Health & Healthcare | March 18, 2010 | By T. A. McNamee, MD | 1 Comment
Let the Matches Begin!
Today is Match Day, the day when fourth-year medical students across the country learn their fate for the next three to five years, and possibly their lifetimes. It’s the day that the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) announces the assignments of the students to their residency training programs that will develop the pluripotent medical student into a specialized professional. In short, it is one of the most important days in a medical student’s career. Read more →
Living with a Brain Disorder | March 18, 2010 | By Karen Flummerfelt, MS | 0 Comments
My Nephew and his Brain, Part 4 – Their Life Today
Continued from Part 3. After the surgery we were hopeful, that with a few limitations on his left side, my nephew would have a fairly normal life. Unfortunately, this was not to be. The faulty electrical impulses that had caused his seizures had migrated to the left lobe and a few days after surgery the seizures returned. It was true that they were milder than they had been before; he no longer stopped breathing when he had them, so some good had definitely come out of his surgery experience. They weren’t gone, however, so he spent another month in the hospital as the doctors tried a staggering amount of drug cocktails on him trying to figure out the best combination for controlling his seizures. None of them worked perfectly, though, so even today at the age of seven, he still has multiple seizures a day. Read more →
Living with a Brain Disorder | March 17, 2010 | By Karen Flummerfelt, MS | 1 Comment
My Nephew and his Brain, Part 3 – Try to Work Out their Troubles
Continued from Part 2. After we had been transferred to the large university hospital, the doctors decided to delve more deeply into the specifics of my nephew’s brain malformation. The MRIs had told us some things, but not everything, so they scheduled him for a Positron Emission Tomograph, commonly known as a PET-scan. A PET-scan uses radioactivity coupled with a biologically-active molecule and after injection, the biological molecule congregates in the area of interest, in our case, my nephew’s brain. The radioactivity attached to the biological molecule then starts letting its extra neutrons go in a process called decay. This decay, through a very complicated process, is read by the PET scanner and brain activity can be assessed. What this very comprehensive scan told the doctors and subsequently us was that the right side of my nephew’s brain couldn’t send electrical signals properly and this aberrant electrical activity was causing the seizures. Unfortunately, the only way to stop the activity was to take out whatever in the right hemisphere was giving the wonky signals, so my nephew, at the age of four months, was scheduled for brain surgery. Read more →
Living with a Brain Disorder | March 16, 2010 | By Karen Flummerfelt, MS | 1 Comment
My Nephew and his Brain, Part 2 – Revealed to be Complicated
Continued from Part 1. After we had arrived at the new hospital and my nephew had been placed into the Pediatric ICU (PICU), the doctors started running more tests, and in conjunction with what the ER doctor had found out, my nephew was diagnosed with a seizure disorder or, as it is more commonly known, epilepsy. Epilepsy is defined as a “brain disorder characterized predominantly by recurrent and unpredictable interruptions of normal brain function” and in most cases, this interruption is caused by either an over-excitation or under-excitation of the neurons in the brain. After electroencephalography (EEG) was performed and analyzed, this aberrant electrical brain activity was what appeared to be happening to my nephew, so the doctors began to prescribe medications that are typically given to children with seizure disorders. The problem with my nephew, however, was that from the MRI that had been performed on him at this point, it was evident that there was significant brain malformation in his right hemisphere, and these medications would only be treating the symptoms and not the cause. Read more →
Other Recent Articles
- My Nephew and his Brain, Part 1 – Introduction
- Deep Brain Stimulation – A New Frontier in Psychiatry
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 3 – Equip Teachers with Prescription Pads?
- Why Some Human Brains Become Leaders, While Others Followers?
- Brain Blogger Finalist for Two 2010 Research Blogging Awards in Neuroscience and Psychology
- Tall Tales of Diabetic Amputations
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 2 – The Solutions
- Brain Blogging, Forty-Ninth Edition
- How Your Brain Groups Words
- The Child Brain and the Playing Teacher
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Thursday, March 18, 2010
- Religion - A "Natural" Phenomenon?
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 1 - The Five Myths
- How Culture Shapes Our Mind and Brain
- Sex, Violence and The Male Warrior Hypothesis
- The Secret to Good Health – Listen to the Data
- If Herbal Medicine is Medicine, Shouldn't it be Treated as Such?
- Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Neuroscience Conferences for 2010
- Too Much Information?
- "I Feel Your Pain" - The Neural Basis of Empathy
- Income Inequality and Health Outcomes
- The Evolution of Depression
- Journal Retracts Autism Research
- Speaking in Tongues - A Neural Snapshot
- Post-Partum Psychosis - Rare but Real
- Is Your Doctor Happy or Burnt-Out?
- The Neural Basis of the Self
- Ginkgo Biloba Ineffective... Again
- Worried Well on the Web
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 2 - The Solutions
- Why Some Human Brains Become Leaders, While Others Followers?
- Let the Matches Begin!
- My Nephew and his Brain, Part 4 – Their Life Today
- My Nephew and his Brain, Part 3 – Try to Work Out their Troubles
- My Nephew and his Brain, Part 2 – Revealed to be Complicated
- My Nephew and his Brain, Part 1 – Introduction
- Deep Brain Stimulation – A New Frontier in Psychiatry
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 3 – Equip Teachers with Prescription Pads?
- Why Some Human Brains Become Leaders, While Others Followers?
- Brain Blogger Finalist for Two 2010 Research Blogging Awards in Neuroscience and Psychology
- Tall Tales of Diabetic Amputations
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 2 – The Solutions
- Brain Blogging, Forty-Ninth Edition
- How Your Brain Groups Words
- The Child Brain and the Playing Teacher
- You Have a Right to Choose if we Agree
- Measuring Quality in Primary Care
- Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me A Match – The NRMP Main Residency Match
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 1 – The Five Myths
- When It Comes to Aging, Size Matters
- “I Feel Your Pain” – The Neural Basis of Empathy
- Congratulations to all who've matched! Although the results of NRMP Main Residen...
- It's been almost 25 years since my son suffered a TBI in an accident. He was onl...
- I tend to agree with the teachers.But a teacher can only keep a record about the...
- Very interesting article, the 5th paragraph gets a little biased...but I still e...
- Dear Dan,There is certainly much clinical interest in this field. ClinicalTr...
- I recently commented on a sciencedaily.com article reporting success with TRD an...
- I have family members who are teachers. After sharing this article with them, th...
- It is great that people are challenging the use of this medication. As, a societ...
- I agree with the stand of the teachers and their children's that more than half ...
- I think that there’s also a social aspect to it. If you grow up in an area where...
- I have had epilepsy since I was 9 and am now 42. I have tried about every med. o...
- In this text is a serious error. Brain areas are found that contain religious ex...
- It's amazing how the brain works....
- Organ transplant for unavoidable patients have been around for quite some time a...
- Diet plays a major role in having diabetes. In today's world, people are finding...
- Interesting... I think that there's also a social aspect to it. If you grow up i...
- I think the article is actually describing a normal human being. Leadership tra...
- I think that applies to leaders within certain fields of knowledge or creativity...
- Thank you for your comments, Shaheen. Your article was quite interesting and you...
- Dear Bill,I wrote on this issue for ...
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Neuroscience & Neurology
March 06, 2010 | 6 Comments | By Simi Agarwal, DDS
Why Some Human Brains Become Leaders, While Others Followers?
The human brain is a biological pattern making machine. At birth, a baby’s brain contains 100 billion neurons, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way. These billions of neurons in human brain have extraordinary capacity to construct and weave strings of useful information patterns which gets ever more complex as cognitive thought process increases. These neural patterns help the brain to recognize, organize, store and retrieve information patterns when needed. It has been noticed that leaders engage in activities which provide the time, space and structure to facilitate the construction of such neural patterns. People who are open minded to experience new concepts or procedures and who are exposed to more rich information sources such as print, television, news media, internet, seminars and interactive conferences — are able to build more rich and dense neural networks and hence reveal themselves as natural leaders. On the other hand, people who are averse to new models, metaphors, information, concepts or interactive discussions, remain as followers. Read more →
More In Neuroscience & Neurology
- How Your Brain Groups Words
- The Child Brain and the Playing Teacher
- “I Feel Your Pain” – The Neural Basis of Empathy
- Speaking in Tongues – A Neural Snapshot
- Neuro Case 1 – Using Transcranial Doppler for Basilar Artery Occlusion
Neuroscience & Neurology
Opinion
February 01, 2010 | 1 Comment | By Jennifer Gibson, PharmD
Crossing the Line from Physician to Journalist
The recent coverage of the devastation and destruction after the earthquake in Haiti has had an unintended consequence; the public is now questioning the legitimacy and ethics of the physicians who masquerade as journalists.
For decades, there has been an increased interest in and awareness of the need for physicians and the medical community to work more closely with journalists and the mass media to guarantee the accurate and appropriate dissemination of health information. Training programs for both physicians and journalists now include innovative curriculum to promote collaboration and build a mutual respect between the professions that, in the end, promotes public health and safety. Publishing or broadcasting clear, consistent and contemporary health and medical information to the general public is a shared responsibility of physicians and journalists. But, what happens when the physician and the journalist is the same person? Read more →
More In Opinion
- Sex, Violence and The Male Warrior Hypothesis
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Opinion
Psychiatry & Psychology
March 12, 2010 | 3 Comments | By Shaheen E Lakhan, MS, MEd, PhD, MD
Deep Brain Stimulation – A New Frontier in Psychiatry
For as long as the brain has been seen as the site of mental activity, it has followed that altering brain function should be implemented to treat mental illness. Second generation antidepressants and psychotherapy are currently the least invasive ways of affecting brain function but they leave too many patients only partially improved, and have proved completely ineffective for some. Estimates of treatment unresponsiveness are unreliable, but 30% to 40% patients with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) probably become treatment failures. For these patients, techniques like deep brain stimulation (DBS) provide a promising treatment alternative. Read more →
More In Psychiatry & Psychology
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 2 – The Solutions
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 1 – The Five Myths
- Journal Retracts Autism Research
- White Bears – The Paradox of Mental Suppression
- Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice?
Psychiatry & Psychology
