Description: Perhaps you have heard about Toxoplasmosis? It is a condition caused by a parasite that is carried by cats who catch wild birds and that can be picked up by humans when they clean the cats’ litter boxes and inhale some of the T. gondii parasite while doing so. Exposure among pregnant women can… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Aging Psychological Disorders
Alzheimer’s: When Potential Treatments Fail
Description: Imagine you are a biochemist and you have been working on finding substances that could be used against the two main toxic proteins involved in Alzheimer’s, amyloid beta and tau. Further imagine that you have found a substance that seems to do what you want, at least when tested on the proteins in petri… Read more »
MIND Diet: What Makes for “Good” Diet Research?
Description: One cannot open a paper or a magazine these days (especially in the weekend “lifestyle” editions) without encountering one or more article extolling the virtues of one diet or another for weight loss, health, wellness, vim vigor or longevity. Often such articles are rather light on systematic science or, if they cite studies they… Read more »
Gaming Depression: Playing your way to mental health
Description: How might playing a tablet based game have a positive impact upon symptoms of late-life (post 60 years) depression? Before you read the article linked below think about the symptoms that are typically associated with depression. In addition to mood related issues (obviously associated with depression) what sorts of cognitive factors are associated with… Read more »
Face-to-Face Interaction and Levels of Depression
Description: Are all social contacts more or less equal in terms of what they do for us? The study described in this article looked at the relationships between the frequency of several types of social contact and symptoms of depression among people over 50 years of age. What do YOU think they found? Source: Today… Read more »
The State of Canada’s Mental Health Treatment System: Broken? Fixable?
Description: The Globe and Mail has produced a series of articles on the current state of mental health treatment in Canada. It does not so much focus on the quality of the treatment options available (they are pretty good) but rather on the general availability (or lack thereof) of such services. You can think of… Read more »
Depression, Bipolar Disorder and “Fuzzy” Thinking
Description: Feeling like your thinking is less sharp or even describable as “fuzzy’ is a fairly common subjective report offered by people struggling with depression or bipolar disorder. However, there has been debate as to whether such feeling are reflections of actual changes in brain function or related, instead to changes in mood or motivation… Read more »
Oliver Sacks on Feelings of Disorder (or Dis-ease)
Description: What subjective/psychologically experiences do we associate with disease? Oliver Sacks, the deeply respected physician and professor of neurology discusses about how patients with migraines talk about the psychological experiences associated with their migraine headaches. The 81 year old Sacks goes on to talk about his own experiences with a particular palliative treatment for the… Read more »
Ultrasound and Alzheimer’s Disease: Steps Toward the Development of a Treatment
Description: Current treatments for Alzheimer’s disease are limited in their effectiveness. A major issue is sorting out the potential causes of the disease from symptoms – the classical problem of correlation. This research on the potentially positive effects of ultrasound on the amyloid plaques that arise in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients is a good… Read more »
Books for Success!
