“I swear I put it down right here,” he thought to himself, “right next to this column.” He looked up; there were many columns. Towering, Ionic pillars draped with sheer golden cloths loomed over him. They were geometrically ordered in rows of hundreds, perhaps thousands.[1] “Where did – “ he stopped mid-thought to look around. […]
July
04
Does Tourette’s Syndrome help Tim Howard?
posted by alexvsscience
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past fortnight, the FIFA World Cup has been on. Unfortunately the US Men’s team was knocked out by Belgium in extra time on Tuesday, but if one man can hold his head high it is Tim Howard. The US goalkeeper made a […]
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
22
Consciousness in your dreams?
posted by Matt Boisvert
“A dream is a short-lasting psychosis, and a psychosis is a long-lasting dream.” -Arthur Schopenhauer Dreaming has entranced thinkers from the beginning of recorded history, and it’s easy to see why. Both Socrates and Plato agreed that dreaming is a total abandonment of reason. More contemporaneously, no less than Kant and Schopenhauer identified dreaming as […]
May
15
The Birth of Tragedy: Pessimism and the Brain (Part 2)
posted by erikkaestner
Is the resolve to be so scientific about everything perhaps a kind of fear of, an escape from, pessimism? – Friedrich Nietzsche In the first part of this article we examined contrasts in attitude and outlook between optimistic and pessimistic people and possible differences in the brain leading to these contrasts. The next question is, […]
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 […]
May
01
Humor Me
posted by socogal42
Is your Facebook timeline as cluttered with Buzzfeed quizzes as mine is? I have to admit a certain weakness for them- I just can’t resist the temptation to know which 90’s Heroine or Broad City character I am (answers: Ty from “Clueless” and Abbi). These quizzes are just another iteration of the very human desire […]
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