Comments on: How to feed your freakish brain: My new column for Discover

By: Column: Welcome to the Multiverse | Cosmic Variance « Science Technology Informer

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 03:23:24 +0000

[...] to the print magazine, known as “Out There.” (Our blog neighbor Carl Zimmer has been columnizing about the brain for a while now.) My first column appeared in the October issue (which comes out in September), and [...]

By: Crows Are Cool

Crows Are Cool — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:18:18 +0000

It’s time for a full investigation of the brains of some of the most intelligent animals in the kingdom. Check out: A Murder of Crows ~ Full Episode | Nature | PBS http://to.pbs.org/pR7W9Q . Crows appear to have the intelligence equivalent of apes: they use tools, can plan three steps in advance to use tools to obtain food, eat a complicated omnivore diet, prepare food, speak in a “family dialect” as well as using an open alerting channel, teach their young and mourn their dead. Amazing!

By: Daniel Kim

Daniel Kim — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:33:09 +0000

One factor that you did not mention is the importance of cooking on the development of the brain. It’s a good tie-in, actually. A few years ago, there were a few articles I read about the influence of easier-to-digest food on human evolution. By processing and cooking food, humans externalized some of the expense of extracting nutrients, allowing us to be adequately nourished even though our bodies lack the robust digestive apparatus of other animals. Cooking obviates the need for large numbers of nutrient transport proteins, etc. in the rest of the body, making resources available for supporting the brain.

Another interesting correlation may be in the typical body mass of children with anencephaly. Without a large brain to support, the anencephalic fetus develops a large, robust body. I think there was a genetically modified mouse that also demonstrated this phenomenon.

By: Deidra Wilson

Deidra Wilson — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:42:41 +0000

Our brains are going to be HUGE in 200,000 years!

By: GADEL

GADEL — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 20:44:07 +0000

The brain is a mysterious organ as Dr. Ben Carson would happily agree with me on this.

By: Aurelio

Aurelio — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:28:11 +0000

Hi. A really nice article I enjoyed reading it a lot. Could you please send me the reference for the Wray paper on SLC2A1?. Thank you. [CZ: Thanks, Aurelio. I heard Wray present results at AAAS this February. He's already published some similar results on another gene earlier this year here.]