Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent.
(Carnac holds the sealed envelope up to his turban) CARNAC: Sis boom bah. ED McMAHON: Sis boom bah? (Carnac rips the envelope open and removes the card) CARNAC (reading): Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes.
Today I was interviewed by a news reporter on my work. He wanted to know why I thought brain imaging was so important in psychiatric medicine. I had answered that question hundreds of times in the past. For some reason today Johnny Carson’s character “Carnac the Magnificent” came to mind. He was a “psychic”, who could tell what was in the envelope by putting it to his forehead. The character reminds me of how most of psychiatry is practiced”¦.you go to doctor with a list of symptoms and he or she is supposed to know what to do for you without ever looking at your brain, even though we have imaging tools available to us.
Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, and I once had a discussion about brain imaging in clinical practice. She is a brain imaging psychiatrist by training. She said it was unnecessary, because the brain has language and can tell you what is wrong. I looked at her dumbfounded, because how is the brain supposed to tell you it has temporal lobe problems “¦when it doesn’t know? By behavior? It just seems so backwards to me, and she is someone I have high regard. I must not be that smart. I cannot read anyone’s mind, much less their brain function. I want to look.
There was an article forwarded to me today by a friend, Earl Henslin. A group of researchers from the University of Florida found that club drugs caused damage in the brain very similar to physical brain injuries. Looking at thousands of scans of drug abusers, it seems clear”¦the real reason not to use drugs is that they damage your brain; and if they damage your brain, they damage your life and limit your potential.
Until next time, please know that success starts with a healthy brain. Failure is often the result of a brain gone wrong. The good news is that no matter how bad you have been to your brain it is never too late to change your brain and change your life. To your brain health, Daniel Amen, MD
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I saw you on MSNBC
I saw you on MSNBC. I’ve been interested in the brain for quite awhile.
I was sexualized as a child. I’m a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest. In 7th grade I attempted suicide and with a great deal of angst, my parents agreed to let me be an atheist.
My life has been a a confusion of good starts and missteps. I have suffered secretly with fear and shame.
I have discovered that while I have been able to avoid religion, I cannot avoid politics. We all live in this world togther. The perps have power and money. The victims, don’t. The perps are the deciders, they make the rules, pick the winners and the losers. I’m tired of being the loser.
In 1994 I was the Press Secretary/Publicist to (R) Michael Patrick Flanagan who ousted the powerful (D) Dan Rostenkowski. I was ousted from my job by Mike Scanlon who went on in DC politics in the infamous Abramhoff/Scanlon Indian Casinos lobbying scandal. I met Mike Scanlon a handful of times before he ousted me.
What the politicians didn’t know was that my perpetrator/priest had primed me for the fight to keep my sanity. (Prior to taking away my job in 1995, Scanlon worked for the ABA, American Bar Association, to improve the image of lawyers, he was a protege of several powerhouse politician/lawyers.)
They failed to frighten me. I surreptitously audio-taped the FBI visits to my home, visits where the FBI threatened me with life in prison. I called Dr. Thomas Szasz at Cornell for guidance. He told me that the government would label me and all I could do was control my own behavior in response to their allegations.
As a child I was silenced and always watchful. Always looking for the lie and the thug, to prompt me to run the other way from the liar.
Politics is filled with predators and liars.
So I would llike to know, can brain imaging, in real-time, act as a lie-detector?
What kind of brain changes happen in a sexualized child?
Is the brain of a perp different from a non-perp?
Truth and lies. Child sexualization. Pornography.
Those are the topics I’m interested in.
Brain scans for all legislators? Why not? They want to be the deciders, deciding who is tha winner and who is the loser. What’s in their brain? Can brain imaging tell me that?
I thought i was the only Daniel Amen in the world but i guess they’re two of us
I met Dr. Amen at a lecture he gave and then participated in his brain study of injured and uninjured brains. I learned a lot about the damage that can occur even from normal children’s bangs to the head – the kind that happen to most kids who engage in sports.
If you are interested in the brain and how it works, I highly recommend reading “”My Stroke of Insight”" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. It’s on the NY Times Bestseller list and it’s a wonderful book. Dr. Taylor’s talk at TED dot com is also AMAZING! Oprah interviewed Dr. Taylor and you can check that out on Oprah.com. And Time Magazine named Dr. T one of the 100 Most Influential people in the world. Having read her book, I can see why all the attention.
Dr. Amen’s book is brain science and it’s great at that. Dr. Taylor is a Harvard Brain Scientist, but what she writes about is the science and much more. She really cracks the code to understand how our brains (right and left hemispheres) work and she explains how we can get into our right brain and be happier and more joyful. Aside from any of the science, My Stroke of Insight is also just a great story.