Check out the new link in the blogroll to the Neurophilosopher. I found a lot of innovative content on the site, including an article about one of my favorite neuroscientists, Santiago Ramon y Cajal. I’m going to log off my blog and go watch the neurosurgery webcast on the site. Read more…
Contemporary diagnostic criteria for autism have not changed much from the original descriptions offered by Leo Kanner in 1943 [1]. The three core features, which all individuals with autism must exhibit in order to be formally diagnosed, are impairments in social interaction, impairments in communication, and restricted and repetitive Read more…
In an earlier post, we tried to untangle some of the ethical issues surrounding the use of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). Miodrag Stojkovic (who incidentally produced Britain’s first human embryo clone) and his colleagues at the Prince Felipe Investigation Centre in Valencia, Spain, have managed to remove stem cells from blastocyst Read more…
The patient is a 23-year old woman, condemned to a vegetative state following a tragic automobile accident in 2005. Her sleep-waking cycles remain normal, but her eyes cannot focus or follow a person around the room. Adrian Owen and his colleagues [1] conducted fMRIs of the patient and 12 healthy Read more…
Pier Ferrari and his colleagues at the University of Parma in Italy just published an article titled Neonatal Imitation in Rhesus Macaques in PLOS–Biology. The authors demonstrated imitation of actions such as lip smacking and tongue protrusion on the infant monkeys’ first day of life. Imitation of this type is believed Read more…