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Mind Speller: Communicate Through Your Thoughts

Belgian researchers from the European nanoelectronics and nano-technology research center Imec, Holst Centre, and Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven developed an EEG based writing system that may be helpful for people with severe disabilities.

The Mind Speller, though, seems very similar to University of Wisconsin-Madison’s communication tool we wrote about a year ago that flashes rows and columns of characters and monitors when the brain notices the character it wants to type.

It detects and interprets P300 event-related potentials in the EEG-signals of a person that is selecting characters from a display presenting alternate rows and columns of characters. P300 potentials are often used as metrics of cognitive function in decision making processes. However, currently available P300 devices are large, expensive and uncomfortable in use. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Do Human Brains Become Larger By Using Tools?

From RIKEN Research:

Scientists from RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako, Japan and the Institute of Neurology at University College London have discovered that the brains of macaque monkeys undergo significant development when they are taught how to use tools. This finding may imply that our advanced human brains got as big and powerful as they did thanks to using tools, rather than the other way around.

The researchers used a technique called voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to classify areas of brain tissue in their MRI images as grey matter, white matter, or cerebro-spinal fluid, and to compare the volume of each tissue at different stages of learning. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Why Not To Drop Your Baby On His Head

Exaggeration, drama, and histrionics are very much the rule of thumb in the ER.  Someone comes in and claims they were stabbed with an eight-inch butcher’s knife, and the police later bring in the actual weapon, and it turns out to be a three-inch penknife.  Someone claims to have taken a whole bottle of tylenol, but their serum levels turn out to be nowhere near the toxic level (or even zero).  A patient reports to you that their last pneumonia was so bad their doctor didn’t think they’d pull through, but you check the records and see they weren’t even in the ICU.  (The sole exception to this rule, of course, is the stated alcohol intake, which is usually about half to a third the actual alcohol intake.) Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*

Study Shows That Our Brains, Not Eyes, See Color

Even though we intuitively think that a particular color looks the same to different people, researchers from The University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University have uncovered that the brain plays a critical role in color perception. The brain actually assigns colors to objects and with a bit of tinkering one can fool the brain to assign the wrong color to an object being viewed. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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