Communicating Neuroscience to the World

Chaz Firestone over at the blog Neuroethics at the Core posted an article back in December about the critical need for promoting an organized effort at communicating neuroscience to the general public. Chaz's article was motivated by an article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience entitled: Neurotalk: improving the communication of neuroscience research. The article addresses the problem of the increasing need for neuroscientists to communicate their research, as well as the implications of their discoveries, to the public.

The article notes the historical difficulty of assuring accurate representation of complex neuroscience concepts by the mass media.

"... neuroscience is among several scientific disciplines that are particularly prone to misinformation and inaccurate reporting. Sensational media headlines that evoke mind reading, a neurogenetic basis for fidelity or voting patterns, memory boosters for the healthy, and miracle cures for sensory and movement disorders are but a few examples."

Given the ease with which discoveries in neuroscience transformed into sensationalist headlines, and the existence of a public audience who does not possess sufficient background knowledge to critically evaluate such headlines, the authors suggest three courses of action for the neuroscience community.

1. A cultural shift within the scientific community regarding communication with the public.

"Owing to the increasing relevance of neuroscience to society, the communication of neuroscience research needs to be made a priority in the professional community, similar to protecting the rights of human subjects and ensuring appropriate animal care in research. Institutional support, which is required to advance this goal, begins with explicitly valuing the effort."

The authors cite many specific examples of how public communication could be valued. They also state the need to encourage the cultural shift at the training level:

"Neuroscience trainees and neuroscience training curricula should be at the core of the culture shift in communication education and funding. It is important to train doctoral students not just to be experts in a specific field or subfield but also to uphold the integrity of their discipline and to commit to generating new knowledge and critically evaluating that knowledge. This will help them to understand and appreciate how their work fits into the larger intellectual framework and social landscape as well as to communicate information clearly and effectively to a broad range of audiences²⁹."

2. Creating Neuroscience Communication specialists.

"Specialized training of journalists, editors and neuroscientists is needed to promote effective communication of important neuroscience findings and considerations of their ethical, social and policy impact. We propose that specialists from both the academic and non-academic neuroscience community who can serve as specialists or ambassadors in neuroscience communication should be identified and should bring their interests to the attention of their supervisors, faculty heads and deans."

3. Conducting research of science communication.

"More empirical data are needed on neuroscience communication. It is imperative to understand the receptivity to, motivation for and barriers to communication of both neuroscience findings and their social impact. The complexities of commercialization and partnerships between academia and industry, including conflicts of interest and intellectual property and risks to the privacy of brain data, expand this imperative^{17, 31}."

Any scientist who has been confronted with a radical misrepresentation of his/her field in the media can appreciate the need for better communication to the public. The authors call upon scientific institutions, as well as individuals, to push for a more developed appreciation for scientist/public interactions within the scientific community. As Chaz Firestone points out, the eagerness with which the public latches on to the sensationalist headlines implies a high level of interest in neuroscience and the brain. We should take advantage of that interest. But only if we, as a community, work to ensure the effective, clear and, above all, accurate communication of our research.

Tweeting the Brain by Chaz Firestone

Neurotalk: improving the communication of neuroscience research. Illes J, et al. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 11, 61-69. Jan. 2010. doi:10.1038/nrn2773

Spurring Clean Technology Growth in California

A bit of technology news: Yesterday, Governor Scharzenegger visited Cobalt Technologies in Mountain View to announce a plan to help encourage the growth of clean technology in California. Cobalt Technologies works to generate a viable biofuel alternative to petroleum. Recently, they succeeded in synthesizing a substance called biobutanol, that meets their internal requirements: generate lower emissions, capable of being used in existing engines and petroleum infrastructure, and below the cost of petroleum.

According to their CEO Rick Wilson:

"it can be blended in with gasoline, diesel fuel and ethanol gasoline blends, it can be converted into jet fuel, it can be converted into propylene to make polypropylene-based plastics or it can be sold into the chemical solvent market as a green chemical alternative."

Wow. That is an impressive list of applications. And did Rick Wagner mention that biobutanol reduces emissions by a whopping 85%, and produces amounts of energy far in excess of other biofuels like corn ethanol. And Cobalt Technologies is ready to immediately scale up to commercial facilities.

During the course of the presentation, Rick Wagner goes on to sing the praises of his companies biofuel, followed by a speech by the Governor, who announced a program to help encourage companies like Cobalt Technologies. The Job Initiative includes a sale tax exemption for the purchase of green technology manufacturing equipment, as well as:

The $500 million for a hiring tax credit, so if you hire new people you get a tax credit for that. And retraining programs, which is very important. If you keep them in your company for more than nine months then you can get also additional tax credit.

Then there's a measure to streamline the permitting of construction jobs and projects,

And then an extension of the home-buyers' tax credit for new and for existing homes,

And the tort reform is the fourth piece of our legislation here. It is tort reform to eliminate frivolous lawsuits that hurt businesses and they kill jobs.

More speeches follow, including one by the newly appointed Mayor of Mountain View, Mayor Ronit Bryant. (Full disclosure: Mayor Bryant is my mother.)

The full text, and a video of the conference is located on the state website.

Stanford Hospital's Pneumatic Tubes

Despite working for over 2 years in and around the Stanford Hospital building, I was completely unaware of the existence of a vast network of pneumatic tubes used to transport lab samples across the medical center. According to an article on the Med School website, this system consists of 4 miles of tubing laced behind the walls and is used 7,000 times a day, to shuttle footlong containers that can carry anything from blood to medication.

Apparently the use of a pneumatic tube system is not unique to Stanford, but ours is the largest, having "124 stations (every nursing unit has one); 141 transfer units, 99 inter-zone connectors and 29 blowers." The containers "can reach speeds of up to 25 feet per second, about 18 miles per hour".

For more information about Stanfords Pneumatic Tube delivery system, see the original article.

Has anyone every used this system to send materials?

Update: Baroness Greenfield, a perspective by Susan Blackmore

I am a huge fan of Susan Blackmore. So although I wasn't going to post anything further on the firing of Baroness Greenfield from the Royal Institution, when I saw that she had written an opinion about the situation for the Guardian, I changed my mind. Those who do not harbor an irrational fondness for the blogs of various British Neuroscientists, might be unaware of the rocky relationship between Baroness Greenfield and the scientific community of the UK. Although Baroness Greenfield was a dynamic leader, she held rather unfortunate scientific beliefs that her position allowed her to air publicly.

As I have not been long acquainted with the Baroness, I wil allow Susan Blackmore, who has known her 40 years, to explain the situation.

I highly recommend reading the whole opinion piece,  but here are her ending paragraphs, where she gives an example of one of the instances where Baroness Greenfield loudly promoted scientifically unfounded opinions.

Then there are her dire warnings about the harms of playing computer games. This story would be funny if it were not so serious. I heard her speak last summer at the Cheltenham Science Festival, where the brochure described her "outspoken views. Praised and criticised in equal measure". There she claimed that our brains could be physically damaged by playing too many computer games. Ironically, she was simultaneously promoting her own commercial brand of brain-training device – "MindFit" – basically a simple computer game advertised as "based on scientific studies of the adaptability of the adult human brain" and "clinically proven to help you think faster, focus better and remember more". When I was recently asked to write about the evidence for brain-training games of this sort, I learned that there is no proper peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that any of them, including her own, actually improve brain function any more than playing Scrabble, chess or other computer games. And to cap it all, there is now evidence that playing fast-moving, first-person perspective computer games improves reaction times and some measures of intelligence. So she has been endorsing one unproven computer product while claiming that others do harm.

I applaud Susan for her dynamism and her many successes, but I wish she had behaved more like a real scientist.

Goodbye to a not-so-good-scientist. By Susan Blackmore

Did the Marsupial Lion Climb Trees?

What could be better than a lion-sized carnivorous marsupial? If said marsupial hunted by stalking, then dragging its prey into the trees.

This possibility is discussed in an article by one of the many, excellent, bloggers over at ScienceBlogs.

According to Brian Switek, owner of the Laelaps blog:

A close relative of living koalas, kangaroos, and wombats, the largest species of Thylacoleo were lion-sized carnivores that stalked the Australian continent between 2 million and 45 thousand years ago.

Due to anatomical features both curious and incomplete, a debate has been raging over whether  the hunting tactics of Thylacoleo were either similar to those used by leopards (who drag their prey into the trees) or to those used by lions (who don't). The evidence for either case would lie in the hind feet (if Thylacoleo climbed trees carrying heavy prey, the hind limbs would show obvious tree-climbing-facilitating specializations), of which, unfortunately, there were no complete examples.

Until now.

The article describes the discovery of a complete hind limb, which shows major differences from those of cats.

The paleontologist explains:

Cats are digitigrade, or they are standing up on their "tippy toes" all the time. The foot of Thylacoleo, though, is plantigrade, or like ours in that the metatarsal bones support part of the foot that touches the ground (to pick an example among carnivores, bears also have plantigrade feet). The feet also have a bit of a curve to them; in the restored foot the bones around the ankle articulation slant to the left while the metatarsal and toes slant to the right.

The paper reported by the article comes down in favor of the Like-A-Leopard hypothesis, as the toes, the curvature of the foot, and the presence of retractable claws on the ends of the toes would all have aided the Thylacoleo to grasp tree trunks. More research is promised by the authors, and so evidence does seem to be accumulating to add another animal to the special group ensuring the elimination of the "Climbing a Tree" monster-avoidance strategy.

Did the "Marsupial Lion" climb trees?

MDMA (Ecstasy) as Therapy

As a first year neuroscience graduate student, I am required to take a course in Neuroanatomy. Designed for medical students, this course mixes basic neuroscience ideas with clinically relevant facts. Amusingly the need to maintain some sort of clinical relevancy is often expressed by detailed explanations about how various recreational drugs modulated the brain. In light of today's explanation of how cocaine and MDMA (Ecstacy) affect domapinergic and serotonergic neurons, respectively, I was amused to run into an article about the use of Ecstasy to resolve psychiatric issues. The article makes for interesting reading, explaining the history of MDMA creation and use as a therapeutic tool.

MDMA (Ecstasy) as Therapy

UPDATE 1/13/2010: MDMA, aka Ecstasy, is in FDA-approved trials for use as a treatment for PTSD

U Penn's Neuroscience Boot Camp

For any non-neuroscientists out there who are interested in learning what all the fuss is about, the Center for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania is holding its Neuroscience Boot Camp from August 1-11th. The camp is "a summer institute on neuroscience for professionals and graduate students in law, ethics, education and other fields", and works to give attendees a basic foundation in cognitiva and affective neuroscience, allowing them to be "informed consumers of neuroscience research". I firmly believe that programs like U Penn's are extremely important undertakings, especially as neuroscience continues to receive increasing exposure non-scientific communities. With the powerful neuroscience technologies being developed, it will become critical that non-neuroscientists will be able to differentiate between bogus claims, and legitimate research.

U Penn Neuroscience Boot Camp. Unfortunately space is limited.

From the Twitter feeds...

Think what you will of Twitter, but I firmly believe that in the right context, its a great way of sharing information. One prime example is in the growing numbers of neuroscientists who are taking advantage of the communal structure to share papers, news, and thoughts. Over the break, I expanded the list of those I follow to include some excellently prolific neuroscience tweeters. Below is a selection of links gleaned from some of my favorite postings from over the break. Why climate change does not equal less snow. (@bengoldacre)

If you make academic papers Open Access, more people will cite them. (@noahWG and @bengoldacre)

Ramachandran speaks about mirror neurons at TED, video at the link. He argues that mirror neurons built civilization. (@vaughanbell)

Thebeautifulbrain.com; a website exploring "the art and science of the human mind" (@mocost)

A twin study suggests that the specific cognitive ability of face perception is heritable , but which genes are involved is a complete mystery. (@mocost)

Baroness Greenfield, head of Britian's Royal Institution has just be let go. In response, she is suing for "sex discrimiation". If you have never heard of Baroness Greenfield, Ben Goldacre, who writes about "dodgy scientific claims" (his words) when he's not being a doctor, will explain her to you. (@mocost, @vaughanbell, @bengoldacre)

Happy New Year!

Belated wishes for a good New Year! Editors Note: With the start of Stanford's Winter Semester catapulting researchers and students back into full productivity, updates to the website were temporarily postponed. Normal service is expected to return following acclimation to new schedules.

Entrepreneurial Aspirations?

For anyone considering a more entrepreneurial focus for their scientific career, here are some helpful tips from David G. Jensen, brought to you by Science Careers. Not being a science-focused entrepreneur, I can't comment on the state of neuroscience entrepreneurial opportunities. But irrespective of the stated focus on how to presenting technological ideas to a wider audience, the advice presented sounds applicable for any presentation situation.