August 31, 2005
Reduplicative paramnesia:
Reduplicative paramnesia is the delusional belief that a place or location has been duplicated, existing in two or more places simultaneously, or that it has been 'relocated' to another site. It is one of the delusional misidentification syndromes and, although rare, is most commonly associated with acquired brain injury, particularly simultaneous damage to the right cerebral hemisphere and to both frontal lobes.
From a Wikipedia article on reduplicative paramnesia I've just created. Enjoy (and excuse the typos!).
—Vaughan.
Women's psychology magazine to launch in UK:
A new glossy women's magazine is due to launch in the UK that covers philosophy and psychology, as well as celebrity interviews and lifestyle stories.
Psychologies already exists in France, where the French version (pictured on the right) sells over 300,000 copies a month. It is hoped that UK women will be similarly intrigued by stories that discuss "what we're like, not just what we look like".
A write-up in The Independent claims that the magazine will be "academically rigorous", presumably basing advice and analysis on established research.
It is clear that the magazine is not straying too far from the tried-and-tested format of women's glossies, however, as beauty advice and celebrity interviews (Meg Ryan will be issue one's cover girl) will still feature strongly.
Link to story from The Independent 'Psychologies magazine: Not just a pretty face'.
Link to website of French Psychologies
—Vaughan.
August 30, 2005
Fortean Times on Koestler Parapsychology Unit:
September's edition of the Fortean Times has a lead article on Edinburgh University's Koestler Parapsychology Unit and the state of parapsychology research today.
The research centre is supported by money left in the will of controversial author Arthur Koestler, who had a long-standing interest, and some personal experience, with paranormal phenomena.
In contrast to much of the frankly dodgy science that the area attracts, the Koestler Unit conducts well-controlled scientific studies into potential psi abilities.
The article notes some interesting findings. For example, there seems to be a statistically significant effect, albeit very small in magnitude, when the results of the scientific studies on psi abilities are collated.
It also includes some insights from current and ex-parapsychological researchers on the future of the field, and whether the findings reflect genuine psi, or perhaps just some uncontrolled 'noise' in experimental design.
The article is only available in the print edition at the moment, but the Fortean Times put their lead articles online after a month or two, so look out for it on their website for those without copies on your local newstands.
Link to Fortean Times website.
Link to Koestler Parapsychology Unit website.
—Vaughan.
August 29, 2005
On hair and leadership:
For at least half a century Americans have shown a marked aversion to electing bald men to their nation's highest office. Excluding Gerald Ford (1974-77) who was bald but not elected, the last bald president was Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61). Europeans have been more sympathetic to the bare-headed politico (Churchill, Papandreou, Simitis, Giscard d'Estaing, Mitterand, Chirac, Craxi, Mussolini), but even they have lagged behind the Soviets, who inexplicably installed, if not exactly elected, bald and hirsute leaders in strict alternation: Lenin (bald), Stalin (hairy), Khrushchev (bald), Brezhnev (hairy), Andropov (bald), Chernenko (hairy), Gorbachev (bald) - a tradition that has been maintained in the Russian Republic with Yeltsin (hairy) and Putin (comb-over).
From p281 of Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body by Armand Marie Leroi.
—Vaughan.
August 27, 2005
Death to common sense:
Online science think-tank Edge has a discussion about the role of common sense theories in explaining physics and cognitive science.
Science writer John Horgan bemoanes the fact that scientific theories have become so complex and fantastical that common sense has gone out of the window.
He cites various examples in the physical and 'mind sciences' which, he claims, demonstrates that theories are becoming useless and untestable.
In reply, Horgan's comments are met with a robust response, with psychologist Daniel Gilbert going as far as saying "such a silly trifle that it doesn't dignify serious response"!
Link to 'In Defense of Common Sense'.
—Vaughan.
August 26, 2005
2005-08-26 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Manchester University initiates a survey on out-of-body experiences - which you can participate in here.
Workaholics are better in bed claims questionable recent study.
The placebo effect causes real-life opioids to flood the brain.
Change blindness is particularly associated with a small area of the parietal lobe, finds magnetic brain stimulation study (via BoingBoing).
In the UK, suicide is most likely to occur on Mondays, possibly due to a "sense of unease over starting something new".
Men score consistently higher on IQ tests than women, claims controversial new study.
—Vaughan.
August 25, 2005
Hack #103: See more with your eyes closed:
A reader writes (thanks nick!)
Not gonna impress any girls with this one, but... I was looking at my mother's ceiling fan the other day trying to determine how many blades it had. It was on its highest setting so it was nearly impossible to do. Until I blinked. If you blink rapidly, it disrupts the brains attempts at connecting frames of sight into continuous motion. Thus a whirling blur becomes a clear frame of sight, easily analyzed. Not sure where else this little trick could pay off. A nice illustration of the characteristics of our visual systems though.
Cool. Freed from the constraint having to make sense of continous input, your visual system can to make sense of the single 'frame' of input it does have. An example of less is more? I noticed something similar when riding my bike. When I glance down at the front wheel, it appears blurred. But when I look back at the road, my visual system delivers me a snapshot of the wheel, unblurred. What is happening - I'm guessing - is that as I move from looking at the wheel to the road ahead there is a moment of saccadic suppression [Hack #17] when visual input is cut off. Into this gap the 'frame' of the wheel is resolved. Also lending a hand may be a neural mechanism which turns off saccadic suppression if the velocity of the eyes matches that of a moving object (with your eyes stationary a moving object is blurred, with your eyes moving a stationary object is blurred, but if your eyes move at the same speed as an object you can get a clear image). For this to work the object needs to be nicely textured, so your low-level visual apparatus can gauge its velocity. Which explains why i get the effect on my mountain bike, which has big treads on the tyres, but not on a road bike, which has smooth tyres.
—tom.
Getting to grips with grasping:
Reach and grasp a willing colleague by the arm, now let them go, and pick up a pen or pencil instead. The first movement requires a power grip, flexing all the fingers together towards the palm, the second movement uses a precision grip involving the thumb and forefinger. Easy to do? Apparently yes, but the ease and accuracy with which we reach and grasp objects (or people!) belies the complexity of the neural processing underlying such movements. Now the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience has published a comprehensive review on the neuroscience of grasping, by Umberto Castiello.
Castiello describes how studies on the ‘kinematics’ of grasping have shown there is a reliable ‘landmark’ during reaching movements: when the hand is between 60 to 70 per cent of the way towards its target, the gap between the thumb and fingers always reaches its largest point, the precise moment correlating highly with the size of the object to be grasped. Other object characteristics – its weight, texture, surface – also affect aspects of the grasping movement in a lawful way.
Most of our knowledge about the brain networks involved in grasping come from intrusive experiments on monkeys that are simply not possible or ethical in humans. These point to a circuit involving the primary motor cortex, the premotor cortex and the anterior intraparietal sulcus. How similar things are in the human brain is a matter of controversy and ongoing investigation using brain imaging and studies with brain-damaged patients. These suggest many of the grasping-related areas implicated in the monkey brain are activated in the human brain too, but that other regions are also involved, including the prefrontal, somatosensory and cerebellar areas.
Castiello describes one patient, A.T., with extensive damage to the parietal lobe and secondary visual areas, who had problems grasping neutral, laboratory objects but was okay at grasping familiar items such as a lipstick. This suggests that, in humans at least, brain areas involved in interpreting the meaning of an object also influence the brain’s grasping circuit.
Indeed, Castiello says more research is needed into whether and how the meaning of an object, and intentions for what to do with an object, affect grasping in monkeys in the same way research has shown these more ‘cognitive’ variables influence grasping in humans.
“It will only be through careful and thoughtful experimentation, using converging techniques from the brain and behaviour, that we might completely understand the grasping function of the human hand”, Castiello’s review concludes.
Link to abstract of the review.
—christian.
Is daydreaming linked to Alzheimer's ?:
A recent brain scanning study has been widely reported as suggesting that Alzheimer's disease is linked to the brain functions of daydreaming. The actual study is both complex and interesting, although not as clear cut as the headlines make out.
Th research project, led by neuroscientist Randy Buckner, conducted brain scans on 10 people with Alzheimer's disease and 8 older people without, and also used data from previous studies on young people.
The newly conducted scans looked at how amyloid plaques, damaging accumulations of proteins linked to Alzheimer's disease, were distributed across the brain. Further scans looked for other types of structural changes in the brain, such as shrinkage.
This distribution was matched with activity from the scans of young people. In contrast to the structural scans, these functional scans looked at how active the brain was.
Normally, functional scans involve participants being asked to do a particular task. In Buckner's study, however, the activity was from participants who were just 'resting' and were not asked to do any specific mental activity - something the researchers called 'default activity'.
The researchers noted that 'default activity' showed a similar pattern in the brain to the distribution of amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease (shown in the image on the right), and have suggested there might be a link.
There are several unanswered questions though, which the researchers themselves acknowledge.
One is simply that 'resting' or 'default' brain activity is a mystery, no one is quite sure what the brain is doing in this state. 'Daydreaming' is just an everyday term that is used, because we assume that's what we do when we're not doing much.
In reality, the brain areas highlighted by the study are involved in a range of diverse of contrasting mental activities.
A further difficulty is that the correlation between 'default activity' and amyloid plaque distribution was found between two sets of people. More convincing would be if these distributions were found to correlate in the same people.
With these issues in mind, the final difficulty is with interpreting the results. The researchers suggest that mental activity in younger adults could be related to the later development of Alzheimer's, but there is no clear understanding of how this happens.
My guess is that 'daydreaming' is unlikely to be a significant part of this explanation, although as the scientific paper only mentions it in passing, I suspect the researchers don't think so either.
Link to press release from Washington University.
Link to Reuters story "Daydreaming activity linked to Alzheimer's"
Link to summary of scientific paper by Buckner and colleagues.
—Vaughan.
August 24, 2005
changing diet might allow you to see infrared:
Thanks to Eric Lundquis for typing this up and putting it on the internet. It's an experiment done by the army and cited by Rubin, M. L., and Walls, G. L. (1969). Fundamentals of visual science. Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, p. 546, which is in turn cited Sekuler, R., and Blake, R. (1994). Perception (3rd ed.). Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, pp. 62-63:
The following story dramatizes how photopigments determine what one can see. During World War II, the United States Navy wanted its sailors to be able to see infrared signal lights that would be invisible to the enemy. Normally, it is impossible to see infrared radiation because, as pointed out earlier, the wavelengths are too long for human photopigments. In order for humans to see infrared, the spectral sensitivity of some human photopigment would have to be changed. Vision scientists knew that retinal, the derivative of vitamin A, was part of every photopigment molecule and that various forms of vitamin A existed. If the retina could be encouraged to use some alternative form of vitamin A in its manufacture of photopigments, the spectral sensitivity of those photopigments would be abnormal, perhaps extending into infrared radiation. Human volunteers were fed diets rich in an alternative form of vitamin A but deficient in the usual form. Over several months, the volunteers' vision changed, giving them greater sensitivity to light of longer wavelengths. Though the experiment seemed to be working, it was aborted. The development of the "snooperscope," an electronic device for seeing infrared radiation, made continuation of the experiment unnecessary (Rubin and Walls, 1969). Still, the experiment demonstrates that photopigments select what one can see; changing those photopigments would change one's vision.
—tom.
Cultural cognition update:
As an update to the last post, on cognitive differences between Eastern and Western societies, Richard Nisbett was on BBC All in the Mind last night to discuss his findings.
He talks about the experimental results just released, as well his wider studies which have resulted in his book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently - And Why.
Link to All in the Mind webpage for Tuesday's edition.
Realaudio of programme.
—Vaughan.
August 23, 2005
Chinese and Americans differ in visual analysis:
An experiment conducted by psychologist Richard Nisbett suggests that Chinese and American people analyse scenes differently. The Americans focused on the main object in the picture, while the Chinese took a more holistic approach, and examined more of the visual context.
Traditionally, Western societies are characterised as 'individualistic' and Eastern societies as 'collectivist', suggesting that in countries like China and Japan, the focus is on society as a whole, rather than each person's individual characteristics.
Some have suggested that this reflects the different philosophical traditions of these cultures, with the West tending to approach problems by analytically breaking them down into component parts, and the East looking at problems in their wider context.
Nisbett's experiment suggests that this tendency may influence mental function even on the unconscious level, as his effect was found when participants were simply asked to view pictures, while their eye movements were tracked with an infra-red camera.
Importantly, the participants were unaware of the full intention of the experiment, and were told they were taking part in a study to test memory for pictures.
Why the picture of the Chinese girl? I just thought she looked beautiful.
Link to write-up from Science (with good example of eye-tracking result).
Link to New Scientist story.
Link to Scientific American story.
—Vaughan.
August 22, 2005
Cabinet on neural network pioneer Walter Pitts:
An article from art and culture magazine Cabinet discusses the prodigious and tragic life of neural network pioneer Walter Pitts, who was one of the major forces in the early development of computational models of the mind and brain.
Pitts started attending university lectures, uninvited, during his teenage years, and by the age of 17 was working with neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch. As Pitts was homeless and without an income at the time, McCulloch invited Pitts to live in the family home.
Together, they wrote one of the foundational papers in cognitive science, where they demonstrated that individual neurons, mathematically modelled, could be combined in networks to simulate logical computation. This suggested that such neurons could be the basic units of an information processing model of the mind.
This was a big step forward, as it suggested a potential link between the mind and brain to a science that was trying to break free from previous behaviourist 'stimulus-response' theories, by adopting a computational framework.
This broad approach is now the dominant theory in modern psychology, although Pitts' was convinced of a more strictly logical model than is generally accepted today.
Pitts was completely absorbed in his work and often seemed troubled when not focused on it. It was rumoured he may have suffered from schizophrenia on account of his markedly odd behaviour and difficulties with social interaction.
Pitts moved to work with a research group in Boston, but fell out with another group member who had a disagreement with Pitts' mentor Warren McCulloch. Pitts became a recluse and it has been rumoured he committed suicide.
Many artificial neural networks are based on his work, which are used as theoretical models of the mind, and to solve practical problems in technology and industry.
Link to Cabinet article on Walter Pitts.
Link to Wikipedia article on Walter Pitts.
—Vaughan.
August 21, 2005
BBC Click Online on 'Blue Brain' simulation project:
BBC Technology TV show Click Online recently visited the team behind the (somewhat unlikely) claim that they are intending to 'simulate the whole brain' with a supercomputer.
Despite the hype surrounding the launch, the project should be genuinely useful in producing simulations that will allow the function of individual brain cells and theories about more complex neural networks to be modelled and tested.
BBC Click Online went to the project's base in Lausanne in Switzerland, and discussed the potential for advancing the field of neuroscience with the team. Video is available as a realvideo stream from the link below.
Link to programme information and realvideo streams.
Link to Blue Brain project.
—Vaughan.
August 19, 2005
2005-08-19 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Erotic or gory images prevent the processing of other images for a (very) short time.
The mysterious "junk DNA" may have an important role in guiding brain development.
Mobile brain-scanner proposed to detect possible stroke in an ambulance.
A piece in The Herald asks the question why do we believe in aliens?
Money might bring happiness, but only relatively.
Numenware on a recent paper that discusses the neuroscience of why mystical experiences often happen on mountaintops.
Interesting analysis of Sherlock Holme's cocaine habit.
Developmental psychologist Rebecca Saxe describes theories about how we understand other people's minds.
—Vaughan.
August 18, 2005
Evolutionary psychology: The fightback:
A piece by Amanda Schaffer on Slate charts the growing opposition to evolutionary psychology. Although this opposition has always been present, it is being increasingly based on scientific rather than political arguments.
Previous criticisms of evolutionary psychology (EP), such as Rose and Rose's 'Alas Poor Darwin', have not always been received well, with some reviews suggesting they were attacking a straw-man version of EP and using politically motivated arguments.
Defenders of EP have sometimes relied on the angle that critics are not well-versed in biology (notably, not a criticism that could be used against 'Alas Poor Darwin') and misunderstand the scientific evidence.
A recent book by David Buller (mentioned previously on Mind Hacks) has gained most publicity for dissecting the evidence used to back up EP, and showing that it is not as strongly supported as some of its champions claim.
One recent review, by philosopher Jerry Fodor, applaudes Buller's careful analysis of the data, but disagrees with some of Buller's conclusions.
In particular, Fodor feels his acceptance of a form of evolutionary adaptation for mental states is misguided, a finished with some advice for would-be gamblers on successful theories:
Over the years, people keep proposing theories that go: "what everybody really wants is just . . ." (fill in the blank). Versions fashionable in their times have included: money, power, sex, death, freedom, happiness, Mother, The Good, pleasure, success, status, salvation, immortality, self-realization, reinforcement, penises (in the case of women), larger penises (in the case of men), and so on. The track record of such theories has not been good; in retrospect they often look foolish or vulgar or both. Maybe it will turn out differently for "what everybody really wants is to maximize his relative contribution to the gene pool". But I don’t know any reason to think that it will, and I sure wouldn’t advise you to bet the farm.
Link to article 'Cave Thinkers: How evolutionary psychology gets evolution wrong'.
Link to review of 'Adapting Minds' by Jerry Fodor.
—Vaughan.
August 17, 2005
Dalai Lama controversy continues:
As previously reported on Mind Hacks, neuroscientist Jianguo G. Gu started an online petition protesting the Dalai Lama's forthcoming lecture on neuroscience and meditation to the Society for Neuroscience's Annual Conference.
Now, the case for supporting the Dalai Lama's appearance has been made, with an online petition supporting the invitation of the Buddhist religious leader.
The new petition has been by neuroscientist and autism researcher Matthew Belmonte.
—Vaughan.
The biology of sexual arousal and orientation:
The Boston Globe has an exceptionally well researched article on the biology and neuropsychology of homosexuality.
While the search for a single 'gay gene' in humans has pretty much been abandoned, a substantial amount of work is now being conducted into the role of genetic factors and the time spent in the womb on sexuality.
One study, conducted by biologist Alan Sanders, is recruiting gay men with gay brothers to investigate any molecular genetic contributions to sexual orientation.
Other research is beginning to find a difference between sexual preference and sexual arousal. Early results suggest that for males, sexual arousal and sexual preference is strongly correlated (men prefer the sex that is capable of arousing them), whereas women are more capable of being aroused by either sex, despite the fact that they may be attracted to only one.
Some studies have found differences in brain structure between gay and straight men. In particular, a small area of the hypothalamus (known to be involved in sexual motivation) was found to differ in size in a controversial 1991 post-mortem study by neuroscientist Simon LeVay.
Link to Boston Globe article 'What Makes People Gay?'.
—Vaughan.
August 16, 2005
PTSD and combat stress:
The BBC have created an in-depth website dedicated to understanding war-related PTSD and combat stress.
In retrospect, there are accounts of combat stress from as far back as ancient times, although the long-term effects of combat-related trauma were first taken seriously as 'shell shock' during World War One.
The psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers was one of the pioneers in understanding and treating these extreme combat reactions. His real-life treatment of the war poet Seigfried Sassoon was the subject of Pat Barker's the Booker prize winning novel Regeneration.
The BBC website charts the history of the conditon, and includes audio, images and stories from those affected by PTSD, including soldiers and their doctors and relatives.
Treatments for the combat trauma are also discussed, and several people have added their own experiences of combat stress to the website, illustrating the journalists angle with real-life accounts.
Link to BBC World Combat Stress website.
Link to information on PTSD.
—Vaughan.
August 15, 2005
Co-operative mind-brain weblog:
Neurodudes is a psychology and neuroscience blog with a difference - it allows readers to login and post their own stories.
The site's regulars, Neville Sanjana and Bayle Shanks, make sure there's always a wide variety of new material on the site, while significant additions from guest contributors provide pointers to some of the more obscure and interesting stuff in the online brain science world.
Recent posts include a breathless post from a guy inviting people to discuss the classic neuroscience text Ion Channels of Excitable Membranes and an elegant synopsis of a paper on the interaction between action and vision in the brain.
Link to neurodudes.com
—Vaughan.
August 12, 2005
2005-08-12 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Threaten a man's masculinity, and he's more likely to support the war in Iraq, want to ban gay marriage and buy an SUV. Makes you wonder what George Bush's homelife is like...
New York Times reviews Clancy's book on the psychology of self-confessed alien abductees.
Meanwhile, the The Guardian asks where have all the aliens gone?
An audience participation play at the Edinburgh Festival about a traumatic therapy session has employed a psychologist in case anyone gets traumatised!
'Thoughts reads' via brain scans (should be 'Journalists' bamboozled via brain scans).
Simon Baron-Cohen outlines his systematising / empathising theory in the New York Times.
The Register report on the recent artificial intelligence conference in Edinburgh.
Mixing Memory on how word gender affects how people think.
Remote control humans!
—Vaughan.
August 11, 2005
The 2005 World Memory Championships:
This weekend, the World Memory Championships are coming to Oxford University. The event is being hosted by the UK Festival of the Mind, which involves lectures from memory champions and experts on advanced learning techniques.
On the BBC Radio Four Today programme this morning, Dominic O’Brien, eight times World Memory Champion, demonstrated his ability to remember the order of a shuffled pack of cards, after just a few minutes studying them. You can listen to the item again here.
In recent years, psychologists and neuroscientists have begun studying superior memory and memory feats, although the area is relatively neglected compared with the study of memory deficit.
In 2002 Dr. Eleanor Maguire at UCL's Functional Imagaing Lab in London used fMRI scanning to compare the brain structure and function of 10 memory champions with that of 10 healthy controls. To find out what they discovered, read on by clicking below.
Although no differences in brain structure or general cognitive ability (excluding memory) were found between the groups, a difference was found in the distribution and intensity of brain activation during the learning of new information. These differences weren’t just a consequence of the memory champs learning more. Maguire et al. used three item types: digits, faces and snowflakes. The memory champs order- and item-recognition performance was superior to the controls with digits, was less so for faces and equivalent for snowflakes, thus allowing some control for the amount of material memorised.
Some brain areas, like the right cerebellum, were more active in the memory champs regardless of performance. Other areas were active in the champs, but not the controls, contingent on performance. But Maguire et al. drew most attention to those areas that were only active in the memory champs irrespective of item type – left medial superior parietal gyrus, bilateral retrosplenial cortex, and right posterior hippocampus – areas associated with spatial memory and navigation (the right posterior hippocampus was found to be enlarged in a sample of London taxi drivers, Maguire et al. 2000). Maguire et al. concluded this brain activity probably reflected the use by every memory champ, but none of the controls, of the ‘method of loci’ mnemonic, an ancient memory strategy that involves imagining oneself encountering items along a route.
So if the memory champions special memory is due only to their use of a spatial strategy, perhaps there is hope for us all. But therein lies the weakness of this study. As discussed by Jack and Roepstorff (2002), a premise of cognitive mapping is that subjects all perform to the same ‘script’, as derived from experimenters’ instructions. It is little wonder that differences in brain activation were found if the memory champions were reading from a different script; were employing a powerful mnemonic when the controls were not. In this instance functional imaging has served only to support what self-report investigations could have told us. It might be more enlightening to investigate whether differences in brain activity between memory champions and controls persist, even when the latter have been trained to use the champions’ mnemonic strategies.
Abstract of the Maguire Study here.
—christian.
Pulp symptoms:
During a tide of public concern about the effect of comics on children, in 1955 EC Comics created a series of new 'more wholesome' titles. One of which, was a four part comic series about psychoanalysis.
The public concern was largely in response to the views of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. He argued, in his book Seduction of the Innocent, that the gaudy comics of the time were a major cause of juvenile delinquency.
Themes of sex, drugs and violence were supposedly represented subliminally in the stories and artwork of popular titles.
This sparked a Congressional inquiry which eventually led to comic book companies toning down their material, despite the unlikely nature of Wertham's claims.
One result was that EC Comics produced comics about more 'respectable' topics, such as hospital medicine, or in this case, psychoanalysis.
The Psychoanalysis series depicts the therapy sessions of three people: a troubled young boy whose father thinks he's a "sissy", an anxiety ridden woman with a recurring dream, and a television writer who has panic attacks and is frustrated in his job.
Interestingly, another EC Comics series, M.D., also touches on mental distress. In M.D. #3 a suicidal man is diagnosed with manic depression, taken to hospital, sedated and given electroshock therapy. Supposedly, this makes him 'forget' his depression which is blamed on his argumentative parents.
Critics have noted that psychiatry is poorly represented in these stories, although they do give a fascinating insight into 1950s attitudes towards people with mental illness and their treatment.
Despite the fact mental illness is a recurring theme in many contemporary comics, few modern titles have attempted to seriously educate their readers about mental health issues.
One exception is The Secret of the Brain Chip, which is aimed at people who have experienced, or are experiencing, a psychotic episode.
It describes the experiences of Paul, a young man who comes to believe that there is a chip in his brain, implanted by scientists to control his thoughts.
He begins hearing voices and becomes paranoid, and is eventually admitted to hospital and is prescribed antipsychotic medication, which helps him recover and even, in the last frame, get the girl.
The story is interspersed with facts about psychosis, and notes several famous people who have also become psychotic.
The comic largely explains psychosis in biological terms (a 'chemical imbalance') and warns patients not to stop taking their medication.
Those of a slightly cynical nature might note, however, that it is partly funded by pharmaceutical company and producer of antipsychotics Janssen-Cilage.
Link 1 and Link 2 to info on Psychoanalysis comic series.
Link to info on M.D. #3.
Link to article on representation of madness in Batman.
—Vaughan.
August 10, 2005
Mental illness, the media and stigmatisation:
The latest issue of open-access medical journal PLoS Medicine has two articles discussing the campaign to destigmatise schizophrenia, and the role of the media in communicating health information.
The first article notes that social stigma, rather than the effects of the condition itself, has been found to be the greatest problem facing people diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The authors examine the effectiveness of campaigns that have tried to tackle the problem, such as the World Psychiatric Association's Open The Doors campaign.
Such campaigns are controversial in some quarters, however, as they are often based on communicating the idea that schizophrenia is a 'treatable brain illness'.
Some research has shown that providing members of the public with a medical or biological explanation for schizophrenia leads people to think of affected individuals as more dangerous and unpredictable than when a social or psychological explanation is given. There is some evidence that a similar effect occurs for professionals.
This might suggest that campaigns based on the biological explanations might have the opposite of the intended effect, although opponents to this view argue that mental illness undoubtedly has a biological component, and education should focus on freeing affected individuals from stigma regardless of how their experiences are explained.
Related to this, PloS Medicine asked a number of health journalists and other professionals to discuss the role of the media in educating the public about health education. The article highlights examples of good and bad practice during recent media frenzies.
This comes in the wake of a previous article, where the ex-editor of the British Medical Journal argued that medical journals have become an "extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies".
Link to article 'The Global Fight against the Stigma of Schizophrenia'.
Link to article 'What Are the Roles and Responsibilities of the Media in Disseminating Health Information?'.
—Vaughan.
August 09, 2005
Dennet on AI, intelligence and artificial paranoia:
A classic Daniel Dennett article considers a curious chapter in AI history, where researcher Kenneth Colby used the Turing Test to see whether psychiatrists could distinguish between delusional patients and his natural language paranoia simulator 'PARRY'.
PARRY was designed by Colby, who was both a psychiatrist and computer scientist, in an attempt to simulate the psychology of paranoia. In particular, the programme was designed to replicate paranoid delusions about being persecuted by the Mafia.
Dennett's 1990 article, entitled "Can machines think?", discusses whether the Turing Test is an adequate test of machine intelligence.
Dennett notes that PARRY is the only programme known to have passed the Turing Test - psychiatrists were unable to distinguish between real patients and simulated ones.
Ironically, PARRY was based on the ELIZA programme, which was designed as a text-only parody of a therapist.
Colby's programme was the first attempt to produce a computer simulation of psychosis, a project which now typically involves artificial neural network simulations of information processing models of the mind, rather than conversational interaction.
Link to article "Can Machines Think?" (seems to have a few scanning errors).
PDF of same article.
Link to article "Simulating Psychosis".
—Vaughan.
August 08, 2005
Eli Lilly discounts on basis of withholding information:
Stay Free Daily! has an article on a contract being used by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, which promises discounts to large purchasers of antidepressants, as long as they don't inform physicians about certain negative information about the drug.
The Wall Street Journal have also covered the story (full text at Stay Free link):
The Cymbalta discount contract offers large purchasers of antidepressants a 5% discount, but specifies that they could lose most of that discount if they engage in, among other things, "negative D.U.R. correspondence to physicians."
While not defined in the contract, D.U.R. is industry shorthand for "drug utilization review," a kind of analysis of prescription patterns that insurers often use to identify inappropriate or risky practices and often also to cut costs.
Link to Stay Free Daily! story.
PDF of Eli Lilly contract.
—Vaughan.
Trippy neuroscience videos:
Waaaay back in the early 90's, trippy videos were part and parcel of rave culture. Now with the Multimedia Neuroscience Education Project, you can relive the days of shiny rendered graphics and techno soundtracks - with a neurobiology twist!
The site, created by a collaborative team based at Williams College, explains synaptic neurotransmission - the process by which chemical signals are passed between neurons.
Four stages are described in detail: the synthesis and storage of neurotransmitters, neurotransmitter release, the role of postsynaptic receptors and the inactivation of neurotransmitters.
As well as outlining the basics of these four stages, specific examples are given to show how particular drugs use these mechanisms to take effect.
Every description has a realaudio-streamed animation to accompany the text, so you can see the process in action. And each video has a home-brew old skool soundtrack.
The videos explaining the effect of anti-anxiety drugs on GABA transmission and the mechanism of action for antipsychotic medication are two particularly fine examples.
Anyone got any veras ?
Link to the Multimedia Neuroscience Education Project.
—Vaughan.
August 07, 2005
Why we laugh...:
The Economist, who seem to have a run of psychology article of late, has a brief article discussing theories of why we laugh:
Why do people laugh at all? What is the point of it? Laughter is very contagious and this suggests that it may have become a part of human behaviour because it promotes social bonding. When a group of people laughs, the message seems to be "relax, you are among friends".
But laughter does not unite us all. There are those who have a pathological fear that others will laugh at them. Sufferers avoid situations where there will be laughter, which means most places where people meet.
Link to article "Poking fun".
—Vaughan.
August 06, 2005
Jury decides Atkins is not retarded, death sentence imposed:
In the face of contradictory IQ test results, a jury has decided that convicted US murderer Daryl Atkins is not legally retarded making him liable for the death penalty. Judge Prentis Smiley has set the execution date for December 2nd.
The decision has been based on evidence from psychological testing to determine whether Atkins' IQ is above 70. Executing people considered legally retarded (defined as a sub-70 IQ) was outlawed by the US Supreme Court in 2002.
Atkins IQ score was put at 59 when first measured, although recent tests put it at 74 and 76.
The Atkins case and construction of IQ was discussed earlier on Mind Hacks.
Link to story "Jury says Atkins isn't retarded" from dailypress.com.
—Vaughan.
Pilot magazine for synaesthetes:
Graphic designer Claire Mills has put together a magazine for people with synaesthesia, the uncommon condition where the senses are 'connected', so, for example, numbers have colours or tastes.
Claire consulted a number of people with synaesthesia to discuss her ideas about the project, and thought carefully about how layout, fonts and themes might be experienced across the senses.
The result is a proof-of-concept magazine, that documents her design process and the the numerous experiences of synaesthetes that she drew on.
Link to Claire Mills' synaesthesia magazine (Thanks Laurie!)
—Vaughan.
August 05, 2005
2005-08-05 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
With all-new date-first title. I've realised that MovableType chops the URL of each post, so every 'Spike activity' had the same URL. Hopefully, we should be fixed...
Science News has a feature article on how pharmaceutical companies influence doctors' drug prescriptions.
Wired discuses research on how 'mental workouts' are being found to maintain mental sharpness in some.
Fantastic article from Harvard Review on the function of sleep and the work on leading sleep neuroscientist Robert Stickgold.
Story and video report on research showing that cognitive therapy reduces repeat suicide attempts by half (via PsyBlog).
Psychiatric polypharmacy, the practice of prescribing more than one medication to treat a condition, is being widely practised on US children.
The Economist discusses how describing financial markets as if they were alive, changes predictions made about them.
People with severe mental illness and more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators, finds recent study.
—Vaughan.
Apple co-branding with cognitive neuroscience?:
Apple seems to be targeting a new advert at neuroscientists. Dr Nouchine Hadjikhani is featured in the promotion, although at closer inspection, the intended audience are more likely to be people dazzled by the bright lights of brain scanning.
The ad is interesting in that it touts her Apple system as a "vital tool" in her research, although the main selling point seems to be that it runs a free software programme used in brain scan analysis called NeuroLens.
NeuroLens, although respected, is not widely used at present, largely due to the domination of SPM. SPM is also free software, and although it requires a commercial copy of Matlab, it runs on Mac, Windows Linux and other sorts of Unix.
One of the reasons given by Dr Hadjikhani for preferring MacOS is that she is 'challenged by the command line', despite the fact that the ad claims she uses NeuroLens before 'delving into extensive data analysis on her Linux systems'.
"Using UNIX at the command line is time consuming and you have to remember a number of things", she says, although I suspect her job as a cognitive neuroscientist means she's quite used to remembering 'a number of things' on a daily basis.
They conveniently neglect to say that MacOS is Unix and that Linux isn't just the command line.
For cognitive neuroscientists, Apple seem to be advertising their systems on the back of (admittedly very attractive) free software, and hoping to use the leverage of Mac only software to get a foot in the door of a largely Apple-free science.
I suspect the ad is more likely to be targeted at executives, however, who want to be seen to be using systems that serious scientists use.
Co-branding with neuroscience, along with other 'hot topic' sciences, might be a policy which would go down well with those worried about being seen with an "artist's" computer on their desk.
Link to Wikipedia page on brain scan analysis and SPM.
Link to NeuroLens software.
Link to Apple ad (via BrainBlog).
—Vaughan.
August 04, 2005
PBS on outsider artist Henry Darger:
Henry Darger was only known as a janitor for the majority of his life, until it was discovered, shortly before his death, that he had been working on an a 15,000 page manuscript since the age of 19.
PBS has put a website up to accompany a TV programme about Darger, with commentaries, audio, video and images of Darger's paintings.
His manuscript, entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, contained an epic story and several hundred water colour illustrations.
The story is fantastic, bizarre and disturbing and recounts the tale of an ongoing and sometimes graphically bloody war between the Vivian Girls, sometimes aided by winged creatures called the Blengens, against child slavery imposed by the Glandelinians.
Darger was diagnosed with a mental illness in his youth, although his diagnosis was reportedly 'masturbation', which was thought by some doctors at the time to cause madness (not an uncommon belief throughout history).
It's not clear whether this was thought to signify the likely cause of an obvious mental illness, or whether this was considered reason enough to justify a clinical diagnosis.
He is considered one of the most important of the 'outsider artists', people who have had no formal training or contact with the mainstream art world, but produce highly regarded works.
Many significant outsider artists, such as Adolf Wölfli, were diagnosed as mentally ill or had experience of serious mental distress.
Link to PBS website 'In the Realms of the Unreal'.
Link to Wikipedia page on Darger, with links to online galleries.
—Vaughan.
August 03, 2005
An embryonic science:
What were you doing for the 38 weeks before you were born? A hell of a lot actually, according to Professor Peter Hepper at Queen’s University, Belfast, who’s written about the nascent field of fetal psychology in the latest issue of The Psychologist magazine.
The article is packed full of fascinating observations including the fact that the fetus demonstrates handedness by 10 weeks of gestation – before any signs of hemispheric asymmetry, thus suggesting a predilection for movements on one side might lead to brain lateralisation, rather than the other way around.
Hepper also mentions the controversy surrounding whether or not the fetus feels pain. Of course it can’t be asked, but by 23 weeks gestation, the fetus does show a biochemical stress response to a needle puncture (during a blood transfusion), which suggests it hurt.
Doctors have no way of directly assessing the brain function of a fetus, but advances in fetal psychology mean aberrant patterns of behaviour can increasingly be used to identify neural problems the fetus may have.
The article is locked to subscribers but will be freely available after six months.
Link to The Visible Embryo
Link to videos of the fetus
—christian.
BBC Material World on Chloroform:
BBC Radio 4 science programme Material World investigates the science and history of chloroform, one of the the original anesthetics, first synthesised in 1831.
Linda Stratmann, author of Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion, and clinical toxicologist Professor John Henry, discuss its accidental discovery, early recreational popularity, original medical uses, how it is thought to work, and, of course, its reputation as a knock-out agent for the criminal underworld.
The section on chloroform starts 13 minutes into the programme, which is archived as a realaudio stream.
Link to programme webpage.
Realudio archive of programme.
—Vaughan.
Francis Crick has left the building:
The final paper of the late DNA pioneer and consciousness researcher Francis Crick has been published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Written with his collaborator Christof Koch, it concerns a little known part of the brain called the claustrum. The claustrum is a thin sheet of grey matter that is parallel to and below part of the cortex, as illustrated by images from Crick's paper here.
Crick and Koch argue that the claustrum is probably connected to all of the cortex, and has a significant role in emotion, suggesting it may be involved in the 'binding' of emotion and the senses into a single conscious experience.
They give the example of holding a rose, smelling its fragrance, seeing its red petals and feeling the texture of its stem, now made more poignant by Crick's passing.
How the brain achieves this (known as the binding problem) is one of the great problems of consciousness research.
Several researchers have argued, most notably biologist Gerald Edelman, that consciousness arises from 'maps' of neural activity distributed across the brain.
The co-ordination of this distributed neural activity is something that Crick and Koch aim to explain in their paper, proposing that the claustrum may be the mesh that connects disparate brain areas.
PDF of paper 'What is the function of the claustrum?' by Crick and Koch.
Link to summary from The Economist.
Link to press-release from the Royal Society.
—Vaughan.
August 02, 2005
How culture shapes illness:
Media analysis magazine Stay Free! has an interview with medical historian Edward Shorter on how psychiatric symptoms have changed over the years, showing, he claims, how we subconsciously express culturally acceptable distress.
The interview was conducted in June 2003, which I missed it at the time, but Shorter's work is usually too good to pass up when you get the chance.
Author of the acclaimed A History of Psychiatry, he is not easily pigeon-holed into the simple labels usually given to those who pitch into the psychiatry debate.
Although a strong believer in the reality of mental illness, he presents evidence for the influence of culture on how symptoms express themselves, and how doctors' expectations affect what they diagnose and treat.
In contrast to the usual tempered and cautious claims made by academics, he is not afraid to state his point of view in clear terms, making provocative points, even if you don't agree with him.
STAY FREE!: You wrote about how some of the most fashionable people have the most cutting edge symptoms, the ones that are most medically up to date. Can you give me an example?
SHORTER: If we're talking about today, new illnesses appear first among educated people simply because they are more plugged into medical media. These middle- and upper-class people are the first to begin monitoring themselves or their children for evidence of peanut-butter allergies or excessive tiredness. It is from these relatively small social groups that the symptoms radiate out.
Shorter reflects a growing trend in understanding the social dimensions of psychopathology.
Anthropologist Roland Littlewood's Pathologies of the West, and sociologist Robert Bartholomew's Exotic Deviance both examine the issue from different angles with refreshing insight.
Link to interview with Edward Shorter from Stay Free! magazine.
Link to article 'Protean nature of mass sociogenic illness: From possessed nuns to chemical and biological terrorism fears' from the British Journal of Psychiatry.
—Vaughan.
August 01, 2005
Mixing Memory:
A recent discovery of mine is the Mixing Memory blog that is choc-full of well written, carefully referenced posts about psychology and neuroscience.
A couple of my recent favourites include a post about the neuroscience of morality and one discussing racial attitudes and how they're reflected in the brain.
Chris, the blog's maintainer, has even set up an email list to run a cognitive science reading group. Enjoy!
Link to Mixing Memory.
—Vaughan.
Confusing symbols and reality:
The latest Scientific American discusses the development of symbolic thinking in children, in an article by child psychologist Judy DeLoache.
Professor DeLoache was intrigued as to why young children sometimes try and pick up or use items in pictures, or fail to make sense of miniature objects - an error she calls 'symbol confusion':
Pictures are not the only source of symbol confusion for very young children. For many years, my colleagues and students and I watched toddlers come into the lab and try to sit down on the tiny chair from the scale model - much to the astonishment of all present. At home, Uttal and Rosengren had also observed their own daughters trying to lie down in a doll's bed or get into a miniature toy car. Intrigued by these remarkable behaviors that were not mentioned in any of the scientific literature we examined, we decided to study them.
DeLoache thinks that 'scale errors' involve a failure of dual representation: children cannot maintain the distinction between a symbol and what it refers to.
To help children solve this problem, the researchers told the children they had a 'shrinking machine', that replaced toys with miniature versions.
When children were told that the toy had been shrunk, they no longer needed to represent it as a symbol of another object, they simply assumed it was the same object, and no longer made 'symbol confusion' errors.
This work has had important legal implications, as young children giving evidence in cases of abuse are often given dolls - symbolic representations of themselves - and asked to describe or point out what happened.
Knowing at what age children are likely to make best use of this technique might be essential in obtaining reliable evidence.
Link to Scientific American article 'Mindful of Symbols'.
—Vaughan.
