Twitter and What I Found There

     The world has steadily become more social media based, and while some of older generations laud this as the end of intelligence and human interaction, truly this is the era of accessibility to information. On the very popular site of Twitter, although it is mostly used for following celebrities and documenting day to day life, you can in fact find information and links to nearly every subject one may be interested in. Even the most scientific fields, like neuroscience, my major, have Twitters documenting the events happening in the field for all to see and read more about.

How Do Brains Talk About Themselves?

     Mostly brains seem to be sharing, through the bodies they control, news articles and updates on new information about the brain. A lot of the tweets are links to articles about important discoveries about certain medicines or research studies going down in neuroscience news.One specific PhD neuroscience student's twitter, @_Anthropoid, not only has links to articles but also speaks live about any seemingly random brain question one might have through sources like podcasts.

LeBlanc, Reigh. "Reigh's Brain rlwat1" 04/05/2005 via Flickr.
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Something Absolutely Twitterpating

      On the official neuroscience news twitter, @NeuroscienceNew, which links to the Neuroscience News official site, the post I found most interesting dealt with blood pressure medicine potentially helping effect Alzheimer's; the pills showed that they prevented some damage usually would occur in cells in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. This post was of an importance to me because I hope to go into the research of Alzheimer's but honestly I would be more happy if a cure was found even before I got into working on it.
     In the twitter of Neuroscience PhD student Ian McLaughlin, the post that intrigued me the most dealt with split brain patients. While I was unable to hear the podcast that the student participated in, the video was very interesting; it is fascinating to see how the brain is connected to control the body and the smallest alteration of that connection changes the extent of how one organ controls what it is supposed to.

Are They As Nerdy As Expected?
     When I went searching for twitter pages within my field I found exactly what I expected: a bunch of nerds. In all seriousness it's exciting to see how the conversations in my field surround new discoveries al the time about possible brain cures or different facts discovered about the brain. It's terrifyingly amazing that the organ we know least about in it's workings controls our entire body and life.