Tastes Like Neuroscience

In a response to a "What are You Thankful For" request by ABC4.com, a rare and interesting neurological case study was described: penetration of the brain by a deer antler. CNN.com also has a video describing the event and the injury. In a nutshell, 5-year-old Connor Schick found a deer antler during an outdoor vacation in July. He tripped while carrying it, he fell on it, and it penetrated his brain through his eyesocket. (OUCH) Below is the MRI of his injury, with his doctor holding up the offending antler for dramatic effect. Credit: CNN.com Connor was quite lucky. Not only did he survive…
Well I arrived back in Michigan after a deep-fried Thanksgiving in Florida, hope you all had an as opulently greasy and delicious a meal as I did. I have to share a funny anecdote from my drive to the airport yesterday. My parents drove me to the Orlando airport, and we had to drive through the now-infamous Polk County. On the highway, my dad pointed out this dog (a "hunten-dawg") standing on top of what can only be described as a huge cage on wheels. We saw that the dog's collar was tied to the top of the cage so he wouldn't fall off. As I was voicing protest as to how mean that was (traffic…
Looking for an unusual brain atlas for that very special neuroscientist in your life? This one is a bit non-traditional, but...wow.... By Sam Brown, 2007 The above map's original data was created from a reference photo of a real human brain which was used to build the 3d terrain. This digital elevation model was then used to create contour line data, relief shading and to plan where the roads and features should be placed for map compilation. Real New Zealand public domain data was then added for the surrounding islands. This appeared as the cover of the most recent issue of the journal…
Whoever said that you can't learn anything useful from TV? A Harvard research team, headed by Jeff Lichtman, has duplicated the way that a television monitor uses varying amounts of just three colors (red, blue, green) to produce a huge array of resultant hues. They have applied this technique in the brain using fluorescent cyan, yellow, and red pigments--varying amounts of which can produce 90 possible color combinations to label individual neurons. Through genetic recombination, pigment-expressing genes are inserted into the genomes of developing mice. The result is the "Brainbow" mouse,…
Its hard to find a more stereotyped relationship than that of the cat and mouse. The cat hunts the mouse, and the mouse fears and runs from the cat. An innate fear response can be replicated in mice just but introducing it to feline urine, which contains olfactory clues which give the mouse information about the presence of a friend or foe. And in fact, an important group of olfactory sensory cells are responsible for detecting these molecules and translating it to a behavioral response which all mice are born with. Recent research by Kobayakawa et al. has discovered that deleting this group…
Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, recently gave this excellent speech at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Conference. In addition to being an engaging speaker, he may also be one of the only scientists I've even seen pull off a leather jacket so well. The talk covers phantom limb pain, synesthesia (when people hear color or smell sounds), and the Capgras delusion, which is when brain-damaged people believe their closest friends and family have been replaced with imposters. This rare…
[This is part of a series I'm doing here on Retrospectacle called 'Science Vault.' Pretty much I'm just going to dig back into the forgotten and moldering annuls of scientific publications to find weird and interesting studies that very likely would never be published or done today (and perhaps never should have.) I'll probably try to do it once a week (and if you have suggestions, please do email me with them.)] Its been a few weeks since anything truly old and shocking as come across my plate as fodder for my 'Science Vault' series, but when I saw this paper, I knew I had to blog it.…
As I mentioned earlier in the week, I'm trying to raise money for a classroom-in-need to buy some books about neuroscience, using the case of Phineas Gage as a jumping off point. (And if you haven't yet donated, they would be most grateful for even a dollar!) I thought it would be interesting and appropriate to discuss what happened to Mr. Gage and how it impacted neuroscience. It all began when a large piece of metal exploded through his brain. Phineas Gage was the ultimate average joe--a railway foreman who was laying down track outside Cavendish, Vermont in the fall of 1848. It was on the…
What happens when you take the "science" out of "neuroscience"? Well, you get something quite akin to Dr. Mario Beauregard's theories on spirituality and the brain. Dr. Beauregard and his graduate student Vincent Paquette are studying the spiritual experiences of Carmelite nuns. First, we had to convince the nuns that we were not trying to prove that their religious experiences did not actually occur, that they were delusions, or that a brain glitch explained them. Then we had to quiet both the hopes of professional atheists and the fears of clergy about the possibility that we were trying to…
The popular press loves to harp on iPods, and their potential to cause hearing loss due to loud music pumped through embedded earbuds. Looks like there's something else, a little more drastic and a lot less common to worry about in regards to your hearing: getting struck by lightning while wearing an iPod. A middle-aged man was jogging in a thunderstorm (ok, not the smartest move, but hey) when a tree he was standing next to was struck by lightning, which threw him 8 feet from the tree. At the ER, he was treated for burns which extended from his chest up his neck and sides of his face and…
Popular legend tells us that during the process of mummification, the ancient Egyptians removed the vital organs, including the brain, and placed some of them in jars. The earliest known mummies date to around 3300 BC in Egypt. During the removal of the brain, the bone behind the nose (the cribiform plate) would be broken with a long metal tool. The embalmer would dice the brain into small pieces so it could be pulled out through the nasal passage. They would then refill the skull half-way with either sawdust or a plant-based resin (see below for half-filled skull). Check out this cool…
Before I became interested in hearing research, I thought I was going to spend my career studying Alzheimer's disease (AD), and worked at the Roskamp Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders at USF. AD is a major enigma in medicine due to the many contributing factors: genetic, lifestyle, and environmental; as well as differing times of onset (early and late) and varying symptoms among affected individuals. The end result is clear though: AD is fatal and affects the brain in drastic ways. AD is characterized by a few pathological hallmarks at the neural level. One is the presence of amyloid-…
The post I wrote last week on the neuroscience of ADHD generated a lot of interest and comments, with one of the main questions in the comments being 'what are the testable neurological correlates' of the condition. Joseph of Corpus Callosum has blogged a quite interesting study on the topic (thanks!) and I suggest you all go take a look.
Cone snail shells are beautiful, but their venom is a potent cocktail used to paralyze passing fish. The venom is a witch's brew of hundreds of novel compounds, many more than are found in snake venom (which has been used by science extensively as well). One compound in particular is a pain killer many times more effective than morphine. The venom apparatus consists of a muscular venom bulb which pushes venom from a gland down a long duct to a chitinous tooth (the pink thing). The tooth is like a little barbed harpoon, which becomes soaked in venom and jabs into prey. Venom is quickly…
The current issue of Nature has a fascinating study regarding how implanted electrodes helped a minimally-conscious man to regain many cognitive functions lost during a traumatic injury. Patients in a minimally-conscious state only very low and sporadic levels of awareness, and have little chance for recovery past the initial 12 months post-injury. But a 38-year old man who had been in such a state for over 6 years received deep brain stimulation via electrodes implanted near the central thalamus (see picture below), which is an area involved in relaying sensory signals. During stimulation…
PhDs are useful for all kinds of things. Some people become faculty, others go into industry, and some decide to market ridiculously nerdtastic neurologically-based gifts via the internet. Sure, the latter kind may be rare, but a good idea is still a good idea. Welcome to Neuromart, online purveyors of parapanalia related to my favorite organ (the brain, of course!). From brain models (you always wanted one of your very own, didn't you?) to brain candy (the sweet stuff, not the Kids in the Hall movie), Neuromart is sure to keep the dopamine flowing.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), currently the most common childhood-onset behavioral disorder, is nothing if not controversial. Nearly every aspect of ADHD from diagnosis to prevalence to medication, and even its mere existence, is disputed by at least one 'concerned' group. And honestly, who could blame parents for being hesitant to medicate their young children, especially since medications come with risks? However, ADHD is a very real (and prevalent) disorder which has discrete neurochemical and, as more and more research is suggesting, genetic causes. It has been linked…
Everyone has painful or unpleasant memories in their past, and some of us would welcome the chance to forget them forever. Some debilitating disorders, like post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), prey on these memories in ways that are often difficult-to-treat. According to some recent research, a drug taken shortly after a traumatic event, or during the recall of traumatic memories, may act to 'erase' them from the brain. Does it work, and could it be a useful treatment? What about the potential for abuse ("de-briefing" comes to mind)? One drug, propranolol, is currently used to treat…
A skin-patch (similar to the patches that deliver nicotine trans-dermally) has been approved to treat Alzheimer's disease. The drug in the patch, Exelon (rivastigmine), is already on the market in pill form, but in the form of a patch the drug can be delivered continuously and more reliably. Delivery through the skin also gets rid of any nasty gastrointestinal side-effects (probably appreciated by caregivers as well...). Rivastigmine is a cholinesterase inhibitor; it works to prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine in the brain. This is theorized to slow or mitigate the symptoms of dementia…
One of the most severe developmental defects is called anencephaly, which literally means "without a brain." However, usually some brain tissue develops normally, but the forebrain and cerebrum is small or absent. This defect is caused by an error in the development of the nervous system and brain, and is thought to be somewhat related to the mother's intake of folate/folic acid (Vitamin B9). Babies born with anencephaly nearly almost always die either in the womb or shortly after birth, as their compromised nervous system is unable to sustain bodily functions (and certainly not consciousness…