Eat your eggs and get some sleep

Duke neuroscientist Wilkie "Bill" Wilson has given US News & World Report blogger Nancy Shute a quick tutorial on how teenage brains can learn better. It's familiar, common-sense advice, (sleep well, eat right, exercise, feed your brain steadily, not in binges, etc.) but it's all backed by science. You may notice that slumping on the couch in front of the TV is NOT on the list.

Next year, the result of all this thinking about brains rolls out as DukeLEARN, a new health curriculum for ninth graders being piloted in the some NC schools. Wilson, a research scientist in Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, has been working for a decade on educating teens about the perils of drug use, especially as it concerns their tender young minds, and has published three books: "Buzzed: The straight facts about the most used and abused drugs from alcohol to ecstasy," "Pumped: Straight facts about drugs, supplements, and training," and "Just Say Know: Talking with kids about drugs and alcohol," all with W. W. Norton.

In developing the books and doing speaking engagements around the country, his team came to realize that they could build a whole curriculum around the care and feeding of your brain.

"We spend all this time teaching to their brains, but never teach them how to care for and use this tool!" he said.

Wilson's preliminary work on DukeLEARN has been supported by a seed grant from Duke's Center for Child and Family Policy, but he's seeking more funding to expand the program.

Neurobiology of Addiction

From Monte Basgall:

The same biological system that makes the body give in to drugs is tied to a sense of bodily well being, Duke pharmacology professor Cynthia Kuhn said in a Sept 4 lunchtime talk on "the neurobiology of addiction." That means "addiction is at its core a biological phenomenon" and "dopamine gets things started," she told a group in the Sanford Institute's Rhodes Conference Room.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that nerve cells release to "make us like things that are life sustaining," according to Kuhn. That chemical spreads the good word to other responsive nerve cells by activating their own dopamine receptors. But drugs like cocaine, marijuana, alcohol and heroin can hihjack the process by activating those same dopamine receptors. Biologically drug-prone individuals then become adapted to that external stimulation and digress from being "dependent" -- meaning their tissues only function normally in the drug's presence -- to becoming addicted.

With addiction's onset, those compulsive drug cravings grow so powerful that users are willing to endure increasingly negative consequences to acquire the increasing amounts needed to retain any sense of pleasure. "Animals and people will self administer drugs until they die," Kuhn said. "They will skip work and not take care of their children." The prefrontal cortex, a dopamine-targeted brain area involved in prioritizing behavior, begins sending out drug-seeking orders. Tests show lab animals on drugs begin acting impulsively, for example by pulling the "reward" handle before the light they are trained to respond to comes on.

And what about genetics? While Kuhn said there is not a single, overarching "addiction gene," researchers have identified a number of candidate genes involved in the drug addiction process.

Fortunately, addiction-prone individuals are in the minority. Only about 20 percent of animals tested display addictive behavior, and those also tend to be the most impulsive, Kuhn said. Other studies have found that addicts have fewer than normal dopamine receptors. In fact, the dopamine system itself is one or several potential targets for drug treatment. Animals whose dopamine responding nerve cells have been destroyed or disabled, for example, avoid taking drugs.

Now Look Here

The Visualization Friday Forum got underway for its seventh season today, with scientific visualization guru Rachael Brady leading off. Her talk was a sort of "what we did last summer," but with Brady having a hand in just about every cool project on campus, "actually it's just some of what my group did this summer!" she said.

The SoundSpace installation at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham has been a big hit, Brady said. Kids dance and jump in a space covered by nine webcams and a score written by music professor Scott Lindroth responds aurally.

The video wall in the uber-tech new Link space in Perkins Library isn't running just yet, but it'll be sweet. It's a 20-by-5-foot HD video wall just begging for content, she said. "It's not trivial designing content for 48 screens that function as one."

The Friday Forums are very cool, if you haven't gleaned that yet, and Brady does a good job of bringing in both the programming types and the scientific types to talk about ways to turn data into compelling visuals.
(To sign up for VFF emails - email sympa@duke.edu and put "SUBSCRIBE visualization" in the body of the message.)

Awesome Ichabod

Duke's Lemur Center is proud to announce the birth of their second Aye-Aye baby to captive-bred parents. Ichabod arrived July 23 and is thriving ... noisily.

Not only are these nocturnal bug-eaters exceedingly rare and threatened, their captive-bred parents weren't too well versed on how to make babies. It took DLC Assistant Director Dean Gibson more than two years of coaching and coaxing to get Ichabod's dad, Merlin, to do his stuff. But man, he gets it now!

Duke's story and video

San Francisco Zoo's Captive-born Aye Aye (#2 in the world). Duke helped.

Finally, some awesome BBC footage of an Aye-Aye feeding in the wild. Note the combination of bat ears, beaver teeth and a hand like no other. The grubs don't stand a chance!