We all know that Nature likes to publish sexy stories. Well, at least we scientists know. For the rest of you, Nature is one of the premier scientific journals that everyone and their mom tries to get their papers published in. The competition is brutal. Not only do you need to have a flawless story (as I’ve discussed before), it usually needs to be sexy, too. … Continue reading
Welcome to Brain Bits, where I highlight important or interesting recent news in the world of neuroscience. This week: implanting a compass into the brain, creating an encyclopedia of neurons, discovering how our brains learn so many different things, and more! A new paper in Current Biology demonstrated that blind rats can navigate just as well as sighted rats using a neuroprosthetic compass connected to their … Continue reading
When I tell people that I’m a neuroscientist, one of the most common questions they ask me is: “Can the brain make new cells?” This is a pretty reasonable question, especially since many of us have heard that we lose thousands of brain cells per day. That’s mostly a myth, by the way. Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s do kill brain cells, called neurons, but normal … Continue reading
Welcome to Brain Bits, where I highlight important or interesting recent news in the world of neuroscience. In store for today: wireless brain stimulation, implanting false memories during sleep, and a new technology for mutating an entire species (seriously!). A new Science paper demonstrates how a recently developed DNA engineering technique called CRISPR can be used to generate self-propagating mutations. Mutated genes usually spread slowly throughout a species because … Continue reading
If you’ve ever done research, then you know about variability. Probably too much about it, in fact. Variability means your results change from day to day, or from cell to cell, or animal to animal. This does not make us scientists happy. Especially for those of us who study animal behavior, which is particularly capricious, variability is the bane of our existence. Even when we … Continue reading
The fact that men and women tend to behave differently is so widely accepted that it’s become a cliche. The subject of hundreds of relationship books and self-help seminars. The constant butt of lame jokes in second tier Sunday cartoons. So, what makes men and women behave differently anyway? Or perhaps you’re first wondering, are there actually innate, biological differences in the behavior of men … Continue reading
Welcome to the second installment of Brain Bits, where I highlight important or interesting recent news in the world of neuroscience. This week: how to build a human brain, what female fruit flies do after sex, DIY brain stimulation, and celebrating crappy results. A hallmark of the human brain is the dramatic enlargement of the neocortex, which is believed to mediate higher-level thought and cognition. Last week a new study in Science … Continue reading
In a recent post I explained why it’s awesome to study the brains of invertebrates, like fruit flies or worms. I bet by now you’re convinced that doing experiments in these tiny creatures can teach us lots of things about the fly or worm brain. But what most people care about is the human brain.1 Can invertebrates really teach us anything about what’s going on … Continue reading
Ok guys, so I’m starting a new thing where I’m going to highlight some of the major news that happened this week in the world of neuroscience. These will be relatively short posts that for now I’m calling “Brain Bits”. I think it’ll be good to engage myself and you guys in the broader world of neuroscience on a regular basis, and it’ll also give … Continue reading
As you guys might know by now, I study fruit flies. When I tell people I study fruit fly brains, the first question I usually get is, “Fruit flies have brains??” Yes, they have brains. Fairly complex ones actually. I challenge the smartest engineers in the world to build a computer that’s half as smart as a fly brain. The second question I get is, … Continue reading