Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV No, it's not science fiction: a new illusion that looks like a flight through space simultaneously tricks your brain in three different ways. Watch the moving white dots and their shadows as they move forwards and backwards. They should appear to change in contrast, grow and shrink in size and vary in depth, since the distance between the dots and their shadows seems to change. But none of these factors are actually changing: the pairs of dots are only moving to a different position on the screen. Aptly named the Star Trek illusion by researcher Yury Petrov and his team from Northeastern University in Boston, who developed the effect, the trick occurs since our brain perceives the motion as a change in viewing distance. Normally, when you move closer or further away from a scene, colour contrast, depth cues and object size are altered to account for the new viewpoint. So the strong flow in the animation tricks our brain and causes it to infer the new cues it's expecting. In their recent paper, Petrov and his colleague found that our brain first rescales the size of the dots and then adjusts contrast. Although the depth effect was predicted, it was only observed when they produced the new version of the illusion, shown above, containing shadows. The illusion has been submitted to this year's Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16531 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By Katherine Harmon Giant and colossal squid can grow to be some 12 meters long. But that alone doesn’t explain why they have the biggest eyeballs on the planet. At 280 millimeters in diameter, colossal squid eyes are much bigger than those of the swordfish, which at 90 millimeters, measure in as the next biggest peepers. “It doesn’t make sense a giant squid and swordfish are similar in size but the squid’s eyes are proportionally much larger, three times the diameter and 27 times the volume,” Sönke Johnsen, a biologists at Duke University, said in a prepared statement. Why would these cephalopods evolve soccer-ball-size eyes? The better to see you with, of course. Well, not you, exactly—unless you happen to be a hungry sperm whale. Scientists have found that having these extreme eyeballs likely allows these squid to spot whales when they’re still far enough away to escape the huge predators. The findings were described online March 15 in Current Biology. Bigger eyes might seem an obvious solution for acquiring better vision. “For seeing in dim light, a large eye is better than a small eye, simply because it picks up more light,” co-author Dan-Eric Nilsson of Lund University said in a prepared statement. But the low-light, low-contrast world of the pelagic oceans, where these squids and whales live and die, is much murkier than our airy environment here on land. “We have found that for animals living in water, it does not pay to make eyes much bigger than an orange,” Nilsson said. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 16530 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By Katherine Harmon Years of surgeries and medications were unable to stop Sultan Kosen’s runaway growth. In 2010 at age 27 and a height of 2.46 meters (eight feet, one inch), he became the world’s tallest living man, according to Guinness World Records. But he wasn’t done growing. Kosen had been diagnosed with a growth disorder at age 10 after doctors in his native Turkey found a tumor on his pituitary gland. The tumor triggered the gland to release too much growth hormone. As a result, he has suffered from both gigantism, a condition in which too much growth hormone is secreted during childhood, and acromegaly, a condition caused by too much growth hormone in adulthood. The tumor was technically benign, but it was lodged near the bottom of his brain, making it difficult to operate on. Thus ensconced, the tumor—along with Kosen’s whole body—continued to grow to dangerous proportions. sultan kosen uva surgery So in May 2010, doctors at the University of Virginia Medical Center put Kosen on new medication to limit growth hormone production. Perhaps more importantly, they were also able to perform gamma-knife radiosurgery on his hard-to-reach tumor. Guided by MRI, the doctors used this super-precise technique, which harnesses high-power gamma rays, to disable the tumor without having to do more dangerous invasive surgery. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 16529 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By Tina Hesman Saey Reading the genetic instruction books of gorillas and chimpanzees has provided more insight into what sets humans apart from their closest primate relatives. The two new studies also provide details about how these primate species may have evolved. Comparing a newly compiled genetic blueprint, or genome, of a western lowland gorilla named Kamilah with the genomes of humans and chimpanzees has revealed that the three species didn’t make a clean break when splitting from a common ancestor millions of years ago. Although humans are more closely related to chimps over about 70 percent of the human genome, about 15 percent of the human genome bears a closer relationship to gorillas. An international group of researchers reports the findings, which come from the first gorilla genome to be deciphered, in the March 8 Nature. A separate study of western chimpanzees, published online March 15 in Science, also has implications for understanding the human-chimp split. The new work shows that humans and chimps have different strategies for shuffling their genetic decks before dealing genes out to their offspring. Neither humans nor chimps shuffle genetic material randomly across the genome. Instead, both species have what are called hot spots, locations in the genetic material where matching sets of chromosomes recombine most often, Gil McVean, a statistical geneticist at the University of Oxford in England and colleagues report. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Evolution; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 16528 - Posted: 03.17.2012

It's not always clever to use brain science as an explanation for the most complex human problems. In the vast literature documenting the possible causes of the financial crises, from tepid governments to loose monetary policy to greedy bankers, there was the more lucid theme of a belief in the infallible nature of modern economic models, those mathematical pieces of wonder that tried to incorporate everything from the weather to political power-plays into the all-encompassing term that is risk. At the heart of this flawed world-view was the idea that economics had become a science much like physics and biochemistry - quantifiable, measurable and able to be modelled. In the wreckage thereafter, the reductionism inherent in such hubris was there for all to see. But the scientism that had inebriated the world of economics is part of a broader trend of viewing our very natures in a stripped back to the biological bones caricature. It is best epitomised by the ubiquity of musings about the brain from those attempting to bolster their authority, which includes everyone from leadership gurus to astrologers. The word is out that human consciousness - from the most elementary tingle of sensation to the most sophisticated sense of self - is identical with neural activity in the human brain and that this extraordinary metaphysical discovery is underpinned by the latest findings in neuroscience. The republic of letters is in thrall to the idea of neuroplasticity, imagining in wonder their brains modifying cells in parallel with their daily meanderings. © 2012 Fairfax Media

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 16527 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC Nature Japanese honeybees' response to a hive-invading giant hornet is efficient and dramatic; they form a "bee ball" around it, serving to cook and asphyxiate it. Now, researchers in Japan have measured the brain activity of honeybees when they form this killer ball. One highly active area of the bees' brains, they believe, allows them to generate the constant heat which is deadly for the hornet. The team published their findings in the open-access journal, PLoS One. Prof Takeo Kubo from the University of Tokyo explained that "higher centres" of the bee's brain, known as the mushroom bodies, were more active in the brains of Japanese honeybees when they were a part of the "hot defensive bee ball". To find this out, the team lured the bees to form their ball by attaching a hornet to the end of a wire and inserting the predator into the hive. This simulated invasion caused the bees to swarm around the hornet. The researchers then plucked a few of the bees from the ball and measured, throughout each of their tiny brains, the relative amount of a chemical that is known to be a "marker" of brain activity. "We found that similar [brain] activity is evoked when the Japanese honeybees are simply exposed to high temperature (46C) in the laboratory," the researcher told BBC Nature. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 16526 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By Aimee Cunningham The chemical bisphenol A, known as BPA, has become familiar in the past decade, notably to parents searching for BPA-free bottles for their infants. Animal studies have found that BPA, which resembles the sex hormone estrogen, harms health. The growing brain is an especially worrisome target: estrogen is known to be important in fetal brain development in rodents. Now a study suggests that prenatal, but not childhood, exposure to BPA is connected to anxiety, depression and difficulty controlling behaviors in three-year-olds, especially girls. More than 90 percent of Americans have detectable amounts of BPA in their urine; for most people, the major source of exposure is diet. BPA is a component of the resins that line cans of food and the plastics in some food packaging and drink containers, and the chemical leaches into the edible contents. Other sources of BPA exposure include water-supply pipes and some paper receipts. Epidemiologist Joe M. Braun of Harvard University and his colleagues studied 240 women and their children in the Cincinnati area. The researchers collected urine samples from the mothers twice during pregnancy and within 24 hours of birth and from the children at ages one, two and three. BPA was detectable in 97 percent of the samples. They also surveyed parents about their kids’ behavior and executive functions—a term for the mental processes involved in self-control and emotional regulation. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: ADHD; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 16525 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By Marla Cone and Environmental Health News That is a main finding of a report, three years in the making, published Wednesday by a team of 12 scientists who study hormone-altering chemicals. Dozens of substances that can mimic or block estrogen, testosterone and other hormones are found in the environment, the food supply and consumer products, including plastics, pesticides and cosmetics. One of the biggest, longest-lasting controversies about these chemicals is whether the tiny doses that most people are exposed to are harmful. In the new report, researchers led by Tufts University's Laura Vandenberg concluded after examining hundreds of studies that health effects "are remarkably common" when people or animals are exposed to low doses of endocrine-disrupting compounds. As examples, they provide evidence for several controversial chemicals, including bisphenol A, found in polycarbonate plastic, canned foods and paper receipts, and the pesticide atrazine, used in large volumes mainly on corn. The scientists concluded that scientific evidence "clearly indicates that low doses cannot be ignored." They cited evidence of a wide range of health effects in people – from fetuses to aging adults – including links to infertility, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer and other disorders. "Whether low doses of endocrine-disrupting compounds influence human disorders is no longer conjecture, as epidemiological studies show that environmental exposures are associated with human diseases and disabilities," they wrote. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16524 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By Cari Nierenberg A Dutch woman recovering from a stroke had an unusual response to seeing her family: The faces of her closest family members looked strange and distorted to her -- even repulsive. But at the same time, strangers' faces seemed normal. In fact, she had much less trouble recognizing the faces of strangers and celebrities than she did her own flesh and blood. This fascinating case of a 62-year-old woman referred to as JS is described in a recent issue of the journal Neurocase. Hospitalized after having an ischemic stroke, JS was unable to recognize one of her daughters with whom she had regular contact. But she immediately recognized her other daughter, whom she hadn't seen in eight years. When her grandchildren visited, she wouldn't let them sit on her lap because she thought they looked repulsive. "Of course, JS felt bad and ashamed about not recognizing family members or perceiving them as ugly," says Dr. Joost Heutink, the lead author of the case study. "As soon as we established that JS had a problem recognizing faces, we informed her family that a perceptual disorder prevented her from recognizing people she loved," he explains. Prosopagnosia. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 16523 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By BENEDICT CAREY They were young males on the make, and they struck out not once, not twice, but a dozen times with a group of attractive females hovering nearby. So they did what so many men do after being repeatedly rejected: they got drunk, using alcohol as a balm for unfulfilled desire. Fruit flies apparently self-medicate just like many humans do, drowning their sorrows or frustrations for some of the same reasons, scientists reported Thursday. Male flies subjected to what amounted to a long tease — in a glass tube, not a dance club — preferred food spiked with alcohol far more than male flies that were able to mate. The study, posted online in the journal Science, suggests that some elements of the brain’s reward system have changed very little during evolution, and these include some of the mechanisms that support addiction. Levels of a brain chemical that is active in regulating appetite predicted the flies’ thirst for alcohol. A similar chemical is linked to drinking in humans. “Reading this study is like looking back in time, to see the very origins of the reward circuit that drives fundamental behaviors like sex, eating and sleeping,” said Dr. Markus Heilig, the clinical director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Heilig, who was not involved in the research, said the findings also supported new approaches to treating alcohol dependence. Researchers are investigating several compounds aimed at blunting alcohol urges. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 16522 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By Laura Sanders The eyes are a window to the soul, but also to the brain. The health of easy-to-check blood vessels in the retina reflects the health of blood vessels deep inside the head, findings that raise the possibility of a simple eye exam catching early signs of brain trouble, scientists report in the March 27 Neurology. “The potential is very great — to use the eye to diagnose what’s going on elsewhere in the body, particularly in the brain,” says neuroscientist Alistair Barber of Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey. “The retina is relatively easy to see. The brain is not.” The findings add to the growing number of studies focusing on blood vessels that link eye and brain health. The Neurology study was conducted as part of the Women’s Health Initiative, which tracks the health of postmenopausal women. Over 10 years, researchers led by epidemiologist and biostatistician Mary Haan of the University of California, San Francisco looked for a link between eye disease and brain performance in 511 women who were at least 65 years old. In the study, participants had their pupils dilated as researchers took pictures of their retinas. After careful examinations, 39 women, or 7.6 percent of the total, were found to have diseased blood vessels in the retina, a condition called retinopathy in which the vessels can become swollen, leaky or grow abnormally. Usually, retinopathy is a symptom of diabetes or high blood pressure, two disorders that if left untreated are known to affect brain functioning. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Vision; Alzheimers
Link ID: 16521 - Posted: 03.17.2012

By Ferris Jabr Jason Egan does not walk, talk or eat like most nine-year-olds. He gets around in a wheelchair and depends on a feeding tube threaded into his stomach. He makes signs with his hands to communicate and has mustered the word "mom" on occasion. Although he cannot always articulate his feelings, he clearly feels a great deal. He is often seen smiling and laughing, especially when his father pushes him around the block near their home in Victoria, Australia. So far, no one has figured out exactly what is wrong with Egan. His doctors know that the boy's brain has been shrinking since birth, but he has tested negative for all known neurodegenerative disorders. Jason Egan may have a disease that is new to science. At first, Egan's doctors diagnosed him with cerebral palsy—an umbrella term for a group of related movement disorders. Children with cerebral palsy may have difficulty standing, moving, hearing, seeing and speaking. Their muscles are unusually tense and refuse to stretch, and their joints lock in place; some children experience tremors or seizures as well. In many cases, such children's brains were damaged during pregnancy or childbirth, usually in a way that limited oxygen to developing neurons. Symptoms of cerebral palsy may appear as early as three months—difficulty crawling, for instance—and usually make themselves known by age two. One of the defining features of cerebral palsy is that it is nonprogressive, which means that the severity of symptoms remains relatively constant over one's lifetime. Egan's symptoms, however, have changed over time. In 2009, around his sixth birthday, Egan began to lose what little sign language he had and stopped saying "mom." He started shaking and he did not seem to feel pain anymore, even when he injured himself. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16520 - Posted: 03.15.2012

by Peter Aldhous Just as many authors of the new psychiatry "bible" are tied to the drugs industry as those who worked on the previous version, a study has found, despite new transparency rules. The findings raise concerns over the independence of the revamped Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and scheduled for publication in May 2013. For the current rewrite, known as DSM-5, the APA for the first time required authors to declare their financial ties to industry. It also limited the amount they could receive from drug companies to $10,000 a year and their stock holdings to $50,000. "Transparency alone can't mitigate bias," says Lisa Cosgrove of Harvard University, who along with Sheldon Krimsky of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, analysed the financial disclosures of 141 members of the "work groups" drafting the manual. They found that just as many contributors – 57 per cent – had links to industry as were found in a previous study of the authors of DSM-IV and an interim revision, published in 1994 and 2000 respectively. Cosgrove also points out that the $10,000-per-year limit on payments excludes research grants. "Nothing has really changed," she says. What's more, the work groups that had the most members with ties to the pharmaceutical industry were considering illnesses for which drugs are the front-line treatment – and for which proposed changes to diagnostic categories are especially controversial. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 16519 - Posted: 03.15.2012

by Michael Marshall DON'T be offended, but you have the brain of a worm. Clusters of cells that are instrumental in building complex brains have been found in a simple worm that barely has a brain at all. The discovery suggests that, around 600 million years ago, primitive worms had the machinery to develop complex brains. They may even have had complex brains themselves - which were later lost. Vertebrates, such as humans and fish, have the biggest and most complex brains in the animal kingdom. Yet all their closest non-vertebrate relatives, such as the eel-like lancelets and sea squirts, have simple brains that lack the dozens of specialised nerve centres typical of complex brains. As a result, evolutionary biologists have long thought that complex brains only evolved after animals with backbones appeared. Not so, says Christopher Lowe of Stanford University in California. His team studies a species of acorn worm, Saccoglossus kowalevskii, which has a rudimentary nervous system made up of two nerve cords and nerves spread out in its skin. The worms live in burrows in the seabed and pull in passing particles of food. Lowe found that young S. kowalevskii have three clusters of cells identical to the ones vertebrates use to shape their brains. In developing vertebrate brains, these clusters - called signalling centres - make proteins that orchestrate the formation of specialised brain regions. The acorn worm, Lowe found, produces the same proteins, and they spread through its developing body in patterns similar to those they follow in the developing vertebrate brain (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature10838). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 16518 - Posted: 03.15.2012

By Rebecca Cheung When it comes to male crayfish, not all claws are created equal. In these crustaceans, the left and right claws might be very different sizes — and the larger one isn’t necessarily stronger, researchers report online March 14 in Biology Letters. This deceptiveness could help crayfish bluff or trick an opponent during a fight, says study coauthor Robbie Wilson, a biologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. What’s more, the findings suggest that within a species, “dishonesty occurs in nature more commonly than we expect,” Wilson says. During a clash, a male crayfish sizes up his opponent when deciding whether to fight or flee. Previously, scientists found that stronger, smaller-clawed crayfish would back down from weaker, larger-clawed opponents. So, it was clear that some bluffing occurred between these crustaceans. In this new work, Wilson and his colleague Michael Angilletta Jr., of Arizona State University in Tempe, compared claw size and strength in the slender male crayfish, Cherax dispar, a species native to Queensland. By having crayfish squeeze down on instruments that resembled tweezers, researchers could measure the force exerted by individual claws. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Aggression; Attention
Link ID: 16517 - Posted: 03.15.2012

By Neil Bowdler Health reporter, BBC News New evidence has linked the environment in the womb with increased body weight in later life. Scientists found changes around the DNA at birth which may result from a mother's diet or exposure to pollution or stress. They then linked these changes to a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) in children aged about nine years of age. But the researchers say more work is needed to definitively prove the link between these changes and obesity. Details are published in the journal Plos One. Childhood or adult obesity has many causes, not least childhood or adult diet, but scientists have previously linked specific genes, such as the FTO gene, with increased body weight. Others have looked at not the genes, but associated molecular changes - what are called epigenetics - which can play a role in how a gene functions in the body, switching genes on and off. These changes are thought to be caused in part by exposure to environmental factors such as diet, stress, smoking or hormones, particularly in the womb and during early childhood. BBC © 2012

Keyword: Obesity; Epigenetics
Link ID: 16516 - Posted: 03.15.2012

By Tori Rodriguez Eating disorders are not just about food. That much has been clear for decades, but researchers are still working to untangle the complex psychological, cultural and physiological roots of afflictions such as binge-eating disorder (BED) and bulimia. Now a growing body of work is finding that disordered eating is connected to attention deficits and poor self-awareness. In one recent study, psychologists at Geneva University in Switzerland tested the cognitive abilities of three groups—obese individuals with BED, obese individuals without BED and a normal-weight control group. They found that obese participants had difficulties with inhibition and focusing their attention. These cognitive deficits were most severe in the BED group, which points to a “continuum of increasing inhibition and cognitive problems with increasingly disordered eating,” the authors wrote in the journal Appetite last August. A different study in the August issue of the Western Journal of Nursing Re­search found that low executive func­tion—the cognitive capacity for self-understanding and self-regulation—is correlated with both obesity and symptoms of ADHD. And several other studies have linked distraction with overeating. The study found that focusing on one’s meal was linked to eating less later in the day—although for someone with ADHD, such focus can prove challenging. Taken together, these results suggest that treatment for binge eating may need to include strengthening mental functions such as attention and self-awareness. © 2012 Scientific American

Keyword: Obesity; Attention
Link ID: 16515 - Posted: 03.15.2012

Eating trans fats may increase irritability and aggression, a new study suggests. "This study provides the first evidence linking dietary trans fatty acids with behavioural irritability and aggression," concludes the study by Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and her colleagues. In the U.S., defence lawyers have used the so-called Twinkie defence to argue a defendant's behaviour, such as switching from a health-conscious diet to scarfing down Twinkies and other junk food, to show untreated depression had diminished an accused's capacity to tell right from wrong. Golomb and her co-authors analyzed diet surveys of 945 men and women with an average age of 57 in the U.S. and did behavioural assessments on them for the study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed online publication published by the non-profit Public Library of Science (PLoS). Eating more trans fats was significantly associated with repercussions for others after taking factors including education, smoking and alcohol use into account, the researchers said. "If the association between trans fats and aggressive behaviour proves to be causal, this adds further rationale to recommendations to avoid eating trans fats, or including them in foods provided at institutions like schools and prisons, since the detrimental effects of trans fats may extend beyond the person who consumes them to affect others," Golomb said. © CBC 2012

Keyword: Obesity; Aggression
Link ID: 16514 - Posted: 03.15.2012

David Wolman In the first months after her surgery, shopping for groceries was infuriating. Standing in the supermarket aisle, Vicki would look at an item on the shelf and know that she wanted to place it in her trolley — but she couldn't. “I'd reach with my right for the thing I wanted, but the left would come in and they'd kind of fight,” she says. “Almost like repelling magnets.” Picking out food for the week was a two-, sometimes three-hour ordeal. Getting dressed posed a similar challenge: Vicki couldn't reconcile what she wanted to put on with what her hands were doing. Sometimes she ended up wearing three outfits at once. “I'd have to dump all the clothes on the bed, catch my breath and start again.” In one crucial way, however, Vicki was better than her pre-surgery self. She was no longer racked by epileptic seizures that were so severe they had made her life close to unbearable. She once collapsed onto the bar of an old-fashioned oven, burning and scarring her back. “I really just couldn't function,” she says. When, in 1978, her neurologist told her about a radical but dangerous surgery that might help, she barely hesitated. If the worst were to happen, she knew that her parents would take care of her young daughter. “But of course I worried,” she says. “When you get your brain split, it doesn't grow back together.” In June 1979, in a procedure that lasted nearly 10 hours, doctors created a firebreak to contain Vicki's seizures by slicing through her corpus callosum, the bundle of neuronal fibres connecting the two sides of her brain. This drastic procedure, called a corpus callosotomy, disconnects the two sides of the neocortex, the home of language, conscious thought and movement control. Vicki's supermarket predicament was the consequence of a brain that behaved in some ways as if it were two separate minds. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Laterality; Language
Link ID: 16513 - Posted: 03.15.2012

Robert Stickgold The psychologist Stuart Sutherland wrote that it is impossible to define consciousness “except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means ... Nothing worth reading has been written about it.” It is arguable whether Christof Koch's Consciousness provides such a definition, but the book is definitely worth reading. Koch, chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, is perhaps best known for his work with the late Francis Crick, searching for the neurobiological 'correlates of consciousness'. Here, he succinctly lays out the story of that quest. Focusing on how the brain might produce the mind, Koch mixes descriptions of major experiments with self-reflection and warnings of the inherent danger of the exercise. From Koch's collaborations with Crick, whom he seems to idolize, to his struggles with religion and free will, this is an engaging mixture of personal anecdote, scientific fact and pure speculation. It is often charming: Chapter 2, for instance, is entitled, 'In which I write about the wellsprings of my inner conflict between religion and reason, why I grew up wanting to be a scientist, why I wear a lapel pin of Professor Calculus, and how I acquired a second mentor late in life'. For many, the richest parts of the book will be Koch's lucid descriptions of experiments such as his work with Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon who implanted electrodes into the hippocampi of people with epilepsy. In one patient, Fried found a single neuron that responded only to the name or pictures of Saddam Hussein; in another, he found one that responded only to pictures of the actress Jennifer Aniston. In a descriptive tour de force, Koch explains that although Fried dubbed these cells concept neurons, we can think of them as “the cellular substrate of the Platonic Ideal of Jennifer Aniston”. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 16512 - Posted: 03.15.2012