November 30, 2005
Swimming with dolphins helps depression:
Christian Antonioli and Michael Reveley at the University of Leicester recruited 30 mildly or moderately depressed people via adverts in America and Honduras. They allocated half of them to a two week course of swimming with dolphins in Honduras and the other half to two weeks of snorkelling and having fun in the sea without dolphins. Afterwards they found the participants who swam with dolphins had recovered from their depression significantly more than the control group. Seventy-seven percent of the dolphin group no longer met the threshold for depression on the Hamilton scale compared with 25 per cent in the control group.
The researchers said "The echolocation system, the aesthetic value, and the emotions raised by the interaction with dolphins may explain the mammals’ healing properties".
The findings support the concept of biophilia - the idea that "human health and wellbeing are strictly dependent on our relationships with the natural environment". The term was first coined by Erich Fromm but has since been championed by and become associated with E.O. Wilson.
The dolphins weren't available to comment.
Link to the study published in BMJ
Link to dolphin swimming holidays
—christian.
Dijkstra on thinking machines:
The great computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra on artificial intelligence and thinking machines:
"John von Neumann speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker and Alan M. Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim."
Link to 'The threats to computing science' by Edsger Dijkstra.
—Vaughan.
Vibrators shrink self-perceived waistline:
If using vibrators to shrink your waistline makes you think of spam email, you may be surprised to find out it's the basis of a fascinating neuroscience experiment published in open-access science journal PLoS Biology.
The study relies on an unusual effect called the Pinocchio illusion, which occurs when a vibrating sensation is applied to the outside muscle on one of the body's joints. This causes a feeling of the joint closing, when in fact it remains in the same position.
This feeling of movement can conflict with other bodily sensations, and can produce the unusual feeling that body parts are becoming warped or elongated, just like Pinocchio's nose.
In Ehrsson's experiment, they applied a vibrating sensation (the blue boxes in the diagram) to the back of each wrist, which gave the false impression that the hands were moving in towards the legs.
While this was happening, Ehrsson and his team brain-scanned the participants to detect active brain areas, and compared conditions where participants were touching vs not touching their legs; and where the vibration was applied to the joint muscles vs another area on the hands.
Crucially, only in the condition when the participant's hands were touching their legs and the wrist joint muscles were being vibrated, did it feel as if their waste was shrinking to accommodate the illusory movement.
The team found that the strength of the illusion was associated with activity in areas of the left parietal lobe, which are known to be involved in creating the sensation of body shape, also called 'body image'.
The study suggests that the brain generates body image by making a best guess from the incoming tactile information.
In other words, because the wrist jounts were providing 'false' information - indicating that the hands were moving through space occupied by the legs - the brain simply 'guessed' that the waist must be smaller to make sense of the discrepancy.
If you want to try this effect at home, a couple of vibrating sex toys are probably your best bet. If you don't have any, now's your chance to freak out your local sex shop by asking them to recommend the best dildo for cognitive neuroscience experiments.
Link to study summary.
Link to full text paper.
Link to write-up from nature.com
Link to write-up from BBC News.
—Vaughan.
November 29, 2005
Newsweek on society, neuroscience and anorexia:
The cover story in December 5th's Newsweek is available online and tackles the science and treatment of anorexia, focusing particularly on why it seems to be increasingly prevalent in children as young as eight.
At a National Institute of Mental Health conference last spring, anorexia's youngest victims were a small part of the official agenda—but they were the only thing anyone talked about in the hallways, says David S. Rosen, a clinical faculty member at the University of Michigan and an eating-disorder specialist. Seven years ago "the idea of seeing a 9- or 10-year-old anorexic would have been shocking and prompted frantic calls to my colleagues. Now we're seeing kids this age all the time," Rosen says. There's no single explanation for the declining age of onset, although greater awareness on the part of parents certainly plays a role. Whatever the reason, these littlest patients, combined with new scientific research on the causes of anorexia, are pushing the clinical community—and families, and victims—to come up with new ways of thinking about and treating this devastating disease.
Unfortunately, the article has a somewhat oversimplified account of psychiatrist Walter Kaye's recent research review and hypothesis about anorexia: that starvation might be a response to a disturbed serotonin system, particularly to high levels at areas in the brain with the serotonin 5HT1A receptor - a system particularly linked to anxiety and obsessiveness.
Starvation might be a response to these effects, as it is known to lower trytophan and steroid hormone metabolism, which, in turn, might reduce serotonin levels at these critical sites and, hence, ward off anxiety.
Importantly, the effects on serotonin levels are often restricted to certain brain areas. Furthermore, studies on a different type of serotonin receptor, the 5HT2A, actually suggest a decrease in serotonin activity at this type of receptor.
Kaye also suggests that disturbance to the serotonin system may arise owing to a combination of genetics, puberty-related hormone changes, stress and cultural pressures - not just a "brain disease", as one psychiatrist is quoted as saying.
The article does, however, report moving accounts of individuals and families affected by the condition, and contains links to a podcast, including interviews with clinicians and researchers.
Link to article 'Fighting Anorexia: No One to Blame' (via PCSD&A).
Link to abstract of Kaye and colleagues article on serotonin and anorexia.
—Vaughan.
November 28, 2005
Walking zombie syndrome:
Antonio Melechi explores one of the bizarre corners of the medical literature in his book Fugitive Minds (p211, ISBN 0099436272):
In 1979, the Journal of the Tennessee Medical Association announced that the 'Walking zombie syndrome' - a condition in which depression and withdrawal led individuals to unconsciously believe that they were dead - was on the increase. Illness, coma, high fever, operations performed under partial anaesthesia, and bereavement were, it claimed, just some of the situations through which a 'death suggestion' could be unwittingly assimilated.
Fortunately, there was, according to the hypnotherapists who 'discovered' the condition, one simple and effective cure: age regression. By returning patients to the event which triggered the 'death suggestion', the 'symptoms of death' could, it was claimed, be at once relived and remedied.
Although most physicians remained unaware of the diagnosis or treatment, the pseudo-illness continued to claim factitious casualties. By the late 1980s, the United States had apparently overtaken Haiti as the zombie capital of the world. According to one estimate, there were 'thousands of walking zombies on the streets of every city'.
Link to PubMed entry for 'The Walking Zombie syndrome in depressive disorders'.
Link to review of 'Fugitive Minds'.
—Vaughan.
November 26, 2005
All in the Mind on sexual desire:
ABC Radio's All in the Mind starts a four part series today on the emotional brain, with the first in the series examining the complexity of sexual desire.
Psychologists Dylan Evans and Doris McIlwain discuss whether we have one sex drive or many, and how it influences and gets tangled up with our other thoughts, desires and behaviour.
Despite the portrayal in some of the media, what emerges is that sexual desire is a rich and complex human motivator.
mp3 or realaudio or programme audio.
Link to transcript.
—Vaughan.
November 25, 2005
Did Mohammed have epilepsy?:
Mohammed, founder of Islam, is often described as having epilepsy. He's even described as such on epilepsy information site epilepsy.com. The historical basis for such claims are almost certainly false, however, and first stem from a historian writing almost 200 years after the Prophet's death.
The myth has been most comprehensively debunked by the respected American historian of medicine Owsei Temkin in his book The Falling Sickness: This History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (ISBN 0801848490). To quote from p153...
As is to be expected, the positive bias of Islam was countered by an opposite bias in the Christian world. As to the origin of the diagnosis "epilepsy", everything points to Christian Byzantium, an empire that was no only hostile to Islam but at frequent war with the Arabs. Less than 200 years after Mohammed's death, the Byzantium historian Theophanes (died about 817) told a story which was bound to make Mohammed appear and fraud and to discredit the belief in his divine mission.
According to Theophanes, Mohammed had the disease of epilepsy. And when his wife noticed it, she was very much grieved that she, being of noble descent, was tied to such a man, who was not only poor but epileptic as well. Now he attempts to soothe her with the following words: "I see a vision of an angel called Gabriel and not being able to bear the sight of him, I feel weak and fall down." But she had a certain monk for a friend who had been exiled because of his false faith and who was living there, so she reported everything to him, including the name of the angel. And this man, wanting to reassure her, said to her: "He has spoken true, for this angel is sent forth to all prophets". And she, having received the word of the pseudo-prophet, believed him and announced to the other women of her tribe that he was a prophet. (Theophanes, 1007, Chronographia, vol. 1, p334)
The is the story which was accepted by Western historians, theologians and physicians. The story has all the earmarks of religious and political propoganda. Hence it was repudiated by Gibbon as "an absurd calumny of the Greeks".
PDF of Owesei Temkin's obituary.
—Vaughan.
2005-11-25 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Great new blog on combating stress, depression and addiction is now online and accepting new readers!
'Singing for the Brain' shows remarkable results in helping people with Alzheimer's communicate by using song.
Makes for a great story but probably best taken with a pinch of salt: Naked statue triggers mental imbalance, supposedly.
Emotional deprivation and neglect in childhood has long lasting effects on neurohormones. The Guardian also has the story.
Therapy for anxiety disorders can be successfully conducted over email.
People with mild symptoms of depression are better at perceiving details of their social environment than those who are not depressed.
Brain imaging study show 'first ever' images of stress in the brain.
People best able to filter out irrelevant information are better at remembering.
Relatives of people diagnosed with autism show similarities in brain structure and behaviour.
Tom Cruise's on-air anti-psychiatry tirade recreated by talking aliens (via BoingBoing).
—Vaughan.
November 24, 2005
Through a scanner deeply:
The New York Times has an article on the increasing interest in hypnosis among cognitive neuroscientists, who are trying to understanding how suggestion and belief can affect basic mental processing.
The article describes some interesting recent work on hypnosis and perception, but omits some of the most fascinating experiments in this area.
A study published in 2003 involved hypnotising participants to simulate experiences of external control, akin to experiences sometimes found in psychosis, to discover whether similar brain areas might be involved in the psychotic and non-psychotic experiences.
Another study, published in the same year, involved hypnotising participants so they thought they were paralysed, in an attempt to better understand 'hysterical' paralysis, sometimes known as conversion disorder - a condition where paralysis is thought to occur due to psychological trauma rather than physical damage.
In these cases, hypnotised, non-hypnotised or 'pretending' participants were were asked to conduct actions while being brain-scanned, to compare and contrast active brain areas.
Interestingly, these two studies suggested that quite different brain networks were involved in producing the experiences, although both activated the cerebellum, a complex area, known to be involved in movement, but still largely mysterious.
Link to article 'This Is Your Brain Under Hypnosis'.
—Vaughan.
November 23, 2005
Misunderstanding mirrors:
If I asked you to draw a full-size outline of your head on a flip chart, and then to draw the outline of your head as it appears in the mirror, would you draw the two outlines the same size? You shouldn't do because the mirror image of your head (as it appears to you) is exactly half its true size, irrespective of how far you are from the mirror, a fact that few people realise. That's according to a new study published in Cognition by Marco Bertamini and Theodore Parks at the Universities of Liverpool and California.
They also found that most people believe the mirror image of their own head will grow smaller as they move away from the mirror - it doesn't it stays the same. Yet most participants correctly realised that if they watched the mirror image of another person's head, it would get smaller as that other person moved away from the mirror. Finally, only a minority of participants realised that the size of the mirror image of another person's head would get bigger as they, the participant, moved away from the mirror. Confused? Me too.
Link to study abstract
—christian.
Autistic pride:
The Observer has an article on the growing 'autistic pride' movement that aims to reframe autism as a variation of human experience with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, rather than as a neurological disorder that needs to be 'cured'.
Many people with autism or Asperger's syndrome describe people without such traits as 'neurologically typical' or NTs, based on the idea that autism might involve different brain 'wiring'.
The autistic pride movement has found a natural home on the internet and several sites take a witty approach to making their point.
The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical turns autism science on its head, by spoofing a research centre that examines non-autistic people as unusual or pathological.
The movement often places itself within a wider 'neurodiversity' movement, demanding that society respects differences in brain structure and function, rather than always focusing on trying to 'correct' them.
The article also mentions the autism software project Reactive Colours, whose director, Wendy Keay-Bright, we interviewed back in July.
Link to Observer article 'Say it loud, autistic and proud'.
Link to wikipedia article on autism rights movement.
Link to Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical.
—Vaughan.
November 22, 2005
Tajne uma (Croatian Mind Hacks):
The Croatian translation of Mind Hacks has just been published. The full title is "Tajne uma. 100 hakerskih trikova našeg mozga" and you can see it / buy it here. Kudos to the translator, Ognjen Strpic, who i discovered is not only fluent in English and Croatian, but also in Neuroscience too (Ognjen picked up on a small error I'd made in the text on the physical colour of part of the visual cortex).
—tom.
Modern-day psychosurgery:
As a follow up to our previous post on the history of the now discarded practice of lobotomy, there's been quite a bit of recent interest in the science and ethics of modern-day brain surgery in treating mental illness, a practice often known as 'psychosurgery'.
BBC Radio 4 aired a one-off documentary called Brain Surgery to Cure the Mind, that discussed its history, practise and effects, including the use of 'deep brain stimulation or DBS.
DBS involves implanting an electrode to increase or decrease activation in a certain brain area. It was pioneered for the treatment of Parkinson's disease but early results suggest it may be useful in treating severe clinical depression. One advantage of DBS over other types of neurosurgery is that it is reversible.
An alternative type of brain surgery, used in both severe psychiatric illness and Parkinson's disease, is to sever or remove a small area of brain thought to be involved in the causing the distress or impairment.
This latter form is particularly controversial, and the British Journal of Psychiatry has published a debate entitled 'Should neurosurgery for mental disorder be allowed to die out?'.
A recent review of the scientific literature, based on psychiatric neurosurgery in Scotland details the evidence for the effectiveness of such treatments, what the most common forms of brain surgery involve, and the likely physical and cognitive risks.
Link to BBC 'Brain Surgery to Cure the Mind' (with audio).
Link to debate 'Should neurosurgery for mental disorder be allowed to die out?'.
Link to article 'Status of neurosurgery for mental disorder in Scotland'.
—Vaughan.
November 21, 2005
Voting causes happiness? Really?:
I love the New Economics Foundation and I think they do great work, but at first glance this report on Britain's democractic deficit looks like it makes the classic correlation-is-not-causation blunder:
'There is significant evidence that the democratic deficit at the heart of the British electoral system is making us unhappy. The 2001 post election survey shows that there is a strong link between levels of personal well-being, the health of communities and voting behaviour. People who voted in the election tended to be more trusting, have higher levels of civic duty, were more engaged in their local communities and were happier than people who didn’t vote.'
More here
—tom.
All in the Mind on epilepsy and altered states:
ABC Radio's All in the Mind has a special on epilepsy, examining the provision for epilepsy care in South Africa, and the link between altered states of consciousness and epileptic seizures.
The programme interviews Professor Bryan Kies from Groote Schuur Hospital in South Africa, and discusses the difficulties with dealing with epilepsy without access to newer, but more expensive medications, and the influence on traditional beliefs and how people with epilepsy are viewed.
Professor Michael Trimble, from the Insititue of Neurology in London discusses unusual experiences and altered states linked to epilepsy. Trimble has written extensively on the neuropsychiatry of epilepsy, particularly psychosis linked to epilepsy.
mp3 of realaudio of programme audio.
Link to transcript.
Learn to deal with an epileptic seizure.
—Vaughan.
November 20, 2005
Stingy Materialism:
Geoffrey Miller, in an essay on the future of neuroscience, has this to say about the relationship of mind to brain:
Too many of us have become Stingy Materialists. A Stingy Materialist takes the view that subjective experiences may not be real if they have not yet been associated with particular brain areas, neurotransmitters, or genes. They suppose that if we have found the brain area for pain, then pain is a real emotion; but if we haven’t yet found the brain area for sexual jealousy or existential dread, they are probably not real emotions. Likewise, if we have found neurotransmitter deficits in schizophrenia, then it is a real disorder; but if we have not found such deficits in irritability, then perhaps it is not a real disorder.
Stingy Materialists lack confidence in their doctrine and in their consciousness, with the result that they fetishize neuroscience, and seek its approval for all things subjective. Since neuroscience is still in its infancy, this results in an infantile view of human nature, in which people are portrayed with crude outlines and primary colors, like stereotypes from a Jerry Bruckheimer action film.
Read the rest:
Miller, G. F. (2002). The science of subtlety. In J. Brockman (Ed.), The next fifty years, pp. 85-92. New York: Vintage. Link (MS Word doc, sorry)
—tom.
Susan Clancy on significance of 'alien abduction':
Susan Clancy's recently published book Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (ISBN 0674018796) details her five year research project into the psychology of self-confessed abductees, in an attempt to better understand unusual beliefs and experiences.
This quote is from the closing pages (p154-155):
The primary lesson I learned from my research with abductees is that many of us long for contact with the divine, and aliens are a way of coming to terms with the conflict between science and religion. I agree with Jung: extraterrestrials are technological angels.... We yearn for spiritualism and comfort, magic and meaning. As Bertolt Brecht said in his play Galileo, we need something "to reassure us that the pageant of the world has been written around us,...that a part for us has been created beyond this wretched one in a useless star." Being abducted by aliens may be a baptism into the new religion of our technological age.
Link to article on Clancy's work at Harvard.
Link to interview with Clancy on NPR radio.
Link to book information with 1st chapter online.
Link to article on 'The Psychology and Neuroscience of Alien Abduction'.
—Vaughan.
November 19, 2005
SciAmMind on fear, eTherapy and Brian Wilson:
A new issue of Scientific American Mind has hit the shelves, and with it comes two freely available articles on their website. One asking "Can We Cure Fear?" and the other on The Promise of eTherapy.
Other articles, only available in the print edition to non-subscribers, include one on the use of drugs to prevent long-term memories from forming, and another on regulating anger.
One other print-only article that particualarly caught my eye is supposedly on Brian Wilson, musical genius behind the Beach Boys.
I've only read the intro on the website so far, which states "Perhaps no story better exemplifies how mental illness can free up creativity, then crush it, than that of Brian Wilson".
I'm hoping the article gets better than that, as Brian Wilson is perhaps one of the best examples of how someone can maintain their creative genius after severe mental illness, as the recent critically acclaimed 'Smile' album and tour have proved.
Link to SciAmMind website.
Link to article 'Can we cure fear?'.
Link to article 'The promise of eTherapy'.
—Vaughan.
November 18, 2005
Meet the chatbots:
Mind Hacks already told you about Jabberwacky, the winner of this year's Loebner prize for the chatbot that comes closest to passing the Turing Test (to pass, a judge must be unable to tell whether she's talking to the chatbot or another human).
Now you can meet the chatbots and their creators at an informal one-day meeting at Surrey University's Digital World Research Centre on November 25.
Dr. Richard Wallace, creator of three-times Loebner prize-winning chatbot ALICE, will be there. So too will Rollo Carpenter, creator of Jabberwacky, and Dr. Hugh Loebner himself, sponsor of the annual Loebner prize.
—christian.
Personal story of lobotomy:
Public radio station NPR has an interview with Howard Dully, who received a lobotomy when he was only 12 years old from controversial psychosurgery champion Walter Freeman.
Dully is shown on the left, holding one of Freeman's operating tools that was used to punch through the bone just behind the eyes and sever the connections to the frontal lobes.
Freeman (pictured right) was a complex character, as previously reported on Mind Hacks, who performed hundreds of lobotomies during his career.
Although psychosurgery is still performed to treat seemingly untreatable mental disorder, its use is now rare, unlike when it was championed for almost all forms of mental distress. It is still as controversial now as it was when it was in its heyday, however.
The inventor of the procedure, Egas Moniz, won a Nobel Prize for his work, now much to the embarrassment of many in the scientific community. This was only a few years before he was shot and paralysed by one of his ex-patients who resented Moniz's work.
The website Lobotomy.info has a wealth of information about the procedure and its originators, including an excellent history entitled "Adventures with an Ice Pick".
Link to webpage on NPR programme "My Lobotomy" (via BoingBoing).
mp3 of programme audio.
Link to lobotomy.info
—Vaughan.
2005-11-18 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Twin study from the University of Amsterdam suggests a genetic contribution to loneliness.
What are we doing when we look away during a conversation? asks Cognitive Daily.
Brain differences found in relatives of people with autism.
Body image, not menopause, causes lack of desire in older women, argues Petra Boyton.
Interview with Leslie Savan on the influence of advertising and media speak on the style and structure of popular language.
Review of neuroscience studies suggests that adolescents are neurologically more vulnerable to addictions.
Nature reviews Nancy Andreasen's new book "The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius".
—Vaughan.
November 17, 2005
Against diagnostic checklists:
Nancy Andreasen, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, says her profession have become overly dependent on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the industry's diagnostic bible that's now in its fourth edition, and which Andreasen helped write an earlier version of.
Speaking to New Scientist magazine, Andreasen says the book was never meant to be "the absolute truth" and that there's a tendency in psychiatry today to "make diagnosis through checklists, with less emphasis on the interesting uniqueness of each individual patient and on the humanism that lay at the heart of early psychiatry".
Citing the example of schizophrenia, Andreasen says that following the recommendations of a working party she chaired, DSM IV keeps things simple and lists 8 general symptoms for the illness. But she says "This is not a complete description. You have to know much more than just those DSM criteria before a patient can be reliably diagnosed".
Link to New Sci interview (requires subscription).
Link to Critical Psychiatry Network
—christian.
Friend-of-a-pharmacist:
The New York Times has an article about the increasing willingness of young people to 'prescribe' themselves, and their friends, psychiatric drugs:
For a sizable group of people in their 20's and 30's, deciding on their own what drugs to take - in particular, stimulants, antidepressants and other psychiatric medications - is becoming the norm. Confident of their abilities and often skeptical of psychiatrists' expertise, they choose to rely on their own research and each other's experience in treating problems...
Perhaps, this is a curious result of consumer cynicism about the links between the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession.
Drug marketing, in the USA at least, can be legally targeted at consumers, rather than at doctors only. Much of the marketing gives the impression that medications are low-risk and widely beneficial, when the reality can be far more complex.
Despite the fact that many psychiatric drugs can be of great value in treating mental distress or impairment, most will cause some form of side-effect and many are still without evidence of their long-term safety.
Rather than distrusting the pharmaceutical industry, which is usually cited as having an untoward influence on medical practice, young self-confident consumers may have, ironically, fallen for the 'pill for every ill' marketing hype and focused their cynicism largely on the medical profession.
Link to reg free NYT article 'Young, Assured and Playing Pharmacist to Friends' (via BrainBlog).
—Vaughan.
November 16, 2005
Own brand shopping:
Research published last year showed people are more likely to marry others whose names resemble their own. Now researchers in Paris have shown this egocentric bias extends to shopping - apparently, in certain circumstances, we're also more likely to buy products with brand names that share letters with our own name.
The researchers said "We found that name letter branding influences choices only under one of two conditions. Either consumers have a need to enhance their self-esteem because of a threatening situation. For instance, a sophisticated restaurant could pose such a threat. Or consumers have to have a product relevant need (for example, being thirsty when choosing a beverage)".
Link to Journal of Consumer Research (study out in December issue).
Link to abstract of research on picking marriage partners (p. 665).
—christian.
BBC Material World on creativity:
BBC Radio 4's science programme The Material World has just had a special on the nature of creativity, how it can be defined, measured and encouraged.
The programme discusses the differences between artistic and scientific creativity, and whether creativity necessarilly has to be productive.
The first part of the programme is on nuclear fission, so skip to 13 minutes if you just want the section on creative thought.
Link to webpage of The Material World edition on creativity.
Realaudio of programme.
—Vaughan.
November 15, 2005
Keeping tabs on the english language:
Language Log is a site that keeps track of language science, and the changes in the subtleties of language use.
It's updated daily, and discusses everything from curious new uses of words to archaelogical findings that shed light on the early development of language.
One of my favourite long-running themes is spotting what Language Log have called 'snowclones'.
A snowclone is a popular sentence structure which is recycled and adapted from the original quote by replacing key words.
For example, "On the internet, no-one can hear you scream" is a snowclone of the original movie tag-line "In space, no-one can hear you scream." Of course, it could be endlessly recycled by replacing 'space' with whatever comes to mind.
I am guessing the name 'snowclone' is an allusion to the American 'snowcone' frozen deserts desserts, which consist of plain crushed ice to which flavour is added.
I, for one, welcome our new snowclone overlords.
Link to Language Log
Link to snowclone definition.
—Vaughan.
November 14, 2005
Meditation can alter structure of the brain:
A recently reported brain-scanning study has found evidence that sustained meditation alters the physical structure of the brain by increasing the thickness of the grey matter.
The researchers, led by neuroscientist Sarah Lazar, scanned the brains of 20 people with long-term experience of meditation, and compared them with 20 other, non-meditating people.
Brain regions associated with attention, sensation, perception and monitoring the body's internal state were thicker in meditation participants than in the comparison group.
There is now increasing evidence - in line with a 2000 study, that reported that London Taxi drivers may have a larger hippocampus (an area of the brain known to be crucial for navigation), that mental practice may alter the brain's structure on a relatively large scale.
Update: Grabbed from the comments page... Some cautionary words on interpreting 'cause' from this sort of study (Thanks 'Coffee Mug'!):
The only way to say that meditation can alter the structure of the brain would be to do a longitudinal study following people who hadn't chosen to meditate prior to the study. Otherwise you run into the same problem as you did with the London cabbie study. Correlation is not causation. People born with bigger hippocampi might self-select as cab-drivers. People with bigger 'attention centers' might be more predisposed to get into meditation.
Link to write-up from LiveScience.
Link to scientific paper abstract.
—Vaughan.
November 13, 2005
Insanity by consensus:
...the original riddle remains: is the world mad, or is civilization psychopathogenic? - the question, of course, posed by Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (1926). And if a civilized society is thus disordered, what right has it to pass judgement on the 'insane'? Regarding his committal to Bethlem, the Restoration playwrite Nathaniel Lee reputedly declared: "They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me." The issue is still alive.
From Madness: A Brief History (p88) by the late great historian of medicine, Roy Porter.
Link to review of Madness: A Brief History (ISBN 0192802666).
Link to Roy Porter's obituary (2002).
—Vaughan.
November 11, 2005
Tinfoil hats tested for anti mind-control properties:
Engineers from MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department have tested the radiation absorbing properties of tin-foil hats, often represented as stopping microwave based 'mind control' technology.
The abstract of the study suggests describes the study, and suggests some worringly conclusions:
Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We theorize that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.
Link to study text (via slashdot).
Link to news story discussing the study.
—Vaughan.
2005-11-11 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
An article on why people believe in alien abduction, and a link to an online study on unusual sleep experiences.
Wired on recent studies suggesting ritual users of the hallucinogen Peyote show no mental or neurological impairment.
Researchers find brain differences in how males and females experience humour.
Interesting Wikipedia page on the diffusion of innovations.
MRI scans can help with the diagnosis of schizophrenia claim researchers (again).
Children of bipolar parents score higher on creativity test.
Complex links between depression, suicide and epilepsy discovered by recent study.
Brief review of book on the 'science of false memories'.
—Vaughan.
November 10, 2005
Depression and the low serotonin myth:
Open-access medical journal PLoS Medicine has published an essay on the popular but poorly supported claim that depression is 'caused' by low serotonin and that some antidepressant drugs correct this 'chemical imbalance'.
The essay particularly focuses on a class of antidepressant drugs called 'selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors' or SSRIs, that increases the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin available to neurons, by preventing its re-absorption after normal use. Prozac is, perhaps, the most famous example.
The authors contrast the claims of SSRI adverts, that usually claim that depression is caused by a serotonin imbalance in the brain, and the scientific research, that reports little evidence for this link.
As previously reported on Mind Hacks, recent reviews of the neuroscience literature suggest that this view is oversimplified at best.
One of the most striking examples of this is the antidepressant Tianeptine. Tianeptine actually increases decreases serotonin levels, and yet is still an effective treatment for depression.
Antidepressant medication has been under the spotlight of late, as concerns about safety have been highlighted, and, controversially, two researchers recently questioned the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs outright.
This opinion is not mainstream, however, as the majority of psychiatrists and researchers accept published research that suggests that SSRIs are helpful in treating depression.
Link to "Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature".
Link to write-up from nature.com.
Link to 'Is depression a brain disease?'
—Vaughan.
November 09, 2005
Nature Neuroscience launch blog:
They say mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, now the Editors at New York based review journal Nature Neuroscience have launched a blog called 'Action Potential'.
In their words:
Action Potential is a blog by the editors of Nature Neuroscience - and a forum for our readers, authors and the entire neuroscience community. We'll discuss what's new and exciting in neuroscience, be it in our journal or elsewhere. We hope for spirited conversation! To contact the editors directly with confidential questions or feedback, please e-mail actionpotential@natureny.com
It's early days but hopefully the blog could offer readers a fascinating insight into the minds of the people steering one of the most influential journals in neuroscience.
Link to Action Potential blog
—christian.
Four ecstasies:
Blog The Huge Entity has a post giving four quotes on the experience of ecstasy and the thin veil of consensual reality.
My favourite is the following from author Fyodor Dostoevsky on epileptically induced ecstasy:
"There are moments, and it is only a matter of five or six seconds, when you feel the presence of the eternal harmony...a terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself and the rapture with which it fills you. If this state were to last more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and would have to disappear. During these five seconds I live a whole human existence, and for that I would give my whole life and not think that I was paying too dearly...."
Link to 'On The Nature of Experience'.
—Vaughan.
November 08, 2005
SfN 2005:
The world's biggest scientific meeting, the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, happens next week in Washington DC. They'll be over 30,000 researchers and clinicians there, as well as the Dalai Lama talking about neuroscience and meditation, 17,000 presentations and a variety of side scientific meetings and social events (i'm intrigued by the Hippocampus open mike event, an evening for researchers interested in the hippocampus organised around the format of a poetry slam).
Anyway, from tomorrow I'll be in Washington - I'm going early for the computational cognitive neuroscience conference. I'll be there until the 16th, so if anyone has any recommendations for things to do, or if any readers fancy meeting up (maybe we could go to the hippocampus social?), let me know. tom [at] mindhacks [dot] com
—tom.
Internet treatment for depression found effective:
Psychological treatment for depression, delivered over the internet, is reliable and effective, according to the results of research published recently in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Psychological treatment, particularly a form of therapy known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), is already known to be an effective treatment, but qualified therapists are relatively scarce.
Some of the techniques learnt during a course of CBT can, however, be passed on via the internet. This has the advantage of being more widely available to help people who may be having problems with distressing thoughts or moods.
One example of this is MoodGym, an open-access web-based treatment for depression, developed by the Australian National University.
Several research trials have shown MoodGym to be effective at alleviating depression when used either by specifically recruited participants, or by other users who happen to have started using the website.
Researchers hope to gain a knowledge about which aspects of therapy can be best communicated online to develop the most effective web-based treatments and therapies.
Link to MoodGym.
Link to British Journal of Psychiatry study summary (via PsychCentral).
—Vaughan.
November 07, 2005
Wider than the sky:
A poem by Emily Dickinson (1830–86):
The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.
The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.
From Complete Poems (1924).
—Vaughan.
The alternate realities of Richard Dadd:
Richard Dadd was a promising artist who was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art in 1837. A decade later, Dadd was a patient in Bethlem psychiatric hospital after experiencing an intense psychosis, but was still to create the greatest of his works.
Dadd first started experiencing the beginings of psychosis when travelling in Egypt. He believed that the sound of the traditional Egyptian "hubbly bubblies" contained messages to him from the god Osiris.
Back in England, the artist became one of the rare examples of people who become violent when psychotic, killing his father with a razor. After fleeing from the authorities he was detained after attempting to attack a tourist in Paris.
On return to London, he was comitted to Bethlem Hospital for 20 years, before being moved to Broadmoor Hospital where he lived for the rest of his life.
When in hospital he continued to paint, and created some of the most important and fantastical paintings of the Victorian era.
The most famous, The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke (jpg - works best full screen) has been the inspiration novels and plays, and even a song by the seminal rock group Queen.
Link to detailed Dadd biography (with early sketches).
Link to brief biography.
—Vaughan.
November 05, 2005
Panexa for life:
Media provocateurs Stay Free! Daily are behind a new web-based promotion for "life changing" medication Panexa.
Reminiscent of the buzz that appeared over the Zoloft for Everything ad campaign that was first reported in The Onion, the Panexa marketing pushes the drug's main selling points:
No matter what you do or where you go, you're always going to be yourself. And Panexa knows this. Your lifestyle is one of the biggest factors in choosing how to live. Why trust it to anything less? Panexa is proven to provide more medication to those who take it than any other comparable solution. Panexa is the right choice, the safe choice. The only choice.
In research trials the drug was shown to significantly increase insight and reduce impulisivity in health care decisions.
Link to Panexa website.
—Vaughan.
November 04, 2005
2005-11-04 Spike activity:
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Electrodes, inserted into the brain, can be used to change blood pressure.
Study reports factors which could predict relationship violence. Further interesting commentary on applying these findings to everyday life.
Study on the historical records of British asylum fails to support stereotype that women were inappropriately detained for mental illness in Victorian times.
Fortean Times has a profile of troubled author Arthur Koestler, who funded Edinburgh University's Koestler Parapsychology Unit.
Magnetically induced 'blindsight' induced in healthy human volunteers.
Articles one and two on using 'mirror box' for pain in non-phantom limbs.
Women with highest levels of estrogen more likely to be attractive, claims new study.
—Vaughan.
November 03, 2005
Theodore Millon on mental illness:
Theodore Millon, one of the grandees of modern psychology (so old-school he's smoking a pipe on his homepage) is interviewed on ABC Radio's All in the Mind.
Misleadingly, the show is pitched as "Theodore Millon – Grandfather of Personality Theory", where in actuality he talks very little about personality research.
He mainly focuses on the wider topic of theories of mental illness, although this is not alien territory to Millon, as he has maintained a clinical focus throughout much of his long and distinguished career.
As well as discussing some of the developments since he started practising over half a century ago, he also talks about his own personal experiences.
I was particularly struck by one, in which he recounts how he spent several days living in a psychiatric hospital he was working at, to better understand the experience of the patients.
He soon became disoriented and started to doubt whether he was a doctor or patient, and had to phone a colleague to test reality.
I like to think the tale caused Erving Goffman a wry smile.
mp3 or realaudio of programme audio.
Link to transcript.
—Vaughan.
November 02, 2005
Bad science on autism vaccine link:
The Guardian's Bad Science column, written by doctor Ben Goldacre, is an excellent resource for anyone who wants scientific straight talk on fashionable nonsense, and often references core ideas of the philosophy of science (which is a neat trick to pull off in a few hundred words in a newspaper column). This week Ben fires off both barrels at the Daily Mail columnist Melanie Philips for utterly misunderstanding the implications of a systematic review of studies investigating a link between the MMR vaccine and autism (there most probably isn't one). Philips takes criticsms of existing research showing no connection between MMR and autism to jump to the opposite conclusion, supported by flimsy evidence for there being a link(Creationist watchers, does this bad science syllogism feel familiar?). Ben's recommendation is strong, but justified:
Either learn how to interpret data yourself, or trust those who can do it for you
Details in the full article
—tom.
Diagnosis by fridge magnet:
A company called Psyches Tears, who otherwise seem to make clothes, have produced a set of fridge magnets with which you can make up your own psychiatric diagnoses.
Whether you think you might have "paranoid kleptolepsy", or suspect that your friend might suffer from a nasty case of "florid histriophobia", now's your chance let the medical world know (by advertising on your fridge).
You never know, your newly coined disorder might make it into the forthcoming DSM-V.
Link to Diagnostic Refrigerator Magnets.
—Vaughan.
November 01, 2005
Open-access sleep special at Nature:
Nature has a special supplement, freely available online, on the cognitive neuroscience of sleep.
Homer Simpson, who once said "There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep", would, I'm sure, approve.
The supplement contains a number of articles summarising recent research in the world of sleep, including the types and causes of sleep disorders and the role of memory in producing dreams to name but a few.
Link to Nature supplement on sleep.
—Vaughan.
