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The Human Brain in the Age of Insight

- Eminent neuroscientist and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel in a recorded livestream from Big Think, interviewed about creativity and the brain, the challenges facing neuroscience research, differences between the brain and computers, imaging, and questions from viewers. “Understanding the human brain is the most important task that confronts us, both from an intellectual point of view and a medical point of view. We’re now at the verge of a major advance,” he says. Check out his new book, The Age of Insight. Click the image above or this link to view video.

Profile of an Anorexic

The founder and clinical supervisor of the Healthy Within eating disorders treatment program explains who typically develops anorexia and what their characteristics are. Often beginning in adolescence, anorexia is also found in adults, and contrary to stereotypes it’s not confined to wealthy, white girls. Anorexia affects people of all genders, races, and ages. However, sufferers do tend to have commonalities such as perfectionism, and issues with control and power. This expert video is a good overview of the most deadly psychiatric disorder, and features a full transcript (scroll down a bit). Learn more about anorexia, bulimia, ED-NOS, and more during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week at the NEDA web site, and also check out PsychCentral’s excellent blog Weightless.

Deep Brain Stimulation in Tourette Syndrome: A Description of 3 Patients With Excellent Outcome

A neurologist describes a new paper published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Three of his patients suffering from severe, treatment refractory Tourette syndrome received deep brain stimulation implants, and the procedures were successful. Dr. Savica talks about which areas of the brain were targeted by DBS, and the need for more research to determine the best target. For more details, read the free article here. DOI: 10.4016/38287.01.

Greg Murray, The Quality of Life Scale

A collaboration with a psychiatry group at UBC in Vancouver and a Sydney, Australia researcher measuring quality of life in bipolar disorders, separate from its symptoms. Murray describes how they developed a scale, now available for free clinical and individual use (click here), through a series of questionnaires and analyses. They created a useful instrument for the treatment of bipolar disorder that considers important dimensions.

Michalak, E., Murray, G. (2010). Development of the QoL.BD: a disorder-specific scale to assess quality of life in bipolar disorder Bipolar Disorders, 12 (7), 727-740 DOI: 10.1111/j.1399-5618.2010.00865.x

Andre Picard: Mental Health and the Media

An interview with a health reporter for The Globe & Mail, a national Canadian newspaper. Topics include mental health stigma, sensationalization, marginalized issues, and policy. They also talk about reader feedback, and parallels to journalism about breast cancer.

Cameron

Candid interview with a Fort McMurray, Alberta man who is homeless and dealing with a drug addiction, talking about the lack of accessible drug rehab programs, a dangerous story of life and death in dumpsters, what it’s like to experience withdrawal, and barriers to treatment. Part of Invisible People Road Trip 2011, a summer’s worth of street interviews with Canadians who are homeless. The short interviews reveal a variety of challenges including mental health issues, abuse, racism, and addictions. Click here for the full series of videos from Canada, and check out blog posts about other mental health issues around the world in the World Mental Health Day blog party.

The Full Story – Soften the Fck Up

Mental health issues and young men, in an awareness campaign about depression, anxiety, suicide, shame, and social issues from male perspectives. Clips of personal narrative in a simple, accessible video. Check out other videos and the whole campaign at the Australian web site.

Introduction to Peer-Run Crisis Respites

Two peer advocates describe the process they underwent to get peer-run crisis respite centers supported by funders in Massachusetts. A detailed and practical discussion about building community among stakeholders, elements of presentations, incorporating evidence and values, communicating a message, creating buzz, and how to present proposals to politicians. Peer-run respites (small comfortable settings for short-term psychiatric crisis peer support care, as an alternative to acute care hospitals) are growing in popularity but many people are still not sure what they are or why they have value. This very helpful video is accompanied by lots of information, research, and presentations to aid people in learning about and starting up respite centers where they live. See also: a 5 minute tour of a peer crisis respite center in New York.

Watson: Do Mind the Wainscoting

Interview in which the lead researcher for the Watson/Jeopardy machine learning project reveals how the program detects patterns in natural language to answer trivia puzzles in the game show Jeopardy. Short video is part of a series for World Science Festival’s  Man Made Minds video week, which includes more clips about Watson’s design and performance. Above video: news report about Watson’s Jeopardy win.

(click to view video)

Alison Gopnik

On infant learning, connectionism, philosophy, and cognitive science. Learning and representation, applications in computing and developmental psychology and the role of probablistic modeling. What knowledge is innate and what is learned from environment? Experiments show powerful results, and Gopnik reveals how previously opposed views can actually support one another. Interviewed at CogSci 2010: Cognition in Flux.