Something to consider over the Harvest Feast Holiday is cuddling up with a good book. A couple suggestions to fuel your mind would be Oliver Sacks’ new book on music-mind connections. The NYTimes wrote a nice review. Another set of essays to prepare you for the third unit of the course are: The Trouble with Testosterone and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.
And for those that subscribe to the Times, the October 23rd edition of the Tuesday Science section is entirely about sleep. We have covered this in earlier entries on sleep.
As we continue to dive deeper into the functional mapping of the cortical regions of the brain, we will see that even though we make firm distinctions as to what parts connect to what– there is always a kink in the plan…
This is a series of clips of the famed neurologist V.S. Ramachandran that cover the idea of left and right body awareness in the brain. He also has a fun 23 minute TED Talk that covers similar ideas.
The sense of depth perception is critical to the survival of hunters such as cats and birds of prey such as hawks and owls. The initial visual processing for this occurs in lateral geniculate nucleus. While there is retinal input to the many layers of the LGN, the vast majority arrives as “feedback” from the V1 and V2 cortices. Part of this information is from binocular cells that compare the input from each eye where their visual fields overlap.
Follow the “Continue” link to see this in action.
As we move into somato-sensory and motor systems, the notion of left-brain and right-brain issues comes to the forefront. There are many stories that we will explore that deal with how the brain splits up tasks of perception and control, but not always in an even-handed fashion.
One particularly cool account considers how when ducks sleep, they form a row; and the ducks keep one eye open to watch for predators. One half of their brain is still sleeping.
This is a neato site to test the dominant half of your brain. While some of the assertions presented here are still debated there is ample evidence for asymmetry in utilization of the cortex for higher functions of perception.
There are other stories about lobe-ectomies– cases in which entire lobes of the brain are removed to alleviate debilitating seizures.
By at least one measure surgical pain management techniques haven’t changed significantly since the first use of ether at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Charlestown in 1846. Anesthetics—both general and local—work by blocking or interfering with signals from all neurons, not just the pain-sensing ones. While these techniques do block pain, they come with a large array of side effects. New work by researchers at MGH and Harvard Medical School demonstrates a targeted approach to pain management that selectively blocks pain-sensing neurons in rats without altering signals from other types of neurons.
The research, which is published in this week’s edition of Nature, used two chemicals to achieve this effect. The actual pain killer in the cocktail is QX-314, a chemical derivative of the commonly used local anesthetic lidocaine. The overall selectivity to pain-sensing cells comes from a very different species, capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers that makes them ‘hot’.
There is a consistent link between the occurrence of austism and special mental capabilities such a remarkable facility with numbers or artistic talent. There are two parts to this broadcast, the first is linked here:
There is an amazing array of stories whereby people wander into the emergency room complaining of a headache only to have an X-ray reveal some large pointy object embedded in their brain. The classic tale is of Phineas Gage who was somewhat different after a 3 foot metal tamping rod was rammed up into his cheek and out through the top of his skull.
Even after seven years, a chopstick in the brain can be an annoyance.
This is a collection of short quicktime movies showing original films of giant squid axon studies and voltage clamping. This is back when science was real science and a pair of scissors from the desk were considered a dissecting instrument.
For those of you that use newsreaders (Safari, Firefox, NetNewsWire) to keep current with the popular press, there are a couple newsfeeds (RSS) listed over to the right ->
You can also subscribe to this blog as a newsfeed.
In addition to the video Channel N and Mindhacks, there is a nice one from Omni (RSS).
Typically, the arsenal of pscho-active anti-depressants can take weeks if not months to take effect. But recent research has shown that ketamines can relieve symptoms of depression in a matter of hours. Ketamines appear to be NMDA antagonists; this can mediate LTD by stopping the sequestering of AMPA receptors. There may be a direct affect on the glutamate receptors but this mechanism is not currently known. Ketamines are used as a club-drug since they can induce hallucinations in high doses. Their clinical application has been as an anaesthetic.
Something to consider over the Harvest Feast Holiday is cuddling up with a good book. A couple suggestions to fuel your mind would be Oliver Sacks’ new book on music-mind connections. The NYTimes wrote a nice review. Another set of essays to prepare you for the third unit of the course are: The Trouble with Testosterone and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.
The sense of depth perception is critical to the survival of hunters such as cats and birds of prey such as hawks and owls. The initial visual processing for this occurs in lateral geniculate nucleus. While there is retinal input to the many layers of the LGN, the vast majority arrives as “feedback” from the V1 and V2 cortices. Part of this information is from binocular cells that compare the input from each eye where their visual fields overlap.
As we move into somato-sensory and motor systems, the notion of left-brain and right-brain issues comes to the forefront. There are many stories that we will explore that deal with how the brain splits up tasks of perception and control, but not always in an even-handed fashion.
By at least one measure surgical pain management techniques haven’t changed significantly since the first use of ether at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Charlestown in 1846. Anesthetics—both general and local—work by blocking or interfering with signals from all neurons, not just the pain-sensing ones. While these techniques do block pain, they come with a large array of side effects. New work by researchers at MGH and Harvard Medical School demonstrates a targeted approach to pain management that selectively blocks pain-sensing neurons in rats without altering signals from other types of neurons.
There is an amazing array of 
This is a collection of short quicktime movies showing original films of 
Typically, the arsenal of pscho-active anti-depressants can take weeks if not months to take effect. But 