Sleep: simplifying synapses?

A recent study seems to support the controversial theory that sleep preserves brain function by weakening or even severing connections between brain cells.

Counter-intuitive, at the very least.

Scientist theorize that this weakening in synapses serves to "save resources ... and boost the signal of important memories over the noise of unneeded connections." It basically clears up the brain for new thoughts and memories.

The findings are by no means certain - indeed there have been past studies suggesting the precise opposite: that sleep strengthens rather than weakens synapses. However, it's still and interesting thought.

It also echoes a similar and equally surprising finding in urban planning: that removing roads and traffic lights actually speeds up traffic. Whether you buy into the roads/synapses analogy, it's a fun article to read: touching upon all sorts of topics from mathematics to economics to game theory.

For more on sleep and synapses, check out this digest on Discover Magazine's blog.

Trauma and the spotless mind

Seems like selective memory deletion is really the hot topic of debate nowadays, and obviously I am fascinated. This recent article, on Wired Magazine, touches upon the possibility of using memory editing drugs to treat post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) in soldiers.

The moral and ethical issues related to memory-editing drugs of course are numerous, and I've touched on a few of them before. My question here is a more practical/functional one...

On a very simplistic level, the case for using memory deletion to treat PTSD is that absent the negative memories from which they originate, the stress symptoms will subside. However, I wonder if there are cases in which knowing and dealing with the source of one's anxiety might in fact be the best way to cure it... Exposure therapy, for example, has proven fairly effective in treating PTSD.

Consider also this article in Scientific American, which suggests that PTSD is over-diagnosed among soldiers, when depression or social and reintegration problems might be equally to blame. In these situations it's hard to imagine that memory editing could possibly be a solution.

Movies worth seeing

This week my Netflix queue bestowed upon me two very unusual French films: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and La Moustache. One thing I like about Netflix is that, since I tend to set up my queue on a whim, when the DVDs finally arrive in my mail I am almost always surprised (and, on occasion, appalled by my own lack of taste). And often, as in this case, they are films I know very little about.

On this occasion, it turns out that I was entirely unprepared for what was to come.


The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, once an editor of Elle Magazine, who suffered a serious stroke and found himself not only fully paralyzed save for his left eye, but a victim of "locked-in syndrome." He could hear and see as normal but was incapable of speaking, gesturing, or communicating with the outside world in any way other than by blinking his one functioning eyelid. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the book he wrote about his experience living life as a prisoner in his own body. To do this he had to painstakingly dictate the entire text one letter at a time to a transcriber who would say the alphabet until Bauby blinked, indicating what letter he wanted.

It's a tragic but fascinating film, well worth watching and all the more incredible considering what it must have been to live with such a condition. Bauby passed away just days after the book was published.


La Moustache is an altogether different story, in which a man who sported a mustache all his life finally decides to get rid of it, only to discover that nobody can tell the difference. In fact, everyone seems to believe that he never even had a mustache in the first place, sending him into a serious crisis of identity. Things get even stranger as more of his beliefs about himself and his life are called into question, causing him to doubt his own sanity and his life to rapidly unravel.

The tone feels very much like Kafka, with the angst that comes from feeling trapped in a dysfunctional world where everything seems to make sense to everybody except you.

So, though perhaps not the best cure for cubicle-induced cabin fever (unless schadenfreude is your cup of tea), both film are nonetheless highly worth seeing.

The Spotless Mind

Believe it or not, Dutch scientists have conducted a research study suggesting that a common heart medicine, beta-blockers, might actually help people banish painful memories.

The researchers induced negative memories on a group of subjects by exposing them to images of spiders accompanied by mild electric shocks. The next day half of the subjects were given a dose of beta-blockers while the others received a placebo pill. When exposed once again to the same spider-shock combo, those subjects who had taken the beta-blockers showed less fear than the control group, even after the effects of the meds had worn off.

They had not forgotten the spiders or electric shocks of the previous day, but somehow the negative aspects of their memories had diminished.

How is this possible? One hypothesis rests on the intricate process by which we recall memories:

"Each time a memory is recalled it changes a little, and the new version is recorded in the long-term memory stash via brain chemical fluctuations in a process called reconsolidation. The beta-blockers could interfere with [certain other] brain chemicals, blocking reconsolidation of the emotional component of the memory, but leaving the rest of the memory intact."

So, in a sense, no memory is truly being erased -- though sensationalism sells, as do parallels to Gondry movies starring Kate Winslet. But then again, what's left when we erase the content of our memories? A bunch of empty facts that, stripped of their emotional relevance, will likely be truly forgotten soon after.

For more on these experiments, check out these articles from BBC News and Discovery Magazine.

Sci-Fi Prosthetics

A prosthetic limb that looks like it came right out of a sci-fi movie? On a girl clearly giving someone the come-hither eyes?



This may be the stuff of dreams for a certain demographic raised on fantasy books and video games. But while the urge to fill this post with thinly veiled cyber-porn allusions is great, what came to mind when I read about this is in fact the theme of this blog. This is a perfect instance of the uncanny valley phenomenon.

A whole lot of thought has gone into making prosthetic limbs look natural and lifelike, but they often remain eerily creepy. Much creepier, as it turns out, than this sci-fi inspired model, a conceptual design by Hans Alexander Huseklepp at AHO, which makes no pretense whatsoever of resembling a flesh-and-blood human limb.

The uncanny valley theory would suggest that this is because this sci-fi prosthesis is sufficiently non-humanlike, that we zero in on its human-like qualities instead. Quite the opposite occurs for traditional prostheses. Indeed, with their skin-colored plastic and fake fingernails, traditional prostheses fall right down the uncanny valley, that eerie place where making something more humanlike actually causes a distinctly more negative human response.

As of now, this design is merely conceptual, but click here to read more about the thought process behind it.

Solve Puzzles for Science

This is brilliant.

Though this is way beyond my intellect, it's awesome to think that more spatially gifted people have a means to put their puzzle-solving abilities to good use!

The use: advancing research on proteins.

Proteins are made up of strands of amino acids that curl up into 3-dimensional bundles, the structure of which is essential to the proteins' functions. Scientists are trying to understand the mechanism by which this folding process occurs, but to do so computationally is both complex and expensive.

Enter FoldIt, a site that turns protein folding into interactive 3-D puzzles that users can attempt to solve, thus contributing to the body research though their efforts.

Possible uses for this research: oh, just curing AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer's...
Sudoku, anyone?

Click here for more info on FoldIt.