Donovan, a biologist from Brazil writes, “My tattoo talks about the real scientific spirit. It’s a phrase in Portuguese of Isaac Newton: ‘If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.'”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
Originally published May 16, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint. In 1969, the book also became fodder for one of the oddest ideas in neuroscience: the grandmother cell. What if a neuron in your head only responded to the sight of your grandmother? For a long time, many neuroscientists have dismissed it out of hand. And yet the idea will not quite die.
Earlier this year a psychologist published an intriguing review of the grandmother cell, arguing that we should not be so hasty to run its obituary. Other scientists I’ve spoken to don’t think grandmother cells actually exist, but their own ideas about how we recognize individuals are equally fascinating. I’ve put together what I’ve learned about Philip Roth’s unexpected contribution to neuroscience in my latest Brain column for Discover. You can read it here.
Originally published May 15, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
Mental Floss has a nice two-post line-up of the weirdest mind-controlling parasites that we know of (1, 2). Some will no doubt be familiar to readers of the Loom, but others may be disturbingly new.
Update: Also check out Discover’s own gallery of parasitic horrors.
Originally published May 15, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.
Discover, May 15, 2009
Four decades ago, an MIT neuroscientist named Jerry Lettvin had a sudden inspiration about how our brains make sense of the world. What if each of us had a special set of neurons in our head whose only job was to recognize a particular person, place, or thing? It was a strange idea, but given what Lettvin knew about the brain, it was plausible. To describe his idea to his students, he made up a story [pdf].
The story was about Alexander Portnoy, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint, which had just been published. The novel is a long monologue delivered by Portnoy as he lies on the couch of his psychoanalyst.
Continue reading “Can a Single Neuron Tell Halle Berry From Grandma Esther?”
To explain the origin of life, scientists seek to explain the origin of its components. The three most important of these are RNA, DNA, and proteins.