In Père Lachaise Cimetière lays the body of the great Frédéric Chopin, a famous composer and pianist. He primarily wrote solo piano pieces so you could imagine how much repetitive finger movements he made. In NBB 301, we learned about the effects of repetitive motion on the cortical representation of afferent neurons. You could imagine that the part of Chopin’s motor cortex that corresponds to his fingers were much larger than that of the average person. Well, maybe since we type on computers regularly the average motor cortex would look more like Chopin’s than in it would have 25 years ago?
Where I’m standing in this photo is where the guillotine once stood. There are five bars on the ground that mark the footprint of the famous decapitation apparatus. There’s been a decent amount of speculation with decapitation regarding the conscious state of the head immediately following. Although the spinal cord is severed, the brain doesn’t die immediately, so I would argue that the head is not conscious enough to make any movements but still has some sensory input from the eyes and sensation in the head that are briefly being processed.
At our visit to the fromagerie, we tasted many different types of cheese, including one that was featured in a recently published paper on the effects of dehydroergosterol on microglial inflammation activity – camembert. Though the photo doesn’t show camembert, it depicts a cheese fermented with a specific type of bacteria that creates a fuzzy blue and white rind. We learned from the paper that the type of bacteria used to ferment the cheese can change its biological properties. For camembert, Penicillium candidum fermented cheese decreases microglial inflammatory response by the greatest margin.
This painting was in Le Centre Pompidou and it caught my eye because I couldn’t decide if there were faces in it or not. At this point, I knew my fusiform face area was hard at work but my superior temporal sulcus wasn’t very active because there weren’t any changes in facial expression. In the end, I decided that there is at least one intentionally placed face with a red eye on the far left because I consistently recognize it thanks to my FFA.
When I visited Le Centre Pompidou, I came across this sculpture of a man hugging a girl who is kissing another man. I was quick to assume that the sculpture depicted an unfaithful situation, but then I got to thinking about pair bonding in prairie voles. Prairie voles, as compared to montane voles, have a higher concentration of oxytocin (in females) and vasopressin (in males) receptors that facilitate the formation of a strong partner preference. Although humans also have the ability to bond, they don’t share the same mechanisms with prairie voles. The science could argue that humans are more willing and able to break bonds than voles – not something most would expect.
These are pictures from another one of our excursions to the Fromagerie Jouannault, where our taste buds went on a journey to experience the various cheeses of France. I was honestly a bit nervous for this trip, because I’m admittedly a picky eater. However, I took a brave stance and tried every single cheese laid out for us to try, and this experience was probably one of my top 3 favorite excursions! As we discussed in our 402 class, some dairy products, including Camembert cheese found here in France, have anti-inflammatory effects and may have the potential to prevent dementia. I’m not going to lie, once we learned about these effects I was tempted to buy a year’s supply!
During our trip to the Loire Valley, I had, quite possibly, the best crepe I have ever had. It was a savory one with mushrooms, tomatoes, some greens, and balsamic vinegar. Voilà! I was overwhelmed with emotions and wish I could replicate the dish. The nucleus accumbens and the VTA are associated with pleasure and reward in the brain. When people smoke cigarettes or eat chocolate, these areas become activated. Mine definitely became activated–especially with the sugar crepe that was included for dessert!
My neuroscience class visited Chateau d’Amboise on Friday, June 15. This beautiful chateau overlooked the Loire River and was used by many French royals. Our tour guide, Roxie, was telling us about all of the royals who spent time in this chateau, including Henry the Eighth.
Roxie told us an interesting fact that Henry VIII had syphilis. His wives, Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, had numerous miscarriages which lead people to believe that Henry VIII had some disease that spread to his wives and affected their ability to carry children. I looked into this topic a little more and what I learned leads me to believe that Henry VIII did not have syphilis which is what some people still believe.
On Monday, the NBB Paris crew took a trip to the Musée du Chocolat. After an hour of mastering the history of cocoa bean trade and origins of chocolate production, we had the opportunity to learn the chocolatiering craft. We were brought to the kitchen of Monsieur Chocolatier (name unknown), where he taught us how to make chocolate molds, fill them, and seal them. He said that we were less skilled and louder than the groups of children he taught (perhaps with the exception of Ashley and I, who will be releasing our new chocolate line shortly). He also said that he liked that we were loud because it meant we were happy. Apparently, his French visitors are very serious about their chocolate education and rarely smile in his class. From the pictures taken during our lesson and at the museum, Monsieur Chocolatier seems to have spoken the truth. Even beyond the chocolate museum, the NBB group seems to be radiating positive emotions in response to French novelties (and French food). The following is a sneak peak of my photo collection “PA Paris” and a neuroscience review of positive emotion experience. For reference, PA stands for Positive Affect state, a state in which humans report to feel fundamentally happy. The most effective method to measure this state is debated among neuroscientists, but self-report ratings and observation of unconditioned behavior such as Duchenne smiling are frequently used (Burgdof and Panksepp, 2006).
We visited a chocolate museum/workshop on Monday. The museum displays the history of cocoa consumption, the techniques of making chocolate and things that are made of chocolate but seem like they are made of other materials. There is free chocolate everywhere in the museum. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a disproportionally large stomach, and therefore I always appreciated places where I can eat as much food as I want. I paced myself, however, because I knew there would be more coming once we were in the workshop.
Cocoa beans, which are the raw material for chocolate, are not cultivated in France: they are mainly produced in tropical African, Asian and American countries. So French is not that unique in respect to chocolate: everyone’s chocolate is made of beans from countries such as Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Indonesia and Nigeria (Mattyasovszky, 2017). The French, however, create pieces of chocolate so pretty that they are worth building a museum for. I remember that my dad once brought me a box of chocolate from France years ago, and I could not eat it because it was so pretty. So I just kept them until they had gone bad. I would not expect to see a similar place in the US because people do not care too much about how their chocolate looks.
We went to the workshop after the museum. The chocolate expert made the process look easy, but it was not. We had to dump the warmed up liquid chocolate into the mold quickly before it cooled down and hardened. We had to hit the mold on the side with the spatula, and the melted chocolate just fell everywhere: on the table, on our hands, and on our cloth. I ate all the chocolate that landed on my hands. Then we added hazelnut filling and another layer of chocolate before putting it in the fridge to cool. The end result was not ideal, as half of my chocolate pieces were broken. But I took a lot of chocolate scratched from the table, so I was happy.
I Made Chocolate!
Do you know that one study has shown that eating cocoa flavanol (a component of chocolate) regularly might improve cognitive function in elderly people who have mild cognitive impairment (Desideri et al., 2012)? More studies found evidence of the potential cognitive benefit of chronic intake of cocoa flavanol (Socci et al., 2017). So I hope my brain will become healthier as I eat all the chocolate scratched from the table.
Chocolate Scratched From the Table
Reference
Desideri, Giovambattista, Kwik-Uribe, Catherine, Grassi, Davide, Necozione, Stefano, Ghiadoni, Lorenzo, Mastroiacovo, Daniela, . . . Ferri, Claudio. (2012). Benefits in cognitive function, blood pressure, and insulin resistance through cocoa flavanol consumption in elderly subjects with mild cognitive impairment: The Cocoa, Cognition, and Aging (CoCoA) study. Hypertension., 60(3), 794-801.
Mattyasovszky, M. (2015, April 23). Top 10 Cocoa Producing Countries. Retrieved from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/top-10-cocoa-producing-countries.html
Socci, V., Tempesta, D., Desideri, G., De Gennaro, L., & Ferrara, M. (2017). Enhancing Human Cognition with Cocoa Flavonoids. Frontiers in Nutrition., 4, 19.
