
PsyDactic
A resource for psychiatrists and other medical or behavioral health professionals interested in exploring the neuroscientific basis of psychiatric disorders, psychopharmacology, neuromodulation, and other psychiatric interventions, as well as discussions of pseudoscience, Bayesian reasoning, ethics, the history of psychiatry, and human psychology in general.
This podcast is not medical advice. It strives to be science communication. Dr. O'Leary is a skeptical thinker who often questions what we think we know. He hopes to open more conversations about what we don't know we don't know.
Find transcripts with show-notes and references on each episodes dedicated page at psydactic.buzzsprout.com.
You can leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.
The visual companions, when available, can be found at https://youtube.com/@PsyDactic.
PsyDactic
Therapeutic Ultrasound with Dr. Michael Canney PhD
This episode includes a fascinating interview with a researcher in ultrasound, Dr. Michael Canney who is an acoustics researcher the chief scientific officer at a French company named Carthera (https://carthera.eu/) and they make ultrasound devices that can disrupt the blood-brain barrier in order to let medicines into the brain that otherwise could only get through in very small amounts.
We talk more broadly about the explosion of various applications of ultrasound beyond imaging, including things like tissue ablation (or basically cooking highly focussed loci of tissue inside your body), or cavitation (where ultrasound causes tiny bubbles to rapidly expand inside cells or vessels), and I end with a brief discussion of the potential of ultrasound for neuromodulation.
Please leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com or send any comments to feedback@psydactic.com.
References and readings (when available) are posted at the end of each episode transcript, located at psydactic.buzzsprout.com. All opinions expressed in this podcast are exclusively those of the person speaking and should not be confused with the opinions of anyone else. We reserve the right to be wrong. Nothing in this podcast should be treated as individual medical advice.
***Transcript In Process***
References
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- https://teams.semel.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/users/user-739/bxpulsar1002_user_manual_053019.pdf