That Fish You Caught Was in Pain
This week we were treated to the news that in addition to his other exotic and high-living habits, the esteemed leader of North Korea likes his sashimi cut from living fish. And this week also the topic of whether fish feel pain graced our newspaper. Elizabeth Braithwaite, a behavioral biologist at Edinburgh University, wondered why […]
Further Thoughts On NIH Funding
In his editorial, “The Reality and the Promise”, Siegfried Othmer discussed the NIH’s lack of interest in supporting neurofeedback research. The NIH’s failure to pursue investigations into a treatment modality as clearly valuable and underutilized as neurofeedback reflects a larger evolving crisis in biomedical research. The psychiatrist and editor of Medical Hypotheses Bruce Charlton argues […]
Brief Reliable Assessments
I’ve been amazed at how some notables in this field have ignored the enormous data base in neuropsychology and either invented their own tests or else used really dumb tests which have not been validated on populations like the ones we see, and have limited face validity, and poor reliability. I got into psychology whilst […]
Folk Remedies and Folk Wisdom
I just went for my vision exam, and since it had been three years the technology had advanced once again in the interim. The bright flash that used to be employed to take a picture of the retina is not as fierce as it once was, and they hand you the trigger so that you […]
Autism: The Integration Deficit Disorder
The story on autism is at once highly promising and depressingly grim. The promising part is that the condition is coming to be understood and so remedies are forthcoming. The grim part has to do with the recognition that this is entirely a man-caused disease. Nature did not conspire against our children in this case. […]
The Reality and the Promise
The entire research agenda for stem cells is at this moment still based on a promise and an expectation for a big payoff downstream, on some uncertain timescale. There is nothing wrong with that. No one is putting conceptual barriers in the way with the argument that there is insufficient experimental support to go forward. […]
Promoting Research in Neurofeedback
The Quietmind Foundation Institutional Review Board There’s been a great deal of discussion taking place of late among practitioners at all levels in the field seeking clarity on the basic science behind various models of neurofeedback training. Within this discussion there are many calls for ‘where’s the data?’ The most notable critiques of neurofeedback refer […]