Shelley Batts is a Neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Michigan. She studies hair cell regeneration in the cochlea, and is trying to finish that quixotic quest called 'thesis.' She lies awake at night pondering how science intersects with politics, culture, policy, money, medicine, and religion in an attempt to be more than just a niche scientist sitting in the oh-so-lovely ivory tower. Follow me and my parrot, Pepper, on our quest to finish my PhD, land a post-doc, and stay sane.
Steve Higgins is a psychology graduate student at an online university. He hopes that the three weeks and $29.95 that he is spending on his Ph.D. will get him a job at a Tier 1 research university. Do online universities have postdocs? Ok...just kidding, Steve is really a Ph.D. Candidate in Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying high level vision. You know... stuff like scene & object perception.
While not an official contributer to 'Of Two Minds,' Shelley's sidekick is an African Grey parrot named Pepper. His heros are Irene Pepperberg, Alex, and Rachel Carson. He spends his time learning Mandarin and writing the Great American novel.
"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life." ~Rachel Carson
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Delusions are the strangest things...
Once, back in the day, when I was interning in Ted Kennedy's press office we got a call from a woman (this was a pretty usual occurrence) demanding to know why the CIA, et. al. were monitoring her brainwaves. Our quick thinking secretary (a Harvard grad making 16k a year for the privilege of working in the Senate) told her to hold he was going to go check the list. He let her sit for a few minutes, got back on the phone, and told her she wasn't on the list and there must be a mistake. He would have her mind control removed immediately and he was sorry for the mix up. She never did call back from what I heard. Perhaps a new form of therapy?
In any case... here's an entertaining police blotter from Federal Way, Washington:
At 4:02 p.m. April 10, two women went into the Federal Way police station claiming that over the past two years, a paranormal person has been placing sensors on their bodies and visiting them in their house at 28600 block of 25th Place South. They said that the ghost has been having sexual intercourse with them. One woman said that these incidents started in Kent and continued when she moved here. The other woman said that this just started now.
•At 3:36 p.m. April 12, a woman contacted the Federal Way police to report that a person was cutting a large tree down. She was concerned it could fall on her car or on her house located in the 30800 block of 22nd Avenue South. The woman who was trying to cut the tree was contacted and said that she needed to cut the tree because it was hazard.
•At 10:10 a.m. April 11, an unknown person cut the vinyl top of a woman’s car in the 30800 block of 8th Avenue SW, and gained access to the vehicle. All belongings inside the car had been gone and the total damage for the vehicle was about $1,200.
At least not all the crime in Federal Way is odd...
I love antique anatomical drawings of the brain. I even have a couple in my office that I should probably take a picture of to show off to you guys. These illustrations from Japan are particularly interesting. According to Pink Tentacle:
The Kaibo Zonshinzu anatomy scrolls, painted in 1819 by Kyoto-area physician Yasukazu Minagaki (1784-1825), consist of beautifully realistic, if not gruesome, depictions of scientific human dissection.
Unlike European anatomical drawings of the time, which tended to depict the corpse as a living thing devoid of pain (and often in some sort of Greek pose), these realistic illustrations show blood and other fluids leaking from subjects with ghastly facial expressions.
Cristiana Senni from World Parrots Trust just let me know that their organization has uploaded several movies to YouTube of African Grey parrots in the wild. I live with a Grey, and was absolutely amazed at their vocalizations and behaviors--pretty much exactly like Pepper. Reminds me that while Pepper is tame, he is still just one generation from his wild brethren. Check out their beautiful videos!
The Dalai Lama has been making appearances and giving talks in the US, with his most recent talk at the University of Michigan (where I am) yesterday. Although I was unable to attend the actual talk, since the tickets were sold out within an hour of going on sale, his appearance was videotaped and uploaded (check out the movie here.)
According to the press release from UM, the Dalai Lama's talk skirted most of the tough issues that Tibet is now facing, and focused more on environmentalism--a topic certainly near and dear to the inhabitants of Ann Arbor. Check it out.
Well folks, sorry I've been so AWOL around here lately. Lets just say there's been a lot of long hours in the basement with the confocal microscope, and I've also been in charge of organizing the U of M Neuroscience Spring Symposium, which is next week. I'm super-excited about the three visiting neuroscientists: Nicholas Gaiano, Ed Boyden, and David Sulzer. So, forgive my temporary absence...although I'm sure Steve is keeping everyone entertained.
Speaking of entertaining, I was emailed this awesome anatomically correct brain cake, recipe which I just had to share. Someone put a lot of love into photographing the entire process of creating something both nerdy and delicious-- even using chocolate chips to create an EEG grid.
A great new piece of technology turns you into old mister Pickard, your pissy, old, get off my damn lawn, next door neighbor.
Carmaker Nissan Motor is using a specialized driver's suit and goggles to simulate the bad balance, stiff joints, weaker eyesight and extra five kilograms (11lbs) that may accompany senior citizenry.
Associate chief designer Etsuhiro Watanabe says the suit's weight and constriction help in determining functionality and accessibility within cars by putting young designers not only in the minds of the mobility-challenged, but also in their bodies.
"Difficulty in walking, back pains, trouble in lifting arms -- we wanted to consider assorted infirmities," said Watanabe of the concept known as universal design.
"It's easy to do this for the young, but we wanted to design for adverse conditions and see what modifications are needed."
An ageing suit was first used by Nissan a decade ago, while Japanese washlet maker Toto uses such suits to simulate bathroom mobility, even including tub water as part of the program.
Do you have an extra brain sitting around you want to donate? Do you want to trade brains with someone else but they are too far away to do it in person? Is your brain malfunctioning and you need to ship it back to the factory for some repairs or in the worst case - a replacement? If your answer was yes to any of these questions then this is the tutorial for you.
This is what you'll need:
Two clean, dry ziploc plastic bags
(about 22.0 x 30.0 cm)
Plastic bucket with tightly fitting lid
(about 4.0 liters)
Large plastic bag
(about 40.0 x 50.0 cm)
Envelope for documents
Thermosafe polyfoam container
(38.0 x 33.0 x 31.0 cm)
Two refrigerant packs
(17.0 x 10.0 cm)
Wet ice (about 1.0 kg)
Once you have these items just follow these eight straight forward steps and you'll brain will be ready to drop off at your local courier store.
Put the fresh brain (A)
in the first ziploc bag.
Ziploc first bag (B).
Place bag (B) in second bag and ziploc it (C).
Place 0.5 kg of wet ice into the bucket and transfer the double-bagged brain onto the ice (D).
Cover double-bagged brain with wet ice (E) and tightly fit the lid on the bucket.
Put big plastic bag into the polyfoam container and place wet ice (about 0.3 kg) into the bag (F).
Transfer sealed bucket into plastic bag of the container, onto the ice and add refrigerant packs (G).
Close plastic bag (H), put polyfoam lid in place, add documents and close cardboard box.
Surprisingly, this post is actually no joke at all. The New York Brain Bank at Columbia University needs brains to do important research on Alzheimer's and many other diseases of the brain. For more information visit their page (including more pictures of brains). Here's their official line:
The New York Brain Bank (NYBB) at Columbia University was established to collect postmortem human brains to meet the needs of neuroscientists investigating specific psychiatric and neurological disorders.
The tasks of the NYBB include:
* Collection and processing of human postmortem brain samples for research.
* Neuropathological evaluation and diagnosis.
* Storage and computerized inventory of brain samples.
* Distribution of brain samples to investigating clinicians and scientists.
The study of human postmortem brain tissue has unveiled structural and biochemical changes that are contributing to the development of drugs. For example, studies using postmortem human brains have led to the development of genetic tests, identification of neurotransmitters essential to Parkinson disease treatment and cytoskeletal abnormalities in Alzheimer disease.
To study the brains of patients with disorders of the central nervous system, brains from individuals without neurological or psychiatric disorders are necessary for comparison. All individuals are encouraged to donate their brains to science with authorization to remove it as soon as possible after death. The identity of each donor will remain strictly confidential.
NYBB will disburse tissue samples to investigating clinicians or scientists, whose research has been approved by their Institutional Review Board (IRB).
Sexing chicks is a very difficult task for naive people. Expert chick sexers are over 98% successful while the naive sexers can only do it with slightly above chance performance. Are you sufficiently confused/pissed yet?
Ok ok... here's what's really going on:
When chickens are born the chicks are examined by experts to determine what sex they are. This important task is performed in order to save money in feed costs and avoid conflict between the male and female chicks (the men are selfish and don't let the females eat or drink). What they do with the male chickens I'm not entirely sure. I would assume they euthanize them.
In any case, this process was discovered by the Japanese and brought to America in the 1920's where a number of chicken sexing schools were setup in Washington and California. According to the industry the skill requires years of practice to master. In fact, the experts are able to classify nearly 1000 chicks per hour with 98% accuracy. The process of sexing the chicken is both interesting and disturbing,
The chicks, only a few hours old, are brought to the sexer in trays of 100. The task requires that the cloaca be everted. The chick is held in the left hand (for a right-handed person) and the fecal contents are squirted into a container to clear the cloaca (see Figure 2). Gentle but firm pressure from the two thumbs and right forefinger are exerted to spread the ventral surface of the colaca upwards to expose the eminence, called the "bead." The eminence is about the size of a pin head. The sexing decision must be made quickly because the chick is at risk from the vent eversion. Females are traditionally place in a tray on the right and males on the left.
Here is an example of how an expert would hold a chick in order to sex it. The chicks eyes have been obscured in order to maintain privacy.
It's pretty amazing what you can sneak into a psychology journal article isn't it?!
ok ok ... Back to the chicken sexing...
Here's what the chicken sex organs look like:
In short, Biederman and Shiffrar discovered that they were able to train novice experiment participants to perform as well as the expert chicken sexers by giving them a short training session that instructed them as to where the non-accidental contrast in shape of chicken organs (concavity vs. convexity) was.
Here's their conclusions:
A contrast in a nonaccidental property can be readily learned and used as the criterion for rapid and accurate classification of complex objects. It is, of course, possible that such contrasts might not be available, in which case classification would have to be accomplished by prototype (or multiple-cue) matching. We suspect that nonaccidental contrasts will be spontaneously used whenever they are obvious. When not obvious because of small size, variability, or embedding in a complex object such as a chick cloaca or tank, a good instructional program is well advised to specify the contrasts rather than hope for their discovery.
-Update-
Check out this Dirty Jobs segment on this exact topic. Ewww!
Report on:
Biederman, I., Shiffrar, M.M. (1987). Sexing Day-Old Chicks: A Case Study and Expert Systems Analysis of a Difficult Perceptual-Learning Task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogntion, 13(4), 640-645.
Something to think about next time those vanity pangs hit (Mac-users, I'm looking at you): new research published in the April 2nd Journal of Neuroscience reports that botulium (the toxin in the popular cosmetic Botox injections) can reach the nervous system when injected into the facial muscles of rats. Although the toxin would only reach the nerve in minute amounts, botulinum toxin is potent even in small amounts and may still disrupt nerve activity. Currently the FDA is reviewing the safety of Botox injections, which are used to paralyze the muscles of the face and thereby reduce the appearance of wrinkles, due to 16 deaths that have resulted from injections.
Botulinum toxin is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum and, by and large, has been safely used by medical professionals to treat a variety of maladies from muscle spasms to migraines to wrinkles. This 'safety' has been attributed to the toxin's localization--specifically, it doesn't leave the injection site or spread to other systems and tissues, where it could be harmful or fatal. This study, conducted by Atonucci et al, suggests that botulinum toxin can be transported backwards along microtubles (the 'skeleton' of cells, which can also move molecules) and leave muscle cells. It can pass through the muscle cell's membrane, and find itself in the afferent nerve terminal adjacent to the injection site. Whether it is enough to interfere with nerve functioning remains unclear, but perhaps will be further studied in the wake of the FDA review.
My friend Amy sent these graphs around today - I have no idea at all what their source is (any ideas?) so I can't credit it. But they really are hysterical.
This is clearly false advertising. I don't see any pinging going on. This seems more like Pigeons playing pong.
BF Skinner trains two pigeons to perform a chain of behaviors for the classroom demonstration. As a result, pigeons engage in a competition, the so-called "pigeon Ping Pong". Narrated by B.F. Skinner.
A number of people have noticed that after getting transplants their personality changes - and not only that- their personality changes to reflect the donors personality.
...though she was born and raised in Tucson, she never liked Mexican food. She craved Italian and was a pasta junkie. But three years ago, all that changed for Jaime Sherman, 28, when she underwent a heart transplant at University Medical Center, after battling a heart defect since birth. "Now I love football, baseball, basketball. You name it, I follow it," said Sherman, a psychology student at Arizona State University. "And Mexican food is by far my favorite."
There is the 8-year-old girl who got the heart of a 10-year-old murder victim, according to medical reports. Plagued by nightmares of the crime after her transplant, the girl used the images in her dreams to help locate and convict her donor's killer.
That's when she learned 29-year-old Scott Phillips - who died of a head injury after a fight at a Phoenix bar - was a sports fan who loved Mexican food. He played on several teams at Kansas State University and followed college and pro sports. Sherman's metamorphosis from nonfan to superfan occurred well before she knew anything about her donor, though her obsession with Kansas State began after she met his family.
Woah.... amazing! Although...I wasn't totally convinced that hearts passed on memories until I saw this article today from MSNBC. Luckily they didn't propose the cellular memory hypothesis (more to come on this later).
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. - A man who received a heart transplant 12 years ago and later married the donor's widow died the same way the donor did, authorities said: of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
These stories go on and on - but what really gets me is the absolutely insane explanations as to why this is happening...
I'm going to be teaching Psych 100 next year and 200 or so lucky kids are going to luck out with me as an instructor. I'm just going to read them previously written blog posts all semester. Maybe I'll read out of a really crappy intro psych text book to them as well. Ok.. just kidding. I really want to make this upcoming year as entertaining as possible for them. There are so many great psychology experiments and stories about classic personalities to share. I think I need a little help with it from you guys though. If you have any suggestions about stories, experiments, or videos you saw in your psych classes that you loved help me out!
I'd especially like a video (or even pictures) of the classic B.F. Skinner conditioning study where pigeons were taught to play ping pong. I haven't been able to find anything like that. Doesn't a video have to exist of that? They had film back then. UPDATE: I finally found the video. Not only that, it's actually narrated by B.F. Skinner. Keep the great ideas for psych 100 coming though!
This seems to be the only pigeon training picture I have ;)
It looks like one the (if not the) most famous psych hospital in the world is going to be turned into a luxury hotel. The Bellevue Psych Hospital will go under construction some time in 2009. I know The Shining happened in a hotel but it seems like this is along those lines and is prime real estate for a horror film. I'm imagining a combo zombie/ghost film where hoards of crazy dead or undead mental patients goes after the construction crews or something.
It's true! Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, previously home to famous names like Normal Mailer, Edie Sedgewick, and the guy who shot John Lennon (Mark David Chapman), is getting a remodel and soon will be a luxury hotel. Built in 1931 it's pretty perfect for the remake, with its location in Manhattan along the East River, its Italian Renaissance style, and even its "H" layout with hotel-sized rooms on long corridors.
Bellevue hasn't treated psych patients since 1984 when it was transformed into a homeless shelter, and now the plans for yet another renovation are well underway. No word yet on when they hope to have the hotel finished, but hopefully there's a developer locked in by the end of the year so renovations can get started by the middle of 2009.
It's just about weekly that some scientist finds that one of our guilty pleasures is actually good for us. First it was red wine, then it was all alcohol. Followed by Omega-3 Fatty Acids - mmm.... fat.... And Now?! It's coffee. It doesn't just wake you up in the morning so you can avoid those pesky rush hour accidents with half drunk and asleep drivers. Now coffee is purported to protect us against dementias by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on our body.
So go ahead eat those extra eggs and an entire package of bacon. You can just drink an entire pot of coffee to protect yourself against dementia.
Hmm... perhaps the way it protects you against dementia is by killing you well before you get to the age where dementia starts occurring. Next thing you know they'll be discovering that smoking is good for you.
Welcome to the most recent installation of the neuroscience blog carnival, Encephelon, here at Of Two Minds! Steve and I thought we would mix things up a little bit and let a guest blogger summarize the best brain blogging (submitted to us (this week)). That guest is none other that famed socialite Paris Hilton, who wished to take this opportunity to attempt to change her image from fashionista to neuronista. Please welcome Paris!
Hi neurokids, Paris here. While I'm sure that you have already formed an opinion of me due to the massive media coverage of my escapades and foibles, hopefully that won't taint your enjoyment of my science blogging. I am actually a very intelligent student of neuroscience - after all if Blossom can become a neuroscience grad student at UCLA so can I! Neuroscience is sooo hot!
The Dalai Lama spoke at the Society for Neuroscience meeting a few years back, demonstrating an active interest in neuroscience (although perhaps a less robust understanding of a few fundamentals). Anyway, the more public figures interested in the brain, the better, I say. He does seem to have a knack for asking interesting and less-than-straightforward questions.
Neuroscience bloggers have been busy covering the science of video games. Mind Hacks highlights the Emotiv headset which is set to hit stores soon, and relies on EEG technology to predict the gamers moves and wishes inside the game. And contrary to industry stats that show females gamers on the rise, one study promotes the idea that men are innately geared towards enjoying video games more than women. Dreaming about video games sounds like an effect of playing them too much, however, people have been found to dream about playing Tetris after a particular long session and that even amnesiac experience these dreams, despite being unable to remember playing the game.
I said a few months ago that "It's no big secret that Nicole and I are no longer friends, ... I will not go into the details of what happened. All I will say is that Nicole knows what she did, and that's all I am ever going to say about it." But I think it's time to come clean about what our disagreement was actually about. Nicole seemed to think that spanking her kids was fine, but now with this post from Brain Blogger I can prove her wrong. As a matter of fact when kids are spanked there is "an increased probability of verbally and physically coercing a dating partner to have sex; risky sex such as premarital sex without using a condom; and masochistic sex such as spanking during sex."
Everyone loves dopamine (Especially ME!). Some people (like ME!) spend their lives (and their fathers' fortunes) chasing the dopaminergic dragon. Marc Digman blogs about a great review article in April's Nature Neuroscience regarding the current view of the neurobiology of pleasure and pain and the difference between 'wanting' and 'liking.' Marc also covers evolutionary theories as to why we love sweet things so much (hint: has to do with dopamine) and how it impacts obesity. Neuroanthropology tackles obesity as well, with a well thought out analysis of the genes vs. environment arguments. I do wish they'd stop hating on the twin studies though.
The Neurophilosopher describes how the evolution of language, and the specification of areas devoted to the processing and production of language, proceeded to rewire the brain via the development of the arcuate fasciculus. Neuroanthropology blogs about a fascinating paper which analyzes how being bilingual might impact how people solve social perception problems.
Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics has been neuro-blogging lately, and here covers a bit about the fascinating history of neuroscience. Why are golgi called golgi?? Who exactly is Ramon y Cajal?? Inquiring minds want to know! She also discusses how the public perception of mental illness has evolved over the past few decades, using the story of Senator Thomas Eagleton as a case in point.
John Medina, affiliate professor at the University of Washington, has written an intriguing book called 'Brain Rules' touted at Sharp Brains. While probably not containing much new info for the seasoned brainiac, these popular neuroscience books serve a role as distilling the science into bite-size pieces for a lay audience via anecdote.
'Mentalizing' refers to being able to infer the mental states of others, which can be impaired in disorders like autism and borderline personality disorder. The Neurocritic summarizes recent fMRI studies on mentalizing, including a 'Bush, not-Bush' task. Hilarity ensues. I wonder what happens when someone mentalizes me?
Celebs will pay big bucks for aromatherapy, but stinky-foot smell is likely not to be one of the featured scents. However, exposing someone having an epileptic seizure to stinky-foot smell has been thought (for unknown reasons) to interrupt the seizure. Oddly enough, there may be something to it. Speaking of smelling, our sense of olfaction may be intimately linked with sensing danger, as a person's sense of smell can be heightened following electric shocks.
Synesthesia is when one experiences sensory input as a different sensory "output," like seeing colors in response to music or experiencing a particular taste when you smell someone's perfume. This blogger describes their own synesthesia experience and breaks down the clinical definition. Phantom pain is also a phenomenon related to altered sensory experience: when an amputated limb continues to "cause" pain despite its obvious absence. Jake at Pure Pedantry blogs that mirrors may be the simple answer.
Tabloids aren't the only publications prone to exaggeration and mis-stating facts. Psychology textbooks do it too, and have perpetuated falsehoods about Descartes, the discovery of Broca's area, and Morgan's canon. I might have to sue some of those textbooks as well as the usual tabloids.
Who knew that the powerful anti-psychotic drug lithium chloride actually began as a salt substitute for people with heart and kidney disease? When people began dying from lithium toxicity, the compound was reclassified from a food additive to a drug after it was discovered that lithium could sedate rats quite efficiently. Although it certainly has more side effects than Prozac...
Looks like an at-home 'spit-test' for bipolar disorder is being sold by a company called Psynomics, which puports to diagnose the disorder by assaying for two mutations on the GRK3 gene which have been linked to it. I'm a bit worried that this might circumvent the care of a physician, or be misinterpreted by the user, but the kit could be useful for physicians to support a diagnosis. That's crazy I thought that pregnancy was the only thing I could test for at home.
Anyway, hope you have enjoyed this installment of Encephalon! The next one will be hosted at GNIF Brain Blogger.
There are some things I consider news, and some things I just consider "well, duh." File this study, which reported that high school students don't care that loud music damages their hearing, under the second category. Kids These Days (tm) have been listening to loud music as long as their has been loud music to listen to, and I doubt very much that this will change. The reason for that is hinted at in the study itself: that teenagers believe themselves to be invincible, with very "low personal vulnerability" to permanent hearing loss. So despite the understanding that loud noise can damage *someone's* hearing in theory, the that-won't-happen-to-me mentality wins out.
However, it does happen to them. I get many emails from readers and internet surfers who complain about hearing loss or tinnitus that occurred in their misbegotten youth touring with White Snake (ok, maybe they aren't loud enough, but you get the picture...). As much as I want to continue researching therapies for deafness, my hope is to one day put myself out of business. However, how can young people be convinced to turn down the music? The short answer is that, as a group, I don't think they can be. That doesn't mean that there isn't ANY recourse though. The study recommends that the devices themselves be designed with hearing protection in mind, which I certainly think is a good idea. These protections do not have to be absolute, but rather guidelines or suggestions similar to the pop-ups on the Nintendo Wii when a person has been playing for a long time ("Why not walk around or take a break?"). The device might issue a brief warning, or beep/vibrate, etc, when the safe window of listening at that particular volume as passed. It could even shut off, if parents wanted to be really over-protective.
Of course, that won't make the music devices any more popular with teens, and hacks will immediately crop up to get rid or disable them. And hearing damage from concerts, stereos, etc will still occur (not to mention genetic and sudden deafness). Looks like I'll be in the business a while yet.
While not an official contributer to 'Of Two Minds,' Shelley's sidekick is an African Grey parrot named Pepper. His heros are Irene Pepperberg, Alex, and Rachel Carson. He spends his time learning Mandarin and writing the Great American novel.
Delusions are the strangest things...
In any case... here's an entertaining police blotter from Federal Way, Washington: 
Put the fresh brain (A)
in the first ziploc bag.
Ziploc first bag (B).
Place bag (B) in second bag and ziploc it (C).
Transfer sealed bucket into plastic bag of the container, onto the ice and add refrigerant packs (G).
Here's the sparse 
Hi neurokids, Paris here. While I'm sure that you have already formed an opinion of me due to the massive media coverage of my escapades and foibles, hopefully that won't taint your enjoyment of my science blogging. I am actually a very intelligent student of neuroscience - after all if Blossom can become a neuroscience grad student at UCLA so can I! Neuroscience is sooo hot!
Everyone loves dopamine (Especially ME!). Some people (like ME!) spend their lives (and their fathers' fortunes) chasing the dopaminergic dragon. 
