Neuroscience

I recently finished the draft for my upcoming book, Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella, 2011). To give you a better idea of it’s aim, here is the current draft of the introduction. The Reading Instinct At the beginning of his book, The Language Instinct, Stephen Pinker demonstrates the amazing power of language with an example. He writes, The [language] ability comes so naturally that we are apt to forget what a miracle it is. So let me remind you with some simple demonstrations. Asking you only to surrender your imagination to my words for…

Mental retardation in autism is known to arise from a plethora of rare de novo mutations of key protein components in the synapse- the basic neuronal connection in the brain’s hardware. In a recent study published in Nature Genetics, Berkel and colleagues identified yet another de novo mutation associated with autism, which essentially consist of a series of loss of function mutations of the protein Shank2- a member of the postsynaptic scaffolding proteins located in the receiving end of synaptic connections known as the post-synaptic terminal (Berkel et al., 2010). Scaffolding proteins…

Is there a link between aging of the brain and the neural defect that underlies Angelman Syndrome?  A new study suggests the answer is yes.   A surprising result that may help the development of new treatments to improve outcomes for children with Angelman Syndrome and encourage healthy aging. Angelman syndrome is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder that is caused by a mutation in the UBE3A gene.  This affects the production of the E3 ubiquitin ligase, an enzyme that selectively marks proteins for degradation.  A balance between synaptic proteins and their…

A study in Current Biology has confirmed that the brain chemical dopamine plays a role in decision making by influencing our expectations of the pleasure associated with the outcomes of our choices. Dopamine's role in reward learning and reward-seeking behavior has been established in animals, said Tali Sharot of University College London. In humans, however, much less was known. Her team recently found that when we imagine future events, activity in a dopamine-laden part of the brain tracks people's estimates of the expected pleasure to be derived from those events. Based on these…

Have a talent and enjoyment for inflicting prescribed doses of pain? Your dream job awaits. (Biology undergraduate required.) Contact: 555-8428   …as seen in classified ads. You are not supposed to be reading this. You’re an ape who never evolved to read, but you can do so because writing culturally evolved to be shaped just right for your illiterate visual system. As I have argue in my research and recent books, culture’s trick for getting writing into us was to harness our ancient visual system for a new purpose (The Vision Revolution), a trick also used for speech and music (upcoming…

Once upon a time, during my medical carrier, a beloved teacher – that passed away almost two decades ago - told me that if well to know is important, it is more importantto bring out that knowing during the adequate moment and at the adequate circumstances. Today, during my ophthalmic consultation a diabetic patient with advanced diabetic retinopathy, told me that she did not realized when she started to be ill about the severe long term consequences of her disease; “Oh doctor, if I was able to know at that time, I would be much better at this time; but I didn’t know at …

Researchers writing in Current Biology say they may have determined what makes musical notes sound good (or bad) by studying the preferences of more than 250 college students from Minnesota to a variety of musical and nonmusical sounds. The University of Minnesota team was able to independently manipulate both the harmonic frequency relations of the sounds and another quality known as beating. (Harmonic frequencies are all multiples of the same fundamental frequency. For example, notes at frequencies of 200, 300, and 400 hertz are all multiples of 100. Beating occurs when two sounds are…

MIT neuroscientists writing in the Journal of Neurophysiology have developed a new method to analyze brain imaging data – one that may paint a clearer picture of how our brain produces and understands language. Research with patients who developed specific language deficits (such as the inability to comprehend passive sentences) following brain injury suggest that different aspects of language may reside in different parts of the brain. But attempts to find these functionally specific regions of the brain with current neuroimaging technologies have been inconsistent and controversial. One…

Our daily lives are filled with changes that force us to abandon old behavioral strategies and develop new, more appropriate responses. While it is clear that new rules are often deduced through trial-and-error learning, the neural dynamics that underlie the change are not well understood. A study in Neuron has uncovered new information about the neural dynamics of developing new problem solving strategies. The research supports the idea of "a-ha" moments in the brain that are associated with sudden insight, the authors say. "The ability of animals and humans to infer and apply new rules in…

As the effort continues to find new treatments for Alzheimer's Disease (AD), researchers have found that music may have a role to play. A study from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) has shown that patients with the disease are better able to remember new verbal information when it is provided in the context of music even when compared to healthy, older adults. Results of the study appear in Neuropsychologia. For the study, AD patients and healthy controls were presented with either the words spoken, or the lyrics sung with full musical accompaniment along with the printed lyrics…