Neurotalk S2E16 Chengua Gu
/This week in Neurotalk, we speak with Chengua Gu about the molecules linking axon guidance, cardiovascular development, and synapse formation.
Dr. Gu is an associate professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.
The 2014 Flame Challenge Question: What Is Color?
/The Flame Challenge invites working scientists to answer a simple question, generated by 11-year-olds, both simply and accurately. Talia Lerner presents her video-based entry, which goes from the physical reality of light, to the biological process of color vision. Plus, there is an adorable hand-drawn bull.
Read MoreNeurotalk S2E15 Thomas Schwarz
/This week on Neurotalk, we speak with Thomas Schwarz about the diversity of potassium channels, the link between mitochondria and Parkinson's disease, what young scientists can learn from Julius Caesar, and more!
Read MoreAsk a Neuroscientist: What's it like to have Broca's or Wernicke's Aphasia?
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Julia Turan answers a question about the language deficits experienced by patients with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. Read on to learn whether Wernicke's aphasiacs have difficulty writing, and to see amazing videos of stroke patients with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.
Read MoreA slap to the back of the neck: An antidote for pressure point TKO?
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The other week, I received a fantastic question from a gentleman named Bill. He wanted to know whether there was any neurological basis in (what is apparently) a common technique for recovering a martial arts practitioner from a knock out induced by a strike to pressure points.
As I've pretty much forgotten everything I ever knew about spinal nerves, I pulled a "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", and phoned (read: emailed) a friend. Well, three friends. One of whom contacted a neurology resident.
Our collective conclusion: the recovery technique is probably BS.
Read MoreAre most published research findings false?
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There has been much wringing of hands of late over findings that many scientific findings are proving impossible to reproduce – meaning, they were probably wrong. Coverage in the news, concern expressed by the President's council of scientific advisors, and a call to action by Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), all suggest that this is a problem that the scientific community needs to understand and address.
In the recent issue of the journal Nature, Francis Collins and Lawrence Tabak (the deputy director of the NIH) outline their plan for improving scientific reproducibility, emphasizing a need for improving experimental design, statistical analysis, and transparency.
Read MoreOf Love and Neuroscience
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For Valentine’s Day, let's take a look at the neuroscience of love.
See: an online version of the Passionate Love Scale used by psychologists and neuroscientists alike to measure love.
Learn: why being passionately in love has some similarity to being addicted to cocaine.
Read MoreA Synaptic Plasticity Twofer: Synaptic distance and Glutamatergic exclusivity
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In this edition of Ask a Neuroscientist, Dr. David Bochner tackles a pair of questions: 1) Whether synaptic plasticity means that synapses move closer together, and 2) Whether the predominance of papers describing plasticity at glutamatergic synapses means that other synapses aren't plastic.
Spoilers: The answer to both these questions is no. Read below the fold to learn why.
Read MoreNeurotalk S2E14 Don Cleveland
/This week on the Neurotalk podcast, Don Cleveland talks about the mechanisms underlying ALS and other motor neuron disorders, the shift in our basic understanding of how gene mutations lead to human disease, and more!
Dr. Cleveland is professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego.
Ask a Neuroscientist: How do I get into the Stanford Neuro PhD Program?
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In this edition of Ask a Neuroscientist, what does it take to get into the Stanford Neuroscience PhD program?
To help me answer this question, I sat down with the newly minted director of the Stanford Neurosciences PhD Program, Dr. Anthony (Tony) Ricci. Before his appointment as Program Director, Tony served on the Stanford PhD Program Admissions Committee; he also was involved in graduate admissions at Louisiana State University prior to his appointment at Stanford. Tony believes that graduate admission should be a transparent process, and so was happy to share his personal approach to selecting applicants.
We discuss the process by which 500 applicants are narrowed down to 30 invited interviewees, and what a successful application needs to prevent rejection.
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