The Lab With Brad

Ge wiz, we’d sure like the twitter media tag thinggy to work. And there are two ‘g’s in thinggy, I swear!

It's all been more complicated than it should be, but it looks like it's working!

Wagging tongues over taste

Researching this episode made me so hungry! Today, phil and I talk about your tongue, a berry that makes sour things sweet, mice in mid yum, and your brain and the sense of taste.

Here’s a short video about synsepalum dulcificum, the fruit that changes sour tastes into sweetness.

Miracle Fruit: How to Trick Your Taste Buds

Here’s a couple of articles that talk about stimulation of the brain changing the way taste is perceived by mice.

Taste Comes From The Brain, Not The Tongue, Scientists Discover

How taste is perceived in the brain

Here’s a thing on how several senses come together in your gustatory cortex, the part of your brain that deals with taste and flavor and hunger and fullness and disgust and and and…

The gustatory cortex and multisensory integration

Balance

You hardly notice it unless something goes wrong, but your sense of balance relies on most of your other senses to work, and uses all sorts of interesting bits of your interesting brain. Along with sleeping birds, bionic men, and beer bottles, Phil and I talk about your sense of balance.

Here are links to a couple of articles about your sense of balance.

How does our sense of balance work?

The neurological mechanisms underlying our sense of balance

Touching on touch

Throughout your body, you have nerves. These send signals about the world through your spinal cord, and into your brain. More than just what you feel, your sense of touch includes temperature, pressure, the position of your body, and a bit about what your internal organs are up to today. We continue our look at your senses and your brain with an episode that touches on touch.

Here are a couple of articles about your sense of touch.

Touch

Sensory and Motor Pathways

Take a look at looking

Your sense of vision is arguably the most complicated sense you have. Estimates range from one half, to as much as two thirds of your brain dedicated to using light to make sense of your world. From the way your eyes turn light into nerve impulses, to different bits of the brain that process them, we take a close look at looking.

Here’s some links to more information about your retina. Located at the back of your eye, this structure turns light into nerve signals.

Simple Anatomy of the Retina

The Neuronal Organization of the Retina

Facts and Figures Concerning the Human Retina

Here’s more information about the superior colliculus, an area of your brain that helps you move your eyes how you need to so you can see what you see.

Superior Colliculus Function, Location & Definition

Here’s more info on the lateral geniculate nucleus.

Lateral geniculate nucleus

Here’s stuff about your primary visual cortex, nicknamed v1.

The Primary Visual Cortex

Here’s an article about a study done on the differences within your brain between real and imagined visual images.

Imagination and Reality Look Different in the Brain

the stuff between your ears, including the ears

From the shape of your ears to bits of your brain, and just a little bit about fish for some reason, have a listen to how we listen.

In this episode, I speak briefly about the vOICe. Here’s a roughly five-minute demo of this app that turns camera images into sound, so that the blind can see with their ears.

Ep 19: Can you hear what I see?

Here’s a link to the vOICe website.

seeingwithsound.com

Here’s a video that explains how the ear turns sounds into brain activity.

Journey of Sound to the Brain

Here’s something on what the brain does with the sound once it’s inside the brain.

How the brain processes auditory signals

Here’s a video with details on the funny little snail-shaped thing in your inner ear called the “cochlea.”

The Cochlea

Here’s a jargon heavy thing on the amplification of sound that happens within the cochlea.

Cochlear amplification, outer hair cells and prestin

Here’s a bit about the cochlear nucleus.

Cochlear Nucleus

Here’s some stuff on fish hearing.

Can Fish Hear?

How do Fish Hear?

More heavy jargon, about cerebellum like structures in fish that hear, sense the motion of water, and can sense electricity.

The Cerebellum and Cerebellum-Like Structures of Cartilaginous Fishes

What is a cortex?

From the Latin word for tree bark, “cortex” refers to the outer most layer of an organ. In the brain, the outer most layer is made of several layers of neurons. That’s true in the cerebellum, in the cerebellar cortex; and the cerebrum, in the better known cerebral cortex. Today, we take a look at how these separate areas of cortex work together, and talk about the six layers of your neocortex.

Here’s a link to more details about the cerebellum, including the three layers of the cerebellar cortex.

The cerebellum | Morphology of Nervous System

Here’s a short two minute video about the motor cortex, which is part of your neo cortex, which is part of your cerebral cortex, which is part of your cerebrum, which is part of your brain.

Motor Cortex

And here are a couple of things with more info about your cerebral cortex.

The cerebral cortex | Morphology of Nervous System

The Cerebral Cortex

What’s this “cerebellum” thing for?

It’s sitting underneath your cerebrum, this odd bulge behind the brainstem. Only ten percent of your brains total volume, it has more than 75 percent of the neurons. What is the cerebellum, and what does it use all those neurons for?

Here’s a link to a video that gives you an overview of the cerebellum, and the classic ideas about its role in movement.

Cerebellum | Organ Systems

Here’s an article that compares the number of neurons in the human brain, to imagined scaled up rodent and primate brains. Turns out the human cerebral cortex is a bit smaller than expected, and our cerebellum a bit larger.

The Human Brain in Numbers: A Linearly Scaled-up Primate Brain

Here’s an article about patterns of activity in your cerebellum while you are sleeping.

The Sleeping Cerebellum

And here’s a longish thing, with several different authors who talk about a more modern take on the cerebellum, and it’s possible roles in movement, your senses, thinking, and emotion.

The Cerebellum's Role in Movement and Cognition

Reverse engineering the brain… ish

Let’s see… How does this “brain” thing work exactly? Maybe we could build something brain-like, something that would act as though it has a mind. Hmmm… In a conversation that rambles through blind cavefish, dancing pigeons, Alaskan turtles, cribbage, and potato chips, Phil and I talk about reverse engineering the human brain. Bwa ha ha!

Here’s a link to an article about cave fish that have lost their eyes.

Cavefish and the basis for eye loss

Here are a couple of videos about the naïve Bayes algorithm.

S1E14 of 5 Minutes With Ingo: Naïve Bayes

Text Categorization with Naive Bayes

And here’s that thing about bird brains.

Scientists find homolog of mammalian neocortex in bird brain

A network of networks

It’s an old part of your brain, but still very complicated. With far too much to cover in one episode, Phil and I hit a few highlights of your reticular formation. From our old friend the substantia nigra; to the raphe nuclei acting as a source of serotonin; to our new friend, the pedunculopontine nucleus, which I never did pronounce right; we take a closer look at the network of networks that is your reticular formation.

Here’s an article about the reticular formation, and how it works with some other parts of your brain.

Brain stem structures, reticular formation, pattern generation, and the cerebellum are discussed.

Here’s an article about the pedunculopontine nucleus.

Rethinking the Pedunculopontine Nucleus