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Graduation Brain Cell – $9.95
Are you still looking for the perfect gift for your favorite graduate? Get them the Graduation Brain Cell from the NeatoShop. Yes, I know they wanted cash. Yes, this is an adorable neuron wearing a graduation cap instead. Come one, were you going to give them cash? No, I didn’t think so! At least this gift proves you are educated and fun.
The Graduation Brain Cell is also available in keychain form!
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Plush Toy fun!
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Surely you’ve heard someone say that humans only use 10% of our brains (and some people even less), but that turns out to be a just myth:
William James, a psychologist in the 1800s, once metaphorically used the idea of 10% of the brain being all that was used at one time. This grew into the rumor that it was all the brain was overall and most of the rest was not understood or used as far as we know. Actually, the inactive neurons are just as important at any given moment as the ones actively firing at a point in time, and the 10% comes from varying areas at different times.
Read more human body myths at Environmental Graffiti: Link
Gender equality and political correctness aside, Mother Nature has decided the answer: female neurons are more valuable.
Writing in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, a group of researchers found that nutrient deprivation of neurons produced sex-dependent effects. Male neurons more readily withered up and died, while female neurons did their best to conserve energy and stay alive. [...]
Robert Clark and colleagues at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center examined whether this sex-dependent response in starvation could manifest in brain cells. They grew neurons taken separately from male and female rats or mice in lab dishes and subjected them to starvation over 72 hours.
After 24 hours, the male neurons experienced significantly more cell dysfunction (measured by analyzing cell respiration, which decreased by over 70% in male cells compared to 50% in female cells) and death. Visually, male neurons also displayed more abundant signs of autophagy, whereby a cell breaks down its components as a fuel source, while female neurons created more lipid droplets to store fat reserves.
Mark Hammond and colleagues at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom have found a way to control a robot with rat neurons. Watch this short video by Newscientist to see the robot in action.
From the article:
This is no ordinary robot control system – a plain old microchip
connected to a circuit board. Instead, the controller nestles inside a
small pot containing a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics. Inside
that pot, some 300,000 rat neurons have made – and continue to make -
connections with each other.As
they do so, the disembodied neurons are communicating, sending
electrical signals to one another just as they do in a living creature.
We know this because the network of neurons is connected at the base of
the pot to 80 electrodes, and the voltages sparked by the neurons are
displayed on a computer screen.It’s
these spontaneous electrical patterns that researchers at the
University of Reading in the UK want to harness to control a robot. If
they can do so reliably, by stimulating the neurons with signals from
sensors on the robot and using the neurons’ response to get the robots
to respond, they hope to gain insights into how brains function. Such
insights might help in the treatment of conditions like Alzheimer’s,
Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.
– via newscientist
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