Her mind works like Google for pictures. Nice introduction to autism in it's different forms, the autism spectrum disorder, does DSM V already have this one? Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids. Related posts: Oxytocin in Schizophrenia and Autism 5 Myths about Positive Thinking A light switch for neurons ..read more »

The forty-ninth edition of Brain Blogging is up. In this round, we try to undercover the neuroanatomy of depression, breakdown emotion into a binary process, take a history lesson on learning theories, and discuss other topics. Related posts: Brain Blogging, Forty-Seventh Edition Brain Blogging, Thirty-Ninth Edition Brain Blogging Forty-Second Edition ..read more »

Pawan Sinha details his groundbreaking research into how the brain's visual system develops. Sinha and his team provide free vision-restoring treatment to children born blind, and then study how their brains learn to interpret visual data. The work offers insights into neuroscience, engineering and even autism. In India many young people are blind. This is a disaster because the brain will not learn to see when older, young age is critical for the brain to be able to see. Impressive lecture about blindness and neuroscience. If the brain is older than 4 to 5 years of age it looses it's .....read more »

Nutrition had a very nice and comprehensive editorial on the essence of chocolate. It mentions the recently discovered profitable effects of chocolate on the human physiology often mentioned on this blog. In short: Reduction of blood pressure by 6 grams of dark chocolate per day. Probably due to the flavonol epicatechin Reduction of platelet and endothelial cell activation Reduction of inflammatory mediators It can also inhibit oral caries It can cross the blood brain barrier and increase cerebral blood flow in humans Rightly the authors question the effects of chocolate on mood and it's possible addictive potential. As written before on this blog, chocolate is not an .....read more »

Excellent and amazing examples of the introduction of new technology in medicine. How to see ECG real time on your phone, a very small ultra sound apparatus, all 7 vital signs in one screen real time. You can have your own EEG during sleep on your clock. From TedMedRelated posts: The Corpus Clock The bio-future of joint replacement Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival about Web 2.0 and Medicine ..read more »

Time management is often necessary to complete tasks in a give period or sequence. For this you have to weigh the importance of your tasks, which is the most important or urgent. You'll mostly use some way to organize and remind your tasks (to-do lists), in order to reduce the cognitive load by having to think about your tasks all the time. Another important topic is dividing your time and estimating the time needed to complete tasks. I mostly use "Getting Things Done" or GTD for time management, follow the link for a post on this blog about GTD. Memory .....read more »

This article discussed in this post, isn't recent but the conclusion is very nuanced which isn't always the case with publications especially in news media about social networking and kids or adolescents. Seems that politicians are advocating measures to restrict social networking for children in order to prevent assumed online sexual exploitation and Internet harassment. Broad claims of victimization risk, at least defined as unwanted sexual solicitation or harassment, associated with social networking sites do not seem justified. Prevention efforts may have a greater impact if they focus on the psychosocial problems of youth instead of a specific Internet application, including .....read more »

Thanks to David Rothman. This is why placebo controlled trials are extremely necessary and seldom done.Related posts: The Placebo Effect The placebo effect, dopamine and reward 7 Reasons for placebo controlled trials in depression ..read more »

This is just one video about a robot replacing humans. It does a terrific sorting job at high speed. I especially liked this video due to the music and the swift and good impression of the possibilties of robots in the workplce. There are many more at Singularity Hub We still picture plants full of human workers toiling to make our cars and furniture, just as we imagine our meat comes from animals in a barn. The truth is much more awe-inspiring, perhaps even frightening. The factories of today have some human workers, but huge portions of assembly lines are 100% .....read more »

This above mentioned website: Academy for Flm and Psychiatry is a website that wants to organize thoughts about the many ways that film and psychiatry intersect. You can discuss films, it already has some films discussed in relation to psychiatry. It also has some information on The Cognitive Neuroscience of Film. Thanks Shrink RapRelated posts: Best Animated Film 2008: I Met The Walrus Gene-environment interaction in Psychiatry Shrink Rap Survey on Attitudes Towards Psychiatry ..read more »