Image via Wikipedia Please forgive the absurd title here … its just a play on words from a flabby, middle-aged science geek who is as alluring to “the ladies” as an old leather boot. Like a lot of males (with active fantasy lives I suppose), my interest was piqued by the recent headline, “What Do [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Neuron’
A yogi's guide to what women want
Posted in breathing, Mindfulness, Uncategorized, tagged Brain, Central nervous system, Emotion, Empathy, Hormone, mindfulness, Mother Nature, Neuron, oxytocin, Society for Neuroscience, Yoga on November 17, 2010 | 2 Comments »
A depression gene that you can’t turn off
Posted in Hippocampus, MAPK, MKP-1, tagged Brain, Chemical synapse, Chronic stress, Depression, Gene expression, Hippocampus, Memory, Neuron, Pyramidal cell, Stress 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 [...]
Sitting on my thesaurus while meditating
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brain, Breathing, Emotion, Meditation, Mind, mindfulness, Neuron, Religion and Spirituality, spirituality, Thesaurus, Vocabulary Lists on October 6, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Image by dullhunk via Flickr On Fridays, after a regular practice session, our shala is open for quiet meditation. This is a new experience for me, even as I’ve read much about the mental and physical health benefits accrued by experienced practitioners. As someone who is totally exhausted after practice – indeed, I couldn’t move [...]
Show me your yogi face!
Posted in physiology, tagged Brain, Emotion, Facial expression, Facial Feedback Hypothesis, Neuron, Restylane, Yoga on September 16, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Every so often, in midst of a posture, as my wobbly elbows strain to press upward and beads of sweat roll down my face, my instructor will chime, “Now relax your face and smile!”. Huh? Did she say, “smile”? WTF? Do I really have to add a smile to my to-do list while struggling through [...]
An essay on science by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Posted in Mindfulness, tagged Brain, Buddism, Dalai Lama, Meditation, Nervous system, Neuron, spirituality, Teachers and Centers on July 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia In this essay, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama addresses the question, “What possible benefit could there be for a scientific discipline such as neuroscience in engaging in dialogue with Buddhist contemplative tradition?”
Present thoughts and future actions rolled together in the brain
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged B. K. S. Iyengar, Brain, Central nervous system, Consciousness, frontal cortex, Human, Meditation, Mind, Neuron, Patañjali, philosophy, precuneus, Religion and Spirituality, Yoga, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali on July 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by alicepopkorn via Flickr Some of the most epic and beautiful of the yoga sutras are found in the final book IV. One of them popped into mind when I came across a recent neuroscience report entitled, “Predicting Persuasion-Induced Behavior Change from the Brain” by Emily Falk and colleagues at the Department of Psychology [...]
Tracking your inner yogi on the web
Posted in Mindfulness, tagged B. K. S. Iyengar, Breathing, Buddism, Central nervous system, Consciousness, dualism, Emotion, Health, Human, India, informatics, Meditation, mindfulness, Mood, Nervous system, Neuron, parasympathetic nervous system, Patañjali, Personalized medicine, philosophy, Religion and Spirituality, Shopping, spirituality, Yoga on June 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by jurvetson via Flickr Like many folks, I generally feel better ever since I started practicing yoga. Outwardly, my body is (slowly) growing stronger and more flexible and perhaps (hopefully) soon, I’ll even lose a few pounds. However, even if I was to convince myself that looked slimmer (skinny mirrors?), the only way to [...]
Brain science of self: Llinas and Roy
Posted in breathing, tagged B. K. S. Iyengar, Brain, Central nervous system, coherence, Consciousness, dualism, Input/output, Meditation, Mind, mindfulness, Nervous system, Neuron, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, philosophy, Psychology, relaxation, Religion and Spirituality, Rodolfo R. Llinas, spirituality, Yoga on June 21, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Image by vramak via Flickr One of the themes that emerges in I.I atha yoganusasanam, and runs throughout the yoga sutras, is the notion that a yoga practice will bring one into a deeper awareness of the self. To begin to explore the modern science notion of self-awareness, here’s a 2009 paper entitled, “The ‘prediction [...]
rs4880 knows that when I’m breathing I’m dying
Posted in SOD2, tagged aging, Brain, Mental health, Mitochondrion, Neuron, Oxygen, Reactive oxygen species, Superoxide, Superoxide dismutase on February 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by MAMJODH via Flickr Oxygen is the key to life. This is because it loves electrons. In the mitochondria of every cell in your body, oxygen (in is atmospheric O2 state) serves as the ultimate electron acceptor and provides the chemical energy that drives the formation of ATP (a form of chemical energy storage [...]
HoxB8 is more Itchy & Scratchy than Kim Kardashian
Posted in HOXB8, tagged Conditions and Diseases, grooming, Neurological Disorders, Neuron, obsessive-compulsive, Perception, Peripheral nervous system, Spinal cord on January 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by BiggerPictureImages.com via Flickr Sometimes, when flipping channels late at night, its hard NOT to stop and gawk at the various spectacles on reality-trash-TV. No self-respecting scientist would admit to being smitten by all the vanity and preening – right? Well, back in 2002, there was a mouse whose homeobox-B8 gene was disrupted – [...]
Semaphorins integrate the sweetness and development of our cortical 6-layer cake
Posted in RLN, SEMA(1-7), tagged Brain, cerebral cortex, Circuitry, Cognition, Development, economics, Frontal lobe, Gene expression, Mental disorder, Mental health, Messenger RNA, neural migration, Neuron, Prefrontal cortex, schizophrenia, Stem cell, University of Pittsburgh on January 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia For a great many reasons, research on mental illness is focused on the frontal cortex. Its just a small part of the brain, and certainly, many things can go wrong in other places during brain/cognitive development, but, it remains a robust finding, that when the frontal cortex is not working well, individuals [...]
rs4680 helps me tonically ponder the Burger King menu and phasically choose the least healthy items
Posted in Cingulate cortex, COMT, Frontal cortex, Hippocampus, tagged Brain, Cognition, economics, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Gene, Gene expression, Mental disorder, Mental health, Neural network, Neuron, Parkinson's disease on January 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
One of the complexities in beginning to understand how genetic variation relates to cognitive function and behavior is that – unfortunately – there is no gene for “personality”, “anxiety”, “memory” or any other type of “this” or “that” trait. Most genes are expressed rather broadly across the entire brain’s cortical layers and subcortical systems. So, [...]
Genetic causes and non-genetic consequences of schizophrenia play out within 2mm of neocortex
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Archives of General Psychiatry, Brain, cerebral cortex, Development, Frontal lobe, Genetics, Mental disorder, Mental health, neocortex, Neuron, schizophrenia, synapse, synaptogenesis on November 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image by Biking Nikon PDX via Flickr One of the difficult aspects of understanding mental illness, is separating the real causes of the illness from what might be secondary or tertiary consequences of having the illness. If you think about a car whose engine is not running normally, there may be many observable things going [...]
Astrocytes hold dendrites in a warm thrombospondin embrace
Posted in CACNA2D1, THBS1, THBS2, tagged CACNA2D1, Chemical synapse, Dendrite, Dendritic spine, Development, gabapentin, Neuron, neurontin, synaptogenesis, Voltage-dependent calcium channel on November 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
If you compare the left panel to the right panel, you’ll see a dendrite (grey) with dendritic spines (green) on the left-side and then, on the right-side, these spines enveloped by the membrane of an astrocyte (white). These images were obtained from synapse-web.org who use a method known as 3D reconstruction of serial section electron [...]
Building and maintaining synapses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brain, Chemical synapse, Development, Genetics, Human behavior, Neuron, Psychology, synapse, synaptic plasticity on October 17, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Phrenological thinking, a popular pseudoscientific practice in the 1800′s suggested that the structure of the head and underlying brain held the clues to understanding human behavior. Today, amidst the ongoing convergence of developmental science, molecular & biochemical science and systems-dynamical science (to name just a few), there is – of course – no single or [...]
Nature meets nurture on BDNF promoter IV
Posted in BDNF, tagged BDNF, Biology, CREB, Development, Epigenetics, Gene expression, Genetics, Michael Merzenich, Neuron, Rett Syndrome on October 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
According to Joseph LeDoux, “One of the most important contributions of modern neuroscience has been to show that the nature/nurture debate operates around a false dichotomy: the assumption that biology, on one hand, and lived experience, on the other, affect us in fundamentally different ways” (ref). Indeed. While I know not where the current debate [...]
Too much yin and not enough yang in cortical networks of MeCP2 mutant mice
Posted in MECP2, tagged autism, Development, Epigenetics, Gene, Gene expression, Long-Term Potentiation, MECP2, Mental disorder, Mental health, Mental retardation, Neural network, Neuron, Rett Syndrome on September 30, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Image via Wikipedia In previous posts, we have explored some of the basic molecular (de-repression of chromatin structure) and cellular (excess synaptogenesis) consequences of mutations in the MeCP2 gene – a.k.a the gene whose loss of function gives rise to Rett syndrome. One of the more difficult aspects of understanding how a mutation in a [...]
Support staff deserves some of the blame for Rett syndrome deficits
Posted in MECP2, White matter, tagged Ari Gold, autism, Development, Glial cell, MECP2, Mental disorder, Neural development, Neuron, Rett Syndrome, White matter on September 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Celebrities and politicians are known for their love of the spotlight. “Me, me, me!” are the words to get ahead by in our modern media circus. As well, it can even be – in the unglamorous world of science – where, in characteristically geeky form, the conventional wisdom is to shout, “my hypothesis, my [...]
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