PHOTO BY ROBERT CLARK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time around brains. I’ve held slices of human brains preserved on glass slides. I’ve gazed through transparent mouse brains that look like marbles. I’ve spent a very uncomfortable hour having my own brain scanned (see the picture above). I’ve interviewed a woman about what it was like for her to be able to control a robot arm with an electrode implanted in her brain. I’ve talked to neuroscientists about the ideas they’ve used their own brains to generate to explain how the brain works. Continue reading “Let Us Take A Walk In the Brain: My Cover Story For National Geographic”

In today’s New York Times, I have a feature about the X chromosome. The X chromosome is one of those things that we learn about early on in school, and yet it still contains mysteries–ones that potentially have a direct impact on our health. Men have one X chromosome and one Y, while women have two X’s. This imbalance has led to all sorts of remarkable things–most remarkable of which is the fact that women shut down one of their X chromosomes–but which chromosome (mom or dad’s) depends on the cell.

Continue reading “X Marks The Genetic Mystery”

It’s always a pleasure to talk with Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich and their crew at the show Radiolab. For their latest episode, “Black Box,” we talked about the mystery of consciousness and how I got in an argument with my anesthesiologist before I had my appendix taken out.

I’ve embedded the whole episode here:

Anesthesia is deeply fascinating, even if you’ve never gone under, because it brings us face to face with the mystery of consciousness. I’ve written about it here and here.

 

Originally published January 20, 2014. Copyright 2014 Carl Zimmer.

 

The New York Times, January 20, 2014

Link

The term “X chromosome” has an air of mystery to it, and rightly so. It got its name in 1891 from a baffled biologist named Hermann Henking. To investigate the nature of chromosomes, Henking examined cells under a simple microscope. All the chromosomes in the cells came in pairs.

All except one.

Henking labeled this outlier chromosome the “X element.” No one knows for sure what he meant by the letter. Maybe he saw it as an extra chromosome. Or perhaps he thought it was an ex-chromosome. Maybe he used X the way mathematicians do, to refer to something unknown.

Continue reading “Seeing X Chromosomes in a New Light”

Daniella Perry writes,

This is an image of a hawk moth and Darwin’s orchid. It spoke to me for its history, beauty, and simplicity, as well as its significance in demonstrating the predictive power of Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection. This orchid (Angraecum sesquipedale) is endemic to Madagascar and has an unusually long spur (20-35cm), where it keeps its nectar. Charles Darwin predicted in 1862 that even though a moth with an equally lengthy proboscis had not yet been discovered, one must exist in order to pollinate the orchid. Continue reading “The Predicted Tattoo (Science Ink Sunday)”