Donald Black, M.D.
Salt Lake Tribune

What distinguishes a conscious spender from a compulsive shopper? The answer lies in the degree to which the shopping affects his or her life, said Black, professor of psychiatry and a leading expert in compulsive shopping and shoplifting. "If it's affecting your social life, your relationships, your marriage, and your financial health, you had better take a look at it." Compulsive shoppers routinely hide credit card bills from family members, take out secret loans, and stash merchandise to hide their habit. In fact, much of the merchandise compulsive shoppers cart home sits unused and even unopened, hidden in closets and under beds. Black treated one woman who routinely saw a blouse or slacks she liked on her daily shopping trips and ended up buying one in every color. It wasn't because she planned to wear these clothes. She just got a high of sorts from the buying.

Bruce Gantz, M.D.
Chicago Tribune

Gantz, professor and head of otolaryngology, was quoted in a story about Tim Brandau, a 19-year-old University of Iowa freshman. Brandau was the first child born in the United States with congenital deafness to receive a cochlear implant (Gantz successfully implanted Brandau's device in 1987). Now, with the help of the cochlear implant--a device that electrically stimulates nerves in the ear, enabling the wearer to hear--Brandau plays alto saxophone in the Hawkeye Marching Band. At the time of the implant, doctors were not sure whether the device would help Brandau learn to understand language and speak normally because he never had been able to hear. "This was a risk to take with Tim and his parents," Gantz said. Today, doctors at UI Hospitals and Clinics have fitted more than 150 children and nearly 600 patients with the implants.

Daniel Tranel, Ph.D.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

With a new respect for the science of emotion, researchers are charting the anatomy of social graces, capturing neural impulses of fairness and shame that guide behavior. In findings made public at a meeting of 24,000 neuroscientists in Orlando, researchers documented how the primal mood circuits of the brain can color manners, cooperation, and judgment, even as scientists revealed a new understanding of how the human capacity for emotion changes over a lifetime. "There has been a shift to looking for brain patterns," said Tranel, a professor of neurology in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. "Emotion is a topic that has been deliberately eschewed by neuroscientists for a long time. It was a nuisance in our data and we tried to get rid of it. Now, we deliberately focus on it."