September 30, 2007

Radio in a coma:

A new series of the whimsical comedy series Vent, about the thoughts of a man in a coma, has just begun on Radio 4. It's darkly comic, surreal and occasionally deeply touching.

It flips between the thoughts and memories of Ben, a man in a coma, and the visits of his friends and family to his unconscious body.

It's by comedy writer Nigel Smith, who was inspired by his own experiences of falling into coma after suffering a demyelinating brain stem lesion.

Link to audio archive of Vent (full archive in 'All Vent programmes' link).

—Vaughan.

September 29, 2007

Is the internet good for our mental health?:

This week's ABC Radio National All in the Mind discusses how the internet can affect the mind, whether we can be addicted to it, and how it's being used to delivered effective psychological therapies for a range of mental disorders.

This is the programme I was interviewed for a few weeks ago (through the magic of editing, I sound quite coherent!) where I mainly discuss why I think the concept of 'internet addiction' is nonsense.

The other guests are Dr Nick Titov, Prof Isaac Marks and Dr Stephanie Bauer, who discuss their pioneering work on using computer technology to provide treatment for mental illness.

Isaac Marks is one of the founders of behavioural therapy and has been quite involved in adapting some of the techniques so they can be taught by computer or over the internet. In fact, he's one of the editors of a new book on computer assisted psychotherapy.

One of the things I plug on the programme is an online cognitive behaviour therapy for depression website called MoodGYM.

It's one of the great success stories of online therapy. It's been extensively researched, found to be effective and is free and advert free. Highly recommended.

Link to All in the Mind with audio and transcript.

—Vaughan.

September 28, 2007

Boyden blogs on augmenting the brain:

Ed Boyden, a neuroscientist who specialises in developing technology to enhance the mind and brain, has just started writing a blog on the Technology Review site.

I had the pleasure of giving a joint session with Ed at the SciFoo conference on 'clinical problems in neuroscience and practical cognitive augmentation' where I learnt a great deal about techniques to control brain circuits developed by his research team, both for treating neurological and psychiatric disorders, and to boost normal cognitive function.

In his first blog post he outlines some of the principles and promises of human augmentation, and discusses what sort of impact this is likely to have on our ideas of 'normal'.

If his work is anything to go by, his blog is going to be well worth reading.

Link to Ed Boyden's blog at Technology Review (via BrainWaves).
Link to Ed Boyden's homepage.

—Vaughan.

Purple haze all in my brain:

It's not often one gets one's bong in the scientific literature, let alone one designed to allow you to smoke weed inside an MRI scanner, but this is exactly what has been achieved in an article published in the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior.

Most studies on the neuroscience of marijuana have used pills or injections of THC, the main active ingredient, but this is quite different from smoking - both in the way it reaches the brain and because of the fact that burning the plant creates many other chemicals which also get inhaled.

A team from Harvard Medical School are interested in how smoked marijuana affects the brain, but have come to the inevitable conclusion that it's actually quite hard smoking a joint when you're lying on your back being brain scanned.

So the research team put their heads together (!), and realised they needed to design a bong - a water pipe for smoking marijuana - safe to use in an MRI scanner.

This isn't a trivial task. Apart from being free of metal parts that could be affected by the MRI scanner's strong magnet, the device had to be installed and removed within one booked session and also needed to control the smoke.

As well as allowing the person take hits from the bong, the device also had to capture the smoke that was exhaled. Otherwise, the scanner room would get filled with smoke which could interfere with the equipment and affect any participants who took part in other studies that happened afterwards.

Presumably, after much trial and error, the final device was created with two main parts: the first was a face mask with pipes going to the bong and the 'exhaust', the second was the water pipe which was sealed in a box.

One thing you may not be aware of is that the US research agency NIDA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, have standard issue spliffs. These are government approved reefers guaranteed to have a measured amount of THC in them.

The bong was designed so these could be attached to the water pipe and lit at the appropriate time so the participant could smoke while being brain scanned.

The researchers tested their creation with a simple brain scan, declared the project a success and published their MRI-safe bong design in the medical journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior.

Link to write-up of study from Wired.
Link to abstract of article.

—Vaughan.

2007-09-28 Spike activity:

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

TechReview has an article on teaching computers to have meaningful conversations. Presumably, teaching humans is going to be the next step.

Neurons avoid talking to themselves by using 19,000 forms of one gene, reports Ars Technia.

How moving your eyes in a specific way can help you solve a complex problem without even realizing it. An interesting study tackled in an article by OmniBrain and one by Mixing Memory

The Boston News discusses how digital technology gives us an almost permanent and sometimes uncomfortably long surrogate memory.

Neurophilosophy covers a case where a stroke causes a woman to feel sounds.

Happiness is a Warm Electrode. Popular Science magazine discusses deep brain stimulation treatment for severe depression.

Cognitive Daily asks why aren't there more women in science and maths by looking at three key studies.

The New York Times asks why men are happier than women. Language Log asks why the NYT are overselling the statistics.

PsychCentral picks up on what looks like a great event in NYC: Comedians for suicide prevention.

Law professor Elyn Sacks' new book on her experience of psychosis is reviewed on PsyBlog.

Treatment Online features a fMRI technique that may help the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

Is it rational to do no harm? The Phineas Gage Fan Club investigates.

Ouroboros reports back from a Cambridge conference on effective therapies for postponing and treating the problems of human ageing.

What influences false recall? Developing Intelligence looks at a recent study which picks apart the processes.

—Vaughan.

September 27, 2007

Ambushing brain damage:

Nature Reviews Neuroscience has a fascinating article on drugs that remain dormant in the brain and only respond when damage occurs.

They've been christened pathologically activated therapeutic (PAT) drugs and rely on the fact that brain damage triggers specific chemical changes and drugs can be designed to take advantage of these processes.

For example, memantine is a type of drug that antagonises (blocks) the NMDA receptor which is activated by the neurotransmitter glutamate.

Important, because this receptor is known to be activated to excess in conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Several drugs block this receptor, including ketamine and PCP ('Angel dust'), but they block the receptor as soon as they arrive.

Memantine is different - it doesn't do its job unless the receptor has already been activated or 'opened' at least once already - making it a 'non-competative antagonist' - in other words, it doesn't compete with the neurotransmitter, it waits until it's been and gone.

It's as if you wanted to prevent postmen from delivery their parcels by bricking up each door, but the householders will only open their door to the postmen.

So you hang around, wait for the postman to call, and then get in the doorway and block it. You're not fighting the postmen while they deliver the letter, you're avoiding conflict and taking advantage of what they already do.

This gives memantine a very important property. It blocks more receptors the more glutamate is about, or to return to our analogy, it can block more doors when there are more postmen about.

This means the drug 'lies in wait'. As more NMDA receptors are activated owing to Alzheimer's disease, the more it steps in to calm the situation down and prevent constant activation which is what is thought to cause the most damage.

The article outlines several other neurochemical processes that allow drugs to seemingly 'lie in wait' and only react to damage, rather than affecting the brain regardless of what else is happening.

It's an interesting, clever and potentially very important twist on drug design that takes advantage of our growing knowledge of how the brain works in both illness and health.

Link to abstract of scientific paper.

—Vaughan.

APA military mental health special:

The latest edition of the American Psychological Association's monthly magazine has a special feature on military mental health.

The issue is timely, as mental illness in the US military is at an all time high and military mental health services were recently described as "woefully inadequate" by a Pentagon task force.

It's a bit of a curious mix for a magazine that's usually heavily academic: it serves as a description of the problem, some motivational material to encourage psychologists to work in military mental health, and a collection of heart-warming tales of success.

There is certainly a great need for psychologists to help treat with psychiatric disorder in veterans, especially now increased government funding has been made available.

However, one wonders whether this issue is also a way of the APA executive mending relationships with the military after the membership voted to condemn the majority of their interrogation practices as torture.

Either way, it's an interesting peek into the coming wave of mental health care changes that have been initiated by the large numbers of psychiatric casualties coming back from Iraq.

Curiously, the web page of the special feature has an interesting Freudian slip.

It's been erroneously titled "Serving those we serve", rather than its presumably correct title, given in the table of contents, of "Serving those who serve".

Link to special feature on military mental health.

—Vaughan.

Daniel Kahneman 'masterclass' online:

Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman recently gave a two day masterclass on his work. It's now been made available on Edge as transcripts and video clips.

Kahneman has done a huge amount of work on cognitive biases - the quirks of mind that make us deviate from rationality, sometimes in quite surprising and interesting ways.

For example, with his colleague Amos Tversky, he discovered the availability heuristic, which is the process by which we tend to judge an event as more likely to happen in the future the more easily it can be brought to mind.

This is why we vastly overestimate the chances of vividly spectacular but unlikely things like terrorism, but underestimate the mundane but consistently lethal things like driving.

Kahneman has been involved in identifying many of these sorts of biases, and cleverly, applying them to economic decision making to inform economic models of financial behaviour.

As a result, experimental psychology is now a key part of economics to understand how people actually behave as opposed to earlier models which assumed that people will always act more-or-less rationally to maximise their profits.

The Edge 'masterclass' is quite a comprehensive guide to his work and covers work which has been influential in many areas of psychology.

Link to Edge Daniel Kahneman 'masterclass'.

—Vaughan.

September 26, 2007

The false progression of Louis Wain:

The five pictures are by Victorian artist Louis Wain who painted cats through the whole of his life and continued through periods of intense psychosis.

Almost every article on Wain uses them to demonstrate the progression of schizophrenia but the evidence for them being painted in chronological order is actually quite weak.

The five pictures are from an original series of eight which were collected by Dr Walter Maclay who was interested in the effect of mental illness on art.

However, the pictures were undated and, as Rodney Dale notes in his biography of Wain (Louis Wain: The Man Who Painted Cats; ISBN 1854790986), "with no evidence of the order of their progression, Maclay arranged them in a sequence which clearly demonstrated, he thought, the progressive deterioration of the artist's mental abilities."

In fact, his later works are for the most part conventional cat pictures in his normal style, with the occasional 'psychedelic' example produced at the same time - where he experimented with what he called 'wallpaper patterns'.

However, the increasing abstraction over time is likely to be a myth. Wain's biography again:

Assembling what little factual knowledge we have on Dr Maclay's paintings, there is clear no justification for regarding them as more than samples of Louis Wain's art at different times. Wain experimented with patterns and cats, and even quite late in life was still producing conventional cat pictures, perhaps 10 years after his [supposedly] 'later' productions which are patterns rather than cats. All of which is to say no more than that the eight paintings were done at different times, which could be said of eight paintings by any artist!

Link to Wikipedia page on Louis Wain.
Link to online gallery of Wain pictures.

—Vaughan.

Olivers Sacks on music, drugs and emotion:

Wired magazine has an interview with Oliver Sacks where he talks about cases from his forthcoming book on the neurology of music, and his own drug-induced experiences of seeing non-existent colours while listening to Monteverdi.

Hume wondered whether one can imagine a color that one has never encountered. One day in 1964, I constructed a sort of pharmacological mountain, and at its peak, I said, "I want to see indigo, now!" As if thrown by a paintbrush, a huge, trembling drop of purest indigo appeared on the wall — the color of heaven. For months after that, I kept looking for that color. It was like the lost chord.

Then I went to a concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the first half, they played the Monteverdi Vespers, and I was transported. I felt a river of music 400 years long running from Monteverdi's mind into mine. Wandering around during the interval, I saw some lapis lazuli snuffboxes that were that same wonderful indigo, and I thought, "Good, the color exists in the external world." But in the second half I got restless, and when I saw the snuffboxes again, they were no longer indigo — they were blue, mauve, pink. I've never seen that color since.

The interview is a glimpse of what his next book will contain, and also relates a case of a man with Alzheimer's and severe memory impairment who can nonetheless take part in an acapella singing group. Seemingly his musical abilities survived his amnesia, not unlike Clive Wearing, who we discussed recently on Mind Hacks.

Link to Wired interview with Oliver Sacks.

—Vaughan.

Who killed the NYT psychology section?:

The New York Times has a record of publishing some cutting edge mind and brain journalism, most of which was collected on their 'Mental Health and Behavior' page. However, the page seems to have ground to a halt, removing one of the best psychology resources from the net.

Actually, they've not stopped publishing high-quality psychology articles, as the recent piece on the genetics of moral behaviour and social altruism demonstrates.

But their single best advert for their articles, a one-stop shop that gathered them all in one place, seems to have died a death.

It's such as shame for a publication that has the rare and enviable record of publishing engaging pieces by writers who actually understand the science.

Link to moribund 'Mental Health and Behavior' page (thanks Jeremy!).
Link to excellent piece on genetics and moral behaviour.

—Vaughan.

September 25, 2007

Smart drugs, 1948:

There's a copy of a wonderful 1948 article magazine available online entitled 'Pills That Increase Your Intelligence' from Modern Mechanix .

It discusses the possibilities of 'smart drugs' and is full of archaic language that makes it equally shocking and endearing.

Can you feed your brain some special food to make it smarter? Scientists have always laughed at the idea. Now they aren't quite so cocksure. Maybe your brain does have faster speed and quicker getaway when it runs on certain fuels. New scientific discoveries indicate that brain power can be stepped up by swallowing tablets. These pills are not stimulating drugs but concentrates of a food element you eat every day.

Let's look into the strange story of one particular brain. It wasn't a very good brain. In fact, it belonged to a fourteen-year-old imbecile boy who had an intelligence quotient of 42 (the average I. Q. is 100). Every year the boy grew twelve months older, but his mental age increased only four and a half months. He kept running an intelligence deficit. Then he was fed little white pills, a dozen and a half daily. Within two months his mental age leaped ahead one year and five months. Sixty days on brain pills and his mental age increased as much as it had in the last five years!

It sounds much like the 'miracle cure' claims that conditions like autism attract to the present day.

Link to 1948 Modern Mechanix article (via Bad Science).

—Vaughan.

Salon's Mind Reader:

Salon have just announced the start of a regular series of neuroscience articles with the first tackling whether brain scans might enable us to communicate with people who are conscious but trapped in their paralysed bodies.

The article considers a recent scientific paper [pdf] on the use of brain imaging to detect awareness in people who might otherwise be thought to be in a coma-like state, but actually are largely unable to communicate with the outside world because they're paralysed.

We've covered two studies during the last few years that have reported consciousness in what were thought to be unconscious patients owing to the fact that their brain activity seemed to reflect complex mental processes or could be altered at will, following verbal requests from the researchers.

There are two main implications of this work, the first is that we could better diagnose patients as being paralysed rather than in comas, and the second is the hope that we could design systems to read the brain activity in a reliable enough way to allow affected people to communicate with the 'outside world'.

With all of the brain scan hype we get subjected to, the article considers an important but rarely discussed point - although revolutionary, fMRI isn't a very accurate measure of brain activity and we can't directly infer subjective mental states from brain scan data.

This means its utility as a tool for detecting consciousness, let alone 'mind reading', is severely limited.

Interestingly, the article is written by a neurologist called Robert Burton, who shares a name with the author of the 17th century book The Anatomy of Melancholy which remains one of the best books ever written on the troubled mind.

It seems this article is the first in a new series called Mind Reader - "a new Salon feature exploring the galaxy of the brain."

Link to Salon article 'The light's on, but is anybody home?'.
pdf of review article on fMRI detectection of awareness in coma-like states.

—Vaughan.

PR for the self: managing identity on social networks:

The New Atlantis magazine has an intriguing article that considers the social effects of sites like MySpace and Facebook and discusses how we are increasingly using these tools to carefully manage our public image - something that was previously only a concern for celebrities and media figures.

The article describes by describing the social networking sites and how they work and discusses a little of their history, but shortly after, it tackles the psychology of how we use them to manage our online identities.

The world of online social networking is practically homogenous in one other sense, however diverse it might at first appear: its users are committed to self-exposure. The creation and conspicuous consumption of intimate details and images of one’s own and others’ lives is the main activity in the online social networking world. There is no room for reticence; there is only revelation. Quickly peruse a profile and you know more about a potential acquaintance in a moment than you might have learned about a flesh-and-blood friend in a month. As one college student recently described to the New York Times Magazine: "You might run into someone at a party, and then you Facebook them: what are their interests? Are they crazy-religious, is their favorite quote from the Bible? Everyone takes great pains over presenting themselves. It's like an embodiment of your personality."

The article also covers some key studies in social network analysis, the science of understanding how relationships between people facilitate large scale social interaction.

And it also discusses some recent ideas on how these tools might be changing the nature of our relationships as a consequence of simply becoming part of the equation.

Link to article 'Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism'.

—Vaughan.

September 24, 2007

Encephalon 32 arrives:

Edition 32 of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just been published on Living the Scientific Life.

A couple of my favourites include an article on foreign accent syndrome and another on the cerebellum as the cause of dyslexia.

Head on over for plenty more scientific curiosities from the internet's best mind and brain writers.

Link to Encephalon 32.

—Vaughan.

The greatest may never come:

Over the next two weeks the BPS Research Digest will be publishing articles by leading psychologists on the greatest psychology experiment that's never been done.

Each contributor was asked to think of a psychology study they would love to see completed, even if it would be so impractical, it would never be possible.

Two will be published each day over over the coming week, and the first ones have just appeared online.

Susan Blackmore suggests we could brain scan people as they die to understand near-death experiences, while Pam Maras thinks we should do a social psychology experiment that looks at every possible interaction in everyday life.

During the week, the authors will suggest studies on the mind of the unborn child, resisting oppression, kindness-centred care for psychosis, the effect of switching parents, and radically reshaping the mind to improve its performance, to name but a few.

Other authors include Richard Gregory, Will Meek, Richard Bentall, Chris Chatham, Martin Seligman, Jeremy Dean, Alex Haslam, Judith Harris, Scott Lilienfeld and Annette Karmiloff-Smith.

So keep tabs on the BPS Research Digest over the coming week to catch the latest releases.

I've also been asked to contribute, and an article on using detectives to find the line between reality and psychosis will be appearing in the next few days.

I realise that means I included myself as a 'leading psychologist' in the opening line, but the more accurate description of "articles by leading psychologists and one over-caffeinated keyboard monkey" made the intro a bit clumsy. Either way, it should be a great series.

Link to 'The most important psychology experiment that's Never been done...?'

—Vaughan.

Trauma from events that never occurred:

A study just published in the medical journal Psychosomatics reports four case studies of people who developed PTSD after experiencing a traumatic event that never occurred - while their emotional reaction was real, the events were hallucinated.

Post-traumatic stress disorder can occur when someone has experienced a traumatic event over which they had no control. PTSD is diagnosed when memories of the event intrude into everyday life, the person feels the need to avoid anything which could remind them of the situation, and they feel excessively anxious and on edge.

The patients described in the article had all been admitted to intensive care for serious medical conditions, but this was not the direct cause of their trauma.

While in intensive care the patients became delirious, a state where consciousness is clouded, thinking is impaired, and delusions and hallucinations are common.

In these cases, the delusions and hallucinations led the patients to believe they were about to die horrible deaths, were being threatened or were experiencing horrific events.

Later, when they recovered from their primary condition, they had all the symptoms of PTSD - but specifically for the incident that had only occurred in their disturbed thinking.

Here's one of the case studies:

"Mr. A" was a 56-year-old white man who developed end-stage liver disease from a combination of alcohol and viral hepatitis. Aside from remitted alcohol dependence, he had no other psychiatric history. After liver transplantation, he experienced a difficult medical course, with sepsis, renal failure, biliary reconstruction, respiratory failure, and immunosuppressive medication neurotoxicity from tacrolimus. Several electroencephalograms showed diffuse generalized slowing of the background rhythms and documented seizures. He had persistent delirium for several months postoperatively.

While having delirium, he was extremely agitated, requiring restraints to prevent him from hurting himself and/or dislodging lines and catheters. He appeared awake, but was frequently incoherent and disorganized. However, he was able to articulate paranoid delusions that the staff were trying to kill him and his son. He was also observed to be responding to auditory and visual hallucinations.

Four months after the transplant, when he was discharged from the hospital, his delirium had resolved. He was no longer confused or disoriented, was not actively hallucinating or delusional, and his mood was good, with only occasional, transient symptoms of anxiety.

Several months later, in the transplant clinic, he reported reexperiencing events he had hallucinated while having delirium in the intensive care unit (ICU), and, thus, he met DSM–IV criteria for PTSD. He recalled detailed paranoid delusions that the hospital staff had chained his son to his bed and were beating him to death. He recalled struggling against the restraints, hoping to free himself to save his son. He described hearing his son's screams for help and sounds as if his son was being pummelled.

He reported recurrent nightmares of these events and even daytime flashbacks of these experiences, typically when spending time alone. He attempted to avoid thinking about these events and the hospitalization, but described difficulty doing so because the thoughts were intrusive and difficult to dismiss. Not only did he avoid discussing the events, but he also had difficulty returning to the hospital because it caused him to recall these images. He was observed to be restless and hypervigilant in the transplant clinic.

Both the medical illness and the psychoactive painkillers can contribute to the disturbed thinking that lead to delirium. This in turn can significantly affect how people remember their recovery.

In fact, one study found that some patients had no factual recall of intensive care at all, their only memory of the time was of their delusions. This group were particularly likely to be traumatised.

People are sometimes embarrassed to talk about these experiences, but they are surprisingly common. Studies have estimated that between between 12.5% and 38% of ICU patients experience delusions and hallucinations.

Link to study abstract.

—Vaughan.

September 23, 2007

ATDT:

I'm not really one for blog memes, but I was pleased to see Psych Central has given us a nod. Actually, we've had a few of these now and they always give us a boost, but getting one from John Grohol is especially welcome because he's the granddaddy of online psychology info.

It's a bit like having Freud announce that you've got good taste in cigars.

For those of you who don't know, Grohol is a psychologist who's been putting mental health information on the net since the early nineties, and was putting information on BBS's before that. He's officially old school (if you thought ZMODEM was the best thing since sliced bread, you're old school too).

At this point it's probably worth mentioning that Mind Hacks is a substantial team effort of which my hypergraphia is just one part. Just Tom and Matt's behind the scenes emails would fill a blog of their own. Plus we get a load of material sent by friends and readers (you know who you are! at least, Christian certainly does). Thanks!

—Vaughan.

Distant echoes of Shatner's Bassoon:

Language Log is doing a sterling job of keeping up with the increasing pace of Dr Alfred Crockus' research, and seem to have found an important neuroanatomical link between the Crockus and another surprisingly neglected brain area, Shatner's Bassoon.

The Crockus is the shameless and unintentionally hilarious invention of educational consultant Dan Hodgins, which he claims is four times larger in girls and so supports his own ideas about teaching (incidentally, he's currently 'on tour' if you want to hear his crockus first hand).

Shatner's Bassoon was the invention of satirist Chris Morris, who persuaded various media figures that it was an area of the brain targeted by the fictional street drug 'cake'.

Several TV personalities and David Amess, a Tory MP, took part in Morris' spoof TV programme with absolutely no insight into the completely ridiculous premise of the whole affair.

The best bit is when they do an earnest public education announcement, warning of the drug's dangers and informing the viewers that it may be sold under the names of looney toad twat, russell dust, chronic basildon donut, Joss Ackland's spunky backpack, bromicide, ponce on the heath, cool thwacks, and Hattie Jacques' portentious cheese wog.

The video is available online, and it is a testament both to the fact that people are easily blinded by scientific sounding nonsense, and to the fact that celebrity endorsement of good causes can be as much about their public profile as it is about the cause itself.

David Amess went as far as asking a question about "cake" in parliament which you can read in Hansard, the official parliamentary record.

Interestingly, the Home Office assumed his question about 'cake' referred to 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-benzylamphetamine (MDBZ), one of the drugs synthesised by legendary psychedelics researcher Alexander Shulgin. The description of the drug appears in his book PiHKAL - a sort of Principia Psychedelica of mind-bending phenethylamines, of which ecstasy (MDMA) is probably the best known.

Morris' spoof news series, The Day Today and Brass Eye, function equally well as hilarious entertainment and a careful analysis of the language of news media we've come to uncritically accept.

As a result, Chris Morris taught me more about deconstructing the media than Derrida ever did.

Language Log has been just as funny lately, and is doing an equally important job in pointing out how the language of neuroscience is now so all-pervasive, that people are willing to make up areas of the brain to support their point of view.

As an aside, if anyone knows of any other fictional brain areas, do get in touch. I feel these need collecting in one place.

Link to Language Log on 'The Crockus and the Bassoon'.
Link to Brass Eye on 'cake'.

—Vaughan.

September 22, 2007

Seeking free will: a debate:

The Dana magazine Cerebrum has just published a debate between a psychiatrist and neurologist on how we can make sense of free will in the age of neuroscience.

The choice of professionals is an interesting one because each typically deals with what are assumed to be quite different disruptions in free will.

Neurologists often treat patients who have problems controlling their movements, cognition or consciousness - owing to clear, identifiable brain damage to the systems involved in these processes.

Someone with Parkinson's disease, for example, seems to have little conscious control over their tremor or rigid movements.

Psychiatrists on the other hand, typically deal with people who don't have clear brain damage, but whose brain's are nonetheless functioning in such as way that they experience unstable moods, odd perceptions, or come to hold seemingly impossible beliefs.

Here the idea of free will is a bit more conceptually tricky. We can clearly say that someone who has Parkinsonian tremor is not 'willing' their movements, but what about someone whose brain disturbance means they hear voices?

Some people who hear voices can have conversations with them. In this situation, the person would seem to be exercising some influence over their hallucinations, because the voices respond to what's being said, but many people can't 'will' the voices away.

One particularly interesting phenomenon in this regard is 'command hallucinations' - usually hallucinated voices that command the person to do something.

Often, the commands are pointless - touch the table, cross the street, take off your hat - but sometimes they can be terrifying instructions - for example, that the person must harm themselves.

In some cases, these commands seem irresistible, the person feels completely compelled to follow their hallucinated instructions.

We don't really have a good understanding (or, to be fair, even a bad understanding) of why some command hallucinations are distressing but impotent, while others seem to compel the person to comply.

There are many more examples of how free will is affected in both psychiatry and neurology. In both specialities, there are conditions where the boundaries of free will cover a big grey area, and all of them raise really quite profound questions about our freedom to act as we want.

The Cerebrum debate tackles exactly these sorts of issues by two people who undoubtedly have to deal with them on a daily basis.

Link to Cerebrum article 'Seeking Free Will in Our Brains: A Debate'.

—Vaughan.

September 21, 2007

Advancing the history of psychology:

I've been enjoying the Advances in the History of Psychology blog lately, which is full of interesting snippets about the past and often digs into the historical background of contemporary hot topics.

For example, here's an interesting bibliography about psychoactive drug use in psychology, and here's another about Benjamin Franklin's interest in 'electrotherapy'.

It's run by the same people who produce the completely invaluable Classics in the History of Psychology archive, that has a huge website with some of the most important texts from psychology's colourful past.

Both are excellent, and I look forward to reading more.

Link to Advances in the History of Psychology blog.
Link to Classics in the History of Psychology archive.

—Vaughan.

Want fries with that?:

Neurophilosophy discusses a recent study that suggests that the inclusion of large amounts of starchy foods into our diet helped fuel the evolution of the brain.

It's interesting because it's not the first study to suggest that specific changes in diet improved nutrition and brain development:

According to one theory, increased consumption of meat by our ancestors provided the additional energy needed for brain expansion. (Cooking would have further increased the amount of calories obtained from meat.) Another holds that a switch to a seafood-rich diet would have provided polyunsaturated fatty acids which, when incorporated into nerve cell membranes, would have made the brain function more efficiently.

And now, a study published in Nature Genetics adds starchy tubers to the smorgasbord of foodstuffs that may have contributed to the expansion of the human brain.

These theories tend to be quite controversial and tend to cause numerous back and forth arguments in the literature, partly because they're quite hard to test, largely owing to the fact that the brain has the consistency of toothpaste and so doesn't leave much of a fossil record.

The study picked up by Neurophilosophy is interesting because it tracks a gene that codes for a starch enzyme, needed to break down starch into glucose.

It's a relatively new approach to an old problem, although as the article mentions, the link to brain evolution is still circumstantial.

However, it's an interesting areas and the Neurophilosophy article is a great brief guide to some of the thinking behind these theories.

Link to Neurophilosophy on 'Diet and brain evolution'.

—Vaughan.

2007-09-21 Spike activity:

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

SharpBrains has an interview with cognitive behaviour therapy guru Judith Beck about using CBT for effective dieting.

Wired wonders whether EEG-based brain-to-game interfaces may mess with our heads.

Hard-up students: Aren't there a lot of psychology textbooks on torrent servers these days? Just sayin'

Genes which raise risk for schizophrenia have likely been positively selected for during evolution, reports SciAm.

The BPS Research Digest reports that having a pen in your mouth impairs your ability to recognise emotions in others, as you're not as good at mirroring their facial expression.

Sally Satel discusses the early rumblings over the new DSM (due out 2012) in The New York Times.

NPR has an interesting programme on the the application of mathematics to tracking social networks of terrorists.

A lovely snippet from Cognitive Daily: more evidence that everyone has a little synesthesia.

Pinker's working the crowd: An NPR radio interview on the new book, and Discover Magazine interview on the same.

Can information be directed to different networks in the brain depending on the "transmission frequency", like the channels on a TV? Developing Intelligence investigates.

Forget troubled teens. The New York Times reports on baby boomers behaving badly.

To the bunkers! Further evidence that Skynet is about to become sentient:
* AIs set loose in virtual worlds to 'hone their skills'.
* Reason Magazine will be saying 'I told you so' when AIs keep us as pets!

OmniBrain notes that the 2008 Visual Illusion Contest is open and accepting entries.

Track the performance of the neurotech industry!

Dr Petra discusses a recent study that asked teens about their definition of virginity - which is remarkably variable.

US Government outsources their wacky mind-control fantasies to Russia.

Analyse the negative, bask in the positive. PsyBlog has some evidence-based advice for increasing life satisfaction.

PsychCentral notes that the APA have earmarked $7.6 million ($7.6 million!) to upgrade their website over the next two years. PsychologicalReviewTube to be launched in 2009.

Pure Pedantry has found some beautiful pictures of the pre-synapse.

—Vaughan.

September 20, 2007

Gone, and yet forgotten:

An interesting section from neuropsychiatrist Michael Kopelman's 2002 review article on the neuropsychology of memory disorders where he tackles transient global amnesia - a form of brief, severe, but mysterious amnesia that resolves in a few hours. No-one really knows what causes the majority of cases.

Transient global amnesia (TGA) most commonly occurs in the middle-aged or elderly, more frequently in men, and results in a period of amnesia lasting several hours. As is well known, it is characterized by repetitive questioning, and there may be some confusion, but patients do not report any loss of personal identity.

It is sometimes preceded by headache or nausea, a stressful life event, a medical procedure, intense emotion or vigorous exercise. Hodges and Ward (1989) found that the mean duration of amnesia was 4h and the maximum 12h. In 25% of their sample, there was a past history of migraine, which was considered to have a possible aetiological role.

In a further 7%, the patients subsequently developed unequivocal features of epilepsy in the absence of any previous history of seizures. There was no association with either a past history of or risk factors for vascular disease, nor with clinical signs indicating a vascular pathology. In particular, there was no association with transient ischaemic attacks.

In 60-70% of the sample, the underlying aetiology was unclear.

Link to full-text of paper 'Disorders of memory'.

—Vaughan.

Won't you help me doctor beat:

Musicogenic epilepsy is a neurological disorder where epileptic seizures are uncontrollably triggered by music. Gloria Estefan's Dr Beat is a catchy 80s pop song where she calls for medical assistance because music is irresistibly moving her body, moving her soul and affecting her brain.

Coincidence? I think not.

Doctor, I've got this feelin' deep inside of me, deep inside of me
I just cant control my feet, when I hear the beat
when I hear the beat
Hey doctor, could you give me somethin' to ease the pain
cause if you dont help me soon gonna lose my brain
gonna go insane

Despite Ms Estefan's requests, painkillers are unlikely to help with the acute effects of seizure.

First-line treatment is usually a rapid acting benzodiazepine and long-term stabilisation with a common anticonvulsant such as sodium valproate.

While her concerns about her mental health are understandable (people with epilepsy are at a slightly higher risk of developing mental illness), the majority of people with the condition lead full and active lives, so her fear of insanity is largely unfounded.

There are many cases of musicogenic epilepsy in the medical literature but, unfortunately, only a few few are freely available online. One is particularly interesting though and is available as a pdf file.

It's a 1957 article published in Psychosomatic Medicine that reports three fascinating cases, including a girl who had her seizures triggered by swing music that induced, among other things, hallucinations of a smartly dressed couple.

For those of you wanting something a bit more up-to-date though, YouTube has the a Dr Beat Mylo remix Dr Who video mashup. Same symptoms, new medical staff.

pdf of 'Musicogenic Epilepsy: Report of Three Cases'.
Link to Dr Beat lyrics.
Link to original Dr. Beat video.
Link to Dr Beat remix Dr Who tribute mashup.

—Vaughan.

Building on brain clichés:

The Financial Times has a slightly bizarre article on the application of neuroscience to architecture that suggests that we're genetically predisposed to feel relaxed around flowers, the hearth and food, and that homes need to be designed to release certain neurotransmitters.

The piece is about the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) which aims to use neuroscience in building design and encourage brain research into the effects of buildings.

I'm all for the wider application of neuroscience, and I'm sure there are some relevant findings that could be applied, but the article is full of so many erroneous brain clichés that I just despair.

Zeisel is also a director of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA), an organisation launched in 2003 to encourage scientists to get out of the lab and partner with architects and designers. "It's the future of the field," he says. "People might ask what neuroscience has to do with designing an 'emotional' house but our emotions are managed by our brain," Zeisel says. "When our brains are happy a certain endorphin gets released, so we need to design homes in order to release that neuro-transmitter."

Endorphins are the brain's natural opioids and are released in a wide variety of situations. They are indeed released when we feel pleasure, but are also released when we feel stress or pain.

So designing homes to maximise the release of endorphins will just as likely lead to uncomfortable, stressful hell-holes.

Take our desire for eye contact with others as an example. "A couple of million kitchens are planned each year and probably only about 5 per cent obey the most basic principles for human communication," [kitchen designer!] Grey says. In most, the person preparing the food at the sink, stove or counter has to face away from his or her family or guests, decreasing sociability in what should be a social zone. "As a result the brain continues to produce adrenalin and cortisol, the hormones associated with fear and anxiety," he says. "Whereas if they are facing [into the room] then oxytocin, the bonding hormone, and serotonin, associated with relaxation and enjoyment, are released."

So, it not only makes the common but false link between specific mental states and general neurotransmitters, makes unproven claims between specific activies and the release of these neurotransmitters, but also makes the unsupported claim that facing away from people in the kitchen causes fear and anxiety, while facing towards them causes relaxation and enjoyment.

Zeisel suggests that responses to some features of the home might even be innate. "We are born with genetically developed instincts that make us feel relaxed around flowers, the hearth, food and water," he says. "It's simply an emotional need and using those things in the environment will make us feel more comfortable." On the flip side, places that seem too sterile or too confusing are perceived as dangerous, which can trigger the hypothalamus to release stress hormones.

There's no evidence that we are genetically predisposed to feel relaxed around "flowers, the hearth, food and water". Perceiving things are dangerous does indeed lead to the release of stress-related hormones, but there's no evidence that 'confusing' or 'sterile' buildings do this.

Of course, buildings that are 'too sterile' or 'too confusing' might do, but therein lies a circular argument, because you've already defined them as having a negative influence.

Professor Joan Meyers-Levy of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management is another academic interested in how our surroundings affect our physical and mental states. Her research shows that when people are in a room with high ceilings, it activates sections of the right brain associated with freedom and abstract thinking. In low-ceilinged rooms, more constrained thinking is brought to the fore. "There's a preference in terms of real estate for high ceilings and it’s [not only] the sense of power and wealth that conveys but also [the fact that] vertical space could have a beneficial mental influence," she says.

To be completely fair to Meyers-Levey, her study [pdf] was a perfectly reasonable investigation into the effect of ceiling height on priming - an effect where an initial stimulus quickens your ability to react to related things.

However, the brain is not even mentioned in the paper, let alone measured in any way. The bit about high-ceilings activating the 'right brain' has just been added, seemingly from nowhere, by the journalist.

Two papers were recently published in Cell about the application of neuroscience to architecture, but importantly, they speculate, but don't actually reference any studies that have looked at the influence of building design on the brain. The article then goes on to repeat several of the speculations as fact.

I think the article may be a candidate for the Dr Alfred Crockus Award for the Misuse of Neuroscience.

As an aside, Crockus fans may be interested to hear that he's been tracked down to the hitherto unknown but undoubtedly endorphin stimulating 'Boston Medical University Hospital'.

UPDATE: Christian just reminded me that he wrote an article for The Psychologist late last year that looked at how psychology is being increasingly used in architecture. It also discusses specific scientific research on psychology and building design. It's an excellent antidote to the Crockus from the FT.

Link to ropey FT article.
Link to Psychologist article 'Is there a psychologist in the building?'.

—Vaughan.

September 19, 2007

Sexuality special in this week's Psychiatric Times:

The latest edition of the Psychiatric Times has a special section on sexuality that discusses everything from dealing with sex-related problems as a clinician, to the science of sexual orientation.

It's actually quite a refreshing change from much of the recent hype we've seen about sexual dysfunction, which usually suggests that a patch, pill or prostheses is an essential treatment for unsatisfactory sex.

Psychiatrists who develop an interest in clinical sexuality tend to employ 2 different paradigms, depending on the clinical situation. One is quite familiar to modern psychiatric continuing education. The patient has a disorder, we possess a range of medication treatments, and the etiological theories support our treatment. Lifelong premature ejaculation is an ideal example.

Another paradigm is necessary for most sexual disorders, however. We approach these disorders from the viewpoint of general etiology rather than disorder-specific causation. Sexuality unfolds in adolescence and continues to evolve over decades of adult maturation. The sexual problem serves as a window into personal development and individual and relationship psychology. Sex is understood to be about the unfolding of the individual self, the capacity to give and receive pleasure, the capacity to love and to be loved, the ability to be psychologically intimate, and the ability to manage expected and unexpected changes throughout adulthood.

Since few sexual dysfunctions have a specific treatment, diagnosis per se usually is not the determinant of treatment. Rather, it is the invitation to study the context in which the problem arose. Treatment rests on the clinician's understanding of how biological, psychological, interpersonal, and cultural factors combined in this case to create the symptom. This second paradigm reminds psychiatrists that the management of sexual disorders often requires interest and skills in psychotherapy.

The fact that most sexual problems are a manifestation of wider difficulties with relationships, mood, or adjustment is taken as read by most clinicians working in the area.

Unfortunately, most of the messages we encounter from TV, magazines and V!aGr4 spam suggest sexual difficulties are nothing more than a physical problem that needs a fix - as if you could help someone drive better by selling them tyres.

Link to August Psychiatric Times.

—Vaughan.

Here's one we prepared earlier:

This week's edition of New Scientist has a cover article outlining a number of try-it-yourself experiments that give you an insight into the cognitive science of the mind and brain.

Hang on a minute, that sounds familiar.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if so, the British science weekly have just paid a huge complement to Tom and Matt.

The NewSci article has six sections, each covering different areas of neuroscience, and each of which uses at least one example that appeared in the Mind Hacks book, and in some cases several. Here's the overlap:

NS: Seeing isn't believing
MH: Hack #17 Glimpse the Gaps in Your Vision
MH: Hack #18 When Time Stands Still
MH: Hack #49 Speech is Broadband Input into Your Head
MH: Hack #59 Hear With Your Eyes: The McGurk Effect
MH: Hack #53 Put Timing Information Into Sound and Location Information into Light

NS: This is not my nose
MH: Hack #63 Keep Hold of Yourself
MH: Hack #64 Mold Your Body Schema

NS: A Brain of two halves
MH: Hack #69 Use Your Right Brain - And Your Left, Too

NS: Probe your subconscious
MH: Hack #80 Act Without Knowing It

NS: Pay attention!
MH: Hack #36 Feel the Presence and Loss of Attention
MH: Hack #40 Blind to change
MH: Hack #41 Make Things Invisible Simply by Concentrating (On Something Else)

NS: Made-up memories
MH: Hack #85 Create false memories

Actually, several of the NewSci sections have completely new examples and have otherwise added updates with the latest scientific findings. A few discuss areas untouched in the book, but mainly they cover the same ground.

If you've got the book already, it's an interesting update with some new experiments to try. And if you haven't, it's like the book, but shorter.

In fact, some of the article text mirrors the flow of the book rather closely. And not even a favourable nod to Tom and Matt. Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!

Sadly, the article isn't freely available online, so you'll have to buy a copy to have a look.

UPDATE: Grabbed from a comments, feedback from the author:

Yes, Mind Hacks was a major inspiration for this article. But there's loads of new stuff in there too. And it does give a nod to Tom Stafford and Matt Webb. That's why it says at the end "Further Reading: Mind Hacks: Tips and tools for using your brain, by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb (O'Reilly 2006)."

Keep up the good work!

Thanks Graham. Unfortunately, the Further Reading section doesn't appear on the online version, which is why I missed it.

Link to Scientific American. Petty, I know.
Link to NewSci article. The world is at peace.

—Vaughan.

An annotated guide to books on the brain:

The Dana Foundation have collected a list of widely praised books on the mind and brain that cover everything from academic texts to compelling fiction. Every book on the list is accompanied by a brief write-up.

It's an extensive list with a number of great books on the list. My only reservation is that David Marr's Vision (ISBN 0716715678) is missing.

I'll get round to writing more about Marr in the future, as he is probably one of the most influential figures in 20th century neuroscience.

An amazing feet considering his book was written while he was dying from leukaemia, to which he eventually succumbed at the age of 35.

Vision was published after his death and has had a massive impact on vision science, neuropsychology and computational neuroscience - the latter of which was largely inspired by his work.

It's also the only academic neuroscience book I've ever read which starts with the line: "This book is meant to be enjoyed".

I read about the Dana guide on the excellent My Mind on Books - a site dedicated to mind, brain and cognitive science books - which also comes highly recommended.

Link to 'Important Books on the Brain' from the Dana Foundation.
Link to My Mind on Books.

—Vaughan.

September 18, 2007

Patient HM marks 50 years in science with new study:

A new study has been published on Patient HM, marking fifty years of participation in neuroscience research since the first study was published in 1957.

HM was suffering from incapacitating epileptic seizures that were not helped by any of the medications of the 1950s.

As a last resort, neurosurgeon William Scoville tried an experimental operation to remove 8cms of tissue on both sides of the inner parts of his temporal lobes, including both hippocampi, hopefully also removing the source of his seizures.

Neurosurgery to treat otherwise untreatable epilepsy is still common and highly effective, although this type of operation isn't used any more.

This is largely because HM's seizures reduced considerably, but he was left with a severe amnesia, meaning he couldn't seem to lay down any new conscious memories, although could remember things that occurred before his surgery.

Because of his seemingly unique memory impairment and an exact knowledge of which brain areas were missing, he has become a regular in neuroscience research that has aimed to understand what his impairment tells us about how normal memory is supported by the brain.

This new study is no exception. The researchers, Profs Veronique Bohbot and Suzanne Corkin, guessed on the basis of the existing evidence that the right parahippocampal cortex would be enough to support spatial learning and navigation.

The right side of the brain is known to be specialised for understanding 3D space and some of the parahippocampal cortex, an area adjacent to the surgically removed hippocampus, remained in HM's brain.

So the researchers used a task where a sensor is hidden under a section of carpet in a room which beeped when it was stepped on.

The participants were asked to find it just by exploration, and subsequently, they were taken to different parts of the room and asked to re-find it.

Despite having no conscious memories of previous tries, HM began to find the sensor quite accurately, much more accurately than if he was just stumbling across it by chance alone.

This suggests that his remaining part of HM's parahippocampal cortex was enough to support spatial memory, and importantly, that the brain areas missing in HM, although they would help, are probably not essential for navigation.

HM has participated some key studies through the decades and has outlasted many in the field. He probably doesn't realise it, but he's been one of the most important people in neuroscience.

Link to abstract of scientific study.
Link to NPR radio show on HM and memory.
Link to Wikipedia entry on HM.
pdf of 1957 study on HM.

—Vaughan.

Girls have a bigger crockus:

The excellent Language Log have discovered that an 'expert' invited to give a talk to a district education group not only invented a completely bogus part of the brain called the 'crockus', but claimed that it's four times larger in girls and used this fact to back up recommendations for the teaching of children.

Language Log writer Mark Liberman notes that a study found a minor sex difference in the pars opercularis, a genuine brain area in the approximate location of the fictional 'crockus'.

Although the study found the opposite pattern (it tends to be larger in boys), Liberman wondered whether the speaker may have misremembered both the name of the genuine brain area and the gist of the study.

So, he emailed the speaker to ask more.

In response, he got an answer that would be comically brilliant if it wasn't deadly serious:

Thanks for asking....The Crockus was actually just recently named by Dr. Alfred Crockus. It is the detailed section of the brain, a part of the frontal lope. It is the detailed section of the brain. You are right, it is four times larger in females then males from birth.

This part of the brain supports the Corpus Callosum (the part of the brain that connects the right and left hemisphere. The larger the crockus the more details are percieved by the two sides of the brain.

Dr Alfred Crockus, we salute you sir!

Link to Language Log on 'High Crockalorum' (via BadScience).

—Vaughan.

Music, love survives the densest amnesia:

Oliver Sacks has written an engaging piece for the latest edition of the The New Yorker on how musical ability can survive even the most severe amnesia, with particular reference to the famous case of Clive Wearing.

Wearing was a renowned classical musicologist and conductor, involved in recreating some of the most challenging Renaissance works. You can still find him in the sleeve notes of some of his professional recordings, usually described as having retired due to 'ill health'.

In his case, ill health meant being struck by herpes simplex encephalitis, a viral infection that is known to attack the key memory areas in the brain, leaving him with a dense amnesia.

Even today, he is severely memory-impaired and remains unable to maintain anything in his conscious memory for more than a few seconds.

But in an almost Homeric twist of fate, as if he had bargained with the Gods themselves, he retained the memory that he loved his wife, and his ability to play music.

Clive has been the subject of two documentaries (clips of which are available online) and a recent book by his wife, entitled Forever Today (ISBN 0385606265).

He's also been the subject of various scientific studies, summarised in a chapter of the book Broken Memories: Case Studies in Memory Impairment (ISBN 0631187235).

This chapter is co-written by Clive's wife and Prof Barbara Wilson, a respected British neuropsychologist who specialises in memory.

The chapter contains a wealth of information about the neuropsychology of his memory, but also contains this interesting snippet:

For many years, Clive has experienced auditory hallucinations. He hears what he thinks is a tape of himself playing in the distance. He refers to this in his diaries as a 'master tape' (a term used in broadcasting for the original audiotape which should be protected from casual use and should certainly not leave the studio).

If asked to sing what he can hear - a sound only ever heard in the distance - he picks the tune up in the middle and is puzzled that no-one else can hear it. Half an hour later when asked to sing what he can hear it is usually the same tune but sometimes sung in a different style as if it were replaying in variations.

The New Yorker article is written with Sacks' trademark sensitivity and wonder, and is a engrossing exploration of music and memory.

It comes shortly before the release of his new book Musicophilia, of which there is a short audio excerpt on the bottom of the book's webpage.

Link to New Yorker article 'Music and amnesia'.

—Vaughan.

September 17, 2007

The most unaccountable of machinery:

"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery — always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?"

English novelist Virginia Woolf, writing in a December 28, 1932, letter.

Woolf was one of the most brilliant writers of her generation and a significant influence on the modernist movement of the time.

She also suffered from profound depressions and eventually committed suicide at the age of 59 rather than suffer another mental breakdown.

A recent article in the journal PsyArt examined the work of Woolf and the American poet Sylvia Plath in light of what we now know about the factors that influence the likelihood of suicide.

Link to Wikipedia page on Virginia Woolf.
Link to 'Suicidal Risk Factors in Lives of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath'.

—Vaughan.

Lucid dreaming in art and science:

The New York Times has a short article on the recent upsurge of interest in both the arts and sciences on lucid dreaming - a form of reflective self-awareness in which you realise you're dreaming when it occurs.

You can apparently train yourself to increase your chances of having a lucid dream, and proponents say that the self-awareness allows you to change your 'dream reality' at will.

Unfortunately, it's jolly hard to study scientifically, because its rare, unpredictable and you can't signal when it occurs.

This means its hard even to make simple correlations between lucid dreaming and measures of brain activity.

Although occasional studies have attempted to study it in 'proficient' lucid dreamers, it's also been used as the basis for a philosophical analysis of what it tells us about different types of consciousness.

We normally assume we're unconscious during sleep, yet lucid dreaming suggests that while we have reflective self-consciousness (usually considered the 'highest form' of consciousness), we don't experience the 'lower' form of perceptual conscious awareness to the same degree.

Apparently, The Good Night, a film shortly to appear in cinemas, has lucid dreaming as its central theme. The trailer for the movie is available here as an embedded video.

Link to NYT article 'Living Your Dreams, in a Manner of Speaking'.

—Vaughan.

Classic video of split-brain patient online:

YouTube hosts a classic video of one of the famous 'split-brain' patients who had his corpus callosum surgically cut to treat otherwise untreatable epilepsy, effectively separating the two hemispheres of the brain.

This procedure is intended to stop seizures spreading across the brain and its effects were first studied in depth by Roger Sperry, who won a Nobel prize for his work demonstrating that the patients experienced, in certain situations, a sort of split consciousness.

Split-brain patients have been incredibly important in cognitive neuroscience, because the procedure prevents information travelling from one side of the cortex to the other.

The left-most and right-most areas of your vision go directly to the opposite hemisphere, and the same goes for touch information from your hands. Information from the left hand goes to your right hemisphere and vice versa.

In people who have an intact corpus callosum, the information is then communicated to the other hemisphere as well, so the whole brain has access. In split-brain patients, only one hemisphere has access.

Sperry worked with neuropsychologist Michael Gazzaniga who used this effect to demonstrate how each hemisphere could be specialised for different functions.

In the video, Gazzaniga runs Joe, a split-brain patient, through one of these experiments and demonstrates various interesting effects.

For example, it shows how Joe can read words that appear to the right because they get transmitted to the left hemisphere which is specialised for language.

However, Joe can't read words that appear to the left, because they get transmitted to the language-limited right hemisphere, but he can draw what the word describes with the appropriate hand, because the right hemisphere is specialised for spatial functions.

He can then look at his own picture, making the information available to the left hemisphere, and only then can he name it.

There have been many variations on these experiments that have demonstrated a number of curious effects about brain specialisation and consciousness, some of which are described in a Scientific American article by Gazzaniga.

One of the most interesting things is that the patients don't feel that their conscious mind is any different, but their split consciousness can be demonstrated experimentally, as shown in the video.

Link to split-brain video.
Link to copy of SciAm article 'The Split Brain Revisited'.

—Vaughan.

September 16, 2007

Lucky escape from crossbow brain injury :

A paper in the British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery reports on a remarkable case of a man who tried to commit suicide with a crossbow and shot an arrow through his neck into his brain. Thankfully he survived with seemingly little long-term impairment.

The arrow missed all major blood vessels and did not seem to seriously damage any crucial brain areas, although the gentleman lost some sight due to severing part of the optic nerve.

The case report reads:

A 25-year-old man, presented to the accident and emergency department, after having fired an 18-inch arrow with a metal point from a crossbow just beneath his chin in an attempt to kill himself.

He was known to be addicted to cocaine, was depressed, and had been feeling low for several months. He had tried to explain his state of mind to his girlfriend, and a month later he attempted suicide.

The entry point of the arrow was apparent through the anterior part of the neck, and close to the midline. There was no active bleeding. The arrow crossed the mouth and had passed behind the soft palate, which resulted in mechanical trismus and therefore a potentially difficult intubation.

Nasotracheal fibreoptic intubation [camera through the nose] was eventually completed. With the patient anaesthetised, plain radiographs and computed tomograms (CT) were taken urgently; these showed that the arrow had passed up through the brain, and the tip was protruding through a comminuted fracture of the skull vault.

In view of the location, and to assess soft tissue damage further, a magnetic resonance cerebral angiogram was taken, which showed the anatomy clearly, in particular no vascular injury.

The patient was therefore transferred to the nearest neurosurgical centre for definitive treatment. Under general anaesthesia and together with the maxillofacial surgeons, the arrow was withdrawn gently along the precise path of its insertion. This was followed by profuse bleeding from behind the soft palate and base of skull, which had been anticipated and was controlled by a post-nasal pack. No further intervention proved necessary.

His recovery was uneventful, but he lost the sight in his right eye as a result of damage to the right optic nerve. No other neurological deficit was documented. The patient was given psychiatric care for several months for further management of his depression, which had been the cause of his attempted suicide.

Link to PubMed entry for case report.

—Vaughan.

Harry Potter, migraines and the neuroscience of self:

A funny article in the medical journal Headache discusses Harry Potter's difficulties with what seems to be a recurrent migraine. This isn't the first time that Harry has turned up in the medical literature. In fact, he's made almost 20 appearances so far.

However, this is the first to consider his neurological problems in detail:

Harry Potter and the curse of headache.

Sheftell F, Steiner TJ, Thomas H.

Headache. 2007, Volume 47, Issue 6, p911-6.

Headache disorders are common in children and adolescents. Even young male Wizards are disabled by them. In this article we review Harry Potter's headaches as described in the biographical series by JK Rowling. Moreover, we attempt to classify them. Regrettably we are not privy to the Wizard system of classifying headache disorders and are therefore limited to the Muggle method, the International Classification of Headache Disorders, 2nd edition (ICHD-II; pdf). Harry's headaches are recurrent. Although conforming to a basic stereotype, and constant in location, throughout the 6 years of his adolescence so far described they have shown a tendency to progression. Later descriptions include a range of accompanying symptoms. Despite some quite unusual features, they meet all but one of the ICHD-II criteria for migraine, so allowing the diagnosis of 1.6 Probable migraine.

The young wizard also appeared in a recent fMRI study [pdf] that investigated which brain areas would be most active when children and adults thought about themselves compared to others.

In the study, participants were brain scanned while being shown short descriptions and were asked to indicate whether they best described themselves or someone else.

One difficulty is that the 'someone else' needs to be well known to both children and adults, so Harry Potter was chosen.

In the final study, when participants judged that the phrase described themself, rather than Harry, the medial (midline) part of the frontal lobes were relatively more active.

Interestingly, this area was significantly more active in children than adults, possibly suggesting that this task requires more effort for children and becomes easier as we age.

Link to PubMed entry for Harry Potter headache article.
Link to abstract of self vs other study.
pdf of self vs other study.

—Vaughan.

September 15, 2007

Brain stem may be key to consciousness:

An article in this week's Science News discusses whether the brain stem may play a more central role in consciousness than it's usually given credit for.

It focuses on children with hydranencephaly, a where the cortex fails to develop in children and instead, the space is filled with cerebral spinal fluid.

Typically, affected children survive only a few months after birth, but those that do survive seem to remarkably more conscious than you would guess based on theories that suggest the cortex is where all the action happens to support consciousness.

Swedish neuroscientist Bjorn Merker wrote an article [pdf] in February's Behavioural and Brain Sciences journal arguing that these cases suggest we need to rethink our ideas about how the brain supports conscious thought, and perhaps, even consciousness itself.

Merker argues that the brain stem supports an elementary form of conscious thought in kids with hydranencephaly. It also contains auditory structures capable of preserving hearing in someone without a cortex. In contrast, optic nerve damage in hydranencephaly frequently impairs vision, regardless of what the brain stem does.

Self-awareness and other "higher" forms of thought may require cortical contributions. But Merker posits that "primary consciousness," which he regards as an ability to integrate sensations from the environment with one's immediate goals and feelings in order to guide behavior, springs from the brain stem.

If he's right, virtually all vertebrates—which share a similar brain stem design—belong to the "primary consciousness" club. Moreover, medical definitions of brain death as a lack of cortical activity would face a serious challenge. At the very least, physicians could no longer assume that individuals with hydranencephaly don't need pain medication or anesthesia during invasive medical procedures.

Link to Science News article 'Consciousness in the Raw'.
pdf of BBS article 'Consciousness without a cerebral cortex'.

—Vaughan.

September 14, 2007

2007-09-14 Spike activity:

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

Female drug reps turn up surprisingly often as contestants on reality TV. Likely due to the fact that pharma companies make a point of hiring persuasively beautiful young women, such as cheerleaders and beauty queens.

Review of Pinker's new book slams 'The Edifice of Pinkerism'. What a great name for a metal band!

BBC News reports on a randomised controlled trial that found that common food additives increase levels of hyperactivity in children.

Also from BBC News, depression associated with worse overall health.

The New York Times looks at some recent studies which show shown a small but significant link between the reduction in antidepressant prescribing and increase in youth suicide. Other data is more mixed, however.

Yahoo! News has a remarkably in-depth article on the difficulties of US soldiers returning home with brain injuries.

The Wilson Quarterly has a review of 'Second Nature: Brain Science and Human ­Knowledge' by neurobiologist Gerald M. Edelman.

Delusional social networkers: A study I did a while ago gets picked up by Three Toed Sloth.

The Menstrual Joy Questionnaire: The Guardian takes a look at one of the more curious corners of psychology research.

SciAm Mind Matters discusses 'Saying no to yourself: the neural mechanisms of self-control'.

Interesting reading pattern discovered: When reading, each eye is focused on a different letter for approximately 50% of the time.

The LA Times has more on Elyn Saks, a successful law professor who lives with schizophrenia.

Scientists Spot Brain's 'Free Willy' Center. Just the title made me laugh out loud. More from Neurocritic on the neuroscience of free will.

The technique is new, but the finding isn't: 3D face scans show distinctive facial structure for certain genetic syndromes. Media mangle the science, scientist loses his rag.

AddictionInfo has a section of articles on the history of the 'disease model' of addiction.

ScienceDaily with the rather optimistic headline 'brain network related to intelligence identified'.

Brief description of Capgras Syndrome in the NYT. Contrary to the author's surprise it's actually fairly common in older people with dementia and psychosis.

PsychCentral lists the Top 10 bipolar blogs.

Charity Autism Speaks created the traumatic 'Autism Every Day' advert. Some people with autism reply with the sardonic 'Neurotypicalism Every Day' video.

—Vaughan.

September 13, 2007

Would you go to bed with me?:

A new book on unusual experiments covers a study by psychologist Russell Clark that involved good-looking researchers approaching strangers of the opposite sex and telling them that they had seen them around and found them very attractive. Then they either asked them for a date, to come back to the researcher's apartment, or to go to bed with them.

If this seems strangely familiar, it's because the main set up line for the study ("I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be attractive. Would you go to bed with me tonight?") was used almost verbatim for the main hook of the pop song 'Would you...?' by Touch and Go.

If you don't recognise the name, you'll almost certainly recognise the song, as it was a huge hit in '98 and has been used almost constantly since for adverts, television and radio.

The original video doesn't seem to be available online, but there's a quirky version on YouTube where some Belgian students have created their own video.

It is, as far as I know, the only pop song with lyrics based on the protocol for a psychology experiment.

The results of the study? As if you had to ask, almost all the men said yes, none of the women did.

It doesn't even come close to the greatest psychology study ever completed though, which also involved beautiful women, sex and danger. But that'll have to wait for another time.

Link to abstract of study.
Link to brief write-up (via BB).
Link to fan tribute to Touch and Go's 'Would you...?'

—Vaughan.

Moral psychology and religious mistakes:

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written a thought-provoking essay for Edge which charts the recent revolution in the psychology and neuroscience of moral reasoning and suggests that the current critiques of religion have mischaracterised its true nature, based on these new findings.

Haidt summarises the main tenants of the new science of morality as four main principles:

1) Intuitive primacy but not dictatorship. This is the idea, going back to Wilhelm Wundt and channeled through Robert Zajonc and John Bargh, that the mind is driven by constant flashes of affect in response to everything we see and hear.

2) Moral thinking is for social doing. This is a play on William James' pragmatist dictum that thinking is for doing, updated by newer work on Machiavellian intelligence. The basic idea is that we did not evolve language and reasoning because they helped us to find truth; we evolved these skills because they were useful to their bearers, and among their greatest benefits were reputation management and manipulation.

3) Morality binds and builds. This is the idea stated most forcefully by Emile Durkheim that morality is a set of constraints that binds people together into an emergent collective entity.

4) Morality is about more than harm and fairness. In moral psychology and moral philosophy, morality is almost always about how people treat each other. Here's an influential definition from the Berkeley psychologist Elliot Turiel: morality refers to "prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other."

The essay then goes on to discuss how the recent findings in then area apply to the ongoing debate between the 'new atheists' (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and the like) and religion.

In particular, Haidt suggests that the recent criticisms of religion don't always reflect the best psychological understanding of what are primarily social, rather than ideological, institutions, and notes research findings showing that religious people tend to be happier and more altruistic than others.

As a self-professed non-believer and high-profile social psychologist, Haidt makes some interesting points that are bound to cause controversy.

Link to essay 'Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of religion'.

—Vaughan.

The remarkable Princess Alice:

I've just discovered the remarkable life of Princess Alice of Battenberg, who was Prince Philip's mother, the current Queen's mother-in-law.

She was deaf from birth, dedicated her life to charity work and nursing, became psychotic, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent two years in a psychiatric hospital, founded an order of nuns, and was declared one of the 'Righteous among the Nations' for risking her life by hiding a Jewish family from the Gestapo when Greece was occupied.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography she was treated by the psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger, one of the founders of existential psychology.

Apparently, she was a patient in the same hospital as Vaslav Nijinsky, the legendary ballet dancer and choreographer who succumbed to schizophrenia in his 20s.

Ludwig's uncle, Otto Binswanger was also a psychiatrist of some note, after whom Binswangers disease, a type of subcortical dementia, is named.

Link to Wikipedia biography of Princess Alice.

—Vaughan.

September 12, 2007

Bart Kosko on noise and optimisation:

Neural network and 'fuzzy thinking' researcher Bart Kosko is briefly interviewed in this month's Wired where he argues that adding noise to a system, including the human one, may improve performance.

It reminded me of part of a colourful interview he did for the 1998 book Talking Nets: An Oral History of Neural Networks - a wonderful collection of personal memories from key scientists in artificial intelligence.

I like to ask researchers where they get their ideas. The only answer I've heard that makes sense is, "You vary your input if you want to vary your output." Do lots of things. If you've gotta take drugs, take drugs. Take long walks, meditate, watch a lot of movies, learn a new language, read different books, argue the other side of the debate - anything you can to vary your stimuli.

And then you have to, as they say, "keep the ass in the seat." You actually have to sit down and write. Do it in a disciplined way. I think if people have a certain minimal training in mathematics, the problem will take care of itself because neural networks are inherently interesting, and I believe they will stay interesting well into the next century.

The rest of Kosko's Talking Nets interview covers topics as diverse as libertarian politics, cognitive maps, God, the mathematics of fuzzy systems, the economics of marijuana, organising neural network conferences and cryogenic nanobots.

Link to brief Kosko interview in Wired.
Link to Talking Nets book details.

UPDATE: Thanks to Daniel for finding the full Talking Nets interview on Google Books. You can read it here.

—Vaughan.

PsychAntenna switches on:

PsychAntenna is a database of RSS feeds from psychology and neuroscience resources from all over the internet so you can search and gather sites news to create your own custom news channel.

It includes a wide selection of news websites, but also indexes podcasts, academic journals and blogs.

The site has been created by Australian psychologist Dr Gareth Furber - the same person behind the popular PsychSplash website.

Link to PsychAntenna.

—Vaughan.

Learn first aid for psychosis:

This post tells you to how to help someone who is experiencing psychosis, based on first aid guidelines that have just been published in the medical journal Schizophrenia Bulletin

Psychosis is a mental state where someone might experience hallucinations, unusual beliefs, paranoia, mixed emotions, muddled thoughts, hyper-awareness or show unusual or puzzling behaviour.

The guidelines have been drawn from an international committee of professionals, patients and carers. The detailed points are in table 1 of the paper which is available online as a pdf file.

If you want additional mental health first aid information, there's more on a dedicated website.

Recognising and acknowledging psychosis

Psychosis is the mental state where someone might experience hallucinations, unusual beliefs, paranoia, mixed emotions, muddled thoughts, hyper-awareness or show unusual or puzzling behaviour. If someone seems distressed or impaired by their experiences, even if they're quite subtle at first, it's best not to ignore them and hope they'll go away. It's good to give the person the opportunity to discuss the situation.

Approaching someone who might be experiencing psychosis

People experiencing the early stages of psychosis may be worried, and may be concerned about discussing their experiences because of what others might think. Also, the experiences might be frightening in themselves.

The key is to be caring, gentle and non-judgemental. Find somewhere where they can talk safely and that's free of distractions. Say why you're worried about them, but avoid talk of mental illness or diagnoses - you could be wrong and it might just make them more frightened. Don't force a conversation if it's not wanted and don't touch them without permission.

Ask the person what will help them feel safe and in control, and allow them to talk about their experiences at their own pace, even if they seem quite unusual to you. Let them know that help is available, and if they don't want to talk, they're welcome to talk at a later time.

Giving support

It's important to respect the person's beliefs, even if you don't agree. Someone who is experiencing psychosis might find it hard to distinguish what's real from what's not, so telling people that they're wrong rarely helps. However, it's always possible to empathise with whatever emotions are stirred up by the experience and this can be very comforting.

Avoid criticising or blaming the person. They may be talking or behaving differently because of their experiences. Although the person might be having some odd experiences and difficulty focusing, their intelligence is unlikely to be affected, so you can talk to them as any other adult. However, sarcasm might be misunderstood by someone who is very suspicious, so should be avoided. Be honest, and don't make promises you can't keep.

Dealing with delusions and hallucinations

Delusions (false beliefs) and hallucinations (false experiences) will probably seem real to the person. Avoid denying, dismissing, laughing at, or arguing about their perceived reality. Try not to be alarmed, horrified or embarrassed about any unusual ideas or paranoia.

Dealing with communication difficulties

People with psychosis are often unable to think clearly. Speaking at your normal pace is fine and usually you will be understood perfectly well, but you may need to give the person extra time to absorb and respond to what you say, and you may need to repeat anything they haven't been able to focus on. The person may seem to show little emotional reaction - but be aware that they may well be feeling strong emotions inside.

Discussing whether to seek professional help

Ask the person if they've felt this way before and, if so, what helped then. Find out what sort of assistance the person thinks will help them this time. If the person has supportive family or friends, encourage the person to contact them. The person might need practical or emotional support when using mental health services, and if the person lacks confidence in the medical advice they've received, encourage them to get a second opinion.

What to do if the person doesn't want help

Some people with psychosis don't realise there's anything wrong, even when they're quite distressed or impaired, and may actively resist encouragement to get help. However, many people understand what's happening and have a right to refuse help. Threatening the person with hospitalisation or mental health law is likely to make matters worse.

If you're worried about someone you should encourage them to talk to people they trust or get a medical check-up. You may need to be patient, and remain friendly and open to the possibility that the person will seek help in the future as some people will need some time to feel comfortable with the idea.

What to do in a crisis when the person is very unwell

Try to remain as calm as possible, talking in a normal tone of voice and answer any questions the person might have. Your aim is to make the person feel more comfortable and calm the situation.

Try and evaluate whether the person is at risk of being harmed, harming themselves, or is suicidal. If you think this is the case, call for medical assistance immediately. If the situation seems risky, check how to leave and keep yourself safe.

If you need to call medical assistance, make sure they know the seriousness of the situation by describing specific observations about the person. If new people arrive, explain who they are, that they they're here to help, and how they're going to assist.

Find out if there's anyone the person can contact who they trust and might be able to help. If you can help with any requests that aren't unsafe or unreasonable, it might help the person feel in control.

What to do if the person becomes aggressive

It is very rare that people with even severe psychosis become aggressive. They are much more likely to be a risk to themselves.

However, people who are extremely suspicious, feel persecuted or are worried about their own safety may be jumpy or feel 'on edge'. The best response is to make the person feel safe and calm. A good way is to lead the way by acting in a calm, reassuring, non-challenging manner. Try to avoid doing anything that might look 'shifty' or suspicious or avoid restricting the person's movement.

Take any threats or warnings seriously. If you are frightened or worried about your own safety leave and call for help. If you call the police, describe any symptoms and immediate concerns and tell them if the person is armed. If possible, explain that you've called help to get medical treatment and because you're worried about their aggressive behaviour.

—Vaughan.

September 11, 2007

The perpetual duel with external forces:

To know the brain...is equivalent to ascertaining the material course of thought and will, to discovering the intimate history of life in its perpetual duel with external forces.

A quote from pioneering Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramon y Cajal. From his autobiography Recollections of My Life.

—Vaughan.

Brain type responsible for politics, pant wetting:

It's often said that politicians need their head examined, but contrary to recent reports, you're likely to find out more about whether they wear a hair piece than whether their brains 'dictate' their politics.

The fact that there is a brain difference between people with left-wing and right-wing views is hardly news. Because every view we have is supported by the brain, by definition they'll be a difference somewhere - just as there's a brain difference between people who prefer London to Paris, strawberry to vanilla, or Britney to Christina.

What is interesting about this new study, is that the researchers have found a difference in the ability to inhibit habitual responses in a 'detect a letter' task which was linked to brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex or ACC - a deep mid-line area in the frontal lobes.

Activity in this area correlates with 'conflict monitoring' - the ability to detect a conflict between completing mental demands.

It forms part of the brain's cognitive control and self-regulation system and when it is triggered, the ACC calls in reinforcements to focus attention - in the form of the upper surface areas of the frontal lobes.

Some cases of people with damage to the ACC seem to have perfectly fine conflict monitoring, so it's not certain that it's a clear link, but the evidence increasingly points that way.

So the study found that conservatives showed less ACC activation and were more likely to respond when they weren't supposed to - in other words, were more habitual in their responding.

Cue media pantwetting about brain types 'dictating' politics, conservatives being 'rigid' and liberals being more 'flexible'.

Most of this is over-interpretation and, needless to say, the study only reports an association, so it's just as likely that preferring conservative politics leads to more habitual responding.

Cognitive Daily have a great analysis of the study and I really recommend it if you want to avoid the hype and actually see what's genuinely interesting about it.

It's one of their wonderfully clear explanations and has a demo you can try yourself. Importantly, their pants stay dry throughout.

Link to abstract of scientific study.
Link to fantastic Cognitive Daily analysis.

—Vaughan.

The awesome power of MRI safety videos:

Someone's uploaded a video which serves both as an important teaching aid for MRI brain scanner safety and a wonderfully entertaining guide to the destructive power of a magnet the size of a small car.

The video itself is a a little bit old, and so has a sort of B-movie quality to it, but which makes it all the more fun.

However, it contains the classic sequence, part of virtually every MRI safety video, where technicians release a steel wrench near the magnet, which then flies through the air and obliterates a number of destructible objects in its path.

The magnetic field is designed to focus on a very specific area, and that's where your head is placed when you're scanned.

Any ferrous metals in the room will be drawn towards the centre of the field, probably at speed, which can be quite unfortunate if your head is occupying the same position.

We collected some nice examples of objects stuck in scanners earlier in the year, including chairs, oxygen bottles, and other assorted medical equipment.

If you want to see the sort of force generated by a steel oxygen bottle heading towards the centre of an MR magnet, there's a short (and somewhat frightening) video on YouTube of some brave MRI technicians demonstrating the effect.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened in one tragic case where a six-year-old boy was killed. The incident is now also a standard part of MRI safety training.

However, the danger isn't only from the 'missile effect'. Additionally, elongated ferrous objects will try to align with the magnetic field. This is a problem if you have metal implants in your body.

For example, brain surgery to prevent aneurysms (strokes) often involves putting a small metal clip over the blood vessel to clamp it shut, to prevent blood flowing to the burst or weakened area. Nowadays, these clips are not ferrous, so aren't a problem, but older ones might be affected by magnets.

Having a ferrous metal clip suddenly move inside your head can be disastrous, as it has the potential to shear the blood vessel, causing internal bleeding.

The video also talks about other sorts of possible MR hazards, largely involving the liquid helium and nitrogen boiling off and freezing, poisoning or pressurising the surroundings.

An explosion of an MRI magnetic when the gasses boiled off too quickly was caught on video by a TV news crew which creates quite a spectacular effect.

However, do bear in mind that these incidents are few and far between. Having an MRI is significantly safer than crossing the road.

If you go for an MRI scan, you'll likely be interviewed and / or examined to make sure you have no metal in your body, and you'll have all metal removed from you.

If you want to try, you can volunteer for brain scanning experiments where you'll usually get a small payment and a picture of your brain - contact your local university or teaching hospital.

Link to B-movie style MRI safety video.
Link to video clip of oxygen bottle flying towards MRI scanner.
Link to MRI explosion video.
Link to previous Mind Hacks post on things stuck in scanners.

—Vaughan.

September 10, 2007

BBC sexual behaviour series begins:

BBC Radio 4 is running a special season on sexuality that will cover everything from the history cultural views on sex to the medical aspects of sexual dysfunction.

The season spans a number of the BBC's regular programmes over the next two weeks and has a remarkably wide remit.

Programmes tackle social issues, behaviour and medical aspects of sex - for example, looking at the history of how attitudes to homosexuality have altered, how sexuality has been depicted in art and what can be considered 'normal', among many others.

By the looks of it, all the programmes should be available online after they've been broadcast.

It looks like a really well put-together season and should make for some interesting listening.

Link to BBC Radio 4 'The Sex Lives of Us' page (via Dr Petra).

—Vaughan.

Encephalon 31 pitches up:

Psychology and neuroscience carnival, Encephalon, has just been posted online by Dr Deborah Serani and contains some of the best in the last fortnight's mind and brain writing.

A couple of my favourites include a piece on the possible natural selection of genes that increase risk for schizophrenia and an excellent analysis of the popular but simplistic 'triune brain theory' (it is responsible for the overused and largely meaningless phrase 'reptilian brain').

Whenever I hear something like "every time you get aggressive, your reptilian brain kicks in", I think to myself, "that's weird, I don't own any reptiles".

There's many more insightful articles in edition 31, so have a browse and see what catches your interest.

Link to Encephalon 31.

—Vaughan.

The changing face of psychoanalysis:

The New York Times has an article on the changing fortunes of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and why psychoanalysis is being increasingly marginalised in mental health.

Psychoanalysis, the name for both the theory practice of psychological treatment developed by Freud, was once the driving force behind American psychiatry and the only game in town as far as psychological treatment was concerned.

It is now becoming increasingly marginalised, thought of as a bit eccentric, and overtaken by newer cognitive therapies. Some of the reasons for this are undoubtedly to do with the culture of psychoanalysis itself.

A major historical factor has been the long and contentious history of the movement, which has been subject to constant splits, disagreements and factional in-fighting.

Part of the reason for this, perhaps more than for other therapies, is that psychoanalysis involves a much closer relationship between theory and practice.

In this framework, mental illnesses arise from unresolved emotional conflicts that the mind tries to handle by various psychological defences. These defences may fail, or they may be counter-productive in the long-term, supposedly leading to the symptoms of mental disorder.

The goal of psychoanalysis is not necessarily to reduce the symptoms but to resolve the inner conflicts (Freud famously said he wanted to transform "neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness").

So, what tells you when the patient is improved? Why psychoanalytic theory of course.

And if you come up with a new theory of a disorder, you are, by definition, suggesting a new form of treatment, and often, new criteria for therapeutic success.

You also might be suggesting that your colleagues' practice is wrong - hence the infighting and divisions.

In contrast, most other forms of treatment (including drugs and other psychological therapies) rely on descriptive measures of symptom improvement that form of the benchmark of psychiatric outcome studies, so theory and practice are much less intertwined.

Analysts will argue that these other treatments only deal with the surface symptoms and don't deal with the 'deeper concerns', but the same issue arises - what constitutes 'deep' in this context is psychoanalytic theory.

In contrast, the development of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) has seen an opposite pattern. If new innovations work, they are typically re-included under the same CBT banner - giving the impression of a single unified therapy, when in fact, the boundaries are quite loose and determined by what has been shown to be effective in studies.

One of the other quirks of psychoanalysis, is that it's selective for people who are quite wealthy.

Training as a psychoanalyst takes up to seven years, and requires you are in therapy yourself, usually for five times a week, at a cost of up to £100 ($200) a session. This comes on top of the cost of the training course itself.

For patients, therapy can also take years, and while most analysts will have discounts for the less well off, the costs can be significant. So despite some notable exceptions, it's mostly the wealthy treating the wealthy - a curious enclave of the upper middle classes.

These factors also mean it's very difficult to subject psychoanalysis to randomised controlled trials, because it's so unlike anything else. This has made a new generation of clinicians, brought up with the mantra of 'evidence based medicine', suspicious of it.

With great reluctance in some quarters, the principles of psychoanalysis have been shoehorned into a number of briefer versions: psychoanalytic psychotherapy, transference-focused psychotherapy and so on.

Interestingly, symptom outcome studies have found that these can be quite effective, particularly it seems for 'personality disorders' - a group of fairly ill defined diagnoses, but which typically involves destructive mood and relationship problems.

Despite the eccentricities and circular reasoning involved in some aspects of psychoanalysis, 100 years of practice has led to some important insights.

However, only recently has research started to pull out the wheat from the chaff in terms of how it can be applied to the demands of 21st century mental health care.

Link to NYT article 'Patching Up the Frayed Couch'.
Link to AJP editorial on treatment of borderline personality disorder.

—Vaughan.

September 09, 2007

Fractals from the brain:

Neurophilosophy has found a series of simply beautiful images created by using the electrical activity of the brain to seed fractal patterns.

They're generated by BrainPaint, a custom system for neurofeedback - a technique in which a person connected to an EEG machine sees the output of their brain visualised in real-time.

This allows people to see the result of modifying mental states that might otherwise be difficult to monitor internally.

For example, the system might be tuned to show a specific pattern when a peak alpha frequency is reached - reported to correlate positively with cognitive performance.

The user can then practice making this pattern appear more often, as the system allows them to see when they're being successful, where previously it might not apparent.

BrainPaint is a neurofeedback system created by researcher Bill Scott who seemed to have come up with the idea of making the feedback appear as beautiful images.

Neurofeedback is being used quite widely outside the mainstream and currently crosses the threshold between a fringe practice and a scientifically validated therapy.

Certainly, there are now a growing number of scientific studies which have demonstrated its modest but reliable effectiveness in some disorders.

However, its not difficult to find neurofeedback therapists on the fringes of the mainstream who claim amazing effects that aren't supported by the research.

If you want to know more about the science of neurofeedback, Scientific American published an article about it last year.

Link to BrainPaint gallery (via Neurophilosophy).
Link to SciAm article 'Train the Brain'.

—Vaughan.

September 08, 2007

Osama Bin Language Acquistion:

Silent for three years, Osama Bin Laden just released a video tape in which he name drops academic Noam Chomsky, suggesting that while in hiding, he's become familiar with the American researcher's extensive work.

Exclusively, Mind Hacks publishes a deleted section from an earlier draft of Bin Laden's latest speech that lays out his demands for the science of linguistics:

People of America: while the cognitive revolution started within your own shores and changed the face of the world, it seems the lessons of the destruction of behaviourism have not been learnt.

Through the careful analysis of Chomsky, it was clear that language could not be entirely accounted for by the influence of environment and culture on a general learning mechanism. While some heeded the messages, some of your brethren remained unconvinced.

Now that the spector of connectionism has raised its ugly head and has been inappropriately glorified by the power of technological corporations, our understanding of the role of transformational grammars in language development is threatened.

And I tell you, artificial intelligence is a false god that provides correlative and not causal models of language acquisition. The infallible methodologies are the comparative study of world languages and lesion analyses of those who must be treated with mercy owing to their acquired dysphasias.

Those who stray from the path will be doomed to repeated the errors of the empty vessels of strict behaviourism and the Standard Social Science Model. Every just and intelligent one of you who reflect on this will be guided to the truth.

Rumours that Steven Pinker has been taken in for questioning have not been verified.

—Vaughan.

September 07, 2007

Ethics, power and faustian pacts:

Renowned psychologist Dr Mary Pipher has handed back her American Psychological Association presidential award in protest at the organisation's refusal to ban participation in US military interrogations which some deem to be torture under the Geneva Convention.

However, the whole issue of psychologists participation in government interrogations shadows a significant, but little mentioned, change in the status of psychologists in the medical establishment.

Fifty years ago, clinical psychologists were little more than test technicians who provided information for psychiatrists to interpret.

During the last decade, clinical psychology training has become equally, if not more, arduous than medical training, and psychological interventions have been shown to be highly effective.

Consequently, psychologists are now being considered on a par with physicians in many organisations. For example, psychologist-led mental health and brain-injury teams are increasingly common.

This change in status is being increasingly reflected in the law. In the UK's 2005 Capacity Act, psychologists are now able to sign assessments concerning someone's mental competence to make a contested decision, something that was previously reserved for medical doctors.

The recently approved UK Mental Health Bill is likely to allow psychologists, rather than just psychiatrists, to take a lead in 'sectioning' people - i.e. detaining them if they're deemed a risk to themselves or others owing to mental illness.

In the the US military, and in some US states, psychologists are now able to prescribe medication, previously the sole domain of physicians, and the APA is pushing for the extension of these rights.

Not all psychologists are of a same mind on these issues, and many see these changes as much as a 'poison chalice' as as benefit.

In many ways, psychologists and psychiatrists are a 'good cop, bad cop' double act in mental health. Psychiatrists can forcibly drug and detain people, while psychologists can tut and scowl with the patient and continue to work collaboratively to improve their mental state.

Of course, patients may be a lot less willing to work with psychologists if they've played a role in their detention or forcible medication.

Internal debates aside, the fact that the US Government is quite happy to rely on psychologists, rather than physicians, for their interrogation practices is testament to a general change in status.

Contentious issues concerning a potent mix of economics, ethics and power balance shifts are common for physicians, who are used to governments wanting to give or take responsibilities away from them to suit their political agenda or latest reform plan.

In contrast, these sorts of ethical dilemmas are relatively new for psychologists.

What makes this an interesting time, is that psychology is in a transition period where lots of legal changes are being made to solidify their responsibilities.

This makes the profession much more susceptible to influence by government, and it will be interesting to see how these issues play out, of which the debate over military interrogations is perhaps only an early skirmish.

Link to interview with Dr Mary Pipher.

—Vaughan.

Autistic children immune to contagious yawns:

The BPS Research Digest reports that children with autism are seemingly 'immune' to contagious yawning - perhaps as a result of their reduced social awareness.

Yawning is mysterious: no-one really knows why we do it, but we do know it's reliably 'contagious'.

Seeing someone yawn, or indeed, just thinking about someone else yawning, makes us more likely to do the same. For example, this article may well be enough to trigger a yawn in some people.

One of the three key aspects of autism is a difficulty with social interaction (the other two being difficulties with certain types of abstract thinking and a restricted or repetitive range of interests or behaviours).

So a group of researchers, led by psychologist Dr. Atsushi Senju, wondered whether children with autism might be less susceptible to yawn contagion.

They came up with the 'I wish I'd thought of that' idea of showing videos of people yawning to groups of typically developing children, and children with a diagnosis of autism.

The study [pdf] showed that children with autism were far less likely to yawn in response to watching others do the same.

Often, autistic social difficulties are put down to a problem with 'theory of mind' the ability to understand other people's beliefs, intentions and desires, but it's not clear that contagious yawning relies on this.

The researchers don't have any easy answers for why yawn contagion is reduced in autism, but suggest, without committing, that known differences in viewing faces, possible differences in mirror neurons or problems with imitating others might be linked.

The BPSRD has a talent for picking up on previously obscure but striking studies, and this is another great example.

Link to BPSRD on autism and contagious yawning 'immunity'.
pdf of full-text of scientific paper.

—Vaughan.

2007-09-07 Spike activity:

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

ADHD is so last season: 4000% increase in US 'child bipolar' diagnosis.

BBC Radio 4's science programme The Material World spends a week with students at the psychology summer school.

Science News lists caffeine levels in almost all the popular soft drinks.

I've been digging Deric Bownd's MindBlog recently. You should too.

An article in The New York Times reports that a new schizophrenia drug that targets glutamate, rather than the traditional dopamine, shows promise in early trials.

Philosopher Colin McGinn, champion of the New Mysterian school of consciousness (aka the Private James Frazer approach) has a blog.

PsyBlog examines a fascinating study which examined the writing of poets who later killed themselves to get an insight into suicide.

Yet another speed dating study. This one suggests that men select every woman above an obtainable attractiveness threshold, women look for indicators of long-term security.

Science News tackles the effectiveness of school violence prevention programmes.

The BPS Research Digest discovers free full-text access to Sage neuroscience journals.

NPR Radio have a short segment on a recent brain scanning study of the placebo effect.

Time magazine reports that sleep deprivation in early life may lead to future behavioral and cognitive problems.

An article on social engineering tricks drug reps use to persuade doctors to use their drugs. Industry responds with 'other industries do the same' and 'we just present the facts' lines. Well, which is it?

—Vaughan.

September 06, 2007

Gambling on social hype:

There was a interesting segment on NPR Radio's Talk of the Nation the other week on the psychology of the stock market that discussed what the science of social behaviour can tell us about the causes of booms and busts.

The guest on the show was Michael Mauboussin, professor of finance and author of a recent book on the psychology of the markets.

There's a lot of talk about the wisdom, and indeed, folly, of crowds, particularly in light of the recent economic turmoil, but perhaps the show lacks a mention of Charles McKay's 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

McKay notes how the herd mentality can lead to financial crises because people get excited about obviously foolish investments, simply because of widespread social hype.

It's a classic in the literature that was not equalled until sociologist Robert Bartholomew examined the topic in more detail in a number of books, of which the wonderfully named Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics is undoubtedly my favourite.

Link to NPR on 'The Psychology of Stocks'.
Link to Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds info.

—Vaughan.

Too much, too young, too little, too late?:

Computer games may contribute to mental illness in children, but for adults they protect against cognitive decline, at least according to neuroscientist Susan Greenfield. However, the evidence for these claims is non-existent for the former, and only preliminary for the latter.

Baroness Greenfield has lent her name, and investment cash, to the 'brain training' game MindFit which was launched today in the UK.

It has apparently been shown in an as-yet-unpublished randomized controlled trial to boost cognitive function in senior citizens.

Interestingly, this time last year, Greenfield was a signatory to an open letter suggesting that "sedentary, screen based entertainment" was damaging to children's brain's because they "they cannot adjust – as full-grown adults can – to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change".

So what evidence is there that computer games are detrimental to children's minds, but beneficial to adults?

There is some evidence that violent media, including computer games, is associated with aggression in children, but none that computer games in general affect mental health or that children cannot adjust to rapid technological and cultural change.

Limited evidence suggests that cognitive training can help healthy older adults stay sharp, but there is no evidence on how it can effect mood or mental health.

So, on the basis of current evidence, or at least the lack of it, we could just as easily warn against the possible mental health implications of "sedentary, screen based entertainment" for seniors as for children.

In lieu of further evidence, I suspect the message that computer games are 'good for adults but bad for children' is based largely on common, but unsupported, social concerns about how technology is used: too much by children, not enough by seniors.

Link to BBC News story 'Mind games'.

—Vaughan.

Radio and the dormant brain:

A charming short article from the July 23, 1923 edition of Time magazine, about the supposedly receptive nature of the dormant brain.

Needless to say, sleeping radio operators were not adopted as the mainstay of the US Navy's communication system.

It is true, however, that during the hypnagogic state, the transition from wakefulness into sleep, the mind can make connections between seemingly unconnected perceptions, thoughts and ideas.

The accidental falling asleep, with the phones on his head, of a student in training for a job as radio operator in the U. S. Navy led to a discovery which will vastly shorten the process of manufacturing experts in wireless telegraphy. While the code and its translation were coming through the ether, the brain cells of the sleeping man, in a state of plastic receptivity, were absorbing the meaning of the dots and dashes and forming new associations. On waking, he was able to repeat accurately everything he had received in sleep. Psychologists say that such results are feasible because of the automatic, repetitive nature of the material conveyed to the dormant brain.

Navy officials immediately instituted tests of the method at Pensacola, Fla. Twelve students who were making unsatisfactory progress were tried out. After two nights, during which the code was sent to those students in sleep, ten had learned the lesson, and the other two had left the class before completion of the experiment. The instructors now report that " the experimental stage is past, and the method may now be termed a standard one."

Link to 1923 Time article 'Radio and Sleep'.

—Vaughan.

September 05, 2007

Infowar: strike early, strike often:

The Washington Post has a timely article about the psychology of believing news reports, even when they've been retracted - suggesting that if false information is presented early, it is more likely to be believed, while subsequent attempts to correct the information may, in fact, strengthen the false impression.

The article starts with results from a study [pdf] by psychologist Norbert Schwarz who looked at the effect of a government flier that attempted to correct myths about the flu vaccine by marking them 'true' or 'false'.

Unfortunately, the flier actually boosted people's belief in the false information, probably because we tend to think information is more likely to be true the more we hear it.

Negating a statement seems just to emphasise the initial point. The additional correction seems to get lost amid the noise.

One particularly pertinent study [pdf] not mentioned in the article, looked at the effect of retractions of false news reports made during the 2003 Iraq War on American, German and Australian participants.

For example, claims that Iraqi forces executed coalition prisoners of war after they surrendered were retracted the day after the claims were made.

The study found that the American participants' belief in the truth of an initial news report was not affected by knowledge of its subsequent retraction.

In contrast, knowing about a retraction was likely to significantly reduce belief in the initial report for Germans and Australians.

The researchers note that people are more likely to discount information if they are suspicious of the motives behind its dissemination.

The Americans rated themselves as more likely to agree with the official line that the war was to 'destroy weapons of mass destruction', whereas the Australian and German participants rated this as far less convincing.

This suggests that there may have been an element of 'motivated reasoning' in evaluating news reports.

Research has shown that this only occurs when there's sufficient information available to create a justification for the decision, even when the information is irrelevant to the main issue.

There's a wonderful example of this explained here, in relation to men's judgements about the safety of sex with HIV+ women of varying degrees of attractiveness.

So, if you want your propaganda to be effective get it in early, repeat it, give people reasons to be believe it (however irrelevant), and make yourself seem trustworthy.

As I'm sure these principles are already widely known among government and commercial PR departments, bear them in mind when evaluating public information.

Link to Washington Post article on the persistence of myths.
pdf of study 'Memory for Fact, Fiction, and Misinformation' in the Iraq war.
Link to info on motivated reasoning and example.

—Vaughan.

Psychiatrist denounces own ghostwritten article as 'crap':

The Carlat Psychiatry Blog contacted psychiatrist Prof C. Lindsay DeVane about an article on antidepressant drug interactions he apparently co-authored for the medical journal CNS Spectrums. In reply, DeVane noted that the article was ghost-written on behalf of a drug company and denounced it as "piece of commercial crap" and 'ridiculous', 'inaccurate' and 'simplistic'.

DeVane was apparently persuaded to take part in a round-table discussion on the interactions between antidepressant drugs, for which attendees could gain 'CME' or 'Continuing Medical Education' points, needed for doctors to demonstrate that they are keeping their skills and knowledge updated.

After the discussion, the a commercial medical education company i3CME, produced an article based on a video tape of the session with the participants names listed as authors.

Ghostwriting, the practice where drug companies or medical writing agencies create scientific articles to which established researchers add their names, still occurs, despite recent attempts to clamp down on it.

It relies on an academic system where researchers' careers depend on the number of publications, and on drug companies' need to boost the profile of their products by adding the names of high-profile scientists to the relevant research.

It's a big business, and there are a number of agencies that just specialise in writing scientific articles for commercial companies that later get handed to 'star' researchers for, at best, checking, and at worst, just signing.

In this case, it seems the article was written without DeVane's agreement, so it's refreshing to see someone disown it, rather than simply add it as another gold star to their CV.

Importantly, DeVane notes that his views on the topic had already been accurately and fairly represented in an earlier article [pdf] which he had personally authored.

The Carlat post has more details on the affair, including DeVane's own description of what occurred.

Link to further details (via Furious Seasons).

—Vaughan.

Sampling The Stuff of Thought :

3 Quarks Daily has an extended review of Steven Pinker's new book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature that highlights one of the many curiosities of the English language.

...what I'd like to try to do here is give you a flavor of the kinds of things the book is about by briefly explaining one of the many fascinating stories that Pinker tells about language and what it entails for "conceptual semantics"--the concepts and schemes that we use to think--indeed, the language of thought itself....

So now, if you heard someone say brush paint onto the fence you might guess that brush the fence with paint is also fine. So far so good. But now consider a different sentence: Hal poured water into the glass. It cannot be transformed in a similar manner: Hal poured the glass with water sounds immediately wrong to a normal speaker of English. Similarly, problems arise in the other direction with other verbs like fill: while the container-locative construction Bobby filled the glass with water is fine, the content-locative Bobby filled water into the glass is not grammatical English. Why?

As Pinker puts it, "How do children succeed in acquiring an infinite language when the rules they are tempted to postulate just get them into trouble by generating constructions that other speakers choke on? How do they figure out that certain verbs can't appear in perfectly good constructions?"

The review goes through Pinker's explanations for how we acquire the correct use of these aspects of language.

This example is one among many that raises the question of how children learn irregular parts of the language.

You might think that they just pick it up from hearing examples or from being corrected by parents, but it turns out that the examples too rarely occur for a complete demonstration of all these aspects and parents actually rarely correct every such mistake children make.

This situations are often where Pinker would argue for an innate 'language instinct' which can generate working language rules from limited experience.

You'll have to read the review or the book for a complete explanation of how this particular rule works out, but it seems, at least according to Pinker, that it's not just a matter of grammar - certain verbs imply certain physical possibilities and these meanings influence what seems grammatical.

And if you want to catch the author in person, Pinker is on tour at the moment, talking about his new book.

Link to review of The Stuff of Thought.
Link to Stuff of Thought lecture tour dates.

—Vaughan.

September 04, 2007

Psychiatrists are least religious medical speciality:

A just published study that looked at the religious beliefs of different types of medical doctors in the US has found that psychiatrists are the least religious among the medical specialities.

The study also found that non-psychiatrist physicians who were religious, were least likely to refer a patient with symptoms of mental illness to a psychologist or psychiatrist, and were more likely to refer them to a member of the clergy or religious counsellors.

There's also a few interesting facts about the demographics of US psychiatrists:

Compared with other physicians, psychiatrists were more likely to be Jewish (29% versus 13%) or without a religious affiliation (17% versus 10%), less likely to be Protestant (27% versus 39%) or Catholic (10% versus 22%), less likely to be religious in general, and more likely to consider themselves spiritual but not religious (33% versus 19%).

Perhaps the fact that psychiatrists are least likely to be religious is not surprising since they deal with lots of people who have experiences that they explain as neurological disturbance but which often appear as no different from what would otherwise be considered spiritual experiences.

For example, Joan of Arc had experiences which could be easily classified as auditory hallucinations, as did many saints, visionaries and prophets throughout history.

This is still a pertinent issue. In a classic 1997 paper psychiatrist Bill Fulford and psychologist Mike Jackson examined some written records of (admittedly intense and atypical) contemporary spiritual experiences and noted that they would fulfil the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia - except for the fact that they were of immense benefit to the people concerned.

More recently, psychologist Ryan McKay noted that current neuropsychiatric models of delusions would also include religious beliefs if they were considered under the same criteria [pdf] - although it could be said that this is just as likely to be a criticism of our scientific understanding of delusion as it is a consideration of spiritual belief.

However, it's probably true to say that spending a great deal of time explaining seemingly mystical experiences as the result of biomedical disturbance probably makes you a little more sceptical of some of the mystical experiences on which many mainstream religions are based.

Link to abstract of scientific study.
Link to write-up from Yahoo! News.

—Vaughan.

Mystery of Jackson's missing bust and lost music:

John Hughlings Jackson was one of 'fathers' of modern neurology and the picture on the right is of his bust, which resides in the Institute of Neurology library in London. However, it's actually a copy as the original went missing and its location is still something of a mystery.

The original was carved in marble in 1907 and graced the entrance to the Institute before being stolen by unknown thieves.

It was thought it was destroyed during the theft because broken marble was found in its place, but it was later spotted in the window of a North London home.

The home was owned by a neurologist who apparently bought the bust in a local antique shop for next to nothing, but when the Institute attempted to negotiate its return, the person refused all contact and its location is now a mystery.

Later, the legendary Canadian neurologist Wilder Penfield, a huge admirer of Jackson, had a bronze bust of Jackson created for the Montreal Neurological Institute which was installed in 1934.

This bust was gifted to London's Institute of Neurology in 1996 and is the one that now resides in their library.

However, an article commemorating the presentation, made a request that if anyone knows the location of the marble bust to get in touch with the Institute to solve the mystery.

The much loved original is presumably still out there somewhere, so keep a look out for a marble version of the current bronze.

As an aside, while searching the archives for material on John Hughlings Jackson, I found this snippet from a personal tribute printed in a Oct 27, 1934 article for The Lancet:

He had no particular taste for music and art in any form, he often admitted he could not distinguish the National Anthem from 'Rule Brittania'...

The fact he couldn't distinguish two common tunes suggests he had amusia, the inability to recognise and understand music.

The condition can be caused by brain damage but it is also known to be inherited, which is the more likely source of Jackson's misperception of music.

Link to article on Jackon's bust mystery.

—Vaughan.

September 03, 2007

Documentary on 1950s Soviet psychiatry:

Channel 4 have been putting a number of classic documentaries online, including an optimistic film by legendary American documentary maker Albert Maysles on Soviet psychiatry in 1950s Russia.

The film is interesting historically for a number of reasons, perhaps, most pertinently, because it presents a counter-example to the known abuses of Soviet psychiatry of the time. It is also a striking contrast to American psychiatry of the same period.

Apart from a few isolated examples, the department at Washington University being the most famous, American psychiatry was dominated by Freudians and a psychoanalytic approach to understanding mental illness.

This meant it was largely led by office-based psychiatrists who mostly eschewed biological and scientific approaches to treatment and who mainly treated depression and anxiety.

In contrast, the Maysles documentary notes that Russian psychiatry was largely based on a Pavlovian (behaviourist) approach to mental illness that put a significant emphasis on neuroscience (e.g. the image is of a Russian psychiatrist checking a child's Babinski reflex - a test of brain or spinal cord damage).

It was also heavily hospital-based, used drug treatments and was more likely to deal with people with schizophrenia and psychoses.

While the treatments themselves now look outmoded, it's notable that American psychiatry now much more closely matches the Russian model.

Psychoanalysis is now on the fringes and mainstream orthodox psychiatry is largely drug-based, while most practitioners are likely to think of themselves as, at least in part, 'applied neuroscientists'.

The film is also notable for being so positive about Soviet psychiatry when it was presumably deeply unfashionable, perhaps even career-limiting, for American film-makers to promote Russian initiatives.

Link to page and video link for Maysles film 'Psychiatry in Russia'.

—Vaughan.

RadioLab on the science of morality:

I've just discovered another episode of the excellent WNYC RadioLab - this one on the psychology and neuroscience of morality. It tackles everything from the development of moral reasoning as a child, to the neuroscience of ethical decision-making, to the psychology of prisons and solitary confinement.

If you've never heard RadioLab before, have a listen, not least because of the beautiful production. It often contains some wonderfully illustrative moments - something akin to the radio equivalent of the 'hip hop montage' film editing technique.

One segment looks at how researchers are attempting to tackle moral reasoning in the lab, something which is becoming an increasingly important research area - as demonstrated by the popularity of Marc Hauser's book Moral Minds.

This research, as well as observational studies on non-human primates, has suggested that some moral behaviour may inherited.

The idea that pro-social behaviour may be the result of evolution has led to the cover story in this week's New Scientist to pose the related question "If morality is hard-wired in the brain, what's the point of religion?'

Sadly, the article isn't open access (pro-social behaviour not being fully evolved in the NewSci offices) but it's an interesting review of some recent studies on the psychology of religion, with some speculative commentary on the possible evolutionary roles of spiritual faith:

Psychologists Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, found that by presenting people first with a word game unscrambling either religious or non-religious phrases, even atheists could be primed to be more generous to an anonymous partner by exposure to the religious words [pdf]...

So why do religious concepts provoke moral behaviour even in non-believers? It's because both religion and morality are evolutionary adaptations, says Jesse Bering, who heads the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University, Belfast, UK. Morality does not stem from religion, as is often argued, he suggests: they evolved separately, albeit in response to the same forces in our social environment. Once our ancestors acquired language and theory of mind - the ability to understand what others are thinking - news of any individual's reputation could spread far beyond their immediate group. Anyone with tendencies to behave pro-socially would then have been at an advantage, Bering says: "What we're concerned about in terms of our moral behaviour is what other people think about us." So morality became adaptive.

Link to RadioLab on the science of morality.

—Vaughan.

Law professor on life with schizophrenia:

Elyn Saks is a law professor at the University of Southern California and adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego. She's also been diagnosed with schizophrenia and has experienced some intense psychotic episodes.

She's just published a book about her experiences called 'The Center Cannot Hold' (ISBN 140130138X) and was the subject of a recent Newsweek article.

Saks also gave an interview to mental health blog Treatment Online where she recounts some of the insights she has gained through her experiences about herself, the mental health system, and the possibilities of living with a mental disorder.

How do you feel that we as a larger society can mitigate the belief - and we feel a lot of people believe this even though they claim not to or can rationally move beyond it - that mentally ill individuals are somehow broken or incomplete?

I guess one way would be having examples of people who have mental illnesses who are doing well. People hear of schizophrenia and they think someone is never going to be able to live independently and work, and then you have people like me who stand up and say, "No, it doesn't have to be that way." Some people say well aren't you unique, and I'm actually doing a study with folks at USC and UCLA on high-functioning individuals with schizophrenia. We've got an MD, we've got a Ph.D. psychologist, we've got some high-level consumer advocates, full-time students and stay at home parents. Just in LA in the past couple of months we've already recruited ten people, and we're going to try to hear their stories and find out if there are things they do to master their illness that we might teach to other people so other people could become higher functioning.

Link to Newsweek article.
Link to Treatment Online interview.
Link to excerpt from book 'The Center Cannot Hold'.

—Vaughan.

September 02, 2007

Moving time:

Please excuse the interruption... I'm doing a little site maintenance today and mindhacks.com is moving over to a new server.

Since you can see this message, you're looking at the new server which means the maintenance worked. If you notice anything broken around the place, please do let me know (matt at mindhacks dot com). Thanks!

—Matt.

Oxytocin and understanding other minds:

The Scientific American's Mind Matters has a special on whether key bonding hormone oxytocin boosts our ability to understand other people's beliefs, intentions and desires.

Oxytocin seems to play a role in bonding between mother and child, and between romantic couples.

The article discusses recent research that found that using an oxytocin nasal spray boosted participant's performance on a task that measured 'theory of mind' - the ability to infer other people's beliefs from their actions.

Like 'mirror neurons', oxytocin is something which is currently overhyped but still genuinely interesting.

The article is by psychologist Prof Jennifer Bartz and psychiatrist Prof Eric Hollander and discusses this new study, and some of the theories that attempt to explain how oxytocin has its effect:

Both our lab and the Domes lab have found that oxytocin facilitates the processing of social information gathered through at least two different sensory modalities -- that is, through both hearing and vision. This raises questions about just how oxytocin actually facilitates social cognition and theory of mind.

Previous research indicates that oxytocin plays a role in regulating stress and fear reactivity. Thus oxytocin may facilitate theory of mind by reducing the social anxiety that is inherent in many social encounters -- and which is felt keenly by many individuals with autism.

Another possibility is that oxytocin may increase motivation to attend to social cues by reinforcing social information processing.

Link to article 'The hormone that helps you read minds'.
Link to abstract of scientific study.

—Vaughan.

September 01, 2007

Mind and brain disorder encyclopedia now free online:

The Dana Guide to Brain Health is a fantastic book that contains a wealth of practical information about keeping your brain healthy, maintaining mental sharpness, and dealing with problems when they arise. Even better, the section on mind and brain disorders has now been made fully searchable and freely available on Dana's website.

In fact, the book is incredibly comprehensive, and in addition to discussing health and illness, covers how the brain develops, functions normally, interacts with the body, and supports social interaction, emotion and cognition.

However, its coverage of disorders is excellent. Each one described, and is accompanied by a review of what's currently known about the causes, diagnosis and treatment, so you know what to expect if you, a friend or relative need professional help.

It's written in a straightforward jargon-free way and is remarkably comprehensive. It covers everything from hearing problems to schizophrenia to the neurological complications of AIDS.

This is the section has now been made freely available and is searchable by topic or keyword. A truly valuable addition to online mind and brain resources.

Link to Dana brain health database.
Link to book details.

—Vaughan.