Katrina's Aftermath

For several years the SfN Meeting was held between venues in DC, Florida, St Louis, Los Angeles/San Diego, and New Orleans.   In 197, 2000 and again in 2003 the meeting was to be held in New Orleans.  Katrina changed that. The views you see here describe the path of the hurricane, a view of the populace that sought refuge at the Convention Center and  view from the air of the flooding around the Super-dome which is within a mile of the convention center. 

The 2006 and 2009 meetings were scheduled to return to NO, but the 2005 hurricane caused the society to cancel those plans.The 2012 meeting is the first time that the meeting returns to New Orleans.  It seemed ironic that just a few month ago, NO was under threat of another disaster from hurricane Isaac.

My first impressions upon returning....

Keep in mind that my impressions thus far are limited only to the things I've been able to observe from my arrival yesterday afternoon until this morning.   From what I've seen and done thus far, things seem much the same.  There is a great deal of construction/re-construction that appears to still be going on.  The people I've met so far seem extremely friendly and are very glad that there are visitors form out of town.  The local news last night featured a story on people who were still displaced from their homes by Isaac - an hurricane season is not over.  But for this week, the forecast is for sunny days and mild nights.  I'll add more to this post throughout my visit.  

Mysteries of the Brain

In conjunction with the SfN meeting, the journal Science has published a special issue with featured articles on various “Mysteries of the Brain” and on Chronic Depression.  Here is an opportunity to determine the content of one of my posts on this blog.  Please let me know which of the following articles you would like me to feature in the blog. The majority of request I receive via comments prior to Saturday, October 13 will determine what I’ll post in the blog.   Here are the choices: 

• Why is mental illness so hard to treat?
• Why are our brains so big?
• Why are you and your brain unique?
• Can we make our brains more plastic?
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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.