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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.
Corpus Callosum is written by a psychiatrist at a small community hospital somewhere in the USA. Email to cc.scienceblogger at gmail dot com.
Category: Psychiatry
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a treatment for major depression. It was approved (PDF) by the FDA in 2008. However, it has remained somewhat of a niche treatment. Some providers remain unimpressed by studies of efficacy. One problem is...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:46 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
The article describes a technique that it said to show a priori which patients are at risk for developing suicidal thoughts after starting an antidepressant. Of course the usual interpretive caveats apply: it is a small study, needs to be...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 1:19 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
At first, I was going to title this post WSJ: Incompetent Ranting. Then I decided that was too strong. Then I read the article again, and went back to the original title. Mind you, this is not intended to be...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:27 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
The January 2010 American Journal of Psychiatry has two articles pertaining to the relationship between dietary practices and mental health. One article presents the results of a study; the other is an editorial. Association of Western and Traditional Diets With...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:22 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
The American Psychiatric Association has gone public with the details of their proposed revisions to their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. As expected, most of this is bland and not worthy of attention from the general public. Unfortunately, as Benedict Carey...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:46 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Objective 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...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:08 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
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...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:39 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
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...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:41 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Bioethics
I couldn't resist that title, but I must admit it isn't mine; the author's post is here. This is about the NYT article about the finding that children on Medicaid are more likely to be prescribed antipsychotic medication, compared to...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:05 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
This post is about a journal article that describes mortality rates in populations of persons with eating disorders. It is sort of about that. The article is in the APA green journal, which is not openly accessible. Only the abstract...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:41 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
