Music and the Brain

The link between human language and our appreciation of music has often been explored, as far back as Darwin and his hypothesis of a musical protolanguage. If, as it has been shown, that music and language share processing locations in the brain, then what is the consequence, if any, of being tune deaf on language ability?
We have previously posted and pondered on the condition, amusia, also known as tune deafness here at the Bayblab. Essentially amusia sufferers have difficulty following pitch changes in music. You have probably heard sufferers of this condition at Karaoke night, and you can take this very interesting test to see if you too are tune deaf and have made others suffer on Karaoke night.
A recent study has found that indeed amusia has consequences for language processing. While the importance of tune in music is obvious, tune is also important to communicate an emotional quality to spoken words. Pitch changes in language can indicate sarcasm, irony, irritation and other emotions that are independent of the words that are spoken. As you might guess, according to this study, it is the interpretation of these emotional tonal cues of language that are deficient in sufferers of congenital amusia. Of course, this doesn't mean that sufferers can not interpret body language or other cues, however the deficit is significant enough that some sufferers are aware of their difficulty in this respect. I have been looking for any information on amusia in people who speak tonal languages as I imagine it would be very debilitating. In any case, next time someone you tell someone how fantastically frequent Bayblab updates have been recently, and they agree, don't let them sing at Karaoke night.

Brain, Thinly Sliced

This is a long day in the lab:

We are slicing the brain of the amnesic patient H.M. into giant histological sections. The whole brain specimen has been successfully frozen to -40C and will be sectioned during one continuous session that we expect will last approximately 30 hours (+ some breaks and some sleep in between). The procedure was designed for the safe collection of all tissue slices of the brain and for the acquisition of blockface images throughout the entire block.

Live video of the brain sectioning can be seen here. The brain in question is that of Henry Molaison who had parts of his brain removed to control epileptic seizures, and ended up not being able to form new memories.

Bayblab podcast: Episode12

Well the first part of episode 12 is now up!

part1: In this section we talk about science in Japan, photodynamic therapy for cancer, and underwear vending machines...

part2: Do humans display swarm behavior? Is our brain capacity limiting how many friends we can have?

part3:Complete guide to graduate school: how to get in, tips, post-doc'ing, and why you should have studied unicycling at the local clown school like your mom told you to...

Enjoy!

Embryonic Stem Cells (tm) by Invitrogen

Caught a great talk today at the OHRI by visiting speaker Mahendra S. Rao, who is probably the world's leading scientist in embryonic/neural stem cell therapies. The talk featured an overwhelmingly impressive wealth of data on neural stem cell biology, particularly pertaining to transplant studies. Most of this work was done in his former capacity as head of the NIH's stem cell program.

What was most interesting about the talk was the work Rao is now leading as VP Stem Cell research at Invitrogen Corp (in the more ES-cell research friendly state of California). He recently took up this post after leaving the NIH as a result of their decision to abandon ES cell research in light of the Bush administration's strong anti ES cell research policies. From what he presented of his new project at Invitrogen, it's obvious they are now about to kick some serious ass in the arena of clinical therapeutic development. They've got GMP-friendly, FDA-approved and production-scalable technologies and ES cell lines ready to go. Couple with that Invitrogen's recent moves that has established the company as the leader in gene expression and cell culture technologies, and what you have is imminent domination of the biological therapies scene. Looks like one of the first applications they will go after is Parkinson's disease, using ES-derived neurons to replenish dopamine producers in the substantia nigra.

Interestingly, while transplanted ES-derived neurons are suitable for applications such as Parkinson's as they can survive long-term in recipient's brain, Rao mentioned that their potential in other regenerative therapies is limited by the fact that we do not yet know how to make the transplanted cells properly integrate into existing neuronal circuitry. Strong impetus for a lot of interesting research in probing neural connectivity...

Engineering the Brain into a Solar-Powered Calculator and Will Biology Ever Be a "Real" Science?

• Engineering the brain is just cool, and this has to be the ultimate example. Groups from Stanford and The Max-Planck have collaborated to create transgenic mice whose neurons can be exquisitely controlled with photons of light. Neurons were engineered to express two types of photoreceptors from algae, one responsive to blue light which creates an action potential, and another responsive to red light which inhibits activity. This highly-specific tool (we're talking lasers) for probing neuronal circuitry will likely replace the far cruder electrode stimulator and undoubtedly open the way to vast new territories of research in neurobiology. Read the original Nature paper here, as well as another concurrently-published PLoS One paper describing a similar system in cultured neurons.

• As a biologist I'm always jealous of physicists, what with the Feynmanian mathematical certainty and Einsteinian grandeur that they wield in their quest to explain the universe. We biologists are are less self-confident bunch, tempered (and tortured) by lives predominated by experimental failures within the lab. Will biology ever join chemistry and physics as a so-called "capital-S Science", with a set of its own all-powerful, generalized and quantitative Laws? (Not to be confused with The Ten Commandments...) MIT biological historian Evelyn Fox Keller argues that biology may never see its Moses descend from the mountain. Instead, she suggests in this Nature essay, that biology is special, and the exceptions more important than the rule. Enquist and Stark, in this response, are more optimistic about the prospects for a quantitative Biology with all-encompassing Laws. Maybe there's hope for biology after all, and there will come a day when we can make predictions that even a VC investor would take to the bank.