Month: November 2006

There’s an interesting snippet on the Wired blog about Hitachi developing ‘home’ brain imaging technology which they hope will allow thought-based computer interaction by 2011.

Hitachi’s system doesn’t invasively co-opt the nervous sytem, instead using a topographic modelling system to measure blood flow in the brain, translating the images into signals that are sent to the controller. So far, this new technique only allows for simple switching decisions, but Hitachi aims to commercialize it within five years for use by paralyzed patients and those undergoing “cognitive rehabilitation.

Link to Wired Blog entry.

From the BPS Research Digest:

The idea that creative geniuses might not be entirely sane isn’t exactly new. But just how much do creative types have in common with people suffering from psychosis? Well, according to Daniel Nettle at the University of Newcastle, serious poets and artists have just as many ‘unusual experiences’ as people diagnosed with schizophrenia. What saves them from the disabling effects of schizophrenia is that they don’t suffer from the lack of emotion and motivation ‚Äì known as ‘introvertive anhedonia’ ‚Äì also associated with the illness.

Nettle used a measure of schizotypy on the participants in his study. Schizotypy is based on the concept that schizophrenia-like experiences can occur in everyone to some degree, and those with schizophrenia simply experience more intense and distressing versions of the milder experiences that other people have.

Link to more from BPS-RD (and link to full-text paper).
Link to Wikipedia page on schizotypy.

Synesthete.org is a website that has a series of online tests where you can test yourself for synaesthesia – the condition where senses are crossed so, for example, you might be able to taste shapes or see colours associated with specific numbers.

The site is run by the Eagleman Lab at the Baylor College of Medicine who study links between perception and action, as well as the curious world of synaesthesia.

If you’re a researcher, you can also use the site to test and collect results on your own participants, and the same tests are also available as downloadable software for the Matlab package.

It’s now known that synaesthesia is partly inherited, so if you find that you or one of your family members seems to have the condition, others in the family may also have similar abilities.

Link to synesthete.org.

As an update to a previous post on John E. Fryer’s dramatic role in getting homosexuality de-listed as a mental illness in 1973, thanks to the reader who emailed to say that the radio programme This American Life has a special on the fascinating story of the people behind the wider campaign.

The programme also charts the personal family story of Alix Spiegel, the producer of the This American Life series, whose grandfather was John Spiegel, president of the American Psychiatric Association when homosexuality was finally removed from the diagnostic manual.

She tells how the issue had a significant impact on psychiatry and society, but also on her family (you’ll have to listen to find out why).

The story recounts one curious event when psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, then head of the diagnostic committee, visited a clandestine gay psychiatrists’ party to meet gay psychiatrists for himself, and was surprised to see many of the psychiatric establishment there.

Although it will cost you 99 cents to download the mp3 of the programme, and audio can be streamed for free from the webpage.

Link to page for ’81 words’ programme with streamed audio (speaker icon).

The British Psychological Society Research Digest blog, run by our own very own Christian Jarrett, seems to have undergone a bit of a change and is now posting in daily bite-sized chunks rather than in two week mega-servings.

A couple of things I picked up from it recently include video from the recently sold-out Royal Society conference ‘Mental Processes in the Human Brain’ and a piece on the seeming impossibility of successfully predicting which soldiers might have mental health problems once they get deployed.

There’s also a wonderful piece on the psychology of why young children think they’re invisible when they close their eyes!

There’s much more where that came from, and now it’s delivered daily.

Link to rejigged BPS Research Digest.

The plot line of this upcoming movie sounds very odd (and it must be said, very original):

“Heartbroken by a break-up with his girlfriend Desiree, twentysomething Zia (Almost Famous’ Patrick Fugit) kills himself – only to wake up in the afterlife: a purgatory populated exclusively by other suicides, where the jukeboxes only play Joy Division and Nirvana, all the colours seem desaturated, and life is more or less the same as back in the real world – ‘just a little worse’. Learning that his beloved ex has also taken her life, he hooks up with a Russian misfit (whose final moments, seen in flashback, provide one of the film’s funniest scenes), and a moody Goth hitchhiker (Shannyn Sossamon), and sets off in a battered station wagon to find her; the resulting road-trip – including a scene-stealing cameo by Tom Waits – forms the basis of this ruefully funny road movie.”

It’s got excellent reviews so far, so I’ll be interested to see how it manages to deal with such a sensitive issue.

Link to official site.
Link to IMDB entry.