Student Post: It’s my party and I’ll change my receptor compositions if I want to.

Tomorrow is the big day. Much to my liver’s dismay, I’m turning 21, so I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the effects on alcohol on the brain in this post.

I searched through article databases reading abstracts about how alcohol shrinks the brain, depletes white mater, inhibits growth of and destroys neurons etc…, until I stumbled on a study that examined acutely intoxicated rat brains. Over hour intervals after alcohol exposure, researchers were able to document neuroplastic changes involving tyrosine hydroxylase, proenkephalin and cannabinoid CB(1) receptor gene expressions. That alcohol alters receptor expression in neurons is a sobering thought. It turns “I only like you when I’m drunk,” into “I only like you when I slowly alter the chemical and physical composition of my brain.” The researchers hypothesize this may play a role in addiction and the immediate feel-good affects of alcohol.

I thought about volunteering my services if the authors ever wished to document their findings in human subjects until I learned I’d have to consume 3g/kg of alcohol (which works out to be about 18 standard drinks for me… a bit too life-threatening for comfort) and that the rats were killed by decapitation (I’m attached to my head). I guess the more I think about it the less I’m interested in incurring a great deal of brain damage this weekend; I’m not sure I could make it through the rest of Neurobio firing on a few less cylinders. I might just take my shiny new ID down to the grocery store and pick me up some O’Doul’s.

Reference: Oliva JM, Ortiz S, Pérez-Rial S, Manzanares J.Time dependent alterations on tyrosine hydroxylase, opioid and cannabinoid CB(1) receptor gene expressions after acute ethanol administration in the rat brain. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol. 2007 Oct 24; [Epub ahead of print

PZ Myers at the Scripps

While I’m here in San Diego, I’ll also be giving a talk/hosting a discussion at the Scripps Institute on Friday at 3:00. The title is:

Sharing science: education, activism, and advocacy

I’m planning on telling the attendees the secret to getting a million visits per month to their blogs. No, actually — I’m going to discuss and justify diverse approaches to getting the public engaged in science issues, and I plan to mention both what I consider to be successes (but which may not change the wider conversations) and failures (which even so are of value). And it’s open to the public! Come on down to Vaughn 100 on the Scripps Institution of Oceanograph (map), and join in the conversation.

Wish you were here!

I’m having a lovely time here at Beyond Belief 2 — you should all be here (and of course, you will be; as they did last year, everything will be available after the meeting on the web.) It’s an eclectic mix of all kinds of interesting stuff outside of my usual range: yesterday, we had terrific sessions on the history of the Enlightenment, evolutionary economics, evolution of religion, and some speculation and cosmology. It was vastly entertaining, and lest you think this was a bunch of thugly atheists preaching to the choir, let me reassure you that I disagreed with about a third of what I heard.

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Interesting discussions that I don’t have time to address right now

How peculiar — I’ve gotten several requests in email to comment on this plaint from Theodore Dalrymple, a fellow who doesn’t like those “New Atheists” like Sam Harris and Dan Dennett. It’s peculiar because I’m here at a conference with Sam Harris and Dan Dennett (and others who do not consider themselves “New Atheists”)— should I just ask them what they think? Actually, if anyone wants to pass along any brilliant questions that I can use to dazzle the luminaries with my insight, go ahead, toss them into the comments.

It’s one of those annoying opinion pieces by an unbeliever who wants to make excuses for belief: the premise is “To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.” It contains many strange arguments, like this one.

The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And in my own view, the absence of religious faith, provided that such faith is not murderously intolerant, can have a deleterious effect upon human character and personality. If you empty the world of purpose, make it one of brute fact alone, you empty it (for many people, at any rate) of reasons for gratitude, and a sense of gratitude is necessary for both happiness and decency. For what can soon, and all too easily, replace gratitude is a sense of entitlement. Without gratitude, it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have: and life will become an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies.

For my own part, I think Western civilization was built on the talent and hard work and ideals of its people, and that if you stripped religion from its greatest artists and heroes and leaders and thinkers, they still would have been great.

I detest the argument about gratitude. It’s a deep error: we should exult in our life and a community of purpose that we build, but there is no one to be grateful to, and displacing our sense of obligation to our human aspirations onto a nonexistent deity represents an abandonemnt of rationality. And the reduction of reason to a mere “shopping spree” or feelings of entitlement is simply the old canard that atheists are amoral hedonists in more high-falutin’ pious language.

You can all discuss this for a while. I’m going to go listen to philosophers and historians explain the Enlightenment to me.

Research into adult neural cell integration

I found an article about new brain cells that I thought was really interesting. Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine discovered the mechanism behind how new neural cells are integrated into the adult brain. It turns out that new neural cells take a while to mature and fully integrate themselves into existing neural networks in the brain. While they are maturing, they rely on signals from other brain regions so that they do not disturb ongoing functions of the brain. They can receive input from these other regions for up to 10 days before they are ready to make any of their own outputs. So how long does it take to fully develop their synaptic connections so that they can talk to one another? Up to 3 weeks.

So why do we care; what is significant about this discovery? This mechanism sheds light on how neural cells integrate themselves into existing networks, which will impact how stem cells are used to replace neurons lost to injury or disease. The main concern is about neurons firing inappropriately, which could cause seizures or cognitive dysfunction.

The full article can be found in the Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 27

Cafe Scientifique — tonight!

Tonight’s the night for the inaugural meeting of Café Scientifique-Morris for the 2007-2008 school year. The topic is:

Food or Fuel? A simple multi-scale integrated analysis of agroecosystems

It will be presented by Abdullah Jaradat of the North Central Soil Conservation Research Lab; I suspect he’ll be talking about their research into newer, better crops for the production of energy. It should be good, come on down to the Common Cup Coffeehouse at 6!

Unfortunately, this will be one I have to miss. I have to catch a plane to San Diego for the Beyond Belief conference (perhaps I shall be live-blogging it tomorrow…or perhaps I’ll be too busy and you’ll have to wait for my summary in the evening). Instead of me doing the introductions, the delightful MC Skatje will be hosting tonight’s event, which will improve it immensely.

That holy flail

Guilt-ridden Christian: If I don’t obey God, he’s going to make me suffer for all eternity.

Evil-angelical Christian: I don’t make you obey God, I’ll be responsible for your eternal suffering.

That link will take you to a despicably manipulative video on GodTube — a dramatized letter from Hell in which a young fellow about to be thrown into the Lake of Fire screams at his still living, Christian friend for not doing enough to save him. It is genuinely vile. It is an attempt to turn a positive social value, friendship, into a rationale for browbeating people into abandoning reason and accepting a superstitious lie.

Christianity is all about death, suffering, fear, guilt, and coercion. It’s a damnable doctrine that preys on the good people want to do and turns it into a corrupting servility to a wretched dogma.