The ABC's of fear

George W Bush has made it clear that during his administration science should be producing tangible benefits for society. In simple terms, the culture has had to shift from a very basic science oriented approach inherited from the freewheeling 90's to an applied focus now. Often what that means is that the same scientists who were on top of basic research for so many years have to give lip service to clinical studies and trials.

A good example came out right before halloween. Here is a hodge podge of quotes from neuroscientists who study fear in the brain.

The first comes from Stephen Maren of Michigan, who is a reputable and good scientist.

"We're making a lot of progress," said University of Michigan psychology professor Stephen Maren. "We're taking all of what we learned from the basic studies of animals and bringing that into the clinical practices that help people. Things are starting to come together in a very important way."

The translation is: "Please don't cut my funding. Look this is all going to pan out clinically in a couple of years, we promise!"

That being said, some progress is being made in this field...so, uh, don't cut NIH funding!

Watson and racism

Jason Malloy at Gene Expression wrote a long and detailed post on James Watson's recent statements on evolution in Africa vs. Europe. The opener:

It is long and detailed with a lot of facts. Here's the opener:

The public intellectual forum is being manipulated with intimidation and coercion and you are being lied to. The media is not doing its job, and the scientific community is not playing its proper public role as a beacon of dispassionate truth seeking, as a conduit of knowledge to the public, or in fostering an open and fair intellectual climate. Both are abusing their power and authority to do the opposite of their honor bound social and intellectual roles; facts are being distorted in service of values.

Watson's remarks in the interview, like Larry Summers before him, were fairly mild. Notheless, a lot of tsk-tsking from the editorialists at Nature.

Building blocks for the developing brain

An interesting, if flawed, study.

"The newborn brain triples in size between birth and 2 years of age. The long-standing presumption has been that certain activities during this period promote optimal development and that others may hinder it."

"In this pilot study, we found that distributing blocks was associated with significantly higher language scores in a sample of middle- and low-income children," the authors write. On average, children who received blocks score 15 percent higher on their language assessment than those who did not. The results suggest that a program that distributes blocks may be effective in promoting development. There was no difference found in attention scores between the two study groups.

Self-reporting is always going to be biased, and of course families which receive toys from the men in white coats will be more likely to report playing with them.

Experimental treatment for brain damaged patient

A pretty powerful story.

Poison Ivy hopped up on CO2

Forget global warming, if we don't stop polluting the air with CO2, then we'll be taken over by monster mutant poison ivy.

That should get people listening. Finally.

Science News Online

Slow wave sleep and race

A blurb that's just coming out into the press.

Slow wave activity (SWA), a stable trait dependent marker of the intensity of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, is lower in young healthy African-Americans compared to Caucasians who were matched for age, gender and body weight, according to recent research.

It would be interesting to see the full report on this, whether subjects were matched on social and economic scales, and whether other health issues played a factor.

Update: Apparently there was a big sleep convention lately. Here were some other findings:

Sleep restriction affects children's speech

Electrical brain waves predict attentional deficits following sleep deprivation


Sleep disorders are highly prevalent among police officers

Sleep deprivation can lead to increased smoking and drinking

Finally:
A good night's sleep improves athletic performance

First vaccines, now antibiotics?

A new study shows that exposure to antibiotics early in life (1st year) predicts the occurrence of asthma later on. The evidence seems to suggest that treating non-respiratory infections with antibiotics will double the risk of asthma.

Also, check this out:

Furthermore, absence of a dog during the birth-year doubled asthma risk among children taking multiple courses of antibiotics.

"Dogs bring germs into the home, and it is thought that this exposure is required for the infant's immune system to develop normally. Other research has shown that the presence of a dog in early life protects against the development of asthma," said Dr. Kozyrskyj. "Exposure to germs is lower in the absence of a dog. The administration of an antibiotic may further reduce this exposure and increase the likelihood of asthma development."

From skin cells to stem cells

Another big step in generating stem cells without using embryos. This finding was made in Japan, and before you get all skeptical, it was replicated by two labs in America. It's not a magic bullet but neither are embryonic stem cells.

The iPS cells aren't perfect, and could not be used safely to make genetically matched cells for transplant in, for example, spinal-cord injuries. Yamanaka found that one of the factors seems to contribute to cancer in 20% of his chimaeric mice.

One of the top science stories of the year so far.

Distilled H2O: bane to human existence or tasty treat?

Some questions are not easily answered by Google or Wikipedia. About a year ago our department moved into a new building that was equipped with distilled H2O at our sinks. Although it was easily determined that the dH2O in our lab was not fit for drinking (I got sick as a dog upon drinking it), this was a factor of decidedly undistilled water coming out of the distilled tap. Nevertheless, I was curious about whether or not distilled water was safe to drink, or beneficial. I must have looked through ten pages of Google to find an authoritative, definitive answer on this and couldn't. I mostly found message boards saying one thing or another. It was simply ungooglable.


Anyway, one of my goals here is to make the ungooglable googlable, so I asked a friend and Chemistry PhD about it. First, some background.

Water is an aggressive solvent
The purer the water, the more aggressive it is as a solvent. Leave metal tools in water overnight, and it will probably be ok the next morning. If it is distilled, your tools will show signs of rust within hours. Those that warn about the dangers of DH2O claim that in like fashion it will leech minerals out of your body, leaving you in poor health and at worst mineral deficiencies.

However, because dH2O is so aggressive, it becomes "undistilled" rather quickly. If you leave a glass of dH2O out in the open air, it will soon become slightly acidic by breaking down carbon bonds from the air and producing carbonic acid. So any concerns about dH2O leeching out minerals can be solved by simply leaving the water out. High end water filtration systems for domestic use often run dH2O back through a bed of rocks so the water picks up minerals naturally before passing through your GI.

That being said, is there really harm in drinking dH2O straight out of the tap. Provided it is really distilled, my Chemistry PhD friend says there isn't too much harm in it. Once the water hits your mouth it's bombarded with organic molecules, and your stomach is very acidic and won't contain the minerals that would leech out anyway. The only concern is that tap water provides minerals that are otherwise hard to get and you'd have to supplement. I estimate you could probably get away with drinkin 80% of your water dH2O with no problems.

The bigger question is whether dH2O is safe for making coffee. By all accounts it's perfectly fine, because it is no longer distilled as it passes through the beans. One question I posed to my chemistry friends is whether the aggressive solvency of dH2O would extract more flavor and/or caffeine from the beans. My PhD friend said that caffeine is an alkaloid and since tap water is slightly acidic it would extract more caffeine. I think an experiment should be conducted to verify this.

Evidence for the inflammation hypothesis of Alzheimer's

The inflammation hypothesis of Alzheimer's, which suggests that inflammation in the brain triggers a cascade of cellular events that over time results in deposits and atrophy, and subsequent cognitive deficits, is still relatively controversial.

A Harvard researcher found a correlation between inflammation and future prevalence of Alzheimer's.

The participants' blood was tested for levels of cytokines, which are protein messengers that trigger inflammation. Those with the highest amount of cytokines in their blood were more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease as those with the lowest amount of cytokines.

Doogie mice version 2.0

"It's pretty rare when you can make an animal smarter," said Dr. James Bibb, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who led the study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

I'll say. These guys deleted a certain gene, Cdk5, which apparently controls the destruction of the NMDA receptor. The NMDA receptor is important for learning new associations and retaining them as memories. Seems pretty legit.

Prenatal thimerosal and autism: evidence opposing the mercury hypothesis

An interesting study that I look forward to reading when it becomes available. Due to some weird University-Publisher interaction, I can't get my hands on this article yet. From the abstract and the news it seems that Rh- mothers who receive Rh immune globulin via vaccine pre-partum did not have any higher incidence of autistic outcomes than the normal population. Good news for Rh- women wanting to have children, but I still have concerns about thimerosal in general.

The authors state in their abstract:

These findings support the consensus that exposure to ethylmercury in thimerosal is not the cause of the increased prevalence of autism. These data are important not only for parents in this country but also for the international health community where thimerosal continues to be used to preserve multi-dose vials which in turn makes vaccines affordable.

I think the authors hastily and unfairly generalized their results in this instance, though I intend to read the document and report more thoroughly when it is available.

A few points to think about.

1.)Vaccinations were given to mothers pre-partum. The concentration of thimerosal to a fetus in a vaccination given to a 135 lb. woman is going to be less than that given to a post-partum baby. I'd have to read the article and wrap my head around the literature to determine the average amount of thimerosal exposure in each case. Most likely, it is a much lower exposure in the prenatal Rh vaccination.

2.)Multiple rounds of multi-dose vials exceeded FDA approved levels of mercury exposure. Period. The authors are comparing apples to oranges here. Any one pre-2001 vaccination did not exceed FDA levels of mercury exposure, but the combination of multiple vaccinations in a short span did exceed FDA approved levels. This report is not the nail in the coffin of the thimerosal hypothesis that the authors suggest.

3.)Johnson and Johnson funded the study. Good science is often funded by private companies, but it should be noted that although the original report cites this funding, the news media do not. I love Johnson and Johnson, and most all pharm companies. Really, they do great work. But these possible conflicts of interest must be highlighted in every study.

In conclusion, Rh- women have some reassurance that Rh vaccination won't have adverse developmental effects on their baby. For the rest of us concerned about multiple exposures to flu and other vaccines on infants, there is little to gain from this study, despite the smug confidence of the authors.


Pubmed abstract

Sarkozy, overtime, and science

In France, if you work longer than 35 hrs. a week you get paid overtime, and your employer pays the government a tax. The idea is that employers have economic incentives to hire more people rather than pay good workers to work longer hourse. Scottie's Mom expounds upon this idea:

I think it's a good idea for those who prefer to work more than 35 hours per week that they won't have to pay a higher tax rate on overtime. Already middle-managers and top managers work "beaucoup de plus", don't get paid extra for it, and it seems that the workers at the bottom of the pile get all of the social benefits...35 hour work-weeks, overtime pay, etc., etc. What's really strange, even those who own their own masonry, electric, plumbing enterprises have adopted the 35-hour work week for themselves; many times they are the sole employee with the exception that they sometimes hire part-time people.

Interesting how tax policy can shift cultural attitudes.

Sarkozy wants to reduce or eliminate the overtime tax. One of my French colleagues, who is working in America as a neuroscientist, voted for Segolene both times and thinks Sarkozy will be a disaster. He specifically cited the reduction or elimination of the overtime tax as a big mistake. I find the overtime tax quite shocking and would love to see it repealed.

The way that EU countries and America fund science is also very different. In France, large institutes receive a lot of money and everyone else gets very little. It reminds me of the Charity Hospital system in New Orleans. From Science magazine:

But the candidates' opinions diverged on how to address the malaise in French research and the long-running problems at the country's universities. Science and higher education don't mix well in France, because most research takes place at mammoth government institutions such as the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) rather than at the universities. A highly centralized administration system means universities are relatively powerless to set their own agendas; they also suffer from the fact that the smartest young minds typically attend the so-called grands écoles, which train France's professional and political elite but carry out little research.
...
Sarkozy has also suggested turning the big research bodies such as CNRS into U.S.-style granting agencies that would reward proposals rather than employ scientists--a controversial shift in a country where science usually means a government job for life. To carry out those promises, Sarkozy's UMP will have to retain its majority in the National Assembly during elections next month; polls suggest it will.

America's granting agencies, mainly bodies of the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, reward grant proposals in a psuedocompetitive processes between professors/MDs applying from universities throughout the nation. There is a long list of European scientists who flock to America in part because of better pay, but in large part because of the un-meritocratic exclusion they faced because the few "Herr Professors" get almost all the funding. I don't know if the Sark can change that for France, but for many of my European colleagues the changes come too late, they are doomed to do research in the land of the free. Yee-haw! USA!USA!

Aggression and mice, an Ohio story

A shout out to my neighbors with the big press release.

"We found that estrogen has totally opposite effects on behavior in these mice depending only on how much light they got each day," said Brian Trainor, co-author of the study and postdoctoral fellow in psychology and neuroscience at Ohio State University. "It is quite a surprising finding."

I can attest to this

An interesting study done here at Ohio State:

But this higher yearly income did not translate into higher wealth. In fact, people with slightly above average intelligence (105 IQ score) had an average net worth higher than those just a bit smarter (110 IQ). "There are some very smart people who get into financial difficulties," Zagorsky notes. "Even smart people don't save."

Amygdala volume and autism

Dr Richard Davidson of Wisconsin, a top fMRI social psychologist, has some interesting findings related to brain imaging and autism...

The brain's fear hub likely becomes abnormally small in the most severely socially impaired males with autism spectrum disorders, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) have discovered. Teens and young men who were slowest at distinguishing emotional from neutral expressions and gazed at eyes least � indicators of social impairment � had a smaller than normal amygdala, an almond-shaped danger-detector deep in the brain. The researchers also linked such amygdala shrinkage to impaired nonverbal social behavior in early childhood.

Is the decrease in amygdala volume a function of a lifetime of autism, or is it an underlying feature? Do infants have smaller amygdalar volume?

Alzheimer's, inflammation, and marijuana

Dr. Gary Wenk on NPR talking about inflammation and Alzheimer's. One thing to note: the doses used in these studies are well below that required for psychoactive effects. But I guess I should tell it to the FDA.

On a related note, curry is also good for reducing inflammation. The JohnnyB diet of all curry all the time works!

Curry and anti-inflammation

Bipolar news

Antidepressants provide no extra benefit to those already on mood stabilizers for bipolar disorder.

Before participants were randomized to one of two antidepressants — bupropion (Wellbutrin) or paroxetine (Paxil) — or to a placebo, doctors trained in the treatment of bipolar disorder adjusted participants’ mood stabilizer doses to optimal levels, ensuring that they were receiving the most appropriate amount.

After about 26 weeks, Sachs and colleagues found that 24 percent of those who had been randomized to the antidepressants stayed well for at least eight consecutive weeks — the study’s stringent standard for recovery; 27 percent of those randomized to a placebo stayed well long enough to meet the eight-week recovery standard, indicating no difference between adding an antidepressant or adding placebo. In addition, about 10 percent of each group experienced emerging symptoms of mania, indicating that the antidepressants did not trigger a manic switch any more than placebo. Finally, when comparing the two antidepressants to each other, both showed similar rates of response and manic switch.

Thomas Jefferson: Terrorist?

I always knew there was something about Thomas Jefferson I didn't like:

Now, new techniques have been brought to bear on Jefferson's Y chromosome, in a study reported in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The presidential chromosome turns out to belong to a rare class called 'K2', which is found at its highest frequency in the Middle East and Eastern Africa, including Oman, Somalia and Iraq. Its closest match was in a man from Egypt. Could this mean that the President had recent ancestry in the Middle East?

Unintentional consequences

Anybody spot the problem here...

Researchers have developed a malaria-resistant mosquito, a step that might one day help block the spread of an illness that has claimed millions of lives around the world.

...This is all fine and good until the malaria evolves, which should take a good year. Then, regular mosquitoes won't stand a chance, and malaria will spread like wildfire to places it hasn't been found in years.

Of goals and spatial memory

It's spring break time here at OSU and many undergrads are driving down to Daytona and Pensacola etc. As they drive through Kentucky and Tennessee, I'm sure they don't remember much about the drive and the exits once they get to their destination. But, imagine they were driving through Kentucky in search of that glorious elixir, Ale-8-1? Better yet, what if they were assigned to work in Estill county, Kentucky, for a summer selling books door to door? One could imagine that driving through Lexington to get gas would not encode the place as strongly as driving through each of the 6 exits to find the thick green glass bottles of Ale-8-one, the kind that truly insulate that citrusey ginger ale concoction.

Interestingly, the idea that goal representation and motivation play a role in the encoding of spatial memories is still controversial within the neuroscience. I am glad to see scientists rigorously testing the effects of motivation on spatial memory (the hippocampus is the part of the brain that encodes spatial memory, among other things).

The hippocampus contains place cells, which are neurons whose firing frequency increases dramatically when an animal is in a specific location in an environment. This location is known as the place cell's place field. Reporting in the Journal of Neuroscience, Hok and colleagues show that these cells can also fire when a rat is in an area associated with a particular goal, even if this area is outside a cell's place field.

It's probably best to read the whole thing.

Behold the Insula

Interesting news in nature caught my eye:

A study in Science reported that people with damage to the insula, a brain area involved in the assessment of bodily states, found it much easier to give up smoking than people with lesions in other brain areas. Importantly, the insula-lesioned patients had no urge to start smoking again.

I think I can see where this is going: mandatory insulotomies for smokers, once Hillary is elected.

Seroquel, it's what's for dinner

I taught recitation for a drugs and behavior class, and am in contact with a lot of undergrads. It seems most of the undergrads I come in contact with have been on some powerful narcotics, uppers, downers, or both uppers and downers. All prescribed. One guy said he took vicodin every day before he went to work. I asked if he did a lot of heavy lifting..."not really". One student was on Seroquel to go to sleep. These are useful medications, though as the article points out the old ones may be just as useful as the new ones for the right patient. I'm just irritated when they are overprescribed for off-label use, often in conjunction with other drugs prescribed for off-label use.

Nature's magic concoction

Can I get a hell yeah for coffee?

a "grande" (medium size) cup at Starbucks, for instance, is 473 milliliters (or 16 ounces) could pack as much as three grams of fiber, about the same as a raw apple and 20 percent or more of the average American's daily intake.

Scientific American: Need Fiber? Have Some Coffee
New study shows that coffee may be a source of dietary fiber, period.

Obesity surgery causes memory loss

Good thing about 1000 kids a year now have obesity surgery, known as Roux-en-y gastric bypass in the clinical parlance.

Check these symptoms out: Wernicke's encephalopathy (a B1 deficiency related loss of memory), seizures, psychosis, deafness, pain or weakness in the extremities.

Isoflurane and Alzheimer's

I use isoflurane for small animal surgery so this story hits home. We have a pretty good ventilation and recovery system, these days. Don't let your grandma go under on this stuff!

Update: It's on the Nature newspage now

Mercury and autism...nothing to see here folks.

Good article on the subject linked above Hat tip to Developing Intelligence

Wellman collected cabbage seeds infected with a common fungus and dunked some of them in a solution of mercury salts and hot water. "The lots treated with mercuric [chloride] were shaken vigorously at first to get thorough contact with the solution," he wrote. His faculty adviser at the time was concerned about an epidemic of cabbage fungus that was wrecking havoc on Wisconsin farms, and he enlisted his student Wellman's help in researching solutions.

By the time his son was born 14 years later, in 1936, Wellman had graduated to advanced plant pathology work at the U.S. Agriculture Department's main research center in Beltsville, in Prince George's County, just outside Washington.

In a résumé, he wrote at length about his experience there with fungicides. On cabbage seeds, he reported, "organic mercury compounds were found to be most satisfactory disinfecting agents." For tomatoes, "proprietary organic mercury dusts also gave good results." All three of the fungicide sales brochures in his archive were for organic mercury compounds--two of them containing ethyl mercury, which was introduced in commercial products just a few years earlier.

Ethyl mercury is also the active ingredient in a vaccine preservative called thimerosal. A maverick minority of scientists and a larger percentage of parents blame thimerosal--which is 49.6 percent ethyl mercury by weight--for the rising autism rate, up tenfold in 20 years to one in 150 8-year-old U.S. children, according to a report this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some parents say they watched their children become physically ill and regress into autism soon after they got shots that contained the chemical--a link public-health officials call coincidence, not cause and effect.

....

All forms of mercury are toxic, but organic mercury--which can cross the body's blood-brain barrier and the placenta--is especially dangerous.

One kind of organic mercury, methyl, "bioaccumulates" or builds up in some large fish. Pregnant women are advised not to eat too much of certain fish for fear of causing neurological damage to their offspring.

Ethyl is a sister compound from the same alkyl subgroup of organic mercury; it has one more carbon and two more hydrogen atoms than methyl. But ethyl mercury is man-made--it was not present in the environment, and humans were not exposed to it, until a Ukrainian immigrant named Morris S. Kharasch created the first commercial formulations just before Kanner's earliest autism cases were born.

.....
"A light bulb went off for me at a conference in Portland [Ore.] in 2001 where I met a mother of five children, all on the spectrum, all unvaccinated," King recalls in an interview. "She was from eastern Washington, she came from a family of farmers, and her husband was a farmer as well. All five of her children had regressive autism. Meeting her changed the way I look at autism, and prompted me to explore the connection."

King says her "jaw literally dropped" when presented with the idea that mercury in fungicides could link Kanner's early cases. "It would be hard to convince me that there isn't a connection," she says.

P53 and tanning

Pretty sweet new study found in Cell

Scientific American: A Protein Twofer That Triggers Tanning and Protects against Skin Cancer
Researchers find that a protein activated to repair DNA damage also activates tanning, which can protect against melanoma

Amanda Baggs' story

All the news stories recently about this new epidemic warrant two comments on my part. One, the DSM IV-TR was released in 2000 and the bar for diagnosing autism has been lowered. A small percentage of the cases of kids diagnosed with autism, or aspergers, or "autism + ADHD" do not fit the standard criteria for these disorders, in a sense autism can become a miscellaneous bin for anyone showing slight social or communication impairment. This doesn't apply to Amanda below; she is a true positive.

Second, there is a still controversial theory that says that maternal perinatal (around birth) stress can affect certain genetically predisposed babies adversely, resulting in higher incidence of these disorders. We can learn a lot from people like Amanda, and next time you see someone like Amanda in the grocery store or walking down the street, remember they are just as much a person as you are and have had a much tougher life.

The brain scan that can read people's intentions

Obviously I'm delving into Johnny B's territory here, but I couldn't resist. Do any of you guys think that there is a slippery slope here just waiting for us to slide down without a snowboard?

Minority Report ended like all Stephen Spielberg movies...happily, and at the last minute, with everyone learning their lessons, no worse for wear.

But it typically doesn't work that way in the real world. What are the ethical implications of being able to read people's intentions?

Guardian Unlimited

Marijuana and memory impairment

Now, I'm posting this for two reasons. One, I'm analyzing brain waves like the scientists here (theta, gamma, etc.) Two, I am throwing this out there to demonstrate that marijuana has negative as well as beneficial effects on mental health. Like most of these posts on these science blogs they are far too glib with their conclusions:

Example:
Because theta and gamma oscillations are thought to play a critical role in creating and storing short-term memories--and fast ripple oscillations may allow such short-term memories to be moved into long-term storage--this suppression could mean missing memories for the rats.

In truth we know very little about how theta and gamma work together in creating and storing memories, and much, much less about fast ripple oscillations. We do know that strong theta in the hippocampus is correlated with good working memory, but we know less about how theta is generated in seperate parts of the brain. Basically, these conclusions made by the scientific american blogger tend to gloss over the specific effects of MJ, at which sites. In other words, are MJ's effects localized to the thalamus, cortex, hippocampus, and which generators of these different brain waves are effected and how? Practically any psychoactive drug will cause changes in these brain waves, but this in and of itself tells us little about how the drug works.

The chemistry of wine

Y'all might be starting to notice a pattern here. Enjoy.

Marijuana and Alzheimers Disease

News from the recent conference. Dr Wenk is a colleague and lab-neighbor. He gets in the news a lot, check out his homepage online and you'll see. He's done research on gingko biloba, chocolate, caffeine and knows a lot about a wide range of issues. He's a nice guy, a good teacher and researcher, a rare trifecta for profs. So don't bombard him with e-mails if he sounds glib here. In his defense he was in the airport and pretty tired when he was interviewed.

Bona-fide

One bona-fide paper to my name, as first author. Behold (click link above)!

The first such paper to demonstrate visual-related activity in the rat parietal cortex. Which is actually pretty cool, because we understand the neurotransmitter systems in rats and can study them, whereas we can't in humans (not without a pretty nasty lawsuit on our hands). Thus study the encoding of these signals in the brain can be more easily studied and manipulated. Boo-yah!

Evolution and Theology

The above links to an interesting post on evolution and theology, and politics. I don't agree with all of it, but most of it. For so long conservatives were branded as social darwinists, but now as crazy creationists. Anyway it's worth a look.

Man uses brain to move cursor

I know a lot of y'all logifans out there wonder what I am doing in graduate school. I am learning, among other things, how figure out this kind of stuff.

Posted at 09:53 am by Johnny B

Reading list for Condi Rice

An article from Scientific American

Posted at 10:03 pm by Johnny B

	Posted by BP @ 06/05/2006 02:17 PM PDT
	Interesting article...I'm assuming the link with Condoleeza Rice is with sanctions on Iran? Interestingly enough I've worked on economic experiments like this and it's amazing how much like rats we all are when we are exposed to a controlled environment and how easy it is to nail down human tendencies. A similar phenomenon was evident with the first few seasons of the Pilgrims where all were welcome to share of the community crops. They nearly starved to death. Without recourse...noone contributes didley squat.

Chocolate rules!

According to Scientific American.

From the Story:

Among those who ate the most chocolate--averaging more than four grams a day--average systolic and diastolic blood pressure was 3.7 and 2.1 millimeters of mercury lower than their chocolate-spurning peers. This result did not hold true for other sweet foods nor did it vary among men who also smoked, were inactive or consumed a lot of alcohol. And, despite being strongly associated with greater intake of calories, chocolate lowered the overall risk of cardiovascular or any other disease by as much as 50 percent.

Posted at 09:52 pm by Johnny B

	Posted by BP @ 03/02/2006 10:09 AM PST
	I'm in...I'm sold...and can adjust my New Year's resolutions accordingly.

Science update: depression

Serotonin receptor protein found to be linked to depression. It is nice to see serotonin get some attention, most everyone is still focused on dopamine these days.

Listen at NPR. I've read some work from these guys and they are good, heavy duty scientists.

Posted at 09:16 pm by Johnny B

Science stuff

One interesting news item came up the other day:

A study about seasonal changes and learning done right here at Ohio State, by a student down the hall (figuratively), Leah Pyter. She showed that during winter, hamsters have smaller hippocampi (kind of like RAM for your brain instead of your computer).

Other science news: At Salon they talk about hacking the neural code. If I only knew what he was talking about.

Alzheimer's begins with attention lapses. This news excites me.

One good way to fend of meat-born diseases, and Alzheimer's Dementia, is to eat curry. In India rates of Alzheimer's are much lower, and in Professor Gary Wenk, a new addition to Ohio State (brought in to replace someone else), has shown that a chemical in curry powder prevents inflammation in the brain, inflammation which is said to lead to neuronal degeneration. Huzzah for curry!

One more. There is a new scanning technique that can find beta-amyloid plaques, which are a hallmark of Alzheimer's. Right now we have to wait for an autopsy to confirm if someone has Alzheimer's. This scan might help predict who will get Alzheimer's so we can treat it earlier.

Menstruation science

One of my least favorite sciences...at any rate, here is an interesting finding: Women's spatial ability improves during menstruation DPA , HAMBURG, GERMANY Tuesday, Oct 18, 2005,Page 6 Through history women have been the butt of smirking male jokes about their alleged inability to give directions or to read road maps. Now, researchers at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, have discovered that a woman's spatial ability, and hence her ability to read maps, actually increases during her menstrual period. During most of her monthly cycle, higher levels of the female hormone estrogen are present and these were linked to lower scores on such things as direction finding and map reading. But when levels of the male hormone testosterone were higher, as during their period, women did better.

Full Story

Posted at 09:08 pm by Johnny B

Aphorism

You can lead an undergraduate to science, but you can't make him think.

Evolution and Social Darwinism

A colleague of mine who is attempting to learn about neuroscience let me borrow a series of lectures on tape from a big name professor named Robert Sapolsky, Stanford professor and author of "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers". He will show up on PBS or NPR occasionally as well to tell us something about stress. I listened to this series of lectures mainly for style points, to see how he conveys complex neuroscience stuff to the masses.

At about the sixth lecture, Sapolsky started talking about how increased levels of circulating prolactin (hormone involved in breast feeding) from new mothers is a potent contraceptive. The key to prolactin is it needs to be released at low levels throughout the day. In other words, mothers can't make the kids wait an hour or two and then give up the milk, it has to be little spurts all day long.

Then he goes off on this tangent (and I paraphrase): 'People in Western culture seems to think that hunter/gatherer societies tend to live in horrible conditions. We think of these people as nearly starving, always succumbing to diseases, but in fact that's not the case. In an anthropology study on (some tribe in Africa) it was shown that these people live just fine. They spend three or four hours a day foraging for food and spend the rest of the time doing social anthropology. They are the cream of the crop, health-wise. In agricultural societies people spend 10-12 hours a day producing food and are susceptible to all kinds of diseases due to the stress. One of the biggest mistakes in human history was the invention of agriculture. All agriculture does is allow for the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, which results in stratified societies etc. etc....maybe a little political motivation there'

Now I've read a little about Sapolsky. He seems like a nice guy. Definitely from a family of concentrated wealth, he attended tory Ivy League schools and succeeded everywhere he went. I'm sure he does wonderful charity work with the royalties from his textbooks, which are foisted upon college undergrads throughout the country. But the question I've got for Sapolsky is, how can the product of an agricultural society learn all this science, and why don't the hunter/gatherers have some expert teaching kids about neuroscience (or music, or language, or film history, or biochemistry). The arrogant way these professors sneak some marxist propaganda into any topic they see fit makes me cringe.

http://www.meta-library.net/bio/sapolsky-body.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolactin

Posted at 11:27 pm by Johnny B

	Posted by BP @ 07/18/2005 08:40 PM PDT
	Ok this post takes the cake as the most thought provoking of the month...anyone disagree?

	Posted by Bonnie G @ 07/19/2005 04:28 PM PDT
	I'll say one thing for sure, it certainly isn't comment provoking.

	Posted by PB @ 07/20/2005 04:27 PM PDT
	LOL... I guess one could make that argument, Bonnie... However, it just goes to show you...that breasts in and of themselves...don't sell.

	Posted by Name @ 07/21/2005 11:39 PM PDT
	maybe if there was a picture or something and not all them damn words