Neuroscience Made Easy

Sorry for the delay. Having the flu will suspend even the greatest blogs 😀 Today's article was recently featured on National Public Radio and even gained significant interest on social media platforms, what is all the hype about? There is some irony here for two reasons. 1. Octopuses have the ability to rapidly change skin pigments creating lucid and trancey displays for camouflage or defensive behaviors. So I found it ironic that a creature capable of creating its own strobe show would be given ecstasy (MDMA), 2. The superficial and viral nature of stopping at, "octopuses were given ecstasy" downplays the importance of the findings presented by the authors. So here, we are going to dive a bit deeper into the importance of what the authors discovered. To start, ecstasy is a psychomotor stimulant and has the potential to induce prosocial behavior in people and rodents. Notably, people and rodents are social and have centrally organized nervous systems. So the

The mission of  Neuroscience Made Easy  is to establish a forum to post about exciting primary neuroscience literature and make it accessible to the public. Many articles are weighted down by scientific jargon and complex analyses which make them difficult to understand. Here, we want to introduce the public to scientific writing and inspire them to seek out primary literature on their own.

New drug development is long (~8-10+ yrs) and costly (~1 billion), so repurposing drugs that are already FDA approved can be an effective strategy for effective therapeutics. With this in mind, energy-dense 'tasty' food activates reward centers in the brain akin to some drugs of abuse including cocaine. With this in mind, researchers have begun to look at the hormones, neurotransmitters, and receptors that regulate food (over)consumption and experimentally manipulate them to try and affect cocaine-related behaviors. Honestly, this idea is decades old, but this recent paper by Hernandez et al. (2018) examines the neuropeptide, Glucagon-like peptide-1  (GLP-1)receptor in cocaine relapse behavior. Activating the GLP-1 receptor effectively reduced cocaine relapse when primed with a cocaine injection and also reduced cocaine relapse when cocaine-cues were presented to invigorate cocaine seeking.  The best part is that the doses tested did not affect food consumption or make the

There are literally hundreds of ways to manipulate and examine neurons and the nervous system. So let's keep it simple and understand a few common ways neuroscientists study neuroscience.  Scientific premise is simple. Scientists change 'something' that they think is critical (experimental group) and they won't change 'something' for our control group. Then, they measure an output to determine if the manipulations had an effect. You may ask what is that 'something'? Well, each technique has its strengths and weaknesses that may (or may not) allow that something to be changed. The biggest thing to remember is that scientists change 'something' and measure an output. In scientific jargon, the 'something' is the Independent Variable and the output measured in the Dependent Variable. Techniques to measure the nervous system are vast! AND often several techniques are used together to verify conclusions or observations. Matt Ca

Neurons communicate with other neurons (and muscles) with tiny chemicals made and packaged in the body called neurotransmitters. Because neurons do not actually touch other neurons, neurotransmitters 'carry' the message from the Presynaptic neuron across the synapse to the Postsynaptic neuron. With all those chemicals how does a neuron determine when to fire and when to withhold firing? Some chemicals are excitatory and others are inhibitory. Additionally, different chemicals arrive at separate times, and to separate parts the the neuron. Taken together this means that neurons integrate information in a spatially and temporally meaningful way to change behavior! Have a look for yourself and simply Google: acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, or GABA to start.

The brain is comprised of neurons and glial cells. Most people have heard of neurons, and most neuroscience research focuses entirely on neurons, neural communication, and networks of neurons. Why? Neurons are exciting...and glial cells (every bit as exciting) were once thought to have little function and only provide structure for neurons.  For now, we'll focus the anatomy of neurons and how it relates to their function and later we'll dissect the components and types of glial cells. Let's start with neuronal structure. There are several ways to classify neurons, but I find that it is easiest and also most intuitive if we focus on whether the neuron is unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar. Don't be alarmed! Simple count the number of connections the cell body has. If it has one, it is a unipolar neuron. If it has two, it must be bipolar. Three or more and it is a multipolar neuron. Most neurons have the same physiological makeup. Let's start with a signal arrivi

At first glance, the brain is a mass created by ridges and valleys, and to a nascent neuroscientist differentiation may be difficult to see. Upon closer inspection, however, you can see the brain is divided into two hemispheres. The valley (sulci) that divides the brain into halves is called the Longitudinal Fissure. The brain is further divided into four lobes. Each lobe generally plays a role in specific behavior and function (But we will soon find out that brain localization is too simplistic and instead the brain communicates in circuits). 1. Frontal lobe : Located in the front (anterior) area of the brain, just behind the forehead. This area is tasked with planning, cognitive tasks, executive functioning, speech production, and premotor planning. 2. Parietal lobe : Located between frontal and occipital lobes. This brain area is responsible for spatial location of objects, and primary sensory (touch) perception. 3. Temporal lobe : Located on the sides (lateral) of the br