Sci has officially returned from vacation! I wish I could say I was glad to be back…but…well…I mean, I did miss you all, but Sci has spent the last few days recovering from her vacation, and some of it was spent feeling like this (I love hungover owls, they satisfy almost all of my humor needs).
Anyway, I have returned and gotta do some crazy catch up. I am too scared to look at my RSS feed, because it’s bound to be scary.
In the meantime, Sci would like to RECAP last week. It was a whirlwind of a week and people have commented and emailed asking for a full set of links to all the stuff I posted last week. So here we go. It’s like a Carnival filled with nothing but SCICURIOUS! A scicuriously awesome carnival.
(Sci’s carnivals come with carousels, cotton candy, and SCIENCE!)
DAY 1: BASICS.
The big one here was Neurotransmission! I got requests for action potentials, and sure enough, I HAVE a post on action potentials. I just forgot to slap that up there. It shall go up later today, fear not.
DAY 2: NEUROANATOMY
Taken from an MRI Sci had done of her very own brain (it was during a pain study, but thankfully the MRI’s do not show Sci wincing), Sci used her MRI scans to show you basic neuroanatomy. The first post is on the basic areas and how the brain is sliced when you’re looking at it in a picture. The second is on the maters surrounding your brain and the large holes in it (don’t worry, most of them are supposed to be there). And the third is on some of the interior features, some of which Sci likes to blog about very much.
DAY 3: DEPRESSION
Something which Sci likes to blog about very much, both to raise awareness of the disorder and to look at how it may work and what treatments are being used and investigated. First up, there was a post on general symptoms and how many people are affected. I then moved on to the current drugs that are being used to treat depression, and how they work, as well as their various side effects. I then posted on how you study depression in animals in the lab, which is a highly useful method for looking at brain mechanisms and testing new drugs before we stick them in patients. To get further into the mechanisms of depression, I included a post on the serotonin system, and then followed that up with the serotonin theory of depression (and why it’s probably wrong). And finally I finished up the day with a study on the genetics of depression (what we know so far).
DAY 4: DOPAMINE AND DRUGS!
Since I wanted to discuss some of the stimulant drugs on this day, I started it off with a basic post on dopamine, one of the current most important chemicals in the study of addiction. I then tackled a question on COCAINES, and another on Ritalin. You think Ritalin has nothing in common with cocaine? Think again.
DAY 5: WEIRD SCIENCE!
Even weird science wasn’t spared this week! Welcome to the basics of erections. And since I finished off this day with some of my favorite comedians, I’m sure we could all use some more sugar lumps with our erections…
And Of course we need the ladies.
Take a took at the post on Grafenberg and his study of the controversial G spot.
What a whirlwind week it was!!! Sci will return shortly with her repost of her old post on action potentials.
