Home of the Stanford Neuroblog. Scientists writing about science, for a general audience.
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A weekly feature, highlighting the science-related internet content that caught our eyes the previous week.
This week: sloths and rattlesnakes, misogyny and the GMO debate. Also: what happens when you place a red-hot metal ball on top of three eggs? There's a video.
Read MoreWhat are the best introductory neuroscience books? Which ones would we recommend for the enterprising high school student, interested in learning about Neuroscience and it's principles? I list 4 textbooks and one non-fiction book, then (reminded that textbooks are really expensive), I add on an online textbook and an expanded list of non-fiction books.
Read MoreIt’s that time of year again, folks. As the Labrador puppy of hope runs headlong toward the closed glass door of inevitability, millions of otherwise rational adults indulge in a practice commonly referred to as “making new year’s resolutions”. Despite initial confidence, most participants will fail to maintain their resolutions. Following on from David’s piece on new year’s day, I’d like to take this opportunity to provide much-needed moral support (“outside interference”?) to those who are looking to beat the odds and stick to their resolutions. And what better way to provide incentive than by giving examples of how three common new year’s resolutions can positively affect your brain and your immune system.
Read MoreAfter a bit of a hiatus, PhDs in Press is back! Quite a few (read: 12) of our comrades in the Stanford Neurosciences Program have published in the last 6 months, both as first authors, and nth authors.
Head below the fold for titles and links to papers authored by: Cora Ames, Matt Figley, the tag-team of Corbett Bennet and Sergio Arroyo, David Kastner, Ryan Squire, Georgia Panagiotakos, George Sebastià Vidal Pérez-Treviño, Matt Sacchet, William Joo, Yvette Fisher, Gregor Bieri and Kira Mosher.
Read MoreDr. Corrine Moss-Racusin is the lead author on the landmark paper describing a study documenting gender bias among male and female science faculty at research institutions. She has been visiting a number of institutions to discuss her findings, including a standing-room crowd at Stanford’s Clark Auditorium on Wednesday, January 15. What did her research find, and will her recommendations for how to fix gender bias be effective? Meryl Natchez, an education and training professional with almost 30 years experience in the corporate sector, the Hass Business School, UC Berkeley Extension and Cal State Sacramento, discusses the presentation and her impressions.
Read MoreI wanted to tell you a little bit about some of my favorite neuroscience books. Books that did a good job of distilling the “wow” factor that drives people like your intrepid neuroblog contributors to think and talk about the brain. I’ve chosen these books for three reasons: they’re accessible to newcomers who don’t know much about neuroscience, they’re well-written enough to be enjoyable reads regardless of your neuro expertise (or lack thereof), and the science in them is largely accurate and based on a body of rigorous scientific literature.
These three books are: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, by Oliver Sacks; Moonwalking With Einstein, by Joshua Foer; This Is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel Levitin
Read MoreScience featured in most TV shows is so ludicrously inaccurate that fact-checking it is no fun. It’s best to either avoid watching or to suspend disbelief. However, The Big Bang Theory is a pleasant exception. ... I thought that it would be fun to translate what the show’s neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler says about her research into plain English.
Read MoreJason asks: What makes certain mental tasks be perceived as more demanding than others?
For physical tasks, it is pretty ease to see how, say, lifting a 10 lbs barbell would be perceived as easier than lifting one that’s 20 lbs. But why is watching a 1 hour video on, say, physics perceived as more demanding than watching an hour of “Desperate Housewives”?
This is a great question, Jason. Why is it that we feel mentally exhausted after studying for a test or preparing for a meeting, but we read books or watch movies to relax? All of these activities require your brain, after all! And why is it harder to resist eating a cookie when you've been doing brain work for hours?
As brain users, we generally feel as if there is some substance called mental effort, which we all have in limited quantities. We have to budget it carefully because some mental tasks require more of it than others, and if we run out we simply have to wait for it to replenish itself before we can use it again.
Read MoreAs we leave 2013 behind and enter into a New Year, many of us make New Year’s resolutions. Most everyone has bad habits that they would like to break or new habits that they would like to start. Perhaps the resolutions center around diet, exercise, or work habits. Whatever your New Year’s resolution may be, sticking to it is hard work! During performance of a habit, the brain seems to be running on autopilot, executing an entire program of actions as if they were one action. Fortunately for those of us engaged in the fight against undesireable habits, a few intriguing studies from the Graybiel lab at M.I.T shed light on how to break out of such automatic brain states. In this post, I’ll be summarizing one of the studies (Smith et al. 2012), and discussing how I think about it in the context of my own and general human habitual behavior, and what implications this study has for enacting long-term behavior change.
Read MoreMusic and rhythm are fundamental and essential components of human civilization. When we dance we anticipate beat placement to coordinate our hands, feet, arms, and legs, while also twirling our dance partners in sync with the music (or so we hope). Our need for music has also materialized in the clinical world. It has been shown that patients with Parkinson’s disease, who often exhibit difficulty initiating motor movements, can move more fluidly when listening to music. Unfortunately, despite our common interactions with music, extremely little is known regarding how our brains process it. Recent findings at Stanford should open the door to studying neural components of rhythm perception and their potential clinical implications.
Read MoreHome of NeuWrite West and the Stanford Neuroblog.
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