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Search Results for: label/brain mapping

  • Tiptoe through the thalamus…

    atively coarse resolution of diffusion MRI to the subcellular level of electron microscopy. That’s a story for another day, but if you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend Sebastian Seung’s eminently readable 2012 book, Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. Back to the Allen Institute datasets. When you click on ‘Mouse Connectivity’, the site presents you with an index of injection sites, 47 in all….

    Authored by on November 19, 2012

  • For Dad: A guide on strokes, including a glossary of terms

    s though ultrasound, as well as in the heart, using both an electrocardiogram(EKG) and an echocardiogram(ultrasound of the heart).  The patient might also be asked to wear a Holter Monitor, which is a device worn for at least 24 hours and can detect potential heart abnormalities that may not be obvious from short-term observations, like those obtained via an EKG.  If a stroke is due to a hemorrhagic event, an angiogramwould be performed to try an…

    Authored by on January 26, 2012

  • Women suffer from brain injuries, too

    …feels and how an individual processes language and information. It can affect walking ability, balance, and senses of sight, touch, smell, and more. TBI can even change a personality. When Corry’s accident happened in October 2007, she thought it was “just a concussion.” At first, she felt dazed and confused and cried a lot. Then other symptoms emerged: Corry couldn’t sleep. She had constant headaches, light and noises bothered her, and she could…

    Authored by on January 28, 2013

  • Sesame Street helps unlock the secrets to the brain during children’s learning

    …levision is a bad idea, but there is something to the idea that educational TV is, well, educational. We have the brain scans to prove it! A study published in PLOS Biology used functional MRI scans to check out the brains of 26 children and 20 adults while they watched 20 minutes of Sesame Street. The actual purpose of the study wasn’t to find out if Sesame Street was educational per se. Rather, it was to observe the neural processes in th…

    Authored by on January 4, 2013

  • Unicorns and Brainbows

    Brainbow is a mouse with a rainbow brain. By Jeffrey Perkel    A couple weeks ago I wrote about the beautiful world right under our noses, a world visible only under the microscope. The cover image for that post was this picture, a “‘Brainbow’ transgenic mouse hippocampus,” which placed 18th in the 2008 Nikon Small World Photomicroscopy contest. Brainbow technology also won the 2007 Olympus Bioscapes contest, with this be…

    Authored by on May 6, 2013

  • Are your children always on your mind? They may be IN your mind

    …7;s a post for another time). As you probably know, most women don’t carry a Y chromosome in their own cells (but some do; another post for another time). In this study, researchers examined postmortem brain tissue from 26 women who had no detectable neurological disease and 33 women who’d had Alzheimer’s disease; the women’s ages at death ranged from 32 to 101. They found that almost two thirds (37) of all of the women te…

    Authored by on September 26, 2012

  • Hormonal birth control explainer: a matter of health

    …ich exists to prepare an egg for fertilization and to make the uterine lining ready to receive a fertilized egg, should it arrive.  Fig. 1. Female reproductive anatomy. Credit: Jeanne Garbarino. In the theoretical 28-day cycle, fertilization (fusion of sperm and egg), if it occurs, will happen about 14 days in, timed with ovulation , or release of the egg from the ovary into the Fallopian tube or oviduct (see video–watch fo…

    Authored by on March 5, 2012

  • Anorexia nervosa, neurobiology, and family-based treatment

    sume eating. If they were still alive. Bruch’s observations dictated eating-disorders treatments for decades, treatments that led to spectacularly ineffective results. Only about 35% of people with anorexia recovered; another 20% died, of starvation or suicide; and the rest lived with some level of chronic illness for the rest of their lives. Not a great track record, overall, and especially devastating for women, who suffer from anorexia at a ra…

    Authored by on August 10, 2012

  • La vie est belle, n’est-ce pas?

    …e within rather than without — and by within, I mean through the oculars of a microscope. Beta-tubulin expression of a Drosophila third instar larval brain, with attached eye imaginal discs. This image placed 7th in the 2012 Olympus BioScapes competition.  (Source) To me, there’s nothing quite so lovely as a really powerful photomicrograph or time-lapse series. Want a good example? Here’s one: On 18 March, Howard Hughes Medical…

    Authored by on April 14, 2013

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …molecules themselves break down into a surprisingly small number of building blocks. The proteins that make up all of the living things on this planet and ensure their appropriate structure and smooth function consist of only 20 different kinds of building blocks. Nucleic acids, specifically DNA, are even more basic: only four different kinds of molecules provide the materials to build the countless different genetic codes that translate into all…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

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