neurophilosophy
Posts by this author
May 12, 2008
Michael L. Anderson emailed to inform me about this forthcoming event:
Announcing the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology June 26-29, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Registration is now open; deadline Thursday, June 5 -- 12:00pm EST
Note that…
May 10, 2008
In Thursday's episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time, presenter Melvyn Bragg was joined by Vivian Nutton, Jonathan Sawday and Marina Wallace (professors of the history of medicine, English and art, respectively) for a fascinating discussion about the history of the brain.
The 45-minute…
May 3, 2008
This beautiful two-photon microscopy image, by Alanna Watt and Michael Hausser, shows a network of Purkinje cells in the cerebellar cortex. Named after the Czech anatomist who discovered them, Purkinje cells are the largest cells in the mammalian brain. They have a planar structure with a highly…
April 29, 2008
My exams begin on Friday, so things are going to be pretty quite around here until around mid-May. I will post various bits and pieces over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, here are some interesting links that I've found recently:
In the New York Times Magazine, Gary Marcus…
April 21, 2008
Our German counterparts at ScienceBlogs.de have produced this 21-minute video of an interview they did with neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of learning and memory in the sea slug Aplysia…
April 21, 2008
Here's something that I'll almost certainly be entering in two years' time (when, if all goes according to plan, I'll be a Ph.D. student again):
Wellcome Trust and New Scientist essay competition
The Wellcome Trust is inviting postgraduates in science, engineering or technology to tell the world…
April 20, 2008
Currents carried by sodium and potassium ions through the membrane of the giant axon of Loligo.
Get more documents
Docstoc is a useful tool for sharing PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and Word and Excel documents. It can also be used to embed files of these formats into a blog post…
April 16, 2008
On this day in 1943, Albert Hofmann (right), a chemist working for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz, discovered the psychedelic properties of LSD. Hofmann had actually first synthesized the drug 5 years earlier, as part of a research program in which the therapeutic effects of derivatives…
April 15, 2008
I've just got the feedback on my final piece of coursework, and it's better than I expected:
A well written description of TrpM8 function in cold sensation. It is written clearly and in the context of experimental evidence. Some additional figures to summarise the results discussed would have been…
April 13, 2008
One of the events organized for Bora's visit to London was a fantastic behind-the-scenes tour of the Darwin Centre, a newly built section of the Natural History Museum which houses the museum's researchers and contains a vast collection of around 70 million bottled animal specimens.
The…
April 12, 2008
Please be aware that I do not endorse any of the products being advertised by Proximic at the bottom of the side bar on the right. I am responsible for the content of the side bar on the left and, of course, for all of the written material on this blog, but I have no control over the products that…
April 7, 2008
A 58-year-old man from Cumbria has had electrodes implanted his brain in order to treat his compulsive gambling.
Raymond Mandale (right), who suffers from Parkinson's, claims that his gambling habit was caused by a prescribed drug he had been taking to alleviate the symptoms of his condition, and…
April 6, 2008
What with the current debate about the use of "smart" drugs by academics, I thought it pertinent to republish this old piece from January of last year, about a bacterial toxin which has been shown to enhance fear conditioning and spatial memory in mice.
In the late nineteenth century, the great…
April 3, 2008
From my inbox:
First Interdisciplinary NeuroSchool of the European Neuroscience and Society Network,
EMBL, Monterotondo (Rome)
Sept. 28th-Oct. 5th
We are pleased to invite applications to the first interdisciplinary 'NeuroSchool' of the European Neuroscience and Society Network, a…
April 2, 2008
It now seems clear that we have grossly underestimated the cognitive abilities of other animals. In recent years, research has shown, for example, that African cichlids use simple logic to infer their social status, and that rodents can think abstractly and learn to use tools.
Birds also display…
April 2, 2008
Bora Zivkovic is coming to London on Wednesday April 9th, and several events have been organized for his visit, which I'll be going to. First, there'll be a behind-the-scenes tour of the Natural History Museum, starting at 4.30pm, followed by a few drinks at The Queen's Arms.
If you're…
April 1, 2008
My broadband connection was down for the whole day yesterday, so I was unable to link to the latest edition of Encephalon, which is now up at Of Two Minds and is, apparently, hosted by none other than Paris Hilton.
As usual, this edition includes some fantastic entries from some of the best…
March 30, 2008
I took this photo about two years ago, when the French mechanical marionette street theatre company Royal de Luxe came to London. It's one of several pics from my photostream that have been favorited by other Flickr users.
March 30, 2008
That impoverished student would be me, and I feel like I'm begging, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm studying part-time for my M.Sc., and working three days a week to support my family and pay the mortgage, bills and my tuition fees. (Actually, my meagre income has been further…
March 30, 2008
This track, called Design Coding by The Poetic Prophet, has just been uploaded on YouTube. I thought it was hilarious the first time I saw it, and it's still very amusing on the fourth viewing. I'm not an expert on search engine optimization, but the advice provided here is, as far as I know,…
March 28, 2008
Jennifer Ouellette reports from a month-long program on the anatomy, development and evolution of the brain, at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, with a fantastic post called Tools of the brain trade.
Inspired by a talk given by Winifred Denk, about reconstructing brain circuitry using…
March 26, 2008
Traditionally, the use of tools was believed to be restricted to humans and several other primate species, and, like language, was argued to be a major driving force behind the evolution of the human brain. However, this view is now being challenged. For example, in recent years it has become clear…
March 25, 2008
A comparative neuroimaging study performed by researchers from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Oxford, provides clues to how human language evolved.
In the past, it was believed that the increase in brain size during human evolution…
March 22, 2008
Isis was born at 12:12pm yesterday, weighing in at a very healthy 8lb 5oz. Mummy is exhausted after her second Caesarian section, but both are otherwise well, and will be coming home in a couple of days.
Needless to say, I'm going to be very busy over the next few days, and I'm unlikely to…
March 19, 2008
Image: Phisick Antique Medical Collection
This highly detailed papier mache model of the human brain, which can be pulled apart to reveal labelled and numbered structures within, was created by the French physician Louis Thomas Jerome Auzoux (1797-1880).
In the early 19th century, human…
March 17, 2008
The Sunday Times has an incredible story about Henry Marsh, a consultant neurosurgeon at St. George's Hospital in South London, who travels to a hospital in Kiev twice a year in his spare time to perform free operations using only the most rudimentary instruments:
The young man lies back on the…
March 15, 2008
For the benefit of new readers, I've selected what I think are the best posts from this blog.
Wilder Penfield, Neural Cartographer: The patient lies on the operating table, with the right side of his body raised slightly. The anaesthetist sterilizes his scalp and injects it with Nupercaine to…
March 13, 2008
The Visible Body is a small application created by the Massachussets-based company Argosy Publishing. The software can be downloaded for free, and includes computer graphic models of more than 1,700 anatomical structures, which can be rotated in a three-dimensional 360 degree view:
The Visible…
March 13, 2008
Best-selling fantasy writer Terry Pratchett, who announced in December that he has a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's, has pledged $1million for research into the disease.
In a speech given ealier today at the Alzheimer's Research Trust Netowrk Conference in Bristol, Pratchett said that he…
March 12, 2008
(AP Photo/Greek Culture Ministry, HO)
This skeleton, exacavated recently in the town of Veria, some 75km west of Thessalonika, provides evidence that the ancient Greeks performed sophisticated neurosurgery.
The remains, dated to the 3rd century A.D., belong to a woman aged around 25, who…