Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
Do gender differences reflect in the functioning of the brain? Yes, say scientists who have confirmed the hypothesis that differences exist in the functional,organisation of brain for a specific component of language, that is, phenological processing, between males and females (Nature, Vol 373, No 6513). Using magnetic resonance imaging researchers …
Try defining consciousness and, like the proverbial 6 blind men trying to describe an elephant, you end up with an embarrassment of choices. Is it a complex symphony created by a neural orchestra, a grand equation arrived at by the logical computations of the brain, a confidential world authored by …
Is consciousness merely a ghost conjured by neurons? During the last decade or so, the idea that inner speech, or the human mind's ability to talk to itself, could fashion consciousness, has made a marked dent on psychologists' perceptions about consciousness. Support for this idea is flowing in from diverse …
Is consciousness unique to us or are animals also conscious of their existence? In her latest book Through Our Eyes Only? Mario Stamp Dawkins, a lecturer at Oxford University, makes a careful case for the conscious chicken, marshalling evidence from years of research into the way chickens behave. Her main …
While neuroscientists look for the secret of consciousness in thinking, a psychologist Nicholas Humphrey has put forward the concept that senses or feelings hold the key to the most elusive of the mind's mysteries. Thinking was considered uniquely human, until the British mathematician Alan Turing's hypothesis that thoughts could be …
A NEW study by the Harvard Medical School (the first of its kind) -- presented recently to UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali -- warns of an alarming rise in mental health problems in developing nations, caused by changing demographic, political and economic conditions, wars, natural disasters and abuse of women …
In a significant development towards tackling brain disorders, American researchers claim to have successfully transplanted immature brain cells in mice to treat a genetic brain abnormality similar to one that may cause mental retardation in humans. Evan Smith of the Harvard Medical School and John Wolfe of the University of …
IMAGiNE being asked questions like, "Have you ever had a period of 2 weeks or mdre when you had trouble failing asleep, staying asleep, waking up too early, or sleeping too much?" : similar set of questions pertaining to feelings of hopelessness, depression and worthlessness of life form the Suicidal …
CAN the mind repair and revive a body in the terminal stages of entropy, flying in the face of just about every medical precedent? Peter Hettel was dying irrevocably of cancer of the sinus. He chose to take the road, so far, least taken: he chose to follow the almost …
Deepak Chopra, author of the American bestseller, Quantum Healing, uses the analogy of wave-particle duality in quantum physics to enunciate a theoretical basis of mind-body medicine. Light can behave like a wave A, or a particle B. In Newtonian physics, they are totally different, since waves are nonmaterial and particles …
Traditional Eastern philosophies view mind and body as different manifestations of the same life force. In the West, one of the earliest medical theories held that disease is a result of an imbalance of nonphysical humours. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, originator of the Hippocratic oath, taught that the body …
Some cases of mental illness in human beings may have a viral origin, say a group of German researchers. The team, led by Liv Bode of Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, found traces of the Borna Disease Virus (BDV) genetic material, which makes horses hyperactive, in the blood cells of …
Some cases of mental illness in human beings may have a viral origin, say a group of German researchers. They have found traces of genetic material of a virus -- which makes horses hyperactive -- in the blood cells of people with depression and other mental disorders. The discovery of …
Despite their growing popularity, electric shocks may not be good for epileptics. Electric shocks are known to impose order among the neurons, or nerve cells, but scientists at the George Washington University, Washington Dc, and the Georgia Institute of Technology at Athens, Georgia, suggest that an abnormal degree of order …
IN THIS age of the media, images are too quickly ingrained into popular imagination. If someone were to tell you that smoking, which has been shown to cause heart disease and lung cancer, may protect against disease, then you would surely think the person is either a fag-fanatic or downright …
IF YOU are reluctant to leave bed on a dark, winter morning, stay right in there. People who wake up early in winters might be cutting short their required sleep, inviting unforeseen health problems (New Scientist, Vol 140, No 1899). Researchers say the natural sleeping patterns of humans are strikingly …
CONTRARY to received wisdom, boxing may not be damaging to the boxer's brain. In fact, anti-boxing advocates may be surprised to learn that this "inhuman sport" may even improve boxers' skills at elementary arithmetic, a British trial has concluded (The Lancet, Vol 342, No 8877). The trial examined the mental …
The VERY Special Arts (VSA) programme uses art to help children with various disabilities, especially those who are mentally handicapped. Art is used for education, emotional, social and economic rehabilitation and as a vocation. Says VSA's Moyna Singh, "The idea is to use art as a tool of rehabilitation." Hypersensitive …
NEARLY 37 million people in the United States have no health insurance at all. Meanwhile, the money spent on health care has been rising steadily till last year, it touched $800 billion -- more than 14 per cent of the country's gross domestic product. But all that will be a …
ALCOHOLIC mothers whose babies suffer from foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) have a great deal for which to answer. Not only are such babies prone to mental retardation, but they rarely improve intellectually, even with careful parenting and education (The Lancet, Vol 341, No 8850). Hans-Ludwig Spohr and his colleagues at …
