Science adds, not subtracts.
Feynman & the flower
Published April 9, 2008 Feynman , Genius , Science Leave a CommentTags: Feynman, Genius, Science
The problem with science education
Published April 9, 2008 Education Leave a CommentTags: Education
It’s great to hear others echoing the same view on science education and the future direction needed for this field to produce not just degree-bearing twenty-somethings, but actually thinking individuals that are capable of dealing with more in life than textbook problems.
So then we put this gecko in a wind tunnel
Published March 24, 2008 Amusement Leave a CommentTags: Amusement
Sounds like the introduction to a joke being told at the cocktail reception of a zoology conference (just imagine David Attenborough doing the delivery), yet it’s simply amazing the amount of free time scientists have. In this week’s New Scientist video roundup a gecko can be seen floating in a wind tunnel. But the point of all this tomfoolery was to show how geckos use their tail as a means for regaining balance. Whether climbing a slippery, vertical surface or gliding in air, a gecko utilizes its caudal appendage to prevent it from falling and also provide direction during a state of free fall. You have to see it to believe it.
Daft Punk isn’t sexy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be
Published March 24, 2008 Sex , Vision Leave a CommentTags: Sex, Vision
Throughout their continued success, the French electronic duo Daft Punk have never been eager to make direct eye contact with their fans; their faces permanently hidden behind futuristic, robotic-like masks during performances. However a little eye contact could boost their sex appeal and your own with strangers. Reported in Psychological Science, a team of researchers from Dartmouth College and the University of Aberdeen found in a study investigating the communicative psychology of directional gaze (that is, the science of staring) that test subjects perceived pictures of faces looking directly at them to be better looking than those looking slightly away. In a related study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, faces looking directly at the viewer were also rated higher if they were smiling.
Love sick
Published March 18, 2008 Love , Neuron , Neuroplasticity 2 CommentsTags: Love, Neuron, Neuroplasticity
Nothing compares to the feeling of being in love. You’re super-energetic, on a mental high, and nearly invincible. But then, if not reinforced over time, like any natural high the feeling peaks and crashes, eventually returning to its normal resting state. Assuming that this feeling called love is derived from a change in neuronal behavior, when the synaptic firing of neurons comes to an end can it be artificially recreated?
The Polish neuroscientist Jerzy Konorski suggested in 1948 that when neurons are active they undergo either of two different types of change: a transitory change, resulting in the promoted excitability of neurons; or an enduring change, that leads to greater plasticity and reinforced connections in the mind.
In an example provided in his book Brain Plasticity and Behavior, author Bryan Kolb writes…
…this change might be transitory, much as when one looks up a phone number and then forgets it, or it might be enduring, such as the case in which a telephone number is memorized.
So in an effort to recreate the feeling of love, one would want to aim for the latter type of neuronal development. But getting there can be complex.
In 1949, Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb proposed that active synapses change only under the right conditions – the most important condition being that the two neurons had to be coincidentally active, and, if so, only then the connection between them was strengthened.
Apparently nature does not treat love as a trivial matter.
Were he still alive today, I’d imagine Spanish anatomist Ramon y Cajal would have something remarkable to say here.
The end of innocence
Published March 15, 2008 Experience , Imagination Leave a CommentTags: Experience, Imagination
Call it the end of wonderment or childlike curiosity, but as the mind matures the time spent contemplating objects in the world seems to diminish.
As Aniela Improta França, Prof. of Neurolinguistics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, writes…
…when we look at three-dimensional objects, we infer that there is a space underlying their surface. Is this space filled? Infants shake closed objects and tap them against the cradle. Toddlers try to crack open clocks and toys to see the inside…[however] adults do not need to open every opaque container they see. Based on their knowledge of the world already represented in their minds, they know or are able to make educated guesses about the contents of closed containers. This system of world knowledge acquisition that maps objects to abstract, mental representations gradually breaks children’s innocence in relation to the contents in the world around them.
The Japan Origami Plane Association is trying to convince NASA to let it release 100 small paper planes from the International Space Station, says a report published in the journal Science. If the plan goes through, NASA astronauts will launch 20-cm long planes down to Earth carrying multi-lingual messages. Doesn’t seem feasible that the planes will survive the entry into the Earth’s atmosphere? Contrary to speculation, last month a team from the Japan Origami Plane Association demonstrated that their planes (made from heat-resistant paper) could withstand Mach 7 (8500 km/h) wind speeds and 200˚C temperatures in the Hypersonic and High-Enthalpy Wind Tunnel at the University of Tokyo. Sounds like one small “fold” for man; one giant leap for mankind in the making.
Blame it on a rush of blood to the head
Published March 13, 2008 Astroglia , Epilepsy , Neuron 1 CommentTags: Astroglia, Epilepsy, Neuron
Perhaps Coldplay was on to something greater than music with the release of their second album in 2002. Scientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT have now hypothesized a new way that neurons process information and relay signals in the brain — that is via blood flow.
One of the hypotheses is that blood vessels in the brain may allow diffusible factors (other than oxygen and glucose) to come into contact with brain tissue affecting normal neural activity. Researchers have also speculated that the expansion and contraction of blood vessels due to varying flow may exert forces that can affect how neurons and glia cells function.
Interestingly, research has shown that epileptics have abnormal blood vessels in the brain region where seizures occur leading scientists to believe that irregular blood flow may trigger the onset of an epileptic event.
Christopher Moore, principal investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, comments…
…many neurological and psychiatric diseases have associated changes in the vasculature. Most people assume the symptoms of these diseases are a secondary consequence of damage to the neurons, but we propose that they may also be a causative factor in the disease process…
Humans have a unique ability where, unlike any other animal, we can “pre-experience” the future by simulating it in our minds. Scientists at Harvard University have performed research showing how mental simulations allow people to “preview” events and to “prefeel” the pleasures and pains those events will produce. The problem is that we aren’t always honest with ourselves in how we perform the previewing. Research has shown that people often use unrepresentative memories as a basis for simulation. The result? Mental simulations tend to overrepresent the moments that evoke the most intense pleasure or pain. Apparently the non-sinusoidal outcomes are disenchanting to the mind, perhaps because they encompass the least amount of feeling and therefore the least amount of experiential data to make a judgment whether the simulation is actually worth experiencing in reality or not.
As Harvard University Prof. Daniel T. Gilbert writes…
…the method is ingenious but imperfect. The cortex attempts to trick the rest of the brain by impersonating a sensory system. It simulates future events to find out what subcortical structures know, but try as it might, the cortex cannot generate simulations that have all the richness and reality of genuine perceptions. Its simulations are deficient because they are based on a small number of memories, they omit large numbers of features, they do not sustain themselves over time, and they lack content.
digital astroglia defined
Published March 11, 2008 Astroglia , Neuroplasticity Leave a CommentTags: Astroglia, Neuroplasticity
Welcome to digital astroglia, a blog of Kayvon Sharghi about the banal, the plain, the ordinary, and the grotesquely beautiful in science, culture, and life. Before we embark on this journey together it may be helpful to have a few working definitions:
astroglia /as·trog·lia/ (as-trog´le-ah)
The majority of cells in the human brain are not nerve cells but star-shaped glia cells, the “astroglia”. The cells appear to talk to neurons and affect their ability to signal with each other. This suggests that they may influence the brain’s thinking process.
digital \ˈdi-jə-təl\
Characterized by electronic and especially computerized technology.
neuroplasticity
In response to a new experience or novel information, neuroplasticity allows either an alteration to the structure of already-existing connections between neurons, or forms brand-new connections between neurons; the latter leads to an increase in overall synaptic density, while the former merely makes existing pathways more efficient or suitable. In either way, the brain is remolded to take in this new data and, if useful, retain it.
OK, let’s do this.
