neuroscience
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2008The 53rd edition of Encephalon is online now at Ionian Enchantment and includes entries about grid cells, cochlear implants and how culture affects the perception of faces.
The carnival comes back to it's original home for the next edition - I'll be hosting it here on 15th September. If you'd like to contribute, send permalinks to your neuroscience and psychology blog posts to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail {dot}com.
Also, there's a new blog carnival called Hourglass that you might like to take a look at. It's about biogerontology (the biology of aging), and the first and second editions are…
j7uy5 | September 3, 2008
href="http://www.researchblogging.org">
alt="ResearchBlogging.org"
src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png"
style="border: 0pt none ;">
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_brain_stimulation"
rel="tag">Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) currently
is under investigation for treatment of sever, treatment-resistant
depression (TRD). It is not really news. I
href="http://trots.blogspot.com/2005/03/implantable-devices-for-major.html">wrote
about it in 2005. The background information in the
earlier post still is pertinent, so I won't…
purepedantry | August 29, 2008One of the problems brains must overcome to behave effectively is to discretely encode all the different responses that they can produce. Considering movement alone, you can move in a lot of different ways. Selecting which one is appropriate is troublesome in itself, but encoding all of them is a challenge. It is like trying to organize the Library of Congress so that you can instantly find exactly what you want. Your brain must come up with some way to encode each of these responses separately because if it didn't than you might engage in one response when you really meant another. How…
neurophilosophy | August 23, 2008NEARLY 70 years ago, Karl von Frisch described the alarm response in a species of small freshwater fish called the European minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus). Frisch, who was one of the founders ethology - the scientific study of animal behaviour - demonstrated that when a minnow was eaten by a predator, a chemical released from its damaged skin elicited defensive behaviour in other minnows that were close by. In response to the chemical, they would at first dart about randomly, form a tight school and then retreat from the source of the chemical.
Frisch called this substance schreckstoff, meaning…
neurophilosophy | August 21, 2008
In 2000, researchers from the Yale University School of Medicine made a surprising discovery that would start to change the way we think about the causes of depression. Ronald Duman and his colleagues chronically administered different classes of antidepressants to rats, and found that this stimulated the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus. As a result, researchers and clinicians began to think of depression as something like a mild neurodegenerative disorder, rather than as a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Earlier studies had already suggested that depression involves shrinkage of…
j7uy5 | August 18, 2008
href="http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/huntington/huntington.htm"
rel="tag">Huntington's Disease is a serious,
progressive disease that involves degeneration of part of the brain.
In particular, there is loss of neurons and development of
gliosis in the striatum. The disease is named after
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Huntington"
title="George Huntington">George Huntington,
who described it in 1872.Huntington's
Disease can be diagnosed by
href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/huntingtons_and_genetic_testin.php">genetic
testing. There has been a lot…
neurophilosophy | August 17, 2008Last week, I wote about the robot controlled by a "brain" in a culture dish, and in that post, I mentioned that several other groups, including members of the Neuroengineering Lab at Georgia Tech, have been doing similar work.
Steve Potter, who leads one of the groups at Georgia Tech's NeuroLab (and whose work I wrote about back in 2006), has now left a comment on the post, saying that the claims made by the University of Reading researchers are exaggerated:
I am disappointed to see Kevin Warwick again overstating things, but am especially bothered when it is about things we are also doing in…
clock | August 15, 2008From The National Humanities Center:
The National Humanities Center will host the third and final conference on "The Human & The Humanities," November 13 - 15, 2008, once again attracting scientists and humanities scholars to discuss how developments in science are challenging traditional notions of "the human." Events will begin on the evening of November 13 with a lecture from noted neurologist and author Oliver Sacks at the William and Ida Friday Center in Chapel Hill, NC.
This event is free, but guests must register in advance to guarantee seating.
Other speakers and special guests…
neurophilosophy | August 13, 2008
Researchers from the Cybernetic Intelligence Research Group at the University of Reading have developed a robot whose movements are controlled by neurons growing in a culture dish.
The robot's "brain" consists of several hundred thousand neurons isolated from embryonic rat neocortex. The cortical tissue was first dissected out, then treated with enzymes which caused the cells to dissociate from one another. The resulting cell suspension was then added to a culture dish containing nutrients.
Rather than plating the cells onto a standard culture dish, the researchers instead grew them on one…
terrasig | August 13, 2008Most people know of methadone as a long-term substitution therapy for people addicted to heroin, morphine, or other similar drugs called opiates or opioids. A good, free full-text description of methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) can be found in the 15 June 2001 issue of American Family Physician.
Now, in the 1 August 2008 issue of Cancer Research, Claudia Friesen and colleagues at the University of Ulm report that methadone can kill leukemia cells in culture and reverse acquired resistance to other drugs like doxorubicin (Adriamycin). Press reports to this effect appeared at the beginning…
neurophilosophy | August 12, 2008
Participation in most sports requires agility, impeccable timing and the planning and execution of complex movements, so that actions such as catching a ball or throwing it into a hoop can be performed. Performing well at sports also requires anticipating and accurately predicting the movements of others.
Athletes and sportspersons undergo years of specialized training to hone these abilities, and nobody would sensibly argue that they are not more proficient at them than others. Indeed, numerous behavioural studies show that those who take part in sports have better sensory and motor skills…
neurophilosophy | August 11, 2008
National Library of Medicine / Hot Medical News
This silent film clip shows several victims of a disease called kuru. They are - or rather were - members of the South Fore, a tribe of approximately 8,000 people who inhabit the Okapa subdistrict of the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. In the 1950s and '60s, a kuru epidemic swept through the South Fore, claiming the lives of more than 1,000 members of the tribe. Later it was established that the disease was transmitted by the tribe's practice of ritualistic mortuary cannibalism.
The word kuru means "shaking death" in the Fore…
edyong | August 9, 2008
Feeling exhausted after a long day is an all too familiar part of modern life. We drag ourselves into bed, hoping to shut down our minds for a night, waking up recharged the next day. But contrary to popular belief, your brain does anything but shut down during sleep.
Science is beginning to reveal that sleep is a crucial chance for the brain to consolidate the massive amount of sensory information it receives during the day. It acts as a time-out between periods of consciousness and gives the brain a chance to weave lasting memories from experiences.
For something that is so…
neurophilosophy | August 8, 2008The classic Nobel Prize-winning studies of David Hubel and Torsten Weisel showed how the proper maturation of the developing visual cortex is critically dependent upon visual information received from the eyes. In what would today be considered highly unethical experiments, Hubel and Weisel sewed shut one eye of newborn kittens. They found that this monocular deprivation had dramatic effects on the visual part of the brain: the columns of cortical tissue that normally receive inputs from the closed eye failed to develop, while those that receive inputs from the other eye were significantly…
clock | August 7, 2008...but if you do, I hope it was enjoyable! And edifying, of course. Kind of science that is amenable to experimentation at home.
neurophilosophy | August 7, 2008
In The Conjurer, by Hieronymus Bosch (above), a medieval European magician performs in front of a small crowd. As the spectators marvel at the conjurer's tricks, their attention is diverted away from the pickpockets who steal their belongings. The painting illustrates well that magicians throughout the ages have had an understanding of attention and awareness, and that their art is in large part based on their ability to subtlely manipulate these processes in their audience.
Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in what magic can teach us about the brain. A year ago, scientists…
neurophilosophy | August 7, 2008The use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs, or roadside bombs) has led to an increase in the numbers of troops sustaining traumatic brain injury during military service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Such injuries are caused by the high pressure shock waves generated by the explosions, which cause rapid head movements, such that the brain is sheared and torn as it comes into contact with the inside of the skull.
Whereas conventional traumatic brain injuries caused by penetrative head wounds are easily diagnosed, those who sustain this kind of closed head injury often exhibit no external wounds…
neurophilosophy | August 5, 2008SYNAESTHESIA is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory pathway evokes sensations in another sensory modality. This may occur because of abnormal connections between the brain's sensory systems, or because the flow of information between those systems is not inhibited as usual.
First described in the 1880s by Francis Galton, synaesthesia is known to exist in several different forms. Galton described "persons who almost invariably think of numerals in visual imagery". This form, now known as grapheme-colour synaesthesia, was experienced by the physicist Richard Feynman,…
neurophilosophy | August 5, 2008The 51st edition of Encephalon is online now at The Mouse Trap. This time, host Sandeep has interspersed the entries with haikus about the mind and brain.
clock | August 4, 2008Mo has the scoop - a fascinating interview with Heather Perry, one of the rare people who voluntarily underwent trepanation surgery.