Year: 2007

2007-05-11 Spike activity

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

One I missed a while ago: Developing Intelligence looks at a paper that actually attempts to define consciousness (rather than relying on the usual “we all know what we’re talking about, don’t we?” definition).

The Toronto Globe and Mail reports on research suggesting that doing good deeds improves our health.

Marriages are slightly more likely to end in divorce when the couple have daughters, according to research covered by Slate.

The Globe and Mail investigates the effect of the higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease in people with Down Syndrome.

Amateur boxers have higher levels of neurofilament light in their cerebrospinal fluid after fights, suggesting they suffer some level of brain damage despite the protective head gear.

Study shows greater amygdala activity in response to fearful faces in people who were closer to the 9/11 disaster.

Another study on the psychological benefits of meditation: it may fine-tune control over attention.

The LA Times reports that some US states still happy to execute people with intellectual disabilities.

InQuisitive Mind, a new online social psychology magazine has been launched.

The art of non-verbal attraction

PsyBlog has just published a couple of short articles on non-verbal communication, one examining a common myth, and the other looking at how it indicates attraction between people who’ve just met.

The first article is on the research that debunks the myth that ‘93% of communication is nonverbal’.

Just the precision of those sorts of statements make me suspicious. To quote the wise words of comedian Vic Reeves “88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot”.

The second article examines a study that looked at the dynamic patterns of non-verbal communication when men and women met for the first time, and looked at how these patterns were related to attraction.

Contrary to many previous findings, attraction was predicted by patterns of synchronisation and not simple mirroring of body language. What emerged were rhythmic structures of movement synchrony – patterns of bodily movement people adopted. In common with previous research, Grammer et al. (1998) found it was women who tended to start and control these patterns. Indeed, the more interested a woman was in a man, the more complicated these patterns became.

There’s more on this impressive study in the PsyBlog article.

Link to article on myth of non-verbal communication.
Link to article ‘The Nonverbal Symphony of Attraction’.

Treating children, pushing drugs

The New York Times has another investigative article on the pharmaceutical industry, this time looking at how promotions aimed at psychiatrists encourage the prescription of antipsychotic drugs to children.

As far as I know, none of the newer ‘atypical’ antipsychotics are licensed for children (actually, I’d be interested to hear otherwise).

This doesn’t mean doctors can’t prescribe them, as they have the freedom to prescribe ‘off-label’ whatever they feel would help the individual, but it does mean that the drug companies can’t advertise them for this purpose.

‘Off-label’ drug promotion is illegal, but it is an open secret that it occurs widely.

Notably, the number of children prescribed atypical antipsychotics has soared in recent years, and in the only US state that keeps records of drug company promotional spending, promotional money seems to be a key factor:

From 2000 to 2005, drug maker payments to Minnesota psychiatrists rose more than sixfold, to $1.6 million. During those same years, prescriptions of antipsychotics for children in Minnesota’s Medicaid program rose more than ninefold.

Those who took the most money from makers of atypicals tended to prescribe the drugs to children the most often, the data suggest. On average, Minnesota psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from atypical makers from 2000 to 2005 appear to have written three times as many atypical prescriptions for children as psychiatrists who received less or no money.

It seems that these drugs are increasingly being prescribed for a whole range of different disorders in children, despite limited evidence for their effectiveness in some conditions and a shocking lack of studies on the long-term effects.

The fact is, psychiatric drugs have an important and useful part to play in treating mental illness, sometimes even in children.

Unfortunately, this sort of underhand marketing and out-of-control prescribing puts some parents off when their children would genuinely benefit, and unnecessarily gives powerful and potentially dangerous drugs to some children when they could be helped in other ways.

The answer? Stick to the science when prescribing – just say no to drug promotion.

Link to article ‘Psychiatrists, Children and Drug Industry‚Äôs Role’

It’s not a quirk, it’s a feature

Prof Richard Wiseman tackles some of the quirkier findings in the psychological literature in a New Scientist article which has been made freely available online.

The article accompanies the launch of Wiseman’s new book, Quirkology, which apparently looks at these sorts of curious research studies in more detail.

He’s also created a very impressive inattentional blindness demonstration video on YouTube. Simple but very cool.

Presumably the gorilla in the background is a nod to Daniel Simons and Chris Chabris’ classic study of the effect, published, rather brilliantly, under the name ‘Gorillas in Our Midst’ [pdf].

It’s the only psychology experiment I’ve ever come across that used a man in a gorilla suit. Unsurprisingly, it won an IgNobel prize, but is actually a valuable contribution to our understanding of the mind.

Link to NewSci article ‘A quirky look at our quirky species’.
Link to cool inattentional blindness demo.

Five minutes with Petra Boynton

Dr Petra Boynton is a social psychologist, researcher, author, broadcaster, blogger, and award winning sex educator.

She’s an advocate for evidence-based sex education, amid the largely sensationalist media coverage of the subject, and a tireless campaigner for sexual equality, having worked to improve media sex coverage both in the UK and internationally.

As well as conducting extensive research into sexual attitudes and behaviours, she also promotes the public understanding of social and health science research through her teaching, writing and broadcasting.

Petra has kindly agreed to talk to Mind Hacks about her work, motivations and current interests in the world of sex research.

Continue reading “Five minutes with Petra Boynton”

Encephalon 22 hits the virtual shelves

Issue 22 of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just arrived, this time hosted by anthropologist John Hawks.

A couple of my favourites include a compelling article from Madam Fathom on the evolution of the nervous system and another by Pure Pedantry on the complex considerations needed to answer the question ‘Do autistic people have a deficit in reading faces?’.

There are many more great articles in the rest of issue 22.

Link to Encephalon 22.

A brief history of neuroscience

There’s been a wonderful series of posts at neuroscience blog Neuroevolution which have charted the history of cognitive neuroscience from ancient Greece to the age of the brain scanner.

There’s been 26 posts in all, each of them a beautifully illustrated snapshot of a groundbreaking discovery.

The series tells the story of how we’ve come to understand more and more about the workings of the mind and brain, with each discovery building on the lessons of history.

Highly recommended.

Link to “History‚Äôs Top Insights Into Brain Computation”.

Understanding wisdom

You would think they’d be lots of good psychological theories of wisdom, as it’s something we talk about all the time in everyday life, but there just isn’t.

Psychologists have traditionally avoided the subject, although, thankfully, this is now starting to change and the New York Times has an in-depth article looking at some of the recent findings.

The article also looks at why the subject has been ignored, partly, of course, because it’s quite hard to define.

Nevertheless, one person who has pioneered the study of wisdom is neuropsychologist Dr Vivian Clayton who began studying this most valued of human traits in the 1970s.

Between 1976, when she finished her dissertation, and 1982, Clayton published several groundbreaking papers that are now generally acknowledged as the first to suggest that researchers could study wisdom empirically. She identified three general aspects of human activity that were central to wisdom — the acquisition of knowledge (cognitive) and the analysis of that information (reflective) filtered through the emotions (affective). Then she assembled a battery of existing psychological tests to measure it.

Clayton laid several important markers on the field at its inception. She realized that “neither were the old always wise, nor the young lacking in wisdom.” She also argued that while intelligence represented a nonsocial and impersonal domain of knowledge that might diminish in value over the course of a lifetime, wisdom represented a social, interpersonal form of knowledge about human nature that resisted erosion and might increase with age. Clayton’s early work was “a big deal,” Sternberg says. “It was a breakthrough to say wisdom is something you could study.” Jacqui Smith, who has conducted wisdom research since the 1980s, says it “was seminal work that really triggered subsequent studies.”

The article discusses some of Clayton’s early groundbreaking work in the field and goes on to look at what modern psychology and neuroscience is telling us about how we understand wisdom and act wisely, particularly in terms of emotion and maturity through the later years.

Link to NYT article ‘The Older-and-Wiser Hypothesis’.

Submarine psychology

I just found this interesting snippet in a BBC News story about the development and imminent launch of the new Astute class Navy submarine:

It may be one of the most sophisticated submarines ever built, but the project has been beset with problems. The three submarines are £900m ($1.8bn) over budget and four years behind the original schedule.

But a new boss at Barrow, Murray Easton, introduced big changes when he arrived a few years back.

A team of psychologists was brought into the yard to improve management effectiveness, and to create better ways of communication. Even now a psychologist is present at every board meeting.

I could write everything I know about organisational psychology (psychology applied to business, team work and organisations) on the back of napkin but I’m curious as to what role a psychologist would play at board meetings.

However, while trying to find out (and failing) I found two short articles (one and two) on ‘submarine psychologists’ who work for the Navy researching life on board underwater vessels.

Link to BBC News story ‘Alien submarine breaks technical barriers’.
Link 1 and link 2 to articles on ‘submarine psychologists’.

Criminal violence and the brain

Open-access science journal PLoS Biology has another fantastic article that investigates what neuroscience tells about about the causes of antisocial behaviour and how damage to the brain can, in rare cases, lead someone to become violent.

The article looks at research on the neuropsychology of violent criminals, as well as ‘forensic neurology’ – the science of understanding how brain injury can remove the normal inhibitions for aggression.

Some striking case studies are covered as well as possible ways of understanding and managing criminality.

Criminality and violence is a difficult area, as personal motivations and influences are complex. The paper notes that:

To be clear, there is at present no reason to believe that all criminal behaviours, or indeed even all violent criminal behaviours, are the result of organically dysfunctional brains. However, there is ample evidence to suggest that some kinds of dysfunction are likely to increase the probability of some kinds of behaviours that society labels as criminal.

The discussion also covers how the legal system might make sense of these new brain discoveries, in light of neuroscience evidence being increasingly used in court cases as a way of determining if someone is telling the truth, and as a way of arguing for reduced responsibility for a criminal act.

Link to PLoS Biology article ‘Law, Responsibility, and the Brain’.

Leyla, darling won’t you ease my worried mind

While looking for neuroscience videos we’ve found some pretty weird stuff on YouTube before, but despite their quirkiness, at least they made sense. This one’s just completely baffling.

It seems to be a sort of love letter, presented as a brain diagram, with a disco backing track. Apparently it’s dedicated to someone called Leyla, and it’s from a teddy bear.

I’m assuming it makes sense to someone out there.

Link to YouTube video ‘Neuroscience with Patchy’.

Don’t stand so close to me

NPR has a short video report on how social conventions, like keeping personal space, transfer into virtual worlds like Second Life.

The report focuses on the work of psychologist Nick Yee who we interviewed last November about his research into the social psychology of virtual worlds.

Yee and the NPR reporter go and field test some of his findings in Second Life, demonstrating that we use the same rules of social psychology taken from physical space to moderate online interactions.

As an aside, Yee’s has recently written a fascinating article on the psychology of how players develop superstitions in virtual worlds.

Link to NPR report with video and podcast.

Withdrawn behaviour

Author Bruce Stutz writes about his experience of depression, stopping antidepressants and the science of SSRI withdrawal in an article for the New York Times.

Withdrawal from SSRI medication, a group which includes drugs such as Prozac, Seroxat and Zoloft, is known to cause considerable discomfort in about 1 in 5 people.

It’s been spun as a ‘discontinuation syndrome‘ by the drug companies, as ‘withdrawal symptoms’ sounds a bit too much like what drug addicts have.

Although SSRIs are not addictive in the sense that they don’t cause a strong desire to take more, the brain does go through a significant period of readjustment when the drug leaves the body.

The NYT article examines Stutz’s experience of treatment for depression, and how he coped with the withdrawal symptoms that he was unlucky enough to experience.

The piece also takes a look at the neuroscience of serotonin and mood, with a more critical analysis than is often found in some mainstream science articles.

Link to NYT article ‘Self-Nonmedication’.

How much do parents shape our personality?

Prospect magazine has an engaging article by psychologist Judith Rich Harris who argues, contrary to popular belief, that parents are not the most important influence in a child’s development.

Harris wrote a book called The Nurture Assumption, and more recently No Two Alike, that both took a similar line, suggesting that the influence of the home environment is relatively small in shaping a child’s personality.

She bases this on research suggesting that children can and do adapt their behaviour according to whether they’re with their parents, with others, in the home, or otherwise.

Harris suggests that child behaviours that remain the same across various environments are more likely to be influenced by genetics.

In other words, she argues that the idea we relate to others in specific ways because we’ve learnt certain core relationship styles with our parents is mistaken, and in fact, we develop context and person specific relationship patterns that can be seen even from an early age.

She gives the example of the classic distinction made between the personalities of first and last born children:

Firstborns and laterborns do behave in characteristic ways when they’re in the presence of their parents and siblings, but they drop these behaviours when they’re away from their family. Like James in [TV programme] Child of our Time, they adapt their behaviour to their setting. The firstborn who dominates his younger siblings at home doesn’t automatically assume that he will also be able to dominate his classmates. After all, even though he’s the largest child at home, he may turn out to be the smallest one in the playground. Research confirms that firstborn children are, on average, no more dominant in the playground than are laterborns. Nor do laterborns go through life permanently cowed. A laterborn who is pushed around by his older brother at home is fully capable of stepping into a dominant role with his peers.

Link to Prospect article ‘Why home doesn’t matter’.
Link to Wikipedia page on Judith Rich Harris with many links.

Bot-on-bot action

Alice and Jabberwacky are the world’s leading AI chatbots and they’ve finally met.

The rendezvous is described in an article from Discover magazine, who got in touch to say that it’s a teaser for their already-on-the-shelves special issue ‘The Brain: A User’s Guide’ which seemed to be curiously absent from their website.

The limits of the bots’ abilities are clear from some of the transcripts, but there are some truly sublime moments in their as well:

A: Do you dream?
J: Yes, I dream.
A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?
J: I remember them vividly.
A: What do you remember about it?
J: I think I shouldn’t flirt with a robot.

If you think robots shouldn’t be flirting with each other, you may want to have a look at a previous Mind Hacks article on the confusion that occurs when humans try their luck with AI systems – either real or imagined.

Link to Discover article ‘I Chat, Therefore I Am…’
Link to Mind Hacks article ‘The Robots are Coming’.