November 30, 2007

Lies, lesions and medical mysteries:

Hysteria, or conversion disorder as it is now known, is when neurological symptoms such as blindness or paralysis are present but no neurological problems or brain abnormalities can be found.

The issue of whether such patients are 'faking', whether the neurological abnormality just hasn't been found yet, or whether the problem is best understood in psychological terms, has been vexing clinicians for the best part of 200 years.

This is a fascinating quote from the introduction to Contemporary Approaches to Study of Hysteria (ISBN 019263254X) by Halligan, Bass and Marshall:

...how can we discover if someone is indeed faking it? (We use ordinary language here rather than the more obviously psychiatric terms such as factitious disorder and malingering: clarity and logic are best served by calling a spade a spade.) The simple but totally impractical solution would be 24-hour surveillance on audio- and video-tape unbeknownst to the patient. Anyone who behaved perfectly normally when alone but who invariably developed the 'disability' when in company might be plausibly thought to be feigning.

Short of this Big Brother solution, investigators have tried to devise catch-trials and catch-tests to detect the cheater. For example, it is sometimes assumed that a patient who 'guesses' a randomized stimulus sequence (touch, touch, no touch...) significantly below chance must be faking it.

But the existence of such phenomena such as blindsight, unfeeling touch, unconscious perception in visual-spatial neglect and priming in amnesia show how misleading it can be to assume that odd relationships between behaviour and verbal report necessarily constitute evidence of cheating.

We do not impinge on the honesty of patients who perform visual discriminations at above chance level while claiming to have seen nothing. Why should we perforce distrust those who score below chance? In short, the detection of lying in the neurology clinic is at least as difficult as it is in a court of law.

Link to book details.
Link to previous Mind Hacks article on hysteria.
Link to great NYT article on hysteria.

—Vaughan.

2007-11-30 Spike activity:

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

The Washington Post has an article on the ongoing trial using MDMA ('Ecstasy') assisted psychotherapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

Babies learn how to make social evaluations in the first few years of life, according to a new study reported by BBC News.

The Guardian has an article on combining a high-flying career with ongoing mental illness.

For men the brain activation in the ventral striatum is dependent not only on the size of reward, but also how it compares to other people's rewards.

Google in your brain? PageRank as a semantic memory model: Developing Intelligence examines an interesting view on memory for facts.

Is the beauty of a sculpture in the brain of the beholder? Stupid headline, interesting study.

A great post from Mixing Memory on a favourite experiment: research on schema (like mental frameworks) for memory.

Is the famous Christian poem 'Footprints' a case of cryptomnesia: the unconscious copying of another creative work? Rachel Aviv for the Poetry Foundation investigates.

Cognitive economics comes to the aid of football goalkeepers, via the BPS Research Digest.

The University of Virginia has a great 'Psychedelic Sixties' online exhibit.

Neurophilosophy finds a wonderful image generated from a supercomputer simulation of brain microcircuitry.

The Dana Foundation has an excerpt from Sandra and Matthew Blakesee's new book 'The Body Has a Mind of Its Own' available online.

Are rocks conscious? Arguing no is harder than you think, and the New York Times covers controversy.

Probably one of the most important emerging fields in biology is epigenetics. Corpus Callosum tackles a new study on the epigenetic transmission of PTSD risk markers.

—Vaughan.

November 29, 2007

Don't forget your brains:

Can you think of a substitute for this? Ohh no! Don't forget your brains!

I noticed this on the menu of a restaurant on Great Russell Street while strolling through London. It seems to be one of a number of curious commentaries on each of the menu items.

While presumably serving as a sort of disjointed advert, it also seems to work as general life advice.

—Vaughan.

Trippin':

I'm just reading a book called The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness which sounds like some stoned hippy opus, but is actually a wonderfully written travel book into the neuroscience of naturally occurring altered states of consciousness.

It was recommended to me by Tom, who got sent a copy to review, and was so enthusiastic about it, he sent it to me afterwards. And I'm very glad he did.

The author, Jeff Warren, wants to experience various altered states of consciousness that are described in the scientific literature, like the hypnagogic state - the hallucinatory period when dropping off, or lucid dreaming, when you're aware that you're dreaming, or hypnosis.

So he travels the world meeting researchers, taking part in experiments, trying things out on himself, and explaining the science along the way.

And this he does very well. He manages to capture some of the key debates in the literature, explain some tricky concepts, as well as introducing us to often curious and compelling characters who research these phenomena.

He skilfully compares the myths, claims and speculation with what is known from scientific studies, and what he managed to experience himself.

There's quite a large section of the book dedicated to sleep and dreaming, and if ever you thought sleeping was the uninteresting third of your life you spend unconscious, this is the book which will make you think again.

Just great fun, and, if you'll excuse the slightly awkward metaphor, wonderfully eye-opening as well.

In the meantime, if you want a quick fix on the science of dreaming, the Washington Post had a recent brief article that discussed the topic.

Link to book's website.
Link to Washington Post article 'Dream on...'

—Vaughan.

A subconsciousness raising exercise:

This week's New Scientist has a cover story on the psychology that goes on behind the scenes, in the subconscious.

Or you could call it the unconscious, or the pre-conscious. Despite the differences in terminology it's much the same idea. Essentially, it's the work the brain does that we're not conscious of.

Unfortunately, the article has a bit of an excruciating tag-line:

Subconscious thought processes may play a crucial role in many of the mental facilities we prize as uniquely human, including creativity, memory, learning and language.

Next week: Sea contains water! Don't be put off though, the article's actually a good guide to some of the latest theories on how information crosses the consciousness divide.

What's more, non-conscious thinking may actually work best in some cases where you might imagine rational, conscious thought is the best tool for the job. In situations where people have to make difficult choices based on large amounts of hard-to-assess information, psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has found that they are happier with their decision when acting on gut instinct than when forced to try to think the choice through rationally (New Scientist, 5 May 2007, p 35). Dijksterhuis is convinced that subconscious thought processes are superior in many situations - including most social interactions - because they allow us to integrate complex information in a more holistic way than can be managed by rational thought processes.

Something similar sometimes happens in problem solving, according to Jonathan Schooler from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. By asking subjects to explain their reasoning as they go, he has found that verbalising what they are doing has no effect on people's ability to solve analytical, mathematical or logic problems but actually hinders performance on insight problems, such as solving a riddle - those for which the solution seems to pop out of the blue in an aha! moment. Remember that subconscious thought processes differ from conscious ones in that we are unable to articulate the former. So here, it seems, is experimental evidence for something we all instinctively know: that subconscious thinking is the source of our inspiration - it is central to creativity.

Rather ironically, for an article on the unconscious, it's been hidden behind a pay wall. So you'll need to get a copy from your newsagent, or if you want to expand the subconscious mind, photocopy it in the library.

Link to table of contents for this week's NewSci.

—Vaughan.

November 28, 2007

The subject of the dream:

We must, in the next place, investigate the subject of the dream, and first inquire to which of the faculties of the soul it presents itself,

i.e. whether the affection is one which pertains to the faculty of intelligence or to that of sense-perception; for these are the only faculties within us by which we acquire knowledge.

The opening lines of Aristotle's early sleep text On Dreams, written in approximately 350 BC.

—Vaughan.

Ministry of Memory Distortions:

In George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth retouching photographs to remove people from the record of history. A recent psychology study suggests that these manipulations may change more than the historical record, they could affect our collective memories of what actually happened.

In the study, led by Italian psychologist Dario Sacchi, participants were shown two photographs; one from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and another from a 2003 protest in Rome against the Iraq war.

What they didn't know was that some participants saw doctored versions of either one or both of the photographs. The image on the left demonstrates that a crowd was added to the Tiananmen Square image. With the Rome photo police and aggressive-looking demonstrators were added to the image of peaceful protesters.

To test whether people perceived the photos as genuine or not without giving the game away, the researchers asked participants how familiar they were with the image.

Both groups rated the Tiananmen Square photo as equally familiar, suggesting few picked up on the changes.

Interestingly, participants rated the altered Rome photo as less familiar, but when given a chance to comment, no-one suggested it was fake, with some suggesting that their memory of the protest being peaceful, rather than the photo, must be mistaken.

The participants were then asked to answer questions about the events from their memories of what happened.

Those who saw the altered Tiananmen Square image remembered more people being there, those who saw the Rome image remembered it as more violent, more negative, and recalled more property being damaged and confrontations with the police.

When the experiment was run again, participants additionally rated themselves as less likely to attend a demonstration in future.

The study has obvious implications for propaganda and the paper spends much time discussing the possible impact of doctored photos on public opinion.

Combined with some earlier studies that suggest that people often believe initial false news reports even when they're aware of them being falsified, you can see how the media has a powerful influence over our remembered realities.

Link to study abstract.
Link to write-up from LiveScience.

—Vaughan.

Enduring error:

The BBC has a curious article about author Ian McEwan that makes an interesting error about his novel Enduring Love. In fact, the truth is much more subtle.

The article notes that:

McEwan made up a medical condition for the stalker and wrote a spoof article from a psychiatric journal explaining the illness and included it in the book.

His description of De Clerambault's Syndrome fooled reviewers and psychiatrists alike.

In fact, De Clerambault's Syndrome (where someone has the delusional belief that another person is in love with them) is well known in the medical literature and McEwan's description is quite accurate.

Nevertheless, his book concludes with what looks like a reprint of an article from the British Review of Psychiatry that describes a case study which the book seems to be based upon.

Although also fiction (the British Review of Psychiatry doesn't exist), its style is convincing and it's properly referenced with studies from the real medical literature.

So convincing, in fact, that it fooled several reviewers, including those in top medical journals, into thinking the novel was based on a real case report.

A clue as to why McEwan was able to successfully imitate the medical literature is given in the acknowledgements. He thanks "Ray Dolan, friend and hiking companion, for many years of stimulating discussion".

Dolan is a professor of neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Functional Imaging Lab in London.

Interestingly, Dolan also played a key part in Saturday, another of McEwan's books - which tackles a dramatic day in the life of a neurosurgeon.

As mentioned in an article in the British Medical Journal, McEwan shadowed neurosurgeon Neil Kitchen while researching the book. The article notes the pair were introduced by Dolan.

Link to Wikipedia page on De Clerambault's Syndrome.
Link to Salon article 'Ian McEwan fools British shrinks'.
Link to BMJ article interviewing neurosurgeon Neil Kitchen.

—Vaughan.

November 27, 2007

Mind snacks:

Exploratorium has a gallery of try-it-yourself perception experiments. There's plenty of great material here, not least because of the the slightly bizarre photos of people with distracting 80s haircuts.

There are quick projects on everything from proprioception to taste, and you can tell which are the good ones because they list 'adult help' as one of the materials.

Think of it as the Mind Hacks that time forgot.

Link to groovy gallery of Exploratorium perception 'snacks'.

—Vaughan.

Morality tales:

The science of morality is becoming a hot topic at the moment, and this week two articles, one in Time and one in Reason, have both tackled the issue.

The Time article is a particularly good example. It's wonderfully written and takes a comprehensive look at the field, taking in evolution, empathy, cognitive neuroscience and culture.

If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind—though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn't lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind—one so sublime, we fold it into a larger "soul." The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant.

Link to Time article 'What Makes Us Moral'.
Link to reason article 'The Theory of Moral Neuroscience'.

—Vaughan.

Scans, brain waves and pulses: three way neuroscience:

One of the reporters for Wired took part in an experiment that combines several key neuroscience technologies to pinpoint a brain area, switch it off, and measure the effects.

The experiment used a combination of fMRI, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and EEG.

TMS is a technique that allows parts of the brain to be safely and temporarily shut down or stimulated for a few hundred milliseconds. It's particularly useful because it allows you to be sure that the function of a brain area is involved in causing a particular behaviour.

Brain scans only allow you to see if an area is associated with a behaviour. The brain area might be reliably active when something important is in progress, but like a car radio, it might not actually be driving the outcome.

However, if you guess that an area is part of the cause, you can use TMS to change its function while the behaviour is in progress. If the behaviour changes, you know the brain area is involved.

Often, the brain area is chosen because it is commonly associated with that behaviour. The trouble is, each person varies slightly.

Doing an fMRI brain scanning experiment first will tell you exactly where activity occurs, so later on, you can use TMS to target the spot more precisely in each individual.

While using TMS to alter the function of a brain area, researchers can also use EEG to see the physiological effect of the stimulation. As well as seeing the behavioural outcome, you can also see it's effect on the wider brain networks.

Combining these techniques is becoming increasingly common in cognitive neuroscience.

Some recent studies have even used TMS when people are lying in fMRI scanners using magnetic coils made of non-ferrous materials so as not to be dangerous in the powerful scanner magnet.

My favourite one is a recent study where they used TMS to trigger 'movement' in a phantom limb by stimulating the motor cortex. They then measured the brain activity linked to movement in the non-existent hand.

Link to Wired article.
Link to abstract of article on TMS-induced phantom hand movements.

—Vaughan.

November 26, 2007

Freud widely taught, except in psychology departments:

The New York Times discusses an upcoming study that has found that Freud and psychoanalysis form a key part of the teaching in the humanities, while being virtually extinct in psychology departments in the same universities.

As some of the psychologists in the article suggest, many of the problems with psychoanalysis are because those who believe in the theories have been reluctant to submit the ideas to rigorous empirical testing.

Where this has been done, the results have been fascinating. As we reported in June, empirical work has supported some of Freud's ideas on transference (how feelings from one relationship can affect another if the two people share similarities).

Moreover, an upcoming London conference aims to get the hard nosed cognitive and neuroscientists talking to the psychoanalysts to thrash out ways of separating the wheat from the chaff and to inspire research with new ideas.

These are largely the exceptions, however, and more often than not, psychoanalysis has continued developing its ideas without much recourse to outside testing.

Psychology now runs on the mantra of 'evidence-based practice', which has meant the science-flimsy Freudian ideas have been largely rejected.

However, subjects like film, literature and history have no such restrictions and have found psychoanalysis a useful discussion point.

Interestingly, there are some moves to introduce cultural analysis based on cognitive science into these subjects.

Buckland's book The Film Spectator: From Sign to Mind (ISBN 9053561315) investigates whether its possible to understand how we interpret film using cognitive linguistics and the science of perception.

Link to NYT article 'Freud Is Widely Taught at Universities, Except in the Psychology Department'.

—Vaughan.

Free Ramachandran talk, Wednesday in London:

I just found out that V.S. Ramachandran is giving a free talk, this Wednesday, at the Royal Society in London.

The talk is entitled 'Nature and nurture in brain function: clues from synesthesia and phantom limbs' and for those not able to make the event in person, it's going to be webcast live.

Ramchandran is an excellent speaker, so shouldn't be missed if you've not seen him talk before.

Link to details of Ramchandran talk.

—Vaughan.

Yay Serotonin! T-shirt:

Left-field t-shirt company ClothMoth have a fantastic t-shirt celebrating the joys of serotonin.

The shirt will cost you $18 and will allow you to advertise your love for one of the key monoamine neurotransmitters in the brain.

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid that is synthesised into serotonin. It is found in many fruits, nuts and vegetables. Walnuts are a particularly good source.

It's not clear how many walnuts were eaten to produce this t-shirt, but the results are fantastic anyway.

Link to ClothMoth Yay Serotonin! t-shirt (via HYA).

—Vaughan.

November 25, 2007

The mother of all drug battles:

Furious Seasons reports that the US state of Arkansas is suing drug company Johnson and Johnson over claims that they misrepresented the facts over their popular antipsychotic drug risperidone.

This, in itself, is not a new occurrence, as it joins a long list of US state lawsuits against drug companies. With rumours that a similar 26 state joint lawsuit is about to begin, this is an indication that the corporate drug world is about to be shaken up on a grand scale.

Most of the lawsuits are over allegations that drug companies hid or massaged evidence to show that their new generation ('atypical') antipsychotic drugs were more effective or less harmful than is now thought, or that they illegally promoted their drugs for conditions for which they weren't licensed.

Most of the most popular atypical antipsychotics were introduced in the 1990s and were marketed as having less side-effects than the older generation drugs.

One of the most unpleasant are extrapyramidal side-effects. Caused by changes the dopamine system they can include involuntary movements and muscle stiffness that can resemble Parkinson's disease in some respects.

However, recent reviews have challenged the idea that the newer drugs have less of these side-effects and other evidence has suggested that they have a higher risk of inducing problems with weight-gain and diabetes.

The marketing was remarkably successful though and the idea that the newer drugs 'cause less side-effects' still persists. Only this week, a letter published in New Scientist stated that the newer drugs benefited patients because they have fewer side-effects.

Later, marketing shifted to suggesting atypicals were better for the 'negative symptoms' of schizophrenia (impaired emotion and motivation), and later still to suggest that they improved cognitive function, largely based on industry funded clinical trials.

Two ongoing independent studies have been key in challenging some of these ideas. The UK's CUtLASS project and the US's CATIE project are not funded by drug companies and have found, contrary to industry research, that, for example, newer antipsychotics are no better than the older drugs in improving cognitive function and that they have no advantage in improving quality of life.

Antipsychotics are genuinely useful and probably one of the most significant medical advances of the 20th century. Before then, no effective treatment for psychosis existed.

However, when side-effects appear (which is not always the case), they can range from the unpleasant to the medically serious, so doctors and patients need to be fully informed about the risks.

The most recent lawsuit from the state of Arkansas [pdf] alleges that, among other things, the drug company deliberately rigged their clinical trials to show less side-effects, failed to warn clinicians about the dangers and promoted their drug illegally.

While people like psychiatrist David Healy have been making these allegations for years, the fact that a large number of US states are willing to take the allegations to court signals that we are about to see a huge battle, and hopefully a period of significant reform, in how drug companies develop, test and market their products.

Reform is sorely needed. As well as scientific manipulation, personal drug marketing to psychiatrists is largely based on ensuring a regular supply of lavish gifts and selective information - as detailed by an article in today's New York Times.

As an aside, if you're in London this Tuesday, a debate is being held at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital on exactly this topic.

It's entitled "Swallowing it Whole: This house believes that psychiatrists are unable to resist the seductive messages on the pharmaceutical industry" and is likely to be a lively event.

Link to Furious Seasons on the Arkansas law suit.
Link to NYT article 'Dr Pharma Rep'.
Link to details of the Maudsley debate.

—Vaughan.

November 23, 2007

Encephalon 35 and 36 catch up:

The psychology and neuroscience writing carnival Encephalon published both its 35th edition and its 36th edition in recent weeks, and I seemed to have slept through these momentous occasions, so hopefully this post will make amends.

Encephalon 35 was hosted at The Primate Diaries and includes articles on, among other things, the neuropsychology of creative thinking and the link between education and Alzheimer's disease.

Brain in a Vat was the place to be for Encephalon 36 which had many fantastic pieces, including one on embodied cognition and another on the growth of the brain in people diagnosed with ADHD.

That's just a sample of the large selection of articles submitted to the carnivals, so have a browse through both editions to get a flavour of what's been hot in the online mind and brain world.

Link to Encephalon 35.
Link to Encephalon 36.

—Vaughan.

The joy of sexology:

The Charlie Rose Show had a recent discussion on the science of sex, and the video of the programme is available to view online. It's a fascinating discussion, largely focusing on biology and neuroscience, but as Dr Petra Boyton notes it's quite a narrow consideration in some respects.

For me, simply seeing a discussion of sex research in the still remarkably prudish American media is a huge step.

I suspect their achingly academic approach to the subject reflects the need to be seen to be serious, but it's also interesting that the Charlie Rose show is sponsored by Pfizer, the makers of Viagra, which may also account for the almost unrelenting focus on biology.

Petra Boynton suggests areas which weren't tackled by the programme, and highlights that there's much more to sex research than measuring the mechanisms of our bodies.

It's well worth watching, but definitely with some of the context in mind.

One of the best programmes on sexuality I have seen on TV was The Truth About Female Desire, which was a collaboration with the Kinsey Institute and involved several women taking part in a number of scientific experiments on female sexuality.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available on public servers, but I'll post on Mind Hacks if ever I find a reliable torrent.

Link to Charlie Rose discussion on Human Sexuality.
Link to Petra Boynton on the programme.

—Vaughan.

Brave old world: the future of cognitive enhancement:

The British Medical Association has just released a report on the ethics of using medical technology to increase cognitive function and optimise the brain. Although the report looks to possible futures, many of them are already upon us.

The report is an interesting sign that cognitive enhancement, using largely physical interventions such as drugs and implants, is now a topic important enough to trouble the UK's professional medical association.

Many of the ethical concerns centre around a potential future where brain enhancing interventions are largely available to the wealthy, leading to a 'brain gap' where the less well off will have relatively poorer mental functioning because they can't access the same cognitive benefits.

However, this is exactly the situation we already have.

Probably the single best cognitive enhancer available to the human race at the moment is a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.

Poor health goes hand in hand with poverty, meaning those who have less money are likely to have brains that don't function at their optimum because of increased stress, poor nutrition and increased susceptibility to damage and disease.

Martha Farah's research group has been specifically researching the links between the neuropsychological development of children and poverty, and have found that children from poorer social groups have markedly poorer mental and neurological functioning.

It is possible that a drug or implant will be discovered in the future that will extend our abilities by an order of magnitude, but more likely the improvement will be much more modest. For example, an improvement of 10% would be considered to be clinically important.

So while it's essential to consider the ethical implications of how specific cognitive technologies will affect us, the inequality-driven 'brain gap' is already here.

One ethical issue less commonly debated is whether we are justified in spending billions developing high-tech cognitive enhancers for a relatively small section of the population rather than support the widespread improvement in nutrition and lifestyle which we know has a strong, reliable and life-long effect.

Link to BMA report 'Boosting your brainpower: Ethical aspects of cognitive enhancements'.

—Vaughan.

2007-11-23 Spike activity:

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

Glamour model Daisy Thompson-Lake has a forthcoming paper on synaesthesia in the British Journal of Psychology.

Cognitive Daily looks at whether selfishness or competition is the strongest influence on behaviour.

How does physical stress and illness affect mental states and psychopathology? ABC All in the Mind investigates.

PsyBlog examines recent research on achieving sustainable happiness.

Hollywood actor Forest Whittaker hails the pioneering brain surgeon that saved his mother's life.

ABC Radio National's Ockham's Razor looks at the infamous case of Sir Roy Meadow and the debates over the existence of 'Munchhausen's syndrome by proxy'.

The New York Times has an article on South Korean boot camps to cure children of non-existent internet addiction.

Denial and public belief. ABC News covers research showing that highlighting false reports may actually make them more widely believed.

The BPS Research Digest looks at research on why sexism towards females in the workplace has a negative effect on males too.

Interesting post on Action Potential shock! The under-performing Nature blog has two great articles on the genetic control of intelligence and innate social evaluation in children.

—Vaughan.

November 22, 2007

The last of the neuromercials?:

One of the most interesting things about the recent election brain scan nonsense is not that it got to the front page of The New York Times, as that's happened several times before, but that the slap down from the scientific community has been remarkably strong and public.

The media is obsessed by neuroscience but in a very odd way. This means that sometimes complete nonsense gets published, like on this occasion, or the focus is on the least important thing.

For example, there have been many reports during the last few days about a study on people with migraines.

Almost all the headlines are variants of the 'Migraine Sufferers Have Different Brains' line. This just isn't news. We know migraine sufferers have different brains because they have migraines and its a brain difference. It's like reporting that 'taller people have different heights'.

What the study actually found was that the somatosensory cortex, an area of the brain that is involved with representing body sensation, is thicker in people with migraines. Most interestingly, this was most pronounced in the section of this brain area that maps to the head and neck.

It was a correlational study, so it's impossible to say whether these differences cause, or are caused by, migraine, but it's a fascinating finding. Isn't this so this much more interesting than repeating the obvious?

The media love stories about the brain because they often sound like explanations even when they're nothing more than descriptions.

This is why nonsense like the 'election brain scans' gets media attention. In this case, it wasn't even as if the ideas were distorted in the retelling, it was clearly nonsense from beginning to end. But because it had all the trappings of science, it made headlines.

This time, however, the size of the backlash from the scientific has been unprecedented.

It got plenty of negative attention in the blogs, but it also inspired a list of leading neuroscientists to write to the NYT to criticise it, it got featured in The Guardian's 'Bad Science' column and has just been roundly condemned in the editorial from this week's Nature.

If brain scans could really predict how people will react when they encounter advertising, you'd think that FKF Research would use it on their own material.

Ironically, for a company that supposedly specialises in neuromarketing, they just got themselves some incredibly bad press.

Link to Nature editorial.

—Vaughan.

Sad, mad or dangerous to diagnose?:

The New York Review of Books has a wonderful article that ostensibly reviews three books about mental illness but is also a powerful summary of some of the most important criticisms of modern psychiatry.

One of the key points of debate is the extent to which distressing yet common mental states such as shyness or feeling low are being classified as mental illnesses such as social phobia or depression.

This is currently a hot topic. The British Medical Journal hosted a recent debate on whether depression is overdiagnosed with Ian Hickie arguing that it needs to be recognised more widely to stop people missing out on lifesaving treatment and Gordon Parker arguing that normal sadness is being excessively labelled as a medical disorder.

Drug companies have an obvious interest in getting more people diagnosed, but less obviously, although equally as pervasive, is their interest in pushing for new diagnoses.

On the level of the individual patient, medicalising a problem often shifts people's thinking so they feel less empowered to make a difference to their lives - it becomes an illness to be dealt with by medical experts.

In the US, however, where insurance payments are often only guaranteed when a medical diagnosis is made, people might only be able to get relief from their mental distress if their problem is medicalised.

Unlike in socialised health systems, insurance-based healthcare can pressure professionals not to help people with non-specific or difficult to diagnose problems, meaning the existing categories are often stretched to allow such people to be treated.

Treatment has traditionally been medication, which means drug companies have a strong financial incentive to push for the changes to the classification of mental illness and promote theories which best support their treatments.

In contrast, cognitive behavioural therapy, a type of psychological therapy, is known to be as effective as drugs (the most effective treatment is both medication and therapy), and is better at preventing relapse.

However, because it isn't a 'product', there is no corporate marketing machine behind it, meaning it is typically under-recognised and under-used.

The 'promotion' of psychological therapies is left to mental health charities (such as the recent We Need to Talk campaign) which pales in comparison to the billions spent by drug companies.

So, the extent to which mental and emotional distress should be treated as a medical disorder effects everything from the personal to the political.

The New York Review of Books article does a fantastic job of covering how these processes work, both at the medical and corporate level, and how they impact on our individual health care.

Link to article 'Talking Back to Prozac' (via MeFi).

—Vaughan.

November 20, 2007

Personality to prevent teen drinking:

A study that successfully used personality-tailored training to reduce teen drinking is shortly to appear in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. It's interesting because it's one of a few studies that have found that the psychology of personality is useful for solving clinical problems.

Your average person on the street probably thinks that clinical psychologists spend a lot of time trying to 'work out' people's personalities as a necessary part of treating them.

Of course, this is something that happens as the psychologist meets and talks to the patient, but considering that a great deal of research in psychology is focused on understanding personality, the findings and techniques barely make a scratch on clinical work.

This is largely because using psychological measures to find out whether someone is introverted, extroverted, conscientious, or any other of the so-called 'big five' personality traits, have been found to be of little use in helping treat or prevent mental disorders or behavioural problems.

Compared to reliably assessing someone's mood, anxiety, risk of self-harm, cognitive abilities or reasoning style, personality is rarely essential for clinical decision-making.

However, one related aspect of personality, similar to the 'Openness to Experience' in the 'big five' model, has been found to relate to substance misuse.

It's called 'sensation seeking' and it's been linked to risky behaviour, including binge-drinking and risky sexual encounters.

In this study, led by psychologist Dr Patricia Conrod, the research team assessed the personality of over 350 teenagers and specifically tailored a programme to focus on common differences between high and low sensation-seekers.

The programme had an educational component, a motivational part and a section that taught the kids skills how to solve problems, manage their thoughts and moods, and pick out common cognitive errors when reasoning about drinking.

It turned out that it was particularly effective in reducing binge-drinking in the high-sensation seekers, the most risky group.

As well as developing a useful way of reducing problem alcohol use in teenagers, it's also interesting to see that a personality measure can be genuinely useful in the prevention of problems.

Clinical psychology is traditionally focused on trying to help with problems after they've happened, rather than before, which is perhaps why personality is not so useful. It's just too subtle when something serious like mental illness affects the mind and brain.

Nevertheless, it's possible that personality will be key in preventive programmes, where this more subtle approach has much more of an effect when the person is not trying to manage a mental crisis.

Link to abstract of study.

—Vaughan.

It's not denial, it's filtered acceptance:

The New York Times has a brief but interesting article on the psychology of denial, which according to the piece has got a bad rap. It's actually a useful and necessary process in many types of relationship.

Yet recent studies from fields as diverse as psychology and anthropology suggest that the ability to look the other way, while potentially destructive, is also critically important to forming and nourishing close relationships. The psychological tricks that people use to ignore a festering problem in their own households are the same ones that they need to live with everyday human dishonesty and betrayal, their own and others'. And it is these highly evolved abilities, research suggests, that provide the foundation for that most disarming of all human invitations, forgiveness.

In this emerging view, social scientists see denial on a broader spectrum — from benign inattention to passive acknowledgment to full-blown, willful blindness — on the part of couples, social groups and organizations, as well as individuals. Seeing denial in this way, some scientists argue, helps clarify when it is wise to manage a difficult person or personal situation, and when it threatens to become a kind of infectious silent trance that can make hypocrites of otherwise forthright people.

The article also discusses a number of experiments where participants 'cheat' on certain aspects, but which demonstrate that we seem to manage not only how much we admit to others about the deception, but we also our own awareness of what we're doing (mostly unconsciously it seems).

Link to NYT article 'Denial Makes the World Go Round'.

—Vaughan.

November 19, 2007

BBC AIl in the Mind on Tasers, film and Anthony Clare:

BBC Radio 4 has just kicked off a new series of All in the Mind with a programme on tasers and their use on people with mental illness, the psychoanalytic film festival and a tribute to the late great Irish psychiatrist Anthony Clare.

Not to be confused with the Australian radio show of the same name, All in the Mind takes a look at whether police are properly trained to detect mental illness in light of preliminary evidence that they may be using Tasers on people with psychiatric disorders more than other people.

The show also talks to some of the participants in the recent European Psychoanalytic Film Festival and traces the intertwined history of film and psychoanalysis.

Finally, the show broadcasts a tribute to Irish psychiatrist Anthony Clare, who, as we reported recently, passed away at the end of October. Among many other things, he was famous as a past presenter of the programme.

Link to first of the BBC All in the Mind new series.

—Vaughan.

Psychopharmacologist's song:

Well, it doesn't get much stranger than this. OmniBrain has discovered an animation created by Prof Stephen Stahl, researcher and author of numerous academic papers and books on the neuroscience of psychoactive drugs, where he sings about his love of psychopharmacology.

If that's not weird enough for you, it's to the tune of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta song and he's dressed as a 19th century Naval officer.

I would describe more of it, but you really need to see it to fully appreciate it in all its glory.

I'm sure no-one needs to remind a professor of psychopharmacology of the maxim "don't get high on your own supply", so I repeat it here purely for our collective reflection.

Link to embedded video of the Psychopharmacologist's Song.

—Vaughan.

The ethical psychiatrist:

ABC Radio National's The Philosopher's Zone had a fascinating discussion recently on the ethics of psychiatry, tackling some of the challenges of this unique medical speciality.

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of psychiatry which distinguishes it from other medical specialities is that it more commonly involves treating people against their will.

The laws on involuntary treatment vary, but most include the principle that someone who is judged to have their lost their insight into their own condition because of mental illness, is at risk to themselves or others, and who refuses voluntary treatment can be treated against their will.

Of course, this relies on a huge amount of other assumptions, such as the ability to distinguish between normal and abnormal mental states, and an idea of what constitutes insight.

It also relies on a presumption that psychiatrists can distinguish between potentially foolish but reasoned refusal of treatment, and a refusal driven by pathological thinking.

The programme tackles many of these issues and discusses how these decisions are affected by cultural norms and political influence, as well as how they fit in with the wider ethical approach of medicine.

Link to the Philosopher's Zone on the ethics of psychiatry.

—Vaughan.

November 17, 2007

Cerebral blood sweets:

It looks like a pipette full of cerebral blood, but actually it's a fun and harmless candy product for children. Bless!

But if you're concerned that this might be a bit too disturbing for your sweet-toothed young ones, another product by the same company will do nothing to dispell your worries.

Because they also makes a plastic brain from which you can squeeze the liquified neural mush straight into your mouth.

After which, the gummy brains and chocolate brains just seem a bit passé really.

Link to disturbing brain candy.

—Vaughan.

November 16, 2007

Reflections on the brain of an idiot:

I've just discovered that the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology have all their past issues freely available online all the way back to 1867. I came across a curious article entitled 'Description of the Brain of an Idiot' in the 1871 issue and it made me think about how names for brain disorders have been rejected and changed throughout history.

Back in 1871, the term 'idiot' was a proper medical term. It referred to someone we would now describe as having learning disabilities or intellectual impairment.

As the word became used as an everyday form of abuse, it left the realms of medicine because it was deemed inappropriate, and has been replaced by seemingly more appropriate terms. There is a long history of this process and it continues to this day.

For example, wildly abnormal or problematic sexual behaviours used to be called sexual deviancy. 'Sexual deviancy' described something beyond the presumed normal range, but it was thought to be inappropriate because it branded people as outsiders.

Now we use the term 'paraphillia' which means, well, exactly the same - someone who has desires outside the norm - but because it's Greek, everyone is much happier.

It's also interesting when the terminology differs between countries. In America, 'mentally retarded' is a common description in medicine, but in Europe it's considered an outdated insult - similar to the previously official words imbecile and idiot.

However, it's always struck me as a little curious why our words for intellectual disabilities have changed so much throughout history, but the word for epilepsy (despite there being many commonly used nicknames) has been maintained since the time of Ancient Greece.

Presumably, there's something about the Greek language which just makes us feel better about our difficulties.

Link to 1871 article 'Description of the Brain of an Idiot'.

—Vaughan.

A pain in the neck, mind, brain and society:

Technology Review has an article that looks at recent work on the neuroscience of chronic pain. While understanding the problem in terms of neurobiology is essential, understanding the psychology and social influences on pain is equally important.

Chronic pain is an interesting condition because it can continue even when the original tissue damage has healed.

The article talks about chronic pain purely in terms of its neurobiology, but there is now a great deal of evidence that we can explain how pain is maintained through social and psychological explanations.

This is remarkably hard for some people to take on board, as there is still the attitude that explaining something in psychological terms somehow implies the pain isn't "real" or is somehow a figment of their imagination.

As he recounted in a recent article for the British Medical Journal, Ben Goldacre came across exactly this when he recently discussed the psychosocial aspects of pain on the radio and got a number of outraged listeners contact the programme to say they were offended by the implication that their suffering was imaginary.

This is exactly the opposite of what the standard scientific approach aims to do though. It accepts that pain is experienced, but attempts to work out the biological, psychological and social factors that can increase or decrease pain.

One of the most important findings in the last few decades is that psychological and social factors have a huge influence.

A recent review article, published in Psychological Bulletin [pdf], examined all of the factors and recounted some fascinating studies that have found that people's beliefs about pain have a huge impact both on how unpleasant they rate the pain to be, and on how disabled they are in everyday life.

This is just a sample from the huge amount of research done on the psychology of pain:

Appraisal and beliefs about pain can have a strong impact on an individual's affective and behavioral response to pain. If a pain signal is interpreted as harmful (threat appraisal) and is believed to be associated with actual or potential tissue damage, it may be perceived as more intense and unpleasant and may evoke more escape or avoidance behavior. For instance, pain associated with cancer is rated as more unpleasant than labor pain, even when the intensity is rated as equivalent (Price, Harkins, & Baker, 1987). Similarly, Smith, Gracely, and Safer (1998) demonstrated that cancer patients, who attributed pain sensations after physiotherapy directly to cancer, reported more intense pain than patients who attributed this pain to other causes... These studies demonstrate the important role of people's interpretations regarding the meaning of pain.

Pain appraisal and pain beliefs are also prominent determinants of adjustment to chronic pain (Jensen, Romano, Turner, Good, & Wald, 1999; Turner, Jensen, & Romano, 2000). The following pain beliefs have been identified as particularly maladaptive in dealing with pain: Pain is a signal of damage, activity should be avoided when one has pain, pain leads to disability, pain is uncontrollable, and pain is a permanent condition (Jensen, Turner, Romano, & Lawler, 1994; Turner et al., 2000). The belief that pain is a signal of damage and the belief that activity should be avoided in order to recover from pain appear to be widespread (Balderson, Lin, & Von Korff, 2004; Ihlebaek & Eriksen, 2003).

Because of the importance of our beliefs about pain on the experience of pain itself, we know that psychological therapy can lead to significant improvement.

A key 1999 study [pdf] gathered evidence from all the relevant clinical trials to date and found that cognitive behaviour therapy was a useful and powerful treatment.

Although we typically associate pain with physical damage to the body, thinking only in terms of physical damage is counter-productive. We also need to tackle the psychology and neuroscience of pain both to fully understand it and to help people affected by it.

Link to TechReview article on the neuroscience of chronic pain.
Link to Ben Goldacre on the challenges of communicating psychosocial factors.
pdf of scientific article on psychology and neuroscience of pain.
pdf of scientific article on effectiveness of CBT for pain.

—Vaughan.

2007-11-16 Spike activity:

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

NPR has a radio programme exploring the significance of dreams and nightmares.

The first version of chocolate is discovered to be 500 years older than previously thought

The Washington Post has an article on ways of optimising your brain function.

An artificial speech implant is looked at by Neurophilosophy.

The Neurocritic rounds up the group smack-down to the nonsense election brain scanning 'study' we reported on earlier.

Japan suffers an average of 90 suicides a day, spurring the government into action, according to a report by The Times.

The New York Times has an article by an economist doing the maths on the process of dating and dating success.

Men talk more than women overall, but not in all circumstances, according to a new study covered by Science Daily.

A forthcoming science series called Curious has launched their website with video clips of some interesting neuroscience stuff.

BBC Radio 4's Case Notes has a special on chronic fatigue syndrome.

BBC News report on more evidence that a healthy diet cuts Alzheimer's risk.

PLoS One has an interesting paper on how gene expression in the human hippocampus differs in cocaine users compared to others.

Dr Petra analyses the Sex Addiction Screening Test and discovers it's not been validated despite being widely used.

Teaching children philosophy brings persistent, long-term cognitive benefits, according to a study reported by the BPS Research Digest.

—Vaughan.

November 15, 2007

Does stress turn your hair grey?:

Scientific American has a short article which examines whether there's any truth to the common theory that stress makes your hair go grey. It's turns out there's some circumstantial evidence that stress may have an effect, but no definite causal link has been found.

Apparently, the gradual loss of melanocyte stem cells, ones that are key for hair colouring, lead to the loss of pigment.

Does stress accelerate this demise of the melanocyte population? "It is not so simple," Fisher says, noting that the process of graying is a multivariable equation. Stress hormones may impact the survival and / or activity of melanocytes, but no clear link has been found between stress and gray hair. Suspicions — and hypotheses — abound, however.

"Graying could be a result of chronic free radical damage," says Ralf Paus, professor of dermatology at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Lübeck, Germany. Stress hormones produced either systemically or locally (by cells in the follicle) could produce inflammation that drives the production of free radicals — unstable molecules that damage cells — and "it is possible that these free radicals could influence melanin production or induce bleaching of melanin," Paus says.

"There is evidence that local expression of stress hormones mediate the signals instructing melanocytes to deliver melanin to keratinocytes," notes Jennifer Lin, a dermatologist who conducts molecular biology research at the Dana-Farber / Harvard Cancer Center in Boston. "Conceivably, if that signal is disrupted, melanin will not deliver pigment to your hair."

And general practice physicians have observed accelerated graying among patients under stress, says Tyler Cymet, head of family medicine at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, who conducted a small retrospective study on hair graying among patients at Sinai. "We've seen that people who are stressed two to three years report that they turn gray sooner," he says.

Link to SciAm article 'Fact or Fiction?: Stress Causes Gray Hair' (via 3Q).

—Vaughan.

November 14, 2007

Uh-oh, little girl, psychotic reaction:

It's an age old story. Boy meets girl, boys loses girl, boy suffers psychotic reaction, boy forms band to sing about his experience on live TV.

I feel depressed, I feel so bad
'Cause you're the best girl that I ever had
I can't get your love, I can't get a fraction
Uh-oh, little girl, psychotic reaction

The group is Count Five singing 'Psychotic Reaction' and as well as being a 1960s rock n' roll classic, it also helpfully informs us that depression is one of the most common signs of impending relapse in psychosis.

In fact, the song preceded Herz and Melville's pioneering study, the first to report this association in the scientific literature, by at least 15 years.

Did the two psychosis researchers lead an earlier life as garage band pioneers? I think we should be told.

Link to Count Five singing 'Psychotic Reaction' (actually very good).
Link to abstract of Herz and Melville study (still rocks).

—Vaughan.

Seeing red can really affect performance:

Cognitive Daily discusses the findings of two interesting studies that suggest that simply seeing the colour red makes us perform worse on tests.

The articles discuss a couple of elegant studies by a research team, led by psychologist Andrew Elliot, which confirmed that seeing red makes us tend to do worse on tests. They then set about trying to understand why.

In a second study, students were given test booklets with the title in one of several possible colours. Interestingly, those who had booklets with red titles tended to choose easier questions, which led to a direct test of a neuropsychological idea about brain symmetry and avoidance:

Students who saw the red test cover chose significantly more easy test questions than either those who saw green or gray test covers. There was no significant difference between the students who saw green and gray.

So it seems that the color red in this context may cause people to avoid challenging or difficult situations. In their final experiment, the researchers took advantage of a robust experimental finding about avoidance. For more than two decades, nearly a hundred studies have found a characteristic brain activity associated with avoidance -- asymmetrical activity in the right frontal cortex. This is easily measured using non-invasive EEG equipment.

The research team used exactly this technique and found that relatively greater right hemisphere was found for red material, but not other colours, suggesting red triggers part of the avoidance system.

As Cognitive Daily note, we can't tell from these experiments whether the red and avoidance link is with us from birth, or whether we've just learnt it through cultural exposure.

It's a really elegant couple of studies though, and as always, they're wonderfully explained by the CogDaily team.

Link to 'Does the color red really impair performance on tests?'.
Link to 'Why does seeing red make test-takers choke?'

—Vaughan.

Ten of the best in social psychology:

PsyBlog has just concluded a great series of articles, each of which tackled a classic experiment in social psychology that demonstrated something counter-intuitive, curious or even shocking about ourselves.

You may recognise some of them, as they've become various shades of legendary to notorious, even to people without a special interest in psychology.

Others are well known within the field but have yet to filter out to the general consciousness.

To my mind, one of the best is the theory of cognitive dissonance. Perhaps one of the most important findings in social psychology - explaining how we are motivated to reconcile conflicting beliefs and actions.

The rest of the experiments have been equally as influential and the whole series makes for a great overview of some of the foundation stones of the modern science of mind.

Link to "Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies".

—Vaughan.

November 13, 2007

The absinthe minded green fairy:

The New York Times has a brief but wonderfully illustrated article on the cultural history of absinthe, the highly alcoholic spirit that was adopted by numerous famous artists.

Wikipedia also has a fantastic article on absinthe which looks at the history of its creation, popularity, prohibition and revival.

It also exposes the myth that wormwood, a key flavouring ingredient, causes hallucinations. A scientific article looked at the evidence for this and found that the effects of the drink are almost entirely due to its alcohol content.

While thujone, an active ingredient in wormwood, can causes seizures in high enough quantities, there isn't enough in absinthe to have a significant effect.

However, erroneous concerns about the drink leading to dangerous forms of 'madness' led it to be banned in most European countries in the early 1900s, giving it an instant notoriety and cultural impact that far goes beyond its pharmacological influence.

Link to NYT on 'Absinthe Returns in a Glass Half Full of Mystique...'
Link to Wikipedia article on absinthe.
Link to scientific article 'Absinthism: a fictitious 19th century syndrome...'

—Vaughan.

Election brain scan nonsense:

Neuropsychologist Martha Farah has written a highly critical commentary on a recent New York Times op-ed piece where neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni and colleagues used brain scans of people who viewed videos of US presidential candidates in an attempt to reveal voter reactions "on which this election may well turn".

Farah quite rightly calls it "junk science" as it is a barely controlled study that relies on stereotypes and generalisation to infer that activation in one particular brain area means the viewers are experiencing a certain reaction.

So why do I doubt the conclusions reported in today’s Op Ed piece? The problems I see have less to do with brain imaging per se than with the human tendency to make up “just so” stories and then believe them. The scattered spots of activation in a brain image can be like tea leaves in the bottom of a cup – ambiguous and accommodating of a large number of possible interpretations.

For example, the story reports that "When we showed subjects the words “Democrat,” “Republican” and “independent,” they exhibited high levels of activity in the part of the brain called the amygdala, indicating anxiety".

In brain-scanning studies, the amygdala is regularly found to be active in people who experience fear. But you can't make the reverse inference, that amygdala activation equals fear, because it can be equally as active when people experience happiness or joy.

There's plenty more where that came from, but what is most shocking is not that this junk made The New York Times but that it made it again, and again.

In fact, Iacoaboni's team were on the front page of the NYT in 2004 with almost exactly the same stunt - attempting to use brain scans to predict responses when viewing political campaign ads.

The 'study' details have mysteriously gone from the web but are still archived if you want to see history repeating itself.

And as we reported in 2006, similar nonsense was repeated with the Super Bowl ads, by (guess who) the same team.

None of these studies have ever been published in scientific journals so why does Iacoboni, who does lots of respectable cognitive neuroscience, keep running these essentially meaningless studies?

All of these stunts are essentially PR for FKF Applied Research, a 'neuromarketing company' who will carry out bespoke brain scan marketing studies for a price.

Iacoboni is not listed as a staff member but he's been associated with most of their previous media stunts and four out of five FKF staff are co-authors on the NYT article. We can bet there's some pretty strong connection there.

Unfortunately, these sorts of stunts play on the excitement surrounding high-tech science and distort the public's understanding of the significance of brain imaging.

They're are neither informative nor truly newsworthy but have enough of a sugar coating to make them attractive to a media beguiled by the bright lights of brain scanning.

Link to Farah article on the Neuroethics and Law Blog.

—Vaughan.

Music in dreams:

From a footnote on p282 of Oliver Sacks Musicophilia:

There have been very few systematic studies of music in dreams, though one such [pdf], by Valeria Uga and her colleagues at the University of Florence in 2006, compared the dream logs of thirty-five professional musicians and thirty non-musicians. The researchers concluded that "musicians dreams of music more than twice as much as non-musicians [and] musical dream frequency is related to the age of commencement of musical instruction, but not to the daily load of musical activity. Nearly half of all recalled music was non-standard, suggesting that original music can be created in dreams." While there have been many anecdotal stories of composers creating original compositions in dreams, this is the first study to lend support to the idea.

The finding has an interesting parallel with findings on the 'age-of-acquisition effect' in language research.

It was known for years that things like the ability to name objects or remember words was influenced by the how common the word is, and how 'concrete' it is. For example, concrete words like tree, apple and house tend to be more robust than abstract words like hope, love or like.

Largely due to the work Andy Ellis it's been found that many of these effects are actually a function of at what age the word was first learnt, with earlier words being more robust in terms of being more easily processed or accessed during cognitive processing.

The Uga study hints that a similar process may be at work with music.

Link to PubMed entry for study on music and dreams.
pdf of full-text of music and dreams study.
Link to Google Scholar search for age-of-acquisition effect.

—Vaughan.

November 12, 2007

Hypnosis as a surgical tool:

The editorial of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute discusses a recent study that found that hypnosis can be successfully used in breast cancer surgery to reduce pain, nausea, painkiller use, tiredness and emotional impact of the surgical procedure.

The study was a randomized controlled trial of patients who were undergoing breast surgery either to treat a cancer or to test a lump to see if it was cancerous.

Patients were randomly assigned to either a brief 15-minute hypnosis condition, or to another where the patient discussed their concerns with an empathic psychologist (to make sure the effects weren't just due to having someone their to 'calm their nerves').

The study found that patients given hypnosis needed less painkilling medication, were less nauseous, less emotionally upset, and experienced less pain intensity than the patients in the 'empathic listening' condition.

The editorial notes that the results suggest hypnosis is a powerful tool for helping patients, discusses why it isn't being used more widely, and what we know about how it affects the brain:

Thus, the study in this issue contributes to an impressive body of research using randomized prospective methodology in sizeable patient populations to demonstrate that adjunctive hypnosis substantially reduces pain and anxiety during surgical procedures while decreasing medication use, procedure time, and cost. If a drug were to do that, everyone would by now be using it.

So why don't they? For one thing, there is no mediating industry to sell the product—dangling watches are out of fashion for hypnotic inductions. Plus, there is still lingering suspicion that hypnosis reeks of stage show trickery. After all, the magic wand originated with Mesmer's use of a magnetic stick to presumably alter magnetic fields in patients' bodies. Yet hypnosis is the oldest Western form of psychotherapy. Hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention, with a constriction in peripheral awareness and a heightened responsiveness to social cues. It is most similar to the everyday state of becoming so absorbed in a good movie or a novel that one enters the imagined world and suspends awareness of the usual one, a condition playwrights refer to as the "suspension of disbelief." This state can exert powerful influence on mind and body.

Altering perception using hypnosis results in brain changes that literally reduce pain perception [rather than merely altering the response to pain]. Indeed, simply changing the wording of the hypnotic instruction from "you will feel cool, tingling numbness more than pain" to "the pain will not bother you" alters the brain location of the analgesia from the somatosensory cortex to the anterior cingulate gyrus. Hypnotic alteration of color perception results in bidirectional changes in blood flow in the portions of the visual cortex that process color vision—blood flow in this region increases when color is imagined rather than seen and decreases when color is hypnotically drained from a colorful stimulus. Thus, there is good neurophysiologic reason to believe that hypnosis is potentially a powerful tool to alter perception of pain and associated anxiety.

If you're interested in volunteering for research into the neuropsychology of hypnosis in London (which doesn't involve anything painful!), we're still recruiting participants for sessions at 2pm on Saturday 17th and 24th November.

There's more information at our study web page.

Link to Journal of the National Cancer Institute editorial on hypnosis.
Link to abstract of RCT study.
Link to information on our neuropsychology of hypnosis study.

—Vaughan.

Antidote to TV drug ads:

Consumer Reports have created a sort of video film review for a popular US television drug ad, where they update the commercial with scientific findings that aren't mentioned.

The advert is for a drug that aims to treat 'restless legs syndrome', and both the condition and the drug are apparently being heavily marketed in the US at the moment.

Consumer Reports have their own take on the ad, noting that the side-effects of the drug can be worse than the condition itself, and highlighting that although trials showed the drug was effective in up to 73% of people, placebo was effective in up to 57% of people.

It's great to see a counter-point to this sort of advertising, especially when it's produced so well.

Link to Consumer Reports page with embedded video (via TWS).

—Vaughan.

'Marlborough Marine' fights post-war trauma, depression:

The Los Angeles Times has a moving video and photo essay about Lance Corporal James Blake Miller, made famous by the iconic photo taken during the battle of Fallujah, and his post-war struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

It's somewhat ironic that the photo, which has become a symbol of the stoicism of the US Marine Corps, depicts Miller at a time when he was first struggling with the trauma of war.

The photo essay is by photographer Luis Sinco, who made the marine famous, and his been following Miller since he returned home from Iraq.

Sadly, Miller has suffered divorce, PTSD, depression and suicidal thoughts since his return owing to his experiences during the fighting.

It's an incredibly powerful piece, with some quite poignant moments (e.g. being ignored by one politician who he had arranged to meet to discuss the effect of PTSD on troops), especially considering that mental illness in the US military is at an all time high.

Link to LA Times photo-essay on James Blake Miller (via MeFi).

—Vaughan.

November 10, 2007

Meditation for the nation:

ABC Radio National's All in the Mind just had a programme looking at both the neuroscience of meditation and its increasing use in evidence-based mental health treatments.

Key aspects of meditation are increasingly become adopted into well-researched mainstream cognitive therapies.

Essentially, it's Buddhist mindfulness meditation, repackaged to make it sound more palatable to a wider audience, and often included alongside more traditional approaches.

The two big players in the psychological treatment field at the moment are Mindfulness-based CBT and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

Mindfulness approaches seem particularly useful for people with chronic or relapsing symptoms, such as severe relapsing depression, rather than for first-episode or acute conditions.

For example, a key study published in 2000 found that mindfulness-based CBT had a beneficial effect on people who had three or more relapse of depression, but not people who had experienced two relapses or less.

The idea is quite different from cognitive approaches, where clients are encouraged to identify, evaluate and retrain their problematic thoughts and behaviours.

Mindfulness instead encourages people to be fully aware of these troublesome thoughts or sensations, but not to engage with them.

In other words, clients are encouraged to develop a degree of separation from their thoughts and emotions, so they can experience them, but not feel that they are fully controlled by them.

Some research has suggested that this is because mindfulness (and indeed other approaches) improve our ability to monitor, evaluate and engage with our own thoughts - so-called metacognitive ability.

Link to AITM on 'Dr Mindfulness: science and the meditation boom'.

—Vaughan.

November 09, 2007

Dangerous minds:

Malcolm Gladwell has written an excellent article for The New Yorker on the problems with the FBI's methods of profiling serial killers and other serious offenders.

The Behavioral Analysis Unit (formerly the Behavioural Science Unit) is the FBI's psychology unit that aims to research and develop methods of understanding criminal behaviour, police tactics, negotiation, and crime scene analysis.

It is a huge enterprise that exports its expertise around the world. Foreign police forces can often call on their expertise, for free, to help solve domestic cases.

However, in many ways the BAU is a world onto itself. It develops its own techniques that can often be quite distinct from those of non-FBI forensic psychologists. For example, many of its criminal and crime science analysis methods rely heavily on Freudian-style symbolic interpretations.

For example, the FBI classifies serial killers into 'organized' and 'disorganized' types.

Organized serial killers supposedly use logic and planning to commit crimes that fulfil their fantasies. The victim carefully selected, efforts are made to maintain control throughout the crime and the scene is cleaned up afterwards.

In contrast, disorganized serial killers supposedly choose their victims almost randomly and attack in a haphazard way, taking opportunity as it occurs. The crime scene is apparently chaotic and because the 'disorganized killer' has no interest in the person themselves, they may, as Gladwell recounts, "takes steps to obliterate their personalities by quickly knocking them unconscious or covering their faces or otherwise disfiguring them."

Perhaps the thing that raises the most eyebrows is that it publishes and reviews many of its theories in its own in-house journals, meaning they get little outside academic scrutiny.

Gladwell takes a look at some of these ideas in more detail and notes that they haven't faired well to some of the independent academic assessments they've been tested with:

Not long ago, a group of psychologists at the University of Liverpool decided to test the F.B.I.'s assumptions [pdf]. First, they made a list of crime-scene characteristics generally considered to show organization: perhaps the victim was alive during the sex acts, or the body was posed in a certain way, or the murder weapon was missing, or the body was concealed, or torture and restraints were involved. Then they made a list of characteristics showing disorganization: perhaps the victim was beaten, the body was left in an isolated spot, the victim's belongings were scattered, or the murder weapon was improvised.

If the F.B.I. was right, they reasoned, the crime-scene details on each of those two lists should "co-occur" — that is, if you see one or more organized traits in a crime, there should be a reasonably high probability of seeing other organized traits. When they looked at a sample of a hundred serial crimes, however, they couldn’t find any support for the F.B.I.'s distinction. Crimes don't fall into one camp or the other. It turns out that they're almost always a mixture of a few key organized traits and a random array of disorganized traits. Laurence Alison, one of the leaders of the Liverpool group and the author of "The Forensic Psychologist’s Casebook," told me, "The whole business is a lot more complicated than the F.B.I. imagines."

The whole article is a fascinating insight into the world of FBI profiling and notes that the methods may rely as much on cognitive distortions for their impact, as on hard evidence.

UPDATE: The forensic psychologists over at the excellent CrimePsychBlog have some commentary on the Gladwell piece, noting, among other things that Gladwell bases his criticisms on methods of profiling pioneers whose time has long since passed. A scientific approach is apparently now the mainstay of profiling practice and (they hope) that also includes the FBI.

Link to New Yorker article 'Dangerous Minds' (via 3Q).

—Vaughan.

2007-11-09 Spike activity:

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

The Neurocritic covers a fascinating study that modelled group interest for new web information. Full text: pdf.

Call for a ban on controversial 'Dolphin Assisted Therapy'. Controversial or just completely bizarre?

Brain Waves covers the top 10 neuroscience trends of 2007.

Activity is reduced in visual areas to direct activation toward hearing areas when we're trying to listen to complex sounds, according to a new study covered by BBC News.

The New Republic has an in-depth review of a new book on the biology of altruism.

A study in this month's British Journal of Psychiatry found that people with schizophrenia can be more logical than people without a psychiatric diagnosis.

The Scientific American Mind Matters blog covers some of the highlights of the Society for Neuroscience annual conference.

The BPS Research Digest looks at a study on psychiatrists who treat themselves for mental illness.

The LA Times has an in-depth and important article entitled 'Are we too quick to medicate children?'

Van Gogh and the history of manic depression is discussed by The Neurophilosopher.

BBC News reports on an intriguing new genetic study of epilepsy: two genes are known individually to increase the chance of having a seizure, but carrying both makes epilepsy less likely.

A study finds further evidence that genetics has a role in determining sexual orientation in men.

PsyBlog discusses the false consensus bias and why we all stink as intuitive psychologists.

The Guardian reports on a study that suggest love at first sight is just sex and ego. Presumably, only if you do it right though.

Amygdala abnormalities linked to violent aggression in a study covered by Treatment Online.

Developing Intelligence reports that an artificial intelligence model of speech recognition develops what seem to be the equivalent of mirror neurons.

How we understand what doctors say can be quite different, even when they use the same words, depending on how serious we think the illness is. Cognitive Daily covers a fantastic applied psychology study.

—Vaughan.

November 08, 2007

Alcohol abuse in the New Testament:

I just found this abstract of a 1987 article from the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism that reviewed attitudes to alcohol in the Bible, and found that boozing was looked on considerably more favourably in the Old Testament than the New.

Alcohol abuse in the New Testament.

Seller SC.

Alcohol and Alcoholism. 1987;22(1):83-90.

The New Testament is similar to the Old Testament in terms of some fundamental attitudes towards alcohol. St Paul, for example, in the spirit of the Old Testament, unequivocally condemns drunkenness but recommends the consumption of wine in moderate amounts. Nevertheless, there are significant differences in emphasis between the two documents. Wine is referred to as God's gift in six of the books from the Old Testament, and no such description is offered in the New Testament. Total abstention seems acceptable only under exceptional circumstances in the Old Testament, while it is implicitly extolled through the exemplary role of John the Baptist in the New Testament. Finally, penalties for drunkards, including loss of salvation, are proportionally more frequent and comprehensive in the New Testament.

Link to PubMed entry for article.

—Vaughan.

Brain map, created by a cartographer:

The October 25th edition of Neuron has a fantastic 'brain map' cover