What does that MRI signal MEAN, anyway?

Sci was incredibly excited to see this paper come out. It’s got lots of stuff going for it, and all its powers combined were enough to send Sci bouncing around in her seat and sending emails to Ed Yong saying “OMG COOL PAPER!!”. What’s it got, you say? It’s got the meaning of life, the […]

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Bulimia and the Vaso-Vagal Reflex

This is another post in Sci’s investigation into the current studies being performed on eating disorders, particularly binge eating and bulimia. Usually I try to focus on the dysregulation of reward-related systems in these disorders, but this paper will be a little different. Faris et al. “De-Stabilization of the Positive Vago-Vagal Reflex in Bulimia Nervosa” […]

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A Follow up: Depression, p21, CREB, and more

Everyone once in a while, someone sends Sci email. Often it’s silly. This one, however, was very good in that it asked for some clarification on a series of posts that I’ve been working on looking at clinical depression and possible causes and treatments, including neurogenesis in the hippocampus, cell cycle controls, and CREB. And […]

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Book Review: Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control your Thoughts and Feelings

Sci recently got asked to be a book reviewer for Oxford University Press again! She is thrilled about this. Having recently moved to Huge New City (and consequently to Very Small New Apartment) she ended up having to…*gulp*…get rid of some books. It was a painful process, but she firmly believes her books are going […]

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On Washing your Fruit: ADHD and Pesticides

Sci was a little startled recently when she saw “the latest study” on ADHD splashed across the frontpage of Yahoo. You can see it here on Reuters. PESTICIDES TIED TO ADHD. (Run for the hills, indeed. Or maybe run AWAY from the hills, since they might have pesticides) However, the story broke a good TWO […]

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Anorexia, Dopamine, and Experimental Confounds

We are now continuing on Sci’s new found, somewhat relentless search into the relationship between eating disorders such as binge eating, bulimia, and anorexia, and reward systems that are usually associated with things like drug addiction. And today I found a human study that looks a little…interesting. For a lot of reasons. Let’s talk dopamine […]

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