Highlights from Brain Science in 2022 (BS 203)
/This is our 16th Annual Review episode where we look back at the highlights from 2022. It’s also a great way for newbies to learn about Brain Science.
Read MoreA Podcast that Explores how neuroscience is unraveling the mystery of how our brain makes us human
Brain Science is a monthly podcast Brain Science, hosted by Ginger Campbell, MD. We explore how recent discoveries in neuroscience are helping unravel the mystery of how our brain makes us human. The content is accessible to people of all backgrounds.
This is our 16th Annual Review episode where we look back at the highlights from 2022. It’s also a great way for newbies to learn about Brain Science.
Read MoreBS 179 is our 14th Annual Review Episode where we review the highlights and reflect on which ideas connected the diverse guests featured 2020. It is a great place to start if you are new to the show.
Read MoreIn response to listener requests, I recently interviewed Dr. Steven Novella from the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. This has been posted as Episode 16 of Books and Ideas , my other podcast. The details are available in the show notes on the Books and Ideas website. I hope you will consider subscribing to the podcast, but if you just want to hear the interview,
BS 140 is our Eleventh Annual Review episode. We look back at the highlights from 2017 and also share a few ideas from this years annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Thank you for your support.
Read MoreIn this very special episode, we begin a two part celebration of the 10 year anniversary for Brain Science. The podcast began in December 2006, which makes it one of the longest running shows since the first podcasts were launched in 2004.
Ten years is a lot of ground to cover, so for this episode we are only focusing on the early years from 2006 to 2011. Learn why the podcast began and get a peek into the format changes the show has had over the years. This episode contains something that you rarely see in the show - listener feedback! You'll get to hear what listeners think about the show, how they use the show to help them with their work, and you'll even get to hear from a critic! So many of you have reached out over the years, and although there isn't room for all our feedback in this episode, please know that each and every email that has been received is appreciated!
In today's episode Dr. Campbell discusses:
how the brain makes us human is an endlessly fascinating topic
favorite shows from the first 5 years of Brain Science
BSP 47 provides the best summary of what we know about brain evolution
favorite guests from the first 5 years
some of the decisions about the podcast frequency and the reasons beind them
the book review that got the show started
the best way to access past episodes of the show
shows mentioned are tagged with the term Embodied Cognition, so search for them that way
In this show, we mentioned the best ways to listen to episodes from our first 5 years. Our episode archive is available to Premium subscribers for only $5/month. The best way to access these episodes is via the FREE Brain Science mobile app, which is available for iOS, Android, and Windows phone.
You can also support the show via Patreon.
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Dr Great Art (podcast) hosted by Mark Staff Brandl
This Week in Science with Dr. Kiki Sanford
Astronomy Cast with Dr. Pamela Gay
Bibliography of all books features on Brain Science (with Amazon and Audible links)
Full list of first 129 episodes of Brain Science
Full list of Guests who have appeared on Brain Science
Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty by Ginger Campbell (buy PDF)
On Being Certain: Believing You’re Right, Even When You’re Not by Dr. Robert Burton
Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
Part 2 of our 10th Anniversary will be posted in January 2017
Please send your feedback to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
The first episode of the Brain Science Podcast appeared on December 5, 2006, which makes it one of the longest running shows in any genre, not just science or medicine. I am especially proud of the fact that we have reached listeners in 219 different countries. BSP 114 is our 8th annual review episode and as a part of our year-end celebration all previous annual review episodes have been added to the FREE feed that also includes our most recent 25 episodes.
The goal of our annual review episode is to highlight some of the key ideas that we have explored during the last years. For 2014 this included discussions of brain plasticity with Dr. Michael Merzenich, the integration of cognition and emotion with Dr. Luis Pessoa, the science of sleep with Dr. Penny Lewis, the hazards of neuromania, consciousness with Dr. Michael Graziano, exercise and the brain with Dr. John Ratey, neurobiology with Dr. Frank Amthor, and mirror neurons with Dr. Greg Hickok. We ended the year with highlights from the event "Neuroplasticity and Healing," which featured the Dalai Lama and three previous Brain Science Podcast guests.
FREE: audio mp3 (click to stream, right click to download)
Premium Subscribers have unlimited access to all old episodes and transcripts.
New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE. All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free. See the individual show notes for links the audio files.
BSP 105: interview with Michael Merzenich, author of Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change Your Life
BSP 106: interview with Luiz Pessoa, author of The Cognitive-Emotional Brain: From Interactions to Integration
BSP 107: interview with Penelope Lewis, author of The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest
BSP 108: interview with Michael Graziano, author of Consciousness and the Social Brain
BSP 109: Avoiding Neuromania (see original show notes for references)
BSP 110: interview with Frank Amthor, author of Neurobiology For Dummies
BSP 111: interview with John Ratey, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
BSP 112: interview with Greg Hickok, author of The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition
BSP 113: Highlights from "Neuroplasticity and Healing," featuring the Dalai Lama
Upcoming episodes of the Brain Science Podcast will feature Evan Thompson, Norman Doidge, and Edward Taub.
All Annual Review Episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are now free. Check the episode listing in your podcasting app to find the ones you may have missed.
The most recent 25 episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE. Older episodes and episode transcripts are available for $1 each. Premium subscribers have unlimited access to all 100+ episodes and transcripts.
Reminder: The Brain Science Podcast mobile app is now FREE for iOS, Android and Windows Mobile. Check newer episodes for extra free content!
Don't forget to check out my other podcast Books and Ideas.
Please share your feedback about this episode by sending email to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com or going to the Brain Science Podcast Discussion Forum at http://brainscienceforum.com. You can also post to our fan pages on Facebook or Google+. I am looking for help with these community pages so please email me at brainsciencepodcast.com if you are interested.
On May 11, 2011 I gave a talk entitled "Why Neuroscience Matters" at the London Skeptics in the Pub. Episode 42 of Books and Ideas is an edited version of that talk, including the lively Q and A with the audience.
Bayes, A., Grant, S., et al. "Characterization of the proteome, diseases and evolution of the human postsynaptic density." Nature Neuroscience 14, 19–21 (2011) (Published online 12/23/2010).
Libet, B. "Do We Have Free Will?"Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6. No. 8-9, 1999, pp. 47-57.
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not (2008), by Robert Burton; p 127.
Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999), by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson; p 4.
Brain Waves Module 2: Report on Education and Neuroscience from the Royal Society (2011).
BSP 25: Rolf Pfeifer, PhD, author of How the Body Shapes the Mind.
BSP 26: Norman Doidge, MD, author of The Brain That Changes Itself.
BSP 42:On Being Certain; and BSP 43: Interview with Robert Burton, MD
BSP 51: Evolution of the Synapse, with Seth Grant, PhD.
BSP 59: Use of C. elegans in Neuroscience, with Guy Caldwell, PhD.
BSP 65: Subcortical Origins of Basic Emotions, with Jaak Panksepp, PhD.
Dr. Campbell will be a speaker at The Amazing Meeting 9, which is coming up in Las Vegas, Nevada July 14-17.
Please send your feedback to Dr. Campbell at gincampbell at mac dot com, or post a comment on the Facebook Fan Page.
Don't forget to sign up for Ginger Campbell's Newsletter so you can get show notes for every podcast.
BSP 70 is an interview with Dr. Scott Lilienfeld, co-author of 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior. This episode was recorded live at Dragon*Con 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia. We focused our conversation on the fact that scientific reasoning and critical thinking do NOT come naturally; instead, we all tend to make similar errors, such as mistaking correlation for causation. Dr. Lilienfeld shared his experiences, and an extensive question and answer session with the live audience allowed him to explore additional examples.
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Episode 66 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Randy Gallistel, PhD, Co-Director of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science and co-author (with Adam Philip King) of Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science Will Transform Neuroscience.
We discuss why read/write memory is an essential element of computation, with an emphasis on the animal experiments that support the claim that brains must possess read/write memory. This is significant because current models, such as neural nets, DO NOT incorporate read/write memory in their assumptions about how brains work. It is not necessary to have any background in information theory or computation to appreciate the experiments that are discussed in this episode.
Episode 3 and Episode 12 of the Brain Science Podcast providebackground information for this episode.
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Spikes: Exploring the Neural Code, by Fred Rieke, David Warland, Rob de Ruyter van Steveninck, William Bialek.
Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science Will Transform Neuroscience, by C. R. Gallistel, Adam Philip King.
Claude E. Shannon: His paper (A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, pp. 379–423, 623–656, 1948) is a cornerstone of information theory.
Rüdiger Wehner: Swiss researcher who has studied dead reckoning in insects.
Nicky Clayton and Tony Dickinson: these researchers have performed elegant experiments that study scrub jay caching.
Christof Koch: was interviewed in Episode 22 of the Brain Science Podcast.
This was Dr. Campbell's 100th podcast (BSP 66 plus Books and Ideas 34)! How long have you been listening?
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Send feedback to gincampbell at mac dot com or leave voice mail at 205-202-0663.
Episode 65 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Jaak Panksepp, PhD, author of Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. Dr. Panksepp has done pioneering work on the neural origins of emotions. In this interview, we discuss how his work challenges some of the common assumptions about emotions and some of the important implications of his discoveries. New listeners may want to go back and listen to Episode 11 for an introduction to the neuroscience of emotion.
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New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE. All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free. See the individual show notes for links the audio files.
Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, by Jaak Panksepp.
"How to Undress the Affective Mind: An Interview with Jaak Panksepp," S. Gallagher, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 15, Number 2, 2008 , pp. 89-119(31).
"Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans,"J Panksepp, Consciousness and Cognition 14 (2005)30-80. Elsevier. (available on-line via ScienceDirect.com)
Visit Dr. Panksepp's faculty page for more references.
John Bowlby: studied the effects of maternal deprivation, helped develop attachment theory.
John Cacioppo: developed the concept of social neuroscience.
Antonio Damasio: neurologist and author of several books including The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.
Walter Hess: work in the 1930's showed that stimulation of the cat hypothalamus led to anger. He shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1949.
Tom Insel: Director of the National Institutes for Mental Health (NIMH).
William James: early pioneer of scientific psychology. The James-Lange Theory of emotion is an outdated theory that emotion result from the brain's interpretation of signals coming from the body.
Eric Kandel: won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work with memory in the Aplysia.
Brian Knutson: former student of Panksepp.
Joseph LeDoux: well-known for his work with fear and memory.
Endel Tulving: memory researcher at the University of Toronto.
For all the scientists mentioned see the episode transcript.
Send feedback to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 64 of the Brain Science Podcast is our Third Annual Review Episode. It includes a review of some of the major ideas we talked about in 2009 and a look ahead to what I have planned for 2010.
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Teenagers: A Natural History, by David Bainbridge (BSP 63).
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, by Stuart Brown, MD (BSP 60).
Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World, by Chris Frith (BSP 57).
Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will, by Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown (BSP 53 and BSP 62).
Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, by Alva Noë (BSP 58).
David Bainbridge, PhD: University Clinical Veterinary Anatomist from Cambridge University (BSP 63).
Stuart Brown, MD: retired psychiatrist and founder of the National Institute for Play (BSP 60).
Warren S. Brown, PhD: experimental psychologist from Fuller Theological Seminary (BSP 62).
Guy Caldwell, PhD: molecular biologist from the University of Alabama (BSP 59).
Patricia Churchland, PhD: neurophilosopher from University of California at San Diego (BSP 55).
Chris Frith, PhD: neuropsychologist from University College London (BSP 57).
Allan Jones, PhD: Chief Science Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Research (BSP 61).
Eve Marder, PhD: neuroscientist from Brandeis University (BSP 56).
Michael Merzenich, PhD pioneer in neuroplasticity (BSP 54).
Alva Noë, Phd: philosopher from the University of California (BSP 58)
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Episode 63 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with David Bainbridge, author of Teenagers: A Natural History. Our focus is on how the brain changes during the teenage years. Bainbridge teaches veterinary anatomy and reproductive biology at Cambridge University and has published several other popular science books, including Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain , which I discussed back in Episode 32.
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David Bainbridge's Home page.
Teenagers: A Natural History, by David Bainbridge.
Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain, by David Bainbridge.
Episode 32: Introduction to Neuroanatomy based on Beyond the Zonules of Zinn by David Bainbridge.
Send feedback to gincampbell at brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 58 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with philosopher, Alva Noë, whose book, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, argues persuasively that our minds are MORE than just our brains. He says that "the brain is necessary but not sufficient" to create the mind.
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Alva Noe (University of California, Berkeley).
Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, by Alva Noé.
Paul Bach-y-Rita: pioneering studies in sensory substitution using tactile stimuli to substitute for vision.
Held and Hein: experiments with cats showing that development of normal vision requires motor-sensory feedback.
Brain Mechanisms in Sensory Substitution by Paul Bach-y-Rita, 1972.
Bach-y-Rita, P "Tactile-Vision Substitution: past and future", International Journal of Neuroscience 19, nos. 1-4, 29-36, 1983.
Held, R and Hein, "Movement-produced stimulation in the development of visually guided behavior." Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology. 56(5), 872-876, 1963.
Held, R. "Plasticity in sensory-motor systems." Scientific American. 213(5) 84-91, 1965.
Special thanks to Diane Jacobs, Jenine John and Lori Wolfson for transcribing all the episodes of the Brain Science Podcast.
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Episode 57 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with neuropsychologist, Dr. Chris Frith, author of Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World. Our brain processes information about the world outside us (via our senses) in the same way that it processes information from within our bodies and from our own mental world. In this interview. Dr. Frith and I explore the implications from recent discoveries about how our brain generates our mental world.
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Chris Frith, PhD: University College London Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging.
Necker cube: a visual illusion that shows that some visual processing can not be changed by top-down feedback.
PubMed: a public service of the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.
Bayes, T (1763). “An essay toward solving a problem in the doctrine of chance.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 53, 470-418.
Blakemore, SJ, Wolpert DM, and Frith, CD (1990) Central Cancellation of self produced tickle sensation. Nature Neuroscience, 1(7), 635-640.
Botvinick, M and Cohen, J (1998) Rubber hands "feel" touch that the eyes see. Nature, 391(6669), 756.
Kilner, JM, Paulignan, Y, and Blakemore, SJ, (2003) An interference effect of observed biological movement on action.Current Biology, 13(6), 522-525.
Rizzolatti, G and Craighero, L (2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 169-192.
Wicker, B, Keysers, C, Plaily,J, Royet, JP, Galese, V, and Rizzolatti, G (2003). Both of us disgusted in My insula: The common neural basis of seeing and feeling disgust.Neuron. 40(3), 655-664.
Wegner, D (2003). The Illusion of Conscious Will, MIT Press.
Wegner, DM, Fuller, VA and Sparrow, B. (2003) Clever hands: Uncontrolled intelligence in facilitated communication. Journal of Personal Social Psychology, 85(1), 5-19.
*These references are from Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World by Chris Frith.
Send feedback to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 56 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with neuroscientist, Eve Marder, PhD. Dr. Marder has spent 35 years studying the somatogastric ganglion of the lobster. In this interview we talk about how she got into neuroscience during its early days, her recent tenure as president of the Society for Neuroscience, and how some of her key discoveries have implications for studying more complex nervous systems.
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Gina Turrigiano (synaptic scaling).
Brain Awareness Week.
Wikipedia links: Eve Marder, central pattern generator.
The Practical Psychiatrist has chosen the Brain Science Podcast for its semi-annual Community Service Award in Mental Health.
Episode 53 of the Brain Science Podcast is a discussion of Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will, by Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown. This book challenges the widespread fear that neuroscience is revealing an explanation of the human mind that concludes that moral responsibility and free will are illusions created by our brains.
Instead, the authors argue that the problem is the assumption that a physicalistic/materialistic model of the mind must also be reductionist (a viewpoint that all causes are bottom-up). In this podcast I discuss their arguments against causal reductionism and for a dynamic systems model. We also discuss why we need to avoid brain-body dualism and recognize that our mind is more than just what our brain does. The key to preserving our intuitive sense of our selves as free agents capable of reason, moral responsibility, and free will is that the dynamic systems approach allows top-down causation, without resorting to any supernatural causes or breaking any of the know laws of the physical universe. This is a complex topic, but I present a concise overview of the book's key ideas.
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Books and Ideas #12 ("The Myth of Free Will")
Alice Juarrero, Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System.
Terence Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain.
Terrence Deacon, "Three Levels of Emergent PHenomena," in Nancy Murphy and William R. Stoeger (eds.) Evolution, and Emergence: Systems, Organisms, Persons (OUP 2007) ch 4.
Alwyn Scott, "The Development of Nonlinear Science", Revista del Nuovo Cimento, 27/10-11 (2004) 1-115.
Roger W. Sperry, "Psychology's Mentalist Paradigm and the Religion/Science Tension," American Psychologist, 43/8 (1988), 607-13.
Donald T. Campbell, "'Downward Causation' in Hierarchically Organized Biological Systems." in F. J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky (eds.) Studies in the Philosophy of Biology 179-186.
Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
Robert Van Gulick, "Who's in Charge Here? And Whose Doing All the Work?"In Heil and Mele (eds.) Mental Causation, 233-56.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought.
Ludwig Wiggenstein, Philosophical Investigations.
Antonio Damasio: Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.
Arthur Glenberg: interviewed in Episode 36.
Rolf Pfeifer: interviewed in Episode 25.
Leslie Brothers, Friday's Footprint: How Society Shapes the Human Mind.
Raymond Gibbs, Embodiment and Cognitive Science.
Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again.
Gerald M.Edelmanand Guilo Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination.
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Brain Science Podcast #52 is our Second Annual Review Episode. We review some of the highlights from 2008. I also discuss the various other on-line resources that I have created for listeners. Then we look ahead to what I have planned for 2009. This episode is aimed at all listeners, including those who are new to the show.
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Early in the year (#30) I discussed language evolution. My criticism of Noam Chomsky's claim that human language results from a Universal Grammar Module generated quite a bit of discussion. My main purpose was to emphasize that current neuroscience does not support this hypothesis. I discussed Chomsky's work in follow-up interviews with Dr. Michael Arbib (BSP 39) and linguist Alice Gaby (BSP 41).
It is my impression that, at least to some extent, this debate comes back to the age-old "nature versus nurture" controversy, which I discussed more explicitly way back in Episode 4. The evidence seems to be mounting that human intelligence is a product of both processes.
There is no doubt that the capacity for language is inherited, but brain plasticity appears to be equally important. One piece of evidence for this is that the changes in the brain that occur when people learn to read are different between languages like English and German and those like Chinese and Japanese. (Episode 24 and Episode 29)
We had 17 guests on the Brain Science Podcast in 2008, so I can't mention them all here.
John Ratey, MD: In Episode 33 we talked about exercise and the brain, while in Episode 45 we talked about ADD.
Robert Burton, MD: In Episode 43 talked about the implications of the discovery that our sense of knowing (feeling certain) is generated by parts of the brain that are outside our conscious control!
John Medina, PhD: In Episode 37 we considered the practical implications of neuroscience, such as the importance of getting enough sleep and why true multi-tasking is actually impossible.
Dr. Brenda Milner: In Episode 49 this pioneering neuroscientist shared highlights from her long career.
Another highlight was our first live podcast, which was recorded at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia on August 31.
In the fall I returned to the subject of evolution with a three part series on the evolution of the brain.
Episode 47, Episode 48, and Episode 51.
Episode 51 is an outstanding interview with Dr. Seth Grant in which we discuss the surprising discovery that synapse complexity seems to have evolved BEFORE larger more complex brains.
I encouraged listeners to frequent this website and to subscribe to the RSS feed so as to receive information between posts.
I encouraged listeners to explored the sidebars and tabs on the website for links to other sites of interest.
I reminded listeners that this website includes a complete listing of previous episodes as well as a list of all the guests that have been on the show.
It is now possible to support the Brain Science Podcast via both PayPal and by direct mail.
I encouraged listeners to participate in our Discussion Forum and to post pictures to our Flickr Group.
I invited listeners to contribute content to the Brain Science Podcast Room on FriendFeed and the new Neuroscience News Network on SocialMedian.
I reminded listeners that my personal blog is now at http://gingercampbellmd.com. This site includes abridged show notes for the Brain Science Podcast as well as the complete show notes for Books and Ideas.
Listeners are encouraged to continue to post reviews on iTunes™, Podcast Pickle, Podcast Alley, Digg, and similar sites. All blog posts and tweets are greatly appreciated.
Send email feedback to Ginger Campbell, MD at brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com
Episode 51 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Dr. Seth Grant from Cambridge University, UK. Dr. Grant's work focuses on the proteins that make up the receptors within synapses. (Synapses are the key structures by which neurons send and receive signals.) By comparing the proteins that are present in the synapses in different species, Dr. Grant has come to some surprising conclusions about the evolution of the synapse and the evolution of the brain.
In this interview, Dr. Grant explains how his research team has uncovered the identity ofsynapse proteins in a variety of species including yeast, fruit flies, and mice. Our discussion is centered on the paper he published in Nature Neuroscience in June 2008. Dr. Grant's team has made several surprising discoveries. First, he has discovered that some proteins associated with neuron signaling are actually found in primitive unicellular organisms like yeast. He has also discovered that the protein structure of the synapse becomes more complex as one moves from invertebrates like fruit flies to vertebrates like mice, but that most of the complexity seems to have arisen early on in vertebrates.
According to Dr. Grant:
The origins of the brain appear to be in a protosynapse, or ancient set of proteins found in unicellular animals; and when unicellular animals evolved into metazoans, or multicellular animals, their protosynaptic architecture was co-opted and embelished by the addition of new proteins onto that ancient protosynaptic set; and that set of new molecules was inserted into the junctions of the first neurons, or the synapse between the first neurons in simple invertebrate animals. When invertebrates evolved into vertebrates, around a billion years ago, there was a further addition, or enhancement of the number of these synaptic molecules, and that has been conserved throughout vertebrate evolution, where they have much larger numbers of synaptic molecules. The large complex synapses evolved before large anatomically complex brains.
The discovery that there are significant differences between the synapses in vertebrates and non-vertebrates is significant, because it has long been assumed that synapses were essentially identical between species, and that brain and behavioral complexity was based on having more neurons and bigger brains. Instead, Dr. Grant proposes an alternative hypothesis:
The first part of the brain to ever evolve was the protosynapse. In other words, synapses came first.
When this big synapse evolved, what the vertebrate brain then did, as it grew bigger and evolved afterwards; it exploited the new proteins that had evolved into making new types of neurons in new types of regions of the brain. In other words, we would like to put forward the view that the synapse evolution has allowed brain specialization, regionalization, to occur.
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"Proteomic analysis of NMDA receptor-adhesion protein signaling complexes."Nature Neuroscience 2000 Jul;3(7):661-9. Husi H, Ward MA, Choudhary JS, Blackstock WP, Grant SG.
"Synapse proteomics of multiprotein complexes: en route from genes to nervous system diseases." Human Molecular Genetics 2005 Oct 15;14 Spec No. 2:R225-34. Grant SG, Marshall MC, Page KL, Cumiskey MA, Armstrong JD.
“The proteomes of neurotransmitter receptor complexes form modular networks with distributed functionality underlying plasticity and behaviour.” Molecular Systems Biology 2: 2006.0023. Pocklington AJ, Cumiskey M, Armstrong JD, Grant SG.
"Evolutionary expansion and anatomical specialization of synapse proteome complexity." Nature Neuroscience 2008. Emes RD, Pocklington AJ, Anderson CN, Bayes A, Collins MO, Vickers CA, Croning MD, Malik BR, Choudhary JS, Armstrong JD, Grant SG
Press Release from Genes to Cognition on Brain Evolution. June 2008
New York Times article by Nicholas Wade (6/10/08).
"Synapse Proteomics," by Diane Jacobs. June 2008.
"Synapse Proteomics & Brain Evolution." Neurophilosophy blog. June 2008
"Increasing complexity of nerve synapses during evolution." Deric Bownds. June 2008
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Episode 50 of the Brain Science Podcast is a change of pace from our usual format. In this episode I share a few highlights from this year's Neuroscience 2008, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, which just concluded in Washington, DC.
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New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE. All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free. See the individual show notes for links the audio files.
Society for Neuroscience Public Outreach Efforts:
Neuroscience Core Concepts: key ideas that everyone should know.
Eve Marder (Brandeis University)-current president of SfN.
Tom Carew (UC-Irvine)-incoming president of SfN.
Michael Bate (Cambridge University): his talk about the study of the development of movement in fruit flies is featured in this episode.
The development of motor coordination in Drosophila embryos by Sarah Crisp, Jan Felix Evers, André Fiala and Michael Bate; Development 135, 3707-3717 (2008).
Books and Ideas #23: Interview with Nobel physicist, Dr. Frank Wilczek.
Send email feedback to Ginger Campbell, MD at brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com
Brain Science Podcast #49 is an interview with pioneering neuroscientist, Brenda Milner, PhD. Dr. Milner is known for her contributions to understanding memory and her work with split-brain patients. Her work as an experimental psychologist has been fundamental to the emergence of the field of cognitive neuroscience.
This interview is a follow-up of Dr. Milner's recent interview with Dr. Marc Pelletier on Futures in Biotech. I highly recommend listening to both interviews.
Premium Subscribers now have unlimited access to all old episodes and transcripts.
New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE. All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free. See the individual show notes for links the audio files.
Listen to Dr. Milner on Futures in Biotech (Episode33)
Brenda Milner, PhD: Montreal Neurological Institute. (Read her MNI biography)
Wilder Penfield, MD: neurosurgeon and found of the Montreal Neurological Institute.
Roger Sperry, PhD: received the Nobel Prize for his work with split-brain patients
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