The New York Times, May 10, 2005

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HANOVER, N.H. – If you walk into the office of a scientist, chances are you’ll see a white board hanging on the wall covered in scrawls. A molecular biologist’s white board might be covered by hideous tangles of protein chains. A geophysicist might doodle India crashing into southern Asia.

The scribbles of Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth, are more metaphysical. Arrows travel from a pair of eyes into a cartoon brain, finally ending at the word “Apple.” Another picture bluntly sums up the modern debate over free will, with a stick figure’s head labeled “Brain,” and two bubbles point toward it — one labeled “Judge” and the other “Neu” — short for neuroscience. Floating uncertainly off to one side is a third bubble that asks, “Mind?”

Continue reading “A Career Spent Learning How the Mind Emerges From the Brain” →

The New York Times, April 12, 2005

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The 18th-century Italian anatomist Luigi Galvani found that a spark could make a frog’s leg kick. His experiments established that electricity was the hidden force nerves used to control the body. Now researchers at Yale have done Galvani one better. They can make fruit flies walk, leap or fly by shining a laser at the insects, setting off certain neurons inside them.

It’s possible, at least in theory, that this method could someday be developed into a sort of animal remote control. But its biggest promise is as a scientific tool that may shed light on the function of different kinds of neurons. The ability to switch on particular neurons may allow scientists to discover clues about a range of disorders, from Parkinson’s disease to drug addiction.

Continue reading “An Off-and-On Switch for Controlling Animals?” →

The New York Times, April 5, 2005

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The inland taipan, a nine-foot-long Australian snake, is not the sort of creature most people would want to bother. Drop for drop, its venom is the deadliest in the world, 50 times as potent as cobra venom. Its fangs are so long they can poke through the snake’s lower jaw. Its victims collapse in seconds and suffer a quick death.

Dr. Bryan Fry, a biologist from the University of Melbourne, will readily admit he is not like most people. He not only bothers inland taipans; he hunts them down in dense cane fields, pins them down and bags them. Later he grabs them by the head and squeezes venom from their fangs.

Continue reading “Open Wide: Decoding the Secrets of Venom” →

The New York Times, March 10, 2005

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NEW YORK — Parents of wailing babies, take comfort: You are not alone. Chimpanzee babies fuss. Sea gull chicks squawk. Burying beetle larvae tap their parents’ legs. Throughout the animal kingdom, babies know how to get their parents’ attention. Exactly why evolution has produced all this fussing, squawking and tapping is a question many biologists are trying to answer.

Someday, that answer may shed some light on the mystery of crying in human babies.

Continue reading “Clues from animals on why babies cry” →