neuroscience
neurophilosophy | September 8, 2007
Bill Scott uses electroencephalogram (EEG) data to create computer-generated images like this one.
(Via Dr. Karen)
neurophilosophy | September 8, 2007Spiders make my skin crawl, but it's always amazed me that, despite being mechanical and grotesque, they produce silk, which is not only one of nature's finest materials, but also one of the lightest and strongest.
The creator of the fictional superhero Spiderman wasn't too far off the mark when he decided that the character would have the ability to spin webs from his hands, because it is now known at least one species of spider - the Costa Rican zebra tarantula (Aphonopelma seemanni) - can secrete silk from its feet.
Stanislav Gorb and his colleagues filmed the spiders as they crawled…
omnibrain | September 7, 2007A boingboing reader visited Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus recently and discovered some absolutely crazy dessert delivery devices... Clown and Horse Brains!
If anyone happens to take their kids to Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus we here at Omni Brain would be eternally grateful if you'd buy us one of the clown heads! (You don't have to send along the accompanying snow cone - the FBI or whoever might think it's some sort of terror device)
clock | September 6, 2007Over the past several months, Alvaro of SharpBrains blog interviewed eleven neuroscientists on the topic of the ability to use various techniques to affect the way our brains function - brain training. He has now put together a collection of key quotes from the eleven interviews, each quote linking to the interview itself. Interesting reading on the cutting edge of neuroscience.
neurophilosophy | September 6, 2007Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated a device which can control the movements of a wheelchair when its operator thinks of specific words.
The Audeo is a human-computer interface consisting of a neckband containing sensors which detect the electrical signals sent by the brain to the muscles in the larynx. The signals are transmitted wirelessly to a computer, which decodes them and matches them to pre-programmed signals before sending them to the wheelchair.
The Audeo was developed by Michael Callahan and Thomas Coleman, who together set up…
neurophilosophy | September 6, 2007Susan Greenfield, one of the U.K.'s most prominent neuroscientists, has just launched a brain-training computer program called MindFit.
The software was developed by a company called MindWeavers, for which Greenfield, and David Moore, the director of the MRC Institute for Hearing Research, are scientific officers.
In this BBC news story, Greenfield is quoted as saying that "There is now good scientific evidence to show that exercising the brain can slow, delay and protect against age-related decline."
That may be the case, but why spend good money on computer games when free Soduko…
neurophilosophy | September 6, 2007
Bill Choisser (left) has written an online book called Face Blind!, where he describes his experiences of prosopagnosia, a neurological condition in which the ability to recognize faces is impaired.
In extreme cases, prosopagnostics are unable to recognize family members, and even their own face.
Prosopagnosia (commonly known as face blindness), often occurs as a result of damage to a region of the brain called the fusiform gyrus, located near the inferior (lower) surface of the temporal lobe at the midline. The damage may be due to head injury, stroke, or various neurodegenerative…
neurophilosophy | September 6, 2007Here are a handful of new blogs I've just found:
Neurofeedback on the Brain
Mind Modulations
Neuromod Blog
Gray Matters
Cognitive Neuroscience Review
And here are two new blogs by philosophers of mind:
The IP Blog
Colin McGinn
neurophilosophy | September 6, 2007Olfaction (smell) is the most mysterious of senses, and is wrongly regarded as insignificant by most people. The sense of taste, for example, consists in large part of smell - try holding your nose next time you eat - and the recent identification of putative pheromone receptors in humans suggests that olfaction affects behaviour in as yet unknown ways.
The human nose, while not as sensitive as, say, that of a dog, can still detect very low concentrations of odorant molecules as they diffuse through the air. The initial event in the process of olfaction is the recognition of an odorant…
neurophilosophy | September 5, 2007Mild cognitive impairment affects many cognitive functions, particularly memory. People with mild cognitive impairment are 3-4 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's Disease; hence, it is regarded as a transition stage between normal age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer's Disease.
Researchers Emory University School of Medicine and Rush University Medical Center in Chicago now report that reduced levels of a receptor found in nerve cells is associated with the onset of mild cognitive impairment. A strong correlation between receptor levels and cognitive performance was also found.…
neurophilosophy | September 4, 2007
In the 1880s, Francis Galton described a condition in which "persons...almost invariably think of numerals in visual imagery." This "peculiar habit of mind" is today called synaesthesia, and Galton's description clearly defines this condition as one in which stimuli of one sensory modality elicit sensations in another of the senses.
There are several different kinds of synaesthesia, and the condition is now known to be far more common than was previously thought. Galton was describing a specific type of synaesthesia, called grapheme-colour synaesthesia, in which printed numbers or letters…
j7uy5 | September 4, 2007In the 1950's, a new class of antipsychotic drugs was
discovered: the
antipsychotics.
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpromazine" rel="tag">Chlorpromazine
(Thorazine®) was the first.
By the 1970's, several related compounds had been discovered.
In
1976, it was learned that there is a direct linear relationship between
the strength with with the compounds bind at the dopamine D2 receptor,
and the clinical potency of the drug.
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">[Figure from Seeman,
Molecular Psychiatry (1998)3, 123-124]
The discovery of this direct relationship was…
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007 The current issue of Chemical & Engineering News contains a series of articles by Sophie L. Rovner on memory:
Hold that thought is a comprehensive piece about what is known of the cellular and biochemical bases of memory formation.
Molecules for memory discusses the ethical issues regarding memory-enhancing drugs being developed by several pharmaceuticals companies.
The well-endowed mind considers what studies of knockout mice tell us about variations in human memory performance.
Memory at its worst looks at how highly emotional memories can lead to post-traumatic stress…
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007
The question of how birds migrate long distances has long baffled researchers, and there are various hypotheses about which navigational cues birds use when migrating. Over the years, it has been suggested that migrating birds use smell, visual cues such as the position of the sun, the geomagnetic field, or a combination of these. It is, for example, known that induced magnetic fields and electrical storms disrupt the navigational abilities of homing pigeons, but exactly how the birds detect, perceive and interpret a magnetic field remains a mystery.
A recent study led by Todd Dennis, of…
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007French researchers have demonstrated for the first time that embryonic cells grafted into the brains of mice with damaged motor cortices can re-establish damaged connections precisely, so that disrupted neural circuitry is reconstructed.
The findings raise the possibility that cell-based therapies could be used to repair the damage that occurs with brain injury, or as a result of various neurodegenerative diseases.
Researchers have experimented with cell transplantation since the early 1970s, particularly to try and develop therapies for Parkinson's Disease. But they have always faced the…
neurophilosophy | September 1, 2007
Yesterday I wrote about the use of microfluidics chips for imaging neuronal activity and the behaviour correlated with it in the nematode worm C. elegans, without going into too much detail about exactly what microfluidics is.
Microfluidics is a multidisciplinary field - a combination of chemistry, physics, engineering and biotechnology - which involves the manufacture of devices that contain sub-millimeter-sized channels and which can be used to control the movements of miniscule amounts of fluids (nano-, or even picoliters).
Starting in the 1990s, microfluidics began to revolutionize…
neurophilosophy | August 31, 2007
Update: Below are the lyrics for the song.
Verse 1:
Neocortex, frontal lobe,
Brain stem, brain stem,
Hippocampus, neural node,
Right hemisphere,
Pons and cortex visual,
Brain stem, brain stem,
Sylvian fissure, pineal,
Left hemisphere,
Cerebellum left, cerebellum right,
Synapse, hypothalamus,
Striatum, dendrite.
Verse 2:
Axon fibres, matter gray,
Brain stem, brain stem,
Central tegmental pathway,
Temporal lobe,
White ---?--- matter, forebrain, skull,
Brain stem, brain stem,
Central fissure, cord spinal,
Par-ie-tal,
Pia mater, meningeal vein,…
neurophilosophy | August 31, 2007A fundamental question for neuroscientists is how the activity in neuronal circuits generates behaviour. The nematode worm Caenhorhabditis elegans is an excellent model organism for studying the neural basis of behaviour, because it is small, transparent, and has a simple nervous system consisting of only 302 neurons.
Typically, an organic glue is used to permanently immobilize the worm on an agar plate, and specific cells of the nervous system are stimulated with microelectrodes. This method has its limitations, however. As it is restricted, the worm's muscles and nervous system cannot…
cortex | August 31, 2007A few weeks ago, I put up a post on the neuroscience of subprime mortgages. A significant percentage of subprime loans get customers by advertising low introductory teaser rates, which trick the brain into making an irrational decision. In essence, we are duped into using our short-sighted emotional mind to make a long-term financial decision.
Look, for example, at the popular 2/28 loan, which consists of a low, fixed-interest rate for the first two years and a much higher, adjustable rate for the next twenty-eight. Most people taking out a 2/28 loan can't afford the higher interest rates…
cortex | August 31, 2007Christopher Vrountas, of Andover, sent in a very astute letter to the Boston Globe in response to my recent article on dopamine and gambling:
I read Jonah Lehrer's article "Your brain on gambling" (Ideas, Aug. 19), about how gambling hijacks the brain's pleasure centers. The gambler's brain remembers and desperately seeks a repeat of unexpected and unlikely pleasure events, such as winning a slot machine jackpot. I was struck by how the description of such an addictive obsession fit the brain of the typically hopeless Red Sox fan. We remember the thrill of "Impossible Dream" victories and…