Peter Binfield, PhD, publisher of PLoS ONE, the wildly successful open-access science journal, discusses the future of scholarly research and publishing at the Stanford Summit @ Medicine 2.0 on Sept. 16, 2011.
Category: brain
November 12, 2011
October 7, 2011
Scientists transform liver cells directly into neurons by turning on only 3 genes
A breakthrough. No Stem Cells Required.
Fully mature liver cells from laboratory mice have been transformed directly into functional neurons by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The switch was accomplished with the introduction of just three genes and did not require the cells to first enter a pluripotent state. It is the first time that cells have been shown to leapfrog from one fundamentally different tissue type to another.
Read article at medicalxpress.com
October 7, 2011
Occupy The Mind – Legalize DMT.
DMT is chemical produced and used by the human nervous system. It can be found in almost any plant or animal species and is a psychedelic chemical that is used in shamanic healing practices of South America. DMT is also listed as a Schedule 1 substance. According to the US government, not only are nature and shamanism illegal, but so are YOU, of possession AND manufacturing of an “illegal narcotic.”
September 29, 2011
New John Hopkins psilocybin paper published in Journal of Psychopharmacology
Media coverage:
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ABC News Want to Be More Open-Minded? Magic Mushrooms Found to Help
CBS News Magic mushrooms improve personality? What study says
LiveScience ‘Magic Mushrooms’ May Permanently Alter Personality
Science Daily ‘Single Dose of ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Hallucinogen May Create Lasting Personality Change, Study Suggests’
TIME ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Can Improve Psychological Health Long Term
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KA MacLean, MW Johnson, and RR Griffiths. 2011. “Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness.“ Journal of Psychopharmacology, 29 Sept.
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Abstract
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A large body of evidence, including longitudinal analyses of personality change, suggests that core personality traits are predominantly stable after age 30. To our knowledge, no study has demonstrated changes in personality in healthy adults after an experimentally manipulated discrete event. Intriguingly, double-blind controlled studies have shown that the classic hallucinogen psilocybin occasions personally and spiritually significant mystical experiences that predict long-term changes in behaviors, attitudes and values. In the present report we assessed the effect of psilocybin on changes in the five broad domains of personality – Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Consistent with participant claims of hallucinogen-occasioned increases in aesthetic appreciation, imagination, and creativity, we found significant increases in Openness following a high-dose psilocybin session. In participants who had mystical experiences during their psilocybin session, Openness remained significantly higher than baseline more than 1 year after the session. The findings suggest a specific role for psilocybin and mystical-type experiences in adult personality change.
September 23, 2011
Visual brain activity reconstructed using fMRI and Youtube
This was the technology portrayed in the 6th season episode of House entitled Black Hole.
The potential of it is staggering.
From description:
The left clip is a segment of the movie that the subject viewed while in the magnet. The right clip shows the reconstruction of this movie from brain activity measured using fMRI. The reconstruction was obtained using only each subject’s brain activity and a library of 18 million seconds of random YouTube video. (In brief, the algorithm processes each of the 18 million clips through the brain model, and identifies the clips that would have produced brain activity as similar to the measured brain activity as possible. The clips used to fit the model, those used to test the model and those used to reconstruct the stimulus were entirely separate.) Brain activity was sampled every one second, and each one-second section of the viewed movie was reconstructed separately.
For a related video see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMA23JJ1M1o
For more information about this work, please check our lab web site:http://gallantlab.org
September 20, 2011
'Google Body' anatomy interface
Navigable, interactive human anatomy atlas by Google. It will be wonderful when the detail is all filled in down to a cellular level, but you can already zoom in pretty close. click the following link and hold down the minus (zoom out) button on the upper left.
>>> Google Body
September 20, 2011
Pot Versus Abilify
Through actual text from commercials for the anti-depressant drug known as Abilify, High Times, in association with York Productions, asks the question, “If pot did this to you, would you smoke it?”
