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enjoy these two sites, full of well-known illusions. i’m going to wash out my eyes and try to regain a sense of reality.

credit: blog carnival

welcome to the twenty-eighth edition of encephalon, a circus of recent highlights from the neuroscience blogentsia. this time around, we had many reviews of some interesting original research, along with posts on everything from aesthetics to eulogies. enjoy!

neo-neuro fields

one of the beauties of neuroscience is its universality: at some level, everything involves the brain. too often, though, people affix “neuro-” to the front of their favorite subject, then claim victory over a paradigm-shifting new discipline. two blogs dealt with this issue recently: neuroaesthetics led to some deep insights, whereas “neuro-leadership” just fell flat. both posts were entertaining and insightful.

over at the third culture, jon follows up his two part series on neuroaesthetics with a post on art, context, and the brain. he asks with subtlety, “if we are to believe that there is some way to understand reactions to art by understanding the brain (or to understand the brain by understanding art), how are we to incorporate context-specific reactions?” jon takes on the question with a review of some neuroeconomics and an apropos reference to ucsd neuro-rocker ramachandran.

meanwhile, the trusted advisor asks “is neuroleadership more than reinventing wheels?” he decides that neuroscience hasn’t contributed novel insights to business management, despite the claims of people like the prolific jeffrey schwartz. i couldn’t agree more: projects such as “neuroleadership theory” only detract from more legitimate descriptive science aimed at understanding the brain more than making a buck.

credit: david linden

and now for some reviews…
biology and neuroscience

psychology and neuroscience

credit: mindhacks

reviews of books and lives

and in other news…

at sharpbrains, andreas describes how dancing is mental exercise. he created a video on the neural substrates of dance, and goes on to cite a study in the new england journal of medicine showing that dancing, more than any other physical activity studied, is correlated with less presentation of dementia later in life. sudip at brain blogger provided a brief discussion of a recent science article on the role of nmda receptors in dentate cells of the hippocampus. the exciting work was done in the lab of susumu tonegawa, a ucsd grad and nobel laureate. brain in a vat gave a shout-out to america’s nerdiest videos, a.k.a. the journal of visualized experiments. to be sure, it looks less like a journal and more like a youtube with citations. but it seems like a useful, if small, repository for teaching biological methods.

phew! that’s all folks. the next stop is at memoirs of a postgrad in mid-august. as always, submit here. happy posting!

sad but true.

just came across this guy’s comics and had to link.

two thirds through donald miller’s blue like jazz, he confesses his love affair and frequent conversations with the late (as of 1886) emily dickinson:

Back then I imagined her as the perfect woman, so quietly brilliant all those years […] I daydreamed about living in her Amherst […] I don’t care why [guys] get crushes on Emily Dickinson. It is a rite of passage for any thinking man. Any thinking American man. [my italics]

appropriately enough, i also read the following poem from the woman herself. it aptly describes my own situation while reading blue.

I Felt a Funeral in My Brain

I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And being, but an ear,
And I and Silence some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here.

a ucsd grad student from romania may be the only one who finds aesthetic value in his spam inbox. he assigns values to words appearing in emails (and other media) to form digital pictures (e.g. “enlarge” = render green). see his blog (with lots of sweet examples… including visual interpretations of mozart compositions) here, or some press from ucsd here.

an awesome reader (hat tip, kw) found the clip alluded to in an earlier post. skip to about 3:30 for the good stuff.

note that it’s actually on protein synthesis (not dna replication), and comes complete with an obligatory, if quizzical, reading of the jabberwocky along with smoke for gtp hydrolysis (and illicit inspiration, i’m sure).

a friend just showed me this new animation exploring the vibrant biological milieu. it’s kind of gratuitous, and the music is wretched, but it does a nice job with DNA transcription, cytoskeletal reorganization, and stylized myosin trafficking (here’s one that takes fewer liberties). unfortunately, the animation doesn’t really capture the feverish pace or elegant complexity of these biochemical interactions…to get an intution for that, it’s better to watch a philip glass serial film. still, it’s a fun cartoon.

for my money, i’d stick with that hilarious 1970’s version of DNA transcription filmed by a bunch of bored, artistically-stifled grad students given afternoon access to a football field. if anybody can find a clip of that, pass it along.

(picture courtesy cgl.ucsf.edu)

there are a few pieces of music in the history of mankind that have moved me to tears. one that i often return to is brahms’ german requiem. the whole thing lasts an hour… every minute extraordinary. it’s the kind of piece that makes atheist choir directors say, “i’m an atheist, but i believe in god when i conduct.”* listen to the second movement here.

the text is phenomenal. below is the german and a brutalized english translation (with references) of the second movement. see also classical music pages, where you can find the whole text.

(german)
Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras
und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen wie des Grases Blumen.
Das Gras ist verdorret und die Blume abgefallen.

So seid nun geduldig, lieben Bruder,
bis auf die Zukunft des Herrn.
Siehe, ein Ackermann wartet
auf die kostliche Frucht der Erde
und ist geduldig daruber,
bis er empfahe den Morgenregen und Abendregen.

Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit

Die Erloseten des Herrn werden wieder kommen,
und gen Zion kommen mit Jauchzen;
ewige Freude wird uber ihrem Haupte sein;
Freude und Wonne werden sie ergreifen
und Schmerz und Seufzen wird weg mussen.

(english)

For all flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.
The grass withers and the flower falls away. (1 Peter 1:24)

Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming.
See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth,
and has long patience for it, until he receives the early and latter rains. (James 5:7)

But the word of the Lord endures forever. (1 Peter 1:25)

And the ransomed of the Lord will return,
and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads:
they will obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. (Isaiah 35:10)

*in searching for that reference, i came across a nytimes article on belief in god, bach, and japanese conductor masaaki suzuki… check it out. also note that brahms may not have believed in God.

that last post got me thinking about the way in which ‘the prayer’ is divinely ordained. it reminds me of a painting, now destroyed, of matthew writing his gospel. commissioned by a roman church in 1602 for caravaggio, it scandalized the church for its apparent lack of respect for the saint. but it captures the strain of communicating God’s word, both in the angel’s expectant gaze and patiently-guiding hand, and in the old writer’s awkward stance at receiving and writing the word. the Lord’s prayer came with great care and meaning.

just came across this exhibit by artists ligorano/reese, created on 29 april 2006, the third year anniversary of the iraq invasion. the icy word melted in about a day.

to prepare my mind for worship today, i listened to faure’s transcendent Cantique de Jean Racine.

you’ll enjoy listening to it; click here.

here’s the french, then a decent english translation:
Verbe,égal au Très-Haut, notre unique espèrance,
Jour éternel de la terre et des cieux;
De la paisible nuit nous rompons le silence,
Divin Sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux!

Répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante,
Que tout l’enfer fuie au son de ta voix;
Dissipe le sommeil d’une âme languissante,
Qui la conduit à l’oubli de tes lois!

O Christ soit favorable à ce peuple fidèle
Pour te bénir maintenant rassemblé.
Reçois les chants qu’il offre à ta gloire immortelle,
Et de tes dons qu’il retourne comblé!

Word, equal to the Almighty, our only hope,
Eternal light of the earth and the Heavens;
We break the peaceful night’s silence,
Divine Saviour, cast your eyes upon us!
Spread the fire of your mighty grace upon us
May the entire hell flee at the sound of your voice;
Disperse from any slothful soul the drowsiness
Inducing it to forget your laws!
Oh Christ, look with favour upon this faithful people
Which has now gathered to bless you.
Receive its singing, offered to your immortal glory,
And may it leave with the gifts you have bestowed upon it!

(text from the choral wiki)

i just got back from al gore’s new documentary on global warming, though it more accurately could be titled:
“Al Gore: Public Crusader for Tomorrow’s World”
or simply
“How to Scroll through a Powerpoint (Keynote) Presentation on a Plane, in a Room, at a Desk, in a Car, on a Couch, …”

that last one made it to the final cut, when the editors (yes, there were editors! but more on this later) finally decided it was too clunky.

at any rate, i spent a lot of time in the movie thinking about the movie (which usually isn’t a good sign). for proper reviews, check out IMDb’s list of external reviews. i just want to comment on a few specific things.

this movie was intentionally appealing to the archetypal republican.

everyone knows the democrats (and republicans) are intensely concerned about this year’s senate elections and the presidential election in 08. republicans just spent more than $5 mil on a winning election campaign to replace san diego’s corrupt, republican ‘duke’ cunningham. how can republicans continue to win, in california no less, with the state of affairs in america as they are?

in answering that question, democrats have strategized, i think, to present its candidates as ‘real americans’, with as much apparent genuineness as W (i say “apparent” with full knowledge of its connotations here). in my mind this movie is one of the most overt recent attempts to “humanize” and “americanize” a democrat. forget that gore is “no longer in politics” and that global warming is “not a political issue; it’s a moral issue.” gore is still part of the democratic machine, and global warming is still a political issue. i’ll spell these out:

1. gore is part of the democratic machine.
even if he’s no longer talking to democratic strategists, he’s forever emblazoned in this generation’s conscience as a democratic figurehead. his activities out of office are a good indicator of what ‘democrats are really like’. the man we see out of office is a hard-working, compassionate son of a politician-farmer, with great foresight and reputable goals. in short, he’s everything W claimed to be, but, well, wasn’t. as if those associations weren’t enough, gore, as if stealing pages from the republican playbook, sounded more like W than i’d ever remembered: i never knew him to be so laborious in his speech, so awkwardly deliberate in his presentation. sure, at times there were light jokes and cheap shots, which, if they weren’t wit, were at least evidence of a brain. but he was, i think intentionally, being awkward… mostly when he talked about himself, his home, his family, the stuff of life in almost entirely contrived and unnecessary cut-to scenes of where he grew up and motivations for working on global warming. to me, it seemed blatant that he was at the same time demonstrating his political prowess and social conscience (a one-up on W) and showing that he was more down-home american (beating W at his own mid-west game). still, it left a bad taste in my mouth, since these kind of irrelevant appeals to political genuineness have the distinct flavor of, well, bull sh’t.

2. global warming is a political issue.
here’s the logic:
global warming results from oil. oil is republican. republican is political. thus global warming is political. as we say in math, quod erat demonstratum.

percolating in the public conscience is the conviction that oil makes rich, corrupt, republican tycoons richer (and perhaps more corrupt and more republican…witness: Iraq war). oil fatcats and their federal compatriots piss off most americans. so, by lining up against the oil companies, democrats befriend the american public. they’re with “us” on this issue…and it’s an issue inextricably linked to the wars and corruption of this mismanaged republican administration.

so in both of these respects, democrats are the good guys in an uphill battle we americans have to join. if that’s not political, what is? fortunately, though, i think they’re on to something. oh the power of grassroots in the internet age… but that’s another post. who knows if it’ll work in awakening republicans to the possibility of voting democratic.

so, do i think you should see this movie? global warming is an extremely important issue, but the facts you get from the movie (plus some) could be learned in fewer than 15 minutes at realclimate.org (see below). so unless you wanna see gore toting his mac all over the globe, don’t bother. BUT, change your habits, if necessary, to produce less (or no) CO2 emissions.

postscript 1. this movie does give tons of evidence for the importance of addressing global warming. i appreciate that it’s bringing a sense of urgency about the problem to a wider audience.

postscript 2. this movie is intensely boring. all i wanted after 8 straight days of 16+ hours of daily work was a relaxing movie. instead, i got a very poor, needlessly long lecture. admittedly, i shouldn’t have gone to a documentary. but my friend suggested it, and it was decently reviewed (nobody wants to be ‘that guy’ who says the global warming movie sucks; that’s tantamount to making a ’special olympics’ joke.) without enough footage of the majestic glaciers we’re out to save, the audience was left watching gore–not known for stirring speeches–being gore. most of the time (75%ish), he’s lecturing to a bunch of other people, who themselves get antsy by the end (i swear there were people in his audience ready to fall asleep, let alone the old guy snoozing across the row from us in the actual theater). he also takes a page from michael moore, incorporating instructional cartoons, albeit less humorous than moore’s galumph through the history of the white man’s oppressive politics. and then, there’re the non-sequitor flashbacks…

for serious information, visit realclimate.org, especially their index, organized thematically. (hat tip to Yeung for this reference)

some wacky body-modification artists decided it’d be cool to put magnets in their ring fingers to sense the world in a new way. the magnets respond to EM fields, oscillate a bit, and activate somatosensory receptors in ways distinct from, say, touching a table or washing your hands. so the implant allows its user to reliably discern electrical activity unavailable to natural human senses. it probably won’t go commercial (thanks to infections and uselessness), but you have to admit, it’d be fun being powder for a day.

from the article:
“Huffman and other recipients found they could locate electric stovetops and motors, and pick out live electrical cables. Appliance cords in the United States give off a 60-Hz field, a sensation with which Huffman has become intimately familiar.”