purepedantry

The abstract says it all: Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model…

(I had this whole post ready talking about flexible representations, but now my computer is borked -- stupid monitor! -- so this is going to have to do.) Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution links to a piece by a former editor at American Economic Review telling all about how papers are accepted…

There is a great conversation going on at Megan McArdle's blog with Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth. I say great because it give me the opportunity to show how astonishingly wrong Campos in suggesting that the obesity at the lower end of the BMI spectrum -- not just morbid obesity -- is…

In neuroscience, we spend most of our time trying to understand the function of the "normal" brain -- whatever that means -- hence, we are most interested in the average. Under most occasions when scientists take an interest in the abnormal neurology, it is usually someone with who has something…

I wanted to draw attention to a new paper in JAMA recently because it reveals a lot about how conditional most of the statements we make in behavioral genetics are. Every time you hear a news article that says, "Gene for depression found," I want you to think about this case. //--> Risch et…

So Notorious has been a neuroscience student for a long, long time now, and he was cleaning out the (metaphorical in his case) attic the other day and realized he has a lot of extra notes lying around collecting dust. In what will no doubt be a vain attempt to not just toss them, he has decided to…

This guy is awesome. In fact, this guy makes me wish that awesome was a verb, so that I could say that "he awesomed around like there was no tomorrow." //--> Pop Sci reports that Carlos Owens of Wasilla, Alaska built his own 18 foot tall robotic exoskeleton in his backyard because...you…

Notorious was having a little conversation with some friends, and someone asked a strange question: why would one want to abuse over-the-counter (OTC) medications such as Robitussin? OTC cold medication abuse is pretty common and the subject of considerable comment in pop culture -- not the least…

Hi all! I wanted to take a moment say hello, and say how honored I am to join Sci and Evil here at Neurotopia. Some of you may know me as Jake Young formerly of the Pure Pedantry blog. Some of you, I may be writing to for the first time. In either case, I am looking forward to talking about…

Hi everyone, I apologize for my long hiatus from blogging. Things have just been crazy at work lately. All the same it has given me some time to think about what I want from blogging, and where I see myself in the next several years. For those of you who don't know I am an MD-PhD student which…

Razib and I have a discussion up at Bloggingheads.tv about genetics and behavior as well as a brief discussion of neuroeconomics. Check it out below the fold:

There is a fascinating case study in Current Biology. de Gelder et al. discuss a patient -- referred to as TN to protect his privacy -- who had two sequential strokes that damaged his brain. The parts of the brain that were damaged included the primary visual cortex in both hemispheres --…

I don't think I am alone in saying that I often feel a little envy and schadenfreude towards my peers. Science is a particularly competitive business with few remunerative rewards, so a lot of my self-worth is tied to comparisons with my peer's successes and failures. I won't deny being envious…

A study discussed over at Live Science confirms what I have always suspected: An eight-year study of 218 couples found 90 percent experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once the first child was born. "Couples who do not have children also show diminished marital quality over time," says…

The title of this pre-publication paper is, "Evidence on the emergence of the brain's default network from 2-week-old to 2-year-old healthy pediatric subjects." The authors put kids in functional MRIs to measure resting state activity and detect the emergence of the default network. While I am…

Neurological diseases can be strange in that they often have additional personality effects. If someone gets a cold, they sneeze a bunch but are basically the same person they were before the cold. In contrast, meningitis can include mental status and personality changes in its early stages --…

Nature Clinical Practice Neurology has a salient article on ethics and medicine. The article asks the question: is it ethical to confront an individual with whom you do not have an official doctor-patient relationship, if you think they have a medical problem? Should you or should you not tell…

It's amazing what the kids are up to these days. This one comes live from Mount Sinai (my present educational residence). Hubner et al., publishing in Science, use an infectious, fluorescent strain of HIV to watch the virus move from one cell to another. Their results are fascinating and may…

What you think about during sex matters. A guy who doesn't want to, ahem, proceed too quickly will think of baseball or something non-sex related. A girl who wants to proceed more quickly might focus on surrounding milieu of a loving environment. These are stereotypes, I know, but the fact that…

Numerous studies have attempted to correlate general intelligence with different anatomical measures. (You might even argue that the phrenologists were working in this vein.) Likewise many studies have attempted to relate intelligence to the function of different brain regions -- using techniques…

Wired Science reports on a way to bleach your hair without all issues of...you know...turning it so stiff and destroyed that it resembles a donkey tail. All you women of the world itching to turn blonde, take note. The system involves an enzyme from forest fungus. Which is good somehow. Forest…

I caught this interesting sentence over at Marginal Revolution: as consumption approaches satiation, workers reduce their hours of work to prevent themselves from actually reaching satiation. More technically, as workers approach satiation, their labor supply curves start to "bend backwards." The…

I know this will be of interesting for about 1 in a hundred of you, but there is a REALLY good review of hippocampal and parahippocampal region connectivity in April's Nature Review Neuroscience. Of special interest, there is an interactive .pdf in the supplementary information where you can…

I have been reading more on the Natasha Richardson story overnight, and it appears the story has moved into blame-placing mode. (For the original discussion of the story, read this.) Possible places to lay the blame (that I have read thus far): The absence of mandatory helmet laws Canadian…

So I am way behind the news cycle on this, but I wanted to comment briefly on actress Natasha Richardson's death as a result of an epidural hematoma. From everything I read, she seemed like a very good actress, a very decent woman, and an excellent wife and mother, so I was saddened to read the…

The New Old Age blog at the NYTimes -- hadn't read it before, but I like it -- has a post about reversible causes of cognitive decline in the elderly. I think they make a really good point: there are reversible causes to senility. Not all mental decline in the elderly is "normal" and certainly…

If you work in infectious diseases in a hospital -- or frankly if you work anywhere in a hospital -- the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria is a serious problem. You have to be constantly aware of what the right drug is to prescribe to ensure its maximum effectiveness, and -- though rare…

This is just unbelievable. At a day care center in Arkansas, 10 kids were accidentally given windshield wiper fluid instead of Kool-Aid: Child welfare investigators plan to talk to the owner of an Arkansas daycare center where 10 children were sickened after they were given windshield wiper fluid…

Most of the stuff you hear about hyperbaric oxygen being used to treat is total nonsense. It isn't effective at treating autism or cerebral palsy. But an article in the Times makes the point that it is effective for treating some things: The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, the…

Did you catch this story? A man in Illinois walks into a church and shoots the pastor. After killing the pastor, his gun jams, he grabs a knife and starts stabbing himself. At which point, he is tackled by two guys and remanded into custody. Now his lawyer is claiming that his mental status was…