4:19 p.m. - 2009-01-14
(scientific) comeback!
havent updated for god knows how long, gosh, but just thought it would be a good idea to jot down my thoughts on recent scientific advancements which catch my interest. oh and which benefits mankind, of course. =)
just read about this cooling chip that may one day control seizures. cool huh. they think it works by stopping the release of neurotransmitters and hence stopping errant neuronal activity. apparently cooling down the brain is useful in stroke too, to slow down metabolism rate so not as much O2 is required. usually the brain can only last 4mins without O2, something i remember from my first aid training and not from my neuroscience lectures, funnily enough!
one other intriguing finding is that it seems ppl from african descent are more sensitive to bitter tastes?? this is very very interesting to me because i once did a mini presentation on the bitter-tasting compound PTC and how schizophrenics and their relatives are less sensitive in tasting it. if i remember correctly, a higher % of africans are less sensitive to PTC compared to ppl of european ancestry. if i remember correctly, that is. it's quite peculiar isnt it then, since the two seem to be mutually exclusive. it could mean that africans are more prone to developing schizophrenia (but i wonder if being genetically predisposed to have heightened sensitivity to bitterness would not offset the so-called tendency to be less sensitive to bitterness if u have schizophrenia), hence being at two ends of the bitter-tasting continuum, or that one of the 2 claims is just utter balderdash! in either case the PTC-sensitivity thingy never really took off as THE gold standard to diagnosing schiz, let alone functioning as an auxiliary screening tool, hence reinforcing the suspicion that we are still very VERY far from understanding what the hell is schiz anyway.
there, much better than reading about my infinite morose thoughts, no?
