Neuroskeptic
ddobbs | February 1, 2010PTSD, pharma, adjuvants, bad movies -- these are a few of my favorite things, and readers' too.
What's Neil doing here? He wasn't on Neuron Culture; I posted his clip on my catch-all, David Dobbs's Somatic Marker, because I love him. So he comes first. From 1986. Looks as if he's having a particularly good time here.
Neuron Culture's Top Five from Jan 2010
NEJM study finds post-event morphine cuts combat PTSD rates in half
"This is a pretty big deal if it holds up in future trials. One caveat I've not had time to check out is whether the morphine was often applied as part of an more…
ddobbs | January 29, 2010Hits of the week:
Savage Minds (with a spiffy website redesign) asks Why is there no Anthropology Journalism?
Jerry Coyne takes sharp exception to both a paper and a SciAm Mind Matters article by Paul Andrews and Andy Thomson arguing that depression might be an evolutionary adaptation. Dr. Pangloss punches back. (NB: 1. I was founding editor of Mind Matters, but no longer edit it, did not edit the Andrews/Thomson piece, and don't know any of these people. 2. While my recent Atlantic article presented an argument for how a gene associated with depression (the so-called SERT gene) might be…
ddobbs | September 8, 2009From my wanderings. We'll start with the happy stuff
Salmon return to Paris! (photo: Charles Bremner, deep in Paris)
Mind Hacks tours some really old brains.
Zuska speaks wisely of health care reform.
The Guardian serves up some glass viruses (smallpox is pictured above).
Neuroskeptic covers a paper that is both encouraging, in its finding that EEG seems to predict antidepressant response, and infuriating, in that it withholds the information anyone else would need to replicate it. NOT GOOD.
The Wall Street Journal checks out cool tools to track the flu.
ddobbs | March 20, 2009A few weeks ago, Matt Stevens, the National Guard captain and medic who served in Iraq and whom I mentioned in my Scientific American article, "The Post-Traumatic Stress Trap, wrote me an email about the social unease he often encountered when he showed any behavior that might remind people he had served in Iraq -- a greater seriousness, an impatience with petty concerns or inefficiency, or even just talking about the place.
I have begun to think of military PTSD as to some extent a civilian problem rather than a soldier problem. To expand slightly here; civilians/politicians send soldiers…