In a couple of days the momma and I will take a short road trip to visit a friend/colleague of hers to work on one of her projects. At first I was confused when the momma told me that her friend has a chocolate lab. The momma works in a lab so I naturally thought they had some research going on that involved chocolate. Could chocolate somehow prevent or ameliorate neurodegeneration?

I’m sure that would make a lot of people very happy (and the momma surely would win the Nobel Prize)! However, I just got some even better news:

His chocolate lab is actually a dog!

Photo courtesy of Samuel A. Scott

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One of the therapies used for the momma’s papa after his stroke is called functional electrical stimulation. It was used to “exercise” the muscles of facial expression on the left side of his face.

French neurologist, Guillaume Duchenne, most notably credited for the discovery of the hereditary muscular dystrophy – Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, used electrical stimulation on live subjects to study facial expressions. He discovered that genuine smiles from true happiness are formed by muscles of the mouth and muscles of the cheeks and eyes, forming crow’s feet, hence the term “Duchenne smile”.

Duchenne stimulating muscles of facial expression with electricity.

Plate from Mécanisme de la Physionomie Humaine (1862) demonstrates various expressions from Duchenne's electrical stimulation studies.

At any rate, the momma’s papa has been walking a bit each day now. When he makes it out the door of his inpatient rehab, he will be going home! Hopefully that will happen in the next few weeks!

The End!

1. Her father’s recent stroke
2. Publishing her research data
3. The fifth year of her 5 year-ARM ends next month
4. Her current job position is temporary until June 2010
5. Fuel prices
6. Paying bills
7. Her computer game addiction
8. Her weight
9. Getting organized
10. Our site is not on the Thursday 13 blogroll yet
11. Getting our other websites rolling
12. Her ability to procrastinate
13. Multitasking all of the above

The End!

Project Implicit

We heard about this project on the news. It is an online study from the collaboration of researchers at Harvard University, University of Virginia, and University of Washington. There are over 90 randomly chosen tests in political, ethnic, sports, and a variety of other categories. One tested the momma’s bias between boxers and briefs!

• More information
• The link to test your hidden biases: Project Implicit
• You may be surprised with what you learn about yourself!

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