Is Provigil addictive?

A new paper in JAMA discusses the potential for abuse of modafinil (Provigil).

"What's a smart guy like me doing in a bar like this?"

An article I stumbled across on Yahoo proves to be less asinine than I feared. In brief: an author/"expert" apparently declared that the higher one's IQ is, the more difficult it is to date. The author of the piece I linked to above politely calls bullshit on this theory.

That's about it, really; this is not an article of substance. The topic could spark quite a debate, though. I am sure that I know people who would side with the author/expert/hypnotherapist, and I am equally sure that I know people who would claim there is no correlation between dating failure and IQ. I personally think it might be a matter of social skills or "emotional intelligence" more than IQ score.

Deep Brain Stimulation to treat OCD?

Medtronic's Reclaim receives FDA approval for use in treatment of OCD where drugs and therapy do not work. Deep Brain Stimulation has been used in the past to treat movement disorders, but this is the first time it has been approved for treatment of a psychiatric disorder.

Missouri legislature considers mandatory insurance coverage for autism

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090305/ap_on_re_us/autism_coverage

I am having a difficult time understanding how someone could be opposed to this.

apologies

My apologies to those of you who pop in here, looking for new posts. As winter drags on, so do I. I will try to post new and exciting tidbits soon....

autism and vaccines

A special court rejects autism vaccine theories.

Then he learned Icelandic in a week...

Interesting interview in New Scientist with Daniel Tammet, who holds a record for reciting digits of pi.

www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126881.800-inside-the-mind-of-an-autistic-savant.html?full=true

He's written a book. "The thinking of savants is an extreme form of the kind that everyone has. The aim of my book is to show that minds that function differently, such as mine, are not so strange, and that anyone can learn from them."