Website relaunch

Capt. Axon

 I heart brains the site is becoming a reality.

The site is usable at homebase.iheartbrains.org one day I will work out how to have it run at a clearer address. If you wish for a iheartbrains.org email address contact me at tony.harley(at)iheartbrains.org and I will make it so. It will also appear less rough in the coming days as I get to grips with the template. Any feedback is super welcome.

So come and enjoy the adventures of Captain Axon and Princess Dendrite as they sail the good ship Amygdala across the oceans of Cortexia and I can set you up as a user.

In other news. My good friend Ben White has published the first of his Clover Island novels. Miya Black: Pirate Princess is the tale of a frustrated daughter of the kings and queen of Clover Island (former pirate and princess respectively) who dreams of adventure on the high seas. Needless to say adventure and excitement find her.... Have a read for gratis and if you like it contact myself or Ben and we can make arrangements for distribution of the high quality paper-back edition. Here are the opening paragraphs.......

"Miya Black was thirteen years old and annoyed. She was thirteen years old because her fourteenth birthday wasn’t for another couple of days. She was annoyed because her upcoming birthday celebration was going to include a formal dance.
“Mum, I hate that kind of thing. You know I hate that kind of thing. Don’t you pay any attention to my loves and hates at all?”
Miya’s mother was Lilith ‘Lily’ Black, queen of Clover Island and ex-princess. She had long black hair and dark eyes, and was often remembered by people as being tall, although in fact she was of slightly below-average height.
“Come on, Miya,” she said. “You like dancing. Everyone likes dancing! Who doesn’t like dancing? Name me one person that doesn’t like dancing.”
“Peggles, down at the docks,” Miya’s father put in. Her father was Tomas ‘Boots’ Black, king of Clover Island and ex-pirate. He had short, wavy brown hair and deep hazel eyes, and a kind of relaxed air about him that extended from the way he sat to the way he smiled. “He’s got two wooden legs, I’m sure he wouldn’t enjoy dancing.”"

Mr boss Peter Joyce with Prof. Fraser

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Also my other boss, Prof. Martin Kennedy and Prof. Doug Sellman the addiction medicine expert.

Jo and Prof. Fraser see Christchurch's new PET/CT scanner

I asked the professor in charge of nuclear medicine if this was going to be availiable with ligands over than deoxyglucose. The answer was a firm No. Hopefully neuroresearch will get a bit of this beast sooner rather than later.

Prof. Fraser and his Black and Decker.....

Smarter hamsters

John Rosenburg from Goats.com fame has established his new web comic, Scenes From A Multiverse. So, so, good.

The science-master featured in the cartoon is striving to boost Hamster intellegence. It has been a while since I looked into the current literature on Sooped up super smart rodents. So I had a wee look see.

In 2000 one of the earlier strains of transgenic knock-in mice was announced. These animals expressed extra neurotransmitter receptors in the the hippocampal brain region. This receptor, the NMDA subunit is special in that it is only activated glutamate in situations where the cell is already stimulated and when I does open a soup of high Calcium fluid enters. Calcium influx from this is the "go-switch" for making permanent new connections. Turns out these mice were twice as good at learning tasks than their litter mates. They were media darlings and were called "Doogie mice".  This advantage is maintained over the entire lifespan (about 400 days).

At the end of last year a new contender stepped up Hobbie-J. This is one of the latest and greatest strains of transgenic rats (much harder to engineer rats than mice). Hobbie-J rats also overexpress NMDA receptors and are also super smart.

While these rodents are engineered nerds their is also a strain of engineered jocks.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcXuKU_kfww This video is fantastic, they are strong, fitter, faster and live longer. They are also more aggressive.

These models have resulted in developments toward the treatment of dementia and sarcopenia (the progressive loss of muscle bulk which occurs in older people) and are not a mere curiosity.

Go Rodents!