A wonderful poem called 'Survivor' from the playful English poet, Roger McGough:
Survivor
by Roger McGoughEveryday,
I think about dying.
About disease, starvation,
violence, terrorism, war,
the end of the world.It helps
keep my mind off things.
McGough has a talent for blending the fanciful with the poignant, as demonstrated in a poem we featured previously.
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 Threadless t-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 Psychology contains 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).
Link to Dr Mezmer's Dictionary of Bad Psychology.
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:
"Your place or monoamine?"
You sir, are a genius.
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.
Link to serotonin tattoo (thanks Sandra!).
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.
The lime flavour includes the neurotransmitter GABA, while other flavours have branched chain amino acids and something called forskolin in them instead.
All of which are important in brain functioning but whether actually eating them as sugar-coated candies will do you any good is anyone's guess.
Link to description and brave first-person report!
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.
Link to psychoanalyst finger puppets.
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.
Link to hilarious McSweeney's piece.
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'.
This wonderful knitted brain is by artist Sarah Illenberger. Presumably, we're looking down on the brain with the two hemispheres slightly separated.
She has also created other wonderful anatomically correct organs, including the heart and the intestines.
It seems this one might be a possible inductee into the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art.
Link to Sarah Illenberger's wonderful creations.
Link to Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art.
Designer Alexander Lervik created this wonderful table lamp based on a 3D reconstruction of his own brain scan.
"MYBrain. The table lamp
A replica of the designer's brain, originated from an MR scan at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
The image was processed through a 3D-printer, and became this unusual lamp shade design. Yes, it is bright."
Although perhaps the coolest, this is not the first brain lamp we've come across.
Indeed, it would make a good accompaniment to the plasma brain lamp we featured back in early 2007.
Link to designer's page for the brain lamp (via BoingBoing).
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.
Link to Mental Floss t-shirts.
Ah, the joys of South East London.
The headline in the latest copy of the South London Press which doesn't seem to have the actual article online.
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.
Run down [and video] at "Tenser, said the Tensor"
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.
Link to Fry and Laurie psychiatrists' sketch.
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.
According to a BBC News article brain scans have revealed "a possible biological basis for cocaine addiction".
Next week: brain scans reveal 'possible' biological basis for thoughts, feelings, actions and neurological illness.
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.
Link to Retrospectacle on plush neurons.
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..."
Link to neuroscience stamp exhibition.
There is simply not enough conspiracy theory-driven paranoid funk rock in the world.
By the looks of his YouTube video 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)
Enough said.
"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me."
Who else, but the the inimitable Hunter S. Thompson.
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.
Link to Gnarls Barkley / Avalanches mashup.
A lyrical tribute to the pain killer ibuprofen, written by poet Matt Harvey.
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 itI'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 IbuprofenThere 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 IbuprofenI love the way the compound sticks its cheeky little hand in
The way it blocks the enzyme that creates the prostaglandinReducing 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.
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 Times review of the same book:
The rhetoric and rituals of wine appreciation are sometimes said to be the alimentary equivalent of lipstick on a pig: they are meant to give an attractive sheen to the ugly business of getting drunk.
Fortune has just published it's list of the year's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business, and at number two comes drug company Eli Lilly, with dog Prozac.
Seemingly, dog depression is an unrecognised epidemic / untapped market that is just crying out for some pharmacological intervention.
Thank God. We've been so worried since Lucky dyed his hair jet black and started listening to the Smiths.
Eli Lilly wins FDA approval to put Prozac into chewable, beef-flavored pills to treat separation anxiety in dogs.
Link to Fortune second dumbest business moment of the year.
We've learned to tie into every organ in the human body but one. The brain! The brain is what life is all about.
Star Trek doctor Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy from the episode entitled The Menagerie.
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.
Link to Threadless 'Connect It' t-shirt.
Think Gum is a chewing gum that apparently contains a number of 'brain boosting' ingredients, although is mainly notable for its high caffeine content.
As well as caffeine, it contains ginkgo biloba and bacopa monnieri, two herbal supplements which some preliminary studies have found increase memory and concentration.
It's hard to say whether these have any effect in this particular product but the 20mg of caffeine per piece of gum should keep you alert, even if the caffeine come-down will take away as much as the lift will give you in the first place.
I once had a pharmacist explain the lift and come-down of stimulant drugs to me as "there's no such thing as a free lunch", which I thought was a little ironic considering how many catered advertising pitches they get taken to by drug companies while under the impression they're getting a free lunch.
Link to Think Gum.
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 Ladies track, 'Brian Wilson', has the following verse:
It's a matter of instinct, it's a matter of conditioning,
It's a matter of fact.
You can call me Pavlov's dog
Ring a bell and I'll salivate - how'd you like that?
Dr Landy tell me you're not just a pedagogue,
cause right now I'mLying 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.
I feel better already.
Link to book details on Amazon.
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.
His description of De Clerambault's Syndrome fooled reviewers and psychiatrists alike.
In fact, De Clerambault's Syndrome (where someone has the delusional belief that another person is in love with them) is well known in the medical literature and McEwan's description is quite accurate.
Nevertheless, his book concludes with what looks like a reprint of an article from the British Review of Psychiatry that describes a case study which the book seems to be based upon.
Although also fiction (the British Review of Psychiatry doesn't exist), its style is convincing and it's properly referenced with studies from the real medical literature.
So convincing, in fact, that it fooled several reviewers, including those in top medical journals, into thinking the novel was based on a real case report.
A clue as to why McEwan was able to successfully imitate the medical literature is given in the acknowledgements. He thanks "Ray Dolan, friend and hiking companion, for many years of stimulating discussion".
Dolan is a professor of neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Functional Imaging Lab in London.
Interestingly, Dolan also played a key part in Saturday, another of McEwan's books - which tackles a dramatic day in the life of a neurosurgeon.
As mentioned in an article in the British Medical Journal, McEwan shadowed neurosurgeon Neil Kitchen while researching the book. The article notes the pair were introduced by Dolan.
Link to Wikipedia page on De Clerambault's Syndrome.
Link to Salon article 'Ian McEwan fools British shrinks'.
Link to BMJ article interviewing neurosurgeon Neil Kitchen.
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.
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.
After which, the gummy brains and chocolate brains just seem a bit passé really.
Link to disturbing brain candy.
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 Times op-ed piece where neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni and colleagues used brain scans of people who viewed videos of US presidential candidates in an attempt to reveal voter reactions "on which this election may well turn".
Farah quite rightly calls it "junk science" as it is a barely controlled study that relies on stereotypes and generalisation to infer that activation in one particular brain area means the viewers are experiencing a certain reaction.
So why do I doubt the conclusions reported in today’s Op Ed piece? The problems I see have less to do with brain imaging per se than with the human tendency to make up “just so” stories and then believe them. The scattered spots of activation in a brain image can be like tea leaves in the bottom of a cup – ambiguous and accommodating of a large number of possible interpretations.
For example, the story reports that "When we showed subjects the words “Democrat,” “Republican” and “independent,” they exhibited high levels of activity in the part of the brain called the amygdala, indicating anxiety".
In brain-scanning studies, the amygdala is regularly found to be active in people who experience fear. But you can't make the reverse inference, that amygdala activation equals fear, because it can be equally as active when people experience happiness or joy.
There's plenty more where that came from, but what is most shocking is not that this junk made The New York Times but that it made it again, and again.
In fact, Iacoaboni's team were on the front page of the NYT in 2004 with almost exactly the same stunt - attempting to use brain scans to predict responses when viewing political campaign ads.
The 'study' details have mysteriously gone from the web but are still archived if you want to see history repeating itself.
And as we reported in 2006, similar nonsense was repeated with the Super Bowl ads, by (guess who) the same team.
None of these studies have ever been published in scientific journals so why does Iacoboni, who does lots of respectable cognitive neuroscience, keep running these essentially meaningless studies?
All of these stunts are essentially PR for FKF Applied Research, a 'neuromarketing company' who will carry out bespoke brain scan marketing studies for a price.
Iacoboni is not listed as a staff member but he's been associated with most of their previous media stunts and four out of five FKF staff are co-authors on the NYT article. We can bet there's some pretty strong connection there.
Unfortunately, these sorts of stunts play on the excitement surrounding high-tech science and distort the public's understanding of the significance of brain imaging.
They're are neither informative nor truly newsworthy but have enough of a sugar coating to make them attractive to a media beguiled by the bright lights of brain scanning.
Link to Farah article on the Neuroethics and Law Blog.
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.
Designer Jun Takashi has created a high fashion handbag, shaped like a brain. Why? You ask. Why not? I answer.
At this point I would like to make it clear that the idea that we only use 10% of our handbag is a myth.
Scientific studies have found that all of the handbag is in constant use, although some parts may be more active than others.
Woody Allen gets to grips with the mind-body problem and comes up with his own unique definition:
"Human beings are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun."
From his 1975 film, Love and Death.
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!]
Link to NewSci letter.
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 G-Spot podcast has a special where they bring Timothy Leary's Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness to life as a KLF-style ambient soundscape.
Needless to say, Leary's model has yet to make any significant impact on the scientific world, but it's a psychedelic classic nonetheless.
Link to The Eight Circuits audio (via BoingBoing).
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!).
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.
Link to 1948 Modern Mechanix article (via Bad Science).
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 Art create 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.
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