neuroscience
neurophilosophy | October 6, 2007As requested by Jenna, I've transcribed the lyrics to Pinky and the Brain's neuroanatomy song.
To my knowledge, the song is anatomically correct, although I think several terms, such as "neural node" and "limbic lobe", are now obselete. There's also one word that I can't quite make out.
neurophilosophy | October 5, 2007Philosophers Andrew Brook and Pete Mandik provide an uncorrected proof of their paper, The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement, which is to be published in a forthcoming special issue of Analyse & Kritic.
The paper gives an overview of how philosophy has increasingly been applied to neuroscience, and vice versa, over the past 25 years, during which time a small group of people from each discipline has become dedicated to contributing to the other.
The work of this neurophilosophy movement has involved integrating the philosophy of mind with the science of brain in order to gain a…
neurophilosophy | October 5, 2007Below is the PowerPoint I presented in the journal club this morning. It's a summary of a recent paper about laterality in the nematode worm:
Poole, R. J. & Hobert, O. (2006). Early embryonic programming of neuronal left/right asymmetry in C. elegans. Curr. Biol. 16: 2279-2292. [PDF]
I mentioned this study in yesterday's post about asymmetry in the nervous system, without going into too much detail. I'm sharing the presentation here because, although the paper is quite complex, the experiments described in it are very elegant.
When it comes to using PowerPoint, I'm a minimalist. I…
omnibrain | October 5, 2007Have you ever wanted a pre-frontal lobotomy?! I know I have!
Just think, by severing connections to your pre-frontal cortex (or just destroying the whole darn thing instead) you can have drastic personality changes! You could even skip that and go straight to mental retardation! Of course we're not sure here at Omni Brain what technique they're using up there in Canada for the lobotomies there are just so many great ones!
You could drill holes in people's heads and then inject alcohol, you could drill a hole in the head and just remove whatever brain matter happens to be sitting around…
neurophilosophy | October 4, 2007Most organisms are bilaterally symmetrical - that is, along the longitudinal axis, each half of the body is a mirror image of the other. There are, of course, deviations from this basic body plan, the most obvious being large internal organs such as the heart and liver, which, in mammals, are located on the left and right side of the body, respectively.
Despite some recent advances, very little is known about the developmental mechanisms by which the asymmetries in the nervous system are created. What is known comes mostly from studies of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, which has a…
clock | October 2, 2007Galilei kicked us out of the Center of the Universe.
Darwin kicked us off the Pinnacle of Creation
Freud kicked the Soul out of our Brains.
Few remain adherents of Geocentrism.
The opponents of evolution are legion and very vocal (in this country, and a couple of Middle Eastern ones), but they have been defeated so soundly so many times, they had to concede more and more ground, and though they are getting sneakier with time, their efforts are becoming more and more laughable and pitiful.
So, the last Big Fight will be about the Soul. The next area of science to experience a big frontal…
neurophilosophy | October 2, 2007A method for the preparation of rodent hippocampal slice cultures is now available at Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, a comprehensive online database of research techniques for the life sciences.
The full list of freely available protocols is here.
neurophilosophy | October 1, 2007
A team of researchers from Yamaguchi University in Japan has submitted a patent application for an implantable brain cooling device that would be used to develop a new treatment for severe cases of epilepsy.
Epilepsy is a condition that is characterised by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Many epileptics experience seizures, during which they convulse - sometimes violently - before losing consciousness. These seizures are caused by an "electrical storm" of abnormal neuronal activity that spreads from the locus (or point of origin) to adjacent tissue.
The brain cooling…
neurophilosophy | October 1, 2007For a limited time, the Nature Publishing Group is providing free access to recent research papers and reviews about neuroplasticity from 7 of its journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Molecular Psychiatry, the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism and Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews (the latest addition to the NPG portfolio).
Below is a selection from the 16 articles that are available:
McClung, C. A. & Nestler, E. J. (2007). Neuroplasticity mediated by altered gene expression. Neuropsychopharm. Rev. doi: 10.1038/sj.npp.1301544. [Abstract/Full text/PDF]
Citri, A. &…
j7uy5 | October 1, 2007Actually, the full headline is:
href="http://www.huliq.com/36055/genetic-test-for-suicidal-ideation-in-patients-using-antidepressant-drugs%20">Genetic
test for suicidal ideation in patients using antidepressant drugs.
A company called Neuromark has made available a genetic test that it
claims can identify persons who would have an increased risk for
suicide after starting an antidepressant medication. They call
the test Mark-C™. It is based upon the finding that
persons with certain genetic markers seem to be at increased risk for
having thoughts of suicide after they start taking an…
neurophilosophy | September 29, 2007Ed Boyden, leader of the Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Group at MIT, has just started a blog.
I wrote about some of Boyden's work earlier this year. His is one of several groups that have used a light-sensitive bacterial protein called channelrhodopsin to develop an "optical switch" that can activate or inhibit neurons.
omnibrain | September 28, 2007Mind Hacks has alerted us to some amazing engineering from Harvard University:
A team from Harvard Medical School are interested in how smoked marijuana affects the brain, but have come to the inevitable conclusion that it's actually quite hard smoking a joint when you're lying on your back being brain scanned.
So the research team put their heads together (!), and realised they needed to design a bong - a water pipe for smoking marijuana - safe to use in an MRI scanner.
This isn't a trivial task. Apart from being free of metal parts that could be affected by the MRI scanner's strong magnet,…
omnibrain | September 28, 2007Ok... maybe not for real reals but there are some brain eating amoebas taking over the world. Ok maybe they're not taking over the world but they really (for real this time!) have killed a few people.
According to the AP:
A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.
Panic!!! Don't swim in lakes! You…
neurophilosophy | September 28, 2007At Wired, filmmaker Ridley Scott discusses the forthcoming remastered final cut of Blade Runner. This classic 1982 film depicts a dystopian futuristic society based on artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, and was recently voted as the best science fiction film ever made by 60 top scientists.
The interview includes quotes about the film from various people, including this one, in which Craig Venter, the billionaire geneticist who has just had his genome published, gives his views on cognitive enhancement:
The movie has an underlying assumption that I just don't relate to: that…
grrlscientist | September 27, 2007tags: book review, neuroscience, neurobiology, body maps, Sandra Blakeslee, Matthew Blakeslee
As a biologist who reads both widely and deeply about a number of scientific topics, it is very rare when I read a popular book that adds depth and nuance to my understanding of a biological phenomenon, but The Body Has a Mind of Its Own By Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee (NYC: Random House; 2007) is that book. This quiet but well-written book explores the interconnection between the environment, the body and the brain; discusses that the body is more just than a container for the brain and a…
neurophilosophy | September 26, 2007In the Annals of Neurology, a team of physicians, led by Tony Ro of the Department of Psychology at Rice University in Houston, Texas, report the unusual case of a woman who began to feel sounds following a stroke
The woman, a 36-year-old professor, suffered a rare type of cerebrovascular accident: a lacunar infarct, in which a small blood vessel deep within the brain became blocked. This led to damage in the ventrolateral thalamic nucleus (VL) on the right side of her brain.
When first examined, some 9 months after her stroke, the woman reported significant changes in her sensations and…
neurophilosophy | September 25, 2007The Learner.org website has a large collection of video teaching modules for high school, college and adult students, including modules on the brain and mind.
The Brain module has 32 film clips, ranging in length from 5-20 minutes. They include films about Phineas Gage, the visual system, sensori-motor integration, the role of synaptic plasticity in learning, the brain's language centres and neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric conditions.
The 35 videos in the Mind module include films on brain mechanisms of pleasure and addiction, the role of the frontal lobes in cognition and awareness…
neurophilosophy | September 24, 2007
Echolocation - or biological sonar - can be thought of as an auditory imaging system that is used by organisms in environments where vision is ineffective. It involves the emission of vocalizations by the animal, and the detection of the echoes of those sounds, which are used to produce three-dimensional information about the environment.
Echolocating organisms understand the world largely via the interpretation of the acoustic reflections, and possess specialized neural circuitry that performs the computations necessary for the perceptual organization of auditory information. This…
neurophilosophy | September 24, 2007Grrl Scientist has just posted the 32nd edition of Encephalon at Living the Scientific Life. As usual, the carnival includes entries from the best neuroscience and psychology blogs on the web.
The next edition of Encephalon will be hosted at GNIF Brain Blogger on October 8th. If you'd like to contribute, send permalinks to your blog posts to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com, or use this submission form.