On Monday, we went to a chocolate museum, which went well with the paper we were writing at the time about the effects of cocoa flavanols on attention. At this museum, we started out learning about the history of chocolate and got to taste samples periodically throughout the museum. Milk chocolate is usually my favorite, but the white chocolate samples were equally good here. At the end, we even got to learn how to make our own! The process was extremely messy but a lot of fun at the same time. We had to make chocolate shells, add in some filling, and cover the end with more chocolate. My first tray was ruined because we waited too long to pour the chocolate, so it was extremely hard to pour. Luckily, we were allowed to try again with another tray.

Figure 1. Me and my roommates with the chocolate we made!

Continue reading “Chocolate and Memory”

I have always been a fan of chocolate. Ever since I was a little kid, any box, bag, or bar of chocolate barely lasted a day in our house before my brother, and I devoured it. Who could blame us? The rich and sweet taste of chocolate was irresistible, and it never got boring. Throughout the years I had never questioned my love for chocolate. I found my love supported by the hundreds of commercials that aired on TV displaying different types of this sweet treat. This week, for my Neuroscience class we analyzed a paper on cocoa flavanols—an ingredient in chocolate. I was surprised! Could our societal love for chocolate have a biological basis?

To supplement our cocoa flavanol exploration, we also visited a chocolate museum to understand chocolate’s history. It was very interesting to see the different ways chocolate was prepared in different areas and times throughout history. In ancient South American Civilizations, cocoa beans were used as currency and were even often offered to deities. It was clear to see that cocoa beans held tremendous value to the people of these civilizations. Later, we even had the opportunity to make chocolate ourselves. It was amazing to see the chocolate making process and how it has evolved over human history. Continue reading “Craving something new!”

Throughout my life, I’ve never had any real problems when it comes to language barriers. In the several weeks I’ve been in Paris, however, I’ve experienced some difficulties because I don’t speak French. As much as I try, I can’t even get myself to pronounce a word in French correctly. This made me wonder why humans have such complex languages, and how this unique human feature evolved. Language is, after all, the greatest social tool we possess (Ardilla, 2015). Yesterday, we visited the Musée de l’homme, an anthropology museum in Paris, and I got an insight onto how this human ability might have developed.

The first part of the museum we visited was the Neanderthal exhibit. Here, we learned that Neanderthals are an extinct species in the genus Homo, who lived in Euroasia roughly 430,000 years ago. What sparked my attention, however, was a section in which morphological characteristics such as the lowered larynx and the hyoid bone of the Neanderthal were identified, and these confirmed that Neanderthals could articulate a great number of sounds: among them vowels. Not only that, but the FoxP2 gene, similar to the one associated with language in modern humans, was present in their DNA. Neanderthals also had intricate social structures and symbolic thought, two things that may be evidence of a complex form of communication. In the brain, their Broca’s and Wernicke’s area for language were well developed. Ardilla 2015 says “It is proposed that grammar originated from the internal representation of actions, resulting in the creation of verbs; this is an ability that depends on the so-called Broca’s area.” This made me wonder how far behind in our history language goes.

Continue reading “The Evolution of Language”

Last Tuesday we were finishing up our last few classes reading about and discussing the cognitive enhancement effects seen in chocolate. Because France is known for their rich chocolate, to celebrate our new knowledge of the field we went off to visit a chocolate museum. However, there was more than met the eye at this particular museum. On the basement floor, there was an area where the owners made chocolate themselves, which you could buy in the gift store, but, even more exciting, you could also make the chocolate yourselves!

At the museum I wandered around looking at the the history of chocolate, but as I looked at and read about the historical and ritual practices of chocolate, in the back of my mind I was thinking about getting to make the chocolate myself (and of course eat it)! Continue reading “Chocolate and Happiness”

This week we went to the Le Musée Gourmand Du Chocolat, where we not only toured the museum, but we also participated in a workshop where we learned (hands-on!) part of how chocolate is made. The museum was very thorough, beginning with how cocoa beans were used by indigenous Americans for making drinks and even trading as currency. What we learned about the purported health benefits of chocolate from the museum tied into what we learned in class about cocoa flavanols’ potential ability to sharpen our brains’ function. An article we discussed this week at length and wrote a review article on provided evidence that cocoa flavanols “enhance the efficiency of spatial attention” (Karabay, Saija, Field, & Akyürek 2018). Therefore, chocolate may not only be good for our taste buds, but also our brains!

The chocolate workshop was really interesting because the chef at the museum that ran our workshop taught us a lot about how different beans are selected for different flavors, how beans are prepared to make different kinds of chocolate, and how different fillings are added to create various chocolatey delights.

Continue reading “Chocolate: Good for the Brain, Good for the Soul”

On an excursion to Musee de l’Homme Neantherthal, our class ventured into human history. When I say human, I’m referring to the hominid family, which encompasses several species within the homo genus from which our modern human lineage formed. Long ago, in early human evolution, we co-inhabited this planet with other species of hominids, including Neanderthals. Neanderthals only recently went extinct at around 35,000 years ago. Leaving behind skeletons, skull bones, and Lithic tools, Neanderthals have left scientists with enough information to piece together their 350,000 plus history on earth as well as insights to the known Neanderthal-Sapien encounters that occurred in our migration out of Africa (“Néandertal L’Expo,” 2018).

The exhibit displayed old hunting and cooking tools of these ancient humans, dwellings that have been attributed to Neanderthal tribes, simulations of their sounds and language, analysis of the Neanderthal brains based on fossil records, replications of the Neanderthal male and female, and hypothesises around the encounters that occurred between our own species and this extinct species. Interestingly enough, Neanderthal DNA was found in modern humans. When we encounter this species, genetic testing suggests that interbreeding definitely occurred. Genomic studies discovered that keratin filament genes in non-African humans display a high frequency of Neanderthal alleles. These findings suggest Neanderthal alleles may have improved our ability to adapt to the non-African regions. While some Neanderthal DNA may contribute to our global existence today, the study also found some Neanderthal alleles found in our DNA today can confer risk of disease. These disease include lupus, biliary cirrhosis, Crohn’s disease, optic-disk size, smoking behaviour, IL-18 levels and type 2 diabetes (Sankaraman et. al., 2014).

Continue reading “Musee de l’Homme Neantherthal Exhibit”