Self-diagnosis, -treatment, and -monitoring is widespread due to the expansion of healthcare and the surplus of medical information available via television, radio, magazines, and the internet. While relying on introspection to develop awareness of your body and emotions is an important skill, self-treatment with over-the-counter (OTC) remedies without the expertise or guidance of a trained health care provider can lead to dangerous outcomes. Read more →

Welcome to the thirtieth edition of Brain Blogging — a semi-monthly blog carnival that aims to review posts “related to the brain and mind that go beyond the basic sciences into a more human and multidimensional perspective.”

Please remember to submit your blog entries using the online submission form. We will do our best to review and include your entry! Enjoy your readings… Read more →

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has a bad reputation, due in part to the graphic media portrayals we see in films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and A Beautiful Mind, and probably also in part to an innate distaste for the idea of receiving electrical shocks to the brain.

Despite the popular disgust for this treatment, ECT is still used in patients with psychiatric disorders that have not responded to other therapies, most commonly major depression and bipolar disorder. Read more →

The reason why chronic pain is chronic appears to be linked to its persistent memory in the prefrontal cortex. A new study by Dr. Vania Apkarian, professor of physiology and anesthesiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, shows that treatment with a drug called D-cycloserine, apart from being effective in relieving the “emotional suffering” from old injuries, also reduces the sensitivity of old injury sites. Read more →

Can the mind cure the mind, working on itself? Well, although the entire self-help psychology industry survives on an assumption that it does — with various techniques, young and old, aimed at self-therapy, scientific research on the subject is still in its early stage.

Mindfulness meditation, or more commonly known as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in psychiatric parlance, has been used “successfully” for years in individuals with a variety of medical disorders, including stress, chronic pain, depression, fibromyalgia, and eating disorders. Read more →

“Keep that estrogen level up, my lady” seemed like a great motto for American Academy of Neurology’s 59th Annual Meeting.

A study announced earlier this month at AAN’s 59th annual meeting shows that women who use hormone therapy before the age of 65 can cut their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. The study found that women who used any form of estrogen hormone therapy before the age of 65 were nearly 50 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or dementia than women who did not use hormone therapy before age 65. Read more →