Broca’s Area, 1865

Broca, P. “On the site of the faculty of the articulated speech” The meeting of the Anthropological Society, 1865.

Broca is a name known universally amongst neuroscientists, med students, linguists, and really almost anyone who’s ever had an interest in language and the brain. Broca lends his name to Broca’s area, an area of the brain localized to the pars triangularis of the inferior frontal gyrus (in English: the area in the shape of a rough triangle that is on the left side of the brain, in the frontal lobe, and it’s on the side just above the tip of the temporal lobe…crap, I’m just including a picture). Broca’s area, along with Wernecke’s area, is always localized to just one side of the brain, usually the dominant side, or the one controlling the handed side of the body. This means, for right handed or ambidextrous people, Broca’s area is on the left side, and for left handed dominant people, it may occur on the right.

(From the “half decent pharmaceutical chemistry blog, which is sadly no longer functional)

So what IS Broca’s area? It is the area of the brain primarily involved in speech, and language processing (as opposed to Wernicke’s area, which is involved in language comprehension). People with damage to Broca’s area suffer major deficits in language production. They can understand you perfectly, can read perfectly well, their motor skills with their mouth, vocal chords and tongue are usually all right, and they express their thoughts on paper just fine, but they cannot TELL you what they mean. Patients with damage to Broca’s area are completely unable to form complex sentances. There is a disconnect between the word they need to form and the motor sequences needed to produce the sounds. Often they can manage sentances that are simple, and usually described as telegraphic, with nothing more than content words.

Whoops, I wasn’t looking

So I apparently got tagged by a blog carnival!  Yay!  I’m always in favor of that.  This one is Medicine 2.0, a blog carnival focused on integration of the web and the practice of medicine.  Check it out!  It’s got lots of technology links and posts about privacy issues.

Humanities v Science: let’s rename it Humanities & Science

Following a post by Dr. Orzel on the divide between the humanities and the sciences, there was a flurry of stuff over at Science Blogs, including stuff from Dr. Free Ride (who, by the way, is my life guru, blogger AND tenured prof in philosophy of science, her posts are always reasoned and thoughtful and interesting…sigh…someday I’ll get her autograph), and others, but I can’t find the links right now because they’re gone from my google reader.  Anyway. 

Musings of the Week

1) Having seen this article in the NY Times, “R U really reading?” on internet reading, as well as reading some opinions on it from Prof. Orzel, and I was reminded of a conversation I had recently on the evolution of language.  Forget the phrase “R U really reading?”  R U really writing?  Or talking?  The advent of LOLspeak (or L33tspeak, or whatever you call it) has become a force of nature on teh intarwebs.  Everyone agrees it’s terrible grammar (my grammar is certainly not the best, but I know better than “I can has?”), and terrible spelling.  Some think it’s harmless and funny (who doesn’t love LOLcats?).  But some people consider it a threat to the current English language.  As to the article above, I think she IS indeed reading, but I don’t think she will learn to write from it.  Perhaps her mother would have a better time directing her toward fan fiction sites that at least have proper spelling.

Is change to the current english language actually a bad thing?  Evolution of language occurs over time, there’s no question of that.  Consider how many people out there can still understand Shakespeare, let alone Beowulf or the Canturbury Tales, yet we all classify them as English.  In history, it appears that this change in language has been pretty gradual, with occasional jumps, as when, say, England was invaded by the Saxons, and then again by the Normans, who of course brought changes to the language with them.

But this change in internet language has happened very quickly, almost as as fast an an invading force.  Is it here to stay?  Is I gonna haf 2 strt riteing all my posts liek this?  And is this an acceptable change to the language?  Are these new grammar and spelling rules that we should teach in the schools as evidence of language evolution? 

Some people would say that, though these changes are happening, they should not be taught, because they do not inherantly add to the language.  In fact, in many cases, they take away nuances of expression.  But it is bad to “streamline” a language in this manner?  Does LOLspeak interfere with transmission of ideas?  And if it does, how should it be dealt with?  I can easily see both sides of this issue, and I’m interested in other people’s opinions as well.

2) Everyone in the W.O.R.L.D. has been linking to this, about time I did, too, I suppose.  I LOVE Joss Whedon’s Firefly, though I’ve actually never really been a fan of Buffy (don’t hit me!!!).  But Joss Whedon is now out with a sing-along musical blog about the trials and tribulations of being an evil genius.  It’s fantastic.  And I can kill you with my brain.

3) Jurassic Fight Club.  The first rule of Jurassic Fight Club is, no dinosaurs talk about Jurassic Fight Club…

4) Where do trendy chunky layers stop and a mullet begin?  I really would like to know.  With pictures, if you have any.

This Friday’s Weird Science: Foot-binding

When I look for Friday Weird Science topics, I often end up with stuff that sex-related.  Why?  Because sex sells, and weird sex stuff sells even better.  And isn’t it crazy that people STUDY this stuff?

So here it is: McGeoch, P. “Does cortical reorganization explain the enduring popularity of foot-binding in medieval China?”  Medical Hypotheses (2007) 69, 938-941.

Warning:  there are some frightening pics of feet below the fold. 

Homeopathy

I feel kind of weird doing a post on homeopathy.  First of all, it’s a really charged issue, and I tend to try and stay away from those.  I don’t want to draw the haters.  Second, I really hate to ruin what, for many people, may be a really beneficial placebo effect.  But it drives me crazy when people talk about homeopathy as though it is the poor unfortunate soul of modern scientific medicine.  So this is an “info” post.  I’ve read a lot of blogs out there, and many of them attack homeopathy without explaining why they think it’s bunk, and many people defend homeopathy without knowing what it is they are defending. 

Homeopathy is a VERY touchy subject in the scientific community.  Almost everyone has an opinion, and opinions are very strong.  I managed to find only one article that I could say made an effort to be unbiased.  This article is actually a statement from the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education by Johnson et al in 2007, and it’s an article about homeopathy and how it should be covered by those in pharmaceutical practice.  So I’m relying pretty heavily on that one article, with other articles in equal amounts on both sides of the debate.  I do think most of this stuff is bunk, but I’m going to try very hard just to tell things as they are, what homeopathic remedies are, and how they are purported to work. 

Worthless grant review comments

We’ve all had that R21 or R03 come back with completely useless comments. Months and months of work, hours or weeks spent in the lab collecting that preliminary data (which is supposedly unnecessary for those R21s). More time spent waiting and waiting. Revisions. Resubmissions. The same useless comments back to you.
Come on. We all know it’s a racket. In a tight funding climate, nobody in charge of the purse strings wants to fund a competitor. But they gotta find a way to reject your grant in a way that is completely noncommittal. Hence, weasel words.
Here’s my favorite: “The proposed studies are not unique”. With this simple, vague statement, any hopes of funding a decent or important project are quashed. Think that study will fill in a crucial hole in the literature? Screw you. Your project isn’t unique enough.
“Unique” or “innovative”, or other similar words have pretty much whatever meaning the reviewer wants them to have. Or needs them to have. But what does uniqueness matter, really? Some of the most informative developmental neurobiology work, for example, still relies heavily on chick embryo limb bud removal; a technique developed about a century ago, requiring little more than a tungsten needle and a microscope. Apply some simple histochemical procedures (which date back even farther) and a few molecular biology techniques (which are about as ubiquitous as you can get), and you can potentially rewrite our understanding of the developing nervous system. Yet on the surface, standard fare. Sorry bud, your project just got pigeon-holed. I’ve seen some great grants go down in flames this way, grants that were either conceptual genius or exceedingly relevant to a health-related issue. The most egregious example I saw was an R01 dealing with the potential for soy phytoestrogens (as an unregulated dietary supplement) to affect behavior and pathology in a model of aging and dementia. This grant– beautifully designed to address a number of questions relevant to the health of postmenopausal women– scored right at the payline on the first review, just missing funding, but then subsequently triaged on both resubmissions. The payline shifted, the grant got rerouted to another, much more competitive study section, and suddenly the grant was “not innovative”.
The best part? You revise and resubmit according to the reviewer’s useless comments, and you get the exact same comments back again.
So what’s your favorite useless grant criticism?

My first 5K

Normally I don’t run for any sort of competitive purpose. Ok, so I’ve never run for any sort of competitive purpose. I took the opportunity this time, though, so that I’d have other runners to help me push my pace.
I’m pretty out of shape right now but I can still do a 7:30 minute mile pretty easily, on hills. When I was in good shape 2 years ago, I my best time on my toughest 1 mile run (which was all uphill for the last half mile, on 14th St heading south towards Walter Reed if anybody knows the area), I could do 6:40. Which makes me reasonably certain I could’ve broken 6:00 on a flat course.
But I digress. I did manage to come in 76th out of about 225 people, with a 8:02 pace, and 11th out of 22 in my age group. I figure that’s pretty good considering that besides being somewhat out of shape I have a condition called enthesopathy, an arthritis-like condition that affects insertion points of the ligaments and tendons. Originally I thought it was fibromyalgia but that turned out not to be the case. I have a dickens of a time with it because my Achilles and psoas never seem to loosen up anymore, and they’re always painfully tight when I run.
I’m obviously not competing with the race winners, who came in with the insane 5:15 pace, but as far as pushing myself I feel really good about my performance.

Podcast Day!

Perhaps some of my fellow scientists out there have it better than me (I doubt it), but I spend a lot of time with my data.  The analysis and graphing takes FOREVER, and it’s also mind-numbing and tedious.  I used to listen to all my music until I got sick of it, but then I discovered podcasts!  It appeals to my geeky soul to listen and learn while I’m analyzing boring data.  And now I have a new glorious car with an aux input for my ipod (and, I might add, excellent gas milage)!  The glory never stops.

So I’m including here a list of podcasts, both science-geared and non, that I like and that other people might like, too.  If you have a podcast that you love and recommend, please do!  I’m constantly running through the ones I have (seriously, 8 hours of data analysis will use up some podcasts). 

Science Oriented:
Scientific American 60-Second Science:  This is a fast look at a story of the day from Scientific American.  I really like their stuff, it’s easy to listen to and very entertaining. Daily. 
Scientific American Podcast:  This is a weekly podcast that usually runs about 30-45 minutes.  They focus on two or three subjects, and go fairly in depth.  I really like the announcer, and it’s usually very interesting stuff.  I think their stuff might appeal to someone with less of a science background.
Nature Podcast:  A weekly, 30 minute podcast, this one has British accents!  It tends to go a little more in depth, than some others, and may require a bit more attention to keep up with.  Also, they get bad grades from me for their sound balance, which is often very bad and very irritating when you’re, say, in surgery and can’t turn up your ipod ’cause you’re gowned.  But the podcast itself is really good!
Nature Neuropod:  This one is monthly, and only focused on neuroscience, which means I personally like it more than the regular Nature podcast.  Good interviews, interesting subjects.  Same problems with sound, though.

History Oriented:
12 Byzantine Emperors: This guy was featured a while back in the NY Times.  He’s apparently a middle-school history teacher by day, and over the past two summers, has been doing a podcast on 12 famous Byzantine emperors.  It’s really informative, since I found my history classes to be stunningly deficient in this area.  Also very interesting, the Byzantines were…Byzantine.  Each podcast runs about 45 minutes, and there are 15 episodes in total.  His voice takes soem getting used to, but the history is fantastic.
In Our Time with Melvin Bragg:  I love this one!  Melvin Brag is with BBC radio, and each week he gets some experts together and discusses the history of great ideas.  They are about 45 minutes, and uniformly interesting.  Part of what I love about this one is Mr. Bragg’s constant enthusiasm for knowledge.  And it will really help your trivia game.
Ancient and Medieval History:  I am a HUGE European history nerd, and this one played to my interests.  Catherine Loomis is very well-informed, and clearly very enthusiastic about her subject.  However, she is a new podcaster, and it shows.
 

Philosophy Oriented:
Existentialism in Literature and Film:  This is an iTunesU podcast from UC Berkeley.  I took Existentialism in college and found it very fascinating.  The prof is VERY geeky sounding, but I kind of like that.  It makes for some really interesting listening if you’ve ever wondered what Dostoyevsky really MEANT.
The Philosophy Podcast:  This is for those of us who are really hardcore philosophy nerds.  It’s readings out of the great works of philosophy.  Right now I find it difficult, the readers don’t have a lot of talent, and I personally really like things explained as they go along.  Otherwise while I’m reading I have to go slowly, so I can interpret.

That’s what I’m into right now, if anyone has some other science podcasts (extra points if it’s neuroscience!), history (I am a major Tudor nerd, or European history in general), or philosophy (I am especially looking for Ancient Chinese Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and anything to do with Wittgenstein), please speak up!

For my first trick, I’m going to make Jack Nicholson… disappear!!!

I’m going to try to review a movie without discussing the plot much. Last night we trudged out to the theater at midnight for the first screening of the new Batman flick The Dark Knight. I went in with high expectations given the stellar cast, but a bit nervous about Heath Ledger in his role as the Joker. Heath’s acting has always been a mite bit unpredictable for me; he was amazingly good in Brokeback Mountain, for example, but bored me to tears in Ned Kelly.
Turns out that very unpredictability makes him perfect for a “reimagined” darker, grittier, noncampy version of the Joker. In the original Burton Batman, the Joker steals the show and thus completely overshadowed every conversation about Batman movies for the ensuing 15 years (minus the Bat Nipples). The same thievery applies here, but Ledger doesn’t do it in a “ooh look, Jack is acting like he just downed a case of Red Bull…. again!” sort of way. No, Ledger’s Joker is a self-proclaimed agent of chaos, and from when he first walks on screen uttering similar words that I allude to in my post title, you know that he’s about to take you for a ride.
One fucked up ride.
Ledger’s Joker is not funny. Not at all. And he knows it. He’s not supposed to be. Sure he laughs, but it’s the laughter of a hyena about to chow on a wounded gazelle, a salivating, gutteral sort of tittering that belongs in a Stephen King book. Sometimes he shrieks. But he does. not. once. in. the. entire. movie. inspire. the. audience. to. laugh. Full stop. End of line. **** What he does do is leave us constantly giggling. Nervously. This giggling should not be taken for actual laughter. It’s the sort of insecure chuckle emitted by a person who’s just seen something so completely inappropriate, so completely out of left field, that he or she can’t help but emit a nervous chattering as a coping mechanism while we try to process “Oh holy fuck, did he really just do that????”
This Joker is unstable. He’s completely amoral. You will be extremely glad that he exists only on the big screen. And Gotham is his playground. Whereas in Batman Begins Ra’s al Gul was a calculating villain, the type of comic book gentleman villain that you sit down and have a chess match with–while the audience watches move-by-move and discusses who will come out on top– in The Dark Knight you get none of that. The Joker is the sort of chap who blithely kicks over the table and sets fire to the game board, and while the rest of us scramble to pick up the pieces or stare for a second, in shock while processing the situation, he’ll shoot somebody simply because they happen to be there while he’s holding a gun. Whether they’re an innocent bystander or one of his own men, no matter. But he’s run across a very strange, effective way to inspire loyalty; people, even hardened criminals and mental patients, fear a true madman, but they’ll follow one who provides even a modicum of order amidst the overwhelming chaos he creates.
At least until he blows your face off.
Both Ra’s and The Joker had the same goal– tear Gotham apart. The former failed though, because he at least played by some rules; his own, maybe, but rules nonetheless. This time Batman, Gordon, love interest and Asisstant DA Rachel, the Mayor, and District Attorney Harvey Dent scramble to pick up the pieces of that chessboard. Even working together, they’re constantly 2 steps behind the calculating lunacy that consumes the city and threatens to compromise everyone’s moral character. I greatly enjoyed Aaron Eckhart’s portrayal of Harvey Dent and his transformation into Two-Face. You don’t get an indication from the trailers, but that transformation is a very integral part of the movie. I won’t say more because I don’t see it as my place to do so. Suffice to say that we can relate, to some degree, to what each character goes through.
Whoever wrote this script is a frakkin’ genius. To many it may seem like the pace is off, disjointed or too fast in parts. I think it’s all intentional; we’re dragged into the same world as Gordon, Dent, and even the Batman as they struggle to keep that very world from unraveling around them. It is viscerally unsettling to watch a movie and know that you’re processing the events, but only barely fast enough. The entire movie plays out like a psychological drama; in a mere 2.5 hours we are given a host of character development to work with. It is hard work to make a comic book flick where not only do you relate to the characters, but you feel as if “yes, all that personification of an animal as my superhero avatar” stuff, all those crazy costumes and gadgets, they really could be part of my world. The Dark Knight excels in this department, easily suppressing its predecessor. Some people will see that as a negative, undoubtedly because they fear the consequences of a reality where The Joker could exist. Sometimes fiction is too damn freaky to be fact, and blurring that line is unsettling as hell.
I can’t say I blame them. But damned if I’m going to let that keep me from seeing this flick again in the theater.
****I was just reminded of one actual funny remark where the Joker waxes Jerry Maguire, but even that was disturbing because you can’t quite tell how much he actually meant it.