Yesterday I participated in a very interesting discussion at the Deans and Directors group about how we talk about research here at George Mason. One interesting idea was the notion of creating compelling narratives for the research that goes on at the University. The idea is to relate different threads of Mason research so that they integrate with one another to form a coherent whole.

Example: Mason has a a very strong cancer biology research program along side its neurosciences focus (the one I write so much about in this blog). How might those two strengths be integrated in one story?

A cell biology professor of mine at the University of Michigan used to say (tongue-in-cheek) that when we really understand the process of learning and memory (in the brain) it’ll turn to be a more regulated form of cancer.

She was way ahead of her time!

She was referring of course to the fact that cancer cells (like neurons) are remarkably plastic. As cancer cells metastasize they round up and loosen their grip on their surrounding substrate. This physical change can be thought of as a kind of cellular plasticity. Similarly, even into adulthood, neurons have the ability to change their physical shape as the brain “rewires” in response to stimuli from the external environment. Turns out that the molecules subserving these changes (both in cancer cells and in neurons) are often he same shady characters. One of them (protein kinase C) was originally discovered in the context of cancer, but actually has turned out to be of tremendous importance in brain learning and memory!

So the above narrative is an example of how one can weave together two different research stories (from quite different fields) into a coherent narrative. The cancer cells and the neurons are linked together in their molecular processes.

It’s possible to do this for many fields of research. At Krasnow, with our research programs covering neuroscience, cognitive psychology and computer sciences, this is especially important.

Jim

Turns out red wine might be as effective as caloric restriction in prolonging life!

NATURE has the report. I’ve linked to the NY Times article.

Jim

Money quote from Nature:

In a speech at the neuroscience meeting, NIH institute heads acknowledged the inevitable outcome: the success rate for grant applications across the agency dropped from 31% in 1998 to 23% last year (see graph). Next year, this is expected to fall to 19%. “We have really good grants that we can’t afford to pay,” says Story Landis, head of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “The demand took off just as the NIH budget was landing.”

An interesting finding from Budinger et al. in Neuroscience: the find that A1 cortex has anatomical connections which suggest multimodal sensory processing.

Jim

We had an excellent comment on the Allen Brain Atlas blog entry–something which hasn’t occurred very frequently in the year and a half since I started this project. Just a quick reminder that comments are welcome, but moderated. I think they add a lot and I’d like to see more of them.

Jim

A very interesting finding on the normal physiological activity of an enzyme that plays a big role in Alzheimer’s Disease (click on the link above). Turns out it plays a role in myelination!

Jim

The Krasnow MRI Brain Imaging Center will be open for scientific use by PI’s in January. For the latest information, please go to http://krasnow.gmu.edu/nicki .

The last two evenings have been just spectacular for the Institute. Monday evening, Krasnow’s Giorgio Ascoli, gave a lecture on “Virtual Brains” to an enthusiastic audience in Mason’s Center for the Arts in Fairfax. And yesterday afternoon’s Advisory Board meeting and subsequent Brain Imaging Center open house celebration was capped off by a very substantial gift pledge from Krasnow Advisory Board member Patricia Kluge. It’s weeks like this one that make my job so incredibly rewarding.

Kudos go to all of the Krasnow and Mason staff who worked so tirelessly to make these events successful.

Jim

Ramachandran and Oberman on the possibility that the mirror system is involved in autism (click on the link above).

Money quote:
“An even more intriguing possibility would be to use biofeedback to treat autism or at least alleviate its symptoms. Doctors could monitor the mu waves of a child with autism and display them on a screen in front of the patient. If the child’s mirror neuron functions are dormant rather than completely lost, it may be possible for him or her to revive this ability by learning–through trial and error and visual feedback–how to suppress the mu waves on the screen. Our colleague Pineda is pursuing this approach, and his preliminary results look promising. Such therapies, though, should supplement rather than replace the traditional behavioral-training techniques.

Another novel therapeutic approach might rely on correcting chemical imbalances that disable the mirror neurons in individuals with autism. Our group (including students Mikhi Horvath and Mary Vertinsky) has suggested that specialized neuromodulators may enhance the activity of mirror neurons involved in emotional responses. According to this hypothesis, the partial depletion of such chemicals could explain the lack of emotional empathy seen in autism, and therefore researchers should look for compounds that stimulate the release of the neuromodulators or mimic their effects on mirror neurons. One candidate for investigation is MDMA, better known as ecstasy, which has been shown to foster emotional closeness and communication. It is possible that researchers may be able to modify the compound to develop a safe, effective treatment that could alleviate at least some of autism’s symptoms.”

Yesterday’s Sunday NY Times magazine has an excellent story of what can happen when a scientist goes bad. For young investigators it’s an important read.

Money quote:
“He presented fraudulent data in lectures and in published papers, and he used this data to obtain millions of dollars in federal grants from the National Institutes of Health — a crime subject to as many as five years in federal prison. Poehlman’s admission of guilt came after more than five years during which he denied the charges against him, lied under oath and tried to discredit his accusers.”