CBDMH Blog

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Merry Barua Awarded the INSAR 2015 Advocate Award!

We are thrilled to announce that Merry Barua, Director of Action for Autism (New Delhi, India)  is the recipient of the 2015 Advocate Award from INSAR (International Society for Autism Research) for “creating the autism community in India, founding the school in New Delhi, and advocating for more positive attitudes to ASD globally!” The formal […]

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Upcoming Talk: “Madness in Norway – Pedigree Charts and Diseased Family Lines

This talk is being sponsored by the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics Theodore Porter (UCLA), draft of chapter seven, “Madness in Norway: Pedigree Charts and Diseased Family Lines,” from The Unknown History of Human Heredity. Monday, December 1, 2014 4:00 PM – 4:00 PM Los Angeles, CA, 5288 Bunche Hall, UCLA

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New Paper from CBDMH: Adults with Autism in India – A Mixed Method Approach to Make Meaning of Daily Routines

We’re excited to announce publication of a new paper from CBDMH (Culture & Disability Research)  in Social Science & Medicine covering two very important and understudied topics using a mixed-method approach: the daily lives of adults living with autism and persons living with psychiatric disorders outside the US. Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.06.052 Adults with Autism in India: A Mixed-Method […]

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Call for Papers / Culture & Global Mental Health / SSPC 2015

Culture and Global Mental Health 2015 Annual Meeting Call for Papers for Charles Hughes Fellowship and John Spiegel Fellowship psychiatryandculture.org Providence, Rhode Island, April 23–25, 2015 Deadline: September 15, 2014. For submissions and questions, contact Brandon Kohrt, email hidden; JavaScript is required The theme of the annual meeting is Culture and Global Mental Health. We […]

From Mind Maps Exhibit (Science Museum)

Rethinking Psychosis: Culture, Brian, and Context (Workshop Summary, Pt. 2)

If you weren’t able to make the FPR-CBDMH inaugural winter workshop on Jan 10–11, 2014, never fear! We’ve posted part two of the summary, featuring talks by Robert Lemelson and Georg Northoff. Comments welcome!

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Challenging the “Soft Bigotry” of Low Expectations in Psychosis

This morning thanks to Twitter I caught a  blog post Thomas Insel wrote last summer about anti-psychotics. Referring to a JAMA (2013) article, at seven years, a reduction/discontinuation group [following six months of antipsychotic treatment after first-episode psychosis] “had achieved twice the functional recovery” than a maintenance group in a Netherlands study headed by Wunderink […]

From Mind Maps Exhibit (Science Museum)

Rethinking Psychosis: Culture, Brain, and Context (Workshop Summary, Pt. 1)

If you weren’t able to make the FPR-CBDMH inaugural winter workshop on Jan 10–11, 2014, never fear! We’ve posted part one of the summary. Comments welcome!

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Is Schizophrenia a Network Disorder? Researchers Weigh in …

This is just a brief note that Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 2013; 15(3) focuses on Static and Dynamic Imaging: Clinical and Therapeutic Implications. The issue includes an overview by Olaf Sporns, author of Networks of the Brain (MIT, 2010) and Discovering the Human Connectome (MIT, 2012). In particular, three papers might be of particular interest to this […]

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A Very Brief Introduction: Resting-State Brain Connectivity

Some of the speakers at our forthcoming winter workshop on psychosis for CBD/CBDMH affiliated faculty and students will be talking about, or have an active research interest in the brain’s resting state activity, including Steve Lopez and Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Georg Northoff, and Suparna Choudhury. I thought I’d post two videos (a very short, fun intro […]

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Lessons from Ten Years of Mixed Methods Graduate Training at UCLA

In May 2012 I attended the 10th reunion of the the FPR-UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development, which was founded in 2002 to foster interdisciplinary research and training at the graduate and postdoctoral level at the intersection of culture, social environment, and human brain development. The meeting  included CBD alumni and current trainees as well as CBD faculty, […]

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DSM-5 and Culture: A Significant Advance

[A]ll forms of distress are locally shaped, including the DSM disorders. – DSM-5 (APA, 2013, p. 758)  The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders  (DSM-5; APA, 2013) was finally presented on May 18th at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco. Much ink has been spilled in the media about the ten-year process […]

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Waking, Dreaming, Being: The FPR Interviews Philospher Evan Thompson

The FPR interviews philosopher Evan Thompson (University of Toronto) for the Foundation for Psychocultural Research about his new book in progress, Waking, Dreaming, Being: New Light on the Self and Consciousness from Neuroscience and Mediation.  Evan Thompson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, works in the areas of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, […]

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A Comparison of Epigenetics and the Higgs Boson (Science and the Public)

The is me retweeting David Dobbs “great” new piece on epigenetics (“Die, Selfish Gene, Die”), typical Twitter swarm mentality. Retweeting before reading is a lazy practice and I really try to avoid it. When I got around to reading the original piece I picked up on the great money quote about football (which reminded my of […]

From Mind Maps Exhibit (Science Museum)

Mental Disorders as Brain Disorders and Connectome Research Programs: Three Very Short Introductions from CalTech

Three videos from TEDxCaltech cover the basics in record time: “Mental Disorders as Brain Disorders” (Insel), the connectome (Lichtman), and The Human Connectome Project (Van Essen):

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“More than a Brain: Human Mindscapes” (Review)

Lambros Malafouris, who is Johnson Research and Teaching Fellow in Creativity, Cognition and Material Culture, University of Oxford, reviews two books for the journal Brain: Aping Mankind (Acuman, 2011) by Raymond Tallis and Landscape of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought (Columbia, 2011) by John Hoffecker.

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DSM-5 Recap: The “Eight Dimensions” of Psychosis

Psychiatric Times recaps changes in DSM-5 re psychotic disorders. But see also a terrific article in 2010 Nature (“The Environment and Schizophrenia”) by van Os et al. for a much less reductionistic examination of environment.

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Fall 2013 UCLA Psychiatry Grand Rounds

All Institute Grand Rounds are held in the Louis Jolyon West Auditorium (C8-183) in the Semel Institute building at 760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles CA 90024 (Google Map), routinely on Tuesdays. Unless otherwise indicated, the presentation will begin at 11:00 AM, and coffee will be served in the auditorium foyer at 10:45.