

"We looked at how variable the intervals between pitches were, not just how variable the pitches were," says Patel.

The intervals in French speech and music turned out to be considerably less variable than their English counterparts. In other words, classical concerts and café chatter may sound rather smoother in Paris than in London.

COLUMBUS, Ohio It's no secret that exercise improves mood, but new research suggests that working out to music may give exercisers a cognitive boost. Listening to music while exercising helped to increase scores on a verbal fluency test among cardiac rehabilitation patients.

"This is the first study to look at the combined effects of music and short-term exercise on mental performance," said Charles Emery, the study's lead author and a professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

"Evidence suggests that exercise improves the cognitive performance of people with coronary artery disease," Emery said. "And listening to music is thought to enhance brain power. We wanted to put the two results together."

Those results appear in a recent issue of the journal Heart & Lung.

The study included 33 men and women in the final weeks of a cardiac rehabilitation program. Most participants had undergone bypass surgery, angioplasty or cardiac catheterization.

Coronary artery disease may compromise cognitive ability, Emery said; that's why he and his colleagues chose cardiac rehabilitation patients for this study.

The researchers asked participants to complete a verbal fluency test before and after two separate sessions of exercising on a treadmill. The workouts were scheduled a week apart and lasted about 30 minutes. Participants listened to classical music Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" during one of the sessions.

"We used 'The Four Seasons' because of its moderate tempo and positive effects on medical patients in previous research," Emery said. "But given the range of music preferences among patients, it's especially important to evaluate the influence of other types of music on cognitive outcomes."

As a way to measure anxiety and depression, participants completed a 30-item checklist before and after exercise. The list included adjectives to describe the patient's current mood. The researchers also tested each person's verbal fluency before and after each exercise session by asking participants to generate lists of words in specific categories.

"This kind of task challenges the part of the brain that handles planning and abstract thought as well as a person's capacity for organized verbal processing," Emery said.

Participants reported feeling better emotionally and mentally after working out regardless of whether or not they listened to music. But the improvement in verbal fluency test performance after listening to music was more than double that of the non-music condition.

"Exercise seems to cause positive changes in the nervous system, and these changes may have a direct effect on cognitive ability," Emery said. "Listening to music may influence cognitive function through different pathways in the brain. The combination of music and exercise may stimulate and increase cognitive arousal while helping to organize cognitive output."

Emery conducted the study with Evana Hsiao and Scott Hill, both with Ohio State, and David Frid of Pfizer, Inc.

A grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute helped fund this research.

It's said to soothe the savage beast. It can make your newborn child smarter. Plus, if you play it, you can get cool haircuts and laid often.

Humans have been making music for thousands of years. But only recently has its effects on the human mind been studied in a scientific manner. Music makes us swoon, yearn, weep, laugh, gets us all lovey-dovey or can work us up into an aggressive, martial frenzy. But how?

That's what a group of scientists at McGill and the Université de Montréal are trying to find out, with a new joint institute called (drum roll please) the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS). The head researchers are Dr. Robert Zatorre of McGill's Montreal Neurological Institute and Dr. Isabelle Peretz of UdeM's Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Science. UdeM donated a fair amount of space to BRAMS, although it is not a new department affiliated with any one university.

Technical virtuoso

In a phone interview, Zatorre speaks with the calm, level voice of a professional scientist. But kind of a hip one, name-dropping bands and subcultures with ease. Trained as a classical organist in his undergrad years, he says he "realized he would be a better scientist than a musician" but would incorporate music into his research - which he's been doing for over 20 years.

What makes studying the effects of music on the brain so interesting for researchers are the multitude of different avenues of research possible. "Advanced music touches on a lot of different things," Zatorre says. "What are the mechanisms in the brain that are affected by music? How does a performer sit down and play a piece of music for half an hour from memory? That's an amazing piece of cognition."

The BRAMS team relies on advanced technology to get an inside look at the mind of a musician or music listener. "We use MRI to look at the anatomy of the brain, which is the usual way to use an MRI, and to measure anatomical changes in the brain - MRIs are also used to find brain tumours," he says. "But in a more global way, if we do an MRI on someone who is trained musically, they'll have changes in the parts of the brain that control fingers, and it's possible to show enhancement in certain auditory parts. But in the majority of cases, we look for brain activity. The brain uses oxygen when it's active, so with our scanning protocols it can pick up changes in oxygen use. This way, we can see what parts of the brain are responsible for controlling different functions."

Because music affects not just the brain but also the rest of the body, the BRAMS scientists have also examined singing, toe-tapping, the "chills down the spine" effect, mood manipulation and the effect music has on physical pain. Dentists, for example, often pipe in music when fiddling around in a patient's mouth. "Is it merely for relaxation and distraction [for the patient], or does it actually reduce the pain threshold?" Zatorre asks. "It seems that it's related to endorphins and opiates that might be released in the brain, but that theory's still up for grabs."

Exposed early and often

They are also studying the innate musical knowledge of casual music fans. Zatorre says laypeople can identify discordant notes in a melody, for instance, because of prolonged exposure to music at an early age. But the music they are exposed to is generally Western - classical, jazz or rock/pop. Research has yet to branch out to study, say, classical Chinese music.

"We're stuck with Western music for now solely because the people involved in the study have knowledge of Western music," Zatorre says. "It's hard to find someone anywhere in the world who has not been exposed to Western music." It's so widely disseminated, he says, that even in the more remote parts of the world, people have probably heard some Western songs, which affects their overall musical knowledge. "What, then, is the influence of early exposure?" he asks.

Still, there is much, much more to learn about the human brain. "We try to cover the whole musical spectrum," he says. "Different styles of music have different components that are of interest. Why can a classical pianist play a 30-minute sonata from memory? That's not typical in pop, where musicians tend to learn chords. And if you want to study improvisation, you look at jazz. A classically-trained musician has no clue how to improvise."

And as for that theory about playing Mozart to babies? "Well, I think it's a good way to sell CDs," he says. "But I think that theory's way overblown."