genome

Understand your connectome, understand yourself

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connectome—–

NO ROAD, NO trail can pen­e­trate this for­est. The long and del­i­cate branch­es of its trees lie every­where, chok­ing space with their exu­ber­ant growth. No sun­beam can fly a path tor­tu­ous enough to nav­i­gate the nar­row spaces between these entan­gled branch­es. All the trees of this dark for­est grew from 100 bil­lion seeds plant­ed togeth­er. And, all in one day, every tree is des­tined to die.

This for­est is majes­tic, but also com­ic and even trag­ic. It is all of these things. Indeed, some­times I think it is every­thing. Every nov­el and every sym­pho­ny, every cru­el mur­der and every act of mer­cy, every love affair and every quar­rel, every joke and every sor­row — all these things come from the for­est. [Read more…] about Under­stand your con­nec­tome, under­stand yourself

Update: Harness Neuroplasticity with Enthusiasm, Exercise & Personalized Medicine

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Time for Sharp­Brains’ Feb­ru­ary 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion mul­ti­ple and com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives on how to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: with enthu­si­asm, BOTH phys­i­cal AND cog­ni­tive exer­cise, and (once tools become bet­ter stan­dard­ized and wide­ly avail­able) brain-based per­son­al­ized medicine.

Fea­tured Per­spec­tives:

What’s New and Mean­ing­ful:

Sharp­Brains News:

Final­ly, let us men­tion that Brain Aware­ness Week is approach­ing (March 12–18th, 2012), and that you can now add com­ments to Sharp­Brains arti­cles via Face­book (see below). Look­ing for­ward to a great month of March!

To Be (Your Connectome), or Not to Be (Your Genome)

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NO ROAD, NO trail can pen­e­trate this for­est. The long and del­i­cate branch­es of its trees lie every­where, chok­ing space with their exu­ber­ant growth. No sun­beam can fly a path tor­tu­ous enough to nav­i­gate the nar­row spaces between these entan­gled branch­es. All the trees of this dark for­est grew from 100 bil­lion seeds plant­ed togeth­er. And, all in one day, every tree is des­tined to die.

This for­est is majes­tic, but also com­ic and even trag­ic. It is all of these things. Indeed, some­times I think it is every­thing. Every nov­el and every sym­pho­ny, every cru­el mur­der and every act of mer­cy, every love affair and every quar­rel, every joke and every sor­row — all these things come from the for­est. [Read more…] about To Be (Your Con­nec­tome), or Not to Be (Your Genome)

MetaCarnival #1: a conversation across the blogosphere

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Wel­come to the first edi­tion of MetaCar­ni­val: a Car­ni­val of Car­ni­vals (announced here), the new, sycamore treemonth­ly, and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary gath­er­ing of blogs and blog carnivals.

Let’s pic­ture all par­tic­i­pants in the shad­ow of an expan­sive sycamore tree, con­duct­ing a live­ly Q&A lunch discussion.

Gen­er­al Advice 

Q: What would you rec­om­mend to live as long as pos­si­ble, and as healthy as pos­si­ble?
- Hour­glass (biol­o­gy of aging): Try Not To Stab Your­self Repeat­ed­ly. Or smoke. Or eat that much fast food…you get the idea.  “The vast major­i­ty of peo­ple are quite com­fort­able engag­ing in habits that cause great harm to the old per­son they will one day be, cut­ting off years or even decades of health.”

Q: Can blog­ging help, too?
- I and the Bird (birds): Indeed. Just read about these life-chang­ing moments in the Kenyan high­lands, brought togeth­er spon­ta­neous­ly as a col­lab­o­ra­tion between researchers, con­ser­va­tion­ists, blog­gers. And, yes, birds.


Sports (Well… Brain and Sports) 

Q: Tell me some­thing inter­est­ing about ath­letes and “The Zone”. 
- Encephalon (neu­ro­science and psy­chol­o­gy): why don’t we review this recent study on the Momen­tum Chain in Sports. You can con­duct your own mini exper­i­ment while watch­ing TV: watch the reac­tions of the play­ers and the teams right after “pre­cip­i­tat­ing events” to see if they actu­al­ly lead to game-chang­ing moments.

Med­i­cine

Q: Should patients be patient?. 
- SurgeX­pe­ri­ences (sur­gi­cal expe­ri­ences): Patience in indeed a virtue, espe­cial­ly [Read more…] about MetaCar­ni­val #1: a con­ver­sa­tion across the blogosphere