The Brain’s Border Patrol – Blood Brain Barrier
The blood brain barrier (BBB) forms a tight security gateway between blood vessels and brain tissue. Blood flow throughout the brain is crucial to deliver the oxygen and nutrients required for the brain to function properly. Even though the brain comprises only about 2% of body mass, it is responsible for nearly a quarter of the body's oxygen consumption. Blood flow is so crucial to the brain that when blood flow stops, brain functions halt within seconds. At the same time the brain also requires a very specific environment in order to function properly. Miniscule changes in pH, chemical concentrations, and protein composition around brain cells can have drastic and detrimental effects to cellular signaling and thus, brain function. The BBB acts as the border control to the brain, selectively allowing the necessary molecules to pass through while denying entry to everything else flowing through the blood vessels.
Intelligence – Are You Holding Back Your Brain?
Is intelligence fluid or crystalline? Is it a function of nature or nurture? Are you born smart, or is the power of your brain under no one's control but your own?You might have cruised through classes at school, or you might have struggled and wondered how your peers managed to pass their classes so effortlessly. In the first case, perhaps you met your match at university when you found you were no longer at the top of the class. In the second, perhaps you had just spent your life assuming some people were born smarter than others. In both cases you are treating intelligence as if it were a static trait -- you're born with a fixed quantity of it, and that quantity never changes.
Risks of Personalized Medicine
Anyone who has taken high school biology has probably heard one of the corniest biology jokes around: How do you tell a girl chromosome from a boy chromosome? Pull down its genes. While this has been a useful (if not really funny) mnemonic for teaching students about life science, now individuals are beginning to play genetic versions of I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours by actually examining their genes. Not much more than a decade has passed since the completion of the Human Genome Project, but, already, direct-to-consumer (DTC) genome mapping and genetic testing are available with little more than a cotton swab and an envelope between you and your DNA.
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Media Violence Leads to Real Violence
A few short decades ago, the most violent scenes we were exposed to in the media involved Wile E. Coyote and an anvil. The nightly news did not display graphic evidence of riots or murders or... Read More→
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Remove your opinion about that which appears to give you pain and you stand painless. — Marcus Aurelius Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. — Dalai Lama The insight of Marcus... Read More→
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Salvia divinorum is a member of the mint family with known hallucinogenic properties which have been known for centuries. Historically it has been used in shaman rituals in the Oaxaca Mexico... Read More→
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If there is anything I know a lot about, it’s persuasion. I don’t mean to say that I am a genius sales person or politician, but I had a big lesson about psychotherapy some years ago. I edited... Read More→
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The history of medical students using human cadavers for dissection is a long and choppy one (no pun intended). Before Christianity, mutilation and use of human corpses was widespread. It is... Read More→
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Being a Mensan – a Gift or a Curse?
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Out of over 400 nominations, Brain Blogger is a finalist for two Research Blogging Awards for 2010 in the categories Best Blog — Neuroscience and Best Blog — Psychology. The Awards... Read More→
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