Moshe Shay Ben-Haim

Yale University | YU

While average human life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last century, the maximum lifespan has only modestly increased. These observations prompted the notion that human lifespan might have reached its maximal natural limit of ~115 years. To evaluate this hypothesis, we conducted a systematic analysis of all-cause human mortality thro...

Significance Many animals perform complex intelligent behaviors, but the question of whether animals are aware while doing so remains a long debated but unanswered question. Here, we develop a new approach to assess whether nonhuman animals have awareness by utilizing a well-known double dissociation of visual awareness—cases in which people behave...

The prevalent m6Am mRNA cap modification was recently identified as a valid target for removal by the human obesity gene FTO along with the previously established m6A mRNA modification. However, the deposition and dynamics of m6Am in regulating obesity are unknown. Here, we investigate the liver m6A/m methylomes in mice fed on a high fat Western-di...

Polymorphism of the FTO gene encoding an N-methyladenosine (mA) RNA demethylase was robustly associated with human obesity; however, the mechanism by which FTO affects metabolism, considering its emerging role in RNA modification, is still poorly understood. A new study published in Cell Research reports novel functions implicating FTO in the regul...

Gene expression can be regulated post-transcriptionally through dynamic and reversible RNA modifications. A recent noteworthy example is N(6)-methyladenosine (m(6)A), which affects messenger RNA (mRNA) localization, stability, translation and splicing. Here we report on a new mRNA modification, N(1)-methyladenosine (m(1)A), that occurs on thousands...

Scholars have long debated whether animals, which display impressive intelligent behaviors, are consciously aware or not. Yet, because many complex human behaviors and high-level functions can be performed without conscious awareness, it was long considered impossible to untangle whether animals are aware, or just conditionally or non-consciously b...

Recent studies indicate that the ability to represent absolute pitch values in long-term memory (LTM), long believed to be the possession of a small minority of trained musicians endowed with "absolute pitch" (AP), is in fact shared to some extent by a considerable proportion of the population. The current study examined whether this newly discover...

we test the hypothesis that naming an object depicted in a picture, and reading aloud an object’s name, are affected by the object’s speed. We contend that the mental representations of everyday objects and situations include their speed, and that the latter influences behavior in instantaneous and systematic ways. An important corollary is that hi...

It is undisputed that the cognition of tonal music is primarily established by pitch relationships set within a tonal scheme such as a major or minor key. The corresponding notion—that absolute pitch and absolute key are largely inconsequential for tonal cognition—thus seems inevitable. Here, we challenge the latter notion, presenting data suggesti...

The emotional Stroop effect (ESE) is the result of longer naming latencies to ink colors of emotion words than to ink colors of neutral words. The difference shows that people are affected by the emotional content conveyed by the carrier words even though they are irrelevant to the color-naming task at hand. The ESE has been widely deployed with pa...

Naïve and primed pluripotent states retain distinct molecular properties, yet limited knowledge exists on how their state transitions are regulated. Here, we identify Mettl3, an N(6)-methyladenosine (m(6)A) transferase, as a regulator for terminating murine naïve pluripotency. Mettl3 knockout pre-implantation epiblasts and naïve embryonic stem cell...

We test the hypothesis that naming an object depicted in a picture and reading aloud an object's name are affected by the object's speed. We contend that the mental representations of everyday objects and situations include their speed, and that the latter influences behavior in instantaneous and systematic ways. An important corollary is that high...

Sustained effects of emotion are well known in everyday experience. Surprisingly, such effects are seldom recorded in laboratory studies of the emotional Stroop task, in which participants name the color of emotion and neutral words. Color performance is more sluggish with emotion words than with neutral words, the emotional Stroop effect (ESE). Th...

Recent studies indicate that the ability to represent absolute pitch values in long-term memory, long believed to be the possession of a small minority of trained musicians endowed with "absolute pitch," is in fact shared to some extent by a considerable proportion of the population. The current study examined whether this newly discovered ability...

It takes people longer to name the ink colour of emotion or threat words than that of neutral words, the emotional Stroop effect (ESE). In three experiments with normal and patient populations, we show that the ESE is a special case of a generic attention model and effect entailed in Garner's speeded classification paradigm. Guided by the Garner mo...

In the emotional Stoop task, people name the ink color of words. The words come from two categories, emotion items and neutral items. It is typically found that it takes longer to name the ink color of emotion items than that of neutral items, the emotional Stoop effect (ESE). Virtually all studies of the effect used a small set of words in each ca...

Three well-established findings generated this study: (1) Long-term memory for pitch chroma is widespread, independently of musical training. (2) In Western musical repertories some pitch-classes are much more frequent than others. (3) Exposure rate significantly affects perceptual and cognitive processing in diverse realms. Together, these premise...

Background Three well-established findings generated this study: (1) Long-term memory for pitch chroma is widespread, independently of musical training. (2) In Western musical repertories some pitch-classes are much more frequent than others. (3) Exposure rate significantly affects perceptual and cognitive processing in diverse realms. Together, th...