Was pleased to see a two part review in the New York Review of Books by Marcia Angell published in two issues of the journal. I like the expansion on ideas this double approach affords the writer and provides to the reader and you have time to consider inbetween or if you’re late to the read can zip straight into the second part.

In it (part one here and part two here) Ms Angell considers several recent titles that question the efficacy of psychiatric drugs, the frenzy with which they’re prescribed, the billowing DSM, the relationship between the pscychiatry and Big Pharma and more.

I’d be curious to hear Ms Angell’s position on the denial of surgery to smokers until they cease smoking in Sweden.

I was particularly intrigued by the debunking of chemical imbalance as the cause of depression and the shift to isolating and treating the brain since the 1970’s.

Bodily other

This journal — Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research — I caught by a fluke 2 second glance on a twitter stream.  I began reading an article on the anthropology of bodily otherness, but dug a bit further and became engrossed in this:

The Football Fan Community as a Determinant Stakeholder in Value co-Creation

Note the breakdown of the demographic of team supporters, their ages, social class and habits. I was intrigued by this idea of a system of relationships and within it, the fans as stakeholders (not least economic, emotively led economic stakeholders?) . What of this transaction? Its ramifications? Its dependence? It also strikes me when examined thus, the incredible power that remains with the fanbase should they chose to subvert that pattern of sustenance. The return, the repetition.

Radio neuro

HM Neuro Celeb radio documentary…

When a 27 year old man known in the text books simply as HM underwent brain surgery for intractable epilepsy in 1953, no one could have known that the outcome would provide the key to unravelling one of the greatest mysteries of the human mind – how we form new memories.

Listen to radio doc here HM – The Man Who Couldn’t Remember