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Science of the Soul? ‘I Think, Therefore I Am’ Is Losing Force

By CORNELIA DEAN In 1950, in a letter to bishops, Pope Pius XII took up the issue of evolution. The Roman Catholic Church does not necessarily object to the study of evolution as far as it relates to physical traits, he wrote in the encyclical, Humani Generis.” But he added, “Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.” Pope John Paul II made much the same point in 1996, in a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, an advisory group to the Vatican. Although he noted that in the intervening years evolution had become “more than a hypothesis,” he added that considering the mind as emerging merely from physical phenomena was “incompatible with the truth about man.” But as evolutionary biologists and cognitive neuroscientists peer ever deeper into the brain, they are discovering more and more genes, brain structures and other physical correlates to feelings like empathy, disgust and joy. That is, they are discovering physical bases for the feelings from which moral sense emerges — not just in people but in other animals as well. The result is perhaps the strongest challenge yet to the worldview summed up by Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who divided the creatures of the world between humanity and everything else. As biologists turn up evidence that animals can exhibit emotions and patterns of cognition once thought of as strictly human, Descartes’s dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” loses its force. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 1: Biological Psychology: Scope and Outlook
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 1: An Introduction to Brain and Behavior
Link ID: 10424 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t

By DENNIS OVERBYE I was a free man until they brought the dessert menu around. There was one of those molten chocolate cakes, and I was suddenly being dragged into a vortex, swirling helplessly toward caloric doom, sucked toward the edge of a black (chocolate) hole. Visions of my father’s heart attack danced before my glazed eyes. My wife, Nancy, had a resigned look on her face. The outcome, endlessly replayed whenever we go out, is never in doubt, though I often cover my tracks by offering to split my dessert with the table. O.K., I can imagine what you’re thinking. There but for the grace of God. Having just lived through another New Year’s Eve, many of you have just resolved to be better, wiser, stronger and richer in the coming months and years. After all, we’re free humans, not slaves, robots or animals doomed to repeat the same boring mistakes over and over again. As William James wrote in 1890, the whole “sting and excitement” of life comes from “our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.” Get over it, Dr. James. Go get yourself fitted for a new chain-mail vest. A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

With Lasers and Daring, Doctors Race to Save a Young Man’s Brain

By DENISE GRADY OPERATING ROOM 14, Dec. 12, 9:30 a.m. — “I always prep my own patients,” Dr. David J. Langer said. “It relaxes me.” He picked up a sponge soaked in antiseptic and began scrubbing the shaved skull of Chris Ratuszny, 26, a mechanic from Lindenhurst, N.Y. Mr. Ratuszny lay on the operating table, anesthetized and oblivious. His head jutted out past the end of the table, supported by four pins that had been screwed into his skull. The pins were attached, like spokes in a wheel, to a semicircular frame — surreal but standard, the hardware typically used to immobilize the head for brain surgery. A thick purple line had been drawn from his neck to the top of his head, to guide the scalpels. He was about to become the first person in the United States to undergo an operation involving the use of an excimer laser to treat a giant brain aneurysm, a dangerous ballooning of an artery that could burst and kill him or leave him with devastating brain damage. The aneurysm was too big for the most common treatments, which involve clips or metal coils; it required bypass surgery on an artery in the brain. The laser is not approved for brain surgery in the United States, but Dr. Langer got permission from the Food and Drug Administration to use it on an emergency basis for Mr. Ratuszny (ra-TOOSH-nee) last Tuesday at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Just Another Face in the Crowd, Indistinguishable Even if It’s Your Own

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Some people never forget a face. Heather Sellers never remembers one. She finds it almost impossible to recognize people simply by looking at them. She remembers the books she reads as well as anyone else, but movies and TV shows are impossible to follow because all of the actors’ faces seem so similar. She can recall a name or a telephone number with ease, but she is unable to remember her own face well enough to pick it out in a group photograph. Dr. Sellers, a professor of English at Hope College in Holland, Mich., has a disorder called prosopagnosia, or face blindness, and she has had it since birth. “I see faces that are human,” she said, “but they all look more or less the same. It’s like looking at a bunch of golden retrievers: some may seem a little older or smaller or bigger, but essentially they all look alike.” Face blindness can be a rare result of a stroke or a brain injury, but a study published in the July issue of The American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A is the first report of the prevalence of a congenital or developmental form of the disorder. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 9145 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Fly Moves: Insects buzz about in organized abandon

Bruce Bower Flies aren't deep thinkers. Yet these humble creatures display a penchant for spontaneous behavior that represents an evolutionary building block of voluntary choice, also known as free will, a controversial new study suggests. By mathematically analyzing flight maneuvers, a team of scientists showed for the first time that fruit flies move in a way that is neither wholly random nor predetermined. An evolved brain mechanism in the fly must generate spontaneous, unpredictable flight shifts to aid in vital tasks such as avoiding predators and tracking potential mates, conclude neuroscientist Björn Brembs of the Free University of Berlin and his colleagues. "Our results provide strong evidence that the exact prediction of an individual [fly]'s behavior is impossible," Brembs says. This finding dovetails with other evidence that people must have a neural ability to generate spontaneous behavior. Without such an ability, "it's hard to imagine people having access to free will," he adds. The researchers reject the traditional assumption that flies and other animals search for food and engage in other critical behaviors primarily by using their senses to glean clues from their surroundings. Instead, the new results suggest that circuitous foraging routes and other behavioral signatures of flies arise spontaneously, although sensory clues may also play a role. Brembs' team describes its findings in the May PLoS ONE. ©2007 Science Service

Do flies have free will?

Philip Ball Gluing a fly's head to a wire and watching it trying to fly sounds more like the sort of experiment a naughty schoolboy would conduct than one that turns out to have philosophical and legal implications. But that's the way it is for the work reported this week by a team of neurobiologists in the online journal PLoS One1. They say their study of the 'flight' of a tethered fly reveals that the fly's brain has the ability to be spontaneous — to make decisions that aren't predictable responses to environmental stimuli. The researchers think this might be what underpins the notorious cussedness of laboratory animals, wryly satirized in the so-called Harvard Law of Animal Behavior: "Under carefully controlled experimental circumstances, an animal will behave as it damned well pleases." In humans, this apparently volitional behaviour is traditionally ascribed to our free will. Björn Brembs of the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and his colleagues make the somewhat radical claim that their experiment shows that even flies, although not making conscious decisions, have a kind of primitive 'free will' circuit wired into their brains. That's an intriguing idea, not least because it forces us to confront the question of what on earth 'free will' could mean in a neuroscientific context. My suspicion is that such a meaning doesn't exist. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Study hints that fruit flies have free will

By Charles Q. Choi A spark of free will may exist in even the tiny brain of the humble fruit fly, based on new findings that could shed light on the nature and evolution of free will in humans. Future research delving further into free will could lead to more advanced robots, scientists added. The result, joked neurobiologist Björn Brembs from the Free University Berlin, could be "world robot domination." "Seriously though," Brembs said that programming robots with aspects of free will "may lead to more realistic and probably even more efficient behavior, which could be decisive in truly autonomous robots needed for planetary exploration." Better understanding aspects of free will in humans also could aid in the treatment of mental disorders where people face problems controlling how they feel, think or act, such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anorexia nervosa, schizophrenia or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Brembs told LiveScience. For centuries, the question of whether or not humans possess free will — and thus control their own actions — has been a source of hot debate. © 2007 MSNBC.com © 2007 Microsoft

Society for Neuroscience

Day 3: Tuesday Nov 5th, 2002
Preventing a shaky future for Parkinson's patients Investigators: Anders Björklund and Gary Housley Anders Björklund of Lund University in Sweden, a leader in fetal tissue transplantation, issued a clarion call to his fellow scientists by mapping out future research priorities. Experimental cell transplants have helped hundreds of Parkinson's patients, but challenges remain in basic research.
A whole new view of the Parkinson's problem Investigators: Jonathan Dostrovsky and Jerrold Vitek The real culprit behind the motor symptoms of Parkinson's may be the irregular pattern - and not the rapid rate - of neuronal firing, mounting new evidence suggests.
New evidence of aggregate toxicity in Huntington's Disease Investigators: Wen Yang and Ronald Wetzel A new assay provides "the best in vitro evidence" that polyglutamine protein aggregates are toxic in Huntington's disease, according to a study presented today at SFN.
Markers for memory decline Investigator: Michela Gallagher Memory makes us who we are. However, scientists are finding that memory loss associated with aging isn't what they once thought it was. In healthy elderly animals, subtle functional changes in the neurons seem to be correlated with memory impairment.
Brain cancer infiltrates SFN Investigators: Luis Parada, Terry Van Dyke, William Weiss and Thomas Curran Today, for the first time ever, brain cancer made a scheduled appearance at the annual meeting of Society for Neuroscience. Researchers say the time is right to join the fields and break down the barriers that have slowed progress in the disciplines.

A sticky situation for ants and bees:

UMass biologist looks at how these insects adhere to various surfaces AMHERST, Mass. – University of Massachusetts biologist Elizabeth Brainerd is part of a team that recently completed a study on how certain types of ants and bees are able to walk on vertical surfaces – or even upside-down. The study, conducted in conjunction with Walter Federle and Bert Höldobler of the University of Würzburg, Germany, and the late Thomas A. McMahon, of Harvard University, was published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings have implications not just in the field of biology, but also in the development of miniature robots used in medical procedures. The study, which included taking videotapes of insects scurrying along glass plates, focused specifically on honeybees and Asian weaver ants. The adhesive organs in these insects are quite different from those of animals such as geckos and most other insects, Brainerd notes. "Geckos have sticky pads on their feet, which peel off at the end of each step. It's a relatively static system," she said. "The adhesive organs in ants and bees are much more dynamic."

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 694 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Headaches have themselves

Jerry Fodor Consciousness is all the rage just now. It boasts new journals of its very own, from which learned articles overflow. Neuropsychologists snap its picture (in colour) with fMRI machines, and probe with needles for its seat in the brain. At all seasons, and on many continents, interdisciplinary conferences about consciousness draw together bizarre motleys that include philosophers, psychologists, phenomenologists, brain scientists, MDs, computer scientists, the Dalai Lama, novelists, neurologists, graphic artists, priests, gurus and (always) people who used to do physics. Institutes of consciousness studies are bountifully subsidised. Meticulous distinctions are drawn between the merely conscious and the consciously available; and between each of these and the preconscious, the unconscious, the subconscious, the informationally encapsulated and the introspectable. There is no end of consciousness gossip on Tuesdays in the science section of the New York Times. Periodically, Nobel laureates pronounce on the connections between consciousness and evolution, quantum mechanics, information theory, complexity theory, chaos theory and the activity of neural nets. Everybody gives lectures about consciousness to everybody else. But for all that, nothing has been ascertained with respect to the problem that everybody worries about most: what philosophers have come to call ‘the hard problem’. The hard problem is this: it is widely supposed that the world is made entirely of mere matter, but how could mere matter be conscious? How, in particular, could a couple of pounds of grey tissue have experiences? © LRB Ltd, 1997-2007

The Conversation: Brain research brings wonders and worries

By Judith Horstman What ethical concerns will arise from new technology and medicine that can reveal our thoughts and enhance our brains? To comment on this issue, please use our forum. Back in the 1980s – in a place long ago and far away called the U.S. House of Representatives – I was a Washington correspondent covering health policy issues, and a young Congressman from Tennessee named Al Gore was chairman of a subcommittee on science and technology. That oversight and investigations subcommittee was wrestling with troublesome questions surrounding organ transplantation. A new anti-rejection drug, cyclosporine, had raised survival rates for recipients to 80 percent, a tremendous advance in life-saving medical technology that resulted in a massive demand for donor organs – already in short supply – and set off a flood of legal, moral and ethical issues. Kidneys were being sold and bought from living donors, the wealthy were getting to the head of waiting lists after making huge donations to hospitals, and desperate parents were launching media campaigns for hearts, livers and lungs for their dying children. In the most notorious and bizarre case, a baboon heart was transplanted into a 7-month-old infant, Baby Fae, who did not survive. Gore's subcommittee waded into this morass and produced landmark legislation: The National Organ Transplant Act prohibited the sale of human organs and set up a policy and structure for allocation of donor organs. More legislation followed and so did more bioethical issues, such as those involving embryonic stem cells, gene therapy, and the ownership of your own body tissue and genes – and foreshadowed the increasingly complex ethical issues to come. © Copyright The Sacramento Bee.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 1: Biological Psychology: Scope and Outlook; Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 1: An Introduction to Brain and Behavior; Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 14008 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Doctors missing consciousness in vegetative patients

by Celeste Biever If there's one thing worse than being in a coma, it's people thinking you are in one when you aren't. Yet a new comparison of methods for detecting consciousness suggests that around 40 per cent of people diagnosed as being in a vegetative state are in fact "minimally conscious". In the worst case scenario, such misdiagnoses could influence the decision to allow a patient to die, even though they have some vestiges of consciousness. But crucially it may deprive patients of treatments to make them more comfortable, more likely to recover, or to allow them to communicate with family, say researchers. In a vegetative state (VS), reflexes are intact and the patient can breathe unaided, but there is no awareness. A minimally conscious state (MCS) is a sort of twilight zone, only recently recognised, in which people may feel some physical pain, experience some emotion, and communicate to some extent. However, because consciousness is intermittent and incomplete in MCS, it can be sometimes very difficult to tell the difference between the two. In 2002 Joseph Giacino at the JFK Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey and colleagues released the first diagnostic criteria for MCS. Then in 2004, Giacino released a revised coma recovery scale (CRS-R) – a series of behavioural tests based on criteria that can be used to distinguish between the two states. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 13081 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Pigeons make the grade at art appreciation

by Ewen Callaway Parents may praise their children's artwork as if each piece were a da Vinci or a Rembrandt – but pigeons, new research suggests, are somewhat more discerning. Several birds have successfully learned to tell the difference between well-executed and crude paintings – all created by 9 to 11-year-olds at a Tokyo elementary school. No, the city hasn't devised a plot to simultaneously rid its streets of pigeons and employ art teachers that work for peanuts – or, rather, grain. Instead, the experiments were set up to see if other animals, provided with enough training, could grasp the human concept of beauty, says Shigeru Watanabe, a psychologist at Keio University in Tokyo, who led the study. Peck for a prize This isn't Watanabe's first efforts to teach art appreciation to pigeons. In 1995, he and two colleagues published a paper showing that pigeons could learn to discriminate Picasso paintings from Monets – work that earned him that year's Ig Nobel prize. New Scientist plays no role in selecting winners, but Watanabe's latest study make a strong case for another award. He trained four birds – on loan from the Japanese Society for Racing Pigeons – to appreciate children's art by linking correct assessments of paintings with food. Works deemed good (see image) had earned As in art class, while bad paintings (see image) garnered Cs or Ds. Watanabe also put the paintings to a jury of 10 adults, and pigeons viewed only works unanimously declared good or bad by the panel. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 12996 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Celebrity 'blindness' down to brain wiring

by Ewen Callaway If you can't tell Angelina Jolie from Jennifer Aniston, total ignorance of pop culture might not be the only culprit. People with a rare condition called "face blindness" lack connections in a brain area responsible for recognising faces, new research shows. Officially termed prosopagnosia, face blindness takes two forms: acquired and inherited. People who develop the condition later in life have usually suffered a stroke or an injury in a brain region important for facial recognition called the fusiform gyrus, says Cibu Thomas, a neuroscientist who led the study while at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The inherited form – which may affect up to one out of 50 people – is far more mysterious. Tests of facial recognition can diagnose inherited prosopagnosiacs, but functional brain scans have revealed few differences between their brains and those of people who can pick out celebrities and loved ones. "Here's a brain that looks normal in an MRI, and in some cases they have difficulty in recognising their own spouse," says Thomas, who is now at the Harvard Medical School. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 12262 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When brain death isn't terminal

Patricia Hluchy How did a man declared brain dead by medical professionals end up back in the land of the living? The emergence of Zack Dunlap's story last month made some people wonder if it's possible to be written off prematurely in the trauma ward. Like a lot of young men in small towns, Zack lived for his wheels – a souped-up all-terrain vehicle. The 21-year-old factory worker spent his free time roaring around the countryside near his hometown, Frederick, Okla., a farming/ranching community of about 4,200. He was so adept at "wheelies" and stunts that his friends called him "Outlaw." Last November, he popped a wheelie that some insist was fatal – even though Zack is now walking and talking again. When he landed, he had to veer suddenly to avoid hitting a fellow ATVer, causing his four-wheeler to flip in the air. Zack, who wasn't wearing a helmet, crashed onto the pavement. Before long he was medevaced to United Regional Healthcare System in Wichita Falls, Tex., about 80 kilometres away, where he was put on a ventilator. Thirty-six hours after the accident, Zack was declared brain dead. The hospital notified the authorities, news reports of his death were published, and preparations were made to harvest his organs. © Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2008

Monkeys reveal brain is hard-wired for counting

Roxanne Khamsi You may not want a monkey to balance your chequebook, but you still have to give them credit – new research supports the idea that not only can monkeys understand written numbers, but that individual brain cells may become dedicated to specific numbers. The small study of two rhesus monkeys reveals that cells in their brains respond selectively to specific number values – regardless of whether the amount is represented by dots on a screen or an Arabic numeral. For example, a given brain cell in the monkey will respond to the number three, but not the number one. The results suggest that individual cells in human brains might also have a fine-tuned preference for specific numerical values. While monkeys might not yet have mastered calculus, recent studies have shown that they can learn understand some basic aspects of arithmetic and, in a rare case, multiplication. Andreas Nieder at the University of Tübingen in Germany and colleagues trained two rhesus monkeys to count by showing them various numbers of dots on a screen followed by Arabic numerals. The monkeys had to pull a lever to indicate when the numeral matched the preceding count of dots. An accurate response earned the animals a cup of apple juice, which they consider a treat. The researchers also reversed the task, showing the Arabic numerals several seconds before the dots. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 10906 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Face Blind

By Joshua Davis BILL CHOISSER WAS 48 when he first recognized himself. He was standing in his bathroom, looking in the mirror when it happened. A strand of hair fell down – he had been growing it out for the first time. The strand draped toward a nose. He understood that it was a nose, but then it hit him forcefully that it was his nose. He looked a little higher, stared into his own eyes, and saw … himself. For most of his childhood, Choisser thought he was normal. He just assumed that nobody saw faces. But slowly, it dawned on him that he was different. Other people recognized their mothers on the street. He did not. During the 1970s, as a small-town lawyer in the Illinois Ozarks, he struggled to convince clients that he was competent even though he couldn't find them in court. He never greeted the judges when he passed them on the street – everyone looked similarly blank to him – and he developed a reputation for arrogance. His father, also a lawyer, told him to pay more attention. His mother grew distant from him. He felt like he lived in a ghost world. Not being able to see his own face left him feeling hollow. One day in 1979, he quit, left town, and set out to find a better way of being in the world. At 32, he headed west and landed a job as a number cruncher at a construction firm in San Francisco. The job isolated him – he spent his days staring at formulas – but that was a good thing: He didn't have to talk to people much. With 1,500 miles between him and southern Illinois, he felt a measure of freedom. He started to wear colorful bandannas, and he let his hair grow. When it got long enough, he found that it helped him see himself. Before that, he'd had to deduce his presence: I'm the only one in the room, so that must be me in the mirror. Now that he had long hair and a wild-looking scarf on his head, he could recognize his image. He felt the beginnings of an identity. © 2007 CondéNet Inc.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 10138 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The root of dyscalculia found

Scientists led by UCL (University College London) have induced dyscalculia in subjects without the maths learning difficulty for the first time. The study, which finds that the right parietal lobe is responsible for dyscalculia, potentially has implications for diagnosis and management through remedial teaching. Dyscalculia is just as prevalent in the population as dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – around 5% of the population is affected. However, dyscalculia has not been given the same attention as other disorders and the underlying brain dysfunction causing dyscalculia is still a mystery. It is hoped that this study will provide a better understanding of the condition and lead to better diagnosis and treatment. Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: “This is the first causal demonstration that the parietal lobe is the key to understanding developmental dyscalculia. Most people process numbers very easily – almost automatically – but people with dyscalculia do not. We wanted to find out what would happen when the areas relevant to maths learning in the right parietal lobes were effectively knocked out for several hundred milliseconds. We found that stimulation to this brain region during a maths test radically impacted on the subjects’ reaction time. “This provides strong evidence that dyscalculia is caused by malformations in the right parietal lobe and provides sold grounds for further study on the physical abnormalities present in dyscalculics’ brains."

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 10123 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Trap-Jaw Ants Go Ballistic

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — The horn-like jaws of the trap-jaw ant snap shut at a speed of 78 to 145 mph, qualifying as the fastest known moving body parts, according to new research. The jaws snap together with a force strong enough to hurl the ant 3 inches into the air and 8 1/2 inches away, the equivalent of a 5’6" human jumping 44 feet in the air and soaring for 132 feet. "The ants generate their extreme (jaw) speeds through the use of power amplification – a combination of springs and latches which allow the animals to store up and release energy within their own body," said lead author Sheila Patek, who indicated that the system has an "internal damping" mechanism that prevents the powerful snap from crushing the ant. "Trap-jaw ants slowly contract large muscles while a pair of latches keep the jaws open. Once the muscles are fully contracted, the latches are released and the jaws close explosively," she explained to Discovery News. The findings are published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 9260 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Think fast! Rice undergrad unlocks nerve speed secret

Houston, – In the second it takes you to read these words, tens of thousands of vesicles in your optic nerves are released in sequence, opening tiny surface pores to pass chemical signals to the next cell down the line, telling your brain what you're seeing and your eyes where to move. Thanks to two new studies – including one spearheaded by an undergraduate biochemistry student at Rice University and published online today by Nature Structural and Molecular Biology – scientists have defined the function of a key protein that nerve cells use to pass information quickly. Like all cells in our bodies, nerve cells are encased in a membrane, a thin layer of fatty tissue that walls off the outside world from the cell's interior. And like other cells, nerve cells use a complex system of proteins as sensors, switches and activators to scan the outside world and decide when to open membrane doorways to take in food, expel waste and export chemical products to the rest of the body. Many studies suggest that a group of proteins called SNAREs act like the cell's loading dock managers, deciding when to open the door to release shipments of chemical freight. SNAREs form a docking bay for cartons of chemicals encased in their own fatty membranes. "Nerve cells are one of the few cells in our bodies in which vesicles are prepositioned at the cell membrane, because they have to be ready to release neurotransmitter to the next nerve cell at a moment's notice," said principal researcher James McNew, assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 9140 - Posted: 06.24.2010

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