For many years, scientists have known that adolescent girls are about twice as likely as boys to develop post-traumatic stress disorder after being exposed to …
Month: November 2016
Following heart repair and liver transplant, baby Owen returns to the Midwest
Just weeks before his first birthday, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford patient Owen Fochler has returned home to Illinois. During his time in California, he …
Brain scans may detect lies better than polygraph tests, new study shows
Forget fact checkers or polygraph tests. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan might be the best way to tell if someone is lying. According to …
health++ hackathon aimed for affordability, innovation
I first met Stanford undergraduates Jason Ku Wang and Shivaal Roy last spring after they returned from a hackathon in Boston. Already, they were starting to …
Pinpointing specific cells may help thwart congenital heart disease, new research shows
The lab of Stanford's Sean Wu, MD, PhD, is working to identify mechanisms responsible for congenital heart disease, the most common cause of stillbirths in …
Talk about death — before a health crisis, says Stanford’s Philip Pizzo
Most of us have no desire to think, or talk, about death. However, if we never talk about it, we leave our health-care providers and …
New research shows benefits of high-intensity statins
In a study publishing this week in JAMA Cardiology, Stanford researchers show that taking high-intensity statins could increase heart patients’ chances of survival over taking moderate-intensity …
When medicine knows no boundaries
Running has been a constant in my life and it always will be. I've gone on runs in snowstorms and 100-plus degree heat waves, Christmas …
“We know very little about the brain”: Experts outline challenges in neuroscience
The greatest challenge in the field of neuroscience, according to two experts, is that we still don't understand the basics. Around forty students, scientists, and community …
Vikram Patel: a hero in the global mental health movement
As he was on his way to Stanford for two days of presentations and meetings last week, global mental-health advocate Vikram Patel, PhD, had …
On election anxiety and post-election survival tips
After repeatedly waking up in the night and obsessively checking news online, Karen Ande, a physical therapist and photographer who lives in San Francisco, realized …
A step closer to gene therapy for sickle cell disease
In the 1980s, molecular biologists conceived the idea of gene therapy, in which a genetic disease might be cured by replacing the mutated disease-causing gene …
Alzheimer’s researchers call on citizen scientists to play an online game
Many people, like me, have helplessly watched a loved one suffer and die from dementia. Now there's something average folks can do to help accelerate …
Stanford medical student honored for saving a life
On a spring day earlier this year, Laura Lu, then a second-year medical student, found herself studying non-stop for her board exams. “I had been …
WELL unites project organizers at a wellness summit
Last week, I joined more than 100 others for a one-day Wellness Living Laboratory Summit, sponsored by the Stanford Prevention Research Center. WELL is a clinical …
Stanford scientists discuss the “hard problem” of consciousness with playwright Tom Stoppard
I've been a fan of Tom Stoppard's plays since I had to read his great play "Arcadia" for a class years ago. In it, Stoppard …