Anyone else into Neuroscience?

Fithealthyforlife

Among other things, I'm a neuroscientist at heart. I heard part of an interview with Antonio Damasio of Berkeley on the radio yesterday late afternoon as I was driving to the gym. He was describing the characteristics of the conscious mind. At the same time, I happened to be having one of those moments of heightened consciousness as my car and I moved through space, because I had just decided a few days before that working out seriously was going to be a major part of my life from here on out. So you can imagine it was a really beautiful thing to experience. I had a tear or two in my eyes, and I experienced the sensation known as "frisson" (tingle down the spine).

Any other neuroscience geeks here?

tehboxingkitteh

I flirted with the idea of a neuroscience degree and career path, but opted against it.

silvergurl518

i loved the film "what the bleep are we here for?" (i think that's what it was called?) and i'm fascinated by conscious/subconscious stuff...but only in a very vague, layman, armchair level.

silver_arrow3

My roommate is a neuroscientist, so I have a passive interest in it just from hearing "Today at work..." stories. My roommate is Amy Farrah Fowler without the weird social hang-ups.

mank32

:sigh:
i wanted to go to grad school for neuromusicology
and work at the neuroscience institute in la jolla, ca
i love oliver sacks
and meditation
so, like
yeah.
i am.

:sad:

BenchPressingCats

I thought about majoring in Neuroscience at one time. I opted for Political Science. One of my good friends is a Neuroscience major and it still seems really interesting to me!

Fithealthyforlife

My roommate is a neuroscientist, so I have a passive interest in it just from hearing "Today at work..." stories. My roommate is Amy Farrah Fowler without the weird social hang-ups.

You know what's cool? Amy is a neuroanatomist in the show...and in real life, her actress has a PhD in neuroscience.

Fithealthyforlife

Neuroscience is an amazing field, especially the study of neuroplasticity, which is taking on new frontiers today. It used to be assumed from experiments on cats (yeah, I know...) that after a certain age, we no longer have plasticity. But now there is evidence that repeated, intense activation can induce long-term changes which lead to learning things that were once though unlearnable after a certain critical period. The mechanisms of this are LTP (long-term potentiation) and LTD (long-term depression). The former is where a repeated, high-intensity stimulus causes long-lasting changes in neural connections between synapses. This is the "rewiring" you hear about sometimes.

Everything we do can be thought of as a brain program. That's why computer modeling is so great for running experiments on how the brain works.

One very interesting brain program is that of feeling attraction toward someone else. Now, let's say I just saw the profile of a woman who I'm "naiive to" (never seen before). And there's no ability for talking (auditory processing), motion, smell, or anything else that is normally attributed as part of attraction. All I have is her profile picture and the words on her profile. There's a one-way visual channel and a one-way linguistic channel. There's no interaction, because I cannot talk back to her until I message her or friend request her. But my personal experience tells me that once in a while, I do feel strong attraction when I stumble on the right woman's profile. It's hard to know how we feel such feelings with such limited input. Amazing, isn't it? It's all due to the way the brain works! It has evolved this ability--of which empathy (a complex emotion) is one part--in order to survive.

heatherloveslifting

Not really, but I learned a little in grad school because the molecules that control the sperm acrosome reaction are similar or identical to those that regulate vesicle release during synaptic transmission.

Fithealthyforlife

Not really, but I learned a little in grad school because the molecules that control the sperm acrosome reaction are similar or identical to those that regulate vesicle release during synaptic transmission.

All I can say to that is "huh".
Not like "huh?" with a question mark...
just "huh...as in interesting".

heatherloveslifting

Yeah so I did my thesis on molecular interactions between the sperm and egg during fertilization. When the sperm hits the glycoprotein coat surrounding the egg it undergoes a vesicle release process known as the acrosome reaction. This event must occur for sperm to penetrate the egg coat (zona pellucida) and fertilize the egg. I showed that some of the molecules that control neuronal synaptic vesicle release also control the sperm acrosome reaction.

I also give lectures on the hypothalamic/pituitary/gonadal axis as it relates to control of the human reproductive system. Want to be friends? :flowerforyou:

neandermagnon

I did some neurobiology modules at uni..., a long time ago so my knowledge is a bit rusty. It and palaeoanthropology were my favourite modules at uni. Although my knowledge is pretty rusty since I've not been studying (except for fun) for more than a decade, and I don't have much access to academic sources like journals etc.

These days I'm most interested in neuroscience from an evolutionary perspective, i.e. why something evolved and when. For example what changed in the Homo sapiens brain about 60,000 years ago that resulted in the upper palaeolithic (from a neurological perspective, the human brain hasn't changed since then, but the upper palaeolithic era itself is marked by a rapid expansion and development of technology that's still going on now... the rate of innovation in the middle and lower palaeolithic eras were comparatively extremely slow). Also stuff like how and when language evolved, and other significantly human behaviours like caring for sick, injured, elderly etc - there's evidence from the fossil record that caring for vulnerable members of the group possibly goes back 2 million years. All that kind of stuff.

I'd like to get back into studying and maybe do an MA/MSc and PhD in palaeoanthropology.

Fithealthyforlife

Yeah so I did my thesis on molecular interactions between the sperm and egg during fertilization. When the sperm hits the glycoprotein coat surrounding the egg it undergoes a vesicle release process known as the acrosome reaction. This event must occur for sperm to penetrate the egg coat (zona pellucida) and fertilize the egg. I showed that some of the molecules that control neuronal synaptic vesicle release also control the sperm acrosome reaction.

I also give lectures on the hypothalamic/pituitary/gonadal axis as it relates to control of the human reproductive system. Want to be friends? :flowerforyou:

That was you who figured that out? That's awesome! Yeah, we have to be friends.

I did some neurobiology modules at uni..., a long time ago so my knowledge is a bit rusty. It and palaeoanthropology were my favourite modules at uni. Although my knowledge is pretty rusty since I've not been studying (except for fun) for more than a decade, and I don't have much access to academic sources like journals etc.

These days I'm most interested in neuroscience from an evolutionary perspective, i.e. why something evolved and when. For example what changed in the Homo sapiens brain about 60,000 years ago that resulted in the upper palaeolithic (from a neurological perspective, the human brain hasn't changed since then, but the upper palaeolithic era itself is marked by a rapid expansion and development of technology that's still going on now... the rate of innovation in the middle and lower palaeolithic eras were comparatively extremely slow). Also stuff like how and when language evolved, and other significantly human behaviours like caring for sick, injured, elderly etc - there's evidence from the fossil record that caring for vulnerable members of the group possibly goes back 2 million years. All that kind of stuff.

I'd like to get back into studying and maybe do an MA/MSc and PhD in palaeoanthropology.

You know what's an interesting question related to this? Why and how did the male and female brains diverge a bit and evolve to be what hey are today?

Not just the brain, but everything else surrounding it, too...the whole package. From my perspective, today's women are the best...speaking in general, you all are the smartest, sexiest, and physically strongest of anything with XX chromosomes to come out in the last few thousand years. if I had been tasked with intelligent design because we weren't fortunate to live in a world with evolutionary pressures that shape living things over time, I'd make women exactly as they are today.

heatherloveslifting

That was you who figured that out? That's awesome! Yeah, we have to be friends.

Well, some of it

You know what's an interesting question related to this? Why and how did the male and female brains diverge a bit and evolve to be what hey are today?

Not just the brain, but everything else surrounding it, too...the whole package. From my perspective, today's women are the best...speaking in general, you all are the smartest, sexiest, and physically strongest of anything with XX chromosomes to come out in the last few thousand years. if I had been tasked with intelligent design because we weren't fortunate to live in a world with evolutionary pressures that shape living things over time, I'd make women exactly as they are today.

Presumably the old line that we our brains have evolved differently based on defined sex roles of the caveman era. So cavemen primarily hunted and cavewomen primarily took care of babies. And I just read that there are differences between the sexes brain units development. Females have a more developed neocortex and males sociality have more developed subcortical units. End result: we are sweet and intuitive and you are more combative. But we can all have fun in the cave.

neandermagnon

You know what's an interesting question related to this? Why and how did the male and female brains diverge a bit and evolve to be what hey are today?

Not just the brain, but everything else surrounding it, too...the whole package. From my perspective, today's women are the best...speaking in general, you all are the smartest, sexiest, and physically strongest of anything with XX chromosomes to come out in the last few thousand years. if I had been tasked with intelligent design because we weren't fortunate to live in a world with evolutionary pressures that shape living things over time, I'd make women exactly as they are today.

Presumably the old line that we our brains have evolved differently based on defined sex roles of the caveman era. So cavemen primarily hunted and cavewomen primarily took care of babies. And I just read that there are differences between the sexes brain units development. Females have a more developed neocortex and males sociality have more developed subcortical units. End result: we are sweet and intuitive and you are more combative. But we can all have fun in the cave.

That's quite an out of date idea.... it ignores the role of women as gatherers, i.e. acquiring food in all the ways that are possible with kids in tow, while men focus on the hunting, which you can't really do while looking after kids. The food is shared between the tribe after everyone gets back home/to base camp, or if the hunting failed (as it often does in modern hunter-gatherer tribes so even more so in palaeolithic tribes with much less complex technology) the hunters still get to eat. Gathered food is a more reliable, dependable food source, hunted food is higher in protein and calories. So each is as important as the other, and each gender depends on the other.

The way men and women shop reflects the neurological differences of hunter and gatherer, you've all seen this joke:



hunters plan in advance what animals they're going to hunt, what weapons they'll use, what strategy they'll use, go out and do it, then bring the hunted animal home to eat. Gatherers wander around the countryside, checking all the places where there can possibly find edible things (not just plants, insects, honey, eggs, whatever else they can get), at each place maybe deciding if it's a good time to harvest the food or if they should wait, e.g. until fruit ripens, or until plants get bigger, etc, and discussing the best time to get them, when various plant foods come into season etc.) As they go around, they collect what food is best to be collected, and eventually return home, after checking everywhere. This is *exactly* how men and women shop, as per the diagram above. Additionally, you see the same in conversation - i.e. men get to the point and tend to communicate more directly, while women tend to be a lot more verbose, again this would suit hunting and gathering respectively... when hunting, you need to communicate concisely, possibly very quietly using gestures if you don't want to alert the animals to your presence.... when gathering the more information you share, the better and there's no danger of your conversation making the plants, insects, eggs, etc run away.

Not all the male/female differences stem from the hunter-gatherer divide... stuff like competitiveness versus nuturing... this is more of a generalised higher primate thing... men are more competitive because primate dominance heirachies are like that, and while female primates do have dominance heirachies too (though in some species like bonobo female heirachies are more important) they tend to be more subtle and there's less confrontation..... this is probably an adaptation to finding mates... dominant males get more sex and leave behind more offspring, so they're effectively competing for mates a lot more than females... but with females position in the dominance heirachy doesn't change how many babies you have... although it may mean more food for you and your babies. So that's probably more likely why men are more competitive.... being competitive about hunting doesn't really make sense as human hunting is mostly co-operative... men hunting alone (prior to the invention of firearms, which is not remotely palaeolithic) will hunt small animals; middle and lower palaeolithic men may not have hunted alone at all, as they wouldn't have had the weapons. Competitiveness seems to be more about finding a mate, and nurturing in females because the females in most primate species do the child rearing.... BUT in bonobos and humans, the males have more of a role and there's a lot more pair bonding between males and females, and in humans you have the hunter-gatherer thing and much higher levels of co-operation within the groups generally, and of males and females helping each other... paternal investment in offspring (or at least in the babies of the woman he's pair bonded with, most of which would be his) would have given his offspring a big advantage over ones where the females are just left to raise the babies like in common chimpanzees and most other primates do. There's a whole bunch of neuroscience in pair bonding alone, no idea when that evolved, it could predate humans, i.e be an australopithecine thing, or a common ancestor between chimps (including bonobos) and humans, and it just got lost in the common chimps. The hunter-gatherer division of labour kind of springs from the whole paternal investment thing, i.e. men hunting while women gathered food, which they all shared......... it's not really clear exactly how or when any of this evolved but it does.

What I find very interesting is how the hunter mindset works in terms of exercise... one thing that I think makes crossfit very popular, and induces cult-like allegence in some members, is because humans are pack hunters, you get bonding between team mates in team sports, you get the same thing going on in crossfit, and people tend to be more motivated when training as part of a team or group, and it's quite difficult training alone, because we are pack hunters. And this is true about women as well as men, and I tend to think that's because early in human evolution, women hunted with the men. Additionally, some of the hormonal related behavioural and emotional changes in women due to pregnancy and lactation could be a neurological adaptation to stop women hunting when they were pregnant or were nursing small kids, before we evolved enough frontal lobe to figure out that it was a bad idea. Just my little theory that I can't test because I'm not a PhD student....

Sorry for the rambling and possibly incoherent post, it's 1:30am and I have been up really early the past few days.

heatherloveslifting

Neander- seriously, really interesting ideas. Especially the part about the hormonal profile of pregnancy affecting behavior. I suspect you are right. You *need* to be a PhD student! :drinker:

Fithealthyforlife

Neander- seriously, really interesting ideas. Especially the part about the hormonal profile of pregnancy affecting behavior. I suspect you are right. You *need* to be a PhD student! :drinker:

Not to mention the idea about Crossfit and team/pack mentality. I think it's likely true.

And that was one hell of a scientific statement I just made. :embarassed:

_DreDay_

Yeah so I did my thesis on molecular interactions between the sperm and egg during fertilization. When the sperm hits the glycoprotein coat surrounding the egg it undergoes a vesicle release process known as the acrosome reaction. This event must occur for sperm to penetrate the egg coat (zona pellucida) and fertilize the egg. I showed that some of the molecules that control neuronal synaptic vesicle release also control the sperm acrosome reaction.

I also give lectures on the hypothalamic/pituitary/gonadal axis as it relates to control of the human reproductive system. Want to be friends? :flowerforyou:

That is amazing

silvergurl518

One very interesting brain program is that of feeling attraction toward someone else. Now, let's say I just saw the profile of a woman who I'm "naiive to" (never seen before). And there's no ability for talking (auditory processing), motion, smell, or anything else that is normally attributed as part of attraction. All I have is her profile picture and the words on her profile. There's a one-way visual channel and a one-way linguistic channel. There's no interaction, because I cannot talk back to her until I message her or friend request her. But my personal experience tells me that once in a while, I do feel strong attraction when I stumble on the right woman's profile. It's hard to know how we feel such feelings with such limited input. Amazing, isn't it? It's all due to the way the brain works! It has evolved this ability--of which empathy (a complex emotion) is one part--in order to survive.

i love how you geek out about it...and yes, agree--very fascinating

Fithealthyforlife

i love how you geek out about it...and yes, agree--very fascinating

Oh yeahhh.