Month: March 2007

Taking oxytocin helps empathy

Brain Ethics has found an intriguing study which suggests that giving people the hormone oxytocin makes them better at reading emotion from other people’s eyes.

Oxytocin is a hormone that also works as a neurotransmitter, and is known to be involved in bonding experiences.

It is released during sex, and also when mothers breast feed their infants.

A 2005 study published in Nature [pdf] suggested that oxytocin increased trustfulness in people playing a co-operative investment game.

This study, published in Biological Psychiatry, is the first to suggest that the a burst of the hormone actually makes us better at perceiving others’ emotions.

The full text of the study is available online as a pdf file if you want to get more details about the research.

Link to Brain Ethics article ‘Oxytocin is the window to the soul’.
pdf of full-text of scientific study.

Encephalon 18 at Pharyngula

The 18th edition of psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has been posted online, this time ably hosted on Pharyngula.

PZ has grouped the posts into four categories: understanding brains, fixing brains, improving brains and evolving brains.

A couple of my favourites include a study on how often neurosurgeons accidentally drop bits of the skull when doing brain surgery, and a fascinating article on the brains of gamblers.

Link to Encephalon 18.

Help discover the link between music and personality

Jeremy Dean, owner of PsyBlog and postgraduate psychology researcher, is asking for participants to take part in an online study looking at the links between music preferences and personality.

The psychology and neuroscience of music has recently become an exciting area, as indicated by the popularity of books and articles on the area.

For example, a few months ago The New York Times ran a feature article that looked at the work of Prof Daniel Levitin and his recent highly-regarded book (as we reported previously on Mind Hacks).

Research into the links between music and personality is also becoming more established, as it becomes clear that our musical preferences are influenced by and reflect our personal characteristics.

One of my favourite studies looked at the links between personality and bass sounds and found that “Psychoticism, gender, and Extraversion are all positively related to preference for enhanced bass”!

Jeremy’s study aims to further this research, and is asking for volunteers to complete some online questionnaires.

Crucially, he’s only recruiting people from United Kingdom or Ireland who are over 18 years of age, but if you fit the bill and are interested in taking part, follow the link below.

UPDATE: Jeremy has emailed to say the study is now over and thanks very much to everyone who volunteered!

Link to PsyBlog page ‘Take Part in Research on Music and Personality’.

Treating brain injury with a sleeping pill

New Scientist has a short report on recent research again suggesting that sleeping pill zolpidem (trade name Ambien) might help people with impaired consciousness after brain injury.

This comes after a 2006 study reported that zolpidem temporarily roused three brain-injured patients who were in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) a coma-like state of impaired consciousness.

Consequently, the media was full of new stories that described patients ‘waking’ from ‘coma’ after being given the drug.

The results were treated with some scepticism by the medical community, who are always suspicious of anything sounding like a ‘miracle cure’.

The plot thickened when zolpidem became the focus of a legal case last year when a UK court ruled that it could be given to a patient who had spent three years in a persistent vegetative state, against the wishes of the family.

In the event, the treatment didn’t work, and the patient was eventually allowed to die as the family wanted.

Interestingly, a new paper published in the medical journal Annals of Neurology reports similar results to the initial study, although this time in a patient with akinetic mutism rather than PVS.

Akinetic mutism is a state of absent motivation where a patient does not initiate any action or speech, although may sometimes be capable of it when prompted.

It usually occurs after severe frontal lobe damage or damage to subcortical areas that connect directly to the frontal lobes.

In this case, the patient became able to spontaneously move and walk after being given zolpidem.

Interestingly, the researchers also use a PET brain scan to see how blood flow to the brain changed after zolpidem when compared to placebo.

It turned out that the sleeping pill increased blood flow to the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortices – both areas of the frontal lobe.

It seems the sleeping pill may have paradoxical and poorly understood effects on the damaged brain, but will need to be studied in much more detail to see if it is genuinely an effective treatment for people with certain types of brain injury.

Link to NewSci article ‘Sedative ‘reactivates’ damaged brains’.
Link to abstract of scientific study.

Physical and psychological torture has similar impact


The New York Times reports on a study that interviewed people who had been either physically or psychologically tortured during the conflict in Yugoslavia and found both groups were equally likely to develop post traumatic stress disorder, otherwise known as PTSD.

The research was led by Dr Metin Basoglu and has just been published in the medical journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

This is powerful research, not least because the United Nations Convention Against Torture uses the potential for ‘prolonged mental harm’ as a way of distinguishing between physical torture and other coercive interrogation techniques that may be frowned upon but are not considered against international law.

The conclusions appear to contradict a Justice Department memorandum of Dec. 30, 2004. Citing the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the memorandum argued that a broad range of interrogation techniques, among them forced standing, hooding, subjection to loud noises and deprivation of sleep, food and drink, might be inhumane but did not constitute torture unless they resulted in “prolonged mental harm.”

“Until now, both sides of the debate have expressed opinions based on personal impressions,” said Dr. Metin Basoglu, the lead author of the study. “But these data clearly suggest that you cannot make a distinction between physical forms of torture and something else called ‘cruel and degrading treatment.’ “

This is likely to inflame the ongoing debate about the American Psychological Association allowing its members to take part in US Military interrogations while US medical associations have banned physicians and psychiatrists from participating in the same.

Link to NYT article ‘The Line Between Torture and Cruelty’.
Link to abstract of study on PubMed.

Interactive websites make false memories more likely

Collision Detection has some interesting coverage of recently published research suggesting websites with interactive graphics are more likely to produce false memories about the pictured products than sites with static images.

The article also makes an interesting point about the focus of consumer psychology in this area:

One interesting thing [researcher] Schlosser points out is that market-research folks almost never study the false-memory effects of advertising. Sure, they test to see whether consumers who’ve looked at promotional material can recall true information about a product. But they rarely check to see whether the consumers also remember false information.

There’s more in the Collision Detection article and a link to the full-text of the paper.

Link to Collision Detection article (thanks Katerina!).

Commercial brain computer interface on sale

Neurophilosopher reports on a commercial brain-computer interface system called g.MOBIlab that has just become available.

The system comes in various versions that can be hooked up to PCs and PDAs using various interfaces including wireless and across the internet.

To quote from the company’s website:

g.MOBIlab – g.tec’s portable biosignal acquisition and analysis system – is the perfect tool for recording multimodal biosignal data on a standard Pocket PC, PC or notebook. This allows to investigate brain-, heart-, muscle-activity, eye movement, respiration, galvanic skin response, pulse and other body signals.

Reading electrical signals from the brain and other parts of the body is relatively simple.

The thing that will determine whether the system is of reasonable standard will be the post recording electronics such as the signal amplifiers, filters and digital signal processing software, to make sense of noisy data that is generated when the brain is at work.

Neurophilosopher has also linked to a video where someone is navigating through a virtual world using the system.

Link to Neurophilosopher on the g.MOBIlab system.

How neurolaw is shaping the courtroom

The New York Times has an in-depth article on the increasing use of neuroscience evidence in court cases and how this is shaping concepts of justice and responsibility.

The article examines the science and technology which is being used as the basis of this evidence and questions whether courts are competent to use the knowledge.

It also looks at whether the notion of free will is being eroded by excusing criminal acts on the basis of disturbed brain function.

To suggest that criminals could be excused because their brains made them do it seems to imply that anyone whose brain isn’t functioning properly could be absolved of responsibility. But should judges and juries really be in the business of defining the normal or properly working brain? And since all behavior is caused by our brains, wouldn’t this mean all behavior could potentially be excused?
…
Proponents of neurolaw say that neuroscientific evidence will have a large impact not only on questions of guilt and punishment but also on the detection of lies and hidden bias, and on the prediction of future criminal behavior. At the same time, skeptics fear that the use of brain-scanning technology as a kind of super mind-reading device will threaten our privacy and mental freedom, leading some to call for the legal system to respond with a new concept of “cognitive liberty.”

If you want to keep track of developments in this area, you could do a lot worse than reading a great new blog called The Situationist from the Harvard Law School’s Project on Law and Mind Sciences.

It’s got some fantastic contributors and, so far, has published some great articles.

Finally, if you want a good academic review of the area and have access to the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, the feature article from the March edition is on ‘Cognitive Science and the Law’.

Unfortunately, neither of the authors have put the full version online, but the abstract is listed on PubMed.

Link to NYT article ‘The Brain on the Stand’.
Link to blog The Situationist.
Link to abstract of TiCS article ‘Cognitive Science and the Law’.

Eric Kandel’s reasons to be cheerful

Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel has been asked to describe four advances in neuroscience from the past year that inspire optimism in an article for Edge.

His choices demonstrate an eclectic interest in modern mind and brain science.

The first is the discovery that MicroRNA is involved in synaptic connections and the second is advances in the understanding of how the hippocampus might store spatial information.

Kandel’s third choice is the discovery that single genes might lead to quite profound changes in social behaviour.

Perhaps his fourth choice is the most interesting, however. He cites neuroscientific evidence for the effectiveness of psychotherapy in treating mental illness, particularly for a type of therapy called cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT.

CBT is the most comprehensively researched of all the psychotherapies.

It has been shown to be as effective, if not more effective, than medication for anxiety and depressive disorders in randomised controlled trials, although best results are usually reported when both medication and CBT are combined, particularly in moderate or severe cases.

Recently, researchers have started to use brain scanning techniques to see how the function of the brain changes after CBT treatment.

Link to Kandel’s article ‘A Neuroscience Sampling’ from Edge.

Mind and brain podcast guide

The BPS Research Digest has just published a comprehensive list of psychology and neuroscience podcasts available for your listening pleasure.

It’s been put together by the BPSRD editor (our very own Dr Christian Jarrett) and is a fantastic guide to the best in mind and brain audio.

It includes podcasts from universities, scientific journals and professionals in the field and includes everything from serious analysis to lighthearted discussion.

Link to BPSRD article ‘Psychology podcasts: a clickable list’.

Five minutes with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin is a lawyer-turned-author who’s now pursuing happiness, by test-driving every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study she can find on the subject, and writing a book about her experiences as she goes.

Sources of inspiration stretch from Aristotle to Oprah Winfrey, and her quest is being charted on her blog, the Happiness Project.

Her online journal has recently explored how happiness relates to physical attractiveness, whether children makes us content, and what Voltaire has to say about living a good life – among a bewildering array of other investigations.

As well as experimenting with her life and recording the results, Gretchen has also been kind enough to talk to Mind Hacks about her motivations and discoveries.

Continue reading “Five minutes with Gretchen Rubin”

A critical view of transhumanism

ABC Radio’s All in the Mind just had an edition on transhumanism, where evolutionary psychologist Prof Leda Cosmides gives a critical commentary on the movement which seeks to to extend human abilities and lifespan through technology.

The programme is particularly interesting, as transhumanism is still on the scientific fringe, and it’s rare to see one of the scientific mainstream make a serious attempt at a critique.

Cosmides takes the movement to task for what she sees as an oversimplification of psychology to fit with technological developments, and a naivety in assuming that human instincts can be engineered without wider consequences.

If you want more of a background to transhumanism, George Dvorsky recently published a transhumanist dictionary, as we reported recently on Mind Hacks.

Link to All in the Mind on ‘Prospects for a Transhuman mind?’.

Neuroscience, know thyself

The New English Review has a thought-provoking article by Theodore Dalrymple (the pen name of psychiatrist Anthony Daniels) who argues that modern neuroscience will not be able to provide a perfect self-understanding, and even if it could, disaster would follow.

Dalrymple is an interesting character, as he’s one of the few conservative writers in the area of mind, brain and mental health who has both experience of working in psychiatry across the world, and a vast academic knowledge.

His writing is distinctly against the mainstream of much modern medicine, particularly in the field of addiction, which, he argues, is often explained by social factors that minimise personal responsibility and disempower the patient.

In this article, Dalrymple argues against the enthusiasm for neuroscience as the ‘great new hope’ which has captured popular imagination in recent decades.

Those who say that we are on the verge of a huge increase in self-understanding are claiming that enlightenment will suddenly be reached under the scientific bo tree. The enlightenment will have to be sudden rather than gradual because, if it were gradual, we should already be able to point to an increase in human contentment and self-control brought about by our already increased knowledge. But even the most advanced societies are just as full of angst, or poor impulse control, of existential bewilderment, of adherence to clearly irrational doctrines, as ever they were. There is no sign that, Prozac and neurosurgery notwithstanding, any of this is about to change fundamentally.

Link to article ‘Do the Impossible: Know Thyself’ (thanks Karel!)

AI system cited for unlicensed practice of law

The robot rebellion got a step closer this week as a US court cited a web-based artificial intelligence system for practising law without a license.

The website provided legal advice based on an expert system – a database of knowledge that is often structured by the links and associations made by human experts in the field.

Someone obviously took exception to a programme providing legal advice and the issue ended up in litigation.

The Wired Blog reported on the curious case and linked to the pdf of the court ruling that stated:

[The] system touted its offering of legal advice and projected an aura of expertise concerning bankruptcy petitions; and, in that context, it offered personalized — albeit automated — counsel. … We find that because this was the conduct of a non-attorney, it constituted the unauthorized practice of law.

I’ll be looking out for more signs that Skynet is becoming self-aware and will be heading for the bunkers at the earliest sign of impending nuclear war.

Link to Wired Blog on ‘AI Cited for Unlicensed Practice of Law’.

2007-03-09 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

Prof Philip Zimbardo, of ‘Stanford Prison Experiment‘ fame, slams the US Government and the Abu Ghraib scandal in his outgoing speech.

Developing Intelligence examines the possible role of dopamine in the binding problem and consciousness.

How I tamed the voices in my head – a fantastic story in the Independent about hearing and dealing with voices.

An amazing demo of what we remember visually, and why is put online by Cognitive Daily.

The BBC reports that the use of hyperactivity drugs for children soars worldwide.

Neurontic ponders why we have a nervous system in our stomachs.

Is Your Memory Erased While You Sleep? asks Scientific American.

OmniBrain discovers that a court ruled that a bankruptcy website passed the Turing test.

Compulsive hoarding in the digital age. A curious form of psychopathology sees its expression in collections of digital media.

Neurophilosopher looks at a brainwave-reading video game controller!

An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea.

Nature reports on research suggesting biblical accounts of violence can spark actual aggression, particularly in believers.

Sex doesn’t sell, particularly for women, according to research discussed in the Economist.

Near death experiences linked to sleep anomalies

Neurologist Prof Kevin Nelson and colleagues have just published a study in the journal Neurology showing that out-of-body experiences and near death experiences are more likely to occur in people who have unusual experiences when falling asleep or waking.

Science Daily reports that:

They found that an out-of-body experience is statistically as likely to occur during a near death experience as it is to occur during the transition between wakefulness and sleep. Nelson suggests that phenomena in the brain’s arousal system, which regulates different states of consciousness including REM sleep and wakefulness, may be the cause for these types of out-of-body displays.

Hallucinations and free-form ideas are very common in the period of entering sleep (called the hypnagogic state) and the period of waking (called the hypnopompic state).

Artists and visionaries throughout history have found inspiration from these unusual sleep-related experiences, as recounted in a recent Fortean Times article.

Link to coverage from Science Daily.
Link to coverage from the Daily Telegraph.
Link to PubMed entry for scientific paper.