Thieves of Rest Who would steal a CPAP machine? One could imagine patients faced with reluctant health insurers might just go out and their own sleep apnea therapy – but lifting 39 machines? Cheryl Pender of Indiana University Health at La Porte has posted bail on the charge of stealing 29 CPAP and 10 BiPAP […]
Your kludgy brain (and how to use it – 3/2/11)
Seeing Without Sight Ever wondered how congenitally blind people “see” what they’re reading? It’s because they’re using the visual processing part of their brains to decipher words. It turns out your brain is a group of kludges – Rube Goldberg machines of tacked together parts that get the job(s) done. Darwinian evolution never went to […]
Take breaks or you make mistakes (2/28/11)
How Can You Keep Your Concentration Sharp? Pay attention! We hear that phrase when we’re very young, but does acknowledging those two words really make focus us better? Probably yes – if they’re a diversion from boredom or mental wandering. People are not machines, no matter how hard we, our parents or our employers try […]
How your brain processes pain (2/25/11)
Does What You Expect Change What You Get? Pain is information, how the brain interprets certain stimuli to form sensations almost all humans fear and detest. As Oxford researchers reported last week in Science Translation Medicine, how we individually interpret pain is markedly changed by context: The Study Subjects – 22 healthy people Method – […]
Lazy Cakes – waiting for a new non-prescription drug disaster (2/18/11)
Relaxation Brownies? Lazy Cakes is two ounces of sleeping medication masquerading as a chocolate brownie – an attempt at a “natural pot” brownie, as it’s advertising implies. It contains a warning on the back, four separate lines within a bracket of one quarter of an inch, lines small enough that children will not see them […]