The man had a normal job and is a married father of two children.
Lionel Feuillet, Henry Dufour and Jean Pelletier. Brain of a white-collar worker. The Lancet, Volume 370, Issue 9583, 21 July 2007-27 July 2007, Page 262.
Apparently, when not busy blowing our minds, bees occupy themselves by…
…brainwashing their youth
…and/or mysteriously disappearing from the face of the earth
Keeping an eye on species poised to take over the world,
Davie
Recently, I was pointed to this article in the WSJ (“A Pentagon Agency Is Looking at Brains — And Raising Eyebrows“) by Sharon Begley. It touches on some noninvasive recording techniques for assessing affective state and cognitive enhancers like ampakine CX717 (previously mentioned on Neurodudes here and here).
It was the very last paragraph that caught my eye:
Ever since the atomic bomb, physicists have known that their work has potential military uses, and have spoken up about it. But on the morality of sending orders directly to the brain (of a soldier, employee, child, prisoner …), or of devices that read thoughts and intentions from afar, neuroscientists have been strangely silent. The time to speak up is before the genie is out of the bottle.
Whoa! To me, the physicists who spoke out early on against nuclear proliferation seemed (and still seem) both very courageous and prescient in their ideas. Are we neuroscientists dropping the ball? I would love to start a discussion on this subject and to hear your responses (both from neuro people and others) in the comments below.
I’ll start: I personally don’t think the arena of neural enhancement/intrusion (mind reading, mind control, cognitive enhancement, etc.) is comparable to the sheer destructive power of nuclear weapons. I do see in the near future the unfortunate potential for abuse of neurotechnology and violation of personal freedoms, but the threat does not seem as horrifying or deadly. Still, if neurotechnology allows governments greater control over their citizens, it seems reasonable that scientists who enable such technologies should intervene. Perhaps it is time for a neural bill of rights, which, similar to the freedoms granted by the US Bill of Rights, will clearly state what aspects of a person’s mental state or capacity cannot be infringed upon without permission from that person. Thoughts?
The common ancestor of Bilateria ( ~= bilaterally symmetric animals ~= “most animals including vertebrates, arthropods, molluscs, etc” – - tolweb) is thought to have had a nervous system. Question: did it have a centralized nervous system? Or did centralization in the nervous system evolve separately in chordates and in other bilaterally symmetric animals?
This article (from last December) has identified what it thinks are 244 new human microRNAs from human fetal brain tissue, of which 20 seem to be species-specific (see figure 1d). They also mention 2 previously-known human-specific microRNAs.
Eugene Berezikov, Fritz Thuemmler, Linda W van Laake1, Ivanela Kondova, Ronald Bontrop, Edwin Cuppen and Ronald H A Plasterk Diversity of microRNAs in human and chimpanzee brain. Nature Genetics – 38, 1375 – 1377 (2006)
Science has a special online feature this week on behavioral science. One of the articles is a review by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg (a fellow SymSys alum!) presents some interesting evidence about how dualistic ideas about mind/brain are present from an early age. They state:
Another consequence of people’s common-sense psychology is dualism, the belief that the mind is fundamentally different from the brain (5). This belief comes naturally to children. Preschool children will claim that the brain is responsible for some aspects of mental life, typically those involving deliberative mental work, such as solving math problems. But preschoolers will also claim that the brain is not involved in a host of other activities, such as pretending to be a kangaroo, loving one’s brother, or brushing one’s teeth (5, 17). Similarly, when told about a brain transplant from a boy to a pig, they believed that you would get a very smart pig, but one with pig beliefs and pig desires (18). For young children, then, much of mental life is not linked to the brain.
And,
For one thing, debates about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, stem cells, and nonhuman animals are sometimes framed in terms of whether or not these entities possess immaterial souls (20, 21). What’s more, certain proposals about the role of evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging in criminal trials assume a strong form of dualism (22). It has been argued, for instance, that if one could show that a person’s brain is involved in an act, then the person himself or herself is not responsible, an excuse dubbed “my brain made me do it” (23).
The authors conclude that adult resistance to science is strongest in fields where scientific claims are contested by the society (that is, contested by non-science alternatives rather than by scientific uncertainty). They claim that this accounts for the difference in the United States (versus other countries with less vociferous advocacy of non-science) in the resistance to the central tenets of evolutionary biology and neuroscience.
I think this says something important about science education, namely that it should start earlier in life. And there’s no reason that neuroscience should be left as a “college-level” subject. I think modern neuroscience has progressed to the point where we can confidently teach some basics at a high-school or earlier stage. Judging from my own experiences, I think the desire to learn about neuroscience is certainly there in younger children.
Some new evidence contradicting previous claims that a particular haplotype of the ASPM gene was selected. We posted about some related work in 2005.
An excerpt:
We also assessed evidence for selection at ASPM by carrying out the long-range haplotype (LRH) test (9). This test assesses whether a haplotype is too young to have risen to its frequency without selection. The LRH test is not affected by uncertainty in recombination rate estimates. We compared LRH results for the A44871G polymorphism to SNPs of matched frequency in HapMap CEU (3, 10) (Fig. 1C). We observed at least as strong a signal for selection at 90% of the regions examined (3, 11). Several genome-wide surveys using similar methods also failed to find evidence for selection at ASPM in European-derived populations (4, 12, 13). The one survey that did find a signal near ASPM did so only in individuals of Chinese ancestry (13), failing to support the contention of (1) of recent selection in European history. Based on linkage disequilibrium (LD) breaking down within ~100 kb on either side (Fig. 1B), we estimate that the G allele arose in European history at least tens of thousands of years ago and possibly more than 100,000 years ago (14) (table S3 and SOM Text). These dates are difficult to reconcile with selection ~6000 years ago, as suggested in (1).
Saw this book on the Daily Show a few nights ago and it looked interesting: Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem
The author mentioned a theory of schizophrenia as due to toxoplasma infected cats, who are themselves infected by rats carrying the disease. Apparently, when the rat is infected, the toxoplasma alters the behavior of the rat such that it doesn’t run away from a cat. So, the parasite ensures its survival.
Although I’m not a big fan of just-so evolutionary explanations in general, this book sounds like it might be a fun read.
Postdoctoral/research scientist positions are available in the inter-disciplinary group of Dmitri Chklovskii at the new Janelia Farm Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute located in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Candidates are expected to have a PhD in neuroscience, physics, computer science or electrical engineering. Most of the work is theoretical or computational and is done in collaboration with several experimental laboratories. Successful applicants will work on projects centered on neuronal circuits such as high-throughput reconstruction of wiring diagrams as well as combining structural and physiological data to infer circuit function. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications. For more information about research directions in the group please see: http://www.hhmi.org/research/groupleaders/chklovskii.html
Interested applicants should send their CV and a statement of research interests to mitya (at) janelia.hhmi.org, and arrange for three recommendation letters to be emailed to me.