MUST WATCH – Arne Dietrich’s TEDxBeirut Talk

November 16, 2011 By 4 Comments

Professor Arne Dietrich is the foremost reason I want to dedicate my life to Neuroscience. I have taken almost every course he gives at the American University of Beirut and he has been the source of inspiration and insight for many of my Biology and Neuroscience posts on this blog.

I took Cognitive Neuroscience with Arne when my questions about our existence and life’s purpose and the presence of a higher being where at their peak. You could say I was at the cliff’s edge, but Arne’s deep insight on the brain based on empirical evidence combined with his eloquent and somewhat irreverent method of delivering it pushed me way over that cliff.

Life made sense, became understandable, and when it didn’t, you at least had some sense on how you’re going to make it understandable with time and research. Mysticism and faith might seem fascinating, but what’s truly magical is how the brain develops and functions, how nature is so much more beautiful, interesting and unbelievable than putting your paws up and worshiping some divine being.

This 17-minute talk does not do justice to the wealth of knowledge and experience this man has. It does coax you though into rethinking several concepts you hold true about the brain, such as the stupid “we use 10% of our brain” myth and what consciousness and altered states of consciousness really are. If you broaden your horizons a bit more, you might also agree that the gods you believe in are, as Arne puts it, “pixies”

The reactions from the crowd says it all, and Arne’s statements got standing ovations and cheers by die-hard subscribers to the theories he supports (such as myself, who went straight from the airport to TEDxBeirut, ran down to the stage to say hello to Arne before even saying hello to my beloved Lori =P)

So, I really, really, really encourage you to watch the video above, and be sure I will be expanding on the topics Arne skimmed through in those 15 or so minutes.

Filed Under: AUB Affairs, Biology and Neuroscience, Leb, Thoughts Tagged With: , ,

3 Reasons Why Mother Nature is the World’s Economy’s Biggest Investor

June 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Mother Nature is awesome. If you ask me, we should be busy worshiping her for giving us life and sustaining us throughout the ages. But, we will leave that what-to-worship issue for another post! Today, I’m gonna spare you the usual environmentalist hippie-ranting and speak in economical terms.

We tend to think that the economy and the environment are at war, with corporations cutting down trees, burning fossil fuels and raping baby dolphins in the oceans. Unfortunately, this leftist-anarchist fodder is somewhat right and business often interferes with Mother Nature.

In reality though, Mother Nature is the biggest investor in every major market and industry. It is the main driving force of the world’s economies, regardless of the policies they are governed by. This is because Nature provides essential goods and services for life itself to survive, much less businesses and the economy. If that doesn’t really sink in, perhaps you should consider how much it would cost us to do the following three things.

1- Air Filtration and Conditioning

All the arguileh smoke, car fumes and of course natural gases we all emit (I was talking about exhaling CO2 you pervs) are taken up by plants and other photosynthetic organisms, which we call autotrophs. Photosynthetic means they make their own food via light (photo-synthesis) and a few other ingredients like water and carbon dioxide.

Of course, too much CO2 kills us animals because we need Oxygen to stay alive. Here’s where “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” metaphor works perfectly. What we throw out (CO2), autotrophs take in. And what autotrophs throw out (O2), we take in! Apart from that, many airborne toxins get trapped inside the plant. So, we’re not just recycling our CO2 emissions into O2, we’re also filtering out all the nasty stuff from it.

Imagine if Nature didn’t filter and recycle our air. Imagine we had to convert CO2 into O2, moisten our air and filter it from toxins… It would be like living in the International Space Station after it crash-landed into the Sahara desert. Apart from that being extremely annoying, it took the entire world’s space programs decades and hundreds of billions to build a craft that can accommodate a handful of astronauts crammed like sardines for only a few days. Imagine the entire human race living like that.

ACs won’t solve it, cause ACs dont convert CO2 to O2, so all you people living in the Gulf can stop feeling comfortable now.

2- Water Filtration

Again, I will give the Gulf as an example here. Much of the GCC countries’ potable water comes from desalination plants. They extract seawater, remove the salt (desalination). This is of course, super-expensive and inefficient compared to natural spring water and river sources. Of course, the GCC people are forced to do this because they have no other alternative. Most other nations though depend on water which becomes potable through the water cycle. The animation says it all, so I won’t add anything.

Imagine the whole world had to desalinate their water… Most countries can’t even afford to reroute their river water to homes. How can we expect them to build state-of-the-art, high-maintenance desalination plants with the capacity to let everyone drink, bathe and irrigate their crops.

3- Pollination

The first two were obvious. This issue though, is just as integral to our survival.

Plants don’t have sex directly. The poor souls don’t enjoy the process at all. Instead, they enlist animals like you and me to help them mate. However, I’m sure you dont run around in fields of flowers all day. That’s why, the world’s most important pollinators are insects, and more specifically, bees.

You’ve probably seen the mass-deaths of bees in places like Australia. Although the reasons are yet unclear, and scientists haven’t pinpointed the exact cause, it probably is our fault. If it isn’t, it still serves as a reminder to us that we shouldn’t only not kill these insects, but should make sure they survive and thrive!

Pollination is when an animal or wind or water, scoops up pollen (plant sperm) from a male plant (or male part of a plant) and inadvertently transfers it to the female part of another plant. This is how fruits and crops are made, the result of the pollination is the apple for example.

And since all our food ultimately comes from plants: no bees = no plants = no yumyums.

Imagine having to pollinate each and every flower, manually. How much time, money and effort would be spent…

Conclusion

These services would cost us trillions of dollars every year if we want to reproduce them ourselves. It takes a few million to help preserve nature’s built-in mechanisms and machinery.

In other words, with no eco-friendliness, we’d just hav a Nomy with no Eco.

Filed Under: Biology and Neuroscience, Fun, Thoughts Tagged With:

TED Video Series: The Intelligence of Crows

June 16, 2011 By 1 Comment

For those of you who don’t know what TED is, it is basically a place where people with awesome ideas share them with other people with awesome ideas, or with people who just want to hear awesome ideas! It began some two decades ago in California, and has since grown immensely, featuring thousands of speakers and many TED events across the globe.

Cairo, Amman and Beirut are among several Arab cities to host a TEDx event. Beirut though is organizing a massive one that will culminate in September 2011. Oh, and for those of you wondering who the hell is “Ted”, there is no Ted. TED stands for Technology, Design, Entertainment. That’s what is started out as, but today encompasses everything from Biology to Economics, and of course the T, E and D.

Here’s a video the great philosopher-biologist, Daniel Dennett, shared in a class with us at AUB this Spring. I must say, it blew my mind and made me appreciate the dynamics of Evolutionary Biology even more than I used to (which was a lot)

Check out TED for more videos, and don’t worry lazy people, I’ll be choosing some of the best and posting them every now and then.

Filed Under: Biology and Neuroscience Tagged With: ,

5 Reasons Why E.coli Are Our Friend

June 11, 2011 By 2 Comments

The recent E.coli epidemic was nothing short of a godsend for all of us carnivores out there! We finally had a legitimate reason to not eat our greens and veggies, for fear mean old E.coli would make us crap ourselves to death. But the tiny, rod-shaped bacterium is a vital part of our existence and a pillar for modern-day genetic engineering and biotechnology

1- They’re the Intestine’s Corleone Family

A Beautiful E.coli Ballet Dancer

E. coli set up shop in your large intestine in the first few hours after birth, and from then on they’re basically an inseparable part of you. Now, before you hysterically guzzle down your antibacterial hand wash bottles (or inject into your rectum, which would be considerably faster and more enjoyable for some of you out there), consider this: The E. coli have been flourishing in your innards for years, and in return for some of your metabolic energy and a blind eye from your corrupt immune system, they’ll be very useful throughout your life

Think of them as the mob, you pay them some “insurance” and they do you certain “favors”. Apart from absorbing the stuff your weak-ass intestine misses, E.coli are more territorial than that Jacob-dog from everyone’s favorite girl-porn: Twilight. This means that whatever new, foreign bacteria your delightful waiter introduces into your food or drinks, you can rest assured the new pathogens will have caps busted up in their ass by the E.colione crime family you harbor.

So, E.coli is your guts’ very own private police force, making sure no one else butts in on their turf and keeping you safe in the process. Corruption is not unknown in the bacterial world though, and every once in a while, a mutation lives up to its name and mutiny arises, making the E.coli mutant zombies naughty and diarrhea-inducing.

2- E.coli are Insulin Sweatshops

People with type 1 diabetes have the cooler type of diabetes. They’re the ones you often mistake for heroine junkies because they’re always injecting needles into their arms and butts. When you eat sugary stuff, the sugar is stored by Mr. Insulin. When there is no insulin there, you’re practically on a sugar-rush 24/7 and will eventually go blind and die.

Some people can’t make insulin, and in keeping true to our outsourcing philosophy, we forced other organisms to make insulin for us. E. coli are readily available, why each you guys creates several samples while sitting on the toilet every day. They’re also simple genetically, allowing us to add and remove stuff in their DNA like legos.

What do you get when you have a diabetic bioengineer, a stool sample and a cool mad-scientist outfit? Why, tiny insulin sweatshops of course! So, E. coli are to diabetics is what the glorious state of Colombia is to crack heads.

3- Special K Dealers

When we’re not modifying the very fabric of these poor little bacteria, they’re busy churning out other stuff we need to survive. Vitamin K is involved in blood clotting. Clotting is when the bleeding stops if you’ve slit your wrists the wrong way, emo. Not enough vitamin K won’t kill you, but, it will make you bleed profusely out of every orifice in your body.

Bruising, bleeding gums, noses, cuts that won’t stop bleeding, osteoporosis and heart disease are the standard package, with ladies getting a bonus: heavy menstrual bleeding.

So, even though 60% of our fecal matter is gut-bacteria, they earn that right valiantly.

4- They Make Genetics Lab Smell Funky

These organisms are simple enough for the average biology student to cut up into tiny pieces and pretend to be CSI for a few hours. It’s important to note here, that DNA fingerprinting and sequencing doesn’t take 5 minutes until Horatio gets out of the elevator and removes his sexy glasses and says something that makes cheese cringe. But hours of repetitive tasks you don’t quite fully grasp, with the lab smelling like sewage pipes at the Karantina river.

Why does it smell so funky? Well, it hopefully isn’t anyone in your lab section… Recall that bacteria make up a fair amount of fecal matter. Well, they also make a fair amount of the stinkiness.

Gunky smell aside, these creepy crawlies provide a model organism in Biology, or in other words, disposable, cheap and easy-to-use stuff to take advantage of and betray God’s original plan in the process (which I will leave to the more religious amongst you).

5- They’re the Perfect Alibi

We all hate vegetables. They taste like bitter water (otherwise known as Perrier), smell like that nerd that sits in front of you in class and are classified as diet foods (tsk tsk tsk).

Every now and then, some careless vegetable-picker inspects his self-made fertilizer and spreads the wealth of his butt-flora to us all. Unfortunately, this new strain is resistant to fourteen types of antibiotics, and here, the threat of death due to dehydration seems to outweigh the benefits of an all-tasty carnivorous meal.

Considering we don’t import veggies from Europe (or at least can’t afford them) and that our water supplies and farmer hygiene protocols are infested with plenty of specimens, developing our acute immune system to defend us against stuff that would kill people in countries where rules, regulations and safety inspections exist, we’re pretty safe. But, that doesn’t mean we can use the E.coli alibi to have a nice meal three times a day.

Words of wisdom?
(even though it’s just as transmissible via meat =P)

Filed Under: Biology and Neuroscience, Fun Tagged With: , ,

Mish Ghinej – Panic Attacks Explained

May 25, 2011 By 3 Comments

Note on the title: Mish ghinej is a Lebanese coloquial phrase. Ghinej means spoiled or drama queen in this scenario. Mish means not or isn’t. Hence: Not Being a Drama Queen, which I hope will be series on the blog to shed some light about psychological phenomena we often mistake for being a sissy.

We all know someone who is like that poor girl to the right. Irrational reactions to a mild stimulus, or maybe even none at all, that have a sudden onset and don’t usually last beyond 10-15 minutes, are called panic attacks.

People who are more prone to these attacks are so because of several different reasons. One of the reasons is having other psychological disorders, such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and phobias. It can also have purely biological causes, such as low blood-sugar (hypoglycemia).

Those are obvious reasons, but one cause I found truly enlightening on what it must mean to experience a panic attack, is people who have over-active chemoreceptors in their medullas.

These chemoreceptors are there to monitor levels of carbon dioxide in your blood. They do that by keeping track of the pH levels of your blood, which is slightly basic at 7.40 ±0.05. Carbon dioxide is packaged into Bicarbonate (HCO3) in the blood, which is a weak acid. Thus, when the pH levels goes somewhere below 7.35, the alarm sounds and your body does its best to compensate for the increased CO2 levels (and thus decreased O2 levels). How? By gasping wildly for air.

Most of you, hopefully, have not experienced this feeling of hyperventilation.

That is not entirely true though. I’m sure as itsy bitsy children, you were taught how to swim. The pinnacle of this experience, is diving underwater, and frantically swimming up for that gasp of air you desperately need. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a delightful sibling or relative who will force your head to stay underwater before you manage to squeeze in that breath. Horrible feeling, right? The fear of death, the frantic need to get out and other behaviors bordering on the insane, are exactly the same feelings someone having a panic attack has…

The reason you need that air so frantically, is that your chemoreceptors detect a rise in CO2 levels and force you to do everything possible to get to that yummy Oxygen. Imagine having that, in the middle of a party, with no big body of water in sight (except maybe the beer kegs). Yup, that’s exactly what people who have panic attacks and subsequently hyperventilate, feel.

A common thing we see being done is a bag handed to the afflicted individual, which they breathe into and out of repeatedly for a few minutes. This is because as a result of high CO2, they breathe in too much, raising the O2 levels in the blood. And like everything, too much of it is bad. So, to restore calm and composure, rebreathing O2-poor and CO2-rich exhaled air eventually restores the O2/CO2 blood balance.

I had the pleasure of meeting several individuals having panic attacks, and understanding that phenomenon has been very rewarding for me. After all, knowledge is always sexy. So, now you know =P

As always, inspired by lectures by Dr. Arne Dietrich, Behavioral Neuroscientist at the American University of Beirut

Further reading: Carbon Dioxide Sensitivity in Panic Anxiety

Filed Under: Biology and Neuroscience, Thoughts Tagged With: , ,

Schizophrenia Explained

May 20, 2011 By 7 Comments

The image to the right, is completely false. Schizophrenia does in fact mean split-brain, but what is meant by split here is not that the brain or mind is split into several minds or personalities, instead, it means a mind which has split from reality. People who suffer from multiple personalities, have Dissociative Identity Disorder.

In terms of pop culture, “Schizo” is often used to tease someone who had a sudden change of heart or mood, helping fuel the misconception that I myself fell victim too before embarking on my Psychology minor at AUB.

What’s even more interesting, is that the general attitude towards the disorder is that it is an exotic and rare, and mostly just textbook and horror movie fodder versus what it really is: an immensely widespread and prolific brain disorder.

The actual figures though, are much, much more shocking. A whopping 1.1% of the human population suffer from schizophrenia. 1.1% might seem a feeble number at first, but think about it, over 1 in every 100 people have it, that’s some 80 people in a population the size of AUB’s 8000 students.

The cost of schizophrenia is also very heavy, with hundreds of billions of dollars spent every year for care, treatment and research around the world. What is unfortunate though, is that even though the prevalence of schizophrenia is twelve times higher than multiple sclerosis, the money spent on MS research per person is almost 4 times the amount spent on schizophrenia research (NHIH 1999).

But, despite this contrast between prevalence of the disease, and the general public’s familiarity with it, many types of schizophrenia are fairly treatable. Antipsychotic drugs like Chlorpromazine traditionally, and the more recent and widely used Clozapine today, are very affective at allaying the symptoms of schizophrenia that are referred to as “positive” symptoms.

Which brings us to the types of schizophrenia and the positive and negative symptoms. Schizophrenia can be thought of as a spectrum of mental diseases that can range from a frozen catatonic state in contorted positions for days, to believing you are the son of God. The easiest way to determine which symptoms are positive and which are negative is to see if schizophrenic behavior is adding (positive) or removing (negative) elements to normal behavior. For example, a paranoid schizophrenic will feel that everyone and everything might be out to get him or her, this is a behavior added to normal behavior. A catatonic state, where people freeze for hours or even days, have something removed from their normal behavior.

I will shamelessly copy paste the categorization from wikipedia now

Paranoid type: Where delusions and hallucinations are present but thought disorder, disorganized behavior, and affective flattening are absent.

Disorganized type: Named hebephrenic schizophrenia in the ICD. Where thought disorder and flat affect are present together.

Catatonic type: The subject may be almost immobile or exhibit agitated, purposeless movement. Symptoms can include catatonic stupor andwaxy flexibility.

Undifferentiated type: Psychotic symptoms are present but the criteria for paranoid, disorganized, or catatonic types have not been met.

Residual type: Where positive symptoms are present at a low intensity only.

The reason I felt this post was in order is because aside from the gross misconceptions I used to share with a sizable portion of the world, is that I recently met a person who fit the symptoms perfectly.

He is a 22-year-old Syrian national, who following the unrest in Syria in recent weeks, became increasingly paranoid. Mediocre tasks such as driving and watching TV, were nightmarish. He perceived the other cars were driven by people who want to do him harm, and were thus closing in on him. His reactions to the popular TV show, LOL on Otv, were of hurt, that they were saying all those jokes about him.

His age, behavior and delusions are a textbook description of paranoid schizophrenia. So is the emotional trigger, which most likely was the traumatic thoughts of his family still in Syria amidst the turmoil.

This assumption, later confirmed, had a profound impact on me personally. That’s when I realized that schizophrenia wasn’t just another rare occurrence that you’ll probably never see except in your exams or books, but very much real and present everywhere, across all socioeconomic, ethnic and racial barriers.

Another popular belief is that schizophrenic people hear voices. This is true, and the hallucinations are mostly usually auditory. They are usually vile, hurtful and inappropriate words and thoughts, which are so distressing and depressing for the patient.

I hope this made some sense, I tried to be as brief and informative as possible. Many thanks to Professor Arne Dietrich for his constant guidance in all things Neuroscientific.


Filed Under: Biology and Neuroscience, Thoughts, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

My Dopamine-Triggering Serotonin Tattoo

April 26, 2011 By 12 Comments

For my friends on Facebook and Tweeps, you probably already saw my first tattoo. It is a simple and solid tattoo of the molecular structure of the neurotransmitter Serotonin.

I might not strike you as the tattoo type, but then again, the tattoo I got was not to get a tattoo, like so many unfortunate people… I knew I wanted this for well over a year, and finally decided to pay Hady Beydoun a visit and get it etched into my skin, forever (not exactly, there are pretty good tattoo removal techniques today =P).

Instead of a butterfly, stars or hearts, or the more manly tribal effects or the saddest in my opinion: skulls, I decided to do one which is inspired by something that has impacted my life deeply and will probably decide what happens with the rest of it: Neuroscience.

Serotonin is involved in a lot of processes, with its effect mediating everything from bowel movements, to depression, sleep and of course magic mushrooms and LSD. It is generally regarded though in pop culture as the “feel-good” hormone. Read more about it on Wikipedia =P

A lot of chemical compounds are fascinating, and most would expect Dopamine, Adrenaline, Caffeine and Oxytocin to be the chosen compound. But frankly, their structures are either too huge, or too ugly. Serotonin looks sexier, and its functions’ complexity have captivated me the most.

For a couple of examples about Serotonin’s close proximity, most of you are on Prozac (I safely assume). Prozac (Fluoxetine) inhibits enzymes that reabsorb serotonin. When you pop a couple of pills, what you’re essentially doing is extending the lifetimes and amount of serotonin molecules, making you happy, relaxed and not depressed. Another is the warm milk grandma story, where a glass of warm milk is supposed to help you sleep. This might be somewhat true, since milk contains serotonin’s precursor: tryptophan, and could help relax you and trigger your sleep cycles.

My body is way too awesome to let anyone mutilate it with a needle, that’s why I decided to go to Hady Beydoun. After looking at his previous works of art and meeting several people who paid him a visit and never looked back (in regret at least), I woke up on Monday after deciding the previous night I should get the tattoo already, only to find a message from the Hady B Tattoo group on Facebook. If I was a believer in the divine, this would probably qualify as divine intervention.

Minutes later, I called Hady, and a couple of hours after that, I was on the rooftop of the Mallah Center in Jal el Dib. Hady’s parlor has undoubtedly the best view ever. Beirut, Jounieh, and the surrounding mountains with Rabieh, Awkar, Bsalim and Roumieh are all within the 360-degree view, that will help diffuse the anxiety (if you have any that is).

A pleasant surprise was Gaia, Hady’s adorable baby golden retriever. The bundle of fur and love doesn’t mind accepting your shower of hugs and kisses, and also, helps diffuse whatever anxiety you have (unless you’re like the woman after me, who has a “dog phobia” as she put it).

Racha, a friend who has had a tattoo at Hady’s well before I did, described a Hady Beydoun tattoo as an “intense experience.” She was absolutely right, not because of the pain, because there hardly is any, but because of Hady’s serious demeanor, the loud Heavy Metal coming out from the Bose speakers and the sound of the tattoo gun (is that the right term?) whirring away.

It should be noted here that Hady’s artistic touch isn’t limited to skin, but he also airbrushes, paints, creates poetry and a whole lot more. Check out his site and his facebook group

It has been little over 24 hours since I did my tattoo, and the pain is really non-existent. I was expecting the tattooed area to be sore, red, but it’s calm and I’m applying ointment to it twice a day, no bandage no nothing. In other words, upkeep seems to be fairly simple and the aftermath of the tattooing is not as horrible as I had imagined.

All in all, my first (and probably last) tattoo experience was an amazing one, and I am very happy with my sciency, meaningful and totally badass tattoo =)

Here are the different stage

The Stencil Before Tattooing Began
Hady tracing the bold, black outline
My traced out tattoo
Coloring the NH Blue
TA DA!
Filed Under: Artsy Fartsy, Biology and Neuroscience Tagged With: , ,

The Little Things… Like An Enveloping-Kind-of-Love by Meggie Bassil

April 4, 2011 By 2 Comments

My Dearest Readers,

I know you can’t get enough of my awesome posts, but there’s only so many I can humanly post. I enjoy reading a lot of other people’s work though, and love to share what I find. One of those people is my teacher and friend Meggie Bassil, who’s a Psychologist like no other… Her teaching career runs in tandem with her real-life experiences with Autistic children, and inspires her blog posts.

Her writing humanizes neuroscience and psychology and makes them accessible in a moving and touching way, shedding light on issues we overlook or downplay in our everyday lives.

Anyway, before I let you read her latest post, I am glad to announce to you that Meggie will be a regular contributor on my blog, and her posts will be featured here regularly! =)

 

Karim and Meggie

While walking around just yesterday, I realized that I have been writing this blog for a little over a month and yet, I still haven’t introduced you to my first love-at-first-sight. I have mentioned him, yes, I remember, but still the simple mentioning doesn’t give him justice. 

You see, this boy, does more than light up my life he gives meaning to every little thing that I do. He is a very important element in making me the Meg that you know today. And I believe it is time that you get properly acquainted.

Karim entered my life in September 2006. I had heard so much about him from my best friend, from the way he sits like a little Buddha, to the way his big eyes sparkle, but all his stories did not prepare me to what I felt the instant I saw him. He was sitting in his playroom on the white spongy floor, flipping quickly through the pages of some book.

Standing watching him, I remember feeling nervous, scared and, naive. This tiny little boy, with the soft cascading brown hair frightened me.

At the time I was embarrassed to admit to this feeling, but 5 years later, I have learned and grown so much because of this boy, that admitting this to you all feels as natural as admitting to my car-crazed fiancé that I still don’t know how to change a flat tire.

People who know me well, know that I am someone who likes to have control. Not the kind of control over people, not the bossy type, but to be in control of what I am doing. I like to be prepared, informed, and perfectly à la hauteur at what I do. And this boy, well, threw my structure, my books, and my research, out the window the second I saw him. I felt unveiled and bare, and completely and utterly lost.

As I watched him, flipping through the thin pages, I wondered if he would like me. Five minutes later, he walks out, and, upon noticing this strange girl in his space, looks straight at me.

He’s looking at me! I remember silently thinking to myself “that must be a good sign!”
My role in this child’s life was to teach him, something I have always loved to do: teach. But over the years, Karim has taught me much much more than I have ever taught an entire university classroom. He has taught me patience, a virtue that I had never really owned prior to him. He has taught me friendship.

I cannot lie; Karim has turned his back at me many times, when I truly longed to reach out for him. But at the end of the day, all friends sometimes need their own space. And once I learned to respect that, not once has he abandoned me. He is always one bounce away to include me in his game once again.

He has taught me perseverance. I have always wanted to do things perfectly well, but when I fail at something, or fail to master it, I quickly give up… This boy, astonishes me every day with his fueled perseverance and effort to impress me, show me, prove to me, that he can do and say everything that he so cleverly knows I, as others, so badly want to instill in him.

He has taught me to pause. Pause, and realize how many things I have and still take for granted each and every day, like just how strong the sun can shine sometimes, and just how loud the music can resonate sometimes, and just how harsh the wind can slap my skin sometimes.. Little things that I am immune to, but that he silently suffers much more times that not.

And finally, he has taught me love. Unconditional love. The kind of love that envelops you and keeps you warm through the coldest days and the loneliest hours. With him, I am never lonely. And I hope he feels the same way.

Karim will be turning ten in two weeks time. He is the most handsome boy in the entire world, I tell him everyday. He is the bravest, most inspiring student I have come to know, I remind him everyday.
He loves basketball and marshmallows.
He can ride a bicycle, he can rollerblade, and he is super fast on his scooter.
He swims like a fish, and wouldn’t mind a bit to spend an entire day in the pool.
He enjoys watching DVDs while comfortably snuggled in his beanbag, his favorite DVD right now seems to be Scooby Doo.
He is and will always be my first love.
He has autism, and he speaks to me everyday.
Thank you Karim, for making me a part of your life.

April is Autism Awareness Month. If you are lucky enough, one of these exceptionally special children will teach you all that I know now, and will surround you with their enveloping-kind-of-love. I am lucky, and I know it.

Filed Under: Biology and Neuroscience, Guest Bloggers Tagged With: , , ,

Psychology: Yes, It Is A Science

March 9, 2011 By 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I wrote a sciency post, and I miss it! So, here’s a somewhat philosophical-leaning post about how my second-favorite science, came to be, and a timeline of sorts to help you understand what differentiates science, from whatever it was before! This is largely inspired from my History and Systems of Psychology course at AUB with Dr. Arne Dietrich.


It hurts me to see that in the time of Protagoras and Democritus, science was more advanced than in the 2000+ years after it. Four and five centuries before Christ, our ancestors were more enlightened than their counterparts for 2000 years in Human history.

The hard-to-explain and simultaneous, but separated, emergence of three different civilizations, namely the Buddhist philosophy (483 BC), the Confucius way-of-life (479 BC) and the Greek civilization (460), is one of history’s most fascinating occurrences. Perhaps that was when humans had successfully made their basic life necessities readily available, and the time we consecrated for hunting and gathering was now much less, leaving us enough time to start to think, reason and explore realms different than day-to-day matters.

Out of the three movements though, it is the Greek one that had the most profound impact, and today’s civilization is basically a byproduct of that period in Ancient Greece, in terms of thought, philosophy, politics, science, arts, theater, ethics, etc.

We move now to when Psychology began to form itself, with philosophers postulating about what the mind is, how we think, why we reason, what is memory and what does consciousness mean exactly.

Epistemology is how we acquire knowledge, or how at least theories about how we do. In ancient Greece, this field had two main camps. The first, included Protagoras and Democritus, who believed that through perception and the senses, we acquire knowledge. The second, included Socrates and Plato, who believed we already knew everything, and that reality was merely an illusion of the true “idea” world, which we “remember” through reasoning and thus acquire knowledge. Of course, the first camp was right, and the second, apart from being ridiculous to us now, will be science’s number one enemy for centuries…

Eventually, Aristotle, realized that we do in fact rely on senses to acquire knowledge, but our ability to reason and preform mental processes was something different from just senses. So, he basically was in the middle, or at least in both camps. Being Plato’s student, he was familiar with the “idea reality” proposed by his teacher. However, with time, Aristotle moved away from this dualism of mind and body, and effectively became a monist, believing the body and mind were one and the same.

This is the guy we are interested in, for his earlier writings were adopted by the Church in full, to fill the gaps the Bibles had not. Gaps such as how the world worked, the Earth’s flatness, the stars, sun, etc. The Aristotelian model was sanctified and integrated into the Church’s doctrine, and Aristotle, though several hundred year before Christ, is a prominent figure in the Catholic Church.

This was risky for the Church, for the model was an all-or-none type, if one facet falls, the whole system crumbles. From Aristotle’s time, some philosophers knew the Earth was round, and even calculated its circumference. But, Aristotle’s earlier thoughts fit better with Christian faith. For the next two millennia, civilization plunged into darkness, into what is correctly dubbed as the Dark Ages. Science was non-existent, and faith and religion were the basis of all knowledge. Illiteracy flourished, feudalism was the law and the Church had near-infinite power.

That’s until our dear friend Physics broke away from religion and its Aristotelian model. It all started with Mr Nicolaus Copernicus, the man who proposed the Earth was not in fact the center of the universe (geocentric theory), but that the Sun was (heliocentric theory). This rattled the foundations of the science-less world, and is credited with sparking the chain of events that led to the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Then came Galileo who supported Corpernicus’ heliocentric theory and further advanced areas such as kinematics and other physical observations, which are undoubtedly the basis of modern science’s research methods. This is significant because the Church began to realize this was a threat, and threatened Galileo, banning his writings and dismissing it as heretical. But, things were already set in motion, and just like that, in the 1400-1500s, Physics was the first science to break away from religion and establish itself independently.

Next in line comes Chemistry, with Dalton’s Atomic Theory in the 1800s, which put a final end to the four-elements-theory (earth air fire water) and paved the way for the Mendeleev’s Period Table. This took several decades to accomplish, but Chemistry successfully shaved itself off of faith-based explanations and theories, and was the second branch of science to establish itself independently.

Now comes Biology’s turn. In just 5 short years, Charles Darwin rendered creation obsolete, and provided an explanation to how we came to be, with the publication of On The Origins of Species in 1859, it took to the mid-1860s for Natural Selection to become the acknowledged mechanism for the theory of Evolution. With that, Biology allowed the exponential expansion of science and scientific thought, extending it from the inanimate world of Chemistry and Physics, into the realm of life, which we are part of.

Darwin was careful not to tread into the mental and consciousness realm, even though he did have his theories. He feared that the shock and then-insufficient evidence would render natural selection obsolete and heretical. It took Psychology some time before it could also sever its ties with religion, mainly because of the ponderings of Mr. Rene Descartes.

His dualistic approach cleaved neatly the physical and the mental. This explained that the mind and soul was not matter, and this cannot be understood or studied. This was naturally gobbled up by the desperate clergy, who clung on to that shred of mystery science could allegedly not get to. But, I’m glad to say we have!

Psychology is the science of understanding the mind and behavior. In other words, things we thought intangible and spiritual. Few ventured there, but nevertheless they have, intermittently and inconsistently. In 1879, the science began, with Wundt’s Structuralism theory and the first laboratory setting for psychology.

Unfortunately, it took much, much longer for us to rid ourselves of pure speculation and not-so-scientific theories (such as Freud’s). In fact, it is in the last 3 or 4 decades that Psychology has lept, with the prospects of fMRI and EEG studies allowing us a look at our most intimate thoughts and emotions, in the hopes of deciphering them bit by bit to understand the most complex object in the known universe: the human brain.

So, think again when it comes to Psychology, and with the timeline above, I hope you’ll understand it’s just a matter of time before the things we have condemned to mysticism and doubt, are made clear, tangible and modifiable.

Filed Under: Biology and Neuroscience, Thoughts

Headphone Isolation: An Dash of Social Neuroscience

January 18, 2011 By 6 Comments


How Hot Am I? =D

Headphones are without a doubt one of the propellors of modern personal entertainment. The idea of having your own personal stereo that, for one is just for your ears, and two, tunes out all the distractions around you, is quite an appealing one. I personally own several sets, each with a specific purpose (and price-tag) depending on where and why I’m using it. I’m a fan of headphones, but for those who aren’t, plenty of less obtrusive devices exist and are used, such as earphones of course, and the recent fad of earbuds, which are inserted deep into the ear canal. I hate earbuds, they’re annoying, though they’re just as efficient, if not more so than headphones, at doing something: isolating us.

Others become mere obstacles, in this "urban trance" we become under

The importance of our social lives and interactions are often left for the non-scientific world to tackle and as a result, the field has garnered skepticism and led to it not being taken seriously. But, day after day, the impact of our interactions with others around us becomes clearer. The brain, the most complex object in the universe and our least-understood system,is made to interact with other brains like it. In fact, it does so without us even catching on until after the deed is done and connection established .

That sounds sort of sketchy, and maybe not something you’d expect me to be saying, but the evidence is overwhelming and I’m fascinated with this field of social neuroscience that seems to be so integral in who we are and how we behave, feel, think, plan, decide and so much more.

Emotions were poorly understood processes and considered worlds and universes apart from our physiological states. That is as far as possible from the truth, with research and evidence in the past decade indicating that apart from altering our physiological states, emotions can even alter our immune system’s response. Talk about “giving up on life” and actually dying when sick. Depression and sadness trigger the release of certain blood-borne substances (stress hormones) that can hamper the gene expression of immune system cells and components. Some bacteria and viruses are known to trigger mood disorders in patients, with obsessive compulsive behavior, depression and even mania being directly linked to certain microorganism infections. So, the science of emotions actually is a science that intertwines with our biology, and systems once thought alien, such as the immune and nervous systems, are in fact very much in tune.

If you haven’t read my article on mirror neurons, you might want to do that now. Here, I’d like to mention a remarkable study of a stroke victim, whose eyes and optical nerves were perfectly intact, but the link between the optical nerves and the occipital lobe (at the back of the brain where stimuli from the eyes are translated into images) had been lost. So, the cameras were working, but the HDMI cable wasn’t connected to the TV. Researchers then showed the man photos of either angry or happy individuals while the patient was in an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging, which shows oxygen-consumption in the brain in realtime). The surprising result was that the brain regions of the patient corresponded with the ones that would’ve been stimulated if the person himself was feeling those emotions. Now, the fact that mirror neurons imitate emotions and brain states of people we observe, even if we weren’t under the same stresses or circumstances, is not new. However, the fact that a “blind” man could also activate his mirror neuron system (MNS) in tandem with photos shown to him, proves that our brain bypasses the occipital lobe for that matter, and goes straight to the amygdala (almond-like region involved in emotions), prepping us to better understand the state of the person in front of us before we ever engage in conversation or more in-depth observation.

In other words, you don’t need to see a smile, frown or long face to calculate consciously the state of another person, your brain primes itself before you can even assemble the image in your occipital lobe or before talking to the person and assessing his emotional state verbally. In fact, you don’t even need to translate the visual stimuli into images for you to pick up on the mood. This illustrates the intricate systems and mechanisms that our brains have developed over time for our social intelligence capabilities.

However, when we are faced with such evidence, we often also hear of stories of incomprehensible and unbelievable cases where humans show zero emotion, total disregard and even fatal negligence of other people’s states or emotions. Our increased tolerance to other people’s emotions, and more importantly misfortunes, is due to many things. One of them is probably our new urban lifestyles. Each day, you and I encounter dozens if not hundreds or thousands of people in our daily commutes, classes or work. Maybe as a child, you would have stopped and probed “why” when you saw a homeless person or beggar. Today, I’d pass through Bliss Street, and I probably wouldn’t grant them a glance. Everyone else seems to do so too, and the unlucky few who fall into their gaze, are often compelled to hand them some spare change. It’s not that I’m an inconsiderate ass, it’s that there are too many homeless people in my every day life to be able to dedicate enough attention and connect with them all. The controversy and rumors surrounding those people also works against them when it comes to acknowledgment and connection. But it’s not just homeless people that get that cold shoulder, everyone else does too, with people maneuvering around me just as I do around them, unless of course I know them or have a class with them, in which case it depends on the person and how close we are.

This connecting is one we often try to repress, that’s because it is overwhelming in our crowded modern environments, and we’d rather treat others as mere obstacles in our way to work or class. With our headphones on, we have an excuse to merely walk around someone in need or someone seeking to engage us or talk to us. This has reached a point where smiling at a stranger, or initiating friendly conversation is frowned upon or questioned for ulterior motives, and it often is tainted with such motives, with the amicable and unsolicited connector needing a pen or your wifi-connected laptop.

Now, I’m not asking for a hippie-style love-fest of emotional expression with complete strangers, for most of them are indeed too stupid or not worth your time. However, consider these few scenarios which I’m pretty sure you never gave a second thought to.

If your waiter is smiling and has a positive tone to his or her voice. You will spend your meal talking about how nice he or she was, and how the service is good and the place is awesome. That simple smile and tiny bit of happiness in a voice is incredibly contagious. Unfortunately, this is not the only contagious emotion, with the negative ones being just as contagious or even more so. For example, a pompous bouncer who treats you like scum and gives you a hard time going into a club will probably ruin your evening there, even if the drinks, music, friends and atmosphere are just perfect inside.

So, emotions are surprisingly contagious, and I’ve began to experiment with that in my daily life. Try to smile at someone you don’t know and observe their reaction. My trials have seen them split between genuinely uneasy, confused and often embarrassed smiles back. How unfortunate. If I’m upset or angry on my way to pick up a friend, my voice’s innotation will mean the world to our outing or plans. My anger will be immediately detected, even before actually addressing it, and thus spoil our meeting. The complete opposite can happen too, and that’s what I’ve tried as well. After going to the airport to pick up a friend, I had quarreled with the insufferable police officer there several times. He was writing up a fine, and I wasn’t able to reach my friend’s mobile, which it turns out she forgot abroad. It was also pouring rain. You can imagine my frustration, but as soon as I spotted her, I gave her a big smile and spoke in a very upbeat manner. Seconds later, she was too.

As with many things in life, I fail to appreciate them fully until I understand, or at least begin to understand, how they work scientifically, more specifically biologically and even more specifically neurologically. I’m happier now, and I make those around me happier too. What I would’ve dismissed as silly self-help fodder, is now a scientifically-explainable phenomenon, which I plan to exploit fully, and advise you to do too.

So, don’t isolate yourself with a pair of headphones. Interact with people, spread the contagion you want and do what our cognitive brains have evolved to do: connect.

Hopefully, I’ll write more about this fascinating branch of social neuroscience, depending whether or not you guys find it as interesting as I do.

Filed Under: Biology and Neuroscience, Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Redefining “Life”: CHNOPS Not the Whole Story

December 4, 2010 By 1 Comment

Life is an amazing thing, and we still have a long way before fully understanding it. Never has this been more obvious in recent times till last Thursday, when a team of scientists successfully challenged the CHNOPS theory that all life is composed mainly of Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorous and Sulfur… (read more about the experiment on the NYtimes)

This might seem like a very insignificant finding to you, an extra elemental component in an organism, so what? Well, this is far from insignificant…

Before continuing, it might be a good idea to read “The Question of Extraterrestrial Life” and “100% Synthetic Life Only a Babystep Away” which I’ve written on the blog in the past.

This cute little bacterium has completely shifted what we think life actually is, and where life can exist. The primary way of detecting life is of course locating water, more precisely, liquid water. That’s because most organisms are mostly composed of water. Organisms’ dry weight though is composed of 98-99% C, H, N, O, P and S. That’s why interplanetary probes and the Mars rovers are specially equipped to detect these elements and their combinations, for if CHNOPS are present without other toxic elements, substances or environmental conditions, there is a good chance life may exist in that given area.

The team of NASA scientists were able to extract a bacterial species from Mono Lake in the United States, and after two months of growing the bacteria in an Arsenic-rich (and Phosphorous-poor) environment, observed something truly spectacular… The bacteria “replaced” their Phosphorous components with the abundant Arsenic. Most significantly, in the DNA “backbone” which usually incorporates Phosphorous in the sugar-phosphate genetic polymer backbone.

Mono Lake, Eastern California

Arsenic is extremely toxic to multicellular organisms because it interferes with the cell’s ability to produce Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the cell’s main “fuel”, leading to cell necrosis and eventually multi-organ system failure and of course, death. That is why the notion that life could incorporate Arsenic as one of its essential elements is a very exciting discovery.

Arsenic is directly below Phosphorous on the Periodic Table of Elements, and thus, chemically, behaves in a very similar fashion to Phosphorous. That is one reason why Arsenic is so toxic, it can easily enter cells and cell machinery and ruin them, much like mud in an engine’s pistons.

So, our traditional methods of searching exclusively for life that obeys the CHNOPS theory, crumbles, and endless possibilities, all within our reach, emerge. Arsenic is an abundant element on several rocks in our solar system. Planets and several orbiting satellites have been shown to contain Arsenic, and possibly frozen water, or water buried beneath layers of frozen liquids. In other words, environments similar to the underwater heat vents, where temperatures and toxic substances are as abundant as the native extremophile flora.

An amazing day for Biology, and all sciences, especially on the eve of the discovery that our estimated number of stars is in fact quite underestimated, with the possible total number tripling! All the more probable that we will find life soon, elsewhere =)

 

 

 

Filed Under: Biology and Neuroscience, Thoughts Tagged With: , , ,

Lebanon’s Very Own Star of Science: Send 4 to 1084 and REPEAT!

November 25, 2010 By 1 Comment

Living in a country where Star Academy actually still exists, and where stupid people, with useless aspirations and pathetic rewards of signing one CD with Arab labels, pollute the airwaves, one of the countries of the Gulf we mock for being stupid, is holding a brilliant “Stars of Science” competition series.

One Lebanese participant, the only Lebanese one for that matter, has made it to the Qatar Foundation-funded competition’s final four.

Hind Hobeika is a 22-year-old AUB Mechanical Engineering graduate who has designed and engineered swimming goggles that monitor a swimmer’s heart rate. Hind, a passionate swimmer herself, noticed that no device existed to help swimmers monitor their heart rates, for a better work out, and of course their safety.

Here’s a YouTube of Hind and other experts explaining more:

I was surprised to hear about this from none other than Hind’s younger sister, and my good friend Youmna Hobeika. If it were some brainless, vain show of tweens singing, and a Lebanese person made it to the finalists, we would go crazy and create mobs and conspiracy theories about Saudi dialing-slaves who will beat us at sending SMSes. But science? Brains? Something useful? Something that would make the world better? We shy away… Shame!

Hind’s device is ingenious, it is original and it has filled a huge gap in the sports and fitness world with a sleek looking pair of goggles I’d love to try on some day when it hits the shelves worldwide.

So, let’s help our fellow Lebanese candidate and AUBite get the recognition she deserves, and send 4 to 1084 from your Lebanese mobile phone. You can vote as many times as you want, and voting ends Sunday! So, hurry up! Send 4 to 1084 as soon as you read this.

For numbers from other countries, go to www.starsofscience.com

Here’s another YouTube for my engineer-readers, explaining more about the engineering aspect

 

 

 

Filed Under: AUB Affairs, Biology and Neuroscience, Leb Tagged With: , ,
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