#neuroscience

See tagged statuses in the local bookrastinating.com community

We're just migrated from another instance, so here is our (re)introduction:

Neurofrontiers is a bilingual blog about interesting neuroscience topics that tries to be accessible to the broader public while still maintaining scientific accuracy. It's run by a team of three people: a computational neuroscientist, a psychologist, and a graphic designer. We think that being on social media allows us to stay up-to-date with the most recent discussions in science and hope to be able to connect with like-minded individuals.

Posting interests below so we show up in mutual searches:

If you or someone you know is looking for an interdisciplinary master's programme in brain and cognitive sciences, note that the @mbcs applications for September 2025 are open!

https://www.uva.nl/shared-content/programmas/en/research-masters/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/study-programme/study-programme.html

replied to Greg Egan's status

@gregeganSF

The connectome of the Drosophila male nerve cord, where the neural circuits for generating the courtship song reside, has already been mapped:

"A Connectome of the Male Drosophila Ventral Nerve Cord", by Takemura et al. 2023
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.05.543757v1

What's missing now is the brain of the male. I'll let the joke write itself.

The ventral nerve cord, and its location within the fly’s body.
A selection of reconstructed neurons. The neurons shown here comprise 4% of all reconstructed neurons in the MANC. (Ventral view.)

Scientific conferences:

  • what makes them so much better in person than online?
  • How can we improve online conferences so people enjoy them as much as in person ones?
  • What's your favourite platform for online conferences? isn't bad I think? And obviously did great (are these still going?)

Serious questions 😃 please boost and give us your thoughts🙏

(or not)

Happy birthday to Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 - 1934), here in front of Purkinje and granule cells from a pigeon, based on one of his own drawings! Cajal &Golgi won the Nobel in 1906, "in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system". He was as much of an artist as he was a scientist & his 100s of drawings are still used for teaching purposes.⁠
⁠🧵1/n
⁠

My linocut portrait of Cajal in a gradient of gold (left, where there is a table and microscope) to blue (right, where he is) . Behind him is an image based on his drawing of a Purkinje and granule cell of a pigeon in a gradient of gold to black.

Extremely biased take coming, this is my wife's DELIGHTFUL brand-new column in the Transmitter where she breaks down incredibly complex but also incredibly important papers and walks through how she would teach them, thereby teaching us; this is an AMAZING paper I've really been looking forward to, about false memories and

https://www.thetransmitter.org/how-to-teach-this-paper/how-to-teach-this-paper-creating-a-false-memory-in-the-hippocampus-by-ramirez-and-liu-et-al-2013/

Why big numbers break our brains.

NPR quotes a neuroscientist: "Our brains are evolutionarily very old and we are pushing them to do things that we've only just recently conceptualized."

https://flip.it/-34ex8

The Brain and Pain: Breakthroughs in Neuroscience

Pain is an inevitable part of existence, but severe debilitating or chronic pain is a pathological condition that diminishes the quality of life. The Brain and Pain explores the present and future of pain management, providing a comprehensive understanding based on the latest discoveries from many branches of neuroscience.

@bookstodon





Richard Ambron―the former director of a neuroscience lab that conducted leading research in this field―explains the science of how and why we feel pain. He describes how the nervous system and brain process information that leads to the experience of pain, detailing the cellular and molecular functions that are responsible for the initial perceptions of an injury. He discusses how pharmacological agents such as opiates affect the duration and intensity of pain. Ambron examines new evidence showing that discrete circuits in the brain modulate the experience of pain in response to a placebo, fear, anxiety, belief, or other circumstances, as well as how pain can be relieved by activating these circuits using mindfulness training and other nonpharmacological treatments. The book also evaluates the prospects of procedures such as deep brain stimulation and optogenetics. Current and thorough, The Brain and Pain will be invaluable for a range of people seeking to understand their options for treatment as well as students in neuroscience and medicine. Review This book may be of specific interest to students at any level who are interested in medicine, neuroscience, or biology but should also be accessible to anyone interested in the mechanisms of pain perception and treatment, provided they do not mind learning some biology on the way. ― Choice

Rewired: Protecting Your Brain in the Digital Age

Living in an age of digital distraction has wreaked havoc on our brains--but there's much we can do to restore our tech-life balance. We live in a world that is always on, where everyone is always connected. But we feel increasingly disconnected. Why? The answer lies in our brains.

@bookstodon






Carl D. Marci, MD, a leading expert on social and consumer neuroscience, reviews the mounting evidence that overuse of smart phones and social media is rewiring our brains, resulting in a losing deal: we are neglecting the relationships that sustain us and keep us healthy in favor of weaker and more ephemeral ties. The ability to connect and form strong social bonds is fundamental to human experience and emerged through unique structures in our brains. But ever-more-powerful technologies and ubiquitous access to media have hijacked our need to connect intimately and emotionally with others. The quick highs of clicking "like" and swiping right overstimulate the same neurological reward centers associated with social relationships. The habits that accompany our digital lifestyles are putting tremendous pressure on critical components of the brain associated with attention, emotion, and memory, changing how we process information and altering how we communicate and relate, even at a physiological level. As a psychiatrist working at the forefront of research on the impact of digital technology, Marci has seen this transformation up close and developed a range of responses. Rewired provides scientifically supported solutions for everyone who wants to restore their tech-life balance--from parents concerned about their children's exposure to the internet to stressed workers dealing with the deluge of emails and managing the expectation of 24/7 availability.