After providing all the funding for The Brain from Top to Bottom for over 10 years, the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction informed us that because of budget cuts, they were going to be forced to stop sponsoring us as of March 31st, 2013.

We have approached a number of organizations, all of which have recognized the value of our work. But we have not managed to find the funding we need. We must therefore ask our readers for donations so that we can continue updating and adding new content to The Brain from Top to Bottom web site and blog.

Please, rest assured that we are doing our utmost to continue our mission of providing the general public with the best possible information about the brain and neuroscience in the original spirit of the Internet: the desire to share information free of charge and with no adverstising.

Whether your support is moral, financial, or both, thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Bruno Dubuc, Patrick Robert, Denis Paquet, and Al Daigen





Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Who’s in Charge—Us?

Well, the on-line donation system to let our readers help fund The Brain from Top to Bottom is now up and running. To learn more about why we have turned to you to help meet our budget, and how you can make a donation, please read the column to the right.

As that column indicates, we plan to keep this site free, and free of advertising, and one day we hope to find a permanent sponsor so that we don’t have to ask you for help any more. But until then, we have had to turn to this fundraising method–sometimes known as “crowd-sourcing”–simply to survive. Since we first announced six months ago that we were looking for new funding, so many people have written to say that they would be happy to make a donation that we have decided to give them the chance to do so. To all of you who do make a donation, we want to say thanks in advance. Because of you, our team will be able to devote the time needed to maintain this site and keep adding new content to it. (more…)

The Emergence of Consciousness | Comments Closed

Tuesday, 2 April 2013
The Brain from Top to Bottom Turns to Its Readers for Funding

As you can read in the column to the right, after having sponsored us for more than 10 years, the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction has been forced by budget cuts to cease our funding as of March 31, 2013. We were given the news in August 2012, and ever since our little team has been looking for another source of stable funding to let us continue our mission of providing the general public with the best possible information about the brain and neuroscience.

We have approached a number of organizations, all of which have recognized the value of our work, but we still have not succeeded in finding a sponsor. So for the moment, we are forced to turn to our readers for funding to let us continue updating and adding new content to this blog and this web site. (more…)

From the Simple to the Complex | Comments Closed

Monday, 25 March 2013
Donating Your Brain to Science

People who donate their brains to be used in neuroscientific research after they die are making a great contribution to our understanding of normal aging and of aging-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Normally, such donations are made anonymously, but for the sake of an exhibition designed to draw attention to this humanitarian gesture, 12 brain donors aged 84 to 100 gave the organizers permission to disclose their identities. (more…)

Mental Disorders | Comments Closed

Tuesday, 19 March 2013
The “God” of Apple and His Disciples

When Steve Jobs died, fans paid tribute by laying flowers and apples alongside burning candles at impromptu shrines around the world. One fan crafted the modified Apple logo shown here, with Jobs’s silhouette resembling what some Christians believe to the image of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin, a famous religious relic.

This analogy with religion may seem a bit forced, but not according to a study reported on the BBC documentary series Secrets of the Superbrands, which examines the cult-like devotion that some people display for major brands such as Apple. In this study, British neuroscientists tried to determine whether this analogy might be more than superficial. They were especially curious to see which parts of an Apple fan’s brain altered their activity when he was shown pictures of Apple products. (more…)

The Emergence of Consciousness | Comments Closed

Monday, 11 March 2013
Free Radicals and Aging: More Complicated Than We Thought

In 2010, Dr. Siegfried Hekimi and his colleagues at McGill University in Montreal received a great deal of media coverage for their research showing that antioxidants, which many people take as food supplements to fight the damaging effects of free radicals, not only do not slow down the aging process but on the contrary might actually accelerate it. Even more unbelievably, when the researchers used Caenorhabditis elegans, a species of small worms, as an animal model and exposed them to an herbicide that is toxic to humans and generates a lot of free radicals, these worms lived 60% longer than worms who were not exposed to it! (more…)

Mental Disorders | Comments Closed