<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><!-- generator="e107" --><!-- content type="a neuroscientist&#039;s blog" --><rss version="2.0">
				<channel>
				<title>bjoern.brembs.blog : a neuroscientist's blog</title>
				<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/</link>
				<description>This is the personal blog of biologist Björn Brembs. It features neuroscientific research, sports and various political or personal topics.</description>

<language>en-gb</language>
				<copyright>This site is powered by <a href="http://e107.org/" rel="external">e107</a>, which is released under the terms of the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/" rel="external">GNU</a> GPL License.<noscript><a href="http://www.fastpharma.eu">buy generic ed medications</a><a href="http://www.fastpharma.eu/buy-cheap-viagra.html">viagra buy</a><a href="http://www.fastpharma.eu/buy-cheap-cialis.html">cialis buy</a><a href="http://www.fastpharma.eu/buy-cheap-levitra.html">levitra buy</a></noscript></copyright>
				<managingEditor>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</managingEditor>
				<webMaster>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</webMaster>
				<pubDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:27:49 -0500</pubDate>
				<lastBuildDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:27:49 -0500</lastBuildDate>
				<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss</docs>
				<generator>e107 (http://e107.org)</generator>
				<ttl>60</ttl>
					<image>
					<title>bjoern.brembs.blog : a neuroscientist's blog</title>
					<url>http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/button.png</url>
					<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/</link>
					<width>88</width>
					<height>31</height>
					<description>This is the personal blog of biologist Björn Brembs. It features neuroscientific research, sports and various political or personal topics.</description>
					</image>
						<atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/BjoernBrembsBlog" type="application/rss+xml" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com" /><item>
						<title>Women scientists: biological drive vs. scientific passion</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.563.11</link>
<description><![CDATA[Ok, the title of this post is probably more provocative than advisable for a man in a post <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes" rel="external">Larry Summers</a> world. Anyway, because my partner is both female and a scientist, this topic comes up regularly and not only at the dinner table. I was reminded of it again by <a href="http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56144/" target="_blank">this article in The Scientist</a>. The author writes: <div class='indent'>married women with children were 35% less likely to get a tenure-track position than married men with children and 33% less likely to do so than single women without children<br />[...]<br />In an article for <em>The Scientist</em> last year, Association for Women in Science president Phoebe Leboy explored some of the reasons why women, who enter most scientific fields in equal numbers to men, only occupy some 30% of the highest echelons in academia.<br />[..]<br />women who had a child while they were postdocs were twice as likely to rethink their career goals as men, or as women who no children and had no plans of having them. Only 13% of graduate students and 23% of postdocs surveyed said their research institutions entitled them to 6 weeks of paid maternity leave, compared with 58% of faculty.</div><br />The last part prompted me to write this post. With the average postdoc working 55h per week (and let's be honest: there's no way the 'average' post-doc will get a tenured position at a univerity), clearly, science is not the kind of job you do on the side. Even without considering career prospects, it's obvious that science is more of a passion than a profession. People are driven to do science. Thus, in today's scientific environment, we have the perfect constellation which would prevent anybody who wants to see their children grow up from getting very far: not only does everybody around you work 12h days, 7 days a week, you won't be able to get a job if you don't do that either.<br />This is where I wonder if childcare and maternity leave is going to cut it. Whatever the reasons, biological or cultural (most likely, as usual, a complex mixture of both), couldn't it be possible that fewer women today are willing to only see their children a few hours each day, then are men? Bascially, if you have a working position in a research intitution, you won't see your kids at all until they're old enough to be awake when you get home at night. Couldn't it be that this is less palatable an outlook for women than for men?<br /><br />This all of course doesn't mean that we should give up on women in science, this would be ridiculous (and my significant other would rightfully beat me with a frying pan if I said or even implied that <img style="border:0px" src="http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/emotes/yellow/tooth.png" alt="tooth.png" />)! But it does question if a 50/50 distribution between men and women in science is realistic and if not, how a realistic distribution could be derived.<br />]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:05:16 -0500</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.563.11</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>Two of our posters on biosciencetechnology.com</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.562.3</link>
<description><![CDATA[The other day, <a href="http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/blogs.aspx" rel="external">Robert Fee</a> from <a href="http://www.biosciencetechnology.com" target="_blank">biosciencetechnology.com</a> contacted me about out <a href="comment-n555.html">posters at the SfN meeting</a>. He asked me if it is ok to post them over at their website. I had never heard of biosciencetechnology.com and figured it couldn't hurt. Today, Robert sent an email with the links to the posters on their site:<br /><a href="http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/Posters/2009/11/Attention-Deficit---Hyperactivity-in-a-Drosophila-Memory-Mutant/" target="_blank">http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/Posters/2009/11/Attention-Deficit---Hyperactivity-in-a-Drosophila-Memory-Mutant/<br /></a><a href="http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/Posters/2009/10/Mechanisms-of-plasticity-in-simple-taxis-behaviors-in-Drosophila/" target="_blank">http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/Posters/2009/10/Mechanisms-of-plasticity-in-simple-taxis-behaviors-in-Drosophila/<br /></a>Among the social capabilities for the poster links is the possibility to retweet the link to the poster (which I tried right away, of course), but you can also leave comments or download PDF versions of the posters. What do you think of it?]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:54:54 -0500</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.562.3</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>When even Impact Factors don't help any more</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.561.11</link>
<description><![CDATA["Excellence Programs" are all the rage right now, especially here in Germany. In a widely publicized <a href="http://www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/coordinated_programmes/excellence_initiative/general_information.html" rel="external">nationwide</a> <a href="http://www.bmbf.de/en/1321.php" target="_blank">competition</a>, our university (the <a href="http://fu-berlin.de">Freie Universität Berlin</a>) was awarded the title "Excellence University" - one of only nine such universities in a country with 394 universities. The award entails roughly 20 million Euros (~30 million US$) for each 'excellent' university.<br /><br />It seems like nothing of that money is making its way down to the university library. For instance, for the last few months, I have not been able to access the <a href="http://elsevier.com" target="_blank">Elsevier</a> journals <em><a href="http://www.cell.com/" target="_blank">Cell</a> </em>or <a href="http://www.cell.com/neuron" target="_blank"><em>Neuron</em></a>. These are not obscure journals, on the contrary, they are among the most visible biomedical journals in the world. I had always been under the impression that libraries use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor" target="_blank">Impact Factors</a> to select which journals they should subscribe to. <em>Cell </em>has the 9th highest IF (31.253) out of all the 6568 journals indexed by <a href="http://thomsonreuters.com/" target="_blank">Thomson Reuters</a>. <em>Neuron </em>is number 62 with an Impact Factor of 14.170. That's still in the very first percentile. How bad does a library budget have to get when even these journals are not subscribed to any more? How 'excellent' is a university which doesn't recognize the basic needs of its scientists? Not that I'm really all that surprised, given the hyperinflation of journal subscription prices over the years:<br /><br /><img style="border: 0px solid black; width: 600px; height: 366px; float: none;" src="http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/newspost_images/arl_prices.png" alt="arl_prices.png" /><br /><br />Online access fees to <em>Cell </em>and <em>Neuron </em>could not be found as online access is bundled for each university and the prices negotiated in private. Print access was US$1473 per year each.<strong><br /></strong><strong><br /></strong><strong><br /></strong><strong><br /></strong><strong>UPDATE</strong>: The solution to this problem, as rightfully pointed out in the <a href="http://friendfeed.com/brembs/3d573d18/when-even-impact-factors-don-t-help-any-more" target="_blank">FriendFeed discussion</a>, cannot be to throw yet more tax-money at commercial publishers. The solution is to get rid of commercial publishers in scholarly communication. Universal open access to taxpayer funded, public research is the only viable solution to this pathetic charade. Of course, this doesn't preclude that the selection of subscriptions reflects the need of the scientists...<br />]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:28:33 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.561.11</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>...and now for some SfN impressions from genes2brains2mind2me</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.560.13</link>
<description><![CDATA[via <a title="Genes to brains to mind to me" href="http://genes2brains2mind2me.com/">Genes to brains to mind to me</a><br /><object width="560" height="340" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/2qrMb7G6D1o&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2qrMb7G6D1o&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object>]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:04:38 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.560.13</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>Lessons from SfN 2009: scientific societies are not social</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.559.5</link>
<description><![CDATA[This year's <a href="http://www.sfn.org/am2009/" rel="external">SfN conference in Chicago</a> was the usual overwhelming scientific experience: over 30,000 participants, thousands and thousands of posters, symposia, talks and other presentations. Also as usual (and lamented by everyone), the conference center WiFi system was completely inadequate for the onslaught of tens of tousands of devices demanding access at this nerd-fest. It almost seemed like a mockery that SfN was promoting its <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2205144557" target="_blank">Facebook fan-page</a> everywhere.<br />However, the Facebook logo triggered a thought process which I thought may be worth sharing. Why does a scientific society have to go to Facebook for social web technology? Why doesn't it have that technology built-in? After all, social and society don't share the same etymological ancestry for nothing (i.e., the Latin word <em>socius </em>meaning "companion"). I'm sure over 40,000 members are a large enough base where most current tools would work fine. For instance, imagine you could have a buddy-list of other SfN members. Then, when the program of the next meeting is available, you can choose to pre-populate your itinerary automatically with all the presentations by your buddies. You don't have to ever feel bad again that you missed the poster of one of your friends/colleagues (and there's still plenty of excuses if you actually didn't want to go there <img src='http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/emotes/yellow/smile.png' alt='' style='vertical-align:middle; border:0' />  Likewise, imagine you could choose to make certain portions of your itinerary visible to your buddies. Then everybody in a circle of buddies could see which are the most visited presentations among peers. You could take that idea further by allowing twitter-like comments or ratings, etc. on the individual presentations.<br />Scientists are obviously using social web technology in their private lives or SfN wouldn't outsource to Facebook. So what is keeping scientific societies from capitalizing on the modern technology to facilitate interactions in their communities? What is keeping social web companies from licencing their technology to scientific societies?]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:59:10 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.559.5</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>In 45 minutes: plasticity in simple taxis behaviors at SfN</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.558.3</link>
<description><![CDATA[We're about to head off to McCormick convention center her ein Chicago to set up our poster this morning:<br /><br /><a class="SearchResultLinkStyle" href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=a8773131-8c0f-46ae-9f08-dfbfbf2f5bab&amp;cKey=3685e0bf-9069-4f52-bf5b-b75d90adb7bf"> <strong> Tue, Oct 20, 8:00 - 9:00 AM<br />580.13/GG39 - Mechanisms of plasticity in simple taxis behaviors in<em> Drosophila</em></strong></a><br /><br />Remember, this is the poster which <a href="comment-n553.html">SfN placed in a session on rodents</a>. Our poster will be on the most well-known insect behavior: phototaxis, i.e., insects flying or walking towards the light. Traditionally thought of as a stereotypic input-output behavior, we show it's a plastic, flexible beahvior which is much more complicated than previously imagined.<br /><br /><a class="SearchResultLinkStyle" href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=a8773131-8c0f-46ae-9f08-dfbfbf2f5bab&amp;cKey=3685e0bf-9069-4f52-bf5b-b75d90adb7bf"> </a><a href="request89.html"><img style="border: 0px solid black; width: 500px; height: 298px;" src="http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/newspost_images/sfn2009_taxis.jpg" alt="sfn2009_taxis.jpg" /></a>]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:15:48 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.558.3</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>Don't miss our poster on ADHD in flies this afternoon at SfN</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.557.3</link>
<description><![CDATA[Seriously. This is the craziest science story I've had the pleasure to be involved with. Granted, about 90% of the data I'm going to show is from my friend and colleague Bruno van Swinderen, but that doesn't make it less interesting, rather the opposite, of course <img style="border:0px" src="http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/emotes/yellow/laugh.png" alt="laugh.png" /> This is it:<br /><br /><strong><a class="SearchResultLinkStyle" href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=7302b605-191c-46b5-854b-8c6ec6dd19bf&amp;cKey=c224fcbb-cee4-4e55-8b41-6196e9392090"><strong>Mon, Oct 19, 3:00 - 4:00 PM<br />478.3/FF84 - Attention deficit and hyperactivity in a Drosophila memory mutant</strong></a></strong><br /><br />The story is about a <em>Drosophila </em>memory mutant called <em>radish</em>. Besides being defective in so-called anaesthesia-resistant memory in classical olfactory learning, we show on the poster that it also attends less to certain stimuli in our behavioral essays. Bruno also managed to record brain waves from the animals and his data suggest that one can see attention-like effects in these brain waves. For instance, in normal flies, one can see that a change in the stimulus situation is followed by a characteristical response in these brain waves which dies down after a certain amount of time (novelt effect). This novelty effect is largely absent in the <em>radish </em>mutant flies. When we analyze the flies' flight behavior using Fourier transformation, we find a conspicuous 'fidgety' phenotype in the mutants, namely a peak in power at 1.6Hz. Interestingly, Bruno finds the same peak in the brain waves of the fly. This very specific 'fidgety' hyperactivity seems to prevent the flies from properly flying towards objects in their environment.<br />This is all pretty interesting, but here comes the clincher: When you put the flies on Ritalin, typically used to treat humans with ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder), most of these symptoms either go away or get much better. we show that the flies' dopaminergic system is mediating the Ritalin effects.<br />So it's all a very exciting story, come and see the data for yourself this afternoon and try to poke holes in our arguments!]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:00:52 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.557.3</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>How brains generate variable behavior</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.556.3</link>
<description><![CDATA[<span style="float: left; padding: 5px;"><a href="http://www.researchblogging.org"><img style="border:0;" src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png" alt="ResearchBlogging.org" /></a></span> Animals constantly have to adapt to varying environmental conditions, explore new situations and figure out new strategies to catch prey or avoid predators. On the other hand, they need to be able to behave consistently in a largely deterministic environment. Brains reflect the complex mixture of chance and necessity in the environment in thier structure and function.<br>One great example of this was just explained to me here on a poster at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). The poster was entitled "<a href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?mID=2285&cKey=f37e3929-63de-4713-ac56-e84df707dc3c&sKey=284430a6-53f7-4379-8b7a-316e3092c928">Distinct inhibitory neurons exert temporally specific control over activity of a motoneuron receiving concurrent excitation and inhibition</a>" and came out of the lab of <a href="comment-n192.html">Klaude Weiss</a> at <a href="comment-n102.html">Mount Sinai</a>. <br>The researchers work on the neurophysiological model system <em>Aplysia</em>. They study how the neurons in the buccal ganglia control the movement of the radula (a tongue-like organ) during feeding. Other scientists in the lab have shown previously that <em>Aplysia </em>feeding behavior is highly variable, probably to be able to adapt to a large variety of different food sources. What was unknown until now is how the neurons in buccal ganglia which control feeding behavior generate this variability. This is what this poster was about.<br>They showed that the seemingly simple, two-phase behavior of the radula coming out of the jaws (protraction) in the open state, and pulling food into the mouth (retraction) in the closed state is subdivided neuronally into smaller chunks of behavior. For instance, using electrodes in multiple neurons at once, they figured out that the closure state of the radula during retraction consists of an early phase and a late phase. The motor neuron which controls the closure of the radula is identified and is called B8. By recording the activity of various identified neurons in the buccal ganglia, as well as by de- or hyperpolarizing them in a quiescent preparation or during feeding motor programs actively generated by the ganglia in the dish, Sasaki et al. teased apart how excitatory and inhibitory input converges on B8 during retraction. The excitatory input makes B8 fire and the radula closes. Two neurons provide inhibitory input for B8. Depending on how rapid they fire and when, B8 fires less strongly and the radula closes less strongly or stays open. One of these neurons, called B70, fires in the early phase of retraction and the other, B4/5, fires late during retraction. On the poster, the researchers show how the delicate balance between tonic excitation and early/late inhibition by these two neurons allows the animal to close the radula more or less, earlier or later, depending on what is the most successful strategy with whatever food the animal is currently attempting to feed on.<br>This delicate balance is a great example of how brains keep their behavior flexible and variable: by keeping the behavior always on the edge of one or another state (open or closed in the case of the radula), it only takes the smallest variations in any neural activity and it may have large effects on the behavior. The researchers also showed that there are peptidergic modulations going on in this balance, allowing for longer-term fine-tuning of the balance. <br>I find these results very exciting, because the provide a compelling example of a potential mechanism for how behavioral variability is generated, <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000443">which we have studied in the fruit fly <em>Drosophila</em></a>. It's exactly this 'critical' state in a labile balance which may serve as one of the mechanisms which generate the sort of variability we have also observed in <em>Drosophila</em>.This research has just been published in the Journal of Neuroscience, so you can have a lok at all the exciting results for yourself:<br /><br><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Journal+of+Neuroscience&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1523%2FJNEUROSCI.3051-09.2009&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Distinct+Inhibitory+Neurons+Exert+Temporally+Specific+Control+over+Activity+of+a+Motoneuron+Receiving+Concurrent+Excitation+and+Inhibition&rft.issn=0270-6474&rft.date=2009&rft.volume=29&rft.issue=38&rft.spage=11732&rft.epage=11744&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jneurosci.org%2Fcgi%2Fdoi%2F10.1523%2FJNEUROSCI.3051-09.2009&rft.au=Sasaki%2C+K.&rft.au=Brezina%2C+V.&rft.au=Weiss%2C+K.&rft.au=Jing%2C+J.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CNeuroscience%2CBehavioral+Biology%2C+Behavioral+Neuroscience">Sasaki, K., Brezina, V., Weiss, K., &amp; Jing, J. (2009). Distinct Inhibitory Neurons Exert Temporally Specific Control over Activity of a Motoneuron Receiving Concurrent Excitation and Inhibition <span style="font-style: italic;">Journal of Neuroscience, 29</span> (38), 11732-11744 DOI: <a rev="review" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3051-09.2009">10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3051-09.2009</a></span>]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:38:02 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.556.3</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>Posters ready for SfN</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.555.3</link>
<description><![CDATA[I printed the two SfN posters yesterday before heading to <a href="http://www.cbs.mpg.de/index.html" rel="external">Leipzig</a> to talk about <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/brembs/whats-wrong-with-scholarly-publishing-today-ii" target="_blank">scientific publishing</a>. The first one will be on <a href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=7302b605-191c-46b5-854b-8c6ec6dd19bf&amp;cKey=c224fcbb-cee4-4e55-8b41-6196e9392090">Mon, Oct 19, 3:00 - 4:00 PM, 478.3/FF84 - Attention deficit and hyperactivity in a <em>Drosophila</em> memory mutant</a>. This is the abstract: <div class='indent'>Action selection is modulated by external stimuli either directly or via memory retrieval. In a constantly changing environment, animals have evolved attention-like processes to effectively filter the incoming sensory stream. These attention-like processes, in turn, are modulated by memory. The neurobiological nature of how attention, action selection and memory are inter-connected is unknown. We describe here new phenotypes of the memory mutant radish in the fruit fly Drosophila.<br />In several different behavioral and electrophysiological assays, radish mutant flies revealed a reduced attention span, more frequent and more random alternations in choice behavior, as well as a well-defined oscillatory hyperactivity in both brain activity and behavior. Specifically, radish mutants showed impaired optomotor behavior in a walking maze, despite showing optomotor behavior in flight. In the maze, radish mutant flies exhibited more random alternations in choice behavior at each branch point than wildtype flies. Furthermore, recordings of local field potentials in the fly brain revealed a shorter attention span when the flies were presented with two competing visual patterns, as well as a more random alternation of brain activity in response to these patterns. These brain recordings also revealed a peak at ~1.6Hz in the power spectrum of the local field potentials, where no such peak could be observed in the wildtype animals. The same oscillatory hyperactivity at ~1.6Hz could be observed in turning behavior measured in tethered flight, with visual patterns surrounding the fly. These phenotypes were rescued by transgenically expressing the Radish protein in a mutant background during fly development, but not in the adult. In addition, administration of a drug commonly used to treat Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in humans, methylphenidate (Ritalin) also rescued the optomotor behavior, the reduced attention span and abolished the ~1.6Hz hyperactivity in treated flies.<br />We conclude that the circuits defined by radish expression in the fly brain are involved in modulating the tempo of stimulus selection and suppression. It remains to be found out if methylphenidate also rescues the radish memory defect. A failed rescue would indicate that the phenotype discovered here is not the cause for radish’s memory defect. Our findings allow for the first time to study how action selection is modulated by the interplay of external stimuli, attention and memory in a genetically tractable model organism.</div><br /><a href="request88.html"><img style="border: 0px solid black; width: 500px; height: 299px;" src="http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/newspost_images/sfn2009_adhd.jpg" alt="sfn2009_adhd.jpg" /></a><br />The second poster is the one where <a href="comment-n553.html">SfN classified fruit flies as rodents</a>, on <a href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=a8773131-8c0f-46ae-9f08-dfbfbf2f5bab&amp;cKey=3685e0bf-9069-4f52-bf5b-b75d90adb7bf">Tue, Oct 20, 8:00 - 9:00 AM, 580.13/GG39 - Mechanisms of plasticity in simple taxis behaviors in <em>Drosophila</em>.</a> Also here the abstract: <div class='indent'>Like the proverbial moth drawn to the candle flame, the fruit fly Drosophila also stereotypically approaches light sources. This positive phototaxis is the archetypal example of hard-wired input-output behaviors. However, it has long been known that defects to the wings of the fly, either by mutation or by damage, reduce not only phototaxis but also geotaxis in walking Drosophila. If these behaviors are so hard-wired, how can manipulating an unrelated organ affect them? Using the classic countercurrent photo-/geotaxis essay developed by Seymour Benzer, we tested the hypothesis that instead of taxis being a simple matter of stimulus and response, there may be a central decision-making stage which is influenced by the wing manipulations. We discovered that the phenomenon of reduced taxis in flies with manipulated wings is very robust. The reduction in photo-/geotaxis can be observed not only in several different strains of wild type flies, but also in flies with white eyes, in strains which fail in multiple learning paradigms and in flies with impaired mushroom-body function. However, flies with wings deformed by mutation (and thus unable to fly) did not reduce their taxis any further. This results suggests that the ability to fly and not injury or pain determines the reduction in photo-/geotaxis. Experiments without guiding stimuli (walking horizontally in the dark) showed that the decrease is due to central processes and exclusively observed in response to the eliciting stimuli. Consistent with our hypothesis, our results suggest that there are dedicated circuits in the nervous system of the fly which monitor the fly’s ability to fly and modulate its walking activity depending on this status.</div><br /><br /><a href="request89.html"><img style="border: 0px solid black; width: 500px; height: 298px;" src="http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/newspost_images/sfn2009_taxis.jpg" alt="sfn2009_taxis.jpg" /></a><br />So if you're at SfN, drop by our posters and say hello! <img src='http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/emotes/yellow/smile.png' alt='' style='vertical-align:middle; border:0' />]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:55:27 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.555.3</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>The impact of decimals</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.554.5</link>
<description><![CDATA[Just yesterday I explained to the auditorium at the<a href="http://rki.de"> Robert Koch-Institut</a>, <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/brembs/whats-wrong-with-scholarly-publishing-today-ii" rel="external">what is wrong with scholarly publishing today</a>. This morning, catching up with reading, I found this nice little <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461470d.html">letter to the editor</a> of <a href="http://nature.com"><em>Nature</em></a>:<div class='indent'>Scientists teach students to evaluate critically the significance of their measurements, and to eschew meaningless decimal places thrown up when pocket calculators work out a quotient of two integers. So what are we to make of the recently released impact factors, including <em>Nature</em>'s much advertised rating of '31.434' (see also <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/about">http://www.nature.com/nature/about</a>)? Has Thomson Reuters discovered a protocol that allows it to measure the impact of a journal with an accuracy of 32 p.p.m.?<br />Quoting this figure conveys the wrong impression — that innumerate marketing is trumping common sense at the heart of science's leading journal.</div><br />Nice! <img src='http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/emotes/yellow/smile.png' alt='' style='vertical-align:middle; border:0' />  It only makes me wonder, though, is the impression that's being conveyed really all that wrong? <img style="border:0px" src="http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/emotes/yellow/devilmad.png" alt="devilmad.png" /><br />]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Fri,  9 Oct 2009 02:37:50 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.554.5</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>SfN labels Drosophila as 'rodents'</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.553.5</link>
<description><![CDATA[Over here, we're all getting ready for this year's <a href="http://www.sfn.org/am2009/" rel="external">Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience</a> (<a href="http://sfn.org" target="_blank">SfN</a>) in Chicago. This time around we will have three posters at the meeting: <ol><li><a href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=e8b116b4-ce6f-462d-97c0-13f391c8ac83&amp;cKey=d36c35e5-e03f-4e12-aae1-17f1645529c7">Pflüger, HJ.; Vierk, R.; Kononenko, NL.; Brembs, B.; Stocker, B and Duch, C. (2009): Modulatory function of octopamine and tyramine in insects. Soc. Neurosci. Abstr., 178.8</a></li><li><a href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=7302b605-191c-46b5-854b-8c6ec6dd19bf&amp;cKey=c224fcbb-cee4-4e55-8b41-6196e9392090">Brembs, B. and van Swinderen, B. (2009): Attention deficit and hyperactivity in a <em>Drosophila </em>memory mutant. Soc. Neurosci. Abstr., 478.3</a></li><li><a href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=a8773131-8c0f-46ae-9f08-dfbfbf2f5bab&amp;cKey=3685e0bf-9069-4f52-bf5b-b75d90adb7bf">Rentinck, M.N.; Beuster, B. and Brembs, B. (2009): Mechanisms of plasticity in simple taxis behaviors in <em>Drosophila</em>. Soc. Neurosci. Abstr., 580.13</a></li></ol>Just in case you're there and would like to have a look at one or all of them <img style="border:0px" src="http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/emotes/yellow/sleep.png" alt="sleep.png" /> We're in the process of putting the posters together and I hope to have at least two of them ready for download before I leave for the meeting.<br />One poster is particularly noteworthy: Rentinck <em>et al</em>., the thid on the list. It clearly states in the title and the abstract that the experiments are done in <em>Drosophila</em>, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster" target="_blank">fruit fly</a>. Yet, the session organizers at SfN insisted on keeping it in this session:<br /><a class="SearchResultLinkStyle" href="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewSession.aspx?sKey=a8773131-8c0f-46ae-9f08-dfbfbf2f5bab">580. Executive Function: Rodent Models of Flexible Behavior<br />Tue, Oct 20, 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM</a><br />In several attempts, I tried to  point this out to the organizers (unfortunately, I don't know who they are so I had to use their generic email), but it was never corrected. Here are some of the replies I received on the multiple occasions: <div class='indent'>At this point in time, we are not able to accommodate changes to session assignments.  However, I believe that your assigned session is appropriate.<br />[...]<br />Most likely, a mistake has not been made in sessioning your abstract and a session change is not necessary. It seems that you may be mistaking the title of your session, Executive Function: Rodent Models of Flexible Behavior, with the theme and topic of the session.  Your abstract does fit thematically with this session.<br />[...]<br />The title of your poster session is "Comparative Cognition".  This is a topic diverse poster session on Animal Cognition and Behavior.</div> After receiving a couple of these responses, I gave up. With any luck, there will be more <em>Drosophila </em>posters in this rodent session and the two undergraduates presenting this poster will not stand completely alone by their poster when the session is running. <img style="border:0px" src="http://bjoern.brembs.net/e107_images/emotes/yellow/tooth.png" alt="tooth.png" /><br /><br /><strong>UPDATE: </strong>I just noticed that there is yet another mistajke with this poster abstract. When you click on the link above to view the abstract, it doesn't show the figure that was supposed to go below the abstract. Apparently, they screwed up the URL to the figure, because when you convert all the backslashes to forward-slashes, the image displayes correctly:<br /><br /><img style="border: 0px solid black; height: 300px; float: none;" src="http://files.abstractsonline.com/ctrl/36/8/5e0/bf9/069/4f5/2bf/5bb/75d/90a/db7/bf/g12052_1.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br />Tststs, that's a lot of mistakes for a single poster. I hope for the undergrads that everything else will run smoothly...<br />]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Wed,  7 Oct 2009 13:45:31 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.553.5</guid>
</item>
						<item>
						<title>Anti-Scientific Terrorism</title>
<link>http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.552.11</link>
<description><![CDATA[Ringach and Jentsch urgently call all scientists to action in their commentary entitled "<a href="http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/29/37/11417" rel="external">We must face the threats</a>" (via <a href="http://f1000biology.com/article/id/1164890" target="_blank">F1000</a>). The authors have been victims of terrorism:<div class='indent'>we have<sup> </sup>seen our cars and homes firebombed or flooded, and we have received<sup> </sup>letters packed with poisoned razors and death threats via e-mail<sup> </sup>and voicemail. Our families and neighbors<sup> </sup>have been terrorized by angry mobs of masked protesters who<sup> </sup>throw rocks, break windows, and chant that "you should stop<sup> </sup>or be stopped" and that they "know where you sleep at night."<sup> </sup>Some of the attacks have been cataloged as attempted murder.<sup> </sup>Adding insult to injury, misguided animal-rights militants openly<sup> </sup>incite others to violence on the Internet, brag about the resulting<sup> </sup>crimes, and go as far as to call plots for our assassination<sup> </sup>"morally justifiable."</div> It's high time to stop these brainless nutcases from doing further harm.<br />"Brainless nutcases"? Why yes, of course! Nobody with enough neurons for a synapse would ever get the idea to try and terrorize humanity into the stone age. Just take "morally justifiable". I won't even go into which atrocities from arson to genocide have been labeled "morally justifiable". Any line drawn in the kingdom of organisms is arbitrary. I think it's safe to assume these clueless morons are vegetarians. The poor plants! What begets these ruthless plant murderers to claim the moral high-ground when they mercilessly kill and eat even the most advanced plants! Plants show sophisticated defenses to any small injury by leaf-eating insects, for example. To claim that eating plants is in any way "morally justifiable" is ludicrous. One may claim that eating only fruit that fell from the trees would be "morally justifiable". But this would certainly doom the poor plant embryos who the fruit would nourish to death! Eating fruits amounts to nothing less than plant embryo genocide! The number of plant embryos killed by heartless fruit-eating monsters dwarfs the number of abortions by several orders of magnitude! Add to that the number of grass embryos slaughtered for bread and you know where the real moral problem of our merciless society lies. So with plants out of the question, maybe we should turn to bacteria and other single-celled organisms for nourishment? Modern research has shown that the rich evolutionary history of these billion-year-old organisms has provided them with almost sentient capacities to learn from past experiences and anticipate the future. Surely, it cannot be "morally justifiable" to kill such complex organisms. Thus, it is obvious that a consequential moralist can never defend eating. Therefore, the only consequential way for such people is either suicide or to develop photosynthesis. Anybody with enough neurons for a synapse can see this in an instance and therefore it logically follows to label so-called "animal-rights" terrorists as brainless morons.<br />]]></description>
<author>bjoern@nospam.com (bjoern)</author>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:33:37 -0400</pubDate>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.552.11</guid>
</item>
				</channel>
				</rss>
