Neuroscience posts
- March 29, 2013
- 11:26 AM
- 158 views
Blast-related Traumatic Brain Injury and fMRI
by William Yates, M.D. in Brain Posts
Blast-related traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an important research topic. Over 100,000 armed services personnel experienced a significant traumatic brain event in the last decade. A majority of these were explosion or blast-related in nature.However, standard brain imaging techniques (computed tomographay, structural MRI) typically fail to demonstrate changes following blast TBI. New imaging strategies are needed to assess severity and progression.Graner and colleagues from Wa........ Read more »
Graner J, Oakes TR, French LM, & Riedy G. (2013) Functional MRI in the investigation of blast-related traumatic brain injury. Frontiers in neurology, 16. PMID: 23460082
- March 28, 2013
- 06:57 PM
- 120 views
Throw another dog in the (data) pool
by Cobb & Hecht in Do You Believe In Dog?
Hello Julie,My, oh my! What an exciting time it was last week, witnessing Dog Spies' migration to the Scientific American Blog Network. Such a great day for dogs, for science and for YOU! Yah! for this recognition of your fabulous writing achievements, communicating the field of canine science to a broader audience. WELL DONE!As for your question about writing and how I do it, I have to admit I'm 'between systems' currently. By this, I mean that I sometimes map out ideas and plan........ Read more »
Liberati Alessandro, Altman Douglas G., Tetzlaff Jennifer, Mulrow Cynthia, Gøtzsche Peter C., Ioannidis John P.A., Clarke Mike, Devereaux P.J., Kleijnen Jos, & Moher David. (2009) The PRISMA statement for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of studies that evaluate health care interventions: explanation and elaboration. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 62(10). DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2009.06.006
Dorey Nicole R., Udell Monique A.R., & Wynne Clive D.L. (2009) Breed differences in dogs sensitivity to human points: A meta-analysis. Behavioural Processes, 81(3), 409-415. DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2009.03.011
Fratkin Jamie L, Sinn David L, Patall Erika A, & Gosling Samuel D. (2013) Personality consistency in dogs: a meta-analysis. PloS one. PMID: 23372787
Nimer Janelle, & Lundahl Brad. (2007) Animal-Assisted Therapy: A Meta-Analysis. Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People , 20(3), 225-238. DOI: 10.2752/089279307X224773
- March 28, 2013
- 05:36 PM
- 148 views
The biological basis of orchestra seating
by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea
Many cultural conventions appear like the result of historical accidents. The QUERTY – keyboard is a typical example: the technical requirements of early typewriters still determine the computer keyboard that I write this text on, even though by now technical advances would allow for a far more efficient design. Some culturally accepted oddities, however, appear [...]... Read more »
Deutsch, D. (1999) Grouping Mechanisms in Music. The Psychology of Music, Second Edition, 299-348. DOI: 10.1016/B978-012213564-4/50010-X
Schneider P, Sluming V, Roberts N, Bleeck S, & Rupp A. (2005) Structural, functional, and perceptual differences in Heschl's gyrus and musical instrument preference. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 387-94. PMID: 16597790
- March 28, 2013
- 04:13 PM
- 143 views
Can Brain Activity Predict Criminal Reoffending?
by The Neurocritic in The Neurocritic
Is it possible for a brain scan to predict whether a recently paroled inmate will commit another crime within 4 years? A new study by Aharoni et al. (2013) suggests that the level of activity within the anterior cingulate cortex might provide a clue to whether a given offender will be rearrested.Dress this up a bit and combine with a miniaturized brain-computer interface that continuously uploads EEG activity to the data center at a maximum security prison. There, machine learning algorith........ Read more »
Aharoni, E., Vincent, G., Harenski, C., Calhoun, V., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Gazzaniga, M., & Kiehl, K. (2013) Neuroprediction of future rearrest. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1219302110
- March 28, 2013
- 12:09 PM
- 140 views
Football and the Blood Brain Barrier
by William Yates, M.D. in Brain Posts
A variety of research tools are being utilized to study the effect of trauma on the brain. In a previous post, I summarized some of the research using diffusion brain imaging or DTI.A recent study looked at the function of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in a group of football players. The BBB is an important brain protective mechanism. A variety of blood proteins and other compounds have the potential to cause inflammation and other damage to neurons and other brain cells.Marchi........ Read more »
Marchi N, Bazarian JJ, Puvenna V, Janigro M, Ghosh C, Zhong J, Zhu T, Blackman E, Stewart D, Ellis J.... (2013) Consequences of repeated blood-brain barrier disruption in football players. PloS one, 8(3). PMID: 23483891
- March 26, 2013
- 06:42 PM
- 171 views
Advice vs Victim-blaming: a proposed study on #safetytipsforladies
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
So there has been a lot of noise about whether giving women 'safety tips' to avoid being raped is a form of 'victim blaming'.Don't get Raped (source)This culminated in a great hashtag (as many things do). Follow #safetytipsforladies to see some lovely tips for avoiding rape.For example:Don't be anywhere. 100% of rapes happen in places and locations. #safetytipsforladies— Conna Stevenson (@1000DaysOfRain) March 25, 2013Others suggest simply not being a woman, not ever drinking anything, not eve........ Read more »
Bieneck S, & Krahé B. (2011) Blaming the victim and exonerating the perpetrator in cases of rape and robbery: is there a double standard?. Journal of interpersonal violence, 26(9), 1785-97. PMID: 20587449
- March 26, 2013
- 03:36 PM
- 130 views
Brain Activation: Does 2 2 = 4?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
An interesting Journal of Neuroscience paper just out argues that Spontaneous and Task-Evoked Brain Activity Negatively Interact. If true, this could be explosive, because a lot of neuroscience is built on the assumption that those two things don’t interact. So what’s going on? We know that the brain is active all of the time. Even [...]... Read more »
He BJ. (2013) Spontaneous and task-evoked brain activity negatively interact. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 33(11), 4672-82. PMID: 23486941
- March 25, 2013
- 06:18 PM
- 39 views
The Neuroscience of Telepathy
by NeuroscienceDC in NeuroscienceDC
Telepathic rats and brain machine interfaces.... Read more »
Pais-Vieira M, Lebedev M, Kunicki C, Wang J, & Nicolelis MA. (2013) A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Real-Time Sharing of Sensorimotor Information. Scientific reports, 1319. PMID: 23448946
- March 25, 2013
- 04:00 PM
- 152 views
Tea Party Brain Surgeon Wants To Shave You
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic_Discover
I’m currently researching a piece on politics and neurosurgery, and I just came across this amusing snippet. David McKalip MD is a brain surgeon from Florida. He attained 15 minutes of infamy in 2009 when he deemed a virulently racially insensitive of Barack Obama to be “funny stuff” and emailed it to some Tea Party [...]... Read more »
McKalip D. (2013) Letter to the editor: shaving. Journal of neurosurgery, 118(3), 701-2. PMID: 23259824
- March 25, 2013
- 08:38 AM
- 133 views
Guest Post: AMPA Receptors are not Necessary for long term potentiation
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
Today's post is brought to you by @BabyAttachMode, who is an electrophysiologist and blogger. Today we are blog swapping! I have a post over at her blog and her post about AMPA receptors and LTP is here. So enjoy, and when you're done reading about the newest advances in synaptic plasticity here, you can head over to InBabyAttachMode and read about my personal life. AMPA Receptors are not Necessary for long term potentiationScience is most interesting to me when you’re testing a hypo........ Read more »
Granger AJ, Shi Y, Lu W, Cerpas M, & Nicoll RA. (2013) LTP requires a reserve pool of glutamate receptors independent of subunit type. Nature, 493(7433), 495-500. PMID: 23235828
Sheng M, Malinow R, & Huganir R. (2013) Neuroscience: Strength in numbers. Nature, 493(7433), 482-3. PMID: 23344353
- March 25, 2013
- 01:55 AM
- 142 views
Brain, livin’ on ketones – a molecular neuroscience look at the ketogenic diet
by Shelly Fan in Neurorexia
WARNING: Wall of text on the yummy neuroprotective effect of ketosis from a molecular neuroscience point of view. Proceed with caution. Remember when your high school biology teacher said that the brain absolutely NEEDS glucose to function? Well, that’s not entirely true. Under severe carbohydrate restriction, the brain can adapt and start burning ketones as [...]... Read more »
Hallböök T, Ji S, Maudsley S, & Martin B. (2012) The effects of the ketogenic diet on behavior and cognition. Epilepsy research, 100(3), 304-9. PMID: 21872440
Rho, J., & Sankar, R. (2008) The ketogenic diet in a pill: Is this possible?. Epilepsia, 127-133. DOI: 10.1111/j.1528-1167.2008.01857.x
Phelps, J., Siemers, S., & El-Mallakh, R. (2012) The ketogenic diet for type II bipolar disorder. Neurocase, 1-4. DOI: 10.1080/13554794.2012.690421
Ruskin DN, Ross JL, Kawamura M Jr, Ruiz TL, Geiger JD, & Masino SA. (2011) A ketogenic diet delays weight loss and does not impair working memory or motor function in the R6/2 1J mouse model of Huntington's disease. Physiology , 103(5), 501-7. PMID: 21501628
Krikorian R, Shidler MD, Dangelo K, Couch SC, Benoit SC, & Clegg DJ. (2012) Dietary ketosis enhances memory in mild cognitive impairment. Neurobiology of aging, 33(2), 2147483647-27. PMID: 21130529
Denke, M. (2001) Metabolic effects of high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets. The American Journal of Cardiology, 88(1), 59-61. DOI: 10.1016/S0002-9149(01)01586-7
- March 22, 2013
- 06:50 PM
- 158 views
A great role model for collaborative science: meet the OpenWorm
by Eugenio Maria Battaglia in Science to Grok
Sometimes even big project could start from a tweet.
Matteo Cantarelli - member of the OpenWorm team - says: "It was 2007 when Giovanni Idili and I started - naively - talking about simulating the worm. We were approaching the problem after having hit common limits of artificial intelligence. We never got to write any code for the worm at that time, we just had lengthy conversations and paper reading sessions together."
... Read more »
Varshney LR, Chen BL, Paniagua E, Hall DH, & Chklovskii DB. (2011) Structural properties of the Caenorhabditis elegans neuronal network. PLoS computational biology, 7(2). PMID: 21304930
Palyanov A, Khayrulin S, Larson SD, & Dibert A. (2011) Towards a virtual C. elegans: a framework for simulation and visualization of the neuromuscular system in a 3D physical environment. In silico biology, 11(3-4), 137-47. PMID: 22935967
- March 21, 2013
- 04:36 PM
- 302 views
Your Body’s Response to Chewing and Spitting: The Role of Insulin
by Shelly Fan in Science of Eating Disorders
In my previous post, I looked at two hormones released during the cephalic phase (gastric secretion that occurs before food is eaten), ghrelin and obestatin, and how they may contribute to runaway eating behavior. Today I’m going to be looking at insulin release during chew and spit (CHSP), a fairly common symptom in eating disorders where the food is tasted, chewed and spit out. Insulin is a small peptide hormone that acts as a key regulator of metabolism; deregulation of insulin signalling........ Read more »
Broberg DJ, & Bernstein IL. (1989) Cephalic insulin release in anorexic women. Physiology , 45(5), 871-4. PMID: 2675143
Moyer A, Rodin J, & Cummings N. (1993) Cephalic phase insulin release in bulimia. The International journal of eating disorders, 14(3), 331-9. PMID: 8275069
Teff KL, & Engelman K. (1996) Palatability and dietary restraint: effect on cephalic phase insulin release in women. Physiology , 60(2), 567-73. PMID: 8840920
Teff KL. (2011) How neural mediation of anticipatory and compensatory insulin release helps us tolerate food. Physiology , 103(1), 44-50. PMID: 21256146
- March 21, 2013
- 04:17 PM
- 24 views
Image ALL the neurons!
by neuroecology in Neuroecology
So you want to image every neuron in the brain of a vertebrate? What kind of crazy man are you? Misha B. Ahrens, that’s who. In what can only be described as a “crazy awesome” experiment, Ahrens used a technique that’s been recently emerging called light sheet microscopy to image the activity of (nearly) every neuron [...]... Read more »
Ahrens, M., & Keller, P. (2013) Whole-brain functional imaging at cellular resolution using light-sheet microscopy. Nature Methods. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.2434
- March 21, 2013
- 08:59 AM
- 115 views
Gazzaniga Book Signing at APS Convention
by sschroeder in Daily Observations
Few scientists know the brain as well as APS Past President Michael Gazzaniga does. A pioneer in cognitive neuroscience, Gazzaniga was the first researcher to study patients in whom the ... Read more »
Gazzaniga M. (2011) Interview with Michael Gazzaniga. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1-8. PMID: 21486292
- March 19, 2013
- 11:47 PM
- 73 views
A snake bit me, now I’m afraid of rope?
by Shelly Fan in Neurorexia
Memories allow us to survive and adapt in constantly changing environments. Fear memory especially warns us to avoid that jumpy hornet in the garden, or the slithering snake on the hiking trail. These memories aren’t very specific – this is evolutionarily beneficial as it allows us to respond to new but similar threats on the [...]... Read more »
Xu W, & Südhof TC. (2013) A neural circuit for memory specificity and generalization. Science (New York, N.Y.), 339(6125), 1290-5. PMID: 23493706
- March 19, 2013
- 04:41 PM
- 130 views
What is up with the "Dopamine Project"?
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
Someone is trying to make me eat my words.yum. (source)That someone is the Dopamine Project. I am on record as saying "It is better for the public to learn simplified bite-size science morsels than to learn nothing at all." And my specific example was that it's better for people to know that 'dopamine is a reward molecule' than to not even know the term dopamine.But sometimes things just go too far. The "Dopamine Project" is a website run by Charles Lyell with a stated 'self-help' purpose: "The ........ Read more »
Shermer M. (2011) What is pseudoscience?. Scientific American, 305(3), 92. PMID: 21870452
- March 19, 2013
- 10:09 AM
- 148 views
Need the Time? Ask a Rooster
by Elizabeth Preston in Inkfish
"The connection with the sun coming up is a misconception," asserts an article in the rural lifestyle magazine Grit. "Roosters crow all the time." Some roosters in Japan would like to loudly disagree. They've shown scientists that their crowing has everything to do with what time of day it is—something they don't even need the sun to know.
Tsuyoshi Shimmura and Takashi Yoshimura, both of Nagoya University in Japan, investigated whether a rooster's crowing is tied to its circ........ Read more »
Shimmura, T., & Yoshimura, T. (2013) Circadian clock determines the timing of rooster crowing. Current Biology, 23(6). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.02.015
- March 19, 2013
- 01:23 AM
- 139 views
The Evolution of Religion
by Drexid in Neurobrainstorm
Religions tend to evolve and adapt to benefit a society the most. The first religion can be uncovered from ancient anthropomorphic sculptures 42,000 years ago.... Read more »
WU Fei-fei,JIN Li-ji,LI Xiao-yu,LI Hua-qiang,CAO Zhen-hui,YOU Jian-song,XU Yong-ping(Ministry of Education Center for Food Safety of Animal Origin,College of Life Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology,Dalian 116024,China). (2012) Research progress in active ingredients and pharmacological effects of deer antler. Chinese Journal. info:/
- March 18, 2013
- 04:27 PM
- 107 views
Today in cognitive dissonance: celebrating “landmark” openness in a closed journal
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
A new editorial in The Journal of Comparative Neurology celebrates a paper that goes the extra mile in making its anatomical data available:
(The authors) provide an unprecedented level of access to their supporting data by publishing their full set of experimental outcomes in the form of virtual slides, or whole‐slide images.
The editorial nicely summarizes why archiving data from brain slices is particularly important. Brains are complex structures, and there is necessarily a lot of inter........ Read more »
Karten Harvey J., Glaser Jack R., & Hof Patrick R. (2013) A landmark in scientific publishing. Journal of Comparative Neurology. DOI: 10.1002/cne.23329
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