Neurocook

[neurocook-blog]

Unforgettable first bite. Indulging! I do not know how to make this, folks (shout out to one of my friend asking). For your convenience.. Here is the how to from YummyPh. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nHREFpZmMhc&feature=youtu.be

[neurocook-blog]

THE GOAT CHEESE IN THIS CRISPY GC SALAD. Chevre is French for Goat’s cheese i.e. cheeses made out of goat’s milk. They are popular among elderly and children who are more likely to show low tolerance to cow’s milk. Also, goat cheeses are higher in vitamin A and potassium. They serve as a perfect substitute for many dieters. But from there, things change. Goat cheese doesn’t taste or feel like cow cheese, and to find out why, we have to go into the precise chemical makeup of these milks. Splendid Table has a nice piece about the differences; in short, goat’s milk has a much higher concentration of particular fatty acids, but less milk protein, than cow’s milk. The higher concentration of fatty acids gives goat cheese its signature tangy flavor, and the lower amount of milk protein gives it a smoother, creamier texture. Without as much milk protein, goat milk has trouble doing some of the crazy stuff cow milk can do. It’s not quite as strong or as stretchy as cow milk, which is why you won’t be seeing too much goat milk mozzarella—a goat’s milk cheese would just sort of fall apart. But goat cheese’s lack of strength isn’t really a weakness; it’s just different. Its tanginess and creaminess makes it ideal for very soft cheeses, or even yogurts. Goat’s milk can also sometimes be used in place of other milks to create slightly different variations on cheeses. Feta and gouda are some examples. Interestingly, I think a goat’s milk brie is both more flavorful and texturally superior to one from cow’s milk. So go forth and eat goat cheese!

#FoodBlog #Foodphotography #modernfarmer #Chevre #GoatCheese #Cheese

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A medium where anything well done is rare. Walas... #foodphotography #foodblog #neurocook @BackyardKitchen

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NEURAL INERTIA CONCEPT: THE HOPE FOR SLEEP DISORDERS AND COMATOSE STATES

by: Sheena Jane Mendoza

As learned from Physics class, Inertia is the tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest or of a body in straight line motion to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force.  Relating this to our brain makes us wonder how the brain transitions between conscious and unconscious states. To further gain understanding first we should know that the setting for Neural Inertia is in our Central Nervous System. The CNS is where conscious and unconscious states interactions take place. General anesthetics offer a controllable means to study these transitions. Induction of anesthesia is commonly attributed to drug-induced global modulation of neuronal function, while emergence from anesthesia has been thought to occur passively, paralleling elimination of the anesthetic from its sites in the central nervous system.

Alternating activity in neuronal networks is responsible for the daily fluctuation between states of conscious wakefulness and the unconsciousness associated with natural sleep. As with wake and sleep, consciousness and anesthetic-induced unconsciousness are bistable, as subjects exist in only one of the mutually exclusive states at a time. Previous hypothesis believed that the processes of going under and waking up from anesthesia affected the brain the same way.  Recently, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have established in animal models that the brain comes in and out of a state of induced unconsciousness through different processes. The findings, published in PLoS One, may help researchers better understand serious sleep disorders and states of impaired consciousness such as comas.

 "Our results suggest that the brain keeps track of whether it is conscious or offline in an unconscious state. We are working to understand the mechanisms through which the brain accomplishes this feat. Studying general anesthetics in animal models offers a controllable means to investigate this newly recognized behavioral barrier that separates conscious from unconscious states” senior author Dr. Max B. Kelz, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, explained. The researchers observed that once a group of animal subjects underwent a transition from wakefulness to anesthetic-induced unconsciousness, the subjects exhibited resistance to the return of the wakeful state. Based on their findings, the authors propose a fundamental and biologically conserved state, which is what we called neural inertia. "The findings from this study may provide insights into the regulation of sleep as well as states in which return of consciousness is pathologically impaired such as some types of coma," said Kelz. "This line of research may one day help us to develop novel anesthetic drugs and targeted therapies for patients who have different forms of sleep disorders or who have the potential to awaken from coma but remain stuck in comatose states for months or years."

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The Concept of Neural Inertia

Researchers are gaining a better understanding of how the brain transitions from a state of unconsciousness to wakefulness. A barrier to awareness, called “neural inertia,” is similar in a way, they say, to the everyday phenomenon of “sleep inertia” – that groggy feeling we have when we’re abruptly woken from sleep.  To study the concept of neural inertia, scientists modified genes known to play a role in sleep in fruit flies anesthetized with isoflourine, in order to see how they impacted the brain’s transition from sleep to wakefulness, and vice versa. Researchers found that four of them – Sh (Shaker), sss (sleepless), na, and unc79 – were able to control the transition, therefore controlling the “neural inertia. One of the interesting consequences of the study was that the forward process of entering and exiting [from the stages of sleep and wakefulness] are dissociable,” study researcher Dr. Max Kelz, M.D., Ph.D.   

 An analogy: It’s not like watching a video and then rewinding it. “You’d need two different movies to watch what’s happening in the brain,” Kelz says. .