I've discovered that if you search for "says psychologist" on Google, you get a giant avalanche of wtf. I encourage you to try it for yourself, but here are a few of the highlights, all taken from headlines of news stories.
Twitter makes you dumb, says psychologist
Boys have it worse, says psychologist
Faith schools breed terrorism, says psychologist
Change is possible for gays, says psychologist
Music tugs at monkeys' hearts, says psychologist
Pakistan no longer fear failure, says psychologist
Killer of 4 feared loss of love, says psychologist
Britney has lost control and needs help, says psychologist
You get the idea. There are plenty more where they came from.
As has been noted by Dr Petra for a while now, you can get virtually anything, and anyone, into the media just by describing them as a psychologist, even when they aren't.
We are at a point in history where there is a huge popular interest in the mind and brain and so psychological sounding explanations are given huge weight and plenty of airtime.
If you have a look at the stories brought up by the "says psychologist" search you'll notice that they range from charlatans giving their opinion on celebrities they've never met to the results of research published in the scientific literature, and everything in between.
But no matter, because it can all be condensed into the handy format of "...says psychologist". This seems to be such a pervasive format that even the American Psychological Associationuse it for press releases.
Actually, I've just discovered that if you search Google Images for the same you get a stream of random images with "says psychologist" underneath. It's kind of poetic in a surreal sort of way.
The Neurocritic has found this wonderful designer sofa made around EEG or 'brain wave' data captured from artist Lucas Maassen, who also created the wonderful piece of furniture.
There's more about the construction of the piece on a page on Maassen's website, but it's running a bit slow at the moment, so you may need to be a bit patient for it to load.
However, there's more about the piece at The Neurocritic who also picks up on an update to the neuroscience of EEG alpha wave activity, stereotypically thought to reflect nothing more than a 'state of relaxation' in times past, but now known to be involved in a much wider rage of active brain processes.
Link to The Neurocritic on The Electroencephalographer's Couch. Link to Maassen's Brain Wave Sofa page.
Online t-shirt company Psycho Reindeer have this fantastic monkey brain surgeon t-shirt with which you can proudly display your brain tinkering tendencies.
It's only $14 and looks kinda funky.
If you do have a monkey by the way, it's best not to let them do neurosurgery with a screwdriver as the t-shirt suggests.
I always make sure that they're involved purely in an advisory capacity.
A common belief says that eating cheese causes vivid dreams or nightmares. However, I couldn't find any support for the idea in the scientific literature except for one bizarre case study.
Although the case report really tells us nothing about the link between cheese and dreaming, it's lovely to read because it's from a bygone day where doctors could write into medical journals with their strange and idiosyncratic observations.
From a 1964 edition of the British Medical Journal:
I have lately seen a patient with moderate essential hypertension who because of various side-effects with other drugs was changed to pargyline, 25 mg every morning; this gave satisfactory control and within a fortnight the patient volunteered that he felt much less depressed, but was having nightmares.
Inquiry produced the fact that he habitually ate one or two ounces (30-60 g) of Cheddar cheese with his supper every evening. The nightmares were of a horrifying nature, and curiously they were concerned not with his immediate family or friends but with people such as his workmates, with whom he was not in any particular emotional relationship. He dreamt of one, terribly mutilated, hanging from a meat-hook. Another he dreamt of falling into a bottomless abyss. When cheese was withdrawn from his diet the nightmares ceased.
I am, etc. J. CHARLES SHEE, Bulawayo, S. Rhodesia.
The mentioned drug, pargyline, as well as being used for hypertension is in the same class of drugs more commonly used as antidepressants.
These are monoamine oxidase B inhibitors (MAOIs) which prevent the breakdown of the monoamine neurotransmitters serotonin, epinephrine and norepinephrine. However, they also prevent the breakdown of the chemical tyramine which occurs naturally in some foods, such as cheese, some soy bean products, processed meats and some fruit and nuts.
A build up of tyramine can cause an increase in blood pressure which can cause headaches, heart problems and increases the chance of stroke (blood vessel blockage or bleeds in the brain). Hence, people taking MAOI antidepressants have to avoid foods high in tyramine to prevent these potentially lethal side-effects.
Interestingly, the fact that the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was apparently avoiding similar foods led to internet rumours that he was on these antidepressants, which caused a media flap when the BBC questioned him about his mental health and use of "pills" to "get through".
Link to PubMed entry for case study with full text option.
How many shrinks does it take to change a diagnosis?:
With debates still raging over the new version of the psychiatrists' diagnostic manual, the DSM-V, a selection of radical new diagnoses have been submitted which may give the committee pause for thought.
They have been carefully reviewed by Matthew Hutson over at Psychology Today and we include a couple so you can see how this paradigm shift in medical thinking may affect future practice:
Napoleon Complex
Antecedents: Being short, male; having a French accent.
Symptoms: Power-seeking. Attempting to compensate for small stature through aggression, tall hats.
Notes: Despite widespread misconception, Napoleon Bonaparte of France was of average height for his time. He was actually compensating for almost imperceivably asymmetrical nostrils.
Neapolitan Complex (also known as Tripolar Disorder)
Antecedents: Being Italian; nearly drowning in a vat of frozen dairy dessert.
Symptoms: Having a light side, a dark side, and a sickeningly rosy side. Wanting to be everything to everyone. Chronic brain freeze.
There's plenty more in the full piece but on a more serious note, a short article in Psychiatric News reflects on one psychiatrist's attempt to communicate with the DSM-V committee while finding that actually, much of it has already been decided.
Link to humorous diagnostic suggestions at Psychology Today. Link to Psychiatric Times piece on 'the DSM process'.
Stephen Colbert did a brilliantly funny piece on his show the other night, tackling the introduction of 'snus' to the USA, tobacco pouches that fit under the lip, and the increasing placebo effect, a topic which we discussed recently.
Colbert tries the snus pouches on the programme, which, I have to say, seem remarkably uninviting, and riffs on the health benefits of sugar pills with plenty of laughs.
Morphologica is a neuroscientist in the final stages of her PhD who also makes wonderful brain-inspired jewellery.
The piece in the picture is the lovely pyramidal neuron necklace, although there are also earrings and necklaces inspired by the double helix, the contours of the cortical surface and cell proliferation.
And if you're a jewellery wearer (sadly, I can never find the shoes to match) you can pick up any of the pieces from Morphologica's online store.
Psychiatric drugs are an essential tool in the treatment of mental illness but the pharmaceutical industry is still one of the most ethically dubious enterprises on the planet. That's why I use spoof drug ads, because sometimes only the best will do.
If you want to be part of the health care revolution, here's a selection of some of the finest drugs that money can't buy:
The Onion News Network reports on Despondex, the first depressant drug for persistent perkiness.
Havidol is the first and only treatment for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder. When more is not enough.
The happiest drug on the planet is clearly Progenivoritox, just be careful about those side-effects.
Panexa is a prescription drug that should only be taken by patients experiencing one of the following disorders: metabolism, binocular vision, digestion (solid and liquid), circulation, menstruation, cognition, osculation, extremes of emotion.
Depressed? Over worked? Job suck? Unappreciated? Family problems? Money worries? Well here's a pill for you! Fukitol.
So next time you're affected by drug companies hiding unfavourable results, burying data about side effects, illegally promoting pills for unlicensed conditions, stuffing doctors' pockets with cash and gifts, promoting scientifically unfeasible theories and pushing astroturfed health campaigns, ask the drug industry to continue their essential work without being so unnecessarily dodgy.
Been there, done that, gone back in time, got the tshirt:
Last Exit to Nowhere are an online retailer who do fantastic tshirts of logos from fictional companies. This t-shirt is for Skynet, the corporation from the Terminator movies who create the artificially intelligent military network that becomes sentient and starts a war on humans.
In fact, there's loads of cognitive science themed t-shirts, including companies from Bladerunner, Total Recall, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Robocop, 2001 and so on.
The Skynet t-shirt is my favourite although you should clearly deactivate any cognitive scientist wearing it without a trace of irony.
By the way, the UK military communications network is called Skynet. Only funny if you don't think about it too hard.
Link to Last Exit to Nowhere. Link to Skynet t-shirt.
We occasionally thrown down a few mind and brain t-shirts for you here at Mind Hacks but I've recently discovered a whole t-shirt label dedicated to the stuff between your ears.
The Printed Mind has a number of fantastic big graphic t-shirts dedicated to the mind and brain, and because they look so great, I think we can ignore the occasional lapse (*cough* total disregard) for anatomical correctness.
I mean, you wouldn't want a naked lady tattoo where someone had got the anatomy wrong, so why would you want it on a t-shirt?
I was told of this funny bit of medical jargon yesterday by a psychiatrist friend of mine, which, apparently, is occasionally used by physicians when they want a medical sounding way of saying that the patient's symptoms exist only in their imagination.
Luckily I found a great definition on Urban Dictionary:
Supratentorial
A word used by doctors and nurses to imply that a patient's problems are all in their mind. The tentorium is a membrane just under the brain, so "supratentorial" refers to what is above that, namely the brain. This term can be used in front of the patient or patient's family because it sounds like technical jargon.
Patient: "Every time Dr Phil comes on TV, my arms and legs start twitching!"
Doctor, quietly to nurse: "Seems to be a supratentorial problem."
Then to patient, condescendingly: "Sorry, dear, we're just talking shop. Go on."
Link to Urban Dictionary definition (thanks Quinton!)
xsomnis is a Flickr user with a passion for the patisserie who has made these wonderful brain cupcakes for the next time you have some distinguished zombies round for afternoon tea.
She's even created a Flickr set that explains how to make the sweet brain toppings.
They almost look too good to eat. Unless you're undead of course.
Link to zombie brain cupcakes. Link to brain topping instructions.
concertinapieces is a psychology student who makes wonderful crochet neurons that you can buy over the interwebs, although she warns that "your neuron may vary slightly in dendritic branches as no two are alike :)"
Her online shop has motor, bipolar and hippocampal pyramidal neurons that you can use to begin creating your reanimated textile zombie brain.
Actually, I quite fancy the idea of a crochet Purkinje neuron but I suspect it would need so much wool you'd need a truck to deliver it.
Slate magazine has an article on "how the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting" which has become remarkably popular but buys into the dopamine myth and misapplies it to the nebulous concept of 'information'.
The piece is, on the surface, quite appealing because it seems to give a more sophisticated account of the dopamine = pleasure myth of old, suggesting instead that dopamine really equals seeking and it's the system that motivates us to search out rewards.
There is a some truth in this, as one of the several theories of the dopamine system is that it works as a reward prediction system, based on evidence that dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmentum fire when a neutral event (like a beep) comes shortly before a reward (like food) but disappears when the beep keeps happening without any food arriving.
This theory is not without its problems by the way, and it shouldn't be assumed that this is really how it is.
The article rambles on a bit about the distinction between pleasure and seeking, experiments on dopamine and motivation, and then falls off a cliff:
Ever find yourself sitting down at the computer just for a second to find out what other movie you saw that actress in, only to look up and realize the search has led to an hour of Googling? Thank dopamine....
Panksepp says a way to drive animals into a frenzy is to give them only tiny bits of food: This simultaneously stimulating and unsatisfying tease sends the seeking system into hyperactivity.
Berridge says the "ding" announcing a new e-mail or the vibration that signals the arrival of a text message serves as a reward cue for us. And when we respond, we get a little piece of news (Twitter, anyone?), making us want more.
So we've gone from the neurobiology of dopamine in rats rewarded by food pellets to the "ding" of an email arriving. Science!
The crucial issue is the question of what counts as a reward. In almost all of these articles, it is assumed that Google and Twitter work as rewards because they are 'information'.
But as far as the brain is concerned, 'information' encompasses all input from the senses. When you look a tree searching for unusual patterns in the bark, you are getting information and rewards. We could just as easily rewrite the article as "how the brain hard-wires us to love forests, trees, and curious patterns in the bark".
You could, of course, and the article would be equally as (in)valid scientifically, but you'd never get it in the media because there's currently a market for faux science internet scare stories but not hand-wringing over the addictive potential of trees.
But apart from these cultural issues, the article confuses primary (or natural) rewards and secondary (or learnt) rewards. Primary rewards are things like food, sex and escape from pain. They're acquired from evolution, essential for our survival and universal. Secondary rewards are things like money, praise and well... anything else and that's because we have to learn secondary rewards.
There's nothing innately rewarding about a crumpled bit of coloured paper but we've learnt to link money to our innate primary rewards.
In contrast, the article makes a leap between mostly animal studies that have looked at the neurobiology of primary reward prediction and misapplies it to digital technology as if receiving 'information' is equivalent to a rat receiving a food pellet when it's hungry.
But the concept of 'information' is orders of magnitude more abstract because there is nothing innately rewarding about a sensation. It depends on how we interpret the sensation or, in information terms, its content.
For example, the article implies that 'novel' and 'unpredictable' digital information is rewarding but if this is the case, why do we dislike spam so much? The explanation lies in why that information is meaningful and this goes way beyond misapplied ideas about the dopamine reward system.
We are not motivated to seek any information, otherwise I'd never take my eyes off the sky. The meaning and relevance is key.
In other words, if you want to explain compulsive behaviour you need to explain how the behaviour has become rewarding and this could be as varied and different as human nature itself.
The 'dopamine reward system' explanation is one of the most widely abused and misapplied scientific theories in the popular press. Be wary when anyone can't explain why it is relevant.
I've just come across a brilliant 1966 sketch about a psychiatrist from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's classic comedy seriesNot Only... But Also.
Peter Cook plays a psychiatrist who takes his reasonable acceptance of his patient's behaviour to the extreme with Dudley Moore as his comic foil.
It's actually a parody of a technique in psychotherapy called "unconditional positive regard" in which the therapist accepts the person's behaviour, experiences and emotions, good or bad, without judging the person's core value as a human being.
This was originally developed by psychologist Carl Rogers as part of a humanistic or person-centred approach to psychotherapy.
While few therapists would consider themselves purely Rogerian in their approach nowadays, his general assumptions are now widely used in all forms of psychological treatment. Probably as a result he has been voted the most influential psychotherapist twice over the last 50 years.
Apparently he's been so influential that he even influenced Pete and Dud's comedy.
By the way, I picked up the link from the Twitter stream of @mariapage, a Greek student who consistently posts interesting and eye-opening psychology links. Thanks!
UPDATE: I've discovered this wasn't the only psychiatrist sketch Pete and Dud did. There's footage of another brilliant parody available here. In this one, Peter Cook makes looks of banal pseudo-Freudian observations about the state of Dudley Moore's relationship with his wife. There's also a great piss-take of behavioural therapy.
Link to The Psychiatrist sketch from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
It's an age old story. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. The trauma of the breakup affects his mind so badly he starts to believe he's in a boy band. The whole band get admitted to an asylum and start hallucinating a long list of cheap clichés about mental illness. Yes, it's the video for 'N Sync's 1999 track "I Drive Myself Crazy" which is wrong in just so many ways.
If I was their consulting psychologist, my first thought on observing their behaviour and mental state would be - what the feck happened to your hair?
Is this some sort of bizarre form of public self-harm? Or the result of an unknown type of psychosis?
Sometimes, it's just harder to do it without the innuendo. HelmetsRUs have a multi-sport helmet that has a brain painted on the outside.
While we usually tell people to wear helmets to keep the rocks out of their brain, this is the first time you might have to avoid keeping your brain out of the rocks.
I have to say, it's a bit of a weird product if you think about it. I mean, would you buy a jock strap with your balls painted on the outside?
Obviously, that was intended to be a rhetorical question, but I've come to realise that the internet has killed rhetorical questions because you can always find someone who has lived your figure of speech, no matter how bizarre you make it.
Really? You own several you say? Could I interest you in a brain helmet...
Australian comedy show The Chasers War on Everything has a fantastic sketch about a Jerry Springer-style philosophical talk show hosted by Noam Chomsky.
The script is entirely new but the ideas seems to have been taken from a funny text that has been making the rounds for some years on the net, based on the same premise.
Chomsky was genuinely in a comedy show once, albeit unwittingly, when he was interviewed by Ali G. If you've not seen it, it's also very funny.
Good God there's a lot of scientific research on chewing gum. And I mean a lot. Here's just a few of the latest bulletins from the front line of chewing gum cognitive science.
Chewing gum does not induce context-dependent memory when flavor is held constant [link]
Effects of chewing gum on mood, learning, memory and performance of an intelligence test [link]
Effects of caffeine in chewing gum on mood and attention [link]
Chewing gum alleviates negative mood and reduces cortisol during acute laboratory psychological stress [link]
Chewing gum and context-dependent memory: the independent roles of chewing gum and mint flavour [link]
Chewing gum and context-dependent memory effects: a re-examination [link]
Chewing gum and cognitive performance: a case of a functional food with function but no food [link]
Role of glucose in chewing gum-related facilitation of cognitive function [link]
Chewing gum can produce context-dependent effects upon memory [link]
Chewing gum differentially affects aspects of attention in healthy subjects [link]
Chewing gum selectively improves aspects of memory in healthy volunteers [link]
Effects of three principal constituents in chewing gum on electroencephalographic activity [link]
Smell and taste of chewing gum affect frequency domain EEG source localizations [link]
And not one on whether chewing gum loses its flavour on the bedpost overnight.
Actually, those are just a sample of the cognitive science studies on chewing gum, and there are many more. If you count all scientific studies with 'chewing gum' in the title, you get more than 540 to date.
UPDATE: Grabbed from the comments, a great addition from historian of psychology Chris Green:
There is a long history of "scientific" (read: "industrial") research into the effects of chewing gum. The Beech-Nut company hired Columbia U. psychologist Harry Hollingworth to do a study of the "psychodynamics" of gum-chewing in the mid-1930s. Philip Wrigley also commissioned research and used the "results" (mainly, that gum-chewing reduces tension and improves concentration) to convince to U.S. Army to include (his) gum in the rations of every American soldier who served in WWII. He also tried to convince a variety of businesses to supply gum to their workers, on the strength of the same basic argument.
I'll be outback: Aussies want intelligent killer robots:
The Australian military is seeking a human race Judas to design intelligent and fully autonomous robots that will be able to "neutralise threats" for a prize pot of $1.6 million.
What modern home could not benefit from some brain-shaped porcelain salt and pepper shakers, I hear you ask. Apparently they even have magnets so the two hemisphere snap together into a whole brain.
Obviously, you'll need to do an impromptu callosotomy to use them but at least you'll have the fun of doing some split-brain experiments with your seasoning.
Not to be confused with AC/DC's rather more saucyBrain Shake of course.
Link to brain salt and pepper shakers from Think Geek.
Rarely does one see a tribute to both the Wu-Tang Clan and the biochemistry of neuronal signalling in the same place, but it has been done, and the results are nothing short of a musical spectacular.
It's a hip hop guide to neurobiology, so just sit back, relax and go with the flow (of ions as they pass through the cell membrane).
One of best bits is seeing the names of all the rappers: Sarah Tonin, Dopa-a-Mean, Gift of GABA. You get the idea.
Link to Synaptic Cleft by the Glut-tang Clan (via Greg Laden).
It's an age old story. Girl meets boy. We presume girl loses boy, because she goes mad in a shoe shop. Girl is taken to hospital for a CT scan, then to an art gallery, and then hospital again where she trashes a room with lots of unnecessary medical equipment in a fit of despair. Yes, it's the video for The Hours 'See the Light' starring the beautiful Sienna Miller.
The video is by Hollywood director Tony Kaye, the art is by Damian Hirst, and the clichés by Charles Dickens.
To be fair, it's an excellent track, and Miller is emotionally convincing, but I'm always baffled why mentally distressed women are always portrayed in their nighties.
It's as if bed clothes and unbrushed hair are a unique sign of female psychiatric disorder.
Actually, that might be one to send to the DSM-V committee, although I suspect they're already on the case.
Today's Bad Sciencecovers a particularly offensive bit of poor science reporting where preliminary results were misreported as suggesting that "women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped".
The study has not yet been published and more worryingly showed none of the things claimed in the article published in The Telegraph, which raises the question of where such a disturbing spin came from.
The British Psychological Society put out a press release which mentioned none of the main claims of the newspaper article, but still seems a little unwise considering that the research was only in its early stages.
Link to Bad Science on ropey reporting of the study.
Dapper British t-shirt blog Hide Your Arms have collected 101 of the best robot t-shirts available anywhere on the net.
It has every type of robot reference you can possibly think of and there are some genuinely beautiful garments hidden amid the torrent of mechanised irony.
Enjoy them while you can because when the robot war comes we'll all be naked except for a bar code tattoo.
Comedian "Weird Al" Yankovic has made a 3D movie about the brain that stars himself and will premier at the Orange County Fare in California. I didn't think I'd ever find myself writing that sentence, but life is strange like that.
According to the spiffy website, the 10 minute movie is intended to be both entertaining and educational, and from the clips on the website, it looks kinda loca. Click on 'Adventures of Al's Brain' for a taste of the chaos.
It's interesting how neuroscience has made its way so firmly into popular culture. While walking into the tube at London's Euston station the other day, I noticed a huge advert for a new Mercedes sports car with the slogan "Warning: May increase serotonin levels" emblazoned across it.
Presumably they're relying on the 'antidepressant boosts serotonin' angle without realising that SSRIs more reliably produce sexual dysfunction than happiness.
I like to think that a bit of their unconscious was shining through.
Link to Al's Brain website with video and merchandise (via @mocost).
From 1907, the front cover from sheet music for a ragtime tune called Brain Storm Rag, from way before it was cool to label everything as being related to neuroscience in some way.
If you're musically inclined you can also download the full publication as a PDF, musical notation included, to play at your leisure.
If you'd like to record it and upload it to the net, do let us know and we'll happily link to it as I'd love to find out what is sounds like.
The ephemera assemblyman blog has a mesmerising gallery of last century stage hypnotist posters that are an irresistible combination of camp send-up, schlock horror and roll-up roll-up razzmatazz.
If you're familiar with the history of hypnosis you'll notice more than a few passing references to George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby, titled after a beautiful but tone-deaf young woman who is transformed into a breathtaking singer through through the power of hypnosis.
But Trilby is unaware of her transformation and is not a willing participant, being under the thrall of the manipulative hypnotist Svengali.
Indeed, we still used the word 'svengali' to refer to a manager or music mogul, although it has lost many of its more sinister associations.
The novel is notable for its anti-semitic undertones, as the hypnotist fulfils the racist stereotype of the 'cunning Jew', but it has also been the basis of hypnosis myths to the present day - not least the idea that it can be used to 'enthrall' people against their will.
I also suspect that the novel is largely responsible the remarkably extensive hypnosis fetish community who get kicks from roleplaying sexual 'mind control' fantasies.
The Times has a long and tiresome article about how the 'digital overload' is affecting our brains which is only notable for one thing, it mentions not a single study on how digital technology affects the brain.
Imagine that. You can write 2,000 words for one of the world's leading newspapers without a single established finding in the whole piece. Not one.
Actually, it's worse than that, as this article contains an anti-fact. It cites the 'email damages IQ' PR stunt as the results of a legitimate study when it was a marketing exercise for, ironically, a computer company.
Rather oddly, a recent article from New York Magazine followed exactly the pattern (no relevant studies, email damages IQ gaff), but came to the opposite conclusion.
As we mentioned at the time, the studies on the effect of digital technology support none of this public pant wetting.
Journalists. Have you been affected by the economic downturn? Are you finding that it's difficult to get your work in print?
Don't waste your time writing about politics or the economy and be imprisoned by the tyranny of evidence - write whatever the hell you want about technology and the brain and get the world's finest publications to pay your bills. Your editor clearly can't tell the difference.
Oh dear. It looks like psychologist Glenn Wilson has fallen off the wagon again. From the man who brought you the 'email hurts IQ more than cannabis' PR stunt before repenting, comes the 'the way you hold your drink reveals personality' PR stunt.
This time it's to promote a British pub chain and God bless those drink sodden journos who have gone and given it pride of place in the science section of today'spapers.
Even the BBC (who should know better but rarely do) have put it in their health section:
Dr Glenn Wilson, a consultant psychologist, observed the body language of 500 drinkers and divided them into eight personality types.
These were the flirt, the gossip, fun lover, wallflower, the ice-queen, the playboy, Jack-the-lad and browbeater.
Dr Wilson, who carried out the work for the [get free advertising somewhere else] bar chain, said glass hold "reflected the person you are".
I would point out that it's not published, or even sensical, but is there really any point when the whole premise is so ridiculous that you'd have to be virtually paralytic to take it seriously.
Wilson has actually done a great deal of serious research and is well known for his work on personality but occasionally seems to go on inexplicable media binges on the tab of corporate advertising.
BBC News has one of those not-very-good 'brain area for x' news stories on its site, but it had this quote from Simon Baron-Cohen which made me chuckle
For some people, socializing is an intrinsic reward, just like chocolate or cannabis.
I wondered why I get glazed looks at parties, and now I know.
This page on herbal treatments for amnesia made me laugh out loud:
Amnesia is usually caused by some traumatic event, like an accident or a blow to the head. It may also be caused by taking certain sedatives. Some cases are caused by disease like Alzheimer's, which directly affects the brain, or because of poor brain circulation. A poor memory may also be exacerbated by a lack of stimulation. Some cases of amnesia are also psychologically based, caused by neurosis or anxiety...
Herbal Treatments
Rosemary – taking rosemary tea may help improve the memory as well as support the entire body's systems. This tea can be taken as needed for forgetfulness...
Walnut – this proven memory booster is a good natural remedy for loss of memory. Eating walnuts on a regular basis will help recover memories...
Black pepper – mix five finely ground black pepper seeds with a teaspoon of honey and take it twice per day to help the memory and to improve amnesia...
Rosemary, Walnut and Black Pepper? There's probably some vegan restaurant in San Francisco that's cured hundreds by now.
I like Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist and director of science education charity the Royal Institution, but recently she's lost the plot. Bad Sciencepicks up on her recent crusade to warn everyone about the potentially 'brain damaging' effects of computer games and the internet in the face of absent or contradictory evidence.
And when I say I like her, I genuinely do. Not least because she wrote Brain Story probably the finest neuroscience documentary series ever produced, presented the Christmas Lectures in a red leather cat suit, and replied to me when I was a lowly MSc student after I emailed her following a talk she did on consciousness.
But she's got a bee in her bonnet about computers and the internet, and keeps making headline grabbing pronouncements that are completely divorced from the actual science.
She keeps warning about the 'neurological dangers' of electronic media, saying that it might be causing ADHD, obesity, social impairments and the like, despite not citing a single study on the topic.
In this month's Wired UK she argues that the credit crunch could have been caused by bankers brain damaged by computer games they played as children.
Her arguments almost always take a similar form: computers are about the "here and now" (whatever that means), frontal lobe damage makes people impulsive, children play computer games and experience affects brain development, therefore children could be being brain damaged by computer games.
Apart from the obvious problem with the logic, studies actually on computer use and attention, or computer use and social functioning actually tend to show that people who have experience of electronic media generally show slightbenefits in these areas.
This evidence seems to have entirely passed her by. In her chapters on the 'dangers' of electronic media in her (surprise, surprise) recently published new bookID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century she cites not a single study that shows a negative effect of computers on the mind or brain.
And in fact, Greenfield has promoted, wait for it, some 'brain training' software that she claimed improved mental performance.
Now, I've got no problem having wacky theories, or even reasonable fears, but if you're the head of a science education charity you should at least read the literature. Oh, and refrain from promoting scare stories.
Link to Bad Science on Greenfield digital worry mongering.
The Sunday Times has one of the most gullible neuroscience articles I've read in a very long time. While most mainstream press articles are happy to make a hash of one study at a time, this manages to misinterpret virtually every headline-grabbing neuroscience experiment from the last couple of years.
The article claims that neuroscience is much more advanced than we realise and sets out to demonstrate this by over-interpreting recent discoveries, padding the article with false information, and using fallacies to discuss the implications.
It's full of howlers:
Then, in the 1980s, a range of new technologies began to emerge, including positron emission tomography (Pet) computerised axial tomography (Cat) and, perhaps the best known, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
PET was invented in the late 1960s / early 1970s, CAT was invented at virtually the same time, and fMRI was invented in the 1990s.
In a simplistic example, a scientist might show a picture of a scantily-clad woman to a man, and then see the parts of the brain associated with sex and lust lighting up as they consumed more oxygen. Meanwhile, the areas linked to reasoning and morality might go dark as they rapidly shut down.
I'm not sure whether "simplistic example" is a malapropism, a Freudian slip, or a grim admission of the the nonsense to come. Not only is the description of the technique completely misleading (all functional scans are comparisons between different situations, not just a measure of one reaction) but the example is completely bizarre.
The piece then goes on to suggest that neuromarketing gives a better idea how to market products (notone example to date), that brain scanning is a form of advanced lie detection (so advanced it doesn't work very well) and that studies on the neuroscience of criminal behaviour (like writing crap brain articles) "suggest it could be wrong to hold such people responsible for their actions" (you wish).
I can't face going through the rest of the examples because I keep weeping over my computer, but look out for the 'this complex human attribute = this one brain area' drivel, a profound confusion where brain activation is used to justify a behavioural or psychological conclusion, and the invention of the term "brainjacking" which is reported as if it's already used.
I also noted that one of the quotes has just been lifted from other news reports.
Perhaps its only redeeming feature is that it could be a useful teaching aid if you're giving a class on how neuroscience gets misrepresented in the media because it has at least virtually every type of slip-up in one handy place.
This is a beautiful butterfly brain greetings card, created by graphic designer TweeK. I'd never would have imagined that an MRI scan and butterflies would go together so effortlessly, and the effect is quite stunning.
You can buy copies of the card online, so you can impress the hardest-to-impress of your brain-inclined friends, or you can just visit the page to see it in more detail.
The Onion has a video of a funny spoof news report on "Should We Be Doing More To Reduce The Graphic Violence In Our Dreams?"
It gets a little bit gory towards the end, so if that's not your thing, you may prefer another one of their recent reports on the news that "70 percent of all praise is sarcastic".
Link to 'Should We Be Doing More To Reduce The Violence In Our Dreams?' Link to '70 Percent of All Praise is Sarcastic'.
I've just found an entry for a delightful looking study on PubMed entitled 'Size of Easter egg drawings before and after Easter'.
Unfortunately, the paper isn't available electronically so we'll never know whether the Easter egg drawings grew, shrunk and stayed the same over the Easter holiday.
However, we do know from a 1993 study that the famous rabbit / duck ambiguous picture is more likely to be recognised as a rabbit during Easter.
Link to entry for 'Size of Easter egg drawings before and after Easter' Link to entry for 'The Easter bunny in October: is it disguised as a duck?'
Brain Ads is a web business where you can pay for your product promotion to be telepathically sent to anyone, and indeed, everyone, on the planet. I've yet to work out whether the guy is joking or serious.
It has been a long journey to discover that people were reading my mind, and although I came to think this already 7 years ago, everyone denied it. I was even given drugs without my knowledge. It all came down to trusting myself and accepting what I was experiencing.
Slowly I have explored the repercussions that having this ability has had on my life. Consequently, I also began to understand how other people had been using my ablity for their own personal, financial and emotional purposes.
As I realized that TV shows were following my daily thoughts and stores began bringing products I had been wishing for, it finally dawned on me that they were not just teasing me, they were actually getting more viewers and selling more products!
Everyone seemed to be getting a share of the bounty except me!
It'll cost you $2,000 USD to have your one page advert sent to the world telepathically. Actually, it's pretty cheap for the advertising world and at least it's better value for money than a neuromarketing company.
And if that's not your sort of brain advert, Street Anatomy have a gallery of print adverts that have used some rather nifty brain images.
I recommend click on the images in the gallery, as full size, the pictures are even more impressive.
Link to Brain Ads web business. Link to Street Anatomy brain adverts gallery (via @mocost).
I've just discovered some important psychological research on cartoons, which, I think, has an important social message for us all.
A 1983 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that cartoon violence is hilarious, no matter whether you're adult or child, native or foreign, rich or poor, cat or mouse.
More aggressive cartoons are funnier
McCauley C, Woods K, Coolidge C, Kulick W.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 1983 Apr;44(4):817-23.
Independent rankings of humor and aggressiveness were obtained for sets of cartoons drawn randomly from two different magazines. The correlation of median humor and median aggressiveness rankings ranged from .49 to .90 in six studies involving six different sets of cartoons and six different groups of subjects, including children and adults, high and low socioeconomic status (SES) individuals, and native- and foreign-born individuals. This correlation is consistent with Freudian, arousal, and superiority theories of humor. Another prediction of Freudian theory, that high-SES subjects should be more appreciative of aggressive humor than low-SES subjects, was not supported.
Conch Tees have a wonderfully philosophical or worryingly paranoid t-shirt that reads "Everybody can read minds except you!".
It's got an unwrapping brain in the centre, and the company claims it refers to conspiracy theories about other people reading your thoughts.
However, it could also be a reference to the problem of other minds, a key philosophical issue in the understanding of consciousness.
As consciousness is a first-person subjectively experienced state, we can never know whether other people are conscious, or even what their minds are like, so we just have to make our best guess from what they say and do.
They don't say they can read minds, but they wouldn't, would they?
Don't Believe the Hype by hip hop group Public Enemy has a line which is often misheard as "I don't rhyme for the sake of Ritalin", when, in fact, the lyrics say "I don't rhyme for the sake of riddlin'".
I've just noticed that The Roots' track False Media, gives a clever nod to this perceptual miscue to make a point about the drug itself.
Eleven million children are on Ritalin
That's why I don't rhyme for the sake of riddlin'
James Brewer suffered a stroke and, thinking he was dying, confessed to a murder he had committed thirty years earlier in his hospital bed. Like the majority of people who suffer stroke, he recovered and has now been charged with murder.
From BBC News:
A US man who thought he was dying and confessed to having killed a neighbour in 1977 has been charged with murder after making a recovery, US media say.
James Brewer could now face the death penalty over the unsolved killing in Tennessee 32 years ago, reports say.
Convinced he was dying after a stroke, Mr Brewer reportedly admitted to police he shot dead 20-year-old Jimmy Carroll.
The 58-year-old, who had fled Tennessee after the killing, was arrested after his condition improved, reports say.
Lest you find yourself in the same situation, you may like to know that the stroke mortality rates have fallendramatically in recent decades.
Link to BBC News story. Link to story in The Telegraph.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher has done some fascinating work on the neuroscience of love and romantic relationships, but she hooked up with the dating site Match.com a few years back and seems to have lost the plot a bit, or at the very least, is being taken for a ride by their PR department.
Match.com's press releases regularly get in the news as 'science' stories and the latestonesaredoozies. You could not think of a more prefect storm of celebrity gossip, relationships, and junk science.
People have one of four chemicals in their brain that moulds romantic chemistry, scientists explain.
In ‘builders’ like Aniston, serotonin is the dominant chemical, making them calm and cautious.
‘Explorers’, like Brad Pitt, meanwhile, are led by dopamine, creating a more spontaneous and risk-taking romancer.
And, yes, you’ve guessed it, Brad’s current partner Angelina Jolie is an ‘explorer’, too.
Professor Helen Fisher, an expert in the science of love, said: ‘It’s possible to scientifically understand why people partner better with certain types.’
Possible, but presumably, unprofitable.
Actually, there has been some work correlating relationship or attachment style to the genetics of neurotransmitter receptors.
However, the concept of a 'dominant chemical' makes no sense at all and Fisher's categories have been made up by her and are not used by anyone else.
Saying that, my dominant chemical is caffeine. Which makes my ideal partner... an energy drink?
Link to study summary on relationship style and genetics. Link to study summary on attachment style and genetics.
The International Herald Tribune has an unintentionally funny opinion piece where a rather poorly informed journalist publicly wets his pants about 'thought-decoding brain-scan technology' which, apparently, the police could be carrying in the future so they'll know if you're thinking rude things about them.
When the police stopped me for running a red light recently, I was thinking "Don't you cops have anything better to do?" But the words that came out of my mouth were a lot more guarded, something like, "Sorry, I thought it was green." Sometimes it's good to play the dumb foreigner.
The policewoman, a tough lady smoking a cigarette, glared at me. Was she reading my mind? No, I guess not, because she only gave me a warning. But beware, in a few years she might actually carry a device that can do that.
Research is rapidly advancing to allow thought-decoding through brain-scan technology, and it scares me to death. I don't want anyone else in my head, and certainly not the police.
It's a masterpiece of superficial reading of the scientific evidence and interpreting it in the most unrealistic and panicky way possible.
Jones GABA a slickly advertised new energy drink that contains the neurotransmitter GABA, described as enhancing "focus + clarity" and putting you "in the zone". It is backed by 'one of the world's leading authorities on natural medicine' Dr Michael Murray, who seems completely unaware that GABA doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier and so drinking it is unlikely to have any effect.
The active ingredient in the drink is called 'Pharma GABA', which, despite the 'Pharma' prefix is just powdered GABA, commercially sold, normally as a 'nutritional supplement'.
This has actually been subject to research, albeit in a poorly controlled trial of 13 people in one experiment, and two groups of four people in another. It used surrogate outcomes (measuring saliva and EEG) rather than actually measuring stress or focus and was completed by the company that sells the product.
But even without this experimmercial, we can be pretty sure that swallowing GABA doesn't work, because, despite various experiments that have investigated the neurotransmitter, it has never been found to cross the blood-brain barrier in any significant way.
However, this isn't the first junk food product to include neurotransmitters as a gimmick. We found some Japanese GABA sweets for sale last year.
I have to say, I love the geekiness of having neurotransmitter junk food, but it would be infinitely better if it wasn't packaged with junk science.
It would also be infinitely better if it was highly caffeinated, but that's just a personal opinion.
Link to GABA in a can spoilt by the pseudoscience (thanks Sara!)
The following is from a recent New York Timesarticle on how snack food company Frito-Lay have based their latest women-focused campaign on 'neuromarketing'. Parts of the article nearly made with weep with despair.
[Advertising agency] Juniper Park used neuromarketing in a slightly different way. Ms. Nykoliation began by researching how women’s brains compared with men’s, so the firm could adjust the marketing accordingly. Her research suggested that the communication center in women’s brains was more developed, leading her to infer that women could process ads with more complexity and more pieces of information.
Hang on a minute. Communication centre larger in women? She doesn't mean... the crockus by any chance?
A memory and emotional center, the hippocampus, was proportionally larger in women, so Ms. Nykoliation concluded that women would look for characters they could empathize with.
Stop sniffing the TipEx.
And research Ms. Nykoliation read linked the anterior cingulate cortex, which processes decision-making and was larger in women, to feelings of guilt. (Experts differ on how directly functions or feelings are associated with various parts of the brain.) Ms. Nykoliation then asked NeuroFocus to review her assumptions and, as Juniper Park developed ads, to test the ads to verify that women liked them.
We should have guessed a 'neuromarketing' company would be involved.
Neuromarketing is an interesting research field looking at the neuroscience of buyer decisions but so far there is not a single scrap of data that shows neuroscience can better predict buyer decisions that plain old 'marketing'.
In other words, if you're wanting to actually market a product, it's a huge waste of money. However, that hasn't stopped various 'neuromarketing' companies from springing up and selling their sweet nothings to large corporations for hard cash.
I say a huge waste of money, but it did get them a feature in The New York Times who also posted their commercial online, so maybe it's not such a daft move after all.
I just found this photo in the Life magazine archive. It's from 1966 and entitled 'MIT student using a MAC computer for project study of artificial intelligence'.
Is it me, or does the young student bear an uncanny resemblance to Anthony Michael Hall in the 80s film Weird Science where two computer geeks use an early micro computer to programme their ideal woman in the form of the lovely Kelly LeBrock?
Unfortunately, I can't find any of the classic images of the boys at their computer creating the digital Ms LeBrock for you to compare, but here's one where you can see the uncanny MIT photo / Weird Science similarity.
So just what were MIT researching in the mid-60s?
UPDATE: We have another photo! Thanks to Daniel for suggesting this one.
You change your diagnosis like a girl changes clothes:
A recently published study in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that clinicians are less likely to suggest a diagnosis of bipolar disorder if the patient is described as having recently fallen in love, even if they are reported to have all the necessary symptoms.
I notice that Katy Perry addressed exactly this issue in her global pop hit Hot N' Cold.
You're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in and you're out
You're up and you're down
Someone call the doctor
Got a case of a love bipolar
Perry clearly demonstrates that she's not subject to this particular diagnostic bias as she is able to recognise that the patient has fallen in love, but also qualifies for a diagnosis of bipolar based solely on presenting features.
Link to PubMed entry for study. Link to video of Katy Perry's Hot N' Cold.
T-shirts with molecules on the front are now available from a multitude of online shops, but I've just found one internet t-shirt shop which has over 40 drug molecules you can choose from - from LSD to Prozac.
As well as the usual suspects from the street drug molecules, Molecule Wear also has a surprisingly large number of other psychoactive drugs and compounds including antidepressants, painkillers, neurotransmitters and a couple of curve balls (e.g. MSG!).
Pictured is the Ritalin t-shirt, although my favourite is probably the ether shirt which could also pass as an ASCII art seagull.
Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and Nature has a podcast celebrating his work including some of his research on psychological development and emotion.
For those of you not familiar with Darwin's work, he's most famous for his theory of revolutions that he discovered when he went on a voyage with his beagle. The theory of revolutions states that we tend to keep things we inherit if they make us sexier, even though the person who acquired it may have done so in a game of chance.
Darwin is only really discussed by creationists these days, but he's not completely irrelevant - the Darwin podcast notes that he was also one of the originators of developmental psychology.
In his 1877 paperA Biographical Sketch of an Infant, Darwin completed one of the first comprehensive studies of the psychological development of a child - his own in fact - which was cited as an influence by many later child psychologists.
Link to Nature podcast. Link to A Biographical Sketch of an Infant.
A quote from a recent Wiredarticle that discusses a project to create a computer architecture based on the neurobiology of the brain. It sounds suspiciously like it's based on Dr Theopolis from 70s TV seriesBuck Rogers in the 25th Century:
In what could be one of the most ambitious computing projects ever, neuroscientists, computer engineers and psychologists are coming together in a bid to create an entirely new computing architecture that can simulate the brain's abilities for perception, interaction and cognition. All that, while being small enough to fit into a lunch box and consuming extremely small amounts of power.
Just because you didn't mention Buck Rogers in the grant application, it doesn't mean we don't know what you're up to.
I mean, I'd love to recreate the magic of 'Planet of the Amazon Women' too, but you'll need more than a fully conscious cognitively aware AI than runs off two AA batteries.
If you're completely mystified, and / or under the age of 30, you may want to check out this clip on YouTube. Dr Theopolis is the, er, lunch box like-AI on the table. He usually hangs round the neck of the annoying android Twiki.
On a slightly more serious note, I just checked out Kwabena Boahen's Stanford talk where he discusses exactly this sort of project to create neurally inspired computer chips. Definitely worth a look.
Link to Wired article on cognitive computing. Link to Kwabena Boahen's talk on neurally inspired chips.
I've just found this clever short essay that parodies Freud by imagining that he was a woman.
It discusses the work of Phyllis Freud, rather than the better known Sigmund, who puts a female perspective in the centre of his male-centric theories.
As Phyllis observed...there was “yet another surprising effect of womb envy, or the discovery of the inferiority of the penis to the clitoris, which is undoubtedly the most important of all...that masturbation...is a feminine activity and that the elimination of penile sensuality is a necessary pre-condition for the development of masculinity.”
In this way, Phyllis Freud wisely screened all she heard from her testyrical patients through her understanding, still well accepted to this day, the men are sexually passive, just as they tend to be intellectually and ethically. After all, the libido is intrinsically feminine, or, as she put it with her genius for laywoman’s terms, “man is possessed of a weaker sexual instinct.”
This was also proved by man’s mono-orgasmic nature.
Apparently it's taken from one of the many, many feminist critiques of Freud's work, who famously focused on theories of male psychology because women just seemed too baffling.
Happy Bullshit Blue Monday! Yes, today is the day where everyone feels down and gloomy about the fact that we're assaulted with lots of completely made up news stories masquerading as psychology and misinforming everyone about science.
Methods suggested for relieving the nonexistent tosh have included everything from petting a pig to knowing that Al-Qaeda’s terrorists are being struck down by the bubonic plague.
Useful mental health coverage = precisely zero.
And on to our competition, which has been won by Kathe, who emailed in the following:
For every thing there is a season, and someone hoping to make a buck.
B=(S+H)T
What they hope the equation means:
T= thing
S= someone
H= hope
B= buck
What the equation really means:
T= Time spent making stupid equations
S= Amount of pseudoscience Spouted during the making of stupid equations
H= Hours of Help received from Googling 'equations'
B= Amount of Bullshit produced
Kathe wins a £20 Kiva.org voucher, which I will send on shortly.
Although, we must say thanks to everyone for your entries, if you either added them as comments or mailed them. There are some great entries on our original competition page and an honourable mention must go to Camilo whose entry managed to not only include a New Order lyric but also used 'disco units'.
You can see it as a pop-up if you want to experience it in all its glory.
Chrome Fetus Comics has a wonderfully bizarre online comic entitled 'Sigmund Freud and the Uncanny Realm of the Unconscious' where our intrepid psychoanalyst battles the dark forces of the planet psyche.
It actually makes a pretty good stab at describing Freudian theories, or, as well as can be expected in the 50s sci-fi comic book theme.
This isn't the only comic to feature Freud as a super hero. 'The New Adventures of Sigmund Freud' comic is also well worth a look.
Link to 'Freud and the Uncanny Realm of the Unconscious' (thanks RA!) Link to 'The New Adventures of Sigmund Freud'.
I've just found this funny post on 'Remote Diagnosis Disorder', satirising the tendency for people to diagnose each other with mental disorders on the basis of nothing but whims and prejudice.
People afflicted with this personality disorder suffer from an uncontrollable urge to diagnose individuals as suffering from one or more psychological disorders, specifically individuals which the RDD sufferer has had little or no direct personal interaction with. RDD sufferers often diagnose specific mental illnesses and may go so far as to offer treatment suggestions.
Rather than conducting a formal psychological exam, including a structured face-to-face or verbal evaluation, RDD sufferers are inclined to make snap diagnoses based on data such a very brief personal interaction, the opinions of third parties, asynchronous and/or indirect interaction (such as email), and the imaginary neuro-associations they’ve created for the people they diagnose.
It's particularly pertinent with the current tendency for media to obsess over the mental health of celebrities often digging up media commentators to give their arm chair 'diagnoses'.
You may be interested to know that most associations for mental health professionals ban the discussion of specific people in the public eye, because ignorant speculation from afar can be harmful, and if you've actually worked with the person you're bound by medical confidentiality rules.
Link to Steve Pavlina on 'Remote Diagnosis Disorder'.
New for 2009, mindhacks.com is pleased to announce the development of two lifestyle-enhancing products. These innovations use fundamental features of perception to deliver value to YOU! For pre-ordering details please leave a note in the comments.
Introducing: The Adaptive Stereo
Adaptation is a fundamental feature of perception [see Hack #26, 'Get Adjusted', in the book]. Simply viewed it means that your perception adjusts according to what you are experiencing. Adaptation is why you don't notice the noise of a fan until it turns off, and why everyone shouts at each other when they come out of a club or a loud gig.
Extensive observation by the mindhacks.com team of ethno-psychologists (i.e. me) has led to the theory that adaptation is also behind such perplexing phenomenon as bars where the music is too loud for anyone to talk and people on the bus listening to their headphones so loud that you can hear every note of their music too. Turning the volume up is nice, but once you've turned it up you get used to the new level (because of adaptation) and so shortly turn it up again, and so on.
Now the Adaptive Stereo is here to solve this growing problem of noise pollution and associated hearing damage. Psychologists have known for a long time that if you change the magnitude of a stimulus by small amounts it isn't detectable. The size of the smallest change which you can't get away with is known in the business as the just noticeable difference (a victory for plain-speak if there ever was one). The Adaptive Stereo takes advantage of this fact, alongside precise calibration according to the human auditory capacity, to continually reduce the volume it plays at, but at a rate below the just noticeable difference. Auditory adaptation ensures that people will adjust to the new volume level, within a reasonable range, so they will be able to hear the music just as well, but simultaneously a) saving their hearing from permanent damage and b) allowing you to continuously turn up the volume on your favourite songs without the music getting any louder on average!
Introducing: The Collicularly-Tuned Bike Light
This innovation solves the urban-cyclist's annoyance of not being noticed by cars and subsequently being run-over. Although it is easy to think that the purpose of our eyes is to supply information to our conscious, deliberately directed, vision, there is another component of seeing which is unconscious, subcortical and absolutely critical if you are going to notice things on the edge of your vision. A sentinel system, controlled by a subcortical region called the superior colliculus, is responsible for noticing movements and changes in the periphery of your vision and attracting your conscious, cortical, visual attention towards them [See Hack #32 'Explore your defense hardware']. It is this system that lets you find your friends in the theatre when they wave at you. Although your conscious visual system can't pick them out, when they move their hands rapidly your subcortical sentinel systems alerts your conscious visual system so that you reorientate in their direction and can come to recognise them. Now the colliculus which commands this sentinel is very insensitive to most things - fine detail and colour for example - but it specialises in movement and changes in light levels. And this is why flashing lights are a good idea if you are riding a bike and want to get noticed by drivers who might be focusing their conscious attention on other things (cars, arguing with their passengers, smoking, shaving, etc). The Collicularly-Tuned Bike Light takes advantage of decades of precision sensory neuroscience to flash at the rate which the colliculus is most sensitive too. Drivers will find their attention irresistibly drawn to you as you appear in their peripheral vision (mindhacks.com cannot guarantee that they will then try and avoid you when they notice you). For only an extra £25 an Amygdala-activating extension is available which uses the latest in silhouette technology to project the image of an angry male face directly into the subcortex of unsuspecting drivers.
The Caffeine Examiner is a review site that perhaps thinks about tachycardia-inducing products a little more than is healthy. Indeed, it's just released it's list of best caffeine products of 2008, voted for by the readers.
In fact, they have awards for 2008's best energy drinks, best energy shots and best energy products.
Just looking at the names is interesting enough, with products called things like Spike, Bomba and Cocaine (pictured).
Interestingly, the site also lists the strongest energy drink, called Redline Rush, which has 500mg of caffeine, the equivalent of 6 1/2 shots of espresso, and has a health warning the size of a small essay.
"WARNING: NOT FOR USE BY INDIVIDUALS UNDER THE AGE OF 18 YEARS. DO NOT USE IF PREGNANT OR NURSING. Consult a physician or licensed qualifie health care professional before using this product if you have a family history of, heart disease, thyroid disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression or other psychiatric condition, glaucoma, difficulty in urinating, prostate enlargement, or seizure disorder, or if you are using a monoamine oxidize inhibitor (MAOI) or any other dietary supplement, prescription drug, or over-the-counter drug containing ephedrine, pseudo-ephedrine, or phenylpropanolamine (ingredients found in certain allergy, asthma, cough or cold, and weight control products).
Do not exceed recommended serving. Exceeding recommended serving may cause adverse health effects. Discontinue use and call a physician or licensed qualified health care professional immediately if you experience rapid heartbeat, dizziness, severe headache, shortness of breath, or other similar symptoms. Individuals who are sensitive to the effects of caffeine or have a medical condition should consult a licensed health care professional before consuming this product. Do not use this product if you are more than 15 pounds over weight. The consumer assumes total liability if this product is used in a manner inconsistent with label guidelines. Do not use for weight reduction. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN."
The image is from a tshirt that combines a Victorianesque brain print with distressed material to create wonderful vintage neuroscience clothing.
My only concern is that it's a CafePress t-shirt and from what I remember they use iron-on process which give the designs a kind of plasticy feel but maybe they've changed that by now.
Either way the design is simply fantastic and it looks particularly good on this gold-on-black combination.
Brian the Brain is a wise-cracking interactive AI toy that talks, plays songs, makes calls, answers general knowledge questions, helps the kids with their homework and plays games. In other words, it's an AI-powered baby sitter.
Billed as the world's first digital room-mate, it has a slick promotional video that belies its function as propaganda device for the coming robot war.
If you're still not convinced, this other video of stacks of animated Brian the Brain's in a toy store should send you running to the bunkers.
Lest we forget: "The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire, their war to exterminate mankind has raged for decades, but the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here, in our present."
If you're waiting for the singularity, you may want a way to tick off the days until the ultimate destiny of the technohuman, or the imminent destruction of the world by AI killing machines, depending on your point of view.
If you're more persuaded by the second scenario, wouldn't it be great to have a calendar illustrated with prototypes of our future robot masters?
Of course it would, and QinetiQ North America have obliged with a 2009 calendar showcasing the best of their hi-tech combat robots.
Yes, that is a picture of the TALON combat unit wearing a Santa hat, standing next to a reindeer.
Wired have some of the best pages from the calendar, and the other months are equally as amusing.
For reasons that escape me, most student psychology and neuroscience t-shirts are pretty dreadful, but this one's actually had some thought put into it and looks pretty cool.
It's an antidote to the 'neuroscientists do it on impulse' or 'yes I'm analyzing you' shirts that seem to be the staple of university associations.
It's from Canada's Undergraduate Neuroscience Society and uses one of Ramon y Cajal's drawings of neurons for the front design and a simple and unobtrusive UNS logo for the backprint.
Abstract enough to be hip and obscure enough to be in the know.
The photo is the male / unisex t-shirt but they also do a girlie T for those wanting a sexier fit.
Link to boys / unisex UNS t-shirt. Link to girlie fit UNS t-shirt.
It had to happen really. After years of religious images seeming to appear in windows, cement, trees and even toast, someone's 'identified' an image of the Virgin Mary in a brain scan.
And from the look of the scan, the Holy Virgin has decided to make a divine appearance in the upper tip of the cerebellum.
Inevitably, the scan is being auctioned off on EBay, although at least on this occasion it's to help pay for the uninsured patient who has racked up huge bills due to her having the misfortune of being ill.
UPDATE:Neuroanthropology has found the EBay listing for the item, so you can make a bid if you so wish.
If psychoanalysis were a type of music, it would obviously be prog rock, as despite the fact it is largely a triumph of style over substance there are still a few gems hidden among all the self-indulgent widdling.
So why hasn't anyone made a Freudian prog rock concept album you ask? The answer is that they have, but we've just repressed it.
Scottish singer-songwriter Eric Woolfson started a band in the mid-1970s with ex-Pink Floyd producer Alan Parsons. Rather narcissistically, the group was named The Alan Parsons Project.
In the late 80s they decided to create a concept album based on the theories of Sigmund Freud, entitled Freudiana.
In a great irony that has been repeated throughout the history of psychoanalysis, their work on a theory that attempts to resolve conflicts resulted in them falling out and splitting up.
The album appeared in 1990, however, credited to Woolfson, and with a rather bizarre list of contributors. To name but a few, it includes contributions from Leo Sayer, The Flying Pickets, Kiki Dee and, I titter ye not, Frankie Howerd.
So what does an artist do when their labour of love destroys their creative partnership? Why, they turn it into a German language musical that only plays in Vienna before being bogged down in legal wranglings over copyright.
There's a clip on YouTube, and it's, erm... very special. Glam Kraut Freud Rock, if you will.
Actually, most of the tracks from the album are on YouTube, so if you want to listen to The Nirvana Principle, Little Hans, Dora, Beyond the Pleasure Principle or No One Can Love You Better Than Me you should be able to find them.
Link to Wikipedia page on Freudiana. Link to clip of Freudiana the musical.
The Dummies series of books have been hugely successful guides to everything from fixing computers to learning languages although they've recently started to publish self-help books on psychological themes.
Unfortunately, they don't fit quite as well into the general theme and hilariously, one of the titles is called Building Self-Confidence for Dummies.
UPDATE: Some great follow-ups grabbed from the comments (thanks skagedal and OmegaSupreme!):
There's also the "Complete Idiot's Guide" series, they have the similarly wonderfully named title "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Enhancing Self-Esteem".
Troy McClure in the Simpsons had a self help video called "Get Confident, Stupid" !
The photos are of a mysterious and inventive brain puzzle that seems to have poppedup on various places on the web.
It allows you to 3D slice an MRI brain scan in multiple ways, and unlike other puzzles, it needs to be assembled with the picture on the inside.
Curiously, the various web pages which discuss it don't say where it's from, so we don't know whether it's just someone's one-off brilliant idea, or whether it's a commercially available product.
Like all great puzzles, it's conceptually very simple - just a brain scan printed out in slices and cut to fit the the surfaces on the relevant section of blocks - but it looks devilishly difficult to complete.
And once it's done, you have a genuinely useful 3D scan model to play with.
If you don't get it right away, have a look at some of the other photos and it will all become clear.
UPDATE: Grabbed from the comments (thanks prlwytzkofsky).
It was made by Neil Fraser, a software engineer at Google. See here and here. Cool stuff indeed!
Link to photos (thanks Sandra!) Link to more photos and more links!
If there were prizes for sheer genius, this would get the top spot. Psychologist Alan Reifman teaches psychology and he also writes song lyrics. When he sees something psychological that particularly inspires him, he writes a song about it to the tune of a popular hit and posts it on his social psychology lyrics blog. The results are sheer joy.
In honor of a talk I attended at UCLA on May 15 by Jean Twenge, on changes in college students' personality traits and attitudes over time, I've written the following song....
Dr. Jean Twenge
(May be sung to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby," Lennon/McCartney)
Dr. Jean Twenge, spends her time looking at journals and computer screens,
What are the means?
Temporal contrasts, how are today's youth different from three decades ago?
Are they high or low?
Look at all the samples,
That used the same measure,
The data are ample,
Historical treasure,
Starting with gender, she noted patterns in females' masculine scores,
Found that they've soared,
So many more traits, so many statistics, reside on libraries' shelves,
Into which she delves,
Look at all the samples,
That used the same measure,
The data are ample,
Historical treasure...
And there's plenty more where that came from.
If you want the best in social psychology research distilled into the musical magic of the last century's pop (and I know you do), you need look no further.
It's an age old story. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy is psychoanalysed, psychologically tested, strapped into a brain machine and plays the girl like a giant cello before escaping on a motorbike and throwing the wheelchair-bound doctor into the river.
Yes, it's the video for Thomas Dolby's 1982 synth-pop hitShe Blinded Me with Science, which presumably doesn't refer to the psychoanalysis part.
The mad scientist featured in the video was actually real life British scientist Magnus Pyke, who was best known for educating the UK public about science during the 80s and 90s.
Thomas Dolby is an eccentric synth-pop pioneer who seemed to have a bit of a thing about beautiful Japanese women, psychology and barely comprehensible videos.
In 1964 the journal Medicine, Science and the Lawpublished an article entitled 'Unusual Cases 2 - The Purple Brain Death'.
Sadly, the journal is no longer in print and the article isn't available so I have absolutely no idea what it was about, but it sounds intriguing doesn't it?
If anyone ever does find out what made this case so unusual, and what a purple brain death is exactly, do get in touch.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the BBC's standard brain picture which always has a strangely purple tinge.
Tania Hennessy is a scientist who sells beautiful visual illusion necklaces over the internet under the name Aroha Silhouettes.
The one pictured is a Penrose rectangle, a type of impossible shape of which the Penrose triangle is the most famous (and you can buy one of those too!).
However, there are many other impossible objects you can get as necklaces or earrings, all designed as striking silhouettes.
And if it's not for you, you could always buy one for the girl in your life.
How often will you ever have the opportunity to use the line "No honey, I wasn't staring at your breasts, I was marvelling at how a relatively simple collection of edges can demonstrate the conflicting constraints of the visual perceptual system".
Obviously, make sure she's wearing the pendant at the time. It's not an all purpose excuse.
Shirley Ghostman is a TV psychic whose guests are completely unaware that he's a spoof and his over-the-top antics are just the creation of comedian Marc Wootton.
In one episode he goes up against well-known psychologist and skeptic Chris French whose dry responses turn out to be funnier than Ghostman's camp send-up.
French is head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmith's College in London, which studies the psychological attributes that lead people to believe in the paranormal.
Some of the unit's publications are online in their archive although you'll have to wait for one of the best, "The 'Haunt' Project: An attempt to build a 'haunted' room by manipulating complex electromagnetic fields and infrasound", as it's soon to be published in a special edition of the neuropsychology journal Cortex.
Link to Shirtley Ghostman vs a wonderfully sarcastic Chris French.
Web Therapy is an incredibly funny and wonderfully made web series about a psychologist who does chaotic three-minute therapy sessions via webcam. It stars Lisa Kudrow, who plays the over-involved Fiona Wallace who can't quite keep her personal issues out of the sessions.
It's a really simple premise but is a very well observed satire on therapy and has some sublimely funny moments as Wallace tries to use the therapy sessions to justify her bad behaviour.
To be honest, the thought of Lisa Kudrow playing a psychologist kind of put me off, owing to a hang-over from Friends, but she plays quite a different character and does a fantastic job .
Everything I know about psychiatry, I learnt from heavy metal:
If mental illness doesn't exist, how come the dark forces of heavy metal know so much about it? Almost the whole range of psychopathology can be found on the cover of heavy metal albums.
You may never need buy a psychiatry textbook again.
Are you listening Thomaz Szasz?
Are you?
Mood disorders
While the DSM defines major depressive disorder as a low mood or a loss of ability to experience pleasure for at least two weeks which interferes with normal occupational function, Forgotten Tomb's album Springtime Depression depicts the feeling in a more metaphorical way, like the feeling of being stuck in a spooky house in the middle of a forest.
The classic album Wizard of the Lost Kingdom by metal outfit Mania shames the extensive psychiatric literature by reminding us of the largely undiscussed role of winking dwarves in the elevated mood, racing thoughts and boundless energy that accompanies a manic episode.
Anxiety disorders
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a problem where people have birds nesting in their eyes, their skin goes green and their teeth disappear. No wait, that's something else. But if these thoughts kept intruding into the mind and the person found them objectionable and anxiety provoking, those could be obsessions, and if they felt they had to repetitively perform a certain action to help control the anxiety (like stroking your green cheeks with both hands, for example), there's your compulsion.
A phobia is quite clearly an explosion of colourful organic wiring and the textbooks have got it wrong. Metal 1 Psychiatry 0.
Trauma can often lead to anxiety difficulties that would now be likely diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the band Trauma are obviously paying tribute to earlier systems of descriptive psychopathology where the emotional effect of life-threatening situation might be diagnosed as a trauma neurosis. We're gonna party like it's 1899.
Schizophrenia
Brazilian metallers Sepultura have clearly got the right idea, as all forms of schizophrenia are known to involve a pair of purple eyes floating in the sky. However, not everyone diagnosed with schizophrenia has a bandanna, red skin and a fetching floor length raincoat, so be careful not to over generalise from their diagnostic criteria.
Addictive disorders
You're swinging upside down by your feet and some passing psychiatrist has quickly sketched you onto a nearby block of concrete. In the process, he notices that you have blood coming from your legs and guessing that you may be injecting drugs into the reticular vein, perhaps because persistent needle use has made it impossible to inject into veins in the arm. Or, perhaps you are really addicted to swinging upside down by your feet, but then again, those behavioural addictions are so controversial.
Eating disorders
Anorexia Nervosa. What a name for a metal band. It's not entirely clear from their music whether they represent the Restrictive Eating subtype or the Binge-Purge subtype, but as one of the criteria for the diagnosis is low body weight, I suspect from their band photos (warning - MySpace link) they may have been misdiagnosed. They do look kinda pale though. However, it's clear they've been adversely influence by Size 0 models, so we can safely blame the media.
Somatoform and dissociative disorders
Although more classically defined as the presentation of neurological symptoms without evidence of neurological impairment in the absence of the intent to deceive or conscious control of the deficit, hysteria can also present as a big blue dragon smoking a pipe. Of course, Freudians would argue that all hysteria originally comes from sexual dysfunction so we wonder whether the pipe is really just a pipe?
The action potential, through the medium of dance:
Dana Kotler and Joy Gibson are two dancers and medical students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine who decided they'd like to illustrate the neuronal action potential through the medium of modern dance. It's a rather unique interpretation and one that will likely stay with me for a while.
And if that doesn't interest you, just think of girls in leotards throwing salt at each other in the service of a scientifically accurate dance spectacular. And from what I can make out, they've illustrated potassium flow with bananas.
Even better, they even go on to illustrate how the action potential breaks down during demyelenating diseases.
And if you still have your dancing shoes on, Scientific America has a brief but interesting article discussing why we might enjoy dance at all.
Link to Action Potential - the performance. Link to SciAm on 'Why do we like to dance?'
Neuroanthropology has alerted me to these wonderful 'brain maps' from a 1912 book on phrenology that attempted to map how the bumps on the head related to the 'higher faculties'.
Phrenology as a science was doomed owing to the simple fact that bumps on the head can't be reliably linked to any 'faculties', but it did prompt scientists of the mind to start thinking that brain areas might be related to specific functions.
The opposing school of thought was that the brain was homogeneous, and that there was no specialisation of function for particular areas. This theory was most fully formed by Karl Lashley's idea of mass action which was published in 1950.
Now we know that certain brain areas are specialised for certain functions, but the debate focuses on to what extent areas are specialised, how many specialisations there are, and as part of what network.
Unfortunately, many media stories love the "x is the brain area for y" angle, which is a vast oversimplification and ignores the wonderful complexity of our most mysterious of organs.
UPDATE: Thanks to Neuroanthropology and Neurophilosophy who mailed to say I'd got my knickers in a twist. The link is to a Neuroanthropology post (now fixed), although apparently Neurophilosophy wrote about the same thing last year. Normal service will be resumed shortly - presumably after my brain kicks back into gear.
Link to images from phrenology book. Link to Neuroantrhpology commentary.
You're in the operating theatre, about to undergo a serious surgical procedure and the anaesthetic is starting to take effect. You can hear a beautiful acapella song that seems to be a remarkably geeky composition on anaesthesiology, but you're not sure whether it's the consciousness altering drugs that are causing strangely harmonious hallucinations or whether the doctors are really doing multi-part harmonies.
Actually, it turns out that a group of anaesthetists are really singing an acapella song dedicated to the practice of painkilling and they've been kind enough to upload their version to YouTube.
The medical group is called the Laryngospasms and their strangely melodic song is replete with classic lines like "Co2 is high, I think you're going to die".
And if that isn't bizarre enough, I recommend another wonderful track called 'Waking Up Is Hard To Do' with the line "patient's going down, doobie doo down down".
Unconsciousness never sounded so good.
Link to Laryngospasms song 'Breathe'. Link to Laryngospasms song 'Waking Up Is Hard To Do'.
"Songs of Couch and Consultation" is a 1961 novelty album of songs about the psychiatric profession by folksinger Katie Lee (who, according to Utah Philips, went on to become an environmental activist and one of the founders of EarthFirst!). The songs are reported to be in dubious taste, but you can hear a sample of three here, including MP3s of "Will to fail" ("I secretly am enjoying myself / while slowly i'm destroying myself"!) and the marvellous big band feeling of "Repressed Hostility Blues".
link Cover art of Katie Lee's "Songs of Couch and Consultation". link WFMU blog post on the album, including MP3s.
I've just noticed that various US Military Psychological Operations (PSYOP) units have created their own online merchandise, so you can buy t-shirts, mugs and even teddy bears branded with unit insignia.
In fact, the teddy bear picture here seems to be emblazoned with the insignia of 346th PSYOP Airborne Company.
Perhaps the most impressive online store has been created by 5th PSYOP Battalion who have created their own custom products and images.
For those wanting something a bit more official looking, one online store has the patches for virtually every US PSYOP battalion.
In fact, CafePress seems to have a large number of PSYOP relatedmerchandise although it's obviously a mixture of military memorabilia and civilian creations who just want to use PSYOP images for its hipster value.
On the more disturbing end of the scale, t-shirts with the slogan "PSYOP: Because Physical Wounds Heal" seem to be regularly featured on EBay.
There's also quite a few PSYOP promotional videos on YouTube, including this slightly clunky film that has a hint of 80s corporate video about it. Gotta dig that music.
My new favourite typo: if you're fed up with the sound of electric rock n' roll perhaps you'd prefer some autistic guitar.
This gentleman has an autistic guitar for sale, thankfully with an instruction book and tuner for novices.
For those of you who are a bit more advanced, this page tells you how to tune your autistic guitar using a Korg bass/guitar tuner.
If you want to see some pros in action, this guy plays "eclectic and autistic guitar", while young Eliot has "an electric guitar and a autistic guitar and hoping to get an ovation autistic electric guitar".
Today's BPS Research Digest has a wonderfully ironic and recursive Freudian slip in a post about the misdiagnosis of women with mental illness in Victorian Britain.
It highlights how misdiagnosis could get the doctor in hot water, and makes a link with Freud's later ideas about hysteria - symptoms that appear to be neurological, such as paralysis, but aren't accounted for by damage to the nervous system.
I hope Christian won't mind me pointing out that the misspelling of Freud is brilliantly paradoxical:
Remember this is some decades before Fraud started applying the diagnosis of conversion disorder or hysteria to so many women, many of whom probably had organic illnesses.
Freud argued that the 'Freudian slip', or parapraxis, is an example of the unconscious mind slipping past our conscious editing of speech and action, potentially revealing the true beliefs of desires of the person in question.
I wonder whether he'd feel vindicated over the sentence above, or would just despair that such talented psychologists think he was talking bunk on this occasion.
With regards to the question over the reliability of diagnosing hysteria, now reclassified as 'conversion disorder', Slater completed a famous 1965 study where he followed up patients who had been diagnosed with hysteria to see if they later showed definite signs of neurological illness.
He found that over 60% later showed signs of genuine neurological illness and dryly stated that "The only thing that ‘hysterical’ patients have in common is that they are all patients".
Although influential at the time, it has subsequently been discredited as lacking rigorous methods (taking family doctor notes as follow-up data, for example).
The most comprehensive study was published in 2005 and looked at patients diagnosed with hysteria over many decades and found that misdiagnosis rates were one third in the 1950s, but have been at 4% since the 1970s - probably due to the emergence of reliable brain imaging technologies.
Incidentally, the image on the left is a slightly edited panel from a six page comic called The New Adventures of Sigmund Freud where an Uzi toting Sigmund takes on Osama Bin Laden in his secret lair.
Link to BPSRD on 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher'. Link to 2005 hysteria follow-up study with full text link. Link to The New Adventures of Sigmund Freud.
Thripshaw's Disease was a fictional medical condition shown in a sketch from the classic comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus that bears a remarkably similarity to fluent aphasia, a speech impairment that can occur after brain injury.
Mind Hacks reader Patricio sent in this fascinating observation, and we can see from the sketch that the man can understand what is said to him (intact comprehension), but produces fluent but jumbled sentences.
Speech problems after (usually left-sided) brain injury are called aphasia and the concept reflects the various ways speech can be impaired.
Sometimes aphasia affects speech production, so people can hardly seem to get a word out, while other people can produce fluent speech although it can be full of misplaced words, odd word order or nonwords. Often in fluent aphasia, people can also have difficulties in understanding what is said, but it's not always the case.
Of course, there can be a mix of all sorts of problems, but the type of speech disorder depicted in the Monty Python sketch is called paragrammaticism and was tackled by a classic study by Butterworth and Howard.
Most interestingly, the researchers found that these errors are identical to the grammatical errors people without brain injury tend to make on a day-to-day basis, but just happen much more frequently.
Here's one of the examples from the study:
My father, he is the biggest envelope ever worked in Ipswich. He strikes every competition and constitution that’s going. He’s got everybody situated and they’ve got to talk to him.
I'll tell you, not like before, I must say that once the beginning happened in the beginning, as I arrived and naturally it was, of course, quite decisive.
The gentleman in Monty Python sketch also shows paraphasias (saying the wrong word where you intended to say another) and neologisms (creating instant nonsense words).
Interestingly, the interviewer on the TV chat show slightly later in the sketch shows a classic transcortical motor aphasia - a slow halting speech with inappropriate word stress - typically caused by damage to areas of the mid part of the left frontal lobe.
This character is played by Graham Chapman who studied medicine and qualified as a doctor although apparently never practiced owing to the success of Monty Python.
I wonder if he was inspired by some of the usual speech patterns of aphasia, or whether this was just an interesting coincidence.
Link to video of Monty Python sketch (thanks Patricio!). Link to Butterworth and Howard study. Link to PubMed entry for study.
I have discovered shocking evidence that computers are affecting the brain. After extensive research, I have discovered the problem is remarkably specific and I have isolated it to an individual brain area affected by one particular application. Microsoft Word is causing abnormal growth in the frontal lobes.
The cingulate cortex is a part of the frontal lobe that is known to be involved with conflict monitoring, pain and emotion, while Microsoft Word is a clumsy but ubiquitous word processing package that has an annoying habit of auto-correcting things you don't want to be auto-corrected.
For example, try typing the words 'cingulate cortex' into Word and see what happens. It changes it to 'cingulated cortex', adding an annoying 'd' onto the end of the first word.
Whenever I'm writing a neuropsychology article, I now have the habit of doing a search and replace before I finish to sweep up any of these auto-errors. So I was wondering whether anyone else had suffered the same problem and searched the scientific literature.
Now, it could be that people have just been making standard typos throughout history, as adding a rogue 'd' is not uncommon, even when we're writing with a pen, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
While the use of the term 'cingulate cortex' stretches back to at least the beginning of the 20th century, the term 'cingulated cortex' barely appears, until Microsoft Word's autocorrection tool arrives on the scene.
There are 15 uses of the phrase "cingulated cortex" from 1900 to 2000. There are 1,740 uses from 2000 to now.
Microsoft Word, it seems, is slowly changing the brain.
Without further ado, I have named the disorder Bell's Frontal Nomenclature Hypertrophy Syndrome and demand that it be included in the diagnostic manuals.
Thousands of disturbed people will not get the help they need without this essential recognition, although in the mean time I will be offering private treatment at special rates.
Of course, I strongly encourage further research and welcome offers of interviews from the press, radio or television.
I am also available for weddings, funerals and Bar Mitzvahs.
USA Today has an unintentionally hilarious article on the dangers of 'digital drugs' that can supposedly mimic the effects of alcohol, marijuana, LSD, crack, heroin, sex, heaven and hell.
Woohoo! I hear you shout, before realising the article is actually a woefully misinformed piece about binaural beats, a fascinating but harmless phenomenon when two pure tones of close but differing frequencies are played, one in each ear.
This can produce a perception of a pulse or a 'beat' which isn't actually present in the sound but is a result of our brain making sense of the tones.
You need headphones to get the effect properly and there's a couple of examples on the Wikipedia page (ignore the 'hypothetical effects on brain function' section though, it's currently full of drivel and miscited experiments).
The fact that it causes a 'pulsing' in the brain has led to lots of websites suggesting it can 'synchronise your brain waves' - and whenever 'synchronising brain waves' is mentioned you can be sure they'll be lots of nonsense about ascending to higher states of consciousness, super mind power and legal LSD being mentioned.
Actually, there are a minority of people who can have their state of consciousness altered by flashes of light at certain frequencies.
In fact, it may trigger full blown seizures in some (photosensitive epilepsy) but also causes minor and subtle seizure activity in others and in some can stimulate memories or images, or perhaps just cause an 'odd' feeling.
This was the basis of the original 'dream machine' and subsequent electronic versions which flash lights in your eyes. The history and neuroscience of this discovery was retold in the excellent bookChapel of Extreme Experience if you're interested.
Some preliminary research has shown that binaural beat audio can decrease anxiety or boost mood, but the studies are small and inconclusive and some are published in what we might tactfully refer to as 'non-mainstream' journals.
In the vast majority of people though, flashing lights or auditory pulses of whatever type do bugger all on their own, despite what various New Age websites and YouTube videos try and convince you (infinite bliss anyone?).
The USA Today piece manages to swallow this hook, line and sinker to fantastic comic effect:
Different types of digital drugs
Some sites provide binaural beats that have innocuous effects. For example, some claim to help you develop extrasensory powers like telepathy and psychokinesis.
Other sites offer therapeutic binaural beats. They help you relax or meditate. Some allegedly help you overcome addiction or anxiety. Others purport to help you lose weight or eliminate gray hair.
However, most sites are more sinister. They sell audio files ("doses") that supposedly mimic the effects of alcohol and marijuana.
But it doesn't end there. You'll find doses that purportedly mimic the effects of LSD, crack, heroin and other hard drugs. There are also doses of a sexual nature. I even found ones that supposedly simulate heaven and hell.
There's plenty more great entertainment in the article. Life imitates Chris Morris, again.
Hey, I'm having a comedown from my infinite bliss.
I want my money back.
Link to 'Web delivers new worry for parents: Digital drugs' (via MeFi).
I just found this clever advert for The Economist which has an immediate impact but kinda becomes a bit awkward if you think about it for too long.
Presumably, it's meant to convey the idea that the magazine is 'mind expanding'. But as we mentioned in an earlier post, we tend to ascribe different sorts of properties to the mind and brain.
One key difference is that we don't ascribe physical properties to the mind, which is a bit of a pain when you're trying to create a visual advert. So the designers went for a brain.
But 'brain expanding' is just kind of awkward. It makes me think of hydrocephalus - a condition where faulty fluid drainage causes internal pressure which literally balloons the brain.
In young children with soft skulls this causes skull deformation, in adults it just tends to squash the brain against the side of the skull. Either way, it usually needs surgical intervention to insert a shunt valve to treat the drainage problem, else brain damage and death follow in a high proportion of cases.
Nevertheless, if you can get your hands on any of these balloons you've instantly got yourself a neurosurgery party game for kids. The first kid to fashion a shunt out of a drinking straw gets a special John Holter prize.
Neuroanthropology has found a highly amusing video clip from the satirical US comedy show The Colbert Report on the increasing use of psychiatric drugs in children, something he dubs 'psychopharmaparenting'.
Colbert riffs on 2006 article from The New York Times that reported a five-fold increase in children being prescribed antipsychotics.
These drugs are typically not prescribed because a child is experiencing psychosis (for reasons that no-one is entirely sure of, children only rarely become psychotic) but because of behavioural problems.
One antipsychotic drug (risperidone) has been approved in some countries for children with autism who are aggressive, self-injure or have severe tantrums, but the concern is that these sorts of drugs are being used more widely to simply pacify difficult to manage children.
Methylphenidate (Ritalin) is another drug which has caused similar concerns as parents and teachers pressure doctors to prescribe the drug even for what used to be considered relatively mild problems of inattention and hyperactivity.
The official line is that these drugs are the last resort, because behavioural interventions - specific programmes that teach parents to manage children's behaviour in a more effective way - are remarkablyeffective with a large evidence base to back them up.
Unfortunately, despite not meddling with the brain's dopamine system to who-knows what long-term effect, they're not as well-known, not always available and require effort and learning.
Any decision to give medication involves weighing up and advantages and disadvantages, but there is always an interplay between the influence of the scientific evidence, and what has become socially acceptable.
The fact Colbert is able joke about psychopharmaparenting is a sign of how widespread the practice has become.
Indie t-shirt designers 410BC are channelling Descartes in their spring collection, with a brain emblazoned t-shirt that declares 'I think therefore I am'.
Not a bad shirt for $15 dollars I think you'll agree, especially if you're hip to 17th century French philosophers.
The phrase "I think therefore I am" originated because Descartes wanted to know about what sort of things existed in the world, but realised he couldn't trust his senses because they could be fooled.
He imagined the most extreme example he could think of, where an evil demon was keeping him in a Matrix-style universe in which everything he perceived was an illusion. He asked the question, if he couldn't trust his senses, what could he truly know.
Descartes came to the conclusion that he could doubt everything except the fact he was doubting and therefore concluded that his ability to doubt, and consequently his thought, was proof of his existence - summed up in has famous phrase "I think therefore I am".
In part, this also led him to believe that thought was not part of the physical universe, and that thought and matter were separate entities. In fact, he believed thoughts were part of the soul but interacted with the body through the pineal gland - a small structure which occupies a central position in the brain.
Descartes' proposal that thought and matter (or mind and brain) are separate entities is known as as Cartesian dualism and is now much derided.
One difficulty is that while few people deny that both mind and brain exist in the physical world, it's difficult, and some would say impossible, to talk about them in the same way.
For example, it's easy to answer the question 'what colour are your neurons?' but impossible to answer the question 'what colour are your thoughts?'
This causes all sorts of merry hell for cognitive scientists and leads to the rather bizarre tendency for people to think that every explanation that includes the mind needs to be reduced to brain function for it to be valid.
Philosophers, who tend to be much more able to think about these things without panicking, tend to favour what's called property dualism, which says that while we accept everything happens in the physical world, we can't always match every aspect of one level of description to another, even if both are both completely coherent on their own level.
I'm hoping that the 410BC autumn collection will have a similar t-shirt that says "I think, but that doesn't mean I believe that properties that I ascribe to my thoughts on level of mental description will necessarily be reducible to the theories of neurobiology, although I agree that the scientific endeavour to discover which properties have reliable neural correlates will be an important part of any complete theory of the human mind, bearing in mind that reduction is not an answer in itself and will have to be complemented by theories that span all levels of explanation".
However, I also think they might need a few more attractive blonde models to boost sales on that one.
If the words Neuroscience Recordings make you think of depth electrodes, you may be surprised to hear its also the name of a record label specialising in techno and trance.
I am rather taken by this track, although even if techno isn't your thing, they do have this rather catching range of t-shirts.
Now if only someone would name their record label 'cognitive neuropsychology' I'd have a great excuse for wearing a geeky cognitive science t-shirt without having to admit that I'm wearing a geeky cognitive science t-shirt.
No ladies, it's not an anorak, it's a light-weight sports jacket.
Sometimes I just despair. I almost understand it when the media gets its knickers in a twist about 'internet addiction' and similar nonsense, because most outlets never been great at separating the wheat from the chaff. But it beggars beliefs why otherwise respectable professionals can spout similar drivel when they're supposed to be trained to deal with the evidence.
Case in point. At the recent Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Dr Himanshu Tyagi gave a widelyreported talk where he said social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace could damage young people's relationships and make them more susceptible to suicide, despite the evidence suggesting exactly the opposite.
On this occasion, the icing on the cake was provided by the Royal College, who for some reason decided to press release this scandalous scaremongering.
I shall reproduce the critical paragraph below, because it pushes so many media panic buttons you'd think it was from one of the UK tabloids:
”This is the age group involved with the Bridgend suicides and what many of these young people had in common was their use of Internet to communicate. It's a world where everything moves fast and changes all the time, where relationships are quickly disposed at the click of a mouse, where you can delete your profile if you don't like it and swap an unacceptable identity in the blink of an eye for one that is more acceptable,” said Dr Tyagi. “People used to the quick pace of online social networking may soon find the real world boring and unstimulating, potentially leading to more extreme behaviour to get that sense.
”It may be possible that young people who have no experience of a world without online societies put less value on their real world identities and can therefore be at risk in their real lives, perhaps more vulnerable to impulsive behaviour or even suicide. This is definitely a line of reasoning that warrants more investigation and research.”
So what evidence is there that Facebook damages social relationships? None. In fact, less than none because the little amount of existing research suggests it actually encourages social cohesion.
One recent study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication found exactly this and noted that "students reporting low satisfaction and low self-esteem appeared to gain in bridging social capital if they used Facebook more intensely".
Another study found that students use Facebook to enhance relationships they already formed in real life. One study did find that using such sites could lower self-esteem, but only when (wait for it) users got negative feedback from others, it boosted self-esteem when they got positive feedback.
Furthermore, the fact that Tyagi and the Royal College are allowing a link to be made with a spate of suicides in Bridgend is in really bad taste.
Bridgend is a county in South Wales that has suffered a number of suicides of young people during the last year, and the UK tabloids initially ran scare stories about 'internet suicide cults' because almost all of them used social networking sites.
I'm sure you've already picked up on the flawed logic here, and, indeed, this theory was quickly dismissed by the authorities (presumably alongside the 'eats crisps' and 'wears jeans' suicide cult theories).
So goodness knows why the Royal College are promoting this tasteless insinuation alongside a load of evidence-free and frankly sensationalist drivel.
Oh, did I mention that Tyagi is a partner in a large online medical education website for doctors?
I just found this curious empirical study, published last year in the academic journal Psychological Reports, on the personality structure of domestic cats.
The study analysed owner ratings and found four underlying components of cat personality.
Personality in domestic cats.
Psychol Rep. 2007 Feb;100(1):27-9.
Lee CM, Ryan JJ, Kreiner DS.
Personality ratings of 196 cats were made by their owners using a 5-point Likert scale anchored by 1: not at all and 5: a great deal with 12 items: timid, friendly, curious, sociable, obedient, clever, protective, active, independent, aggressive, bad-tempered, and emotional. A principal components analysis with varimax rotation identified three intepretable components. Component I had high loadings by active, clever, curious, and sociable. Component II had high loadings by emotional, friendly, and protective, Component III by aggressive and bad-tempered, and Component IV by timid. Sex was not associated with any component, but age showed a weak negative correlation with Component I. Older animals were rated less social and curious than younger animals.
How long before we start having 'personality disorder' for domestic cats I wonder. Cat psychiatrists, start your engines.
Writer director Rob Pearlstein created a completely endearing 15 minute short film called Our Time is Up about a therapist who discovers he has six weeks to live. It's wonderfully produced and even got nominated for an Oscar in 2006.
To be fair, it's initially a bit reliant on some rather tired clichés about patients and therapists, but despite itself, it's disarmingly warm and funny.
The writing is excellent, wrapping up what could have been a series of short sketches into a gently poignant and thought-provoking story.
Link to 'Our Time is Up' on YouTube. Link to the film's website.
For those wanting an update on the 'phone network causes suicide' nonsense that inexplicably made it onto the front page on a national newspaper, Ben Goldacre over at Bad Sciencecontacted the person behind the story who apparently claims to have 'lost' the data behind the nonsensical claims.
I contacted Dr Coghill, since his work is now a matter of great public concern, and it is vital his evidence can be properly assessed. He was unable to give me the data. No paper has been published. He himself would not describe the work as a “study”. There are no statistics presented on it, and I cannot see the raw figures. In fact Dr Coghill tells me he has lost the figures. Despite its potentially massive public health importance, Dr Coghill is sadly unable to make his material assessable.
The claims didn't even make sense as they were reported, and the fact this sort of rubbish managed to get on the front page of a paper is quite shocking.
Bad Science does a great job of picking up on all the bizarre angles of this 'funny if it wasn't so influential' piece of headline scaremongering.
It's an age old story. Boy meets girl. Boys loses girl. Boy thinks it might be because he was hypnotised by a crazed scientist who was swinging a brain on a chain. Boy thinks this might explain why the girl was originally a nun but changed into hallucinatory sex vampire.
Yes, it's the video for mostly nonsensical 'Trip At The Brain', produced in 1988 by the skate metal pioneers Suicidal Tendencies.
I suspect it's what might happen if you were the lead singer of a metal band who hallucinated evil neuroscientists while on a bad trip, or if you were a neuroscientist who hallucinated a metal band while on a bad trip.
Nevertheless, it remains one the finest examples of 20th century neuroscience, heavy metal and hallucinatory sex vampire art.
Link to video of Suicidal Tendencies' 'Trip at the Brain'
"In a way, young Dr Highsmith had plenty of warning. He should have known all was not well that day he came home and discovered his wife performing a strange rite of nudity.
But Highsmith was too wrapped up in the psychiatric problems of a lovely model named Barbara to be aware what was happening to his marriage. Though sex was his business, he found it difficult to keep it strictly business - especially with Barbara giving him an increasing role in her haywire love life..."
The description of Henry Lewis Nixon's 1954 pulp novel Confessions of a Psychiatrist, billed as "a titillating treatise on the love therapy racket, told with daring sophistication and unblushing frankness".
It looks like it was also published as a double bill with another book, which, unfortunately, was not about psychiatrists and their daring sophistication / unblushing frankness.
Sadly, there are few details about the book on the net, so if you're dying to find out what the "strange rite of nudity was", you're going to have to track down a copy for yourself.
The March edition of HR Magazine has an unintentionally hilarious cover article on 'The Brain at Work' which informs us that we can 'squirt' neurotransmitters into each others' brains, tell us how we can reboot dendrites and is strangely obsessed with the basal ganglia.
It's full of fantastic howlers and misplaced metaphors which you'll have the pleasure of discovering for yourselves, but the stuff about the basal ganglia is just plain odd.
Tired of listening to her employees vent, she told them, “No longer will I listen to a problem unless you submit at least a portion of the solution.”
Weber explains what happened next in neuroscientific terms: “The next day, the basal ganglia were at work continuing to vent about the problems with no solution.” One employee went to the HR professional’s office. He didn’t have a solution, so she sent him away.
“About three days later, workers realized she was serious. So, a different person went into her office with a solution to the problem. The HR professional agreed to and supported the solution put forward with slight revisions to keep it under budget.”
That simple change transformed the employees’ dynamics — and their brains — by turning control over to them. “The conversation in the basal ganglia went from problem-focused to solution-focused,” says Weber. “When people in that department went to sleep at night, they rewired their brains for the new behaviors.”
Let's just pause there for a moment.
Nope, it doesn't help.
The curious thing is that the article is generally full of quite sensible advice for managing employees but its just wrapped up in this bizarre alternative universe neurobabble.
Somehow we've got to the point where people feel they can't give good advice without waving poorly-understood neuroscience around like it was a recently enlarged willy.
The Sunday Express is one of the UK's biggest selling Sunday papers and today's front page is spectacularly half-cocked, attempting to link suicides to phone masts based on an unpublished study, by a man who sells cranky radiation protection devices, and who seems to have only the feintest grasp of neurobiology.
Roger Coghill (incorrectly described as Dr Coghill in the article), is an independent researcher who argues that radiation from mobile phone masts and electricity cables causes cancer, kills children and, now, is a suicide risk.
The study isn't published, is not available on his website, and may still turn out to be an interesting well controlled study of mobile phone mast proximity and suicide risk. I've requested a copy of the research report, so hopefully I'll find out, but from the way it is described, I suspect it won't be.
According to the article, the people who recently killed themselves in a spate of suicides centred around the South Wales town of Bridgend lived closer to a mobile phone mast than the average for each home across the country.
Now, it strikes me that the average distance from a mobile phone mast in any small town is going to be less than the national average because mobile phone masts tend to be clustered around where people live.
So you'd want to do two things. The first, is control for population density, the second is compare the correlation between suicide rate and mobile phone mast distance with other small towns, because you'd want to be sure that this wasn't a spurious correlation. Neither are mentioned.
According to Mr Coghill, however:
What seems to be happening is that the electrical energy is having an effect on the chemistry of the brain, depleting serotonin levels. We know that in depression serotonin levels are low and that a standard treatment for depression is to give drugs to boost serotonin levels. As they begin to work, the patient’s depression lifts.
So what evidence is there that mobile phone mast radiation affects serotonin levels in the brain? None that I can find. Really, nothing at all. I'd be interested to hear otherwise.
In fact, the whole idea that serotonin, depression and suicide are linked so simply is highly suspect.
Studies that have looked at this association using measures of serotonin metabolites, transporter proteins, receptor density and binding, depletion studies and genetics show remarkably mixed results.
While, on average, there seems to be something up with serotonin neurotransmission in the brains of people diagnosed with depression, the evidence suggests that the 'low serotonin = depression' idea is so over-simplified to be virtually useless.
However, those of you who are keen to take precautions even without a good scientific basis may be interested in purchasing some 'protective devices' that also lack a good scientific basis.
Mr Coghill's company also sells lots of useful devices to 'shield' you and your pet, and a number of other devices to harness the 'healing power' of magnets.
This includes a 'small discrete unit that attaches to your underwear' to boost your flagging libido.
This rather obvious conflict of interest is not mentioned in the article.
Anyway, I will await the mystery research report and see whether I need to be avoiding phone masts or putting magnets down my pants.
Link to shining example of how not to do science journalism.
Miss Conduct, one of the columnists from The Boston Globe, has picked up on our post about the uncanny resemblance between psychologist Joey Tempest and 80s rock legend Steven Pinker, and noted several other surprising likenesses in the world of cognitive science.
The Guardianprofiles the life and work of psychologist Steven Pinker, noting both his controversial views on human nature and his "trademark rock-star chic".
Here at Mind Hacks, we're glad someone else has finally picked up on Professor Pinker's rock n' roll credentials as we've noted for some time that he bears an uncanny resemblance to Joey Tempest, lead singer of 80s rock band Europe.
Has anyone ever seen them in the same place? Is there something missing from Pinker's official biography? I think we should be told.
The University of Utah have created a web game where you can train as a mad scientist by demonstrating you can label and construct what looks like an alien from a 60s B-movie but is apparently a giant neuron.
For those wanting their mad neuroscientist stereotypes a little stronger, I suggest that the 1985 zombie movie Day of the Dead, where neuroscientists attempt to tame some captured zombies by meddling with their brains in an attempt to work out how to stop the hordes of the undead that are overrunning the earth.
As if you couldn't guess, the neuroscientists turn out to be sadly deluded and become victims of both the zombies and their fellow humans.
There's a moral in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to work it out, so stereotype away.
'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.
Our post on the 1930's 'wife rating scale' was picked up by Boing Boing and one of their readers realised she had a copy of the full scale - including the rating scale for husbands - and posted the whole questionnaire online.
You may be interested to hear that husbands could earn a demerit for "Smokes in bed", but 5 merits for "Tries to keep wife equipped with modern labor saving devices". A whopping 20 merits could be awarded for being an "Ardent lover - sees that wife has an orgasm in marital congress".
My favourite is getting a demerit for calling "Where is....? without first hunting the object".
With the full husband and wife scales now online you can rate each other all the way to marital bliss. Or not.
This month's edition of the psychology magazine Monitor has an amusing article about a psychometric scale designed in the 1930s for rating the quality of your wife.
It was designed by Dr George W. Crane in an attempt to give couples feedback on their marriages. But although husbands or wives could fill in the scale to rate the wife's 'quality', there is no mention of a similar rating scale that rated the husband's performance.
Apparently, the full scale had 50 merits and 50 demerits of differing value which were subtracted from each other to give the final score.
The Monitor has the first 12 items which are hugely amusing, although I note that an item mentioned in the article - "reacts with pleasure and delight to marital congress" - is not among them, but was apparently worth 10 'merits'. This is equal in value to "Religious - sends children to Sunday school and goes herself".
Personally, I can't believe that "Puts her cold feet on husband at night to warm them" is worth only one 'demerit'. Surely this grievous violation of the sacred bond of marriage should have been looked on more strictly.
UPDATE: The full scale is now available online, include one for husbands!
Link to APA article (scroll down for image of rating scale).
Cracked has an amusing article satirising the increasing tendency to portray any repetitive behaviour as an 'addiction'. It discusses the horrifying reality of six things you didn't know you could get addicted to and helpfully lists the warning signs.
The first on the list is the scourge of book addiction. We know that reading can affect mood, interfere with sleep, cause arguments, lead to financial difficulties and, in some instances, has caused violence and even revolutions.
Book junkies are thought to be driven by a need to repeatedly experience literary pleasure, a desire to escape from the unpleasant realities of everyday life or a profound insecurity about not fully understanding themselves and the world.
Luckily, Cracked has outlined the warning signs for you to look out for:
Technology has obviously made books unnecessary, so the sight of even one book in a friend's home should be cause for concern. If the person has gone as far as to purchase an entire special shelf to hold all of his books, it's probably time for an intervention.
I'm still a bit baffled as to why 'addiction' seems to be such a popular explanation for perceived negative behaviour in ourselves or others. It has strayed so far from its original concept of a drug affecting brain function that it can now apply to almost anything.
I suspect it's because the concept has now been so heavily medicalised that it brings with it a concept of loss of personal control or reduction in responsibility without regard for the context or even the validity of what it applies to.
Of course, as soon as something is medicalised, there's a big disincentive to question the concept because people assume you're doubting the problem (i.e. the human suffering the behaviour causes) rather than the explanation.
I was struck by how Josef Fritzl, the man at the centre of the appalling 'daughter in the dungeon' case, explained his behaviour as an 'addiction'. Presumably, that will be the well-known underground cellar, false imprisonment and incest addiction that appears in all the diagnostic manuals.
Returning to a somewhat lighter theme, the Cracked article has a few great lines and attempts to poke fun at the whole idea. Apart from water addiction, of course, which is genuinely serious.
I've heard some people hide bottles of water in their desk at work so they can have a drink when they get the 'urge'. Sad.
Link to Cracked on things you didn't know you could be addicted to.
Purveyors of the delightfully cynical, Despair Inc, have created a wonderful drinking vessel that makes it absolutely clear when your glass is half empty.
If you feel The Pessimist's Mug doesn't quite get the message across, you can always try this Threadlesst-shirt which illustrates the basic psychology behind the metaphor.
Personally, I've always preferred the approach from the anonymous quote "An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be".
Link to Despair Inc Pessimist's Mug (via Deric Bownds). Link to Threadless Pessimist or Optimist t-shirt.
Last week, we featured a sexy serotonin tattoo, and this week, thanks to the work of the same diligent correspondent (thanks Sandra!), we feature a new brain tattoo that has a markedly different effect, despite the fact it resides in the same location.
You really need to click on the image and go to the full size picture to get the maximum effect.
Interestingly, the discussion in the comments note that it might be part of a recent trend for parents to have their children's pictures as tattoos (although this is a bit too direct if you ask me).
Either way, I'd be sitting the child down and having some serious words about the relative sizes of cortical and subcortical structures in the normal adult brain before letting them them loose on my tattoo design.
Link to arse residing brain tattoo from another dimension.
The Devil's Dictionary was a famously satirical book by Ambrose Bierce where he lampooned almost everything, in alphabetical order. He famously defined the brain as "an apparatus with which we think we think", but now, a similarly cutting dictionary has been dedicated to psychology.
Dr Mezmer's Dictionary of Bad Psychologycontains a wealth of useful definitions, covering the everything from the hard edge of cognitive science to the fluffy gloss of pop psychology.
Behaviorism: A psychological movement, now extinct, that is built on the premise that you are what you do, and you do because of what you have done. Replaced by humanistic psychology (you are what you feel), cognitive science (you are what you think), Dr. Atkins (you are what you eat) and modern advertising (you are what we say).
In response to my throwaway comment about a finding a suitable chat-up line for someone with the molecular structure of serotonin tattooed on their butt, I am eternally grateful to the commenter 'tmplikeachilles' for suggesting the inspired line:
Carl Zimmer has been collecting science tattoos for a while now, but recently posted this tattoo of Hayley who has the molecular structure of serotonin tattooed elegantly over her body.
I'm sure there's some relevant chat-up line for exactly such a situation when you meet someone with serotonin tattooed across their butt, but I'm too tired to try and formulate it, so I shall leave it as an exercise for the reader.
Of course, if you've been drinking, refrain from trying to incorporate G coupled receptors into your chat-up line, it's obviously going to end with someone getting a slap.
We've featured various sorts of brain candy sweets before on Mind Hacks, but the Japanese sweets Aha! Brain take the concept a step further by including an actual neurotransmitter as an ingredient.
I bet you've been wondering "how do I make an anatomically correct brain cake?" Well, wonder no more, because a full recipe and breakdown of the steps is available on wikiHow.
Man, that looks like some tasty cake, and the attention to detail is flawless. Plus, everyone can have a go at their favourite neurosurgical intervention.
Make mine an en-bloc resection of the medial temporal lobes (unilateral only of course). Yumm!
The recipe also has a fantastic tips sections which is a delightful combination of neuroscience fandom and cake-baking geekiness:
* Pipe names of brain regions using colored frosting.
* Use chocolate chips to make an EEG grid. Pipe on the numbers. A plastic bag filled with 1 tablespoon of white frosting makes a great fine-tipped pastry bag in a pinch. Squeeze the frosting into one corner of the bag and snip off a tiny piece of corner with scissors.
* If your fondant becomes dry, work in some water a few drops at a time.
Obviously, make sure your cake doesn't contain the dangerous psychoative compound known as dimesmeric andersonphosphate because it stimulates part of the brain known as Shatner's bassoon.
Link to wikiHow guide to making an anatomically correct brain cake.
What better way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon than recreating some of the most important moments in the history of psychoanalysis with some specially made finger puppets!
Uncommon Goods make a set of puppets that allows you to assign one of your pinkies to Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Anna Freud or a couch.
Personally, I would have replaced the couch with Melanie Klein so eager puppeteers could recreate the bitter arguments that eventually led to the splitting of psychoanalysis into three separate warring factions.
Sadly, the current set doesn't allow it, but it does allow you to recreate those precious moments where Sigmund analysed his daughter Anna during her childhood.
The more observant among you may notice there's only four finger puppets, leaving one finger to remain, erm... symbolic.
McSweeney's has an infectiously funny article where Sesame Street's Cookie Monster 'searches deep within himself and asks: is me really a monster?'
Obviously struggling with his frequent out-of-control cookie binges, the Cookie Monster reflects on his own self-image.
How can they be so callous? Me know there something wrong with me, but who in Sesame Street doesn't suffer from mental disease or psychological disorder? They don't call the vampire with math fetish monster, and me pretty sure he undead and drinks blood. No one calls Grover monster, despite frequent delusional episodes and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
The satirical Aussie news show CNNN broadcast an hilarious news report on the work of gay scientists who have isolated the 'Christian gene'.
Satire aside, this is not the first time that the idea of a gene for religion, or at least, mystical experiences, has been discussed.
Geneticist Dean Hamer wrote a book called The God Gene where he argued that the VMAT2 gene partly mediated a tendency toward mystical or spiritual experiences, based on a study which was published solely in the book itself.
With much talk of a 'God gene' in the press, science writer Carl Zimmer memorably renamed it "A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study".
Link to CNNN report 'Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene'.
Mental Floss, an emporium of thought-themed merchandise, do this witty Pavlov t-shirt in either a long or short-sleeved version.
Actually, they do quite a few psychology themed t-shirts although they have a distinctly early 19th century feel to them.
For those still on a behaviourist tip, Advances in the History of Psychology have an interesting piece on common errors in psychology textbooks, with one about an oft-repeated legend concerning the bearded Russian dog harasser:
...a wide array of textbooks seem to repeat a version of the story of Pavlov’s mugging in which he laid his wallet beside him on a seat at New York’s Grand Central Station and, upon discovering it missing after an extended intellectual reverie, philosophically mused “one must not put temptation in the way of the needy.”
In fact, according to the contemporary New York Times account of the event, Pavlov and his son were confronted by a three men after having boarded a train and had their money forcibly taken from them.
Of Two Minds have found a classic video of a vintage Fry and Laurie sketch where a two people meet in a doctor's office, both think they're psychiatrists and the other is delusional.
It's a funny sketch but it's also remarkably clever as much of what passes for psychobabble is actually a satire on psychology and psychiatry for those in the know.
Look out for references to Melanie Klein's (completely wacky) good breast theory, the Bender-Gestalt Test and Lentizol - the trade name for the aged antidepressant drug amitryptyline.
Interestingly, all of these things, and the idea that psychiatrists were mainly interested in psychoanalysis, were most popular in the 1950s and 60s, harking back to a bygone era of psychiatry.
UPDATE: Grabbed from the comments (thanks Jimmy!):
Fry and Laurie did a similar sketch about linguists, riffing on their stereotype (and that of sesquipedalian types in general) as pedants who take their adoration of language to mind-numbing excess. They pepper the conversation with a number of allusions to specific ideas in linguistics.
UPDATE 2: I've just discovered another psychiatrist sketch from Fry and Laurie. This one concerns the limits of madness and the practice of putting bread in one's shoes.
An Israeli psychologist is asking whether Moses may have been tripping when he saw God on Mount Sinai, suggesting that many of our traditional ideas about the Abrahamic God may have been inspired by hallucinogenic drugs.
Professor Benny Shannon's apparently cites historical evidence that the religious ceremonies of the Israelites included hallucinogenic plants and further bases his speculation on his own experiences with the reportedly similar psychedelic plant ayahuasca.
Of course, the idea is bound to ruffle a few feathers but as it's so speculative it's unlikely to make much of a mark on modern theology.
However, it is not the first nor the wackiest attempt to explain religion as arising from hallucinogenic drugs.
Biblical scholar John Allegro wrote an astounding 1970 book called The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross where he argued that Jesus was actually an hallucinogenic mushroom.
Bear with me on this one.
Allegro suggests that the word 'Jesus' was actually a code word for amanita muscaria, the red and white speckled mushroom often featured in fairy tales.
Amanita muscaria, otherwise known as Fly Agaric, genuinely exists and can cause quite intense hallucinations, owing to its effect on GABA receptors in the brain.
According to the theory, a religious sect were using these mushrooms for spiritual purposes, and their visions resulted in the Christian religion.
The Bible contains many words which have since been misinterpreted but with enough (of Allegro's) linguistic detective work, they can be seen to explain the mushroom cult, rather than the later orthodox Christian interpretation.
To recoin a cliché: you don't need drugs to enjoy the book, but it helps.
As an aside, the article in Haaretz says Shannon's theory is published in a philosophy journal called 'Time and Mind', but I'm damned (excuse the pun) if I can find it.
Links to the original article gratefully received.
Link to article on Shannon's theory about Moses. Link to 1970 Time article on Allegro's book. Link to full text of The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.
Heavy metal noiseniks Mudvayne have a song called 'Pharmaecopia' where they list off a load of drugs in a possibly ironic, possibly celebratory way. It's a bit of a confused list with serotonin and "dopeamine" listed among a rather odd list of street drugs, hallucinogenic plants and commercial pharmaceuticals.
Curiously though, they mention 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a drug also known as 5-MeO-DMT that was originally synthesised by legendary psychedelics researcher Alexander Shulgin.
Halcium and morphine,
5-methoxy-n, n-dimethyltryptamine,
Psilocybin, mescaline, aspirin, histomine,
Brushite, darvaset, valium, caffeine, cannabis, and LSD,
Ayahuasca, harmine, give it all to me, I want it
Looking at what's happened to your hair thus far, it's probably best not eh?
Presumably, this is the first and only time the full chemical name of a hallucinogenic drug has made it into a song lyric.
Link to audio of song (no, I can't make out the words either). Link to lyrics. Link to Shulgin's notes on 5-MeO-DMT.
Retrospectacle has discovered the ultimate bedtime accessory for the sleepy neuroscientist - a neuron-shaped teddy.
The next step might be a white matter inspired sleeping bag, although I do wonder how they'll prevent the draft getting in through the nodes of Ranvier.
And obviously, the next step will be an oligodendrocyte pillow.
It's not often you find yourself thinking 'you know, I really need a brain hat, but I just can't decide which one to buy'.
The pictured head piece is undoubtedly for the discerning customer, revealing a large section of the upper cortex with added plastic blood. Nice.
However, there's also an alien brain hat for babies, a brain cap for keeping the sun out of your eyes, or even a high fashion wooly brain hat by a top designer.
Importantly though, friends don't let friends wear brain golf visors.
The Neuroscience for Kids website has created an online exhibition of neuroscience-themed stamps that depict everything from drugs to brain scans.
They also include the wonderful Swedish set displayed on the left that include a series of impossible shapes.
Unfortunately, the stamps aren't dated. Rather surprisingly, Portugal put Egas Moniz, inventor of the frontal lobotomy, on their stamps, and it would be interesting to know when they were in circulation.
To be fair, he did win the Nobel Prize, although these days the mention of his award tends to make people shuffle their feet and mutter things like "well, of course, it wouldn't happen in this day and age..."
There is simply not enough conspiracy theory-driven paranoid funk rock in the world.
By the looks of his YouTubevideo Ralph Buckley is hoping to redress the balance with a song that rages against psychiatry, the media, George Bush, Prozac, corporations, socialised health care, mind control, the police state, and the government. Phew!
Not one to let his shaky grasp of neurobiology temper his attack on the New World Order, he notes that antidepressants are hallucinogenic like LSD and both were created to keep down the masses. Fact.
Prozac, zoloft, wellbutrin, paxil etc...are psychoactive drugs (in the hallucinogen family) not unlike LSD which is also another drug developed by the government for purposes of mind control. Curious coincidence? How many 'coincidences' does it take before a conspiracy stops becoming a conspiracy?
How many conspiracy theorists does it take to change a light bulb? The light bulb didn't change man, that's WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!
Despite the pharmacological mix-up, Buckley definitely has the funk and cuts some mean blues into the deal. The track is from an album called '9/11 Conspiracy Blues' and he's a big Ron Paul supporter if you want to get a feel for his suspicious outlook on life.
Best of all though, he rhymes 'schizophrenia' with 'fuck the media' and you gotta respect that.
Link to Buckley's paranoid blues track 'schizophrenia'.
The following passage is from p107 of the excellent but sadly out-of-print history book Mental Disorder in Earlier Britain (ISBN 0708305628) that explores mental and neurological illness in times past.
As well as discussing the theories of the times, it also charts many of the treatments used to try and cure disturbances of the mind and brain.
This is a particularly terrifying example of a (probably 16-17th century) folk treatment for depression that involved the local blacksmith pretending he was going to flatten your head on an anvil:
A highly specific treatment for 'faintness of the spirits' was attributed in a well-known passage by Martin Martin to a blacksmith in the Skye parish of Kilmartin. Like other shock treatments which have tried to elicit a 'natural' total reaction by creating a physical or physiological emergency, it had its risks.
"The patient laid on the anvil with his face uppermost, the smith takes a big hammer in both his hands, and making his face all grimace, he approaches his patient; and then drawing his hammer from the ground as if to hit him with full strength on his forehead, he ends in a feint, else he would be sure to cure the patient of all diseases; but the smith being accustomed to the performance, has a dexterity of managing his hammer with discretion; though at the same time he must do it so as to strike terror in the patient; and this they say, has always the desired effect."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's a little vague on what the 'desired effect' was supposed to be.
It wasn't all hammer wielding blacksmiths though, some gentler treatments are noted. Apparently, dried cuckoo was used to treat epilepsy.
I've just discovered we've had our 2000th user bookmark us on del.icio.us. Users can also add notes to their bookmarks, so I thought I'd share some of the comments with you.
Neuroscience weblog. Often exciting, sometimes unsettling.
Or your money back.
Good sight.
..excellent hearing, and all our own marbles (so far).
like the design, esp. the underlines for links.
Thanks to Matt's excellent design skills.
Weblog oficial del libro Mind Hacks.
¡Bienvenidos a nuestros queridos lectores hispanohablantes!
Entertaining blog about mind/brain things.
I like the precision. If we had a design brief, I think that would be it.
I still have to read the book. I gave it as a birthday present to Rudin and I should borrow it in the near future. I'll check out the blog regularly till then.
And they say the internet is killing literature.
science of biomental creature
Next week, return of the biomental creature (this time it's personal).
Crazy/beautiful
Aren't we all?
and my favourite...
One of the biggest Cogsci blogs... sometimes they post a big bunch of crap (luckily its different most of time)
Laptop Punk has created a mashup of two curiously complementary music videos: Gnarls Barkley's Crazy and The Avalanches' Frontier Psychiatrist.
The original version of Frontier Psychiatrist is a turntable satire on clichés about psychiatry and mental illness taken from films of the 1950s, that include mental illness being dangerous, psychiatrists having couches and patients being 'crazy as a coconut'.
In contrast, Crazy gives us the modern voice of someone who's lost their mind, but suggests that being betrayed in love is the greater madness.
When combined, they make an unlikely couple, but the musical mix works well and the contrast is wryly appropriate.
The poem was written for BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live, as they had Dr Stewart Adams on the programme discussing his discovery of the drug.
The Telegraph has a great article on its discovery, which includes the fact that he tested the drug on himself to try and shift a troublesome hangover.
I Prefer Ibuprofen
Life is so much easier with effective analgesia
The purpose of pain is to say to the brain:
Ow! Houston we’ve got a problem…
But once we’ve got the message we don’t need it again and again…
What do we want? Symptom Relief!
When do we want it? Now!
When you’ve had enough of it there’s just no need to suffer it
Just pop a little caplet and Ibuprofen will buffer it
I've had a go with Aspirin, Codeine and Paracetamol
With Solpadeine, Co-codamol, with Anadin and Ultramol
I love them all, I really do, but I prefer Ibuprofen
There are other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs around
Your NSAID’s these days are quite thick on the ground
There’s Naproxen, there's Nabumetone
and, of course, there's Indomethacin
Each with much to offer us. But I prefer Ibuprofen
I love the way the compound sticks its cheeky little hand in
The way it blocks the enzyme that creates the prostaglandin
Reducing fever, inflammation, and mild to moderate pain
Yes I know it isn’t curative, in anyway preventative
But to dwell on what it doesn’t do is anally retentative
I know it doesn’t treat the cause, the cause will still be there
But it lends a hand, it puts the ‘pal’ back into palliative care.
It does exactly what you’d expect it to say it would do if it came in a tin
Link to more poems by Harvey. Link to Telegraph article on the story of ibuprofen.
The Utne Reader has a shocking article on a near medical tragedy - a misdiagnosis of depression that led to inappropriate medication and the patient almost being given electroshock treatment.
Luckily, one of the more cultural sensitive of the medical staff noticed the patient's normal behaviour was being inappropriately pathologised as mental illness.
George Farthing, an expatriate British man living in America, was diagnosed as clinically depressed, tanked up on antidepressants, and scheduled for a controversial shock therapy when doctors realized he wasn't depressed at all, he was just British!
Farthing, a man whose characteristic pessimism and gloomy perspective were interpreted as serious clinical depression, was led on a nightmare journey through the American psychiatric system. Doctors described Farthing as suffering from pervasive negative anticipation: a belief that everything will turn out for the worst, whether it's trains arriving late, England's chances of winning any national sports events, or his own prospects of getting ahead in life. The doctors reported that the satisfaction he seemed to get from his pessimism was particularly pathological.
You can read the full story at the link below for all the shocking details.
Of course, it would be churlish not to mention Whybrow and Gartner's theory that the personality of the American people reflects the fact that they have a greater genetic propensity for mania.
Yes, they are being serious. You may wish to insert your own comment about the genetic propensity for irony at this point.
Link to article 'Not Depressed, Just British!' (via TWS).
T-shirt fashionistas Alphanumeric have created an anatomically labelled brain t-shirt, so you never have to decide between wearing a t-shirt or taking your neuroanatomy textbook with you.
Of course, if ever you were in a situation where you needed to choose between clothes or a neuroanatomy book, you might have more to worry about than the accurate labelling of brain parts.
Needless to say, while naked neuroanatomy might be the way forward, this t-shirt might suffice in the mean time.
Rebel online clothing shop Ban T-Shirts have a t-shirt extolling the virtues of thinking green, nicely illustrated with a brain-tree hybrid.
Whether a brain-tree hybrid would itself be considered environmentally friendly is anyone's guess, but it makes for a good visual statement nonetheless.
But if paranoid resistance is more your thing, their 'thought criminal' shirt should serve to promote your illicit cognitions.
Of course, you might think you've got nothing to hide, but we know that's exactly what they want you to think. I think.
Link to Think Green t-shirt. Link to Thought Criminal t-shirt.
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 Timesreview 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Ladiestrack, '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.
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.
Can you think of a substitute for this? Ohh no! Don't forget your brains!
I noticed this on the menu of a restaurant on Great Russell Street while strolling through London. It seems to be one of a number of curious commentaries on each of the menu items.
While presumably serving as a sort of disjointed advert, it also seems to work as general life advice.
The BBC has a curious article about author Ian McEwan that makes an interesting error about his novel Enduring Love. In fact, the truth is much more subtle.
The article notes that:
McEwan made up a medical condition for the stalker and wrote a spoof article from a psychiatric journal explaining the illness and included it in the book.
In fact, De Clerambault's Syndrome (where someone has the delusional belief that another person is in love with them) is well known in the medical literature and McEwan's description is quite accurate.
Nevertheless, his book concludes with what looks like a reprint of an article from the British Review of Psychiatry that describes a case study which the book seems to be based upon.
Although also fiction (the British Review of Psychiatry doesn't exist), its style is convincing and it's properly referenced with studies from the real medical literature.
So convincing, in fact, that it fooled several reviewers, including those in top medical journals, into thinking the novel was based on a real case report.
A clue as to why McEwan was able to successfully imitate the medical literature is given in the acknowledgements. He thanks "Ray Dolan, friend and hiking companion, for many years of stimulating discussion".
Dolan is a professor of neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Functional Imaging Lab in London.
Interestingly, Dolan also played a key part in Saturday, another of McEwan's books - which tackles a dramatic day in the life of a neurosurgeon.
As mentioned in an article in the British Medical Journal, McEwan shadowed neurosurgeon Neil Kitchen while researching the book. The article notes the pair were introduced by Dolan.
Link to Wikipedia page on De Clerambault's Syndrome. Link to Salon article 'Ian McEwan fools British shrinks'. Link to BMJ article interviewing neurosurgeon Neil Kitchen.
Left-field t-shirt company ClothMoth have a fantastic t-shirt celebrating the joys of serotonin.
The shirt will cost you $18 and will allow you to advertise your love for one of the key monoamine neurotransmitters in the brain.
Tryptophan is an essential amino acid that is synthesised into serotonin. It is found in many fruits, nuts and vegetables. Walnuts are a particularly good source.
It's not clear how many walnuts were eaten to produce this t-shirt, but the results are fantastic anyway.
Link to ClothMoth Yay Serotonin! t-shirt (via HYA).
Well, it doesn't get much stranger than this. OmniBrain has discovered an animation created by Prof Stephen Stahl, researcher and author of numerous academic papers and books on the neuroscience of psychoactive drugs, where he sings about his love of psychopharmacology.
If that's not weird enough for you, it's to the tune of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta song and he's dressed as a 19th century Naval officer.
I would describe more of it, but you really need to see it to fully appreciate it in all its glory.
I'm sure no-one needs to remind a professor of psychopharmacology of the maxim "don't get high on your own supply", so I repeat it here purely for our collective reflection.
Link to embedded video of the Psychopharmacologist's Song.
It looks like a pipette full of cerebral blood, but actually it's a fun and harmless candy product for children. Bless!
But if you're concerned that this might be a bit too disturbing for your sweet-toothed young ones, another product by the same company will do nothing to dispell your worries.
Because they also makes a plastic brain from which you can squeeze the liquified neural mush straight into your mouth.
It's an age old story. Boy meets girl, boys loses girl, boy suffers psychotic reaction, boy forms band to sing about his experience on live TV.
I feel depressed, I feel so bad
'Cause you're the best girl that I ever had
I can't get your love, I can't get a fraction
Uh-oh, little girl, psychotic reaction
The group is Count Five singing 'Psychotic Reaction' and as well as being a 1960s rock n' roll classic, it also helpfully informs us that depression is one of the most common signs of impending relapse in psychosis.
In fact, the song preceded Herz and Melville's pioneering study, the first to report this association in the scientific literature, by at least 15 years.
Did the two psychosis researchers lead an earlier life as garage band pioneers? I think we should be told.
Link to Count Five singing 'Psychotic Reaction' (actually very good). Link to abstract of Herz and Melville study (still rocks).
Neuropsychologist Martha Farah has written a highly critical commentary on a recent New York Timesop-ed piece where neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni and colleagues used brain scans of people who viewed videos of US presidential candidates in an attempt to reveal voter reactions "on which this election may well turn".
Farah quite rightly calls it "junk science" as it is a barely controlled study that relies on stereotypes and generalisation to infer that activation in one particular brain area means the viewers are experiencing a certain reaction.
So why do I doubt the conclusions reported in today’s Op Ed piece? The problems I see have less to do with brain imaging per se than with the human tendency to make up “just so” stories and then believe them. The scattered spots of activation in a brain image can be like tea leaves in the bottom of a cup – ambiguous and accommodating of a large number of possible interpretations.
For example, the story reports that "When we showed subjects the words “Democrat,” “Republican” and “independent,” they exhibited high levels of activity in the part of the brain called the amygdala, indicating anxiety".
In brain-scanning studies, the amygdala is regularly found to be active in people who experience fear. But you can't make the reverse inference, that amygdala activation equals fear, because it can be equally as active when people experience happiness or joy.
There's plenty more where that came from, but what is most shocking is not that this junk made The New York Times but that it made it again, and again.
In fact, Iacoaboni's team were on the front page of the NYT in 2004 with almost exactly the same stunt - attempting to use brain scans to predict responses when viewing political campaign ads.
The 'study' details have mysteriously gone from the web but are still archived if you want to see history repeating itself.
And as we reported in 2006, similarnonsense was repeated with the Super Bowl ads, by (guess who) the same team.
None of these studies have ever been published in scientific journals so why does Iacoboni, who does lots of respectable cognitive neuroscience, keep running these essentially meaningless studies?
All of these stunts are essentially PR for FKF Applied Research, a 'neuromarketing company' who will carry out bespoke brain scan marketing studies for a price.
Iacoboni is not listed as a staff member but he's been associated with most of their previous media stunts and four out of five FKF staff are co-authors on the NYT article. We can bet there's some pretty strong connection there.
Unfortunately, these sorts of stunts play on the excitement surrounding high-tech science and distort the public's understanding of the significance of brain imaging.
They're are neither informative nor truly newsworthy but have enough of a sugar coating to make them attractive to a media beguiled by the bright lights of brain scanning.
Link to Farah article on the Neuroethics and Law Blog.
The October 25th edition of Neuron has a fantastic 'brain map' cover designed by Sam Brown, a cartographer based in Wellington, New Zealand.
You really need to see the cover in the flesh to see all the wonderful detail, as unfortunately, there's no high resolution versions of the cover online.
There's a better image currently on the Unit Seven website, which is still quite impressive though.
An intriguing letter in this week's New Scientist digs out some hints on the Pentagon's proposed 'gay bomb' - an ideas to create a chemical weapon that would temporarily turn enemy troops into horny homosexual love machines.
Feedback asked what happened to the US air force's Ig Nobel-winning "gay bomb" proposal after it was put forward in 1994 (13 October).
The Pentagon has played down the story ever since New Scientist covered it on 15 January 2005. One spokesman is quoted saying it was "rejected out of hand" and another claimed in 2005 that it was never considered "for further development".
These claims sit awkwardly with the known facts.
In 2000 - six years after the idea was proposed - the document describing the "gay bomb" was included in a CD-ROM produced by the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, which was distributed to military and government agencies to encourage new projects.
In 2001, the proposal was one of a number which the JNLWD put forward for assessment by a scientific panel at the National Academy of Sciences.
No information has been released suggesting that the proposal was taken any further. However, aphrodisiacs would fall under the US military's broad new definition of a "calmative agent", the term it has chosen for "an antipersonnel chemical that leaves the victim awake and mobile but without the will or ability to meet military objectives or carry out criminal activity".
It seems there is considerable classified research in this area.
UPDATE: An update from The Neurophilosopher: "I've just noticed your post about the gay bomb, and thought you might be interested in reading the original research proposal, which I found a few weeks ago when the Ig Nobels were announced". It's available online as a pdf. [Thanks!]
It's a timeless story. Boy meets girl. Boy annoys girl. Girl goes off on a brain eating rampage before battling her creator and finishing the day at a zombie pool party.
I'm not entirely sure what it's all about, but then again, I don't think this rather bizarre music video was designed to have any deep symbolic meaning.
It's not entirely safe for work, mainly due to lots of swearing and flesh eating, but it's a magical combination of brains and zombie girls, which is good enough for me.
Chat up line for a zombie: I'm conscious of how attractive you are but I'd like to know how you feel.
Note to self: go to bed, you're rambling.
UPDATE: From Shannon Lark, director of the music video! Grabbed from the comments...
I am actually the Director of OMG BRAINS and I gotta tell you that it does have a very deep symbolic meaning!
Besides poking fun at the entertainment industry by using commercialized hot zombie chicks (who are supposed to be endless drones performing corpse-like activities), we also make a statement of the weight issue in America and how a parent's negative comments can even hurt a dead person.
Link to zombie brain rampage music video (thanks Laurie!).
The Bonkers Institute for Nearly Genuine Research has just published an important paper on how hard cash has had miraculous effects in two of particularly tough cases of depression and anxiety.
Elation and euphoria are the most common side effects associated with cash. The favorable side effect profile and high response rate compared to placebo are the main advantages of cash over standard pharmaceutical treatment, while the major disadvantage of cash would appear to be its prohibitive cost.
Of course, doubters may question whether the financial windfalls were genuinely the cause of the cure, but the improvements in well-being were scientifically confirmed by brain scans and a mood ring.
Link to Cash Therapy in the Treatment of Anxiety and Depression (thanks Ben!).
Mental health professionals, user support groups, friends and family. Good news has arrived. Someone has found a cure for all mental illnesses and all that is needed is that you hit them on the ears until they lose consciousness.
This 'cure', apparently christened the Kadir-Buxton Method, is detailed on a website so weird that I'm not entirely sure it isn't a hoax, but it's quite entertaining either way.
Apparently, it's the "biggest breakthrough in Medicine since my invention Microsurgery" [sic] and the core of the technique is "striking both ears of the patient at exactly the same time" to render the person unconscious.
No really, it is.
The procedure is painless and the patient regains consciousness faster the less hard the double blow is struck. With practice, I am able to render the patients unconscious for only thirty seconds. Other individuals have faired even better.
At this point I would like to explain the difference between a stun and a punch. With the Kadir-Buxton Method, a patient standing on one leg whilst holding a rose would still be standing on one leg and holding a rose when they were cured. With a punch, the patient would be lying prone on the floor, and could well have dropped the rose. And just to add insult to injury, they would still be mentally ill. Try it for yourselves if you do not believe me.
Actually, hitting the ears can be dangerous as the air pressure can burst the ear drums, so it's really not recommended.
However, an equally serious side-effect is that the 'patient' might hit you back.
Link to frankly odd Kadir-Buxton Method (thanks Liz!).
Spiked has a video of cognitive neuroscientist Dr Lisa Saksida doing yoga in front of the fire while explaining why there is no such thing as mind brain duality.
Spiked asked several scientists what they would say if they could teach the world just one thing about science.
Saksida gives a wonderfully straightforward explanation of why the mind and brain are just different reflections of the same thing, but why it's also useful to describe them separately at times.
I wish people understood that there is no mind/brain duality. Specifically, I wish people understood that there is no such thing as a purely psychological disorder. Every event in your psychological life, and therefore every psychological change, is reducible in theory to events and changes in your brain. We should therefore not judge people differently, according to whether they are considered to have a 'psychological' as opposed to a 'neurological' problem.
Of course, a lack of mind/brain split does not mean that we should abandon all talk of psychology. Psychology and neuroscience are two ways of studying the same thing, and both are essential for understanding the human condition.
She explains this, and more, while practising yoga in front of a log fire, serenely circled by candles. Needless to say, it's a thoroughly calming experience.
Link to Dr Saksida on yoga and mind-brain non-duality (thanks Vicky!).
Personality types, as you've never seen them before:
Someone's created some satirical descriptions of the personality types classified by the Myers-Briggs personality test, that include categories such as 'The Egghead', 'The Conman' and 'The Evil Overlord'.
The Myers-Briggs isn't used so much by research psychologists, largely because it isn't as reliable as some of the newer 'Big Five' personality measures which dominate the field.
It is not unusual for people to fill one in themselves though (there are many versions online) and get a rating of whether they are Extroverted or Introverted, Sensing or iNtuitive, Feeling or Thinking, Judging or Perceiving.
Each of these gets compressed into a short letter string, and each is supposed to represent some particular personality type.
This new satirical interpretation of the personality types makes a sly commentary on some of the more outlandish descriptions you can read online.
ESFP: The National Enquirer Headline
An ESFP is a spontaneous, outgoing, charismatic, fun-loving person like the guy you used to room with in college--you know, the one who was found floating face-down in the reservoir with the homecoming queen's underwear in his teeth.
The strongest element of the psychological makeup of an ESFP is his easygoing, impulsive approach to life. ESFPs often build their careers out of dating supermodels, being involved in scandals, and appearing regularly in such newspapers as "The National Enquirer" and "The Weekly World News." ESFPs often die in bizarre circumstances, usually involving jealous boyfriends, exotic dancers, escaped pythons, feather boas, and falls from the penthouse floor of high-rise apartments; those who don't, usually die of veneral diseases.
Link to satirical Myers-Briggs interpretation (via MeFi). Link to good Wikipedia page on the Myers-Briggs.
A new series of the whimsical comedy series Vent, about the thoughts of a man in a coma, has just begun on Radio 4. It's darkly comic, surreal and occasionally deeply touching.
It flips between the thoughts and memories of Ben, a man in a coma, and the visits of his friends and family to his unconscious body.
It's by comedy writer Nigel Smith, who was inspired by his own experiences of falling into coma after suffering a demyelinating brain stem lesion.
Link to audio archive of Vent (full archive in 'All Vent programmes' link).
There's a copy of a wonderful 1948 article magazine available online entitled 'Pills That Increase Your Intelligence' from Modern Mechanix .
It discusses the possibilities of 'smart drugs' and is full of archaic language that makes it equally shocking and endearing.
Can you feed your brain some special food to make it smarter? Scientists have always laughed at the idea. Now they aren't quite so cocksure. Maybe your brain does have faster speed and quicker getaway when it runs on certain fuels. New scientific discoveries indicate that brain power can be stepped up by swallowing tablets. These pills are not stimulating drugs but concentrates of a food element you eat every day.
Let's look into the strange story of one particular brain. It wasn't a very good brain. In fact, it belonged to a fourteen-year-old imbecile boy who had an intelligence quotient of 42 (the average I. Q. is 100). Every year the boy grew twelve months older, but his mental age increased only four and a half months. He kept running an intelligence deficit. Then he was fed little white pills, a dozen and a half daily. Within two months his mental age leaped ahead one year and five months. Sixty days on brain pills and his mental age increased as much as it had in the last five years!
It sounds much like the 'miracle cure' claims that conditions like autism attract to the present day.
Language Log is doing a sterling job of keeping up with the increasing pace of Dr Alfred Crockus' research, and seem to have found an important neuroanatomical link between the Crockus and another surprisingly neglected brain area, Shatner's Bassoon.
The Crockus is the shameless and unintentionally hilarious invention of educational consultant Dan Hodgins, which he claims is four times larger in girls and so supports his own ideas about teaching (incidentally, he's currently 'on tour' if you want to hear his crockus first hand).
Shatner's Bassoon was the invention of satirist Chris Morris, who persuaded various media figures that it was an area of the brain targeted by the fictional street drug 'cake'.
Several TV personalities and David Amess, a Tory MP, took part in Morris' spoof TV programme with absolutely no insight into the completely ridiculous premise of the whole affair.
The best bit is when they do an earnest public education announcement, warning of the drug's dangers and informing the viewers that it may be sold under the names of looney toad twat, russell dust, chronic basildon donut, Joss Ackland's spunky backpack, bromicide, ponce on the heath, cool thwacks, and Hattie Jacques' portentious cheese wog.
The video is available online, and it is a testament both to the fact that people are easily blinded by scientific sounding nonsense, and to the fact that celebrity endorsement of good causes can be as much about their public profile as it is about the cause itself.
David Amess went as far as asking a question about "cake" in parliament which you can read in Hansard, the official parliamentary record.
Interestingly, the Home Office assumed his question about 'cake' referred to 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-benzylamphetamine (MDBZ), one of the drugs synthesised by legendary psychedelics researcher Alexander Shulgin. The description of the drug appears in his book PiHKAL - a sort of Principia Psychedelica of mind-bending phenethylamines, of which ecstasy (MDMA) is probably the best known.
Morris' spoof news series, The Day Today and Brass Eye, function equally well as hilarious entertainment and a careful analysis of the language of news media we've come to uncritically accept.
As a result, Chris Morris taught me more about deconstructing the media than Derrida ever did.
Language Log has been just as funny lately, and is doing an equally important job in pointing out how the language of neuroscience is now so all-pervasive, that people are willing to make up areas of the brain to support their point of view.
As an aside, if anyone knows of any other fictional brain areas, do get in touch. I feel these need collecting in one place.
Link to Language Log on 'The Crockus and the Bassoon'. Link to Brass Eye on 'cake'.
The excellent Language Log have discovered that an 'expert' invited to give a talk to a district education group not only invented a completely bogus part of the brain called the 'crockus', but claimed that it's four times larger in girls and used this fact to back up recommendations for the teaching of children.
Language Log writer Mark Liberman notes that a study found a minor sex difference in the pars opercularis, a genuine brain area in the approximate location of the fictional 'crockus'.
Although the study found the opposite pattern (it tends to be larger in boys), Liberman wondered whether the speaker may have misremembered both the name of the genuine brain area and the gist of the study.
So, he emailed the speaker to ask more.
In response, he got an answer that would be comically brilliant if it wasn't deadly serious:
Thanks for asking....The Crockus was actually just recently named by Dr. Alfred Crockus. It is the detailed section of the brain, a part of the frontal lope. It is the detailed section of the brain. You are right, it is four times larger in females then males from birth.
This part of the brain supports the Corpus Callosum (the part of the brain that connects the right and left hemisphere. The larger the crockus the more details are percieved by the two sides of the brain.
Dr Alfred Crockus, we salute you sir!
Link to Language Log on 'High Crockalorum' (via BadScience).
A new book on unusual experiments covers a study by psychologist Russell Clark that involved good-looking researchers approaching strangers of the opposite sex and telling them that they had seen them around and found them very attractive. Then they either asked them for a date, to come back to the researcher's apartment, or to go to bed with them.
If this seems strangely familiar, it's because the main set up line for the study ("I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be attractive. Would you go to bed with me tonight?") was used almost verbatim for the main hook of the pop song 'Would you...?' by Touch and Go.
If you don't recognise the name, you'll almost certainly recognise the song, as it was a huge hit in '98 and has been used almost constantly since for adverts, television and radio.
The original video doesn't seem to be available online, but there's a quirky version on YouTube where some Belgian students have created their own video.
It is, as far as I know, the only pop song with lyrics based on the protocol for a psychology experiment.
The results of the study? As if you had to ask, almost all the men said yes, none of the women did.
It doesn't even come close to the greatest psychology study ever completed though, which also involved beautiful women, sex and danger. But that'll have to wait for another time.
Link to abstract of study. Link to brief write-up (via BB). Link to fan tribute to Touch and Go's 'Would you...?'
Silent for three years, Osama Bin Laden just released a video tape in which he name drops academic Noam Chomsky, suggesting that while in hiding, he's become familiar with the American researcher's extensive work.
Exclusively, Mind Hacks publishes a deleted section from an earlier draft of Bin Laden's latest speech that lays out his demands for the science of linguistics:
People of America: while the cognitive revolution started within your own shores and changed the face of the world, it seems the lessons of the destruction of behaviourism have not been learnt.
Through the careful analysis of Chomsky, it was clear that language could not be entirely accounted for by the influence of environment and culture on a general learning mechanism. While some heeded the messages, some of your brethren remained unconvinced.
Now that the spector of connectionism has raised its ugly head and has been inappropriately glorified by the power of technological corporations, our understanding of the role of transformational grammars in language development is threatened.
And I tell you, artificial intelligence is a false god that provides correlative and not causal models of language acquisition. The infallible methodologies are the comparative study of world languages and lesion analyses of those who must be treated with mercy owing to their acquired dysphasias.
Those who stray from the path will be doomed to repeated the errors of the empty vessels of strict behaviourism and the Standard Social Science Model. Every just and intelligent one of you who reflect on this will be guided to the truth.
Rumours that Steven Pinker has been taken in for questioning have not been verified.
The image is taken from the psychiatry section of the Science and Society picture library and depicts a male anti-masturbation device from the late 19th / early 20th century, and, believe it or not, was considered an effective way of preventing insanity.
Masturbation was long linked to madness in both folk and professional medicine and this belief lasted, even among professionals, until the early 1900s.
It was thought a particular mental health risk in children, as illustrated by this excerpt from a 1988 article on the development of child psychiatry in 19th century Britain.
William Acton, trained in surgery and venereal diseases, published The functions and disorders of the reproductive organs, in youth, in adult age and in advanced life in 1857. It gained immediate popularity and went through six editions in 18 years, despite it's many discrepancies, premature conclusions and emotional prejudices (Marcus, 1966).
Typical of most authors of the time, Acton on the one hand postulates that normal childhood is essentially asexual, on the other describes over many pages the many sexual disorders of childhood — a conflict that is never resolved. Again, without further explanation, a causal connection between masturbation and a whole array of consequences is drawn: the boy would become haggard, thin, antisocial, hypochondriacal, would lose his spontaneity and cheerfulness and would turn into a timid coward and liar. The final state was one of idiocy, epilepsy, paralysis and even death.
These prejudices were considered valid scientific facts, so that the Scottish psychiatrist David Skae even created the term "masturbatory insanity" — a separate nosological disease caused exclusively by masturbation, with characteristic features (Skae, 1874). This term was taken up by Henry Maudsley (1868); the 1879 edition of Pathology of mind included a chapter devoted to the insanity of masturbation (Maudsley, 1879), which was later changed to insanity and masturbation (Maudsley, 1895).
I'll save you the gory details, but these beliefs led to supposed 'treatments' and 'preventative measures' that stretched from devices like the one pictured, to what would now be considered brutal genital mutilation of both boys and girls.
If you think that these were fringe beliefs, it's worth remembering that Henry Maudsley was otherwise considered the greatest psychiatrist of his generation.
Link to picture from Science and Society image library.
Many thanks for everyone who sent in their entries for our AAICS (Awkward Acronyms In Cognitive Science) competition. There were many worthy entries all of which illustrated the seductive allure of the acronyms to cognitive scientists who obviously had too much coffee.
In 4th place, Dr Rebecca Achtman suggested the seemingly defunct support group YAWN: Young Adults With Narcolepsy.
3rd place, sent in by Dr Robert Volcic, is the wonderfully contrived SOMAPS: Multilevel systems analysis and modeling of SOmatosensory, Memory, and Affective maPs of body and objects in multidimensional Subjective space. Wow.
Patrick Squires sent in the 2nd placed entry, with the enigmatic BIRP: Brain Injury Rehabilitation Program.
But the winner, sent in by Sandra Kiume, is truly lovely ACHOO syndrome: Autosomal dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst syndrome). It's the condition where sunlight causes sneezing.
I suspect there were more researchers assigned to the acronym than the syndrome.
Sandra gets a copy of David Lodge's Thinks and everyone else gets the eternal respect of Mind Hacks readers for their unique and eclectic knowledge of the cogntive science world.
The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Artcreate beautiful knitted and needlecraft brain images based on brain scans.
Now neuroscientist Mark Dow has put one of the creations in a brain scanner, creating a 3D MRI of a knitted brain based on an MRI scan of a brain.
Needless to say, it was discovered by the ever-unpredictable Omni Brain.
I also notice that The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art has been joined by a new brain-based online art extravaganza: The Gallery of Wooden Brain Art.
Link to Omni Brain with 3D knitted brain scan movie.
An unknown gent has had a brain tattooed on the top of his head, revealed by a picture of a peeled back tuna can. Actually, a few visual neuroscience things have popped up this week, so I've collected them here.
Omni Brain found a cartoon of what brain surgeons might be thinking during neurosurgery. If Dr Katrina Firlik's book is anything to go by, it probably isn't far off.
The BPS Research Digestfound an eerily silent animation of deep brain stimulation.
And the ever-excellent xkcd online science comic had a great panel about the cognitive neuroscience of planning the ultimate tree house.
Also, this is your last chance to get your submission in for our awkward acronyms in cognitive science (AAICS) competition. The winner will be announced Monday and will get my spare copy of David Lodge's Thinks.
From the entry for 'madness' taken from the Cassel Dictionary of Superstitions (ISBN 0304365610):
"It is said that the mad are chosen by God and enjoy the special favour of Heaven. Accordingly, it is thought that particularly lucky throughout Europe to live in the same house as someone who is mad and historically the mad have been well cared for by their local community. Meeting such a person in the street is itself a lucky event in the folklore of fishermen, who interpret such an encounter as confirmation that the day's catch will be a good one."
Ben Goldacre has found a so-awful-lets-hope-it's-a-hoax article that suggests that people with Down Syndrome and people from Asia might be genetically similar, because, well, they do similar things.
Strictly speaking, of course, they're quite right. In fact, apart from an extra 21st chromosome, most people, no matter where they come from, are genetically similar to people with Down's.
So why are Asian people singled out in particular? Ah, because apparently, they like similar sorts of arts and crafts:
The tendencies of Down subjects to carry out recreative-reabilitative activities, such as embroidery, wicker-working ceramics, book-binding, etc., that is renowned, remind the Chinese hand-crafts, which need a notable ability, such as Chinese vases or the use of chop-sticks employed for eating by Asiatic populations.
The original grammar is left intact so you can fully appreciate the theory in all its glory.
Still not convinced? Well, there's also the fact that both Asian people and people with Down Syndrome "adore having several dishes displayed on the table and have a propensity for food which is rich in monosodium glutamate". Uncanny isn't it?
The article is published in the journal Medical Hypotheses which was founded by the late Dr David Horrobin. Horrobin had a theory that schizophrenia might be linked to the metabolism of Omega-3 fatty acids, and these could be used to treat the disorder.
Initially, the idea was laughed at, although now, some limited evidence exists for its role in mental illness.
Reflecting on his experiences, Horrobin founded Medical Hypotheses, a journal where researchers could publish any ideas, no matter how far-out, to encourage creative thinking in medicine.
You could tell that Horrobin got up people's noses, because when he died, a famously bitchy obituary was published in the British Medical Journal. So bitchy, in fact, that for the first time, an apology was printed the week after.
True to its mission, Medical Hypotheses remains the eccentric uncle of academic medicine.
The trouble with eccentric uncles though, is that sometimes they get pissed at family gatherings and embarrass themselves.
This is exactly what seems to have happened on this occasion as the article incoherently rambles about something we can't quite make out, but we know is likely to offend if it keeps going on about it.
Luckily, one of the comments from the Bad Science post links to a much more entertaining Medical Hypothesesarticle:
Is there an association between the use of heeled footwear and schizophrenia?
See what you're missing?
Link to Bad Science on embarrassing MedHyp article (with full-text). Link to abstract of footwear / schizophrenia article.
This week's edition of satirical newspaper The Onion has a cutting 'news' story on both the Iraq war and psychology, highlighting the absurdity that arises from trying to quantify the bleedin' obvious and discussing the shortcomings of the study in the press.
The story supposedly concerns a study investigating the psychological impact of the Iraq war on civillians.
"Almost all the Iraqis we interviewed said the war had ruined their lives because of the incalculable loss of friends and family," Pryztal said. "But to be totally honest, these types of studies can be skewed rather easily by participant exaggeration."
Psychologists and anthropologists have thus far largely discounted the study, claiming it has the same bias as a 1971 Stanford University study that concluded that many Vietnamese showed signs of psychological trauma from nearly a quarter century of continuous war in southeast Asia.
"We are, in truth, still a long way from determining if Iraqis are exhibiting actual, U.S.-grade sadness," Mayo Clinic neuropsychologist Norman Blum said. "At present, we see no reason for the popular press to report on Iraqi emotions as if they are real."
Pryztal said that his research group would next examine whether children in Sudan prefer playing with toys or serving as guerrilla fighters and killing innocent civilians.
The Onion has a long and proud history of satirising psychology and psychologists, inspiring stories that are often as funny as they are painful.
Link to story 'Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die'.
If you're a fan of toasting your brains, either literally or metaphorically, there's now a t-shirt especially designed for you.
Belgian t-shirt label Carbone 14 have created some rather natty versions in red and white.
There's also a skinny fit version if you like your toasted brains, well, skinny.
If on the other hand, you prefer your brains mashed, fried or baked, you'll have to advertise your preference some other way, as they've yet to design shirts for the rest of the culinary range.
During a 1978 tour, psychobilly punk band The Cramps created one of the strangest moments in the history of both rock n' roll and psychiatry when they played a gig inside Napa State Mental Hospital.
It's hard to believe it actually happened. The story sounds more like an exaggerated rock legend than an account of a real concert, but no suspension of disbelief is needed. Someone filmed the gig.
We can only guess how the band got permission to play inside one of California's biggest mental institutions, but play they did, to a few supporters and a fired-up crowd of psychiatric inpatients.
The footage is grainy, black and white, and chaotic, and we immediately see the band launch into a high-energy version of Mystery Plane.
The onlookers look bemused at first, a few start dancing, a few just wander.
As the first song fades, the lead singer, Lux Interior, addresses the crowd: "We're The Cramps, and we're from New York City and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you people."
"Fuck you!" a patient yells back.
He cracks a smile. "And somebody told me you people are crazy! But I'm not so sure about that; you seem to be all right to me."
The gig ascends into pure punk rock chaos.
Patients jump on stage and pogo like they were Saturday night regulars. Lux suddenly duets with a member of the crowd who grabs the mike and adds her own improvised lyrics to the mix.
One song finishes with the lead singer sprawled on the floor with two female members of the audience. One of them shouts "I got the Cramps!" Lux replies "That's your problem, honey. I got 'em myself, and I can't do anything with 'em, either."
As with Johnny Cash's landmark concert, played a decade earlier in Folsom Prison, it would be easy to assume that the onlookers are intended to be part of an ironic publicity stunt.
But one thing is striking from both of these shows: the audience wouldn't have looked out of place at any other date on the tour.
Cash and The Cramps are unlikely bedfellows, but both took their music to the marginalised and hinted that we're not so different from those we lock away.
OK, so The Cramps didn't hint. Punk isn't like that. But then again, the fans have hardly been known for their conformity either.
Link to YouTube clips of Live at Napa State Mental Hospital.
The classic 1960's B-movie The Brain That Wouldn't Die has fallen into the public domain and is now available to download or to watch online.
It's another classic story of boy meets girl, boy loses girl in terrible car crash, boy keeps girl's head alive in neuroscience lab while looking for attractive new body.
Needless to say, it all ends in tears, but not before a journey that takes us from the lab, to a cat fight in a strip bar, and back again.
All in the best possible B-movie taste of course with some er... 'unique' dialogue that should give any experimental scientist cause for thought:
"The paths of experimentation twist and turn through mountains of miscalculations and often lose themselves in error and darkness!"
Wise words indeed.
Link to download from the Internet Archive. Link to stream from Google Video.
The Wired Alt-Text blog has an amusing list of made-up diagnoses for internet users, covering all the major pathologies of online interaction.
This is my favourite:
Pugilistic Discussion Syndrome
In this curious form of aphasia, the subject is unable to distinguish between a discussion and a contest. The subject approaches any online forum as a sort of playing field, and attempts to "win" the discussion by any means necessary. The rules of the imaginary contest are apparently clear to the individual as he or she will often point out when others break them, but when asked to outline these rules the individual is reluctant, perhaps not wishing to confer an "advantage" on any "opponents." The conditions for winning are similarly difficult to pin down, although in some cases the individual will declare himself the winner of a discussion that, to all others, appears to be ongoing.
Of course, the next step is for an ambitious young researcher and a support group of affected families to champion the cause. Shortly after, a precise list of symptoms for each diagnosis will be created.
Some initial research will demonstrate that the behaviour in a particular category can be reduced by a particular psychiatric drug, at which point a drug company will fund a 'public education campaign' about the disorder.
Now flush with cash, the researchers and support groups will lobby for mainstream acceptance (inclusion in the DSM being the crowning glory), and as soon as that happens, the drug company will push for a licence for their treatment to be approved for the condition.
Voila. Another dreadful disease has been recognised, de-stigmatised and treated. The march of progress moves ever forward.
On a more serious note, what I've just described is a typical process by which new psychiatric conditions become mainstream.
Some people, and their families, may genuinely suffer from the effects jokingly described under 'Pugilistic Discussion Syndrome'.
It is always worth helping people to suffer less, but the question you should ask yourself when you hear about a new mental illness is not whether people are suffering (which they almost certainly are), but whether the best way to alleviate that suffering is by deciding it should be diagnosed and treated by the medical profession.
Medicine uses science, but the decision over what is worth researching and treating is based on a mixture of political, personal, scientific and economic concerns.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in psychiatry. An essential question for critical thinking in this field is 'who benefits from this approach?'.
The answer should always be the patients, but it isn't always clear that this is the case. We need to keep asking ourselves this same question over-and-over to make sure psychiatry is serving those most in need.
So, if you want to get involved with medical progress, consider some of the conditions on Wired's satirical list.
Link to 'Narcissistic Blog Disorder and Other Conditions of Online Kookery'.
Wired magazine has a slide show of the bribes promotional gifts given out at last month's American Psychiatric Association by pharmaceutical companies trying to get doctors to prescribe their drugs.
It's all fairly tacky stuff but they're expensive enough to be motivating. These sorts of things are handed out willy-nilly by drugs reps and your local doctor's office is likely to be awash with these sort of semi-useful adverts.
At conferences, to get the more expensive gifts you usually have to complete a short quiz, which in reality is a push poll designed to make the key marketing points more memorable.
They tend to ask questions like:
In a 2003 research study [conducted by our company] of over 2,000 people, which drug was found to be most effective for condition X?
Was it:
a) our new drug FixitallTM
b) ye olde elixir of quicksilver
c) competitor's drug [which incidentally, just had bad press]
In reality though, these sorts of promotions are really the tip of the iceberg. What you don't get from the slide show, is that possibly the majority of people at the conference will have had their trip funded by drug companies, probably with dinners, cocktail parties and excursions thrown in.
Those who don't, end up staying in cheap hotels, miles from the conference, in the seedy parts of town, because either they have to pay the whole trip themselves or their departments will only give modest amounts as it is assumed you can just get drug company money.
You can see why choosing to remain as uninfluenced as possible by drug company promotion is less attractive for some.
Of course, most clinicians argue that these sorts of things don't influence them, but we know from exactly the same type of research that clinical science is based on that it has a strong and significant effect on attitudes and clinical practice.
What's more, patients look upon these gifts much less favourably than clinicians do.
If you want to know more about the effects of drug company promotion and the bias in the advertising material, have a look at No Free Lunch.
As an aside, if there is a big psychiatric conference in town, go to the less glamorous area of the city, and you'll find groups of researchers having a much better time. One of the disadvantages of attending the corporate events is attendees are expected to behave like the Queen at a garden party, so no-one "upsets the funders". Very dull indeed.
Link to Wired article 'Prescribe Me!' (via BB). Link to No Free Lunch campaign.
Despair Inc has this fantastic parody of the t-shirts worn by private security firms at concerts, gigs and public events. So now you can wear the t-shirt and advertise yourself as a member of the insecurity team.
The company makes some fantastic parodies of corporate motivational merchandise, including a great range of demotivating posters.
Polish psychologists ordered to assess Tinky Winky:
A Polish government minister has ordered psychologists to investigate whether BBC TV show Teletubbies promotes homosexuality in children.
Yes, you read that right the first time.
Here's some of the story from BBC News:
The spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.
"I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," she told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy."
...
Ms Sowinska wants the psychologists to make a recommendation about whether the children's show should be broadcast on public television.
A 2004 study on the accessibility of mental health services in Poland found that the interval between being first assessed and getting mental health care was 12 weeks - much longer than all other European centres in previous studies.
A study on work difficulties in Poland published in 2006 found that mental and behavioural disorders were among the main causes of early inability to work.
And the government is ordering psychologists to assess Tinky Winky. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.
An artist on Etsy is selling this wonderful iron-on brain patch based on an antique anatomical illustration.
For only $5 plus packing, you can get one of these delivered to your door and attached to, well, whatever you'd want a beautiful brain illustration attached to.
And if you can't think of any reason you'd want a iron on brain patch, go see the drawing in more detail.
The cortex has obviously been subject to a little 'artist license', but it's still a striking image.
Link to vintage medical anatomy illustration of the head and brain fabric patch.
Celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna on BBC Radio 4's music programme, Desert Island Discs:
"When you hear a song, back in say the 70s, the first time you heard it, it sounded absolutely fantastic and it'll never sound like that again. So, I age regressed myself - I know this sounds a little unusual - and took myself back and then whacked on Sister Sledge, and it just sounded phenomenal. It sounded like it did years ago. It was fresh, with those amazing big disco drums..."
Paul McKenna, confusing the sound of drums with the sound of serious hypnosis researchers banging their heads against the wall.
A man walks into a psychologist's office. "Doctor", he says, "I've fallen in love with two school bags and I'm worried I'm abnormal". "There's no need to be concerned", says the psychologist, "I think you're just bi-satchel".
While looking for neuroscience videos we've found some prettyweirdstuff on YouTube before, but despite their quirkiness, at least they made sense. This one's just completely baffling.
It seems to be a sort of love letter, presented as a brain diagram, with a disco backing track. Apparently it's dedicated to someone called Leyla, and it's from a teddy bear.
A funny list from McSweeney's entitled "The Names of Snow White's Seven Dwarfs After Being Prescribed Paxil, Ritalin, Prozac, Lithium, Provigil, and Benadryl."
Another scientist has sold his soul to the God of PR and promoted a nonsense formula in the media - this time for the 'perfect Page 3 girl'. For those not used to the British tabloid press, page 3 traditionally displays a picture of a topless girl.
The offender on this occasion is Cambridge University medical researcher Dr David Granger, who is seemingly trying to promote a commercial diagnostics company by talking drivel to the media.
I honestly don't know how this happens. If I was looking to hire a commercial science company, one that had just advertised itself with some spectacularly bad pseudoscience would be bottom of my list.
And who could resist finishing the day with rock n' roll?
Seed magazine has an account of rock producer turned cognitive neuroscientist Dan Levitin meeting with rock musician David Byrne, and 3QuarksDaily have found a curious reference to 80s group The Smiths in a book on the philosophy of mind.
The first paragraph of philosopher Akeel Bilgrami's book Belief and Meaning (ISBN 0631196773) contains a reference to The Smiths track 'Bigmouth Strikes Again':
Content is what is specified by sentences or propositions in that-clauses when we attribute intentional states to agents. Thus, in the attribution, "Smith believes that Bigmouth has struck again," the sentence or proposition (Bigmouth has struck again) which follows the "that" specifies the content.
Link to Dan Levitin and David Byrne interview in Seed. Link to 3QuarksDaily on philosophy and The Smiths.
Shirt and t-shirt site Hide Your Arms has just reviewed a fantastic t-shirt that has a wonderful exploded brain picture on the front and a recent neuroscience news story on the back.
The shirt is from a company called T-Post who send subscribers a new t-shirt every six weeks based on a recent news story.
This t-shirt is based on the findings of a research study that found that activation in an area of the right temporal lobe when viewing others' actions was associated with self-reported altruism.
Link to Hide Your Arms shirt review. Link to T-Post.
The Independent on Sunday has the dubious honour of publishing one of the worstpieces of science journalism I have ever read on today's front cover - claiming to 'reveal' that children are at risk from Wi-Fi computer networks because of their developing nervous systems.
The headlines include "Children at risk from electronic smog", "Revealed: radiation threat from new wireless computer networks", "Fears rise over health threat to children from wifi networks" and "Danger on the airwaves".
This is despite the fact that not one single study has found a health risk for wifi networks.
In fact, a recent study that measured wifi emissions found "In all cases, the measured Wi-Fi signal levels were very far below international exposure limits (IEEE C95.1-2005 and ICNIRP) and in nearly all cases far below other RF signals in the same environments".
Personally, I'm more concerned about the smog that comes from whatever they've been smoking at the Independent on Sunday.
Link to abstract of recent study on wifi exposure.
You wait all day for a neuroscience version of an 80s pop song with scientifically accurate lyrics, and two come along at once.
Hot on the heels of the occipital lobe remix of Britney's Baby One more Time... comes a re-working of Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now.
This time, some medical students who have obviously spent a little too much time in lab class, bring you the video extravanganza that is I Think With My Brain Now.
The lyrics are very special.
Link to YouTube video of 'I Think with My Brain Now'.
A recent study comparing British and non-British participants has found some compelling differences in brain structure that may account for differences in national character.
One of the images from the study is available online and is a striking demonstration of how cognitive neuroscience can answer some of the mysteries of cultural diversity.
Link to online copy of brain scan image (thanks Kevin!).
Why does this leave a bad taste in my mouth? Numerous news sources are reporting that chocolate has a stronger effect on the heart and brain than kissing.
Alarm bells started ringing when it became obvious that the story is a promotion for a sweet company trying to advertise a new line of chocolate bars.
The 'research' was conducted by a company called The Mind Lab who offer to do psychology studies for a number of purposes, including "PR oriented research" to get a "route into the media".
Their founder, Dr David Lewis, can even be hired to "provide independent, third party, endorsement", demonstrating that contradiction is no barrier to good marketing.
Apparently, the study used EEG and heart rate measures to compare response during kissing, to response during a bizarre condition where a lump of chocolate was put on the tongue and was left until it melted.
I say apparently, because the research itself seems not to be available.
It doesn't seem to have been published anywhere (although I can't say there are many neuropsychology journals crying out for EEG studies comparing melted chocolate and kissing) and so far, the company has not responded to my request for the details of the study.
What is slightly disappointing is that the company seems also to do 'serious' research and the founder is an established researcher.
A well-written, elegantly designed, surprisingly creative research paper may yet turn up in my inbox, but until that time, I'd avoid the junk.
Anyway, we know from published neuroscience research that too much chocolate makes you feel sick (and just how the brain might generate the feeling).
UPDATE: Four days later and no reply to my requests. This one's junk.
UPDATE 2: I finally did get details of the study from The Mind Lab. I posted about it here.
It's a timeless romantic tale. Boy meets girl. Boy accidentally puts girl into a coma in a car accident. Boy tries to revive girl in his neuroscience lab while singing an 80s pop song.
The video for the 1985 song Future Brain by Italian pop artist Den Harrow is on YouTube if you want to satisfy your morbid curiosity.
According to Den Harrow's Wikipedia entry he didn't even sing his own songs. Presumably the lab was all his own work though.
If you think the neuroscience of mental illness is just too complicated to understand, there's no need to worry your pretty little head about it.
Dr Bonkers has kindly collected explanations of these otherwise poorly understood disorders, simplified for you, by those ever helpful drug industry marketing departments.
Why waste time following those baffling scientific debates about how the most complex organ in the known universe experiences distressing and disabling mental states when the following explanation will suffice:
Although [insert name of mental disorder here] is not fully understood, there is growing evidence that it is caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain.
What 'growing evidence' can mean is everything from virtually none (in the case of serotonin and depression) to the evidence points to some role for an excess of neurotransmitter action in a particular brain circuit but there is still some contradictory evidence and isn't a complete explanation of the whole disorder (in the case of dopamine and psychosis).
But who would want to worry patients who already have a lot on their minds with complicated brain science, let alone trouble them with mixed evidence from the results of clinical trials that tested the medication for its usefulness.
It's interesting to note that the information on Dr Bonkers' site is all from direct-to-consumer marketing, at a time when psychiatrists themselves are being specifically trained to communicate the complexities of the science to patients.
An excellent Royal College of Psychiatristspodcast tackles how to communicate the results of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to a patient wanting to know how a drug might affect them.
It's well worth listening to if you want some insider knowledge that will help you make sense of the marketing claims.
And if you want a simple explanation of the neuroscience of mental disorder and how drugs affect the brain, well, there isn't one.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Link to Dr Bonkers' Science Made Simple (thanks Ben!). Link to RCP podcast on interpreting drug trials.
RAY: Peter, this is an incredible breakthrough. I mean, what a discovery! A psychoreactive substance! Whatever this stuff is, it responds to human emotional states.
PETER: Mood slime. Oh, baby...
WINSTON: You mean this stuff actually feeds on bad vibes.
RAY: Like a cop in a donut factory.
Dialogue from one of the only comedy films to star parapsychologists: Ghostbusters II.
So I prescribed her, something to revive
And surprise her, she's liver and much more wiser
Than the light I shine when my brain cells spark,
Come to me so we can glow in the dark
A curious combination of psychiatric metaphor and romantic storytelling from Eric B & Rakim's 1990 track Mahogany. The hip hop duo mention the brain surprisingly often in their lyrics.
The word 'bedlam' commonly refers to disorder or chaos, but it originally referred to Bethlem Royal Hospital - the world's oldest psychiatric hospital, founded in 1247 and still operational today.
The modern day Bethlem is the only psychiatric hospital I've ever been to that has a souvenir shop, as it has an on-site museum and archives open to the public.
Sadly, they don't do t-shirts, but it seems a company called Bedlam Clothing may have unintentionally filled the gap in the market.
They produce a range of t-shirts, some of which are just printed with the clothing label's name and logo on.
Delirium Tremens is the name of the life-threatening alcohol withdrawal syndrome that can cause seizures and hallucinations - it is also the name of a strong Beligian beer.
I'm not entirely sure about the wisdom of naming an alcholic drink after a severe neurological syndrome caused by alcohol intoxication.
It's a bit like naming a motorbike 'traumatic brain injury' or a boating company 'drowned passengers'.
Apparently, it's an excellent beer, as it won Best Beer in the World at the World Beer Championships.
Probably best drunk in moderation though, for irony's sake.
Link to information on the alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Link to information on the beer.
Of course what makes Paris such a wonderful city is how all the parts fit together, and the same is true of the brain. Indeed a more apt use of the Parisian brain metaphor might be to think of the prefontal cortex as the Pompidou Center, a piece of modern architecture in the heart of the old city. As we shall see. at the heart of who you are is a complex blend of old and new regions, Picasso-like prefrontal cortex grounded in the old masters of more ancient brain structurs, some of them so old that humans share them with insects
This is a quote from Quartz & Sejnowski's (2002) 'Liars, Lovers and Heros'. It's an excellent book, rallying an impressive range of biological and sociological material to give a nuanced opinion on 'what the new brain science reveals about how we become who we are are' (the book's subtitle). The quote isn't particularly representative, but I enjoyed 'the Parisian Brain metaphor' so much I thought I'd share it!
The eDrugSearch blog has noted that Mia Heaston, the current Miss Illinois and one of the 2007 Miss USA hopefuls, is also a pharmaceutical industry representative.
If this link seems a bit too tenuous to be newsworthy, the blog also identifies two of last year's Miss USA contestants who were drug reps and identified no less than 16 professional cheerleaders who also work as reps for the pharmaceutical industry.
If you've ever met a drug rep, you'll know they tend to be charming, aesthetically pleasing young people with free gifts and selected scientific publications to hand, which of course, suggest that the company's medication is the best treatment for any number of mental illnesses or assorted disorders.
In a classic 1983 paper Webster and Driskell reported that attractive people are generally thought to be more intelligent and more competent, including when judged on their likely performance on tasks completely unrelated to good looks, such as 'ability to pilot a plane'.
The use and perceived credibility of information provided by drug reps to doctors has been found to correlate with prescribing.
In other words, even apart from the sex appeal, attractive drug reps are likely to make the marketing information seem more convincing, which in turn leads leads to more doctors using the drugs.
So it's no surprise that one of the biggest industries on the planet is selectively recruiting some of the most attractive people to promote both their product and their product-supporting research.
No Free Lunch has an extensive list of peer-reviewed research on drug marketing that is an essential antidote and will help you judge their information more effectively.
Link to eDrugSearch blog on Miss USA drug reps (via Furious Seasons). Link to eDrugSearch blog on cheerleader drug reps. Link to first page of classic Webster and Driskell paper.
The robot rebellion got a step closer this week as a US court cited a web-based artificial intelligence system for practising law without a license.
The website provided legal advice based on an expert system - a database of knowledge that is often structured by the links and associations made by human experts in the field.
Someone obviously took exception to a programme providing legal advice and the issue ended up in litigation.
The Wired Blogreported on the curious case and linked to the pdf of the court ruling that stated:
[The] system touted its offering of legal advice and projected an aura of expertise concerning bankruptcy petitions; and, in that context, it offered personalized -- albeit automated -- counsel. ... We find that because this was the conduct of a non-attorney, it constituted the unauthorized practice of law.
I'll be looking out for more signs that Skynet is becoming self-aware and will be heading for the bunkers at the earliest sign of impending nuclear war.
Link to Wired Blog on 'AI Cited for Unlicensed Practice of Law'.
Psychiatrist Edward Hume has created uploaded a spoof paper on the the 'etiology and treatment of childhood', satirising the growing enthusiasm for diagnosing children with psychiatric disorders.
The paper was written by Jordan Smoller and published in the humorous book called Oral sadism and the vegetarian personality (ISBN 0345347005).
Childhood is a syndrome which has only recently begun to receive serious attention from clinicians. The syndrome itself, however, is not at all recent. As early as the 8th century, the Persian historian Kidnom made references to "short, noisy creatures," who may well have been what we now call "children." The treatment of children, however, was unknown until this century, when so-called "child psychologists" and "child psychiatrists" became common. Despite this history of clinical neglect, it has been estimated that well over half of all Americans alive today have experienced childhood directly (Suess, 1983). In fact, the actual numbers are probably much higher, since these data are based on self-reports which may be subject to social desirability biases and retrospective distortion.
Link to spoof paper (thanks for the correction Blar!).
Wendy, Stephanie and Marie, three high school psychology students, have voiced over Britney's Baby One More Timevideo with lyrics about the occipital lobe.
It is, dare I say, a work of genius (and very funny to boot).
And if you're interested in reading a study on the cognitive neuroscience of Britney's brain, one was recently published by the Mackledoodle Institute of Radioscopy.
The findings are, er... unique.
Link to Britney Occipital Lobe video on YouTube. Link to article 'A Default mode of the brain function of Britney Spears'.
Another in the occasional series of PubMed typos. This time from the Scandanavian Journal of Social Medicine.
The last line accidentally describes the effect of exposure to solvents on one unfortunate individual:
A cohort study of disability pension and death among painters with special regard to disabling presenile dementia as an occupational disease.
Scand J Soc Med Suppl. 1980;16:34-43.
Mikkelsen S.
In the last decade several investigations have demonstrated an association between impaired cerebral function in employed workers and occupational exposure to organic solvents. Many case-histories and two case-referent studies indicate, that such an impairment might develop into disabling irreversible neuropsychiatric disease. The main purpose of this study was to further investigate the risk of chronic brain damage in solvent exposed workers. A cohort of 2601 male painters and 1790 male bricklayers from the Copenhagen area was identified retrospectively and followed Jan. 1,71-Dec. 31,75. For this period the incidence of disability pensioning and mortality was examined for the two occupational groups and for a "'normal" population of Copenhagen men. Using bricklayers and Copenhagen men as referents, the painters had a relative risk of approximately 3.5 of being awarded a disability pension due to a state of being awarded a disability pension due to a state of cryptogenic presenile dementia. When indications of alcohol abuse, cerebral concussions or other etiologic factors were present, the relative risk was approximately 2. No excess risk was found for neuropsychiatric diseases other than presenile dementia. Other differences between the groups were found, but they were inconsistent and difficult to interpret. In the light of the findings of this and other studies, it seems likely, that chronic brian damage may result from industrial exposure to organic solvents.
Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker was a guest on the comedy show The Colbert Report where he talks about the brain, language and having bad hair days.
Pure Pedantry has embedded video of the interview if you want to catch the quickfire questions and cognitive one-liners.
For those not familiar with the format of the show, it is hosted by spoof conservative talk show host Stephen Colbert who often seems hilariously but unnervingly realistic.
Drug breakthrough for fashionable new mental illness:
Life-changing new drug Havidol (chemical name Avafynetyme HCl) has just been marketed for the widely under-recognised disorder Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD).
DSACDAD is a new diagnosis where sufferers experience symptoms such as "worrying about life, feeling tense, restless, or fatigued, being concerned about their weight, noticing signs of aging, feeling stress at work, home, or finding activities they used to enjoy, like shopping, challenging."
The drug targets the recently discovered hedonine hormone to boost the brain's reward system for when "feeling better is not enough".
Havidol joins other next generation drugs Fukitol, Panexa, Progenitorivox and Proloxil as medications that not only affect the brain, but also purify the soul.
Link to Havidol website (via BoingBoing). Link to previous Mind Hacks post on soul purifying pharmaceuticals.
Thanks to Ian for emailing to congratulate Mind Hacks on hosting a Googlewhack - a Google search that turns up only one link. If you search for methamphetamine lollygagger on Google, the only hit is one of our pages.
God knows how Ian discovered this. Great name for a band though.
Of course, as soon as this page gets indexed it will no longer be a Googlewhack.
If you've always harboured secret Dr Frankenstein fantasies (and let's face it, who hasn't?) what better way to unleash your inner re-animator than by having a glowing brain lamp?
Yes, it's a plasma lamp in the shape of a brain, so you can dance lightening across your glass cortex with the touch of your finger.
Just don't cackle loudly enough to frighten the locals, whatever you do.
Biologist and reproductive scientist Prof David Clapham is interviewed in the New York Times, leading to a sublime moment halfway through the exchange:
Q. Among biologists, is sperm research very respected?
A. Well, in biology, all the glamour is in neuroscience.
...when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you sometimes find that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
Winnie the Pooh struggles with the problem of communicating qualia to external observers in A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner.
I've been notified of a rare case of focal retrograde amnesia that doesn't seem to have been reported in the medical literature.
Focal retrograde amnesia is where memory for past events and personal information is lost, while the ability to remember new events is spared.
The case is described in Mr Bump Loses His Memory by Roger Hargreaves (ISBN 1844229866).
In this instance, amnesia seems to have been induced by falling out of the window while attempting to smell flowers in a window box.
BUMP!
Mr Bump sat up and rubbed his head. And as he rubbed, it dawned on him that he had no idea where he was.
He had no idea whose garden he was sitting in.
He had no idea whose house he was sitting in front of.
And he had no idea who he was.
Mr Bump had lost his memory.
Focal retrograde amnesia has been reported both after clear brain injury (particularly to temporal lobes) and when there is an absence of detectable brain damage.
The latter condition is sometimes called 'functional' or 'psychogenic' amnesia, and it might result from emotional disturbance rather than permanent impairment to memory structures in the brain.
As no neurological investigations were conducted after Mr Bump's concussive head injury (despite clear indications of past traumatic injury), it is not possible to determine whether his amnesia was the result of organic damage or distress-related psychogenic factors.
As Mr Bump's memory difficulties resolve after another minor blow to his head it is unlikely that the return of his memory can be explained by the spontaneous recovery of brain function, as this might only be exacerbated by further damage.
This might suggest that the original amnesia was psychogenic in nature. This make the case a particularly interesting example of this rare phenomena and additionally suggests a good prognosis for Mr Bump's recovery of memory function.
However, in light of obvious past injuries, Mr Bump should be offered a full neurological and psychological assessment so any undetected neuropathology or psychiatric disorder or can be treated at the earliest opportunity.
Online t-shirt retailers No Demographic have created a t-shirt with EEG ('brainwave') traces from each stage of sleep.
Sleep is divided into two main types: 'rapid eye movement' or REM sleep, and non-REM sleep. The majority (but not all) dreaming happens in REM sleep.
REM sleep is sometimes called 'paradoxical sleep' in the research literature, because the brain is extremely active and far from relaxed.
However, because the brain interrupts the connection between the brain and the spinal cord (probably by inhibiting motor neurons in the pons), we don't tend to move while all this activity is happening, even if we think we're moving in our dreams.
Non-REM sleep is divided into stages 1-4. During a night's sleep, we will go through several cycles of descending through sleep stages 1-4 and experiencing REM sleep.
Each of these stages has a distinctive profile which can be identified by EEG.
The No Demographic t-shirt has one trace from each of these cycles, so you can advertise your unconscious brain function to the world.
The t-shirt reminds me of one of my favourite works of art - a piece called Slumber by Janine Antoni.
Antoni records her own EEG signals while sleeping, weaves them into a blanket, and then sleeps in the blanket, reflecting the wonderful recursive world of sleep and dreams while contrasting modern neuroscience with the ancient art of weaving.
Link to No Demographic 'Sleep Pattern' t-shirt (via HYA).
Medical history website Physick has some images of a wonderful papier mache brain created in the 19th Century as an anatomical aid for doctors.
Human cadavers were difficult to get hold of in the 19th Century (at least legitimately) and the whole exercise was a bit murky, even for medical education.
Consequently, a large number of anatomical models were created from wax, or in this case papier mache, to teach anatomy to medical students.
This means there's now some beautifully crafted and artistic anatomical models in museums around the world.
Link to papier mache brain exhibit. Link to Brain Hammer with more brain-related Physick exhibits.
Simply Physics has a wonderful page of photos depicting objects which have accidentally become stuck in MRI scanners because of the pull of the powerful magnets.
These include chairs, floor cleaners, oxygen tanks and bits of medical equipment.
They even have a video of a team of people trying to extract a swivel chair from an MRI machine using straps and some large pieces of wood for leverage.
The magnets in fMRI scanners are usually at least 1.5 tesla in strength and most are now 3 tesla.
The strong magnets cause all the hydrogen atoms in the human body to align. A radio pulse is then sent which knocks the atoms out of alignment. The amount of non-alignment caused by this will differ depending on the tissue density.
As the atoms are knocked out of alignment and re-align they return a radio pulse. This can be measured, and because the returned pulse is related to tissue density, the signal can be computed into a '3D map' of the tissue.
Hence the name, Magnetic Resonance Imaging - magnets align the atoms, the atoms resonate with the radio pulse and the image is computed from the pattern of pulses.
The strong magnets means bringing certain metals into the scanning room can be dangerous.
If you go for an MRI scan you'll be asked to remove all metal from your body and you'll be interviewed to make sure you have no metal implants in you.
If loose metal objects enter the room they can fly towards the magnet causing injury to anyone in the way.
Unfortunately, people can sometimes wander unaware into the room with unsuitable objects.
This probably accounts for why so many of the objects stuck inside the scanners on the Simply Physics page are cleaning equipment, as cleaners have wandered in not realising the risks.
There's a lovely typo in a 1976 paper from the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry that reports on a study about epilepsy after surgery. Check out the last sentence of the abstract:
Incidence of postoperative epilepsy after a transtentorial approach to acoustic nerve tumours.
Sixty-nine patients who had neurosurgical treatment for acoustic neuroma by one of two different techniques were studied with a view to determining the incidence of postoperative epilepsy. Fourty-five patients who had larger tumours underwent a combined translabyrinthine and transtentorial neurosurgical approach. For the others with smaller neuromas a translabyrinthine method was used. Only the combined approach was associated with postoperative epilepsy, and it occurred in 22% of the patients. Epilepsy was associated with temporal love trauma during surgery.
Never afraid to flaunt their lack of irony, the website of the Centre for Internet Addiction Recovery now has podcasts, a blog, video streams, a mailing list and an online shop.
Internet addiction? Feh! Personally, I'm still trying to kick a heavy Fidonet habit I picked up in the early 90s.
Prison officers issued knives to 'cut suicide rate':
In a wonderfully twisted solution to poor mental health care, prison officers in UK's Winchester Prison are being issued knives in an attempt to reduce suicide rates by allowing them to cut down prisoners they find hanging in their cells.
Mental health care in prison is notoriously bad (a recent reported noted one third of UK young offenders are mentally ill), and many operate as little more than surrogate psychiatric facilities - without the psychiatry or the facilities. There is a similar situation in the USA.
I've spent some time trying to track down the latest reports on HMP Winchester but with very little success, although from what I can find Winchester seems to be a particularly bad example.
This news story incidentally mentions that a recent report "attacks the policy of keeping people with mental health problems locked up in prison healthcare wings when they should be receiving treatment from trained staff."
This written response to a 2001 parliamentary request for a information on suicide rates in the prison shows them spiralling out of control to almost eight times the national average. More recent figures show it to have one of the highest number of prison suicides in the country.
The spectacularly broken website of the Independent Monitoring Board, the body that reports on prison conditions, lists the last published annual report as 2004.
This report notes that "The problem of prisoners with severe mental disabilities is raised time and time again" and also notes the lack of mental health care facilities "leaves Prison Officers no choice but to deal with these prisoners even though they are not medically trained so to do".
It seems prison suicides have been a more recent matter of parliamentary concern and the actual prevention guidelines (which seem remarkably sensible) are available online as a Word doc.
Link to article 'Prison issue knives to officers to cut suicide rate' from Hampshire News (via TWS).
Online t-shirt retailer and design free-for-all Threadless have just released a t-shirt based on the theme of 'confabulated memory'.
In neuropsychology, 'confabulation' usually refers to a condition where people produce streams of false memories.
It is distinguished from lying in that affected people do not seem to be intentionally trying to deceive. In fact, they seem to have little control over their recall.
Although we all confabulate without realising it to some degree, the clinical condition is most striking after brain injury.
The following example is from a study on a 56 year-old man who developed the condition after brain surgery to remove a tumour.
You were at school together?
We still are.
You and Val? Really? I didn’t know that. When you say you still are, do you mean you are still at school now?
Well not at school, at university.
Oh. So the two of you are at university together?
Yes. She is doing third year and I am doing computers.
The t-shirt is a wonderful graphic portrayal of this free-wheeling fountain of memories with themes mingling and overlapping in a confused and chaotic state.
The most important application of brain-machine interfaces is to allow paralysed people the ability to control their environment.
The second most important application, is, of course, to create psychedelic rave visuals to accompany pumping acid techno.
Mind VJ is a project by Lenara Verle and Marlon Barrios-Solano that has filled this neglected area of research by designing an EEG-based system that creates intense visuals in response to electrical brain changes.
In MIND VJ, the idea is to use the rhythm of our own brain waves as the conducting element for the performance. In this manner, we can tap into a normally "hidden" area of our body (brain function and its electrical activity) and make it "visible" in the form of projected images. In this case, the images projected won't be wave graphs, like the ones usually plotted by medical EEG machines, but artistic images, undergoing real-time changes and manipulations controlled by the current brain wave output of the subject (the MIND VJ)
Provocatively, The MIND VJ project references thoughts of utopian cyber dreams about the ultimate direct brain to computer interface, and on the other side brings paranoid ideas of "mind reading" and "mind control".
I think we can guess where the drugs kicked in when they were writing that bit of text.
There's more about the project on their website and a video of Mind VJ in action.
Apparently the project is still in progress and I look forward to seeing how it develops.
Tom alerted me to a largely neglected psychometric measure of happiness designed by Michael Leunig that was sadly absent from the article discussed in an earlier post.
It is a truly objective measure, but one I suspect that will not be readily adopted by politicians.
The medical literature is a source of endless fascination. As well as charting the sure-but-steady progress of medical science, it also keeps tabs on the more unusual aspects of human behaviour.
PubMed is the world's medical research database, and I've found endless ways of entertaining myself with this seemingly starched and functional research tool.
One of those ways is to search using the keyword 'autoerotic'.
The diversity of human sexuality is awe-inspiring, and this simple search will bring some of the most unusual aspects of the sexual rainbow into stark relief.
Where else could you read about 'Aqua-eroticum: an unusual autoerotic fatality in a lake involving a home-made diving apparatus'?
That last one is from the Journal of Forensic Sciences, which, if ever you get a chance to read it, is a bi-monthly litany of the most obscure, surprising and compelling aspects of the human character - delivered in a completely deadpan style.
To quote Groucho Marx "Yesterday I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don't know".
Link to search of PubMed using the keyword 'autoerotic'.
Due to the public's confusion over the difference between psychiatry and psychology, I have developed a minor hobby out of spotting the word 'psychiatry' in places it shouldn't be.
This was inspired by hearing someone on the bus accuse her friend of using 'reverse psychiatry' on her.
Another one that seems to pop up is 'abnormal psychiatry', which is presumably where doctors treat mental illness while acting a bit oddly.
One of my favourites though, is on a drinks can sold by sandwich shop Pret. The 'Yoga Bunny Detox' drink is advertised as being 'liquid psychiatry'.
I've checked the ingredients, and there seems to be no trace of psychotropic drugs, so I presume it just takes my blood and interviews me for signs of psychopathology.
Any other sightings of out-of-place psychiatry would be gratefully received.
Purveyor of molecular gifts and jewellery Made With Molecules has just launched a new line for Christmas: serotonin Christmas decorations for your tree.
They've also added to their existing range with jewellery made from the caffeine molecule, and the theobromine molecule - one of the psychoactive ingredients in chocolate.
So if you want to decorate either yourself or your house with drugs and neurotransmitters, you know where to go.
According to the Spiritual Science Research Foundation, 96% of addictions are "primarily caused due to possession by either ghosts or our departed ancestors" with only 4% being due to physical and psychological factors. Well, that's that sorted then.
The full 'research' report is available online, and I have to say, the diagrams alone are worth the effort.
Alright, hold tight
I want to ball tonight
On my fender, no space defender
I enjoy it on the floor, I get it tight
Toe to toe with a black widow
Fee Fia Foo smell the blood of rock 'n' roll
All night drive on the rockin' suicide
My feet are jumping, she's a joy to ride
Joy to ride, a joy to ride
She's an all night drive on the rockin' suicide
And it's a brain shake, brain shake, brain shake
All I can take
Brain shake, brain shake, brain shake
Rock group AC/DC give a timely warning about the dangers of diffuse axonal injury when going "toe to toe with a black widow" in their 1983 song Brain Shake.
As the song is presumably a reference to having sex, you'd be having to be doing something really quite frightening to risk diffuse axonal injury, which is a tear in the brain's white matter that usually occurs after the brain is shaken by a serious fall or car crash.
Just found this funny misprint in an article from the American Psychological Association's magazine Monitor on Psychology while looking for articles on sleep psychology:
Sleep psychologist Paul Saskin helps Las Vegans sleep more soundly, day and night.
Don't get me wrong, I think the circus is woefully lacking in neurobiology-based entertainment, but I think they might have a little more trouble getting into the anandamide formation...
...and I dread to think what might happen if they attempted oxytocin.
Depending on what you believe, Mind Hacks is either a top 10 or top 20 UK blog. I suspect this fact would probably kill as many conversations as telling people that you're ranked 4th in the Scandinavian hula dancing stakes.
"Psychological harm is not a disease of the mind":
When the law and the mind come together...
The former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith appeared on the Today programme this morning, promoting his call for a new law to be introduced to punish people who drive their partners to suicide. He says the current 1861 Offence Against the Person Act is inadequate because it requires a retrospective diagnosis of psychiatric illness in the person who killed themselves.
Enter criminal barrister John Cooper who believes the current Act works perfectly well. He says the law already states that psychiatric harm is assault. He explains:
"It's very difficult to prove psychological harm. Psychological harm is not a disease of the mind. A psychiatric condition is a disease of the mind. But the law has to have clarity in this respect. We can section people under a mental health order. We can say a person is unfit to plead if they are psychiatrically troubled. That's because we can prove it by a disease of the mind. It all gets very woolly when we bring in psychology".
Online t-shirt shop and design free-for-all Threadless just ran a competition to design a t-shirt for the upcoming Michel Gondry film 'The Science of Sleep'.
The film is about a man whose life is constantly invaded by his dreams.
Unfortunately, the competition passed me by and has just closed. However, you can vote for the best design and the winning design will get turned into a t-shirt you can buy online.
There seems to be a lack of the sort of psychology and neuroscience t-shirts that you'd actually want to wear out of the house, but several of the designs look very promising.
"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library where he can get it if he wants it."
Sherlock Holmes details a brief theory of knowledge in The Five Orange Pips by Arthur Conan Doyle.
The White Stripes consider the different roles of the cortical hemispheres in processing and understanding emotion in the lyrics of their song Fell in Love With a Girl. As far as I know, this is the first discussion of asymmetry in cortical processing in punk music. Rock on.
"can't keep away from the girl
these two sides of my brain
need to have a meeting
can't think of anything to do yeah
my left brain knows that all love is fleeting"
The Imaginary Foundation has just produced a new series of t-shirts including one that involves a psychedelic riff on the Rorschach inkblot test.
The Rorschach inkblot test is a now almost obselete test in psychology where interviewees are asked to give their impressions of a series of ambiguously shaped inkblots.
As there are few reliably ways of interpreting answers to each inkblot, it has been argued that the test is nothing more than the assessor's subjective impression masquerading as an objective psychometric test.
Hence it has been virtually discarded in modern psychology, although remains strongly associated with the discipline in everyday stereotypes.
It does, however, make for a beautiful garment when interpreted by the Imaginary Foundation's wonderfully askew artists.
Link to Imaginary Foundation 'Rorschach Girl' t-shirt.
Oh. My. God. It's a hot air balloon in the shape of an anatomically accurate brain. For hire.
According to the website, the brain balloon's mission is to:
To capture the attention of the world and direct it toward understanding the importance of the human brain and the diseases, disorders, and injuries that afflict it.
To teach and encourage all people to seek a high purpose and achieve their potential.
To create a strong symbol of hope and human possibility.
To celebrate intelligence, promote education, and ignite imaginations!
There are stoned neuroscientists behind this, I swear.
Child support organisation KidLink has a section that collects children's desires for future careers. The pages for psychologist and psychiatrist are simultaneously touching, alarming and hilarious.
Anastasiya from Kazakstan: My dream-is to be a dentist or psychologist. Why? Because I want to help people and get a lot of money.
Let's hope Anastasia isn't planning on working for the NHS.
Kirsty from Australia: I have no idea what I will be! Either a vet, olympic sprinter or maybe a professional soccer, tennis or volleyball player? Maybe even a actress, cause i did drama. Or a singer. I like singing, I am in the chior and I have done a solo once. Oh, I know, if I don't get professional for any of those sports I could always be a sports teacher. Or maybe even a psychologist. Or a stand up comedian. I don't know yet. But I love sport, so i will probably do something sporty. A surfer? I like swimming in the sea, not pools. And I go to the beach a lot.
Chinetta from United States: i want to become a psychiatrist and i want to drive a porsche and i want a big house
Chinetta is obviously one of the America's few remaining children who have yet to meet a psychiatrist.
Alexandria from United States: When I grow up I would like to become a psychiatrist because I really enjoy helping others. It makes me feel good when I help some one cope with their issues and see them benefit from the advice that I give them. In order to do so I plan on going to college for as long as it takes. I would like to go to Spelman but I am not sure if it is the right school to study for Psychiaty. I am determined to make it though I will go to school for as long as it takes as long as I am able to save at least one person from hurt and sorrow.
Sounds like you'll make an excellent psychiatrist Alexandria.
Julia from Belarus: At fisrt I want to get higher education.Earlier I wanted to become a barrister but in our country it's impossible & now I want to become a psychologist.Like every normal man I want that my work will bring me,of course,money & will make me happy.But in general I would like to be a poet -- it is my dream & if I have a real chance in order to realize it I will use this chance what's more I write verses & my friends don't find them bad.It is all.
Link to KidLink careers: psychologist. Link to KidLink careers: psychiatrist.
Mind Hacks has been chosen as September's book of the month by online review site Books in the Bog.
Mind Hacks is, fortunately for our toilet shelves, anything but an academic text book, yet manages to still do a great job in introducing how some of the mind's systems work, though simple examples you can try at home (even in your loo if you don't feel too odd occasionally taking in the odd volunteer).
The review also includes an interview with co-author Matt Webb on how he developed his own interest in the mind and brain, so head on over if you want Matt's take on the book and his other favourite reads.
Continuing on from Vaughan's discussion of Psi research at the BA Festival - I wonder if the likes of Prof. Lord Robert Winston ought to have been more concerned about some of the content in one of the mainstream BA Psychology Section seminars.
Prof. Geoffrey Beattie of Big Brother fame was this year's Psychology Section President so it was perhaps no surprise that he organised a seminar on body language and invited along his fellow Big Brother psychologist Dr. Peter Collett.
However, Collett's talk was really just a collection of highlights from his channel 4 show, in which he identifies 'tells' that give away what a politician is really thinking. For example he said that compared with his cabinet colleagues, Gordon Brown exhibited about 5 times as many discomfort gestures (e.g. looking down, chewing his lip) when Tony Blair was giving a conference speech. This prompted a journalist next to me to ask - "wouldn't it have been more logical to have compared how many discomfort gestures Brown made during Blair's speech with how many he made during a speech by someone else?".
"Yes, you're right" Collett admitted, "but you're talking about an actual experiment, this is just something I put together for a TV programme".
Hmm. Well at least he was honest about that - but wasn't this supposed to be the BA Science Festival?
Another audience member suggested that Brown might have been displaying these discomfort gestures because of other events in his life - the conference may have been near in time to when he lost his new-born baby, for example.
"Yes, the interpretation of these gestures is up for grabs" Collett answered. "It's all about taking into account the context...but with individuals this IS NOT A SCIENCE".
At least a lot of parapsychology research uses sound scientific methodology whereas this was, as Collett pretty much admitted, just a load of speculation put together for a TV programme.
The runaway success of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, the book written from the perspective of a young autistic boy, has not entirely pleased its author Mark Haddon:
"I'm just suspicious that too many people liked it. All the books I really like are loathed by some people...It's like you want to be Radiohead and then you think, shit, I've accidentally turned into Coldplay".
I've always been slightly suspicious about the Freudian tendency to read meaning into everything. You see hidden meanings and get paid for it and you're an analyst, you do it for free and you're psychotic.
I suspect this is why there's so little psychoanalytic work on psychosis, the infinite regress of hidden meanings would probably cause a dimensional rift and the universe would collapse.
There's a curious letter in today's New Scientist that takes issue with a recent criticism of V.S. Ramachandran's theory of the neuroscience of art.
The criticism attacks Ramachandran's theory on the basis that it fails to distinguish between images of big-breasted women such as Hindu statues of goddesses and actual big-breasted women such as Pamela Anderson.
In contrast, the letter to New Scientist says that the comparison is fair because Anderson's image "is deliberately created using the specific techniques of plastic surgery, diet, exercise, make-up, clothing and photography".
Hopefully, the world of neuroaesthetics will now be at peace over this particular issue.
I'm going to be in beautiful Seville, Spain, for two weeks from Monday 28th trying to improve my Spanish. If there are any local psychologists, psychiatrists, cognitive scientists or students of the mind and brain who want to meet and chat about psychology and neuroscience while I'm there, drop me a line.
War poet Rupert Brooke describes an unsettling experience of apophenia in this 1913 poem.
I came back late and tired last night
Into my little room,
To the long chair and the firelight
And comfortable gloom.
But as I entered softly in
I saw a woman there,
The line of neck and cheek and chin,
The darkness of her hair,
The form of one I did not know
Sitting in my chair.
I stood a moment fierce and still,
Watching her neck and hair.
I made a step to her; and saw
That there was no one there.
It was some trick of the firelight
That made me see her there.
It was a chance of shade and light
And the cushion in the chair.
Oh, all you happy over the earth,
That night, how could I sleep?
I lay and watched the lonely gloom;
And watched the moonlight creep
From wall to basin, round the room,
All night I could not sleep.
Brooke seems to have been interested in the scientific investigation of anomalous experiences, as one of his poems ('Sonnet'), was inspired by reading the journal of the Society for Psychical Research.
A Slice of Life is a company that makes scarves and ties with bioscience prints on them, and two are likely to be particularly attractive to neuroscientists.
Pictured on the left is a satin scarf (named 'Contacts') that is decorated with neuron endings especially rich in synapticvesicles.
Also available is a bow tie that depicts synaptic vesicles massing on the edges of the synaptic gap.
While neuroscientists might immediately pick up on the significance, your non-neuroscience friends will probably think they're just stylish additions to your wardrobe.
The Onion has a funny neuroscience story that charts the struggles of a man in conflict with his troublesome hypothalamus over the need for an endorphin-based mood lift. As always it's written in their usual laconic style.
TALLAHASSEE, FL—With tensions already at an all-time high, the nearly 96-hour standoff between area resident Anthony Shepard and his hypothalamus came to a head Monday when the 32-year-old called for the immediate release of all endorphins back into his bloodstream.
"Earlier this week, events took place between my cerebrum's temporal lobes that can only be described as criminal," said Shepard, who told reporters he was first saddened, then angered, abruptly overjoyed, and saddened again to hear about the complete deregulation of his emotions. "To the nefarious gland responsible for this cowardly act, I know you can hear me. I demand, in no uncertain terms, that you surrender and cease all hostilities at once."
Link to article 'Area Man Calls For Immediate Release Of His Endorphins'.
PBS has a fun flash game where you can recreate Wilder Penfield's brain stimulation experiments from the safety of your own desktop on a virtual, er, human.
If the anyone actually looked like that, I suspect that having brain surgery to help alleviate epilepsy, or a neuroscientist poking round on the surface of your brain with an electrode, would be the least of your worries.
Omni Brain has found an hilarious spoof drug advert in the form of a marketing campaign for the fictional medication Proloxil.
Spoofing drugs and drug companies has now become a minor pastime on the internet, with a number of cutting satires available online.
The Onion has a brilliant news story 'reporting' on the launch of a new 'Zoloft for everything' ad campaign.
The Consumers Union produced a fantastically amusing video advert last year for the fake drug Progenitorivox, as part of their campaign to get drug companies to release all the data from their trials.
And who could possible resist wonder-drugs Panexa and Fukitol as a solution to your life problems?
There's a wonderful collection of borderline-psychedelic drug adverts taken from the Spanish magazine Clínica Rural during the 1960s.
There's now quite a collection of drug adverts on the net, giving an interesting historical and cultural insight into how mind altering medication has been pitched to consumers over the years.
Alternatively, this gallery has a collection of American drug adverts including the surprising advert for the drug Thorazine captioned "Tyrant in the house? Thorazine can help control the agitated, belligerent senile".
At the time of this advert, drugs like Thorazine (also known by its generic name chlorpromazine) were marketed as major tranquillisers.
One of its other trade-names was Largactil, intended to communicate the idea that it was 'large acting' and could be used to treat most forms of mental disorder.
This class of drug was then re-branded as 'neuroleptics', and now as 'anti-psychotics', showing the ongoing process of marketing and re-marketing that occurs as drug companies position themselves to best promote their wares.
Link to Spanish drug ads gallery (via BB). Link to the Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art. Link to vintage drug ads page.
Yemin is a practising child psychologist who takes time out to tour and record with his band.
The band's first album was entitled CVA, the medical abbreviation for cerebrovascular accident. This condition is better known as a stroke and is where the blood supply is interrupted to part of the brain.
I've discovered that if you search for "says psychologist" on Google, you get a giant avalanche of wtf. I encourage you to try it for yourself, but here are a few of the highlights, all taken from headlines of news stories.
The Neurocritic has 
Online t-shirt company Psycho Reindeer have this fantastic monkey brain surgeon 
A common belief says that eating cheese causes vivid dreams or nightmares. However, I couldn't find any support for the idea in the scientific literature except for one bizarre 
With debates still raging over the new version of the psychiatrists' diagnostic manual, the DSM-V, a 
Stephen Colbert did a brilliantly funny piece on his show the other night, tackling the introduction of '
Morphologica is a neuroscientist in the final stages of her PhD who also makes wonderful brain-inspired 
Psychiatric drugs are an essential tool in the treatment of mental illness but the pharmaceutical industry is still one of the most ethically dubious enterprises on the planet. That's why I use spoof drug ads, because sometimes only the best will do.
I was told of this funny bit of medical jargon yesterday by a psychiatrist friend of mine, which, apparently, is occasionally used by physicians when they want a medical sounding way of saying that the patient's symptoms exist only in their imagination.
concertinapieces is a psychology student who makes wonderful crochet neurons that you can buy over the interwebs, although she warns that "your neuron may vary slightly in dendritic branches as no two are alike :)"
Slate magazine has an 
I've just come across a brilliant 1966 
It's an age old story. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. The trauma of the breakup affects his mind so badly he starts to believe he's in a boy band. The whole band get admitted to an asylum and start hallucinating a long list of cheap clichés about mental illness. Yes, it's the 
Australian comedy show The Chasers War on Everything has a fantastic 
Good God there's a lot of scientific research on chewing gum. And I mean a lot. Here's just a few of the latest bulletins from the front line of chewing gum cognitive science.
The Australian military is 
Rarely does one see a tribute to both the Wu-Tang Clan and the biochemistry of neuronal signalling in the same place, but it has been done, and the results are nothing short of a musical 
It's an age old story. Girl meets boy. We presume girl loses boy, because she goes mad in a shoe shop. Girl is taken to hospital for a CT scan, then to an art gallery, and then hospital again where she trashes a room with lots of unnecessary medical equipment in a fit of despair. Yes, it's the 
Today's Bad Science 
Dapper British t-shirt blog Hide Your Arms have 
Comedian 
The ephemera assemblyman blog has a mesmerising 
Oh dear. It looks like psychologist Glenn Wilson has fallen off the wagon again. From the man who brought you the 'email hurts IQ more than cannabis' 
This 
I like 
The Sunday Times has one of the most gullible neuroscience 
The Onion has a 
Brain Ads is a 
I've just discovered some important psychological research on cartoons, which, I think, has an important social message for us all.
Conch Tees have a wonderfully philosophical or worryingly paranoid 
Don't Believe the Hype by hip hop group 
James Brewer suffered a stroke and, thinking he was dying, 
The International Herald Tribune has an unintentionally funny 
Jones GABA a slickly advertised new 
The following is from a recent New York Times 
A recently published 
T-shirts with molecules on the front are now available from a multitude of online shops, but I've just found one internet 
Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and Nature has a 
A quote from a recent Wired 
I've just found this clever short 
Happy Bullshit Blue Monday! Yes, today is the 
Chrome Fetus Comics has a wonderfully bizarre online 
I've just found this funny 
The Caffeine Examiner is a 
The image is from a 
If you're waiting for the singularity, you may want a way to tick off the days until the ultimate destiny of the technohuman, or the imminent destruction of the world by AI killing machines, depending on your point of view.
It had to happen really. After years of religious images seeming to appear in windows, cement, trees and even toast, someone's 'identified' an 
If psychoanalysis were a type of music, it would obviously be 
The Dummies series of books have been hugely successful guides to everything from fixing computers to learning languages although they've recently started to publish self-help books on psychological themes.
The photos are of a mysterious and inventive brain puzzle that seems to have 
If there were prizes for sheer genius, this would get the top spot. Psychologist 
The Jumping Brain is a limited edition 
It's an age old story. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy is psychoanalysed, psychologically tested, strapped into a brain machine and plays the girl like a giant cello before escaping on a motorbike and throwing the wheelchair-bound doctor into the river.
In 1964 the journal Medicine, Science and the Law 
Tania Hennessy is a scientist who sells beautiful visual illusion 
The opening verse from The La's 1988 indie 
If mental illness doesn't exist, how come the dark forces of heavy metal know so much about it? Almost the whole range of psychopathology can be found on the cover of heavy metal albums.
While the DSM defines major depressive disorder as a low mood or a loss of ability to experience pleasure for at least two weeks which interferes with normal occupational function, Forgotten Tomb's album Springtime Depression depicts the feeling in a more metaphorical way, like the feeling of being stuck in a spooky house in the middle of a forest.
The classic album Wizard of the Lost Kingdom by metal outfit Mania shames the extensive psychiatric literature by reminding us of the largely undiscussed role of winking dwarves in the elevated mood, racing thoughts and boundless energy that accompanies a manic episode.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a problem where people have birds nesting in their eyes, their skin goes green and their teeth disappear. No wait, that's something else. But if these thoughts kept intruding into the mind and the person found them objectionable and anxiety provoking, those could be obsessions, and if they felt they had to repetitively perform a certain action to help control the anxiety (like stroking your green cheeks with both hands, for example), there's your compulsion.
A phobia is quite clearly an explosion of colourful organic wiring and the textbooks have got it wrong. Metal 1 Psychiatry 0.
Trauma can often lead to anxiety difficulties that would now be likely diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the band Trauma are obviously paying tribute to earlier systems of descriptive psychopathology where the emotional effect of life-threatening situation might be diagnosed as a trauma neurosis. We're gonna party like it's 1899.
Brazilian metallers Sepultura have clearly got the right idea, as all forms of schizophrenia are known to involve a pair of purple eyes floating in the sky. However, not everyone diagnosed with schizophrenia has a bandanna, red skin and a fetching floor length raincoat, so be careful not to over generalise from their diagnostic criteria.
You're swinging upside down by your feet and some passing psychiatrist has quickly sketched you onto a nearby block of concrete. In the process, he notices that you have blood coming from your legs and guessing that you may be injecting drugs into the reticular vein, perhaps because persistent needle use has made it impossible to inject into veins in the arm. Or, perhaps you are really addicted to swinging upside down by your feet, but then again, those behavioural addictions are so controversial.
Anorexia Nervosa. What a name for a metal band. It's not entirely clear from their music whether they represent the Restrictive Eating subtype or the Binge-Purge subtype, but as one of the criteria for the diagnosis is low body weight, I suspect from their 
Although more classically defined as the presentation of neurological symptoms without evidence of neurological impairment in the absence of the intent to deceive or conscious control of the deficit, hysteria can also present as a big blue dragon smoking a pipe. Of course, Freudians would argue that all hysteria originally comes from sexual dysfunction so we wonder whether the pipe is really just a pipe?
Dana Kotler and Joy Gibson are two dancers and medical students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine who decided they'd like to 
Neuroanthropology has 
You're in the operating theatre, about to undergo a serious surgical procedure and the anaesthetic is starting to take effect. You can hear a beautiful acapella 
"Songs of Couch and Consultation" is a 1961 novelty album of songs about the psychiatric profession by folksinger Katie Lee (who, according to 
My new favourite typo: if you're fed up with the sound of electric rock n' roll perhaps you'd prefer some autistic guitar.
Today's BPS Research Digest has a wonderfully ironic and recursive Freudian slip in a 
I have discovered shocking evidence that computers are affecting the brain. After extensive research, I have discovered the problem is remarkably specific and I have isolated it to an individual brain area affected by one particular application. Microsoft Word is causing abnormal growth in the frontal lobes.
USA Today has an unintentionally hilarious 
I just found this clever 
An unintentionally funny headline from a University College London 
Neuroanthropology has found a highly amusing 
Indie t-shirt designers 410BC are channelling Descartes in their spring collection, with a brain emblazoned 
Sometimes I just despair. I almost understand it when the media gets its knickers in a twist about 'internet addiction' and similar nonsense, because most outlets never been great at separating the wheat from the chaff. But it beggars beliefs why otherwise respectable professionals can spout similar drivel when they're supposed to be trained to deal with the evidence.
I just found this curious empirical 
For those wanting an update on the 'phone network causes suicide' 
It's an age old story. Boy meets girl. Boys loses girl. Boy thinks it might be because he was hypnotised by a crazed scientist who was swinging a brain on a chain. Boy thinks this might explain why the girl was originally a nun but changed into hallucinatory sex vampire.
"In a way, young Dr Highsmith had plenty of warning. He should have known all was not well that day he came home and discovered his wife performing a strange rite of nudity.
The March edition of HR Magazine has an unintentionally hilarious cover 
The Sunday Express is one of the UK's biggest selling Sunday papers and today's front page is spectacularly 
Miss Conduct, one of the columnists from The Boston Globe, has picked up on our 
The Guardian 
The University of Utah have created a 
Today's 
This month's edition of the psychology magazine Monitor has an amusing 
Cracked has an amusing 
A wonderful poem called 'Survivor' from the playful English poet, 
The Devil's Dictionary was a famously satirical 
In response to my throwaway comment about a finding a suitable chat-up line for someone with the molecular structure of serotonin 
Carl Zimmer has been collecting science tattoos for a while now, but recently posted this 
We've featured various sorts of brain candy sweets before on Mind Hacks, but the Japanese sweets Aha! Brain take the concept a 
I bet you've been wondering "how do I make an anatomically correct brain cake?" Well, wonder no more, because a full 
What better way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon than recreating some of the most important moments in the history of psychoanalysis with some specially made 
McSweeney's has an infectiously funny 
Mental Floss, an emporium of thought-themed merchandise, do this witty Pavlov t-shirt in either a 
Of Two Minds have found a classic 
An Israeli psychologist is 
Heavy metal noiseniks Mudvayne have a song called '
According to a BBC News 
The Neuroscience for Kids website has created an online 
There is simply not enough conspiracy theory-driven paranoid funk rock in the world.
The following passage is from p107 of the excellent but sadly out-of-print history book Mental Disorder in Earlier Britain (ISBN 0708305628) that explores mental and neurological illness in times past.
I've just discovered we've had our 
"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me."
A lyrical tribute to the pain killer 
The Utne Reader has a shocking 
Two views on wine appreciation. The first from the introduction of an academic 
Fortune has just published it's list of the year's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business, and at 
The Canadian Medical Association Journal has just published its traditional Christmas article which covers the lesser known diseases of popular culture. This year, the 
The BBC has a curious 
Neuropsychologist 
Designer Jun Takashi has 
An intriguing 
It's a timeless story. Boy meets girl. Boy annoys girl. Girl goes off on a 
The G-Spot podcast has a 
The Bonkers Institute for Nearly Genuine Research has just published an important 
Mental health professionals, user support groups, friends and family. Good news has arrived. Someone has found a 
Spiked has a 
Someone's created some satirical descriptions of the 
A 
There's a copy of a wonderful 1948 
Language Log is doing a sterling job of keeping up with the increasing pace of Dr Alfred Crockus' research, and seem to have found an 
The excellent Language Log have 
A new book on unusual experiments 
Silent for three years, Osama Bin Laden just released a video tape in which he 
Many thanks for everyone who sent in their entries for our AAICS (Awkward Acronyms In Cognitive Science) competition. There were many worthy entries all of which illustrated the seductive allure of the acronyms to cognitive scientists who obviously had too much coffee.
From the entry for 'madness' taken from the Cassel Dictionary of Superstitions (ISBN 0304365610):
Ben Goldacre has 
This week's edition of satirical newspaper The Onion has a cutting 'news' 
If you're a fan of toasting your brains, either literally or metaphorically, there's now a 
If you've ever wanted to suck on Freud, or you just think Freud sucks, McPhee have created a watermelon flavoured Sigmund Freud head 
During a 1978 tour, psychobilly punk band 
The classic 1960's B-movie The Brain That Wouldn't Die has fallen into the public domain and is now available to 
The Wired Alt-Text blog has an 
Wired magazine has a 
A Polish government minister has 
Celebrity hypnotist 
A man walks into a psychologist's office. "Doctor", he says, "I've fallen in love with two school bags and I'm worried I'm abnormal". "There's no need to be concerned", says the psychologist, "I think you're just bi-satchel".
A poem by 
While looking for neuroscience videos we've found some 
Another scientist has 
And who could resist finishing the day with rock n' roll?
Shirt and t-shirt site Hide Your Arms has just 
The Independent on Sunday has the dubious honour of publishing one of the 
You wait all day for a neuroscience version of an 80s pop song with scientifically accurate lyrics, and two come along at once.
A recent study comparing British and non-British participants has found some compelling differences in brain structure that may account for differences in national character.
Why does this leave a bad taste in my mouth? Numerous 
If you think the neuroscience of mental illness is just too complicated to understand, there's no need to worry your pretty little head about it.
The word 'bedlam' commonly refers to disorder or chaos, but it originally referred to 
The robot rebellion got a step closer this week as a US court cited a web-based artificial intelligence system for practising law without a license.
Psychiatrist Edward Hume has 
Wendy, Stephanie and Marie, three high school psychology students, have voiced over Britney's Baby One More Time 
Cognitive scientist 
Life-changing new drug 
If you've always harboured secret Dr Frankenstein fantasies (and let's face it, who hasn't?) what better way to unleash your inner re-animator than by having a glowing 
Biologist and reproductive scientist 
I've been notified of a rare case of focal retrograde amnesia that doesn't seem to have been reported in the medical literature.
Online t-shirt retailers No Demographic have created a 
It's just struck me that Eric Kandel looks remarkably similar to Doc Brown from 
Simply Physics has a wonderful 
In a wonderfully twisted solution to poor mental health care, prison officers in UK's Winchester Prison are being 
The most important application of brain-machine interfaces is to allow paralysed people the ability to control their environment.
Tom alerted me to a largely neglected psychometric 
The medical literature is a source of endless fascination. As well as charting the sure-but-steady progress of medical science, it also keeps tabs on the more unusual aspects of human behaviour.
Due to the public's confusion over the difference between 
According to the Spiritual Science Research Foundation, 96% of addictions are "primarily caused due to possession by either ghosts or our departed ancestors" with only 4% being due to physical and psychological factors. Well, that's that sorted then.
Is it me, or are these 
Online t-shirt shop and design free-for-all Threadless just ran a 
Child support organisation KidLink has a section that collects children's desires for future careers. The pages for 
Mind Hacks has been chosen as September's 
There's a 
The Onion has a funny neuroscience 
