Dr Shock speculates that I am busy with Twitter. But that is not the case. I am busy with my historical research on electrotherapy with a focus on magnetic stimulation and psychiatry. Now I am working on the period around 1900.  I found a lot of documents about German magnetotherapy. An electrotechnical engineer Eugen Konrad Müller produced a apparatus that produced an alternating magnetic field with an alternating current.  He claims he saw phosphenes in 1883 when he placed his head near an alternating magnetic field. Around 1900, he founded an institute in Zürich to investigate the effects of the magnetic waves produced by his apparatus. Physicians also got involved. They claimed that the apparatus was able to heal 70% of all conditions caused by an irritated nervous system (for instance neurasthenia) and  vasomotoric problems.  But Müller was not the only one who made an electromagnetic apparatus. The firm Trüb also produced an electromagnetic therapeutic machine. This machine worked with a rotating simple magnet. There was a lot of debate which machine worked and if the machines worked at all.

This is a just a little insight in the research I am doing right now. I want to extend the period to  nowadays and investigate how it came about that magnetic brain stimulation is al around.  I am still looking for interesting articles about magnetotherapy in the UK, France and US around 1900. So if someone has some clues or some interesting links please let me know. The research is not confined the scientific articles. Everything (photos, populair articles, newspaper articles) is interesting.

I would love to go to the exhibition about mental illness and visual arts in Vienna 1900. This would be a nice addition to the things I allready know about this period.

Would you do this to your friends?

Off-topic: google has added Street View for the Netherlands. For now only 010 and 020.

Acutezorg wonders what health people would be able to do with it. One thing that would be cool is to project peoples organs on the outside of their body. I do not yet know what good will come out of that, but it would be fun.

For my thesis on TMS I am looking for a list of  publications of the french scientist d’Arsonval. The most famous publication on TMS by d’Arsonval in 1896¹ I already have in my possession. If someone has a list, please send me an e-mail or leave the list in the comment. Or if someone has an easy way to obtain the list, let me know!

1) d’Arsonval, J. A. (1896). “Dispotifs pour la mesure des courants alternatifs de toutes fréquences.” Comptes rendus des séances et mémoires de la Société de biologie et de ses filiales et associés: 450-451.

Do you want an easy adaptable transcranial magnetic stimulator? It might be possible in the (near) future. At OpenStim you can read about an open source rTMS stimulator. The WIKI has two goals:

1. Create a community that designs the core technology for a safe, highly functional, inexpensive, efficacious noninvasive transcranial magnetic stimulator (TMS) device for stimulating the central nervous system.

2. Facilitate experimentation and exchange of ideas, on the topic of modulation of brain function in a variety of people and contexts, so that we can learn more about the neural circuits mediating our subjective experiences, and improve mental functions (aka hacking your brain).

Another question that came to my mind about (r)TMS was whether you need to be a physician (MD) in the Netherlands to apply (r)TMS.  You need to be a physician to apply electroconvulsive therapy (dutch). But does (r)TMS belong to that category? And how about Magnetic Seizure Therapy?

Unfortunatelly we (Dr Shock and I) were not able to get a lot of input from other medbloggers for our grand rounds. Of course there were exceptions such as Laika. As a result of this Dr Shock started his monthly rounds of dutch medblogs.

The Dutch grand round had a short live. Nevertheless some medbloggers in The Netherlands produce interesting posts. Had lost track of most of them. Decided to produce a monthly selection as a kind of grand round. Choices are very biased and made by myself. If you feel left out, unappreciated or anything else please contact me [dr Shock].

I started my own weekly grand rounds (in dutch) in 2007, but it took me too much time to continue.

Yesterday I wrote about my pdf-overload and how I am coping with that. Today I will write about other sources information that I want to store or want to be alerted to.  I use:

*) Evernote to store extracts from webpages with the accompanying link. Before using Evernote I used Google Notebook.  But since there are rumours that Google stops supporting Notebook I switched to Evernote. I must say that I liked Notebook better. One of the reasons for that is that I also use Google Reader. I also would like to have the opportunity to work offline, but I did not yet find a solution for that. 

*) Google Reader to read my RSS-feeds. Not so long ago I had over a thousand RSS-feeds but I removed them all and started all over again. Nowadays I have approx. 25 feeds I read. I also created RSS-feeds for Pubmed for deep brain stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation.  Below you can find a video about creating a RSS-feed for a pubmed search term. 

*) Twitter to obtain information before it is even published on one of the weblogs. Since google reader does not yet(?) support some kind of alert if a new message arrives, Twitter gives me alert if something new is posted. But I am not yet a fervent Twitterer. 

*) I almost never use the favorites of my browser. Google Chrome automatically remembers the websites I visit the most. For other websites I just type the URL or I use google to find the url. 

*) I installed WordPress on my Asus EEEPC with linux. I also installed a webserver with mysql. This allows me to take notes during discussions in places where no (wireless) internet is available. These spots still exist in the Netherlands. 

As you can see I still use several software packages to store my information. Ideally, I want to store all the information in one place.

Dr Shock asked for this.  I use five Greasemonkey scripts.

*) Pubmed redirect. First of all I redirect all pubmed pages (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) to the pubmed page (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy.library.uu.nl) of my university
*) Automatically open UBU link. If the pubmed page consists of a direct (UBU) link this script automatically opens the link to the pages of for instance a journal.
*) Resize window. For some reason I do not know a library page opens in a small windows. This scripts makes sure that the window resizes to the full screen.
*) Automatically open PDF.  If the pubmed page consists of links to pdf’s then this script automatically opens the pdf.
*) Redirect Springerlink. This is a redirect script for Springer pages.

You can find the scripts below. Any questions? Let me know.

—– Pubmed redirect ———————————————

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Redirect Pubmed
// @namespace      Redirect Pubmed
// @description    Redirect Pubmed
// @include        http://*ncbi.nlm.nih.gov*/*
// ==/UserScript==

//alert(document.location.href);
var str =  document.location.href; // get the hyperlink of the current page and store it in the variable str
var matchpos = str.search(/proxy.library.uu.nl/); // see if proxy.library.uu.nl occurs in the variable str 
var rep =   “ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy.library.uu.nl”;  // store new hyperlink in variable rep
if (matchpos ==-1){ // if str does not contain proxy.library.uu.nl then substitute links
str = str.replace(/ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/g, rep); // substitute ncbi.nlm.nih.gov with variable rep
document.location.href= str;
}

———————————————————————–

—– Automatically open UBU Link —————————-
// ==UserScript==
// @name           Automatically open UBU Link
// @namespace      NLM.NIH.GOV.PROXY.LIBRARY.UU.NL
// @include        http://*ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy.library.uu.nl*
// ==/UserScript==

// an UBU link is characterized by one of the following links: sfx.library.uu.nl, pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender or ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy.library.uu.nl/entrez/utils/fref.fcgi?PrId

var links = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’); // get all hyperlinks and store them in variable links
for(var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) { // loop through the hyperlinks in variable links

var url = links[i].href; // store array variable in url
var matchpos = url.search(/sfx.library.uu.nl/) // see if sfx.library.uu.nl occurs in the variable url
if (matchpos !=-1){ // if url contains sfx.library.uu.nl open url in new tab
GM_openInTab(url);

}
var matchpos1 = url.search(/pubmedcentral.nih.gov\/articlerender/); // see if pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender occurs in the variable url
if (matchpos1 !=-1){ // if url contains pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender open url in new tab
document.location = url;

}
var matchpos2 = url.search(/ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy.library.uu.nl\/entrez\/utils\/fref.fcgi\?PrId/); // see if ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy.library.uu.nl/entrez/utils/fref.fcgi?PrId occurs in the variable url
if (matchpos2 !=-1){ // if url contains ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy.library.uu.nl/entrez/utils/fref.fcgi?PrId open url in new tab
GM_openInTab(url);

}

}
———————————————————————–

—– Resize window —————— —————————-

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Library
// @namespace      Sfx.library.uu.nl
// @include        http://sfx.library.uu.nl.proxy.library.uu.nl*
// ==/UserScript==

self.resizeTo(screen.availWidth,screen.availHeight);

———————————————————————–

———Automatically open PDF ——————————-

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Automatically open PDF
// @namespace      Pubmedcentral
// @include        http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov.proxy.library.uu.nl/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=*
// ==/UserScript==

// if a hyperlink on a http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov.proxy.library.uu.nl/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=* page contains blobtype=pdf then it refers to a pdf. So this scripts looks for such hyperlinks and opens them if it occurs.

var found = 0;
var links = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’); // get all hyperlinks and store them in variable links
for(var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) { // loop through the hyperlinks in variable links

var url = links[i].href;
var matchpos = url.search(/blobtype\=pdf/);  // see if blobtype=pdf occurs in the variable url

if (matchpos !=-1 && found==0){  // if url contains blobtype=pdf open url in new window
window.location = url;
//alert(url);
found = 1; // to prevent opening more than one window the variable found is set to 1

}

}

———————————————————————–

———Redirect Springerlink ————————————

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Redirect Springerlink
// @namespace      Pubmedcentral
// @include        http://www.springerlink.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

var str =  document.location.href;
var matchpos = str.search(/proxy.library.uu.nl/);
var rep =   “www.springerlink.com.proxy.library.uu.nl”;
if (matchpos ==-1){
str = str.replace(/www.springerlink.com/g, rep);
document.location.href= str;
}

———————————————————————–

Belgian psychiatrist Damian Denys explains (in dutch) the use of DBS for OCD at Pauw en Witteman, a dutch talkshow. Below you can find an extensive video in which a patient treated for OCD is shown. Additional information should be found at Teleac in the course Wetenschap is beterschap, but unfortunatelly I could not find it.

The AMC, the medical centre Denys works,  also interviewed him for the video series Fascinaties (Fascination).

After reading a lot of publications about brain stimulation I do not think you can really stimulate your brain with a 9V battery.  But then again Wikipedia mentions that you only need 1-2 mA.  And some people just try it. It is called transcranial direct current stimulation.  

Stanford University has her own video channel on YouTube.  It also features a series of 7 videos on the future of human health.  It is all about the brain and very interesting. Thanks to Scienceroll. 

Building a Circuit-Diagram for the Brain

Understanding Blindness and the Brain

Brain-Computer Interfaces

Controlling the Brain with Light

Googling the Brain on a Chip

Visualizing Desire

Deafness: Emerging Strategies for a Cure

Since I will be busy finishing my thesis about on a history of brain stimulation in psychiatry with a focus on TMS, DBS and VNS, I will keep you updated about my achievements. This will mean that I will post less about web 2.0 and all that kind of stuff.

Later I will tell something about the way I work. How do I cope with loads of pdf (>100) and loads of references (>3000). But for now I just want to share some interesting videos about brain stimulation. Two are about TMS. The first one is a promotional video (thanks to Brain Stimulant).  It tells us that Deep TMS was invented in 2001, but I am not really sure that is true.  But I will find out during my research.

The next video does not feature a psychiatric application but is nevertheless interesting. It is about eye tracking with TMS.

And the last one is about DBS.

Update
Even more videos on Youtube about this subject.

And Taiwan will host the first international conference on neuroprosthetic devices.

Google launches a new initiative: it plans to measure your blood pressure, sugar levels. When will they be able to measure all these thing directly without external devices. All these thing integrated in my keyboard and mouse. Wouldn’t that be nice?

The polls for the 2008 Medical Weblog Awards are opened. A quick look on the nominees revealed only one Dutch contender Laika’s MedLibLog. This weblog is nominated in the category Best New Medical Weblog. Please support her and vote for her. Unfortunately ShockMD did not make it to the shortlist.