neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007Abdel Monim Mahmoud, an Egyptian journalist and blogger, has identified (in Arabic and English) a prison officer who allegedly tortured him for 13 days at a state security headquarters back in 2003.
27-year-old Mahmoud is a member of Ikhwan Muslimin (the Muslim Brotherhood, MB). The MB is the world's first Islamist movement - it was founded in 1928 - and its early ideology is what inspires most of today's Islamists, including al-Qa'eda.
The MB has always been, and remains, Egypt's biggest and most popular opposition party. It is officially illegal, but is tolerated by Egyptian president…
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007 The current issue of Chemical & Engineering News contains a series of articles by Sophie L. Rovner on memory:
Hold that thought is a comprehensive piece about what is known of the cellular and biochemical bases of memory formation.
Molecules for memory discusses the ethical issues regarding memory-enhancing drugs being developed by several pharmaceuticals companies.
The well-endowed mind considers what studies of knockout mice tell us about variations in human memory performance.
Memory at its worst looks at how highly emotional memories can lead to post-traumatic stress…
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007
The question of how birds migrate long distances has long baffled researchers, and there are various hypotheses about which navigational cues birds use when migrating. Over the years, it has been suggested that migrating birds use smell, visual cues such as the position of the sun, the geomagnetic field, or a combination of these. It is, for example, known that induced magnetic fields and electrical storms disrupt the navigational abilities of homing pigeons, but exactly how the birds detect, perceive and interpret a magnetic field remains a mystery.
A recent study led by Todd Dennis, of…
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007French researchers have demonstrated for the first time that embryonic cells grafted into the brains of mice with damaged motor cortices can re-establish damaged connections precisely, so that disrupted neural circuitry is reconstructed.
The findings raise the possibility that cell-based therapies could be used to repair the damage that occurs with brain injury, or as a result of various neurodegenerative diseases.
Researchers have experimented with cell transplantation since the early 1970s, particularly to try and develop therapies for Parkinson's Disease. But they have always faced the…
neurophilosophy | September 2, 2007 On Saturday I mentioned that submissions are being accepted for Open Lab 2007.
Bora has now posted links to the 100+ posts that have been submitted so far. The book, which is to be edited by Reed Cartwright, will contain 50 of the best science blog posts from 2007, so Bora's list contains plenty of good reading.
If there's a post that you think should be added to the list, written either by you or someone else, don't hesitate to submit it.
neurophilosophy | September 2, 2007
These illustrations by Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty are part of a collection which is to be auctioned off at Christie's in New York on October 5th.
The auction, which is called Anatomy as Art: The Dean Endell Medical Collection, has 229 lots, including the first edition of De Humani Corporis Fabrica, by Andreas Vesalius, estimated at $200,000- $300,000. The illustrations above are from lots 85 and 91, which together have estimates of $80,000- $120,000.
Illustrations by both Vesalius and d'Agoty were used by Jessica for 3 of my beautiful rotating custom headers.
(Via Morbid…
neurophilosophy | September 1, 2007
Yesterday I wrote about the use of microfluidics chips for imaging neuronal activity and the behaviour correlated with it in the nematode worm C. elegans, without going into too much detail about exactly what microfluidics is.
Microfluidics is a multidisciplinary field - a combination of chemistry, physics, engineering and biotechnology - which involves the manufacture of devices that contain sub-millimeter-sized channels and which can be used to control the movements of miniscule amounts of fluids (nano-, or even picoliters).
Starting in the 1990s, microfluidics began to revolutionize…
neurophilosophy | September 1, 2007
Registration for the 2nd Science Blogging Conference is now open. The conference, which is the brainchild of the tireless Bora Zivkovic, will be held at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina on Saturday, January 19th, 2008. Here's the conference program. If you'd like to attend, fill out the details on this registration form.
Bora is planning to have Open Lab 2007, the second Science Blogging Anthology, ready in time for the conference. You can submit your favourite science blog posts for inclusion in the book using this form. The first anthology, which includes a post from this blog (…
neurophilosophy | August 31, 2007
Update: Below are the lyrics for the song.
Verse 1:
Neocortex, frontal lobe,
Brain stem, brain stem,
Hippocampus, neural node,
Right hemisphere,
Pons and cortex visual,
Brain stem, brain stem,
Sylvian fissure, pineal,
Left hemisphere,
Cerebellum left, cerebellum right,
Synapse, hypothalamus,
Striatum, dendrite.
Verse 2:
Axon fibres, matter gray,
Brain stem, brain stem,
Central tegmental pathway,
Temporal lobe,
White ---?--- matter, forebrain, skull,
Brain stem, brain stem,
Central fissure, cord spinal,
Par-ie-tal,
Pia mater, meningeal vein,…
neurophilosophy | August 31, 2007A fundamental question for neuroscientists is how the activity in neuronal circuits generates behaviour. The nematode worm Caenhorhabditis elegans is an excellent model organism for studying the neural basis of behaviour, because it is small, transparent, and has a simple nervous system consisting of only 302 neurons.
Typically, an organic glue is used to permanently immobilize the worm on an agar plate, and specific cells of the nervous system are stimulated with microelectrodes. This method has its limitations, however. As it is restricted, the worm's muscles and nervous system cannot…
neurophilosophy | August 30, 2007
A caricature of me, aged about 4, by Bahgat Osman (1931-2001).
Osman was Egypt's most prominent political cartoonist during the 1960s and '70s. He was a close friend of my father's, and I have vivid memories of him from my early childhood in Cairo. I even vaguely remember posing for this portrait, which was completed in a matter of minutes.
Both my father and Osman were members of the diaspora of Egyptian intellectuals. My father was imprisoned and tortured under Gamal Abdel Nasser in the mid-1950s, and came to London in the early '70s for medical treatment. At around that time, Osman…
neurophilosophy | August 30, 2007I was contacted by Craig J. Phillips earlier this year, but neglected to mention the comment he posted at my old blog. Craig posted this comment here several days ago:
I am a traumatic brain injury survivor and a master's level rehabilitation counselor. I sustained an open skull fracture with right frontal lobe damage and remained in a coma for 3 weeks at the age of 10 in August of 1967. I underwent brain and skull surgery after waking from the coma. Follow-up cognitive and psychosocial testing revealed that I would not be able to succeed beyond high school. In 1967 Neurological…
neurophilosophy | August 29, 2007
This mechanical prosthetic arm, developed by Michael Goldfarb and his colleagues of the Center for Intelligent Mechatronics at Vanderbilt University, is powered by a pencil-sized rocket that burns pressurized liquid hydrogen peroxide. The reaction, which is catalyzed by iridium-coated alumina granules, generates steam that forces the pistons in the arm to move up and down.
Conventional prosthetic limbs are powered by batteries. Rockets were employed here as an alternative, because of the weight of batteries needed to power a prosthesis for any reasonable amount of time.
The prototype…
neurophilosophy | August 29, 2007Beliefnet.com has an interview with Martin Seligman. (Don't click on the link if you can't bear promises of finding "eternal joy with Jesus' word," or - worse - ads for live psychic readings.)
Seligman is a highly influential psychologist. A former president of the American Psychological Association, he is perhaps best known for his theory of learned helplessness.
Beliefnet also has excerpts from Seligman's latest book, Authentic Happiness.
neurophilosophy | August 29, 2007 Alzheimer's Disease is the most common form of age-related dementia, affecting an estimated 25 million people worldwide.The pathological hallmarks of this condition, which were described 100 years ago by the German pathologist Alois Alzheimer, consist of plaques of amyloid beta protein and neurofibrillary tangles made of tau protein. These insoluble deposits accumulate within the brain, and are believed to be toxic to nerve cells.
Now, researchers from Harvard Medical School show that the amyloid plaques in mice with Alzheimer's-like pathology can be effectively cleared by implanting cells…
neurophilosophy | August 29, 2007This paper appeared in the February 1999 issue of the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences:
Phantom erection after amputation of penis. Case description and review of the relevant literature on phantoms.
Fisher C. M., Neurology Service, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston 02114, USA.
BACKGROUND: Perception of a phantom limb is frequent after an amputation of an upper or lower extremity. Phantom penis is reported infrequently.
METHOD: Case description and literature review.
RESULT: The phenomenon of phantom penis followed total penectomy. Several aspects were unusual,…
neurophilosophy | August 28, 2007To celebrate the fast-approaching 500,000th reader comment, ScienceBlogs is running a contest.
To enter, all you need to do is post a comment on any of the blogs in the SB network, using a valid email address. Alternatively, you can sign up to the new weekly newsletter.
When the 500,000th comment is posted, the contest will be closed. One email address from a comment posted at around that time will then be randomly selected.
One lucky reader will win a 5-day trip to the world's greatest science city, as voted by you. (Cambridge, U. K. currently tops the poll.) 50 runners-up will receive a…
neurophilosophy | August 28, 2007
(Fleur Champion de Crespigny)
Researchers at the University of Exeter have found that female bruchid beetles (Callosobruchus maculatus, above) mate when they are thirsty.
Evolutionary biologist Martin Edvardsson kept some female bruchids with, and others without, access to water. All the females were given the opportunity to mate with a new male every day.
In the journal Animal Behaviour, Edvardsson reports that those females without access to water mated more frequently - up to 40% more - than those with access to water. This leads him to conclude that female bruchid beetles…
neurophilosophy | August 28, 2007Multitasking refers to the simultaneous performance of two or more tasks, switching back and forth between different tasks, or performing a number of different tasks in quick succession. It consists of two complementary stages: goal-shifting, in which one decides to divert their attention from one task to another, and rule activation, by which the instructions for executing one task are switched off, and those for executing the other are switched on. Multitasking involves dividing one's attention between the tasks, and because each task competes for a limited amount of cognitive resources,…
neurophilosophy | August 28, 2007 In his Channel 4 documentary The Enemies of Reason, Richard Dawkins attacks what he rightly regards as an epidemic of irrational thinking, or, as he puts it, humanity's "retreat into the fog of the superstitious past."
He notes, for example, that 25% of the British population believe in astrology, and that more column inches in British newspapers are devoted horoscopes than to science.
In a manner which I found at times to be highly amusing, Dawkins debunks astrologists, psychics, tarot card readers, and purveyors of alternative therapies.
Watch part 2 of The Enemies of Reason below…