My daughter Professor Karen and me!
Here is what I am reading today:
“The discovery, published today in The Journal of Neuroscience, could lead to new information about how the gut signals to our brains about when we’re full, and when to keep eating.
In the University’s Nerve-Gut Research Laboratory, Dr Stephen Kentish investigated how the nerves in the stomach respond to stretch, which occurs as a consequence of food intake, at three-hourly intervals across one day.”
“”To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice,” says study author Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Most interestingly, the changes were observed in genes that are the current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs,” says Perla Kaliman, first author of the article and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain (IIBB-CSIC-IDIBAPS), where the molecular analyses were conducted.”
“A group of 2,000 dead mice equipped with cardboard parachutes have been airdropped over a United States Air Force base in Guam in order to poison brown tree snakes.
It may sound like the plot to an animated movie starring the vocal talents of Gilbert Godfried, but we assure you this is actually happening.”
“Dr. Gobbi and her colleagues compared the social behaviour and brain anatomy of mice that had been raised with both parents to those that had been raised only by their mothers. Mice raised without a father had abnormal social interactions and were more aggressive than counterparts raised with both parents. These effects were stronger for female offspring than for their brothers. Females raised without fathers also had a greater sensitivity to the stimulant drug, amphetamine.”
“”Discovering that the hypothalamus can rapidly produce large amounts of estradiol and participate in control of gonadotropin-releasing hormone neurons surprised us,” says Ei Terasawa, professor of pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and senior scientist at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center. “These findings not only shift the concept of how reproductive function and behavior is regulated but have real implications for understanding and treating a number of diseases and disorders.””
“For 4 years, paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo has been chasing a ghost species of ancient human. Known only by its DNA and three scrappy fossils from Denisova Cave in Siberia, this extinct lineage has left genetic traces in living Southeast Asians, so Pääbo expected to find its DNA in bones from across Asia. He had come up empty. Now, his team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has finally found part of the broken Denisovan trail—not in some mysterious Asian fossil, but in a proto-Neandertal from Spain.”
11 Comments
JSGraves · December 6, 2013 at 8:49 am
In response to: “Our pupils adjust as we imagine light and dark scenes”
I thought this article was very interesting. I love that there is a physiological response associated with imagination. This reminds me of the dream theory about the mind using dreams as a preparation for possible threats. This states that the mind is putting itself into dangerous situations and is able to process what to do to survive these. I find it interesting that the body seems to have a reaction to actual perceived situations and imaginary ones and that there always seems to be a survival response. I think it would be interesting to further test this with something as simple as posture and different imagined scenarios.
Alina Parga · December 6, 2013 at 1:34 pm
In response to “Stomach ‘clock’ tells us how much to eat” I can easily say that I do not listen to my stomach clock. Since I am a college student I feel like my stomach clock rhythm is always being thrown off balance due to abnormal hours of sleep. I have definitely realized that throwing off my stomach ‘clock’ has contributed to weight gain and I need to start listening to highly sensitive nerves when I am full. I am interested in further research with humans specific gut nerves to see if people that are obese have less sensitive nerves in general.
Alina Parga · December 6, 2013 at 1:49 pm
In response to reading “Dads: How Important Are They?”
I am really glad that researchers are finally finding that absentee fathers affect the development of the neurobiology of their offspring because I feel the value of the mother is always outlined but the father is usually overlooked. From my experience, my peers that has absentee fathers usually had more freedom and got to do whatever they wanted without parental supervision so I feel like developmentally they had to mature much faster which usually led to make bad decisions regarding drugs and alcohol. I am really interested in reading more studies about the affect of offspring with absentee fathers and I am also curious to see if teenage pregnancy is a big factor as well.
Kendra Keith · December 6, 2013 at 2:24 pm
In response to “do you listen to your stomach clock?”:
I found it really interesting that the nerves in the stomach act as a circadian clock by responding to stretch, telling you when and when not to eat during the day. It seems similar to the circadian rhythm humans experience with sleep. In addition to disruptions in sleep, disruptions in eating can occur when someone’s circadian rhythm is out of sync. This makes sense because people have trouble with both sleep and eating patterns when working night shifts or when experiencing jet lag, for example. I, as well as many others, have always known that something lets us know when to stop eating, but finding out further details on this topic is exciting. It sure is easier said than done, however, to listen to our bodies. The phrase “eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full”, seems to be something people struggle with, especially Americans. Maybe improvements can be made now that there is new data to support it. I understand too why it’s better to eat slowly; the nerve receptors need time to detect the amount of food and send the signal to the brain that tells us we are full or hungry. The studies have not been done on humans yet, so hopefully future studies can focus on that.
Kendra Keith · December 6, 2013 at 2:39 pm
In response to “meditation and gene expression”:
I was excited to read this article because I know meditation is good for you, but I wanted to hear more specifics on what it physically does for your body. The fact that small molecular changes can occur after meditation is intriguing to me! This article confirms the idea that there is a cellular component to decreased stress after meditation. The mind truly is powerful, as it can alter our expression of genes through focus and serenity. Meditation rejuvenates your body in more ways than previously thought and after reading this article, I am convinced everyone should to meditate daily. I have always believed that, but this article really confirms it because of the scientific data presented. As always though, this study should be repeated several times before the results become well known to the public. Overall, this article makes me want to go to yoga! Now when meditating, I can think of the positive changes being made to my body on a molecular level, which is a pretty cool thought.
neirani · December 6, 2013 at 3:50 pm
In response to “population control through dead mice”
This is the craziest article I’ve read from this blog. Parachuting poisoned mice for controlling the snake population is definitely very creative and I would have loved to hear the first pitch for this idea. At the same time it doesn’t surprise me too much because I’ve heard of the military even training dolphins or bees to do more specific tasks than being eaten. Hopefully there just isn’t any inadvertent adverse effects caused on the ecosystems because of this. For example if some rats died of natural causes and then were eaten by decomposer type animals.
emilyhinkamp · December 6, 2013 at 8:33 pm
In response to the “stomach clock” article
It’s interesting that people who work night shifts are prone to “disruptions in sleep and eating behavior, leading to obesity and other health problems” while the study shows that our gut nerves are more sensitive to stretching in the day-to-night time shift; would not logic follow that we would be fuller faster as the darkness stretches on in the night? I’m playing at the idea that nerve sensitivity and nightfall may just be a correlation, not causation of eating problems — it would make more sense for sensitivity to help our weight balance.
emilyhinkamp · December 6, 2013 at 8:41 pm
In response to “estrogen in the brain” article
This exciting finding about the hypothalamus producing estradiol (in addition to the already-known source, the ovaries) makes a lot of sense, biologically. So many functions of a woman’s body are directly correlated to the environment she is physically in, which in turn is a reflection of how she (i.e. her brain) is reacting to her life, surroundings, etc. It comes as no surprise that there is an organ other than the ovaries that allow for female functions to adjust to biological factors… After all, something like a spontaneous abortion does not just “happen” because the ovaries feel like it sending specific chemical messages to the uterus; stress factors within the brain (specifically, the hypothalamus) must also contribute to catalyze this process.
Anewman1188 · December 8, 2013 at 1:37 pm
In response to “The importance of Dads” I have always wondered about its effects. You hear about “daddy Issues” or a boys who cause trouble with no one to whip them into shape but that is just general thinking. What I truly wonder is what are the differences a man offers? If it was a gay or lesbian couple how would the role of the father act then? Also why can some animals regularly function without parents, as the father or mother or both may leave after birth. Biologically, we were intended to grow and mature with a mother and father but it is striking the damage that can be done psychologically when one is not present.
Anewman1188 · December 8, 2013 at 1:43 pm
In response to “population control through dead mice” this is a very clever way to try and control population. Letting them rest in the canopy keeps them available to limited predators and it seems like only the snakes will be fatally wounded when consuming the mice. How far are we willing to go though? If the snakes are killing off a weaker species, shouldn’t we just let it happen? These birds are not dying off because of deforestation or something man is doing. They are simply a weak species and should either evolve or move. Perhaps that is an ignorant statemen but my beliefs.
jnlui · March 10, 2014 at 11:20 am
The article on the importance of dads is an interesting topic. First off it is interesting cause they used mice to test out their theory first. But also because I can relate to this topic. Since I was born my dad has worked overseas. I probably see him 3-5 months out of the year. Safe to say I see my aunt or cousins more often. My cousins are also in this situation. It is interesting to read about, because from my observation we are definitely more close to our mothers, but as a whole family we are close knit, because we always leaned on each other for help. But none of us have problems or substance abuse issues. Rather I think we are just more shy, especially when it comes to the opposite sex.