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Category: History of neuroscience
NEW York City in the 1920s and '30s was a hotbed of criminal activity. Prohibition laws banning the production, sale and distribution of alcohol had been introduced, but instead of reducing crime, they had the opposite effect. Gangsters organized themselves...
Posted by Mo at 9:00 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
This post is part of a Nature Blog Focus on hallucinogenic drugs in medicine and mental health, inspired by a recent Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper, The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders, by Franz Vollenweider...
Posted by Mo at 12:45 PM • 33 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
A new study by a group of German researchers shows that depressed people have reduced sensitivity to contrast, and may actually perceive the world differently from others.
Posted by Mo at 8:15 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Delusions are pathological beliefs which persist despite clear evidence that they are actually false. They can vary widely in content, but are always characterized by the absolute certainty with which they are held. Such beliefs reflect an abnormality of thought...
Posted by Mo at 12:52 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Hallucinations are often associated with psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia or with LSD and related drugs. Hearing voices is a characteristic symptom which is reported by about 70% of schizophrenic patients, as well as by some 15% of patients with...
Posted by Mo at 6:20 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
In 1965, Senator Robert Kennedy visited several "institutions for the mentally retarded" in New York State. His descriptions of the conditions he found there, which were published widely in the media, shocked the American public and angered those in charge...
Posted by Mo at 4:15 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
This week's issue of Time has a cover story called America's Medicated Army, about the increasing use of antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs among U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.The article quotes figures from a recent report by the Army's...
Posted by Mo at 1:17 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
SciCurious has written an interesting post about Sigmund Freud's experiments with cocaine. Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was also a pioneer of psychopharmacology; as well as being one of the first to scientifically investigate the properties and effects of cocaine,...
Posted by Mo at 9:25 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: History of neuroscience
A forthcoming PBS documentary called The Lobotomist examines the career of psychiatrist Walter J. Freeman, who performed nearly 3,000 "ice pick" lobotomies during the late 1930s and 1940s.The hour-long program, which is partly based on Jack El-Hai's book of the...
Posted by Mo at 5:48 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
A lengthy article in last weekend's Washington Post Magazine discusses the work of Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) who has almost completed the first phase of a clinical study into the use of...
Posted by Mo at 2:36 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Orac 02.13.2012
Tim Lambert 02.01.2012
PZ Myers 02.02.2012
Orac 01.26.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
