Happy New Year

One of my favorite Copland pieces is the second movement from Rodeo - the Corral Nocturne (right click in new tab to play).  It's on most of my lullaby playlists, and is modern and sweet without being precious.  It is also quite brief at a little over three and a half minutes, so lean back, close your eyes, and sit a spell, if you do that...

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Closing Out 2010

For many, like my beloved Texas Longhorns, 2010 was a difficult year. I started the year in a plateau, having gained and lost (and gained and lost) quite a few pounds during and after pregnancies for my two little girls. Nutrition was an interest of mine for many years, however. I had read Good Calories, Bad Calories and the works of Micheal Pollan, and for years had been avoiding too much fake...

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Your Brain On Creatine

Thank you, good paleo fairy, Melissa McEwan. By my count, next time I'm in NYC I owe you a half dozen NorCal Margaritas. And thank you also former primal muse who has now moved over to That Paleo Guy (I should just send you a margarita machine.) I now have in my little hands several creatine fed to vegetarians papers (1)(2)(3). Seems that cognition researchers (and athletic performance researchers)...

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The Vulnerable Substantia Nigra

Blogging while out of town has proved more difficult that I thought. For one thing, we have free babysitting, so we've obviously been going out at night rather than staying in. Also, I am mostly limited to the iPad, which isn't as easy to blog from as a normal computer (yes, cry me a river, but true nonetheless). And I was planning on blogging about the creatine and vegetarians paper from the British...

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Secrets of the Synapse

Merry Christmas Eve, y'all! I'm in Texas and therefore blogging in a Texas accent currently. Also, I ate some Tex-Mex, which aside from the vegetable oils and corn and cheese and beans is totally paleo. It is too much to hope that the restaurant we went to used the traditional lard.But life goes on, the year comes to a close, and earlier this month a lovely "Brief Communication" was published in...

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Alzheimer's and HDL

There are a number of December papers I've been wanting to blog about, but other things came up along the way.  But here I have a moment before the children come home, and the house is quiet except for the cats... I ought to be wrapping presents... but here is a new Alzheimer's paper to add more confusion to the cholesterol and Alzheimer's information. ...

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Scratchy

Purdue University and its mice hit the nutrition news this week with the work of Dr. Joseph Garner and his team. Their paper, "Nutritional up-regulation of serotonin paradoxically induces compulsive behavior" was published in Nutritional Neuroscience, and prompted several reports and tweets rather like this one. Jad supplied me with a links in the comments to That Tapeworm Ate Your Depression, and...

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Carbohydrates Can Kill Podcast

Find it here: PodcastThanks Dr. ...

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That Tapeworm Ate Your Depression

I'm a little embarrassed that Mark Sisson got to this one before I did.  But I'm sure he has several minions to scan the literature for him, whereas I have a few loyal friends and fellow bloggers.  Here it is, though, a new paper from the Archives of General Psychiatry, "Inflammation, Sanitation, and Consternation: Loss of Contact With Coevolved,...

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Pleasure, Pain, Wheat, and Psychopharm

There is something of an addiction theme out in the blogosphere today.  Mark Sisson is talking kicking the junkfood habit, and Dr. BG is talking politics and CRACK.  I thought I would throw in a little neuromapping of pleasure and pain, as hey, apparently folks like a bit of neuroanatomy (who'd a thunk?) with their grain-free Evolutionary Psychiatry.  Also, there's a new medicine for...

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Your Brain Loves Cholesterol (Don't Go Too Low)

Sometimes this blog writes itself.  Today I was sitting around minding my business, spreading happiness and serenity, when I got an email from the Amazing Jamie Scott, who sent me a link to this paper: Diabetes and Insulin in Regulation of Brain Cholesterol Metabolism.  And then my receptionist handed me my mail, and the top story of this month's Psychiatric Times is "Statins, Cholesterol...

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Genius and Madness

In the Dopamine Primer 2, I covered the four major dopamine tracts in the brain.  Today I'll break down the two most important ones to psychiatrists and anyone interested in the fabulous story of human evolution and greatness, the mesolimbic and the mesocortical pathways.For simplicity sake (as mesolimbic and mesocortical don't have a whole lot...

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Rant

Pubmed is awesome. It makes us all into research giants from home. I've even made my own username and password in "My NCBI" and programmed in some automatic searches, so the first Saturday of every month (today, as a matter of fact), Pubmed sends me some emails about the latest research pertaining to my keywords of interest. Today I received several emails, one of which contained a link to this...

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Brain Efficiency, Pediatric Edition

Back in November, I wrote a post titled Brain Efficiency that detailed some of the links between mitochondrial dysfunction and Parkinson's Disease.  The mitochondria are the energy powerhouses of the cells, cranking out ATP (cell gasoline) to keep pace with all our cells need to do.  Classically, mitochondrial dysfunction was felt to be relatively rare, and it was usually investigated in...

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Dopamine and the Left Brain

In dopamine primers 1 and 2, I introduced this useful neurotransmitter and key to the thinking style of humanity. Today we'll go over the different neurotransmitters on the different sides of the brain, and why that matters.Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is not only responsible for modulating a lot of our physical movement, but also sex, aggression,...

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Acne, Depression, Omega 3, Vitamins, and Minerals

In 2008 some folks from a Beverly Hills skin clinic wrote up a short paper in Lipids in Health and Disease called Acne vulgaris, mental health and omega-3 fatty acids: a report of cases (free full text). The experiment itself was an open-label trial of a mineral/omega-3 supplement on five patients, so useful only as a reason to do further research. But a lot of interesting science tidbits on acne,...

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