Electroencephalograms

Susan Callison will never forget how terrified she was when at the beginning of second grade, it took her son, Chad, two hours to complete a simple homework assignment. "I remember working with him on the word boat. I used pictures, everything, to try to help him recognize the word," recalls the El Toro mother and former teacher. "But after 20 minutes of working, he still didn't have a clue. It was frightening."

Susan Callison will never forget how terrified she was when at the beginning of second grade, it took her son, Chad, two hours to complete a simple homework assignment. "I remember working with him on the word boat. I used pictures, everything, to try to help him recognize the word," recalls the El Toro mother and former teacher. "But after 20 minutes of working, he still didn't have a clue. It was frightening."

Q: Is it true that some animals sleep with only half their brain? A: Yes. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) have shown that some species of birds and some aquatic mammals sleep with only half their brain at one time, while the other half remains alert and functioning. Such sleep habits allow the mammals to continue swimming and rise to the surface for air while at least part of their brain is getting a good night's rest. The half of the brain sleeping apparently alternates.

The latest urban folk tale making the rounds in this area concerns a woman who phoned an exterminator to report that something was "growling" in her bedroom closet. Then, according to the story passed along to me by Ernest Fujimura, a technician is dispatched to the scene only to find that the noisy creature was "her husband's pager, which was in the closet, set on 'vibrate.' In her panic, she kept paging him, which of course kept setting it off."

Most of the time, it's pretty easy for doctors to tell when someone's dead: The person's breathing and heartbeat have stopped, and he or she can't be revived. After Congress passed the Uniform Determination of Death Act in 1981, however, the overwhelming majority of organ donors have been declared dead by a very different standard: Machines keep their hearts and lungs pumping, but doctors determined that their brain and brain stem have irreversibly stopped functioning.

Some things actually get better with age, and emotional stability appears to be one of them. It says so right in the authoritative Journal of Neuroscience. Ever since Freud, psychologists have focused almost exclusively on misery -- our fears, our depressions, sadness, anger, hostility, aggression, you name it. Now, thank goodness, the young discipline of "positive psychology" is gaining ground as psychologists and neuroscientists try to figure out what makes people happy.

In the late 1960s, a group of UC San Diego physicists developed an experimental tool called a magnetometer to measure the Earth's magnetic fields. After seeing that there was ample demand for the device from other physicists, they formed a company now known as Biomagnetic Technologies to manufacture the product.

For more years than she cares to remember, Dr. Joan Hodgman, director of the newborn service at County-USC Medical Center, has been troubled by the knowledge that she and other physicians who care for dying infants lack a simple, safe and effective method of telling when their patients are brain dead.

One day after Ross Perot yanked his hat out of the political ring, a group that calls itself the Natural Law Party brought its presidential candidate to Los Angeles to put voters' minds at ease--literally. The candidate is John Hagelin, a soft-spoken physicist who teaches at Maharishi International University in Iowa. His message: mellow out.

"Let this relaxation sink inward, let it sink inward, let it flow into your brain," intones the soothing voice as a low-frequency tone resonates in the background. "Feel it sinking inward easily and calmly until your entire brain feels more and more relaxed, more and more relaxed." Robert A. Monroe, founder and executive director of the Monroe Institute, is guiding his listener on a 30-minute journey to dreamland via an audiocassette tape called the Catnapper.

In the late 1960s, a group of UC San Diego physicists developed an experimental tool called a magnetometer to measure the Earth's magnetic fields. After seeing that there was ample demand for the device from other physicists, they formed a company now known as Biomagnetic Technologies to manufacture the product.