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Our last recording went a little long. We split it in two, and this is the second part. Today we talk about the somewhat gruesome history of studying the electrical activity of the brain.
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The parts of your brain that are working the hardest, need the most blood. Your brain actually pulsates with your heartbeat, and the flow of your blood within your brain changes from minute to minute. One of the ways to study the brain is to track its blood flow. Today, along with the fall of Eastern Rome, assassins, goats and tourniquets, Phil and I talk about early methods of tracking the brain’s blood flow.
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Much of what we’ve learned about how our brain works came from the results of injury and disease. From the work of an ancient Egyptian doctor, to a roman physician patching up gladiators, to an unfortunate gunpowder accident in 1848, we talk about some of what we’ve learned from the brain about the brain when the brain breaks.
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From simple staining, to neurons being stimulated by lasers, today we look at some of the ways we look at our brain, it’s cells, and how said brain cells work.
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After more than 200 episodes, we finally decided to introduce ourselves and the show. Learn a bit about who we are, what we’re doing and why. Also, rubber ducks!
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:16 — 12.0MB) | Embed
Phil and I have decided to look at some of the tools and techniques used to try and understand the human brain. Today, we look at the MRI. Unfortunately, Brad couldn’t follow the physics, and it shows.
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In a previous post, I said that adding energy to the system would speed it up. Between that and adjusting the mutation rate, I was right. The figures are adapting to changes within minutes, instead of taking hours.
In the most recent post, I managed to get the figures to push a button when they see a light. Take a look at a typical run, after turning off the energy requirements and mutation, running the population that was produced, guesser0.pop.
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Professor Steve Stewart-Williams, one of my twitter folk posted this thing about perceptual illusions. They were all visual. I can’t see them, but I remember seeing some back when I could see well enough to see them. Even then, not all of them would work. In fact, I had different illusions of my own.
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:04 — 12.2MB) | Embed
The neuron is not the only type of brain cell. From a celebrity missing body parts, to human cells in a mouse brain, we take a look at your glia.
Here’s a video about the brain, that includes the animation I mentioned in the episode, and information on your Glia.
A Blueprint for the Human Brain
Here’s a simple and quick article about human Glia being placed into mice.
The smart mouse with the half-human brain
Here’s a less simple, less quick article about the same experiments.
Here are a couple of articles about Einstein’s brain.
The Tragic Story of How Einstein’s Brain Was Stolen and Wasn’t Even Special
The strange afterlife of Einstein’s brain
I said that myelinization is an invention of the vertebrates. Well, there are exceptions. It wasn’t in the show, but it’s interesting—something on the evolution of myelination that includes a couple of invertebrates who’ve come up with the same trick.
When I posted the last post I posted, I was smugly certain that I’d be posting another post, (that very day!)all about how success had been achieved. It had been a while since I’d last looked at my figures. I had episode 200 to kick out the door, and some research to do for a new project. It wasn’t that long of a break, but just long enough to mean I had to read my journal to figure out where I was, and what I should do next. Once I knew what was what, I realized that what I had planned to do was pointless and useless, at least compared to the shiny new idea in my head.
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