Brain and Behavior

Sarah Berga, et. al. presented a paper at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Prague, about the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy for treatment of infertility.  It this post, I elaborate on some of the details that the mainstream media left out.  I end by speculating about what it might mean about our society, that such a simple solution could have been overlooked for so long. From a report on the Times Online: href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2235656,00.html">Learning how to beat stress could be the best fertility treatmentby Mark…
Mixing Memory posted an interesting reply to my "Gladwell is the New Freud" post. He argued that my "Freud bashing was just wrong": For one, while Jonah attempts to criticize Gladwell for being too Freud-like in his discussion of the "adaptive unconscious" (another term for the "cognitive unconscious"), the very fact that contemporary psychologists have begun to show just how important unconscious processes are is, in a way, a vindication of Freud. As is the fact that we are just now beginning to understsand the interplay of affect, motivation, and cognition -- the very focus of Freudian…
Brainethics has a summary of a recent Science Magazine article about cross-cultural sharing behavior. The study set up three different sharing scenarios, then examined how cultures with different values with respect to sharing behaved: These results demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between the likelihood of accepting an offer (i.e. the level of willingness to punish small offers) and the willingness to share (i.e. altruism). In other words, in cultures where you are expected to share, you give more, even though others have no way to threaten or punish you. The authors of the…
This is the second in the series of posts designed to provide the basics of the field of Chronobiology. See the first part: ClockTutorial #1 - What Is Chronobiology and check out the rest of them here - they will all, over time, get moved to this blog. Here is a brief overview of the concepts and terms used in the field of chronobiology. I will write much more detailed accounts of various aspects of it in the future. Seasons of the year, phases of the moon, high and low tides, and alternation between night and day are examples of cyclic changes in the environment. Each presents a different…
The persistence of circadian rhythmicity during long bouts of hibernation in mammals has been a somewhat controversial topic in the literature. While some studies suggest that circadian clock is active during hibernation, other studies dispute this. Apparently, the truth is somewhere in-between - it differs between species: Not all hibernating animals retain apparent circadian rhythmicity during the hibernation season. Whereas some species, such as bats and golden-mantled ground squirrels, maintain circadian rhythmicity in Tb throughout the hibernation season when held in constant…
In chronological order, starting with tomorrow....[under the fold] First The Synapse (neurobiology, brain and behavior) will be on June 25th, 2006 on Pure Pedantry. Next Carnival of the Godless (religion from godless perspective) will be on June 25, 2006 on Silly Humans. Next Tar Heel Tavern (North Carolina blogging) will be on June 25th, 2006 on My Blue Puzzle Piece. First Radiology Grand Rounds will be on June 25th, 2006 on Sumer's Radiology Site. Next Carnival of the Green (sustainability, environment, conservation) will be on June 26th, 2006 on Jen's Green Journal. Next Carnival of Bad…
Here is an illusion that was discovered relatively recently. Take a look at this (from here): You should see two figures with a purple outter border and an orange inner border. What color is the interior of the figure? It probably looks like it's orange, though a lighter shade of orange than the inner border. It's actually white, though. Don't believe me? Take a look at these two figures: These are the same two figures as the ones above, except that I've removed the orange inner border from the figure on the left. Now you can clearly see that the interior is white. This is called the "…
A couple Science Bloggers have been giving Freud a hard time lately. In a post on Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, Jonah Lehrer of The Frontal Cortex wrote: So why was Blink less than satisfying for me? Becase Gladwell ended up lumping together all sorts of research, from Damasio's Iowa Gambling Task to Ekman's cartography of facial muscles to brain scans of autistic people, that, at least from a neurological perspective, were totally unrelated. They all involved different brain regions that are activated by different stimuli. Gladwell got around this slight problem by never discussing the actual…
Jonah Lehrer now has two posts slamming Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. The second post, currently ScienceBlogs' most emailed story, offers the ultimate slam, proclaiming that Gladwell is the "new Freud," a mere "prose stylist" who "wasn't particularly interested in the neurological foundations of his theories." As I've said before, I agree with much of what Jonah is saying, especially when it comes to Gladwell's over-reliance on anecdote and over-generalizations about experimental results. And I'm certainly impressed, as Jonah is, with Gladwell's insightful analysis of current events and politics…
The brain can be a good multitasker, using the same systems for unrelated functions. For example, the sensorimotor system may be used for imagining objects and concepts. What's more, when one part of the brain fails to do is job, another part can sometimes fill in the gaps. Yet some disorders do cause intractable problems. People with autism, for example, have difficulty recognizing personality traits in others. While the specific neurological cause of autism has yet to be isolated, one hypothesis suggests that the key is an inability to develop episodic memory. If you can't recall the…
In my post on Blink, I argued that Gladwell's book was a wee bit incoherent, and that this incoherence stemmed from his reliance on spiffy anecdotes instead of nitty-gritty scientific details. Katherine made an excellent comment: I thought the problem with Blink was that he never really made a point. He basically said our first impressions are always right, so we should trust them ... except when they aren't right. His style of anecdotal evidence is indeed what makes him so readable, but he has a common problem of either not making a point, or citing anecdotes for both sides of the argument.…
'If man in space, in addition to flying his vehicle, must continuously be checking on things and making adjustments merely to keep himself alive, he becomes a slave to the machine. The purpose of the Cyborg, as well as his own homeostatic systems, is to provide an organizational system in which such robot-like problems are taken care of automatically and unconsciously, leaving man free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel.' -Cline and Clyne (1960), on the creation of the word "cyborg" During the summer, the Neurokids (University of Michigan Neuroscience pre-docs) have a journal club…
Last week we looked at the organ systems involved in regulation and control of body functions: the nervous, sensory, endocrine and circadian systems. This week, we will cover the organ systems that are regulated and controlled. Again, we will use the zebra-and-lion example to emphasize the way all organ systems work in concert to maintain the optimal internal conditions of the body: So, if you are a zebra and you hear and see a lion approaching (sensory systems), the brain (nervous system) triggers a stress-response (endocrine system). This is likely to happen during the day, as the…
Next Teaching Carnival (higher ed) will be on or after June 16th, 2006 on Raining Cats and Dogma. First Mendel's Garden (genetics) will be on June 18th, 2006 on The force that through.... Next Pediatric Grand Rounds will be on June 18th, 2006, on Unintelligent Design. Next Carnival of the Green (sustainability, environment, conservation) will be on June 19th, 2006 on Savvy Vegetarian. Next Carnival of Bad History (misuse and abuse of history) will be on June 20, 2006 on Frog In A Well[thanks to Jonathan Dresner for updating me on this] Next Grand Rounds (medicine) will be on June 20th on…
We're off to a great start in the ScienceBloggers' Donors Choose fundraiser for teachers, but we've still got a long way to go. Now there's even more great news: SEED magazine will match all the funds we raise up to $10,000. Add that to my and Greta's offer to do a 10 percent match if Cognitive Daily reaches its goal of $1,000, and there's never been a better time to donate. Give $25, and it's like giving $52.50. Give $100, and it's like giving $210. Give $100 million, and send Dave and Greta to the poor house -- or at least determine the limits of our generosity -- either way, it's a nifty…
It is impossible to cover all organ systems in detail over the course of just two lectures. Thus, we will stick only to the basics. Still, I want to emphasize how much organ systems work together, in concert, to maintain the homeostasis (and rheostasis) of the body. I'd also like to emphasize how fuzzy are the boundaries between organ systems - many organs are, both anatomically and functionally, simultaneously parts of two or more organ systems. So, I will use an example you are familiar with from our study of animal behavior - stress response - to illustrate the unity of the well-…
[From the archives; originally posted October 20, 2005] Measles is one of those diseases that we don't give much thought to in the United States anymore. Following an incubation period of about 10 days, flu-like symptoms appear: fever, malaise, cough, congestion, conjunctivitis. Soon, the rash appears, first near the ears, then the forehead, the face, and over the rest of the body. Complications were common. These could include a seconary bacterial pneumonia, encephalitis, myocarditis, miscarriage, and a condition called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). (Continued below...) SSPE…
This paper shows that leptin injections into the hippocampus improves memory in a T-maze footshock avoidance and step down inhibitory avoidance tasks. It caught my eye because I just finished a course in behavioral neuroscience, but I have never for the life of me thought the two were related. Leptin is a hormone that is released by fat cells that tells your brain that you're good on food and that you should stop eating. Leptin insufficiency causes obesity. Before you get excited though you should know that leptin is not a diet drug because if you have too much of it your brain stops…
Hi there. If this is your first visit to the newly-designed ScienceBlogs homepage, welcome. And if you're a return visitor, welcome back. I want to take a moment to walk you through the new features and functionalities on the page, but first, a reminder. If you're feeling disoriented by the new design, and are aflame with nostalgia for ScienceBlogs Classic®, I urge you to check out the 'Last 24 Hours' channel, in the upper left-hand corner of the page. Clicking 'Last 24 Hours' will take you to an "alternate homepage" that works exactly as the 'old' ScienceBlogs did: it's an uncluttered space…
Each week, Seed magazine poses a question to all of its ScienceBloggers. This week's question, from reader Jake Bryan, is: Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why? My current work is in protein structure, but there are plenty of other scientific areas that I'd like to explore. Based solely on scientific interest, I would have to go with behavioral genetics. The field of genetics really came into its own in the second half of the 20th Century and captured the imaginations of people…