Hey, Wake Up, It’s Brain Awareness Week

Your brain doesn’t come with an instruction manual.

The Dana Foundation’s annual Brain Awareness Week (BAW), March 10-16, seems particularly appropriate and useful this time around, after a year in which brain-based disease models of human behaviors came under fire from social scientists and neuroscientists alike.

A recent analysis of the coverage of neuroscience in the popular press showed that the number of news articles using the terms "neuroscience" or "neuroscientist" had increased by a factor of 30 between 1985 and 2009. Moreover, the NIH's massive Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, designed to speed up our understanding of the neural workings of the human brain in the years ahead, is in progress.

Brain Awareness Week, which takes place each year during the third week of March, is the global campaign to increase public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research. The Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) administers a BAW grants program for European partners.

During the week, campaign partners around the world organize activities to educate their communities about the brain and brain research. A product of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, Brain Awareness Week “unites the efforts of partner organizations worldwide in a celebration of the brain for people of all ages. Activities are limited only by the organizers’ imaginations and include open days at neuroscience labs; exhibitions about the brain; lectures on brain-related topics; social media campaigns; displays at libraries and community centers; classroom workshops; and more.”

In league with hundreds of governmental and private partner institutions around the world, BAW’s enormous calendar of events testifies to the success of this outreach. The week kicks off with an interview with Kelley Remole, Ph.D., the director of neuroscience outreach at Columbia University and the co-president of the Greater NYC Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience. 

Here you will find a pile of publications and resources.

And here is a bunch of downloadable brain stuff for kids.

Marijuana Can Make You Vomit, and Other Stories

Short subjects, various.

First, a recap of an earlier story, and a very strange story at that. Cannabinoid hyperemesis, as it's known, was not documented in the medical literature until 2004, and was first brought to wider attention earlier this year by the biomedical researcher who blogs as Drugmonkey. Episodes of serial vomiting appear to be a very rare side effect of regular marijuana use. Posting on his eponymous blog, Drugmonkey documented cases of hyperemesis that had been reported in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Omaha and Boston in the U.S.

As Drugmonkey reported, “patients had discovered on their own that taking a hot bath or shower alleviated their symptoms. So afflicted individuals were taking multiple hot showers or baths per day to obtain symptom relief.”

A year ago, I published a post on this topic, titled "Marijuana, Vomiting, and Hot Baths." Sure enough, a number of people left comments about their own experiences with this unusual and unpleasant effect. Recently, one of my commenters caught drugmonkey’s eye, and he noted it in his new blog post on the phenomenon:

“Dirk Hanson's post on cannabis hyperemesis garnered another pertinent user:

Anonymous said...
My son suffers from this cannabinoid hyperemesis. At this moment he is here at my home on the couch suffering. I have been up with him for 3 days with the vomiting and hot baths. He says this time its over for good. This is our third bout. The first two time we went to ER, they put him on a drip to hydrate him, and gave him some pain medicine and nausea medicine. After a few hours he went home and recovered. This time we went to Urgent Care, put him on a drip, pain med, Benadryl, and Zofran….

Drugmonkey writes: “I reviewed several case reports back in 2010.... and there was considerable skepticism that the case report data was convincing. So I thought I'd do a PubMed search for cannabis hyperemesis and see if any additional case reports have been published…. One in particular struck my eye. Simonetto and colleagues (2012) performed a records review at the Mayo Clinic. They found 98 cases of unexplained, cyclic vomiting which appeared to match the cannabis hyperemesis profile out of 1571 patients with unexplained vomiting and at least some record of prior cannabis use… this is typical of relatively rare and inexplicable health phenomena. The Case Reports originally trickle out... this makes the medical establishment more aware and so they may reconsider their prior stance vis a vis so-called "psychogenic" causes. A few more doctors may obtain a much better cannabis use history then they otherwise would have done. More cases turn up. More Case Reports are published. etc. It's a recursive process. “
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In a story I think of as vaguely related, in the sense that it is a rare drug phenomenon unrecognized by the public, I recently wrote an article  for The Dana Foundation on the subject of “Smoking’s Ties to Schizophrenia.” In addition, check out a story about plans by the Air Force to make their hospitals and clinics smoke-free HERE. In brief: Smoke-free clinics pose major problems for heavy smokers with mental health disorders.
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Speaking of hospitals, Michelle Andrews reports in Kaiser Health News that about half of the patients undergoing treatment in hospital emergency rooms are under the influence of booze. Alcohol screening and counseling can be effective in this context—but there’s a catch. “Regardless of state law, self-insured companies that pay their employee’s health care costs directly can refuse to cover employees for alcohol-related claims.”

Even though the National association of Insurance Commissioners does not recommend it, dozens of states have passed laws allowing health insurers to deny payment for a patient’s injuries if they were incurred while he or she was under the influence of alcohol. About as many states have passed laws prohibiting such exclusions due to alcohol. The result is one big mess, and confusion reigns. As a professor of health law put it: “There’s no reason to think that insurers, eager to hold down costs, wouldn’t continue” to deny payment for alcohol-related injuries.
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And finally, some news about Chantix (varenicline), the drug both patients and doctors love to hate. It often works very well as an anti-craving medication for smoking cessation. But it can also, in some cases, present patients with a bewildering array of psychological side effects, including rare cases of suicidal ideation. A new study  by researchers at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco, suggests that Chantix may have application in the treatment of alcoholism as well. Participants in the study reduced the average number of drinker per week on Chantix, compared to placebo. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the State of California. Pfizer, the company that markets Chantix, did not fund or participate in the study.

Graphics Credit: http://teesdiary.files.wordpress.com/

What is Brain Awareness Week?

Celebrate your sentience March 12-18.

Gather ‘round, children, and the Dana Foundation will tell you an amazing tale about… the You Man Brain…

Well, that is, the HUMAN brain—and the many ways of increasing understanding and awareness of this little three-pound marvel. Officially the brainchild of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives in New York and the European Dana Alliance for the Brain, “Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is the global campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research,” according to the BAW website.  

Founded in 1996, Brain Awareness Week is designed to unite partner organizations around the world “in a week-long celebration of the brain.” Partners include universities, hospitals, schools, government agencies, and service organizations. Partner organizations come up with creative and innovative community activities to educate people of all ages “about the brain and the promise of brain research.” For example, on Wednesday the Dana Alliance is sponsoring a “brain bee” at The Rockefeller University in New York City, where students from 21 area high schools will go head-to-head on their knowledge of neuroscience.

To see the full list of partnerships, from 41 countries, go HERE. For a list of events planned for the week, take a look HERE.  Events include open houses at neuroscience laboratories, special brain exhibitions at museums, displays and lectures at community centers, and workshops in the classroom.

If you’re feeling cocky, you can test your brain with several challenges at http://www.testmybrain.org/

Sadly, none of this hoopla will necessarily solve certain perennial brain conundrums, such as:

--If you can’t change your mind, how do you know you have one?

--Is that hole in a man’s penis really there to get oxygen to his brain?

--How can we believe that the brain is the most important organ, when the brain is the organ telling us that?

And finally, the one that keeps me awake at night:

-- How did the scarecrow know he didn't have a brain?