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.
and now for some reviews…
biology and neuroscience
yeastbeast of ouroboros reviews a recent science article reinvestigating the role of a receptor gene previously shown important to insulin signaling. among the findings was that mutant mice lacking the gene had much smaller brains, leading to some sweet speculations.
at neurophilosophy, mo writes of two recent studies that challenge some long-held dogmas in neuroscience. first, and perhaps more important, researchers in roger traub’s lab discovered gap junctions in hippocampal cells, with obvious implications for epilepsy. second, he writes about a two-neuron digestive system circuit that transmits signals in two modes, the faster one using action potentials and the slower (on order of minutes) using a ceramide-activated second messenger system. as always, he provides great historical context.
medopedia briefly reviews two papers, one on brains and one on hearts. the first connects glutamate receptor mGluR1 in its role in memory and addiction, as described by johns hopkins researcher david linden, who stopped by recently to talk about two photon imaging of cerebellum. the second looks at regenerating cardiac cells. medopedia speculates on melding the two studies to rewire brains, an idea that already has a lot of steam in neurodevelopmental labs, such as anirvan ghosh’s here at ucsd.
brain in a vat reviews a paper on integrator neurons. the duke researchers report neuronal subpopulations in lateral intraparietal area (a part of the parietal lobe) that use spike rate to encode the number of dots in the monkey’s visual field. nice!
psychology and neuroscience
cognitive daily reviews a new paper on multitasking and stress. in the study, average performance of human subjects on two different tasks was not different between high- and low-stress situations. however, the researchers pursue a subtler point, arguing from reaction times that the high-stress group uses the same strategy for both tasks, whereas the low-stress group uses different strategies. in my opinion, making conclusions from reaction times is always a tricky business, but historically it has provided some useful insights into brain processing.
jeremy, of psyblog fame, discusses a study showing that couples tend to look more similar as they grow older. the researchers speculate that, because married folks empathize with one another, they mutually mimic facial expressions, leading to similar-looking faces. however, happiness–and thus, perhaps, the degree to which couples empathize with one another–didn’t correlate significantly with apparent similarity. good find!
brain in a vat reports that a new anti-smoking pill may treat alcohol dependence. rats trained to self-administer ethanol reduced their consumption when treated with the active ingredient in a popular smoke-stick-stopping drug. the ingredient, varenicline, works as a competitive antagonist on nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. it may point to a shared mechanism mediating addiction of both flavors.
in a related post at mindhacks, contributor vaughan bell discusses addiction as more than a mere “brain disease”. he puts the neuroscience of addiction into the larger context of psychology and sociology. he also quotes the delightful theodore dalrymple, who warns against the excesses of medicalization in substance abuse. importantly, vaughan points out that diagnosing a “brain disease” can reduce the stigma that comes with being different.
sudip at brain blogger writes a meditation for troubled minds, a review of a metastudy on meditation. apparently, mindfulness meditation has a checkered record in ameliorating stress.
the neurocritic reviews an fmri study suggesting that ten year olds better able to resist peer pressure also have better executive control in prefrontal cortex and a higher correlation between prefrontal and posterior brain activity during certain activities.
reviews of books and lives
providentia gives us worm running, a reflection on the life of the late iconoclastic researcher and joker james mcconnell. you may remember him from a famous research project called memory transfer through cannibalism in planaria, in which worms learned a task faster after eating compatriots who had already learned the task. the underlying theory of memory rna never caught on, much to the chagrin of the food industry (how much would you pay for nobel laureate soup?).
alvaro at sharpbrains records an interview with yaakov stern, a columbia doc who studies alzheimer’s. he has tried to tackle a central paradox in the disease: pathology without presentation. it’s like DC, only weirder.
thinking meat’s mary gives a nice review of two new books on neuroplasticity, one on personal accounts of the phenomenon (norman doidge) and one on the plasticity research in animal models, including young and adult humans (sharon bergley).
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!
2/9: Takeo Watanabe on inhibitory control and learning