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
As a kid, I thought biology was stupid. Biology seemed to be taught mainly in the form of lists and diagrams. Here’s a list of the differences between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. There’s a diagram of the circulatory system. Here’s a list of traits specific to mammals. Then there’d be a page on the test where you’d have to label the organelles of a cell … Continue reading
In my previous post I discussed how the Serial podcast reminds me of doing science: starting with an initial straightforward question that rapidly becomes a murky mess, poring over ambiguous evidence that provides few clear answers, and so on (read the post here). Today I’m going to continue with this analogy and discuss what the search for truth in science really means. One of the … Continue reading
Like everyone else in the known universe, I recently finished listening to season 1 of the Serial podcast. Yup, for the first time ever I’ve actually been on the forefront of a viral phenomenon, thanks to the fortuitous intersection of my NPR addiction with a set of long international flights. For those of you who’ve been living under a rock or something (e.g. me for … Continue reading
Note: This post is a modified version of an article that I submitted to the Access to Understanding science writing competition sponsored by Europe PubMed Central, which required writing a summary of a science journal article chosen from a short list. So this post may seem different from usual—more narrowly focused and formally written—though I’ve edited it to fit the style of my blog. … Continue reading
You’ve probably heard that our bodies have an internal clock. That’s why you get tired or hungry at about the same time each day and feel jetlagged when you’ve crossed too many time zones. Our clocks are set by external cues, such as daylight, alarm clocks, or your roommate grinding coffee beans at an ungodly hour each morning. But our clocks can also function completely … Continue reading
This past week was the big conference in the field of neuroscience, creatively named “Neuroscience” but referred to as “SFN” by the rest of us because it’s organized the by Society for Neuroscience. Over 30,000 neuroscientists attended this year’s event in Washington D.C. I bet the rest of you didn’t think there were even that many of us in the whole world! (At least that’s … Continue reading
In last week’s post about taste and smell I cited a study that estimated that humans can smell over a trillion different odors. That study was published in Science earlier this year by Leslie Vosshall’s lab at Rockefeller University.1 While the paper was a bit controversial from the start, this week I discovered that the controversy has reached a new level due to a scathing … Continue reading
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