“Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars.” Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his […]
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
– Oliver Sacks
December 22, 2014 By
“If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self – himself – he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.” In his most extraordinary book, “one of the great clinical writers of […]
A Doctor’s Touch
– Abraham Verghese
August 11, 2014 By
From TED.com Modern medicine is in danger of losing a powerful, old-fashioned tool: human touch. Physician and writer Abraham Verghese describes our strange new world where patients are merely data points, and calls for a return to the traditional one-on-one physical exam. In our era of the patient-as-data-point, Abraham Verghese believes in the old-fashioned physical exam, […]
His and hers … healthcare
– Paula Johnson
August 9, 2014 By
From TED.com Every cell in the human body has a sex, which means that men and women are different right down to the cellular level. Yet too often, research and medicine ignore this insight — and the often startlingly different ways in which the two sexes respond to disease or treatment. As pioneering doctor Paula Johnson […]
The Brain That Changes Itself
– Norman Doidge
July 29, 2014 By
“The brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.” What is neuroplasticity? Is it possible to change your brain? Norman […]
A new strategy in the war on cancer
– David Agus
July 27, 2014 By
From TED.com Too often, says David Agus cancer treatments have a short-sighted focus on individual cells. He suggests a new, cross-disciplinary approach, using atypical drugs, computer modeling and protein analysis to diagnose and treat the whole body. Although a highly-accomplished conventional doctor, David Agus has embraced the future of medicine and is constantly exploring ways that […]
Doctors make mistakes
– Brian Goldman
July 25, 2014 By
From TED.com Every doctor makes mistakes. But, says physician Brian Goldman, medicine’s culture of denial (and shame) keeps doctors from ever talking about those mistakes, or using them to learn and improve. Telling stories from his own long practice, he calls on doctors to start talking about being wrong. (Filmed at TEDxToronto.) Brian Goldman is an […]
What if our healthcare system kept us healthy?
– Rebecca Onie
July 20, 2014 By
From TED.com Rebecca Onie asks audacious questions: What if waiting rooms were a place to improve daily health care? What if doctors could prescribe food, housing and heat in the winter? At TEDMED she describes Health Leads, an organization that does just that — and does it by building a volunteer base as elite and dedicated […]
What doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe
– Ben Goldacre
July 17, 2014 By
From TED.com When a new drug gets tested, the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world — except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go unreported, leaving doctors and researchers in the dark. In this impassioned talk, Ben Goldacre explains why these unreported instances of negative data […]
Meet the future of cancer research
– Eva Vertes
July 7, 2014 By
From TED.com Eva Vertes — only 19 when she gave this talk — discusses her journey toward studying medicine and her drive to understand the roots of cancer and Alzheimer’s. Eva Vertes is a microbiology prodigy. Her discovery, at age 17, of a compound that stops fruit-fly brain cells from dying was regarded as a step […]
