Brain and Behavior
blue_expo | December 12, 2007Here's another interesting question from our most recent neurobiology exam. With some luck PZ won't get irritated that I keep recycling my work. This paper was a bit of a brain thumper but also very interesting after deciphering what it's talking about.
3) Summarize this paper and describe both the neural circuit and the genes underlying this particular rhythm.
Stoleru D, Peng Y, Agosta J, Rosbash M (2004). Coupled oscillators control morning
and evening locomotor behavior of Drosophila. Nature 431:862-868
The roughly one hundred bilaterally arranged circadian clock neurons in adult fly…
bushwells | December 10, 2007So does anyone want to lay odds on how long it will be before "discovery of the gay gene" gets spread like a crazed rhinovirus through the popular media? A recent press release announces the discovery that male fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) with mutations in the GB (genderblind) allele not only mate with female flies but also were attracted to - and try to mate with - male flies.
The mutation apparently alters perception of chemosensory cues. Two of the major chemical attractants in the world of fruit fly sex are 7-tricosene and cis-vaccenyl acetate: the flies taste the former…
goodmath | December 10, 2007 Astute readers will remember a couple of encounters I had with Sal Cordova from Uncommon Descent a few months ago (here, in the comments, and here). Not too long after that, Sal made a fairly big deal about the fact that he was returning to grad school, and had to stop blogging at UD because the dastardly darwinists would damage his academic prospects if he continued. He played the standard creationist-martyr role, poor guy, persecuted by
all the horrible non-believers. Naturally, it didn't last long. He's got his own blog now, called "Young Cosmos", where he writes his usually pathetic…
clock | December 9, 2007This weekend, with 70 degrees F in Chapel Hill, it would have bin a sin to remain indoors. So I didn't. But in the end, at twilight today, my daughter and I went to see Golden Compass, the movie whose first-weekend box-office earnings I wanted to boost.
I made sure not to read any reviews of the movie beforehand. I am, unlike most people who already wrote about it, one of those people who has never read the Pullman books on which the movie is based. Thus, like the majority of the target audience, I was a Pullman "virgin" and I wanted to watch it just like anyone else going out to see a…
clock | December 8, 2007My son is working on a paper for school and he picked the topic of video games and how they affect behavior. He primed himself by playing Assassin's Creed for a couple of days, so he could aggressively look for sources and he found these:
Most Middle-school Boys And Many Girls Play Violent Video Games
Children's Personality Features Unchanged By Short-Term Video Play
Study Examines Video Game Play Among Adolescents
Surgeons With Video Game Skill Appear To Perform Better In Simulated Surgery Skills Course
Online Multiplayer Video Games Create Greater Negative Consequences, Elicit Greater…
j7uy5 | December 8, 2007
This case was
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/23/2411">written
up in the NEJM,
and made freely accessible. The image on the top left shows a
brain scan taken three years earlier than the one on the top right.
The other images show the cells in the tumor.
It is a meningothelial meningioma, World Health Organization grade I.
You may ask, how is it that we happen to have available
before-and-after views of the same brain. That is not usually
the case. But this was an unusual case: the patient had
undergone sex-change treatment, and was receiving high-dose…
retrospectacle | December 5, 2007
Some interesting research is being reported in the mainstream media: that buckwheat honey can reduce coughing and soothe sore throats as well as over-the-counter cough syrup (dextromethorphan), in children. ABC News specifically reported that, in comparison to baseline levels, coughing children who received honey slept better and coughed less that those that received cough syrup or nothing at all. I decided to go to the journal article, published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, and read about the results myself.
The authors' objective was to compare honey, honey-flavored…
clock | December 4, 2007Tuesday night - time to see what's new in PLoS ONE - 28 new papers:
Reporting Science and Conflicts of Interest in the Lay Press:
Forthright reporting of financial ties and conflicts of interest of researchers is associated with public trust in and esteem for the scientific enterprise. We searched Lexis/Nexis Academic News for the top news stories in science published in 2004 and 2005. We conducted a content analysis of 1152 newspaper stories. Funders of the research were identified in 38% of stories, financial ties of the researchers were reported in 11% of stories, and 5% reported financial…
developingintelligence | December 4, 2007How does memory help to accomplish moment-to-moment goal-directed action? Classic accounts, such as Baddeley's working memory model, suggest that there are separate storage and processing ("executive") mechanisms, whereas newer accounts (proposed by a variety of researchers) propose that storage and processing are intertwined in the form of maintained goal or context representations.
According to these newer theories, individual differences in the strength of goal representations can more or less efficiently "bias" perception and behavior, particularly in cases where habit or environmental…
gregladen | December 3, 2007Sex differences in certain abilities, which have persisted for decades in various psychological tests, are now widely believed to be the result of conditioning that is in turn shaped by cultural factors. This applies to math abilities, spatial skills, and a range of other activities. Neural plasticity is key, and widely misunderstood or ignored. (Indeed, this is at the heart of the race discussion. Some people really want genes to "cause" different levels or kinds of intelligence, but are unable to explain how a few thousand genes wire up a few billion neurons ... but that is the subject…
bleimanb | December 3, 2007Humans are now one large step closer to producing armies of undead, zombie hordes who live only to feast on the brains of the living and reproduce by infecting non-zombies with their "zombie virus" through their saliva or other bodily fluids. This is thanks to the work of a team of scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, who have documented a kind of wasp that zombifies cockroaches.
Ampulex compressa enjoys licking pieces of wood, long walks on the beach and necromancy.
The Ampulex compressa actually stings a roach twice, once to disable it, and again (this time…
developingintelligence | December 3, 2007Your IQ can be reliably predicted by simple reaction time tasks - perhaps even more reliably than with much more complex cognitive tasks. This surprising psychometric fact has led to the belief in human "processing speed." In the same way that a computer with a faster microprocessor might carry out more computations, with potentially less demand on memory, the idea is that brains with better neuronal efficiency also manifest both higher IQ and proportionately faster reaction times even in simple tasks.
To me, this story always seemed "too good to be true" - or perhaps merely "too simple to…
clock | December 3, 2007It's been a long time since I last hosted a carnival, but who could resist Mo when he asked so nicely if I would be interested in hosting Encephalon? Of course I will! And here it is and I hope you enjoy it, with a great diversity of posts, linked in the order I received them:
GrrlScientist of Living the Scientific Life invites us all to the Mouse Party to see the difference between 'your brain' and 'your brain on drugs'.
Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science looks at the recent study on the neurobiology of aesthetics: Brain of the beholder - the neuroscience of beauty in sculpture.
Dr. Deb…
j7uy5 | December 3, 2007The Washington Post has an interesting article,
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/01/AR2007120101782.html">'A
Soldier's Officer', about an officer in Iraq who attempted
suicide and endangered other personnel. The military is
considering putting her on trial for "assault on a superior
commissioned officer, aggravated assault, kidnapping, reckless
endangerment, wrongful discharge of a firearm, communication of a
threat and two attempts of intentional self-injury without intent to
avoid service."
In this post, I will comment on the article and the case as…
pharyngula | November 30, 2007So this young man, Dennis Lindberg, refused a blood transfusion and died. This was a completely useless, futile death; it wasn't a sacrifice that helped someone, and it was avoidable by a routine medical procedure. So what could possibly have driven him to this behavior?
Earlier Wednesday, Skagit County Superior Court Judge John Meyer had denied a motion by the state to force the boy to have a blood transfusion. The judge said the eighth-grader knew "he's basically giving himself a death sentence."
"I don't believe Dennis' decision is the result of any coercion. He is mature and understands…
j7uy5 | November 29, 2007
href="http://www.researchblogging.org/">A great
deal of evidence has accumulated that there is a problem with
regulation of cortisol levels in persons with posttraumatic stress
disorder. Several years ago, it
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/157/8/1252">was
demonstrated that adult offspring of persons with PTSD had
lower circulating cortisol than others, and it appeared that the lower
cortisol was a risk factor for the development of PTSD.
Now, it has been shown that, at least in some persons, lower cortisol
levels can be seen in infant offspring of patients…
developingintelligence | November 29, 2007The ability to actively maintain more information in memory, known as "working memory," seems to benefit performance in a variety of tasks. One idea is that these tasks require controlled attention, allowing for better control over behavior.
But there's a serious problem with this explanation: maybe this doesn't reflect improved control so much as superior motivation. In other words, maybe subjects with higher working memory are the only ones who care, and everyone else is just goofing off!
Thankfully, there are some cases where additional working memory has no benefit - or can even be a…
oracknows | November 29, 2007We've had one example this week of people with minds so open that their brains fell out at the Oxford Union, which invited Holocaust denier and British National Party leader Nick Griffin to "discuss free speech." Now, sadly, I see another, this time it's the United States government, which has invited die-hard antivaccinationists to be on a major federal panel about autism:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Advocates who believe vaccines may cause autism will join mental health professionals and neurologists on a new federal panel to coordinate autism research and education, the U.S. Health and Human…
clock | November 27, 2007There are 35 brand new papers on PLoS ONE tonight and it is difficult for me to pick the most exciting for the week. So, here is one on the effects of night-shift, one on melanopsin and light perception, one on time perception, one on limb regeneration in the Axolotl, a meta-analysis of the soil ecology literature and, a first for PLoS ONE, an article by a prominent philosopher of science that I expect to be discussed on blogs over the next few days:
Acute Sleep Deprivation and Circadian Misalignment Associated with Transition onto the First Night of Work Impairs Visual Selective Attention:…
retrospectacle | November 27, 2007In a response to a "What are You Thankful For" request by ABC4.com, a rare and interesting neurological case study was described: penetration of the brain by a deer antler. CNN.com also has a video describing the event and the injury. In a nutshell, 5-year-old Connor Schick found a deer antler during an outdoor vacation in July. He tripped while carrying it, he fell on it, and it penetrated his brain through his eyesocket. (OUCH) Below is the MRI of his injury, with his doctor holding up the offending antler for dramatic effect.
Credit: CNN.com
Connor was quite lucky. Not only did he…