Tag Archives: Science

All science-related posts

Jan28

Brain Function, Brain Anatomy Linky Goodness!

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Brain Function, Brain Anatomy Linky Goodness!

Do you want to understand the structure and function of your brain? Are you curious about how brain anatomy affects behavior and thinking? I have some good sites for you!

brain diagram

If you have to start somewhere, this site, The Brain from Top to Bottom is a great place. Not only is it indexed based on brain function, but you can select from three levels of understanding, based on your current knowledge of brain anatomy and functions.

UNDERSTANDING HOW THE BRAIN WORKS Written by Glen Johnson, a Clinical Neuropsychologist, this is a pretty understandable general overview.

MyBrainNotes™.com was written by Sarah-Neena Koch as a way to understand the structures of the brain and brain functions for a novel she was writing. The end result is pretty impressive – it’s pretty comprehensive while also being comprehensible. You should be able to understand it, and there are lots of embedded links.

Chapter Two of “Psychology, an Introduction” by Russ Dewey: The Human Nervous System has some description of brain anatomy and functions, and also covers certain deficiencies that result from brain injuries or hereditary differences. Again, more basic, because it’s not written for neurologists.

Patrick McCaffrey has an online syllabus and course supplements for a class on Neuroanatomy of Speech, Swallowing and Language and an equally informative set of pages on Neuropathologies of Language and Cognition


Anatomy of the Brain from The Mayfield Clinic is designed for patient education, and has illustrations to make the information more understandable.

Keith A. Johnson, M.D. and J. Alex Becker, Ph.D. from Harvard compiled The Whole Brain Atlas which takes a more neuroanatomical view with a focus on specific injuries and diseases.

The Allen Brain Atlas is “A growing collection of online public resources integrating extensive gene expression and neuroanatomical data, complete with a novel suite of search and viewing tools.”

“Welcome to Neuroscience Online, the Open-Access Neuroscience Electronic Textbook! This online, interactive courseware for the study of neuroscience is provided by the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.”

Jan28

Amino Acid Supplements – Do They Work?

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Amino Acid Supplements – Do They Work?

Supplements
Well, if you’re taking them for a deficiency in your diet, then yeah. But if you’re taking them for your brain, then no. Really, no. Despite what claims are made by sites that tell you the benefit of “natural amino acid supplements” or “organic amino acid supplements,” you need to keep in mind that these sites are also selling amino acid supplements. They are not selling them to you for dietary deficiencies, they are selling them as “natural supplements for depression.”

Amino acid supplements do not work the way their purveyors say they do. Oh, yeah, they’ll cite scientific studies, sometimes even link to those studies, but they’re counting on a few things. . .First, you probably won’t check the actual studies to see what they say. Second, you probably don’t have access to the full text of the study, and the abstract is more like a press release than an accurate summation of results. Third, even if you can get more information about the study, you probably won’t understand the methodology – and that’s crucial to understanding whether the results have any relevance whatsoever to what the supplement pusher is telling you.

Let me explain. . .
Read the rest of this entry →

Jan27

Some Links About Understanding Science

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Some Links About Understanding Science

Because I can’t think about what to write about next, I’m going to give you all a bunch of links that have helpful information about science in general, and some of the things I find myself referring to or referencing when I talk about science.

Understanding Science: An overview is geared towards students and teachers at the K-12 levels. It has some good explanation of what science is (and is not) and how it is “done.”

Introduction to the Scientific Method is a little higher order than this, and also includes definitions of terminology that is misunderstood. . .like the difference between Theories and Laws.

The Structure, Format, Content, and Style of a Journal-Style Scientific Paper outlines how a piece of research is written up for submission to a science journal. It’s different from your school project, and I think it’s important to note that the Abstract is not as definitive of findings as news reports make it out to be!

What is Soft Science? defines the difference between the methods and results of soft science vs. hard science. It’s some good things to know.

The Sufficient-Component Cause Model will help you understand what “correlation is not causation” means.

“The National Coalition for Health Profession Education in Genetics (NCHPEG), with support from the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR), developed this site to provide sufficient genetics background to allow social and behavioral scientists (SBS) to engage effectively in interdisciplinary research with genetics researchers.”

How Scientific Peer Review Works This is a good article that explains what peer review is, and presents a fairly balanced view of its benefits and its shortcomings.

Related to peer review, this piece from Nature discusses the “Impact Factor” of scientific publications.

Journal Selection for MEDLINE® Indexing at NLM is a FAQ about how a journal is selected to be included in National Library of Medicine at the NIH.