Biology 202 Neurobiology and Behavior Spring 2004

The first thing to keep in mind is that this isn't a place for "formal writing" or "finished thoughts". Its a place for thoughts-in-progress, for what you're thinking (whether you know it or not) on your way to what you think next. Maybe simpler, imagine that you're not worrying about "writing" but instead that you're just talking to some people you've met. This is a "conversation" place, a place to find out what you're thinking yourself, and what other people are thinking, so you can help them think and they can help you think. The idea is that your "thoughts in progress" can help others with their thinking, and theirs can help you with yours.

So who are you writing for? For yourself, and for others in our classes primarily. But also for the world. This is a "public" forum, so people anywhere on the web might look in (and might even add their own thoughts in progress, though that doesn't in fact often happen).

That's the second thing to keep in mind here. You're writing for yourself, for others in the class, AND for others you might or might not know. So, your thoughts in progress can contribute to the thoughts in progress of LOTS of people, particularly if you do the best you can to be clear to lots of different people. The web is giving increasing reality to the idea that there can actually evolve a world community, and you're part of helping to bring that about. Glad to have you along, and hope you value/enjoy sharing the activity.

To get things started, how about a few thoughts about what you particularly bring to this conversation? What kinds of background/experiences/perspectives do you have that might be different from those of others in the course, and so provide insights that might be useful to them? On the flip side, what particular questions/curiousities/puzzlements are you bringing to the course that might help to challenge the thinking of others and shape the directions we take?

Remember, no "formal writing", no long essays, and no "last words". Just a few sentences, a few thoughts to help get the conversation started. Why should one study "neurobiology and behavior"? What do you think you know about it at the outset and why? And what would you like to know that you don't and why not?

I think this course examines a lot of controversial and unanswered questions within the frame work of the physical brain. How is the phisical brain linked to the mental self?
I would like to delve into the nature of conciousness, of what constitutes a person. Are animals people? can they be? or personalities at least? is there some level of complexity in brain tissue required to make something a person? if so, what level? is it a hard line or a spectrum?

As far as I go on an individual basis; well, I'm not planning to pursue a path which would typically require a neurobiology course (in an academic sense)- but maybe that's an oversight. The very fact that I do, in fact, have a brain and do, in fact, enjoy using it would seem to me excellent qualifications. Beyond that, I enjoy classes structured around engaging with others both in and out of the classroom, and think learning for learning sake is always best.

Chelsea

I love classes with lots of discussions, especially discussions that involve different points of view. I don't know how this may play into our discussions, but often times at Bryn Mawr, I feel as though people shun conservative points of view and the liberals dominate the conversation.

I'm excited about the things we may learn in class, like why some people feel and express emotion differently, or to touch on recent cases, the Teri Shiavo incident and what was the neurobiological reasons for why people argued that she was or was not in a permanent vegetative state.

Cheers to a good class,
E

Right now, I'm most interested in how the brain gives rise to the mind. How does a mass of specialized cells create the inner and outer realities unique to every individual? And how, at the same time, is there a common reality, the external one, that we all share, when none of us experience or perceive things the same way? It's fascinating and amazing to me that we have no real, direct contact with the external world, that we can experience it only through our nervous system, and so everything is, to a sense, second-hand. We truly do create our realities. The reality of a schitzophrenic is as real to him as the "real" world is to someone "normal."

Along these lines, there are specifics I want to look at this semester: I'm intrigued by color. Since I was little I've wondered whether what I see as "blue" is what you see as "blue." Maybe my "blue" looks like your "purple." I recently read a chapter from Oliver Sacks' book An Anthropologist On Mars about an artist who lost all knowledge of color in a car accident. He didn't just become red/green color blind; he lost all perception, sense, and memory of color. After doing some experiments, Sacks and a colleague deduced that the patient was seeiing in wavelength, but his brain no longer tagged these wavelengths with color. It was a fscinating story. I'm also interested in the neural.biological basis of spirituality: the fact that as humans, we are wired to seek meaning. What does this mean for religion? Is God a lie if our search for meaning is biologically inherent? Or did a Divine Being create us and just hardwire us to seek Him/Her/It? I'd love to debate this, so if you have any ideas, please post them!

I focus on the culture, politics, and languages of the Middle East- but would like to broaden my academic horizons...

I am interested in environmental factors that can cause brain damage over short periods of time such as asphyxia, and things that can impair brain functioning such as sleep deprivation.

I am also fascinated by the unconscious movements our body performs, as I type this I am not consciously focusing on what key I am pressing yet I can form typed words and sentences with no perceptible effort. However someone with Cerebral Palsy might find this activity very challenging if not impossible. I am often amazed at the complexity of the central nervous system and the way, despite all the things that can go wrong, most of the population functions with little or no difficulty. I am excited to learn about all of the intricacies of the brain and it's control of behavior in higher-level thought processing as well as motor functioning.

There is also a website http://www.brainexplorer.org that I find very easy to use. It provides basic brain anatomy and function.

I feel that I can add an unique approach to some of the topics that might come up in class mainly because of my past experiences. I conducted research at Columbia University for two years on the gamma secretase complex. This complex is known to be a key factor in the formation of neurotoxic amyloid beta-42 and the amyloid beta-42 forms the senile plaques associated with familial Alzheimer's Disease. Specifically, I transfected :

a known component of the gamma secretase complex(presenilin 1 placed into a red fluorescent protein, four forms of a gene[APH-1 in a green fluorescent protein ( there are two variations APH-1a and APH-1b that were used,but I also used mutants of these two variations which had a glycine residue changed to aspartate)] that was thought to be in the complex, and another gene that was at that time questioned about its involvement(PEN-2, which was not ligated to a fluorescent marker)

into cells in different combinations and than used a microscope that could detect fluorescence emitted from the fluorescent proteins in order to determine if the components that were transfected into the cells were colocalized, which would implicate that they formed a unified structure, or if the components had shifted from the ER/golgi apparatus area, which would have suggested that a complex had been formed or maybe even that the components combined to form the gamma secretase complex if they migrated to the plasma membrane. There were many other steps used in this experiment [such as subcloning(which took forever)in order to place the components used into fluorescent proteins, and performing a western blot using the transfected cells in order to be sure I was expressing certain proteins] and all of these experiments along with reading previous journals concerning the topic took much of my time and dedication, but it created my passion for understanding the molecular processes that cause neurological diseases and disorders. I want to take this course in order to increase my understanding of neurobiology before I go back to conducting research on familial Alzheimer's during my college years and hopefully as a profession one day.
By conducting this research I have gained a background in some molecular neurobiology topics and also techniques that can be used to further inquire about the molecular and cellular nature of neurological diseases and disorders. Being in this class I hope not only the bring my previous knowledge to our discussions, but also to learn more about what behavior is typical of people with certain neurological disorders/diseases and maybe even correalate the steps in behavioral changes with the changes that can be seen on the molecular level.

Usually my interests in biology lie in the technical aspects of how the body works and not in how it relates to society and behavior. Recently however, that changed. My sister is a pyschology major and has been studying and researching pain. After reading her paper (she made me) I really became interested in how pain is perceived in different individuals. More specifically, how different individuals perceive identical pain stimuli to different degrees. In addition, I have recently learned that there are studies (though not many) that study the effect of mental outlook on recovering from injury, illness or other trauma. One study at UPenn examined the difference in immune activity between optimists and pessimists, finding that optimists have a better immune system activity than do pessimists. I think it would be worthwhile to investigate these findings further, and I look forward to doing so.

Sarah

Hello reader,

Neurobiology and behavior...My studies in both biology & philosophy provides an excellent background with which to bridge the gap between the subjects. I feel as though both subjects are moving to a similar understanding and that understanding stems from the brain. In my first course on neuroscience, psych 101, I came to realize that the deeper we look into the brain the farther we fall into its labyrinth. This idea of a labyrinth can be exemplified by our lack of correlation between neuron synapses and human emotion. Although it is true that Neuroscience is very advanced and has mapped out the function behind structures in the brain, this work is limited to basic movement, and/or memory loss.

After combining Descartes philosophy and this "emergence principle" of biology (idea that feeling and thought comes from a collection of nerve cells), I am left still trying to gather physical evidence for the Cartesian dualism developed by Descartes. For those not familiar with this notion of Cartesian dualism it can be simplified to the idea that every human being is a mind and body. It was the use of this theory that led Descartes to meditate to the point of "cogito ergo sum" (I think, I am). Hopefully this course and its relevant research/discussion can provide a clearer basis for Descartes' ideas.

Up to this point in my academic life, I have almost always been solely exposed to the physiology part of the nervous system. I would like to know more about the human behavior in the context of being influenced by the NS. It will be very interesting to engage in discussions with people from other disciplines and hear different voices.

Some of the ideas others have put out in class today and on the forum also sound fascinating, and i'm looking forward to learning from the rest of you as well.

As a human, I think it's hard NOT to be interested in how or why the brain works a certain way, and why animals (especially people) behave as they do.

Over break I started Carl Sagan's book, "Broca's Brain" and was struck by his view on the subject. Sagan finds the preserved brain of Paul Broca (who first discovered that the brain is compartmentalized into functional regions and later located the area responsible for speech) in a dusty jar of formaldehyde, forgotten within the shelves of a French museum. He asks himself, "How much of that man known as Paul Broca can still be found in this jar?"

I found a paraphrased version (not written by me) of Sagan's answer intriguing:
"If you possess a religious nature, the answer is probably "nothing." However, if you follow modern studies of how the brain functions, there is the fascinating thought that since memories seem to be stored in proteins, it may be theoretically possible to "recreate" a dead person by manipulating their memory proteins. Such thoughts could also be used to argue in favor of life after death, in that we live on if our protein patterns live on. The soul of a human could then be considered as a permanent record of these patterns, that are continually updated as a person generates new memories."

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?s_site=philly&p_multi=PI|&p_product=PI&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_text_search-0=Terri%20AND%20Schiavo&s_dispstring=Terri%20Schiavo%20AND%20date(last%20180%20days)&p_field_date-0=YMD_date&p_params_date-0=date:B,E&p_text_date-0=-180qzD&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no

I am looking forward to exploring this issue from the neurobiological perspective. After all, all philosophy and literature is created by and through this interesting thing, the brain (so is it the brain that becomes uneasy with its own uniqueness? why?). It would be partucularly interesting to observe (to the extent possible) the changes in my own ways of perceiving and comprehending reality as the course progresses. I am also looking forward to exploring the relationship between our consciousness and unconsciousness, of whose dialogue I was dimly aware for as long as I remember. In general, I think that we (the students in this course) will become increasingly more interesting to ourselves and to each other as we go on.

When I go home and talk to my Dad and brother (a sleep specialist and a neuroscience student, respectively) our conversations always get deadlocked in the same place: how much we should attribute to culture vs. "hard-wiring". I don't expect this class to provide me with any conclusive answers to this huge question, but I really would like to have the vocabulary and analytical skills to navigate the question. Hopefully by the end of the semester I won't have to abandon the conversation everytime The Question inevitably arises. Also- I'm currently writing my anthropology thesis on how sensory experiences of place are reflected in cultural works (specifically architecture).

As the daughter of a psychologist and a scientist, I was always caught between the two debates of nature versus nuture in the development of children and behavior. From this, I've gained more then a desire to figure out what truly causes behavioral differences within humans. Also, as a newly developing (Freshman, yes!) science major, my major interests lay in the inner working of humans themselves; genetics and the pyschology of the mind and how the neurological sytems function to make us as people, as successful as we are now. What tiny malfunction of the NS or even brain disorders could have made humans anything but what we are today?

My mother, in attempting to gain her second Ph.D planned to study neurological functions in the brain in relations to mental disorders in patients, and I myself find this extremely fascinating. And with the confliction views I was brought up with, I'm more then able to think on varying perspectives of many issues.

See you Thursday!

Katina

I'm glad you brought up color blindness. I have been thinking about red/green color blindness for quite some time. I wonder what color the color-blind person sees when he/she sees red or green... if there are different shades of those colors, if he sees a totally different color like the "normal" blue, the confusion that goes along with everyday life (like traffic lights). I try and imagine myself in the mind of someone who is color blind, which is difficult; therefore, I'd like to learn more about this subject. That's awesome that you brought it up, and I hope to read the book you mentioned. Thanks!

My point is, if someone had asked us outside of this class "What influences behavior?", we might have answered with numerous variables. "Education. Childhood. Emotion. The weather. The setting. The people. The past. The future. Et cetera, et cetera, and so forth." But how do these things tie into the brain? Does the brain contain all these things, and if it does, can we then rightly (or less wrongly) say that it is the brain and only the brain that influences behavior?

Over and out.

I was thinking that a lot of your behaviour is dictated just by memory- experiences translate as memory, so much of the time. Or, well, not all experience- sometimes your responses to a situation are more deeply ingrained than long-term memory, some learned responses don't leave you even if you lose your memory. But so much of how you behave, so much of who you are, is decided by the memories you carry- defined by the memories you carry. And since those memories are stored by the brain- tied to this material, deeply fragile object, I think it can be said pretty definitely that memories aren't at all separate from the brain. They can be lost if your brain is damaged- or, I guess more accurately, the ability to access them can be lost very easily, which amounts to the same thing.

And so... It's intriguing- when so much of who you are is memory, and the ability to form new memories, what are you, really, without all of that? Do you lose yourself if your brain is damaged? Or can you really say that there's a self to be lost, if all that your "self" is is a bundle of memories and impressions and sensations... Unless that isn't all the self is- unless your self transcends the brain, which is a much more comforting way of looking at things in a lot of ways. Which is, perhaps, why people often prefer to see it that way- simply because it's more comforting. I'm sorry, I'm just typing as I'm thinking, here. I know it's not terribly coherent.

It makes me think of another story by Oliver Sacks- he wrote about a patient of his who had lost all memory of his life after the age of 20 or so, and had also lost the ability to form new memories. It makes you really wonder what that would be like- to be alive, to be able to feel, to be perfectly healthy and able to function in all other respects, but have no memory of events after periods of more than a few minutes. To be living, in effect, in one ever-changing moment, with no memory of what came before.

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