Drink wine and you get shrinkage - of your hippocampus! (Overview of a recent study and rant on the media and science)

I was holding off on commenting on this study until I reveal a project I’m working on, but so many wine blogs out there have talked about it, I feel like adding my $0.02.

As you may be aware, I am a medical researcher who spends countless hours each week studying the hippocampus. Each day I take little glass electrodes and place them on brain cells in the rodent hippocampus observing changes in cellular calcium and electrical current in response to glutamate (excitatory neurotransmitter) stimulation that I control with a laser. My research has implications in memory and epilepsy. As a neuroscientist studying the hippocampus and a wine enthusiast, the recent topic of the effects of wine on the hippocampal volume hits pretty close to home.

Here is my overview of the study (I’m trying to not be too technical here - please leave a comment with questions): Read more