One psychologist, Ken Zucker, suggested that the family encourage their son to only associate with traditionally male toys and activities to encourage him to be more comfortable with his born sex, while the other, Diane Ehrensaft encouraged the family to allow their son to explore his cross-gender interests.

Whatever your immediate reaction to these approaches the psychologists in the programme make interesting points on both sides of the debate:

Ehrensaft sees transgenderism as akin to homosexuality, she says, she thinks Zucker's therapy — which seeks to condition children out of a transgender identity — is unethical.

But that isn't how Zucker sees it. Zucker says the homosexuality metaphor is wrong. He proposes another metaphor: racial identity disorder.

"Suppose you were a clinician and a 4-year-old black kid came into your office and said he wanted to be white. Would you go with that? ... I don't think we would," Zucker says.

If a black kid walked into a therapist's office saying he was really white, the goal of pretty much any therapist out there would be to make him try to feel more comfortable being black.

Gender identity disorder is a controversial area. The diagnosis requires "a strong and persistent cross-gender identification" and significant distress related to the birth gender.

Some cross-gender people feel they are being labelled as mentally ill for having atypical gender desires and suggest that any associated distress is because they have to live in a society that marginalises their life choices.

There are some proponents that maintain that any cross-gender identification is an illness, although these are often the same people that think that being gay is a disorder and run 'treatment centres' for homosexuality.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it seems Zucker's work is quoted rather favourably by many of these organisations - something that has given him a bad name amongst some parts of the the LGBT community. Although, from what I can make out, he's never associated himself with any of these views or organisations.

The mainstream professionals who defend the GID diagnosis usually suggest that the distress, rather than the desire itself, is key and this legitimises its classification and treatment. From this point of view, happy and adjusted transgender people would not be considered to have a disorder.

The program is well worth listening to as it tackles many of these thorny issues of gender politics.

Incidentally, the producer is Alix Spiegel, who produced 81 words, one of the finest documentaries on the history of psychiatry I've ever heard.

It looks at the how homosexuality was de-listed as a mental illness, but is more than that, it's also a moving story from Spiegel's family. The remarkable thing was that the the two were inextricably linked.

I've mentioned it before on Mind Hacks, but I highly recommend it if you've not encountered it before.

Link to NPR programme on cross-gender desires in children.
Link to audio archive of 81 words (click 'Full Episode' for free stream).

A couple of my favourites include a poem inspired by a new stereoscopic atlas of the body and brain, and an excellent post on the neuropsychology of stalking (with a great bonus Death Cab for Cutie track!).

Coincidentally, the stalking article appears courtesy of Neurocritic where the the next edition of Encephalon is due to appear in two weeks.

Link to Encephalon 45.

Unlike the recent trend for focusing exclusively on religious belief and the neuroscience of mystical experience, Burton explores something much more essential - how do we have beliefs, any beliefs, at all?

His recent book, On Being Certain, tackles the neuropsychology of belief, certainty and conviction and has garnered some excellent reviews along the way, including one in this month's Scientific American Mind.

As well as wrestling with the fundamentals of human cognition, he's also been kind enough to share his beliefs about belief with Mind Hacks.

The article features journalist Liz Spikol, who we interviewed back in 2006, and professor of law Elyn Saks, who we featured last year, among a host of others who are associated with what might loosely be termed as 'mad pride'.

'Loosely' is certainly an apt description, because, apart from fighting stigma, views within the mad pride movement vary widely.

There are a few lingering Marxists who see all psychiatry as part of the capitalist system to oppress the working class, but most simply want better care for mental distress and society to be more accepting of differing states of mind.

Mad Pride is often rather clumsily related to 'antipsychiatry' but they are are often at the forefront of campaigns when essential services are threatened.

In London, the campaign against the shutting of the Maudsley Hospital psychiatric emergency clinic was spearheaded by several 'mad pride' organisations - who had a mischievous and witty banner at one demo saying "We must be mad! We want the emergency clinic kept open!".

I do share Phil Dawdy's bemusement at being overlooked, as he's surely one of the most thorough and effective of campaigning writers, but good to see the NYT continue its tradition of high quality mental health journalism.

Link to NYT article 'Mad Pride Fights a Stigma'.

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.

A stroke, known medically as a cerebrovascular accident, is where the blood supply to the brain is interrupted because of blockage or damage to an essential blood vessel.

It can be fatal, and more often leads to significant brain damage, but this can be limited or a life potentially saved if it is detected and treated as soon as possible.

The following are warning signs of stroke. If someone you know experiences any of these, call an ambulance or get them medical care as soon as possible.

Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body

Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding

Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes

Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination

Sudden, severe headache with no known cause

To reduce your chances of having a stroke, you need to look after your cardiovascular health.

Essentially, healthy body, healthy brain - so alcohol, smoking, excess fatty food, little exercise and head injury will increase the chances of blood supply problems in the brain.

Link to CDC report on stroke awareness.
Link to write-up from Yahoo! News.

Fascinating article in the New York Times on lying, deception and why exaggeration seems the same but is psychologically quite different.

UK government returns to pissing in the wind over drug classification. Prime Minister feels that having wet trousers will "send a message".

New Scientist covers a new study on old news that hallucinations and delusions during intensive care can lead to trauma in children.

Fake tits and heroin, brought to you by HotForWords.

Scientific American Mind has an excellent article on unconscious bias and prejudice and how it affects how we behave.

How LSD rocked the world. The Independent discusses the cultural impact of LSD in light of the recent passing of its creator.

AlterNet discusses the implications of having America's chemically modified 21st century soldiers in the heat of battle.

To the bunkers! Intelligent robot exoskeleton created by a company called Cyberdyne Systems. Cue nervous laughter.

Developing Intelligence has an article on modelling the diffusion of information in the brain.

Where do all the neurotics live? New York apparently. An article in the Boston Globe covers 'Big Five' personality maps created for a new book. The full map is here.

Treatment Online discusses new research showing post-birth depression affects male partners as well.

Interesting New York Times article on why intelligence in animals isn't always an evolutionary advantage.

Neuroanthropology has had a series of great essays recently, on everything from brain imaging to addiction.

Rather breathless article from The Times on possible use of ecstasy for treating PTSD that's more anecdote than hard data but has some interesting personal accounts.

Channel N finds an award winning video report on the neuroscience of the teen brain.

The LA Times has a brief but interesting article on the advantages of 'good enough' evolutionary mind adaptations from the author of 'Kludge'.

In autistic boy's hands, paper and scissors express an amazing spectrum. An article on an remarkably talented boy from The Seattle Times.

PsychCentral discusses the benefits of the usually unintentionally planned 'single session psychotherapy'.

This week's Nature reviews a couple of books on children and neurodevelopment.

Science Daily looks at some interesting findings on the influence of epigenetics on suicide. If you're not familiar with epigenetics, it's well worth checking out. It's the future.

Antipsychotic drug use soars among U.S. and U.K. kids despite an almost complete lack of evidence for its effectiveness or long-term safety.

The New York Times have an article on breaking habits and boosting creativity.

3D brain images! Get those red and green glasses out.

Scientific American's blog Mind Matters looks at evidence on how mobile phones can affect brain function.

Musical hallucinations are covered in a cool article from the BPS Research Digest.

With their trademark clarity, CogDaily discuss a study [pdf] by psychologist David Pizarro that found if participants were told about man leaving a restaurant without paying, they remembered the unpaid bill being more expensive if they were told he treated the waiters rudely, than if they were told he was generally a responsible person.

The study is reminiscent of a famous experiment by a young Elizabeth Loftus called Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction.

It was simple but elegantly designed. Groups of people were shown clips of cars crashing and then asked how fast the cars were travelling, but with different verbs in the question.

For example, some people were asked how fast the cars were travelling when they "smashed" into each other, others how fast when they "bumped" into each other, others how fast when they "contacted" with each other, and so on.

Loftus found that simply asking the questions with a different verb altered people's memories of the speed of the crash - like so:

"smashed" : 40.8 miles per hour
"collided" : 39.3 miles per hour
"bumped": 38.1 miles per hour
"hit" : 34 miles per hour
"contacted" : 31.8 miles per hour

Needless to say, these sorts of tricks have been used by lawyers ever since.

Link to CogDaily on moral blame can change the memory of a crime.
pdf of full-text paper.
Link to Wikipedia page Loftus's car crash study.

One of the most striking studies in sex and symmetry research isn't mentioned, however. A 1995 study found that the likelihood of female orgasm during sex was related to the extent of bodily symmetry in the male partner.

The study was led by biologist Randy Thornhill and recruited 86 young couples who completed a number of relationship questionnaires, including one on how often the female partner orgasmed during sex. The males then had their bodies measured and assessed for how much one side differed compared to the other - a measure of bodily asymmetry.

In the final analysis neither the male's age, wealth, social skills, physical attractiveness or relationship style predicted the frequency of female orgasm. Only male bodily symmetry was statistically associated with the chance of the women climaxing during sex.

The researchers thought that maybe women who have more orgasms, or who are just more sexual, simply get the more symmetrical (maybe hotter) guys. But when they looked at frequency of orgasm outside copulation (such as during oral sex or masturbation), the relationship to male symmetry disappeared, suggesting that this wasn't the case.

This study, and the new study published in PLoS One, also suggested that symmetry was associated with more masculine features generally - a bigger body in the orgasm study, and a more typically male face in the PLoS research.

The evolutionary explanation suggested by the authors is that female orgasm during copulation may make pregnancy more likely, so it's an adaptive strategy to increase fertility when making love to males with genes more likely to lead to healthy children.

How orgasm increases with body symmetry is not clearly understood, though. The authors speculate that female perception of a highly symmetrical male might psychologically prime sexual arousal, but the mechanism is left largely to guesswork.

Link to PLoS One study on attractiveness and symmetry (via Anthro).
Link to abstract of orgasm and symmetry study.

The programme tracks the earliest Western ideas on the function and purpose of the brain from the times of the ancient Greeks.

What's most fascinating is how some completely false ideas about the brain survived centuries, despite the fact that it would have been easy to see how they were incorrect, if it weren't for the reluctance to actually do dissection studies on humans.

However, there were rare exceptions in the ancient world. For example, Herophilos and Erasistratus dissected the brains of live criminals!

It's a wonderfully erudite and in-depth discussion, and thoroughly delightful if you're interested in the history of the seat of human thought.

Link to webpage with permanent streamed audio (thanks Ben!).
mp3 of programme (disappears after a week).

"Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not passive, receptive, relaxing times - although such experiences can be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

Like pronouncing the name of psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi whose book Flow this quote is taken from.

UPDATE: Thanks to the 'in-the-zone' Chris Green from AHP for emailing to say it's pronounced "chick-sent-me-high". Great name for an indie band that.

The learner, said the professor, would be in an adjoining room, out of my sight, and strapped to a chair so that his arms could not move — this so that the learner could not jump around and damage the equipment or do harm to himself. I was to be seated in front of a console marked with lettering colored yellow for "Slight Shock" (15 volts) up to purple for "Danger: Severe Shock" (450 volts). The shocks would increase by 15-volt increments with each incorrect answer.

I was very suspicious and asked a number of questions: Isn't it dangerous? How do you know the learner doesn't have a bad heart and can't take the shocks? What if he wants to stop, can he get out of the chair? The professor assured me that the shocks were not painful or harmful since the amperage was lowered as the voltage increased. He let me feel what a 45-volt shock would be like: a slight tickle. I asked the learner if he was willing to do this and why he didn't have any questions. He said, "Let's try it." With some trepidation on my part, we began the experiment.

Link to 'Resisting Authority' (via MeFi).

Furthermore, an article for Slate reveals that a supposedly 'independent' NPR national radio show on the safety of antidepressants had three guests, a host and the production company, all of whom received money from drug companies.

While the financial interests of the DSM committee must be declared, drug company links were not revealed in relation to the radio programme and the production company seem to be being evasive about discussing the situation.

Apparently, the committee for the new DSM (the DSM-V) largely parallels the situation with the previous version, where over half of the members had drug company ties.

Because of the way the US health system woks, US health insurers tend only to pay for treatments when a specific diagnosis has been made, so it is in the drug companies' interest to influence the classification of mental illnesses to make prescribing more likely.

However, there are rumours that the insurance industry and getting rather fed up of having to pay out on potentially drug company influenced diagnoses, and are considering funding research of their own into the validity of diagnoses to counter this trend.

The two news items mentioned above seem to be the work of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest that campaigns for transparency in science education and policy.

At the end of the Slate article, the organisation note that they have a list of leading scientists who do not have links to industry. Journalists are welcome to contact them if they want a source free of potential biases.

Link to Slate article 'Stealth Marketers'.
Link to CSPI news item on DSM-V committee.

Survivor
by Roger McGough

Everyday,
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.

There are many, many types of self-harm, some more culturally acceptable than others. Self harm is often accepted as part of fashion or ritual (piercings, scarring), or can be due to genetic abnormalities (e.g. Lesch-Nyan syndrome), or as a result of learning disabilities or brain injury.

It can be because of delusional or psychotic ideas; OCD type urges, like hair pulling or skin picking, which people often want to resist but can't; or can be an indirect result of other difficulties, such as damaging the body through drugs, alcohol, or an eating disorder.

The type discussed in the article, and what we normally think of in our cultural stereotype, is often an adolescent or young adult who cuts or burns themselves.

The motivations vary, and yes, a minority do give 'wanting attention' as a reason. Sometimes this is a learnt response when they've been in an environment where the only time they have been given any care or attention is when they've damaged themselves.

However, the vast majority try their best to hide what they do and it can be a source of significant shame.

As noted in a recent review on the area, this group tends to use self-harm as a way of managing strong emotions and cutting is associated with a build-up of tension and the feeling of relief at the time of committing the act.

People who self-harm are more likely to be depressed, impulsive and poor at problem-solving and self-harm is often a way they've found, at least temporarily, to control otherwise overwhelming emotions.

Although the risk of suicide is increased in adolescents who self-harm, only a minority will go on to kill themselves. Just over 1% in a recent study with a 26 year follow-up.

There's still not a great deal of research on which are the best treatments with the biggest reviews being inconclusive, but recent findings suggest that self-harming problems can be treated with psychological therapy.

Link to NYT article on self-harm.