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Posts Tagged ‘Memory’

Zen gene teaches us the art of letting go of pain

Posted in Hippocampus, KCNIP3, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 18, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Zen meditators are famous for their equanimity in the face of physical discomfort.  How do they do it?  Well, according to a recent neuroimaging investigation, it may be because they do not “think” about pain.  Rather, they just “experience” pain: An ancient Eastern text describes two temporally distinct aspects of pain perception; the direct experience [...]

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My father’s genes unfold within me …

Posted in APOE, Hippocampus, tagged , , , on April 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Have you ever suddenly realized, “OMG, I’m just like my dad (or mom)!”  Oh, the horror .. the horror.  Here’s John Updike from A Month of Sundays: Also my father, who in space-time occupied a stark room of a rest home an hour distant, which he furnished with a vigorous and Protean suite of senility’s [...]

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The mind is stranger than the yoga sutras

Posted in meditation, tagged , , , , , , , on December 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Image via Wikipedia The yoga sutras are a lot of fun to read – especially the super-natural ones.  I try not to take them too literally, as you never know what might have been warped in translation, or perhaps included merely to inspire yogis to go the extra mile in their practices. Occasionally, I come [...]

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A depression gene that you can’t turn off

Posted in Hippocampus, MAPK, MKP-1, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 10, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Image via Wikipedia You already know this, but when you are stressed out (chronic stress), your brain doesn’t work very well.  That’s right – just when you need it most – your brain has a way of letting you down! Here are a few things that happen to the very cells (in the hippocampus) that [...]

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DNMT helps neurons remember epigenetic stuff

Posted in BDNF, DNMT, Hippocampus, RLN, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Image by DerrickT via Flickr Most cells in your adult body are “terminally differentiated” – meaning that they have developed from stem cells into the final liver, or heart, or muscle or endothelial cell that they were meant to be.  From that point onward, cells are able to “remember” to stay in this final state [...]

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PARP-1 is the epigenetic handyman of learning and memory

Posted in Hippocampus, PARP-1, tagged , , , , , , on October 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

The human brain has some 100 billion neurons.  That sounds like a lot, but I’m still keen on keeping ALL of mine healthy and in good working order.  One way that cells protect themselves from damage and untimely death is by protecting their DNA – by wrapping it up and coiling it tightly – using [...]

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rs35753505 C-alleles make de l’Art Brut of the brain

Posted in Fusiform gyrus, Middle frontal gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, NRG1, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

According to wikipedia, “Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (July 31, 1901 – May 12, 1985) was one of the most famous French painters and sculptors of the second half of the 20th century.”  “He coined the term Art Brut (meaning “raw art,” often times referred to as ‘outsider art’) for art produced by non-professionals working outside [...]

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Thousands of genes together with thousands of resting-state nodes actually makes the genes-to-cognition problem LESS complex

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

DON’T tell the grant funding agencies, but, in at least one way, the effort to relate genetic variation to individual differences in cognitive function is a totally intractable waste of money. Let’s say we ask a population of folks to perform a task – perhaps a word memory task – and then we use neuroimaging [...]

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Recalling finch beaks using variable decision criteria to learn from whence we came

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Image via Wikipedia In his book, The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner describes the great diversity of finches on the Galapagos Islands – so much diversity – that Darwin himself initially thought the finch variants to be completely different birds (wrens, mockingbirds, blackbirds and “gross-bills”).  It turns out that one of the pivotal events [...]

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echoblog: understanding how neuromodulator (genes) help the brain compute

Posted in 5HTT, acetylcholine, Dopamine, Noradrenaline, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Image by jurvetson via Flickr pointer to: Computational Models of Basal Ganglia Function where Kenji Doya provides computational explanations for neuromodulators and their role in reinforcement learning. In his words, “Dopamine encodes the temporal difference error — the reward learning signal. Acetylcholine affects learning rate through memory updates of actions and rewards. Noradrenaline controls width [...]

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I express a multiple-handed Hindu goddess in my brain, therefore I am

Posted in Frontal cortex, Hippocampus, Kalirin, Rho GTPase, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Image via Wikipedia Joseph LeDoux‘s book, “Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are” opens with his recounting of an incidental glance at a t-shirt, “I don’t know, so maybe I’m not” (a play on Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum“) that prompted him to explore how our brain encodes memory and how that leads to [...]

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PSD-95 holds your long term memories in place

Posted in PSD95, tagged , on August 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Image by pchow98 via Flickr One of the cool things about the brain & one of the ways in which it differs markedly from our current computer systems is that cells and synapses are living dynamic entities that grow and sprout new connections in response to experience. Since the 1980′s studies using protein synthesis inhibitors [...]

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Intronic rs833070 / rs2146323 variants in VEGF demonstrate link to hippocampal size to reinforce role in rehabilitation, resilience and medication response

Posted in Hippocampus, VEGF, tagged , , on July 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Image via Wikipedia The mitogenic activities of the vascular endothelial growth factor protein family are well researched. A number of findings have linked this gene to learning and memory and hippocampal-dependent response to antidepressant medication. Indeed, its reasonable to expect that a mitogen such as VEGF would regulate hippocampal cell division and the accompanying benefits [...]

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rs4675690 C-allele steers my left insula away from angry old farts

Posted in CREB, Insula, tagged , , , on May 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Image via Wikipedia Indeed, learning how to manage one’s response to the negative emotions of others and stay out of trouble is an important life skill. At some point, most of us learn to just avoid angry, mean or melodramatically negative people and save ourselves the strife. Roy Perlis and colleagues, in their recent paper, [...]

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Genetics and emotional memory – a view from Rawanda

Posted in ADRA2A, Noradrenaline, tagged , , on June 2, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

Image via Wikipedia Dominique JF de Quervain and colleagues provide an elegant example of how genetic differences can relate to complex traits such as the ability to recall emotionally laden experiences. In their recent Nature Neuroscience paper, they looked at a deletion of 3 glutamic acid residues (301–303) in the third intracellular loop of the [...]

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