Taste and smell are two senses close to my heart. I mean not literally, I’m not like one of those weird bugs that can taste all over their body (such as with their legs, wings and genitals—perhaps a post for another time?). No, it’s because taste and smell, the “chemical senses”, are what we study in my current lab. The olfactory system was also the … Continue reading
I had planned to write a post about songbirds at some point in the future—how they’re used as a model for studying motor coordination, speech learning, and all kinds of cool stuff. But with recent news of the untimely passing of Allison Doupe, a longtime neuroscience faculty member at UCSF (where I got my PhD) and a pioneer in the songbird field, I think now … Continue reading
Sometimes I feel like there’s something almost absurdly circular about what we neuroscientists do for a living—using our brains to try to understand the brain. It’s like if a cardiologist’s heartbeat could drum out his patient’s diagnosis in morse code, or if a urologist could pee out the medicine for treating her patient. In my previous post I talked about what makes the brain so cool. To … Continue reading
Brains are freaking amazing. You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this, as you’ve likely been inundated for the last year with BRAIN initiative news stories exclaiming how the brain is the ultimate frontier of human knowledge and we’re going to throw billions of dollars at it and solve everything and cure schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s! Wooooo! But maybe you’re still wondering what all the hype … Continue reading
I started this blog because I’m passionate about the brain and I want to share that passion with others, especially those of you who don’t have a background in neuroscience or biology. There are so many topics in neuroscience that I find super cool, and I’m convinced that if I could just explain them carefully then I could convince anyone in the world to feel … Continue reading