Blogs

Background

Though pain is traditionally thought of as the bodily awareness to harmful or noxious stimuli, the subject of pain has far more depth than one might initially believe. The issues surrounding pain, pain philosophy, and pain management are far-reaching and are replete with ethical and moral conundrums.

By its very nature, love is an irrational and capricious emotion. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines love twelve different ways (thirteen if you count the tennis term), and there have been countless attempts made by poets, musicians, philosophers, and literary figures to distill and define the essence of this powerful emotion. At first thought, love appears to be too complex and ambiguous to define in a scientific manner. As Professor Le mentioned, social scientists do not attempt to operationalize complex emotions like love in their entirety. For example, by demonstrating love-directed behavior in one instance is a study able to be generalized to other

                       

While accounts of both phantom limb awareness and pain have been reported for over 500 years (1), only in recent decades have patients reporting such sensations of missing limbs not been classified as pathological. In fact, recent studies report 60-80% incidence rate of PLP, whereas in the middle of the 20th century, reported PLP cases were as low as 4% (3). Rather, modernized technologies and advancements in the field of neuroscience have revealed evidence indicating that the mechanisms involved in such sensations are actually responsive and adaptive (2), perhaps accounting for the increased rate

Our decision to discuss animal research arose from several questions that we think are important to consider, as scientists who have used, or might use, animal models at some point in our career. First, we wondered who is in charge of the regulation of lab animals. Who is keeping track of the numbers, and who monitors the treatment of these lab animals? Secondly, we wanted to investigate the written legal restrictions on use of animals in scientific research. Where is the line drawn between what is acceptable to do to an animal and what isn’t?

Anesthesia and Consciousness

 

Gender and Sexuality Differences in the Brain:Should we study them?

Kara BrownApril 21, 2008