During a wedding the oxytocine of those involved in the wedding party rises, the testosterone level of only the groom rises, naughty, naughty. Watch this video and find out why people like to have a wedding.

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For 40 years, the choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo has captured the hearts and minds of people around the world, including former South African President, Nelson Mandela

Also see Nelson Mandela’s Life and Leadership

Twenty years after his release from prison, a look at the career of the world’s great hero. Narrated by TIME’s Managing Editor, Rick Stengel

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Couldn’t resist, phenomenal clip, imagine all the timing and work to make this exhibition and even the music is OK. Hilarious.

Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.

It’s a so called Rube Goldberg machine. It’s a deliberately over engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. The expression is named after American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg. Since then, the expression has expanded to denote any form of overly confusing or complicated system such as this one.

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I was a great fan of Google Notebook but Google decided to drop the development of Google Notebook. I used it mostly for blogging. It’s integration with Firefox made it an easy to use tool for saving links, web pages and blogposts. At the beginning of the previous year I decided to give Evernote a try and I was very satisfied with this capture tool. You can sync your evernotes with all your devices, even with the iphone. It’s integration with Firefox is smooth.

Recently found a better alternative reducing the time to save links etc. with another click less and as such more comparable to Google Notebook: Read It Later. It’s faster than Evernote, because especially in Windows Evernote has to start up, you have to approve each note and tag it if wanted. Read it later is also an onlineservice but you can also save your notes directly in your browser, add ons are available for all the major browser platforms. You can also read it on any device such as iphone. Articles are saved text-only or with images, and formatted for easy reading. You can also read your notes off line.

Read It Later Digest as shown in this video below, analyzes all of the articles in your list and automatically groups them into topics. Simply put, it is like having folders in your list, but Read It Later takes care of sorting them for you.

Makes saving web pages, links and posts a breeze.

Thanks Lifehacking.nl

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Medical Schools or medical education is mainly done in universities. Medical education in universities especially undergraduate education in North America as well as in Europe are full with very basic science such as chemistry, physics, but also laboratory branches such as biochemical education. I can still remember long afternoons using a pipette in endless rows of test tubes. Scientific research is also integrated in Med Schools. Even community based schools are strongly connected with universities.

This model stems from the beginning of the previous century. Obviously medical education liaised with the universities has many benefits, the close partnership results in a scientific approach and early adaption of scientific discoveries in the medical curricula. But medical education is also about training good professionals as well as good communicators. The modern physician also needs knowledge about prevention, medical decision making, ethics and cultural competence to name a few. This kind of knowledge needed by modern physicians is very different from the knowledge learned in basic sciences taught during medical education.

The solution to this problem is according to some authors:

A richer, broader education that can be achieved through more flexible and individualized paths to the MD and facilitated by realizing medical schools’ full academic citizenship in the university.

This proposal for more individual learner-centered education is the new buzz in medical education. Medical students should have the opportunity to follow their intellectual curiosity about phenomena of illness and disease, their understanding of the human condition, and their exploration of the many other disciplines that relate to medicine and the life sciences.

Students might explore issues of stigma or disability, or the economics of health care. Those interested in pediatrics could study the history of childhood, cross-cultural breastfeeding practices, or public policy that affects children’s health. The possibilities are legion, and few (geology, perhaps?) are irrelevant to clinical practice, medical research, or the societal contributions of the profession.

The main problem is the fact that medical curricula are all ready overcrowded with required content. This limits the pursuit of individualized interests and learning goals. The solution to this problem from the authors of one of the recent publications on this subject is the adaptation of the medical curriculum to the need of the medical student. Those wanting to become a surgeon can have different needs with more procedural and technical skills than those becoming a psychiatrist.

Psychiatry medical student education e.g. should consist of three subsets in addition to a core curriculum. A track for students bound to become primary care physicians. This curriculum would include more detailed knowledge and skills in assessment and actual treatment of straightforward presentations of common mental disorders. Another track for them interested in neuroscience research. This should consist of the core curriculum and additional emphasis on neuroscience electives and research throughout the course of medical school. The last track is for those aiming at becoming psychiatrists. They should broaden their knowledge and skills in other fields since this could be their last available opportunity before becoming a psychiatrist.

The new medical education should be broader and more personalized with flexible and individualized paths to the MD. Choices should be made also during clerkship towards future interests, but how many students already know what they want to be. To my opinion very few, what do you think?. These are just a few options mentioned in the articles discussed. To me the personalized view on medical education was the most interesting part and important overlap between the discussed articles.

Curry RH, & Montgomery K (2010). Toward a liberal education in medicine. Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 85 (2), 283-7 PMID: 20107358
Thornhill JT 4th, & Tong L (2006). From Yoda to Sackett: the future of psychiatry medical student education. Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry, 30 (1), 23-8 PMID: 16473990

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Healthtalkonline is a website with a lot of information from the point of view of the patient on a lot of diseases. Both mental and physical health. I tried their information on depression. They interviewed 38 people about their experiences of this condition. This resulted in a whole list of topics. Stories about discovery of depression, how to negotiate with the health system (doctors included), self care, support, and living with depression and discovery. Awesome information for patients and their relatives. The information is presented very clearly mostly with video interviews of patients. Saw an interview on video of a women who

Wanted her GP (who was also a friend) to notice her problem, but was worried that if she told him how she was feeling he might judge her badly.

Many more videos to see about this and other topics. An enormous database of very valuable information for patients with all kind of ailments and diseases.

The information on Healthtalkonline is based on qualitative research into patient experiences, led by experts at the University of Oxford. These personal stories of health and illness will enable patients, families and healthcare professionals to benefit from the experiences of others.

There’s also a similar website for younger patients, adolescents, called youthhealthtalk.org

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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.

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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.

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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 ability to learn to see. A Project Prakash was started to help blind or almost blind children and help if possible.

The goal of Project Prakash is to bring light into the lives of curably blind children and, in so doing, illuminate some of
the most fundamental scientific questions about how the brain develops and learns to see.

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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 antidepressant and chocolate craving is a difficult concept consisting of different features.

The authors explain that chocolate as used nowadays is completely different from how it was probably originally consumed as a frothy, tart-tasting, and mildly alcoholic beverage among the Olmec and Maya. Those days it also was a critical source of calories in a calorie-constrained society. For the history of chocolate read Cacao and Chocolate Timeline

Their conclusion on the still obscured effects of chocolate on health in general and the mind more specifically explains the controversies in results and interpretations of different research on chocolate:

Unraveling the components of a lipid-rich, small molecule–laden foodstuff that varies by genetics, fermentation method, and the chocolate-making process is a tall order. So, perhaps the answer lies in understanding the pharmacology of specific chocolate formulations rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach to this age-old problem.

McShea, A., Leissle, K., & Smith, M. (2009). The essence of chocolate: A rich, dark, and well-kept secret Nutrition, 25 (11-12), 1104-1105 DOI: 10.1016/j.nut.2009.05.012

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