Tag: Neuroscience
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The One-Man Environmental Disaster
The story of Thomas Midgley Jr. is a cautionary tale of the power of scientific research, and its consequent potential dangers. As an engineer with over 100 patents by the end of his career, Midgley (Figure 1) could always be expected to be working on the next big breakthrough (National Inventors Hall of Fame, 2003).…
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Phantom Sounds in the Pandemic
Do you ever hear a sudden ringing in your ears that no one else does? You are not alone. In fact, roughly 10% of American adults experience this chronic condition called tinnitus (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), 2017). Tinnitus is often distressing as it disrupts focus and relaxation. To make matters…
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Mini Brains: Coming Soon
In 2011, a biologist named Madeline Lancaster was working on growing 2D neural rosettes. Neural rosettes are columnar cells that form a radial structure and express proteins that are also expressed in neuroepithelial cells of a neural tube (Wilson & Stice, 2006). In an interesting turn of events, the cells instead started growing into a…
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Neurological Effects of the Gut Microbiome
The human microbiome is perhaps one of the most subtle and unfamiliar aspects of modern medicine. Though some bacteria have been shown to be beneficial to human health, not much is known about microbiome-host interactions. It remains a keen topic of research. Numbering in 100 trillion cells, the human microbiome is comprised of 10 times…