Let's start with three thought-provoking posts about the way the most fundamental ideas about neurobiology are being questioned and are changing as we speak:
Watching a paradigm shift in neuroscience by Bjoern Brembs at Bjoern Brembs blog:
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How Long Do Joint Injections Last? by Doctor Ramey at David Ramey, D.V.M.:
Epigenetics Is Not Revolutionizing Biology by Michael White at Pacific Standard:
Watching a paradigm shift in neuroscience by Bjoern Brembs at Bjoern Brembs blog:
........As one would expect, this dramatic shift in perspectives from input/output to output/input has led to a slew of recent publications which were not thinkable a mere 15 years ago. For instance, it was reported that rodent brains add variability to sensory input. In Aplysia, it was shown that such variability can be generated by balancing excitatory and inhibitory input, but also that individual neurons (see Fig. 4b) are capable of showing spontaneous variability in their firing patterns, even when they are isolated from the rest of the nervous system. In the most recent annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, where I usually only find very few presentations on ongoing activity and how it leads to variability, there now were several posters on exactly this topic, seemingly out of nowhere.......Memories May Not Live in Neurons’ Synapses by Roni Jacobson at Scientific American:
As intangible as they may seem, memories have a firm biological basis. According to textbook neuroscience, they form when neighboring brain cells send chemical communications across the synapses, or junctions, that connect them. Each time a memory is recalled, the connection is reactivated and strengthened. The idea that synapses store memories has dominated neuroscience for more than a century, but a new study by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, may fundamentally upend it: instead memories may reside inside brain cells. If supported, the work could have major implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition marked by painfully vivid and intrusive memories......Neuroscience and other theory-poor fields: Tools first, simulation later by Ashutosh Jogalekar at The Curious Wavefunction:
.......The gist of those issues can be boiled down to one phrase: “trying to chew on more than we can bite off”. Basically we are trying to engineer a complex, emergent system whose workings we still don’t understand, even at basic levels of organization. Our data is impoverished and our approaches are too reductionist. One major part of the project especially suffers from this drawback – in-silico simulation of the brain at multiple levels, from neurons to entire mouse and human brains. Now here’s a report from a committee which has examined the pros and cons of the project and reached the conclusion that much of the criticism was indeed valid, and that we are trying to achieve something for which we still don’t have the tools. The report is here. The conclusion of the committee is simple: first work on the tools; then incorporate the findings from those tools into a bigger picture. The report makes this clear in a paragraph that also showcases problems with the public’s skewed perception of the project.......The war, the mouse, the protein and the lovers: the curious tale of the search for a common cold vaccine by Fiona McMillan at DR FIONA McMILLAN - SCIENCE WRITER:
The advertisements were enticing. They turned up regularly across England for decades. Posters. Newspaper ads. Leaflets. They offered time away in the countryside near Salisbury. Fresh air. Relaxation. Free meals. Not only that, you would be paid for your time. Sound lovely? Married couples were welcome. Singles were invited, too. There was even the prospect of romance, provided that those interested in courting remain at least thirty feet apart at all times. It wasn’t that the organisers were prudish, they just cared deeply about sneeze range. Therein lay the catch, after all there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and certainly not ten free lunches in a row. Every holiday maker had a one in three chance of catching a respiratory infection. The organisers would make sure of it. And still people came by the thousands. Their vacation, they were told, would help cure the common cold.....Ancient cancer by Orac at Respectful Insolence:
......If there’s one claim that irritates me that various proponents of alternative medicine like to make, it’s that cancer is a “modern” disease, that it was rare (or even didn’t exist) before the rise of modern societies, particularly the industrial revolution. This viewpoint bubbled up five years ago, when a commentary in Nature Reviews Cancer (yep, the same journal in which I published my opinion piece on integrative oncology a few months ago) that argued strongly that cancer was almost unknown (or at least very rare) in the ancient world based on the lack of finding it in mummies in Egypt and South America. They also looked at ancient texts and literature from Egypt and Greece, and say that there’s little sign that cancer was a common ailment. After all, cancer is mainly a disease of the elderly, with three-quarters of cases being diagnosed in people over 60 and more than a third of cases diagnosed in people 75 or older. Life expectancy was much shorter in ancient times; so relatively few people made it to cancer-prone ages. Most probably didn’t make it past age 40......Lessons of the world’s most unique supercentenarians by Rachel Nuwer at BBC Future:
Reaching a hundredth birthday is always cause for celebration, but these days there are so many centenarians around that scientists don’t even bother trying to keep track of them all. Indeed, in 2012 the United Nations estimated that there were about 316,600 people over 100 living around the world. By 2050, that number – unbelievably – is expected to rise to over three million. A much more exclusive club, therefore, are the supercentenarians, or people who live to 110 or older. ....Imagining the Anthropocene by Jedediah Purdy at Aeon:
....The lack of an official decision has set up the Anthropocene as a Rorschach blot for discerning what commentators think is the epochal change in the human/nature relationship. The rise of agriculture in China and the Middle East? The industrial revolution and worldwide spread of farming in the Age of Empire? The Atomic bomb? From methane levels to carbon concentration, from pollen residue to fallout, each of these changes leaves its mark in the Earth’s geological record. Each is also a symbol of a new set of human powers and a new way of living on Earth.....What Would Being In A Bunker For 15 Years Really Do To Your Head? by Esther Inglis-Arkell at io9:
......There are few types of torture more effective than deprivation. We found that out in 1958, when a psychologist named Donald Hebb decided to do some research on extreme isolation. Each member of a group of volunteers was locked in a separate cell. Some were kept in dark rooms. Some were put in restraints and wore goggles and white noise ear phones. It took only a couple of hours for them to get restless. It took only a day for their performance on cognitive tests to slip. After two days they were hallucinating. The test was a week long and not a single volunteer made it through. The experiment itself has been criticized, both for its techniques and for its results, which show that lack of stimulation annihilates people.......Memetics is Dead but What’s the Study of Cultural Evolution Otherwise About? by BBenzon at A Replicated Typo:
In the waning years of the previous century an online journal for serious work in cultural evolution was established: Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission. The first issue came out in 1997 and the last in 2005. The journal closed for lack of interest; it wasn’t getting enough high-quality submissions. In the last issue one of the editors, Bruce Edmonds, published a short swansong, The revealed poverty of the gene-meme analogy – why memetics per se has failed to produce substantive results. Those remarks remain valid today, a decade later. .....The secrets behind chameleon’s skin coloration change by Jaime de Juan Sanz at Mapping Ignorance:
Color patterns are important features of lots of animals, having key functions in protection against UV irradiation, camouflage, shoaling or sexual selection. Color patterns in birds and mammals are generated by a particular type of cell called melanocyte which produces melanin and transfers it to the tissues of fur or plumage. In fish, amphibia and reptiles, skin coloring is generated by a particular cell type called chromatophore. These cells are able to retain a pigment and the distribution of different chromatophores with different pigments in the skin is what determines the final pattern.....Is email one of the last private spaces online? by Krystal D'Costa at Anthropology in Practice:
.........It’s a common critique of the digital experience that people say and do things they wouldn’t necessarily do in a face-to-face encounter. Offline we have a singular physical presence. We’re bound by time and place. We have to physically retire from an interaction to remove ourselves from the transaction of the relationship. But online we can fragment our personalities. Coupled with the psychological and physical distance afforded by online interactions and we be disinhibited—even when our names are attached. We see this in social media frequently: People may try to maintain certain contacts within Facebook versus Instagram versus Twitter. And on each network may interact with others differently depending on the platform. And we have seen that even when their names or identities are available, people over share on Facebook, revealing personal details about their lives; people can be moved to provide support online when they might not do so offline; or people can be rude, threatening, and critical under the cloak of anonymity (or perceived anonymity) offered by the web and the distance it offers from the actual event. Disinhibition can be fueled by the immediacy of the interaction—it’s easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and be driven by emotions. A post on social media appears in friends’ feeds almost instantly, for example. And given that we are primed to respond in these contexts, you can be assured that someone may Like, comment, or reply, validating your statement through acknowledgment. ......Plasmodium knowlesi: A New Ancient Malaria Parasite by Michelle Ziegler at Contagions:
There are over a hundred different species of the malaria-causing Plasmodium parasites in reptiles, birds and mammals. Being so widespread among terrestrial vertebrates, zoonotic transfer of Plasmodium has come at humans from multiple different sources. Plasmodium knowlesi had been known for some time as a parasite of long-tailed macaques but was not considered a significant human parasite until 2004 when a large number of human infections were identified in Borneo. Molecular analysis implies that Plasmodium knowlesi is as old as Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum........
........The more treatments that there are for a particular condition, the less likely it is that any one of them really does much. If there’s a likely cure for a condition, everybody knows about it, and uses it. If there are dozens of treatments, it’s likely that none of them are really effective. And with osteoarthritis, well, there are magnets, and supplements, and special shoeing, and injections in the muscle, and injections in the vein, and liniments, and electrical stimulators, and, stem cells, and platelet rich plasma, and IRAP®, and I could keep going but I think you get my point. Oh, and joint injections – the subject of this article. Just this past February (2015), a new study came out looking at how long you can expect an effect from joint injections. And it’s absolutely fascinating. So here goes.....Image: Time heals all wounds by Cristian Retamales at DeviantArt
Epigenetics Is Not Revolutionizing Biology by Michael White at Pacific Standard:
Among the several recent developments in biomedical research that are being hyped as revolutionary, the science of epigenetics has inspired the boldest claims. Epigenetics is "at the epicenter of modern medicine," according to one piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Epigenetic diets will help us be healthier. New epigenetic drugs will help us fight common diseases and disorders ranging from cancer to drug addition. For social scientists, epigenetics offers a biological basis for the lasting effects of childhood abuse, socioeconomic disadvantage, and racial health disparities. There are at least a half-dozen popular books devoted to epigenetics, explaining how the field is "rewriting our understanding of genetics" and even claiming that we can make ourselves healthier by controlling our genes with our thoughts. In what appears to be a validation of these broad claims, the National Institutes of Health has sponsored a $240 million project devoted to it......Live, Fast, Die Old – Intermittent Energy Restriction Diets by Sara Adaes at Brain Blogger:
Intermittent energy restriction (IER), or intermittent fasting, is a form of calorie restriction diet. The principle is simple: periods of non-fasting are intercalated with periods of fasting. IER is not about starvation followed by binge eating: non-fasting periods have regular caloric intake, while during fasting periods, little or no food is consumed. Fasting periods can vary: they can be on alternate days, two non-consecutive days per week (the 5:2 diet), or any other ratio of fasting to non-fasting periods – there are many different variations. Also, you don’t necessarily go 24 hours without eating; on your fasting day you can limit your feeding time to a window of 8 hours or less, followed by a fasting period of 16 hours or more – you can simply skip breakfast and lunch several days each week.....Forage or Famine (pt 1) and Forage or Famine (pt 2) by Megan Molteni at Beacon:
Where have all the sardines gone? These small, silvery fish prized for their omega-3 rich oil once massed off America’s West Coast in schools so large they could blot out the sun, leaving the kelp forests below awash in murky, if not momentary, darkness. And in just a few short years they have all but disappeared. Despite our best management efforts, we’re smack-dab in the biggest sardine crash in generations and the effects of losing this keystone forage fish are already rippling through the ecosystem. .....The trolley and the psychopath by Sally Adee at The Last Word On Nothing:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A trolley carrying five school children is headed for a cliff. You happen to be standing at the switch, and you could save their lives by diverting the trolley to another track. But there he is – an innocent fat man, picking daisies on that second track, oblivious to the rolling thunder (potentially) hurtling his way. Divert the trolley, and you save the kids and kill a person. Do nothing, and you have killed no one but five children are dead. Which is the greater moral good? This kind of thought experiment is known as a sacrificial dilemma, and it’s useful for teaching college freshmen about moral philosophy. What you maybe shouldn’t do is ask a guy on the street to answer these questions in an fMRI machine, and then use his answers to draw grand conclusions about the neurophysiological correlates of moral reasoning. But that’s exactly what some neuroscientists are doing. The trouble is, their growing body of research is built on a philosophical house of cards: sacrificial dilemmas are turning out to be exactly the opposite of what we thought they were. Guy Kahane wants to divert this trolley before it drives off a cliff......Dinosaur Whiskers? by Brian Switek at Laelaps:
........Whiskers – technically called vibrissae in mammals – are an important part of my cats’ sensory arrays. When Margarita abruptly tears across the apartment for reasons I can only speculate about, her whiskers can tell her if she’s cutting to close to a wall so that she doesn’t run headlong into the doorway. And they’re certainly useful when she plays fetch. She fans her whiskers forward so that those hairs send vibrations back to the skin and she can orient her mouth just right to catch her “prey”, and the vibrissae on her arms help her triangulate the right angle of attack.........This is why you shouldn’t believe that exciting new medical study by Julia Belluz at Vox:
In 2003, researchers writing in the American Journal of Medicine discovered something that should change how you think about medical news. They looked at 101 studies published in top scientific journals between 1979 and 1983 that claimed a new therapy or medical technology was very promising. Only five, they found out, made it to market within a decade. Only one (ACE inhibitors, a pharmaceutical drug) was still extensively used at the time of their publication.....How Sleep Became A Social Justice Issue by Ciara Byrne at Fast Company:
.........More than ever, working Americans are starved of sleep: Up to 30% of employed adults report routinely sleeping less than six hours a night, representing approximately 40.6 million workers. (The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adults get about seven to nine hours of nightly sleep for optimal health, productivity, and alertness.) Short sleepers are also potentially sacrificing their health and safety: Short sleep duration has been linked to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, coronary artery disease, and higher levels of mortality in general.........From Many, One: How Many Species of Redpolls Are There? by victoria at All About Birds Blog:
The Hoary Redpoll is one of those hard-to-get lifelist-adds that can turn birders into Captain Ahab seeking a little whitish bird. The allure of these little ghost finches has drawn many a lister to places like Minnesota’s Sax-Zim bog—in the dead of winter—just for a chance to lock into a Hoary. But new research by two scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology presents genetic evidence that reopens questions about the species status of the Hoary Redpoll, long thought to be the frosty cousin of the Common Redpoll. In a paper published this week in the journal Molecular Ecology, Nicholas Mason and Scott Taylor of the Cornell Lab’s Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program show that Hoary Redpolls and Common Redpolls have no differences at all across much of their genomes.....Looking for Life in All the Wrong Places? by Corey S. Powell at Out There:
The past couple weeks have seen a brain-sparking series of discoveries that advance the search for life beyond Earth. Enceladus is emitting burps of methane, which strongly indicate the presence of a warm ocean under its ice (and which could, just possibly, hint at biological activity down there). Ganymede seems to have its own buried ocean, one that may contain more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. A new study shows that organisms could potentially evolve in the frigid methane lakes dotting the surface of Titan. And NASA is poised to send a spacecraft to Europa to see if anything could be alive in the extensive waters below its fractured, frozen surface.....Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know The Answer) by Sam McNerney at Sam McNerney blog:
At a special event in the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, the CEO of Apple Tim Cook riffed on Apple’s latest gadget, the Apple Watch. “It’s the most personal device we’ve ever created,” Cook said. “It’s not just with you; it’s on you. And since what you wear is an expression of who you are, we designed Apple Watch to appeal to a whole variety of people with different tastes and preferences.” In just one sentence, Cook perfectly captured the genius of Apple, insisting that technology is not just about selling great products but merging them with lifestyle and identity. We no longer use electronics. They’ve become an expression of who we are......Ferns Get It On After 60 Million Years Apart by Jennifer Frazer at The Artful Amoeba:
An unassuming little fern has left scientists scratching their heads at the feat of reproductive hijinks it apparently represents. The fern, xCystocarpium roskamianum (the prefix ‘x’ indicates it is a hybrid), collected in the French Pyrenees, appeared to be a blend of two ferns they know well. Although this fern is infertile as many hybrids are (think mules), it propagates asexually with ease via underground stems called rhizomes.....Global Warming Turns Rainforest Leaves into Junk Food by Elizabeth Preston at Inkfish:
Like those breakfast cereals that look healthy on the box but have even more sugar inside than Cocoa Puffs, some rainforest trees engage in false advertising. It’s not their fault—it’s ours. Climate change has made their leaves less nutritious than they used to be. And the animals who live off of those trees don’t exactly have another store to shop at....