Now on ScienceBlogs: The Galaxy's Biggest Valentine
Category: Neuroscience
New research shows that trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling) occurs as a result of defects in the brain's immune system, and can be alleviated by bone marrow transplants.
Posted by Mo at 5:55 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Animal Behaviour
SNAKES have a unique sensory system for detecting infrared radiation, with which they can visualize temperature changes within their immediate environment. Using this special sense, they can image the body heat radiating from warm-blooded animals nearby. This enables them to...
Posted by Mo at 8:15 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Researchers from Columbia University Medical School have found that adult neurogenesis is regulated by a species of microRNA
Posted by Mo at 3:00 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Developmental Biology
This beautiful image of the brain of a 5-day-old zebrafish larva, which was created by Albert Pan of Harvard University, has just won 4th place in the 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging competition. (See a larger version here.) It...
Posted by Mo at 9:27 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Memory
Learning and memory are widely thought to involve long-term potentiation (LTP), a form of synaptic plasticity in which a neuron's response to the chemical signals it receives is enhanced. This leads to a strengthening of the neuronal circuit, so that...
Posted by Mo at 12:20 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Molecular Biology
In his 1941 book Man on His Nature, the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington described the brain as "an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern." Little could he have known that within 50 years...
Posted by Mo at 8:23 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Molecular Biology
The transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), which include variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans, "Mad Cow" Disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep, are progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorders characterized by the accumulation within nerve cells of an abnormally folded and insoluble...
Posted by Mo at 11:10 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
The September issue of Scientific American contains an excellent and lengthy article about a state-of-the-art technique called optogenetics, by molecular physiologist Gero Miesenböck, who has been instrumental in its development. As its name suggests, optogenetics is a combination of optics...
Posted by Mo at 11:05 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neurodegeneration
National Library of Medicine / Hot Medical News This silent film clip shows several victims of a disease called kuru. They are - or rather were - members of the South Fore, a tribe of approximately 8,000 people who inhabit...
Posted by Mo at 7:21 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Developmental Biology
The classic Nobel Prize-winning studies of David Hubel and Torsten Weisel showed how the proper maturation of the developing visual cortex is critically dependent upon visual information received from the eyes. In what would today be considered highly unethical experiments,...
Posted by Mo at 10:54 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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