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I’m calling it Father’s Day – with the apostrophe before the ‘s’. I’m sure that there are lots of Fathers out there but my wee girl is only concerned with one – little old me. Though not so little these … Continue reading →

What goes up, must come down
My body and brain are crashing
and I must resist temptation
to post here
knowing full well
anything I say can and will be used against me

Did someone already come up with the phrase "Thank G-d it's Friday"
and how did that brilliant person know Just How I Feel tonight?

I met my writer friends at a diner today
We talked shop
I filled them in on Kindling
and the drive and the fiction strand
and the bonfire and the wishes
and the writers that welcomed me with open arms

They said I was glowing
Like I was in love
That look we get when romance is mysterious and mythical
That feeling we get that we can literally walk on water

If this is love, I hope the honeymoon never ends
(although I know it always does, the blessing or curse of getting older)

Holding on to this spirit of enchantment and infatuation won't be easy--
(I know, realistically, we are odd creatures and err on the side of angst and worries-- of which I have many and many)--

but I will do what I can to protect and defend the fire in my fingertips.

The weather is deadful: monsoon rains since early morning
and I've lost my ambition to do anything of consequence this evening
In fact, these letters I type may be the heaviest of lifting I attempt all day.

Not true.
My eyes are yearning to close
And I am fighting them,
fighting sleep,
fighting letting myself go into the abyss of
nothingness

Give me a few minutes. I'm sure I'm headed that way.
It's not nice to deny Mother Nature what's due. And what I am due for is
sleep
A Very Deep Sleep

where I am sure I will dream of
quiet revelations found in
trees and lightning bolts and magic and Mrs. Gladstone and Stanley Yelnats and handsome waiters carving slices of honey-soft steak...

No joke.
I just fell asleep
at my desk
before I sent this to Live Journal.

There was a dream in those few seconds of slumber
but I can't remember anything
and I'm shaking my legs and arms out,
trying to re-ignite my engine tonight
but, like my car last weekend,
I think my oil pressure is leaking
and I have to stop this car,
safely

Earlier today we posted an article about Deep Brain Stimulation inspired by a 38-year old patient that regained consciousness. Below is an excerpt from Plum and Posner’s Diagnosis of Stupor and Coma 4th edition,  to help you further understand how miraculous Deep Brain Stimulation is.

Consciousness is the state of full awareness of the self and one’s relationship to the environment. Clinically, the level of consciousness of a patient is defined operationally at the bedside by the responses of the patient to the examiner. It is clear from this definition that it is possible for a patient to be conscious yet not responsive to the examiner, for example, if the patient lacks sensory inputs, is paralyzed, or for psychologic reason decides not to respond. Thus, the determination of the state of consciousness can be a technically challenging exercise. In the definitions that follow, we assume that the patient is not unresponsive due to sensory or motor impairment or psychiatric disease. (more…)

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In light of the breaking news last week that a 38-year-old man regained speech after brain stimulation, we asked Craig Panner, our in-house expert on all things science and a senior-editor at OUP, what his thoughts were. He immediately thought of Plum and Posner’s Diagnosis of Stupor and Coma 4th edition because Nicholas Schiff, one of the co-authors, was deeply involved in the study that led to brain stimulation. Below is Panner’s first OUPblog post. (more…)

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Today’s Medical Monday’s post looks forward toward The Future of the Brain. In the excerpt below author Steven Rose explains both the “promise and the perils” of the future of neuroscience.

‘Better Brains’ shouted the front cover of a special edition of Scientific American in 2003, and the titles of the articles inside formed a dream prospectus for the future: ‘Ultimate self-improvement’; ‘New hope for brain repair’; ‘The quest for a smart pill’; ‘Mind-reading machines’; ‘Brain stimulators’; ‘Genes of the psyche’; ‘Taming stress’. These, it seems, are the promises offered by the new brain sciences, bidding strongly to overtake genetics as the Next Big Scientific Thing. (more…)

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Last week, Nobel-prize winning scientist Eric Kandel wrote about the five most unforgettable works on memory for The Wall Street Journal. Today we will look more closely at two of these titles, Memory and Brain by Larry R. Squire and Memory From A to Z by Yadin Dudai. Below is an excerpt from the beginning of Memory and Brain. Check back later today to learn more about Memory From A to Z.

(more…)

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