The transparent brains are so awesome. Be sure to click through and watch the video. it's f'in' amazing.
It was the same video as before. Then it wasn't.
Tweety and I recently watched Singin' in the Rain, and my first reaction to the Keller/Sullivan clip was that wow, SitR really did a good job capturing the timbre and cadences of early sound film.
Brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain. Narf!
I tried and failed to come up with a "pinkeye and the brainsplosion" joke in that recent thread.
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Lee is currently waiting for the phone to ring for her screening interview for a good job much like her last one. I am trying to be cool about this because I don't want to stress her, but oh my goodness I hope she just gets a fucking job. But a good one that pays well and will not make her miserable would be nice. Yesterday had good progress on the sticking-it-to-the-former-job front, but I could really use a little more security about likely futures than I have right now.
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Did they combine the transparent brain with the system that makes neurons light up when they fire? Peeow! Peeow!
I love it when things like that video turn out to exist, things you just would have imagined didn't. There are sound recordings of Sarah Bernhardt and Tolstoy, you know?
(One thing I always hope I'll find or stumble upon is film of Dorothy Parker. I'm always curious what she sounded like when not simultaneously drawling and over-enunciating for the recording horn. She must have been interviewed on tv at some point...)
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Did you read that thing by the super-entitled and super-whiny Princeton mom? Want something even worse? Meet the SWUGs!
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This recreation of an Emile Berliner recording from 1889 -- recreated from an engraving -- blew my mind.
Thanks, Moby. The interview went fine and they were asking about things she can speak to well. She interviews well, so I'm feeling a big sense of relief now. It's just good to know that there are options out there sometimes, even if she doesn't get this one.
Nice video. Rare? Not any more.
Dammit. The transparent brain thing is way cooler than the Helen Keller thing. There's a video at the link! It's uh-maaaaazing!
That SWUG thing is completely unobjectionable. Raisa Bruner wrote an article for a school paper about the differing social positions of freshman and senior women and people are freaking out.
9: Why is the piece about the SWUGs worse? Sounds to me like they're just going through a phase (an alcohol-drenched, highly negative phase perhaps) - kind of a senior slump. Easier for me to take than "that thing by the [aptly-described] super-entitled and super-whiny Princeton mom."
On preview, massively, nay, heroically pwned by 17.
Anyhow to respond to 7 that would be difficult, since the transparentifying process involves taking the brain out of the animal, which greatly reduces brain activity. But you totally can stain different types of neruons and have them show up when everything else is transparent.
taking the brain out of the animal, which greatly reduces brain activity
Also, makes it hard for those involved to date PETA members.
I mean it doesn't have to be a living animal; some of the tests they did were on brains of deceased people that were in brain banks.
But again, brain activity in dead animals is greatly reduced.
Reduced, but sometimes still statistically significant.
The brain video was awesome but I don't just want to go inside a mouse's brain, I want to really get inside the mind of a mouse.
23: if you measure it wrong, yes.
The last mouse I saw was one that ran into a plastic tray full of glue. Why don't you try that.
Is there any point to the article in 9 other than to sate our eternal curiosity about how -- and I mean EXACTLY how -- 21 year olds are having sex?
Not as cool as the transparent brains video, but magnetic putty is pretty captivating.
27: Don't they have sex the same way as everyone else? (Everyone but urple, of course.)
Or maybe that's putting on pants after sex. 21 was a really long time ago for some of us.
I love it when things like that video turn out to exist, things you just would have imagined didn't. There are sound recordings of Sarah Bernhardt and Tolstoy, you know?
Yes! And footage of Anna Pavlova dancing.
The brain video is pretty awesome. Now I want someone to make pretty videos explaining my papers with an English accent.
So should Obama just give all that brain-mapping money to these people at Stanford? Seems way beyond the one cubic millimeter of mapped mouse neurons or whatever it was that people were touting before.
34: I hope he withholds judgment until they can prove that the transparent mice brains still have satisfying orgasms.
Do you think heebie and Cala are having babies right now?
A babysplosion-once-removed friend of mine just had hers yesterday. I'm all excited; they live a block away and I'm hoping to get to babysit.
And heebie was sending non-baby-related emails a half hour ago, so probably not for her at least.
34: nooo he should give it all to me.
(In all serious there are lots of pieces of a "map of the brain" that this approach can't help with -- notably what happens when it's actually powered up and doing things. But it is really astounding, and has the potential to increase understanding very, very rapidly. N.B. the same lab discovered optogenetics, which means they are the most badass neuroscience lab there is. Deisseroth has to be kind of a presumptive Nobelist at this point.)
Could be.
Funny note on Lamaze breathing -- we were talking here about how lots of us still haul it out to deal with anticipated pain. My mother just mentioned this weekend that she still uses it, almost fortytwo years since her last kid, for the same sorts of things.
(Oh also, the "map of the brain" idea that originally inspired the federal project is basically stupid, and there are actually a hell of a lot of things you'd want to know about the brain that are at best tangential to a full map of functional connectivity. Hopefully the money goes to worthwhile projects regardless of how tightly they fit that description. This is one of the many ways the analogy to the human genome project is flawed.)
Deisseroth has to be kind of a presumptive Nobelist at this point.
I suppose if you give someone a big award, they'll tend that way.
Not having the baby. Teaching classes. Whenever I'm queen of the world and pass laws related to maternity leave, everyone gets 36w-delivery off of work because man this last month has been uncomfortable and also I have only three work-appropriate shirts that fit.
Dammit. The transparent brain thing is way cooler than the Helen Keller thing. There's a video at the link! It's uh-maaaaazing!
I can't believe you're attacking Helen Keller. Who does that?
44: I totally remember that racing to the finish line feeling, wondering if I was going to have the baby before I was bigger than all of my clothes.
38: Multitasking?
Blame the advent of the iPad.
46: And honestly, what the hell is up with that? I look like I have a basketball under my clothes. Many women carry a lot bigger than I am; why are these shirts not five inches longer?
45: a lot of people, in her lifetime.
why are these shirts not five inches longer?
If we could add five inches of material to the maternity shirts of every pregnant woman of unfogged, the mills of Lancashire would be kept busy for a century.
Shit. I hadn't realized that I was echoing a line from the other thread. I'm sorry.
The YouTube link wasn't showing up at first—it was just a dark rectangle, so I thought heebs was just making a Helen Keller joke.
Apropos, have you ever seen a map of Helen Keller's brain? Neither has she! Har.
"What's on your mind,"
he asked, "my dear?"
"Why can't you see?
It's crystal clear.
Now all my thoughts must be apparent.
They've fixed my brain to be transparent."
I'm here, too. Although I told everyone I'd be unavailable after April 6th, so I've packed up all my work maternity clothes and good fucking riddance to them, too.
51: if that was to me, I actually laughed, so don't worry. But then, history's greatest monster, &c.
History's greatest monster is the guy who came up with the "when the leash goes slack" joke.
Or Hitler. You can never rule him out in that sort of contest.
44, 54: One of you two has to live blog labor and delivery. We've had lots of fun live events here, but not that one yet.
the same lab discovered optogenetics,
I'm trying to piece together what this is based on the wikipedia article and linked sources. So they insert a gene for a light-sensitive protein into an animal's brain. Are they doing this with a virus, just infecting all of an adult animal's brain cells? Then they use a laser to stimulate this light-sensitive protein in a particular neuron. Does that mean they have some sort of nanoprobe which gives of laser light jammed into the cell? Then they use the laser to stimulate the cell and observe the results. So they can, like, make the cell give off different chemicals and see what kind of signaling pathways are activated?
49: Indeed. Good read:
http://www.iww.org/en/history/library/HKeller/why_I_became_an_IWW
"The true task is to unite and organize all workers on an economic basis, and it is the workers themselves who must secure freedom for themselves, who must grow strong." Miss Keller continued. "Nothing can be gained by political action. That is why I became an IWW."
Helen Keller trivia! Did you know that she introduced Akitas to the US?
Some light reading: http://www.detaineetaskforce.org
Right -- I need to put up a post on that tonight/tomorrow.
61: you've pretty much got it. The light-sensitive ion channels can be injected selectively by using viruses (like rabies) that travel along synapses, and the chemicals that are being released are neurotransmitters, so you can selectively activate networks of neurons. Oh, and you don't need to put the light in the cell as the cells are translucent. In fact, you can just shine a light at the brain and get them to release that way.
Er, shine a light at the surface of the brain, that is. Also, it's possible to get multiple different kinds of rhodopsin whatever to express in a cell, so that you can activate dopamine with a blue light and serotonin with a green light or whatever.
The big question a/f/a using it to study human cognition is if people will be able to get it to work in monkeys; right now it works in mice and rats (and maybe other species) but nobody has demonstrated it in primates.
Haven't they also reversed it so that ion flux can result in light emission so you can track where the neurons fire?
The light-sensitive ion channels can be injected selectively by using viruses (like rabies) that travel along synapses
See, I'm just old enough to think this is creepy futuristic.
68: I believe so, yeah. Although I'm not sure how fine-grained that is; I think most studies still use single-unit electrophysiology to record responses.
69: oh my god it's totally creepy futuristic. It's also amazing, though.
Also, wait, using giant magnets cooled by liquid helium to measure the blood flow in every blood vessel in your brain at once (well, basically) isn't creepy futuristic?
Or what about MEG? That actually uses SQUIDs, as seen in the story Johnny Mnemonic.
And they're a lot better than draining all of the CSF and then using super high powered x-rays. That shit is creepy Victorian.
Also the MEG is by far the most creepy-futuristic looking device known to science.
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Excel error (partially) responsible for austerity.
Fucking Excel. Pretty much the first thing I did as a summer research assistant for [prominent economist] long ago was discover that his previous assistant had omitted one column when sorting a dataset in Excel for a draft NBER working paper. The seemingly large and highly statistically significant impact of the variable in that column did not survive the corrected sorting.
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Everybody should just go ahead and learn SAS.
Good luck birthing ladies! I hope those babies come quickly, easily, and safely!
9: Meet the SWUGs!
"For the SWUG is not a type but an ethos," Taylor explains. "It is the Dionysian response to the cruel brevity of our bright college years. The SWUG seeks oblivion in the face of despair, love in the face of alienation, whiskey in the face of moving back in with your parents who don't have a liquor cabinet."
Oh, oh, oh!
Actually I didn't realize that Yale had frats.
The first fraternities in the US were at Yale.
Yale has over forty words for "fraternity".
Maybe someone should make a tv show that consists of exact, scriptural remakes of episodes of Golden Girls except everyone is college aged.
Either I'm really tired and kind of out of it or 84 is the most brilliant idea I've heard in months. Both, maybe.
85: I first read that as "most brilliant idea I've *had* in months," and thought, Wow! essear has really caught on! He's demanding to be co-author!
The many, many international versions of the Golden Girls are pretty awesome (get ready for "Las Chicas De Oro"). Dutch Blanche is pretty hot for an old Dutch woman.
The first fraternities in the US were at Yale.
I had no idea.
84 is indeed brilliant. But seriously, what is wrong with people (21-year-olds) that they're acting all world-weary and shit?
Buncha drama queens.
As entertaining as your tv show ideas are, essear, I really have work to do.
81 is not actually true; depending on how you define "fraternity" the first was either at William and Mary in 1776 or Union College in 1825.
But Yale does have plenty of frats; George W. Bush was famously president of one.
I now have "Thank you for being a friend" (sung by Lenny) stuck in my head.
You want to replace that with a much better song that will not leave your head? The 1-minute snippet of the new Daft Punk is impossibly good.
Can I share my earworm? At least it's not We Built This City.
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Also about people in their 20s having sex; also vaguely depressing.
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94: I had been skipping it because I wasn't sure I wanted to spoil it, but jesus christ that's good.
I don't like it! This makes me terribly sad.
82: Yale has 40 words for snow but they all also mean "you are so iced, brah!"
I feel like I read Carmen Maura was going to be in the Spanish Golden Girls, which is a little sad for me since she is permanently Pepa Marcos in my universe.
I presume 56 is a confession.
86: I read it the same way! Essear's using Science! to see into our brains and change our perceptions. I knew Science! would only be used for evil.
Maybe someone should make a tv show that consists of exact, scriptural remakes of episodes of Golden Girls except everyone is college aged.
This reminds me of the sitcom idea set in an old folks home where all the inhabitants had known each other at college. Also an excellent concept.
81 is not actually true
But it feels true. In my gut.
