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.

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.

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

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.

Hey guys, hope you don’t mind if I mix it up a bit. The link above is a pretty good blog about neuroscience. If it is too deep this one might be better. In addition there are some neat books out there that I recommend

1. Law, Legislation and Liberty F.A. Hayek

2. Land Without Justice Milovan Djilas (a communist apology, i.e. why this Yugoslav became communist)

3. Conversations with Stalin Milovan Djilas (After communism took hold and Djilas saw how the sausage got made in Moscow).

4. The Self and Its Brain By Eccles and Popper, two guys I really admire.

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.

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!

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

A great site to explain the brain and what we know about Alzheimer’s Dementia, for the novice.

Posted at 09:27 am by Johnny B

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.

Posted at 09:16 pm by Johnny B