Drink Green Beer, Not Green Wine
Monday, March 17th, 2008 On St. Patrick’s day, pour yourself a green beer, not a green wine: wine and spirits cause more hippocampal volume loss than does beer (in chronic alcoholics, anyway).
There are probably other good reasons for not drinking green wine, although some clever marketing group will probably market a sauvignon vert . . . [...]
Obesity research: The French stop eating when they want to, Americans stop eating when others do
Thursday, January 17th, 2008The stereotype of overeating Americans is true. Americans stop eating meals based on external cues from others. The French stop eating when they themselves want to. Here’s from Wansink, Brian, Payne, Collin R., Chandon, Pierre, Internal and External Cues of Meal Cessation: The French Paradox Redux?, Obesity 2007 15: 2920-2924:
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Do Psychopaths Dream?
Friday, January 4th, 2008Updated: 02.02.08
Did you every wake up and say, “Wow. That dream was so real.”
My guess is that psychopaths — at least some — don’t do that. If you want to see if someone has psychopathic tendencies, maybe a one question, binary, yes-or-no question is, “do you dream” ?
I’m researching white matter as part of [...]
Face perception in monkeys reared with no exposure to faces — Sugita, 10.1073/pnas.0706079105 — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008Face perception in monkeys reared with no exposure to faces — Sugita, 10.1073/pnas.0706079105 — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Toddler monkeys who have never seen a human or a monkey face prefer to look at faces in photographs.
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Obesity and genes: Extreme body mass associated with faulty gene processing
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008People with extreme body mass index may have the right genes, that splice the wrong way.
Here’s a press release, describing the work to date.The abstract, Goren, Amir, Kim, Eddo, Amit, Maayan, Bochner, Ron, Lev-Maor, Galit, Ahituv, Nadav, Ast, Gil , “Alternative approach to a heavy weight problem”, Genome Res. 2007 Dec 20 [Epub ahead of [...]
From Proventia, “Does child abuse affect brain development?”
Monday, December 31st, 2007In the ovarian lottery, we are born human babies ready to adapt to our surroundings.
Dr. Vitelli at Proventia posted on how child abuse - sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, witnessing the abuse of others — affects brain development. (This was way back in November — I’ve been meaning to post on this.) The post [...]
Hapmap update: Evolution speeding up; schizophrenia DNA very homozygous and looks like recessive selection
Sunday, December 30th, 2007Which is better, for genes to change or for them to stay the same?
Is it better to evolve or devolve?
According to new hapmap data, evolution is accelerating with increasing human density and migration. We are evolving more quickly since the Pleistocene, according to a recent report in PNAS by Hawkes et al. Most of [...]
White-collar psychopaths at The Top Two Inches
Monday, December 17th, 2007
Grandville, Metamorphosis, “Un mariage de raison…pour raison.”
I’m always amazed that psychopaths get as far as they do in corporations, with no backstop. The Grandville cartoon is an illustration of my explanation: they make sure their watchdogs are lame.
Multiple hat tips to the blog “The Top Two Inches” and Dr. Steve, who posts regularly on “sub-criminal” [...]
Weight Loss Meds Updates: New Phen-fens and leptin
Monday, November 19th, 2007
Happy pre-Thanksgiving!
On that note, I thought I’d catch up on weight loss abstracts.
1. New Phen-fens without the side effects look good, and they may also be useful in treating diabetes. They may have an “anxiety” type side effect initially.
2. Leptin plus a satiety protein (Amylin’s pramlintide) makes 200+ pound people lose about 25 pounds [...]
Fragile X research: A boy’s Fragile X gene reverts to normal and premutation carriers produce antisense DNA
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007Imagine you are a 10 year old and your whole life you’ve lived with two mentally disabled brothers who have Fragile X. You are told you have the thing in your body that could make you have problems when you are older, too. And then one day, you are told you are fixed.
I can’t [...]
Daylight savings time ends November 4 unless you have CLOCK gene polymorphism rs1801260
Monday, October 22nd, 2007For 2007, November 4 is when we (in the US ) set our clocks back an hour so we get an extra hour sleep. But, whether or not you actually go to sleep is another matter. One genetic polymorphism correlates with being a “night owl” as well as other conditions.
As far as standard time, [...]
Dopamine is the new phen-fen?
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
Eating to Live, Living to Eat: Genes May Make Some People More Motivated to Eat, Perhaps Overeat
We knew that.
Here’s a press release from the American Psychological Association:
Newswise — Science has found one likely contributor to the way that some folks eat to live and others live to eat. Researchers at the University at Buffalo, [...]
Abuse x genes = “pronounced psychopathological manifestations”
Saturday, October 13th, 2007Nature, nurture, nature, nurture.
Nature x nurture is really the thing. If you are genetically loaded, and your mother drank while pregnant with you, or had genital herpes while pregnant with you, or if you were abused after you were born, your behavior will be more extreme than if you just had the genes or [...]
Neurological Correlates: Scientific Illustration, Ernst Haeckel, “Kunstformen der Natur”
Friday, October 5th, 2007Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of nature) (1904) is online at Wikimedia Commons - a sample for your Friday
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Neurological Correlates: Going on Anti-Depressants and Thinking “I’d rather be dead”
Saturday, September 29th, 2007
Cruickshank, George, “Suicide”
“A young woman has jumped from a bridge; two onlookers are standing on the bridge in upper right corner; ship masts are visible in lower left beneath the arch of the bridge through which shines a full moon.”
Regarding suicide - from the US CDC:
• Among young adults ages 15 to 24 years [...]
Neurological Correlates: Antique Scientific Illustration, Squirrels
Thursday, September 20th, 2007Happy Autumnal Equinox In Advance! Squirrel prints, including lots of flying squirrels.
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