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Happy New Year from Neuroscience for Kids!
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Welcome to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter.
In this issue:
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Neuroscience for Kids had several new additions in December including:
A. December Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter was archived
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/news2012.html
B. Neuroscience in the News
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/inthenews.html
The Neuroscience for Kids "Site of the Month" for January is the "Harvard Brain Tour" at:
The Harvard Brain Tour web site takes you on a neuroscience journey through the lens of Harvard University. Launched in 2016, this web site is a collection of pages highlighting specific neuroscientific discoveries, artifacts and inventions associated with Harvard University.
Among the many articles on the web site is the story of Phineas Gage, the railroad foreman who had a tamping iron shot through his skull in 1848. You can see Gage's skull and the tamping iron if you visit the Countway Library of Medicine in Boston. Also, read about David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, two Harvard University professors who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1981 for their work about information processing in the visual system. All of the articles are illustrated with colorful pictures and have links you can follow to learn more. Videos are also available if you navigate to the "Click/Watch/Learn" tab at the top of the site.
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There is one more month to send in your entry to the 2018 NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS POETRY WRITING CONTEST. Students (kindergarten through high school, undergraduate, graduate), teachers and parents are all welcome to enter the contest. Use your imagination to create a poem, limerick or haiku about the brain and you might win a prize. The complete set of rules and the official entry form for the contest are available at:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/contest18.htmlEntries must be received by the February 1, 2018 deadline.
__________________________________________________________Smell is a sense that is strongly tied to memory and emotions. But how do you sell a scent? Perfume and cologne manufacturers spend millions of dollars advertising their fragrances and last month I noticed plenty of advertisements for their products. Maybe it was the time of year, but there seemed to be more of these ads than usual on TV. The more perfume ads I saw, the more I found them to be very strange. In most cases, it was difficult to know what was being advertised until a picture of the perfume bottle appeared at the end of the commercial.
You've likely seen these fragrance ads -- they often show a model or celebrity frolicking at the beach or attending a fancy party. I even saw one with actor Johnny Depp wandering around a desert. It must challenging for ad agencies to sell an odor, but why do the ads seem to have nothing to do with the product? Commercials for other products at least tell you something about the item. For example, a car company tells you how fast a car accelerates or how nicely it handles and a beverage company might tell you that their drink has more lemon-lime flavor than other drinks. But I've never seen an ad that describes a perfume by the way it smells. Instead, perfume advertisers try to convince consumers that wearing a specific scent will somehow provide people with the lifestyle they see in the ad.
Perhaps describing the actual smell of a fragrance, for example, "fruity with a hint of musk," won't sell the product. Nevertheless, the fragrance ads I've seen make no "sense" to me.
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A. "Does Mindfulness Really Work" is the cover story of the January-February 2018 issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND magazine.
B. "Rap Guide to Consciousness"is a new off-Broadway show by Baba Brinkman. Performances at the Soho Playhouse in New York City, March 1, 2018 - April 29, 2018: http://www.sohoplayhouse.com/event/45fadfa0b02552a56f009ed0741c7ea8
C. "War Against Ourselves" by Michael Waldholz and "The Toxic Well of Loneliness" by Francine Rosso in the January 2018 issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.
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A. The scallop has 200 eyes that focus light on two retinas (Source: Palmer et al., The image-forming mirror in the eye of the scallop, Science. Vol. 358, December 1, 2017, p. 1172. doi:10.1126/science.aam9506.)
B. Approximately 6 million Americans currently have Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive impairment; this number is expected to increase to 15 million by 2060. (Source: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/new-forecast-shows-6-million-alzheimers-disease-cognitive-impairment
C. Between 1.1 and 1.9 million sports- and recreation-related concussions occur in children 18 years and younger in the United States each year. (Source: Bryan, M.A., Rowhani-Rahbar, A., Comstock, R.D., Rivara, F. and Seattle Sports Concussion Research Collaborative, Sports- and Recreation-Related Concussions in US Youth, Pediatrics, 2016 Jul;138(1). pii: e20154635. doi: 10.1542/peds.2015-4635.)
D. An oligodendrocyte is a type of glial cell that provides support and myelin to axons in the central nervous system. The word "oligodendrocyte" comes from Greek meaning "few tree cell."
E. Dr. May-Britt Moser, a neuroscientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2014, was born on January 4, 1963.
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Help Neuroscience for Kids
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Your comments and suggestions about this newsletter and the "Neuroscience for Kids" web site are always welcome. If there are any special topics that you would like to see on the web site, just let me know.
Eric
Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D.
(e-mail: chudler@u.washington.edu)
(URL:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html)