neuroscience
neurophilosophy | August 13, 2007After writing this recent post about Fyodor Dostoyevsky's epilepsy, I decided it was time I re-read one of the great author's novels, and chose The Idiot, because it contains Dostoyevsky's most vivid descriptions of the epileptic aura. (It is widely believed that Dostoyevsky based the protagonist, Prince Myshkin, on himself.) I'm reading a Penguin Classics edition of the book, which was translated by David McDuff, and was first published in 2004.
In The Idiot, Myshkin's epilepsy is first mentioned in chapter one. In the online edition of the book, which I quoted in the post about…
neurophilosophy | August 13, 2007 Head over to Memoirs of a Postgrad for the 29th edition of Encephalon.
The 30th edition will be hosted at Neurofuture on 27th August. If you'd like to contribute, please email permalinks to your neuroscience/ psychology blog posts to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com, or use this submission form.
neurophilosophy | August 12, 2007 There's an interesting case study in The Lancet, about a woman who began hearing voices with speech impairments following a bicycle accident.
The 63-year-old woman was treated at the University Hospital of Psychiatry in Bern, Switzerland, after falling from her bicycle and hitting her head. Following the accident, she suffered a brain hemorrhage and lost consciousness.
Upon her arrival at the hospital, it was found that the woman had an aneurysm (a blood-filled dilation of a blood vessel in the brain). This was treated, and a craniotomy was performed to after tests showed damage in the…
clock | August 11, 2007I have linked to and posted pictures of Eva Vertes from SciFoo before and you may ask: "Who is she? Why was she invited there?" The Wikipedia page I linked to earlier is a short stub and full of errors. So, to make it clear, see this page as well as comments on this talk she gave two years ago when she was 17:
j7uy5 | August 10, 2007A
while back, Shelly wrote a nice introduction to
title="Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder">ADHD
at
Retrospectacle:
href="http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/07/the_neuroscience_of_adhd_1.php">The
Neuroscience of ADHD. Read that first, for
background, then consider this to be a minor addendum. There
are still people who believe that
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention-deficit_hyperactivity_disorder"
rel="tag">ADHD is not real. This is a
good example of the scientific findings to the contrary. It
is an open-access article (there is one every
month)…
neurophilosophy | August 9, 2007
Slate Magazine has a report from the DARPATech conference, containing details of the contraptions under development by those mad Pentagon scientists, including the robotic surgeon trauma pod and this prosthetic arm:
At one display area, a pair of armless volunteers and a young veteran missing his right hand demonstrate some fancy new models. We don't yet have bionic arms that hook up directly to the cortex, but one machine uses electrical signals from the muscle tissue remaining in a patient's stump to drive a mechanical hand: After extended training, the veteran could open and close his…
neurophilosophy | August 9, 2007
I've just received a copy of Best of the Brain from Scientific American, courtesy of the publishers, Dana Press.
Best of the Brain is fantastic a collection of essays from SciAm and SciAm Mind, by leading neuroscientists, such as Antonio Damasio and Eric Kandel, and top science writers like Carl Zimmer.
The essays provide a fantastic summary of current thinking and research in a wide variety of areas, from addiction, mental illness and consciousness to brain-computer interfaces and neuromorphic microchips.
The book will be published in the U. K. on 20th August. The full contents, and…
neurophilosophy | August 8, 2007 Alzheimer's is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterised by the formation of senile plaques consisting of amyloid-beta protein. The molecular genetic basis of Alzheimer's is very complex. Amyloid-beta is a toxic protein fragment produced by abnormal processing of amyloid precursor protein (APP), which accumulates to form the insoluble plaques found within cells. (This occurs by a seeding mechanism similar to that of prion proteins.)
A new study, by researchers at UCL's Institute of Ophthalmology, in collaboration with French and Italian colleagues, now confirms the role of…
neurophilosophy | August 8, 2007Can single neurons be replaced by artificial ones, perhaps nano-bots
of some kind?
No. Artificial neurons have not been developed.
Could a cluster of neurons be replaced by an artificial cluster?
No, but devices such as cochlear implants and the electrode arrays used for deep brain stimulation can perform the functions of groups of neurons.
...or perhaps hooked up to a computer which
replicates their function?
Some research groups have developed neuron-semiconductor interfaces which can communicate with neurons bidirectionally (i.e. artificial synapses). So, information from spontaneously-…
neurophilosophy | August 7, 2007Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is said to be one of the signature injuries of the conflict in Iraq, and accounts for a larger proportion of troop casualties than it has in previous wars fought by the United States. According to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, the U. S. military formally diagnosed 2,121 cases of TBI between October 2001 and January 2007.
The incidence of TBI among troops may actually be much higher than these official statistics suggest, largely because of the increasing use of the signature weapon of the Iraq war: the improvised explosive device (IED).…
purepedantry | August 7, 2007The SciAm blog has a great discussion on current research into the neuroscience of morals. Two cool observations. First, while people tend to agree with the calculus of utilitarian moral judgments, they tend to reject them. Would you kill one person to save twenty? Even if you can morally justify that exchange, you are decidedly reluctant to do it. Second, this reluctance to make utilitarian moral judgments is neurologically based in the sense that if you lose a certain part of your brain (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) you are more likely to accept this calculus.
Go check it out.
I…
neurophilosophy | August 6, 2007
It is well known that traumatic memories, or those with other emotional significance, are more persistent than trivial or mundane ones. The death of a loved one, for example, is far more readily recalled than an uneventful car journey to work.
Evolutionarily, enhanced memory of a highly emotional event - say, a situation when one's life is in danger - is an advantage, because that information will be potentially life-saving if that situation is encountered again. But persistent memories of such events can have adverse effects, as they can lead to conditions such as post-traumatic stress…
neurophilosophy | August 6, 2007Here are 5 short clips from a film called The Squid and its Giant Nerve Fiber, which was made at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the 1970s. One of the clips includes footage of Alan Hodgkin performing patch voltage clamp experiments on the squid axon.
Hodgkin, together with Andrew Huxley, used the voltage clamp technique to elucidate the mechanism of the action potential. The pair were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1963 for their work.
(Via Pharyngula.)
neurophilosophy | August 5, 2007From Nature:
Catherine Dulac and her colleagues at Harvard University genetically engineered female mice to lack a gene called TRPC2. This gene is essential for the functioning of a pheromone-sensing organ in the nose called the vomeronasal organ.
Without the gene, female mice acted exactly like males - even towards male mice - complete with mounting, pelvic thrusts and the ultrasound calls that males use to attract a mate.
Watch the film clip below.
Related:
Alpha male pheromone stimulates neurogenesis in the female brain
j7uy5 | August 5, 2007At
least in mice, that is: rendering the
href="http://neuro.fsu.edu/%7Emmered/index.htm">vomeronasal
organ inactive by deleting the gene
href="http://www.informatics.jax.org/searches/accession_report.cgi?id=MGI%3A109527">TRPC2
(transient receptor potential cation channel, subfamily C, member 2)
results in profound behavioral changes. This was reported on Nature
News:
href="http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070730/full/070730-13.html">Nose
goes, gender bends. They include a video (link
below the fold) of mouse sexual behavior (which may not be safe for
work, depending on the…
neurophilosophy | August 4, 2007
Resident ScienceBlogs psychiatrist Joseph has found some interesting papers about various types of cognition-induced epilepsy, including this one from the Hong Kong Medical Journal:
Mah-jong induced seizures: case reports and review of twenty-three patients.
Chang, R. S. K., et al.
'Mah-jong epilepsy' is a rare reflex epilepsy syndrome, manifesting as recurrent epileptic seizures triggered by either playing or just watching mah-jong. We present three patients with this condition and review all the reported cases. Mah-jong-induced seizures can be considered a subtype of…
j7uy5 | August 4, 2007An
article in the Honk Kong Medical Journal reports on a seried of cases
of Mah-jong Epilepsy. This is something I had not heard of
before: it is considered a subtype of cognition-induced epilepsy.
rev="review" href="http://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v13n4/314.htm">Mah-jong-induced
seizures: case reports and review of twenty-three patients
Richard SK Chang, Raymond TF Cheung, SL Ho, Windsor Mak
Department of Medicine, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong
Hong Kong Med J 2007;13:314-8
'Mah-jong epilepsy' is a rare reflex epilepsy syndrome, manifesting as
recurrent epileptic seizures triggered…
neurophilosophy | August 3, 2007In the English language, the term "bird brain" is often used in reference to intellectually challenged individuals. This is, of course, based on the notion that birds are dim-witted creatures whose behaviour is largely based on instinct.
The main assumption is that a six-layered neocortex, like that of humans, is a prerequisite for anything that might be classed as intelligent, and even ornithologists have generally believed that, because they have a "smooth" brain, birds aren't too clever.
However, it has in recent years become clear that we have grossly underestimated the cognitive…
neurophilosophy | August 2, 2007
Researchers report in today's issue of Nature that they have improved brain function in a minimally conscious patient by implanting electrodes into his brain.
Schiff et al used deep brain stimulation (DBS), an experimental surgical technique that has previously been used to treat Parkinson's Disease and depression, to increase the level of arousal and motor control in the patient, who had been in a minimally conscious state for more than 6 years.
Neurologists define disorders of consciousness according to specific criteria based on behavioural responses. According to these criteria…
j7uy5 | August 2, 2007
title="Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences">PNAS
has an open-access article describing the current state of knowledge of
the genetics of
rel="tag">autism. The authors looked at
information from the Autism
Genetic Resource Exchange and two other databases; one from
the University of Michigan, the other from the
href="http://www.iancommunity.org/">Interactive Autism
Network (IAN) Research Database. Their findings
indicated that most cases of autism can be explained by one of two
mechanisms. The concluded that most cases arise from
spontaneous mutations, with a…