Our series on Medicine and Law is starting to wind down. We’ve covered lots of topics including contract and consent, malpractice, causation, informed consent, and abandonment. Now we will talk about third-party liability.

Third party liability means exactly what it says — that a different party other than the physician or the patient hold liability for an outcome. The most common form of third party liability in the medical profession is when a patient is denied coverage by the insurance company for a recommended procedure. I’m sure many of you have seen the Matt Damon movie where he plays a lawyer and represents a patient with cancer whose insurance company repeatedly denied a bone marrow transplant. That movie summarizes the main issues with third party liability. Read more →

One of the more intriguing aspects of human behavior comes packaged in an extremely natural and habitual act — sleep. Most of us take this routine of sleeping as part of the day, and slide in and out of it rhythmically, systematically. When we do, though, our bodies and minds enter this realm of unknown — theoretically, a passive state of rest for the body and mind. However, due to the many subtle and spontaneous reactions in physical and mental functioning, experts now term sleep as a dynamic rather than a passive state of being. Read more →

We at the Brain Blogger are privileged to host the 7th edition of the Synapse, “a neuroscience carnival devoted to all areas of neuroscience including neurobiology, psychology, psychiatry, and neural systems — healthy brains to perverse minds — neurotransmitters to theories of mind.” We are thrilled to see this immense public interest in neuroscience and related disciplines. Read more →