Twitter and What I Found There

While it is well known that Twitter is a great platform for personal expression, it is also just a great platform for information in general. There are no limits to what can be talked about, and with Twitter's popularity, who will see it. I narrowed my search to a "neuroscience" scope and read a lot of interesting posts. Most of the posts had fairly complicated topics and needed a link to some other website to really get into detail about the subject.

A very large amount of the neuroscience related posts on Twitter involve some kind of new study, discovery, or question. Since not everybody is an expert in neuroscience, the only people that really contribute to the neuroscience areas of Twitter are universities, laboratories, and other credited establishments. If any normal people post about neuroscience, they usually refer to these establishments with a link. Since most of these posts are from credited places, there is not too much debate, but rather questions or comments. Most readers will simply be learning information from these posts.

One post directed me here with a link. The actual Twitter post had only the title of the linked article and #neuroscience. I was instantly drawn to this post because of its claim to have found a mechanism that causes memory loss. This is a very big deal in neuroscience because of how big of a role memory plays in human function. It is also a major problem for the very common Alzheimer's Disease. As a neuroscientist , or any biological research profession, the goal is to identify specific mechanisms and their role in the living organism. This allows breakthroughs that solve various medical problems. Solving the issue of memory loss could potentially help millions of people around the world. Learning about Alzheimer's from my neuroscience class last semester and from people I know made me extremely interested in the subject. Not only is the biological reasoning complicated and intricate, but it is also a very prominent disease worldwide. This article was very promising as it described certain mechanisms that could help memory loss, and it left me optimistic for future research.

This other post that stood out to me was this one. Even though the post was in Spanish, I knew what the picture was. It is the mapping of nerves in a certain part of the brain. After reading through so many articles, it was refreshing to just enjoy a picture of the brain. Not only is the picture colorful and nice to look at, but it has some meaning to it. Scientists do not just perform these expensive studies to produce pretty picture, they are also mapping certain tracks of nerves to see how and when they are fired. When I look at this picture I see how complicated the brain is and enjoy the thought that I have one in my head.

I was not surprised with what I found on Twitter. With a topic like neuroscience, or any specific science, there is not a lot of room to debate or argue. Most scientists would leave the arguing to more scholarly platforms. I did not expect, however, the extent to which new and relevant stories were being shared. I expected somewhat limited posts, either in when they were posted or from where. I found there was a large variety of stories from a continuous stream.