March 2011
125 posts
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ASSOCIATED PRESS: Shocking as it may seem, U.S.... →
Ok, Bio/psych experimental history 101. And it wasn’t just the U.S. There’s a big problem with a quote, which intends on aligning all early researchers with Nazis. It starts out correct:
Attitudes about medical research were different then.
Exactly, popular/general society’s attitude, not just researchers’ or the gov’s attitude. This is an important distinction...
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Former Federal Judge, Caught in Drug and... →
It was quite shocking last October when word first surfaced that then-federal judge Jack Camp, at the time a senior judge for the Northern District of Georgia (Atlanta), might have indulged in cocaine, marijuana, and sex with a prostitute. The charges were hard to believe, especially given Judge Camp’s judicial office.
But, as it turned out, there was some truth to the allegations. In November,...
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Medical Care for Prisoners: Challenges and...
Dr. Robert Greifinger, Health care policy and quality management consultant for correctional health care systems, will lead an interactive discussion about the issues involved in providing medical care for prisoners. Given that the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a case (Schwarzenegger v. Coleman and Plata) addressing issues related to general medical and psychiatric care of ...
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My ‘safe place’ is filled with a lot...
February 2011
55 posts
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“Unfortunately, science does little to settle this debate, because the brain...”
– Oh, it that why?! From the are you fucking kidding me article, Sex Addiction: A Real Disease or a Convenient Excuse? by John Cloud for Time. Hey Cloud, that’s a nice fat bow of outdated assumed truths you tied up this story with.
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Just hammering it in today. →
…mammals and birds express mate preferences and make mate choices, and data suggest that this “attraction system” is associated with the dopaminergic reward system. (…) These and other results suggest that dopaminergic reward pathways contribute to the “general arousal” component of romantic love; romantic love is primarily a motivation system, rather than...
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Defining the brain systems of lust, romantic...
Mammals and birds have evolved three primary, discrete, interrelated emotion-motivation systems in the brain for mating, reproduction, and parenting: lust, attraction, and male-female attachment.Each emotion-motivation system is associated with a specific constellation of neural correlates and a distinct behavioral repertoire.
Lust evolved to initiate the mating process with any...
How Lithium Works Finally Explained →
ziyadmd:
Researchers are only now beginning to understand how lithium works. Ongoing research now suggests that lithium can help restore brain volume deficits.
Despite a remarkable lifespan of over 70 years, lithium continues to be an effective treatment for the manic and depressive episodes of bipolar disorder.
Read more at: Psych Central
My main associate was one of the 5 original MDs...
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The email that took five hours to get right, but could be said in seconds.
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Did the mind of a seven year old write this... →
Man Locked Away 14 Years Without Trial
Floyd Brown, a North Carolina man with mental disabilities, spent 14 years in North Carolina jails and mental facilities awaiting trial on a murder that he always said he didn’t commit. Because a judge ruled he was not competent to stand trial, Brown was never tried but was locked away in a Raleigh mental hospital. DNA testing wasn’t possible because ...
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Educating the Jury...and the Attorneys →
Jurors believe interrogation tactics are not likely to elicit false confessions: will expert witness testimony inform them otherwise?
Situational factors - in the form of interrogation tactics - have been reported to unduly influence innocent suspects to confess. This study assessed jurors’ perceptions of these factors and tested whether expert witness testimony on confessions informs...
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But I don't know what to call it.
Let’s say you haven’t had a real vacation in 9 years. You might have the occasional day off which sometimes gets used up doing catch-up work, organizing or planning meetings. Making the decision to stop marketing your business a while ago (only taking word of mouth referrals, so that you have more time for courses and lab research that you love doing) didn’t “make”...
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Neuroscience evidence, a double-edged sword →
”The prosecutor’s typical position is that brain scan evidence shouldn’t be used because they say it’s not scientifically useful,” Greely said. “They say it will confuse the jury, that it’s not relevant, that the technology isn’t good enough yet. But most of all, they’ll say that’s fine that you found this person has an abnormal...
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alittlespace:
“Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake.”
W.C. Fields talking about my life.
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The 5 Weirdest Ways Music Can Mess With the Human... →
At a neuroscience conference a couple months ago, the keynote speaker was going on about the positive affect of synchronicity or the rhythm of firing action potentials and communicating frequencies on the life span and strength of neurons. Getting that rhythm going whatever way you like, is key. Music is one of them.
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What got you interested in brain scans in the... →
In India, a woman was convicted of murder using a technology that recorded electrical activity from the scalp while she was viewing or listening to materials related to the crime. When I learned more about the tests and how widely they were being used in the Indian legal system, I realized these techniques need to be evaluated in a more rigorous way.
Something I haven’t read much...
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“The painful, gut-wrenching feeling you get when you’re ignored, research...”
– The brain police: judging murder with an MRI. By Angela Saini.
SCOTT SHAFFER: NPR on Meditating Murderers →
scottdshaffer:
Outside of This American Life and maybe Car Talk, this is the best piece I’ve heard on public radio in years. Some death row prisoners in Alabama are doing Vipassana meditation:
“For the first three days, the only thing we do is sit and focus on our breath,” Young says. “This is to still…
Fascinating. I love this.
…inmates who go through the course have a 20...
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Does Misery Love Company? Evidence from... →
With substantial fixed costs of drug development, more common conditions can support more products. If additional pharmaceutical products are beneficial, they will attract greater consumption and promote better health, e.g. greater longevity. We ask how market size measured by condition prevalence affects consumption and longevity. We document in condition cross sections that both the tendency...
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littleorphanammo replied to your photo: $295 for what benefits? Adios ABA.
wha’izzit?
American Bar Association. AKA: fancy pants ‘Look At Me!’ club.
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Inbox gems, ctd.
Why would you ever give a dude a vacuum for Valentine’s Day, you ask?
Men who do more housework have more sex.
Here’s some stats to back it up. (A headline I’m not mad at: “Men who share the load clean up in the bedroom”)
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Can Robots Express Emotion? →
Two main consequences deserve emphasis. First, it could be of interest for roboticists to have in mind that human-like entities might not be the unique way to develop social robots: if our brain responds similarly to non anthropomorphic emotional signals, is there a need to design expressive agents that share our morphology? Are anthropomorphic signals of emotion a necessary ingredient for...
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"If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect."
scottdshaffer said: I love your jokes and nerdy posts and mysterious profile pics. I think I’m tumblcrushing.
Thanks…and check out this important Field Guide To Narcissism.
Court bans man with low IQ from having sex →
It was decided by a Court of Protection, that for a man with a “vigorous sex drive” and an IQ of 48 that being sexually active with his current partner is “inappropriate and (…) that he did not understand what he was doing” speaking on his cognitive ability to obtain consent and the health risks involved with having sex.
A psychiatrist involved in the case even tried to...
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approachingsignificance replied to your photo: A lot of this happened over the weekend and I feel…
Kind of looks like lines of coke in a nightclub.
In that case, I did about three 8-balls worth of data.
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“Halfway through a therapy session an angry husband pulled a gun from his jacket...”
– Case 2-5. Ethics in Psychology and in the Mental Health Professions, Koocher, Keith-Spiegel, 2008. It’s ok, they both lived to go to prison. Problem solved.
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Stanford Ruled Incompetent to Stand Trial →
In an interesting twist, the judge suggested that one prison hospital that might be suitable for Mr. Stanford was the Federal Medical Center in Butner, N.C. Among the inmates at the Butner federal prison is the convicted swindler Bernard L. Madoff, who ran a far-larger Ponzi scheme than the one Mr. Stanford is accused of operating.
…so they might get together and start talking about...
As Republicans Resist Closing Prisons, Cuomo Is... →
So NYS was going to close and consolidate about 10 Dept. of Corrections’ adult and juvenile facilities, since the intake of prisoners just doesn’t justify the operation costs of the facility. Good news, right? More money for other things, like education, right? naah. Instead, the governor’s office faces:
“stiff resistance from Senate Republicans, who are trying to...
