January 2012
3 posts
floating-point asked: What's your opinion on the origins of Alzheimer's disease (tau vs. beta amyloid as causative)? Also, it seems that cholesterol plays a role in the disease based on epidemiological and genetic association studies (APOE e4 mutations). What's your view on the biochemical basis for this? Perhaps an impact on APP processing at the membrane level?
December 2011
2 posts
miklo-west310 asked: can you tell me some things about an a sciatic nerve ?
November 2011
1 post
October 2011
3 posts
pooleeanderson asked: Hey, I'm new to reading your blog, and I haven't gotten to all the posts, but I was wondering what opinions you had on the theory of neuroplasticity? I know many neurologists have long thought in terms of localizationism. I find neuroplasticity to be a very compelling topic and certainly something that could open entirely new doors in the study of the brain. By the way, your blog is...
erikaajacksonn asked: I have had Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropthy (CIDP) for four years now. It is an aquired inflammatory disorder of the peripheal nervous system. Suddenly I strained to move my arms, shortly after my legs followed. I receive IViGs about every month and when I asked my doctor how they help me, he couldn't really answer. I was just curious if you could shed some light on the...
February 2011
2 posts
January 2011
8 posts
daath asked: Can you tell me about the frontal lobes, what they effect, and how they grow? And/or, when/how they became a major player in the Homo Sapien?
After I stumbled across your tumblr today. I...
First of all, I’d like to apologize for the radio silence. It’s been due to both my research picking up and coming down with an exhausting illness. Hopefully with this new year, I can maintain more regular posting! Now, this question was asked a long time ago, but it’s an interesting one, so I thought it would be fun to begin with an answer. Although I cannot speak for...
October 2010
5 posts
I get a lot of questions about my background and what I do now. Perhaps more of those than about neuroscience. I figured I might as well address that, and it might give me a bit more cred in the field to list my qualifications and past research. I was pre-med in my undergrad, and even got so far as being accepted at medical schools before I decided I would definitely rather do research/teaching...
September 2010
5 posts
August 2010
15 posts
stringingalong asked: What's your opinion (if any) on polyphasic sleep?
Improving memory with REM sleep →
The benefits of sleep are well-documented, but researcher Sara C. Mednick, PhD, and her colleagues are finding that certain stages of sleep actually have distinct roles in people’s memory capacity. The REM (rapid eye movement) sleep stage — where people’s dreams are most vivid — is also important for people’s memory systems, Mednick found.
Mednick, who is a...
July 2010
14 posts
anquex asked: I've heard that there's two types of amnesia: anterograde amnesia, where a person can't remember new things; and retrograde amnesia, where a person can't recall pre-existing memories. From reading your previous posts, I'm guessing the former is due to a problem more to do with the hippocampus while the latter is perhaps from neurodegeneration. What happens with temporary...