neurophilosophy | March 12, 2008Thanks to Natasha Dantzig for drawing my attention to this talk from last month's TED Conference in Monterey, California:
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened - as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding - she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
Taylor describes her experience in terms of unlocking the hidden potential…
neurophilosophy | March 11, 2008
UCSD-TV, the local television station broadcast by the University of California at San Diego, has a series called Grey Matters, which is devoted to neuroscience.
To date, fifteen full-length presentations have been produced for the series, all of which are availabe online in RealPlayer at the UCSD-TV website. They can also be viewed on the UCTV YouTube Channel, along with the other programs produced (all 1,800+ of them).
The programs in the neuroscience series cover topics such as autism, aging, decision making, neural stem cells, perception, and development and evolution of the brain.
neurophilosophy | March 10, 2008
From one angle, they look like miscellaneous wall markings. From another, they look like this...
[Via Crooked Brains]
neurophilosophy | March 10, 2008
In today's issue of The New Yorker, John Lancaster reviews a new book called Perfumes: The Guide, by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez.
Olfaction (the sense of smell) is, as Lancaster notes, "a profound mystery". Why is it, for example, that two aromatic molecules with almost identical structures can smell completely different from each other?
Take this molecule, R-carvone, which smells of spearmint (and also elicits a cooling sensation, because it binds to, and activates the "cold" receptor TRPM8). It is one of two enantiomers, or mirror images, of the carvone molecule.
S-carvone is chemically…
neurophilosophy | March 9, 2008
My fellow M.Sc. student Maria informs me that Brain Awareness Week is about to begin:
[This annual event]...is an international effort organized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives to advance public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research. The Dana Alliance is joined in the campaign by partners in the United States and around the world, including medical and research organizations; patient advocacy groups; the National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies; service groups; hospitals and universities; K-12 schools; and professional organizations.…
neurophilosophy | March 8, 2008
Sea cucumbers are marine invertebrates which live on the sea floor and feed on debris that drift down. When threatened, they can harden their skin within seconds, so that they are less likely to be devoured by the approaching predator.
This behaviour is made possible by the structure of the sea cucumber's skin, whose deeper layers contain a network of collagen nanofibres enveloped within a viscous and elastic matrix of connective tissue. The arrangement of the collagen can be transiently modified, in response to a protein secreted by nerve cells found in the skin, which alters the chemical…
neurophilosophy | March 7, 2008
Here's the first 10 minutes of the recent episode of Horizon about sensory deprivation, which I discussed about 6 weeks ago. The entire program has been uploaded to YouTube: here are parts 2, 3, 4 and 5.
neurophilosophy | March 3, 2008
[Introduction|Part 2|Part 3]
The study by McKemy et al is of great significance, as it led to the identification and characterization of the first cold receptor. This study also suggests that TRP channels have a general role in thermosensation, as all the previously identified TRP channels are sensitive to heat.
Dhaka et al (2007) show that TRPM8 is required for sensitivity to innocuous cool stimuli and is also involved in sensing noxious cold temperatures. The TRPM8 knockout mice generated in this study have only a partial deficit in sensing noxious cold stimuli, so it is most likely that…
neurophilosophy | March 3, 2008Here are a number of new neuroscience blogs that I've come across recently:
Neuropathology Blog - by Brian E. Moore, an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at Southern Illinois University's School of Medicine. This is a welcome addition to the blogosphere, as neuropathology is a dying art (if you'll excuse the pun).
Neuroanthropology Blog - a group blog by students and staff in the anthropology departments of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, USA, which "encourage[s] exchanges among anthropology, philosophy, social…
neurophilosophy | March 3, 2008The 40th edition of Encephalon, which is now up at Mind Hacks, includes some excellent entries from the usual suspects. The next edition will be at Pure Pedantry on March 17th. If you'd like to contribute, email permalinks to your neuroscience or psychology blog posts to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com.
neurophilosophy | March 1, 2008
(Image: Kymmy Lorrain/BrainCells, Inc.)
The two winners of GE Healthcare's 2007 IN Cell Image Competition will be going on display on the NBC screen in New York City's Times Square at 7pm on Friday, March 7th and Saturday, March 8th.
This confocal image, which won the vote of the scientific panel of judges, shows cultured stem cells from the human neocortex. The cells are stained with antibodies for the neuronal marker Tuj1 (green), the glial cell marker GFAP (red) and DNA (blue).
neurophilosophy | March 1, 2008Gazzaniga is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and director of the Law and Neuroscience Project.
In the 66-minute interview, he discusses, among other things, the use and misuse of neuroimaging data in the courtroom, the ethics of cognitive enhancement, and the pioneering studies of split brain patients that he carried out with Roger Sperry in the 1960s.
neurophilosophy | February 29, 2008
[Introduction|Part 2]
Takashima et al (2007) carried out one of the first investigations of the distribution of TRPM8-positive sensory nerve terminals in various peripheral structures, using transgenic mice which express enhanced green fluorescent protein under the control of the TRPM8 transcriptional promoter.
First, they confirmed that the transgene expression was neuron-specific, by showing that cultured DRG and TG neurons from the transgenic animals expressed both GFP and the pan-neuronal marker PGP-9.5. The correspondence of GFP and PGP-9.5 coexpression with TRPM8 immunoreactivity…
neurophilosophy | February 28, 2008
One shouldn't really need an excuse to embed this fantastic performance by Thelonious Monk, but now there is one: NIDCD researchers believe that they have identified the cognitive neural substrate of jazz improvisation.
For the study, which is published in the open access journal PLoS One, Charles Lamb and Allen Braun recruited six professional jazz pianists. The participants were asked to play a specially-designed keyboard whilst their brain activity was monitored with functional magnetic resonance imaging.
In the control condition, the musicians were asked to play an ascending or…
neurophilosophy | February 27, 2008[Introduction]
McKemy et al (2002) used whole-cell patch clamping and calcium imaging to record the responses of cultured rat trigeminal ganglion neurons to cold temperatures and various cooling compounds. They found that the cells respond to menthol and cold with an increase in intracellular calcium ion concentration, and that these stimuli activate non-selective cation channels which are highly permeable to calcium. The currents measured were also found to be outwardly rectifying (i.e. much larger at positive than at negative holding potentials). Similar results were obtained from DRG…
neurophilosophy | February 26, 2008A few days ago, I briefly discussed the article by Oliver Sacks about geometric hallucinations in migraine aura. I thought that it was published in the print edition of the New York Times, but it turns out that this is in fact Sacks's first post on a new NY Times blog called Migraine: Perspectives on a Headache.
Sacks is one of five "migraneur" contributors to the new blog. (His co-bloggers are author Siri Hustvedt, journalist Paula Kamen, neurologist and psychiatrist Klaus Podoll and musician Jeff Tweedy.) The post/article about visual migraines generated a lot of discussion, and, in his…
neurophilosophy | February 26, 2008
Below is the introduction to my third and final piece of coursework, an essay entitled Multiple roles for Transient Receptor Potential Melastatin 8 (TRPM8) in cold thermosensation. This time, I discuss three recent studies which have contributed significantly to the understanding of the mechanisms by which nerve endings in the skin detect cold stimuli. I'll post the rest of the essay over the next few days, in 3 or 4 parts. The papers I discuss will be listed as references after the discussion section.
Summary: Here I discuss three recent studies which have contributed significantly to the…
neurophilosophy | February 25, 2008If you're in London, you might be interested in this event, which has been organised by the Royal Institution in collaboration with Nature Network:
Blogging science
Dr Ben Goldacre, Dr Jennifer Rohn, Ed Yong
Thursday 28 February 2008
7.00pm-8.30pm
What is it like to work in a lab? What's the latest science news? How can you tell good science from quackery? The answers to all these questions can be found in blogs, and in this event you'll meet the people who are writing them.
There are literally tens of millions of blogs online. Some read like personal diaries, while others are built round…
neurophilosophy | February 25, 2008
The Lobotomist, a PBS documentary about Walter Freeman which I mentioned recently, is now available online as a series of short clips that require either QuickTime or Windows Media Player for viewing.
The program charts how the lobotomy came to be regarded as a cure for most types of mental illness, how Freeman "refined" the procedure, and how, in the face of criticism, it was eventually replaced in the 1950s by the newly-developed neuroleptic drugs.
Read more about the rise and fall of the prefrontal lobotomy, and watch a film clip of James Watts and Walter Freeman performing a prefrontal…
neurophilosophy | February 23, 2008
(Cartoon by Greg Williams, from Wikipedia)
The term hyperthymestic syndrome was proposed by James L. McGaugh, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues, following their case study of the woman known as A.J. (The study was published in the journal Neurocase, and is available as a PDF; there's also this story on NPR.)
Now in her mid-40s, A.J. contacted the researchers, telling them about her "non-stop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting" autobiographical memory. While researchers have been fortunate enough to study a number of amnesic patients (see…