Sci is at SciAm today talking about the latest paper which may show why we get tinnitus, which is that annoying thing where your ears ring. You can read it over there, and if you feel like, you can comment over there…or over here! It’s up to you. Please ignore the ringing sound, it doesn’t […]
Today was a lovely day. The weather was perfect, a good day in lab, a good run, a delicious veggie burger, a good beer. Life was pretty much perfect as I sat down in a mood to blog. …and then I read this paper. And it was like this: (You know, if only they could […]
A few days ago I talked a little bit about the interactions between stress and neurogenesis, and the way that this might impact symptoms of depression. But it turns out that there’s even more to the way stress affects the body than impacting neurogenesis, and the long term effects could in turn affect the way […]
One of the interesting things about being a scientist is reading how science is interpreted in the mainstream media, and then comparing the headlines back to the science that was, you know, actually done. When I was a young, and highly naive little scientist, I would read the headlines and go “oh, wow, they found […]
A tweet via @Vaughnbell yesterday shared this paper, and I just couldn’t let it go by. Sigh. So very much to blog, so very little time. I don’t know how you all feel about breakfast, but for Sci, it’s a little essential. I NEED it. If I don’t get breakfast by 10am I am a […]
Today being Monday, Sci will be over at her Sci Am blog, expounding today on the latest paper about coffee. I mean, what ELSE?!
When most people think of dopamine, they think of things that can get you high. Things that feel good. Cocaine. Sex. Food. We imagine floods of dopamine in our brains as the pleasurable feelings take hold. As more and more media outlets cover neuroscience, we get the idea that serotonin means happiness, but dopamine means…pleasure. […]
Today Sci is going to blog a paper that she has been meaning to blog for a long time. It’s one of those papers that people who do certain kinds of science snuggle with when they go to sleep at night. (Sci and this paper) But the real reason that Sci loves this paper is […]
I was very pleased to run across this paper a few weeks ago. I answer a LOT of questions about psychiatric drugs (on blog and IRL), and one of the most frequent ones is “DO antidepressants hurt sexual activity?” and “HOW?” As for whether they DO, well, yes. The most popular class of antidepressants, the […]
Today we move on in our tour of the cranial nerves to another nerve that is basically responsible for an entire system. In fact, it’s an overachiever…and does TWO. We’ve had the olfactory and the optic, and now, we welcome the vestibulocochlear, which does both auditory AND your sense of balance. The auditory system is […]