Showing papers by "Neil R. Smalheiser published in 2013"

How many scientists does it take to change a paradigm? New ideas to explain scientific observations are everywhere—we just need to learn how to see them

Abstract: The scientific process requires a critical attitude towards existing hypotheses and obvious explanations. Teaching this mindset to students is both important and challenging.

Preparing synaptoneurosomes from adult mouse forebrain.

Abstract: Many neuroscience studies involve subcellular fractionation to produce isolated or enriched synaptic fractions. Synaptosomes are prepared by flotation of synaptic membranes on sucrose or Percoll gradients. Alternatively, synaptoneurosomes are prepared by filtration of tissue homogenate through a series of filters to obtain a fraction that is enriched in pinched-off dendritic spines. Whereas the protocol for making synaptosomes is reasonably well standardized and well described in the literature, there is (to our knowledge) no detailed lab protocol for making synaptoneurosomes. Here, we give the methods used in our laboratory to produce synaptoneurosomes that are suitable for studying RNAs and proteins.

Tools for Identifying Reliable Evidence and Implementing it in Everyday Clinical Care.

Abstract: Just as translational medicine follows a long winding path from bench-to-bedside, so can Evidence-Based Medicine be envisioned as comprising a multi-step pipeline, from building evidence from raw data through synthesizing best practices and providing clinical decision support in a process described as the “evidence pyramid”. 1 At one end, a heterogeneous mix of clinical and experimental studies including clinical trials, case reports, animal models and retrospective analyses are published as new knowledge. Then, experts collect and assess high-quality relevant evidence on specific issues and publish their conclusions (e.g., regarding efficacy and safety of treatments) as systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Finally, when an expert consensus has been reached, this must reach the attention of policy makers within the profession, the government and insurance companies, resulting in new practice guidelines and altered clinical practice within hospitals and clinics. At each stage, this process requires a large investment of time and effort from many individuals with a wide range of expertise. Our panel will discuss the variety of innovative approaches that are being taken by different informatics research groups to improve each step within the evidence based medicine pipeline. These approaches are, in part, devoted to making existing data collection and synthesis practices faster and more efficient, but they also involve re-imagining and re-engineering the processes by which evidence is accumulated, evaluated and applied.