Guest Articles
retrospectacle | February 4, 2008
Along with Shelley, I am a graduate student in the Neuroscience Program at UM. The last three years my friends and I have made a trilogy of satirical neuroscience posters (see the first one here) poking mild fun at the mystical art of brain science. Also in any spare time remaining I have punished myself with some rather difficult neural engineering experiments.
Year 1, on the Stock Market and Rat Neurons, is already posted on Shelley's blog here.Year 2, on "How many Neurons Must One Man Have, before You Call Him a Man" will be posted shortly, as the story is unfinished on that bit of…
retrospectacle | January 31, 2008The 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. To understand cats are mammals, all you need to know are the definitions of CATS, ARE and MAMMALS, plus the grammar involved. This was how I was trained to think about language. I knew that there were probably some other aspects of language (like phonology), but they seemed peripheral.
That worked well enough until I came…
retrospectacle | January 30, 2008Cochlear 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 here about Michael Chorost, a science writer and recipient of a cochlear implant, who wrote a terrific piece about his quest to experience his favorite piece of music, "Bolero," once again. We made contact after that, and Michael was kind enough to send me his book, which I read as well as my friend who researches new applications for cochlear…
retrospectacle | September 26, 2007The following is a guest post by Tim Marzullo, Graduate Student in Engineering/Neuroscience at the University of Michigan.
"Tri, Dva, Odin, Zashiganiye!" (Three, Two, One, Ignition!)
A review of "Live from Cape Canaveral" by Jay Barbree
"Live from Cape Canaveral" by Jay Barbree serves as a well-written introduction to the last 50 years of human spaceflight. Covering the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and space shuttle missions in 307 pages makes for very fast, pleasant light reading, and the book also serves as a memoir of sorts for Jay Barbree, who was a correspondent for NBC from the first…
retrospectacle | July 19, 2006Recently the topic of Parkinson's has come up both here (in regards to more young people getting the disease) and at Neurotopia (who gave a great summary of a paper which suggested that chemicals in pesticides can contribute to Parkinson's symptoms). I want to keep the ball rolling on the topic by offering a silver lining: a promising new therapy for Parkinson's via neurogenesis (replacing or regenerating lost neurons). This post (beginning below the fold) was written by an expert on the dopaminergic system and a fellow Neuroscience PhD student here at the University of Michigan. We'll call…