neurobiology
pharyngula | June 30, 2009Ah, a solid science talk. It wasn't bad, except that it was very basic—maybe if I were a real journalist instead of a fake journalist I would have appreciated it more, but as it was, it was a nice overview of some common ideas in neuroscience, with some discussion of pretty new tools on top.
He started with a little history to outline what we know, with Ramon Y Cajal showing that the brain is made up of network of neurons (which we now know to be approxiamately 1012 neurons large). He also predicted the direction of signal propagation, and was mostly right. Each neuron sends signals outwards…
pharyngula | May 16, 2009Baroness Susan Greenfield has been spouting off some bad neuroscience, I'm afraid. She's on an anti-social-networking-software, anti-computer-games, anti-computer crusade that sounds a bit familiar — it's just like the anti-TV tirades I've heard for 40-some years — and a little bit new — computers are bad because they are "changing the workings of the brain". Ooooh.
But to put that in perspective, the brain is a plastic organ that is supposed to rewire itself in response to experience. It's what they do. The alternative is to have a fixed reaction pattern that doesn't improve itself, which…
pharyngula | May 9, 2009
I've been doing it wrong. I was looking over creationist responses to my arguments that Haeckel's embryos are being misused by the ID cretins, and I realized something: they don't give a damn about Haeckel. They don't know a thing about the history of embryology. They are utterly ignorant of modern developmental biology. Let me reduce it down for you, showing you the logic of science and creationism in the order they developed.
Here's how the scientific and creationist thought about the embryological evidence evolves:
Scientific thinking
An observation: vertebrate embryos show striking…
sporte | May 6, 2009We always enjoy home science experiments and it was fun the other night to learn about a new experiment we could try with our teenage daughter and an iPhone.
As it turned out, the joke was on us.
My husband is an enthusiastic fan of the iPhone store. Last night, he downloaded this application called "Army Knife."
This application has, I kid you not, the following nine items:
unit converter - these are always helpful, especially if you travel
ultrasonic whistle
protractor
Heart (beats per minute) counter
measuring tape
digital caliper
Two levels
flashlight
emergency SOS light
Some of…
bioephemera | March 7, 2009Brevity can be a creative coup. Consider Claire Evans' "Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds", which shoehorns our entire history into one minute: as the clock slowly ticks away, it makes me fear for a moment - implausible as it may seem - that it might run out before we evolve. Then there's the genius of Hamlet as Facebook updates (or Pride and Prejudice, though I don't find it nearly as good as Hamlet.) Maybe it's a symptom of our increasingly short attention spans, the acceleration of the news cycle, or simply the accumulation of too darn much data; for whatever reason, brevity is trendy. And…
pharyngula | December 15, 2008
No, not really, but this is still a cool result: investigators have used an MRI to read images off the visual cortex. They presented subjects with some simple symbols and letters, scanned their brains, and read off the image from the data — and it was even legible! Here are some examples of, first, the images presented to the subjects, then a set of individual patterns from the cortex read in single measurements, and then, finally, the average of the single scans. I think you can all read the word "neuron" in there.
Reconstructed visual images. The reconstruction results of all trials for…
grrlscientist | December 9, 2008tags: encephalon, brain, behavior, cognition, neurobiology, neuroscience, blog carnival
The last frontier: The brain.
Image: Orphaned. Contact me so I can provide credit and linkage.
Welcome to Encephalon! This is the blogosphere's neuroscience blog carnival that focuses specifically upon the brain, neuroscience, perception and behavior. If you sent me an essay or video about the brain and its relationship to behavior, perception, cognition, or learning, then it is included here! Also, please accept my sincerest apologies for the one day delay in publishing Encephalon: a police action in…
pharyngula | December 4, 2008Simon Ings has written a wonderful survey of the eye, called A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and it's another of those books you ought to be sticking on your Christmas lists right now. The title give you an idea of its content. It's a "natural history", so don't expect some dry exposition on deep details, but instead look forward to a light and readable exploration of the many facets of vision.
There is a discussion of the evolution of eyes, of course, but the topics are wide-ranging — Ings covers optics, chemistry, physiology, optical…
grrlscientist | November 14, 2008tags: neurobiology, neuroscience, animal communication, birdsong, premotor nucleus HVC, brain temperature, neural circuitry, motor behaviors, bioacoustics
Captive-bred Zebra Finch, Taeniopygia guttata, at
Bodelwyddan Castle Aviary, Denbighshire, Wales.
Image: Adrian Pingstone/Wikipedia [larger view].
Birdsong is the primary model system that helps scientists understand how the brain produces complex sequences of learned behavior, such as playing the piano. In songbirds, there are many interconnected brain regions that play specific and important role in the production of song. These…
grrlscientist | October 7, 2008tags: dopamine, behavior, evolution, rewarding affiliative behaviors, brain reward pathways, songbirds, birdsong, zebra finch, Poephila guttata, neurobiology
A pair of wild Zebra (Chestnut-eared) Finches, Poephila guttata.
Image: Adelaide Zebra Finch Society [larger view].
People have been known to "sing for joy" and we often experience happiness when others sing for us. Additionally, birdsong has often brought joy to those who have listened, but what about the birds themselves? Do birds experience "happiness" when they hear birdsong, or when they sing for others? According to newly…
sporte | September 25, 2008Lots of bloggers in the DNA network have been busy these past few days writing about Google's co-founder Sergey Brin, his blog, his wife's company (23andme), and his mutation in the LRRK2 gene.
I was a little surprised to see that while other bloggers (here, here, here, and here) have been arguing about whether or not the mutation really increases the risk to the degree (20-80%) mentioned by Brin, no one has really looked into the structure and biochemistry of the LRRK2 protein to see if there's a biochemical explanation for Parkinson's risk. I guess that task is up to me.
Let's begin at…
sporte | September 20, 2008Hey high school teachers! Are your students interested in the brain?
Who isn't?
Three winners will win all-expense-paid trips to present their work in a poster session in Seattle at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. Their teachers get to come too! I can tell you, Seattle is a fun place to visit.
Low tide at Golden Gardens, July 2008
Plus, three student winners will get $1000 in cash in addition to the trip.
Find out more at www.aan.com/achieve.
pzminion | August 21, 2008Guest Blogger Danio, one last time:
Part I
Part II
Part III
The current standard of pediatric care mandating that all newborns undergo hearing screenings has been applied successfully throughout much of the industrialized world. Early identification of hearing impairments gives valuable lead-time to parents and health care providers during which they can plan medical and educational interventions to improve the child's development, acquisition of language skills, and general quality of life.
Up to 12% of children born with hearing loss have Usher syndrome. However, diagnosing Usher…
grrlscientist | August 19, 2008tags: cognition, behavior, self-recognition, self awareness, tool use, memory, brain architecture, birds, European magpie, Pica pica, researchblogging.org
Figure 1. European magpie, Pica pica, with yellow mark [larger view].
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060202.
Birds have been disparaged publicly as "bird brains" for so long that most people have lost the ability to view them as intelligent and sentient beings. However, a group of researchers in Germany have conducted a series of studies with several captive European magpies, Pica pica, that challenge the average person's view of birds and…
pzminion | August 18, 2008Guest Blogger Danio:
The time has come to delve into the retinal component of Usher syndrome. In Part II, I briefly described the results of protein localization studies, in which most members of the Usher cohort were found at the connecting cilium of the photoreceptor and at the photoreceptor synapse. The following diagram summarizes these findings:
Usher protein localization in photoreceptor cells. From Reiners, et al. 2006
So, as we saw in the ear, proteins with the equipment for physically interacting with one another are gathering in specific places, and thus multi-protein complexes…
pzminion | August 15, 2008Guest Blogger Danio:
I know, I know. Friday night isn't exactly the best time to smack you with a big messy fistful of science, but PZ will be kicking us Minions out of the house early next week, so I have to stay on schedule with these Usher posts if I'm going to get through Part IV by the time he shows me the door.
In Part I, I introduced the hereditary disease known as Usher syndrome and went over a bit of the cell biology of auditory and visual sensory cells. In this post, I'll discuss the molecules known to be affected in Usher patients, and begin to describe what is known about…
pzminion | August 13, 2008Guest Blogger Danio:
In my introductory post I mentioned that my research focuses on the genetics of hereditary deaf-blindness, specifically Usher syndrome. As it's likely that many of you have never heard of it, I thought I'd kick it up a notch with some sciency posts on what we know about Usher syndrome and what we think we can contribute to the diagnosis and treatment of the disease.
Usher syndrome is a genetically recessive condition characterized by hearing impairment, usually from birth, which is due to the degeneration of sensory neurons in the inner ear, and blindness due to retinal…
pzminion | August 13, 2008
My first of several posts about sensory cell neurobiology will be appearing shortly. To get you warmed up, here's a movie showing a mechanosensory hair cell responding to a low frequency sound played through the glass pipette you can see in the image. *Caution*: low frequency sound may not be appropriate for work. Earphones recommended.
Also, the Scienceblogs Survey is now open again, and will remain so until 11PM EST Friday, August 15th.
~Danio
sporte | August 8, 2008A few weeks ago, I wrote about a paper in Science(1) that I read on a connection between a mutation in the dopamine D2 receptor and the genetics of learning.
Only, it turned out that when I looked at the gene map...
the mutation mapped in a completely different gene.
I presented the data here and wrote a bit about my surprise at finding this mistake and even greater surprise at seeing this same mistake perpetuated by others.
Now, I have some updates to the story.
The folks at the NCBI responded quickly and added annotations to both the DRD2 and the ANKK1 citations in the Gene database.
Now…
pharyngula | June 30, 2008
We've heard the arguments about the relative importance of mutations in cis regulatory regions vs. coding sequences in evolution before — it's the idea that major transitions in evolution were accomplished more by changes in the timing and pattern of gene expression than by significant changes in the genes themselves. We developmental biologists tend to side with the cis-sies, because timing and pattern are what we're most interested in. But I have to admit that there are plenty of accounts of functional adaptation in populations that are well-founded in molecular evidence, and the cis…