You can view the article in Wired Magazine’s 17.04 issue, or at the following link: http://www.wired.com/print/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_brainatlas

And if you’re really interested, here’s the link to the Allen Brain Atlas Portal

Check out the live feed of the slicing!

Courtesy of The Brain Observatory at UCSD.

Also, here’s an article from the NY Times.

Yes, yes, and YES! Scientists need to learn how to write. I have been arguing this for ages! I used to be a creative writer, but it’s like an unexercised muscle. I’m rusty and have almost lost the ability to narrate – to tell a story. But that’s what science is!! We need to tell a story about what it means to be an organism on this Earth. Check out this RadioLab podcast. It’s beautiful.

The Gift of Color

If you have been in a long-term relationship – and I mean really long term, as in, willing to marry – then you know what I’m talking about. It has been a long standing question about whether humans are a monogamous species or not. It is my argument today that monogamy does, in fact, exist, as its presence runs deep within my own veins. Oxytocin is our wonder-drug of choice. Those people who are in long term relationships have the joys of feeling a bond with their partner that runs much deeper than many people think.

Oxytocin is released during physical interactions with your partner, forming emotional and physical bonds with that individual. My theory is that no matter how bad the relationship gets, no matter how horribly bad that you want out, there is some instinctual property of monogamy that is not easily overridden by the conscious acknowledgment of a failing relationship. Your body has set your biological clock in motion – ticking away, knowing that a mate has been discovered. You are therefore not keen to let that mate go, as evolution insists that you sire offspring in order to keep your genes in the population. You can look back on a relationship all you want, and try to convince yourself that everything about it was poisonous – but in the end, oxytocin seems to prevail, and it takes the will power of a saint to get through a break-up.

Well, I’ve given a great argument for monogamy, but this doesn’t explain why people cheat on their partners and seek out multiple relationships at once. I do not know the statistics (and would be interested to find them out), but it would make sense if most cases of adultry were initiated by men. Why? Because men are able to have several partners in a short period of time, and therefore can spread their genes to several females. Females, on the other hand, have a lengthy gestation period, and then must care for the young (in most cases) once the young have been born/hatched etc. Females cannot have multiple partners as easily as males can. (There are a few exceptions to the rule, but not many.) So perhaps there are sex differences in how oxytocin is metabolized, released, inhibited, or bound. It is an interesting topic for investigation.

This was my poor attempt at analyzing my personal feelings on a scientific level. Somehow it makes it easier to bear sometimes.

I have also come up with an outline for a literature review that will help me to make sense of the papers that I’m currently trying to wade through. Developments are pretty much the same on this front. The big focus will be on discussing the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the amygdala, the periacqueductal grey (PAG), and their behavioral associations. I will then discuss how this relates to squirrel behavior, and ultimately, human health (as discussed in the previous post).

For now, I play the waiting game.

New-found resources include:

Geoffrey Schonenbaum: OFC work linked to human addiction

Erich Jarvis: neuroscience in the field (a VERY important resource)

That said, I would like to devote a chapter of my dissertation to the human health implications that are tied to my current research project. Since I will be studying the anti-predator behavior of ground squirrels, I decided to look a little further into it, and think of how this behavior may be translated into human behavior. It may not be easy to see at first, but it’s the behavior of fear – of anxiety. I’ll be comparing two different populations of squirrels: one that has been exposed to predators rather recently, and one that has not lived with their snake predators for 300,000 + years. It has already been found by my esteemed advisors, Don Owings and Dick Coss, that there is infact a difference in behavior between these two populations. They do not respond equally to the same rattlesnake predator presentation.  Why? Well, the population that has not experienced snakes for many thousands of years seems to be more afraid; more anxious; more vigilant.

Now, to my knowledge, a model of anxiety has not been studied with an evolutionary outlook in mind. It’s all been immediate studies concerning Pavlovian conditioning of fear in rats or mice. This does not take 300,000 years to produce; it merely takes days. So, my new evolutionary model might be extremely insightful into investigating the neural circuitry underlying vigilance and the production of anxious behaviors. PLUS! I will be investigating these behaviors in the field. No one has done neuroscience in the field before. This is completely novel. I have already received comments from the folks at the National Science Foundation (NSF) who did not like my initial proposal because this neurological method is so new. They don’t think that it can happen. This is what I devote my summer to now – making sure that I can get it right so that the next time around, NSF can’t give me the excuse that they don’t want to fund a seemingly impossible project.

As previously stated, you can now see that there are several existing levels to the project that I am proposing. Not only that, but I have found woulderful resources and opportunities that lie in wait at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Bethseda, MD. One wonderful woman by the name of Jacqueline Crawley, works on animal models of psychiatric disease, including depression and anxiety. I have a connection to Brian Trainor here at UCD who is working on an animal model of depression, and my work already is beginning to focus on an animal model of anxiety. Boom. There you have it. A fellowship at NIH may very well be in my future.

Or…let me rephrase. Instinct still exists, but we surpress it. Why? Just because we can.

We constantly strive to be what we think we should be, instead of just being who we are. Today’s lesson centers around just being yourself for once. Don’t think, just do. Are you afraid of something? What does the pit of your stomach tell you to do? Why are you overthinking it? Do what feels right in your heart, not necessarily what your brain or the larger central nervous system of society tells you that you should do. Come to think of it, society is like one large brain, intending to command all of the peripheral subjects that live under its oppression. Society acts as the prefrontal cortex: there is where we lose our ability to follow our instincts. It’s the over-arching command center – the king, the president, the emperor, whatever you’d like it to be – inhibiting instinctual behaviors that might just be what the situation calls for.

Mind you, I’m not condoning harming another human being in a fit of rage, because yes, that is instinct too. I’m just trying to say that you don’t have to be afraid to be you. What you are is your instinct, and what you should be is merely a figment of your prefrontal cortex’s imagination. Be free today. Let go. See how it pans out. It’s not as scary as you think.

This, I assure you.

Disclaimer: This blog is based on pure instinct. My pure instinct. I don’t rely on it enough, and here, I make it a requirement.