Shelley Batts is a Neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Michigan. She studies hair cell regeneration in the cochlea, and is just embarking on that quixotic quest called 'thesis.' She lies awake at night pondering how science intersects with politics, culture, policy, money, medicine, and religion in an attempt to be more than just a niche scientist sitting in the oh-so-lovely ivory tower. Follow me and my parrot on the quest to get funded, get a PhD, and stay sane.
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life. ~Rachel Carson
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Cochlear Hair Cell Regeneration
Interview With Dr. Irene Pepperberg
On Religion and Taking the 'Red Pill'
Neuroscience of Cocaine Addiction
Parrots Have Object Permanance
January 31, 2008
Category: Announcements
Just a quick reminder that Friday (tomorrow) is the last day to submit the potentially prize-winning entry to name the brand new blog that Steve and I are starting quite soon. Read more about the prizes here, and leave your...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 6:27 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Tastes Like Neuroscience
Brenden Maher at Nature emailed me this morning to clue me in on an anonymous survey that their editors are doing on the topic of cognitive enhancers (a spawn of the commentary piece on the same subject a few weeks...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 11:21 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Guest Articles
The following is a guest post by Joshua Hartshorne at the Cognition and Language Lab. The first scientific paper I wrote states, in the second paragraph, that "language depends on two mental capacities with distinct neurocognitive underpinnings": vocabulary and grammar....
Posted by Shelley Batts at 9:49 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 30, 2008
Category: Birds
I'm already so excited to read and review this! Irene Pepperberg's memoir, tentatively titled "Alex and Me," covers her 30 years with the parrot that could count to six, identify colors and even express frustration with repetitive scientific trials. It...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 12:09 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Guest Articles
Cochlear implants are true cyborg technology. They stimulate the auditory nerve of deaf individuals to allow them to interact with the sounds of the world again--although those new sounds are at first alien and foreign. A few months back I...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 9:17 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 29, 2008
Category: Sound and Fury
People, I need to say this. Its never a good idea to stick things--including Q-tips--in your ears. Despite the illusion of 'cleaning' your ear canal, often Q-tips just shove the ear wax further into the canal, or worse, can cause...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 11:17 AM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Genetics
Wouldn't it be great if there was some magical institution which mapped out the developmental expression of mouse genes, and then made it freely available on the internet? And wouldn't it be cool if all that data was compiled in...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:52 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 27, 2008
Category: Announcements
My time here at Retrospectacle has been glorious, magnificent, awesome! However, I have decided to end things here and start a brand-spankin'-new blog (yes, here at ScienceBlogs) with Steve Higgins from Omnibrain as a co-blogger. I'm in my final grad...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:06 PM • 150 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 26, 2008
Category: Creepy Crawlies
At Cracked.com I came across a fantasticly irreverent article about the five most horrifying insects in nature, including the bullet ant, the Japanese giant hornet, and of course, the botfly. There are dozens of varieties of Bot Fly, they're each...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 3:08 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 24, 2008
Category: Academia
Every now and then I do a Google News Search for topics I'm interested in to get good blog fodder ('neuroscience' and 'parrots' are of course perennial favorites). This time one of those searches popped up an interesting news piece...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 1:17 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Birds
Exotic bird smuggling is a pet issue of mine, not only since it decimates wild populations of parrots, but because it creates a demand for cheaper black market birds without a proper 'history of origins.' While it is up...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:52 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 17, 2008
Category: Plague
The plague was unbelievably deadly and disastrous in Europe during the 1300-1700s, but it is somewhat more surprising that the plague still claims a number of lives across the modern world. Even more surprising is that the number of cases...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 9:00 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blather
When I was a senior in high school in South Carolina, I had a particularly smart and talented English teacher--the same my junior and senior years. I remember that the summer before my senior year, this teacher required all of...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 5:54 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Carnivals
In my grief over the result of the Michigan primary, I almost forgot to post a link to the current edition of the medical-blogging carnival 'Grand Rounds' which is over at Sharp Brains now. The appropriate theme is 'Briefing the...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 12:24 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 16, 2008
Category: YouTube Obsessions
I explore the oft-ignored theories of badger neuroscience.
Posted by Shelley Batts at 6:15 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogging
There's a new way to gauge your importance on the 'Net, a little app in beta stage called QDOS. The forumula used to compile your QDOS number (which made me think of Erdos number) is a propriatary blend of Myspace,...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 2:51 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Sound and Fury
Are you too poor to afford an exotic beach vacation in the dead of this frigid winter? Now, with the "Noisy Instrument" (pictured below) you can bring the sounds of the ocean to your sad, depressed little ear canals while...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 9:00 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 15, 2008
Category: U of M
PZ Myers, despite being at a large Midwestern state school, has decided to pick on my current academic home, the University of Michigan. Why, you ask? Well, yes, a few students are doing something rather silly. Engineering senior Israel Vicars...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 12:40 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Tastes Like Neuroscience
Hydrocephalus, sometimes called "water on the brain," is a condition where cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) accumulates in the ventricles of the brain. This causes the expansion of the ventricles which displaces the brain, sometimes causing brain damage due to the intracranial...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:38 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 14, 2008
Category: Plague
Its sad serendipity that I found out that an Arizona-based biologist working for the National Park Service, named Eric York, likely died of plague a few months ago. Fatalities due to modern-day plague (caused by the bacteria Y. pestis) are...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 11:25 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Weird Science
I came across a Russian blog purporting to have photo evidence of an abandoned Soviet-era neuroscience lab outside Moscow, left in a real hurry for unknown reasons. I thought it might be a hoax or exaggeration, but after looking at...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:56 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Birds
I just couldn't resist posting this, silly as it is. Intruders smashed the front window of Pet Palace in Leominster, about 45 miles west of Boston, and as they entered the store the bird began to shout, said store...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 3:30 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 13, 2008
Category: Blogging
After much gnashing of teeth, I finally updated my blogroll. Sadly, I realized I hadn't done this in almost a year and many of the links were old and no longer around. So, I pruned those out and put in...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 7:31 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Truth and Beauty
Although I don't care much about money, I do regret that having none means that buying beautiful works of art is something that I cannot do. I occasionally post here about interesting science/naturalism-inspired art, and a new artist I wanted...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 4:37 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 12, 2008
Category: Technology
CES, or the Consumer Electronics Show, is a trade show held in Las Vegas where new products are announced and demonstrated to the press. This year's CES just ended January 10th, and it looks like there was a small scandal...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 6:25 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 11, 2008
Category: LOLStuff
Just when I thought I had the LOLParrot market cornered, someone at I Can Has Cheezburger posts this awesome (and atheist) budgie giving the Great Big Kitteh in the Sky the proverbial smackdown (or wing-down?). Happiness chirp goes to Jake,...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 5:10 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Plague
This is a continuation of the first part in a series about what caused the Black Death in 12th-17th century Europe, and part of Plague Week here at Retro, which is looking like it might become Plague Fortnight. The...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:34 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 9, 2008
Category: Blogging
Yes its plague week, and yes I promised to post something today on the topic, but ironically (and inconveniently) I'm not feeling well. (Oooohh, maybe its Y. pestis? Maybe I should coat myself in mercury and hop in the oven...)...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 10:46 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Red Herrings
A friend of mine is visting a relative in Abu Dhabi and sent me this priceless screen shot, which he got when he was trying to access YouTube....
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:22 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 8, 2008
Category: Tastes Like Neuroscience
This video is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on YouTube. It shows the oh-so-careful surgical removal of an egg-sized cyst (intact) from a person's brain. The cyst is a hydatid cyst, which is the result of...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 6:36 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Plague
While perhaps having some small effect to prevent infection, the odd costumes surely had a large effect on scaring their patients
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:29 AM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 7, 2008
Category: Tastes Like Neuroscience
I think I might have been quoted in today's Chronicle of Higher Education journal, except I can't find out since it requires a subscription (which U of M doesn't have.) Well humbug. From what I could tell from the title,...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 6:19 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Tastes Like Neuroscience
True to form, OmniBrain has posted an informative video about the "ice cream headache" also known as "Iceberger's syndrome." This is the nominally painful headache one experiences after eating too much of something extremely cold. While no "silent killer," as...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 12:01 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Plague
This week is plague week at Retrospectacle, and every day I will be posting something about the Black Plague. The Black Plague was responsible for wiping out 1/3 of the population of Europe during the 1300s, and is considered one...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:45 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 6, 2008
Category: Tastes Like Neuroscience
Trepanation is a procedure where a hole is drilled into the skull, exposing the dura mater and brain for either medical (releif of pressure) or mystical (supposed heightened consciousness)purposes. It is likely the oldest procedure in neurosurgery and has been...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 9:24 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 5, 2008
Category: Creepy Crawlies
It's an odd sort of entertainment: put two bugs in a glass aquarium and watch them fight to the death. Scorpions, tarantulas, huge wasps, mantis, centipedes, and other creepy crawlies are caught on film trying to defend themselves against their...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 9:31 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 4, 2008
Category: Blogging
Hear ye, hear ye! To all those curious about the mysteries of the Plague, next week I will be blogging something about the Plague every day. To get a whiff of where I'm going with this, check out my post...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 6:56 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: LOLStuff
Its been a while since I've posted some of my 'world-famous' (heh) LOLParrots. Pepper was squawkin' that I was neglecting his kin so here's my offering to appease him....
Posted by Shelley Batts at 1:48 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Tastes Like Neuroscience
Short video clips of human brain surgery and removal of tumors.
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:45 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 3, 2008
Category: Tastes Like Neuroscience
What looks like a bevy of medieval torture tools is actually a early 19th century set of German neurosurgical tools. I think I would be terrified if a doctor walked into my room and opened that innocuous-looking velvet-lined case...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 11:19 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blather
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I spent with friends in Lansing, Michigan, but on the 28th I packed up my car, kissed Pepper goodbye, and headed to Lexington, KY to hang out with Steve of OmniBrain for a few days....
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:36 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 2, 2008
Category: Friday Grey Matters
On December 30, the New York Times Magazine ran a feature about the most important obituaries of 2007. It was gratifying, yet still sad, to see that a joint obituatry for Alex the parrot and Washoe the chimp was included...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 9:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogging
Its great to come back from vacation with good news waiting for you. Usually I just come back to school (and my blog) to a build-up of spam, bills, and unwanted catalogs so it was quite a welcome surprise to...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:01 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
