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Category Archives: Brain science

Learning about learning

Remember those photos from Aspen? Here’s a post for the Dana Foundation blog on what I was doing there, work-wise: How does school work, brain-wise? Do children teach themselves or is it something about the instruction that gets their brains firing and wiring faster? Last fall, a few hundred neuroscientists, teachers, and curriculum-makers met for [...]

Posted 27 January 2012 † nickyp § Learning ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Brainy days

Whew, we’re done with a week of meeting smart folks and learning about the brain. More than 31,000 neuroscientists hit DC last week, and a lot of us wrote about it. Here are my entries for The Dana Foundation: How Do You Get Involved in Neuroethics? During a workshop at the annual meeting of the [...]

Posted 22 November 2011 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Brain scientists occupy DC

Smack in the middle of National Novel Writing Month, I have to switch gears for a week to report on the news in brain science (that’s my day-job). Neuroscience 2011 is the big event of the year for these folks. Starting Saturday, more than 30,000 scientists from around the world are expected to converge on [...]

Posted 11 November 2011 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

Active Learning

[by me for the Dana Foundation blog. See more great stuff there!] Despite falling SAT scores and employers reporting that high-school grads can’t run the cash register, researchers, educators, and parents each have some pieces of the puzzle of how children learn best. But somehow, all these experts don’t always share what they know. Consider [...]

Posted 19 September 2011 † nickyp § Just fun § Playing ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Where are we with pain?

At one session at a forum put on by One Mind for Research in Boston last spring, researchers described progress in treating the invisible wounds sustained by the brain, including post-traumatic stress disorder, concussions, and chronic pain (see earlier post: “Targeting the Effects of War on the Brain“). I learned a lot at the forum, [...]

Posted 08 September 2011 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) °

No Expiration Date on PTSD

Even though I live near Washington, DC, I’m not a politics maven. I remember when Sen. Max Cleland lost his seat in 2002, but I hadn’t heard anything about him since, so I figured he had happily retired from the often-dirty fray. I could not have been more wrong. I saw him again last month [...]

Posted 13 July 2011 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) °

National PTSD Awareness Day

As promised, for National PTSD Awareness Day, June 27, I wrote a post for the Dana Foundation blog about one survivor and how the illness may strike decades later than the original trauma. Sen. Cleland’s story, and the others I heard that day, brought home how important it is to learn more about our brains [...]

Posted 27 June 2011 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) °

Targeting the effects of war on the brain

My second post from the One Mind for Research forum is up on the Dana site. It’s the science part of one of the sessions. I’m going to write about the emotional part for a post on June 27, National PTSD Awareness Day. Stay tuned!

Posted 17 June 2011 † nickyp § Thinking ‡ Comments (0) °

Life is learning

Life is Learning | HHMI iPad app Promo from Small Mammal on Vimeo. Neuroscience Nobelist (and Dana Alliance vice-chairman) Eric Kandel has a sense of humor, too.

Posted 19 April 2011 † nickyp § Just fun ‡ Comments (0) °

Treating mind diseases with brain pacemakers

I have a new post up at the Dana Foundation blog, “Are we overeager to surgically stimulate the mind?” Here’s the top: When is a new brain treatment ready for the real world? After many trials and much research, the therapy known as deep brain stimulation (DBS) was approved by the FDA to treat Parkinson’s [...]

Posted 04 April 2011 † nickyp § ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,