Researcher Kwabena Boahen is looking for ways to mimic the brain's supercomputing powers in silicon -- because the messy, redundant processes inside our heads actually make for a small, light, superfast computer. The brain is very efficient, they will never be able to copy that, or will they? Related posts: Brain Power: Brain Only Computer Interface Making A Brain Cake Computer Games at Work are Good For You ..read more »

Scientists have developed a robot that appears to react emotionally to the way it is treated, relaxing when it is shown kindness and flinching at anger. These robots start with face recognition software.Special robots were developed to make you feel better, they are called emotibots. Eventually they might help taking care of children and the elderly. You can see them live in the Science Museum, London. See some examples in the video above, amazing, I definitely want one, what about you? Wouldn't you like one for companion? To pour you a red wine and bring you some dark chocolate? Let me know in the .....read more »

If you want to know which doctor is the most trustworthy, ask the nurse. The nurse-rated patient doctor relationship (PDR) and the Emotional Intelligence (EI) score for the doctor were positively associated with patient trust at a significant level.A doctor’s self reported Emotional Intelligence did not correlate with patient-rated trust, or the patient rated quality of the Patient Doctor Relationship. This is the fourth post in this series about patient doctor relationship. Next Friday will be the next post. What is emotional intelligence and why is it important in the Patient Doctor Relationship?The first and original and still useful definition of .....read more »

Grand Rounds is up this week on Dr Edwin Leap's place. His theme was "Why we do it". Nicely done and some very nice posts, he even included one of my recent posts, thanks.Related posts: Grand Rounds 5:45 – Le Tour de France Edition! Medical Grand Rounds on The Covert Rationing Blog Emergiblog: Start your Grand Rounds ..read more »

What is it with psychiatrists and photography. Something comparable to psychiatrists and detectives? As you may well have noticed Dr Shock photo's can be viewed on Flickr, at least some of them. Another Belgian psychiatrist on his blogroll does the same. Well may be more on this topic of psychiatrists and photography later. Psychiatrists are not the only one posting photographs. Photo posting has also become one of the most apparent components of identity performance on profiles of social network sites. Why do individuals post and comment on photos on the Internet? It can be done to enhance interaction and relationship formation. But .....read more »

a BBC investigation has revealed that nearly 50 women were locked in an isolation ward in a mental asylum in Surrey - not because they had a mental illness - but because they carried typhoid and were deemed a public health risk. They were held at Long Grove Hospital - a mental asylum in Surrey - which started admitting carriers of typhoid as early as 1907 and continued through the 1940s and 1950s. Once admitted, those women never left. When you think you have heard it all. All of the women came from the London area and between 1944 and .....read more »

I don't think I've taken a blog to discuss ECT and it's uses in modern society, but let me just say it is used in the psychiatric community when depression is resistant to the plethora of anti-depressants that are handed out today. It's an ever continuing cycle and when the meds run out or no longer work, ECT is introduced into the client's regimen. At some point, I will write more of an expose on ECT, but for now I just want to stick to my experience. A nice account of ECT by someone undergoing this treatment. She even posted some .....read more »

The authors of this systematic review included only the serious mental illness of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder (MDD), and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As if the other mental illnesses are not serious? Well lets stop moaning their initiative is praiseworthy. They performed a systematic literature search of Medline (1966–August 2007) and a review of the studies was conducted to determine the knowledge base on clinical outcomes of surgery among persons diagnosed with serious mental illness. After selection they found 10 articles reporting perioperative medical, surgical, or psychiatric complications with schizophrenia and 2 for depression. Patients with schizophrenia undergoing surgery were .....read more »

Light can have amazing effects and contrasts of light and dark. They can create beautiful effects or phenomena. This picture above is from a blog with 20 Most Incredible Light Phenomenas for your viewing pleasure. But light can also be used in depression. Bright light therapy is an excellent candidate for inclusion into the therapeutic inventory available for the treatment of nonseasonal depression today, as adjuvant therapy to antidepressant medication. This was the result of a recent systematic review. To me light therapy for nonseasonal depression was new, which inspired the recent post on this blog about this topic. Light therapy can .....read more »

A robot with empathy sounds like the stuff of sci-fi movies, but with the aid of neural networks European researchers are developing robots in tune with our emotions. The tantalising work of the Feelix Growing project is grabbing the world’s attention. Through the combination of cameras,sensors, artificial neural networks and software development ICT results are developing robots that can respond to human emotions. If someone shows fear or cries out in pain, the robot may learn to change its behaviour to appear less threatening, backing away if necessary. If someone cries out in happiness, it may even detect the difference, and one .....read more »