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Ed: This post was originally published by our partners at the Berkeley Science Review, October 1, 2013http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/learning-about-touch-sensation-from-an-unlikely-creature-the-star-nosed-mole/
This is the first in a three part series introducing the science of touch sensation.
Read MoreWhat started as an idea for a birthday party got a little out of hand. The California Academy of Sciences (one of the largest natural history museums in the world) runs an annual sleepover for grownups, during which visitors can explore the museum after hours then roll out their camping gear and sleep with the fishes in the aquarium or with the penguins in the African hall. This year, Antoine de Morrée (co-chair of the Stanford University Postdoctoral Association) decided that instead of convincing a handful of friends to attend the sleepover, the association should get together a committee to convince 40 Stanford postdocs to spend days preparing samples and scientific stories to share with the public. Astonishingly, that’s exactly what happened.
Read MoreEach week the Stanford Neurosciences Institute (SNI) invites a prominent scientist to come to campus and share their most recent work with the Stanford community. Each week, as part of the Neuwrite West podcast NeuroTalk, we engage the SNI speaker in an informal interview/conversation. This week, we talk to Graeme Davis about teaching neurobiology at Wood's Hole, how a synapse maintains homeostasis, and more!
Dr. Davis is a professor of neuroscience at UC San Francisco.
Listen to NeuroTalk S2E5 Graeme Davis by NeuWriteWest | Explore the largest community of artists, bands, podcasters and creators of music & audio.
Listening options: Our conversation with professor Davis can be streamed or downloaded here: NeuroTalk S2E5 Graeme Davis You can also subscribe to NeuroTalk though iTunes by searching for "Neuwritewest" in the iTunes store and subscribing to our channel.
How useful is the laboratory mouse to research on neurodegenerative disease? Anybody who’s dissected a mouse knows that its organs are strikingly similar to textbook pictures of human organs. However, the brain is a special case. Though there are broad similarities, such as that both humans and mice have a hippocampus, humans have many more neurons, many more connections between them, and vastly more intellectual capacity. With this in mind, some neurobiologists advocate using mice to study biochemical pathways that may underlie neurodegenerative disease and not the symptoms or the clinical outcomes. The latest breakthrough in research on neurodegenerative diseases, announced in an October 9 paper in Science Translational Medicine by Julie Moreno and colleagues, is a good example of this approach.
Read MoreEach week the Stanford Neurosciences Institute (SNI) invites a prominent scientist to come to campus and share their most recent work with the Stanford community. Each week, as part of the Neuwrite West podcast NeuroTalk, we engage the SNI speaker in an informal interview/conversation. This week, we talk to Gail Mandel about her long, and winding journey into neuroscience, what makes a neuron a neuron, how astrocytes contribute to neurological disorder, and more!
Dr. Mandel is a Senior Scientist at the Vollum Institute and a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Oregon Health and Science University, as well as an HHMI investigator.
Gail Mandel talks about her long, and winding journey into neuroscience, what makes a neuron a neuron, how astrocytes contribute to neurological disorder, and more! Dr. Mandel is a Senior Scientist at the Vollum Institute and a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Oregon Health and Science University, as well as an HHMI investigator.
Listening options:
Our conversation with professor Mandel can be streamed or downloaded here:
You can also subscribe to NeuroTalk though iTunes by searching for "Neuwritewest" in the iTunes store and subscribing to our channel.
This week on NeuroTalk, we bring you a special report about a scientific sleepover hosted by the California Academy of Science called Penguins & Pajamas! Stanford postdocs from a variety of disciplines presented on their research, and we bring stories from the event, and speak with Mary Cavanagh and Antoine de Morree from the Stanford postdoc association. Below, you'll also find full interviews with many of the postdocs at the event.
This week we bring you a special report about a scientific sleepover hosted by the California Academy of Science called Penguins & Pajamas! Stanford postdocs from a variety of disciplines presented on their research, and we bring stories from the event, and speak with Mary Cavanagh and Antoine de Morree from the Stanford postdoc association.
David Zhang talks about the science behind cloning, and the ongoing efforts to clone a woolly mammoth.
Felice Kelly and Fiona Strouts talk about how live bacteria and yeasts transform simple ingredients into more complex flavors.
Gazi Yildirim talks about the Quake Catcher Network, the world's largest, low-cost strong-motion seismic network.
Learn more about the Quake Catcher Network here: http://qcn.stanford.edu/
Jenny Lumb describes the science of hula-hooping!
Jolyn Gisselberg
Merav Vonshak talks about the worldwide domination of invasive ants and consequences for biodiversity.
Rico Rojas talks about cholera, climate change, and the ecological relationships between humans and their pathogens.
Zeeshan Maan talks about translating research from the bench to the bedside.
Urvi Vyas talks about conducting brain surgery without ultrasound.
Viola Caretti talks about a novel approach to studying brain cancer by using light-activated neuronal stimulation.
Stefano Bonetti explains how to use magnetism to get a levitating train.
Avi Adhikari talks about the neurobiology underlying anxiety.
All pictures by Mark Padolina and Luqia Hou.
You can find more information about the Stanford Postdoc Association on their website: http://www.stanford.edu/group/supd/
or their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordUniversityPostdoctoralAssociation
You can find more information about Penguins & Pajamas on the California Academy of Sciences website: http://www.calacademy.org/events/sleepovers/
For more information about Stanford's involvement in Penguins & Pajamas, and other events, you can also contact Mary Cavanagh directly at museumpostdocs@gmail.com
Each week the Stanford Neurosciences Institute (SNI) invites a prominent scientist to come to campus and share their most recent work with the Stanford community. Each week, as part of the Neuwrite West podcast NeuroTalk, we engage the SNI speaker in an informal interview/conversation, with the aim of gaining a better insight into the speaker’s personality, and providing a platform for the kinds of stories which are of interest to us but are often left out of more formal papers or presentations. This week, we talk to Diana Bautista about the difference between itch and pain, the curious organ of the star-nosed mole, and more! Dr. Bautista is an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California at Berkeley.
This week, we talk to Diana Bautista about the difference between itch and pain, the curious organ of the star-nosed mole, and more! Dr. Bautista is an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California at Berkeley.
Other listening options: Our conversation with professor Bautista can be streamed or downloaded here: NeuroTalk S2E2 Diana Bautista You can also subscribe to NeuroTalk though iTunes by searching for "Neuwritewest" in the iTunes store and subscribing to our channel.
Please let us know if you have any trouble accessing the podcast.
Thanks, and enjoy!
On behalf of NeuWrite West, Erica Seigneur Forrest Collman Mark Padolina
Dopamine neurons are some of the most studied, most sensationalized neurons out there. Lately, though, they’ve been going through a bit of an identity crisis. What is a dopamine neuron? Some interesting recent twists in dopamine research have definitively debunked the myth that dopamine neurons are all of a kind – and you should question any study that treats them as such.
Read MoreWeighing in at 58 pages, the Interim Report of the BRAIN Working Group (online version, here) is a detailed document that identifies and discusses eight research areas that were determined by the working group (with help from expert consultants, aka additional neuroscientists) to be high priority areas for the 2014 fiscal year. So what are these high priority research areas? How closely do they hew to ongoing research areas long acknowledged as important by the neuroscience community? How much do they rely on recruiting non-neuroscientists to research teams? How clearly do these areas address the Presidential mandate of the BRAIN Initiative? Will these goals help us to elucidate the importance of the Initiative, both in our minds and in the minds of the general public?
What follows are my impressions of the critical points contained within each of the eight sections that make up the body of the Interim Report.
Read More
Welcome to the new year of school, and a new year of NeuroTalk! In the first episode of our second season, our guest is Yun Zhang, an associate professor of biology at Harvard University. We speak with professor Zhang about growing up in science, and studying learning and behavior in C.elegans!
Note to listeners: we had some connectivity issues while conducting the interview, so the audio quality is not as good in some places.
Welcome to the new year of school, and a new year of NeuroTalk! In our first episode of our second season, we speak with Yun Zhang about growing up in science, and learning and behavior in the nematode C.elegans! Yun Zhang is an associate professor of biology at Harvard University.
You can also stream or download this NeuroTalk here:
Season 1 of NeuroTalk is still available for your listening pleasure here:
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