In the June 18th, 2007 issue of Newsweek, Sharon Begley wrote an opinion column that must have raised a few hackles in the psychotherapy community. In her words, “…(for) patients seeking psychotherapy….talking can be dangerous … and therapists have not exactly rushed to tell them so.” One well-documented class of examples has come from “stress…
You may have heard that the AMA recently decided that a child’s “addiction” to computer games should, in the extreme, be recognized as a medical disorder. You probably understand that the AMA has two reasons for elaborating the lists of maladies that are recognized as deserving treatment by its members. 1) They really do have…
There are too many answers to this question, and in a sense, THAT’S what’s wrong. I used this ‘headline’ as a cheap trick to get you to read my little story. I have a specific partial answer to this question in mind, which I would like to present to you by way of a little…
I wrote recently about some things that can increase or decrease amyloid beta protein in the body, and how the protein plays a role in Alzheimer’s disease. Now, scientists are working on an eye test that scans for amyloid beta deposits in the retina as a way to detect early Alzheimer’s. The research is still…
I’m excited to announce that my brand new book Soft-Wired is now out and available in paperback or Kindle format. This book was a labor of love, and it took me many years and many iterations to say exactly what I wanted, how I wanted to say it. The result is a book that covers…
This past weekend I visited two outstanding programs in Portland designed to inform Oregon educators (and through them, school-age children) and an interested citizenry about advances in neuroscience. I was very much impressed by these programs; they are good models of what SHOULD be happening, all across America. <strong>Brain Awareness</strong> (www.oregonbrains.org) targets teachers and school…
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my grandaughter Leila’s neighborhood public elementary school in Oakland, California is being reconstructed at all deliberate speed — and I emphasize the word ‘deliberate’ — after it was largely destroyed by an arsonist. Because schools and institutions in general have just lost the skill of doing anything FAST,…