I mentioned acetylcholine (ACh) is the star of one of my favorite neuroscience stories. So here it is ( Read more... )

I've spent a bunch of time thinking about placebos. At one point I gathered a lot of it into a single long and rambling LJ post almost a year ago (I've posted about it in my problog since then, but I don't want to directly link that blog to this LJ; it was about placebo only in the context of clinical acupuncture research, and thus less applicable ( Read more... )

This is my terribly informal non-IRB-approved internet poll. I might use the results in a future blog post as information about how (some) people think they'd use scientific studies in their decision process to try or not try acupuncture; no names or handles or other identifying information would be included (but if you're worried, just answer the ( Read more... )

I referred to a survey the other day that appeared in various polyamory-related communities on Livejournal ( example, another example, a third example). It's actually even worse that is seems: the survey hasn't been reviewed by either of the groups mentioned in the survey (which was said repeatedly in the comments on the links above ( Read more... )

( trigger warning, NSFW )

Scientists and Engineers for AmericaPlease join us on March 9 at 8:00 PM EST (ed note: that's tomorrow) for ( Read more... )

Leave it to the last hour of the final meeting of a class to uncover a massive complicated ethical problem that impacts all of medicine. Let me see if I can explain it, since I don't have all the study references at hand and the nature of the problem makes talking about it potentially a violation of ethics (to the point where if I had already sworn ( Read more... )

As a former biologist, I'm pretty comfortable calling bullshit on this:

Thermahelm Motorcycle Helmet Helps Prevent Injury by Inducing Brain Freeze: Traditional helmets are lined with a thick layer of polystyrene foam, exacerbating brain injuries by acting as an insulating layer and allowing the brain to reach its fatal threshold temperature. The ( Read more... )

My Tuesday morning class, _Experience, Experiments, and the Soul_ taught by Ted Kaptchuk, is just as awesome as I'd hoped. Let me share a little bit of what I learned during today's lecture on the history of medicine and healing, on the birth of modern Western medicine ( Read more... )

There have actually been some things to come out of Surveyfail that would be interesting to people who couldn't care less that some asshole "researchers" were poking fandom with a stick (again). At the very least, as someone whose BA is in Psych and Neuroscience, I find this examination of cognitive neuroscience (here's more of that examination ( Read more... )