The Benefits of Butter

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, today's post is about the neural benefits of, you guessed it--FOOD. Fatty, delicious food.

But seriously, a recent article in the New York Times discusses something called the Ketogenic Diet, which has been purported to significantly decrease the number of seizures in people suffering from epilepsy.

Though alleged "food cures" have been around for over a century (diabetes, anyone?),

the Ketogenic Diet is especially notorious for its apparently indulgent facade. To put it in perspective, a hypothetical day spent practicing the Ketogenic Diet would have you gorging approximately 90% of your calories from fat, 8% from protein and the last 2% from carbohydrates (as visually displayed in the pie-no pun intended-chart below).

Yeah. I know. This sounds bizarre. But, according to this scientific article published in Epilepsia, it actually works. Though it does not actually "cure" epilepsy, per se, it has been shown to dramatically reduce the number of seizures experienced in epileptic patients, especially those who are children.

The Ketogenic Diet, or Keto (as called by its loyal fans/practitioners) works by forcing the body to burn fat instead of carbohydrates, a trait typically seen in people suffering from starvation. For reasons not yet completely understood, this starvation mode the body enters has some sort of antiepileptic effect. Jong Rho, a prominent researcher at the University of Calgary, has posited that Keto works because ketone bodies, which are produced en masse by the liver when the body burns fat, act as a protective measure from brain cell damage.

So yes, more research needs to be done. But can't that be said of all cutting edge science? The future of the Keto Diet is one of optimism--check out Charlie Abrahams on youtube to put an inspirational face to the success of this avant-garde methodology.

ZOMBIE MIND CONTROL

In true Halloween fashion, today's post is about none other than...ZOMBIE MIND CONTROL. Okay, not really. However, it is about how we can use our thoughts to control what appears in the external world (even cooler).

The study alleging such psychical phenomena was conducted by Christof Koch (a neuroscientist at CalTech), Itzhak Fried (a neurosurgeon at UCLA) and Moran Cerf (a graduate student at CalTech); the original intention of the researchers was to explore whether or not surgically implanted electrodes deep within the neural centers of twelve epilepsy patients could aid in identifying the cause of the patients' epileptic seizures.

What these three researchers found, however, was much more than a cause. Through presenting images to the subjects on a screen and subsequently asking the subjects to think about a different image, the researchers were able to teach the subjects to change the projected image using only their brains!

How does this work? Each neuron is able to function as an essentially independent unit, meaning that the patients could train themselves to trigger certain neurons to respond to specific images (of Marilyn Monroe or Bill Clinton, for example). When these corresponding neurons were triggered, a cursor on a computer screen (visible only to the experimenter) moved up or down depending on the patient's preferences, and the image was altered accordingly.

Sound like something straight out of Frankenstein? Inspiration for the next psychological thriller (ahem, a chance for M. Night Shyamalan to redeem himself)? Believe it!

Here's the proof.

Your Brain on Google

"The future brain may be one that's seamlessly connected to technology"

This really cool video shows how the internet may effect brain functioning and what the future may hold for the human brain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhLnoZFCDBM&feature=related