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In personal communications a little over three years ago, the Brain and Behavior Blogger and a Program Director at a large federal agency* that is a primary funder of research on mental health "disagreed" (to say it politely) over the best way to provide assistance to war fighters who were suffering from PTSD.   The B&B Blogger had written: "In severe anxiety syndromes, including deep depression and PTSD, neuroscientists now believe that the brain is literally short-circuited, that it is stuck in a hyper-danger-processing mode.  Although there is some evidence to the contrary, many psychologists...

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Back in the day prior to back in the day, when the B&B Blogger was a graduate student, a wave of enthusiasm swept over the field of psychological science for "unobtrusive measures" - metrics that didn't require researchers to "intrude" into the context or dynamic of what was being investigated.  One of the then most often cited examples of the utility of such measures  was John Snow's mid-1800's* identification of a single water pump as the primary source of a cholera outbreak in London.  He simply mapped the residences and work places of the 600+ people who had died in the epidemic and found...

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The demand is relatively small.  But, there's a consistent amount of business out there for companies that cryogenically freeze and maintain the bodies of people who, when alive, believed that it was possible that they - if cryopreserved properly - could one day be brought back to life. As one might imagine, cryopreservation services are very expensive.  But the possibility of having a second chance at life is so attractive that many people have come up with very creative means of accumulating the necessary cash.  For example, in one of the great ironies of the English language, the No. 1 source...

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On Friday, October 19, TiER1 will co-host the “Growing IT in Covington” Technology Showcase in conjunction with 3Z.net and C-Forward. This event (mentioned in the Enquirer article referenced here) aims to tell the success stories of companies like ours who have “grown up” in Covington, share initiatives that make the city attractive to tech companies today, and present new technologies from Microsoft and Dell. Normand Desmarais, co-founder and chairman of TiER1, sees this gathering as a chance to put Northern Kentucky’s urban core on the map. “Our company started in Covington ten years...

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Had any withdrawal symptoms after going for a while without your favorite ice cream?  Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health, and Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, have gone public with their contention that many processed foods including (and, perhaps, especially) ice cream disrupt the parts of the brain controlling a) the experience of pleasure, and b) the self-control function - in ways that are very, very similar to the manner in which those brain functions are disrupted in the noggins of drug addicts. The position held by these two high-ranking government...

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