Living with a Brain Disorder | March 17, 2010 | By Karen Flummerfelt, MS | 0 Comments
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 →
Living with a Brain Disorder | March 15, 2010 | By Karen Flummerfelt, MS | 1 Comment
My Nephew and his Brain, Part 1 – Introduction
As a person who believes in full disclosure, I feel that I should say from the outset that I am not a neurologist. I am a microbiologist, and generally speaking, even though I am a science-type of person, I was never very interested in neurology. All that changed, however, when my nephew was born. Well, it didn’t happen exactly the moment he was born; it took a while for us to learn how unique he really was. I guess it is probably best if I start at the beginning. Read more →
Psychiatry & Psychology | March 12, 2010 | By Shaheen E Lakhan, MS, MEd, PhD, MD | 3 Comments
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 →
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Wednesday, March 17, 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
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- Worried Well on the Web
- Psychotropics and Youth, Part 2 - The Solutions
- Why Some Human Brains Become Leaders, While Others Followers?
- 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
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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 →
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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 →
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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 →
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Psychiatry & Psychology
