Neuro New Year

Good news, Radio 4 history of the brain radio series: 10 programmes. Nice one! More please! Until then listen here

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.

There was an engaging story in today’s NY Times about the neuroscience of courage. Here is the link, I read it, appropriately, on an airplane.