Good Science but Bad Journalists?

Science may be interesting but it is not often exiting. Test tubes don't really provide the same opportunity for media coverage that Z-list celebrities trying to ice- skate so clearly does. 

As such the media can often exaggerate scientific progress, 'Cure for Most Cancers 'Soon'' being a fantastic Daily Express FRONT PAGE (!) headline in January.

Scientific papers and journals are complex to understand, simply because they have to be otherwise the lack of detail would be useless to fellow researchers. But media have to put it simply because the public can't be expected to understand complex scientific ideas, and won't read something they don't follow anyway. 

The media has a duty to report the news fairly, and the science world has a duty to make itself accessible. I think that's fair don't you?

PS: The reporting of science in non-scientific media can still be notoriously bad. Check out Martin Robbins in the Guardian last year for a superb parody of this, complete with great references.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1

PPS: Nothing annoys me more than an article without a reference. It should be illegal.

REF:

The Lay Scientist, Martin Robbins, Monday 27 September 2010, 09.19 BST, guardian.co.uk   ... should be ok I think!

Because People Like Pictures

Everyone likes a good picture. Scientists like them too, explaining complex stuff is so much easier with a nice diagram to go with it.

Scientific imaging has made massive strides it what it is capable of showing us. We can watch the brain at work, see all the bones in our body and find that tumour that seemed to be invisible. Imaging can also give us some pretty cool pictures, so I put one behind my blog.

I got this image by typing 'Glial Cells' into Google and it is from the Encor Biotechnology website (their picture not mine!)

Glial cells make up most of the brain. While nerve cells carry the signals and do all the cool stuff, Glial cells provide them with the structure and nutrients for them to keep going, Fibroblasts are the main connective tissue in the body and are stained green. The star- shaped Astrocytes come out gold/orange. Astrocytes are pretty cool, they envelope the synapses in the brain and monitor their transmission. We don't really know much about them either, but it seems they might do more than just helping out the nerve cells. The blue dye reveals all the DNA in the nuclei of each cell.

Pretty picture hey? Shame i'm colour blind. I hate pictures.

on its original page:

http://www.encorbio.com/Album/pages/Chkvim-RGFAP-hoe-40X-3.htm

All you need is Love?

I would imagine that most people have to sit through their grandparents reminiscing at length over Sunday lunch. I would imagine too that most people would have heard the story of how their grandparents first met. "..and she's still as beautiful as the first time I saw her..." may have been the point that convinced you that you grandfather had lost it, or could it be that actually he really does think so?

It's nice to start things on positive note and this article seems like a good place.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21208991 (pubmed abstract).

The research here involves 17 people who had all been married over 20years, and showing them pictures of their partners (and people they didn't know as controls) and watching how their brains react using functional MRI. For the lay scientist fMRI is one of the most common imaging techniques. It measures hemodynamic activity in the brain ie. changes in blood flow. It works on the principle that if a part of your brain is working hard, the blood flow to that area increases to meet the increase in demand for oxygen, glucose and other nutritional goodies. In our experiment here, the fMRI allows us to see which areas of the brain light up in the subjects when they are shown pictures of their loved ones. Cool, eh?

The authors have noted quite a few areas of the brain that light up; hypothalamus and hippocampus are two areas you might have heard of. Some of the others, probably not. But hey, the brains pretty complicated. The most interesting area is the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA),  where much of the Dopaminergic nerve cells originate. Ever done something that felt good? Chances are that your VTA was working in overdrive at the time. The VTA sends messages to almost everywhere and it's involved in motivation, addiction and reward (your VTA is why Galaxy Bars just taste so good).

The authors have read other articles that have done the same thing in people who have just fallen in love: the patterns look the same!

What the article is saying is that after 20 years these people are still getting the same sense of happiness when they see their partner as they did when they fell in love. How sweet. 

Nice to know there are people in white coats in NY researching this kind of thing. How interesting. Grandpa will be happy. Oh wait, he already is.

REF:

Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love, Acevedo BP et al. Soc Cogn Affect Neaurosci, 2011 Jan 5th (Epub before print)