August 1, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – Hundreds of thousands of veterans with PTSD have been prescribed simultaneous doses of powerful psychiatric drugs. The practice, known as “polypharmacy,” can tranquilize patients to the point of numbness, cause weight gain and increase suicidal thoughts … Read More
July 31, 2025
(New York Times) – But by artificially circulating blood and oxygen, the procedure can reanimate a lifeless heart. Some doctors and ethicists find the procedure objectionable because, in reversing the stoppage of the heart, it seems to nullify the reason … Read More
July 30, 2025
(NBC News) – Acute necrotizing encephalopathy is deadly in more than a quarter of kids diagnosed with the inflammatory brain disease. Severe flu seasons in recent years have brought to light a little-known danger of influenza infections in kids: a … Read More
July 30, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – Shooter at NFL headquarters believed he was suffering from CTE, caused by repeated head trauma Shortly after Shane Tamura was identified as the shooter at the NFL’s Park Avenue headquarters building in New York on Monday, … Read More
July 30, 2025
(Wired) – Once dismissed as just snoring, sleep apnea is now emerging as an early warning sign for serious conditions like Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and depression. Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is one of the most common types of apnea, affecting … Read More
July 30, 2025
(Wired) – Stress, isolation, and uncertainty appear to have caused the brain to age quicker for those who lived through the crisis. More than five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still discovering the after-effects of … Read More
July 30, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – Ultrapotent nitazenes, mostly from China, are easy to smuggle and mix into heroin, recreational drugs and gray-market pharmaceuticals Fentanyl fueled the worst drug crisis the West has ever seen. Now, an even more dangerous drug is … Read More
July 29, 2025
(CNN) – Maida’s cognition showed additional improvement, however, after she completed a total of 40 weeks of intensive lifestyle changes, said principal investigator Dr. Dean Ornish, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and creator … Read More
July 23, 2025
(KFF Health News) – More states are passing laws to protect information generated by a person’s brain and nervous system as technology improves the ability to unlock the sensitive details of a person’s health, mental states, emotions, and cognitive functioning. … Read More
July 23, 2025
(Wired) – Summer. For teens not at work, it’s hot, it’s boring, and it’s an ideal time to close the door and spend about every waking moment watching, playing, texting, streaming—anything but talking—on the phone. With almost half of teenagers … Read More
July 22, 2025
(NBC News) – The stress of lockdowns, fear and social isolation appear to have left a mark on our brains. Experts say it may be possible to counteract the changes. Brain aging may have sped up during the pandemic, even … Read More
July 21, 2025
(Wired) – Millions of people suffer debilitating reactions in the presence of certain scents and chemicals. One scientist has been struggling for decades to understand why—as she battles the condition herself. In 1997, Miller proposed a career-defining theory of how … Read More
July 21, 2025
(Wired) – Unlike Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface, Synchron’s doesn’t require open-skull surgery, and it has an OpenAI chatbot baked in. While Musk envisions a transhumanist fusion of mind and machine, Synchron is focused on meeting the immediate needs of people … Read More
July 21, 2025
(Comment) – But what if the creation of language and its communication are fundamentally different from what LLMs are doing? What if language use is not just one more skill among many? What if LLMs are subtly altering how we … Read More
July 16, 2025
(New York Times) – When it comes to mental health, most treatments for conditions like depression or anxiety come with caveats. Medications work for some symptoms, but can exacerbate others. Cognitive behavioral therapy is effective for many patients, but not … Read More
July 16, 2025
(Forbes) – Some professionals have warned against the excessive use of YouTube Shorts. For example, ChoosingTherapy.com, an outline site for mental health articles, released a report in 2023 describing how the compulsive urge to watch videos on YouTube can lead … Read More
July 16, 2025
(The Guardian) – Do you scream when you stub your toe? Could you play a grand final with a shattered jaw, or work all day as your belly fills with blood? When it comes to suffering, perspective is everything Each … Read More
July 15, 2025
(The Guardian) – Polyamorous but married to a monogamous wife, Travis soon found himself falling in love. Before long, with the approval of his human wife, he married Lily Rose in a digital ceremony. This unlikely relationship forms the basis … Read More
July 11, 2025
(New York Times) – A man’s death after using “Flow” in a small Vermont city exposed a drug operation that spanned continents and sent a New York prosecutor on a heartbreaking journey. The Flow case encompassed scores of investigators, prosecutors … Read More
July 8, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – It’s a common view among neuroscientists that building brainlike neural networks is one of the most promising paths for the field, and that attitude has started to spread to psychology. Last week, the prestigious journal Nature … Read More
July 7, 2025
(Axios) – It’s not food, it’s not chewing tobacco and it’s not gum — though it might look like it when you see it — but it is becoming America’s new addictive obsession. Why it matters: Sales of Zyn nicotine … Read More
July 7, 2025
(Wired) – As psychedelic companies and therapy apps experiment with AI, people are already taking huge doses of drugs and using chatbots to process their trips. He recently asked the app’s “chat with your mind” function how he had become … Read More
July 4, 2025
(Nature) – Brain–computer interfaces being trialled in China offer some advantages over Neuralink and other leading US devices. A deep brain device that allowed a man with no limbs to play computer games is one of an increasing number of … Read More
July 3, 2025
(Undark) – Although the evidence is limited, some psychiatrists are using ketogenic diets to treat psychiatric disorders. In fact, ketogenic diets have long been used in conventional medicine to treat severe or intractable epilepsy. Several studies published in the past … Read More
July 3, 2025
(Front Porch Republic) – One does not need too much imagination to understand how Leopold’s critique of over-mechanized hunting is generalizable to the relationship between technology and all facets of life. In the case of large language models and their … Read More
