Not Pinky

"They're Pinky and the Brain, Pinky and the Brain. One is a genius, the other's insane. They're laboratory mice - their genes have been spliced - they're dinky, they're Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain."

When I was in high school, brain imaging studies were new. There was a theory floating out there that we only used 10% of our brains. I'm never sure where this theory came from because it's one of the stupidest theories ever. Brains use a HUGE percentage of our energy intake. And any scientist, at least any (ahem) materials scientist, knows that everything tends toward a low energy state. Things that require lots of energy to sustain don't get sustained if they aren't important. This goes for muscles and neurons. If we only regularly used 10% of our brains, our brains would shrink to the size of a golf ball, just like our muscles wither and bones lose density if we stay inactive. Even plants do the same - removed from stressors like insects, they don't produce as much of their protective chemicals until the stressors come back. Our bodies plain wouldn't waste the calories on an inactive brain. Brains are enormously important and the body knows it and does a lot to protect them. If you don't eat? Your brain can starve - but only after it sucks nutrients out of every last cell you have outside your brain. But we're not perfect protectors of our brains.

There's a lot to love in this SEED mag article about neruogenesis including the theory (almost certainly correct and primary) that Prozac works by increasing brain cell growth, which is why its effects are delayed several weeks from initiation of treatment. Brains take a lot of energy and coordination. If they're not in the habit of growin, it can take a while to turn it around, grow new bits, link them up, and get them to be a useful part of the network.

But the article points out one of the things that pisses me off most about scientists and science news - scientists will dismiss ideas they can't fit in the current model, until they're forced to see a new model. On the one hand, science allows for new models. On the other hand, people resist change, have a vested (short term) interest in being seen to be right over actually being right, and not every crackpot theory is worth the bother of responding to.

But neurogenesis? Why would that ever be crackpot? Every other part of our body regenerates, why not our brains? "Scientists" dismissed brain growth for years and years. The article even says "10 years ago no one could have imagined that brains grew." Well, I wish I was blogging 10 years ago because I can tell you now that I imagined it then. Learning can't just reroute existing bits, there has to be some growth. It's only sensible. I think it's why reading and driving and paying attention in museums is so exhausting - your brain is consuming your energy allotment. The more you exercise it, the more it gets used to using the energy, and that energy has to do something beyond quivering.

The other "no one thought of that" was the cage environment. A lot of scientists didn't think the cage environment for rats and monkeys affected their experiments because it was a controlled, consistent environment. But we know people go quite insane when locked in solitary confinement, why wouldn't other social mammals? It has always been curious to me that people would dismiss the "home" environment of a lab rat as inconsequential. Yes, it can be tough to control an experiment if you've infected some rats and not others and they can't mix. But in recent years, researchers have found that enhanced environments means their little specimens live longer, heal faster, and grow better. Perhaps neurogenesis was never observed in caged monkeys because their boring sterile environment away from the comforting touch of friends and relatives led to brain tissue die off far outpacing neurogenesis.

Anyhow, statements like "no one could imagine it" really irk the bejezus out of me. But it irks me more to see the work of honest, outside-the-box-thinking scientists marginalized because of it. The extra special perk of this article is that a female researcher and professor is getting the snaps for "inventing" the field. Which really means changing the model. And here's hoping our brains are better for it.