neuroscience
clock | June 12, 2006So, Wellbutrin is now officially a drug for treating Seasonal Affective Disorder. And chocolate is so unofficially. But, those may only take the edge off of the symptoms - they cannot affect the underlying causes.
cortex | June 12, 2006I got a very thoughtful email from a former colleague of mine (he's still a neuroscientist), who wondered why I would invest in scientific research for drug addicts over those with mental illness. After all, schizophrenics didn't commit a crime; they just inherited a flawed cortex. Why not first invest in cures for patients who 1) have an illness through no fault of their own and 2) can't already be cured by a combination of willpower, therapy and methadone.
This is an excellent point, and my priorities were certainly morally skewed. But I still won't change my answer. The reason I find…
clock | June 11, 2006The Synapse is a new neuroscience carnival. The first edition will appear on Pure Pedantry on June 25th, and the second two weeks later here on A Blog Around The Clock.
Anything involving the brain, nervous system, behavior and cognition is fair game for this carnival, from brand new research to historical studies, from pure basic science to applications in medicine or robotics. Please send the links for the first edition, including your name, your blog's name and a short blurb about the post, to Jake at: jamesjyoung AT gmail DOT com.
Then, once your post appears in an edition of the…
cortex | June 10, 2006This week's question is what scientific field I would study, "if time and money were not obstacles." Since I'm not a real scientist - just a science writer - I'm not quite sure how to answer this. I worked for several years in a neuroscience lab, and if I hadn't studied neuroscience I probably would have ended up trying to understand RNA. (Why RNA? Because it does so many inscrutable things, and has been second fiddle to DNA for way too long...In fact, the whole field of epi-genetics strikes me as ripe with promise.)
But I'm going to interpret this question a little differently. I'm going to…
purepedantry | June 9, 2006Here is a interesting idea about how to treat pain without addicting people to pain killers.
There is some back story to this business that you should know before we discuss why this is a cool idea, though.
Opioid drugs -- like codeine, morphine, and heroine -- act in the nervous system by activating receptors in specific regions of the brain that result in pain relief. If you were wondering though why evolution would be so kind as to make natural receptors to get yourself high, they are there because there are actually natural compounds that act at these receptors and do some similar…
purepedantry | June 9, 2006This article in Science News is really interesting as it goes into the causes of disruptive behavior in children. I don't have much time to review it now as I have the last test of my graduate school life in about an hour and a half, but I think it cuts a good balance between saying that genes matter and saying that they matter in an enviromental context.
I will be doing the happy dance with more posts later.
neurotopia | June 9, 2006...you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started
sittin' in your little room
--The White Stripes
Welcome to the second incarnation of Neurotopia! The old incarnation can be found here, although lately it has just been a collection of posts where I complain about how Blogger stinks. But no more! Now I'm here on this slick new platform! The SEED overlords pulled a mean trick on me: they set up the new blog launch mere hours before I'm supposed to hit the road and celebrate my 8th anniversary by accompanying Mrs. Evil Monkey to Fallingwater for the weekend.…
neurontic | May 5, 2006Men's brains weigh about 2.5 pounds. Women's brains are 100 grams less, the equivalent of one teaspoon. To most people, this difference seems negligible--hardly the stuff of controversy.
Scientists have yet to determine the reason for the size differential. Neuroscience is still in its infancy, and it will likely be many years before researchers gather enough evidence to tell us. In the mean time, most have adopted a common sense explanation: women are typically smaller than men therefore their brains are smaller. But if you spend enough time reading about neuroscience, you'll inevitably…
neurontic | April 9, 2006I know I'm dating myself by referencing an SNL bit circa 1986, but I couldn't resist. Those of you who've read Microscopic Mind Control know that toxoplasma, the bacteria people pick up from house cats, is purported to make women more "outgoing and warmhearted." Well, according to New York State University Psychologist Gordon Gallup, semen is an even more powerful organic anti-depressant. In 2002, Gallup conducted a study that suggested that women who regularly engage in unprotected sex (both vaginal and oral) are happier than their conscientious counterparts. (Semen Acts as Anti-depressant…
neurontic | April 6, 2006Most people don't know that Sigmund Freud was a frustrated neurologist. Before he abandoned himself to abstraction, the father of psychoanalysis was a practicing physician, intent on developing "a neural model of behavior." (Kandel Interview) But Freud found neuroscience too blunt a tool, in the early twentieth century, to serve his purposes.
If brain science had been further along at the turn of the century, we might have been spared the Oedipus Complex and the concept of penis envy. But we may also have missed out on his theory that dreams are a form of wish fulfillment--a hypothesis that…
neurontic | April 1, 2006Phantom limbs are not a modern phenomenon. There are records of people "haunted" by amputated appendages dating all the way back to the sixteenth century. Consequently, we have more than 500 years worth of theories about what causes phantom limbs--some quite ingenious. After losing his right arm in the Napoleonic Wars, British naval hero Lord Nelson believed that his phantom arm was proof positive of the existence of a soul. After all, if his arm could outlive its corporeal existence, why not the rest of him? This was a soothing hypothesis. Most were not.
For the uninitiated, phantom limbs…
neurontic | March 2, 2006In Mind Wide Open, Steven Johnson writes about advances in neurofeedback technology. "Your Attention Please" describes Johnson's attempts to peddle a virtual bicycle using the power of his brain.
He's at a training session organized by a firm called The Attention Builders. As the name suggests, the company is in the business of building attention. The firm's software was designed to familiarize children suffering from attention deficit disorder (ADD) with the experience of concentrating. To do this, they employ some new-fangled technology. A helmet that wouldn't look out of place in TRON is…
neurontic | February 6, 2006I live with a man who can easily dredge up the names of people who testified in the Watergate hearings, because he watched them on TV--when he was four. He can recite dialogue from movies he hasn't seen since the early '80s. And he can tell you with absolute certainty that Admiral Ackbar, the fish-faced commander from Star Wars, was a member of the Mon Calamari species. I, on the other hand, have trouble remembering high school. I fear that if I don't do something to staunch the flow of data pouring out of my head, he'll spend the autumn of his life reminding me what my name is, while feeding…
neurontic | February 4, 2006I've never read anything that captures the torment of a bad day of writing as well as the following passage from the preface of Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem:
. . . I sit in a room literally papered with false starts and cannot put one word after another and imagine that I have suffered a small stroke, leaving me apparently undamaged but actually aphasic.
I remember being intensely relieved when I first read this ten years ago. It seemed clear to me that only people of a certain disposition were afraid they were suffering from an undiagnosed embolism at the age of 22. And that I…
neurontic | February 3, 2006Think neuroscience is boring? Think again, says V.S Ramachandran, director of San Diego State's Center for Brain and Cognition. In the coming years, Ramachandran says, neuroscience promises to revolutionize the way "we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos." (BBC Reith Lecture 1) If he sounds less like a neurologist than a new-age prophet, don't let that surprise you. Ramachandran--one of the few scientists just as likely to quote the Upanishads as he is to cite the research of Richard Dawkins--is on a mission to tear down the walls that separate science and philosophy.
According to…
neurontic | January 2, 2006Okay, so let's do a quick recap. How exactly do mirror neurons work? And why do they suggest that normally functioning human beings are hard wired for empathy?
Here's my working definition. (Those with a firmer grasp on the specifics will be sure to correct any faulty assumptions.)
Mirror neurons are, in essence, physical and emotional templates that your brain starts hoarding at birth. The first time you throw a Frisbee, for instance, a few mirror neurons are requisitioned. They become the "Frisbee Throwing Templates," encoding all the information you need to repeat the movement with…
neurontic | January 1, 2006The New York Times (Cells That Read Minds) and The Wall Street Journal (How Mirror Neurons Help Us to Empathize) published a couple of articles at the beginning of this month about mirror neurons. Now, I don't generally scour the paper for breaking news on neurons, but I started scanning the Times article and found myself completely riveted.
Here's why you should care about mirror neurons even if your working knowledge of neuroscience is dwarfed by your grasp of, say, Project Runway trivia.
The Strange and Mystical World of Mirror Neurons may help to explain:
*The biological foundation of…