Action Potential

Although the Watson scandal was more public and hit faster, there has been another crisis brewing at CSHL for going on a year now that has been discussed in whispers at meetings and through emails, but let's organize all of these free associations and questions into a single place and ask the big question:

What is going on with neuroscience at CSHL?

In the early years of this decade, the neuroscience community at CSHL was making such a name for itself that it was beginning to match the excellent reputation acquired by the entrenched genetics and cancer community there. A very productive group of labs stormed through a variety of problems, using a beautiful complement of model systems and approaches. Everything from molecular and physiology to systems and computational studies were streaming out of this motivated group. I should know, I was there.

Now, starting at the end of last year, there has been a steady retreat from the buildings along the Long Island sound. Here is an unofficial account of the movements:

Carlos Brody - to Princeton
Karel Svoboda - to Janelia Farm Research Campus
Zach Mainen - to Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (Lisbon)
Holly Cline - to Scripps Research Institute
Josh Huang - (rumored) to Columbia University
Dmitri Chklovskii - to Janelia Farm Research Campus
Robert Malinow - (rumored) to UCSD
Tim Tully - unknown, but likely somewhere in San Diego

That leaves Tony Zador, Linda van Aelst, Josh Dubnau, Partha Mitra, Yi Zhong and two new hires, Adam Kepecs and Glenn Turner, in the department. Granted, this group can still utilize a diversity of systems and techniques to address current questions in neuroscience, and are indeed a competent group, but why is CSHL dragging its feet to replace the rest of the lost labs? The irony is that during this entire exodus, the lab has undertaken a massive building program to expand their research programs into more practical spaces. As of now, it seems like these new buildings will not house more neuroscience research. Hopefully, CSHL will get its affairs in order and continue to hire more programs dedicated to neuroscience. They have started this process by adding Kepecs and Turner, but these young investigators can't do it all by themselves, and it would be a shame to lose the momentum gathered by the previous group by downsizing the emphasis on neuroscience now. I hope that pruning back is not the long-term plan.

Posted by Noah Gray at 03:02 PMon October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Random Thoughts

This is an entry that should have been written back in June, a time that pre-dates my involvement with Action Potential! Back then, nature.com incorporated and launched a new free service called Scintilla that collects data from hundreds of news outlets, scientific blogs, journals and databases and then makes it easy for the user to organize, share and discover exactly the type of information in which he or she is interested.

Scintilla incorporates interesting features from several different Web 2.0 technologies including The Hype Machine (aggregation), Google Reader (checking selected sources), last.fm (recommendation engine based on other users’ activities), and del.icio.us (social network based around content). It is pretty slick and easy to use. For the content producers, here is a statement from NPG. They even have an interesting solution for science bloggers concerned about losing advertising revenue to those reading through this service.

Give it a try and tell me what you think.

Posted by Noah Gray at 02:11 PMon October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Scientific Publishing

In a statement issued today, Dr. James Watson resigned as Chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. This is an important event for CSHL, which is now relieved of making more difficult decisions regarding Dr. Watson's future. Although Watson's fund-raising abilities were unparalleled, and he built the lab to what it has become today, in order for CSHL to move forward, he had to leave.

Dr. Watson's full statement:

This morning I have conveyed to the Trustees of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory my desire to retire immediately from my position as its Chancellor, as well as from my position on its Board, on which I have served for the past 43 years. Closer now to 80 than 79, the passing on of my remaining vestiges of leadership is more than overdue. The circumstances in which this transfer is occurring, however, are not those which I could ever have anticipated or desired.

James D. Watson
One Bungtown Road
Cold Spring Harbor, New York
October 2007

And thus, a long storied career ends in disgrace, along with a long relationship of more than 40 years. Good for CSHL for making a clean break...or did they? Word coming out of CSHL suggests that this clean break may not be so clean. Watson will keep his house on campus until he dies, will maintain his office with a secretary, and most likely, much of his salary. In other words, to the outside world, Watson is gone, while on the CSHL inside, the only thing that has changed is the nameplate on the door (removing the word "Chancellor"). Disappointing, but did you expect anything more than a little finger-waggling from the CSHL board?? And do you think that in the future, no one will ever pop by Watson's office when a big labwide decision needs to be made for a little informal advice? It seems like "I'm stepping down" is just PR-speak from Watson and CSHL for "Just leave us alone."

Posted by Noah Gray at 10:35 AMon October 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Breaking News

No, Action Potential is not going to start giving dating advice...yet. I just needed a catch-all title for a catch-all blog entry. After last week's ugly Watson debate, I figured that I would return to research science and have a little fun updating you on some recent primate research. The usual caveat applies to this entry, as with many of mine, that the neuroscience links are tenuous. Of course, that depends on your definition of neuroscience. Since mine is quite broad, it looks like we can proceed.

In the last few weeks, several studies have come out reporting on characteristics of our primate brethren. Reporting in Current Biology, Marc Hauser and his collaborators compared people with chimps in a head-to-head test of patience. The researchers used a classical experiment in which subjects learn that they can either accept a smaller reward immediately, or wait for a larger reward. Previous studies had demonstrated that many animals, including other monkey species, rarely wait for the larger reward (most lasting only seconds before selecting the immediate gratification). Chimps were not only willing to wait for minutes in order to receive a larger food reward (much longer than any other species tested), but were also more patient than humans in the head-to-head test. Lest we feel inadequate in the face of this great loss, the authors then tested humans on a similar task in which the reward was not food, but money. In this task, when the results were normalized, chimps and humans had equal capacity for patience in order to reap greater benefit. Therefore, humans and chimps (and bonobos as well) are the few species that demonstrate a presumed capacity to take into account future events when making temporal choices. Thus, as Chaucer wrote in The Canterbury Tales (1386), "Patience is a virtue high" not only for humans, but also for our closest relatives.

Moving on to a different characteristic, Keith Jensen and colleagues concluded that unlike humans, chimps are "rationale maximizers." What the heck does that mean? These findings were published in Science, and the phrase basically means that chimps lack a sense of fairness. In the ultimatum game, previously only given to humans, subjects are matched, with the "proposer" dividing up an arbitrary reward, and the "responder" accepting or rejecting the proposal. If the proposal is rejected, neither party gets anything. Almost universally, humans will reject any division in which they receive less than 20%, likely because the proposal was deemed to be unfair. In a cleverly adapted version of the ultimatum game, chimps, on the other hand, accept any proposal in which their share is not zero. The researchers thus propose that an aversion to inequality, even at a personal expense, could be a key differentiating factor between humans and chimps. This is a key conclusion for some researchers who believe that placing a premium on fairness is what has allowed human society to become so large and complex.

Finally, getting the girl. Human machismo exists for an evolutionary reason, right? It is a way of proving one's physical prowess and genetic fitness. In chimps, sharing wild plant foods is uncommon, however, in those troops that hunt, the sharing of meat can influence social bonding and relationships. Thus, the apparent danger inherent to hunting is hypothesized to signal the fitness of the bearer of meat. New data supporting this theory of [thwarting danger = fitness] was recently published in PLoS ONE. Researchers observed the sharing of plant foods amongst chimps, which at first glance refutes previous findings and hypotheses. However, a closer inspection revealed that the specific plants being shared were cultivated foods, stolen from nearby farm fields. Even more interestingly, the food was primarily received by a reproductively cycling female from a male, suggesting that food raiding, a dangerous endeavor, may be another means of proving the fitness of the successful male. The presumed trading of commodities (coveted food in exchange for sex or grooming) provides an exceptional crop raider with the currency to get the girl. This obviously isn't fair to the chimp who lacks the courage to sneak into an angry farmer's field for papaya, but who said that chimps are fair???

Posted by Noah Gray at 02:54 PMon October 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, Interesting Neuroscience

James Watson, current chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, shared the Nobel Prize in 1962 for his contributions leading to the discovery of DNA structure. I guess his expertise in molecular biology and genetics has also provided him with a unique insight into the relationship between intelligence and race.

Referring to a recent interview, The Times UK reports that Dr. Watson suggested he is pessimistic about the "prospect of Africa" (a little vague, conceptually, but I assume he meant the continent's growth trajectory and future) since the policies of the west, and other countries providing aid to African nations, assume that the people of Africa (read: black people) are as intelligent as we are. Now, this statement could be referring to a lot of things, including educational opportunities, specialized training in economics or industry, or even the performance on standardized tests (suggested by some researchers to be socially biased against students of color.)

But to make sure that we all understood what he meant, he continued speaking and clarified his position by stating that while he hoped everyone was equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I was reminded that this was the same man who has mentioned that sex drive is related to skin color (i.e. Latino or black individuals have a higher libido), has made homophobic statements, and has repeatedly demonstrated his lack of respect for women. Therefore, why should unfounded, racist statements taken straight from The Bell Curve be off-limits?

If you didn't have a good reason not to purchase his new book (which he is currently on the road promoting), I hope that he has now given you one. He has embarrassed both his publisher, as well as the Long Island institution he has helped to build, a number of times with his outrageous opinions. Neither his prominence in the scientific community, nor his Nobel Prize, give him license to make such ridiculous and inflammatory statements.

I wish Stephen Jay Gould was still around to comment on Dr. Watson's latest verbal gaff.

Posted by Noah Gray at 03:49 PMon October 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (1)
Categories: Noah Gray, Breaking News

Have a busy schedule ahead of you, but wishing you could stay current with cutting edge neuroscience discussion? Well fret no more. Nature, in partnership with The Dana Foundation, has launched Neuropod, a neuroscience-based podcast.

Each month, Kerri Smith will report on some of the interesting happenings in the world of neuroscience research. This month, Kerri discusses the relationship between cognitive enhancement and warfare, how stress contributes to memory formation, learning from brain imaging, and why chili peppers might have a future in anesthesiology.

Remember to check back each month for a new episode, or better yet, sign up for the free RSS feed to have the podcast delivered straight to your desktop (paste this link in your media player). Let me know what you think of this format, as we want your feedback to make this feature an interesting and entertaining tool.

Posted by Noah Gray at 03:25 PMon October 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Categories: Noah Gray, What's New in NN?