The regular collection of modern painters, from 1905-1960 in the Centre Pompidou in Paris holds some beautiful paintings by Wassily Kandinsky. This picture is just one out of five or six nice paintings, colorful. Enjoyed them very much while visiting Paris, so check them out when you have the opportunity. You can find more on Kandinsky and syneasthesia on this blog.Related posts: Largest Kandinsky Copy on Weilheim Square in Germany Kandinsky and Der Blaue Reiter Barack Obama in Paris: Dorothy’s Art Gallery ..read more »

Oxford mathematician Peter Donnelly reveals the common mistakes humans make in interpreting statistics -- and the devastating impact these errors can have on the outcome of clinical trials. British and very funny besides being very informativeRelated posts: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics Recommended reading: From Statistics to Fort Hood How to design the ultimate TEDTalk with statistics ..read more »

Merry X mas to all readers and thanks for all the comments. Take care Dr ShockNo related posts. ..read more »

This lecture explains everything you wanted to know about the fascinating fixture of human language: metaphors. The cognitive process, examples, effects etc.Related posts: Reprise Bullet Points in Medical Education ..read more »

Ommwriter from Herraiz Soto on Vimeo. A new minimalistic full screen text writer: Ommwriter. Simple, adaptable (fonts, font size, keyboard sounds, background, sounds although a bit new age, and size) and a pleasure to use. Besides only available for Mac. Until now used Scrivener but this one is cool. You'll have to register to download it. We also love writing. We love writing for the simple pleasure of, well, writing. Besides, writing is a beautiful way to chase great ideas. As mere mortals, we also face the usual challenges of daily life: a multitude of windows open on our computer desktops, messages, .....read more »

In short, a recent article proposed to do deep brain stimulation for schizophenia. Schizophrenia has positive-, negative- and cognitive symptoms (see the figure above). The authors propose the DBS for positive symptoms. Their approach is based on current models of the neurocircuitry of psychosis . They hypothesize: that chronic, high frequency electrical stimulation (HFS) of the hippocampus or the nucleus accumbens (NAc), through stabilization of dopamine (DA) release in the striatum, may improve positive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. I checked Clinicaltrials.gov but no one is doing a trial with DBS and schizophrenia yet. Their hypothesis is based on the assumption .....read more »

Snow is causing a lot of troubles on roads, train, and airports these days in The Netherlands. Even heard a spokesman compare these problems with the problems of Chicago in the winter as an excuse. "In Chicago these problems also exists in the winter". No one objects but comparing the weather of Chicago with the weather in The Netherlands is like comparing apples and oranges. The average Chicago winter produces 38.0 inches (94 cm) of snow. This is just an average; Chicago winters have produced between 9.8 and 89.7 inches (25 cm and 221 cm) of snow. In finding lame excuses .....read more »

The MedLib’s Round Blog Carnival is a monthly blog carnival that showcases excellent posts in medical librarianship. The carnival is not restricted to librarians – anyone can submit as long as the post is relevant and of good quality. If you have an article on medical librarianship, PubMed, evidence-based medicine, information literacy or Web 2.0 tools etc., you’re welcome to submit, I will be the next host. There is no special theme. Please submit your article before January 2, 2010 through this form. The MedLib’s Round 1.9 should be available on January 6th.Related posts: Scientia Pro Publica: a call for submissions Finding .....read more »

Three fast track articles were recently published on CyberPsychology and Behavior about the treatment of PTSD with virtual reality exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is the most evidence based treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). More than 18 studies have been published on the use of virtual reality exposure treatment for PTSD. One of the articles is a case series of treatment with virtual reality exposure treatment within the combat theater. Until now this treatment was done at home. In this article a portable set of virtual reality machines was take to Iraq for treatment of PTSD within the .....read more »

As written elsewhere on this blog: Dr Shock is a musical omnivore. He likes hip hop, reggae but also Jazz. One of his favorite jazz musicians is Bill Evans. Mostly because the piano is Dr Shock's favorite instrument. Not that he can play the piano but these vibes get down all the way. Recently discovered a Dutch site written in English about Bill Evans. This site has an enormous amount of information about Bill Evans an his music, obviously written by a very enthusiastic fan, must be a physician. I tried Google but couldn't a better and more informative site .....read more »