Brain and Behavior
neurontic | February 2, 2007I'm a big fan of YouTube. Any medium that facilitates the sharing of my favorite commercials (see Burger King Chicken Fries and Citreon C4 Transformer) and allows me to watch Michel Gondry solve a Rubik's Cube with his feet is OK by me. That said, it's rare to stumble on a YouTube offering that meets the stringent requirements of "brain blogging." So you can imagine my delight at finding this: An excerpt of autistic savant Stephen Wiltshire drawing an aerial view of Rome from memory.
I've spent a good chunk of time reading about autistics with peculiar gifts, but I've never seen a savant…
cortex | February 2, 2007It's a shocker: getting hit in the head by enormous men running at high speed is bad for your brain. The NY Times today has a riveting article chronicling the retirement travails of Ted Johnson, a former middle lineback for the Patriots:
Ted Johnson helped the New England Patriots win three of the past five Super Bowls before retiring in 2005. Now, he says, he forgets people's names, misses appointments and, because of an addiction to amphetamines, can become so terrified of the outside world that he locks himself alone inside his Boston apartment in bed with the blinds drawn for days at a…
omnibrain | January 31, 2007Here's the basic story...
New work by a team of researchers has shed light on why hallucinogenic compounds cause altered states in creatures. It has long been known that hallucinogenic compounds have a high affinity for a certain receptor in the central nervous system (5-HT2A, or 2AR), and that when these receptors are blocked, the hallucinogenic side effects are mitigated. What has remained a mystery is why other non-hallucinogenic compounds with a similar affinity for these 2ARs do not produce similar side effects.
How do you know a mouse is tripping balls? It's not like you can show them…
oracknows | January 31, 2007There I was, puttering around the Internet trying to procrastinate while writing yet another grant, when I came across a truly inane article by Scott Adams arguing that the entire universe must be intelligent because processes that lead to products of intelligent (machines, books, etc., made by us) must also be intelligent. (At least I think that's what he was arguing; the argument was so poorly constructed and circular that it was hard to tell. No doubt Adams will retreat to his "I was only joking" or "I was only playing with your mind" defense.) I thought of having a little fun with it, but…
jstemwedel | January 30, 2007There's been some blogospheric blowout (see here, here, and here for just a taste) about a recent PETA ad that many viewers find gratuitously sexist. To me, the ad and the reaction to it are most interesting because they raise a larger issue about how we promote our values and how we choose our allies. From Michael Specter's article on PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk in the April 14, 2003 issue of The New Yorker:
Newkirk seems openly to court the anger even of people who share her views. "I know feminists hate the naked displays," she told me. "I lose members every time I do it. But my job isn…
tsmith | January 30, 2007Readers who are regulars at Effect Measure or Deltoid will be familiar with the opinions of attorney and author Michael Fumento. Fumento considers himself an avian flu "skeptic," and recently issued a "challenge" (the title, "My avian flu challenge to the leftist bird-brained squawkers", might give you some clue as to its scientific value) to bloggers, in response to one blogger's comment that "... there was a "50%/50%" chance of [an influenza] pandemic in the next year":
I took advantage of Mr. Paramedic's oversight to bet him 10-1, with him picking the dollar amount, that there would be…
tetrapodzoology | January 29, 2007
It turns out that Cretaceous troodontid dinosaurs had asymmetrical ears. This makes them like owls, which also have asymmetrical ears. But not all owls have asymmetrical ears and, what's more, the story of ear asymmetry in owls is itself a pretty remarkable one....
Before getting distracted by godwits, I was talking about troodontids and their asymmetrical ears (and this itself came as a distraction, as beforehand I was talking about the evolution of blood-feeding in birds). The irresistible comparison that comes to mind is of course with owls, as owls also have asymmetrical ears (though…
thusspakezuska | January 29, 2007Female Science Professor describes the amazing (and amazingly depressing) power of invisibility women in science seem to possess - at least when Distinguished Schmucks are visiting the department:
A male colleague and I walked up to the Distinguished Visitor in the hallway, and the visitor stuck out his hand at my male colleague and gave him a manly handshake; they introduced themselves to each other. For some reason, I assumed it was my turn for a handshake and introduction. Social horror! He ignored me. I dropped my hand, but I introduced myself anyway, saying something like "I'm on your…
cortex | January 29, 2007Paul Krugman's analysis of Milton Friedman's intellectual legacy is one of the best articles I've read recently. Krugman not only paints a balanced portrait of Friedman's accomplishments - great economist, bad popularizer - but ably summarizes the rival tensions in 20th century economics. It's all fascinating stuff, but I was particularly interested in this section on the rational agent model:
For most of the past two centuries, economic thinking has been dominated by the concept of Homo economicus. The hypothetical Economic Man knows what he wants; his preferences can be expressed…
clock | January 27, 2007Considering I've been writing textbook-like tutorials on chronobiology for quite a while now, trying always to write as simply and clearly as possible, and even wrote a Basic Concepts And Terms post, I am surprised that I never actually defined the term "biological clock" itself before, despite using it all the time.
Since the science bloggers started writing the 'basic concepts and terms' posts recently, I've been thinking about the best way to define 'biological clock' and it is not easy! Let me try, under the fold:
A biological clock is a structure that times regular re-occurence of…
pharyngula | January 27, 2007I recently got a short email interview on the subject of science and spirituality. Now I should warn you: "spirituality" is one of those words that sets my teeth on edge and triggers a reflexive reach for my kukri. It's an empty buzzword that some people use as a placeholder for "deep feelings of connectedness to the universe", but that I read as "mindless blithering; brains on the fritz", so I respond to questions like that with an immediate rejection of the premise. The writer seemed like a nice person, though, and the questions are well-intentioned, so after barking out my answers I…
cortex | January 26, 2007It's an astonishingly robust finding:
Smokers with damaged insulas were 136 times more likely to have their addictions erased than smokers with damage in other parts of their brains.
What makes this paper so interesting is that it actually makes sense. The insula has been recognized for more than a decade as a crucial substrate for feeling. It sits at an important neural intersection, and is largely responsible for integrating signals generated by our body - so called "somatic markers" - into mental states. As Antonio Damasio has written (his wife is a co-author on the cigarette paper): "The…
clock | January 26, 2007As always, put the press releases under the dissecting microscopes:
Thinking With The Spinal Cord?:
Two scientists from the University of Copenhagen have demonstrated that the spinal cord use network mechanisms similar to those used in the brain. The discovery is featured in the current issue of Science.
More under the fold...
Quitting Smoking May Be Harder If Mom Smoked During Pregnancy:
Quitting smoking may be more difficult for individuals whose mothers smoked during pregnancy, according to animal research conducted by Duke University Medical Center researchers. Prenatal exposure to…
clock | January 25, 2007Speaking of the role of blogs in science communication, today's NY TImes has an interesting article about the way a sloppily reported story about research on gay sheep got all out of proportion: Of Gay Sheep, Modern Science and the Perils of Bad Publicity (also mentioned by Dave this morning).
Apparently, the media reporting was heavily influenced by PETA, and much of the blogosphere fell for it, except for a couple of notable exceptions, including 'emptypockets' who is a co-blogger on Next Hurrah and a Diarist on Daily Kos who focuses mainly on science topics.
His analysis of the way story…
clock | January 25, 2007How Fishes Conquered The Ocean:
Scientists at the University of Bergen, Norway have deduced how bony fishes conquered the oceans by duplicating their yolk-producing genes and filling their eggs with the water of life -- the degradation of yolk proteins from one of the duplicated genes causes the eggs to fill with vital water and float. This is the major solution realized by extant marine teleosts that showed an unprecedented radiation during the late Cretaceous and early Paleogene Periods. The work is a unique hypothesis that integrates the cellular and molecular physiology of teleost…
developingintelligence | January 24, 2007"Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed." The first program will save 200 people. The second program has a 33% probability of saving all 600 people, but a 67% chance that no one will be saved. Which program would you choose?
If you're like most people, you'll pick the first program. However, if these choices had been framed in terms of losses (i.e., 400 people will die in the first program, where the second program has a 33% chance that no one…
hrynyshyn | January 23, 2007The lead story in today's Science section of the New York Times isn't really about science at all, but its opposite: superstition. The notion that we're hard-wired to believe in a god has received a lot of attention of late, but now we're told that we also might be genetically programmed to believe in magic, luck and superstition. Great.
The brain seems to have networks that are specialized to produce an explicit, magical explanation in some circumstances, said Pascal Boyer, a professor of psychology and anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. In an e-mail message, he said such…
drorzel | January 22, 2007In the initial "Basic Concepts" post, I discussed the concept of Force in physics. This time out, I'll be talking about fields, which is a much dicier proposition. Not only are fields considerably more abstract than forces, but I've never lectured on fields in general (specific instances of fields, yes, but not fields as abstract objects). For that matter, I've never taken a real field theory class. The chances of my saying something stupid about fields are exponentially greater than the chances of my saying something stupid about forces.
In a certain sense, though, "Fields" is a good topic…
clock | January 22, 2007As always, comment on the studies and reporting of them in the comments....
Male Fish Turn To Cannibalism When Uncertain Of Paternity:
A study from the February issue of the American Naturalist is the first to demonstrate that male fish are more likely to eat their offspring when they have been cuckolded during the act of spawning. Moreover, the more males that are present during spawning, the more likely it is that a male will try to eat the eggs when they are laid, as it is less likely that he fertilized them.
...more under the fold....
Spider Silk Inspires Strong And Stretchy…
sciencetolife | January 21, 2007 What drives people to do good things?
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have discovered an area of the brain that determines whether people tend to be selfish or altruistic.
The researchers used a brain scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with a computer game that engaged participants' altruistic behavior. In the computer game participants' success earned them money for a charity.
The study showed that increased activity in a region of the brain called the posterior superior temporal sulcus strongly predicted a person's…