Melipona is a genus of stingless bees. These are widespread in warm areas of the Neotropics, from Sinaloa and Tamaulipas (México) to Tucumán and Misiones (Argentina).

At least 40 species are known. Several species are kept for honey production, e.g. in Brazil, where some are well-known enough to have common names. Melipona honey has long been used by humans and nowadays is of minor commercial importance. There is ongoing research in improved beekeeping techniques. In addition, Mexican Melipona are known to be good pollinators of the vanilla orchid Vanilla planifolia, increasing the harvest of this valuable crop. Due to their small size and stinglessness, they can also be used as pollinators in greenhouse culture of pepperfruits (Capsicum spp.). Irapuá (M. ruficrus) on the other hand has a reputation to be somewhat of a pest in citrus plantations.

The medical plant Hog plum (Spondias mombin) is also occasionally pollinated by Melipona. Important predators of Melipona include woodpeckers, such as the White Woodpecker (Melanerpes candidus) which is very fond of M. ruficrus.

me time

Illustrating peripersonal space

when an object is mapped into your personal space

Dear Adrienne,

Remember that one time I confused Lisa Frank with Anne Frank?

Syntax vs. Semantics

Fuck syntax.

For Kendra: On Memory

• Patterns of activity in the brain are remarkably similar when thinking about the past and the future. This is because we piece together fragments of memory from our past to get an idea of the future. (not a direct quote, but based on research by Donna Addis, Harvard)

• People with damaged hippocampi cannot think of the future or of the past. John Forbes’ hippocampi are half the size of a normal person’s. He cannot recall memories to form an idea of the future, or mental time travel. He is stuck in the present. (For more information on John, maybe look up Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, the neuroscientist studying John since he was born)

• Mental time travel is presumably a uniquely human trait. Most increments of time are fully understood by age 9.
  Memory only reaches its full power at the age of 25, when we can remember over 200 things/second.

• Every time you remember something, you change it slightly because the memory becomes fluid. Yadin Dudai proposed that “The safest memory, one that is uncontaminatable, can only exist within the mind of a patient with Amnesia. If you have a memory, the more you use it, the more you are likely to change it…The safest memories are in the brains of people who cannot remember.”

• Clive Wearing- One of the worst documented cases of Amnesia. He can remember his wife and how to conduct an orchestra, though he is not concious of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing

• Here are some fragmented notes I took on Karim Nader’s discovery of how anisomycin effects memory:

a rat hears a tone, after the tone it gets shocked. This happens over and over again. When they see a rat freeze after the tone, they know it is bracing itself for the shock. They know that the rat is remembering.
Injecting anisomycin, while the tone is playing, will prevent the memory of the tone and electrical shock from forming.
2000 Ladue‘s lab Karim Nader suggests injecting anisomycin into the rat while the rat is remembering the tone/electrical shock memory. A memory is static when it is not being used. A memory becomes fluid and malleable when it is being used. Nader played the tone and shocked a new rat repeatedly so that it would form a memory. He waited 60 days, played the tone, the rat froze up, expecting the tone, then Nader injected the anisomycin. The next day, the rat had no reaction to hearing the tone. It was suggested that maybe the rat’s memory wasn’t erased, but that it just had brain damage. To test this, Nader uses two different tones that both result in a shock. When he plays the tones, 45 days later, he only picks one tone where he will inject the chemical. Only the tone paired with the chemical was erased.

On a full moon

a visual representation of Ginger Campbell’s “Evolution of Language”

Lately:

• Stephen Jay Gould’s evolutionary theory that humans are born nine months prematurely. Proof? Our brains grow and develop so fast during infancy. If our brains fully developed during pregnancy, we would not fit through the birth canal. We’ve evolved to be born prematurely. Compare to bonobos.
• Peripersonal space is literally mapped in your parietal lobe.
• Mark Howe employed the mirror test developed by Gordon Gallup to see if toddlers were self-aware. Two of the eight children put their hands to their foreheads when they saw the paint. The same group of toddlers were then brought into a new room and were shown a drawer where a stuffed, toy lion was kept. Two weeks later, the same two children who saw themselves in the mirror, remembered where the lion was. A sense of self must exist before children can form memories relating to themselves. Our autobiographical memory, and therefore ourselves, can only begin once we can recognize ourselves.
• Selective memory erasing is possible ala Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Injecting a patient with anisomycin while they are remembering or reliving a memory will erase a memory. Memories are made of proteins and anisomycin inhibits protein synthesis.