neuroscience
neurophilosophy | June 18, 2008
The Boston Globe has an infographic containing tips on how to nap effectively.
But why would you want to run the risk of being thought of as lazy by sleeping during the day? Recent research shows that power napping enhances memory consolidation and increases alertness and productivity.
neurophilosophy | June 17, 2008
The winners of the first Kavli Prize were announced a couple of weeks ago. One of the three recipients of the prize for neuroscience was Pasko Rakic, a professor of neurobiology and neurology at the Yale School of Medicine.
Rakic has spent most of his career investigating the development of the cerebral cortex of man and other mammals, and it is for his outstanding contribution to this area of research that he has been awarded the Kavli Prize for Neuroscience.
Cortical development (or corticogenesis) is a highly dynamic and complex process, involving the tightly orchestrated movements of…
edyong | June 15, 2008Show someone a piece of rotting food and their reaction will be visibly similar the world over. Their eyes will close, their noses will wrinkle and their mouths will tighten, all part of a universal expression of disgust. Darwin himself was struck by the universal nature of human facial expressions - from the busiest of cities to the most isolated of villages, smiles and frowns are recognisable, done in the same way and carry the same meaning.
Facial expressions are massively important for the social lives of humans and it should come as no surprise that some parts of our brain are dedicated…
neurophilosophy | June 13, 2008WE BELIEVE THAT memory provides us with a faithful record of past events. But in fact, it is well established that memory is reconstructive, and not reproductive, in nature. In retrieval, a memory is pieced together from fragments, but during the reconstruction errors creep in due to our own biases and expectations.
Generally, these errors are small, so despite not being completely accurate, our memories are usually reliable. Occasionally, there are too many errors, and the memory becomes unreliable. In extreme cases, memories can be completely false.
False memory, or confabulation, is…
purepedantry | June 12, 2008Here is an interesting article showing the cross-over between neuropharmacology and decision making. Crockett et al. show that if you use acute tryptophan depletion to lower the levels of serotonin in subjects, they are more likely to reject unfair offers in the ultimatum game.
Background
The ultimatum game is an experimental economics paradigm. It works something like this. The proposer in the game gets to divide a certain pre-specified quantity of money between themselves and another player. The other player sees that division, and then gets to decide whether to accept it or reject it…
j7uy5 | June 12, 2008A study published in
title="Journal of the American Medical Association">JAMA
indicates that treatment with bright light alone (1,000
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux">lux), or
bright light combined with
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin">melatonin,
can improve symptoms in patients with dementia. Melatonin
alone appeared to have a slight adverse effect.
This already has been reported by
href="http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1813396,00.html">Time,
the BBC,
href="http://www.modernmedicine.com/modernmedicine/Neurology/Bright-Light-Can-Help-…
neurophilosophy | June 11, 2008When it comes to human brain evolution, it is often said that size matters. The human cerebral cortex is much larger than that of other primates, and therefore its expansion must have been a vital feature of human evolution. Researchers have therefore emphasized the importance of encephalization, the process by which brain mass increased dramatically in relation to total body mass that occurred in the human lineage.
However, a new study which used bioinformatics to compare the synapses of distantly related species suggests that size may not be the most important factor in human brain…
neurophilosophy | June 11, 2008
Several years ago, the mad scientists at DARPA (the research and development wing of the Pentagon) conceived of a pair of binoculars that would enhance soldiers' ability to detect enemies.
Danger Room informs us that DARPA has just awarded the giant defence contractor Northrop Grumman a $7.6 million contract to develop the device. Here's a snippet from the press release:
In Phase One of the program, the Northrop Grumman team plans to demonstrate the concept by building a breadboard system and complete a preliminary design for the company's Human-aided Optical Recognition/Notification of…
neurophilosophy | June 10, 2008The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is a pioneering open access online journal devoted to the publication of peer-reviewed biological research in video format.
The JoVE website was launched in December 2006, and now has about 200 films, which are divided into 7 categories, and which describe all sorts of experimental procedures.
The neuroscience category contains videos describing basic techniques such as culturing mouse neocortical neurons, and more sophisticated procedures, such as implanting a glass-covered "brain window" for in vivo imaging in rats.
(In March of last year, I…
neurophilosophy | June 10, 2008
A group of Dutch researchers report that a 115-year-old who remained mentally alert throughout her whole life had a healthy brain that showed no signs of Alzheimer's Disease or other forms of dementia.
den Dunnen et al had the unique opportunity to evaluate the woman's performance on psychological tests just a few years before she died, and then later to examine her brain at autopsy.
They say that their findings, which are due to be published in the August issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging, call into question long-held assumptions about the cognitive decline and…
neurophilosophy | June 10, 2008At Channel N, Sandra has compiled a fantastic 47th edition of Encephalon. There are, as usual, many blog posts about a wide variety of topics neuroscience and psychology.
This edition also includes no less than 7 film clips, including one which contains footage of Albert Bandura's classic 'Bobo Doll experiment', in which the effect on children of viewing violence on television was examined.
neurophilosophy | June 9, 2008Neuroscience, like all other branches of science, is fraught with dogmatic ideas about its subject matter. A number of principles have emerged, principles that have been regarded as fundamental to our understanding of brain function.
But the human brain is an organ of bewildering complexity - it is often referred to as the most complex object in the known universe - which doesn't give up its secrets easily. After 100 years of scientific investigation, we still know very little about it.
So it's no real surprise that in recent years, neuroscientists have made quite a few discoveries…
neurophilosophy | June 6, 2008
Photo by Einat Adar
Our feathered friends provide us with some beautiful examples of the link between brain and behaviour. In some bird species, groups of cells involved in seasonal behaviours die after they have performed their function, but are regenerated by neurogenesis as and when they are needed.
Male songbirds, for example, serenade females; the brain nuclei which produce the vocalizations die when the mating season ends, and regenerate as the next one approaches. Similarly, the Clarke's nutcracker stores tens of thousands of pine seeds in many different caches spread across a…
neurophilosophy | June 5, 2008Some old, some new:
The Reflection of Light
Psychedelic Research
Brain Stimulant
Brain Mind & Society
NeuroScene
Neurodisorder
Neurotonics
The Neuroprotective Lifestyle
Giovanna Di Sauro
The Cortical Column
Neurology Minutiae
neurophilosophy | June 5, 2008
Researchers report today that human stem cells can rescue mice from an otherwise fatal neurological condition caused by the brain's inability to conduct nervous impulses. The findings, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, raise the possibility of cell transplantation treatments for a number of neurological diseases in which the ability of nerve cells to communicate with each other has been compromised.
The new study, led by Steven Goldman, a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center, used glial progenitor cells (GPCs) obtained from the brains…
neurophilosophy | June 3, 2008
Imagine listening to a piece of music, and perceiving a rattle of pots and pans instead of the harmony of the combined component sounds; or developing an insatiable desire to play the piano after being struck by lightning; or to be able to reproduce a complex piece of music after hearing only once, despite being blind, autistic and needing round-the-clock care.
People with these conditions are among those encountered by Alan Yentob, in a documentary called Oliver Sacks: Tales of Music and the Brain, which was broadcast on BBC1 last night. As its title suggests, the programme features…
neurophilosophy | June 3, 2008
MIT Tech Review reports that a San Diego-based pharmaceuticals company BrainCells Inc. is carrying out a phase II clinical trial to test the efficacy of a neurogenesis-stimulating compound as a treatment for depression.
It has been known, for about 20 years, that the brains of mammals (including humans) contain stem cells which are capable of dividing to generate new neurons. This process, called neurogenesis, occurs throughout adulthood in several discrete areas of the brain (the hippocampus and olfactory bulb), but the exact function of the newly-generated cells remains unclear.
Reduced…
neurophilosophy | June 3, 2008
This month's issue of IEEE Spectrum Online magazine contains an excellent special report on the singularity, the hypothetical point in time at which technology will be sufficiently advanced so as to enable the human race to transcend their biology and take their evolution into their own hands.
Some transhumanists envision a future characterized by cyborg-like beings and thinking machines with superhuman artificial intelligence, and await the singularity as eagerly as end-timers wait for the Second Coming. Some go as far as to say that we will one day be able to cheat death by uploading our…
neurophilosophy | June 2, 2008
This email from the owner of the website explains:
Gliocast is a set of software tools for visualizing fiber tracts. The emphasis is on the 3D display technologies. Gliocast includes a rudimentary model for tumor growth, but more physically realistic models can be substituted for it.
Fiber tract imagery provided by the Banks Laboratory at the University of Tennessee.
Brain dataset courtesy of Gordon Kindlmann at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, University of Utah, and Andrew Alexander, W. M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior, University of…
neurophilosophy | June 1, 2008According to the Daily Telegraph, the new chief executive of the Independent Schools Commission, a former Rear Admiral called Chris Parry, believes that "children will learn by downloading information directly into their brains within 30 years."
The article continues that Parry told the Times Educational Supplement: "It's a very short route from wireless technology to actually getting the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge."
Actually, it is highly unlikely that this will ever be a possibile. Downloading information to the brain, or, conversely, uploading information…