Ron Melzack, of Melzack & Wall, of the gate control theory, is officially a superstar..... Ronald Melzack has won the 2010 Grawemeyer Awards for Psychology for his work on explaining pain. With Patrick Wall, he proposed the 'gate control' theory of pain suggesting that people feel pain in their brain which led to further research and … [Read more...]

Mind Hacks has put us onto the SmartHand project - it is truly ambitious but if it works will be terrific for amputees (at least I think it will - one never does know what unexpected and unwanted things emerge when we are messing this seriously with the brain - but it looks GREAT). Go here to the SmartHand website, here for Mind Hack's post on … [Read more...]

That magnificent imagination that kids have and that we somehow tend to lose as we grow up (why is that?) is apparently a powerful ally in attempts to reduce the frequency and impact of abdominal pain in kids.  Rather than describe it badly, have a look at the BBC coverage of it here 'Children can be taught to use their imagination to tackle … [Read more...]

Listen to the radio tomorrow.  Those in the know have given us a tip off that Lorimer's groovy experiment with Peter Brugger is going to get some air time on ABC radio.  What time?  Who knows?  Our informants are not fully in the know but are trying to find out. The odds are that you will miss it, in which case check out the Proceedings of … [Read more...]

Last night, I went to the opening of a play at the Bondi Pavillion.  The play is written and directed and produced etc etc by a good friend of mine. Despite this, it is, in my view, very good. It explores themes of neuroscience, evolution, biology, disability, love and living in Bondi - in short, one doctoral student who doesn't finish but hits … [Read more...]

For those of you who have heard Lorimer's 'How normal are the people who participate in experiments?' talk, here's a write-up on an article currently in press in the journal of Behavioral and Brain Sciences 'The weirdest people in the world'. How Normal is Weird? It's a pretty shocking fact, but pretty much everything we think we know about … [Read more...]

Upping the ante - some fish make their cells more sensitive within minutes of a social encounter by inserting ion channels into the cell membrane.  Hormones released into circulation by the pituitary evoke the effect.  What has this got to do with us? Well, if you have been to one of the Explain Pain seminars lately you will be sick of Lorimer … [Read more...]

This review from arguably two of the biggest wigs in proprioception and kinesthesia (Uwe Proske from Monash University & Simon Gandevia from Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute) is a must read for anyone who wants to get a good handle on how the body tells us where it is.  There are some new data and, as always with these guys, it is … [Read more...]