American researchers say they’ve performed what they believe is the first ever human-to-human brain interface, where one person was able to send a brain signal to trigger the hand motions of another person. “It was both exciting and eerie to watch an imagined section from my brain get translated into actual action by another brain,” said Rajesh Rao, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, in a statement. Previous studies have done brain-to-brain transmissions between rats and one was done between a human and a rat. Rao was able to send a brain signal through the internet – utilizing electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation – to the other side of the university campus to his colleague Andrea Stocco, an assistant professor of psychology, triggering Stocco’s finger to move on a keyboard. “The internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains,” said Stocco. “We want to take the knowledge of a brain and transmit it directly from brain to brain.” On Aug. 12, Rao sat in his lab with a cap on his head. The cap had electrodes hooked up to an electroencephalography machine, which reads the brain’s electrical activity. Meanwhile, Stocco was at his lab across campus, wearing a similar cap which had a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil place over his left motor cortex – the part of the brain that controls hand movement. Rao looked at a computer and in his mind, he played a video game. When he was supposed to fire a cannon at a target, he imagined moving his right hand, which stayed motionless. Stocco, almost instantaneously, moved his right index finger to push the space bar on the keyboard in front of him. Only simple brain signals, not thoughts “This was basically a one-way flow of information from my brain to his,” said Rao. © CBC 2013

Keyword: Robotics; Brain imaging
Link ID: 18583 - Posted: 08.29.2013

Amanda Mascarelli It’s an inconvenient truth of aging: In our 30s and up, it gets increasingly harder for most of us to recall names, faces, and details from the past. Scientists have long debated whether this gradual decline is an early form of Alzheimer’s disease—a neurodegenerative condition that leads to severe dementia—or a distinct neurological process. Now, researchers have found a protein that distinguishes typical forgetfulness from Alzheimer’s and could lead to potential treatments for age-related memory loss. Previous studies have shown that Alzheimer’s disease and age-related memory loss involve different neural circuits in the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure in the brain where memories are formed and organized. The hallmark signs of Alzheimer’s disease are well established—tangled proteins and plaques accumulate over time, and brain tissue atrophies. But little is known about what occurs when memory declines during normal aging, except that brain cells begin to malfunction, says Scott Small, a neurologist at Columbia University and senior author to the study. “At the molecular level, there’s been a lot of uncertainty about what is actually going wrong, and that’s what this paper isolates.” To tease apart the biological processes involved in memory loss in normal aging, Scott and other researchers from Columbia University in New York examined postmortem brain tissue from eight healthy people ranging in age from 33 to 86. They looked for differences in gene expression—the proteins or other products that a gene makes—between younger and older people. They also looked for age-related changes in the brains of mice. © 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 18582 - Posted: 08.29.2013

by Douglas Heaven Why rely on mouse brains to help us understand our most complex organ when you can grow a model of a human one? Tiny "brains" that include parts of the cortex, hippocampus and even retinas, have been made for the first time using stem cells. The 3D tissue structures will let researchers study the early stages of human brain development in unprecedented detail. Because human brains are so different from those of most animals, looking at how animal brains develop only gives us a crude understanding of the process in humans. "Mouse models don't cut it," says Juergen Knoblich at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Vienna, Austria. To grow their miniature brains, Knoblich and colleagues took induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells – adult cells reprogrammed to behave like embryonic stem cells – and gave them a mix of nutrients thought to be essential for brain development. The stem cells first differentiated into neuroectoderm tissue, the layer of cells that would eventually become an embryo's nervous system. The tissue was suspended in a gel scaffold to help it develop a 3D structure. Right food, right structure In less than a month, the stem cells grew into brain-like "organoids" 3 to 4 millimetres across and containing structures that corresponded to most of the regions of the brain. For example, all the organoids they made appeared to contain parts of the cortex, about 70 per cent contained a choroid plexus – which produces spinal fluid – and about 10 per cent contained retinal tissue. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 18581 - Posted: 08.29.2013

By Shinnosuke Nakayama and The Conversation In our society, not many people are lucky enough to have an ideal boss who they would want to follow faithfully for the rest of their lives. Many might even find their boss selfish and arrogant or complain that they don’t listen to their opinions. We humans push the concept of leaders and followers to the extreme but they exist throughout the animal kingdom. These leaders and followers of the natural world could help us decide whether that unpopular boss can learn to be part of the team. Leaders and followers are found in many group-living animals, such as fish, birds and primates. Group living can offer many benefits to group members, such as increasing the chances of finding food or avoiding predators. Unlike some human workplaces, groups of animals know that they need to agree on where to go and when to go there in order to take full advantage of group living. Leaders share common characteristics, so are to some extent predictable. In humans, leaders generally show higher scores in certain personality traits, notably extraversion. Similarly, in animals, bolder and more active individuals tend to be found as leaders. Evolutionary theories suggest that boldness and leadership can coevolve through positive feedback. Individuals who force their preferences on others are more likely to be followed, which in turn encourages these individuals to initiate more often. This feedback results in distinct social roles for leaders and followers within a group, as shown by several experimental studies. It would therefore seem that leaders and followers are born through natural selection, and that you have no chance of becoming a leader if you are born a follower. But our work with stickleback fish suggests that while followers may not have what it takes to lead, leaders can learn to follow. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 18580 - Posted: 08.29.2013

As the debate about legalizing marijuana heats up in Canada, a new study suggests the drug might be riskier for teens to consume than had been previously thought. Researchers from the Université de Montréal and New York's Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital conducted a review of 120 studies examining cannabis and teenage brain development, and concluded there is strong evidence early cannabis use puts some teens at risk of developing addiction and mental health problems as adults. Dr. Didier Jutras-Aswad, with the Université de Montréal's psychiatry department, is a co-author of the review, which was published this month in the journal Neuroparmacology. He says that in adolescence, the brain is still fine-tuning how different areas, such as learning and memory, interact and it appears that marijuana use alters that process. "When you disrupt this, actually, development, during adolescence, notably through cannabis use, you can have very pervasive, very negative effects in the long-term, including on mental health and addiction risk," he told CBC News. Some studies have also found links between early cannabis use and schizophrenia, but Jutras-Aswad says it seems clear there is a wide risk profile that includes genetics and behavioural traits in addition to age. "For me, the question is not about whether cannabis is good or bad, but who is more likely to suffer from problems in cannabis, because we know for most people that will not happen," he said. © CBC 2013

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 18579 - Posted: 08.29.2013

By Stephen L. Macknik A new study in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests that a part of the brain critical to motivation, the substantia nigra, which is famous for its role as a primary culprit in Parkinson’s Disease, is central to the relationship between feeding and drug seeking behavior. Neuroscientists have known for some time that acquisition of drug seeking behavior is higher in people whose food supply is restricted. But nobody knew why. Neuroscientist Sarah Branch and her colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio have now discovered a critical neural mechanism that links food restriction to enhanced drug efficacy. They mildly restricted the diet of mice and found that it caused certain neurons in the substantia nigra burst in activity. These neurons, called dopamine neurons, are implicated in the feeling of pleasure felt with drugs of abuse. It’s as if the neurons are preparing to reward their owner the moment that food is found, perhaps to reinforce food acquisition. When the mice were given cocaine as well, the bursty effect in food restricted mice was enhanced even further, which leads to increased drug seeking behavior too. Interestingly, they found that the effects could persist up to ten days after the food restriction ended. The results suggest that there may be a way to enhance drug efficacy in patients with chronic pain. But it also serves as a cogent reminder that the substantia nigra is central to how the brain generates motivational behavior. When the substantia nigra dies, you get Parkinson’s, and you find it difficult to motivate yourself to even pass through a doorway. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 18578 - Posted: 08.29.2013

Karen Ravn It’s safe to say that wildlife biologist Lynn Rogers gets along better with the black bears in Minnesota than with the humans in the state’s Department of Natural Resources. Rogers, a popular bear researcher who has made numerous TV appearances, is engaged in quite a row with the department. At issue: should the department renew Rogers’ permit to study black bears? In June, the department said “no.” But trying to come between Rogers and his bears is a bit like trying to come between a mother bear and her cubs. He took the agency to court, and late last month, the parties came to a temporary agreement. Rogers can keep radio collars on the ten research bears that have them now, but he can’t keep live-streaming video on the Internet from his internationally popular den cams. His case will go back to court in six to nine months. Earlier this month, Rogers received a big boost from renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall, who wrote to Minnesota governor Mark Dayton praising Rogers and saying that it would be “a scientific tragedy” if his research were ended now. The department gave three reasons for not renewing Rogers’ permit: he hadn’t produced any peer-reviewed publications based on data collected over the past 14 years when he had a permit; his work was endangering the public; and he had engaged in unprofessional conduct. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 18577 - Posted: 08.29.2013

Elizabeth Norton Brain cells, like Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, grow accustomed to a familiar face—so much so that repeatedly viewing a distorted face will make the normal face look odd. This process, known as visual adaptation, is enhanced by sleep and may be an essential component of memory, a new study finds. After multiple exposures to a striking visual pattern, neurons in the retina and visual cortex of the brain fire less frequently the next time you see the pattern. By devoting less energy to familiar sights, the brain is free to concentrate on the next new thing that comes along; the original image becomes a routine perception. Scientists think that this allocation of mental resources is crucial to our ability to perceive and interpret our surroundings. Whether visual adaptation is a prelude to memory formation is another question, one that intrigued cognitive neuroscientist Thomas Ditye of University College London. Because sleep strengthens memory, Ditye and colleagues decided to test whether visual adaptation also improves after some shuteye. The researchers asked a group to view a computer screen on which distorted images of the faces of actors George Clooney and Angelina Jolie flashed for periods of 0.5 to 6 seconds. The images were “extended”—stretched until they achieved the blown-up look of a fun house mirror. The object of the test was to determine whether the brain would adapt to images and begin seeing the distorted faces as normal. The volunteers, however, believing their reaction time was being tested, merely pressed a button whenever they saw the image. © 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 18576 - Posted: 08.28.2013

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS As a clinical psychologist and sleep researcher at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, Kelly Glazer Baron frequently heard complaints from aggrieved patients about exercise. They would work out, they told her, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, but they would not sleep better that night. Dr. Baron was surprised and perplexed. A fan of exercise for treating sleep problems, but also a scientist, she decided to examine more closely the day-to-day relationship between sweat and sleep. What she and her colleagues found, according to a study published last week in The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, is that the influence of daily exercise on sleep habits is more convoluted than many of us might expect and that, in the short term, sleep might have more of an impact on exercise than exercise has on sleep. To reach that conclusion, Dr. Baron and her colleagues turned to data from a study of exercise and sleep originally published in 2010. For that experiment, researchers had gathered a small group of women (and one man) who had received diagnoses of insomnia. The volunteers were mostly in their 60s, and all were sedentary. Then the researchers randomly assigned their volunteers either to remain inactive or to begin a moderate endurance exercise program, consisting of three or four 30-minute exercise sessions a week, generally on a stationary bicycle or treadmill, that were performed in the afternoon. This exercise program continued for 16 weeks. At the end of that time, the volunteers in the exercise group were sleeping much more soundly than they had been at the start of the study. They slept, on average, about 45 minutes to an hour longer on most nights, waking up less often and reporting more vigor and less sleepiness. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 18575 - Posted: 08.28.2013

Piercarlo Valdesolo Public opinion towards science has made headlines over the past several years for a variety of reasons — mostly negative. High profile cases of academic dishonesty and disputes over funding have left many questioning the integrity and societal value of basic science, while accusations of politically motivated research fly from left and right. There is little doubt that science is value-laden. Allegiances to theories and ideologies can skew the kinds of hypotheses tested and the methods used to test them. These, however, are errors in the application of the method, not the method itself. In other words, it’s possible that public opinion towards science more generally might be relatively unaffected by the misdeeds and biases of individual scientists. In fact, given the undeniable benefits scientific progress yielded, associations with the process of scientific inquiry may be quite positive. Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara set out to test this possibility. They hypothesized that there is a deep-seated perception of science as a moral pursuit — its emphasis on truth-seeking, impartiality and rationality privileges collective well-being above all else. Their new study, published in the journal PLOSOne, argues that the association between science and morality is so ingrained that merely thinking about it can trigger more moral behavior. The researchers conducted four separate studies to test this. The first sought to establish a simple correlation between the degree to which individuals believed in science and their likelihood of enforcing moral norms when presented with a hypothetical violation. Participants read a vignette of a date-rape and were asked to rate the “wrongness” of the offense before answering a questionnaire measuring their belief in science. Indeed, those reporting greater belief in science condemned the act more harshly. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Emotions; Attention
Link ID: 18574 - Posted: 08.28.2013

By Katherine Harmon The eight wily arms of an octopus can help the animal catch dinner, open a jar and even complete a convincing disguise. But these arms are not entirely under the control of the octopus’s brain. And new research shows just how deep their independence runs—even when they are detached. The octopus’s nervous system is a fascinating one. Some two thirds of its neurons reside not in its central brain but out in its flexible, stretchable arms. This, researchers suspect, lightens the cognitive coordination demands and allows octopuses to let their arms do some of the “thinking”—or at least the coordination, problem-solving and reaction—on their own. And these arms can continue reacting to stimuli even after they are no longer connected to the main brain; in fact, they remain responsive even after the octopus has been euthanized and the arms severed. The research is in the special September 2013 issue of the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology called “Cephalopod Biology” (we’ll check out the other fascinating studies in days and weeks ahead). The researchers, working at St. George’s University of London and the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station in Naples, Italy, examined 10 adult common octopuses (Octopus vulgaris) that had been collected and used for other studies. After the animals were euthanized, their arms were removed and kept in chilled seawater for up to an hour until they were ready for experimentation. Some arms were suspended vertically, and others were laid out horizontally. When pinched, suspended arms recoiled from the unpleasant stimulus by shortening and curling in a corkscrew shape within one second. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 18573 - Posted: 08.28.2013

Daniel Cressey A few chance encounters hundreds of metres underwater seem to have solved the long-standing mystery of what one squid species does with its unusual tentacles: it pretends they are fish to lure its prey into range. Until now, the deep-sea-dwelling squid Grimalditeuthis bonplandi had never been observed in the wild by researchers, and most of the knowledge about it came from partially digested specimens pulled from the stomachs of large fish and whales. Most squid have a pair of tentacles with hooks or suckers that they use to grasp food, but in this species the corresponding tentacles are thin, fragile things — and their function has puzzled squid researchers. Henk-Jan Hoving, a squid researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, and his team obtained videos of seven of these animals seen in the Atlantic and North Pacific. One of the observations came from an expedition run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California, and the other videos were made by commercial remotely-operated submersibles used by the oil and gas industry, and later supplied to Hoving and his team. Hoving and his team saw the squid move the ends of their unique appendages, known as tentacle clubs, in a way that “really looked like a small fish or squid”, he says. They describe their observations in Proceedings of the Royal Society B1. The movement of these tentacles attracts the crustaceans and other cephalopods that G. bonplandi eats. Thinking they are going to get dinner, the prey species move towards the flapping arms, only to be eaten themselves. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 18572 - Posted: 08.28.2013

By BENJAMIN EWEN-CAMPEN This may seem obvious. But in evolutionary terms, the benefits of sexual reproduction are not immediately clear. Male rhinoceros beetles grow huge, unwieldy horns half the length of their body that they use to fight for females. Ribbon-tailed birds of paradise produce outlandish plumage to attract a mate. Darwin was bothered by such traits, since his theory of evolution couldn’t completely explain them (“The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me feel sick!” he wrote to a friend). Moreover, sex allows an unrelated, possibly inferior partner to insert half a genome into the next generation. So why is sex nearly universal across animals, plants and fungi? Shouldn’t natural selection favor animals that forgo draining displays and genetic roulette and simply clone themselves? Yes and no. Many animals do clone themselves; certain sea anemones can bud identical twins from the sides of their bodies. Aphids, bees and ants can reproduce asexually. Virgin births sometimes occur among hammerhead sharks, turkeys, boa constrictors and komodo dragons. But nearly all animals engage in sex at some point in their lives. Biologists say that the benefits of sex come from the genetic rearrangements that occur during meiosis, the special cell division that produces eggs and sperm. During meiosis, combinations of the parents’ genes are broken up and reconfigured into novel arrangements in the resulting sperm and egg cells, creating new gene combinations that might be advantageous. © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 18571 - Posted: 08.28.2013

Beth Skwarecki Be careful what you say around a pregnant woman. As a fetus grows inside a mother's belly, it can hear sounds from the outside world—and can understand them well enough to retain memories of them after birth, according to new research. It may seem implausible that fetuses can listen to speech within the womb, but the sound-processing parts of their brain become active in the last trimester of pregnancy, and sound carries fairly well through the mother's abdomen. "If you put your hand over your mouth and speak, that's very similar to the situation the fetus is in," says cognitive neuroscientist Eino Partanen of the University of Helsinki. "You can hear the rhythm of speech, rhythm of music, and so on." A 1988 study suggested that newborns recognize the theme song from their mother's favorite soap opera. More recent studies have expanded on the idea of fetal learning, indicating that newborns already familiarized themselves with sounds of their parent’s native language; one showed that American newborns seem to perceive Swedish vowel sounds as unfamiliar, sucking on a high-tech pacifier to hear more of the new sounds. Swedish infants showed the same response to English vowels. But those studies were based on babies' behaviors, which can be tricky to test. Partanen and his team decided instead to outfit babies with EEG sensors to look for neural traces of memories from the womb. "Once we learn a sound, if it's repeated to us often enough, we form a memory of it, which is activated when we hear the sound again," he explains. This memory speeds up recognition of sounds in the learner's native language and can be detected as a pattern of brain waves, even in a sleeping baby. © 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 18570 - Posted: 08.27.2013

By Felicity Muth Humans love their victory displays. You only have to watch a game of football (or soccer to US-readers) to see some victory displays of the most ridiculous kind. Why do people do such things? If there was no crowd there, it is unlikely that they would perform such displays. But is it for the sake of the sex they are wishing to attract, or perhaps to put people they are competing with in no doubt of their accomplishment? Other animals, of course, also compete with each other, for food, resources and mates. And, like humans, how they behave once they win or lose a competition may depend on who’s around to see it. Male spring crickets fight with each other for territories and females Male spring field crickets fight with other males. The winners tend to do a lot better with the lady crickets, as the winners may gain the best territory, and because females of this species prefer dominant males. Now for the part that may surprise you: the males that win these fights will perform a victory display just like humans – after beating another male, the male winner performs an aggressive song and jerks his body in a particular way to show off that he’s won this fight. But, like with humans, the question arises: why do males do these victory displays? Is it to show the loser male that he has lost, or to show other males and females that he’s won? © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Attention
Link ID: 18569 - Posted: 08.27.2013

Erika Check Hayden US behavioural researchers have been handed a dubious distinction — they are more likely than their colleagues in other parts of the world to exaggerate findings, according to a study published today. The research highlights the importance of unconscious biases that might affect research integrity, says Brian Martinson, a social scientist at the HealthPartners Institute for Education and Research in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who was not involved with the study. “The take-home here is that the ‘bad guy/good guy’ narrative — the idea that we only need to worry about the monsters out there who are making up data — is naive,” Martinson says.

 The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, was conducted by John Ioannidis, a physician at Stanford University in California, and Daniele Fanelli, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK. The pair examined 82 meta-analyses in genetics and psychiatry that collectively combined results from 1,174 individual studies. The researchers compared meta-analyses of studies based on non-behavioural parameters, such as physiological measurements, to those based on behavioural parameters, such as progression of dementia or depression.

 The researchers then determined how well the strength of an observed result or effect reported in a given study agreed with that of the meta-analysis in which the study was included. They found that, worldwide, behavioural studies were more likely than non-behavioural studies to report ‘extreme effects’ — findings that deviated from the overall effects reported by the meta-analyses.
 And US-based behavioural researchers were more likely than behavioural researchers elsewhere to report extreme effects that deviated in favour of their starting hypotheses.

 © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Brain imaging; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18568 - Posted: 08.27.2013

By Clayton Aldern We’ve been here before. Two or three times a year, a team of neuroscientists comes along and tightropes over the chasm that is dystopian research. Across the valley lies some pinnacle of human achievement; below flows the dirty, coursing river of mind control and government-sponsored brainwashing and all things Nineteen Eighty-Four. Cliffside, maybe clutching our tinfoil caps, we bite our nails and try to keep our faith in the scientists. This time is no different. On July 26, a research team took its first step onto the tightrope. Working under Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, the MIT group reported that they had created a false memory in the brain of a mouse. “Our data,” wrote the authors in Science, “demonstrate that it is possible to generate an internally represented and behaviorally expressed fear memory via artificial means.” While the sterility reserved for scientific research abstracts tends to diffuse the élan of the work, the gravity here is apparent. Which brings us to the cliff and the chasm. That devil-klaxon of a sound effect from Inception always seems appropriate for heralding reports with sci-fi undertones. In the case of the closest thing we have to an actual inception, it seems particularly apt. But the group’s work is not Inception per se, and it’s certainly not Total Recall. That’s not to say it isn’t unnerving. It’s also not to say the study isn’t remarkable. More than anything, the Science paper’s publication is a reminder that neuroscience is inching over some dangerous ethical waters, and from here, it is important to tread carefully. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18567 - Posted: 08.27.2013

By Eleanor Bradford BBC Scotland Health Correspondent More than half of all teenagers may be sleep deprived, according to experts. A combination of natural hormone changes and greater use of screen-based technology means many are not getting enough sleep. Research has suggested teenagers need nine hours' sleep to function properly. "Sleep is fundamentally important but despite this it's been largely ignored as part of our biology," said Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at Oxford University. "Within the context of teenagers, here we have a classic example where sleep could enhance enormously the quality of life and, indeed, the educational performance of our young people. "Yet they're given no instruction about the importance of sleep and sleep is a victim to the many other demands that are being made of them." At One Level Up, an internet cafe and gaming centre in Glasgow, I found a group of young people who are used to very late nights. "There's things called 'grinds' which we have on Saturdays which are an all-nighter until 10 in the morning," said 17-year-old Jack Barclay. "We go home, sleep till 8pm at night and then do the exact same thing again. I like staying up." Fourteen-year-old Rachel admitted occasionally falling asleep in class because she stayed up late at night playing computer games. "If it's a game that will save easily I'll go to bed when my mum says, 'OK you should probably get some rest', but if it's a game where you have to go to a certain point to save I'll be like, 'five more minutes!' and then an hour later 'five more minutes!', and it does mess up your sleeping pattern. BBC © 2013

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 18566 - Posted: 08.27.2013

By Scicurious Optogenetics likes to light up debate. Optogenetics is a hot technique in neuroscience research right now, involving taking a light-activited gene (called a channel rhodopsin) targeted into a single neuron type, and inserting it into the genome of, say, a mouse (yes, we can do this now). When you then shine a light into the mouse’s brain, the channel rhodopsin responds, and the neurons that are now expressing the channel rhodopsin fire. This means that you can get a single type of neuron to fire (or not, there are ones that inhibit firing, too), whenever you want to, merely by turning on a light. I actually remember where I WAS when I first heard of optogenetics. I came into the lab in the morning, was going about my daily business, and hadn’t checked the daily Tables of Contents for journals yet (I get these delivered into my email). I remember the postdoc, normally a pretty phlegmatic person, actually putting a little excitement into their voice, “hey guys, look at this.” The paper was this one. We all crowded around. It took us all a few minutes to “get it”. As it began to sink it, I had two thoughts. The first? “WHOA, THAT IS AWESOME.” The second? “Great, I know what’s going to be the hot stuff now.” There are fashions in science. Not the kind where everyone dyes their lab coat plaid or creates cutoffs out of their Personal Protective Equipment (though that would be hilarious). There are experimental fashions. Lesions were once really “in”. Knockouts were hot stuff in the 90s. fMRI enjoyed (and still does enjoy) its moment in the sun, electrophysiology often adds a little je ne sais quoi to a paper. DREADDs, CLARITY. And when a new thing comes along and is going to be hot? You can sniff it out a mile away. For next year? I’m betting on GEVIs, myself. They’ll be all the rage. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 18565 - Posted: 08.27.2013

By Laura Sanders Despite the adage, there actually is such a thing as bad publicity, a fact that brain scientists have lately discovered. A couple of high-profile opinion pieces in the New York Times have questioned the usefulness of neuroscience, claiming, as columnist David Brooks did in June, that studying brain activity will never reveal the mind. Or that neuroscience is a pesky distraction from solving real social problems, as scholar Benjamin Fong wrote on August 11. Let’s start with Brooks. Some of his complaints about brain scans, with their colorful blobs lighting up active parts of the brain, are quite legitimate. Functional MRI studies are notoriously difficult to make sense of. In fact, this powerful technology has been used to find brain activity in a dead salmon. Dubious fMRI studies do trickle into the hands of sensationalistic journalists, medical hucksters and marketers, who twist the results into self-serving sound bites. All true. But Brooks’ essay conflates the entire field of neuroscience with some bad seeds. Some studies should never have been done, others mislead people, waste resources and sensationalize their results. But for every one of those studies, countless others tell us something important about how the human brain works. Serious scientists use a huge variety of techniques — yes, even fMRI — responsibly, and interpret their results cautiously. Judging the whole enterprise of neuroscience by its weakest studies is disingenuous. There is bad science, just like there’s bad food, bad music and bad TV. Trashing all brain research because a tiny bit of it stinks is like throwing your new flat screen off a balcony because you accidentally turned on Jersey Shore. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Brain imaging; Consciousness
Link ID: 18564 - Posted: 08.27.2013