tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:23:29 +0000A blog about how we develop the connections that keep us alive.http://www.therootsystem.net/noreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)Blogger35125Society & Culturenoreply@blogger.comnoA blog about how we develop the connections that keep us alive.Subscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with Pageflakestag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-8113476729889019964Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:43:00 +00002008-06-18T17:43:02.646-07:00Consciousness Thanks toNew Scientistfor bringing our attention to this -These are the clearest pictures ever taken of what is the starting point of every human life: ovulation occurring inside a woman's bodyI can't exactly say I find it beautiful, but it is breath taking. Check the post for more details.http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/06/where-it-all-begins.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-2533937649313236685Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:15:00 +00002008-06-13T19:15:02.617-07:00Consciousness- Image from the Society for Neuroscience These are two pictures of rat's brains. The rat whose brain we see on the left was raised in a lab with its mother and littermates. The rat on the right was part of a group that, in the words of Brain Briefings, ... [was] removed from their moms and placed in an incubator as a group for a few hours a day for several days. So what are the brown spots youhttp://www.therootsystem.net/2008/06/illustrating-cost-of-neglect.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-7354893290391525132Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:01:00 +00002008-06-13T19:06:32.267-07:00ConsciousnessSugested ReadingA fun little article about memory from the The Boston Globe about how we think about remembering. The general consensus used to be that there was an index part of the brain that kept track of everything's whereabouts in memory. Turns out, not so much. Ever had that experience when you..just...can't...quite... remember? Here's the key passage -The tip-of-the-tongue experience, however, is http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/06/what-that-name-boston-globe.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-1963836067487849784Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:56:00 +00002008-06-09T14:56:00.185-07:00The JASONS are a semi-secret research arm of the Defense Department. They issue occasional papers about areas of interest, and when they do, Secrecy News from the Federation of Atomic Scientists is usually nice enough to let us know.This latest report is at the intersection of neuroscience and war, the subject of a new blog I am writing called The Brain at War. A natural outgrowth of my http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/06/future-of-sleep.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-8559718846359630355Tue, 13 May 2008 16:14:00 +00002008-05-13T09:14:30.201-07:00In Jewish religious law, as laid out in Leviticus, there are times when a woman must separate herself from the community. There are also times when a man must do the same. Traditional commentary has referred to the state the necessitates removal as tamei, which was translated into English as impure. The call for separation was understood to be a demand, made by the community of the individual.http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/connection-and-separation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-4086521295777990191Mon, 12 May 2008 22:29:00 +00002008-05-12T15:29:16.866-07:00I wrote about my ignorance of human memory in a previous post. I need to dig out the inapt metaphors I have growing in my mental garden. I am starting with the kudzu of conceits, the mental weed that has spread widest: human memory is / is not analogous to computer memory. In my ignorance, I have easily shuttled back and forth between the positive and negative formations of the metaphor. As I http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/weeding-my-mental-garden.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-4340519996665423394Mon, 12 May 2008 21:21:00 +00002008-05-12T14:21:36.631-07:00One last word before I never write about penis thieves again. In the previous post, I wrote about the ir/resistible impulse to surrender to mob thinking.What baffles me are the "victims", Reuters interviewed Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko. But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent.http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/one-last-thing-about-penis-thieves.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-7250453280892869212Sat, 10 May 2008 01:47:00 +00002008-05-12T14:18:42.665-07:00Moments in TimeIn the first 16-21 days the neural tube closes.That, my friend, is what you looked like at one point. That groove right down the middle was what your proto-spinal cord looked like. And that glowing knob on the right? That'd be your brain.There is also a disturbing resemblance to a fluke worm.That is pretty gross wondrous. http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/at-2-weeks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-1095043485814821597Sat, 10 May 2008 01:47:00 +00002008-05-11T16:12:47.128-07:00Neurons and MetaphorsIt has been over a year since Seung-Hui Cho murdered his community, plowed salt into his soil and then snuffed himself out. Unrooted.His sister had deep connections in rich soil. She had friends who nourished her, a bright future to shower sunlight on her leaves and, just as important, it was bright enough to coax greater growth towards the light. Her roots were strong enough and deep enough http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/virginia-tech-shooter.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-5694188183628959387Sat, 10 May 2008 01:46:00 +00002008-05-11T16:39:48.239-07:00I am starting here by posting a call for Airplane Behavior from you. I've not done this before, so you can be sure I am serious. No inappropriate laughter and no tantrums. When we fly on an airplane, we act like big boys and girls. Period. For those who don't know, when a parent demands airplane behavior it is Defcon 1: the this-is-not-a-drill moment for childhood restraint. The parent http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/we-believe-what-we-believe-to-be-real.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-6785966628515838353Fri, 09 May 2008 22:04:00 +00002008-05-09T15:04:13.444-07:00ConsciousnessNot sure what got me thinking about this. I heard a story. On a playground in elementary school. After Mr Pletcher's history class in high school. Who knows.The story was that consciousness doesn't stop until oxygen runs out to the brain and just because you cut off NEW blood flow to the brain, the lights don't go out immediately. So goes the story, Louis XVI was able to stare at his own http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/guillotine.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-5025650247863611832Fri, 09 May 2008 21:49:00 +00002008-05-09T14:49:46.031-07:00Sugested ReadingBut if you want to, here you go: Critical Periods of Vulnerability for the Developing Nervous System: Evidence from Humans and Animal Models I've been looking for some actual peer-reviewed papers that you can look at to confirm some of the processes I have been chewing over here. This is the most comprehensible one I could find.But there is probably a master's degree carefully pasted over by http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/we-read-it-so-you-don-have-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-8447071807910039402Fri, 09 May 2008 21:47:00 +00002008-05-09T14:47:12.684-07:00Bong hits after midnightWhy did we develop intelligence at all? If it was so great, in oither words, why isn't everyone else doing it? This is from an article in the Literary Review of Canada Online about a new book called - Darwin on My Mind -The author starts us off with a significant point, namely that most organisms do not think. Most organisms certainly are not rational. Yet they do all right. The most http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/why-intelligence.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-6588145917057535347Fri, 09 May 2008 21:46:00 +00002008-05-09T14:46:33.998-07:00Once you get started looking at how things normally develop, you find eye popping examples of not normal. Most are horrifying. Nightmare inducing. Williams Syndrome is different. Only about 25 malformed or missing genes stand between health and illness in Williams. That is 083% of the genes. It doesn't look like much .083%. Maybe a rounding error. But that tiny misquote in a string 30,000http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/williams-syndrome.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-4528963944502271377Fri, 09 May 2008 01:47:00 +00002008-05-11T17:33:25.759-07:00Moments in TimeI had been looking for a few days now for pictures of the very earliest embryonic development, that showed very early neural development. Thank you Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique.This is what a human embryo looks like at three weeks. The disk itself is only a couple of cells thick. The black line over on the left there is wonderfully called the primitive streak. - Courtesy of http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/at-3-weeks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-6794140433075543697Wed, 07 May 2008 01:46:00 +00002008-05-12T14:19:26.132-07:00Something I've never really understood is how memories get stored. Unlike a hard drive, which I can picture physically holding a static image of a thought, experience, emotion or instructions for cleaning carburetors, living neurons "holding" onto anything baffles me. I had thought I didn't understand biological memory because I didn't understand computer memory and programming. Which wouldn'thttp://www.therootsystem.net/2008/05/un-scientific-thinking.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-5004959435198606253Mon, 05 May 2008 09:19:00 +00002008-05-12T14:17:57.995-07:00Consciousness- From General Science written in 1912 in Philly!Last time I wrote about consciousness, I was ruminating on how a near flip of a coin separates the wheat from the chaff, or in this case, the baby from the placenta. All cell's in a blastocyst have the potential to create consciousness, but only some are the progenitors of it.When a cell is chosen for glory, that glory does not yet arrive. http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/04/global-neuronal-workspace.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-715620626281916291Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:55:00 +00002008-04-29T02:55:05.134-07:00There is a backlog of posts sitting in the outbox awaiting some free time for final edits, but instead of tackling them, I want to lay out what lies ahead in the next 5 months for the Root System before the proto-human becomes the KidPart I. My goal is to get a general, but complete, understanding of the brain functions that let each of us connect and root into the world. Which parts of the http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/04/blog-trip-tik.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-4224292475764635909Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:06:00 +00002008-05-11T17:37:08.433-07:00ConsciousnessWhen an egg is fertilized, a new cell is created with the combined genetic material of the father (me) and the mother (Mikaela). The newly formed zygote (from the Greek for "76 points in Scrabble" ) splits into many new yet identical cells until a small blackberry like glob of proto-human is floating it's way down to the uterus, inside its Zona Pellucida spaceship (marked one on the picture http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/04/when-does-consciousness-show-up.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-4155452545065227886Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:40:00 +00002008-04-29T00:40:41.173-07:00Moments in TimeIt felt like a kettle drum hit by a felt covered mallet. It felt like a gentle rocking bump from passenger standing next to you on the subway. It felt like touching a cheek flicked from the inside by a tongue. It was round and soft and muffled, but urgent.It was a reminder that life is restless, impatient, and eager. http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/04/i-felt-kick-tonight.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-6816162325591319221Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:33:00 +00002008-04-23T16:33:49.994-07:00There are some complicated concepts when you're reading about the brain. But sometimes the simplest things stand in your way. For example, coronal and sagittal and axial just confused me. I kept forgetting which was which and what I had changed when I went from one to the other. Disorienting really.So I looked them up and now I understand why I found it confusing. There are two reasons http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/04/some-vocabulary-coronal-sagittal-axial.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-7284374358255261291Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:34:00 +00002008-04-19T09:34:29.085-07:00ontogeny + phylogenyIt looks like the odds aren't great that there is intelligent life out there. Is there anybody out there? -A mathematical model produced by Andrew Watson, Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, suggests that the odds of finding new life on other Earth-like planets are low, given the time it has taken for beings such as humans to evolve and the remaining life span http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/04/what-if-we-alone.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-3747472521260739315Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:46:00 +00002008-05-12T14:20:06.198-07:00Saw this article about why people turn down economically beneficial windfalls when they think they're being misteated. We talked about the irrationality of these decisions in upper-level economics classes a decade ago. Now those conversations are everywhere.But this is interesting. From the article Are humans hardwired for fairness? in the journal Psychological Science. The Money Quote -[T]http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/04/are-humans-hardwired-for-fairness.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-5265762367410061156Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:25:00 +00002008-04-16T23:25:09.858-07:00It may be possible to study brain formation not as a metaphor. Just the facts. But, boy, I sure find it hard. The way your experiences carve your brain into a physical manifestation of those interactions seems to leave a lot of metaphors laying around to be stepped on. Like, for example, the neuron that does not build strong connections dies. What happens to the kid who doesn't connect? As http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/04/stubbing-your-toe-on-metaphors.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8404060645489353911.post-1416445406757270802Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:16:00 +00002008-04-16T23:16:23.356-07:00The origin of the name dendrite from the good people at Scholarpedia -The receiving or input pole [of the neuron] generally consists of extensively branching tree-like extensions of the soma membrane known as dendrites (coined in 1889 by William His from dendros (Greek) meaning tree) which arises in vertebrate neurons directly from the cell body (the body is also a receiving site in most http://www.therootsystem.net/2008/04/trees.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Our Lil' Sassafras)0en-usnonadult