John Hewitt

(Phys.org) —Advances in light-sheet microscopy have led to impressive images and videos of the brain in action. With this technique, a plane of light is scanned through the sample to excite fluorescent calcium sensors which ...

(Phys.org) —Actin "comets" are scaffolds of polymer that various bacteria and viruses construct within cells. Party-crashers, like Listeria or Shigella bacteria, are able to seed structures using special patches of their ...

(Medical Xpress)—Like narcolopsy, Tourettes syndrome is as much an enigma to the neuroscientists that study it, as it is to its sufferers. To say that we really understand nothing about how diseases like Tourettes actually ...

(Medical Xpress)—One of the most incredible instruments you might ever get to play with is a fiberoptic imaging wand that you hold against the underside of your tongue. Through a semi-mysterious optical arrangement, the device ...

(Medical Xpress)—A major question regarding how axons acquire a coat of myelin, is the role of spiking activity. It is known that in culture systems oligodendroctyes will at least try to wrap anything that feels like an ...

In 2002, Secretary of state Donald Rumsfeld made a statement regarding weapons of mass destruction that today is still well known. He famously parsed the evidence (or lack thereof) into "known knowns, known unknowns, and ...

(Phys.org) —Early embryonic development is a marvel of mechanics. Its signature step is the production of three tissue layers—mesoderm, ectoderm, and endoderm—through a topological maneuver known as gastrulation. While events ...

(Medical Xpress)—The relationship between fine-scale structure and function in the brain is perhaps best explored today by the study of neurodegenerative disease. Disorders like Rett syndrome may be considered developmental ...

(Phys.org) —The cytoskeletal proteins of eukaryotes polymerize into self-organized patterns even as pure solutions. However, to see more complex dynamics, like filament sliding or rotation, various motor proteins and cofactors ...

(Medical Xpress)—Perhaps the most controversial book ever written in the field of psychology, was Julian Janes' mid-seventies classic, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." In it, Jaynes reaches ...

(Medical Xpress)—In certain neurosurgical procedures, like fixing pituitary glands, surgeons can remove a tumor through the nose with minimal damage to surrounding tissue. It turns out, that passing things in the other direction—into ...

(Medical Xpress)—Among the many great talks at the recent annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience were three special lectures given sequentially during the evenings. The first described how we might translate the known ...

(Medical Xpress)—The robotic brain surgeon, featured in the 2013 movie "Enders Game" is no fictional brain-fixing machine. The open-source surgical platform, known as Raven II, has already starred in several brain procedures ...

(Medical Xpress)—MRI scanners have steadily increased in power, giving researchers ever finer-grained snapshots of the brain in action. However just as modern day fighters can pull high G turns that would drain consciousness ...

(Medical Xpress)—In preparation for neuroscience's huge SFN2013 meeting next week in San Diego, many key scientific journals are rolling out their special neuro-focus issues. Generally this is the time for the field to reflect, ...