Category: The Brain

Thanks for the Memories.

“We appear to be bringing the worst affected parts of the brain functionally back to life.” Is Alzheimer’s disease about to go the way of polio? A new drug known as rember, according to scientists in England, seems to halt and even roll back the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. “We have demonstrated for the first time that it may be possible to arrest progression of the disease by targeting the tangles that are highly correlated with the disease. This is the most significant development in the treatment of the tangles since Alois Alzheimer discovered them in 1907.“

Obama and McCain’s Sinister Inclinations.

“In the race for the White House, lefties seem to have the upper hand. No matter who wins in November, six of the 12 chief executives since the end of World War II will have been left-handed: Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton and either Obama or McCain. That’s a disproportionate number, considering that only one in 10 people in the general population is left-handed.” In the WP, authors Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt explain why all your Oval Offices are belong to us, the lefties. We also swelled the ranks of both my undergraduate and graduate cohorts, whatever that’s worth.

World in My Eyes.

“Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself.” The shape of things to come? Scientists at Berkeley conceive a way to use MRI imaging to “map” images in the brain. “Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience at any moment in time…It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30 to 50-year time frame.”

You’re biased! No, really, you are.

“If you are unprepared to encounter interpretations that you might find objectionable, please do not proceed further…I am aware of the possibility of encountering interpretations of my IAT performance with which I may not agree. Knowing this, I wish to proceed with either the Democratic Candidates task or the Republican Candidates task.“ As the 2008 Democratic primary season degenerates into a Clintonian morass of identity politics and invective, now seems as good a time as any to test your own internal bias with an Implicit Association Test. (For more info, Slate’s Jay Dixit covered the test and it social implications a few years ago.)

As for me, I took it three times. At first, my reptile-brain displayed a bias for Hillary Clinton, with Barack Obama and John Edwards exactly tied below her, and Bill Richardson lagging considerably behind. (My apologies, Governor Richardson. I think it might be because you look older than the rest of the candidates. At least, I hope that’s the reason.) The second time I took it involved just the candidate’s names, and it was completely inconclusive — all four were tied exactly in the center of the chart. The third time — perhaps because I was growing more used to the interface — Barack Obama was up high, followed by Edwards, followed by Clinton followed by Richardson.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.

“We have to realize that we are already living in a society where we are already self-medicating with caffeine.” This one’s been languishing in the bookmarks for awhile, but via Drudge and blog-twin FmH, scientists may have discovered a cure for sleep deprivation in Orexin A. “The study, published in the Dec. 26 edition of The Journal of Neuroscience, found orexin A not only restored monkeys’ cognitive abilities but made their brains look ‘awake’ in PET scans. Siegel said that orexin A is unique in that it only had an impact on sleepy monkeys, not alert ones, and that it is ‘specific in reversing the effects of sleepiness’ without other impacts on the brain.” But is it cheaper than my daily Red Bull?

The Dancer Upstairs.

Ok, this one’s a bit creepy. By way of Webgoddess, watch the rotating dancer to ascertain whether you’re left-brained or right-brained. I’m pretty right-brained, it seems (which makes sense, since I’m both left-handed and left-footed). But, if I changed tasks while the dancer was on — say went to click another window or focused on the list at left, she’d sometimes switch direction. Weird…well, I just hope my right-brain knows what my left-brain is doing.

Crossfire, Hard-Wired?

Is political conflict bred in the bone (or, put less charitably, do some among us just have an easier time with higher-order thinking)? A new joint NYU-UCLA neurobiological study finds once again that left- and right-leaning brains function differently, with liberal minds more receptive to change than their conservative counterparts. “Dozens of previous studies have established a strong link between political persuasion and certain personality traits. Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances…[In this case] respondents who had described themselves as liberals showed ‘significantly greater conflict-related neural activity’ when the hypothetical situation called for an unscheduled break in routine. Conservatives, however, were less flexible, refusing to deviate from old habits ‘despite signals that this…should be changed.’”

The World Forgetting, by the World Forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d. Life imitates art as researchers hone in on drugs that will potentially erase traumatic memories. “‘This is all very preliminary,’ said Dr. Roger Pitman, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist. ‘We’re just getting started. There is some promising preliminary data but no conclusions.‘”

A World of Addicts.

Love is a stranger in an open car…or is it just a much-needed dopamine fix? Somebody writes this story every Valentine’s Day. Still, I guess it’s something to keep in mind. (And sorry, Berk, you may be my Valentine again this year, but the same type of deconstruction applies to you. No hard feelings, bud.)