I spent my spring break on the Rosebud Reservation, in South Dakota, as part of a joint Stanford undergraduate and medical school class studying health …
Month: April 2013
Innovative new treatment for those who can't swallow
Marjorie McFadden is not your typical 90-year-old. McFadden retired from her public-school job at the age of 85 and remained very social afterwards, regularly attending social gatherings …
Packard Children’s Hospital psychologist to discuss helping children coping with trauma
As the ongoing investigation into the tragic death of California high-school student Audrie Pott has become national news, many parents are wondering how to help their …
Catching some Zzzs at the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center
Chronic sleep problems affect an estimated 70 million Americans, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among those who …
Image of the Week: 3-D rendering of a clarified brain
Earlier this week, fellow Scope contributor Bruce Goldman reported on a paradigm-shifting process developed by Stanford psychiatrist and bioengineer Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, and colleagues. Using …
Grand Roundup: Top posts for the week of April 7
The five most-read stories on Scope this week were: Lightning strikes twice: Optogenetics pioneer Karl Deisseroth’s newest technique renders tissues transparent, yet structurally intact: Stanford …
Advice for physicians when interacting with patients online
A position paper recently released by the American College of Physicians (ACP) and the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) urges health-care providers to carefully …
Co-leader of Obama’s BRAIN Initiative to direct Stanford's interdisciplinary neuroscience institute
Earlier this month, the White House announced that William Newsome, PhD, a professor of neurobiology at Stanford, was one of two scientists selected to lead the …
Brains of different people listening to the same piece of music actually respond in the same way
Ever wonder - say, while sitting quietly in a concert hall or screaming your lungs out in a crowded ampitheater - whether the musical experience …
Scientific community (and Twitter) buzzing over Stanford's see-through brain
Yesterday's announcement about Stanford scientists developing a process that renders tissue, specifically a mouse brain, transparent spurred a significant amount of excitement among both the …
The importance of curation and communities when crowdsourcing clinical questions
Whether it's at a party or in the grocery store aisle, doctors have always been faced with the challenge of patients asking them medical questions …
Chipping away at stereotypes about older women and science, one story at a time
I love this: A cutely named blog that celebrates the accomplishments of older women who have worked in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). …
Neuroscience studies often underpowered, say researchers at Stanford, Bristol
I'm ashamed to admit that the study of statistics was regarded (at least by me) as a necessary evil when I was in graduate school. …
Mining data from patients' charts to identify harmful drug reactions
Health-care providers know there's a wealth of valuable information trapped in the hand-written notes on patients' charts. But the challenge of collecting and interpreting the …
A closer look at caregivers and clinical trials
A recent blog entry on the Huffington Post focuses on an issue I haven't seen much written about: the role of caregivers in the clinical-trial …
Peering deeply – and quite literally – into the intact brain: A video fly-through
Earlier today I wrote about a breakthrough method called CLARITY, pioneered by Stanford psychiatrist/bioengineer Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, for rendering intact tissue samples transparent. Above is a video …