Tuesday 22 January 2013

An update on Molly Meldrum

Molly's recovery

Readers may recall that in December 2011 Molly Meldrum was admitted to hospital after a fall at his home in Melbourne. He was in an induced come for approximately 10 days and in Post Traumatic Amnesia (PTA) for almost one month. From the limited details released by the media, Molly appeared to have sustained at least a severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

It has emerged that on February 27, 2012, less than 10 days after coming out of PTA, Molly checked himself out of hospital. At that point he could walk and talk, was physically much better, had likely had enough of being in hospital and (incorrectly) assumed that he was well enough to go home.

Thursday 17 January 2013

Autism - making the most of a disABILITY

Recently, Louis Theroux explored the lives of children with Autism and their families in a documentary called 'Extreme Love'. It was most recently aired on ABC2 on Sunday 13 January.

One of the best scenes in the documentary (in my opinion) involves Louis asking a family whether they would take away their son's autism if they could. They said no because some of his quirks related to his condition made him lovable, fun and interesting to be around. According to his mother, none of her other children could make her laugh or make her think about things the way he could.

This child was very high functioning and, understandably, the answer was quite different for those families whose child/ren were low functioning or difficult to manage.

Friday 11 January 2013

Should we be concerned about the effects of mobile phones?

It has been suggested that mobile phones do fry your brains Numerous articles and studies have suggested that regular use of mobile telephones may be harmful to our health. It has even been suggested that mobiles fry our brains. Given that mobile telephone are becoming more and more prevalent, are being used by younger and younger children, and for many of us are our primary means of communication, it is important that we understand the effects of these devices on our brain functioning. It is also important that we do not make false assumptions about the erroneous effects of mobile phones.
The public concern about mobile phones is based on the fact that wireless phone signals cause electromagnetic fields from which radiation is emitted. The World Health Organisation has found that radiation is a possible human cancer-causing agent.
It is however difficult to measure to what extent radiation from mobile phones heats human brain tissue. A recent study by researchers from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Alcatel-Lucet Bell Laboratories in the US found that MRI scans can directly study how mobile phones heat the human brain. Research is in its early stages however and there are no conclusions as yet.