Author: vaughanbell

Scientific American have just concluded its series on scientists who have experimented on themselves in an effort to better understand the mind, brain and body.

The first piece is about Kevin ‘Captain Cyborg’ Warwick, who seems mainly to have been experimenting with the media rather than himself.

I’ve always considered him the poor man’s Stelarc to be honest, but then again, Stelarc hasn’t had a distinguished research career in robotics so swings and roundabouts I guess.

A further story discusses Olivier Ameisen, a cardiologist who became alcoholic and treated himself with baclofen, a drug then untested for the condition.

There’s a couple of people who experimented on their children, which doesn’t really count as self-experimentation in my book, but they make for good reads nonetheless.

One covers Deb Roy’s recording of the entire first two years of his child’s vocalisations and speech to help understand how language develops.

The other describes Jay Giedd’s project to brain scan his daughter every three months from the age of four upwards. Interestingly, it got stopped by the ethics committee because she might feel pressured to take part. Surely bribery by Pokemon cards would have solved that problem?

While there are several other scientists discussed, the only other one of psychological interest in the legendary Alexander Shulgin who has spent most of his life synthesising new hallucinogenic drugs and trying them on himself. He’s now 83. There’s a moral in that story somewhere.

Link to SciAm’s self-experimenters series.

A new journal, Neuroethics, has just launched and among the freely available articles is an engaging piece on ‘neurosexism’, the increasing trend to portray sex differences as ‘hard wired’ into the brain.

The piece is by psychologist Cordelia Fine who argues that some recent popular science books and articles are simply restating old stereotypes but making them sound more modern with an appeal to neuroscience.

Neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine’s book The Female Brain comes in for particular criticism, as it has in the scientific literature. But despite the fact it seems to play fast and loose with the scientific evidence, it has become an international best-seller.

Then, too, with the buzz-phrase ‘hard-wiring’ comes an extraordinary insistence on locating social pressures in the brain. In The Female Brain, for example, the working mother learns that she is struggling against “the natural wiring of our female brains and biological reality” (p. 161). According to Brizendine, combining motherhood with career gives rise to a neurological “tug-of-war because of overloaded brain circuits” (p. 160). Career circuits and maternal circuits battle it out, leading to “increased stress, increased anxiety, and reduced brainpower for the mother’s work and her children.” (p. 112).

But Brizendine promises her female readers that “understanding our innate biology empowers us to better plan our future.” (p. 159). It may startle some readers to learn that family friendly workplace policies are not the solution to reduced maternal stress and anxiety, and that fathers who do the kindergarten pick-ups, pack the lunch-boxes, stay home when the kids are sick, get up in the night when the baby wakes up, and buy the birthday presents and ring the paediatrician in their lunch hour are not the obvious solution to enhanced maternal ‘brainpower’.

No, it is an appreciation of female brain wiring that will see the working mother through the hard times. (Predictably, Brizendine never even hints that the over-wired working mother consider the simplest antidote to the ill-effects of going against her ‘natural wiring’: namely, giving her partner a giant kick up the neurological backside.)

Fine’s argument is not that that sex differences don’t exist in the mind and brain. Indeed, there are numerous scientific studies which have reported these.

The problem is that they are often portrayed in the popular literature as being ‘hard wired’ – an ugly analogy taken from computers that suggests that the difference is an innate and permanent feature.

Apart from ignoring the fact sex differences are typically only stable at the group level (meaning that this difference is not significant in any single male-female comparison) most of these claims about ‘hard wiring’ are not based on evidence about the innateness of the difference.

Actually, I’ve never been clear what ‘hard-wired’ is supposed to mean. Even if we presume that a particular behaviour or feature is coded in the DNA, the brain develops only through interaction with its environment – be this after birth, or in the womb.

In other words, most claims about a human ability being ‘hard wired’ ignore the history of how these develop through our lives.

The rest of the first issue of Neuroethics also looks fascinating, with article on neuroenhancement of love and lust, nanotech, neuroimaging and understanding others’ mind, to name but a few.

pdf or web version of Fine’s article ‘Will Working Mothers‚Äô Brains Explode?’.
Link to Neuroethics 1st issue table of contents (via Neurophilosophy).

The beautiful image on the right is a collection of neural stem cells stained with fluorescent die, taken from the finalists of the Wellcome Image Awards.

A wonderful image of the bacteria that cause a type of meningitis is another brain-related image in the finalists’ gallery.

There are plenty more images of course, but don’t miss the audio interviews that accompany each image where the scientist discusses their work.

All of the pictures are quite stunning so well worth a look.

Link to 2008 Wellcome Image Awards gallery.

While we’ve got used to ‘internet addiction’ popping up in the media from time to time, it has inexplicably been the subject of an editorial in this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry arguing it should be included in the DSM-IV – the next version of the diagnostic manual for psychiatry.

The editorial suggests that we should make ‘internet addiction’ a serious public health issue despite the fact that no-one yet has suggested anything that uniquely distinguishes it from its use as a tool or a source of entertainment.

For example, here are the components that the author, psychiatrist Jerald Block, cites as evidence that someone can become addicted to the internet:

1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue

Apart from the fact that these and most other supposed criteria make no distinction between using the internet and what the person is using the internet for, it’s easy to see that they don’t describe anything unique to the net.

For example, here are my criteria for ‘sports team addiction’:

1) excessive time following games, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when team news or matches are inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better match viewing equipment, more news, or more hours of team-related activity, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue

As more people in the world follow sports teams than have access to the internet, surely this is the more serious problem, especially considering the high levels of violence and alcohol abuse associated with this tragic affliction.

You may, of course, substitute whatever interest you want into the criteria to capture people who are the most motivated to pursue their favourite interest, or who are workaholics who rely on the technology (if you want a retro version, substitute the ‘postal system’ for the internet for a 1908 style communication addiction).

Rather curiously, the editorial mentions the figure that 86% of people with ‘internet addiction’ have another mental illness. What this suggests is that heavy use of the internet is not the major problem that brings people into treatment.

In fact, ‘internet addiction’, however it is defined, is associated with depression and anxiety but no-one has ever found this to be a causal connection.

Recent research shows that shy or depressed people use the internet excessively to (surprise, surprise) meet people and manage their shyness.

And in fact, as I mentioned in an earlier article, one of the only longitudinal studies [pdf] on the general population found that internet use is generally associated with positive effects on communication, social involvement, and well-being, although interestingly, those who were already introverts show increased withdrawal.

In other words, the internet is a communication tool and people use it manage their emotional states, like they do with any other technology.

Of course there are some people who are depressed and anxious who use the internet (or follow sports teams, or read books, or watch TV…) to excess, but why we have to describe this as an addiction still completely baffles me.

Link to AJP editorial. Don’t click! You’re feeding your addiction!
Link to previous post ‘Why there is no such thing as internet addiction’.

The Nobel prize-winning poet Wisława Szymborska wrote one of her most striking poems about a morbid experiment where a dog’s head was cut from its body but kept alive by a blood-pumping machine.

The poem serves as a commentary on happiness and anxiety about the purpose of existence, but what many people don’t know is that the experiment was genuinely completed, and the black and white film that the poem is based on can be viewed online.

The experiment was executed by Russian scientists and anticipated later work by neurosurgeon Robert White, who attempted transplant the heads of two monkeys, as can be seen in footage from the procedure.

While White thought of it as a possible precursor to human head transplantation, the scientific community reacted with outrage and these days it’s generally thought of as a pretty appalling experiment that achieved virtually nothing of consequence.

Neuroscientist Steven Rose gives an interesting video commentary on the experiment, drawing from recent findings in ‘embodied cognition‘ which have suggested that the brain cannot be meaningfully switched because so much of our experience of our minds relies on the body in which it has developed and is embedded.

I’ve also included Szymborska’s poem below the fold if you want to see her literary reflection on watching the original Russian film.

Link to Soviet film on separated dog head.
Link to footage of White’s monkey head transplant film.
Link to video with reaction and commentary to White’s experiments.

Continue reading “Head transplants and Szymborska’s Experiment”

Gary Pugh, the director of forensic sciences for the British police has sparked controversy after he suggested that children as young as five who display ‘future offending traits’ should be placed on a DNA database so they are more likely to be picked up if they commit crime in the future.

Pugh is almost certainly talking about children who have what are known as ‘callous-unemotional’ traits, described somewhat less politically correctly as ‘kiddie psychopathy’.

These have indeed been found to weakly predict future antisocial behaviour, but the picture is more complex than it seems and, as we’ll see, they aren’t a good basis on which to base future crime fighting efforts.

Psychopathy describes a pattern of shallow emotion, low empathy and the lack of conscience for antisocial acts, with the ability to seem charming on the surface. Callous-unemotional traits describe something similar in children.

A recent study on the prevalence of these traits in children used a fairly typical definition:

1. Makes a good impression at first but people tend to see through him/her after they get to know him/her
2. Shallow or fast-changing emotions.
3. Too full of his/her own abilities.
4. Is not genuinely sorry if s/he has hurt someone or acted badly.
5. Can seem cold-blooded or callous.
6. Doesn’t keep promises.
7. Not genuine in his/her expression of emotions.

This traits have been found in much higher levels in children with conduct disorder. CD is a psychiatric diagnosis, but really just describes a pattern of quite severe antisocial behaviour.

These studies have also found that in children already displaying aggressive or antisocial behaviour, callous-unemotional traits are associated with more severe aggressive, antisocial behaviour in the future.

However, recent studies that looked at these traits in the general population found that these traits reliably, but only very weakly, predict antisocial behaviour during the following years

So, if you look at the population as a whole, you could say that these childhood traits are genuinely linked to later antisocial acts, but the overall difference between children with and without these characteristics is small.

In other words, if you put every child with these traits on a DNA database, you’re unlikely to see a significant increase in later crime detection as a result and you’ll have the DNA of a lot of children who will never get in trouble with the law.

Link to BBC News story ‘Police spokesman sparks DNA row’.

They say sincerity is everything, and if you can fake that, you’ve got it made. Nowhere is this more true than in marketing and Time magazine discusses the seemingly related concept of ‘synthetic authenticity’ – the feeling that a product is the ‘real deal’, which is supposedly going to be one of the big commercial trends in the near future.

And how does a cutting edge company make a product seem authentic? Well, it’s not really clear from the article, but it seems to involve some sort of emotional attachment to the product which prompts associations with a sense of community and trust.

Two hundred years ago, agrarian Americans decided whether to buy a hoe mainly on the basis of whether it was available and affordable. But in the past 20 years, a school of behavioral economists has emerged to point out the obvious: consumers with higher living standards often make stupid, irrational decisions. We don’t simply look at price and quality; we decide how we feel about a refrigerator or even a pair of socks before we buy.

Authenticity is a way of understanding this concept… Gilmore and Pine give a name to this ephemeral dimension of consumer behavior: in addition to the established dimensions of availability, price and quality, we are buying according to authenticity.

In some instances, it seems to be a way of making the commercial relationship between buyer and seller seems less like a commercial relationship and more of an implicit partnership of friends.

In others, it seems to rely on the idea that the consumer is accessing some sort of underlying ‘true’ experience that cannot be captured by modern technology.

The ideas are based on a recent book by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore who started the ‘experience economy’ movement (‘sell experiences, not products’) some years back.

One can’t help but wonder whether they were inspired by Philip K Dick’s alternative reality novel The Man in the High Castle. One character, Mr Wyndham-Matson, is involved in selling fake antiques to unsuspecting punters.

The thing that makes the object valuable, suggests Wyndham-Matson, is ‘historicity’ – the perception that the object has been involved in something historically significant.

He notes that if an antique gun has gone through a famous battle “it’s the same as if it hadn’t, unless you know“, with the implication that the feeling of history (and dare we say, authenticity), is as much to do with the smoke and mirrors of persuasion as it is to do with the properties of the product.

Link to Time article ‘Synthetic Authenticity’.

I had the pleasure of watching a screening of a stunning new documentary called The English Surgeon yesterday. It’s a film about the work of London-based neurosurgeon Henry Marsh and his colleague Igor Kurilets in the Ukraine.

However, to say the film was just about brain surgery would be vastly under value its significance, and to describe it as a meditation on the humanity of medicine would be to confine it to a cliché.

Although Marsh normally works at St George’s, one of London’s most established hospitals, he has regularly travelled to the Ukraine for 15 years to assist the development of neurosurgery in this still struggling country.

The contrast itself is striking. One scene sees Marsh and Kurilets looking through street market hardware stalls for screws, rivets and power tools to use in their operations.

One of the most gripping scenes is where the two surgeons open a patient’s skull using a Bosch power drill only to find the battery is going flat as they proceed.

The man has been only given local anaesthetic as the Ukrainian hospital doesn’t have the facilities to safely put someone under and wake them up after initial part of the procedure.

Some of the most moving moments concern the tension between the shortcoming of medicine and the hope of the patients. There are many profound moments that aren’t well captured by brief summaries, and I’m sure each viewer takes something different away from them, so you’ll need to experience them for yourselves.

It’s probably worth saying that the film is also incredibly funny in places, partly owing to Marsh’s phlegmatic personality, but partly owing to the dark humour and comic irony posed by the situations that arise.

Marsh was the subject of another documentary by the same filmmaker created for the BBC as part of their medical series Your Life in Their Hands. Sadly, it’s not available online (or anywhere by the looks of it), but let me know if it appears as a torrent and I’ll link to it.

If you want to see it on the big screen there are screenings in Norwich, Brighton, London, York, Glasgow and Edinburgh before the end of March, and apparently it will be shown on BBC Two on March 30th.

International readers will have to hope for a torrent as things currently stand.

As an aside, the soundtrack was composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and is fittingly beautiful.

Link to film website (thanks Kat!).