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The Corpus Callosum

The Corpus Callosum is an occasional journal of armchair musings, by a suburban, reality-based, slightly-left-of-center guy, who reserves the right to be highly irregular at times. Topics: social commentary, neuroscience, politics, science news. Mission: to develop connections between hard science and social science, using linear thinking and intuition; and to explore the relative merits of spontaneity vs. strategy.

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Corpus Callosum is written by a psychiatrist at a small community hospital somewhere in the USA. Email to cc.scienceblogger at gmail dot com.


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February 1, 2010

Objective Diagnosis Of PTSD Using Magnetoencephalography

Category: NeurosciencePsychiatry

ResearchBlogging.orgObjective diagnosis is in some ways the holy grail of medicine.  It has been maddeningly elusive in psychiatry.  Now comes a paper in which the authors suggest that they may have found this treasure.

The paper details a method of using magnetoencephalography to assess human brain function.  They claim that, in a select population, it can correctly identify patients with PTSD with 90% accuracy. 

The synchronous neural interactions test as a functional neuromarker for post-traumatic  stress disorder (PTSD): a robust classification method based on the bootstrap
A P Georgopoulos et al 2010 J. Neural Eng. 7 016011

Abstract. Traumatic experiences can produce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which is a debilitating condition and for which no biomarker currently exists (Institute of Medicine (US) 2006 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Diagnosis and Assessment (Washington, DC: National Academies)). Here we show that the synchronous neural interactions (SNI) test which assesses the functional interactions among neural populations derived from magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings (Georgopoulos A P et al 2007 J. Neural Eng. 4 349-55) can successfully differentiate PTSD patients from healthy control subjects. Externally cross-validated, bootstrap-based analyses yielded >90% overall accuracy of classification. In addition, all but one of 18 patients who were not receiving medications for their disease were correctly classified. Altogether, these findings document robust differences in brain function between the PTSD and control groups that can be used for differential diagnosis and which possess the potential for assessing and monitoring disease progression and effects of therapy.

The synchronous neural interactions test is a test that is done by having persons perform a simple task, while the magnetic signals from their brain are being measured.  The process is called magnetoencephalography.  The resulting record is called a magnetoencephalogram (MEG).  It is similar to an electroencephalogram (EEG).  The difference is that the EEG measures small electric currents.  The MEG measures magnetic impulses.  These impulses are only slightly affected by the intervening tissue (skull, skin, etc).  Therefore, it is possible to get readings that are more precise.  The downside is that it requires a more elaborate device, and a special, magnetically-shielded, room.  Very few of these devices exist.

January 30, 2010

Google Chrome on Opensuse 11.2

Category: Computing

I decided to try using Google Chrome as a web browser. The reason is that it is supposed to be faster, particularly for sites that make heavy use of Flash. It turns out that installing it is a hassle if you do it the obvious way, because Flash does not work without fiddling around. That sort of defeats the purpose.

The easier way is to use the one-click install at:
http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/ope...2/chromium.ymp.

This adds the necessary repositories, downloads the application, and configures it so that flash works right away.

It seems to work pretty well. It remains to be seen, however, if Chrome has any chance of becoming my main browser. After all, the first browser I used was NCSA Mosaic, which morphed into Netscape Navigator, which went through several iterations, then became the basis for Firefox. I just followed along. After 17 years, it might be hard to change.

January 25, 2010

Glaxo Patent Giveaway: Charity or "Theft"?

Category: MedicineSocial Issues

I saw this headline on Google Fast Flip, and had to read it.  I'm always game for an anti-big-pharma story: even though I appreciate their efforts to relieve suffering, I do like to take notice of their shadier practices.

Is Glaxo's Charity Really Theft?
Jan 20 2010, 5:30 pm
by Daniel Indiviglio

Is there a fine line? Corporations have a duty to shareholders to maximize profits. But when they donate to charity -- which is regularly done these days, often through foundations -- this takes money out of shareholders' hands or stifles future growth. It instead provides that money to some cause that management deems appropriate. But Glaxo-SmithKline's recent decision to put thousands of chemical compounds which may cure malaria into the public domain gives this question a new dimension, adding additional complexity...

The story does not go where I expected.  It is not talking about some kind of charity scam, in which they get PR karma for doing something that really only benefits themselves.  Rather, the story is about the fact that Glaxo is releasing some of the compounds it has developed, into the public domain.

Indiviglio's story is posted on the Atlantic business blog.  It is based upon an article in the (UK) Guardian.  The Guardian version is reasonably thoughtful, whereas the Atlantic version is frankly offensive.

January 19, 2010

Why should the city be a concrete desert?

Category: Armchair MusingsEnvironmenteconomy

Susanne Sternthal, a writer based in Moscow, has published an article about the ecology of stray dogs.  The article is in Financial Times, of all places.  Why is that?

Moscow's stray dogs
By Susanne Sternthal
January 16 2010 00:04

January 18, 2010

Comments on the Morphine-for-PTSD Article

Category: NeurosciencePsychiatryScience in the Media

I've been mulling this over for a few days, finally deciding to write about it.  There was an article in the NYT on 13 January 2010 about an NEJM article:

Morphine May Help Traumatic Stress
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: January 13, 2010

January 15, 2010

What Hath Geology Wrought?

Category: PoliticsSocial Commentary

The earthquake in Haiti is only the most recent in a series of catastrophes stretching back over two centuries.  It was not always like this.  Haiti, in fact, was once the most prosperous colony in the New World.  When it was a French colony, known as St. Domingue ( also called The Pearl of the Antilles), it generated more wealth that the 13 British colonies that were to become the United States.   

Foreign Policy magazine has a timeline of the modern-day disasters that set the stage for the current humanitarian disaster

The Unluckiest Country
The second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere has been wracked by coups, dictators, and foreign interventions throughout nearly its entire history. But you don't have to agree with Pat Robertson to agree that even by Haitian standards, the last few decades have been particularly tragic.
BY JOSHUA KEATING | JANUARY 14, 2010

The FP chronology describes: the Duvalier dictatorship, which was backed by the USA because of Duvalier's staunch anti-communist stance; the Aristide fiasco, also orchestrated by the USA; the 2004 floods, which the USA had no role in causing; the food riots of 2008, which arguably were partly due to USA policies; and the 2008 hurricanes. 

What they do not mention, however, is the deeper background.  How did Haiti get to be so poor, so lacking in wealth and resilience?

Anthropology Works gives an introduction:

January 11, 2010

Possible New Nonaddictive Anti-Anxiety Drug

Category: MedicineNeurosciencePsychiatry

Those of us who watch the drug development pipeline have been pining for a nonaddictive anti-anxiety drug.  Occasionally there are glimmers of hope.  One candidate is emapunil, aka XBD-173 or AC-5216.  In 2004, there was an article in the British Journal of Pharmacology about this.  That article described promising findings, in rats and mice.  Now, there is an article in Science that finally show some findings in humans.

January 1, 2010

Lawsuit Against Ca Science Center...

Category: PoliticsPropagandaSocial Issues

...for canceling the showing of a creationist film, Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record.  The background is on Greg Laden's Blog, Los Angeles Venue Cancels Intelligent Design Film:

You'll recall that it was recently reported that the California Science Center, which is loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, had planned a screening of "Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record" which is apparently a creationist documentary.

Well, now, the venue has cancelled the showing and the ID people are all lathered up about it.

There is some dispute about the reason for the cancellation.  Whatever the reason, the cancellation has spurred a lawsuit by the American Freedom Alliance against the California Science Center.  The AFA issued a press release lauding themselves for their action.  It's available in a PDF here.

As far as I can tell, the press release was not picked up by any serious news organizations, but it is out there on the Internet and on a few religious sites. 

December 28, 2009

Happy Birthday, Linus

Category: Chatter

Today is the birthday of Linus Torvalds. That is all.

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