neurophilosophy | May 27, 2008New research shows that a protein found in green algae can partially restore visual function when delivered into the retina of blind mice, taking us one step further towards genetic therapy for various conditions in which the degeneration of retinal cells leads to imapired vision or complete blindness.
Normally, light entering the eye falls upon the rods and cones at the back of the retina. These are the photoreceptors: they are packed with a light-sensitive protein called rhodopsin, which initiates an electrical signal when struck by photons (the particles which carry light).
The signals…
neurophilosophy | May 26, 2008From this online gallery of modern and vintage psychiatric drug adverts.
COCAINE TOOTHACHE DROPS Instantaneous Cure! Price 15 Cents. Prepared by the Lloyd Manufacturing Co. 219 Hudson Ave., Albany, N.Y. For sale by all Druggists. (Registered March 1885.)
Cocaine is the new anaesthetic now used so extensively throughout Europe and this country by Physicians, Surgeons and Dentists. This preparation of Toothache Drops contains Cocaine, and its wonderful properties are fully demonstrated by the many recommendations it is daily receiving. Take no other except Cocaine…
neurophilosophy | May 25, 2008This clever 2-minute film was produced by the Korean electronics firm Samsung, as part of their promotion for a new product called the SOUL mobile phone.
Related:
Interior design optical illusions
The left brain/right brain myth
neurophilosophy | May 25, 2008Here's a beautiful quote by the great neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952), from his 1941 book Man on His Nature:
Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of sub-patterns.
Sherrington made a significant contribution to the discovery of the neuron, and coined the terms neuron and synapse. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work.
neurophilosophy | May 22, 2008
Via Street Anatomy comes this recent case report from Acta Neurochirurgica, of a man who had a paintbrush stuck into his brain - bristly end first - during a fight, but didn't realize until 6 hours later, when he went to hospital complaining of a headache! Even more remarkably, any brain damage that may have occurred was apparently insufficient to cause any behavioural or cognitive deficits.
Mandat, T. S., et al. (2005). Artistic assault: an unusual penetrating head injury reported as a trivial facial trauma. Acta Neurochir. 147: 331-333. [Summary]
The authors report a case of…
neurophilosophy | May 21, 2008The WBUR/NPR programme On Point has a very interesting interview with Jill Price (right), a 42-year-old woman from Los Angeles who has a "non-stop, uncontrollable and automatic" episodic memory.
Known in the scientific literature as A.J., Price is the first documented case of hyperthymestic syndrome, a condition in which autobiographical memories cannot be forgotten. Consequently, Price recalls every miniscule detail of her life since the age of 14, "like a movie" which is played over and over again on a daily basis.
Since Price's case was first reported in 2006, a handful of people have come…
neurophilosophy | May 20, 2008
Four representations of Phineas Gage, from Macmillan, M. (2006). Restoring Phineas Gage: A 150th Retrospective. J. Hist. Neurosci. 9: 46-66. [Abstract]
Here's some more neurohistory from the Beeb: following on from last week's episode of In Our Time, which featured a discussion about the history of the brain, is the BBC Radio 4 series Case Study, which looks at - yes, you've guessed it - individual case studies that have made significant contributions to neuroscience and psychology.
In the third episode of the series, which airs tomorrow at 11am GMT is now online, presenter Claudia…
neurophilosophy | May 17, 2008The brain is an organ of staggering complexity, consisting of hundreds of billions of cells (and tens of thousands of different cell types) which form millions of specialized circuits that are organized into thousands of discrete areas. Neuroscientists have a number of methods for investigating brain circuitry and the connectivity of neurons within circuits. One of these involves exploiting the abilities of certain viruses, such as the herpes viruses, to target nerve cells; genetically manipulated viruses can be used to trace the synaptic connections between cells. This method has its…
neurophilosophy | May 15, 2008Four years ago this week, leading neuroscientists and psychologists convened at Columbia University for the Brain and Mind Symposium, "to discuss the accomplishments and limitations of reductionist and holistic approaches to examining the nervous system and mental functions".
Speakers included the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, developmental neurobiologist Thomas Jessell, who heads Columbia's new neuroscience research centre, and pioneering child psychiatrist Michael Rutter, whose reassessment of John Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation proved highly influential.
On the…
neurophilosophy | May 13, 2008
The procedure known as trepanation, in which a hole is scraped or drilled in the skull, is an ancient form of neurosurgery that has been performed since the late Stone Age. Exactly why ancient peoples performed trepanation has remained a matter of debate: some researchers argue that it was performed for medical reasons, as it is today, while others believe it was done for magical or religious reasons.
A new study by two American anthropologists now provides evidence that the Incas performed trepanation to treat head injuries; that the procedure was far more common than was previously…
neurophilosophy | May 12, 2008Michael L. Anderson emailed to inform me about this forthcoming event:
Announcing the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology June 26-29, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PARegistration is now open; deadline Thursday, June 5 -- 12:00pm EST
Note that early registration is suggested, as the reserved hotel block is likely to fill quickly.
The 2008 conference will feature presentations by:
George Ainslie, Michael L. Anderson, Louise Antony, Peter Carruthers, Louis Charland, Anjan Chatterjee, David Danks, Felipe De Brigard, Michael Devitt Marthah Farah…
neurophilosophy | May 10, 2008In Thursday's episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time, presenter Melvyn Bragg was joined by Vivian Nutton, Jonathan Sawday and Marina Wallace (professors of the history of medicine, English and art, respectively) for a fascinating discussion about the history of the brain.
The 45-minute programme, which can be downloaded as a RealPlayer file from the link above, focuses on how perceptions of the brain have changed over the past 2,500 years, beginning with the first brain dissections, which were performed by Herophilus and Erasistratus in Alexandria, apparently on live criminals!…
neurophilosophy | May 3, 2008
This beautiful two-photon microscopy image, by Alanna Watt and Michael Hausser, shows a network of Purkinje cells in the cerebellar cortex. Named after the Czech anatomist who discovered them, Purkinje cells are the largest cells in the mammalian brain. They have a planar structure with a highly elaborate dendritic tree which forms hundreds of thousands of synapses with the parallel fibres of cerebellar granule cells, and a single axon which projects down into the deep cerebellar nuclei.
The image comes from a collection inspired by the UCL Neuroscience website, which has just been launched…
neurophilosophy | April 29, 2008My exams begin on Friday, so things are going to be pretty quite around here until around mid-May. I will post various bits and pieces over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, here are some interesting links that I've found recently:
In the New York Times Magazine, Gary Marcus discusses the possibility of memory chips - future generations of neural implants which use algorithms inspired by Google to augment the retrieval of information.
The author of the above article is interviewed by Carl Zimmer on bloggingheadsTV. Marcus is a professor of psychology at NYU, and the author of a…
neurophilosophy | April 21, 2008
Our German counterparts at ScienceBlogs.de have produced this 21-minute video of an interview they did with neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of learning and memory in the sea slug Aplysia californica.
Kandel is one of the authors of Principles of Neural Science, the standard textbook for neuroscience at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. His autobiography, In Search of Memory, which was published in 2006 (and which I reviewed at the time), won the LA Times Book Award for Science…
neurophilosophy | April 21, 2008Here's something that I'll almost certainly be entering in two years' time (when, if all goes according to plan, I'll be a Ph.D. student again):
Wellcome Trust and New Scientist essay competition
The Wellcome Trust is inviting postgraduates in science, engineering or technology to tell the world about their research, through an annual essay competition run in partnership with New Scientist.
Prizes this year for outstanding essays include a two-week, expenses-paid media placement with 'New Scientist', £1000 spending money and publication of the winning essay in 'New Scientist'.
As well…
neurophilosophy | April 20, 2008
Currents carried by sodium and potassium ions through the membrane of the giant axon of Loligo.
Get more documents
Docstoc is a useful tool for sharing PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and Word and Excel documents. It can also be used to embed files of these formats into a blog post in a customizable document viewer.
I've just set up an account, and have uploaded two papers by Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, in which they describe their classic experiments on the giant axon of the squid. With these experiments, which were performed in the early 1950s, Hodgkin and Huxley elucidated the…
neurophilosophy | April 16, 2008On this day in 1943, Albert Hofmann (right), a chemist working for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz, discovered the psychedelic properties of LSD. Hofmann had actually first synthesized the drug 5 years earlier, as part of a research program in which the therapeutic effects of derivatives of ergot alkaloids - chemicals produced by a fungus - were being investigated.
In his autobiography, LSD: My Problem Child, Hofmann explains how he accidentally ingested the drug while synthesizing it in the laboratory:
It seemed to have resulted from some external toxic influence; I surmised a…
neurophilosophy | April 15, 2008I've just got the feedback on my final piece of coursework, and it's better than I expected:
A well written description of TrpM8 function in cold sensation. It is written clearly and in the context of experimental evidence. Some additional figures to summarise the results discussed would have been helpful.
The choice of papers demonstrates a clear understanding of the field and were a coherent choice. The candidate also extends their discussion on the significance of the findings through the citing of other works. This is clearly a distinction level essay. However, a further discussion…
neurophilosophy | April 13, 2008
One of the events organized for Bora's visit to London was a fantastic behind-the-scenes tour of the Darwin Centre, a newly built section of the Natural History Museum which houses the museum's researchers and contains a vast collection of around 70 million bottled animal specimens.
The Darwin Centre's tank room is a most remarkable place. This is where the largest specimens are stored, in glass jars and metal containers whose lids are opened and closed with a system of chains and pulleys suspended from the ceiling.
The tank room mostly contains fish specimens, including a coelacanth, but…