Month: August 2006

I like experiments that use lasers, radiation or magnets, because, goddamit, they feel like proper science. And if the study produces a 3D fly-through animation afterwards, so much the better.

The Neurophilosopher’s blog has just published a great article discussing a study that ticks several of these boxes.

Professors Vladimir Parpura and Umar Mohideen of the University of California, Riverside have used atomic force microscopy [Roaarrrr!] to investigate the mechanisms by which neurons release neurotransmitters.

Check out the bottom of the article for the fly-through animation.

Link to Neurophilospher’s article ‘Neurotransmitter release examined using atomic force microscopy’.

When the American Medical Association directed its members to have no part in controversial US military interrogations, the military said they’d just use psychologists instead.

Subsequently, the American Psychological Society Association has endorsed a report [pdf] that sets out how psychologists can participate in the same interrogations that their medical colleagues have declared unacceptable.

Salon wrote an article about this decision, and the fact that the endorsement did not follow the standard route of approval and contained a majority of members with ties to the military.

The APA sent off an angry reply to Salon but has subsequently had to admit that some of the information in their reply was incorrect, as detailed in a further article.

The debate is likely to get heated during the APA’s summer conference where the controversy is due to be debated.

There is already an online petition of psychologists who are lobbying the APA to adopt a stricter policy which has gained 1,500 signature so far.

In response, the APA has posted their own analysis of the key similarities and differences between the medical position and their own on their website [pdf].

Link to Salon article ‘Psychological warfare’.
Link to Salon ‘Psychologists group still rocked by torture debate’.
pdf of APA ethics comparison.
pdf of Report of the APA Presidential Task Force on psychological ethics and national security.

Scientific American has released another one if its special editions, the most recent is on the science of evolution and the rise of intelligence.

From what I can make out, all the articles have been published before in the regular Scientific American, but are collected together in place to make a special theme issue.

The ‘Becoming Human’ issue looks at the cognitive and social skills of apes, the migration patterns of early humans, the curious case of the homo floresiensis (‘hobbit’) fossils and the current theories and controversites over the evolution of mind and intelligence.

I picked up a copy in the newsagent but it looks like you can also download a version from their website for $5.

Link to SciAm special edition ‘Becoming Human’.

American medical journal JAMA has just published two fascinating articles on the impact of war: one on the neuropsychological effects of combat duty on US soldiers, and the other on the impact of chemical weapons on the mental health of Iranian chemical warfare survivors.

The study on US soldiers has been covered by the New York Times and the original research paper is freely available online.

It found that compared to non-deployed soldiers, previously deployed soldiers in Iraq scored worse on measures of sustained attention, verbal learning, and visual-spatial memory and had higher scores on measures of tension and confusion. In contrast, their general reaction time had improved.

The authors of the study suggest that these differences may result from the effects of persistent arousal on the brain which heighten the ability to react quickly at the expense of dampening attention, learning, and memory for things that are not threat-relevant.

The research on the impact of chemical weapons focused on three towns in northern Iran (Oshnaviyeh, Rabat and Sardasht) that had suffered either ‘low-intensity’ conventional warfare, ‘high-intensity’ conventional warfare or a mixture of conventional and chemical warfare in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Researchers interviewed civilian residents of the towns and found frightening levels of lasting PTSD, anxiety symptoms and severe depressive symptoms, particularly in those who had experienced the additional horror of chemical weapon attack.

The chances of mental disorder were 7.2 to 14.6 times higher for chemical weapons survivors than for individuals who had experienced ‘low-intensity’ warfare.

Link to New York Times article (via Frontal Cortex).
Link to full-text JAMA paper on US soldiers.
Link to abstract of paper on chemical warfare.

The UK goverment commissioned psychopharmacologist Professor David Nutt and neuroscientist Professor Colin Blakemore to rank recreational drugs by their dangerousness.

The list has just been published in today’s The Independent and gives some surprising results. Unusually, the list contains both legal and illegal drugs.

The drugs were ranked by ratings which took into account a combination of their physical damage, social harm and addictive properties.

In rank order of harmfulness:

1. Heroin
2. Cocaine
3. Barbituates
4. Street methadone
5. Alcohol
6. Ketamine
7. Benzodiazepines (e.g. Vallium)
8. Amphetamines
9. Tobacco
10. Buprenorphine
11. Cannabis
12. Solvents
13. 4-MTA
14. LSD
15. Methylphenidate (Ritalin)
16. Anabolic steroids
17. GHB
18. Ecstasy
19. Alkyl Nitrites (poppers)
20. Khat

I would like to point out to my ex-girlfriend that Red Bull is not listed among them.

There’s more information on each drug here and an article about the consultation here.

Apparently, the government were a little reticient to publish the report, considering the legal clasification is completely out of whack with this analysis.