Synraptic

The synaptic cleft...open, open, close, close.

The Value of Scholarship

An opinion article by Thomas L. Friedman in today's New York Times argues that education, by producing innovators and creating jobs, can lead a country out of recession. I agree that education is the most important investment that a country can make in its future and the future of other countries. His emphasis on education underscored how it is sometimes neglected.

Education can be overshadowed by efforts to increase access to healthcare and provide food. I think this is a disservice when health care is not coupled with education. I argue, albeit without data, that education improves health disparities, decreases birth rates, and tempers religious zealotry. As a rule when aid (usually financial) is considered to develop a country or improve the lives of an underpriveleged group, it should be proportionally directed toward developing sustainable food supplies, providing basic health care, and fostering education systems.

The reality of the world - when a $1 is spent on education, it's not spent on feeding a child going without a meal - creates a real problem for my view, but arguably, the starving child will always be there if we don't fix the system he's born into.

Dylan Tics

I just watched Dylan Speaks: The 1965 Press Conference in San Francisco. It's reviewed here. Not to add to the mounds of Dylan commentary generated over the years, but I was struck by the subtle tics throughout the interview. Fine movements of his mouth and eye blinks were the most noticeable to me, but he also seemed to demonstrate stereotypies (lip licking). I think all his movements could be considered drug-induced stereotypies. Having seen him in other documentaries, I had never noted these before. I read that Dylan was using methamphetamines in the mid-60's which would account for these movements. Below is Part 1/6 of the interview which will get you to the rest. It's also available on netflix.

An update

In an effort to treat a difficult topic more sensitively (and to address the concerns of a commenter), I edited a prior post.

Proust was a Neuroscientist

A more accurate title for the book would have been Proust, along with a poet, a chef, a composer, an artist, and 3 writers, intuited what neuroscientists later found to be true; that wouldn't sell books, however. Like myself, many people haven't read Proust, but he holds a certain mystique. Escoffier, the French chef, made for an interesting chapter, but I wouldn't have wanted to read a book about him.

Instead of a review, these are the points I found interesting. William James, eminent psychologist "was drawn to the phenomena that mental reductionism ignored".(p17) These are always the more interesting. The section on hypnosis later in the book was informative.

"Life is slipshod."(p48) This was in reference to stochastic gene expression. Lo, we are not our DNA. Behold, part of us isn't controlled by anything. I recently saw an article about how two identical cloned dogs weren't alike. The owner couldn't explain it but stochastic gene expression in the developing dog fetus could.

A great quote from Cajal is in a footnote on page 83. "No one without a certain intuition - a divinatory instinct for perceiving the idea behind the fact and the law behind the phenomenon - will devise a reasonable solution, whateer his gifts as an observer."

Gertrude Stein certainly had something to say with her writing, not in her writing, but who the hell wants to read it?

I must read Wittgenstein, quoted on p155, "The meaning of a word is its use in the language." Certainly, any grand philosophy must start with language and linguistics, for what can we think and conjecture if we don't have language. This can be taken one step further by investigating what allowed us to obtain language. It turns out cerebral assymetry is not unique to humans. Why are humans (we) different?

Sperry and Gazzinga made their career on split brain patients. (p179) Much was gleaned. However, I think their work contributed to the Right brain/Left brain craze. At the beginning of The origin of consciousness and the breakdown of the bicameral mind, Jaynes begins with criticism of other theories of mind as derivative of singular scientific discoveries. The title of his book clearly shows his devotion to split brain patients.

Like any good pop science book, the ideas were dense, capable of triggering the far-off gaze of thought-grappling. Are we looking for the thought? Do we think better with our eyes closed? As opposed to the Gladwell's of pop science, this book was solid.

Jonah Lehrer. Proust was a Neuroscientist. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2007.

The Angular Gyrus

Located in the parietal lobe, near the superior edge of the temporal lobe, the angular gyrus is involved in the association of language and visual recognition. As noted in one paper, "posterior lesions, particularly of the angular gyrus, can produce quite pronouced anomia for visually recognised objects, and may be associated with alexia."

It occupies Brodmann area 39.

Kipps CM, Hodges JR. Cognitive Assessment for Clinicians. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2005;76(Suppl 1):i22-i30.

Bell's Palsy

A large randomized, controlled, double-blinded trial published in the NEJM has concluded that Acyclovir and prednisolone dual therapy does not offer benefit over prednisolone alone. The jury is still out regarding the addition of valacyclovir. Severe cases respond best to valacyclovir and prednisolone dual therapy according to the published papers on the subject. For now prednisolone is certainly indicated for cases of Bell's palsy. Valacyclovir therapy may or may not add benefit. Not prescribing Valacyclovir would certainly be reasonable practice.

NEJM 2007;357:598-607