Author Archives: Catie Profaci

March 02

Pain: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it

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Imagine what life would be like with no pain.  No headaches or sore throats.  You would never experience the anguish of a papercut or a stubbed toe or a sprained ankle.  No stomach cramps or muscle soreness.  Childbirth or getting kicked in the balls?  Piece of cake.  Thrown from a moving car?  Don’t feel a […]

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November 17

Brain and Blood, Diseases and Drugs

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Neuroscientists love neurons.  We learn about the endless types of neurons, the distinct ways in which they send chemical signals, how they connect to each other, and how these networks underlie behavior.  Most of us eat, sleep, and breathe neurons.  A smaller, badass group of neuroscientists instead champions glia, the underappreciated cells in the brain […]

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October 31

Work Alone (A Work from Home Parody)

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The UCSD neuro grad program made another parody music video! Watch and share! If you’re coming to SD for SfN, join us Monday 11/14 at Parq

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August 11

Alzheimer’s disease: back to the basics & exploring new frontiers

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When my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), I wanted to better understand what exactly was happening in his brain as his memory slowly deteriorated. Perhaps this drive came from innate scientific curiosity, or perhaps burying myself in the gritty molecular details was my attempt at escaping from the emotional gravity of the situation.

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June 30

Reflections on #SciComm Boot Camp

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Communicate. It is part of the scientific process, and yet scientists are notoriously terrible at distilling their work into an understandable form.

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June 02

Your Brain on Thirsty Thursday

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Alcohol: loss of motor coordination, a sense of invincibility, amplified emotions, loss of inhibition, hazy memory, blackout. What kind of crazy things are happening in the brain?! How does alcohol even get into the brain?!

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December 03

Anorexia

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Anorexia nervosa. A disease for the privileged? Shallow white girls trying to look like fashion models? […] The stereotypes attached to anorexia add to the devastating reality of a serious brain disorder

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September 24

Altruism: A Story of Amygdalae and Kidneys

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So, how do you begin to study the neural underpinnings of something so difficult to define or identify? And since virtually all of us do kind things on occasion, how would one compare altruists and non-altruists to see whether there are any differences in brain structure or activity?

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August 27

Two brains in one head?: The story of the split-brain phenomenon

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The idea that a person is right-brained or left-brained is a myth […] However, the brain is indeed split into a right and left hemisphere, and the two are connected by a structure called the “corpus callosum”, a bundle of nerves through which information can be shared.

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June 25

Aging: Telomeres and Meatballs

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What causes the slowly encroaching physical signs that we are past our prime? Scientists often gain understanding about a particular physiological process by studying cases in which that process goes awry. Can the aging process go haywire?

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