Expanding upon Mr D's post last week (click here for the story), the New York Times have posted a video that explores this idea further.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/02/04/science/1247466860136/communicating-with-the-unconscious.html
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Iffy Science: Another Reason Parenting is Hard
Submitted by Art Leo, Upper School English teacher (and closet scientist) this morning. Click on the hyperlinks within the post for more details of the various aspects of this story.....
Parents face many difficult decisions, among the most difficult of which is what to name those hungry little blobs. Decisions about whether or not to vaccinate your children against disease have become complicated in recent years by scientific studies about the potential dangers of inoculation. In 1998, physician Andrew Wakefield published a study in Britain’s leading medical journal, The Lancet, claiming a connection between the Measles Mumps Rubella vaccine (MMR) and the onset of autism in children. Some parents in Great Britain panicked, leading to a rise in Measles cases, especially in Wales, where cases rose by 36% in 2008.
Some critics quickly pointed out problems with the study. Bad Science columnist Ben Goldacre, led the charge, gleefully attacking those responsible for the panic.
This week, The Lancet formally retracted Wakefield’s MMR research. Scott Hensley of NPR summarizes the story.
(Because I’m an English teacher, I highly recommend that you check out Matthew Herper’s complaint (“The Lancet's Incomprehensible Autism Retraction”) about the obfuscatory and misleading language employed in the retraction.)
Think tennis for yes, home for no: how doctors helped man in vegetative state
The following story was in today's Guardian newspaper:
For seven years the man lay in a hospital bed, showing no signs of consciousness since sustaining a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. His doctors were convinced he was in a vegetative state. Until now.
To the astonishment of his medical team, the patient has been able to communicate with the outside world after scientists worked out, in effect, a way to read his thoughts.
They devised a technique to enable the man, now 29, to answer yes and no to simple questions through the use of a hi-tech scanner, monitoring his brain activity.
To answer yes, he was told to think of playing tennis, a motor activity. To answer no, he was told to think of wandering from room to room in his home, visualising everything he would expect to see there, creating activity in the part of the brain governing spatial awareness.
His doctors were amazed when the patient gave the correct answers to a series of questions about his family. The experiment will fuel the controversy of when a patient should have life support removed.
It also raises the prospect of some form of communication with those who have been shut off from life, perhaps for years. To read the rest of the story, click here
For seven years the man lay in a hospital bed, showing no signs of consciousness since sustaining a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. His doctors were convinced he was in a vegetative state. Until now.
To the astonishment of his medical team, the patient has been able to communicate with the outside world after scientists worked out, in effect, a way to read his thoughts.
They devised a technique to enable the man, now 29, to answer yes and no to simple questions through the use of a hi-tech scanner, monitoring his brain activity.
To answer yes, he was told to think of playing tennis, a motor activity. To answer no, he was told to think of wandering from room to room in his home, visualising everything he would expect to see there, creating activity in the part of the brain governing spatial awareness.
His doctors were amazed when the patient gave the correct answers to a series of questions about his family. The experiment will fuel the controversy of when a patient should have life support removed.
It also raises the prospect of some form of communication with those who have been shut off from life, perhaps for years. To read the rest of the story, click here
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