This website and blog were created three years ago, in 2012, to promote a book manuscript that I was trying to get published as a book. The idea was to attract people via social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin,YouTube) who could serve…
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PTSD has been called a disorder of sleep, which it certainly seems to be, disrupting both sleep onset and sleep maintenance. A recently published flow diagram for PTSD treatment indicates trazodone (for inducing sleep) and prazosin (for…
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What is the “self”? It is our sense of who (and what) we are, both our personality and our actual physical body. Our sense of self develops gradually and continuously through life, from birth to death. We can watch it develop in…
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I recently finished Robert Waggoner’s book, Lucid Dreaming (2009), a fascinating read. Here I highlight similarities and differences between dream revision therapy and lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is the state of being conscious…
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What is magical thinking? It involves the notion that the laws of science can sometimes be overcome with sufficient mental or spiritual force. In such instances a miracle is said to occur; religious people may claim that there was…
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I recently attended a scientific meeting in Boston on Acute Pain Management. Doctors in Massachusetts and many other states are required, for renewal of their license, to spend some hours of continuing medical education (CME) on a topic…
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TAGGED IN: acute pain management, addiction, antidepressants, anxiety, habit-forming drugs, medications, pain, psychotherapy, PTSD
Background Classical conditioning is a form of memory. The “classic” example of classical conditioning derives from the experimental studies of Ivan Pavlov with dogs. The sound of a bell, announcing the impending arrival of…
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TAGGED IN: Anxiety Disorders, Conditioning, Consolidation, Extinction, Memory, Memory Consolidation, Pavlov, PTSD, Reconsolidation, REM, Triggers
The caudate nucleus, buried beneath the cerebral cortex, is involved in habit formation. Evidence from brain imaging studies suggests that new habits may be established during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when our most vivid and…
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Michele Rosenthal is the lively and engaging hostess on a radio call-in show, “Changing Direction”, which airs on Mondays and Wednesdays at 2PM EST. I have now appeared on her show three times in the past few months (February 6, May…
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