Brain and Behavior
cortex | September 1, 2006The talented Elizabeth Gould of Princeton has done it again: she has produced another study documenting the power of structural plasticity. This time she studied marmoset fathers. She compared the brains of first time and experienced fathers with males who never had children. Her results showed that experienced marmoset fathers had a higher density of dendritic connections in the prefrontal cortex than nonfathers. In addition, marmoset dads had more vasopressin receptors, which makes sense since vasopressin is thought to be involved in parental behavior and social bonding. Furthermore, the…
stcynic | September 1, 2006Walmart has decided to join the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, in an obvious attempt to sell products to a group of people with significant disposable income. The result, predictably, is a major freakout by the religious right. Now I know, we hear from conservatives all the time about free markets and capitalism, but you don't think they actualy mean it, do you? Also predictably, the Worldnutdaily is leading the chorus of outrage. This article contains lots of ridiculous statements, but it begins by describing what's going on:
"It is correct that we have a dialogue with the (…
clock | August 31, 2006Since Chris Mooney's book has just come out in paperback and the critics often invoke false equivalence between abuses of science on the Right and the Left, I thought this would be a good time to repost this August 05, 2005 post (reposted here on January 16, 2006):
According to Michael Shermer there are:
- science
- borderlands science
- psuedoscience, and
- nonsense
Science is a methodology of figuring out, with as great confidence as possible, how the world works. Evolutionary theory is one of the biggest, strongest and best-supported bodies of all of science.
Borderland Science refers to…
clock | August 31, 2006Melatonin improves mood in winter depression:
Alfred Lewy and his colleagues in the OHSU Sleep and Mood Disorders Lab set out to test the hypothesis that circadian physiological rhythms become misaligned with the sleep/wake cycle during the short days of winter, causing some people to become depressed.
Usually these rhythms track to the later dawn in winter, resulting in a circadian phase delay with respect to sleep similar to what happens flying westward. Some people appear to be tracking to the earlier dusk of winter, causing a similar amount of misalignment but in the phase-advance…
ksharpe | August 30, 2006The Periodic Table of the ScienceBlogs rolls on, with a brief description of every blog in the system. Use it to find your new favorite.
A Blog Around the Clock
Categories: Brain & Behavior, Biology
Bora Zivkovic, better known online as 'Coturnix,' created A Blog Around the Clock as a fusion of his three old blogs: Science and Politics, Circadiana, and The Magic School Bus. Bora was born in the former Yugoslavia, where he trained horses, got his black belt in karate, and studied veterinary medicine. In 1991, he emigrated to the USA, settling in North Carolina and earning an MS degree in…
j7uy5 | August 30, 2006One of the articles that I read, early in my career, that influenced
the way I think about neuroscience, was this one:
href="http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/49/9/681">Caudate
glucose metabolic rate changes with both drug and behavior therapy for
obsessive-compulsive disorderL. R. Baxter Jr, et. al., Arch Gen Psychiatry.
1992;49:681-689.
We used positron emission tomography to investigate local cerebral
metabolic rates for glucose (LCMRG1c) in patients with
obsessive-compulsive disorder before and after treatment with either
fluoxetine hydrochloride or behavior therapy.…
clock | August 29, 2006Yesterday, we were putting down media reports on a study that purports that dolphins are not intelligent despite behavioral studies and big brains. Today, NYTimes has a much better article arguing that manatees, despite their small brains, are more intelligent than previously thought.
It is a longish article but well worth reading. The idea is that manatees don't have too small brains, but overlarge bodies, and, since they are herbivores with no prey or predators, they do not need to reserve vast portions of their brains for tackling hunting and defense.
Brain size has been linked by some…
clock | August 28, 2006Where does one start with debunking fallacies in this little article? Oy vey!
Dolphins and whales are dumber than goldfish and don't have the know-how to match a rat, new research from South Africa shows. For years, humans have assumed the large brains of dolphins meant the mammals were highly intelligent.
No, we knew dolphins were smart millenia before we ever looked at their brains. The ancient Chinese knew it. Aristotle knew it. And the idea that brain size has anything to do with intelligence is, like, sooo 19th century.
Paul Manger from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand,…
clock | August 27, 2006Childhood Sleep Apnea Linked To Brain Damage, Lower IQ:
In what is believed to be the first study showing neural changes in the brains of children with serious, untreated sleep apnea, Johns Hopkins researchers conclude that children with the disorder appear to suffer damage in two brain structures tied to learning ability.
Constant Lighting May Disrupt Development Of Preemies' Biological Clocks:
Keeping the lights on around the clock in neonatal intensive care units may interfere with the development of premature babies' biological clocks.
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he finding that…
ddobbs | August 26, 2006
"Errant Behaviors," a video and sound installation by Shawn Decker and Anne Wilson.
In response to my post on "Music, Mood, and Genius (not) -- or RockNRoll meets neuroscience," one Shawn Decker, a music professor and composer at the Chicago Art Institute (and a former classmate and ultimate-frisbee teammate of mine from college), wrote asking whether I knew of any studies testing the notion -- popular among the Chicago electronic music crowd, says Decker -- that similar talents or brain areas may underlie both musical composition and computer programming. Writes he,
[I]n many labs doing…
clock | August 26, 2006Bumble Bees Can Estimate Time Intervals:
In a finding that broadens our understanding of time perception in the animal kingdom, researchers have discovered that an insect pollinator, the bumble bee, can estimate the duration of time intervals. Although many insects show daily and annual rhythms of behavior, the more sophisticated ability to estimate the duration of shorter time intervals had previously been known only in humans and other vertebrates.
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Bees and other insects make a variety of decisions that appear to require the ability to estimate elapsed…
pharyngula | August 23, 2006Douglas Theobald passed along an interesting collection of quotes from that atheist evolutionist, Adolph Hitler. It's particularly interesting the he outlawed atheist and freethought groups in 1933.
It's a long list of quotes, so I'll tuck it below the fold.
"The anti-Semitism of the new movement (Christian Social movement)
was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]
"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty
Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."
[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag…
purepedantry | August 22, 2006Before, I talk about a mouse model that is resistant to depression, I think I had better talk about mouse models of depression so that everyone is on the same page. If you ask a nonscientist whether they think there can be a mouse model of depression, you would probably get a raised eyebrow if the person didn't totally laugh in your face. But mouse models of depression -- ridiculous as they may sound -- are actually important learning tools for understanding the disease...that is as long as you think of them in context.
How would we define a mouse model of depression? Well, since it is…
clock | August 22, 2006From January 30, 2006, a look at the "new" genre and the hype around it...
Lab Lit is all the buzz these days. Nature magazine had a recent article on it. Blogosphere is abuzz - see Hedwig's take on it.
SEED magazine has a contest. This is what they are looking for - it explains what they think Lab Lit is:
We are not looking for traditional Sci-Fi--we are looking for fiction that reflects the significant role science plays in our culture; fiction that uncovers the rich narratives in science; and fiction wherein scientists are fallible and human. We are looking for Science-In-Fiction,…
clock | August 21, 2006Three interesting press releases/news-reports today. Click on links to read the whole articles:
Daytime light exposure dynamically enhances brain responses:
Exposure to light is known to enhance both alertness and performance in humans, but little is understood regarding the neurological basis for these effects, especially those associated with daytime light exposure. Now, by exposing subjects to light and imaging their brains while they subsequently perform a cognitive test, researchers have begun to identify brain regions involved in the effects on brain function of daytime light exposure…
clock | August 21, 2006 The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition by Michael Tomasello was the first book (and still the only one so far) we were reading in the newly minted CogBlogGroup, a group of bloggers reading stuff about cognitive science. You can download the whole book in PDF or the first chapter only in html. This was the first of two parts (I never finished the book nor rerview!), originally posted on August 20, 2005:
Chris of Mixing Memory has written an introductory post providing a broader context and background. Some of the participants have already posted their commentaries on the First Chapter,…
clock | August 20, 2006Mapping The Neural Landscape Of Hunger
The compelling urge to satisfy one's hunger enlists structures throughout the brain, as might be expected in a process so necessary for survival. But until now, studies of those structures and of the feeding cycle have been only fragmentary--measuring brain regions only at specific times in the feeding cycle.
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In their paper, Ivan de Araujo and colleagues implanted bundles of infinitesimal recording electrodes in areas of rat brain known to be involved in feeding, motivation, and behavior. Those areas include the…
neurontic | August 20, 2006I have some experience with depression, mostly mild although I have had a couple periods that could be described as major depressions. I know that my thoughts are intimately connected to my brain chemistry and that paying attention to how I'm thinking can alter my mood. For example, if I catch myself starting to feel depressed, I can pay attention to the conversations I'm having with myself and interrupt the thoughts that go something like "You worthless, useless, lazy slob". That, along with taking care of chores and projects I've been letting slide, and getting some exercise, usually help.…
clock | August 17, 2006
This is a summary of my 1999 paper, following in the footsteps of the work I described here two days ago. The work described in that earlier post was done surprisingly quickly - in about a year - so I decided to do some more for my Masters Thesis.
The obvious next thing to do was to expose the quail to T-cycles, i.e., non-24h cycles. This is some arcane circadiana, so please refer to the series of posts on entrainment from yesterday and the two posts on seasonality and photoperiodism posted this morning so you can follow the discussion below:
There were three big reasons for me to attempt…
clock | August 17, 2006This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior.
So far, I have directed all my attention to daily - circadian - rhythms, and pretty much ignored other rhythms that correspond to other cycles in nature. Another obvious cycle in nature is the procession of seasons during a year.
Just as an environment during the day is different from the same environment during the night and thus requires different adaptations for survival, so the winter environment and the summer environment…