2009 – Page 20 – Mind Hacks

Keep on keepin’ on

The New York Times has a fantastic profile of ultramarathon runner Diane Van Deren who became a world class endurance athlete after having brain surgery to remove a large chunk of her right temporal lobe.

The surgery was to treat otherwise untreatable epilepsy and has left her with memory and organisation difficulties, neither of which stop her from running and winning races of several hundred miles.

Van Deren, 49, had a lobectomy in 1997. She has become one of the world‚Äôs great ultra-runners, competing in races of attrition measuring 100 miles or more. She won last year‚Äôs Yukon Arctic Ultra 300, a trek against frigid cold, deep snow and loneliness, and was the first woman to complete the 430-mile version this year…

[Neuropsychologist] Gerber, who works at Craig Hospital, a rehabilitation hospital in Englewood, Colo., for people with brain or spinal-cord injuries, said that Van Deren ‚Äúcan go hours and hours and have no idea how long it‚Äôs been.‚Äù Her mind carries little dread for how far she is from the finish. She does not track her pace, even in training. Her gauge is the sound of her feet on the trail.

‚ÄúIt‚Äôs a kinesthetic melody that she hits,‚Äù Gerber said. ‚ÄúAnd when she hits it, she knows she‚Äôs running well.‚Äù

Link to NYT on Van Deren.

Brand new second hand

Newsweek has an interesting article about the reality of unconscious plagiarism – otherwise known as ‘cryptomnesia’.

The article describes apparently genuine cases in terms of source memory – the ability to not only to remember information but also where it came from. When you remember a great idea, was it one of yours, it did you read it in a book, or hear it from a friend?

In the lab this has usually been tested by relatively simple experiments where participants are asked to read out words, imagine themselves reading out words and hear words being read out.

They’re then shown another list, and they have to say whether they’ve encountered the word before and, if so, did they hear it, read it or imagine it.

There are many variations on this simple idea, but all of which show that we routinely mistake information from other people as something we generated ourselves.

Psychologist Marcia Johnson has done a huge amount of work on how we monitor the source of our memories and how distortions affect what she calls ‘reality monitoring’.

It turns out that memories don’t have a specific source tag, like a mental label. We infer where they came from based on their content. There are many things have been found to be important, but even something as simple as the sensory vividness of the memory is known to have a big effect.

For example, people who have very vivid mental images have been found to be more likely to misattribute the source of memories for this reason.

So the idea is that sometimes we present other people’s ideas as our own, not because we’re being deliberately dishonest, but because we genuinely think we came up with it in the first place because of source memory failure.

The Newsweek article covers how this applies to writers and journalists and some of the recent research which tackles exactly these sort of memory distortions.

However, it doesn’t mention perhaps the most famous of cryptomnesia – where a judged ruled that ex-Beatle George Harrison had unconsciously plagiarised the Chiffons’ He’s so Fine in his own track My Sweet Lord.

And this is exactly where it gets a bit murky, because it’s never clear whether someone has unconsciously plagiarised, or just plagiarised, because it relies on making a judgement about someone else’s intentions.

Link to Newsweek article on cryptomnesia.

Calcium rushes in – Vesicles go BOOM

Rarely does one see a tribute to both the Wu-Tang Clan and the biochemistry of neuronal signalling in the same place, but it has been done, and the results are nothing short of a musical spectacular.

It’s a hip hop guide to neurobiology, so just sit back, relax and go with the flow (of ions as they pass through the cell membrane).

One of best bits is seeing the names of all the rappers: Sarah Tonin, Dopa-a-Mean, Gift of GABA. You get the idea.

Link to Synaptic Cleft by the Glut-tang Clan (via Greg Laden).

Pain? What pain?

Pain research often involves investigating the link between the subjective experience of what’s hurting compared to brain activation, mental state or situation. While past research has reported gender differences in pain thresholds, a new study casts a hazy light across the field by finding that men consistently report less pain when talking to female researchers.

The experiment included men and women as participants, as well as male and female experimenters, allowing the researchers to compare each combination of the sexes during their research.

Participants had a safe but painful heat applied to their arm and they were asked to report how painful and how unpleasant it was. They also had heart rate and skin conductance monitors to check how the body reacted.

Women reported the same things to male and female experimenters but men consistently said the pain was less when talking to female staff. Importantly though, their bodily responses were no different, suggesting that the physical sensation was probably the same, they just minimised it when talking to women.

The fact that men report less pain when talking to women has been found before, but the fact the body’s reaction was no different is new and tells us that the presence of women was unlikely to have actually reduced the amount of physical suffering.

In other words, pain research that has relied just on self-report may have been affected by men trying to look macho in the lab.

Link to DOI entry and summary of study (via @researchdigest).

NeuroPod on virtual lesions, vision bias and reply

The latest edition of the Nature NeuroPod podcast is now available. It has the usual collection of cutting edge brain stories but is particularly good for an introduction to transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS, a technique that allows researchers to temporarily ‘switch off’ bits of the human brain during experiments.

TMS is really just a large electromagnetic coil that can switched on and off very quickly, allowing a focused high intensity magnetic field to be directed into the brain from a few centimetres outside the skull.

As you may remember from high school physics, when a magnetic field passes over a conductor it causes an electrical current. In this case, the conductor is the area of your brain just at the focus of the magnetic field and the current is enough to trigger all the neurons in that small area.

Because neurons are all busy doing their thing, suddenly electrifying them all at once effectively ‘resets’ them, and so switches them off for a brief moment before they resume.

If you suspect that a particular brain area is involved in a task, you can get someone to do the task and switch the brain area off for a few hundred milliseconds with TMS. If the area is genuinely involved, the person should do it slightly worse or slightly slower, whereas, if it isn’t, there should be no difference.

TMS can also be used before someone is doing a task to make the area more or less excitable in general terms, by applying repetitive pulses to the area a few minutes before. Think of it like changing the mood of a crowd before the main event. It’ll affect how they react later on.

It’s a versatile and interesting technique for exploring brain function, but the exact detail of how it affected the electrical circuitry of the brain has been a mystery.

NeuroPod interviews neuroscientist Sven Bestmann, who recently published a paper on what we know about TMS and the brain, where he discusses the latest discoveries and explains the technique in more detail.

Link to NeuroPod webpage.
mp3 of latest podcast.

The long dark nightie of the soul

It’s an age old story. Girl meets boy. We presume girl loses boy, because she goes mad in a shoe shop. Girl is taken to hospital for a CT scan, then to an art gallery, and then hospital again where she trashes a room with lots of unnecessary medical equipment in a fit of despair. Yes, it’s the video for The Hours ‘See the Light’ starring the beautiful Sienna Miller.

The video is by Hollywood director Tony Kaye, the art is by Damian Hirst, and the clich√©s by Charles Dickens.

To be fair, it’s an excellent track, and Miller is emotionally convincing, but I’m always baffled why mentally distressed women are always portrayed in their nighties.

It’s as if bed clothes and unbrushed hair are a unique sign of female psychiatric disorder.

Actually, that might be one to send to the DSM-V committee, although I suspect they’re already on the case.

Link to The Hours video ‘See the Light’ (via @sarcastic_f).

Psychiatry’s diagnostic manual feuding continues

The storm over the new version of the diagnostic manual for psychiatrists shows no signs of dying down as a committee member has publicly resigned over concerns that new diagnoses are being created without proper regard to the scientific evidence.

The 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental disorders, known as the DSM-V, is due out in 2012. It is hotly anticipated because it defines mental illness for the USA and much of the world.

The Carlat Psychiatry Blog reports that Dr. Jane Costello, a member of the Work Group on Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence, recently resigned in protest at what she suggests are unrealistic aims and a disregard of the research evidence. A copy of her resignation letter has already found its way online.

Carlat also reports that Allen Frances and Robert Spitzer, both chiefs of the committee for past versions of the manual, have amplified their recent criticisms in a leaked letter by writing to the American Psychiatric Association Board of Trustee to denounce the DSM-V leadership as having “lost contact with the field” and urging that “It is your responsibility to save DSM-V from itself before it is too late”.

As Frances’ last public criticism was greeted by a strongly worded and surprisingly personal response, this may be the beginning of a drawn out public battle.

Link to Carlat Psychiatry Blog on latest DSM feuding.

Without a brain

According to press reports Michael Jackson will be buried without his brain because it is still ‘hardening’. Although this may seem unusual, the ‘hardening’ process is actually a standard part of any post-mortem examination where the brain is thought to be important in the cause of death, such as in suspected overdose.

It involves removing the brain from the skull and leaving it to soak in a diluted mixture of formaldehyde and water called formalin. This soaking process usually takes four weeks and the brain genuinely does harden.

A ‘fresh’ brain is a pinkish colour and has the consistency of jelly, gello or soft tofu meaning it is difficult to examine and the various internal structures are often hard to make out.

After soaking the brain, it has the consistency and colour of canned mushrooms making it easier to slice, examine and photograph. However, because the brain is so soft to start with, it can’t just be dropped in a tank of fixing solution, because it will deform under its own weight.

To solve the problem it is usually suspended upside down in a large bucket of formalin by a piece of string which is tied to the basilar artery.

After it has ‘hardened’ or ‘fixed’ it is sliced to look for clear damage to either the tissue or the arteries. Small sections can also be kept to examine under the microscope.

Because this part of the post-mortem takes several weeks preparation it is usually only carried out with the family’s permission as the body may need to be buried without it, or the burial delayed until the procedure is finished.

This also means that this form of post-mortem brain examination is usually only carried out where there is a feeling that examining the brain can help clarify the cause of death – which is what pathologists are often most concerned with.

In cases such as Michael Jackson’s, where the effects of drugs are suspected to play a part, pathologists will be looking for evidence of both sudden-onset and long-term brain damage. If they find it, they’ll be trying to work out how much it could have been caused by drug use and how much it contributed to the death.

Link to surprisingly good article in The Mirror.

SciAmMind on music, kids, the perfect and the pumped

The latest edition of Scientific American Mind has just hit the shelves with a number of freely available online articles covering music and its emotional kick, the tyranny of perfectionism, the drama of developing child and the neural benefits of exercise.

One of the most interesting articles tackles a fascinating genetic effect called genomic imprinting where certain genes have different effects, depending on whether you inherited them from your mother or your father.

The classic examples are the Prader-Willi and Angelman syndromes, both of which are genetic disorders linked to learning disabilities and neurological problems.

Both are caused by a partial deletion of genes from chromosome 15. When this is inherited from the mother, it causes Angelman syndrome, when inherited from the father, it causes Prader-Willi syndrome.

Recently, two Canadian researchers suggested that this process could also contribute to a whole range of mental difficulties and disorders, including relatively common ones like autism and psychosis which they cite as being differently affected by opposite and competing genetic influences from each parent.

The theory is perhaps a little fanciful, in that it seems to ignore cases of people with both conditions and doesn’t account for more recent evidence finding that forms of a genetic mutation known as a ‘copy number variation’ seems to increase the risk of both.

However, there is good evidence for the more general effect, where some genes can have a different psychological effect depending on where they originate, and the article discusses what we know about the science of this quirk of inheritance.

Link to July’s Scientific American Mind.

The long game

Prospect Magazine has a gently philosophical article on legendary England cricket captain and now, psychoanalyst, Mike Brearley. It weaves the philosophies of cricket and psychotherapy into a wonderful article that muses on the similarities between the test match and psychoanalysis, the Twenty20 and CBT.

[Americans: skip this paragraph] Brearley captained England during the legendary 1981 Ashes series and is often cited as channelling Botham’s uneven temperament into a focused performance that won the seemingly doomed series.

After retiring from first class cricket, Brearley trained to become a psychoanalyst and is now president of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

The article is both delightful to read and remarkably balanced, giving many such gems on the links between therapy and cricket:

Cricket, particularly in its five-day form, requires intelligence, astuteness and an ability to withstand long periods where nothing much happens while keeping alert for the moment when action erupts ‚Äî not unlike psychoanalysis itself.

Link to Prospect article ‘Freud in the slips’.

A kava panorama

ABC Radio National’s Bush Telegraph has a special programme on a psychoactive plant called kava that has been used ceremonially by Pacific Islanders for generations and has recently been researched as a treatment for depression and anxiety.

The effects of kava are usually compared to alcohol as it has a sedating and relaxing effect, although it produces far less thinking impairment than booze so the drinker has much more mental clarity.

The programme explores the history and traditional preparation of this tranquillising plant as well as discussing recent scientific research on its use as a psychiatric treatment.

This is particularly in light of a recent study by psychiatrist Jerome Sarris and colleagues where it performed remarkably well as both an anti-anxiety and anxidepressant drug.

In the interview, Sarris describes how kava affects the brain as well as suggesting that its ban in many countries, based on concerns about liver damage, may be due to low quality preparations of the compound which aren’t found in traditional methods.

Link to Bush Telegraph on ‘Kava, bliss and angst’.

Countering the fixated threat

I’ve just found this interesting 2007 article on the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, a combined unit of the British Police and health service that attempts to divert disturbed and potentially dangerous stalkers to mental health services before they attempt violence.

[Psychiatrist] David James – whose research helped to found the centre, and who now co-directs it – outlines its mission: ‘We have discovered that letters written to prominent individuals can be a powerful tool in detecting people suffering from untreated psychotic illness,’ he says.

But FTAC isn’t just about preventing murders that haven’t yet occurred, and is much less about protecting the powerful by using psychiatrists’ powers to detain patients under the Mental Health Act. Its real innovation is to marry crime prevention with a new way of finding and helping those with therapeutic needs:

‘This is an area where the interests of security and public health overlap,’ James says. ‘We’re not just providing protection: we’re helping to find care and treatment for those whose lives are being destroyed by untreated mental illness.’ Some of the patients first identified by FTAC, James says, are now leading ‘functional and relatively normal’ lives.

We’ve featured research from the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre before on Mind Hacks, when we discussed a recent study on ‘a classification of royal stalkers’.

As the article notes, the centre seems to have caused some controversy when it opened with news reports concerned that it would some sort of shadowy persecutor of oddballs and the obsessed.

For reasons that don’t seem entirely clear, it’s recently been the focus of interest from two British members of parliament who asked various written questions about the centre. You can read their questions and the answers provided by the government online which are another useful source of information about the service.

Link to Observer article on the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre.

Ghost in the machine

Electronic brain implants are becoming increasingly common in both research and medicine but little attention has been paid to the digital security of these grey matter gateways. A new article in Neurosurgical Focus discusses their potential back doors and security weaknesses.

While there’s a small literature on hardware problems in implantable deep brain stimulators, little consideration has been give to data privacy, access control and crash protection for neural implants.

Many of these devices are designed to be surgically implanted and controlled, tuned or reprogrammed from outside the body by a wireless link but very few (if any) have an in-built authentication system that only allows access to people who are authorised to make the changes.

Currently, they work more like TV remote controls. Anyone with the correct remote control can change the settings on your TV, but it’s just assumed that no one except the owner would want to.

As these devices become more widespread, however, it leaves open the possibility that malicious attackers could alter the function of the brain by taking control of the device.

In fact the research group that wrote this article managed exactly this sort of remote pwnage on a commercial implantable heart defibrillator in 2003:

In our past research, we experimentally demonstrated that a hacker could wirelessly compromise the security and privacy of a representative implantable medical device: an implantable cardiac defibrillator introduced into the US market in 2003.

Specifically, our prior research [pdf] found that a third party, using his or her own homemade and low-cost equipment, could wirelessly change a patient’s therapies, disable therapies altogether, and induce ventricular fibrillation (a potentially fatal heart rhythm).

Although we only conducted our experiments using short-range, 10-cm wireless communications, and although we believe that the risk of an attack on a patient today is very low, the implications are clear: unless appropriate safeguards are in place, a hacker could compromise the security and privacy of a medical implant and cause serious physical harm to a patient.

We believe that some future hackers ‚Äî if given the opportunity ‚Äî will have no qualms in targeting neural devices.

It also seems that there is little concern for data privacy on these devices, so everything is broadcast ‘in the clear’. This means even if you didn’t own a legitimate controller, you could potentially intercept the data, learn its structure and create your own.

While information about an individual’s neural firing patterns are probably of little interest at the current time, we just don’t know enough about them to ‘reveal’ anything personal about the patient, their frequency and pattern could conceivably leave both the device and the patient open to side channel attacks – where the external behaviour of a system can give clues to its internal weaknesses.

For example, take a patient who has an implantable chip that detects when epileptic seizures are about to start and cools the disturbed part of the brain, a technology that is already in development.

It would be possible to know when the system kicks in by monitoring radio transmissions, giving the outside observer a reliable guide to what external conditions trigger seizures in the patient.

If transmitted, it might also be possible to read the exact frequency at which neural oscillations lead to seizures, giving clues as to how to trigger them with lights or sounds.

Another problem is the integrity of the devices. For example, the devices need to be resistant to interference from other radio signals, magnetic fields or even deliberate attempts to crash them.

This new article serves as both a warning and a plea to consider security when designing and deploying these increasingly common medical technologies.

By the way, the whole issue of Neurosurgical Focus is dedicated to brain-machine interfaces and is freely available online.

Link to ‘Neurosecurity: security and privacy for neural devices’.

Brutal untruths

Today’s Bad Science covers a particularly offensive bit of poor science reporting where preliminary results were misreported as suggesting that “women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped”.

The study has not yet been published and more worryingly showed none of the things claimed in the article published in The Telegraph, which raises the question of where such a disturbing spin came from.

The British Psychological Society put out a press release which mentioned none of the main claims of the newspaper article, but still seems a little unwise considering that the research was only in its early stages.

Link to Bad Science on ropey reporting of the study.

80% genetic, 20% polyester

Over the last couple of days, there’s been a great deal of coverage of three new studies on the genetics of schizophrenia. While the coverage has actually been pretty good, almost all the news stories make the same error when talking about the ‘genetic risk’ for the condition.

Twenty years ago, geneticists were searching for the ‘gene for schizophrenia’ until it became apparent that there was not going to be a single gene, or even a handful, found responsible for the mental illness.

It since became a mantra that the genetic risk for schizophrenia would be conferred by ‘many genes of small effect’. In other words, the cumulative effect of lots of genes that, on their own, would be quite benign.

Nature has just published three studies that use the only-recently-feasible technique of scanning the whole genome and has reported the first convincing positive evidence for the ‘many genes of small effect’ theory by finding that a whole bunch of genes, when considered together, account for about a third of the total difference in schizophrenia risk.

Interestingly, all three studies find that many of the genes lie in a <a href="region called the ‘major histocompatibility complex’ – a series of genes involved in the function of the immune system.

However, lots of the news reports, even from science publications give variations on the theme that ‘genetic factors account for 80 percent of the total risk of getting schizophrenia’.

This 80% figure (which can vary, some give 90%) is not an estimate of risk and shows a misunderstanding of estimated heritability taken from twin studies.

Luckily, I tackled exactly this issue in a column for July’s edition of The Psychologist:

Nature versus nurture is a lie. Music is not melody versus rhythm, wine is not grapes versus alcohol and we are not environment versus genes. We are their sum, their product and their expression. They dance together and we are their performance, but neither is an adversary. The art of understanding this elegant ballet is complex and arcane but you may never realise this from reading the quoted results of genetic studies, because the extent to which a trait is heritable, that is, accounted for by genetics, is usually expressed as a simple percentage.

If you search Google for the phrase ‚Äú80 percent genetic‚Äù, you will discover hundreds of sources that claim that everything from schizophrenia, to height, to intelligence has been found to be four fifths ‚Äògenetic‚Äô. Pick any other figure and you can find everyone from psychologists, to politicians, to journalists claiming that this or that is explained by genes to a given percentage. Geneticists know the subtly of this percentage and why these statements, usually lifted from the results of twin studies, are misleading, but clearly many others do not.

Imagine a mental illness is described as being 80% heritable. This is often taken to mean that four fifths of an individual‚Äôs risk is down to his or her genes, but this is not the case. What it means is that 80% of the variance in the measured illness was explained by genetic factors in the specific group that was studied. If this seems like a frivolous distinction, bear with me, because it is key in understanding heritability and it becomes crystal clear when tackled as an example.

Imagine that we could study a population where everybody lived in an identical environment. They did the same things everyday; they ate identical foods, had identical relationships and were stressed by identical events. Their lives were carbon copies of each other. A twin study would find that mental illness would be close to 100% heritable, because if the environment is fixed, any difference must be down to genetics. In fact, twin studies would find that everything is close to 100% heritable, for exactly the same reason. To flip our thought experiment on its head, if we only studied genetically identical clones, everything would be 0% heritable, because any difference must be down to the environment.

These figures do not necessarily tell us anything about the potential for a trait to be influenced by nature or nurture, because heritability is rarely an immutable and absolute fact about biology; it is an overall measure of how things are for that group, at that moment. In other words, the process of measuring the influence of genetics is, itself, subject to environmental factors. It captures the dance, not the dancers.

Thanks to Jon Sutton, editor of The Psychologist who has kindly agreed for me to publish my column on Mind Hacks as long as I include the following text:

“The Psychologist is sent free to all members of the British Psychological Society (you can join here), or you can subscribe as a non-member by emailing sarsta[at]bps.org.uk”

Link one two three to Nature genetics of schizophrenia studies.
Link to good write up from Science News, despite 80% genetic risk slip-up.

2009-07-03 Spike activity

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

The ‘men agree on female attractiveness, women don’t on male attractiveness’ story has been a little exaggerated. There was consensus in both groups, just more in men than women.

The British Journal of Psychiatry has started putting fantastic art on its covers with a brief discussion of the piece. This month ‘Welcome to my <a href="Welcome to My Psychosis
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/vol195/issue1/cover.dtl”>Psychosis‘.

A piece from BBC News on psychologists studying their own children to understand language development is clearly ripped off the New York Times, but it’s still very good.

The Economist reports on a study finding that depression is linked to how willing someone is to give up their goals.

Divorce rates are dropping. Is marriage being rehabilitated asks The New York Times. Jonah Lehrer also mans the marricades.

New Scientist discusses spite and theories on the function of social punishment.

Ten key studies that tell us about group behaviour are covered by PsyBlog.

Advances in the History of Psychology covers a US legal case that was a key moment in the history of eugenics for mental disability.

There’s an excellent neuroimaging study in PLoS One finding that brain areas linked to social cognition (described rather grandly as ’empathy’ areas) are activated more by sweat from anxiety than sweat from sport.

Big Picture magazine is an awesome resource for teachers that gives neuroscience activities and materials. Latest issue on ‘Music, Mind and Medicine’.

An anthropologist working for Intel discusses her work on ABC Radio National’s Future Tense.

In Our Time, the excellent BBC Radio 4 history of ideas programme has a discussion on <a href="Logical positivism
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot/”>logical positivism.

Neurotech market analyst Zack Lynch gives an interview on emerging commercial neuroscience markets and participates in a discussion about cognitive enhancers on Canadian TV show The Agenda.

The Frontal Cortex finds an entertaining interview with Oliver Sacks on US comedy programme

A list of Top 10 psychology feeds on Twitter is on PsychCentral and there’s also a follow-up with a few more. Mostly therapist focussed but a good collection.

The Independent sends one of its reporters to try out a number of ‘legal highs‘. But I thought love was the drug?

There’s a tale of two suppressed studies at the Neuroskeptic.

Deric Bownds’ MindBlog has been excellent recently. Go check it out!

A ‘treat violence like a disease’ safer streets project is discussed by New Scientist.

Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica has started some surprisingly good psychiatry podcasts.

There’s a segment on brain cancer on ABC Radio National’s Health Report.

Danvers State Insane Asylum is a wonderful website on the history of this imposing gothic asylum built in 1878.

Two-year-olds possess grammatical insights according to a study covered by New Scientist.

Analysis from BBC Radio 4 has a good programme on experimental philosophy and morality. Grab the mp3 before it gets sucked into the black hole of their butchered archiveless website.

We have larger responses in brain areas linked to social cognition when seeing people of our own race in pain, according to a new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Neuron Culture covers a fascinating study finding that the effect of Ritalin may partly be due to a placebo effect in the parents.

My mate Rich at PC Advisor riffs on the Troublemaker’s Fringe and the ‘Facebook causes cancer’ panic.

Dr Shock has an excellent post on placebo response in transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Picasso or Prosopometamorphopsia? asks a fantastic post on The Neurocritic on a neuropsychological disorder where faces seem distorted.