Neuroscience is a small world

I know, I know. I've fallen behind. Both in terms of keeping this blog up to date and in wishing Oliver Sacks a very happy 80th birthday (it was on July 9th, but better late than never!).

Corny picture but I couldn't care less!

Let's just say that I lost track of time. Heck, maybe I was even in the phone box too long and actually was moved forward in time without realizing it! (Yes, that was a lame attempt at a Doctor Who reference. Deal with it.)

I did spend a good portion of my time a few weekends ago at an absolutely fantastic little bar called the Way Station. In case you can't tell from the image, it's a Doctor Who themed pub with the bathroom exterior designed to look like the Tardis! And yes, it actually was bigger on the inside. Plus, Matt Smith, Karen Gillian, and Steven Moffat all signed a wall there while they were in New York shooting 'Angels Take Manhattan'! Needless to say, I was thrilled to visit.

But right now, I'm even more thrilled to see where my academic career is taking me. I was recently listening to the newest Radiolab podcast which tells the story of how Oliver Sacks began his writing career while reorganizing some data in the lab. I was only mildly paying attention as most of my concentration was focused on the excel sheet in front of me, but when I heard Sacks mention Albert Einstein College of Medicine I stopped everything for a moment.

I had the good fortune to visit a primate lab
where they were recording from inside the
visual cortex. It was stunning!

Oliver Sacks worked on the same campus that I have had the privilege of being a part of. Oliver Sacks was in the neurology department and most likely worked in the same building that my lab is housed in! I know it seems like a little thing, but I just got so excited!

I remember reading The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat in high school and thinking it was the most interesting compilation of neurological stories I'd ever read. It gave me a place to connect the physical systems I'd been learning about in biology and psychology with the actual ramifications of various disorders. Connecting that high school experience of 4 years ago with the work I'm doing now reminded me how far I've come in the field and how excited I am to be a part of it all.

Another fun connection in the podcast was hearing how Oliver Sacks was inspired by the writings of A.R. Luria. When Sacks was at Albert Einstein, he was doing mostly laboratory science with neural cells of earth worms. But reading Luria's humanistic recordings of his patients helped change his direction towards medical writing.

Frankly, some scientific writing makes as
much sense as this painting I saw at the
MoMA...

Now I know a lot of strict scientists are not fans of this prose-style writing and say it's too much fluff to be of any use. And I've heard people argue that his writing is just a glorified way of turning patients into a paycheck. Still, I think we need to keep in mind that Oliver Sacks has helped raise interest in neurology in general and that can only help draw more people to the field. "Pure scientists" should realize that while their work is vital, if it can't be disseminated in some form it is simply useless.

In conclusion, Happy (late) Birthday Oliver Sacks! Haters gonna hate, but I want to say I've loved reading your stories.  And as you were inspired by Luria, I continue to be inspired by Radiolab. (Seriously guys, if you ever need a correspondent in Texas just let me know!) And to all my readers, I'd love to hear about what inspires you! Feel free to comment below!

PS- My laptop recently decided to have a meltdown. It seems that my hard drive is kaput and I only have 1.5 weeks left in New York before I return to the blazing hot state of Texas. So, this may be my last post for a bit.

Oh yeah, and it hasn't all been hard work. I did find the time last weekend to see
Justin Timberlake and Jay Z perform at Yankees Stadium!!!!!!!

Remember that one time when.....

How much of our personality, our soul, is composed of our memories?  I think who we are stems from what we've done and how we've learned from those actions.  But imagine an existence where you could no longer form memories.  This is the situation faced by neurological patient H.M.- now know as Henry Molaison.

Henry Molaison passed away in 2008.

Henry suffered from debilitating seizures caused by tissue in his temporal lobes.  Historically, patients before him had undergone surgery to remove the epicenter in the brain that caused the seizures and this usually solved the problem.  But for Henry, the seizures were caused by 2 epicenters- one on each temporal lobe.  So when surgeon Scoville removed the defective tissue in 27 year old Henry Molaison, he had to take large portions from both sides.

But a strange thing happened when Henry recovered from his surgery.  He was no longer able to form new memories.  Semantic information (facts and dates) from before his surgery was untouched but when it came to recalling simple episodic information (like what he had eaten for breakfast), he couldn't recall a thing.

Neuroscientists Brenda Milner and Suzanne Corkin took on the case of H.M. in the hopes of learning more about memory and its storage in the human brain.  They found that the hippocampus, which was almost completely removed, is vital for processing memories.  You could view it as a sort of clearing house where short term memory gets transferred into long term storage.  But without this structure, Henry could no longer process his memories.  In other words, he was forever stuck in the mindset of his 27 year old self.

Hi-lighted in yellow is the portion that H.M. lost.

A similar deficit was found in a Korsakoff's syndrome patient mentioned by Oliver Sacks in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.  This man was also unable to form new memories, leaving him trapped in a time that has already passed.

Now while there are some technical differences on the types of memories and amount of retrieval between these patients, they both hold an amount of melancholy in my mind.  To be deprived of the ever changing world.  To be able to grow and expand.  These two men lost so much.

I am a firm believer that our genetics set the blue print but our experiences are really what make us unique. And our capacity to change is what makes us so fantastic.  My heart goes out to these two men and all who suffer from anterograde amnesia.  It's a hard world to imagine.

But what about you?  Would you rather suffer anterograde amnesia (where you can't form new memories) or retrograde amnesia (where you can't remember your past from a certain point back)?  It's no easy choice.