Editor’s Note: This is the first in an occasional series where NeuWriters review fiction and nonfiction books about the brain. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about locked-in syndrome, a rare and dramatic disorder in which a stroke or other traumatic event affects the brain stem and leaves the patient completely paralyzed but […]
Category Archives: Neuroscience
August
22
How Does Exercise Improve the Brain?
posted by Melissa Galinato
When I started college, my best friend and I started a regular workout schedule to evade the infamous freshman fifteen. The odds were already out of my favor when I started to work at the dining hall right next to my freshman dorm. We were not as intense as Olympic runner Allyson Felix pictured above. […]
August
14
Let’s Talk About Sleep
posted by kkiritah
Oh no. It’s 4am, and I’ve done it again. Ugh. I’ve waited until the last minute to write my NeuWriteSD post, and now it’s 4am. And I haven’t slept since 5am yesterday morning. Ugh. As you might imagine, I’m feeling pretty terrible. Not only because of the guilt (since I was supposed to have this […]
July
31
False Memories and Inception
posted by dknowland
Our memories are so dear and essential to our lives that the idea of false memories or that our memories are vulnerable to outside influence seems more than a little unsettling. After all, our memories are critical for not only how we interact with others, but also generating and maintaining our image of self. The […]
July
24
Lucy’s Brain: Use it or lose it
posted by Ethan McBride
With the Lucy movie coming out, we’ve been really curious here at NeuWrite about what marvelous new life skills Scarlett Johansson will accrue, now that she can use more than 10% of her brain. As forward-thinking neuroscientists, we’ve been speculating: what would Lucy be able to do with such incredible and unprecedented brain power? The […]
June
28
Synesthesia: The sky, the number 7, and sadness are all blue
posted by Rose Hendricks
If you were shown the shapes below and told that one is called a “kiki” and the other a “bouba,” which name would you attribute to which shape? Between 95 and 98% of people agree that the more rigid shape is “kiki,” and the curvy one is “bouba.” This is not because they learned these names […]
June
19
Locked In Syndrome: Facing My Nightmare
posted by socogal42
You always hear about “medical student syndrome,” where first year med students start diagnosing themselves with all of the diseases they learn about, becoming temporary hypochondriacs. They don’t tell you that the same fear can set in during graduate school. Ever since I started my Ph.D, I’ve diagnosed myself with more than a few of […]
June
12
Pattern separation gone awry: the dentate gyrus and schizophrenia
posted by Melissa Troyer
[Image Source: Sebastian Seung via http://connectomethebook.com/.] Since the discovery of patient H.M. in the 1950s (see this post from October 2013), scientists have known that the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure located in the medial temporal lobe, is crucial for the successful formation of new memories. The mammalian hippocampus is characterized by several distinct regions, each with […]
June
05
LoveConnectome
posted by socogal42
We’re coming up on finals week here at UCSD, so we thought we’d take this week off to get our studying done. In the meantime, please enjoy this video made by the first year Neuroscience graduate students. Fans of our “Get Data” video should make sure to fast forward to 4:29 to enjoy more of […]
May
08
Neurons, Footballs, and the Draft! Oh my!
posted by Ethan McBride
Tonight, a few hundred football players will be chosen by one of the 32 teams of the National Football League in the hopes of making millions of dollars and establishing their names in the glory of NFL history. Yet only a tiny fraction of college football players, 1.6%, and an even smaller fraction of high school […]
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