Just a reminder that we will be hosting the next edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival here, next Monday.
So if you want your writing featured send a link to your article to:
encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com
…and we’ll look forward to including it.
According to a BBC News article brain scans have revealed “a possible biological basis for cocaine addiction”.
Next week: brain scans reveal ‘possible’ biological basis for thoughts, feelings, actions and neurological illness.
A fantastic study has just been released by open-access science journal PLoS One that investigated the neuroscience of jazz improvisation.
Jazz musicians were put inside an fMRI brain scanner and were asked to do complete a number of different musical exercises using a specially adapted magnet-friendly keyboard.
The musicians were asked to demonstrate musical scales, a pre-practised fixed piece, and an improvisation exercise while their brains were scanned.
A summary of the study by the John Hopkins medical school team gives the main results:
The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides, showed a slowdown in activity during improvisation. This area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions, Limb suggests.
The researchers also saw increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which sits in the center of the brain’s frontal lobe. This area has been linked with self-expression and activities that convey individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.
Some years ago, psychiatrist Sean Spence suggested that Jazz music may have been born owing to the ‘the father of Jazz’, Buddy Bolden, having schizophrenia and suffering from associated frontal lobe impairments.
Spence argued that reduced frontal lobe function meant that Bolden could only improvise, as he didn’t have the cognitive control to stick to pre-learnt pieces.
At the time improvisation was considered a sign that you couldn’t play ‘proper music’ well enough, but Bolden took improvisation to a new level with wondrous flights of fancy and, as the legend goes, jazz was born. That’s not the whole story of course, but it’s possibly an ingredient.
While these new findings don’t give us much of a lead on whether this might have been the genuine beginning of jazz music, it’s interesting that the idea that reduced frontal lobe function ‘frees up’ the over-inhibited playing of set pieces, is consistent.
Link to PLoS One article on the cognitive neuroscience of Jazz.
Link to study summary.
Link to BBC News on Spence’s theory.
Theories are made great by those whom they inspire. Perhaps then, it is not surprising that the fresh new face of the US presidential race has been inspired by behavioural economics, one of the fresh new faces of cognitive science.
The New Republic magazine has an article on how the Obama campaign have adopted behavioural economics – the science of how people actually reason about money, as opposed to how they should – as their mainstay of economic policy.
Unsurprisingly, The New Republic, generally a centre-left publication, hold out great hope for the partnership of this new science and an Obama government.
You can find subtle evidence of this influence across numerous Obama proposals. For example, one key behavioral finding is that people often fail to set aside money for retirement even when their employers offer generous 401(k) plans. If, on the other hand, you automatically enroll workers in 401(k)s but allow them to opt out, most stick with it. Obama’s savings plan exploits this so-called “status quo” bias.
What is more interesting though is that cognitive science is starting to make inroads into policy development outside the traditional area of defence (where psychology, and more recently neuroscience, have traditionally been key in driving defence spending).
Link to The New Republic article ‘The Audacity of Data’.
Link to intro to behavioural economics (both via MeFi).
I just discovered the wonderfully perceptive artist Chuck Close did a cover for Science magazine back in 1999.
Close was renowned for doing huge super-realistic paintings of portrait photographs that seem more real than real. When you get up close you notice that he’s painted in insanely small details, like individual hairs that stretch into the background and blur as they become out of focus in the original photograph.
Painting this sort of detail on such a huge scale makes you question how real photographs really are, as it gives them an surreal quality despite looking like wonderful likenesses. It’s an uncanny perceptual effect.
In 1988, Close suffered a stroke in his spinal artery, restricting his movement and confining him to a wheelchair.
Close was determined to continue painting and thought about how he could still paint with his inability to do fine detail because of his damaged nervous system.
His later paintings, like the one featured on this cover, break down images almost into perceptual units. As you move away from them, they coalesce into photorealistic images.
His paintings lose a lot when you can’t see them in their original towering sizes, so if you ever get the chance to his work ‘live’, don’t miss it.
He’s a wonderful ‘perceptual explorer’ and a wry commentator on our photo obsessed age.
Link to BBC News article on Chuck Close cover.
Link to search of his pictures (just stunning).
PsyBlog has just finished its series on the ‘seven sins of memory’ that fade and distort what we try to remember, based on memory researcher Dan Schacter’s book on the same name.
The ‘seven sins’ are:
1. Transience
2. Absent-Mindedness
3. Blocking
4. Misattribution
5. Suggestibility
6. Bias
7. Persistence
And PsyBlog looks at each one, discussing what research has told of us about this particularly memory difficulty and how it affects our record of things past.
If you’re interested in reading more, Schacter’s 1999 book comes highly recommended.
Link to PsyBlog on the ‘Seven Sins of Memory’.
The new generation antidepressants are no better than placebo in mild-moderate depression according to a new analysis of published and unpublished trials that were submitted during the drugs’ approval.
The study is published in PLoS Medicine and despite the huge headlines it has generated, is not entirely surprising.
Psychologist Irving Kirsch, who led this new research, has conducted several previous studies looking at the effectiveness of SSRI antidepressant drugs and found similar results, although this is the first time that the study has factored in the severity of depression.
This study focused on the drugs fluoxetine (Prozac), venlafaxine (Effexor), nefazodone (Serzone), and paroxetine (Seroxat or Paxil) and used the US Freedom of Information Act to request data on (mainly) negative trials that haven’t been published to complement the data set from published trials.
In this new analysis, only in severe depression did these medications show a distinct improvement over placebo, and this, the authors suggest, is because of the reduced placebo effect in the severely depressed, rather than than the fact that the medication has a differential effect in those most affected by mood disorders.
It’s important to note that the study didn’t show that the drugs had no effect in mild-moderate depression. They were all associated with an improvement in depression, but this was no different from placebo (a powerful effect in itself).
It’s also important to note that this finding doesn’t apply to all antidepressant drugs, and that it doesn’t apply to the use of these four drugs in all situations. They are also commonly prescribed for anxiety disorders which weren’t investigated in this study.
However, this is another example of how drug companies’ attempts to obscure data from negative trials are coming back to haunt them.
The Times has one of the best write-ups but as usual, the PLoS article has a jargon-free summary included so you can get the findings from the source even if you’re not familiar with scientific writing.
UPDATE: An important clarification from PJ, taken from the comments:
I think that by saying “this was no different from placebo” you are being misleading. Strictly speaking it was statistically different from placebo but did not reach the NICE criteria for a clinically significant difference:
“a three-point difference in Hamilton Rating Scale of Depression (HRSD)scores or a standardized mean difference (d) of 0.50”
Thanks PJ!
Link to full-text of PLoS Medicine paper.
Link to Times write-up.
Dopamine has been the big player in understanding schizophrenia since antipsychotic drugs were discovered. All current antipsychotics have their main effect by blocking dopamine function in the mesolimbic pathway and there’s now significant evidence that this is the location of one of the major dysfunctions.
It’s been clear for a while that this isn’t the whole story though. Ketamine and PCP, two glutamate-focused drugs that barely touch the dopamine system directly, are heavily linked to schizophrenia and can intensify psychotic symptoms.
Findings such as these have sparked a flurry of interest in understanding the role of glutamate in psychosis, and there’s now an intense interest in developing drugs that might target this system.
One of the key hopes is that these newer drugs will have fewer side-effects, as, in some, antipsychotics are have unpleasant and unhealthy adverse consequences.
The New York Times has just published a great article on the development of these new drugs, just in mid-testing stage, and on the neuroscience that motivates them.
People who use PCP often have the hallucinations, delusions, cognitive problems and emotional flatness that are characteristic of schizophrenia. Psychiatrists noted PCP’s side effects as early as the late 1950s. But they lacked the tools to determine how PCP affected the brain until 1979, when they found that it blocked a glutamate receptor, called the NMDA receptor, that is at the center of the transmission of nerve impulses in the brain.
The PCP finding led a few scientists to begin researching glutamate’s role in psychosis and other brain disorders. By the early 1990s, they discovered that besides triggering the primary glutamate receptors — NMDA and AMPA — glutamate also triggered several other receptors.
They called these newly found receptors “metabotropic,” because the receptors modified the amount of glutamate that cells released rather than simply turning circuits on or off. Because glutamate is so central to the brain’s activity, directly blocking or triggering the NMDA and AMPA receptors can be very dangerous. The metabotropic receptors appeared to be better targets for drug treatment.
The article talks about some of the new drugs in development, and the fact that this is where drug companies are placing their (quite substantial) bets at the moment.
Link to NYT article ‘Daring to Think Differently About Schizophrenia’.
After being put back from January, the fantastic documentary on Walter Freeman and the rise and fall of the frontal lobotomy is finally available to view online.
Unfortunately, it’s been cut up into little chunks and is only available as a Quicktime or Windows Media stream, which makes it a pain to watch and completely inaccessible to anyone not using Windows or Mac.
Needless to say, a better quality version is available on some torrent servers as a sensibly packaged video file and the healthiest torrent seems to be this one.
It’s a fantastically well-researched and balanced documentary, looking at the history of the procedure, Freeman’s over-identification with the operation and its abandonment as the problems became clear.
The tale is tragic for many reasons, not least of which is Freeman’s flawed personality and unwillingness to admit that the lobotomy was not the miracle cure he initially claimed.
There’s plenty more background information on the programme website and the Neurophilosophy article on the history of the procedure has some more details.
Link to The Lobotomist website and streamed version.
Link to Mininova torrent.
Only the morally weak and degenerate became mentally ill in the 18th century. At least, that’s what the popular theories of the time suggested. Madness was caused by moral failings and those who lost their mind were sinners.
We like to think that we live in enlightened times and that only in the far outskirts of the religious fringe are mental disorder and immorality thought to be (presumably gay) bedfellows.
Politics is one of the few areas were accusations of mental illness are considered fair game. I don’t mean simply calling someone or their ideas ‘mad’, ‘loony’ or ‘crazy’. I mean suggesting a politician or a political group has a diagnosable mental disorder.
US psychiatrist Lyle Rossiter published a book in 2006 claiming that liberalism was a form of clinical mental illness. Bang up to date with the latest in 1920s Freudian analysis, Rossiter claims that liberalism is caused by problems with relationships as a child, leading to a pathological fear of abandonment and an obsessive need for an omnipotent control of others.
Presidents fair little better. A 2004 book claimed George W Bush is an untreated alcoholic, while a 2000 book claimed Clinton was racked with compulsions.
In the UK, so many people accused Tony Blair of being insane that an article was published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that gathered the accusations and wondered why otherwise respectable clinicians feel the need to diagnose public figures.
It seems this is one of our last bastions of publicly acceptable prejudice against mental illness. We would be horrified if politicians were labelled epileptic because of their views, but barely blink an eyelid when they’re called schizophrenic.
This makes it all the more ironic that numerous successful politicians have been genuinely mentally ill. Winston Churchill was famously pursued by his ‘black dog’ throughout his time as Prime Minister and a recent biographical study by Duke University found evidence for psychiatric problems in 37 US Presidents from 1776 to 1974.
One of the most remarkable stories from recent years comes from Scandanavia, where Kjell Magne Bondevik, the then serving Prime Minister of Norway, announced he needed three weeks sick leave owing to an episode of depression.
Bondevik returned to work and was re-elected in the subsequent election. He’s now retired from politics, campaigns to fight the stigma associated with mental illness and was recently interviewed (realvideo) about his experiences on BBC’s Newsnight programme.
It’s a optimistic story for many reasons, but the fact that the Norwegian electorate seemed more concerned with his past record than his diagnosis gives us genuine hope that we’re slowly banishing the ghost of moral madness.
Link to JRSM article ‘The Madness of Politics’.
realvideo of Kjell Magne Bondevik interview.
The drowning of five children by their mother, Andrea Yates, was a case that forced many to confront an issue that most would rather ignore. Yates was one of the rare cases of women with puerperal (childbirth associated) psychosis who kill their children.
This week’s ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind talks to three forensic clinicians who research and work with women who have either killed or injured their children while mentally ill.
It’s an extraordinarily emotive issue, both due to the cries of condemnation from those appalled by what they consider ‘evil’ acts, and the concerns of others worried that focusing on the issue will strengthen the largely unfounded stereotype of the ‘dangerous mentally ill’.
All in the Mind manages to tackle the issue incredibly sensitively, a rarity in a world where these tragic situations only ever seem to get attention as sensational news stories or political point-scoring.
The programme looks at the sorts of mental states which have led to these tragedies and talks to two female forensic psychiatrists about how they deal with the strong emotions that these cases stir up.
If you’re interested in a more academic approach to the research in this area, psychiatrist Margaret Spinelli wrote an important 2004 article on maternal infanticide in the American Journal of Psychiatry that’s freely available online.
The programme also tackles the difficult subject of female sex offenders and how clinical science is being applied to preventing and treating this subset of the forensic population.
Link to AITM on maternal disorder.
Link to AJP article on maternal infanticide.
Who would have guessed the Iraq war would be so uplifting to the children of Baghdad? According to research funded by the US Military, the invasion boosted the self-esteem of Iraqi teenagers.
The BPS Research Digest covers the study which took place in the summer of 2004, a year after the invasion.
With this new found benefit of invasion, the next target seems obvious – those self-deprecating Canadians!
Link to BPS Research Digest write-up of the study.
Psychology Today is a bimonthly US magazine that’s traditionally been thought of as a ‘pop psychology’ publication but has made efforts in recent years to be more scientific. They’ve just launched a blog network and have attracted some big names in academic psychology to contribute.
Authors include psychiatrist Peter Kramer, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa and MIT media lab cognitive scientist Dan Ariely, as well as the regular editorial staff from the magazine.
Some of the authors aren’t due to start in earnest until the beginning of March, but there’s some good material on there already and looks very promising.
Link to Psychology Today blogs.
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
The New York Times tackles the debate about whether psychiatric drugs can increase suicide in some instances.
To the bunkers! Agent Kurzweil at work again: Machines to match man by 2029. Virtuality and reality to merge.
Yale psychiatrist Charles Barber argues in the Washington Post that healing a troubled mind takes more than a pill.
PsychCentral covers a new guide on how to apply research findings to treatment with psychological therapies.
How the Media Messes with Your Mind: Scientific American has a brief article on how recognising two common fallacies can help you separate fact from media fiction.
Neuroanthropology asks whether studies on culture and neuroscience are all brain and no culture?
Philosopher and New Mysterian Colin McGinn reviews Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia in the New York Review of Books.
The non-sight senses of blind people are not more acute but they may develop new skills to compensate, reports PsyBlog.
Vivid but inconclusive examples vs ambiguous scientific data: The New York Times on the renewed debate over drug side-effects in light of latest school shooting.
In some very limited circumstances a laser could be used to transmit sound to the ear with a recently uncovered military technology, reports Wired.
Artists create a humanoid robot which uses brainwave activity recorded during sleep to playback an interpretation of your dreams.
Powell’s has an in-depth review of ‘The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder’.
The end of the Flynn effect? The BPS Research Digest on a study that found a decline in IQs when measured in 2004.
Cognitive Daily looks at a study which asks whether music preferences are a guide to personality.
Someone’s uploaded a video to YouTube of the fantastic Kay Redfield Jamison discussing her own experiences with bipolar disorder.
Jamison is a psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts on the science of the condition that’s often called manic depression.
She was known for her groundbreaking work on the disorder for many years before she ‘came out of the closet’ and described her own experience in her powerful and lyrical autobiography An Unquiet Mind.
Having attempted suicide and become quite psychotic at times, she has experienced the most extreme edges of the condition.
In this lecture, rather than presenting any of her considerable scientific research, she discusses the subjective experience of the highs, lows and distortions of thought that can occur in this mood disorder.
Children’s play has long fascinated psychologists. The post-Freudians saw it as a direct expression of the human unconscious and its often been seen an essential, if not slightly mysterious, element of a healthy childhood.
The New York Times has a wonderfully in-depth article on the latest scientific discoveries on the role of play in development, most of which attempts to answer the question ‘if play is so energy consuming and dangerous, why do almost all mammals engage in it when young?’.
One fascinating bit discusses ‘play signals’, body postures that are specifically used by humans and other mammals to advertise the fact that they’re playing, and so none of the rough-and-tumble is mistaken for aggression:
Social play has its own vocabulary. Dogs have a particular body posture called the ‘‘play bow’’ — forelegs extended, rump in the air — that they use as both invitation and punctuation. A dog will perform a play bow at the beginning of a bout, and he will crouch back into it if he accidentally nips too hard and wants to assure the other dog: ‘‘Don’t worry! Still playing!’’
Other species have play signals, too. Chimps put on a ‘‘play face,’’ an open-mouthed expression that is almost like a face of aggression except that the muscles are relaxed into something like a smile. Baboons bend over and peer between their legs as an invitation to play, beavers roll around, goats gambol in a characteristic ‘‘play gait.’’ In fact, most species have from 10 to 100 distinct play signals that they use to solicit play or to reassure one another during play-fighting that it’s still all just in fun. In humans, the analogue to the chimp’s play face is a child’s smile, an open expression that indicates there is no real anger involved even in gestures that can look like a fight.
…[in humans] Brown could detect some typical gestures that these 2- and 3-year-olds were using instinctively to let one another know they were playing. ‚Äò‚ÄòPlay movement is curvilinear,‚Äô‚Äô he said. ‚Äò‚ÄòIf that boy was reaching for something in a nonplay situation, his body would be all straight lines. But using the body language of play, he curves and embraces.‚Äô‚Äô
The article also looks at the possible benefits of play for brain development, and what role play takes in the learning of social roles and moral behaviour.
Link to NYT article ‘Taking Play Seriously’.
Mind Hacks 