Monthly Archives: November 2006

Gobble, gobble

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Thanksgiving! If you are heading to a Thanksgiving feast, chances are that you’ll be stuck in at least one conversation about tryptophan. Yes, we all know the claim that the loud snoring that begins after the Thanksgiving meal is caused by that rogue amino acid. However, tryptophan may be innocent! True, tryptophan can be converted to serotonin, which causes sleepiness. But, tryptophan needs to be consumed on an empty stomach to be effective, and the protein in turkey (let alone all the other foods consumed at the Thanksgiving table) prevents this possibility. It’s possible that excessive carbohydrate consumption (think stuffing and sweet potato pie) is to blame. The carbs cause the pancreas to pump out insulin. Insulin busies the other chemicals running through your bloodstream, clearing the way for tryptophan to arrive unhindered at the transporters that shuttle amno acids into the brain. Most likely of all, post-Thanksgiving fatigue is caused by the diversion of blood from the nervous system to the stomach to deal with the excessive amount of food there.

Amazingly Plump

Posted on by
Reply

“His brain is amazingly plump.” That’s what Sandra Witelson says of Albert Einstein in this interview in last week’s New York Times. In 1999, she found that Einstein’s parietal lobe was bigger than average, and unlike everyone else’s parietal lobe, it wasn’t divided by the Sylvian fissure.

Witelson has built a career studying the human brain. At McMaster University, she studies a brain bank filled with donations from cancer patients who went through a battery of physiological and some psychological tests before death. So, she can correlate these measures with human brain anatomy.

Witelson has some interesting findings on sex differences in the human brain. In a 1995 Journal of Neuroscience paper, she found that women have 11% more neurons in cytoarchitectonic area TA1, a portion of the temporal lobe that is thought to be involved in language. Unlike her study of Einstein’s brain, which makes for great cocktail party conversation, her studies of sex differences in the brain have become politically charged, quoted most recently by the supporters of Lawrence Summers, the embattled former president of Harvard.

Personally, I’m far more surprised by anatomical differences in Einstein’s brain than in anatomical differences between the sexes. At the very least, male and female brains are bathed in different hormones that could influence gene expression, cell division and cell death throughout development. So what was Einstein’s brain bathed in, and how did it develop so unusually?

Job opening at the journal…

Posted on by
Reply

If anyone has happened to check the “About the Editors” section on our webpage, you may have noticed that I am in the midst of my second stint at the journal. I worked here back in 2001 in between completing a master’s degree in the UK and a PhD at MIT, and then returned this year while I looked into postdoc options. I will be leaving at the end of January to start a postdoc in Andrew Oxenham’s lab at the University of Minnesota, and so the journal is looking for someone to take my place.

I would encourage anyone considering alternatives to the standard academic career in science to think about applying. I have enjoyed my time here tremendously and highly recommend the position.

I get asked all the time what it’s like to be an editor. The primary duties involve reading and evaluating manuscripts. Over 70% of submitted papers are rejected without review, and reading the submissions and then making those calls is one of the main responsibilities. Once a decision is made to send a paper out for review, you have to choose appropriate reviewers, and once the reviews are in, you have to come to a decision on what to do with the paper. Other responsibilities include commissioning and editing News and Views pieces and review articles, writing press releases, and attending scientific meetings. So there is not that much editing in the traditional sense of the word, although it is a component of the job. The job mostly involves thinking critically about science.

I really enjoy the work, so much so that I came back to work for the journal a second time. One of my favorite aspects of the job is that you get to be very broad, reading papers from quite a large expanse of the field. It’s quite different from scientific research, where typically we focus on very particular problems for long periods of time. You stay up to date on the entire field and continually learn new things. It’s also very different from research in that the rewards are more immediate. Every decision you make has tangible short-term consequences, and matters to a lot of people. Because the editorial decisions are so important to the people involved, and to the community at large, it’s easy to get excited about the day to day activities on the job. You are also constantly exposed to cutting edge work, sometimes being the first to hear about it. And you spend a lot of time talking with scientists, so you stay close to the research world even though you are not doing primary research.

The main official requirement is a PhD in neuroscience. My background is in the higher end of the field, but someone with molecular or cellular training would be equally welcome.

If you think you might be interested, you should submit a CV and cover letter to admin@natureny.com, and cc the editor in chief, Sandra Aamodt, at s.aamodt@natureny.com. If you have any questions about what is involved feel free to email me as well.