RECENT POSTS 
A long time ago, I heard that my great uncle—he was only referred to as Uncle Sepp—collected butterflies. Someone in my family mentioned it. Actually, Uncle Sepp was a butcher. He lived in New Jersey. (I can't but think of Satriale's Pork Store.) Last month, when I was there, in Newark at the NJIT, it got me interested again. Uncle Sepp is already about 30 years dead, but still. Over Christmas, I asked again in my family. His name was... Read more
I am on my way to the FENS-IBRO-Hertie Winter School "Brain Dynamics and Dynamics of Brain Disease". My slides are here. I am quite happy to see that it actually becomes less remarkable that brain dynamics in disorders like Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, autism, schizophrenia, sleep disorders, stroke, and---not least--- migraine should be described in terms of mathematics. Of course, there is no other language for dynamics. Now, we even have a Winter School devoted to the topic. Already Freud thought... Read more
Some time ago, we published a paper in PLoS ONE on early migraine symptoms called migraine aura. These symptoms can be mapped onto the human cortical surface. We used individual drawings of the visual field defects in visual migraine aura and MRI scanner readings from the same person. (The annotation is in German. "rechtes Gesichtsfeld" means "right visual hemifield" and "linke Sehrinde" menas "left visual cortex") A neurologist at the University of Utah, KC Brennan, reports now that once we... Read more
I thought about writing a new manuscript for the high profile journal PNAS, the Proceedings of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Searching first for PNAS member editors is probably not a bad idea. I was struck. None? Did I misspell migraine? No. Let's try headache, maybe "headache" works. Again no one. That rang a bell. Didn't I just read about a comparison that first seemed a bit odd to me. The WHO estimates that migraine causes more lost... Read more
I read this today on the facebook page of the The Migraine Project: "Headache has become a euphemism in society for anything that’s a nuisance, right? ‘Oh, my god, I gotta go to this meeting. What a headache.’ And that’s a problem, because headache gets not respect, which is part of the reason why funding is so wholly inadequate." - Dr. David Dodick, Neurologist. First, I was not sure whether I agree. For one thing, we need figures of speech,... Read more
The next generation of brains: from retinal gigapixel to curved cortices. The pattern of the highly folded surface of the brain is a prominent features of the human brain. It looks a bit like a walnut. This surface is named cerebral cortex. (And it is gray matter, hence the blog name by the way---who would have guessed.) Primarily, folding of a surface permits a larger surface area to fit inside a limited space, the skull that is. However, folding does... Read more
Do we consider consciousness as a matter of physics or rather---engineering? I read a nice post by Sean Carroll: Feynman on Initial Conditions, Evolving Laws, and What We Consider Physics. Consciousness is the obvious candidate of what we might consider physics one day. Well, let's just assume consciousnes will be understood one day (as far as science can go and understand things). Will it be part of physics? A part of physics like the value of the refractive index of water... Read more
It is a bad hair day for Lefkowitz, as I learned this morning form the SciAm podcast "The 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry". And since there was also a brief mentioning of migraine in this podcast, I thought I get into this. This Nobel prize (why for Chemistry not for Physiology and Medicine, can anyone explain?) was awarded to Brian Kobilka and Robert Lefkowitz for their work on how G-protein–coupled receptors function. If you knew this already, you probably also... Read more
I’m currently visiting the Mathematical Biosciences Institute at The Ohio State University. Last week, it started with a great workshop on Mathematical Challenges in Neural Network Dynamics. (I actually heart for the first time someone mentioning his blog in a talk.) There will be soon the videos available, check out those from the last workshop: Math Biology: Looking at the Future. I will work here on ionic based models of neural activity, also sometimes referred to as second generation Hodgkin-Huxley... Read more
I recently gave a talk at the third “Dynamics of Disease” workshop at the University of Manchester. I thought it is a nice way to introduce my work here in the blog. Note that below, you will find the slides. Any questions? Please don't hesitate to ask in the comments. More videos from this workshop can be found here (follow link wokshop/talk videos). ... Read more
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