2012 MacArthur "Genius" Award Recipients

Nope....  I'm not one of them.  But among the 22 recipients of the $500,000 awards in this year's class of MacArthur Fellows there are two neuroscientists.  

Elissa Hallem, Ph.D.
Arguably, the least well understood of our sensory/perceptual systems is the olfactory system. However, over the past two decades there have been significant advances in our understanding of how odors are represented within the nervous system.  Hallem's approach is to employ is to learn how this is accomplished in relatively simple nervous systems - those of the fruit-fly and the nematode. While these are relatively simple nervous systems compared to our own, the skills required to do this type of work are extremely complex and technically demanding.  Understanding how olfactory cues are processed in these simple organisms provides important insights into our own olfactory system. Hallem's research has important applications as the focus is to examine how mosquitoes an parasitic nematodes employ chemical signals to locate their hosts (that could be you, me, our pets or the animals that we depend upon as sources of food). You can learn more about her work by clicking  here, and reading the articles below:

Fluorescently labeled nervous system of the nematode c. elegans

• Hallem E.A. et al. (2011) A sensory code for host seeking in parasitic nematodes. Current Biology, 21(5), 377-83. DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2011.01.048
• Hallem, E.A. et al. (2011) Receptor-type guanylate cyclase is required for carbon dioxide sensation by Caenorhabditis elegans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: USA, 108(1), 254-259. 

Benjamin Warf, M.D.
Warf is a Pediatric Neurosurgeon, a specialist in pioneering techniques for treating congenital malformation of the CNS, specifically  hydrocephalus (HC) and spina bifida. The typical surgical approach to treating HC is to place one end of a shunt (tube) within the cerebral ventricals of the brain and the other end within the abdominal cavity.  Excessive cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) that would accumulate within the ventricles, compress the developing brain and in young children cause an enlarged head is diverted by the shunt into the body cavity where it is reabsorbed.  However, these shunts often fail, requiring additional surgeries.  Warf developed an alternative approach in which the fine capillaries (choroid plexus) within the ventricles that are the source of CSF are cauterized, thereby reducing the accumulation of CSF within the ventricles.  His work has had significant impact in developing countries such as Uganda, where he established a hospital and a program to train surgeons in the treatment of CF.   You can learn more about his work by clicking  here, and by reading the articles listed below.

• Warf, B.C. (2012) Long-term outcome for endoscopic third ventriculostomy alone or in combination with choroid plexus cauterization for congenital aqueductal stenosis in African infants. Journal of Neurosurgy: Pediatrics, 10 (2), 108-11.

Chuck Close

Each year the Society for Neuroscience host a special talk by an individual who is not a neuroscientist, but whose work has contributed to a greater understanding of neuroscience among the general public.  This year that person is the artist Chuck Close.

Anyone who is interested in art, aesthetics, perception,  and their relationship to the brain and mind should find something to appreciate in the life and work of Close.  

One of the things I find intriguing is that while his career was established through the remarkable style of his portraitures, Close has been diagnosed with prosopagnosia - or "face blindness". Individuals with prosopagnosia have difficulty identifying others solely by the appearance of the face and in extreme cases may not even recognize their own reflection in a mirror.  While such extreme cases often result from strokes that damage an area of the brain called the fusiform face area (FFA), neuroscientists now recognize that the majority of cases are more mild and are congenital. Close attributes his interest in portraiture to this disability - it emerged as a sort of coping mechanism.

  

2012 SfN Annual Meeting

The annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience will begin in just a few short weeks - from October 13 through the 16th in New Orleans.  This will be the first time the annual meeting has been in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.  While I attend the meeting I'll provide some posts to this blog about the interesting research highlights and events.

Besides myself, several graduates of Washington College will be presenting scientific posters at the conference.  They are:

Caitlin Orsini ('07) - Ph.D. University of Michigan
Elaine Pranski ('07) - Ph.D. Emory University
Lisa Gavrushenko ('10) - University of Maryland School of Medicine
Nikki Scutella ('10) - University of Maryland School of Medicine

Just for fun:  Can you identify what is depicted in the logo for the annual meeting above?

The Fallacy of Extreme Genetic Determinism

While attending a recent conference on the west coast, I had some time to read the New York Times and my interest was peaked by the headline on the story below:

Here is a synopsis of the news report.  Gary Cossey had pleaded guilty to to a single count of possessing child pornography.  At the sentencing hearing expert psychologists for the defendant testified that Mr. Cossey was not a high risk repeat offender in-part because he had voluntarily been participating in therapy sessions with signs of responding positively to therapeutic interventions.


Nevertheless, the judge rejected these arguments because it was very likely that Cossey would commit repeated offenses stating: "It is a gene you were born with.  And it is not a gene you can  get rid of,"  Judge Gary Sharpe then sentenced Cossey to a prison term of 6.5-years, a life term of supervised release, and a $100 court fee.


However, a court of appeals overturned the sentence* because there was no evidence to support the assertion that Cossey would inevitably repeat his offenses due to a child pornography gene. Neither is there undisputed evidence that such a gene exist. The appeals court then ordered that another judge be appointed to preside over a re-sentencing hearing to determine a Cossey's final jail sentence.


But what if there were such a gene?  What if it were not a trait that was expressed according to classic laws of Mendelian inheritance, but was a polygenetic trait?  Would it be the case in either instance  that a person with this gene or genes would inevitably be either a consumer or purveyor of child pornography?