After a mild concussion, people generally start to feel like they are back to normal within 1-2 weeks. Symptoms start to resolve, and if being evaluated by a professional, patients will usually show a return to baseline scores on common tests such as SCAT and ImPACT within this window post-concussion. But is their brain really healed?

Unlike a broken bone where you can take an x-ray and see directly if the injury is healed, a head injury is assessed indirectly by measuring brain function. This is like assessing a broken

Getting a pet dog is often suggested to people who need extra motivation to exercise a little more. Having a dog will force you to go outside and go on walks that you might otherwise take, and that, in turn, can help improve your physical health.

But what about your mental health? Can pets have a significant effect on our mental well-being? Your first thought with that question may be along the lines of the companionship pets supply, maybe their role as a stress-reducer, particularly in those with mental health

A year after we launch Grumpy Science, we decide to write about it. After all, we are a couple of curmudgeonly old guys that do whatever we want whenever we want. So what exactly is Grumpy Science? Grumpy Science is a videocast that is co-hosted by Bob Dennis and myself. It evolved from our Friday afternoon impromptu meetings that we could never bring ourselves to call “Happy Hour”. It basically morphed into “grumpy hour” in which we complained about a lot of things and then we realized that we were

My first real exposure to neuroscience was in the early 1980s (I say real because I don’t count textbook and classroom exposure). After graduating with an MS in Biomedical Engineering and Mathematics, I was hired as an in-house engineer in a neurophysiological lab. In addition to developing and maintaining experimental protocols for this lab, we were also the “hub” for a multiple investigator group that was studying pain (that program project started in the 1980s and continued for 30+ years). Several different methods were used to study pain by

The Brain Gauge: A revolutionary tool for assessing brain health.

Imagine a world where brain health could be measured in a manner as simply as taking your temperature. Check the reading, and you have your answer. Essentially a 1-2 minute task would give you an idea about the status of your brain health. You could immediately determine if that hit your child took to the head playing sports caused a concussion or see if the age of your parents was starting to have an effect on their brain function. Or

Everyone has some experience with stress. It could be acute stress from cramming for a test (or two) in high school, getting the jitters before a big race or game, or experiencing a traumatic event; or it could be a chronic dose of stress from your job, from the lack of having a job, taking care of a sick loved one, or being chronically sick yourself. Stress can come in all shapes and sizes, but do all of these scenarios affect our brains the same way? What exactly is going