Category: Science

Solstice Detection (Slow Vision)

A special solstice edition of NeuroThursday this week: the eye’s special mechanism to detect the slow light changes of day and night, winter and spring.

Threadreader version:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/944026526890196992.html

Twitter thread:

Learning Styles

NeuroThursday is back in action with a discussion of learning styles in the classroom – particularly the now-classic split between visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. How meaningful is the whole idea?

Saturday Night Palsy

NeuroThursday has come around for a late-night drink this week, and an explanation of the nerve injury known as Saturday Night Palsy!

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

NeuroThursday took a brief break, but it’s back to finish the Methods Trifecta with a discussion of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), the .0000001 megapixel camera!

https://storify.com/bckinney/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

NeuroThursday returns from last week’s internet outage with a primer on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS): brain stimulation you could do at home, and why you probably shouldn’t.

Right Hand, Human Brain

My latest neuroscience essay, “Right Hand, Human Brain” is up today at the Baen website! This one uses science fiction and fantasy to guide a deep dive into my personal favorite bit of neuroscience, part of my current research topics: handedness, and how it arises in the brain.

Hand dominance is much more complex than most people realize. It’s built from asymmetries atop asymmetries, a stack of lateralized functions in the brain, independent from each other in varying degrees. To understand these, you need to get to the root of the human condition: how we move, how we talk.

The complexity of this answer is why I love studying handedness. It’s prosaic and universal, so ordinary that it can affect your every waking hour without you needing to notice or care. Yet for all its silent ubiquity, to understand handedness, you need to understand everything about the organization of the brain.

For following here to the website, I offer you a bonus bit of trivia: late in the essay when I discussed ways to alter handedness, I mention “all four lobes of the brain.” This is a lie.

The traditional, textbook image of the brain shows four lobes: frontal (motor and executive), parietal (touch and sensorimotor integration), occipital (basic vision), and temporal (hearing, complex vision, memory formation).

The modern conception of the brain shows at least five lobes, maybe six. I’m used to the 5-lobe version, where you find another one by unfolding the crevasse between the frontal and temporal lobes.1 On the inner walls of that space, you will find the insular lobe, which seems to play roles in emotion, homeostasis, and consciousness.

Some people count a “limbic lobe” as the sixth, but if lobes are going to be anything other than an arbitrary distinction, they need to be anatomically & spatially separate, which the limbic lobe isn’t (though it is functionally distinct).

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

This week for NeuroThursday, I unveil some myths & methods of the non-invasive brain stimulation technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)!

Harry Potter Neuroscience #2 (Philosophy of Neuroscience)

This week I decided to pursue the follow-up questions from last week, and address some more philosophical questions about what our neuroscience answers mean!

Harry Potter Neuroscience (Novelty in the Brain)

NeuroThursday is back, picking up a reader’s dare: can I actually write “Harry Potter and the Principles of Neural Science?” It turns out I can! It’s about surprise and novelty in the brain!

Threadreader:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/908508062050406400.html

Twitter original:

https://twitter.com/BenCKinney/status/908508062050406400

Muscle Memory in the Brain

NeuroThursday is back from its summer break to talk about “muscle memory” – that is, skill/procedural memory – and how you can improve it!