BrainBlog

A fine blog entry at the Dana Foundation Blog : Creating a Neuroscience Learning Community (05 April 2012).

The 24th Cambridge Neuroscience Seminar: Translational Neuroscience For full information, click here .

The February edition of Neuropod presented by Kerri Smith is up and is a great listen today. Listen to or download the edition and enjoy features about the connectome , thoughts on just how many neurons are present in the average human brain, and "The Good, the Bad, and the Monkey." Just where did that number of 100 billion come from? One number is sure: it is the 50th episode of this popular podcast. Congrats! Enjoy! Homepage and link to podcast

The Charlie Rose show is airing episodes from Series 2 of its "Brain Series." Series 2 is a series of episodes that deal with brain disorders. Home page

Intraneuronally Injected Amyloid Beta Inhibits Long-Term Potentiation In Rat Hippocampal Slices J Neurophysiol. 2012 Feb 15; Nomura I, Takechi H, Kato N Abstract Extracellular accumulation of amyloid beta (Aβ) is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD). It has been reported that extracellular perfusion of Aβ inhibits long-term potentiation (LTP), which is strongly related to memory in animal models. However, it has recently been proposed that intracellular Aβ may be the first pathological change to occur in AD. Here, we have investigated the effect on LTP of intracellular injection of Aβ (Aβ(1-40), Aβ(1-42)) into hippocampal pyramidal cells using patch clamp technique. We found that injection of 1 nM Aβ(1-42) completely blocked LTP and extracellular perfusion of a p38 MAPK inhibitor or a metabotropic glutamate receptor blocker reversed these blocking effects on LTP. Furthermore, we have examined the effects of different concentrations of Aβ(1-40) and Aβ(1-42) on LTP and showed that...

Visualizing long-term memory formation in two neurons of the Drosophila brain Science. 2012 Feb 10;335(6069):678-85 Chen CC, Wu JK, Lin HW, Pai TP, Fu TF, Wu CL, Tully T, Chiang AS Abstract Long-term memory (LTM) depends on the synthesis of new proteins. Using a temperature-sensitive ribosome-inactivating toxin to acutely inhibit protein synthesis, we screened individual neurons making new proteins after olfactory associative conditioning in Drosophila. Surprisingly, LTM was impaired after inhibiting protein synthesis in two dorsal-anterior-lateral (DAL) neurons but not in the mushroom body (MB), which is considered the adult learning and memory center. Using a photoconvertible fluorescent protein KAEDE to report de novo protein synthesis, we have directly visualized cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) response element-binding protein (CREB)-dependent transcriptional activation of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II and period genes in the DAL neurons after spaced but not...

A quick overview sheet presented by the Wellcome Trust Blog : pdf sheet

A special features section of the Guardian and the Observer : Homepage

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2011 Meet Your Brain Homepage Guardian article about the lectures: Read full article here

Read the In The Pipeline blog entry (06 December 2011).

Today on WYNC's Leonard Lopate show, Dr. Michael Gazzaniga. Listen and/or download here

From the Society for Neuroscience: Wireless Internet Access

Here is the website, chock full of information, for the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting, Neuroscience 2011: Neuroscience 2011

A TEDtalk by University of Cambridge neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert: TEDtalk From the webpage: "Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert starts from a surprising premise: the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement. In this entertaining, data-rich talk he gives us a glimpse into how the brain creates the grace and agility of human motion."

This post, and all others on BrainBlog, are written by Anthony Risser for his blog BrainBlog. The appearance of this entry, and others, on different websites, framed under different websites, or not at the BrainBlog URL do not have my permission. All rights retained. Wendy Williams Kraken: The curious, exciting, and slightly disturbing science of squid NY: Abrams Image (2011) ISBN 978-0-8109-8465-3 My guess is that, unlike biology students, many psychology students exposed to their first courses in biopsychology and neuroscience have little idea about cephalopods and their role played in our knowledge about the nervous system and behavior. (Hint: You are likely to have found squid in your textbook, in that diagram which shows the recording of electrical activity from a generic single neuron and its axon.) Wendy Williams’ new book, Kraken , is a curious book that gives credit to the cephalopods and to the scientists who respect them and learn from them. It is a brief book with a nicely ...

From the Scientific American blog: The 2011 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize: Honoring Dr. Brenda Milner for her pioneering work in cognitive neuroscience By Jeanne Garbarino October 26, 2011 | Read the blog post about the award

Melbourne Brain Centre opens 9News 17:22 AEST Mon Oct 17 2011 Read the report

The Brain Study blog published an interesting posting earlier in the week about this important contemporary issue in neuropsychology: Brain Study posting about Reality Monitoring A good read!

A new online open-access journal: Brain and Behavior Wiley Volume 1, Issue 1 Table of Contents From the website: "With the launch of this open access, multidisciplinary journal, we offer a broad scientific community a forum for rapid publication of original contributions, covering all aspects of neurology, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry. By offering quality assurance through stringent peer review and delivering content quickly, broadly, and effectively, we aim for Brain and Behavior to become both your regular source for neurology, neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry research, as well as a platform by which you will offer your best science to the broadest community possible."