Author: Ankita Moss

This week, the Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology class visited the Musee de Fumeur in Paris. Hearing about this visit, I grew interested to see what would be inside. In fact, before the visit, our entire class began working on a paper for 402W about how nicotine affects attention. The researchers of the study used mice as the model organism for the experiment. The study analyzes how differences in baseline attention contributed to the motivation to self-administer nicotine.

Reading the paper made me think about how smoking differs amongst populations. Most of the differences are cultural. For example, the French smoke heavily whereas those in the United States stigmatize smoking to an extent. I clearly saw this cultural difference while looking around the smoking museum. For example, as soon as I walked into the museum part behind the French smoke shop, I saw glamorous pictures of people smoking. Yes, there were glamorous pictures of celebrities smoking, but this glamour also manifested itself within the old French smoking advertisements I saw all across the walls of both the museum and the smoke shop! Continue reading “Who knew a smoking museum could say so much?”

During my first week in Paris, I visited the Basilica of the Sacred Heart! Even though the walk to the basilica was very tiring, the view was certainly worth it. In fact, after climbing hundreds and hundreds of steps, one can see arguably one of the best views of Paris! It was so beautiful that I climbed those steps again just to see the view a couple weeks later. In fact, beautiful scenery like the view from the basilica can activate dopaminergic pathways in the brain! These pathways can also be reinforcing, so that explains why I really wanted to go back and stare into the skyline of the city. The next time I’m in Paris, I will definitely go climb those steps for that view again!

Our class watched the rugby final at the Stade de France! It was an unforgettable experience, as I have never attended a rugby game before. As I was walking to the rugby game, I got lost in large, loud crowds. Even though I was having trouble finding exactly where I was going, I could not help but reflect on all the enthusiasm and excitement within the crowd. Furthermore, at the rugby game, everyone was yelling for their team. In fact, the brain plays a very important part in our hearing process. The brain actually perceives these  signals through a very interesting pathway. For example, hair cells in our inner ear send electrical signals to the auditory nerve. This signal is then processed in the auditory center of the brain. I never really thought about auditory processing before, but the loud rugby game definitely made me look into it!

I was really excited to visit the Musée de l’Homme, especially after having taken the NBB 201 class combining both neuroscience and anthropology! In the museum, I listened to an audio that mimicked the vowel and consonant sounds of Neanderthals and then compared them to humans. I also learned that Neanderthals had a similarly sized Broca/Wernicke’s area to humans! It was fascinating to look at everything in the museum. I usually don’t try to read every word at a museum, but I was particularly interested in this one so that I could learn about the distinct differences and similarities in humans and Neanderthals.

One of my favorite parts of Paris was getting to live 1.5 miles from the Eiffel Tower. Every time I walked back to my apartment, I tried to spot the Eiffel Tower, as the entire NBB class only had one month to take in all of Paris. In fact, the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower was around midnight. I cannot describe how magnificent the flickering of the lights looked. I took several pictures of the tower, but I do not think anything could do the Eiffel Tower any justice. I could not believe what I was seeing, and later on, after thinking about how tall and detailed the tower looked, I thought about how our brains reconstruct our visual world. Our rods and cones actually process the signals they receive and then interpret this information. I wondered if I took in all the detail of the tower!