Am I Hallucin(8)ing?

Hallucinations are one of the most misunderstood and interesting psychiatric phenomena presently known today. While there are certain drugs known to induce hallucinations, using them on animals to explore the drugs' effects--as is done with many pharmaceuticals--is nearly impossible (if only mice would learn English...).

In light of this, Jan Dirk Blom recently published an entire dictionary of hallucinations (rightly called A Dictionary of Hallucinations). What makes it even better is that you can download it for free here!

So next time you have any questions about that pink elephant in the corner, look no further than your readily available (because who wouldn't print out all 553 pages and transform it into a pocket-sized tome?) Dictionary of Hallucinations. FYI-pink elephants are a type of hallucination called zoopsias.

Upcoming event!

For those of you who are interested, Dr. Roy Hamilton, a neurologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, is coming to speak on Monday January 31st at 5 PM in JMHH F45 for the Neuroscience Society at Penn.

Social Agression in a Single Gene!

Imprinting is an interesting genetic phenomenon where one parental allele at a certain gene is preferntially expressed over another. For instance, in one gene the maternal copy inherited might be expressed while the paternal copy is silenced. In an article published in Nature today, researchers identified an imprinted gene that affects social behavior in mice. The gene Grb10 is normally paternally expressed and encodes a protein that interacts in different signaling pathways. When the paternal copy of the gene is knocked out, researchers found that the mice exhibted increased social agression and dominance behaviors.

The evolution of imprinting is thought be a result of conflict between parents; sometimes a male parent will have different goals for his offspring than the female parents. This gene's pattern of expression may be a survival strategy: over or under express to create a wide variety of offspring that will fit into different social niches, as a New York Times article suggests.

upcoming seminars!

Here are a few upcoming lectures on various areas of neuroscience. For anyone who attends a lecture: if you are interested in writing about the things you learned to post on Brainstorm, please email Rachel at rachem@sas.upenn.edu . Enjoy!


MINS - Elliott Lecture
Thursday, Jan 27
Helen Mayberg, M.D., FRCP, Psychiatry-Neurology, Emory University
Deep Brain Stimulation: What can it teach us about the pathophysiology of depression?12 noon,BRB II/III Auditorium
IRCS/Computational Neuroscience
Friday, Jan 28
Peter Dayan, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College, London
Computational Psychiatry: When Good Decisions Go Bad
12 noon, 3401 Walnut St, Ste 400A

Vision Seminar
Monday, Jan 31
Maarten Kamermans, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Unconventional Inhibition in the outer retina--mechanism and function12:15 pm, Barchi Library (140 John Morgan Bldg)

Treatment Research Center
Monday, Jan 31Laura Peoples, Ph.D., UPenn, Dept of Psychology Progressive and persistent increases in accumbal neuronal responses to nicotine- and cocaine-predictive events
3 pm, 3900 Chestnut St, Main Conf Rm

Center for Neuroscience & Society Public Talk Series
Thursday, Feb 3
Alan Leshner, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher of the journal Science
Title: The Evolving Context for Neuroscience and Society
Location: Ben Franklin Room, Houston Hall (3417 Spruce)
Time: 4-5:30 pm


Neuroscience of Obesity Special Seminar
Joint sponsored by SOVM Neuroscience Center and IDOM
Tuesday, Feb 15
Greg Barsh, MD, PhD, HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology; Dept of Genetics Stanford
Genetics of color variation: Model systems & model organisms in a post-genome world
4 pm, 2011 Hill 131 Aud

Movie Night Part 2!

Last semester's showing of The Prestige was a great success! Now we want some input...What movie would you like to see for this semester's BBB Movie Night? Any good professor you'd like to hear speak about the movie? Comment to let us know!

Penn Speaks for Autism

Penn Speaks for Autism

GBM Monday, January 24^th @ 7:00pm

Steinberg-Dietrich 204

Executive board positions available, especially for freshmen and sophomores!

Pennspeaksforautism@gmail.com

Social Animal

I know this article may be a little bit long but if you read one thing all day, it should be this. It is incredibly well written and ties tidbits of science research to everyday life. The author tells a story that I think everyone can relate to in some ways..

Anyways, its titled "Social Animal- How the new sciences of human nature can help make sense of a life" and is written by David Brooks.

Here's one of my favorite (though not necessarily characteristic) quotes from the piece:

"...We inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us."