Creation: the Movie

I must admit, when I first saw a post for the upcoming movie Creation, I experienced a brief moment of panic. These days, the word "Creation" is associated (at least in my mind) with a host of unfortunate connotations. However, I had no reason to fear, as Creation (whose trailer is currently up on Hulu, link at the bottom), is in fact, a dramatization of Charles Darwin's writing of Origin of the Species. With Paul Bettany in the role of Darwin, this movie appears to be focused on Darwin's journey to writing the book, as well as the effects it had on his marriage and social standing. Although most of the dialogue seemed to address those subjects, there was one visual of a ship at sea. Presumably this involves the voyage of the Beagle, implying that some filming was done at the Galapagos. Very few mainstream films have filmed at the Galapagos, the first one being Master and Commander (which curiously also featured Bettany as a naturalist).

I will be interested in how this film mediates the choppy waters of depicting evolution and the battle between Darwin's writings and the beliefs of Christianity. With scenes of Darwin's wife accusing him of betraying his faith prominently displayed in the trailer, it looks like this film is not shying away from the subject.

The film was released in the UK in September. I wonder how the film will be received in America, given that with a January release, I have yet to see any major press. Being rather jaded about the ability of America to engage in a measured discussion of evolution, I wouldn't be surprised to see a very limited release of the film. But perhaps I underestimate film studios and people in general.

Creation Trailer on apple.com. In theatres Jan. 22.

I'll most likely post a review soon after the release date.

Astrocytes critical for Long Term Potentiaton

It's news that would make Ben Barres extremely happy. Last week in Nature, an article describes a role for astrocytes in memory. Specifically, the researchers found that long term potentiation depends on the release of D-serine from astrocytes.

The role for astrocytes in long-term potentiation (and well, everything) remains somewhat controversial. Neurons can synthesize D-serine themselves, leading to debate over whether astrocytes were really necessary, despite results showing that release of D-serine from glia allows LTP in cultures. In authors come down in favor of a role for astrocytes, showing that "induction of NMDAR-dependent LTP at excitatory hippocampal synapses depends on the availability of NMDARs provided by the Ca2+-dependent release of D-serine from a local astrocyte." The authors go on to suggest that neighboring astrocytes will have distinctive effects on their local synapses, but will also likely have an extended influence, potentially allowing LTP of synapses contacted by the activated astrocyte, extending LTP into a ranged alteration of potentially hundreds of additional neurons/synaptic contacts.

Henneberger et al. Long-term potentiation depends on release of D-serine from astrocytes. Nature, 463, 232-236 (2010).

And for those of you not acquainted with Dr. Ben Barres, or why the news that astrocytes are important would make him happy, I refer you to his Stanford academic profile, where you can read about "The Mystery and Magic of Glia".

Watching death glow in real time

Researchers at the UCL Institute of Opthalmology describe in Nature their novel use of fluorescent proteins to monitor nerve cell death in real time. All neurodegenerative disorders involve nerve cell death at some point in their pathology. Research into the molecular events underlying apoptosis and necrosis has advanced significantly, with many elements and triggers recognized as common between difference neurodegenerative disorders. However, research investigating the progression and dynamics of disorders has relied upon histological or in vitro analysis, limiting the types of results obtainable.

Happily for the advancement of knowledge, the UCL group has tagged two cell death markers with fluorescent labels, allowing in vivo imaging of disease progression in live cultures cells. The two markers in question are annexin V and propidium iodide (PI), which have been previously established as a method for differentiating between apoptosis and necrosis (presumably in histological sections).

The UCL groups paper in Cell Disease and Death details their use of fluorescent-labelled annexin V and PI to image retinal ganglion cell apoptosis in the mammalian eye. They report that they were able to track changes to individual neurons over hours, days, and week. All together, sounds like another win in the fluorescent protein column.

Oddly, the conclusion of the paper states that the reported imaging could be useful in a clinical setting.

"Although the equipment we use in these studies has been customised to suit animal models, the instruments are essentially the same as those used in hospitals and clinics around the world. This raises the possibility that in the near future, clinicians may be able to assess retinal nerve cell death in vivo as a method of monitoring disease progression and treatment efficacy."

With an experimental procedure that requires the injection of fluorescent labeled proteins, I will be very curious to see how (and if) the technique transitions from rats and mice to humans.

Cordeiro MF et al. Imaging multiple phases of neurodegeneration: a novel approach to assessing cell death in vivo. Cell Death and Disease: 1, e3 (2010)

Searching for an Introduction to Neuroscience?

Are you interested in learning about neuroscience, but have already graduated from college? Are you looking for some simple recommendations for resources that will help satisfy your deep-seated desire to learn about the marvelous inner workings of the brain? Do you know someone who is?

Never fear, Noah Gray (also known as @noahWG on twitter) has some advice regarding the best way to get up to speed on current thinking in the neuroscience field.

Noah Gray, answering the question: What's the best way for a post-college person to learn about neuroscience from scratch?

Note: Noah's advice includes both blogs and books that are useful/interesting for people besides those with college degrees and no experience in neuroscience. Both pre-college and college students would find the resources useful, and I, as a graduate student in Neurosciences, have the blogs he mentions perpetually bookmarked.

Also, one personal addition to the list of books mentioned is Susan Blackmore excellent series of interviews, called Conversations of Consciousness. This book really helped get me hooked on neuroscience while I was in college, and provides an excellent sampler of various theories in the field of consciousness.

Genetics explains Shar-pei wrinkles

The search for the genetic underpinnings of various phenotypes is a vast undertaking. As our knowledge of the relationships between genotypes and phenotypes matures, we have found more evidence that any particular phenotypic trait is encoded by the interactions of a host of genes, in concert with various environmental variables.

Given the vast complexity that geneticists have been slowly uncovering, it is always cheering to read about scientists localizing particular traits to a particular set of genes.

Especially if those traits and genes involve puppies.

The BBC reports that scientists have identified the genetic forces that play a role in giving the Shar-pei its distinctive wrinkled appearance. In particular, researchers have identified four single nucleotide polymorphisms located on the gene HAS2, which encodes an enzyme (hyaluronic acid synthase 2) known to be important for skin production (it makes hyaluronic acid, one of the principle components in skin). These SNP's were found while comparing a specific stretch of DNA between wrinkled Shar-peis, smooth coated Shar-peis, and other breeds. In addition, the group identified 155 genomic regions containing candidate genes for such phenotypes as are usually distinctive in breeds: size, coat color and texture, behavior, skeletal morphology, and physiology.

The full article is available at PNAS.

Fish gills evolved for chemo-regulation, not breathing?

The BBC reports on a paper in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B by a group of zoologists from the University of British Columbia, Canada. These zoologists, lead by Clarice Fu, studied the development of gills in rainbow trout larvae. They found that the larval gills developed the ability to regulate blood chemicals significantly earlier than the ability to exchange oxygen. As fish mature, both their ion exchange, and the oxygen uptake shifts from being primarily localized to the skin, to being localized to the gills. By studying the ability of young rainbow trout gills to exchange ions and to take up oxygen, the zoologists found that the localization of the ion uptake shifted to the gills first.

Clarice Fu et al go on to use the developing larvae as a model of evolutionary pressures, therefore proposing that as the rainbow trout evolved, ion exchange moved to the gills before the animals started breathing through their gills.

The question remains: why did fish evolve gills in the first place? Ion exchange can only move to the gills if the structures are already in place and capable of supporting exchange.

Locating the neural substrates of emotional intelligence

An article in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) is reporting that two types of emotional intelligence: "experimental" and "strategic", can be localized to two distinct brain regions.

The researchers at NINDS gave various tests to a group of Vietnam veterans who had sustained head injuries (the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, for all you human intelligence test aficionados out there). Vets who had injuries to their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex performed poorly on tasks that tested "experimental" emotional intelligence (the ability to judge emotions in other people). In contrast, vets with injuries to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex did not succeed at tasks testing "strategic" emotional intelligence (the ability to plan socially appropriate responses to situations).

Neither of the groups showed any deficit in general cognitive intelligence, leading the researchers to conclude that emotional intelligence can be dissociated from cognitive intelligence. They go on to describe the social importance of this proposal, saying that by recognizing the complementary nature of emotional and cognitive intelligence, we may be able to resolve the conflict between the dual influences of cognition and emotional intelligences in behavioral economics, particularly by recognizing that  "social exchange is a fundamental distinguishing feature of humans and that it finds expression in both impersonal exchange through large-group markets and personal exchange in small-group social transactions (59)."

Unfortunately, they do not discuss the implications of the distinct localizations of the two types of emotional intelligence. However, given the popularity of the subject, I am sure that such studies, both from the neurological and from the neuro-economic camps, are in our futures.

Krueger F, et al. The neural bases of key competencies of emotional intelligence. PNAS, 106: 22486-22491 (2009).

Good news for the coffee addicts

This just in: Consuming caffeine does not cause or aggravate tinnitus, the phenomenon of ringing in the ears that affects nearly 15% of adults in the UK.

Previously, giving up caffeine was thought to be one way to cure tinnitus. Now, research from the Centre for Hearing and Balance Studies at Bristol University has shown that, in fact, acute caffeine withdrawal might make that annoying ringing sound you keep hearing worse.

Says Dr. Lindsay St. Claire, the lead researcher:

"With almost 85 per cent of adults in the world consuming caffeine daily, we wanted to challenge the claim that caffeine makes tinnitus worse. Many professionals support caffeine withdrawal as a tinnitus therapy, even though there is a lack of any relevant evidence, and, in fact, acute symptoms of caffeine withdrawal might even make tinnitus worse."

I'd like to personally thank the intrepid researchers who have provided me with another excellent reason to keep drinking the yummy coffee.

Neuroscience as unregulated plot device.

Updated as of 1/17/2010: see end of post. I freely admit to being a geek. This admission should hardly be surprising coming from a woman born and raised in the heart of Silicon Valley. No matter what your personal preference for defining a "geek", I am confident that I will fall within that definition.

I mention this explicitly as a lead in for the following statement: I consume a lot of science fiction, whether in book, television, or movie form. Ever since reading the Lord of the Rings in 2nd grade, I have been an avid follower of science fictional works. (Note: I am well aware that Tolkein's massive work is Fantasy, not Science Fiction. But there isn't much of a difference to a 2nd grader who just discovered the SciFi/Fantasy section of the library). To further establish my credentials, let me say that I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation with my parents, Stargate SG1 for 5 glorious years with my siblings (we came discovered it during the 5th season), and have recently enjoyed the offerings of Whedon's Dollhouse and Cameron's Avatar.

It was these last two that have motivated this post, with its rather lengthy biographical introduction.

Warning: comments that could be uncharitably described as whiny neuroscience nitpicking follow.

Over the past few months, I have become more aware of the use of Neuroscience as a plot device. Science, or more accurately, technobabble, has long been a hallowed institution of the science fiction genre. Anyone who has ever seen an episode of Stargate SG1 has most likely enjoyed the wonderful Amanda Tapping spouting some completely incomprehensible sequence of words, cobbled together by the writers with the sole purpose of indicating that SCIENCE was occuring.

For the most part, I take such babble  in the spirit it is meant: as a stand-in for scientific procedures and thinking that are required to be attended, but not comprehended. But with many science fiction shows now using neuroscience as a basis for their "science", I have been less able to suspend my belief. No longer are the syllables of the technobabble unrecognizable. Indeed, some of the phrases are highly recognizable. However, they remain completely incomprehensible.

An example. A few months ago, I was watching Joss Whedon's soon-to-disappear show Dollhouse. I won't try to explain the premise, but needless to say it involves wiping the personalities of people ("Dolls") and filling the resulting blank brains with made-to-order personalities. The show has established that these personalities involve creating memories, feelings, the whole enchilada, by manipulating brain connections. Lots of pretty lights and pictures are used to illustrate the concept. Of course, from a neuroscience perspective, our currently level of understanding completely prohibits such a feat. We can hardly delete a persons personality, much less load a new one, if we don't know what generates personalities and conscious thought in the first place. Despite this, my large experience with Science Fiction allowed me to happily ignore such a technicality, mentally allowing Mr. Whedon to use neuroscience as a plot device to advance his own storytelling agenda.

But about a month ago, I was struck by one scene in particular. During this scene, the main brain-altering-technician (Topher, for those of you who have seen the show) is making with the brain erasing. During the course of his rather frantic manipulations, he calls out something along the lines of "LTP has been de-potentiated!" Topher has just told us that he's de-potentiated the long term potentiation. Sounds amazing, except for the uncomfortable fact that LTP is a process whereby neuronal synapses are potentiated. So LTP itself would not be de-potentiated. The synapses that had undergone LTP would be de-potentiated.

I know this is a minor detail. And I'm not complaining about the dialogue, or the scene, or the episode, or the show. But that bit of dialogue, and my falling-out-of-the-chair-sputtering reaction (for which I was thoroughly smacked by my viewing partner), made me think about how neuroscience is presented in popular media.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Neuroscience is becoming increasingly integrated into popular culture. Avatar, which is on track to being the highest earning movie of all time, is heavily dependent upon some tricky (and completely improbable) neuroscience. For instance (and ignoring the whole subject of transferring consciousness to another body): claiming that a human brain was "100% neurally mapped" to an avatar brain, despite the fact that the avatar brain was obviously larger, and contained neural connections for integrating sensory and motor functions for two extra limbs. Limbs which the human consciousness inside had no functional problem with. Human minds are remarkably fragile when it comes to removing limbs from their neural connections. Why shouldn't adding limbs be any different?

As Neuroscience enters the public consciousness, there will be more and more examples of the popular media using highly specific neuroscience concepts to advance plot lines. I worry about the portrayal of the neuroscientists, as well as the willy-nilly co-opting of neuroscience terms. Although the script writers of Dollhouse, Avatar, and others are undoubtedly highly educated, can they be trusted with the language of neuroscience? Should they be encouraged towards requesting oversight? Should highly neuroscience-dependent scripts be run by actual neuroscientists before they are unleashed upon the general public?

Oversight of script writing by experts is not a new idea. It is now common that any fictional endeavor involving the military is assigned a liaison who ensures that the military is accurately (and positively) portrayed. Stargate SG1, for instance, had an Air Force liaison for many years, and even features real Air Force officers as guest stars. A viable argument for such a practice (the oversight, not the guest starring) is that the writers needed experts in how the Air Force functions to maintain a high level of credibility in their scripts.

Should science be any different?

Another show, FlashForward (one that I do not watch), recently suggested that the reason for a worldwide blackout that killed 20 million people was a "National Linear Accelerator Project", based in Palo Alto, California, that was conducting "proton-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration" experiments. Now, there isn't a National Linear Accelerator Project in Palo Alto, but there is the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Following the airing of the FlashForward episode in question, SLAC released a press release stating that SLAC does conduct plasma-wakefield acceleration experiments, but not on protons, as such technology does not exist. SLAC explained plasma-wakefield acceleration, the reason behind the experiments, and the fact that plasma-wakefield experiments could NOT cause a "flashforward":

Is there any way that plasma-wakefield experiments could cause a "flashforward"?

No. Plasma-wakefield acceleration is just an advanced technique to boost particles to high energies, something that particle physicists have been doing for decades. Even the most speculative theories rooted in real physics make no prediction that anything like a flashforward could occur.

“Although we can use particle accelerators to essentially look backward in time to recreate the conditions of the universe soon after the big bang, there is no known way to look into the future,” says Mark Hogan, chief experimental scientist for the plasma wakefield program at SLAC’s FACET."

I see a problem with a situation where a research group feels the need to release a press release distancing themselves for the actions of fictional scientists (albiet ones belonging to an entity so obviously based upon the real group). Without the quick thinking of the SLAC communications department, would there have been some people who became suspicious of the real life SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory based upon the fictional actions of FlashForward's National Linear Accelerator Project? I think there would be.

As the neuroscience that appears in fictional contexts becomes more similar to real-life theories and advances, it will become critical that Neuroscientists become involved in the creation of our fictional counterparts.

A shining example of such cooperation is the show Numb3rs, which features a gaggle of mathematicians helping solve FBI crimes in Los Angeles. The math in the show, which is regularly used to solve complex crimes, is actually written by mathematicians, and the mathematical concepts behind the shows usage are published by the show. During my college calculus course, we were given the math problems associated with the episodes and published by the shows. Particularly clever mathematics professors (at least the ones at Bryn Mawr College) are using the charismatic mathematicians written into the show to encourage interest in higher level math.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if neuroscience could do the same? So many shows currently airing involve neuroscience concepts. I don't watch Fringe, but I from what I have glimpsed, I imagine lots of faux-neuroscience is casually thrown around. Could neuroscientists band together to insist upon more sensical use of our field in the fictional media? Without constraining the fictional advances required to advance plot-lines, neuroscientists could help guide writers towards faux-neuroscience that is more plausible, helping to avoid mistakes in basic neuroscience concepts. Wouldn't such an effort, at the very least, advertise our field to the general public, sparking interest in the real advances in neuroscience?

I would argue that the answers to both questions are an emphatic yes.

Update 1/17/2010: While reading a NYTimes article by one Charles McGrath about the upcoming Starz miniseries Spartacus: Blood and Sand, I came across this quote by head writer Steven S. DeKnight:

"And within reason, he said, he also wants the show to be accurate. He even hired a couple of Ph.D. candidates in classics to pelt him with memos and e-mail messages about details like whether or not Capua had a governor and the wine-drinking habits of Thracians. “We bend history, of course,” he said. “But we try never to break it.”"

Here's to hoping Mr. DeKnight's example inspires his colleagues who are currently working with more science-based themes.

From the Twitter feeds

Time for another roundup of posts brought to us by the talented neuroscience twitterers: A British man with persistent hiccups is cured... by brain stem surgery. from @mocost

An online repository of 100 free science documentaries @bengoldacre

The next generation of ampakine "cognitive enhancers" @vaughanbell, @Wildcat2030

Is memory a quantum entanglement? @mocost