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Is Hysteria Real? Brain Images Say Yes
By ERIKA KINETZ, The New York Times, September 26, 2006
The 19th-century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, shown lecturing on hysteria, helped lay the groundwork for contemporary research.
Hysteria is a 4,000-year-old diagnosis that has been applied to no mean parade of witches, saints and, of course, Anna O.
But over the last 50 years, the word has been spoken less and less. The disappearance of hysteria has been heralded at least since the 1960’s. What had been a Victorian catch-all splintered into many different diagnoses. Hysteria seemed to be a vanished 19th-century extravagance useful for literary analysis but surely out of place in the serious reaches of contemporary science.
The word itself seems murky, more than a little misogynistic and all too indebted to the theorizing of the now-unfashionable Freud. More than one doctor has called it “the diagnosis that dare not speak its name.”
Nor has brain science paid the diagnosis much attention. For much of the 20th century, the search for a neurological basis for hysteria was ignored. The growth of the ability to capture images of the brain in action has begun to change that situation.
( Read More )
Subway Sleuth Clears Dinosaur of Cannibalism
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, September 26, 2006
A graduate student in paleontology was standing on the downtown subway platform at the American Museum of Natural History stop. He idly inspected the bronze cast on the wall of one of the museum’s dinosaurs.
The student, Sterling J. Nesbitt, was surprised to see what looked like crocodile bones that had presumably been the dinosaur’s last feast. This set in motion a re-examination of two specimens on display in the museum’s Hall of Dinosaurs, and wiped clean a dinosaur’s reputation that had been besmirched by suspicions of cannibalism.
( Read More )
Mixed Report on U.S. Nanotechnology Effort
By BARNABY J. FEDER, The New York Times, September 25, 2006
The United States continues to lead the world in nanotechnology research, but the impact of the federal government’s multibillion-dollar investment in the field and shortcomings in the effort are impossible to quantify, according to a lengthy assessment for Congress of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
( Read More )
A Conversation With Paul Greengard: He Turned His Nobel Into a Prize for Women
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS, The New York Times, September 26, 2006
When the neuroscientist Paul Greengard was named one of three winners of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, he decided to use his award — almost $400,000 — to finance something new: the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize.
This honor, named for Dr. Greengard’s mother, would give an annual $50,000 prize to an outstanding female biomedical researcher. Of the 184 medical Nobelists, only 7 have been women.
( Read More )
By ERIKA KINETZ, The New York Times, September 26, 2006
The 19th-century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, shown lecturing on hysteria, helped lay the groundwork for contemporary research.
Hysteria is a 4,000-year-old diagnosis that has been applied to no mean parade of witches, saints and, of course, Anna O.
But over the last 50 years, the word has been spoken less and less. The disappearance of hysteria has been heralded at least since the 1960’s. What had been a Victorian catch-all splintered into many different diagnoses. Hysteria seemed to be a vanished 19th-century extravagance useful for literary analysis but surely out of place in the serious reaches of contemporary science.
The word itself seems murky, more than a little misogynistic and all too indebted to the theorizing of the now-unfashionable Freud. More than one doctor has called it “the diagnosis that dare not speak its name.”
Nor has brain science paid the diagnosis much attention. For much of the 20th century, the search for a neurological basis for hysteria was ignored. The growth of the ability to capture images of the brain in action has begun to change that situation.
( Read More )
Subway Sleuth Clears Dinosaur of Cannibalism
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, September 26, 2006
A graduate student in paleontology was standing on the downtown subway platform at the American Museum of Natural History stop. He idly inspected the bronze cast on the wall of one of the museum’s dinosaurs.
The student, Sterling J. Nesbitt, was surprised to see what looked like crocodile bones that had presumably been the dinosaur’s last feast. This set in motion a re-examination of two specimens on display in the museum’s Hall of Dinosaurs, and wiped clean a dinosaur’s reputation that had been besmirched by suspicions of cannibalism.
( Read More )
Mixed Report on U.S. Nanotechnology Effort
By BARNABY J. FEDER, The New York Times, September 25, 2006
The United States continues to lead the world in nanotechnology research, but the impact of the federal government’s multibillion-dollar investment in the field and shortcomings in the effort are impossible to quantify, according to a lengthy assessment for Congress of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
( Read More )
A Conversation With Paul Greengard: He Turned His Nobel Into a Prize for Women
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS, The New York Times, September 26, 2006
When the neuroscientist Paul Greengard was named one of three winners of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, he decided to use his award — almost $400,000 — to finance something new: the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize.
This honor, named for Dr. Greengard’s mother, would give an annual $50,000 prize to an outstanding female biomedical researcher. Of the 184 medical Nobelists, only 7 have been women.
( Read More )
