On Wednesday I was in New York to participate in the Wired Health Conference. I interviewed Martin Blaser of NYU on the microbiome and what it means for the future of medicine. We managed to cover a lot of ground, which you can watch in the video, which I’ve embedded below.
Continue reading “The Microbiome and the Future of Medicine”
It’s not exactly true to say that each of us has our own genome. We have genomes. Some of us, known as chimeras, have genomes from more than one person. The cells of children linger behind in their mothers; in the womb, cells from twins can intermingle. The rest of us non-chimeras can trace our genomes to one origin–the fertilized egg from which we developed. But as the cells in our bodies divided, they sometimes mutated, creating a panoply of genetic variation known as mosaicism.
The New York Times, October 31, 2013
Multiple Walter Whites will walk the streets on Thursday in search of candy. But some frights endure the fashion cycle and never go out of style.
This week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists examines one particularly long-lasting source of fear: snakes. The researchers found that certain neurons in the brain only respond to these legless reptiles. These snake-dedicated neurons, they argue, are a legacy of our distant primate past, when the animals posed one of the greatest threats to our survival.
Continue reading “Afraid of Snakes? Your Pulvinar May Be to Blame”
Snakes inhabit our fears and stories. Why do they have such a hold on us? For my New York Times column this week, I take a look at a provocative theory that snakes have shaped our evolution since our primate ancestors first clambered through the trees. This week, a new study added a neurological twist to this idea, as scientists offered evidence that some of our neurons may be exquisitely sensitive to snakes. Check it out.
Continue reading “Snakes on the Brain: My New Column for the New York Times”
In case snakes weren’t enough of a fright-fest for you this Halloween, here’s a video that I narrated for National Geographic about one of nature’s spookier creatures. (One of many, as I explain in Parasite Rex.)