Ask a Neuroscience Professor

[pau17]

The only way I can think of to test that is to have someone make a decision, then go back in time and see if they can make a different decision

In my opinion, though such speculation is fun to think about, it's not really important. More importantly, I don't consider the split-brain experiments to be compelling evidence for this, just that our left-hemisphere tends to rationalize with whatever it can get, it doesn't really say anything about free will--again, it just relates to how it works.

I think it's important precisely because of the notion we have that it is unimportant, if that makes sense. We feel that we have free will and we shrug these kinds of questions off. We don't really like to think about it. But when you do think about it, our conception of science suggests that consciousness is a quantity, while in everyday terms we treat it as a quality. The quality might just be after-effects of the quantity, is what I am saying. I think it is applicable in the sense that it would make us more aware of how our beliefs are grounded, and what is "correct" vs. what we believe in for x and y reasons.

An interesting talk on the subject:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_dennett_on_dangerous_memes.html

 

[El_Machinae]

As for the psychology, my hesitation comes from the often speculative nature of the psychologists I've met, but while I wasn't looking I guess the field stepped up it's game.

Oh, goodness, it's stepped up in the last two decades. Once the branch of cognitive psychology opened up, it changed everything.

Cognitive psychology... Is that essentially the same thing as cognitive neuroscience?

I don't know! As far as I can tell, they deal with the same thing, but cognitive neuroscience uses more toys when asking the questions. IMO, they are the same thing, because everything dealt with in psychology can also be dealt with using neuroscience.

 

[Mark1031]

Where do you publish the results of your research? I often hear that professors publish their works in peer reviewed journals but I have never read one of these journals before.

Are your published works just a brief overview about what your research entails or do they contain large amounts of data and information about the experiments and trials that you performed?

What exactly does it mean when a journal is 'peer reviewed' (do other scientists try to duplicate the results of your experiments to verify them?)

How much writing does your job involve and how much do you publish?

The top journals are Science and Nature. They come out weekly with maybe 10 papers and cover all science in the world from physics to psychology. It is very hard to get into. My last two papers were in Science but those were the first I got in there since I had my own lab (10 yrs). Most work is published in specialty journals. These are all peer reviewed and in fact are sometimes more solid work than Science and Nature articles which can be flashy but a bit more shaky. Everything is peer reviewed. Typically a paper is submitted to a journal and then is sent out to 3 other scientists who anonymously comment on it for validity of experimental approach and conclusions. For the more competitive journals the biggest issue for reviewers is how novel and generally interesting the results are. Typically a review might ask for more experiments or at least clarification of points and then there is a second round of reviews. It is pretty thorough but not flawless, crap does get through. You generally have to put in enough details for a competent scientist to replicate the results.

My job is almost all writing: papers, grants, reviews of other peoples papers and grants. I publish less than I should as I tend to go for big findings. I should be cranking out more mundane stuff. This is currently the more rewarded approach, but people are trying to change this.

 

[theskald]

I think it's important precisely because of the notion we have that it is unimportant, if that makes sense.

It does make sense, but that doesn't mean there's evidence for it, that there's a reason to believe it's true. That's not shrugging it off, that's thinking critically.

I don't know! As far as I can tell, they deal with the same thing, but cognitive neuroscience uses more toys when asking the questions.

Yeah, I think when it get right down to it I just want to be with the ones who have the toys

I publish less than I should as I tend to go for big findings. I should be cranking out more mundane stuff. This is currently the more rewarded approach, but people are trying to change this.

Please don't, I just felt a huge burst of respect for you. What were the two published in Science about?

 

[Globex]

Have you ever published a study only to find that someone else in the field had already done work that was identical or very similar to yours?

Does this occur often and if not, what prevents it? Where do you go to make sure the ideas you come up with haven't already been thought of and how do you check to see if anyone is already investigating what you are planning of doing research on?

 

[El_Machinae]

This will be the hardest question of the thread. This is where you earn your stripes!
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0001959

The dentate gyrus of the hippocampus is one of the few regions of the mammalian brain where new neurons are generated
throughout adulthood. This adult neurogenesis has been proposed as a novel mechanism that mediates spatial memory.
However, data showing a causal relationship between neurogenesis and spatial memory are controversial. Here, we
developed an inducible transgenic strategy allowing specific ablation of adult-born hippocampal neurons. This resulted in
an impairment of spatial relational memory, which supports a capacity for flexible, inferential memory expression. In
contrast, less complex forms of spatial knowledge were unaltered. These findings demonstrate that adult-born neurons are
necessary for complex forms of hippocampus-mediated learning.

They use bigenic mice, with Dox being used to activate a Bax gene, if the cells contain nestin. I think only neuronal precursors (or young neurons) transcribe nestin.

They see a huge knockdown in new hippocampal neurons (i.e., it blocks neurogenesis by increasing bax production), but they don't see a reduction in the Subventricular Zone or in the number of neurons in the Olfactory Bulb!

So, why isn't the neurogenesis in the SVZ being knocked down but the neurogenesis in the SGZ is being inhibited? Or what's your best guess, anyway? (You might need to look at the paper!)

Extra pressure because it's a Tet-On system!

 

[Mark1031]

Have you ever published a study only to find that someone else in the field had already done work that was identical or very similar to yours?

Does this occur often and if not, what prevents it? Where do you go to make sure the ideas you come up with haven't already been thought of and how do you check to see if anyone is already investigating what you are planning of doing research on?

This is a huge issue for researchers. All published research is available in searchable database so it is easy to know what has been done already. What is more of a problem is that most projects take a long time. Say 3 yrs for a new genetically modified mouse study and I have known people who have had years of work and careers flushed because they were beat on a project by a few months. In general you try to keep up on what your competitors are up to from meetings and gossip. You also try to carve out a niche where you use techniques and ask questions in a unique way. You also race. I know I am racing a big competitor on one project right now.

 

[Mark1031]

This will be the hardest question of the thread. This is where you earn your stripes!

So, why isn't the neurogenesis in the SVZ being knocked down but the neurogenesis in the SGZ is being inhibited? Or what's your best guess, anyway? (You might need to look at the paper!)

Extra pressure because it's a Tet-On system!

Easiest question so far. It is an integration site dependent effect on the transgene. Transgenes don't always express in exactly the same way as the endogenous gene. In this case there is just not enough expression of rtTA in the SVZ to cause BAX expression.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

How`d you get to where you are today? What did you take at university and what did you do after?

 

[Globex]

How often do you collaborate with scientists from other universities? Do you ever work with foreign researchers and do you travel a lot to attend conferences and meetings with colleagues?

 

[Mark1031]

How`d you get to where you are today? What did you take at university and what did you do after?

BS in Biochemistry, PhD. in Molecular Biology- UW-Madison

Post-Doc of 6 years at Columbia with Eric Kandel (2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine).

To get a Prof job you need to have some rather big findings and a good pedigree.

 

[Mark1031]

How often do you collaborate with scientists from other universities? Do you ever work with foreign researchers and do you travel a lot to attend conferences and meetings with colleagues?

Quite a bit of collaboration. Sometimes it goes somewhere and sometimes not, you really must do this in modern science.

I could travel constantly and some scientists do. I limit myself to maybe 4-5 trips/year. You do have to get out and about to be known.

 

[El_Machinae]

You're in memory, right? If you were looking at globally increased levels of learning (i.e., enriched environments coupled with increased salience), are there are proteins you would associate with learning? i.e., you could do a Western on the hippocampus, and decide whether learning was higher in an animal vs. controls?

 

[Gogf]

I'm not sure if this falls under neuroscience or psychology, but I might as well ask. I'm reading Dragons of Eden, by Carl Sagan, which was written in the 70s and talks about how at that time some monkeys had learned vocabularies of about 100 words in American Sign Language. To what extent can we now community with monkeys? How fundamentally limiting to communication is their neuroanatomy?

 

[Mark1031]

You're in memory, right? If you were looking at globally increased levels of learning (i.e., enriched environments coupled with increased salience), are there are proteins you would associate with learning? i.e., you could do a Western on the hippocampus, and decide whether learning was higher in an animal vs. controls?

Well this is a pet peeve with me and part of the main focus of my current research. Enriched environment is not necessarily learning. We know both theoretically and experimentally that memory encoding is sparse. Very few neurons likely take part in any given bit of learned information so you can't do a western blot of gross brain tissue, see a change, and ascribe it to learning. If fact, if you do see a change you can almost certainly say it is NOT directly linked to the learning. Nevertheless there are thousands of papers (well at least 100s) that do just that-but not if I review them.

 

[Mark1031]

I'm not sure if this falls under neuroscience or psychology, but I might as well ask. I'm reading Dragons of Eden, by Carl Sagan, which was written in the 70s and talks about how at that time some monkeys had learned vocabularies of about 100 words in American Sign Language. To what extent can we now community with monkeys? How fundamentally limiting to communication is their neuroanatomy?

I have seen a bit of that. I dont knoe the quality of the studies. It certainly is true that you can get monkeys to use sign language to represent things and I think many people have shown that. The real question is do they understand syntax? Can they put together words in a particular order and make new meanings that they have never been trained on. There is at least one person who claims she has done that with a monkey trained over many years. We have much larger cortices and I don't think that monkeys have the human "language" areas but there is no reason I know of that with enough training they could not use the areas they have to do these tasks- and it has been claimed they can. Pretty wild.

 

[Fifty]

I'm not sure if this falls under neuroscience or psychology, but I might as well ask. I'm reading Dragons of Eden, by Carl Sagan, which was written in the 70s and talks about how at that time some monkeys had learned vocabularies of about 100 words in American Sign Language. To what extent can we now community with monkeys? How fundamentally limiting to communication is their neuroanatomy?

That research program failed to teach any actual language to the monkeys. As Mark suggests, they just learned cause and effect in the same way dogs do, but with ASL rather than with verbal commands. So it was more like "make this hand gesture and I get food", rather than "this hand gesture means I want food".

Look up "Nim Chimpsky" if you're interested in more.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well this is a pet peeve with me and part of the main focus of my current research. Enriched environment is not necessarily learning. We know both theoretically and experimentally that memory encoding is sparse. Very few neurons likely take part in any given bit of learned information so you can't do a western blot of gross brain tissue, see a change, and ascribe it to learning. If fact, if you do see a change you can almost certainly say it is NOT directly linked to the learning. Nevertheless there are thousands of papers (well at least 100s) that do just that-but not if I review them.

I'm not really asking about 'bits' of learning, I'm talking about massed changes due to massed learning. An enriched environment makes a rather big difference on both the morphology of the brain and the intelligence of the animal. So, are there proteins which you'd look for if you were wondering if an animal benefited from an enriched environment?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I remember reading an article on the folding of neural tissue during development in the womb. Is it possible for some mental illnesses to be caused by problems in this mechanism? And if it can, how can you treat it?

 

[Kal'thzar]

I have a mild form of epilepsy; would you have any idea on what precisely is going on the brain (I'm a undergrad in physics if that allows you to make any more precise explanations) during a seizure? (and during an 'absence' not a full blown seizure, but certainly a complete loss of memory of what occured during the past 5 seconds).

Any idea why when I am about to to have a seizure I lose ability to send signals out of my brain first? (i.e. I receive sensory information, I've heard someone in a rather concerned tone ask if I was alright!, but I can't respond, can't even move my eyes)

Any Idea why after the seizure I require a deep sleep (repairs?) and the reason why I lose taste (food literally tastes like cardboard, texture and no content) for a period after my seizure?