Tastes Like Neuroscience

Neuroscientists truly are rock stars. And, apparently, some are *literally* rockstars, or at least grasping desperately at it. Meet Joseph LeDoux's band, The Amygdaloids: Joseph LeDoux, Daniela Schiller, and Nina Galbraith Curely are neuroscientists who study emotion and memory functions of the brain, and Tyler Volk is an environmental scientist who has also written about mind and brain. Their original songs are about mental life and mental disorders (Mind-Body Problem, An Emotional Brain, If You Want Your Brain to Last). They also cover other "heavy mental" tunes like Manic Depression, 8…
(Homer Simpson voice) Mmmmmmm, GABA.........aghahgahgharrrrrhhhhhhh ::drool:: GABA is your friend. Increased GABA in the brain can result in decreased feelings of anxiety and increased relaxation and happiness. So, nobody tell those wacky Japanese candy makers that GABA doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, and its highly doubtful any would make it into the bloodstream from the stomach. Shhhhhhh. Don't tell them that. Cause next time I go to Asia, I wanna make sure I can still pick up some GABA chocolate (The Mental Balance Chocolate, 280mg GABA) or GABA hard candy. Dee-lish! The company…
Anti-cancer vaccines seem to be a burgeoning field in immunology (for example, the HPV vaccine) and what's more, they seem to hold much promise. A recent clinical trial at UCSF Brain Tumor Research Center has tested a vaccine (vitespan, trademark Oncophage) to glioma, a tumor of glia cells in the nervous system which is always fatal. The vaccine is individually tailored to the patient: its made out of their own tumor. All 12 patients had recurrent high-grade glioma, and all 12 showed an immune response, attacking the tumor, following administration of the vaccine. Patients who received the…
What happens after a person receives a traumatic brain injury? Tissue damage and swelling often results in neural tissue being unable to receiving adequate levels of glucose which are required to "feed" the brain. This deprivation of energy can cause further injury to tissue, so often times an artifical supply of glucose is given to the brain to stave off those bad effects within the first few hours of injury. Now this traditional food source may take a back-seat to lactate: the chemical that makes your tired muscles "feel the burn" and gives sour milk its, well, sourness. Researchers at UCLA…
A parasite called Toxoplasma gondii has a unique mechanism to help it spread: "tricking" rats into delighting in the smell of its predator, cats. This is an important adaptation since this parasite can only sexually reproduce in the gut of cats, so the parasite needs to get the infected rats into the cats' gut. Yeah, the cat eats the rat, and the parasite lives happily ever after. Normally rats have a strong aversion to the scent of cat urine, but infected rats completely lose their aversion to cat pee but retain all their other fears and phobias. "Toxoplasma affects fear of cat odors with…
Would you rather have a completely happy life, or a meaningful life? And are the two mutually exclusive? The topics, as well as recent neuroscience research, is addressed in a fascinating podcast over at Governomics. The podcast is here, with the transcript here. As mentioned in the podcast, Aristotle had certain ideas of what ideal happiness was: [He]...thought that eudaimonia was the ultimate goal of all purposeful striving. Greek for "happiness," the word eudaimonia comes from"eu" (meaning "good" or "well being") and "daimon" (meaning "spirit"). For Aristotle, "well being," or "happiness…
Neuroscience has a long and sordid history with anesthetic chemicals. Take curare (d-Tubocurarine) for example. Better known as a South American "dart poison," curare causes paralysis but not loss of consciousness. However, this chemical was used during the early 1900s as a surgical anesthetic for women and children until the 1940s when it was recognized as merely a paralytic. Its quite chilling to think of the numerous surgeries which were performed on completely conscious individuals who were paralyzed but unanestisized. Later procedures mixed muscle relaxants with an anesthetic, and…
So I got this comment on my post about the "Video Game Mind Control" aka the EEG headset made by Emotiv. Thought I would post is to get a bit more visibility. Hi guys, I work at Emotiv and stumbled upon this site by chance. As you guys seem to have the most knowledge in this area compared to other forums, I can tell you the following: 1. It is an EEG system (new technology that required no gel) 2. It's developed based on the latest breakthoughs in neuroscience. Emotiv has developed a highly sophisicated algorithm (patent pending) to "unfold the cortex" (which individualized across peopl like…
"Anyone studying Down's is going to have their socks blown off by this," says geneticist Roger Reeves, a Down syndrome specialist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, who was not involved in the study. "There hasn't been anything out there that we really could take to patients or that we had a strong possibility of taking into the clinic." This, in response to a new drug candidate which has been found to reduce the mental retardation associated with Down syndrome. Mouse models of Down's syndrome (Ts65Dn mice) were given the drug, and after just two weeks performed as well as…
Fetal alcohol syndrome---where the developing fetus is exposed to high levels of ethanol in the womb---has far-reaching negative effects on neural development. Now environmental and biological factors of parental alcohol abuse might also retard brain growth, according to a new study published in Biological Psychiatry. Many studies have shown that alcohol-dependent men and women have smaller brain volumes than non-alcohol-dependent individuals. It is widely believed that this is due to the toxic effects of ethanol, which causes the alcoholic's brain to shrink with aging to a greater extent…
I love video games. Hell, I was raised by Mario, Luigi, Sonic, and Yoshi and eagerly anticipated every new upgrade of the Nintendo console. My parents understood, they were of the Atari generation and saw video games as harmless fun on a rainy Florida afternoon, and perhaps even "good" for improving hand-eye coordination. I played outside like any normal kid, had friends, did schoolwork, grew up, and went to college. However, video games followed me through all of it. And while I don't play much anymore, a new Final Fantasy game or a Wii demo at Best Buy is still capable of raising my blood…
We've all heard of Mad Cow disease (bovine spongiform encephaly) in the media. A few years back it was as big a sensation as bird flu and twice as scary. The colloquial understanding of the disease was poor: what it was, how humans (or cows) could get it, what should be done to curb its spread, and whether or not there was any treatment. This disinformation led to small-scale hysteria when it came to beef, with some countries (eg Japan) completely banning all beef from nations that were even suspected of having a "mad cow." The beef industry as a whole took a hit, as pubic perception held…
Huffing, or inhalant abuse, is a significant problem among young people and the homeless due to the habit being cheap and easily accessible legally. It involves the concentration and inhalation of chemicals that are found in many household cleaners, solvents, glue, paint, etc, which result in the person feeling inebriated or "high." At higher concentrations these chemicals can induce nausea, psychosis, memory loss, emotional disturbances, or violent behavior. One of the most common ingredients in abused inhalants is toluene (think the smell of paint thinner), an aromatic hydrocarbon which…
Scientific American has a "Ask the Expert" series, and someone asked why it was impossible to tickle yourself. The answer lies at the back of the brain in an area called the cerebellum, which is involved in monitoring movements. Our studies at University College London have shown that the cerebellum can predict sensations when your own movement causes them but not when someone else does. When you try to tickle yourself, the cerebellum predicts the sensation and this prediction is used to cancel the response of other brain areas to the tickle. Two brain regions are involved in processing how…
If you won a million dollars, what would you do? This is a common and fun daydream to have which represents freedom to most people--being independently wealthy is the American dream. Would you share that wealth or hoard it greedily? I think most people would like to believe that if they received a sudden windfall, they would share some. But actually, this altruism is probably just an illusion, as demonstrated by a series of experiments by American and Canadian behavioral researchers recently published in Science (Vohs et al 2006). While being wealthy reduces feelings of dependence on others…
I'm sure you've heard of it by now, as numerous blogs (from Big Fat Blog to Effect Measure to Corpus Callosum) have been buzzing with the news of Pfizer's pet obesity drug Slentrol. As a very brief re-cap, this liquid drug is administered to overweight dogs and cats to induce a sense of 'full-ness,' and reduce their food intake. Why this couldn't be accomplished by feeding them less rather than relying on them to voluntarily eat less ('fat' chance), I'm not sure. But, fact is, the drug is now here and its going to make Pfizer a boat-load of cash (as planned) despite it seeming to fill an non…
Watching the movie "The Good Shepherd" got me thinking about something: are truth serums real? And if so, has any been proven to work? There was a scene in TGS where a prisoner who was believed to be lying was administered LSD. Now obviously THAT wasn't a real truth serum (unless you want to hear about the innate truth of teacups or something), but if the CIA was using LSD they were likely using other candidates as well. Lets just assume for a moment that there existed some potion that extracted the truth from people, rendered them unable to lie when questioned. Wouldn't that negate free…
As research into stem cells broadens, it seems like we're finding them in more and more places. Most recently, stem cells have been isolated from amniotic fluid. Interestingly, they possess qualities which pose as a kind of intermediary between adult and embryonic stem cells. As much as I hate evaluating science on abstracts alone, that's all i've got at the moment until UM updates its databases. The paper, "Isolation of amniotic stem cell lines with potential for therapy" was published in Nature Biotechnology by groups at Wake Forest and Harvard (Anthony Atala seems to be the senior…
Although I thought about making a post about the refusal of the corrupt earmark system to just die already, I think something more in my scope of interest is the current ethics debate regarding a severely mentally handicapped child. Specifically, her parents have opted to surgically stunt their child's physical development to prevent puberty (hormones, menstruation, growth, etc) and to keep her weight at a level that they can manage. She is currently 9 years old, and has the mental capacity of a 3 month baby--she can only lie on her back and kick her legs/arms around. She relies on her…
Most people who have known a drug addict, or have watched Trainspotting or ER, know that one of the more insidious parts of addiction is the need for more and more drug to achieve a "high." This leads the addict into a spiral of drug-seeking behavior, and brain changes, which lead to the person just trying to feel normal again. Why is it that, over time, opiate drugs lose their rewarding effects? Until recently, the molecular mechanism behind "why" was unknown, but a new study published in Nature (subscription required) this month explains that has to do with the decrease of a certain…