In Sickness and In Health

28

labphoto:

Filtering out the product of the diazotation. It has an awesome color due the copper(2+) ions.
Have You seen my portfoio? It’s over here: http://labphoto.tumblr.com/tagged/portfolio

4805

naking:

limbsa7o:

The first bionic hand that allows an amputee to feel what they are touching will be transplanted later this year in a pioneering operation that could introduce a new generation of artificial limbs with sensory perception.

raw

222

neurosciencestuff:

Can Brain Scans Really Tell Us What Makes Something Beautiful?
When art meets neuroscience, strange things happen.
Consider the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art in Oregon which features rugs and knitting based on a brain scan motif. Or the neuroscientist at the University of Nevada-Reno who scanned the brain of a portrait artist while he drew a picture of a face.
And then there’s the ongoing war of words between scientists who think it’s possible to use analysis of brain activity to define beauty–or even art–and their critics who argue that it’s absurd to try to make sense of something so interpretive and contextual by tying it to biology and the behavior of neurons.
Beauty and the brain
On one side you have the likes of Semir Zeki, who heads a research center called the Institute of Neuroesthetics at London’s University College. A few years ago he started studying what happens in a person’s brain when they look at a painting or listen to a piece of music they find beautiful. He looked at the flip side, too–what goes on in there when something strikes us as ugly.
What he found is that when his study’s subjects experienced a piece of art or music they described as beautiful, their medial orbito-frontal cortex–the part of the brain just behind the eyes–”lit up” in brain scans. Art they found ugly stimulated their motor cortex instead. Zeki also discovered that whether the beauty came through their ears, in music, or their eyes, in art, the brain’s response was the same–it had increased blood flow to what’s known as its pleasure center. Beauty gave the brains a dopamine reward.
Zeki doesn’t go so far as to suggest that the essence of art can be captured in a brain scan. He insists his research really isn’t about explaining what art is, but rather what our neurons’ response to it can tell us about how brains work. But if, in the process, we learn about common characteristics in things our brains find beautiful, his thinking goes, what harm is there in that?
Beware of brain rules?
Plenty, potentially, responds the critics’ chorus. Writing recently in the journal Nature, Philip Ball makes the point that this line of research ultimately could lead to rule-making about beauty, to “creating criteria of right or wrong, either in the art itself or in individual reactions to it.” It conceivably could devolve to “scientific” formulas for beauty, guidelines for what, in music or art or literature, gets the dopamine flowing.
Adds Ball:

Although it is worth knowing that musical ‘chills’ are neurologically akin to the responses invoked by sex or drugs, an approach that cannot distinguish Bach from barbiturates is surely limited.

Others, such as University of California philosophy professor Alva Noe, suggest that to this point at least, brain science is too limiting in what it can reveal, that it focuses more on beauty as shaped by people’s preferences, as opposed to addressing the big questions, such as “Why does art move us?” and “Why does art matter?”
And he wonders if a science built around analyzing events in an individual’s brain can ever answer them. As he wrote in the New York Times:

…there can be nothing like a settled, once-and-for-all account of what art is, just as there can be no all-purpose account of what happens when people communicate or when they laugh together. Art, even for those who make it and love it, is always a question, a problem for itself. What is art? The question must arise, but it allows no definitive answer.

Fad or fortune?
So what of neuroaesthetics? Is it just another part of the “neuro” wave, where brain scans are being billed as neurological Rosetta Stones that proponents claim can explain or even predict behavior–from who’s likely to commit crimes to why people make financial decisions to who’s going to gain weight in the next six months.
More jaded souls have suggested that neuroaesthetics and its bulky cousin, neurohumanities, are attempts to capture enough scientific sheen to attract research money back to liberal arts. Alissa Quart, writing in The Nation earlier this month, cut to the chase:

Neurohumanities offers a way to tap the popular enthusiasm for science and, in part, gin up more funding for humanities. It may also be a bid to give more authority to disciplines that are more qualitative and thus are construed, in today’s scientized and digitalized world, as less desirable or powerful.

Samir Zeki, of course, believes this is about much more than research grants. He really isn’t sure where neuroaesthetics will lead, but he’s convinced that only by “understanding the neural laws,” as he puts it, can we begin to make sense of morality, religion and yes, art.

Two scientists walk into a bar

The first scientist says ‘I’ll have a glass of H2O”

The second scientist says ‘I’ll have a glass of water too. Wh… why did you say H2O? Like, I know it’s the chemical formula for water and all, but it’s the end of the day and there’s really no need to intentionally over-complicate things like that in a situation outside of work”

The first scientist stares at his drink, angry that his assassination plan has failed.

(via bigbloodyglaive)

351

neurolove:

DOPAMINE!
Alright, moving along to dopamine (DA), which is probably my favorite neurotransmitter (and likely yours too- even though you don’t realize it!). Dopamine is the neurotransmitter involved in addiction (shown above for cocaine- since cocaine blocks the dopamine transporter, it causes dopamine to stay in the synapse longer), and basically anything rewarding. When you get a surprise or win some money, dopamine is what causes that feel-good rush! It’s the transmitter involved in reward, but it also has other functions as well- it helps with prefrontal concentration, accurate movements, control of thoughts (too much can cause hallucinations), etc. It’s really an incredible molecule!
Dopamine is produced in the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) and Substantia Nigra (SN) in the midbrain and has widespread effects throughout the brain- in the basal ganglia circuitry and throughout cortex. I’ll be talking more about this one in coming posts since it’s quite fascinating to me!
[Image Source]

And maybe a word or two about its inhibitory effects in the anterior pituitary on mammotrophic hormone release? :) It’s other functions besides being the ‘reward hormone’ tend to get pretty damn overlooked.

25

neurosciencestuff:

New drug enhances radiation treatment for brain cancer in preclinical studies
A novel drug may help increase the effectiveness of radiation therapy for the most deadly form of brain cancer, report scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center. In mouse models of human glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the new drug helped significantly extend survival when used in combination with radiation therapy.
Recently published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, the study provides the first preclinical evidence demonstrating that an ATM kinase inhibitor radiosensitizes gliomas. Gliomas are brain tumors that originate from glial cells, which provide support for nerve cells and help regulate the internal environment of the brain. ATM, or ataxia telangiectasia mutated, is an enzyme that helps repair DNA damage. The scientists used an experimental drug, KU-60019, to block the activation of ATM, which led to the enhanced destruction of the gliomas due to their reduced ability to repair the DNA damage caused by the radiation treatment. The new approach was particularly effective against gliomas that have a mutation in the p53 tumor suppressor gene, which accounts for approximately 30 percent of all glioma cases.
“Sadly, the average life expectancy of patients diagnosed with glioblastoma is just 12 to 15 months,” says the study’s lead researcher Kristoffer Valerie, Ph.D., co-leader of the Radiation Biology and Oncology research program and a professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at VCU Massey Cancer Center. “By limiting the tumor’s ability to combat DNA damage caused by treatments such as radiation, we are hopeful that we can enhance our ability to specifically target the glioma, prolong survival and reduce damage to surrounding brain tissue.”
Currently, GBM is treated with surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Potentially, ATM kinase inhibitors like the one used in this study could enhance the effectiveness of some other cancer treatments that kill tumor cells by damaging DNA. The scientists chose radiation therapy in this study since it is already standard care and can be delivered to brain tumors with extreme accuracy, minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue.
“If these findings hold up in early phase clinical trials, we expect patients with p53 mutant gliomas to respond well to this treatment while showing few side effects. Also, we anticipate that this same treatment strategy could be effective for other cancers that are treated with DNA-damaging chemotherapies,” says Valerie. “We are encouraged by these early findings and will continue to move forward with our research. However, more studies are needed before we can proceed with testing this new therapy in humans.”
This first, ‘proof-of-principle’ study is an important follow-up of a study published several years ago on KU-60019 by Valerie and his research team that demonstrated KU-60019’s superior efficacy, specificity and potency on glioma cells as compared to a predecessor ATM inhibitor.
Valerie and his team are conducting additional studies examining the effects of KU-60019 and other ATM kinase inhibitors on gliomas, including studies that combine ATM kinase inhibitors with a type of drug known as a PARP inhibitor to increase the effectiveness of the treatment. PARP inhibitors block the action of poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP), an enzyme that also aids in the repair of DNA damage. The researchers believe that combining an ATM kinase inhibitor with a PARP inhibitor may cause a condition referred to as “synthetic lethality,” which arises when the functions of at least two interacting genes are simultaneously inhibited, which, in turn, leads to tumor cell death.

37

scienceyoucanlove:

Beyond the Embryo
By Thomas Deerinck, NCMIR, UCSD
Even after development stops, tissues still need regular maintenance. This is the job of “adult stem cells.” These cells sit quietly in the nooks and crannies of organs, waiting for the signal to start dividing and differentiating.
Image: Mouse intestine section imagined with wide-field multi-photon microscopy. Actin (green) and lamin (red) are immunolabeled with quantum dots (QD 525 and QD 655, respectively); nuclei are shown in blue.
source

You can tell histology revision kicked in when I knew what the picture was without having to look.

252

science-junkie:

A storage power plant on the seabed
Norwegian research scientists will contribute to realising the concept of storing electricity at the bottom of the sea. The energy will be stored with the help of high water pressure.The idea of an underwater pumped hydroelectric power plant may sound like Jules Verne fiction, but then it was hatched by a German engineer who has spent much of his professional life working in aerospace technology.“Imagine opening a hatch in a submarine under water. The water will flow into the submarine with enormous force. It is precisely this energy potential we want to utilize,” explains Rainer Schramm, inventor and founder of the company Subhydro AS to Gemini.no. “Many people have launched the idea of storing energy by exploiting the pressure at the seabed, but we are the first in the world to apply a specific patent-pending technology to make this possible,” he adds.Read more

8

labphoto:

Lithium-deuteride and lithium-aluminium-deuteride, a few simple reagents for stable isotope labelled chemistry, where instead of normal hydrogen, deuterium is used.
And also the key reactant for a fusion bomb :D

231

Gamers--do your civic duty.

avbofsteel:

You can be a budding neuroscientist.

Track brain neurons for these scientists. Please note, no computer is advanced enough to do this. It requires humans.

You know what you must do.

Neuroscience: Epilepsy Cured in Mice Using Brain Cells

neurosciencestuff:

Epilepsy that does not respond to drugs can be halted in adult mice by transplanting a specific type of cell into the brain, UC San Francisco researchers have discovered, raising hope that a similar treatment might work in severe forms of human epilepsy.

UCSF scientists controlled seizures in…

(Source: newswise.com)

Inactivity on this blog is to be expected for the next few weeks due to my end of year exams, sorry!
There’s essential science that must be learnt. And no room for anything else ;)

103

scienceyoucanlove:

Even though I hated bio, here’s some biology inspired art by Michael Cammer!

1819

medicalschool:

Colored x-ray of a full-term fetus in breech position.

(Source: Science Photo Library)