Suzana Herculano-Houzel aka BrainSoupLady

So THIS is my kind of place of worship: the Cathedral of Learning, U Pittsburgh. Come and think, be awed and inspired, not indoctrinated.

Suzana Herculano-Houzel on Substack Faith in humanity restored: Wikipedia turned down ai Have I said already that I don’t understand humankind’s eagerness to write itself out of the equation? To abandon its hard-earned ability to gene...

Faith in humanity restored: Wikipedia turned down using AI to create content

substack.com/@suzanahercu...

I’ll be working from Brazil for the next three months, writing science in my mezzanine between mountains and sea away from the insanity of the dismantling of US science. Vaccines here are plentiful, I’ll make sure to take every booster I can before going back 😖🙄

Do yourself a favor, IGNORE the trailer and go see Sinners. I almost didn’t go because of the trailer, but… glad I did. You will be too.

U.S. science has been OUTSOURCED to universities for several decades. I think more people need to understand that. Nixing NIH and NSF funds as a way to make universities bend their knee to the president will make China great, but definitely not America anymore.

Fun thought: I figured out what determines the duration of gestation across mammalian species, but if I die on this flight, the world will continue to think it’s the result of selection and adaptation, because I’m still preparing the single-author paper. THAT is what publishing is for…

Went back in the house to fetch my US passport on the way to the airport when my husband asked me to make sure I had it on me, even though I’m just flying to California for a talk at UCIrvine, not internationally. Why? My name doesn’t sound like a US name. That is the new reality. God bless America.

Also found a few of these at the secondhand store, and raided the net for 15 more. I’ll be using this instead of a regular textbook and have the students spot the important questions they’d like to ask about animal behavior and evolution. Like I said: I’m having fun teaching 🤗

Found this game at a second hand store. You, “natural selection”, can choose what’s best for the critters in the game and “evolve” them. Right or wrong, my Animal Behavior students will be playing this game in the classroom next year. I’m gonna have some fun teaching 🤗

Hehehe this is a clinical centrifuge, it doesn’t even have a rotor! Worst case scenario, the arms holding the 15 ml tubes break but the metal body should hold the punch. Would be noisy, but a quick fix by just pulling the plug…

I love that I can do a lot of my job with very simple equipment, and old equipment is often best. Young ‘uns, what is this below that I just scavenged and am using right now in my lab? 🧪 🤗

Who am “I”, and where am “I”? “I” am whatever moves when my brain says something should move. This neuroscientist really thinks it is THAT simple. Applies to the car you drive, the avatar you operate on the screen, your hands seen through virtual reality.

Hmm… life doesn’t get better, sorry. It gets different. Bacteria have never gone away, never been replaced, and neither did the tiny, small-brained mammals.

Ah the freedom to get the information, have the benefits of a free market available to you, and do what you want with your own body. Not everybody has that…

I just realized that the entirety of my work on brain evolution is centered on a now-banned word: Diversity. Do i even bother writing new grant proposals? Good thing there’s plenty I can do with little money, but my university doesn’t like that 🙄

Things I learned today: Chinese fortune cookies were originally Japanese; it is animals who live at lower densities, not larger animals, who travel farther; and tricking the hypothalamus to lower the core body temperature of the mouse results in longer-lived animals. A good day, overall!

Things I learned today: that larger dogs, like my Dane, really DO have shorter life expectancy, because of the high IGF1 levels - and the same is true for taller humans, apparently for the same reason! What to do? Stay lean and exercise body and mind. Has been working for my dog, now 7…

What does this liquid nitrogen burn to remove a wart have to do with developmental biology, you ask? Notice the crisp borders, despite the spread of the freezing jet that caused the burn. Below a certain threshold, the cells recover; above it, the cells die - and so a gradient becomes a sharp border

Totally unrelated, but I’m having a wonderful Sunday reading When the moon hits your eye in my backyard hammock. I read several of your other books already, also loved the dispatcher (or something like that). If you ever need a neuroscientist consultant, hit me up!

We celebrated Jon Kaas with a whole days of talks by his former students and collaborators followed by dinner with an open mike at Vanderbilt yesterday. How wonderful to celebrate people WITH them while they live. This man changed my life so many times in so many ways. I’m forever grateful.

Ok fine I’ll come back to blue sky for the sole purpose of having a channel to talk everyday science and connect to people interested in everyday science 🤗

A map is a flat side-by-side representation of what is side-by-side in the world; an atlas is a stack of maps; and DHARANI is a set of atlases of the fetal human brain released by IIT Madras in India. I’m in Bangalore today to support and explain the importance of this massive feat. Go India! 🇮🇳 🧠 🧪

So this is how deviant the mind of this neuroscientist is: Indian jewelers take gold for payment, and I was amazed to find that my old wedding band weighed… five rat brains, though it’s the size of just one. That’s right: my unit of measurement is rat brains. For the record, that’s two grams 😜

And if it turns out that they ARE idiots after all… good riddance, isn’t it?

The important part is putting emphasis on how they are ACTING like an idiot, when you don’t believe that they ARE one. People don’t expect the candor, so if they are not idiots, polite, non-aggressive, non-defensive, purely informational candor will disarm them.

Did you really mean that? Because you are coming across as an idiot, and I don’t think you are one” - or something to that effect.

Some people, however, are NOT idiots (yet), but can on occasion ACT like one. These are salvageable and worthy of your efforts, IF you are so inclined. You can try to ask them politely “ do you realize that you are coming across as saying Y instead of X and insulting me?

Learn what you can from them: their favorite “arguments”, their “ logic”, their patterns of rhetoric - then nod “ thank you” politely while they are still fawning their intelectual superiority over you, then get rid of them. Learn from the experience, just like you can learn from a bad lecture (4/5)

If they are repeat offenders, expose them, call them out - but with the occasional unknown idiot who WILL come to bother you whenever you start to shine, don’t waste your time trying to educate them.(3/5)

So: Some people ARE idiots, and will remain so no matter what you do. This includes Mansplainers; people of all genders who are so full of themselves that they don’t listen (so you can’t really have a conversation); supremacists of different flavors.

My advice? (2/5)