December 31, 2007

The philosophy of wine:

Two views on wine appreciation. The first from the introduction of an academic book edited by Prof Barry Smith called Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine, a volume that collects perspectives from philosophy and cognitive science on how we understand the qualities of wine:

Do we directly perceive the quality of a wine, or do we assess its quality on the basis of what we first perceive? Tasting seems to involve both perception and judgement. But does the perceptual experience of tasting - which relies on the sensations of touch, taste and smell - already involve a judgement of quality? Is such judgement a matter of understanding and assessment, and does require wine knowledge to arrive at a correct verdict?

Some philosophers would claim that one cannot assess a wine's quality on the basis of perceptual experience alone and evaluation goes beyond what one finds in a description of its objective characteristics. According to these thinkers something else is required to arrive at an assessment of a wine's merits. This may be the pleasure the taster derives from the wine, the valuing of certain characteristics, or the individual preferences of the taster. Is there room among such views for non-subjective judgements of wine quality?

And the alternative view, from The New York Times review of the same book:

The rhetoric and rituals of wine appreciation are sometimes said to be the alimentary equivalent of lipstick on a pig: they are meant to give an attractive sheen to the ugly business of getting drunk.

Link to book details (thanks Kat!).
Link to NYT review.

—Vaughan.

December 30, 2007

When a Rose Is Not Red:

There's an interesting article in January's Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience about a brain injured patient who has a curious form of simultanagnosia - the inability to perceive more than one object at once.

In this case, he also seemed unable to report more than one attribute, like colour or name, at a time, while looking at the object.

Simultanagnosia: When a Rose Is Not Red.

J Cogn Neurosci. 2008, 20 (1), 36-48

Coslett HB, Lie G.

Information regarding object identity ("what") and spatial location ("where/how to") is largely segregated in visual processing. Under most circumstances, however, object identity and location are linked. We report data from a simultanagnosic patient (K.E.) with bilateral posterior parietal infarcts who was unable to "see" more than one object in an array despite relatively preserved object processing and normal preattentive processing. K.E. also demonstrated a finding that has not, to our knowledge, been reported: He was unable to report more than one attribute of a single object. For example, he was unable to name the color of the ink in which words were written despite naming the word correctly. Several experiments demonstrated, however, that perceptual attributes that he was unable to report influenced his performance. We suggest that binding of object identity and location is a limited-capacity operation that is essential for conscious awareness for which the posterior parietal lobe is crucial.

This is particularly interesting because it relates to a key question in understanding consciousness, known as the 'binding problem'.

The brain deals with different parts of perception (for example movement, colour, light-dark differences) in different parts of the brain, yet when we perceive an object, it all seems to be integrated into one conscious experience.

For example, our experience of an object's colour and movement never seem to be 'out of synch'. How this happens is the essence of the binding problem.

This case report is of someone whose brain injury seems to prevent 'binding'.

Looking at what brain injured patients can no longer do and matching this with the damaged areas can give us a clue to how the brain works because "you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone".

Strictly speaking, this is called the transparency assumption in cognitive neuropsychology but I call it the Joni Mitchell principle as the quote is a song lyric of hers (I got this from a student essay I once marked so thank you insightful mystery student!).

In this case, the patient suffered damage to both sides of the back of the parietal lobes because of a stroke ("bilateral posterior parietal infarcts"), suggesting the parietal lobes might be key in binding perceptual elements for consciousness.

Unfortunately, I can't get to the full-text of the paper yet, so I'm not sure what insights the authors themselves have offered. Still, a fascinating case.

Link to PubMed abstract.

—Vaughan.

December 29, 2007

Finding Alzheimer's:

The New York Times has a fantastic article on the neuroscience of Alzheimer's disease, as well as the human impact of the disorder on individuals and their families.

The article is accompanied by two video reports that weave together personal stories with some of the latest developments in understanding the disorder.

Alzheimer's is a form of dementia, which is where the mind and brain break down quicker than would be expected through normal ageing.

Like many forms of dementia, the first symptoms (such as memory, attention, language or movement problems) appear after a significant amount of brain damage has already been done.

One of the key aims of dementia research is to identify this process while it is still 'silent' to understand how it forms and try and prevent it developing further.

Genetics are one focus, but they are known to be complex. Certain genes (most famously 'ApoE') are known to alter the risk of developing the Alzheimer's in older people, but they're only one part of the puzzle.

However, there is one form of Alzheimer's that is inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern, meaning that if one of your parents has it, you've got a fifty percent change of getting it too.

It means that if you've inherited the gene or genes (autosomal dominance implies a single gene, but several are currently candidates), you're almost definitely going to develop the disorder.

Interestingly, this autosomal dominant version of Alzheimer's tends to happen much earlier in life, in the early 60s, 50s or in some cases, even the 40s.

A similar thing happens with other similarly inherited dementias, like CADASIL, where a single gene has been fairly confidently identified.

It's both terrifying and amazing to think that a difference in a single gene, expressing a single different protein, can cause such as massive break down in brain function.

The article also looks at a new type of dye which allows abnormal clumps of amyloid protein, a brain change characteristic of Alzheimer's, to be seen on a PET brain scan done on living people.

At the moment, Alzheimer's can only be diagnosed with 100% accuracy after death, but this new technique could allow brain changes to be tracked in people before they develop any symptoms.

However, it's become clear that you can have protein clumps without having the disease.

Researchers are increasingly talking about 'cognitive reserve', a measure of 'wear and tear' or 'fitness' of the brain, with the idea that the disease happens where various factors tip the brain 'over the threshold' into physical decline.

The 'threshold' is thought to be set by a combination of genetics, physical health, cognitive ability, education and level of activity.

The New York Times article is a wonderful guide to the scientific debates behind the quest to understand the disorder, and the videos really bring home the effect of it.

Link to NYT article 'Finding Alzheimer’s Before a Mind Fails' with videos.

—Vaughan.

December 28, 2007

Sex, prodrugs and rock and roll:

BBC News has a report on the increasingly popularity of gamma-Butyrolactone or GBL as a recreational drug. Actually, it's not a drug in itself, but once ingested it is metabolised into GHB, a drug often sold under the name 'Liquid Ecstasy'.

Actually, the effects are much more like alcohol than ecstasy (the street name is just a marketing ploy) and the similarities to alcohol can be seen in its structure and effect on the brain, as both affect GABA receptors.

The increasing popularity of GBL is particularly interesting, however, as GBL is legal, but the body transforms it into the illegal UK Class C substance GHB.

Compounds that are weak or inactive until the body transforms them into an active drug are called prodrugs, and this is the first situation that I can think of where a legal prodrug has been found for an illegal drug.

Probably the most commonly used illicit prodrug is heroin, which is metabolised into morphine in the body, but both are Class A drugs in the UK so there's no legal benefit to having one rather than the other.

GHB is usually described as a 'date rape drug' despite the fact that it is barely used in 'date rapes', unlike alcohol, which is used in the vast majority of cases and is a much better candidate for the 'date rape drug' label.

GBL is closely related to 1,4-Butanediol, which is also a GHB prodrug. 1,4-B recently caused a scare because a toy called 'Aqua Dots' was made using the compound and had to be withdrawn after several infants swallowed the plastic pellets and became dangerously intoxicated.

Needless to say, the news inspired some to swallow the plastic pellets for fun and the experience was, inevitably, reported online.

GHB is a nervous system depressant, and like all depressants, a major danger is unconsciousness, coma, and collapse of breathing and circulation.

Consequently, there have been a number of reports of these cases being admitted to hospital emergency rooms.

The long-term toxicity of these substances aren't really known, but as both GBL and 1,4-B are used as industrial solvents and cleaning fluids, it's likely that they give the body a fairly rough time.

Link to BBC News on the rise of GBL use.

—Vaughan.

A War of Nerves:

I've just started reading Ben Shephard's stunning book A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists that tracks the history of military psychiatry through the 20th century.

Even if you're not interested in the military per se, the wars of the last 100 years have been incredibly important in shaping our whole understanding of mental breakdown, mind-body concepts and clinical treatment.

For example, the effects of trauma stemming from World War I were so shockingly obvious and happened in such large numbers that the medical establishment could no longer deny the role of the mind in both the theories and practice of treating 'nervous disorders'.

In effect, it made psychology not only acceptable, but necessary, to a previously sceptical medical establishment that were largely focused on an 'organs and nerves' view of human life.

One of the big concerns during World War I was 'shell shock', a confusing and eventually abandoned label that was typically used to describe any number of physical problems (such as paralysis, blindness, uncontrollable shaking) that arose from combat stress.

The original name came from early theories that suggested these symptoms arose from the effect of 'shock waves' on the nervous system.

However, it became clear that only a small percentage of cases actually resulted from actual brain injury (interestingly, a recent article in the American Journal of Psychiatry notes parallels between 'shell shock' and concerns over the effects of Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs in Iraq).

It turns out, many of the symptoms were triggered or exacerbated by unbearable stress and were shaped by beliefs and expectations.

This was clearly demonstrated when a 'gas shock' syndrome emerged during World War I when gas attacks became more frequent.

Like 'shell shock', it arose from a combination of extreme stress and was shaped by expectation and fear (the descriptions of death by mustard gas are truly horrifying) even when no gas injury could be detected.

An eye witness recalled that: "When men trained to believe that a light sniff of gas meant death, and with nerves highly strung by being shelled for long periods and with the presence of not a few who really had been gassed, it is no wonder that a gas alarm went beyond all bounds. It was remarked as a joke that if someone yelled 'gas', everyone in France would put on a mask. Two or three alarms a night was common. Gas shock was as common as shell shock."

The military managed (and still manage) these forms of combat stress reactions by rest (stress and fatigue play a great part) but also by managing expectations.

Soldiers are typically treated briefly and near the front line, with the expectation they'll rejoin their unit. In effect, instilling the belief that the effects are unfortunate but transient. As a result, they usually are.

Shephard's book is full of fascinating facts, quotes and insights on every page as he's used some incredibly in-depth historical research to bring not only the scientific and medical issues alive, but also the culture and attitudes of the time.

He's interwoven military records and scientific research with press commentary and personal letters to make the book really quite moving in places.

I'm sure I'll be posting more gems as I read more.

Link to book details.
Link to abstract of 'Shell shock and mild traumatic brain injury: a historical review.'

—Vaughan.

Philosophy, as God intended (if he were a school girl):

It seems it's still handbags at 40 paces as the full text of Colin McGinn's increasingly infamous review of Honderich's book On Conciousness has been posted to the web, so you can enjoy the academic mudslinging in all its glory.

If you're not clear on the background to this spectacular resurgence of the long-running feud, have a look at our post from a few days back.

To continue the saga, Honderich has also posted his own reply , followed by McGinn's subsequent response with his own (one sentence!) reply to that.

Of course, there's some good conceptual points being made about the nature of consciousness, but let's be honest, that's not why we're reading it.

Link to McGinn's review of On Consciousness with links to replies (via MeFi).

—Vaughan.

December 27, 2007

Beliefs about intelligence affect mental performance:

I've just found a fascinating five minute NPR radio report on work by psychologist Carol Dweck that has found that if a child thinks that intelligence is something that can change throughout life, they do better in school.

Dweck has been doing some fascinating work on what affects children's academic performance.

We've reported on some of her earlier work, including the fact that praising children for their intelligence actually makes them perform worse in certain situations, whereas praising them for their hard work encourages them to tackle adversity when it occurs.

This NPR radio slot covers some work she published with colleagues in a freely available paper looking at the fact that children who believe that intelligence is flexible seem to do better as they "tend to emphasize ‘learning goals’ and rebound better from occasional failures".

Dweck and her colleagues then tested the idea that if they taught children that intelligence could grow, their performance would improve. As predicted, it did.

It's a really great example of carefully targeted cognitive science research. It's a counter-intuitive finding that has direct practical application to improving children's academic performance in both the long- and short-term.

It's also a lovely example of a self-confirming belief. Children who believe intelligence is fixed are more likely to have fixed performance, whereas children who believe intelligence can grow are more likely to show performance growth.

The implications for the psychology of teachers are also interesting, because it would seem to be self-confirming for them as well. Teachers who believe that poorly performing children may have hidden potential might see them improve when they pass this on to the child.

Teachers who believe that poorly performing children are unlikely to change may actually limit a child's performance if the child picks up on this and begins to believe the same.

So it might be worth testing whether teachers' beliefs about intelligence affect their students' performance as well.

Link to NPR on 'Students' View of Intelligence Can Help Grades'.
Link to paper 'Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success?'.

—Vaughan.

December 26, 2007

Pulsing visual illusion:

Omni Brain has found an op-art style visual illusion that seems to pulse out from the centre.

Click on the link below or on the image to get the full picture, and if you don't see the effect straight away, just glance at the corners.

The effect is a slow shimmering movement when it kicks in.

Link to pulsing visual illusion.

—Vaughan.

December 25, 2007

Kids' letters to Santa as advertising psychology study:

A completely charming study looking at how television advertising influences children by examining the toys they request in their letters to Santa Claus.

The study was led by Prof Karen Pine and has just been published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

The Relationship Between Television Advertising, Children's Viewing and Their Requests to Father Christmas.

J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2007 Dec;28(6):456-61.

OBJECTIVE:: Children's letters to Father Christmas provide an opportunity to use naturalistic methods to investigate the influence of television advertising.

METHODS:: This study investigates the number of toy requests in the letters of children aged between 6 and 8 (n = 98) in relation to their television viewing and the frequency of product advertisements prior to Christmas. Seventy-six hours of children's television were sampled, containing over 2,500 advertisements for toys.

RESULTS:: Children's viewing frequency, and a preference for viewing commercial channels, were both related to their requests for advertised goods. Gender effects were also found, with girls requesting more advertised products than boys.

CONCLUSION:: Exploring the children's explicit understanding of advertising showed that children in this age group are not wholly aware of the advertisers' intent and that, together with their good recall of advertising, this may account for their vulnerability to its persuasive messages.

Link to abstract on PubMed.

—Vaughan.

Not just a pretty face:

The Economist has a fascinating article on the link between beauty, intelligence and success. It reviews research showing that beautiful people are actually, on average, slightly more intelligent and it's probably a result of genetics.

The first half of the article looks at the psychological research that has found that beauty, and particularly symmetry, is linked to health and intelligence.

Interestingly, visual beauty is only a clue to intelligence at certain stages in life:

They found that the faces of children and adults of middling years did seem to give away intelligence, while those of teenagers and the elderly did not. That is surprising because face-reading of this sort must surely be important in mate selection, and the teenage years are the time when such selection is likely to be at its most intense—though, conversely, they are also the time when evolution will be working hardest to cover up any deficiencies, and the hormone-driven changes taking place during puberty might provide the material needed to do that.

Nevertheless, the accumulating evidence suggests that physical characteristics do give clues about intelligence, that such clues are picked up by other people, and that these clues are also associated with beauty.

The second half of the article reviews an innovative approach to the effect of beauty by economist Daniel Hamermesh.

He's found a robust link between financial success and beauty (interestingly which differs across cultures), but has also looked at the cost-effectiveness of using cosmetics and clothing to boost attractiveness.

It turns out, it's a poor investment. His research study [pdf] found that the financial boost generate by using clothes and beauty treatments only covers 15% of their cost.

Link to Economist article on beauty and success.
pdf of Hamermesh's paper 'Dress for Success: Does Primping Pay?'.

—Vaughan.

December 24, 2007

2007-12-24 Spike activity:

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

BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed has discussions on myths about sex trafficking and the history of hunger.

Science and Consciousness Review has a feature on whether Theory of Mind is dependent on episodic memory?

Omni Brain finds a spoof video on installing a DIY brain-computer interface.

There's a great review of new book 'Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind' on Metapsychology that looks at some of the skeletons in the psychoanalytic closet.

An article for the Washington Post describes one of Stanley Milgram's lesser known but enormously endearing experiments.

Oliver Sacks describes the case of Mrs O'C and her musical hallucinations for NPR Radio. He first described her in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and updated her story in Musicophilia. He presents the complete version in this short programme.

On the same theme, Scientific American had a good 'music and the brain' article in November's issue that I missed earlier.

Bad headline but interesting sleep study. A better headline would be 'quality of sleep influences how the brain stores memories' - a subtle but important difference.

The New York Times reports that adverts aiming to 'promote awareness' about childhood psychiatric disorders are cancelled after complaints about scaremongering and insensitivity.

A genetic test for genes that may alter response to antidepressant drugs becomes commercially available, and Corpus Callosum has a great analysis of its limitation and significance.

Is it possible to be too happy? Cognitive Daily discusses a study which investigated whether there is an optimal happiness level.

—Vaughan.

December 22, 2007

Philosophical feud reignites:

The Guardian has an article on a feud between philosophers Colin McGinn and Ted Honderich which has recently been reignited after McGinn wrote a review of Honderich's new book on consciousness which the newspaper describes as "probably the most negative book review ever written".

The review was published in the July edition of academic journal Philosophical Review, and the article has some of the highlights:

"This book runs the full gamut from the mediocre to the ludicrous to the merely bad," begins Colin McGinn's review of On Consciousness by Ted Honderich. "It is painful to read, poorly thought out, and uninformed. It is also radically inconsistent."

The ending isn't much better: "Is there anything of merit in On Consciousness? Honderich does occasionally show glimmers of understanding that the problem of consciousness is difficult and that most of our ideas about it fall short of the mark. His instincts, at least, are not always wrong. It is a pity that his own efforts here are so shoddy, inept, and disastrous (to use a term he is fond of applying to the views of others)."

And in the middle, there is nothing to cheer the book's author. Honderich's book is, according to McGinn, sly, woefully uninformed, preposterous, easily refuted, unsophisticated, uncomprehending, banal, pointless, excruciating.

What does the man on the receiving end think of this review? "It is a cold, calculated attempt to murder a philosopher's reputation," says Honderich.

Both philosophers can be adequately described as larger than life and both hold positions on consciousness that can be thought of as fairly radical when compared to the mainstream of philosophical thought.

Apparently, the feud goes back many years and includes everything from philosophical mudslinging to backhanded remarks about girlfriends.

Connoisseurs of academic mudslinging may wish to revisit a couple of classics to accompany this recent fine display.

Link to Guardian article 'Enemies of thought' (via 3Q).

—Vaughan.

Christmas update:

This is just a brief note to wish all our readers a very happy Christmas, Solstice, Diwali, Hanukkah, Eid ul-Adha, Yalda or non-theist winter holiday, and to say that updates might be a bit irregular over the next week as we take time off to travel and spread good cheer.

Many thanks for your all your comments, contributions and, most of all, continued interest in Mind Hacks. We enjoy writing it and it's always great to hear that other people enjoy reading it.

Wishing you all life, love and mental health!

—Vaughan.

December 20, 2007

What a difference a friend makes:

It's a big glossy website with lots of smiling people promoting an intervention for mental illness. Surely, drug company marketing you think? Actually, it turns out to be a US Government initiative promoting the importance of friendship in mental health and recovery from mental illness.

In the medical literature, friends and family are described as 'social support' and we know that social support is one of the biggest protectors against mental illness and one of the best predictors of recovery.

It's probably one of the best studied aspects of mental health, and we know it has a significant impact on physical health as well. For example, it's clear from the depression research that social support has a positive effect in a wide range of people and situations.

The website has resources on different types of mental illness, tips for helping people you know and information on getting further advice and support, all very well presented with video and audio as well.

Largely because you can't make a profit from love and friendship, you don't see it promoted much, despite it being one of the most effective ways of combating psychiatric disorder.

Hopefully, this website is part of a larger campaign to get the word out. Bravo!

Link to What a Difference a Friend Makes.

—Vaughan.

December 19, 2007

Altered mates: drugs in science:

This week's Nature has an article about the illicit use of cognitive enhancing drugs by healthy people just wanting to push their limits, including working scientists.

These are the same drugs that have caused concern about their level of use among students, chiefly modafinil (Provigil) and methylphenidate (Ritalin), although other drugs such as Alzheimer's medication donepezil (Aricept), non-amphetamine ADHD drug atomoxetine (Strattera) are also candidates.

The article argues that the use of these drugs by healthy people raises some new ethical questions that need to be addressed and particularly discusses their use by scientists.

The issue is hardly new, however, as scientists have been using chemical pick-me-ups as long as science has existed.

Mathematicians have been noted for their use of amphetamines (Paul Erdős being a famous example) and there are plenty of famous figures from other fields who have made use of drugs for tweaking their mood or mind.

William Stewart Halsted, the "father of American surgery" and founder of the surgery department at John Hopkins Medical School, was a long-term cocaine and morphine addict.

Psychologists and psychiatrists have had a long history of trying out drugs on themselves and expanding their consciousness with hallucinogens in attempts to understand how the mind and reality can become distorted.

As we've noted previously, many of the so-called 'new' ethical issues, apply equally well to past drugs and past situations.

Probably the only genuinely new aspect, is that there are virtually no long-term studies on these newer drugs, so it's still not clear on what the long-term effects might be. Perhaps more scary than their use by consenting adults therefore, is their use on children.

Nevertheless, on this occasion Nature have set up an online forum to discuss the use of drugs by scientists, so you can join the debate yourself.

Link to Nature article 'Professor's little helper'.
Link to Nature forum 'Would you boost your brain power?'.

—Vaughan.

Dog prozac wins dumbest moments in business prize:

Fortune has just published it's list of the year's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business, and at number two comes drug company Eli Lilly, with dog Prozac.

Seemingly, dog depression is an unrecognised epidemic / untapped market that is just crying out for some pharmacological intervention.

Thank God. We've been so worried since Lucky dyed his hair jet black and started listening to the Smiths.

Eli Lilly wins FDA approval to put Prozac into chewable, beef-flavored pills to treat separation anxiety in dogs.

Link to Fortune second dumbest business moment of the year.

—Vaughan.

December 18, 2007

Encephalon 38 flies in:

The 38th edition of psychology and neuroscience writing carnival Encephalon has just arrived online and this fortnight it's ably hosted by Not Exactly Rocket Science.

A couple of my favourites include an excellent article (how did I miss it before?) from Pure Pedantry reviewing the evidence that show mental illness is a poor predictor of violence in light of recent shootings in the US, and another on the functions of the hippocampus from Memoirs of a Postgrad.

There's a whole stack more in the same edition, so have a look through for the latest and greatest from the last two weeks.

Link to Encephalon 38.

—Vaughan.

The problem of believing in belief:

Sam Harris is better known as a leading atheist, but he's also completing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and a forthcoming study by Harris is a flawed but important contribution to how we understand the neuropsychology of belief.

Harris and his colleagues asked participants to respond to a number of statements with buttons presses indicating that they either believed, disbelieved or were undecided about each proposition.

The participants were shown statements relating to mathematics, geography, word meaning, general knowledge, ethics, religion and their own life.

While they were doing this brain activity was measured by a fMRI scanner, with a view to finding out which areas of the brain were involved in 'belief' and 'belief states'.

It's a straightforward study and you may wonder why no-one has ever done it before. It's possibly because, from what we know about belief, it's not clear that this study tells us much more about belief rather than what happens when people respond to questions.

Belief is a concept that is used all the time in psychology but is a pain to define in a way that science would be happy with. If you're not convinced Eric Schwitzgebel's guide to the problem is about as good as you're likely to read, but I'm going to give a quick run through of the most relevant issues here.

One of the main problems is that experimental neuropsychology relies on measuring brain and behaviour during activities, and there is no single activity that represents 'believing'.

When do you believe Paris is the capital of France? Only when you think about it or all the time? Presumably, we believe it all the time as we don't assume someone has stopped believing it when they think about something else or are unconscious, when asleep perhaps.

The above example treats belief as a proposition stored in memory (a semantic memory in psychology parlance), but you can easily respond to a belief question if you've never thought about a proposition before in your life.

Do you believe tigers wear pink pyjamas? Presumably you don't, but it's unlikely you've ever thought about this before. It's an answer reconstructed from fragments of other information you have in memory, reasoning and 'gut instinct' to varying degrees.

Saying you believe something can work the same way, of course. You may never have thought about it before, but you can say you believe it.

Just these two examples show that saying you believe or disbelieve can involve retrieving a 'fact' from memory, or might involve any number of other mental processes to give an answer.

Furthermore, its not even clear that two people retrieving facts from memory are even thinking about the same thing.

Here's another question. Do you believe snow is white? Imagine two people are asked this question. One believes snow is frozen water, the other believes it's star dust.

Considering that each person believes that the subject is something completely different, are they answering the same belief question, or is one answering 'I believe frozen water is white' while the other is answering 'I believe stardust is white'? Now scale that up to concepts like democracy or religion.

This is known as the atomism vs holism debate in philosophy and concerns whether we can ever consider belief is isolation ('snow is white'), or whether we can only consider them in relation to other beliefs that might need to be accessed at the same time (what we believe a word represents, or, even, what we believe the about what we believe).

These issues are essential for neuropsychologists, because they predict different patterns of brain activity, even though the behaviour (e.g. responding 'I believe') is exactly the same.

The point of having so many topics in Harris study is that despite these issues, on average, there might be some brain differences involved in answering 'believe' or 'disbelieve' regardless of the topic, but the mental processes involved in answering these questions might be so diverse that it's difficult to say whether the average brain activity actually describes 'belief' in any meaningful sense.

This doesn't mean the study is worthless though, and in fact, it's an essential step in the scientific study of belief.

Science tends to start big, obvious and practical, and work through objections, new ideas and problems over time with new experiments. This study is one of the early but essential, big, obvious and practical steps.

Interestingly, some philosophers (known as eliminative materialists) argue that the concept of belief is just one we've inherited from everyday or 'folk psychology' and because of the conceptual problems with it, we'll eventually realise there are no distinct mind or brain process that can be coherently identified as 'belief'.

Like the concept of 'rooting for your team', we'll just realise its too broad to be scientifically useful and we'll disregard the idea of 'belief' mechanisms in the brain in favour of a variety of better specified concepts that reliably map onto mind and brain processes.

Importantly, studies into the neuropsychology of belief, like this one, can help answer these questions, and eventually, they are likely to have profound implications for everything from lie detection to clinical medicine.

Link to full-text of Harris's study.
Link to Schwitzgebel's on belief for the Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
Link to write-up from Time.

—Vaughan.

Alcohol, the cause and solution to all of life's problems:

As the Christmas season is upon us, what better time to think about alcohol, aptly described by Homer Simpson as the "the cause and solution to all of life's problems".

The British Medical Journal has a wonderful article that tells you everything you wanted to know about alcohol (but were too drunk to ask) in one concise package.

It covers the effect of alcohol on the body and brain, and describes what affects how alcohol is absorbed into the body:

Rate of absorption of alcohol depends on several factors. It is quickest, for example, when alcohol is drunk on an empty stomach and the concentration of alcohol is 20-30%. Thus, sherry, with an alcohol concentration of about 20% increases the levels of alcohol in blood more rapidly than beer (3-8%), while spirits (40%) delay gastric emptying and inhibit absorption. Drinks aerated with carbon dioxide—for example, whisky and soda, and champagne—get into the system quicker. Food, and particularly carbohydrate, retards absorption: blood concentrations may not reach a quarter of those achieved on an empty stomach. The pleasurable effects of alcohol are best achieved with a meal or when alcohol is drunk diluted, in the case of spirits.

It also notes that blood alcohol level is affected by stage of the menstrual cycle in women. Apparently, it is highest premenstrually and at ovulation (evolutionary psychologists, start your engines).

Different effect are compared to the amount of alcohol in the blood stream, so it's a really handy summary.

The BMJ also published a systematic review of hangover cures and preventions later in the year, and found, rather sadly, that:

No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcohol hangover. The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of alcohol induced hangover is to practise abstinence or moderation.

Bugger.

Link to BMJ article 'ABC of Alcohol'.
Link to BMJ systematic review on hangover cures and preventions.

—Vaughan.

December 17, 2007

Cognitive dissonance reduction:

Following on from my earlier post about the way psychologists look at the world, let me tell you a story which I think illustrates very well the tendency academic psychologists have for reductionism. It's a story about a recent paper on the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, and about a discussion of that paper by a group of psychologists that I was lucky enough to be part of.

Cognitive Dissonance is a term which describes an uncomfortable feeling we experience when our actions and beliefs are contradictory. For example, we might believe that we are environmentally conscious and responsible citizen, but might take the action of flying to Spain for the weekend. Our beliefs about ourselves seem to be in contradiction with our actions. Leon Festinger, who proposed dissonance theory, suggested that in situations like this we are motivated to reduce dissonance by adjusting our beliefs to be in line with our actions.

Obviously after-the-event it is a little too late to adjust our actions, so our beliefs are the only remaining point of movement. In the flying to Spain example you might be motivated by cognitive dissonance to change what you believe about flying: maybe you come to believe that flying isn't actually that bad for the environment, or that focussing on personal choices isn't the best way to understand environmental problems, or you could even go all the way and decide that you're not an environmentally responsible person.

The classic experiment of dissonance theory involved recruiting male students to take part in a crushingly boring experiment. The boring part was an hour of two trivial actions --- loading spools into a tray, turning pegs a quarter-turn in a peg-board. At the end of this, after the students through the experiment was over, was the interesting part of us. The students were offered either $1 or $20 to tell the next participant in the experiment (actually the female accomplice of the experimenter) that the experiment she was about to do was really enjoyable. After telling this lie, the participants were then interviewed about how enjoyable they really found the experiment. What would you expect from this procedure? Now one view would predict that the students paid $20 would enjoy the experiment more. This is certainly what behaviourist psychology would predict --- a larger reward should produce a bigger effect (with the effect being a shift from remembering the task as boring, which is was, to remembering it being enjoyable, which getting £20 presumably was). But cognitive dissonance theory suggests that the opposite would happen. Those paid $20 would have no need to change their beliefs about the task. They lied about how enjoyable the task was to the accomplice, something which presumably contradicted their beliefs about themselves as nice and trustworthy people, but they did it for a good reason, the $20. Now consider the group paid only $1. They lied about how enjoyable the task was, but looking around for a reason they cannot find one --- what kind of person would lie to an innocent for only $1? So, the theory goes, they would experience dissonance between their actions and their beliefs and reduce this by adjusting their beliefs: they would come to believe that they actually did enjoy the boring task, and this is the reason that they told the accomplice that it was enjoyable. And, in fact, this is what happened.

At this point I want you to notice two things about cognitive dissonance. Firstly, it requires the existence of quite sophisticated mental machinery to operate. Not only do you need to have abstract beliefs about the world and yourself, you need to have some mechanism which detects when these beliefs are in contradiction with each other or with your actions, and which can (unconsciously) adjust selective beliefs to reduce this contradiction. The second thing to notice is that all this sophisticated mental machinery is postulated to exist from changes in behaviour, it is never directly measured. We don't have any evidence that the change in attitudes really does result from an uncomfortable internal state ('dissonance') or that any such dissonance does result from an unconscious perception of the contradiction between beliefs and actions.

So, to the recent paper and to reductionism. The paper, by Louisa Egan and colleagues at Yale [ref below] is titled 'The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance', and represents one kind of reductive strategy that psychologists might employ when considering a theory like cognitive dissonance. The experiments in the paper (summarised here and here) both involved demonstrating cognitive dissonance in two groups which do not have the sophisticated mental machinery normally considered necessary for cognitive dissonance --- four year-old children, and monkeys. The reductionism of the paper, which the authors are quite explicit about, is to show that something like cognitive dissonance can occur in these two groups despite their lack of elaborate explicit beliefs. Unlike the students in Festinger's classic experiment we can't suppose that the children or the monkeys have thoughts about their thoughts in the same way that dissonance theory suggests.

To demonstrate this the authors employed an experimental method that could be used with subjects who did not have language, but would still allow them to observe the core phenomena of dissonance theory --- the adjusting of attitudes in line with previous actions. The method worked like this. For each participant --- be they a child or a monkey --- the experimenters identified three items (stickers for the children, coloured M&M's for the monkeys) which the participant preferred equally. In other words, if we call the three items A, B and C then the child or monkey liked all of the items the same amount. Then the experimenter forced the participating child or monkey to choose between two of the items (lets say A and B), so that they only got one. Next the child or monkey was offered a choice between item C and the item they did not choose before. So, if the first choice was between A and B and the participant chose A, then the next choice would be between B and C. What does dissonance theory predict for this kind of situation? Well, originally the three items are equally preferred --- that's how the items are selected. After someone is forced to make a first choice, between A and B, cognitive dissonance supposedly comes into play. The participant now has a reason to adjust their attitudes, and the way they do this is to downgrade their evaluation of their unchosen item. This will is known as being happy with what you got or "I must not like B as much, because I chose A". So on the second choice (B vs C) the participants are more likely to choose C (more likely that chance, and more likely than a control group that goes straight to the 'second' choice). This prediction is exactly what the experimenters found, in both children and monkeys, and the startling thing is that this occurred despite the fact that we know that neither group was explicitly talking to themselves in the way I outline the dissonance theory prediction above ("I must not prefer B as much...etc"). Obviously something like cognitive dissonance can be produced by far simpler mental machinery than that usually invoked to explain it, conclude the experimenters. In this way, The paper is a call to reduce the level at which we try and explain cognitive dissonance.

How far should you go when trying to reduce the level of theory-complexity that is needed to explain something? Psychologists know the answer to this immediately --- as far as possible! So when our happy band of psychologists got to discussing the the Egan paper it wasn't long before someone came up with a new suggestion, a further reduction.

What if, it was suggested, there was nothing like dissonance going on in the Egan et al experiments? After all, there was no direct measurement of anxiety or discomfort, so why suppose that dissonance occurred at all --- perhaps, if we can come up with a plausible alternative, we can do away with dissonance all together. Imagine this, see if you find it plausible: all of us, including monkeys and children, possess a very simple cognitive mechanism which saves us energy by remembering our choices and, when similar situations arise, applying our old choices to new situations, thus cutting down on decision time. That sounds plausible, and it would explain the Egan et al results if you accept that the result of the first, A vs B, decision is not just "choosing A" but is also "not choosing B". So, when you get to the second choice, B vs C, you are more likely to choose C because you are simply re-applying the previous decision of "not choosing B", rather than performing some complicated re-evaluation of your previously held attitudes a-la cognitive dissonance theory.

At this point in the discussion the psychologists in the room were feeling pretty pleased with themselves --- we'd started out to with cognitive dissonance, reduced the level of complexity of mental processes required to explain the phenomenon (the Egan et al result) and then we'd taken things one step further and reduced the complexity of the phenomenon itself. At this point, we had a discussion of how widely the 'decisional inertia' reinterpretation could be applied to supposed cognitive dissonance phenomena. Obviously we'd have only been really satisfied with the reinterpretation if it applied more widely than just to this one set of experiments under consideration.

But further treats were in store. What if we could reduce things again, what if we could make even simpler the processes involved? We'd already started to convince ourselves that the experimental results could be produced by simple cognitive processes rather than complex cognitive processes, perhaps we could come up with a theory about how the experimental results can be produced without any cognitive processes at all! Now that would be really reductive.

Here's what was suggested, not as definitely what was happening, but as a possibility for what could potentially be happening --- and remember, if you are sharing a table with reductionists then they will prefer the simple theory by default because it is simpler. You will need to persuade them of the reasons to accept any complex theory before they abandon the simple one. Imagine that there is no change at all going on in the preferences of the monkeys and the children. Instead, imagine --- o the simplicity! --- that any participant in the experiment merely has a set of existing preferences. These preferences don't even have to be mental, by preferences all I mean are consistent behaviours towards the items in question (stickers for the children, M&Ms for the monkeys). From here, via a bit of statistical theory, we can produce the experimental result with out any recourse to change in preferences, cognitive dissonance or indeed anything mental. Here's how. Whenever you measure anything you get inaccuracies. This means that your end result reflects two things: the true value and some random 'noise' which either raises or lowers the result away from the true value. Now think about the Egan et al experiment. The experimenters picked three items, A, B and C, which the children or monkeys 'preferred equally', but what did this mean? It meant only that when the experimenters measured preference their result was the same for items A, B and C. And we know, as statistically-savvy psychologists, that those results don't reflect the true preferences for A, B and C, but instead reflect the true preferences plus some noise. In reality, we can suppose, the children and monkeys actually do prefer each item differently from the others. Furthermore this might even be how they make their choice. So when they are presented with A vs B and choose A it may be because, on average, they preferred A all along. Now watch closely at what happens next. The experimental participants are given a second choice which depends on their first choice. If at first they chose A over B then the second choice is B vs C. But if they chose B over A then the second choice is A vs C. We know the results: they then choose C more than the unchosen option from the first choice, be it A or B, but now we have another theory as to why this might be. What could be happening is merely that, after the mistaken equivalence of A, B and C, the true preferences of the monkey or child are showing through, and the selective presentation of options on the second choice is making it look like they are changing their preferences in line with dissonance theory. Because the unchosen option from the first choice is more likely to have a lower true preference value (that, after all, may be why it was the unchosen option), it is consequently less likely to be preferred in the second choice, not because preferences have changed, but because it was less preferred all along. In the control condition, where no first choice is presented, their is no selective presentation of A and B and so the effect of the true values for preferences for A and B will tend to average out rather than produce a preferential selection of C.

Now obviously the next step with this theory would be to test if it is true, and check some details which might suggest how likely this is. Did Egan et al assess the reliability their initial preference evaluation? Did they test preferences and then re-test them at a later date to see if they were reliable? These and many other things could persuade us that such an explanation might or might not be very likely. The important thing, for now, is that we've come up with an explanation that seems as as simple as it could possibly be and still explain the experimental results.

For psychologists, reductionism is a value as well as a habit. We seek to use established simple features of the mind to explain as many things as possible before we get carried away with theories which rely on novel or complex possibilities. The reductionist position isn't the right one in every situation, but it is an essential guiding principle in our investigations of how the mind works.

Link: to earlier post about how psychologists think.

References

Egan L. C., Santos L.R., Bloom P. (2007). The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance: Evidence from Children and Monkeys. Psychological Science, 18, 978-983.

Festinger, L. and Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Festinger/">Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203-211.

—tom.

Experiment with a virtual neuron:

The Children's Hospital Boston have created a fantastic 'virtual neuron' which allows you to explore the basics of neural transmission with an interactive flash demo.

Strictly speaking, of course, it's designed for children, but it's remarkably good fun whatever your age.

Once you've got the demo window up, the options at the top of the screen allow you to choose different demonstrations, and the text below explains what's happening.

Yay!

Link to virtual neuron.

—Vaughan.

Man hammers nail into head every week for 11 weeks:

I just found this jaw-dropping case study of a man who banged 11 nails into his head while sadly quite distressed and psychotic.

The X-ray images are striking on their own, and what is even more astounding is that he made a full recovery.

Penetrating head injury in planned and repetitive deliberate self-harm.

Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2007 May;82(5):536.

Demetriades AK, Papadopoulos MC.

44-year-old man presented to his local emergency department wearing a baseball cap and complaining of headaches that had progressively worsened over the preceding 11 weeks. After we provided generous analgesia and performed simple investigations that failed to identify a diagnosis, the patient removed his cap to reveal an assortment of metallic objects embedded in his scalp. Plain radiographs showed 11 nails penetrating into his brain. A detailed history revealed a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and the patient confirmed that he had hammered a nail into his head each week for the past 11 weeks to rid him of evil. The nails were removed with the patient under general anesthesia, and he made an uncomplicated recovery with no neurological deficits.

Link to abstract on PubMed.

—Vaughan.

From the nose to the genitals and back again:

Recently, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has had some interesting letters on a theory from times past - the nasogenital reflex theory - that says that the nervous system makes a direct link between the erectile tissue in the genitals and the nose.

The nose has tissue which, like the genitals, can become engorged with blood, which is part of the reason we get a stuffy nose. To counter this, most nasal decongestants contain a drug which acts as a vasoconstrictor to reduce blood flow (sometimes this is a type of amphetamine).

The possible link between nose and genital tissue was first proposed by American surgeon John McKenzie in 1883:

Over one hundred years ago, neurological reflexes emanating from the nose — termed the nasal reflex neurosis — were considered to be the cause of many symptoms, including symptoms related to the genitalia. In 1883 McKenzie, an otolaryngologist from Johns Hopkins Hospital, proposed a nasogenital reflex responsible for symptoms such as dysmenorrhea, pelvic pain, etc. and described improvements following nasal treatments.

In other words, he argued that problems with the nose could also results in problems with the genitals and vice versa.

Later, Wilhelm Fleiss, a German ear, nose and throat specialist and a close friend of Freud's elaborated the theory, and suggested that nasal tissue could be the cause and cure of a number of illnesses in body and mind:

In 1893 Fleiss published his monograph on 'The Nasal Reflex Neurosis', in which he claimed that back pain, chest tightness, digestive disturbances, insomnia and 'anxious dreams' could all be attributed to nasal pathology. He also claimed that temporary relief of these symptoms was possible with the topical application of cocaine, of which Freud had published the first account of local anaesthetic properties.

Gradually the list of conditions grew to include migraine, vertigo, asthma and then gynaecological conditions such as dysmenorrhoea and repeated miscarriages.

Freud became quite influenced by this theory at one time, and referred a patient to Fleiss for nasal surgery to cure her depression. Sadly, surgical complications nearly cost the patient her life and Freud became disenchanted with the theory.

While it is now clear that the nose isn't a major cause of other disturbances in the body and mind, and the nervous system has no major pathway that connects the tissues of the nose and the genitals, there are some clues that they might both be affected by similar things.

Reports of 'viagra nosebleeds' and 'honeymoon rhinitis' (a stuffy nose and sneezing after sex) suggest that they may react similarly in some instances.

Link to JRSM letter (not open-access yet).
Link to second JRSM letter (not open-access yet).

—Vaughan.

December 16, 2007

Tortured minds: psychiatry and human rights:

ABC Radio National's All the the Mind has just concluded a two part series on human rights and psychiatry that looks at the role of mental health professionals in military interrogations, and the rights of psychiatric detainees.

The first part is based at the World Psychiatric Association conference in Australia and interviews several psychiatrists about their views on whether mental health professionals should be involved in, most relevantly, 'war on terror' interrogations that some argue are tantamount to torture.

The response is a bit predictable as psychiatrists have already firmly decided to have no part in these interrogations which they see as incompatible with their oath to 'do no harm', unlike the American Psychological Association which has decided to endorse participation within some rather vague limits.

There's a particularly interesting contribution from psychiatrist Prof Steven Sharfstein, who as president of the American Psychiatric Association was taken to Guantanamo Bay by the US Government, presumably to reassure him and other clinical leaders that the horror stories about the place were unjustified.

Instead, he came away convinced that Guantanamo should be closed for good.

In contrast, the American Psychological Association president, Prof Ronald Levant, who attended the same visit, came away with no strong convictions that any unethical practices were taking place.

The second part of the All in the Mind special investigation looks at the treatment of psychiatric patients across the world, particularly focusing on parts of the developing world where asylums can sometimes be little more than prisons.

The programme mentions a 2003 edition of Time Asia which had a photo essay on some of the shocking conditions in some Asian institutions.

It also discuss the newly agreed UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which is likely to have a significant impact on the rights of people with mental difficulties.

One of the most interesting contributions is from psychiatrist Prof Vikram Patel who headed up the excellent Lancet series on Global Mental Health.

It was a fantastic series of articles, including a paper entitled 'Barriers to improvement of mental health services in low income and middle income countries' which identifies education and funding as two key factors, and another called 'Resources for mental health: scarcity, inequity, and inefficiency'.

Without a hint of irony, the series is closed-access and individual articles are charged at $30 each.

The last in the series of article urges the global mental health community to "scale up the coverage of services for mental disorders in all countries, but especially in low-income and middle-income countries".

So I've uploaded all the articles to the web. Enjoy.

No health without mental health [pdf]

Resources for mental health: scarcity, inequity and inefficiency [pdf]

Treatment and prevention of mental disorders in low-income and middle-income countries [pdf]

Mental health systems in countries: where are we now? [pdf]

Barriers to improvement of mental health services in low income and middle income countries [pdf]

Scale up services for mental disorders: a call for action [pdf]

Link to AITM on participation in interrogation or torture.
Link to AITM on 'Who speaks for the chained and incarcerated?'.
Link to 2003 Time Asia article and photo essay on Asia's mental health centres.

—Vaughan.

December 14, 2007

Has shyness been transformed into a mental illness?:

Bookslut interviews author Christopher Lane, who argues in a new book that shyness has been transformed in the mental illness 'social phobia', partly due to it being used as a political football during a time of theoretical upheaval in psychiatry.

Social phobia is a type of anxiety that is triggered in social situations.

It can be specific to a certain situation, such as eating in public, or more generally associated with interacting with any group.

Some have argued that it is a prime example of where drug companies have picked up on an unpleasant but common anxiety and promoted it as a mental illness to be treated with medication, whereas others feel it is disabling enough to require wider recognition and medical attention.

As in a previous article for The New York Times [pdf] and seemingly in this book, Lane argues that definition is so vague as to be virtually meaningless.

Throughout the book, Lane suggests that the conceptual problems of the DSM arise in part from its weird eagerness to break decisively with Freud. Lane has vividly reconstructed the decision-making process of the DSM-III in the 1970s, showing how scoring points over rival theoretical schools frequently trumped logic or consistency. Insisting on the biochemical nature of all mental suffering leads psychiatrists to turn away from the vicissitudes of the mind -- what Lane calls "the strange, unusual turns of consciousness, themselves in thrall to vivid memories, irrational fantasies, persistent associations, and sometimes-inexplicable impulses." By reducing the complexity of these "turns" into "disorders" -- no matter how "multiaxial" -- modern psychiatry seems to drain the life out of the mind. Shyness is passionately and compellingly argued, in clear prose that is in turn scathing, hilarious, and sympathetic.

In the interview below, Lane discusses the origins of the book, the implications of shifting from a "reaction-based" to a "disorder-based" model of diagnosis, the differences between psychoanalysis and neuropsychiatry, and the problem of emotional blunting.

Link to interview with Christopher Lane.
Link to book details with excerpt.
pdf of NYT article 'Shy on Drugs'.

—Vaughan.

CT in the Sky with Diamonds:

Inkling Magazine has discovered a curious episode in the history of music and neuroscience where The Beatles helped to fund the development of the CT scanner.

If you ever suffer a head injury, you're likely to given a CT head scan as its a quick, convenient way of look for damage to brain tissue.

In a recent talk, consultant radiologist Dr Ben Timmins claimed that the sales of Beatles records allowed EMI to fund Sir Godfrey Hounsfield to develop the first scanner.

As a direct result of The Beatles’ success, Dr Timmis claimed, the scanner’s inventor, Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, was able to devote about four years developing the scanner from its 1968 prototype, to something that could be used in a clinical setting. His work was done in the Central Research Laboratory, a facility near Heathrow airport that was part of the EMI Group. Having sold 200 million of the Fab Four’s singles, (at seven inches, almost enough vinyl to stretch the length of the equator) the Beatles’ record company, EMI, was able to fund Hounsfield to do his research and the scanner was ready be used in hospitals in the 1970’s.

Link to Inkling Magazine on The Fab Four and CT scanners.
Link to The Independent with a short article on new CT scan and its history.

—Vaughan.

2007-12-14 Spike activity:

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

Novelist A.S. Byatt (who has had a long-standing interesting in brain science) writes an article in The Times arguing that 'neuroscience is helping us to understand how art works – and it may offer us a way out of narcissism'.

We perceive music differently depending on how we dance to it. A completely fascinating study covered by the inimitable Cognitive Daily.

Tonometric is a website where you can take musical perception tests which contribute to studies on the neuroscience of music.

Developing Intelligence looks at work which suggests IQ can be predicted by a simple reaction time test.

How would you complete the word jo_? Students who had been asked to contemplate their own death were more likely to form positive words (like 'joy') than others. More evidence for a positive cognitive bias in the face of death, reported by the BPS Research Digest.

The Literary Review gets stuck into a new book on Freud's last year.

Wired reports that Sega and NeuroSky are to make mind-controlled toys.

SciAm's Mind Matters blog discusses some recent work on 'stereotype threat', an interesting effect where people perform worse if they think the test might confirm a stereotype about them (e.g. black people are academic under-achievers, white men are athletic under-performers etc).

PsyBlog asks you to vote now for your favourite in its weird psychology studies series.

Repeated Exposure to Media Violence Is Associated with Diminished Response in an Inhibitory Frontolimbic Network. Important research published in PloS One.

Corpus Callosum discusses a case of personality change caused by a brain tumour in a 28-year-old male-to-female transsexual patient that was recently reported in the NEJM.

The New York Times discusses the phenomena where parents look back and realise they may have elements of conditions such as autism or ADHD after their children are diagnosed.

The Neurocritic has a fantastic article on altered self-perception in people with body dysmorphic disorder.

Remarkable savant Daniel Tammet, is profiled in The New York Times.

Why do I feel like I'm falling when I go to sleep? Pure Pedantry digs up some fascinating work on this curious and common experience.

Infiltrating the waiting room: 'Information leaflets' in doctor's surgeries could be drug company advertising according to an article in The Guardian.

Crap headline but interesting story about decoding the neural code of neurons involved in visual recognition.

Neurophilosophy collects four parts of his essay on axon guidance in a single post and gets confirmation of what we already knew.

—Vaughan.

December 13, 2007

Kooky cool on the catwalk:

The New York Times has an interesting piece on Heather Kuzmich one of the recent contestants on reality TV show America’s Next Top Model who reportedly has Asperger's syndrome.

Asperger's syndrome is essentially High Functioning Autism (the difference in diagnosis lies in a fairly academic point about the age at which someone acquires language), meaning that the person is not impaired in terms of intelligence, but has difficulties understanding others' emotions, social interactions and can have 'special interests' or repetitive behaviours.

The stereotype of someone with Asperger's is that they're quite shy, withdrawn or socially unattractive.

In contrast, a video of Kuzmich on YouTube shows her to be an engaging and outgoing personality with a delightfully kooky edge that shines through.

It's always great to see when someone doesn't conform to a negative stereotype and the impact is all the more enhanced when it's someone high profile or in the public eye.

Link to NYT article 'Asperger’s Syndrome Gets a Very Public Face'.

—Vaughan.

Fighting the tide of prison suicides:

The Boston Globe has produced a powerful video documentary and article series on prison suicide and mental illness.

Treating mental illness in prison is a complex business. As Time reported earlier this year, the rates of mental illness are much higher among offenders, confinement is known to worsen mental health, and prison treatment facilities are usually poor.

On top of this, some prisoners attempt to fake mental illness to gain hospital privileges, so working out whether someone is genuinely at risk of harming themselves can be quite tricky.

All of these factors can contribute towards the high suicide rate in prisons, and create tension between staff and families.

As prisons become the asylum of last resort for the mentally ill, desperation, frustration and violence are rising on both sides of the cell door. About 50 times each month, inmates are assaulting prison staff members. And, at nearly the same rate, inmates, many of whom say they are abused by officers, attempt to kill or injure themselves. The Spotlight Team examines the tension between mentally disturbed inmates and their jailers.

The Boston Globe has produced a remarkably comprehensive resource, with video, articles, prisoners suicide notes, official reports, and personal stories.

Link to Boston Globe special report on prison suicide.

—Vaughan.

Scanning psychopaths:

Today's Nature has a great article [pdf] on the neuroscience of psychopaths, as investigated by an ingenious study being run by a group of Dutch researchers.

Although there is a higher number of psychopaths among violent criminals, a psychopath is not necessarily someone who is violent.

The term describes someone who is considered to lack empathy or conscience, is superficially charming, manipulative, has 'shallow affect' (doesn't have a big emotional range) and has poor impulse control.

More recently, psychopathy has become synonymous with the use of the PCL-R, the diagnostic tool also known as the Hare Psychopathy Checklist after it's creator and psychopathy researcher Robert Hare.

The Dutch team, however, are working with psychopaths who are in prison for presumably quite serious crimes, precisely because they lack empathy.

They are comparing the brain activation between psychopaths and non-psychopaths when they view material that communicates emotions and normally evokes an empathy-driven reaction.

By looking at which areas are less active in the presumably empathy-less psychopaths, they hope to find out the crucial empathy-related brain circuits.

There are more details about the study in the article, but one bit is particularly interesting, where one of the participants, from a high security prison, comments on the study:

When he entered the prison five years ago, Boerema says, 'borderline personality' was the fashionable term, and his designated pigeonhole. "The psychopathy label is more damaging though — it prompts everyone to see you as a potential serial killer, which I could never be." (Note, in reporting this article it was agreed that inmates' crimes would be neither asked about nor reported on.) But Boerema also wears the score as a badge of honour: "I think my high psychopath score is a talent, not a sickness — I can make good strong decisions, and it's good to have some distance with people."

Interestingly, Boerema (not his real name) makes a couple of points that have also been made in the psychological literature.

Ian Pitchford proposed in a 2001 article that psychopathy could be an evolutionary advantage for a minority of individuals, as it allows them act violently or antisocially without any emotional cost to themselves.

Furthermore, discussion in both the psychological and legal literature has focused on whether labelling someone a 'psychopath' is unjustly stigmatising.

One article even goes as far as to suggest that 'psychopathy' is just a modern term we've invented to replace the world 'evil'.

pdf of Nature article 'Scanning Psychopaths'.

—Vaughan.

December 12, 2007

What IQ doesn’t tell you about race:

IQ has suddenly become a hot topic again, owing to a certain DNA-discovering Nobel laureate putting his foot in his mouth and the publication of a couple of books on the subject. Malcolm Gladwell has written a great article for the New Yorker that summarises many of the recent arguments and suggests why comparing IQ scores of different races is doomed to failure.

IQ is designed so it always has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. However, during the past decades people have been scoring better on IQ tests, something known as the Flynn effect, meaning the new versions have been re-adjusted to make sure the mean stays at 100.

This is important, because it means that comparing IQ from the 1950s is not a far comparison to IQs from the 2000s, because they use tests with different standards.

Some of the people who argued that certain races are more intelligent than others have failed to include these changes in their calculations, and, as Gladwell points out, when these are accounted for, many of these differences completely disappear.

The best way to understand why I.Q.s rise, Flynn argues, is to look at one of the most widely used I.Q. tests, the so-called WISC (for Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children)...

For instance, Flynn shows what happens when we recognize that I.Q. is not a freestanding number but a value attached to a specific time and a specific test. When an I.Q. test is created, he reminds us, it is calibrated or “normed” so that the test-takers in the fiftieth percentile—those exactly at the median—are assigned a score of 100. But since I.Q.s are always rising, the only way to keep that hundred-point benchmark is periodically to make the tests more difficult—to “renorm” them. The original WISC was normed in the late nineteen-forties. It was then renormed in the early nineteen-seventies, as the WISC-R; renormed a third time in the late eighties, as the WISC III; and renormed again a few years ago, as the WISC IV—with each version just a little harder than its predecessor. The notion that anyone “has” an I.Q. of a certain number, then, is meaningless unless you know which WISC he took, and when he took it, since there’s a substantial difference between getting a 130 on the WISC IV and getting a 130 on the much easier WISC.

Link to Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker.

—Vaughan.

What it's all about:

We've learned to tie into every organ in the human body but one. The brain! The brain is what life is all about.

Star Trek doctor Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy from the episode entitled The Menagerie.

—Vaughan.

December 11, 2007

Ozzyform band degeneration:

The Canadian Medical Association Journal has just published its traditional Christmas article which covers the lesser known diseases of popular culture. This year, the article tackles the scourge of cacophonopathology, a dreadful affliction caused by a disturbing reaction to music.

It notes that a particular form of the disorder affects fans of heavy metal:

A severe form of cacophonopathology, metallicus gravis, has also been identified among many of the misguided souls who followed the siren of cultura popularis. Victims of metallicus gravis attend mass gatherings to participate in this form of auditory abuse, which employs sound to numb rather than to enhance awareness. In its later stages, patients demonstrate involuntary movement disorders, such as caput metallicus (headbanging), florid hemiballismus (air guitar syndrome) and precipitous projectile collapse (crowd surfing).

Post-mortem findings include scarred cerebral gyri, which assume the texture of hard pebbles or rocks, diagnostic of dementia zeppelophilia plumbea. A related condition is black s*bbath excephalobaty (BSE), which features Ozzyform band degeneration and afflicts those who dismember flying rodents with their teeth.

The author suggests that a possible treatment might involve a slow immersion in classical music.

I, along with many others, have yet to be convinced by the evidence for this treatment, and tend to be guided by the trusted clinical maxim "a day without AC/DC is like a day without sunshine".

I was reminded of the Journal's fantastic Christmas tradition by Tom mailing me a wonderful article from 2004 about the neurology of Tintin's possible hormonal problems.

The footnotes to the article are priceless, so have a look when you read the article.

Another past article took a neurodevelopmental approach to the pathologies of Winnie-the-Pooh and friends.

One of the best bits about these articles is the correspondence they generate. Letters are linked from the bottom of each article and as you can see, they can be a wonderful parody of medical argument and high-brow posturing.

Link to article on cacophonopathology.
Link to article on the neurology of Tintin.
Link to article on neurodevelopmental disorders in Winnie the Pooh.

—Vaughan.

How do psychologists think?:

I believe that the important thing about psychology is the habits of thought it teaches you, not the collection of facts you might learn. I teach on the psychology degree at the University of Sheffield and, sure, facts are important here --- facts about experiments, about the theories which prompted them and about the conclusions which people draw from them --- but more important are the skills which you acquire during the process of learning the particular set of facts. Skills like finding information and articulating yourself clearly in writing. Those two things are common to all degrees. But lately I've been wondering what skills are most emphasised on a psychology degree? And I've been thinking that the answer to this is the same as to the question 'how do psychologists think?'. How does the typical psychologist[*] approach a problem? I've been making a list and this is what I've got so far:

1. Critical --- Psychologists are skeptical, they need to be convinced by evidence that something is true. Their default is disbelief. This relates to...

2. Scholarly --- Psychologists want to see references. By including references in your work you do two very important things. Firstly you acknowledge your debt to the community of scholars who have thought about the same things you are writing about, and, secondly, you allow anyone reading your work to go and check the facts for themselves.

3. Reductionist --- Psychologists prefer simple explanations to complex ones. Obviously what counts as simple isn't always straightforward, and depends on what you already believe, but in general psychologists don't like to believe in new mental processes or phenomena if they can produce explanations using existing processes or phenomena.

I am sure there are others. One of the problems with habits of thought is that you don't necessarily notice when you have them. Can anyone offer any suggested additions to my inchoate list?

Footnote:
* I'm using the label 'psychologists' here to refer to my kind of psychologists --- academic psychologists. How and if what I say applies to the other kinds of psychologists (applied, clinical, etc) I'll leave as an exercise to the reader.

—tom.

Daily Express cures Alzheimer's:

The front page of the today's Daily Express, a UK national newspaper, has one of the worst neuroscience stories I have a read in a very long time.

It's actually on a valuable research project being run by an established team of researchers and involves giving people with Alzheimer's disease a small digital camera to wear around their neck which takes pictures every 30 seconds.

The person then views the pictures at a later date. There is a rapid presentation mode (10 pictures per second) but the person has the option to view images individually at will.

It isn't a cure, it's just a useful way of reviewing events and 'refreshing' the memory. This is likely to prevent people with Alzheimer's forgetting events so quickly if they're captured on camera.

I say likely, because the research that the Daily Express story talks about hasn't been published yet, but a single case study on a woman with limbic encephalitis did show it made a considerable difference to her recall of past events when compared to a diary.

Now let's just pause for a minute and think what sort of headline you'd write if you were going to publish a story on this line of early research.

Obviously someone had the same decision to make at the Daily Express, and came up with:

BREAKTHROUGH ON ALZHEIMER'S
British scientists bring real hope of a cure

The paper describes the system as involving "a small camera taking photographs every 30 seconds which are then artificially 'forced' on to the brain" and says that "In some cases, patients have experienced up to 90 per cent of their memory being restored after just two weeks".

How they got from 'viewing pictures on a computer' to 'forcing images on the brain' is anyone's guess, and presumably the 90% figure is the score on a memory test rather than amount of memory loss restored, although without any published data its hard to say.

So how did this preliminary research make the front page of a UK daily as a "real hope of a cure"?

Microsoft have developed the camera and are funding this project (along with several other similar studies), and I can't help but wonder whether their PR people have been at work behind the scenes.

Actually, there are other systems that have been around a while now which are equally as interesting. The NeuroPage system is another simple idea.

It's a pager for people with memory problems and people can program the system to send reminders. So far, early research has found it to be quite effective in helping people with memory impairments.

Despite the hype, the SenseCam project is a great idea and could lead to a genuine benefit to people with memory problems, but it won't cure Alzheimer's.

Link to abstract of case study on person with limbic encephalitis.
Link to Microsoft SenseCam and memory loss page.

—Vaughan.

December 10, 2007

Mind and brain science storms NYT's 'Year in Ideas':

The New York Times seems to have been publishing loads of mind and brain articles recently and their end of 2007 round-up of 'hot ideas' contains no less than 11 articles on developments in psychology and neuroscience - including everything from Alzheimer's to Zygotes (via Lap Dancing).

I was alerted to the series by Matthew Hutson, who emailed to say he'd written the article on 'neurorealism' - the tendency for people to believe even quite outlandish claims if they think they're backed up by neuroscience.

In a blog post about his piece, he notes some of the sources and origins of his article, including some peer reviewed research and our own Tom Stafford, who coined the term 'neuroessentialism' (independently, as did two others!) to describe the same phenomenon.

The other psychology and neuroscience articles cover a whole range of topics, and are all two-minute write-ups of ingenious studies or theories (sort of like a behavioural science tapas selection):

* Alzheimer’s Telephone Screening
* Faces Decide Elections
* Lap-Dance Science
* The God Effect
* Hope Can Be Worse Than Hopelessness
* Mindful Exercise
* Quitting Can Be Good for You
* Starch Made Us Human
* Zygotic Social Networking

UPDATE: Two more with mind and brain themes!

* The ‘Cat Lady’ Conundrum
* Ambiguity Promotes Liking

—Vaughan.

Multicoloured USB brain tee:

One of the best brain t-shirts to come along in a very long time has just arrived, and, unfortunately, it sold out within days.

At least, if you're after a male sizes that is. Luckily, there are still plenty in female sizes left.

It's a beautiful multi-coloured brain where the brain stem changes in a series of USB plugs so you can connect your cortex to the nearest computer.

It's a Threadless t-shirt, so despite the fact they're out of stock, you can click to register your interest in getting them to print some more, and they'll let you know when they're ready.

In the mean time, you may have to find your nearest female neuroscience enthusiast to admire the t-shirt in all its glory.

Link to Threadless 'Connect It' t-shirt.

—Vaughan.

The Truth About Female Desire available online:

Finally, one of the best TV series on the psychology, biology and neuroscience of female sexuality is available online as a torrent.

The Truth About Female Desire was a four part UK television series broadcast in 2005 which was a collaboration between the respected sex research centre The Kinsey Institute, London's Brunel University and Channel 4.

Eight women volunteered to undergo a number of experiments on sex and sexuality largely taken from the scientific literature, ranging from how suggestion affects attraction, to the physiology of female sexual arousal, to the neuroscience of orgasm, to name just a few.

Researchers are on hand to discuss the results with the women who seem genuinely fascinated about how these results might reflect their own varied experiences of sex, whether straight, gay, stable or single.

While the discussion is frank, if you're just looking for porn with a bit of science thrown in, you'll need to go elsewhere.

There's very little naked flesh on display, and despite this (magazine editors take note!) it's enormously good fun, quite sexy in places, and utterly fascinating.

There are two torrents available online each of which contains all four 50 minute episodes as one 1.7Gb file.

There is one good torrent available online which contains all four 50 minute episodes as one 1.7Gb download.

At the moment, both have a only a few other people currently downloading, so it may be a little slow to start with, but the more people downloading, the quicker it gets.

It's rare that proper scientific sex research makes the media and even rarer that it is made into compelling TV, so it's a few hours well-spent if you're interested in female sexuality, or sex research in general.

If you're not sure what a torrent is or how to download one there's a guide here and if you're having trouble playing the files the free VLC media player should do the trick.

Finally, thanks to zoidberg for letting me know about the series arriving online.

Link to mininova page with torrent of series.
Link to mininova page with alternative torrent for series.

—Vaughan.

December 09, 2007

Gathering data for thought experiments:

The Idea Lab section of The New York Times has an article on experimental philosophy - a new branch of philosophy where, for example, answers to philosophical thought experiments are tested on members of the public to find the most common answers and possible contradictions in everyday reasoning.

But now a restive contingent of our tribe is convinced that it can shed light on traditional philosophical problems by going out and gathering information about what people actually think and say about our thought experiments. The newborn movement (“x-phi” to its younger practitioners) has come trailing blogs of glory, not to mention Web sites, special journal issues and panels at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association. At the University of California at San Diego and the University of Arizona, students and faculty members have set up what they call Experimental Philosophy Laboratories, while Indiana University now specializes with its Experimental Epistemology Laboratory. Neurology has been enlisted, too.

More and more, you hear about philosophy grad students who are teaching themselves how to read f.M.R.I. brain scans in order to try to figure out what’s going on when people contemplate moral quandaries. (Which decisions seem to arise from cool calculation? Which decisions seem to involve amygdala-associated emotion?) The publisher Springer is starting a new journal called Neuroethics, which, pointedly, is about not just what ethics has to say about neurology but also what neurology has to say about ethics. (Have you noticed that neuro- has become the new nano-?) In online discussion groups, grad students confer about which philosophy programs are “experimentally friendly” the way, in the 1970s, they might have conferred about which programs were welcoming toward homosexuals, or Heideggerians. Oh, and earlier this fall, a music video of an “Experimental Philosophy Anthem” was posted on YouTube. It shows an armchair being torched.

Some of the highest profile work uses neuroimaging to look at the brain areas involved in making moral and ethical decisions, but some of my favourite are the most simple.

As we've discussed previously philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel's work on whether being a professional ethicist makes you behave any more ethically is amusing, but also asks questions about the use of moral philosophy if it doesn't seem to have any personal impact.

He's recently taken this a step further and has begun to investigate whether political scientists vote more often than other people.

In a way, everything has come full circle. Before the word was invented 'science' was called 'natural philosophy', because it was the philosophy of how the natural world worked. It was distinguished from the rest of philosophy because it used experiments.

Link to NYT on 'The New New Philosophy'.
Link to Schwitzgebel on whether political scientists vote more often?

—Vaughan.

December 08, 2007

Think gum:

Think Gum is a chewing gum that apparently contains a number of 'brain boosting' ingredients, although is mainly notable for its high caffeine content.

As well as caffeine, it contains ginkgo biloba and bacopa monnieri, two herbal supplements which some preliminary studies have found increase memory and concentration.

It's hard to say whether these have any effect in this particular product but the 20mg of caffeine per piece of gum should keep you alert, even if the caffeine come-down will take away as much as the lift will give you in the first place.

I once had a pharmacist explain the lift and come-down of stimulant drugs to me as "there's no such thing as a free lunch", which I thought was a little ironic considering how many catered advertising pitches they get taken to by drug companies while under the impression they're getting a free lunch.

Link to Think Gum.

—Vaughan.

December 07, 2007

The tickbox revolution in intensive care:

The New Yorker has a completely gripping article on intensive care medicine that while fascinating in its own right, is also interesting as it contains an amazing account of a how a three year old girl was resuscitated and recovered brain function after near drowning, and stresses the importance of behavioural interventions in high-tech medicine.

The article is essentially about an incredibly simple idea that is vastly reducing infection rates and improving survival rates in intensive care - using checklists to make sure that each step of complex procedures are completed.

It's been championed by physician Dr Peter Pronovost and is simple but effective way of reducing cognitive error in high pressure situations.

It's interesting that the idea has found a fair amount of resistance among some doctors, who think that it somehow diminishes their expertise if they have to check against a list, despite the fact that common slips affect even the most competent of people.

One illustration of how complex the intensive care process has become is given near the beginning of the article when it describes a case of a three-year-old girl saved from drowning with what has become a hugely complex, multi-expertise, high-tech medical effort.

Consider a case report in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery of a three-year-old girl who fell into an icy fishpond in a small Austrian town in the Alps. She was lost beneath the surface for thirty minutes before her parents found her on the pond bottom and pulled her up. Following instructions from an emergency physician on the phone, they began cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A rescue team arrived eight minutes later. The girl had a body temperature of sixty-six degrees, and no pulse. Her pupils were dilated and did not react to light, indicating that her brain was no longer working.

But the emergency technicians continued CPR anyway. A helicopter took her to a nearby hospital, where she was wheeled directly to an operating room. A surgical team put her on a heart-lung bypass machine. Between the transport time and the time it took to plug the inflow and outflow lines into the femoral vessels of her right leg, she had been lifeless for an hour and a half. By the two-hour mark, however, her body temperature had risen almost ten degrees, and her heart began to beat. It was her first organ to come back.

After six hours, her core temperature reached 98.6 degrees. The team tried to put her on a breathing machine, but the pond water had damaged her lungs too severely for oxygen to reach her blood. So they switched her to an artificial-lung system known as ECMO—extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The surgeons opened her chest down the middle with a power saw and sewed lines to and from the ECMO unit into her aorta and her beating heart. The team moved the girl into intensive care, with her chest still open and covered with plastic foil. A day later, her lungs had recovered sufficiently for the team to switch her from ECMO to a mechanical ventilator and close her chest. Over the next two days, all her organs recovered except her brain. A CT scan showed global brain swelling, which is a sign of diffuse damage, but no actual dead zones. So the team drilled a hole into the girl’s skull, threaded in a probe to monitor her cerebral pressure, and kept that pressure tightly controlled by constantly adjusting her fluids and medications. For more than a week, she lay comatose. Then, slowly, she came back to life.

First, her pupils started to react to light. Next, she began to breathe on her own. And, one day, she simply awoke. Two weeks after her accident, she went home. Her right leg and left arm were partially paralyzed. Her speech was thick and slurry. But by age five, after extensive outpatient therapy, she had recovered her faculties completely. She was like any little girl again.

It's a wonderful article that speaks to a number of important issues in medicine, including the self-perception and culture of clinicians, the importance and power of simple changes in behaviour, and why low-tech capital-free solutions are often the hardest to implement.

Link to New Yorker on checklists and intensive care medicine.

—Vaughan.

2007-12-07 Spike activity:

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

Chewing gum and context-dependent memory: The independent roles of chewing gum and mint flavour. A paper currently 'in press' for the British Journal of Psychology.

Sharp Brains has an interview with Prof Robert Emmons, a psychologist who studies gratitude.

In light of the recent UK case of a supposedly dead man who turned up claiming he couldn't remember the last five years of his life (now under arrest for fraud!) the BBC has an article on why men go missing, and neuropsychologist Dr Eli Jaldow discusses whether this type of amnesia is likely, in The Times.

PsyBlog starts a fascinating series on the unconscious.

A fantastic 'turning tables' visual illusion is discovered by Living the Scientific Life

Science News reports on a new theory on the neuroscience of the organisation of thinking. Abstract of scientific paper here.

The influence of eye disorders on the development of impressionist art is discussed by Neurophilosophy

How America Lost the War on Drugs: a fantastic Rolling Stone article on how billions were spent in a futile attempt to stop people taking drugs.

Frontal Cortex looks at a possible link between business acumen and dyslexia.

Partial Recall: Why Memory Fades with Age. Scientific American looks at the neuroscience behind memory decline in normal ageing.

Guantanamo detainee attempts suicide by slashing himself with a sharpened fingernail. When will these terrorists acts of asymmetric warfare cease?

Cognitive Daily looks at kids' misconceptions about numbers - and how they fix them.

—Vaughan.

December 06, 2007

Which brain hemisphere falls asleep first?:

The abstract of a fascinating 1995 review paper by Maria Casagrande and colleagues which gathered experimental data together to try and work out which of the brain's cortical hemispheres falls asleep first.

It turns out, it's the left.

Which hemisphere falls asleep first?

Neuropsychologia, 33(7), 815-22.

Casagrande M, Violani C, De Gennaro L, Braibanti P, Bertini M.

Behavioral tasks (reaction times to acoustic stimuli and finger tapping tasks) performed by normal subjects when sleepy or attempting to fall asleep have been used as indices of hemispheric asymmetries during the sleep onset period. Results show a stronger impairment of the left hemisphere (right hand) both in reacting to external stimuli and in sustaining endogenous motor programs. The left hemisphere seems to fall asleep earlier than the right hemisphere.

Link to abstract of scientific paper.

—Vaughan.

Almost perfect:

The New York Times has a short article on mental health and perfectionism, the tendency to measure success and self-worth by the completion of often unrealistic goals.

Over the last two decades this concept is being increasingly seen as a core component in some types of types of depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive and eating disorders.

A recent study identified several key features of perfectionism as, primarily, excessive concern over making mistakes, with other influences including high personal standards, the perception of high expectations and criticism from parents, doubting of the quality of your own actions, and a preference for order and organisation.

One of the key papers [pdf] in the field that really cemented the idea of perfectionism as an important psychological idea, suggested perfectionism could be focused inward (stringently evaluating and censuring your own behaviour), other-oriented perfectionism (having unrealistic standards for other people) and socially prescribed perfectionism (living up to unrealistic standards which the person perceives others are setting).

For people who already have negative ideas about themselves, perfectionism is thought to work like a constant test. If you can prove to yourself you can pass the test, you feel like a good person.

However, if the standards are unrealistic, you're always going to fail, and ironically, concern and anxiety about achieving these high standards can actually lead to putting things off, or doing the tasks worse.

This can lead to a vicious circle where people feel their emotional well-being is dependent on them reaching impossible goals, but trying to reach the goal makes them feel even worse.

One of the difficult things in psychological treatment, is often trying to persuade people that performing worse is actually a good thing. 'Good enough' rather than 'perfect'.

Link to NYT article on perfectionism.
pdf of key paper 'Perfectionism in the Self and Social Contexts'.

—Vaughan.

December 05, 2007

Fighting over font-change semantics:

Philosopher Patricia Churchland wrote a damning review of Steven Pinker's new book, 'The Stuff of Thought', for Nature and it's caused a bit of a rumble.

One particular highlight was that she described a theory from Pinker's book, that suggests that language and thought can refer to meaning in a similar way, as:

...about as applicable to real meaning as 'Dungeons and Dragons' is to real life. Aptly ridiculed by critics as 'font-change semantics', the theory still has its disciples. Including Steven Pinker.

Apart from showing a woeful misunderstanding of Dungeons and Dragons, Churchland also failed to notice that Pinker had never proposed this theory in his book. In fact, his book argues against it.

In this week's Nature, psychologist Marc Hauser writes in to say Churchland doesn't seem to have read the book, and Pinker comes back with his own rebuke:

The book apparently stimulated the reviewer to free-associate to her own beliefs that psychological phenomena can be explained at the level of neurons and that human thinking is in the service of motor control. The fact that I (like most cognitive psychologists) have not signed up to these views is the only point of contact between my book and her review.

While definitely being more entertaining than your average book review , it doesn't even come close to matching the slanging match between Hans Eyesenck and Stephen Jay Gould, where they ending up arguing over the 'relative exposure of our respective arses' in The New York Review of Books.

—Vaughan.

Sleeping and dreaming:

London's newest science museum, the Wellcome Collection, has just kicked off what looks to be a fantastic exhibition on the art and science of sleeping and dreaming.

It runs until March 2008 and aims to illustrate how we've understood sleep through the ages, as well as the contemporary science of this still mysterious state.

If you can't make it in person, there's an online taster that contains a collection of striking images from the exhibition with some brief commentary.

The exhibition also has free guided expert-led tours, including ones by sleep researcher Dr Mary Morrell on December 19th, and one by sleep doctor Dr Neil Stanley on January 17th.

Other tours are guided by science journalists and some of the exhibited artists.

Link to exhibition details.
Link to online 'taster' exhibition.

Full disclosure: I've received grant funding from the Wellcome Trust for a science art collaboration and I am an occasional paid reviewer for their Arts Awards. As far as I know though, neither are connected with this exhibition.

—Vaughan.

Pavlov and Brian Wilson redux:

Ivan Pavlov and Brian Wilson - together at last! This rather unlikely combination seemed to spark a bit of interest, so here is a brief collection of your contributions.

Thanks to Lloyd for sending in one of Mark Stivers' hilarious cartoons that gives an interesting twist on Pavlov's experiments. Click for the larger version.

Jesse mentioned a clip from The Office that depicts a wonderful demonstration of classical conditioning, as used when trying to annoy your coworkers.

On a Brian Wilson tip, Simon notes that "While insane, Brian Wilson recorded an album called "Sweet Insanity" with [psychologist] Eugene Landy as co-producer, but his label rejected it. WFMU's blog has a most delightfully terrifying track from said album."

Brian Wilson rapping. Indeed truly terrifying.

Distinctly less terrifying is Aimee Mann's recent track, 'Pavlov's Bell', which also references the work of the bearded Russian dog harasser.

—Vaughan.

December 04, 2007

Ring a bell and I'll salivate:

A funny clip from That 70s Show where Michael provides a unique interpretation of Pavlov's work on classical conditioning in an attempt to help Eric with his women problems.

This is not the first time that Pavlov has been invoked as a metaphor in popular culture.

The Barenaked Ladies track, 'Brian Wilson', has the following verse:

It's a matter of instinct, it's a matter of conditioning,
It's a matter of fact.
You can call me Pavlov's dog
Ring a bell and I'll salivate - how'd you like that?
Dr Landy tell me you're not just a pedagogue,
cause right now I'm

Lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did...

The Dr Landy referred to in the lyrics was controversial psychologist Eugene Landy, who attempted to 'treat' Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson's mental difficulties (including a not inconsiderable psychosis) by taking control of his career, musical output and other substantial parts of his life.

Unsurprisingly, legal action was eventually taken against Landy and he gave up his license to practice in California.

Link to That 70s Show clip.
Link to obituary of Eugene Landy.

—Vaughan.

Harnessing the brain's power to reorganise after injury:

The online Dana magazine Cerebrum has a great article on neurorehabilitation - the art and science of helping someone to recover from brain injury both by harnessing the brain's natural ability to adapt, and by teaching the injured person new skills and abilities.

The article discuss both rehabilitation medicine, the practice of training patients to adapt and improve, and the neuroscience techniques which are being developed to try and tackle the problem at the cellular level.

One of the key processes which science is trying to understand and optimise is 'neuroplasticity', the process by which the brain makes new connections, reorganises and routes around damage.

The article sets out six key questions for neuroscience that, when answered, should revolutionise who we can treat brain injury:

1. Since so much of what we think we know about regeneration is derived from experiments on immature nerve cells, are the mechanisms of regeneration in the injured mature nervous system the same as those that apply to the developing embryonic nervous system?

2. Since the vast majority of experiments in regeneration of nerve pathways have been done in rats and mice, how predictive are these experiments for results in human patients? Apart from molecular differences, rodents are much smaller than we are. Nerve fibers may have to regenerate much farther in humans in order to achieve the same level of reconnection that underlies functional improvement in smaller animals.

3. Even if sufficient nerve regeneration can be achieved, will the connections made be specific enough to underlie real function?

4. How helpful are stem cells? Can they survive after transplantation into the human spinal cord or will they be rejected? Can they replace damaged neurons or will they serve only as sources of chemical substances that support survival and growth of the brain’s own nerve cells?

5. Will we be able to identify a single approach that is so fundamental that it can yield dramatic improvements in recovery from brain injury, or will we need to develop a cocktail approach, using multiple treatments simultaneously?

6. Will approaches that enhance regeneration in one circumstance, for example spinal cord injury, also work in other situations, such as stroke or traumatic brain injury?

On a related note, Sharp Brains has picked up on the fact that American TV channel PBS will shortly be broadcasting a special on brain fitness and neuroplasticity.

It'll probably focus on normal ageing and brain fitness rather than brain injury, but hopefully should tackle some of the neuroscience behind brain changes in general.

There's a trailer available online.

Link to article 'Harnessing the Brain's Power to Adapt After Injury'.
Link to Sharp Brains on PBS neuroplasticity programme.

—Vaughan.

War, social networks and ethical minefields:

Wired has an article in its latest edition that discusses why understanding human networks are becoming key to the US Military's mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the article seems to do little more than uncritically echo military enthusiasm for this new approach while telling us little about the actual science behind the techniques.

But the most interesting story is not the strategy itself, which is hardly new, but how it is causing a rift among anthropologists to the point where conference speakers have been heckled and left in tears for their participation.

The debate centres on the US Military's Human Terrain System, a project that aims to understand the culture, society and social networks in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a view to using this information to further military objectives.

In contrast, the NYT managed to do a brief but considerably more balanced article and video segment on the project last May, noting that the crux of the matter is that the project has employed numerous anthropologists, as anthropology now plays a key role in US military strategy.

Concerns centre over whether co-operating with the military violates the strict codes of ethics that compels anthropologists to 'do no harm' to the cultures they are studying, and to ask for informed consent from the people that are observing to make them fully aware of the purpose of the research.

Critics believe that aiding a military occupation is unethical, as it will inevitably lead to deaths prompted by the intelligence they provide, and requires a level of secrecy - violating both of the 'do no harm' and 'informed consent' principles.

This has caused an angry rift with accusations of 'mercenary anthropology' and, in an interesting parallel to the ethical dilemmas faced by the American Psychological Association, the American Anthropological Association has been forced to issue a report and statement on the issue; disapproving of the project while refusing to ban its members from participating.

Last Thursday, at a panel session on the issue at the American Anthropological Association conference, Zenia Helbig, an ex-Human Terrain System researcher, cried when she was heckled by the audience.

Wired describes the scene as 'ugly' and quotes Helbig as implying the hecklers were being driven by conspiracy theories, while Inside Higher Education gives a more nuanced account, suggesting audience reactions were mixed.

The overarching issue is that the military has cottoned-on to the fact that its in-house 'psyops' services are inadequate for the complexity of new forms of warfare, and are seeking the collaboration of academic disciplines which have been founded on principles of non-coercion.

The debate essentially centres around whether these principles should be universally applied to all people, or whether they are trumped by loyalty to the national interests of a researcher's country.

Link to NYT article 'Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones'.
Link to abstract of Human Terrain System paper.
Link to Inside Higher Ed article on panel discussion.

—Vaughan.

December 03, 2007

Encephalon 37 arrives:

The 37th edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just pulled into town and is hosted on A Blog Around the Clock.

A couple of my favourites include a post on whether smiling actually makes you feel better, and one on some of the hidden motivators for our voting behaviour.

There's much more great mind and brain writing in the mix (including a raft of new student writers), so have a browse and see what catches your eye.

Link to Encephalon 37.

—Vaughan.

SciAmMind on Smart Kids, Sex Bias and Psychopaths:

The latest Scientific American has just hit the shelves and two of the feature articles are available online: one with tips for raising hard-working and motivated children from developmental psychology research, and another on whether neuropsychology helps us understand the gender bias in fields like maths and physics.

However, there is another, stand out article on psychopaths that describes what the term actually means in psychology.

It's something that's commonly but wrongly confused with psychosis, largely because they're both unfortunately shortened to 'psycho', despite them being completely different.

This month, the articles in the print edition look particularly good. They cover everything from people who want to be amputees, to the psychology of terrorism, to psychedelic drug therapy, to phantom limbs and more.

Link to article on raising smart kids.
Link to article on gender and scientific achievement.
Link to article on psychopaths.

—Vaughan.

No eye deer - an amazing brain injury:

Retrospectacle has found an amazing case of a five year-old boy who impaled his left frontal lobe on a deer antler after he tripped and fell while carrying it.

The business end of the antler (which was thankfully no longer attached to a deer) went through his eye socket and into his brain.

Luckily, the young lad made a full recovery with no loss of eyesight and no long term brain damage.

Brains of children (particularly those under the age of 8) can make recoveries from injuries that would be much more serious in adults.

This is because young brains are still very 'plastic'. In other words, they are still growing and re-shaping.

These recoveries can sometimes be quite astonishing. For example, as we've reported previously, some young kids can make a full recovery even when they've had half their cortex removed.

Interestingly, this child's injury from the deer antler is similar to an 'ice pick lobotomy', detailed in a fantastic Neurophilosophy article.

One difference, however, is while both the ice pick and the deer antler have entered the brain the same way, the ice pick would be moved side to side to cause damage over a much wider area.

Link to Retrospectacle on amazing deer antler injury.

—Vaughan.

December 02, 2007

How to Good-Bye Depression:

It's rare than someone comes up with a truly novel treatment for mental illness, but Hiroyuki Nishigaki's book may be a genuinely original contribution to the field.

It's entitled How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?

Needless to say, it's contribution to psychiatry is only equalled by its contribution to the development of the English language.

The description of the book is a wonderful read in itself and the reviews are absolutely priceless.

I feel better already.

Link to book details on Amazon.

—Vaughan.

December 01, 2007

In search of evidence-based bullshit:

Monday morning is not the best time to be told to 'bridge the quality chasm' and 'identify your value stream'. I was having the misfortune of starting my week with a talk that introduced new health-service management ideas based on psychological sounding ideas such as 'lean thinking' and 'connected leadership'.

Now, I've got no problem with things sounding like bullshit, as long as they work. After all, medicine is one of the few places where you can get away with calling the practice of squirting cold water in the ear 'vestibular caloric stimulation'.

No-one minds that much, because it's been very well researched and is known to have a profound, albeit temporary, effect on a number of neurological conditions.

So if I wanted to find out whether any of these new management techniques made an organisation more efficient, the first thing I'd do is find out what the research says.

In health and medicine, the 'gold standard' for finding our whether an intervention has an effect is the randomised controlled trial or RCT.

It's a simple but powerful idea. You get a group of people you want to study. You measure them at the beginning. You randomly assign them to two groups. One gets the intervention, the other doesn't. You measure them at the end. If your intervention has worked, one group should be different when compared to the others.

Of course, it gets a bit more complex in places. Making the comparison fair and deciding what should be measured can be tricky, but it's still a useful tool.

After my traumatic Monday morning experience I went to see what randomized controlled trials had been done on management techniques.

To my surprise, I found none. Not a single RCT in any of the business psychology literature.

Now, this may be because I know little about organisational psychology, and literature searches are as much about knowing the key words as knowing what you want. So maybe RCTs are called something completely different, or I'm just looking in the wrong places.

So, if you know of any RCTs done on leadership and management techniques, please let me know, I'd be fascinated to find out.

I could completely wrong, but if I'm not, I want to know why are there no randomised-controlled trials in organisational psychology?

And as a corollary, are we spending millions on organisational interventions to supposedly help patients that have been tested no further than the pseudoscience we reject for every other area of medicine?

UPDATE: Some interesting comments from organisational psychologist Stefan Shipman:

It may be that the complexity lies in that organizational research is always secondary to doing business. I can remember in some of my early research that I attempted to implement a new human resources program in one department. The program was successful in its early stages and was (despite my suggestions) implemented company wide.

I think your post absolutely speaks to the frustration of all organizational psychologists because the zeal of organizations to find "new" ways of doing business that are hopefully more effective. This zeal often reduces the "completeness" of research. As organizational psychologists we accept the conditions under which real world research can be done. We encourage the assignment of conditions but accept that some ideas or programs might "leak" into other parts of the organization.

—Vaughan.