May 31, 2008

Do Bayesian statistics rule the brain?:

This week's New Scientist has a fascinating article on a possible 'grand theory' of the brain that suggests that virtually all brain functions can be modelled with Bayesian statistics - an approach discovered by an 18th century vicar.

Bayesian statistics allow the belief in the hypothesis to shift as new evidence is collected. This means the same evidence can have a different influence on certainty, depending on how much other evidence there is.

In other words, it asks the question 'what is the probability of the belief being true, given the data so far?'.

The NewSci article looks at the work neuroscientist Karl Friston, who increasingly believes that from the level of neurons to the level of circuits, the brain operates as if it uses Bayesian statistics.

The essential idea is that the brain makes models upon which it bases predictions, and these models and predictions are updated in a Bayesian like-way as new information becomes available

Over the past decade, neuroscientists have found that real brains seem to work in this way. In perception and learning experiments, for example, people tend to make estimates - of the location or speed of a moving object, say - in a way that fits with Bayesian probability theory. There's also evidence that the brain makes internal predictions and updates them in a Bayesian manner. When you listen to someone talking, for example, your brain isn't simply receiving information, it also predicts what it expects to hear and constantly revises its predictions based on what information comes next. These predictions strongly influence what you actually hear, allowing you, for instance, to make sense of distorted or partially obscured speech.

In fact, making predictions and re-evaluating them seems to be a universal feature of the brain. At all times your brain is weighing its inputs and comparing them with internal predictions in order to make sense of the world. "It's a general computational principle that can explain how the brain handles problems ranging from low-level perception to high-level cognition," says Alex Pouget, a computational neuroscientist at the University of Rochester in New York.

Friston is renowned for having a solid grasp of both high-level neuroscience and statistics. In fact, he's was the original creator of SPM, probably the most popular tool for statistically analysing brain scan data.

Needless to say, his ideas have been quite influential and 'Bayesian fever' has swept the research centre where he works.

I was interested to see that his colleague, neuroscientist Chris Frith, has applied the idea to psychopathology and will be arguing that delusions and hallucinations can be both understood as the breakdown of Bayesian inference in an upcoming lecture in London.

This edition of NewSci also has a great article on how cosmic rays affect the brains of astronauts, so it's well worth a look.

Link to NewSci article 'Is this a unified theory of the brain?'.
Link to article 'Space particles play with the mind'.

—Vaughan.

May 30, 2008

In the midst of the video game fury :

The BPS Research Digest has just alerted me to an excellent cover article from Prospect magazine on the effects of computer games on young minds and why the scaremongering is largely hot air.

One of the biggest mongers of scare is the otherwise excellent Susan Greenfield, who seems to be convinced, mostly on the basis of speculations from some rather obliquely-related neuroscience studies, that video games and electronic culture and doing dreadful things to young minds (although not to elderly minds, who should apparently buy the 'brain training' software she's endorsed).

There is indeed evidence of an association between violent video games and aggression aggression in some young people, but there's also plenty of evidence of the benefits of children playing games.

Psychologist Tanya Byron wrote a remarkably well-researched report on the topic for the UK government, which is rightly highlighted by the Prospect article as one of the high-points of the debate.

The Prospect piece is a great overview of some of the things less often touched on by the academic literature, such as the real-life management skills needed to succeed in some of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game's like World of Warcraft or Second Life.

Link to Prospect article 'Rage Against the Machines'.

—Vaughan.

Fantastic introduction to MRI brain scanning physics:

Magnetic resonance imaging is the most popular method for scanning the brain both for research and for clinical investigations. I've just found a wonderfully written article that gives a great introduction to the physics of how MRI scanners work.

It is both clearly written for the non-specialist and fantastically complete. This is a rare and valuable combination.

There are some other guides to MRI physics which are also wonderfully written but most lack the sufficient detail that would bring you up to 'entry level' in the field.

For example, How Stuff Work's guide to MRI is a great place to start, but it won't tell you about why and how T1 and T2 imaging are different, or any of the other things you need to know to understand the fundamentals of MRI technology.

You don't need to know maths to understand the article (the downfall of most 'introductory' guides to MRI) and the author uses wonderfully clear analogies throughout.

The article is written by radiologist Robert Pooley, who should give himself a pat on the back for such a great job. It was published as an open-access paper in the journal RadioGraphics. Perfection!

Link to article 'Fundamental Physics of MR Imaging'.

—Vaughan.

2008-05-30 Spike activity:

ABC Radio National's The Philosopher's Zone broadcasts part two of its series on the philosophy of suicide.

PsyBlog has been rocking the cognitive biases recently. This is a fascinating article on 'Four Belief Biases That Can Reduce Pleasure'.

Columbia University has an archive of video lectures by some of the 'big names' in psychology and neuroscience.

The BPS Research Digest covers a new study that finds that harsh discipline actually makes aggressive children worse.

Calm Zone. A fantastic UK initiative to encourage young inner city males to get help for mental health difficulties.

"Why we posted epilepsy film to YouTube". The Guardian continues the debate over whether video of people having seizures is education or exploitation.

Time magazine wonder about the possibilities of prescribing our own antidepressants.

Pete Doherty says 'a mind is a terrible thing to waste'. No it's not the Pete Doherty you're thinking of.

The All in the Mind blog finds some interesting commentary on movement, the mind, cognition and the car.

Psychologist David Rabiner asks does mindfulness meditation help adults and teens with ADHD? in an article for Sharp Brains.

The Situationist discusses whether we're living in an age of increasing child anxiety?

Gratingly banal headline obscures an interesting article from The New York Times on the neurobiology of cigarette addiction.

Not Quite Rocket Science covers recent research on how perceived social hierarchy affects cognitive abilities. The Economist on the same.

A fantastic 2002 article from Wired on the curious and death of psychiatrist Elisabeth Targ, who completed the (in)famous prayer healing (not quite so) randomised controlled trials.

Brain Windows is a fantastic looking neuroscience blog that seems to have been dormant for a couple of months. Plenty of good articles there though.

Forgetting Is the New Normal according to an excellent brief article on memory and ageing from Time magazine.

Furious Seasons looks at some new broadsides in the debate over the effectiveness of antidepressants.

Can you teach happiness? ABC Radio National's education programme EdPod examines whether it's possible to teach positive psychology to school children.

Inspirational Kid's Company founder and child therapist Camila Batmanghelidjh is interviewed in The Independent.

Time magazine looks at the psychology of Second Life.

The 'seven challenges of psychotherapy' are discussed by PsychCentral.

—Vaughan.

May 29, 2008

Miracle fruit trips out flavours:

The New York Times have an article on the truly miraculous miracle fruit, a plant that contains a unique protein that transforms even the most intensely acidic flavours into sweet taste sensations.

“You pop it in your mouth and scrape the pulp off the seed, swirl it around and hold it in your mouth for about a minute,” he said. “Then you’re ready to go.” He ushered his guests to a table piled with citrus wedges, cheeses, Brussels sprouts, mustard, vinegars, pickles, dark beers, strawberries and cheap tequila, which Mr. Aliquo promised would now taste like top-shelf Patrón.

The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, is native to West Africa and has been known to Westerners since the 18th century. The cause of the reaction is a protein called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids, according to a scientist who has studied the fruit, Linda Bartoshuk at the University of Florida’s Center for Smell and Taste.

Apparently, some pioneering barmen have been experimenting with miracle fruit cocktails and the article has video of a 'flavour tripping party' where people get together to try the small red berry before sampling a while range of foods which take on a strange news flavour.

Link to NYT article 'A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue'.

—Vaughan.

May 28, 2008

Review: "Why the mind is not a computer":

"Why the mind is not a computer: A pocket lexicon of neuromythology"
Raymond Tallis (2004, originally published 1994).

Neuromythology is the shibboleth of cognitive science that the mind is a machine, and that somehow our theories of information, complexity, patterns or representations are sufficient to explain consciousness. Tallis accuses cognitive scientists, and philosophers of cognitive science such as Chalmers, Churchland and Dennett, of the careless use of words which can apply both to thinking and to non-thinking systems ('computing', 'goals', 'memory', for example). This obfuscation "provides a framework within which the real problems can be by-passed and the illusion of progress maintained". At his best Tallis is a useful reminder that many of the features of the brain which are evoked to 'explain' consciousness really only serve as expressions of faith, rather than true explanations. Does the mind arise from the brain because of the complexity of all those intertwined neurons? The processes inside a cell are equally complex, why aren't cells conscious? Similarly for patterns, which depend on the subjective perspective (yes, the consciousness) of the observer rather than having an objective existence which is sufficient to generate consciousness; and for levels of description, which, with careless thinking are sometimes reified so that the mind can 'act' on the brain, when in fact, if you are physicalist, the mind and brain don't have separate existences. Moments of the argument can appear willfully obstructive. Tallis maintains that there is no meaningful sense in which information can exist without someone being informed, any more, he says, than a watch can tell the time without someone looking at it. He's right that we should be careful the word information, which has a very precise technical meaning and also colloquial meanings, but if you suppose that subjective consciousness is required to make information exist (and rule-following, representation and computation to pick a few other concepts about which he makes similar arguments) then you effectively disallow any attempts to use these concepts as part of your theory of consciousness. The disagreement between Tallis and many philosophers of cognitive science seems to me to be somewhat axiomatic --- either you believe that our current models of reality can explain how matter can produce mind, or you don't --- but Tallis is right to remind us that the things we feel might eventually provide an answer don't in themselves constitute an answer.

In essence what this book amounts to is a vigorous restatement of the 'hard problem' of consciousness --- the stubborn inadequacy of our physical theories when faced with explaining how phenomenal experience might arise out of ordinary matter, or even with beginning to comprehend what form such an explanation might take.

Disclaimer: I bought this book with my own money, because I needed something to read at the Hay Festival after finishing Ahdaf Soueif's wonderful 'Map of Love' (200) and because Raymond Tallis's essay here was so good. I was not paid or otherwise encouraged to review it.

—tom.

History of american psychiatry, in two obituaries:

The last few months have seen the passing of Frank Ayd and Charles Brenner, two huge figures in American psychiatry. Their obituaries in The New York Times reflect the ideological divide between psychoanalysis and pharmacotherapy that defined stateside psychiatry during the 20th century.

Ayd, pictured top, was one of the pioneers of antipsychotic drug therapy in the states. Although it was already popular among European psychiatrists, Ayd was one of the first to try chlorpromazine (more commonly known as Thorazine) with some of his outpatients.

As well as noticing the huge potential for the drug, virtually the first ever effective treatment for severe psychosis, he was also persistent in publicising the disabling side-effects when many others were dismissing them as part of the illness or 'hysterical' in nature.

In contrast, Brenner was a mainstay of mainstream Freudian psychiatry for most of his life.

Interestingly, both Brenner and Ayd came from similar backgrounds. In their early years, both published on drug treatments and lobotomy (then at the height of its popularity), although Brenner later trained as a psychoanalyst and began to focus almost entirely on a Freudian approach.

Brenner is perhaps best known for his 'conflict theory', first presented in an influential paper entitled The Mind as Conflict and Compromise Formation.

This overturned the distinction between the Id, Ego and Superego and the Freud's idea of the unconscious as being nothing more than metaphors, and proposed a model of the mind which we would now recognise as a constraint satisfaction approach - where the mind attempts the best compromise between the satisfaction of drives while accounting for emotions and defences.

While Anglo-European psychiatry tended to lean toward the biological approach, in the mid-20th century American psychiatry was largely Freudian. This is partly to do with the differing practice traditions, European psychiatry was largely hospital based and focused on psychosis while American psychiatry was largely concerned with office practice and neurosis.

The shift to a more scientific approach to psychiatry in the 1970s was led by several US psychiatry departments who were more Anglo-European influenced (Washington University, Johns Hopkins, Iowa Psychiatric Hospital, New York Psychiatric Institute).

This hit psychoanalytic psychiatry hard. One of the major blows was the 1980 publication of the DSM-III diagnostic manual that threw out almost all Freudian-influenced diagnoses after studies found them unreliable.

Link to NYT obituary of Frank Ayd.
Link to NYT obituary of Charles Brenner.

—Vaughan.

Encephalon 46 arrives:

The latest edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just appeared online, ably hosted by The Neurocritic.

A couple of my favourites include an article on the psychology of superstition from PodBlack and one hot from the Association for Psychological Science convention, where Cognitive Daily report on cognitive influences on calculation.

It's a bumper edition and it even has some video of an intriguing experiment on 'distributive justice'. You'll have to read more to find out.

Link to Encephalon 46.

—Vaughan.

May 27, 2008

Hash high in cannabidiol but varies widely:

In light of research showing that an ingredient in cannabis, cannabidiol, seems to actually reduce the risk of psychosis, I speculated previously on Mind Hacks whether smokers might be attracted to high-cannabidiol dope.

A study of UK street cannabis published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences suggests that cannabis resin (hashish) has the average highest rates of cannabidiol, while 'skunk' and imported herbal cannabis (weed) have the lowest.

For people who take cannabis, it's not the cannabidiol that makes you 'high', it's mainly a substance called tetrahydrocannabinol or THC.

There's accumulating evidence that THC increases the risk of psychosis, while cannabidiol reduces it - so the ratio of the two substances in the street drug might give a 'risk profile' in terms of mental health.

'Might' is the operative word here, as the research is still preliminary and the studies are still largely correlational with regard to cannabidiol-to-THC ratio and psychosis-like symptoms.

However, if this does turn out to be case, the new survey of UK street cannabis suggests that, on average, cannabis resin has higher levels of cannabidiol, with the implication that this might be less risky in terms of developing schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders.

This finding is an average over all the samples, however, and the study also found that resin had quite a bit of variability with regards to cannabidiol-to-THC ratio.

However, imported herbal cannabis and skunk was generally very low in cannabidiol. Additionally, skunk also had about 6 times the THC content of normal weed, making it especially potent.

The study concludes:

This study suggests that cannabis in England in 2005 remains a very variable drug with unpredictable pharmacological and psychological activity. The potency (THC content) of the cannabis varies widely, as does the content of other cannabinoids, especially in herbal cannabis and cannabis resin. The average potency within the country appears to be increasing, but large variations remain within and between different areas of the country.

CBD affects the pharmacological qualities of THC and reduces it psychoactive potential. The relative proportions of THC and CBD in resin are wide ranging, supporting the view that the potential effects of resin cannot be judged by measuring the THC content alone. The resin samples were all similar in appearance and gave the user no indication of their cannabinoid content.

Of the three principle forms of cannabis, sinsemilla [skunk] commonly had the highest THC content and almost totally lacked CBD. Had CBD been present it would have reduced the psychoactive potential of this material. In addition to having increased in potency, sinsemilla also appears to have become the most widely used form of cannabis. The current trends in cannabis use suggest that those susceptible to the harmful psychological effects associated with THC are at ever greater risk. This is due to the combined rise in potency and popularity of sinsemilla and the absence of CBD in this product.

The lead scientist in the study is called Professor Potter. Do with that fact as you will.

Link to abstract of Journal of Forensic Sciences study.

—Vaughan.

Placebo is not what you think:

The New York Times covers an interesting development in the world of consumer medicine - a company selling placebos to consumers that they can use to ease their children's ills.

For doctors, the use of placebos to treat medical conditions is explicitly banned by most medical associations but their use is widely debated.

Thousands of clinical trials have shown us that placebo is one of the most effective and safest of medicines (although it is not entirely without side-effects).

However, it is also one of the most misunderstood of treatments.

An article in this month's Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (which has been debating placebo over the past year or two) dispels some of the myths.

The placebo effect is usually equated with the average response of patients receiving placebo controls in randomized trials. However, it's not quite that simple.

For example, not every improvement that happens after someone is given a placebo treatment is the 'placebo effect' (some symptoms will just get better by themselves) and not every improvement after medication is the active effect of the drug, some of that will be 'placebo effect' too.

Placebos are not 'ineffective'. In fact, when three condition trials are run (no treatment vs placebo vs medical treatment), placebo consistently out performs 'no treatment' and of course, not uncommonly, the medical treatment condition as well.

Placebos are not a 'non-specific' treatment. A study on people who take the dopamine-boosting drug L-DOPA for Parkinson's disease but who took a placebo L-DOPA pill, showed almost identical brain changes, as if they'd taken the real thing.

Furthermore, studies done in the 1970s showed that when heroin users inject water (sometimes done deliberately to alleviate cravings when drugs are in short supply), they can experience drug-like euphoria and have been observed to show opiate-like physiological signs such as pupil constriction.

This last point also demonstrates that placebo is not solely about expectancy, belief or 'being fooled', as the heroin users knew they were injecting themselves with water. Conditioned responses play a role.

This can also be seen from the fact that these specific effects of placebo tend to fade after a while, as the conditioning becomes extinguished.

The fact that placebo can be a relatively safe, effective, and sometimes selective treatment has led some to argue that doctors should be able to use it officially (although, of course, many use it unofficially).

Law professor Adam Kolber (who you may know from the excellent Neuroethics and Law blog) wrote a fascinating paper last year that reviewed the research and argued that in limited circumstances, placebos could be ethically used.

The article is available online and I really recommend reading the 'Avoiding Deception' section if nothing else - for series of recommendations on how placebo could be used without straight up deception.

Link to NYT on buy-your-own placebos for kids.
Link to JRSM article on placebo. Full text here (thanks Ines!).
Link to Adam Kolber's article (scroll down for free full text download).

—Vaughan.

May 26, 2008

Spellbound by the box:

A quote from the sardonic Alfred Hitcock where he notes the curious interaction between mind doctors and the moving image:

"Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it."

I suspect he was commenting on concerns about negative effects of television, although I wonder whether he still might say the same, in light of the enduring influence of pharmaceutical adverts and claims of disease mongering.

Hitchcock himself was famously fascinated by the psychiatry of the day, and his films are well known for containing Freudian themes.

The most obvious was Spellbound, which featured psychiatrists, a psychoanalytic plot, and a symbolic dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí.

—Vaughan.

Free choice and the female science divide:

The Boston Globe has a provocative article that sheds some new light on the old debate over why there are so few women in maths and physical science subjects. One important factor seems to be that they simply choose other professions, but if you think this answer is too simplistic, there may be more to it than meets the eye.

It no longer seems to be the case that women are being explicitly blocked from maths, physics and engineering jobs, although the number of women in these professions is still very small.

One strong argument for why women are in the minority is that they suffer from the effects of implicit sexism, a system designed to take advantage of male attributes and life choices.

Some argue that the lack of support and consideration for women's lives puts them off, and so they decide against what seems like a bad option.

However, the article presents an interesting piece of evidence against this as being the major influence.

In her controversial new book, "The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap," [Susan] Pinker gathers data from the journal Science and a variety of sources that show that in countries where women have the most freedom to choose their careers, the gender divide is the most pronounced.

The United States, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom, which offer women the most financial stability and legal protections in job choice, have the greatest gender split in careers. In countries with less economic opportunity, like the Philippines, Thailand, and Russia, she writes, the number of women in physics is as high as 30 to 35 percent, versus 5 percent in Canada, Japan, and Germany.

"It's the opposite of what we'd expect," says Pinker. "You'd think the more family-friendly policies, and richer the economy, the more women should behave like men, but it's the opposite. I think with economic opportunity comes choices, comes freedom."

If the gender gap in many fields has its roots in women's own preferences, that raises a new line of questions, including the most obvious: Why do women make these choices? Why do they prefer different kinds of work? And what does "freedom of choice" really mean in a world that is still structured very differently for men and women?

Of course, this doesn't deny that there are still other reasons why women might be put off these careers (lack of female role models, perception / effect of a 'boys club' etc) but it's interesting that support for female physical scientists seems not to correlate with their numbers.

The article also mentions an interesting point that women with high maths ability tend to have good verbal ability (meaning they have a much wider potential choice of careers) whereas this is less often the case with men. In essence, the article argues that women would rather select jobs with more human contact.

It's probably worth saying that in the life sciences, females predominate. In fact, in psychology, men are typically outnumbered 10-1. Clinical psychology tends to be even more extreme.

Despite the vanishingly small number of male psychology undergraduates, I've never heard of any effort to recruit or attract more males to the subject.

I'm always curious as to why having few males in life sciences doesn't seem to bother people but having few females in maths or physics does.

Can't we have some equality in our equality?

Link to Boston Globe article on women in science and engineering.

—Vaughan.

Like a bullet in the head:

Neurophilosophy has collected some of the most unusual cases of penetrating brain injury from the medical literature, with x-rays that illustrate how some of the most curious objects can end up on the wrong side of the bony brain protector.

You may recognise a couple that we've noted before on Mind Hacks, but this is a far more complete and frankly quite surprising collection.

The most amazing is the case of a "32-year-old Caucasian male with a history of repeated self-injury drilled a hole in his skull using a power tool and subsequently introduced intracerebrally a binding wire from a sketchpad".

A striking, and, in some places, stomach churning collection of case studies.

Link to Neurophilosophy on unusual penetrating brain injuries.

—Vaughan.

May 25, 2008

Mental illness following The Exorcist:

Horror movie The Exorcist remains one of cinema's darkest and most frightening classics. So great was its power that rumours circulated about viewers running in fear, feinting, or even going mad after seeing the film. In fact, it caused such concern that it was discussed in the medical literature for its possible role in triggering mental illness.

In 1975 psychiatrist James Bozzuto wrote an article for the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease entitled 'Cinematic Neurosis Following The Exorcist' that reported four cases of previously untroubled people who seemed to develop psychiatric difficulties after watching the film.

I'll return to the case reports in a moment, but it's probably worth mentioning that Bozzuto was not alone in discussing the possible 'destabilising' effect of the film. In fact, his commentary was remarkably reserved in comparison to some of his contemporaries.

A 1974 Time magazine article quoted some of his less inhibited colleagues:

After seeing the film, two young Chicagoans required hospitalization. "They're way out in leftfield," said Dr. Louis Schlan, psychiatrist and medical director of Riveredge Hospital in Forest Park, Ill. "They see themselves possessed by Satan."

Many others who have seen the film experience nightmares, hysteria and an undefined, but nevertheless profound apprehension. "It is dangerous for people with weak ego control," explains Dr. Vladimir Piskacek, a Manhattan sociologist and psychiatrist, "but it would not cause psychosis." Small children may suffer from hallucinations after seeing The Exorcist, but Dr. Piskacek doubts that the film would permanently impair even an immature mind.

Predictably, there are widespread objections to the film's R rating, which permits youths under 17 to see it if accompanied by a parent. Manhattan Child Psychiatrist Hilde Mosse warns that the film provides a "deadly mixture of sex, violence and evil. The idea that we can solve our problems by magic instead of by rational solutions is destructive. I lived through this before Hitler came to power. He said, 'Listen to the language of your pure Germanic blood, your unconscious.' The Jews in Germany then became the devil to be exorcised. The only thing The Exorcist can do," Dr. Mosse concludes emphatically, "is to pull young people down to a primitive level."

With Hitler, hallucinating children and Satanic possession being invoked in relation to the film, it's no wonder that people had anxieties about its influence.

Bozzuto's explanation for his four case studies is perhaps a little mundane in comparison, but the influence of the media hysteria is plain to see.

One case is particularly striking, owing to gentleman's florid magical thinking about the Devil and his possible malign influence.

Case 4. Mr. Lyle H. was a 24-year-old black male who initially came to the emergency room for three visits approximately 1 month after seeing "The Exorcist". At that time, he complained of flashbacks and of getting "nervous", especially with his two children and his wife; he was frightened that his 5-year-old daughter was possessed, had insomnia, and felt that certain people "looked strange". He was given Vallium and referred to the Psychiatric Clinic. After being contacted for his first interview, he was fearful of coming for he felt that the therapist may have been involved with the Devil.

The patient stated that he knew little about the movie but had seen it discussed on a TV talk show before. He went with his wife and another couple. He was so upset during the movie that he had to walk out, and afterward he was frightened, feeling that the Devil "would come". He had immediate insomnia, 15-pound weight loss over the past month, and numerous nightmares of vampires chasing women with himself interfering. He could not look people directly in the eye for fear he might imagine them to be devils...

Also, since seeing the movie, he complained of a stiff neck which he related to an identification with the girl in the movie. He was afraid to use a razor that his brother-in-law had given him because it might be stolen and it would imply he had done something wrong and would therefore be like the Devil.

Bozzuto suggests that each of his patients was already under significant pressure and the film was the last stressful straw that broke the camel's back.

He also suggests, invoking the spirit of Freud, that the movie's theme of losing control to the love-hate figure of the Devil may have had special significance for the four, each of which was apparently struggling with an ambivalent relationship.

According to Bozzuto, the similarity triggered repressed feelings, leading to an emotional crisis and a subsequent breakdown.

While the cases remain entirely anecdotal, it's interesting that they made it into print at all, considering that almost all films have the potential to trigger emotional crises in some.

The fact that the issue of 'Exorcist madness' was considered serious enough to appear in a medical journal is more likely testament to the fact that the film touched a raw nerve in the America of the 1970s, than the fact that it raised the hackles of some of its audience members.

Link to PubMed entry for 'Cinematic neurosis following The Exorcist'.
Link to Time article 'Exorcist fever'.

—Vaughan.

May 24, 2008

'Miracle cure' for dyslexia fails to make the grade:

Today's edition of Bad Science covers a so-called 'miracle cure' for dyslexia which has been persistently promoted in the UK media, despite numerous complaints upheld by media regulators, veiled threats of legal action against people who say it doesn't work and five editors of a scientific journal resigning over the publication of a flawed study on the treatment.

Personally, I would have thought anyone promoting their 'treatment' under the name "miracle cure" is asking for trouble but apparently with enough celebrity endorsement you can get away with promoting your product without the need for irony (quite hard work in modern Britain, I can tell you).

The system was developed by paint millionaire Wynford Dore and involves various balancing and co-ordination exercises supposedly to strengthen the cerebellum, which Dore argues is functionally impaired in dyslexia.

There's actually a fair amount of independent research on the role of the cerebellem in dyslexia but, sadly, the idea that exercises might help treat this has the sole drawback of not being supported by the scientific evidence.

Interestingly, it seems that the company went bankrupt yesterday and have just closed up shop. That might have been a result of charging £2,000 for the course.

Ben Goldacre has more on the whole sordid tale over at Bad Science.

Link to Bad Science on the Dore 'miracle' 'cure' for dyslexia.

—Vaughan.

May 23, 2008

Terry Pratchett, on the ropes:

On the Ropes, BBC Radio 4's programme about people in difficult situations, interviews author Terry Pratchett about his recent diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

In the first half of the interview, Pratchett talks about his early years as a writer and how he came to write the Discworld series and other novels.

In the latter half, he talks through the realisation that he had Alzheimer's, from being tested for his initial relatively minor stroke, to being more comprehensively assessed for his ongoing cognitive difficulties.

He gives a fascinating first-person account of how he experiences the difficulties and the effects of the medication on his mind.

After his diagnosis, Pratchett was surprised at how little Alzheimer's disease research was going on and donated half a million points pounds to scientific research.

Pratchett fans have set up Match It For Pratchett, a drive to match the Discworld author's donation and boost degenerative brain research.

Link to On the Ropes interview with Terry Pratchett.
Link to Match It For Pratchett.

—Vaughan.

The brains of dead Russian geniuses:

What makes a man a genius? Russian neuroscientists were pondering this exactly this question in the early 1900s and did exactly what seemed sensible at the time - they collected and dissected the brains of some of the greatest cultural figures in a huge collection called 'The Pantheon of Brains'.

It's a fascinating story told in a recent article published in the medical journal Brain. Amazingly, the last brain was only added in 1989.

Rather fittingly, the collection contains the brains of some of the Russia's greatest psychologists and neuroscientists and has many curious aspects to it, such as the mysterious death of its founder. After death, his brain was immediately added to the collection.

In 1927, Bekhterev came up with a plan to organize ‘The Pantheon of Brains’ in Leningrad in order to collect elite brains. It was a severe irony of fate that precisely when the question about creating the Pantheon had been positively solved, the very initiator of this creation, Bekhterev, suddenly passed away. The circumstances are still questionable.

On December 17, 1927, the First All-Union Congress of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists was held in Moscow. Bekhterev, along with L. S. Minor and G. I. Rossolimo, was elected as honourable chairmen of the congress. On December 23rd, the last day of the congress, Bekhterev gave a presentation during the afternoon session. In the evening, symptoms of a gastrointestinal disorder started and 24 hs later, Bekhterev died of (as officially stated) acute heart failure. Without any further post-mortem pathoanatomical investigation, his brain was removed, in accordance with his will, and his body was cremated the next day. However, the idea did not fade away.

In 1928, the neuroanatomical laboratory of Vogt and his Russian colleagues were reorganized into the Moscow Brain Research Institute, where the structured collecting and mapping of the brains of famous Russians started. Bekhterev did not see his plan come to fruition, but his own brain enriched the collection of the Moscow Institute (the weight of his brain was 1720g). The collection acquired the brains of Soviet politicians, famous writers, poets, musicians, etc.

It is not surprising that these included the brains of prominent Russian neuroscientists, such as neurologist, G.I. Rossolimo (1860–1928) - 1543g; physiologist, I.P. Pavlov (1849–1936) - 1517g; neurologist, M. B. Kroll (1879–1939) - 1520g; psychiatrist, P. B. Gannushkin (1875–1933) - 1495g; psychologist, L.S. Vygotsky (1896–1934). During the Soviet period, the work of the Moscow Brain Research Institute continued behind closed doors.

The collection was still expanding as recently as 1989, when it acquired the brain of A.D. Sakharov [A. D. Sakharov (1921–89) was an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He was an advocate of civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975] — 1440g.

You gotta love the fact that the authors have added exactly how much each person's brain weighed.

Sadly, the full text isn't available online, although Brain does fully release articles after a set amount of time (a year I think) so it should eventually see the light.

Link to PubMed entry for article.

—Vaughan.

2008-05-23 Spike activity:

PLoS Medicine has an eye-opening study on how the local price of alcohol is related to the level of violence in the area.

To the bunkers! Robot removes brain tumour.

BBC News Magazine has an interesting piece on 'celebrities we love to hate' with comments on the phenomenon of celebrity from a number of sociologists.

ABC Radio National's excellent All in the Mind had a great edition on the science of happiness.

Petra Boyton looks at a recent study on how alcohol and drug use among European young people is deliberately and strategically linked to sexual behaviour.

An US Iraq veteran who wrote about his PTSD, sadly, kills himself.

BPS Research Digest picks up on interesting new study that found that women's memories are more speech-filled than men's.

Am I part of the cure, or am I part of the disease? Scientific American looks at the psychological health benefits of blogging, and on the flip side, whether it's driven by pathology.

Those concerned about their blogging habits may want to diagnose themselves with a couple of light-hearted lists of social media related psychopathologies.

PsyBlog reports on a new study that found that online daters site spend seven times longer looking at other people's profiles and sending emails than they did going on real dates.

Frontal Cortex has found a interesting video of someone's speech function being temporarily 'switched off' by TMS.

Getting doctors to routinely enquire about domestic violence may help detect and prevent this vastly under-recognised problem, according to The New York Times.

Psychological Science has an accurate (if not slightly formulaic) article on 'mirror neurons'.

Researcher mull possible use of oxytocin to treat social phobia, reports BBC News.

Computer World asks the somewhat ridiculous question "Asperger's and IT: Dark secret or open secret?". Secret? How about "Asperger's and IT: blessing or gift?"

One of the original internet psychologists, John Suler, has a posse... sorry, blog.

The Wall Street Journal reports "Research shows that people often do get a high from shopping - the brain releases chemicals such as dopamine or serotonin". Oh gag me, please. Release us from these tired, misleading clichés.

Sage Journals are giving away free access on registration to all their academic journals until the end of May (thanks Patricio!).

BBC News reports on unlikely suggestions to bring in testing for brain doping in school students.

Could an Acid Trip Cure Your OCD? The use of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of mental illness is considered by Discover Magazine.

The New York Times has some brief audio interviews of people talking about their experience with ADHD.

Older brains may be slower because they've just got more information to sift through. The advantages and disadvantages of wisdom are considered by The New York Times.

The ironies of peer pressure: smokers give up in groups, reports BBC News.

Drugs, anthropology and embodied cognition. A lost weekend, or a collection of interesting links from Neuroanthropology. You decide.

—Vaughan.

May 22, 2008

Ecstasy's impact:

I've just noticed this review article that concisely reviews what we know about how the street drug ecstasy (MDMA) affects the function of the brain.

In terms of life-threatening physical damage, MDMA is a great deal safer than most other recreational drugs including alcohol and tobacco, but there is increasing evidence that it impacts on memory, and the effect seems to be related to dose.

In other words, the more ecstasy you take, the more likely memory problems will be worse.

The neuropsychology of ecstasy (MDMA) use: a quantitative review.

Hum Psychopharmacol. 2007 Oct;22(7):427-35.

Zakzanis KK, Campbell Z, Jovanovski D.

A growing number of empirical studies have found varying neuropsychological impairments associated with use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) use. We set out to determine to what extent neuropsychological abilities are impaired in MDMA users. To do so, meta-analytical methods were used to determine the magnitude of neuropsychological impairment in MDMA users across pre-specified cognitive domains. We found that cognitive impairment secondary to recreational drug use may result in what might be described as small-to-medium effects across all cognitive domains with learning and memory being most impaired. We also found that total lifetime ingestion of MDMA appears to be negatively associated with performance on tasks ranging from attention and concentration to learning and memory. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.

Sadly, the full-text of the paper isn't freely available online, but the main punchlines are in the summary.

Link to PubMed entry for paper.

—Vaughan.

What do you need to do to be considered an expert?:

Sociologist Harry Collins is interviewed in American Scientist on his fascinating mission to find out what we need to do to be considered an expert and what different types of expertise exist.

Collins has spent many years studying how science works. Not how it is supposed to work, through experiments and falsification and gradual knowledge building, but how it actually works, through social networks, economics and traditions.

He studied physicists who research gravitational waves and realised he was able to have in-depth conversation with gravitational wave theorists even though he couldn't run the equipments or do the maths. As most expertise plays out in conversation, how much of an expert was he?

Collins and his colleagues wanted to test the difference between tacit knowledge, what we can do without being able to explain, and explicit knowledge, so they devised some fascinating experiments to see if people could tell the difference.

One ingenious experiment involved testing whether people could tell the difference between a colour blind person and normally sighted version from just talking to them about colour. It turns out, they can't.

Technical decision-making is often a matter of debating in committees and the like, so the way expertise works itself out in conversation was always going to be a central concern. We decided to use the forerunner of the "Turing test"—the "imitation game"—to see whether one kind of expert could be distinguished from another in conversational tests. In the imitation game, a judge asks open-ended questions of, say, a full-blown expert and someone with interactional expertise only, without knowing who is who. The judge tries to tell the difference. In the best-known of the experiments we did in Cardiff, color-blind people were found to be indistinguishable from color perceivers, and we argued this was because the former had been immersed in the language of the latter all their lives.

As a result of this project, the research team have created a 'periodic table' of different types of expertise and how they manifest themselves.

Collins' research is also discussed in an interview for this month's Scientific American and many of his publications on expertise are available on his website.

Link to American Scientist interview.
Link to Scientific American interview.
Link to Collins' expertise publications.

—Vaughan.

Don't believe the neurohype:

Wired magazine has just published a must-read article on the hyping of neuroimaging technology by companies wanting to sell brain scans on the deceptive premise that they can tell you something about your mood and personality, the effectiveness of adverts or whether you're being truthful.

Here at Mind Hacks, we've covered several highlights in the ongoing parade of brain scan powered bullshit in the past (FKF Applied Research I'm looking at you) but this new article, by psychiatrist Daniel Carlat, is an engaging guide that tackles many of these issues in one go.

Neuroimaging studies that measure brain function are almost always done on large numbers of people and the results are usually only reliable when average differences between groups are compared. This makes it difficult to make sensible judgements about any one individual.

Brain scanning is also often reported as if it is revealing exactly which parts of the brain do what, but it typically only reports associations.

For example, an experiment might find that fear is associated with amygdala activation. But it's impossible to say the reverse, that every time the amygdala is activated, the person is fearful.

Here's an analogy. On average, people from New York may be more impatient than people from other cities.

If you predicted that all people from New York were impatient on the basis of this, you'd be grossly mistaken so many times that it would make your prediction invalid.

In fact, taking the average attributes of populations and applying them to individuals is stereotyping, and we avoid it because it is so often wrong as to cause us to misjudge people.

Alternatively, if you met an impatient person and therefore concluded that they must live in New York, you'd be equally inaccurate.

But this is essentially what these commercial brain scan companies are doing, but they are selling it as if it is reliably telling us about an individual person or an individual product because people tend to be blinded by the fact it just seems more scientific. After all, it's neuroscience right?

Scientists and responsible clinicians will know about these shortcomings and make sure they don't oversell their findings, but commercial companies are not selling you the data, they're selling you a way of make you feel better about your insecurities, whether they be commercial concerns or health worries.

Interestingly, the Amen Clinic comes in for criticism which seems to specialise in pushing and overinterpreting SPECT scans to patients.

These guys were the subject of a similarly critical article in Salon the other week and were pulled up the the Neurocritic blog last year for suggesting political candidates should be brain scanned to see what sort of people they are.

If you want to be immune to this sort of nonsense, the Wired article looks at some of the current commercial offerings and how they're trying to sell you short.

Link to article 'Brain Scans as Mind Readers? Don't Believe the Hype'.

—Vaughan.

May 21, 2008

Linguistic feathers ruffled by high tech new school:

This week's Nature has a feature article on how a new breed of computational linguists are attempting to understand the evolution of language by using high powered computer models. The traditionalists are not impressed, and accuse the new school of reducing language to numbers and oversimplifying to the point of meaninglessness.

It's an old debate in the human sciences, and relates to whether aspects of human experience can be meaningfully quantified.

Some psychologists, for example, completely reject any scientific approach to thought and behaviour because they say it strips human experience of exactly what it means to be human - the lived subjective experience of life.

German intellectuals were struggling with similar issues in the 1890s but a related debate arises in consciousness studies in the form of the hard problem.

It wonders how we can explain the fact that our conscious experience - which we understand subjectively, can arise from the biological function of the brain - which we understand empirically and objectively.

While not all problems are quite so intractable, many issues in human science bump up against the maxim "not everything that can be measured is meaningful, and not everything that is meaningful can be measured".

Whether a particular method gets the balance right is a constant source of arguments.

The Nature article notes that traditional linguists tend to use their interpretation of word meaning combined with historical records to track how language has developed over time, while newer methods code rough assumptions into numerical models and then compute likely patterns.

It is putting it mildly to say that many historical linguists find the evolutionary biologists working on language histories to be bungling interlopers who have no idea how to handle linguistic data. It is also an understatement to say that some of these interlopers feel that their critics are hidebound traditionalists working on a hopelessly unverifiable system of hunches, received wisdom and personal taste. And that's just the mood between the historical linguists and the newcomers. Lots of the newcomers don't like each other either. “Why get excited about it when it is still so preliminary?” says Johanna Nichols, a historical linguist at the University of California, Berkeley. “We are not impressed by a computational or mathematical paper per se. We have to see that it blends well with what is known by historical linguistics and really adds to our knowledge. Then we will be excited.”

Link to Nature article 'The language barrier'.

—Vaughan.

Psychology's greatest case studies:

BBC Radio 4 have just broadcast a fantastic new radio series called Case Study that looks at some of the most influential, and most remarkable, case studies in the history of psychology.

The most recent edition was on the famous case of Phineas Gage, the 19th century American railway worker who had a 6 foot tamping iron shoot through his head during a railroad construction accident.

Gage's job was to clear boulders by drilling holes in them, filling the hole with gunpowder, and tamping the charge down with a large iron bar.

If ever there was an accident waiting to happen, this was it, and lo and behold, the iron bar sparked on the rock, igniting the charge and firing the metal rod through his frontal lobes.

The rest, they say, is history. Or rather, is one of the histories, as there are many legends and stories surrounding his life which turn out to be less than reliable.

The programme looks at the known facts, the speculation, and the huge impact of the case on the development of neuroscience, which had never known a patient with such damage to the frontal lobes who had survived before.

The other programmes are equally as interesting, one edition covers the story of the 'Wild Boy of Aveyron' who largely grew up in the woods without any human contact, while another edition tackles the case of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was murdered apparently in full sight of bystanders who failed to intervene.

Needless to say, influential cases attract influential myths and psychologists' favourite 'fireside stories' of what occurred don't always match the known facts.

The series is presented by Claudia Hammond, who also presented the excellent Mind Changes series about influential psychologists, and who will be presenting the upcoming series of BBC All in the Mind.

Thanks to Tenyen for letting me know about the series, although I notice I was pre-empted by Neurophilosophy.

Link to programme on Phineas Gage.
Link to programme on The Wild Boy of Aveyron.
Link to programme to Kitty Genovese.

—Vaughan.

Crowded thoughts: the 70s boom in multiple personalities:

Below is an excerpt from psychologist John Kihlstrom's ­2005 review article on dissociative disorders where he talks about the sudden 'epidemic' of multiple personality disorder, now know as DID, in the 1960s and 70s.

Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID is a diagnosis that describes where someone manifests various personalities, often of a diverse range of people - from children to adults of either sex.

It is controversial partly because diagnoses seemed to massively increase when two famous films on the disorder were popular.

Kihlstrom makes the interesting point that the increase in the number of people diagnosed with the disorder was also matched by an increase in the number of personalities each person seemed to have.

An interesting feature of the DID “epidemic” is an increase not just in the number of cases but also in the number of alter egos reported per case. In the classic literature, the vast majority of cases were of dual personality (Sutcliffe & Jones 1962, Taylor & Martin 1944). By contrast, most of the new cases compiled by Greaves (1980) presented at least three personalities; in two other series, the average number of alter egos was more than 13 (Kluft 1984, Putnam et al. 1986).

As Kenny (1986) noted, it was almost as if there were some kind of contest to determine who could have (or be) the patient with the most alter egos. The famous Eve, of course, appeared to have three personalities (Osgood & Luria 1954, Thigpen & Cleckley 1954). But when popular and professional interest in MPD was stimulated by the case of Sibyl, who was reported to possess 16 different personalities (Schreiber 1973), Eve replied with her own account of her illness, eventually claiming 22 (Sizemore & Huber 1988).

Despite the almost-infinite number of possible synaptic connections in the brain, one might say that the mind simply is not big enough to hold so many personalities. The proliferation of alter egos within cases, as well as the proliferation of cases, has been one of the factors leading to skepticism about the disorder itself.

In general, dissociative disorders are where one part of consciousness seems to be 'split off' or inaccessible to another.

For example, psychogenic amnesia or conversion disorder ('hysteria') are more common examples and hypnosis seems to reliably induce the phenomena in some people.

These are still some of the most mysterious processes in psychology and are fraught with controversy, particularly as they're often linked to repressed memories from abuse or trauma.

This is one of the more difficult areas to study scientifically because it largely relies on self-report, and Kihlstrom notes there is still no convincing evidence that trauma or abuse leads to amnesia for the event.

Link to PubMed abstract of Kihlstrom's review.
Link to full-text of pre-print.

—Vaughan.

May 20, 2008

Virtual Iraq used to treat post-war trauma in US vets:

Continuing yesterday's virtual reality theme, The New Yorker has an in-depth article about how US Iraq veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder are being treated in a VR simulation of battle situations.

The VR simulation is actually a modified version of Full Spectrum Warrior, a military tactics video game that was first developed to train US army soldiers before being released as a commercial product.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can be diagnosed if a person has experienced a potentially life threatening experience, and has intrusive traumatic memories, persistently increased arousal, and avoids reminders of the event.

Helping someone re-visit aspects of the original experience is an important part of the psychological therapy. This is relatively easy for someone who was traumatised in a traffic accident, but is considerably more difficult for a soldier who was traumatised in a distant and still-active war zone.

Virtual reality aims to safely simulate the environment and features of combat. The idea is that the intensity can be controlled by the therapist to manage exposure and to make sure the patient is never challenged with more anxiety than they can manage.

“This shows you why you need a trained therapist,” Rizzo said, turning off the machine and watching Aristone, who was bent over, with his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths. “Someone who knows exposure therapy, who knows how little things can set people off. You have to understand the patient. You have to know which stimuli to select. You’d never do what I just did—you’d never flood them. You have to know when to ramp up the challenges. Someone comes in and all they can do is sit in the Humvee, maybe with the sound of wind, and may have to spend a session or two just in that position. For P.T.S.D., it’s really intuitive. We provide a lot of options and put them into the hands of the clinician.”

One of these is Karen Perlman, a civilian psychologist who uses Virtual Iraq with patients at the Naval Medical Center San Diego. Perlman is an apple-cheeked, middle-aged native Californian with cascading brown hair, who, when I met her, was wearing an elegant short black dress with a pink-blue-and-purple tie-dyed silk scarf. At first glance, Perlman does not seem to be the sort of person a young marine would cotton to, but Rizzo says that she has a gift, and so far eight of the nine patients she has treated no longer meet the criteria for P.T.S.D. (This number does not account for those who dropped out.) “It’s a very collaborative relationship,” she told me in February, when Skip Rizzo and I drove down to San Diego. “I know which stimuli I’m going to add as the therapy progresses. I’m not going to overwhelm them. There are no surprises. I say, ‘I think you’re ready for the I.E.D. blast or for more airplanes.’ I’m not only adding more, but increasing the duration of each one. It’s intensive, but for P.T.S.D. you need a treatment that is intensive.”

The team have published some published some initial studies from the treatment which looks promising.

The project joins a growing number of studies that have found VR a promising method for treating trauma.

Link to New Yorker article 'Virtual Iraq'.

—Vaughan.

The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover:

The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover was an influential article by Lindsy Van Gelder that examined how a case of gender-bending identity faking from the early days of online chatrooms impacted on a virtual community.

I'd read it many years ago when it was published in the book, Computerization and Controversy, but have just found a scanned copy on the net as a pdf.

It's entirely anecdotal but it's a fascinating read (although has been scanned in sideways, so you'll have to print it, or rotate it on screen - Acrobat users, you can right click to rotate documents).

What I hadn't remembered was the identities of the person and the alter-ego:

I soon learned that [Talkin' Lady's] real name was Joan Sue Green, and that she was a New York neuropsychologist in her late twenties, who had been severely disfigured in a car accident that was the fault of a drunken driver. The accident had killed her boyfriend.

Joan had spent a year in hospital being treated for brain damage, which affected both her speech and her ability to walk. Mute, confined to a wheelchair, and frequently suffering from intense back and leg pain, Joan had been at first so embittered about her disabilities that she literally didn't want to live.

Then her mentor, a former professor at John Hopkins, presented her with a computer, a modem, and a year's subscription to CompuServe to be used specifically doing what Joan was doing - making friends online...

Over the next two years, she became a monumental on-line presence who served as both a support for other disabled women and as an inspiring stereotype-smasher to the able-bodied. Through her many intense friendships and (in some cases) her on-line romances, she changed the lives of dozens of women.

Thus it was a huge shock early this year when, through a complicated series of events, Joan was revealed as being not disabled at all. More to the point, Joan, in fact, was not a woman. She was really a man we'll call Alex - a prominent New York psychiatrist in his early fifties who was engaged in a bizarre, all-consuming experiment to see what it felt like to be a female, and to experience the intimacy of female friendship.

I first came across the case in Sherry Turkle's book on the psychology of online identity, Life on the Screen, where she described the story as already having "near-legendary status" in 1995 cyberculture.

There is now a growing body of scholarly work on the psychology of the internet but several episodes seem to have become part of the mythos of the subject, partly because they were used to illustrate psychological points before rigorous empirical work had been started.

Incidentally, I tried to look up the author, Lindsy Van Gelder, on the net but found few details. However, I did find this article from the 1980s where she defends her counter-culture credentials against the fact she owned an IBM PC! (a 5150 if I'm not mistaken).

pdf of Van Gelder's 'The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover'.

—Vaughan.

Decline of a Baghdad psychiatric hospital:

The New York Times covers the disturbing state of the Ibn Rushid hospital, one of only two psychiatric hospitals in Baghdad that serves the entire population of 6 million.

The article is equally moving and disturbing as it describes how the local citizens are suffering the effects of war with little available assistance while the doctors resort to desperate measures to try and help.

The hospital's fortunes have changed markedly during the occupation. Apparently in decline since the days of Saddam Hussein, a 2004 Psychiatric News article described how it had been refurbished after being looted by armed men shortly after the beginning of the war.

It now seems that a sharp decline is in progress once more as medication is increasingly scarce and ECT is being given on faulty equipment without anaesthetic or muscle relaxants.

One aspect of Iraq's mental health system which has been consistently reported since the occupation is the fact that many Iraqi psychiatrists have left the country owing to violence and kidnapping that has targeted doctors.

Both major Baghdad hospital have been sacked by armed looters and have been affected by nearby fighting.

The NYT article is accompanied by a photo essay that documents a day in the life of the Ibn Rushid hospital.

Link to NYT article 'War Takes Toll on Baghdad Psychiatric Hospital'.
Link to NYT photo essay.

—Vaughan.

May 19, 2008

Virtual paranoia:

The Royal College of Psychiatrists podcast has a fascinating interview with psychologist Daniel Freeman who discusses his recent study that used virtual reality to study paranoid thinking.

Freeman has pioneered the use of VR in studying paranoia to try and understand how individual psychological differences contribute to suspiciousness and fear.

Of course, it's possible to use real life environments to see how exposure relates to paranoid thinking. In fact, the same research group has studied how patients with paranoid delusions react to urban environments.

Those familiar with South East London might be interested to know that stressful urban stimulus in this experiment was a walk down Camberwell High Street (as a resident of Camberwell it is disconcerting, although not entirely surprising, to find out I'm living in an experimental condition used to induce paranoid reactions).

For a scientific point of view, one difficulty with using real-life environments to study paranoia is that they are constantly changing and reactive.

This latter point is important because people who are very paranoid might, for instance, behave in a manner that other people find strange and that attracts attention, or in a way that sparks hostility in others.

One way of getting round this is to expose all participants to a virtual reality environment programmed to be identical, so any differences in paranoid thinking between individuals are almost certainly related to how they interpret the situation and not how the environment reacts to them.

In this latest VR study, the environment was programmed to be neutral (a simulation of the London Underground carriage) but about a third of participants from the general population reported paranoid thoughts.

Some of the paranoid thoughts reported in the paper are really quite striking: "There was an aggressive person – his intention was to intimidate me and make me feel uneasy" and "One guy looked pissed off and maybe one guy flicked the finger at me".

I've actually been in the simulation, having taken part in a pilot study for a related project, and although it's a bit clunky (as you can see from the picture) it's remarkable how its difficult not to have human reactions to the 'people' on the train.

Interestingly, the study found that anxiety, worry and the tendency to have anomalous perceptual experiences were associated with paranoid thoughts, as was 'cognitive inflexibility' - the tendency to be unable to see alternative explanations for ideas or beliefs.

In the audio interview, Freeman discusses this latest study in more detail and how it relates to what we know about the psychology of paranoia.

UPDATE: Thanks to PsyBlog for alerting me to the fact that a streamed video from the Wellcome Trust has an interview with Dan Freeman and footage from the experiment itself.

Link to RCPsych to podcast on VR and paranoia study.
Link to abstract of study.

—Vaughan.

Survivor search robots to comfort disaster survivors:

The St Petersburg Times has an article on the new generation of rescue robots that search for survivors after disasters. Their creator, engineer Robin Murphy, is designing robots that will aim to provide psychological comfort to trapped victims until the rescuers can reach them.

Murphy has been designing and deploying rescue robots for many years, assisting the rescue teams after the World Trade Centre attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the Utah mine disaster to name but a few.

Recognising the need to alleviate the psychological suffering of trapped survivors, she's just won a $500,000 grant from Microsoft to develop robots that attempt to comfort the people they reach.

The Survivor Buddy would act as an emergency companion to people stuck in the crossfire of snipers or under the rubble of an earthquake-ravaged building like the ones now littering China.

She envisions a robot that plays soothing music to trapped victims and features a monitor showing the faces of loved ones and rescuers trying to reach them. It will deliver water and transmit a victim's vital signs to doctors. And it should be friendly, she said.

Link to The St Petersburg Times on Survivor Buddy (via AI&Robots).

—Vaughan.

May 18, 2008

The philosophy of suicide:

The most recent edition of ABC Radio National's The Philosopher's Zone discussed the philosophy of suicide, looking at how our concepts of self-killing have changed throughout history and whether there is any such thing as a rational reason for ending our own lives.

The philosopher Albert Camus famously stated that "there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide", something that surely struck Socrates as he killed himself by drinking hemlock.

Suicide in its many forms has inspired everything from condemnation to romanticisation, most focusing on the morality of taking one's own life and whether it can be justified as a reasonable option.

The programme touches on many of these issues and I was also interested to see a link from the page to an entry on suicide from the excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Link to Philosopher's Zone on suicide with audio and transcript.
Link to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on suicide.

—Vaughan.

May 17, 2008

How neurotech will change the world, one brain at a time:

High end business magazine Condé Nast Portfolio has a feature article on the latest developments in the 120 billion dollar neurotech industry that aims to develop drugs and devices to cure diseases and optimise our brains.

The article takes a broad view of the industry, but also highlights a few areas which are looking hot and gives a guide to the sort of business thinking that motivates both the neurotech giants and the fledgling startups.

It seems the industry is currently a high stakes, high risk investment prospect as the majority of companies do not make money, so investors are betting long-term or hoping they're backing a blockbuster.

The piece also mentions the work of Zack Lynch of the neurotech industry group NIO, who in partnership with his co-director and wife Casey Lynch, seems to have been lobbying the US government for significant support for the sector:

The couple’s new push is to get more federal dollars channeled toward the industry. Zack has been traveling back and forth to Washington, sometimes taking along neurotech C.E.O.’s, to promote a $1 billion “national neurotechnology initiative” that Representative Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat, recently announced he will introduce in Congress. The legislation asks the federal government to spend $200 million a year for five years on neurotech, including $30 million for the Food and Drug Administration to train more experts, $80 million for the National Institutes of Health to coordinate the neuroresearch efforts that are now run by 16 different institutes, and $75 million to increase small-business grants for neurotech companies.

One issue the article touches on is the deregulation of the industry so they can develop pharmaceuticals for cognitive enhancement of healthy people without having to get their medication licensed for a specific medical disorder.

While some remain suitably demure about the possibilities (at least in public), this is obviously the neurotech holy grail and is undoubtedly high on the long-term goals of the industry.

The article also has a couple of fantastic interactive features accompanying it - one on drugs and the other on implants. Also check the right-hand column for a series of related articles from the same publication.

Link to Condé Nast Portfolio article 'The Ultimate Cure' (via BrainWaves).

—Vaughan.

May 16, 2008

Pharmaceutical product placement rife in TV shows:

Treatment Online reviews some recent research showing that there is an increasing trend for pharmaceutical drug brand names to appear in prime-time TV shows in what looks increasingly like widespread product placement advertising.

Unsurprisingly, the main culprits tend to be popular medical shows, where the rate of pharmaceutical name-dropping seems to be increasing.

You might think that drug brand names are just being mentioned so the shows can be realistic and use the names of real medications. But it is possible to mention drugs without mentioning brand names, and this is probably more more realistic.

Medical drugs have two common names. One is the generic name which refers to the compound, one is the brand name, which refers to a specific drug company's version.

For example, aspirin is a generic drug often sold under the name Anadin. Fluoxetine is the generic drug often sold under the name Prozac.

So, there's not really any particular reason for TV shows to use brand names (in fact, doctors more commonly use the generic names). But despite this, the trend is growing and there is evidence that some of the name dropping is actually paid advertising through the back door [insert your own suppository joke here].

Industry watchdog Nielsen Product Placement notes that the number of casual references to name-brand pharmaceuticals is higher than ever before and continues to rise with each new TV season. Medical shows in particular lend themselves to this form of non-advertising, and they are among the most popular prime-time programs. Shows like "House," "Scrubs," and "Grey's Anatomy" routinely feature medical environments where sexy doctors and nurses drop references to brand-name drugs in settings both private and professional.

Studies reveal that the authority granted to these characters leaves viewers less likely to notice or question their implied endorsements of the products at hand - and, by the very nature of the fiction, a TV doctor recommending Vicodin is not as overbearing an advocate as the same character might be when marveling over the many great features of his brand-new Hummer.

Some companies actually admit to negotiating placement deals despite the industrywide contention that the vast majority of these references do not fulfill any contract. While these placements are not illegal, necessary federal oversight remains very poor if it exists at all.

Link to Treatment Online on drug company product placement.

—Vaughan.

Expensive advice more likely to be followed:

Hot on the heels of a study that found that simply describing a wine as more expensive made it taste better comes the discovery that the same advice is more likely to be followed if it costs more.

The study was led by organisational psychologist Francesca Gino and is covered by the BPS Research Digest:

Dozens of students were asked questions about American history and received small cash prizes for correct answers. The students were either given the option of receiving advice on the correct answers, or advice was imposed on them. Sometimes this advice was free; other times it was paid for out of the students' winnings.

Crucially, the advice always came from the same source - in the form of the answer that a student from a pilot session had given to the same question - so the quality of advice was held constant regardless of whether it was free or paid for.

Throughout the study, the participants took more account of advice they had paid for than advice they were given free, even though it was made clear to them that the advice was of the same quality. A final study showed the students took even more account of advice if it was made more expensive.

The full text of the study is freely available online as a pdf, although if you're not convinced of the findings I'm sure Dr Gino would be happy to supply an additional copy for a small fee.

Link to BPSRD on the behavioural value of expensive advice.

—Vaughan.

2008-05-16 Spike activity:

Frontal lobe damage changes performance on the 'Pepsi challenge'. Isn't the world a better place now we know that?

Philosophy Now reviews 'Freedom and Neurobiology' by John Searle.

In an article for Salon, our recent interviewee neurologist Robert Burton gets stuck into a high-tech huckster promoting expensive SPECT scans to diagnose Alzheimer's and herbal supplements to treat the brain disorder.

Channel N discovers a video lecture by Antonio Damasio on the neuroscience of emotion.

Psychologist Charles Fernyhough turned every moment of the first three years of his daughter's life into a research project notes The Telegraph as they review the resulting book.

Treatment Online on research that has found that variations in serotinergic neuroreceptors may indicate severity of depression.

13 ways to quickly improve your decision-making are discussed by PsyBlog.

The Age has a fantastic article on the psychology of risk and why we're so bad at judging it.

"The Change You Deserve". The slogan for antidepressant drug Effexor, and now, the slogan for the US Republican party!

Furious Seasons notes that a recent study on bipolar disorder being overdiagnosed is being supported by leading bipolar researchers.

APA psychology magazine Monitor has an excellent article on how research with deaf people who can't sign might shed light on the fundamentals of cognition.

Burgeoning research on the neuroscience of mystical experiences is discussed in the The New York Times.

Pictures of brain tumours!

BBC News reports that music can enhance the taste of wine. If only it could do the same for brussel sprouts.

The brain is not modular: what fMRI really tells us. An article in Scientific American Mind discusses limitations of brain scanning.

Deric Bownds covers a study that finds our facial touch sensitivity is enhanced by viewing a touch.

The excellent ABC Radio National's All in the Mind discusses the neurobiology of nicotine addiction and concerns about new anti-smoking drugs.

Developing Intelligence covers a fascinating study on time distortion due to visual flicker.

The Wall Street Journal on the possibility of the US Goverment awarding Purple Hearts, a medal for soldiers wounded in battle, for cases of PTSD (thanks Kyle!).

—Vaughan.

May 15, 2008

The secret family life of a false memory :

Thanks to Aaron and Frontal Cortex for simultaneously alerting us to this fantastic animation that recounts a charming real life case of a false memory.

Families are like incubators for false memories because each family has its favourite stories, anecdotes and foundational myths that get passed on, retold and molded in the retelling, like an intergeneration game of Chinese whispers.

I have many early memories that I simply don't know whether I genuinely remember, or I just think I do, because I've heard stories or seen the photos so many times.

I love listening to families talk about memories, because its fascinating to hear how recollections can vary, each highlighting a different aspect, as well as how they resolve conflicting accounts.

The animation shows exactly this process in action, showing us that remembering is more than just an individual process, it's often a group activity.

Link to This American Life animation on memory.

—Vaughan.

Orgasm and brain:

Scientific American Mind tackles the neuroscience of orgasm in a feature article which has just been released online.

One of the merits of the article is that it avoids the 'men are simple, women are complex' stereotype and presents results from scientific studies that suggest there are both subtle similarities and differences in sexual response.

One problem with the area of sexual neuroscience is that it largely relies on brain scanning studies in humans.

You'll see from the article that there's lots of speculation as to what the changes in orgasm-related brain activity mean. It's largely blue sky thinking though, because it's always difficult to decide what is happening in the mind from the activity of particular brain areas. Take these paragraphs for example:

But when a woman reached orgasm, something unexpected happened: much of her brain went silent. Some of the most muted neurons sat in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex, which may govern self-control over basic desires such as sex. Decreased activity there, the researchers suggest, might correspond to a release of tension and inhibition. The scientists also saw a dip in excitation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which has an apparent role in moral reasoning and social judgment—a change that may be tied to a suspension of judgment and reflection.

Brain activity fell in the amygdala, too, suggesting a depression of vigilance similar to that seen in men, who generally showed far less deactivation in their brain during orgasm than their female counterparts did. “Fear and anxiety need to be avoided at all costs if a woman wishes to have an orgasm; we knew that, but now we can see it happening in the depths of the brain,” Holstege says. He went so far as to declare at the 2005 meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development: “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.”

It's like trying to guess what's happening in a city just by looking at changes in traffic flow. The upsurge in traffic on the high street could mean it's a busy shopping day, but it could also mean there's a carnival, or a riot, or funeral, or any other strange or unusual occurrence you might never have predicted.

Brain scanning just finds associations, but to find out whether an area is causally involved in a particular function, or whether it is necessary for the function, research with brain injured patients is one of the most powerful methods.

For example, if you think a brain area is necessary for orgasm, or a certain component of orgasm, a person with damage to that area should not experience what you've predicted.

We know that sexual problems are common after brain injury, but virtually no research has been done to see how damage to specific brain areas affects orgasm.

This would be important, both to help us understand the neuroscience of orgasm beyond general speculation, but also to begin to understand how we can help brain injured people regain satisfying sex lives.

Link to SciAmMind article 'The Orgasmic Mind'.

—Vaughan.

Undercover genetics and the function of the brain:

Science News has an article on one of the most important future topics in neuroscience - epigenetics, the science of how information coded in the genes is used when the brain does its work.

Almost every cell in the body has a copy of the DNA, and therefore has the capability to express any protein.

But you wouldn't want proteins that are used for digesting food produced in the brain, so the body has various ways of regulating which proteins get expressed at any one time. This is epigenetics.

If DNA is like a blueprint, epigenetics is the committee of civil engineers that coordinate the construction site.

We've known from twin studies and molecular genetic research that genes and the environment both influence cognition and behaviour, but these studies only give statistical associations. What they don't tell us is how this happens.

In a sense, epigenetics is the scientific glue that allows us to understand how genes influence learning and behaviour, but also how learning and behaviour influences the expression of genes.

In other words, its goal is to explain how the environment combines with genetic information in the brain.

Needless to say, much epigenetic research is focusing on mental illness, the classic example of how genetic risk, experience and environment combine with sometimes disastrous consequences.

One of the most interesting aspects is that there is growing evidence that epigenetic information can be inherited. So your experiences may actually cause changes to gene regulation that are then passed on to offspring.

Link to Science New article on epigenetics.
Link to abstract of good review article on epigenetics and cognition.

—Vaughan.

May 14, 2008

Brain surgery in ancient Incan society:

Neurophilosophy has a fascinating