Dan has been making a lot of comments and asking a lot of questions, and I thought I’d take a crack at one of the latter. He specifically asks how a blind individual creates representations of the things of the world. What kind of internal ‘representation’ can the brain make, when it can never see…
There are several highly-ordered neurological representations of the surfaces of your body within a cortical region called “S1”, which occupies a narrow band that roughly bisects the cerebral cortex mantle from a location just above and in front of your ear, and extends from ear to ear. When you stimulate a specific location on the…
In an earlier blog, I recommended that you look at “Children of the Code” as a reference for gaining a deeper understanding of dyslexia and its human costs. I really hope that you’ve taken a look at this wonderful resource. One of the best treatments in this outstanding series of documentaries summarizes the often-tragic human…
Alcohol is our best-studied neurotoxin. You can pickle a brain in booze. At somewhat lower concentrations that are quite easily achieved in drinking humans, ethanol alters synaptic spines and their plasticity, greatly reduces the complexity of neuronal interconnections, ultimately kills off your neurons, and shrinks your brain. Cognitive and motor losses are the predictable behavioral…
James B. Watson, the genetics pioneer, is the first individual in the history of the universe to have his DNA completely sequenced. In a statement that testifies to his infectious enthusiasm for nerd science (for which, if you’ve had a conversation with him, you know that Watson is obviously genetically endowed), Jim was “thrilled to…
David Boulton’s “Children of the Code” is a wonderful, general resource for educating yourself, a class, a teaching staff, your professional assistants — or any other group with a need to know — about the miracle of reading. A second, very enlightened focus of Boulton’s opus is on the origins of, and the great personal…
Nancy Martin-Crisco wrote a heart-rending response to a blog I posted (“How to get PTSD. Twice. Worse.”) that you all should read. Her son Christopher was diagnosed with PTSD after service in Afghanistan. After a few months stateside, he was redeployed to Baghdad. It was NOT good for him. Addiction, divorce, separation from his child,…
I delivered a lecture about ethical considerations related to the neuroscience of brain plasticity to a class at Stanford last night, and thought it might be fun to reiterate some of the issues raised for those bright young men and women struggling to understand how to behave in their professional lives. The class is organized…
A child therapist who I very greatly respect, Ann Osterling (from Champaign, Illinois) wrote me an email message in response to my (undoubtedly superficial) comments about Down Sydrome that I thought everyone interested in helping these kids would enjoy reading. In her words: You threw out the idea of intensive early intervention as one option…