Free Republic

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a 73-year-old Republican who has been in office for three decades and is presently running for re-election, revealed in an interview this week with News Center Maine that she suffers from a nervous system disorder. Collins — shown in two recent polls to be trailing radical Democrat candidate Graham Platner by at least 27 percentage points — indicated, however, that the disorder has not interfered with her job. "What I have is an extremely common condition that is called a benign essential tremor," Collins explained. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, an...

Implanted Devices May Alter Treatment of Many Disorders A handful of scientists around the world have begun cautiously experimenting with devices implanted in patients' bodies to deliver precisely targeted electrical stimulation to the brain in hopes of treating otherwise hopeless behavioral, neurological and psychiatric disorders. While stressing that the ethically sensitive research with "brain pacemakers" has just begun, the scientists say the results so far have been so promising that it could mark the beginning of a new era in treating often intractable cases. The approach builds on rapid recent advances in understanding how the brain works, on high-tech imaging...