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The genes of your mind

Gene-hyped as we are here at BrainEthics, I'm mentioning a few articles that are highlighting the relationship between genes, brain and mind. As neuroscience deals with the wet matter of the mind – the fatty, information-processing and massively energy consuming body part we call the brain – we must also realize that the basic building [...]

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What makes human brains unique?

In a thorough and very good review in PLoS Genetics, James Sikela writes about the comparative genetics between the chimp and the human genome. From the article:
It has been pointed out that the primary molecular mechanisms underlying genome evolution are 1) single nucleotide polymorphisms, 2) gene/segmental duplications, and 3) genome rearrangement. In addition, a “less-is-more” [...]

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Monday Paper Review, May 29.

Uh, two paper reviews so close? Good thing there's an abundance of interesting stuff out there. Come to think of it, we could actually run paper reviews every day! Though it would take a lot of time gathering all items, it would certainly be possible. This highlights one of the shortcomings of this (or any) [...]

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Saturday paper survey, May 27

Yes, yes, it's all very embarassing, but I never got around to doing my Monday paper Survey. Sorry, folks. I've been busy getting people to commit to a book I'm editing, and I've been preparing a talk for this event. (If it so happens that you will be participating as well, please come by the [...]

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An fMRI revolution?

In a just published paper in PNAS by Le Bihan and colleagues, a technique called diffusion MRI is used to measure the activation of the brain. This is rather unusual. Diffusion MRI is normally used to measure the diffusion, or movement, of water in the brain. Grey matter is relatively disorganized and water is less [...]

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Plethora of brain changes in Williams Syndrome

Several studies today are looking at different changes in the brain structures in healthy vs. non-healthy development, and other brain diseases. In a study just published in the Journal of Neuroscience, David van Essen and colleagues studied the brains of people suffering from Williams syndrome, a rare genetic developmental order that is characterised by "a [...]

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SCR up again

Finally, Science & Consciousness Review is up again. Several bugs during the past month have blocked access to the site. It is still not working 100%, but at least now, you can access both Martin's article about art and consciousness, and my article about imaging genetics. Hey, we're the neuropsychology tag-team, remember?
-Thomas

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Apes think ahead

“The time in which the chimpanzee lives is limited in past and future” Wolfgang Köhler once wrote. One of the things we see as a typical human trait is the ability to plan our next move, or just anticipate that we have a future. In a report in this week's Science, this view gets a [...]

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“Pyow–hack”: Meaning conveyed … in putty-nosed guenons

In this week’s Nature a report from Kate Arnold and Klaus Zuberbühler from the Scottish Primate Research Group demonstrates that the putty-nosed guenon can combine vocalizations in order to convey different meaning. The meaning is is found between alarm calls for different situations and contexts.
From the article:
Like most forest guenons, male putty-nosed monkeys (Cercopithecus [...]

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