Home of the Stanford Neuroblog. Scientists writing about science, for a general audience.
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The carrot of desire and whip of fear are powerful drivers of our actions, but what happens when they are in conflict? How does the brain balance these great motivators in a scenario like the one you propose, where you are offered a million dollars to walk through a terrifying snake enclosure?
Read MoreJoin us for a very exciting edition of NeuroTalk as we examine the future of scholarly publishing. Nick Weiler interviews John Sack, founding director of High Wire Press, the groundbreaking e-publishing platform created in 1996 and now serving nearly 2,000 journals, ranging from Science to eLife. We go in-depth and discuss Sack's ideas about the future of scholarly journals, including the evolution of the "open access" movement, improvements to the peer review process, and the need for interactive online discussions around published science. Sack, a self-proclaimed futurist, muses about ongoing trends in publishing and whether we would even recognize the journals of the future. This is one episode you don't want to miss!
Read MoreDo you have a brain? Do you like to drink? Do you listen to our radio show Brains & Bourbon? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, we want to hear from you! We at Brains & Bourbon are always looking to improve the show, and we'd love to hear what our listeners have to say about it. If you have a few minutes to spare, please fill out our listener survey here: Brains & Bourbon Feedback Survey
In this exciting new episode of Brains & Bourbon, Zoya Farzampour talks to us about the role of non-neuronal brain cells in epilepsy, why electrophysiology is so dang cool, and much more!
Zoya is a 5th year graduate student in John Huguenard's lab here at Stanford.
Follow Dr. Marlieke van Kesteren during a hypothetical day in her postdoc life as a Cognitive Neuroscience researcher in the Department of Psychology at Stanford.
Read MoreThis week we sat down with new MCP Assistant Professor Lucy O'Brien over her favorite chocolate recovery shake to talk about studying stem cells in the fly gut and the great adventure of science.
We recently sat down with new MCP Assistant Professor Lucy O'Brien over her favorite chocolate recovery shake to talk about studying stem cells in the fly gut and the great adventure of science.
Check out the episode on SoundCloud, or subscribe to Brains and Bourbon via iTunes or Stitcher!
We sat down with Stanford Neuroscience graduate student Kelly Zalocusky over a Tom Collins to discuss the dopamine reward system, risk tolerance in rodents, and nut caching in squirrels, among other topics. Listen to individual segments from this show here: https://soundcloud.com/neuwritewest/sets/brains-bourbon-episode-15-a-tom-collins-with-kelly-zalocusky
A couple weeks ago, we sat down with Stanford Neuroscience graduate student Kelly Zalocusky over a Ginger Tom Collins to discuss the dopamine reward system, risk tolerance in rodents, and nut caching in squirrels, among other topics.
You can also listen to individual segments of this show here.
Here's the breakdown:
Part 1 (26:23) Dopamine System (extended)
“Anyone who has ever gotten out of bed at 6 in the morning knows that you need motivation in order to initiate movement”
Part 2 (26:48) Dopamine and Risk-Seeking Behavior in Rats, Rat fMRI, and the Not My Field game show
“Have you been able to make the risk-seeking rats into humdrum rats?”
Part 3 (20:05) Squirrels
“It turns out that they bury walnuts at the distance you would bury walnuts if you were planting a walnut orchard.”
Are you left handed? Right handed? Somewhere in between?
What is commonly thought of as "left" and "right" handedness, is probably more accurately described as a spectrum. Where we lie on that spectrum (from strongly right handed, to strongly left handed) can depend on the task we are performing. For example: you might be strongly left handed when it comes to writing, but you find it more natural to open a jar with your right hand. Or when you open the lid of a hinged box, you do so with either left or right hand.
We don't really have a good handle on what it is about the brain that makes us handed (or footed). But we do know that other animals also show similar preferences. So it's possible that handedness is some kind of fundamental feature of the way brains generate movement, and interface with muscles.
Read MoreComputer games are a guilty pleasure many of us indulge in when we think our co-workers aren’t looking over our shoulders, and using this pastime to make ourselves smarter feels a lot like cheating! So does this strategy actually work? Should you buy in to the brain training game, or cast your bets elsewhere?
Although brain games are based on sound principles, scientists are still reluctant to embrace their effectiveness. The crux of whether brain training programs meet their claims is whether specific task training can generalize to intelligence and every day cognitive function.
Read More
This week on Brains & Bourbon, we chat with Hank Greely about the ethics and laws of neuroscience. Topics include the legal and ethical concerns of personal genomics (such as 23 and Me), using fMRI as a complimentary tool for lie detection, establishing justice in cases of mental or psychiatric instability, bringing back extinct animals, and more! Hank Greely is a Professor of Law at Stanford University, and serves as the chair of the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research, director of the Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences as well as the new Stanford Program In Neuroscience and Society, or “SPINS.”
This week on Brains & Bourbon, we chat with Hank Greely about the ethics and laws of neuroscience. Topics include the legal and ethical concerns of personal genomics (such as 23 and Me), using fMRI as a complimentary tool for lie detection, establishing justice in cases of mental or psychiatric instability, bringing back extinct animals, and more!
Hank Greely is a Professor of Law at Stanford University, and serves as the chair of the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research, director of the Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences as well as the new Stanford Program In Neuroscience and Society, or “SPINS.”
Here is a video of the Tasmanian Tiger, Aka, the Thylacine that we discussed in the interview:
Tasmania Tiger, Thylacine, this is the last one, died in 1936. El último ejemplar murió en 1936
Home of NeuWrite West and the Stanford Neuroblog.
Do you have burning questions about how the brain works? You’ve come to the right place! Submit all your questions to NeuWrite West and we will have a neuroscientist research and answer your question.
Note: The NeuWrite West team consists of research scientists. Therefore, we can not provide answers to questions of a medical nature; we are not medical doctors.
Questions will have a turn-around time of approximately one month.
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