International College of Affective NeuroScience
Beatriz Rodriguez-Cabo
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Posts by Beatriz Rodriguez-Cabo
Astrocyte´s new role in controlling breathing
Jul 20th
A recent study published in Science highlights the role of astrocytes, star-shaped cells found in the brain and spinal cord, in regulating respiration by ’sensing’ changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood and stimulating neurons to regulate respiration.
Astrocytes have been traditionally thought to just provide structural and metabolic support for other cells, so this new information adds an unexpected role in controlling breathing.
Find a link to the paper abstract here
Find a comment on Nature news about this topic here
Nature Special: Science Metrics
Jun 25th
Last week, Nature dedicated its section “Nature Specials” to Science Metrics, the way the scientific community measures the value of scientific output, from the citation index to the h-index and more. Do they work? Are they fair?
Quite a lot of the content can be accessed online for free here
2008/2009 Impact Factor Just Came Out
Jun 19th
Some days ago, the 2008/2009 Journal Citation Reports of ISI Web of Knowledge have been published.
Journal Citation Reports are composed of two parts: the Science Edition and the Social Sciences Edition, in which journals are ranked according their impact factor during the last year.
In the Science Edition, we can find a category called “Neurosciences”, with three journals of the Nature Publishing Group in the top 5 journals of this category; with Nature Reviews Neuroscience having the highest impact factor in this category during the last year
- Nature Reviews Neuroscience (26.483)
- Annual Review of Neuroscience (24.822)
- Behavioral and Brain Sciences (19.045)
- Molecular Psychiatry (15.049)
- Nature Neuroscience (14.345)
Other well-known journals include the American Journal of Psychiatry (12.522) and the Archives of General Psychiatry (12.257), listed in 2nd and 3d place in the category “Psychiatry”, with, again, Molecular Psychiatry in the top one of this category.
23rd European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Congress
Feb 20th
The 23rd ECNP Congress will be held in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) from 28 August until 1 September 2010
The deadline for submission of papers,, early registration fee and application for ECNP Award is 31 March 2010.
You can find more information here.
Nature: How to write science books
Feb 12th
During this week, five top science book writers will be offering advice for budding authors in a series of interviews in Nature’s Books & Arts section. Find the link here
- Peter Atkins reveals the hard work behind a successful textbook
- Carl Zimmer highlights how passion is essential for popular science
- David Brin reveals how criticism improves his fiction writing
- Georgina Ferry shares research tips for biographies
- Joanna Cole explains how to convey science to children
Registering research projects: practical issues?
Feb 8th
I would just like to know what is your usual way of acting regarding the recommendation on registering clinical trials by some journals and the International Committe Of Medical Journal Editors
Do you usually register all your research projects? Or just the clinical trials? Or none?
Is it really asked by scientific journals to have done this before starting the research?
Thank you
Metabolic Changes in Schizophrenia and Human Brain Evolution
Feb 2nd
Khaitovich et al. – Genome Biology 2008, 9:R124
In this study, authors aim to identify molecular mechanisms involved in the evolution of human-specific cognitive abilities by combining biological data from two research directions:
- Identifying the molecular changes that took place in the human evolutionary lineage, presumably due to positive selection
- Considering the molecular changes observed in schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder believed to affect such human cognitive functions as the capacity for complex social relations and language
They assume that schizophrenia affects recently evolved biological processes underlying human-specific cognitive abilities, so they expect a significant overlap between the recent evolutionary and the pathological changes.
Authors directly study brain metabolism in prefrontal cortex of humans (schizophrenic patients and controls) and non-human primates (chimpanzees and rhesus macaques) by using 1H NMR spectroscopy. They realize that metabolites linked to energy metabolism, neurotransmission and lipid/cell membrane metabolism are different between schizophrenic patients and controls. In addition, they realize that the different metabolites found in schizophrenic patients and controls have as well evolved rapidly in the evolutionary lineage, when performing an analysis including chimpanzees and rhesus macaques. Finally, using linkage disequilibrium analysis, authors conclude that these differences are explained by positive selection instead of relaxation of selective constraint.
In the discussion, authors argue that is conceivable that human brain is running very close to the limit of its metabolic capacities, so, as a consequence, any perturbation of normal energy metabolism levels may be expected to adversely affect brain function, leading to human cognitive disfunctions, such as schizophrenia.
Authors finally conclude that, taken together, findings indicate that changes in human brain metabolism may have been an important step in the evolution of human cognitive abilities and remark that results are consistent with the theory that schizophrenia is a costly by-product of human brain evolution.
You can find a direct link to the full-text article here:
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