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A Recommended Dose of Psychopharmacology
Despite the prominence of drugs in society, both illicit and prescribed, psychopharmacology — a hybrid discipline of psychological science and pharmacology — remains surprisingly obscure to people outside the discipline. Training in psychopharmacology is typically
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New Research on the Antidepressant-Versus-Placebo Debate
TIME: In the 1990s, everyone was “Listening to Prozac,” after bestselling author Peter Kramer described sparkling personality transformations in patients who took the titular antidepressant drug. Then came the backlash: by the early 2000s, studies showed
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Researchers Say Drugs Can Boost Cognition, But Only So Much
Cognition-enhancing drugs, once restricted to the world of science fiction, are now widely available and commonly used. The prevailing assumption is that, in terms of cognitive ability, more is better. But a study in the
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Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice
Select your favorite metaphor for the extended time that it typically takes for scientific findings to gain widespread clinical use — a clogged pipeline, a leaky pipeline, or a chasm to be bridged — the
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Oliver Sacks: What hallucination reveals about our minds
Mainstream society tends to associate hallucinations and delusions with the drug-addled and the mentally ill, but in reality they stem from many different sources and provide some amazing insight into how the brain works. Charles
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In Defense of Antidepressants
The New York Times: In terms of perception, these are hard times for antidepressants. A number of articles have suggested that the drugs are no more effective than placebos. Last month brought an especially high-profile