There’s been a fair flap lately about John Horgan’s argument that optogenetics and its potential have been overhyped by both scientists and some journalists (including myself, I think, from my inclusion in one paragraph listing “glowing coverage”). I like it that Horgan is pushing back a bit, because I think the field stands in danger of […]
Continue reading →All mice groom themselves to keep their fur clean, but some in a lab in Columbia University, New York, have started grooming to an unusual and excessive degree. This isn’t vanity. Instead, it’s the rodent equivalent of the repetitive rituals that many people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) go through, like an irresistible urge to wash […]
Continue reading →I resist best-of-year roundups when I see the heads — but then find I usually like reading them, and lo and behold, find it instructive to do my own. While most of my attention last year went into pitching and then beginning work on The Orchid and the Dandelion, I spent a lot of time […]
Continue reading →Not making this up: A team of researchers has used light to make a mouse’s brain run better and relieve the mouse’s mousy version of depression. (Paper — a pdf download — is here.) This is potentially pretty big. For one thing, it’s what science writer John Pavlus would call awesome. For another, it expands […]
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