neuroscience
omnibrain | December 10, 2007
Yeah you heard me right... there is no good reason why Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, or any of the other tabloid celebs are so paid attention to. They contribute nothing to society - and they aren't even that attractive. Dr Torkel Klingberg and Fiona McNab have come up with a potential explanation as to why these celebrity vampires have come to take over the press - inability to filter out irrelevant stimuli. Basically... the U.S. is undergoing a pervasive bout of ADHD.
Here's some of the study details from BBC news (which of course overblows the significance of this research just like I…
neurophilosophy | December 8, 2007About 2 years ago, researchers reported the discovery of the so-called "Halle Berry cell" in the human brain. This, and similar cells which respond selectively to other well-known celebrities, famous landmarks or categories of objects are located on the medial surface of the temporal lobe.
The same group of researchers now report that they can decode the activity of these cells to predict what people are seeing. The ability to decode this neural activity will prove to be very useful in the development of brain-computer interfaces for amputees and paralyzed patients.
The cells in question were…
neurophilosophy | December 8, 2007Jennifer writes to point out a documentary about neuroplasticity which is being aired on PBS this month. Follow the link for a 3-minute preview, which features Michael Merzenich.
clock | December 6, 2007Hmm, I did not know this - apparently the left hemisphere of the human brain falls asleep first, and the right one a little bit later in most people.
I wonder if that has any connection with the reason we tend to focus on the right side of the face when someone is talking to us - checking the vigilance/sleepiness state of the person?
neurophilosophy | December 4, 2007
An article in the NY Times discusses the work of Michael Marmor, a professor of ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine who has created a computer simulation of how eye diseases such as macular degeneration and cataracts have affected the painting styles of a number of impressionist artists.
Claude Monet, for example, was known to have suffered from slowly progressive cataracts. Although diagnosed in 1912, problems with his vision began about 7 years earlier, when Monet, who was then 65, began to complain of changes in his perception of colour:
...colors no longer had the same intensity…
neurophilosophy | December 3, 2007The 37th edition of Encephalon, hosted by Bora at A Blog Around the Clock, includes posts from students in PZ's neurobiology class, as well as the first piece of coursework for my M.Sc., an essay on axon guidance which I posted in four parts while I was away in Egypt.
purepedantry | December 3, 2007
Spence et al. wanted to test the use of fMRI for lie detection. In order to do so, they found a subject who had been convicted for child molestation because she has Munchausen's syndrome by proxy.
There are two important parts of background to this piece.
First, Munchausen's syndrome by proxy (MBP) is a disease (or syndrome or whatever you want to call it) where the individual -- nearly always a mother -- deliberately does things to their child in order to get attention from medical professionals. This contrasts with plain old (if anything in this can be called plain old) Munchausen's…
clock | December 3, 2007It's been a long time since I last hosted a carnival, but who could resist Mo when he asked so nicely if I would be interested in hosting Encephalon? Of course I will! And here it is and I hope you enjoy it, with a great diversity of posts, linked in the order I received them:
GrrlScientist of Living the Scientific Life invites us all to the Mouse Party to see the difference between 'your brain' and 'your brain on drugs'.
Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science looks at the recent study on the neurobiology of aesthetics: Brain of the beholder - the neuroscience of beauty in sculpture.
Dr. Deb…
neurophilosophy | December 1, 2007
Using sophisticated techniques to silence or activate specific neurons, researchers from Stanford University have established that a simple behaviour used by fruit fly larvae to evade attack from parasitic wasps is triggered by a type of sensory neuron that is similar to the neurons which respond to painful stimuli in mammals.
Although little is known about the somatosensory system of fruit flies, several lines of evidence have implicated sensory cells called multidendritic neurons as nociceptors (cells that are responsive to noxious chemical, mechanical or thermal stimuli).
First, with…
neurophilosophy | November 30, 2007
This brain map comes from The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man (1912), by the obscure mystical philosopher Alesha Sivartha, who is sometimes referred to as a "grandfather of the new-age movement".
The map is of particular interest, as it approaches modern neurology but still retains a few elements of phrenology, and is therefore a transition between the two. (Click on the image for a larger version.)
It is based on the experiments of the pioneering Scottish neurologist David Ferrier, who functionally mapped the sensory and motor cortices by lesion studies and…
neurophilosophy | November 30, 2007
Emotional Systems is the inaugural exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Centre La Strozzina at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy. It begins tomorrow and runs until 3rd February, 2008.
The...installation...[includes] an exhibition, a publication and a programme of lectures designed to investigate the topic of emotions, proposing a reinterpretation of the correlation between the contemporary artist, the work of art and the user, in the light of the latest discoveries in the neurological sciences about the human brain and its effects on the emotions.
The artists in the…
j7uy5 | November 29, 2007
href="http://www.researchblogging.org/">A great
deal of evidence has accumulated that there is a problem with
regulation of cortisol levels in persons with posttraumatic stress
disorder. Several years ago, it
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/157/8/1252">was
demonstrated that adult offspring of persons with PTSD had
lower circulating cortisol than others, and it appeared that the lower
cortisol was a risk factor for the development of PTSD.
Now, it has been shown that, at least in some persons, lower cortisol
levels can be seen in infant offspring of patients…
neurophilosophy | November 29, 2007
The image on the right is a supercomputer simulation of the microcircuitry found within a column from the neocortex of the rat brain.
The simulation is a tour de force of computational neuroscience: a single column is a highly complex structure, containing approximately 10,000 neurons and 30 million synapses, and the image is based on 15 years' worth of research into the morphology of many different cell types in the rat cortex, and the unique repertoire of receptors and ion channels expressed by each, as well as their connectivity and electrophysiological properties.
Nevertheless, this is…
neurophilosophy | November 28, 2007Neurologist and neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran is giving a talk at the Royal Society in London tonight. Entitled Nature and nurture in brain function: clues from synesthesia and phantom limbs, the talk begins at 6.30pm GMT.
The lecture is free and does not require a ticket or advance booking, so if you're in London it's well worth attending. If you can't make it, the talk will be webcast live. I'll be there, as Ramachandran has been somewhat of an inspiration to me.
[Thanks Vaughan]
neurophilosophy | November 27, 2007
This image of the brainstem of a Brainbow mouse, by Jean Livet of Harvard University, has just been awarded 1st prize in the 2007 Olympus Bioscapes International Digital Imaging Competition.
neurophilosophy | November 27, 2007A lengthy article in last weekend's Washington Post Magazine discusses the work of Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) who has almost completed the first phase of a clinical study into the use of ecstasy as a therapeutic tool for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ecstasy (MDMA, or 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) is a psychedelic and a stimulant which acts by inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin, and, to a lesser extent, of dopamine and noradrenaline. It is illegal in most countries (it is classified as a Class A drug in the U.K. and a…
j7uy5 | November 26, 2007Using my new Firefox search box to search ScienceBlogs, I
learned that
href="http://www.nursece.com/onlinecourses/9012.html" rel="tag">Fetal
Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
href="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/02/children_of_alcoholics_have_re.php">retards
neural growth,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/12/fetal_alcohol_syndrome_affects.php">screws
up the circadian clock, is the
href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/02/everything_i_know_about_the_dangers_of_d_1.php">subject
of moralistic cartoons, and that it
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/…
j7uy5 | November 25, 2007
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agomelatine" rel="tag">Agomelatine
is a new chemical entity that is nearing approval for treatment of
depression. It was developed by
href="http://www.servier.co.uk/aboutus/history.asp" rel="tag">Servier
Laboratories; they have entered into an agreement with
href="http://www.novartis.com/" rel="tag">Novartis
for commercialization of the product (
href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/85521.php"
rel="tag">Valdoxan®).
This represents a new approach to the pharmaceutical treatment of
depression. The putative mechanism of action…
sb admin | November 23, 2007This Friday is a holiday (in America, at least) and what's better on a holiday than a rerun? Yay for reruns. So, I've written about the Amygdaloids before, but here's an introduction video in case you didn't see it (or want to enjoy it again). Also, this band of rockin' cognitive scientists has a CD available now.
The Amygdaloids: Live concert at Union Hall
Preview their new CD here (buy it here) alongside descriptions of each brain-based song.
"Past lovers often leave strong and enduring memories. 'A Trace' tells a story about this. Memory researchers in the know will figure out that the…
neurophilosophy | November 22, 2007[Introduction|Part 2|Part 3]
The three studies discussed here make important contributions to our understanding of axon guidance. Lopez-Bendito et al describe a novel guidance mechanism involving tangentially migrating GABAergic interneurons. These cells migrate ventrally from the LGE to form a permissive corridor through the MGE, a region that is otherwise non-permissive for TCAs.
The corridor is fully formed by the time TCAs reach the ventral aspect of the MGE. This is therefore a means by which the presentation of guidance cues can be regulated both spatially and temporally. This may be…