--Original published at Olivia's College Blog

I chose to investigate the TED talk, “Can the Damaged Brain Repair Itself?”, by Siddharthan Chandran. I was drawn to the topic because it is at the intersection of the themes of the courses I am taking; biology, neuroscience, and psychology. I also am curious to learn about this topic because people in my family have multiple sclerosis, so I feel it is important for me to be educated on the brain’s mechanics and processes.

Chandran stated that any given time, 35 million people are suffering from devastating yet untreatable diseases of the brain. They occur when the cells of the brain die or become damaged, interfering with the brain’s electrical activity and disrupting and slowing connections. Chandran steers his talk into the direction of stem cells. Stem cells can renew themselves or become specialized—two extremely useful functions for a damaged brain. He explains that the brain naturally repairs itself, but not at the rate it needs to for controlling a brain disease. Using stem cells, he describes, would promote the spontaneous repair that is already occurring within the brain.

The most interesting aspect of Chandran’s talk were the statistics he pointed out to support his argument that it is crucial to find treatment for brain diseases. He said that the prevalence of brain diseases is on the rise, because they are age-related diseases, and the population is living longer. Chandran’s TED talk is essentially a call to action, and he uses this fact to insight passion in viewers because it illuminates the dark reality behind this rapidly growing world-wide epidemic.

I found Siddharthan Chandran’s TED talk to be extremely credible. Aside from his expertise in neuroscience, he is an excellent presenter. Chandran modifies his talk by giving the audience a lesson on the mechanics of the brain. He is especially skilled at modifying his jargon for a broader audience, which shows a deep understanding and mastery of his material. In addition, he uses real life examples from patients that he has worked with. From patients with motor neuron disease to multiple sclerosis, he uses personal examples of how the stem cell technique is revolutionizing brain diseases and repair. Overall, I think his presentation was very successful and I trust his work.

For a research idea of my own, I think it would be fascinating to study the impact of stem cells across various diseases. The study could consist of a large pool of patients who agreed to screenings and stem cell infusions, with diseases like MS, motor neuron, Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s.  The research could be used to compare the effects of the stem cell therapy on different diseases, and therefore see if it is a more useful for one type of disease over another. This could potentially help categorize types of brain diseases.

--Original published at Zach Nawrocki's Blog

The TED Talk that I chose to watch was “Can the damaged brain repair itself?” by Siddharthan Chandran. The reason I chose this TED Talk is because when I had the neuroscience class we talked about neuroplasticity which is when the neurons in the brain change when the brain is damaged and to rewire the brain to keep it functioning. I find this topic very interesting because of how complex the brain is and how amazing it is to be able to do some of the things it can do.

In this talk Siddharthan Chandran talks about the effect that different neurodegenerative diseases have on the functioning of neurons in the brain. The main disease that is focused on in the talk is Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and how it degrades the myelin sheath. He also talks about how research is taking so long to discover new treatments/medicines and the main reason it is taking so long is because most screening for new treatments is done on animals instead of humans. One way that the process is starting to be sped up is by taking human stem cells, growing them in the lab and actually doing screenings on them to find new treatments. The main topic of the talk however, is that he is finding a way to use existing stem cells in the brain to create new myelin to repair the neurons in the brain.

The thing I found most interesting about the talk is how scientists can use existing stem cells in the brain and activate/trigger them to create new myelin that would be able to repair neurons on its own. One other interesting fact that I found is that if we cannot active the existing stem cells we can grow some in a lab and physically plant them in the brain to help repair neurons.

I find the information that is being presented in this talk by Siddharthan Chandran very trustworthy. He is the Head of Neurology at the University of Edinburgh and the Director of the Centre for Clinical Brain Science and Euan MacDonald Centre for Motor Neurone Disease Research. He has been in the field of regenerative neuroscience for many years and is well known in the field.

One research idea would be to take stem cells from an animal (such as a mouse) and grow them in a lab. With them you can then use different medicines on them to see how it effects the activation of the stem cells outside of the brain. Once the best medication is found that stimulates the stem cell the most the next step would be to transplant them into a mouse brain that suffers from a disease such as MS or some other motor neuron disease and scan the mouse brain every few hours to see if the stem cell is in fact repairing the damaged neurons. Nevertheless, as explained in the talk the best research would be to conduct this using humans instead of mice however, this is a touchy subject because of how ethical it would be to do research like this on a human.

--Original published at Jessica K's College Blog

This week, I will learn about the biological standpoint on emotions, daily functions of the body, and anything that relates to the brain.

Even if the lesson will be reasonably short, and even if I’m not too much of a science person, learning the multiple sections and functions of the brain will be tiring enough. However, it would be a more scientific take on how we all work through every day, from everything as simple as breathing and walking, to even more complex actions, I will then learn everything the brain will transmit and perform to be the supercomputer of people all over the globe.

--Original published at Grace's College Blog

I chose to watch Thomas Insel’s TED talk: Toward a New Understanding of Mental Illness. I was drawn to this talk because many of my friends and family members suffer from mental illnesses and I was interested to learn more. In his talk, he first showed remarkable statistics on the survival rate of diseases like heart disease, leukemia, strokes, and AIDS. All of these have improved their survival rate greatly from their peak from 1965-1995. Then was the rate of suicide since it’s peak, it has not gone done at all. 35,000 people die a year from suicide. He then spoke about how these were diseases of the brain, they are very common and described them as not exactly behavorial disorders. They are behavior related when you see the outcome of what is going on in the brain. His goal to reduce the suicide rate is to diagnose early and start treatment immediately, rather than waiting for the behavior part of the disorder to develop and beginning treatment then. The most interesting part of the talk was when he spoke about the brain and how it is so intricate that we have really only just begun to understand it. There are over 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. I found Thomas Insel very trustworthy. He mentioned that he worked for the federal government and his job was working on reducing the rate of suicide. That is why he is so informed about the brain and it’s functions and how mental illness affects it. For the topic, mental illness and specifically suicide, I would research the events that happened directly before a person committed suicide. I would study and speak to people who have survived suicide attempts and talk to them about the events right before. Studying the events prior to a suicide attempt could help in preventing them. I could find out if those events were preventable and we could develop more signs of mental illness. If they were preventable, why didn’t the person take themselves out of the situation or was it something happening all in their brain.

--Original published at Phil's College Blog

The Ted talk I chose to watch was Jim Fallon’s talk ” Exploring the mind of a killer” because a student from my high school turned out to be a serial killer a few years ago. His name was Cosmo DiNardo. He was a senior when I was a freshman, and the teachers at my school thought that he was a normal student. However, a few years after graduating he killed young adults from my county. Later, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and other mental diseases. I always wondered why he would do these things, and that is why I was attracted to that TED talk.

Jim Fallon’s talk included how genders influenced the likely hood of who became a serial killer. He explained how the X chromosome is the deciding factor. This is true because the X chromosome carries a gene called MAOA gene. These means that the likely hood of this gene becoming dominant will come from your mother if you are a boy. This is true because a girl has two X chromosomes. For instance, the X chromosome from your mother becomes diluted with your father causing the MAOA gene to be less dominant. This happens because there is to much serotonin in the embryo  during the pregnancy so later in life serotonin becomes ineffective to the person. Jim also explained why this gene continues is because the only way the gene activates because of a traumatic event. This causes cultures to be violent because the only ay this gene becomes active is through violence causing a tinderbox of a community ready to ignite.

The thing I found the most interesting about the talk is how the gene largely only affects boys because a girl has the same gene but it is not activated because of the X chromosome of the girl’s father. I would think that the same traumatic event would still activate the gene even though a female has another X chromosome.

I do not fine the presenter trustworthy because he did not perform a experiment about the children in violent communities have a more likely chance to have MAOA activate. He described scientifically and psychologically how this could occur but he never did a study on those children and children outside of that community. That he randomly assigned and randomly sampled.

My research idea is that a safe environment away from violence will decrease the chance of violent actions by the affected individuals.

First, I would select a random group of children that have volunteered for my study from a violent community. Then I will randomly assign the children into non-violent communities, and the other randomly assigned group will be sent to a different violent community. The children’s violence will be monitored by an act of physically or emotionally hurting someone by their host families and their teachers in the perspective schools. After one year, the violent acts will be tallied, and we will see if the traumatic events in their younger childhood years still affected their behavior. However, the researcher will also see if the new environments increased or decreased the behavior of the children . The students in the violent community will always be secretly watched incase their mental health and live is put in serious danger by the host family. Both host families, in either community will give the same treatment to the subjects. Both will provide exactly what is needed to survive, but the family will give no extra affection or neglect. This will truly attest the research to the community the students live in daily.