Author of Why We Snap
Human Brainwaves
SAN DIEGO—The most fundamental question of how information is coded and processed in the brain is being re-examined, and the controversy drew an overflow crowd of neuroscientists to participate in an intense debate at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in San Diego.
Something more can be done in addition to environmental action to help prevent wildfires.
First published in Psychology Today.
The inferno of tragic fires in California has destroyed thousands of homes, incinerated hundreds of thousands of acres, and killed many people this year. In the latest, the entire town of Paradise was reduced to smoldering ash. Highlighting the vulnerability of anyone and anything to the destructive power of wildfire, among the homes lost in this week’s California fires include those of celebrities, Miley Cyrus, Neil Young, and Gerard Butler. The current blazes are still raging out of control, and it is too soon to know the causes and full extent of the destruction, but some of these California fires were ignited intentionally. A 51-year old man has been charged with starting the Southern California Holy Fire. A 32-year old man has been linked to 5 California fires. What sort of person is compelled by pyromania to kill, terrorize, destroy lives and property, and devastate the beauty of nature with fire?
WASHINGTON, DC–Speaking at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, DC on November 14, 2017, Dr. Wendy Marie Ingram, Psychiatric Epidemiologist at the Geisinger Medical Institute in Pennsylvania, presented new research on the effects of anesthesia on electroconvulsive therapy (ECT or shock therapy). The results help answer long-standing questions about the controversial treatment, but social stigma surrounding ECT impede efforts to crack the medical mystery of how ECT works.
“The first person I saw was a male,” Ingram says, describing the first person she observed receiving ECT. “The previous week he was completely nonresponsive [catatonic]—couldn’t even respond to his name.” The anesthesiologist inserted a soft rubber guard into the man’s mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue, and …
The scientific evidence linking cannabis use in adolescence to schizophrenia in adulthood is now so strong that the general public must be alerted. This was the pronouncement of researchers from Germany and England speaking October 9, 2017, at the World Psychiatric Association meeting in Berlin.
“There is no doubt,” concludes Sir Robin Murray, Professor of Psychiatry, Kings College of Medicine, that cannabis use in young people increases the risk of developing schizophrenia as an adult. He cites ten independent studies of young cannabis users which have found a significant risk of developing psychosis, and three other small studies that found a clear trend, but the sample size in these three was too small to reach statistical significance. “The more [cannabis] you take–and the higher the potency–the greater the risk,” he says the data show.
Marijuana and violence
New research reported in the journal <em>Psychological Medicine</em>, concludes that continued use of cannabis causes violent behavior as a direct result of changes in brain function that are caused by smoking marijuana over many years.
Writers are crazy and rock musicians want to be–neuroscientists meet and explain why
San Diego--Would we have Poe’s Raven today if the tormented author had taken lithium to suppress his bipolar illness? Not likely, considering the high frequency of psychiatric illnesses among writers and artists concludes psychiatrist Kay Jamison of Johns Hopkins Medical School speaking this week at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego. Madness electrifies the creative process Jamison concludes, but this difficult drug-use dilemma raises an even more provocative question: Would we have Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had the Beatles not taken LSD?
I was stopped at a red light. Through my rear view mirror I saw the car speeding toward me. The driver was looking down operating a cell phone in his lap. I considered putting my car in park because the rapid acceleration in a crash is what damages, but I did not want to limit my options. As the car barreled toward me at full speed I applied my brakes hard with both feet and braced for impact. The driver never looked up. His car slammed into mine, collapsing my seat with the explosive force of the rear-end collision. Sharp pain stabbed my neck and shot down my shoulder, upper back, lancing down my arm and making my middle and ring fingers suddenly go numb and tingly as if I had hit my funny bone. Two weeks later the pain has decreased to a constant annoyance, but my fingers are still numb, my neck hurts, and the tingling has spread to include my little finger.