NBB Summer Program in Paris

Paris isn’t anything if not romantic. During my first weekend in Paris, I took a walk from our apartment in the 15^th arrondissement to the Seine, Champs de Mars, and Eiffel Tower. At every corner, the breathtaking architecture, aroma, and culture was inspiring and captivating. I was intrigued by the fact that over centuries social definitions of beauty for people have changed, yet French architects had created buildings whose beauty was unbowed by time. The striking fact that I was attributing beauty to an inanimate object surprised me as well. Later, I stumbled across an article that talked about the Neuroscience of Architecture and how characteristics of buildings stimulated pleasure receptors in our brain. It really is possible to fall in love with a city!

For our neuroethics class this week, we had the amazing opportunity to attend a Neuroethics conference at La Pitie Salpetriere. There, we heard conversations and seminars from leading scholars on how neuroscience has developed and what its ethical implications could be. When we walked through the hospital complex, I was amazed by the beautiful architecture and landscaping. Coming from the United States, the milieu of Salpetriere was something I had never seen before nor imagined. La Salpetriere is known as one of the birthplaces of modern neuroscience, being able to visit there and learn about how advancements in neuroscience are changing the way we see, characterize, and understand the brain was truly a dream come true.

This week I had the pleasure of visiting a Fromagerie, or cheese shop, in Paris. Growing up I had always been the cheese lover, but I hadn’t put any thought behind why humans liked cheese in the first place. A paper we were reading in class, by Ano et al. (2015), claimed that specific kinds of cheese may have anti-inflammatory properties that can help stave off neurodegeneration. The excursion for me, however, was a time to explore the enormous variety of cheese that was native to France. While I may not have loved all of them, it was really interesting to see how different region specific techniques had developed to make tasty and unique cheese.

This photo was taken when my NBB class went to attend the national rugby final at Stade de France. While I was unfamiliar with the sport, the environment was electric and it was fun to see such a high profile game at this famous stadium. This excursion tied back to my NBB 402 class’s focus on the impact concussions can have on the human brain over time. Specifically, it has been shown that rugby players have nearly 9 head impacts per match and that individuals in this population are at higher risk for neurodegenerative disorders. This experience helped me contextualize the paper we were reading in class and understand how concussions are impacting real people.

When I saw this contraption that says “Coffee + Hit = You are FIT!!” at Le Musee de Fumeur, I did not know whether to be shocked or humored. In our previous NBB402 class, we read an article about the beneficial cognitive effects cocoa flavanols (found in coffee) can have (Karabay et al., 2018). However, we did not discuss any of the ways taking a hit (quickly smoking something) could benefit one. The idea that coffee and smoking could somehow have a synergistically beneficial effect to enhance one’s fitness seems counterintuitive since smoking is known to have many detrimental effects on one’s lung health. This makes me wonder how caffeine and nicotine taken together at a high dosage could affect one’s cognitive function (whether it is beneficial or detrimental).

Citation:

Karabay, A., Saija, J. D., Field, D. T., & Akyürek, E. G. (2018). The acute effects of cocoa flavanols on temporal and spatial attention. Psychopharmacology, 235(5), 1497-1511. doi:10.1007/s00213-018-4861-4

Yesterday we visited le Musée de Fumeur to learn about the history of smoking. The museum began in a store that is in operation today, where we saw the various modes of intake for nicotine and cannabis which are in use in France today. As we continued through the rest of museum, the cultural phenomenon of smoking unfolded, ranging from tools found in tribal villages to smoking paraphernalia from the 1800’s in Paris. Like many of our visits, it may be unclear as to why a group of neuroscience students visited a museum about smoking, but is one of the most popular topics in neuroscience at the moment. For class, we recently reviewed a neuroscience article where researchers tested personality characteristics of rats and whether behavior could predict vulnerability to nicotine consumption.