Category archives: Neurobiology

Grasshopper mouse mighty powers against evil bark scorpion: a molecular tale

Grasshopper mouse mighty powers against evil bark scorpion: a molecular tale

BiochemistryBiomedicineMolecular biologyNeurobiology

By Sergio Laínez

Natural selection has been sculpturing living organisms for millions of years, enabling them to get adapted to an ever-changing environment. Gradually, certain traits are selected over others based on the advantage they confer to the population. Natural selection is not a random process and it relies on genetic variation. Random mutations serve as the substrate […]

Chasing painful channels

Chasing painful channels

Neurobiology

By Sergio Laínez

Most people have experienced how does it feel when dipping a finger into boiling water or swallowing while having tonsil inflammation. Pain may be annoying, but it is an essential protective mechanism because it warns us against potential tissue damage. This necessary role in survival is illustrated by the shortened life expectancy seen in individuals […]

Eat healthily, for your children’s sake!

Eat healthily, for your children’s sake!

BiochemistryBiomedicineMolecular biologyNeurobiology

By Carlos Romá-Mateo

Nowadays we are more aware than ever about the relevance of eating a balanced and assorted diet. However, in the more industrialized countries obesity has become almost epidemic, and it is a condition that lies at the base of many different health issues, being the cardiovascular complications probably the most obvious. But also immunological and […]

Bees are coffee addicts too

Bees are coffee addicts too

BiologyEvolutionNeurobiology

By Francisco J Hernández

As the Hungarian mathematician Alfréd Rényi famously put it (although usually misattributed to Paul Erdös), mathematicians are devices for turning coffee into theorems. Other people drink coffee for a variety of reasons, and considering that coffee is very far from being the only popular beverage containing caffeine, it is not difficult to believe that caffeine […]

Sensory competition (1): A clash of odors

Sensory competition (1): A clash of odors

Neurobiology

By Jorge Mejías

For any animal, the real world is an ever-changing environment. Continuously, even then they are just remaining in a peaceful, awake state, animals receive multiple sensory signals encoding different features of their surroundings, or even carrying information about their own internal state (orientation, body movement, or internal temperature, for example). Some of these signals might […]

Communication breakdown: schizophrenia as the outcome of subtle neuronal dysfunction

Communication breakdown: schizophrenia as the outcome of subtle neuronal dysfunction

BiomedicineNeurobiology

By Carlos Romá-Mateo

The functioning of the human brain goes far beyond a bunch of cells packed together; each of them is able to produce, receive, and transform electrical signals into a concrete response that affects the neighboring cells, counted by hundreds. This image is already complex, but if we say that the electric signals are constituted by […]