neuroscience
clock | December 11, 2006The Synapse #13 is up on Neurocontrarian. Go take a look.
This will be the last edition of The Synapse. The two neuro-carnivals are going to fuse into one, so in the future, only submit your entries to Encephalon.
cortex | December 5, 2006Good question. There appears to be no single cause, although there are several factors that put Boston-area Puerto Ricans at higher risk for depression, including high rates of obesity and diabetes. But some causes of the depressive epidemic might prove harder to treat:
Their depression, the surveyed Puerto Ricans said, was often fueled by the sight of relatives departing Boston for warmer climes.
"They constantly referred to their social networks being undermined by people picking up and leaving," said Northeastern researcher Luis Falcón .
cortex | December 5, 2006This is the ultimate placebo effect:
Pseudocyesis, or false pregnancy, is rare, occurring at a rate of 1 to 6 for every 22,000 births. Though scientists are still largely baffled about what causes it in humans, recent case studies and studies of similar conditions in animals are beginning to provide insight, exploring the role of hormones and psychology.
Those who suffer from the disorder present a constellation of symptoms that mystify even seasoned practitioners. Not only do they fervently believe they are pregnant, but they also have bona fide symptoms to back up their claims, like…
cortex | December 4, 2006Studio 360, a radio show on NPR (no affilation with Aaron Sorkin), did a show this week on the "Science of Creativity". The show featured a few nice segments - I especially enjoyed the riff on mental illness and artistic genius (Virginia Woolf wasn't the only one) - but I kept on waiting for the show to admit that science knows virtually nothing about human creativity. We don't know why it exists, or where it comes from, or how it works.
But instead of admitting that the imagination remains totally ineffable, the show discussed silly fMRI studies connecting artistic creativity to increased…
purepedantry | November 27, 2006Mind Hacks covers an article in the Financial Times about delusions and how brain damage affects cognition:
Some researchers have argued that this is the basis of a similarly curious syndrome, known as Capgras delusion, where someone believes that their friend, spouse or relative has been replaced by a near-identical looking impostor.
In Capgras delusion, it is thought that the same problem with automatic emotional response is present, but that the person attributes the problem to external changes in the world ("it's something to do with my wife...") and reasoning problems lead to the…
cortex | November 27, 2006The power of self-fulfilling prophesies:
According to Vietnamese astrology, your year of birth shapes your chances in life. Some years are good luck, others are bad luck, and your prospects for health and professional success are dim if you happen to be born in the wrong year. A new study sponsored by The World Bank seems to offer empirical support for this belief: it finds that Vietnamese chilren born in auspicious years enjoy better health and higher education levels than those born in unlucky years. (This finding holds true even within families - children born in lucky years are healthier…
purepedantry | November 24, 2006If you remember back from when I was at the Society for Neuroscience, I saw a talk by Bruce Appel where he showed videos of oligodendrocytes migrating and myelinating in the zebrafish.
Oligodendrocytes are the myelin forming cell in the central nervous system of vertebrates -- the cells that coat axons in a sheet of fat called myelin that helps the axons conduct action potentials more quickly. At a point in oligodendrocyte development the oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) have to migrate out from the ventral part of the spine to cover the axons in the spinal cord. However, this…
cortex | November 24, 2006Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday with a regrettable meat. Turkey is the sawdust of protein, a big bird with a bad breast-to-leg ratio, which means that you have to dry out the breast before you can fully cook the leg. (And yes, I've tried every foil trick in the book.)
But why is turkey so dry? No matter how much butter I stuff under the skin, and slather into the open cavity, and baste over the the breast, the meat ends up requiring generous servings of cranberry sauce and gravy just to become palatable. Like all scientifically-minded cooks, I directed these important questions to Harold…
cortex | November 22, 2006Over at The American Scene, Ross Douthat argues that scientists should try treating our spiritual experiences of the divine as literal events. In other words, the crazy people who see God might not be crazy:
Atheistically-inclined scientists and philosophers have all manner of complicated theories about how religious experience and beliefs sprang up in homo sapiens - maybe it's a useful mutation, maybe it's an accidental byproduct of a useful mutation, etc. Some of these theories feel like so much hand-waving, but some are at least plausible. On the other hand, the eye exists because of…
purepedantry | November 20, 2006Women are more susceptible to Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) even when the type of the stressful event is controlled for:
Males experience more traumatic events on average than do females, yet females are more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), according to a review of 25 years of research reported in the November issue of Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association (APA).
The authors reviewed 290 studies conducted between 1980 and 2005 to determine who is more at risk for potentially traumatic events (PTE) and…
neurotopia | November 19, 2006Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) refers to a condition where recurrent seizures arise in the temporal lobe of the brain. This condition is seen in humans and animals. Often, TLE arises following a neural insult such as head trauma or tumor, but can also be triggered by infection. These febrile seizures are often seen in children under the age of five, and subsequent scans can show atrophy of temporal lobe structures such as the hippocampus. The hippocampus is highly interconnected with other temporal lobe structures, so a seizure that originates from or propagates through the hippocampus is…
cortex | November 17, 2006I've got a short essay on the Nintendo Wii, William James and Antonio Damasio over at seedmagazine.com. It's fun for the whole family. (And don't believe the Sony Playstation 3 hype, unless you really care about how realistically your basketball players sweat. The Wii is a much cooler system.)
This is the irony of the Wii: although it can't compete with the visual realism of Sony and Microsoft, it ends up feeling much more realistic. When I was testing out the Wii, I was surprised by how the new controller completely altered my gaming experience. Because my body was forced to move as if I…
cortex | November 17, 2006Milton Friedman was a magnificent economist, and I'll defer to other economists to sing his praises. But it's worth noting that, besides being an evangelical for free-markets, he was also a proponent of the rational-agent model. Those two facts aren't a coincidence. Friedman firmly believed that, when left alone, people will intelligently act in their own best interest, and that the market will coordinate their actions to produce outcomes beneficial for all. The wisdom of crowds depends upon the rational wisdom of the individual.
Of course, prospect theory, behavioral economics, neuroscience…
purepedantry | November 13, 2006I see that Simon Baron-Cohen has a piece in Seed about his theory of autism. I am really skeptical of many of his arguments related to autism, so I thought I would discuss a couple of them. Here is his core argument:
So what has all of this got to do with autism? We know that autism runs in families, and that if a child with autism is a twin, the chances of the other twin also having autism is much higher if the twins are identical. This tells us that genes are likely to be an important part of the explanation, and that one should look at the parents of children with autism for clues.…
clock | November 12, 2006The Synapse #11 is up on Developing Intelligence. As expected, I am most excited about this post on Mouse Trap.
cortex | November 10, 2006Ogi Ogas is a Ph.D candidate in neuroscience at Boston University. He was also a contestant on Who Wants to Be A Millionare, where he used his knowledge of neuroscience to win a cool $500,000. Learn about how he did it.
If you're a true game show fanatic, then you might be interested in learning about the optimal strategies in Deal or No Deal. Economists have analyzed the decisions of contestants and found that their choices are rarely "rational". Instead of performing a few simple calculations, and figuring out if the deal is fair, contestants rely on their emotional instincts and impulsive…
clock | November 9, 2006Cell transplant for eyes?
In the current study, the scientists looked at these photoreceptors' development -- from the embryonic stages to those in the newborn. They found that the cells that worked best came from animals between the first and fifth days of life. "Photoreceptors are just being born and starting to make connections," said Pearson, one of the co-authors of the study, published this week in Nature.
The retinal cells were transplanted in normal adult mice and others with two different types of vision problems that cause blindness. In earlier studies, researchers found that the…