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getting a sketchy feeling...

August 24, 2012

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most people daydream about their celebrity crush, i dream of neuroscience.

p.

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My Experiences with Cupping Therapy

Dry cupping with plastic suction cups, like the ones used on me. Air is removed with a pump, raising the skin & dilating blood vessels. It's uncomfortable, but non-painful, feels like the skin is being stretched, and looks as though there's a ping-pong ball beneath the skin! After hearing about the success of cupping therapy from two of my lab-mates (both of whom I trust to be very empirical and objective people), I thought I would give it a try for myself. Cupping has been practiced for thousands of years, and has even been documented in one of the earliest medical texts, the Ebers Papyrus . Cupping is a common practice of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), but is also practiced by a variety of other cultures, including many Islamic groups in the Middle East (even the Prophet Muhammad has approved of the Hijamah ). Cupping is often used in combination with another form of therapy or treatment, and has been used to treat a multitude of conditions: Skin problems:

Dr. Sukhvinder Obhi - Separating Mimics and Mirrors

While many researchers simply assume that the process of social mimicry (i.e., unconsciously performing similar actions to someone you are engaging with) are attributable to the activation of mirror neurons , there is not much empirical evidence to support this. Utilizing cognitive neuroscience techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and EEG/EMG recordings, Dr. Sukhvinder Obhi (McMaster University) has sought a direct connection between mimicry behaviourally and activation of mirror neuron systems, as revealed by motor resonance (MR), neurophysiologically in a series of research studies. Dynamic modulation of the motor cortex was observed during an action observation task (i.e., video of a hand squeezing a ball) following a staged social interaction with covert mimicry of the naive subject by the experimental confederate. In different conditions, subjects were primed with words suggesting interdependence (i.e., "together"), independence (i.e.

Mapping ROIs onto an Inflated Brain in BrainVoyagerQX

Thanks to my labmate Mike , and putting our two resourceful grad student brains together, we figured out how to create some awesome looking figures in BrainVoyager. Ever want to show your ROI on an inflated brain? Look no further than this brilliant plugin, with 32-bit, 64-bit AND MAC versions! Now all of your publication-quality ROI figures are just a few clicks away! Tips/Steps: 1. Load your tal.vmr with your ROIs (no VTC required) 2. Load/create a mesh for your subjects' brain (or an avergae brain depending on what you want to show) 3. Once you place the VOI->POI plugin into your Plugins_32 or Plugins_64 folder (in My Documents/BVQXExtensions), it should show up in the Plug-ins menu in BVQX. Just click on it and select the number of millimeters you want the vectors for the surface coordinates to be The default is 2mm, so BVQX will create surface coordinate vectors, measured in vertices, 2mm around the ROI coordinates, which are measured in voxels). 4. Flip over to

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