Happy Anniversary Encephalon!

Double congrats go to Mo the Neurophilosopher. Not only has the Encephalon neuroscience blogging carnival seen it’s first year anniversary, Encephalon masterbrain Mo has been welcomed aboard the scienceblogs.com network! His scienceblog can be found here.

It’s been nearly 3 months since I last wrote anything here and I should probably give a few updates. I was recently in Chicago for every brain imager’s annual favorite, the Organization for Human Brain Mapping conference. All in all, I really enjoyed the conference and the city. A few highlights:

- Marcus Gray from University College London had an interesting poster entitled ‘A cortical potential for cardiac function’ (now in PNAS). From the abstract:

Emotional trauma and psychological stress can precipitate cardiac arrhythmia and sudden death through arrhythmogenic effects of efferent sympathetic drive. Patients with preexisting heart disease are particularly at risk. Moreover, generation of proarrhythmic activity patterns within cerebral autonomic centers may be amplified by afferent feedback from a dysfunctional myocardium. An electrocortical potential reflecting afferent cardiac information has been described, reflecting individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity (awareness of one’s own heartbeats). To inform our understanding of mechanisms underlying arrhythmogenesis, we extended this approach, identifying electrocortical potentials corresponding to the cortical expression of afferent information about the integrity of myocardial function during stress. We measured changes in cardiac response simultaneously with electroencephalography in patients with established ventricular dysfunction.

- Gray’s work is somewhat representative of a general emphasis on biomarkers and predictive imaging at this year’s conference.

- This year, diffusion tensor imaging, (DTI), dynamic causal modelling (DCM), multi-modal imaging, as well as lie-detection were in vogue. I remember resting-state fMRI being the cat’s meow at the 2005 conference in Toronto. Oh the times, they are a changin’…

- I think everyone’s favorite memory from the conference program was that of a video involving monkeys and robots. Enough said.

- On other studies, Dr. Nicholas Schiff had a very interesting talk on limited states of consciousness in the clinic. You may remember Dr. Schiff’s name splashed in the headlines last summer on a very interesting case of a man who ‘woke up’ after being in a minimally conscious state. Yes, DTI pops up here too. Dr. Schiff recently talked at a workshop on neuroethics and limited states of consciousness as part of ongoing work at Stanford’s Neuroethics unit.

There are many more highlights but I should leave off now. What I will leave off with is a note that the 27th edition of Encephalon will be hosted right here in two weeks time. That’s Monday, July 16th. If you’d like to contribute, don’t be shy, send in any post you may have that’s neuro-related!

Send an email to: encephalon[dot]host[at]gmail[dot]com.

Things that I would be particularly interested in reading relate to blogging and funding. If you have an opinion as to how science blogging could be a tool (or not) for raising awareness about the need for funding, or have some interesting statistics, please send it in! The debate over stem cell research is certainly important, but I’d be interested in something that looks at the issue more broadly (many of you out there can sympathize with the penny pinching scientists are forced to endure, or end up finding financial pressures destructive). Another issue that caught my attention at the OHBM town hall meeting involved a debate about whether or not the conference should consider holding a future meeting in Cuba. Posts related to conferences and political pressures would also be well received. i.e. Should scientists be concerned about conferences being held in countries with conflicting political ideals? Could scientific conferences be held in more developing countries to bring attention to overlooked research programs?

And now for some brainial stimulation of the broab:

debate, debate, debate

debate is on my mind.

1. I found an interesting journal over the weekend titled Debates in Neuroscience. It appears to be a very new journal, the article I’m halfway through (a critical look at adult neurogenesis) was accepted in Februray of this year.

The vision that led to the establishment of this journal is to provide a forum for the neuroscience community that is devoted explicitly to controversies and conflicting ideas. We are very grateful to Dr. Norman M. Weinberger who first presented the idea for this journal to us. The give and take of debate and controversy are critical to enabling conceptual advances within any field of science, but these normally take place at scientific meetings, informal discussions, or in private correspondence. Debates in Neuroscience makes the exposition of emerging debates and controversies its centerpiece.

Since the purpose of most neuroscience journals is publishing new research reports and/or review papers, and compounded by the unusual breadth of neuroscience, there is an unmet need on the part of researchers, instructors, trainees, and students to access relevant alternate viewpoints on topics of interest, especially outside their own areas of specialization. Each issue of Debates in Neuroscience will focus on a small number of controversial topics. Each topic will be addressed by two or more papers written by nominated authors. The papers will provide an in-depth exposition of an alternative theoretical or conceptual perspective. Authors will subsequently have an opportunity to respond to the rival viewpoints.

2. There was a debate on whether we are better off without religion at Westminster this past week.

Speaking for the motion, “We’d be better off without religion”, at a debate held in Westminster on March 27; Professor Richard Dawkins, Professor A.C. Grayling and Christopher Hitchens. Speaking against: Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Professor Roger Scruton and Nigel Spivey. The debate was chaired by Joan Bakewell

You can listen to a podcast of the debate by pointing your browser here.

3. I discovered I had been linked to on A Don’s Life blog for a history carnival. While I did not submit my blurb on Andrew Scull’s review of History of Madness to the carnival, I must say I was flattered to have a Professor at Cambridge read and link to the post. Nonetheless, Professor Beard’s characterization of me prematurely dancing on Foucault’s grave was a little exaggerated. I will certainly read the newly translated edition in one hand (my copy of Madness and Civilization in the other) and decide then whether or not to put on my dancing shoes. I’d rather chalk up the tone I took in my post to the excitement of taking the shoes out of the closet.

Scull on Foucault

Despite his fitting name, Andrew Scull is not in neuro. He is, however, a professor in the Department of Sociology at UCSD with psychiatry on the brain. Now aside from tickling my allusion fancy, Professor Scull has written several books, of which I can say I’ve at least thumbed through one: Madhouses, Mad Doctors and Madmen: Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era. The thumbing was done for my History of Modern Medicine course which, in and of itself, was as inspiring as it was eye opening. That said, Professor Scull’s book is a favourite work of mine that comes to mind particularly as I near the end of my degree (along with Henri Ellenberger’s The Discovery of the Unconscious).

Needless to say I was happy to see Scull’s review of the newly translated edition of Michel Foucault’s History of Madness. More to the point, I was happy to see it was a scathing review. A quote:

Narrowness of this kind is not confined to footnotes. Foucault’s isolation from the world of facts and scholarship is evident throughout History of Madness. It is as though nearly a century of scholarly work had produced nothing of interest or value for Foucault’s project. What interested him, or shielded him, was selectively mined nineteenth-century sources of dubious provenance. Inevitably, this means that elaborate intellectual constructions are built on the shakiest of empirical foundations, and, not surprisingly, many turn out to be wrong.

Scull concludes his article, stating that

The back cover of History of Madness contains a series of hyperbolic hymns of praise to its virtues. Paul Rabinow calls the book “one of the major works of the twentieth century”; Ronnie Laing hails it as “intellectually rigorous”; and Nikolas Rose rejoices that “Now, at last, English-speaking readers can have access to the depth of scholarship that underpins Foucault’s analysis”. Indeed they can, and one hopes that they will read the text attentively and intelligently, and will learn some salutary lessons. One of those lessons might be amusing, if it had no effect on people’s lives: the ease with which history can be distorted, facts ignored, the claims of human reason disparaged and dismissed, by someone sufficiently cynical and shameless, and willing to trust in the ignorance and the credulity of his customers.

Oh yes, Foucault is finally fully translated into English. Me thinks it’s about time.

law and the brain

Much blogable ado has been made about the New York Times article ‘The Brain on the Stand‘ by Jeffrey Rosen (and I would say quite rightly so). While the article shows nuance in the opinions of brain imagers, and as much as I would fully recommend you read the entire article, Rosen really does sum things up quite nicely:

As the new technologies proliferate, even the neurolaw experts themselves have only begun to think about the questions that lie ahead. Can the police get a search warrant for someone’s brain? Should the Fourth Amendment protect our minds in the same way that it protects our houses? Can courts order tests of suspects’ memories to determine whether they are gang members or police informers, or would this violate the Fifth Amendment’s ban on compulsory self-incrimination? Would punishing people for their thoughts rather than for their actions violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment? However astonishing our machines may become, they cannot tell us how to answer these perplexing questions. We must instead look to our own powers of reasoning and intuition, relatively primitive as they may be.

As Stephen Morse puts it, neuroscience itself can never identify the mysterious point at which people should be excused from responsibility for their actions because they are not able, in some sense, to control themselves. That question, he suggests, is “moral and ultimately legal,” and it must be answered not in laboratories but in courtrooms and legislatures. In other words, we must answer it ourselves.

Another interesting thing: the article mentions the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics. It’s worth a gander for some interesting reports and outlines some spooky issues ranging from brain ‘fingerprinting’ to psychotropic weapons.

jesus grapevine

this sounds like a bad soap opera:

jesus has returned as Dr. Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda to collect rolex watches and random companies from his followers whilst a bikini girl, one of His exclusive singers, sings about how she loves how her lover knows what she likes in her coffee.

but just when you thought it was safe, it turns out he’s the antichrist. the end is nigh! save yourself latina lovegirl!

maybe latina lovegirl can give us some solace, after all ‘Latina lovergirl is in love with love and loving it–whether she’s splashing poolside in a bikini or shimmying bare-midriff style on a soundstage she’s selling it big time in this infectious, horn-peppered pop.’ Watch it! The apocalypse was never sexier.

via pharyngula

a classic

College-Radio DJ Thinks He Has Cult Following

CHARLESTON, IL-College-radio disc jockey Jordan Haley is convinced that “Rock Blossom,” his show airing Thursdays from midnight to 2 a.m. on WEIU 88.9 FM, has a devoted cult following, the Eastern Illinois University senior told reporters Monday.

testify!

if you haven’t seen PhD Comics, now’s the time.

synapse13

is a neuroscience carnival devoted to all areas of neuroscience, including neurobiology, psychology, psychiatry, and neural systems — healthy brains to perverse minds — neurotransmitters to theories of mind.

To kick off the final installment of The Synapse before the new year, Corpus Callosum gets a little Popperian on the falsification of hypotheses and the connection between antidepressants and suicide. In the same vein, the Neurocritic bites into an antidepressant study and outlines why some of the claims being made are hard to swallow.

Bearing in mind Corpus Callosum’s reiteration that ‘correlation does not imply causation’, we turn to Vaughan’s submission of an fMRI study related to psychopathy at Mind Hacks.  Non Causa Pro Causa has interesting implications for the old nature/nurture debate and makes neuroimaging studies all the more nuanced. For more on psychopathy, I’d recommend Inside the Mind of a Psychopath on CBC’s Quirks & Quarks.

On Autism, Dr. Deborah Serani, host of the previous Synapse, highlights a paper on genetic mutation and its link to the risk of Autism.

Musings on Neurology and Lenitives In Simplistic Art outlines his top 5 strategic areas for research in neuroscience. Is the NIH accepting grant proposals in blog format? While quite broad in scope, there are some sympathies on this end to neuroinformatics and making conversion between file formats easier or potentially adopting a more standard format (imaging people, I know you sympathize. Oh, to be back in the DICOM days). Hat tip on Neuroethics, look north.

On touching brains in a bad way, the Neurophilosopher elaborates on every neuroscientist’s perennial favourite:  Phineas Gage.  A lot seems to fall out of rod-shaped objects piercing one’s head, although tamping irons may not be that common these days.  What, you ask, might be?  Chopsticks of course!

Could a young man like this (and his chopsticks) be a key contributor to stem cell research? Shelley at Retrospectacle says yes! 

On touching brains in a good way, Jake at Pure Pedantry looks at brain stimulation and the therapeutic value of brain stimulation for Parkinsonism.  For coverage of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), including a talk by a Parkinson’s patient, check out the Dana Centre’s webcast on DBS during the 2006 Brain Awareness Week at the Science Museum in London.

Transcranial direct current stimuliation (tDCS) is another good touch, albeit less invasive.  The Fibromyalgia Research Blog reviews a paper on tDCS as a treatment for fibromyalgia pain.

For a more magnetic touch, consider the Neurocritic’s post on repetative transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS.

Alvaro at SharpBrains interviews Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg on brain fitness and cognitive training and looks at what successful traders and students have in common. I concur on the point of bloated textbooks here in North America. That said, if you’d really like to know what Penfield or Newton thought, read them! Don’t just read a synopsis in a textbook! It’s unfortunate that there are not more programs like St. John’s Great Books program out there.

Outside of print, I Am A Scientist! caught up with Dr. Mary Harrington from Smith College at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) conference in Atlanta this past October.  Listen to a discussion on the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience live online, Sunday, December 10th at Noon (GMT -0600) on CKUW 95.9 FM.  Unable to listen?  The show will be archived on the show website.  In the meantime, lend your ears to another discussion at SfN, this time with Dr. Gladys Maestre from the University of Zulia in Maracaibo, Venezuela on neuroscience and developing countries.  Part 1 / Part 2 (MP3).

And heck, I’ll be hosting The Motel 6 later this morning (sigh, it’s late) live on CKUW 95.9 FM and ckuw.ca starting at 10AM (GMT -0600) on Sunday. Tune in!

Should you listen to the interview with Dr. Harrington, circadian rhythms will likely be on your mind. A Blog Around The Clock points to the refinement of questions in circadian rhythm research.

And, speaking of the molecular level, PZ Myers gives a near textbook explanation of the notch receptor.

While Sandy at The Mouse Trap makes his conjectures on the evolutionary trajectory of colour vision, Pete at Brain Hammer brings us back to philosophy and reminds us that a scientific theory, necessarily being falsifiable, is only as good as the predictive power it holds.

And it looks like that’s a wrap folks. Thanks for stopping by, see you in the new year, and in the words of the infamous Ivan Hrvatska, See you at party!

Weeee!

UPDATE
Synapse and Encephalon are consolidating! Regular and potential contributors to The Synapse are encouraged to submit posts here or by emailing encephalon.host at gmail.com. The next Encephalon will be held at Neurotopia on December 18th.

late nightness

this is funny and is taking the sting out of the jarring sound next door, but if the car in the parking lot does not shut it’s alarm off i’m going to throw a brick at it. argh.

Kansas Outlaws Practice Of Evolution

TOPEKA, KS—Any living being that undergoes genetic modification favoring survival could face jail time under the new law.