NBB Summer Program in Paris

Musee d’Histoire de la Medicine was established in 1905, added as a wing to the Collège de Chirurgie by architect Ginain. The museum possesses a large variety of medicinal tools, machines, writings, among other interesting medically-related items. The most ancient of items included an Egyptian form of “Sunglasses” to “scalpels” from the Roman empire. The medicinal equipment was extensive, spanning primitive forms of surgical tools, such as saws for amputations, to the first-forms of autoclaves and electrical therapy machines for depression. Passing by the surgical tools, I realized much of today’s modern medicine has made few advances in areas such as surgical tools or eye protection to name a few examples. The shapes of the blade used for surgery in the medieval ages were sometimes identical to the ones we use now, especially for orthopedic-based tools.

Continue reading “Musee d’Histoire de la Medicine”

Last Saturday night, all together with the NBB Paris group we have gone to watch the national final rugby match at Stade de France, with the intention of learning about possible head injuries the players could acquire and the long tern consequences of having repeated concussions. But we were also there to have some fun and since we knew neither of the teams, we rooted for the team whose flag we found on our seats: Montpellier Hérault Rugby.

Continue reading “Blog 2: Unexpected Rewards at Stade de France”

This past Wednesday, our NBB class visited Musée des Arts et Métiers, an industrial design museum in Paris that houses a variety of scientific instruments and inventions. As a huge science nerd, I was excited to see what instruments this museum housed.

In the “Communications” section of the museum, there were a series of display boxes showing different cameras:

Continue reading “Human Memory vs. Photographic Technology”

This past weekend, my roommates and I made it over to the Artists and Robots exhibition. The trip fit well with the upcoming topics for the week, as we discussed a lot about robotic body parts and the use of technology as an enhancement to humans. During the week we actually even watched a movie in our neuroethics class about prosthetics and some examples of how technology is being utilized to advance the body. The moment where this would propose an ethical concern is in the idea of advancing humans into non-human things–it’s difficult to draw the line between what’s acceptable and what may be too far.

On the one hand, this type of technology is allowing people with disabilities or amputated limbs to regain function in their limbs or be able to move about and walk again. On the other hand, at what point are we more robotic than human? If we replace all four limbs with bionic limbs, are they considered to be a part of our body?

Continue reading “Robots or Humans?”

This past weekend, we traveled to Stade de France to watch the Top 14 final game in France, featuring Montpellier and the Castres.  After being handed a Montpellier flag for free, we became avid fans (Fig. 1).  Unfortunately, the Castres came out on top and won the coveted Brennus Shield. During our time at the game, we saw medics come out to the field four times, 3 fights, hundreds of tackles, and I believe a couple lost teeth.  Needless to say, rugby is an unforgiving sport and results in copious amounts of player to player collisions (Fig. 2).

This high impact nature of the sport was the motivation behind a recent study that examined the effects of recurrent concussions in retired professional rugby players long-term (Decq et al., 2016).  There has been a rise in concussion research within the past couple decades, stemming from findings of brain injury and abnormalities in boxers and more recently American football players that had suffered repeated blows to the head.  However, much of the foundation of this work has been in post-mortem examinations of athletes who suffered severe neurological symptoms during their lifetime, or case studies that detail the decline in brain and cognitive functions of former contact sport athletes (Perrine, Helcer, Tsiouris, Pisapia, & Stieg, 2017). For us to establish a potentially causal link between these sports and these neurological effects, which are also prevalent to an extent in the general population, we need to perform larger scale, comparative studies, like the Decq et al. (2016) study. Continue reading “Got concussions?”

During our visit to Musée d’Histoire de la Medécine, we had the opportunity to walk through the evolution of medicine and understand how it shifted from a theoretical approach to a scientific practice backed by tangible evidence and experience. Before medicine became a scientific practice, it was very much so based on folklore and word-of-mouth. With the technological advancements and understanding of the human body that we have today, it is hard to imagine that people used to be so willing to try treatments with no actual evidence that it won’t harm them or that it even works. However, this isn’t really a different approach to medical treatments now, as most people simply want something to cure their maladies without understanding the mechanisms behind it. It’s the same ‘if it works, it works’ approach that people had before doctors could outline the positive and negative consequences of any treatment. As with any new development or discovery, we should expect that same learning curve, but now we can account for larger implications of those discoveries. Continue reading “It’s Time to Sleep!”

Who doesn’t love watching a good rugby match? The French sure do! On Saturday June 2^nd 2018, my Neuroscience class and I attended a rugby match. Apparently it was a pretty important one at that! As we hopped off the RER onto the stop where the Stade de France is located, we were greeted by enthusiastic fans; they were cheering, drinking, socializing, singing and getting hyped up for the game! It was such a great atmosphere being surrounded by a unified group of people. We walked with large crowds towards the 11^thsection of the stadium and found our seats. There were flags on our seats that we waved continuously throughout the game since we could not for the life of us figure out which team they were for (I still don’t know which team the flags represented, but hey, I always love a free souvenir ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) Continue reading “Concussed much?”

As a former football player and someone who enjoys many different sports, I would say I have a general appreciation for the difficulty and love for the game. We recently went to a rugby game, where we got to enjoy the competition for the national rugby championships of France. I must say for someone who wasn’t the most familiar with the rules, I had a lot of fun cheering for both teams as I had no allegiances. The hits in the game were the most exciting part second only to a team managing to score. The excitement from the crowd was palpable from the beginning of the game to the end every time there was a hit. There were at least 10 instances where a player who was hit was down on the field and took an extended period of time to get up, accompanied by trainers who likely provided a painkiller. As much as this was part of the sport and how much I was impressed by the hits and physical prowess of the players, I could not help but think- this must have short and long term effects on the brains of these players! I knew a little about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and how it was a neurodegenerative disease that affected most of the players in the National Football League (NFL) in the United States, but I had wondered what effect this may have for rugby players, who played the sport without pads or helmets (Casson et al, 2014). Continue reading “Should Rugby Be Celebrated?”

France is world-famous for their cuisine, and no food from here may be more renowned than French cheese. Each region of France produces particular varieties, and strict protocols govern their production. The result is that many distinct French cheeses exist, each with a patently unique flavor profile. This week, we had the privilege of being able to sample a broad selection of French cheeses at the Fromagerie Jouannault.

Modern demand for French cheese has created a unique problem. The market is being forced to mass produce popular varieties, and at times these formerly strict protocols have been compromised. An example of this issue is the contemporary production of Camembert cheese, a variety we studied for its anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective effects (Ano et al.). Traditionally, Camembert is produced from raw milk in small batches, but now some mass production is occurring using pasteurized cheese. This compromises the flavor profile and reduces the integrity of the variety’s brand. Continue reading “What Cheese can be Used to Encourage a Bear? … Camembert!”

Over this past weekend, my roommates and I toured almost all of the main Paris highlights, covering enough distance to walk across the diameter of Paris and back. The moment we were set free in the city, our first stop was to visit the illustrious museé de Louvre.  After getting sidetracked in every room along the way by some masterpiece or another, and following some other equally confused tourists, we finally made it to the Mona Lisa.  I had to push some innocent bystanders out of the way but was able to make to the front, directly in front of Mona herself, and she did not disappoint (Figure 1).

Over recent decades, research in the visual system and neural processing of visual arts has grown.  There are novel insights into how visual information is sent to the brain, as well as how different pathways and even disorders help us understand how art is viewed and created.  Ironically, this path has led us to much of the same conclusions and tactics that visual artists have been using for centuries.  Leonardo da Vinci’s perhaps most renowned masterpiece is often characterized by her overall sense of ambiguity.  Whether intentional or not, Mona Lisa appears almost androgynous, her gaze appears to follow you without making direct eye contact, and she sits there with the tiniest suggestion of a smile.  The most typical question you are supposed to ask yourself while looking at her is whether or not she is smiling.  Art historians will call her coy, playful, or confusing and accredit this to an intentionally blurry depiction of her mouth.  However, work by renowned neurobiologist Dr. Margaret Livingstone may provide a purely scientific explanation for this, and has helped me apply my vast NBB301 visual system knowledge.
Continue reading “Mona Lisa Smile”