The most exciting blogging moment of 2013 for me was probably when I discovered that my idea about linking synaesthesia with the immune system, and idea which I published in the winter of 2012 at the blog, had been recycled without my permission in a paper that was published in October 2013 in a journal that is apparently peer reviewed and all that fancy stuff. Of course, the big excitement of 2012 was thinking of this idea along with a suite of more important and related ideas, and the excitement continued this year as I read more about the work of researchers such as Carla Shatz, Ben Barres, Beth Stevens and Marie-Eve Tremblay who are busy pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge about the complex relationship between elements of the immune system and elements of the brain. It’s a wide open and potentially very important new area of scientific discovery, and below are the details of some items that you can read if you wish to find out what the excitement is about. Have an exciting new year.
Miller, Kenneth Brain benders. Discover. October 2013. p. 30-37. http://discovermagazine.com/2013/oct/12-brain-benders#.UsL_B_QW18E (disregard the guff in this article about autism and schizophrenia)
Costandi, Moheb The mind minders. New Scientist. Issue 2938 October 12th 2013. p. 45-47. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029381.000-the-mind-minders-meet-our-brains-maintenance-workers.html
One thing in the world of popular science writing that hasn’t been so inspiring and exciting in 2013 is the famous Dr Karl Kruszelnicki’s latest pop science book on the 2013 Christmas gift book market, titled Game of Knowns. The book has a chapter in it about the blood-brain barrier. The concept of a blood-brain barrier is an established and accepted idea in medicine, but I think that the new area of research about the varied and important roles in brain development and brain maintenance of cells and chemicals that were previously thought to be limited to playing roles in the immune system are very important exceptions to the old notion that the brain is normally quarantined from the immune system by the blood-brain barrier. I’ve had a quick look at Dr Karl’s new book, and it appears to me that the chapter about the blood-brain barrier fails to mention the role of these immune cells and chemicals in the brain, things such as microglia, MHC1 and complement system proteins. It appears to me that the chapter in Dr Karl’s book is dated and seriously incomplete, and missing some exciting material. Even for a populariser of science, I expect more.
Am I a super-recognizer? 