Neuroscience posts
- September 10, 2010
- 05:16 PM
- 694 views
fMRI, BOLD and the Beautiful
by amiya in Physiology physics woven fine
When we want to examine the brain of a person noninvasively by Computed Tomography (CT) or MRI, we get a ‘snapshot’ of the anatomy (or pathology, if any) of the subject’s brain. We are however clueless as to its functional aspect. fMRI or Functional Magnetic Resonant Imaging allows us to do just that. The difference is not unlike a ‘still picture’ versus a ‘video of a moving train’. PET scans, previously described, also can asses the functional state of the brain.Whenever we do a t........ Read more »
Gore, J. (2003) Principles and practice of functional MRI of the human brain. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 112(1), 4-9. DOI: 10.1172/JCI200319010
- September 10, 2010
- 10:00 AM
- 1,433 views
More acupuncture quackademic medicine infiltrates PLoS ONE
by Orac in Respectful Insolence
I hate to do this to Bora again. I really do. I'm also getting tired of blogging all these crappy acupuncture studies. I really am. However, sometimes a skeptic's gotta do what a skeptic's gotta do, and this is one of those times.
As you may recall, a mere week ago I was disturbed to have discovered the publication of a truly horrifically bad acupuncture study in PLoS ONE. It had all the hallmarks of quackademic medicine: an implausible hypothesis, trying to correlate mystical concepts of merid........ Read more »
Quah-Smith, I., Sachdev, P., Wen, W., Chen, X., & Williams, M. (2010) The Brain Effects of Laser Acupuncture in Healthy Individuals: An fMRI Investigation. PLoS ONE, 5(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012619
- September 10, 2010
- 04:09 AM
- 575 views
The neuroscience of creativity and insight
by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles
Have you ever wondered what was going on in your noggin when on that rare occasion you had an "aha!" moment or found yourself in a creative flow state, where even your screaming girlfriend couldn't snap you out of? Well Dietrich and Kanso over at the American University of Beirut seem to have mapped out the phenomena for us nicely. However, it's not quite as simple as you think. In their review paper published in this months Psychological Bulletin, they cover three broad categories relate........ Read more »
Takeshi K, Nemoto T, Fumoto M, Arita H, & Mizuno M. (2010) Reduced prefrontal cortex activation during divergent thinking in schizophrenia: A multi-channel NIRS study. Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology . PMID: 20673784
- September 9, 2010
- 10:36 AM
- 1,070 views
Vitamin B and Brain Atrophy in Alzheimer's Disease
by William Yates, M.D. in Brain Posts
Disclosure: I am not a big supporter of vitamin therapy for clinical neuroscience disorders. Of my previous 131posts, I have only referenced on study related to vitamin therapy---that was a study that found no improvement in treating dementia with vitamin E. Nevertheless, today's post focusses on a new study of B vitamins in mild cognitive impairment. I ran across a randomized controlled trial using B vitamins in a controlled study of brain atrophy (Hat tip to BBC news). ........ Read more »
Smith, A., Smith, S., de Jager, C., Whitbread, P., Johnston, C., Agacinski, G., Oulhaj, A., Bradley, K., Jacoby, R., & Refsum, H. (2010) Homocysteine-Lowering by B Vitamins Slows the Rate of Accelerated Brain Atrophy in Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Randomized Controlled Trial. PLoS ONE, 5(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012244
- September 9, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 1,331 views
World Congress on Pain throws up a few gems
by Lorimer Moseley in BodyInMind
I have just been in Montreal for the World Congress on Pain – numerous presentations and about 1600 posters. It is the posters I really like – can be intimidating but there are always a few gems. Here is some preliminary work that I thought was interesting and which is relevant to work that our [...]... Read more »
Van Damme S, Gallace A, Spence C, Crombez G, & Moseley GL. (2009) Does the sight of physical threat induce a tactile processing bias? Modality-specific attentional facilitation induced by viewing threatening pictures. Brain research, 100-6. PMID: 19094970
- September 9, 2010
- 08:00 AM
- 2,223 views
Eating your own brain: Ocean of Pseudoscience repost
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
Southern Fried Scientist decided to feature a week of surreal science related to the oceans. I take this opportunity to be a lazy blogger and repost this piece (slightly rewritten) from May 2008.
Adult sea squirts (also known as tunicates or ascidians) are sessile animals. As adults, they really don't move. But if anyone has heard about sea squirts, they’ve probably hear that little sea squirts start life as smart little tadpoles, searching this way and that for a place to land. Once they’v........ Read more »
Mackie GO, & Burighel P. (2005) The nervous system in adult tunicates: current research directions. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 83(1), 151-183. DOI: 10.1139/z04-177
Meinertzhagen IA, & Okamura Y. (2001) The larval ascidian nervous system: the chordate brain from its small beginnings . Trends in Neurosciences, 24(7), 401-410. DOI: 10.1016/S0166-2236(00)01851-8
- September 9, 2010
- 04:22 AM
- 1,269 views
Lamme model - less emphasis on introspection
by Janet Kwasniak in Thoughts on thoughts
According to Victor Lamme, the reason that the study of consciousness is so difficult is that it gives priority to introspection and behaviour so, as a result, we are fooled into thinking that we know what we are conscious of. By adding evidence from neuroscience into the mix, he hopes to [...]... Read more »
Lamme, V. (2010) How neuroscience will change our view on consciousness. Cognitive Neuroscience, 1(3), 204-220. DOI: 10.1080/17588921003731586
- September 8, 2010
- 03:23 PM
- 994 views
Finding the Gene for Migraines
by agoldstein in WiSci
Migraine headaches affect 1 in 6 women and 1 in 12 men, and can be triggered by any number of seemingly innocuous events, from eating cheese, to taking birth control pills, to exercising. In 2009, people worldwide spent $2.6 billion on preventative drugs, trying treatments from beta-blockers to anticonvulsants.1 Yet, despite being considered the most expensive brain disorder in the European Union and United States, the source of migraines has remained elusive . . . until now.... Read more »
Silberstein, S. (2008) Treatment recommendations for migraine. Nature Clinical Practice Neurology, 4(9), 482-489. DOI: 10.1038/ncpneuro0861
Anttila, V., Stefansson, H., Kallela, M., Todt, U., Terwindt, G., Calafato, M., Nyholt, D., Dimas, A., Freilinger, T., Müller-Myhsok, B.... (2010) Genome-wide association study of migraine implicates a common susceptibility variant on 8q22.1. Nature Genetics. DOI: 10.1038/ng.652
Pow DV, & Cook DG. (2009) Neuronal expression of splice variants of "glial" glutamate transporters in brains afflicted by Alzheimer's disease: unmasking an intrinsic neuronal property. Neurochemical research, 34(10), 1748-57. PMID: 19319679
Hassel, B., Tessler, S., Faull, R., & Emson, P. (2007) Glutamate Uptake is Reduced in Prefrontal Cortex in Huntington’s Disease. Neurochemical Research, 33(2), 232-237. DOI: 10.1007/s11064-007-9463-1
Boston-Howes, W. (2006) Caspase-3 Cleaves and Inactivates the Glutamate Transporter EAAT2. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 281(20), 14076-14084. DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M600653200
- September 8, 2010
- 06:48 AM
- 721 views
Wild-type humans
by Kevin Mitchell in Wiring the Brain
Wild-type is the term geneticists use to refer to non-mutants. It literally means organisms that are the same, genetically, as those in the wild, compared to ones that have been grown under coddled conditions in the lab for generations, going soft in the absence of natural selection, or that are specifically mutant at some gene or other. There are no wild-type humans. Well, maybe there are a few, somewhere, but even they are not really non-mutants. We all carry millions of mutations in our g........ Read more »
Ng, S., Turner, E., Robertson, P., Flygare, S., Bigham, A., Lee, C., Shaffer, T., Wong, M., Bhattacharjee, A., Eichler, E.... (2009) Targeted capture and massively parallel sequencing of 12 human exomes. Nature, 461(7261), 272-276. DOI: 10.1038/nature08250
Roach, J., Glusman, G., Smit, A., Huff, C., Hubley, R., Shannon, P., Rowen, L., Pant, K., Goodman, N., Bamshad, M.... (2010) Analysis of Genetic Inheritance in a Family Quartet by Whole-Genome Sequencing. Science, 328(5978), 636-639. DOI: 10.1126/science.1186802
- September 7, 2010
- 11:47 PM
- 626 views
The World of Tractography Where The White Matter Tracts Appear Colored
by Amiya Kumar Sarkar in Physiology physics woven fine
White matter tractography, a relatively new MRI based technique, can delineate fiber tracts and assist in surgical planning and research.... Read more »
P. Mukherjee,, J.I. Berman,, S.W. Chung,, C.P. Hess, & R.G. Henry. (2008) Diffusion Tensor MR Imaging and Fiber Tractography: Theoretic Underpinnings. AM J Neuroradiol . DOI: 10.3174/ajnr.A1051
- September 7, 2010
- 08:41 PM
- 467 views
Review: Brain damage and ordering of panels in comic strips
by Neil Cohn in The Visual Linguist
I recently reviewed an older study of brain damaged individual's comprehension of final-panel jokes in comic strips. Here's another paper that explores brain damage and the ordering of panels in sequences.Participants were asked to arrange scrambled parts of a story into their accurate order, and the authors compared the abilities of numerous types of brain damaged patients. Participants ... Read more »
Huber W, & Gleber J. (1982) Linguistic and nonlinguistic processing of narratives in aphasia. Brain and language, 16(1), 1-18. PMID: 7104674
- September 7, 2010
- 03:29 PM
- 1,682 views
Perfectionism as a Risk Factor for Anorexia Nervosa
by William Yates, M.D. in Brain Posts
Temperament is generally defined as innate early emotional and behavioral characteristics that precede puberty and adult development. Felt to have significant genetic components, temperament is also potentially influenced by environmental factors. There are a variety of temperament domains that have received significant attention in childhood, adolescent and adult populations. Some of the most commonly studied domains include:neuroticismharm avoidancenovelty seekingreward depend........ Read more »
Wade TD, Tiggemann M, Bulik CM, Fairburn CG, Wray NR, & Martin NG. (2008) Shared temperament risk factors for anorexia nervosa: a twin study. Psychosomatic medicine, 70(2), 239-44. PMID: 18158375
- September 7, 2010
- 07:06 AM
- 698 views
What’s the buzz?: Synthetic marijuana, K2, Spice, JWH-018
by David J Kroll in Terra Sigillata
The topic of one of our most popular posts of all time has been the synthetic marijuana products containing JWH compounds, naphthoylindole cannabimimetics synthesized in the 1990s in the Clemson University laboratory of John Huffman. This post first appeared at the ScienceBlogs home of Terra Sigillata on 9 Feb 2010 and gives you some background [...]... Read more »
Aung MM, Griffin G, Huffman JW, Wu M, Keel C, Yang B, Showalter VM, Abood ME, & Martin BR. (2000) Influence of the N-1 alkyl chain length of cannabimimetic indoles upon CB(1) and CB(2) receptor binding. Drug and alcohol dependence, 60(2), 133-40. PMID: 10940540
- September 7, 2010
- 02:33 AM
- 510 views
Is recognition without awareness possible?
by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles
It seems common knowledge in the world of neuroscience that episodic memories are formed through conscious awareness. However, a couple of years ago Voss and Paller found that this may not necessarily be the case. They had subjects perform a forced choice recognition task using kaleidoscope images (for novelty's sake). Interestingly, accuracy was highest when subjects reported guessing, thus indicating little awareness that the studied images had been seen before. "This indicates that episodic m........ Read more »
Voss JL, & Paller KA. (2009) Recognition without awareness in humans and its implications for animal models of episodic memory. Communicative , 2(3), 203-4. PMID: 19641728
Jeneson A, Kirwan CB, & Squire LR. (2010) Recognition without awareness: An elusive phenomenon. Learning , 17(9), 454-9. PMID: 20810620
Voss JL, & Paller KA. (2010) What makes recognition without awareness appear to be elusive? Strategic factors that influence the accuracy of guesses. Learning , 17(9), 460-8. PMID: 20810621
- September 7, 2010
- 02:00 AM
- 1,083 views
Daydreaming…..
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
A daydream is a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake. Some people may devote 50% of their awake time with daydreaming. Recently a case study was published in which a 36 year old female has a long history of excessive daydreaming. [...]
Related posts:Individual Differences in Empathy
Brain Blogging, Forty-Seventh Edition
Photograph Use on Social Networks
... Read more »
Cynthia Schupak, & Jesse Rosenthal. (2009) Excessive daydreaming: A case history and discussion of mind wandering and high fantasy proneness. Consciousness and Cognition. DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.10.002
Arne Dietrich. (2003) Functional neuroanatomy of altered states of consciousness: The transient hypofrontality hypothesis. Consciousness and Cognition. DOI: 10.1016/S1053-8100(02)00046-6
Barry Dauphin, Ph.D., & Grant Heller, B.A. (2010) Going to Other Worlds: The Relationships between Videogaming, Psychological Absorption, and Daydreaming Styles. CYBERPSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING. DOI: 10.1089/cpb.2009.0065
- September 6, 2010
- 04:57 PM
- 995 views
Giving way to the right – the Brits could be onto something
by Lorimer Moseley in BodyInMind
Some time ago we posted an article that showed that a unicellular organism called slimeball could solve the planning of the British rail network better than the Brits did. Now it might be time to smirk on the other side of our face because, as Sarah Wallwork, the tireless Honours student who had the misfortune [...]... Read more »
Groeppel-Klein, A . (2008) Anti-Clockwise or Clockwise? The Impact of Store Layout on the Process of Orientation in a Discount Store. European Advances in Consumer Research, 415. info:/
Zimmerberg, B., Glick, S., & Jerussi, T. (1974) Neurochemical Correlate of a Spatial Preference in Rats. Science, 185(4151), 623-625. DOI: 10.1126/science.185.4151.623
- September 5, 2010
- 01:52 PM
- 1,030 views
No turning back for science
by Zen Faulkes in NeuroDojo
An article with a title like “Science’s dead end” seems like an active effort to troll the science blogosphere. Maybe author James Le Fanu has a point, but a quick search raise doubts as fast as you can type. He’s trained as a medical doctor, not a researcher. And he seems to be a cynical one, having written a piece with a similarly apocalyptic title, “The fall of medicine,” for the same magazine over ten years ago.
He outsider’s perspective is apparent in his first paragraph.
F........ Read more »
Anckarsäter H. (2010) Has biology disproved free will and moral responsibility?. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(27). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1006466107
Brass M, & Haggard P. (2007) To do or not to do: The neural signature of self-control. The Journal of Neuroscience, 27(34), 9141-9145. DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0924-07.2007
Cashmore AR. (2010) The Lucretian swerve: The biological basis of human behavior and the criminal justice system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(10), 4499-4504. info:/10.1073/pnas.0915161107
Hinsen K. (2010) A scientific model for free will is impossible . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. info:/10.1073/pnas.1010609107
- September 5, 2010
- 09:50 AM
- 862 views
2 legs good, 4 legs better: Uner Tan Syndrome, part 2
by gregdowney in Neuroanthropology
Beginning in 2005, reports by Prof. Üner Tan of Cukurova University in Turkey alerted the world to a number of families in which some members walked quadrupedally. This is the second part of a (so far) two-part post on Uner Tan Syndrome. Although you’re welcome to read the first part, I’ll give you the one sentence summary if you just want to push on and a piece of video clip on the cases. I should warn you though, before you read the first part, that the whole thing is sort of like the........ Read more »
Dietz Volker. (2002) Do human bipeds use quadrupedal coordination?. Trends in neurosciences, 25(9), 462-7. PMID: 12183207
Dietz V, & Michel J. (2009) Human bipeds use quadrupedal coordination during locomotion. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 97-103. PMID: 19645886
Hall, Brian K. (1984) Developmental mechanisms underlying the formation of atavisms. . Biological Reviews, 89-124. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-185X.1984.tb00402.x
Herz J, Boycott KM, & Parboosingh JS. (2008) "Devolution" of bipedality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(21). PMID: 18487453
Humphrey, Nicholas, Stefan Mundlos, & Seval Türkmen. (2008) Genes and quadrupedal locomotion in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science , 105(21). DOI: 10.1073 pnas.0802839105
Lovejoy CO, Suwa G, Simpson SW, Matternes JH, & White TD. (2009) The great divides: Ardipithecus ramidus reveals the postcrania of our last common ancestors with African apes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 326(5949), 100-6. PMID: 19810199
Susanne M. Morton,, & Amy J. Bastian. (2007) Mechanisms of cerebellar gait ataxia. The Cerebellum, 6(1), 79-86. DOI: 10.1080/14734220601187741
Tayfun Ozcelik, Nurten Akarsu, Elif Uz, Safak Caglayan, Suleyman Gulsuner, Onur Emre Onat, Meliha Tan, & Uner Tan. (2008) Mutations in the very low-density lipoprotein receptor VLDLR cause cerebellar hypoplasia and quadrupedal locomotion in humans. . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(11), 4232-4236. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0710010105
Ozcelik, Tayfun,, Nurten Akarsu,, Elif Uz,, Safak Caglayan,, Suleyman Gulsuner,, Onur Emre Onat,, Meliha Tan,, & Uner Tan. (2008) Reply to Herz et al. and Humphrey et al.: Genetic heterogeneity of cerebellar hypoplasia with quadrupedal locomotion. . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(23). DOI: 10.1073 pnas.0804078105
Stanford CB. (2006) Arboreal bipedalism in wild chimpanzees: implications for the evolution of hominid posture and locomotion. American journal of physical anthropology, 129(2), 225-31. PMID: 16288480
Tan, Meliha, Sibel Karaca, and Uner Tan. (2010) A New Case of Uner Tan Syndrome—with Late Childhood Quadrupedalism. Movement Disorders, 25(5), 652-653. DOI: 10.1002/mds.22951
Tan, Uner. (2007) A Wrist-Walker Exhibiting No “Uner Tan Sydnrome”: A Theory for Possible Mechanisms of Human Devolution Toward the Atavistic Walking Patterns. International Journal of Neuroscience , 117(1), 147-156. DOI: 10.1080/00207450600936866
Uner Tan, Sadrettin Penccedile, Mustafa Yilmaz, Ayhan Oumlzkur, Sibel Karaca, Meliha Tan, & Mehmet Karatascedil. (2008) “Unertan Syndrome” in two Turkish Families in Relation to Devolution and Emergence of Homo Erectus: Neurological Examination, MRI, and pet Scans. International Journal of Neuroscience, 313-336. DOI: 10.1080/00207450701667766
Tan, Uner, & Meliha Tan. (2009) Unertan Syndrome: A New Variant of Unertan Syndrome: Running on All Fours in Two Upright-Walking Children. International Journal of Neuroscience, 119(7), 909-918. DOI: 10.1080/00207450902828050
Thelen, E.,, & Ulrich, B. D. (1991) Hidden skills: A dynamic systems analysis of treadmill stepping during the first year. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 56(1), 1-98. DOI: 10.2307/1166099
Thorpe, S. K. S.,, R. L. Holder,, & R. H. Crompton. (2007) Origin of Human Bipedalism As an Adaptation for Locomotion on Flexible Branches. Science, 316(5829), 1328. DOI: 10.1126/science.1140799
Trommsdorff M, Gotthardt M, Hiesberger T, Shelton J, Stockinger W, Nimpf J, Hammer RE, Richardson JA, & Herz J. (1999) Reeler/Disabled-like disruption of neuronal migration in knockout mice lacking the VLDL receptor and ApoE receptor 2. Cell, 97(6), 689-701. PMID: 10380922
S Türkmen,, K Hoffmann,, Osman Demirhan,, Defne Aruoba,, N Humphrey,, & S Mundlos. (2008) Cerebellar hypoplasia, with quadrupedal locomotion, caused by mutations in the very low-density lipoprotein receptor gene. European Journal of Human Genetics, 1070-1074. DOI: 10.1038/ejhg.2008.73
- September 4, 2010
- 05:36 AM
- 377 views
Problems with Pitch: Congenital Amusia and Tone Languages
What, exactly, is tone deafness? We've all known someone who claimed he or she was tone deaf or "couldn't carry a tune." However, congenital amusia, which seems to be true "deafness" to tone, affects only about 4% of the general population - that is, 4% of the almost exclusively Western populations that have been studied.
Congenital amusia is one of several different types of music perception impairments. A person with the disorder is born with a variety of symptoms, including an inability to re........ Read more »
Nan Y, Sun Y, & Peretz I. (2010) Congenital amusia in speakers of a tone language: association with lexical tone agnosia. Brain : a journal of neurology, 133(9), 2635-42. PMID: 20685803
- September 3, 2010
- 11:13 AM
- 577 views
Are "Antipsychotics" Antipsychotics?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
This is the question asked by Tilman Steinert & Martin Jandl in a letter to the journal Psychopharmacology.They point out that in the past 20 years, the word "antipsychotic" has exploded in popularity. Less than 100 academic papers were published with that word in the title in 1990, but now it's over 600.The older term for the same drugs was "neuroleptics". This terminology, however, has slowly but surely fallen into disuse over the same time period.To illustrate this they have a nice graph ........ Read more »
Tilman Steinert and Martin Jandl. (2010) Are antipsychotics antipsychotics? . Psychopharmacology. DOI: 10.1007/s00213-010-1927-3
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