Year: 2007

The Washington Post has a fascinating article on the work of neuropathologist Dr Bennet Omalu (pictured right) who is researching whether American footballers are more likely to get dementia by examining their brains – after they’ve died.

The technique itself isn’t particularly controversial as the post-mortem study of brain tissue is one of the mainstays of neuroscience research.

It is difficult work, however, as it often involves asking the relatives at the point of death whether the body of their loved one can be examined for medical research, usually involving removing parts and examining them under a microscope.

Omalu thinks that the blows to the head suffered during Americfan football may increase the risk for early onset dementia and claims to have found tell-tale signs in the brain.

The idea that persistent low level head injury might raised the risk of dementia is not particularly new.

There are even some research findings suggesting that late life brain function is worse in ex-footballers and the risk for dementia may indeed by higher.

The Washington Post article is an interesting insight into an essential but difficult type of neurological research.

Link to Washington Post article ‘Brain Chaser Tackles Effects of NFL Hits’.

The May edition of top brain research journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience is available online for anyone who completes the free site registration.

The issue contains a round-up of recent neuroscience news, as well as some in-depth reviews of depth perception, the genetics of nervous system development, olfactory memory in fruit flies, neural cycle cyle regulation and a fantastic article on the epigenetics of psychiatric disorder.

Epigenetics describes the process of how genes actually ‘do their work’.

DNA has two main functions. The ‘template function’ of DNA is to pass on genes through generations and allow different traits to be inherited.

The ‘transcriptional function’ of DNA is to allow these genes to be expressed at appropriate times and places (and not expressed at others) so the work can be done.

Almost every cell in the body has a copy of the DNA and, therefore, all the genes, but there are many types of cells with many diverse functions.

This is because not all genes are transcribed and expressed at once. Genes are expressed selectively.

This allows the body to have a diverse range of differently structured cells, and it allows the same cells to do different work at different times.

In a famous 1998 paper, Kandel noted that the transcriptional function of genes, that determines which proteins are expressed at any particular time, can be regulated by social, environmental and experiential (learning-based) factors.

This is why epigenetics is so important, because it is one way of understanding how genes and the environment interact.

We know that it is possible to inherit a variable risk for mental illness, and that life experiences are likely to combine with this risk to trigger mental illness in some people.

The Nature Reviews Neuroscience article looks at the latest research on how this occurs and how it might be different in various types of psychiatric disorder.

Link to May’s Nature Reviews Neuroscience (via Pimm).
Link to PubMed entry (with full text links) for Kandel’s classic 1998 paper.

Slate has just released a special series on the brain – taking a critical look at some of the most recent developments in the field and asking researchers how neuroscience has changed their life.

There’s a wonderful article by developmental psychologist Alison Gopnick on getting past the hype surrounding mirror neurons – which are being used to explain almost every form of human behaviour despite the lack of evidence.

A host of brain researchers note how neuroscience has impacted on their day-to-day life and changes the way they see the world.

Most strikingly, Christof Koch notes that his research into consciousness convinced him to become vegetarian as “mammals can consciously experience the pains and pleasure of life”.

There’s also a few articles on cognitive enhancement: notably, one on the history and myths behind popular ‘brain supplement’ ginkgo biloba and another on neuroplasticity and the new craze for ‘brain training‘ programmes.

Neurotheology, the neuroscience of religious and spiritual experience, also gets a look in with an article examined the development of this new discipline and another on whether technology could induce spritual experiences via the brain.

I have to say, the article on the ‘five biggest neuroscience developments of the year’ is a bit ropey.

For example:

2. The neural alteration of morality. Six people with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were presented with moral dilemmas (e.g., would you smother a baby to prevent bad guys from finding and killing people in hiding) and were found to be two to three times more willing to kill than people without brain damage. The advertised conclusion is that such willingness to kill is objectively immoral. The feared conclusion is that if brain design determines what’s moral, you can change morality by changing the brain – and once technology manipulates ethics, ethics can no longer judge technology.

In fact, we’ve known for a very long time that brain damage can make people less moral, as the case of Phineas Gage suggested, and modern studies of ‘acquired sociopathy’ have reported.

It’s also interesting that the study in question found patients with ventromedial brain damage were actually more moral in utilitarian terms.

They were less swayed by the normal emotional response to making decisions that required trading off considerations of group welfare against emotionally negative behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives).

Whether this is less moral, depends on your moral framework.

Generally, though, the series is well worth checking out and has some fascinating insights and commentary.

Link to Slate special series on the brain.

A psychology and a neuroscience book have made two of out of the six entries shortlisted for the UK’s premier science book prize.

The award is the The Royal Society Prize for Science Books, previously called the Aventis Prize.

Daniel Gilbert’s entertaining book on the sometimes paradoxical world of the psychology of contentment, Stumbling on Happiness (ISBN 9780007183135), is one of the six.

In Search of Memory (ISBN 0393058638), Eric Kandel’s memoirs and discussion of the neuroscience of memory, also makes the list.

The full shortlist is at the link below.

Link to BBC News article on the 2007 shortlist.

No sooner than we post something about psychedelic drug research becoming mainstream than a newspaper reports on a psychologist being barred entry to the US because he wrote an article on a 1967 LSD experience.

Dr Andrew Feldmar (pictured right) is a Vancouver based psychologist and psychotherapist who was attempting a regular cross-border visit, this time to meet a friend in Seattle.

When crossing the border, he was stopped for a random check and security typed his name into Google – bring up a link to a 2001 paper on the hot topic of psychedelics and psychotherapy.

The official said that under the Homeland Security Act, Feldmar was being denied entry due to “narcotics” use. LSD is not a narcotic substance, Feldmar tried to explain, but an entheogen. The guard wasn’t interested in technicalities. He asked for a statement from Feldmar admitting to having used LSD and he fingerprinted Feldmar for an FBI file.

Then Feldmar disbelievingly listened as he learned that he was being barred from ever entering the United States again. The officer told him he could apply to the Department of Homeland Security for a waiver, if he wished, and gave him a package, with the forms.

Feldmar trained under R.D. Laing, the radical psychiatrist and psychotherapist who himself took LSD in an attempt to better understand psychosis and altered states.

As a curious aside, the article notes that Feldmar first tried LSD after being offered a 900 microgram dose (that’s one big hit of acid), not by Laing, as you might have guessed, but by cognitive neuroscientist par excellence Zenon Pylyshyn, who was his collaborator at the time.

Pylyshyn had reportedly tried LSD out of curiosity but had since become interested in other things and had some of the compound left over.

Link to article ‘LSD as Therapy? Write about It, Get Barred from US’ (via BB).
Link to Feldman’s article ‘Entheogens and Psychotherapy’.

The 21st edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just been published on neurobiology of aging blog Ouroboros.

A couple of my favourites include Dr Deborah Serani discussing a to-be-released psychotherapy game for the Nintendo DS, and Neurophilosopher with a wonderfully in-depth article on Dostoyevsky’s epilepsy.

There are many more fantastic articles in this edition, and it looks beautiful. Head on over.

Link to Encephalon 21.

A new edition of Scientific American Mind has arrived with two freely available articles online: one on the distortion of body image in eating disorders and the other on whether brain scans could be a communication channel for people in coma-like vegetative states.

Perhaps the key feature of eating disorders such as anorexia is not just that the person wants to be thin, but that they have a disturbance in their body image so they think they are fat, even when dangerously undernourished.

The SciAmMind article looks at research which attempts to understand how and why body image becomes disturbed and how this can contribute to disorded eating patterns.

This second article discusses the implications of a study [pdf] published recently by Adrian Owen and colleagues suggesting that some patients in a persistent vegetative state or PVS might actually have conscious awareness which they can’t outwardly express (see previously on Mind Hacks).

The first step is getting a general understanding of the patient’s state of mind. Clinicians divide disorders of consciousness into three categories: coma, in which a patient is neither awake nor responsive; vegetative, in which a patient is awake but unresponsive; and minimally conscious, in which a patient is awake and responds to stimuli but has limited capacity to take willful actions. Typically doctors make these categorizations by observing a patient at the bedside. By this method alone, a patient thought to be vegetative could actually be aware.

“It’s really a conundrum. The way that consciousness is typically measured is by basically asking somebody to tell you that they are conscious,” Owen says. “So if someone wasn’t unconscious but couldn’t respond and tell you that, they would be classed as unconscious.” In Owen’s team’s case study, reported in the September 8, 2006, issue of the journal Science, the researchers asked the vegetative patient to imagine herself doing various tasks, including walking through the rooms of her home, while they scanned her brain using fMRI. The resulting images showed that her response matched that of healthy test subjects – she understood the commands and intentionally decided to comply.

Other articles available in the print edition or to subscribers tackle food addiction, brain development in adolescence, perceptual integration, the psychology of stalkers, lithium in the treatment of neurological disorders, pain disorders and implanted ‘brain chips’.

Link to contents for April 2007 issue.
Link to article on body image and eating disorder.
Link to article on communicating in vegetative state.