Description, from the Wisconsin Historical Society: “View from behind of a young woman wearing a t-shirt with the title Dungeon Mistress printed on the back while she plays an adventure game on a computer. In the background is a blackboard.”
Via @auntiepixelante.
Psychedelic Man-Of-War by Aaron Ansarov
The Portugese Man-of-War is an static creature, its only mobility provided by the swaying tidal forces. When one gets washed up on the beach, its only hope is it to get washed back into the rolling waves, otherwise they’re dead. But sometimes they may get picked up by Aaron Ansarov (with rubber gloves of course since their sting hurts like a sumbitch), who takes them back to his studio and splats them down on a light table, illuminating their naturally translucent bodies which he then mirrors in Photoshop. The result kinda looks like a tripped-out kaleidoscope that just vomited out its own intestines (And to the concerned readers at home: Aaron always transports the creatures safely and returns them to the beach when they’re done seductively distending their tentacle-y appendages).
The Thirty Meter Telescope
Above is a view of the Keck Observatory atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano. The University of California along with several other institutions use the telescope to make discoveries of exoplanets orbiting around other stars to figuring out the size and age of our universe. Recently a permit for a $1.3 billion Thirty Meter Telescope was approved by the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources.
The telescope, a project that UC will play a part in funding, will be built near Keck on the summit of the volcano Mauna Kea. Researchers believe the telescope will produce images three times sharper than those produced by optical telescopes today.
Seeing the Brain With New CLARITY
A new brain imaging technique called CLARITY allows neural structures to be reconstructed in three dimensions better than ever before. It does so by turning the brain “transparent”.
Truly understanding the inner workings of the brain means studying not only how individual neurons function, but also how they are wired together. Even with techniques like the beautiful “brainbow”, untangling spaghetti-like long-range connections has proven difficult.
Stanford University neuroscientists have taken a step in that direction with their new CLARITY method. Neurons and other cells are normally labeled by sticking fluorescent tags on various proteins and other molecules that a researcher wants to study. That way we can literally see where and how they function. But looking into a three-dimensional brain is like peering into murky water: the fatty cell membranes and neuron sheaths just get in the way.
The Stanford researchers immobilized these mouse brains in a gel, then washed away all the murky muck. This left all the connections and proteins in their right place, free to be labeled in a clear block of brain Jell-O.
For more: Head over to Nature News to read more, and be sure to watch their great, detailed video to find out more about how it was done. If you’re interested, here’s the research paper in this week’s Nature.
Antidepressants acting on the default mode network?
If there’s one thing we know about antidepressants it’s that they’re complicated. Not only are there approximately a bajillion different kinds, but we also haven’t completely nailed down how they actually produce an antidepressant effect. However, a new study from a group of researchers at Columbia University suggests there may be a link between antidepressants and a similarly confusing group of brain areas called the default mode network (DMN).
The study, published in February in JAMA Psychiatry, first used functional-connectivity MRI to show that patients with dysthymia show a higher baseline level of activity in their DMN. Then, after 10 weeks with either duloxetine or placebo, the patients’ brain activity was measured again. Patients who had received the antidepressant showed brain activity in the DMN more like control subjects than those patients who just got the placebo. The authors conclude that antidepressant treatments “normalize” activity in the DMN.
But there are a couple problems here. First, what exactly is the default mode network? Well, it’s a group of brain areas that “lights up” in brain imaging between tasks. It’s sometimes used to describe the brain’s resting state. But it also can be selectively activated when subjects are given self-directed tasks (like asking a participant “what did you buy at the store?” rather than “what did your roommate buy at the store?”). And while previous studies have shown that DMN activity is higher in depressed patients than in control subjects, what that means in terms of therapy (pharmacological or otherwise) has yet to be understood.
Second, brain imaging is always, by necessity, nothing more than correlated with behavior. Which makes it pretty difficult to draw any giant conclusions here. And third, possibly most importantly, the authors did not see any correlation between improvement of dysthymia symptoms and DMN activity. That’s right. Even though they’d like us to believe DMN activation plays a crucial role in depression and antidepressants, they really only found half that story. And it’s a really muddled story to begin with.
So, what exactly are we supposed to do with this? Right now, I’d say nothing.
Originally wrote this for class. Now it’s here.
Tagged as:neuroscience,default mode network,antidepressants,dysthymia,my life,
What is oral allergy syndrome?
Actually it’s a lot like “The Fugitive”
It’s a case of mistaken identity. Persecuted for crimes they didn’t commit, raw fruits and veggies can incite a series of puzzling allergic reactions if oral allergy syndrome is around to mess things up.
Imagine a humble apple as our Dr. Richard Kimble (obviously, still played by David Janssen). That apple is a great, upstanding piece of deliciousness. It’s packed with vitamin C, gives you a sweet dose of natural sugar, and pays its taxes on time. That apple only wanted to help. And it definitely did not murder its wife.
But, like Kimble, that apple had one important force working against it – its proteins are unfortunately similar to the allergens found in birch tree pollen. And in people who already have seasonal allergies to pollen, oral allergy syndrome (OAS) causes the body to confuse those otherwise harmless apple proteins for the birch pollen ones. So, unlike other allergies to things like pollen, dust, and animal dander, OAS isn’t just your immune system being oversensitive. And unlike classic food allergies, it’s not really the food you’re allergic to.
I wrote another thing for Allergen & Tonic. If you’re unlucky enough to be like me and have OAS, this one’s for you.
