vaughanbell

2007-02-09 Spike activity

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

Three psychiatrists have started producing a regular, engaging and somewhat quixotic podcast called My Three Shrinks.

The Neurophilosopher investigates a new form of artificial limb that feeds back touch sensations.

Approximately 6 out of every 100 words are affected by repetitions, corrections or hesitations. Why does this happen? Mixing Memory is on the case.

Neuroscientist Read Montague discusses his current reads with American Scientist.

Pure Pedantry investigates why speed daters say that selective is hot.

The New York Times has an article on the psychology of the colour red.

Improve your presentation by slagging it off? Cognitive Daily looks at research suggesting that self-deprecating comments may improve audience ratings.

Drug breakthrough for fashionable new mental illness

Life-changing new drug Havidol (chemical name Avafynetyme HCl) has just been marketed for the widely under-recognised disorder Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD).

DSACDAD is a new diagnosis where sufferers experience symptoms such as “worrying about life, feeling tense, restless, or fatigued, being concerned about their weight, noticing signs of aging, feeling stress at work, home, or finding activities they used to enjoy, like shopping, challenging.”

The drug targets the recently discovered hedonine hormone to boost the brain’s reward system for when “feeling better is not enough”.

Havidol joins other next generation drugs Fukitol, Panexa, Progenitorivox and Proloxil as medications that not only affect the brain, but also purify the soul.

Link to Havidol website (via BoingBoing).
Link to previous Mind Hacks post on soul purifying pharmaceuticals.

A Whiter Shade of Searle

The Boston Globe has a brief interview with philosopher John Searle where he’s quizzed about his views on consciousness, computation and consensus.

Despite having a back catalogue stretching back to the 60s, prog rock band Procol Harum are popularly remembered as ‘the band who did A Whiter Shade of Pale’.

Similarly, despite his wide-ranging work, Searle is popularly remembered as the ‘guy who devised the Chinese room argument’.

Searle is the Procol Harum of philosophy, although, to be fair, his back catalogue is actually worth checking out.

In this interview with the Globe’s Ideas section, he touches on consciousness, free will, whether the mind can be described as computation, and why philosophers disagree so much.

IDEAS: You think that questions about the mind are at the core of philosophy today, don’t you?

SEARLE: Right. And that’s a big change. If you go back to the 17th century, and Descartes, skepticism — the question of how it is possible to have knowledge — was a live issue for philosophy…

IDEAS: Why the change?

SEARLE: We know too much. The sheer volume of knowledge has become overwhelming. We take basic findings from physics and chemistry about the universe for granted. Knowing much more about the real world than our ancestors did, we can’t take skepticism seriously in the old way. It also means that philosophy has to proceed on the basis of all that we know.

The universe consists of matter, and systems defined by causal relations. We know that. So we go on to ask: To what extent can we render our self-conception consistent with this knowledge? How can there be consciousness, free will, rationality, language, political organization, ethics, aesthetics, personal identity, moral responsibility? These are questions for the philosophy of mind.

Link Q&A with John Searle from The Boston Globe (via 3Q).

The psychology of risk and security

Security expert Bruce Schneier has written a remarkably insightful article on the psychology of security trade-offs and risk assessment.

He’s not a psychologist by trade, although has obviously spent a lot of time researching the various studies that are relevant to the sort of decision making we engage in when trying to estimate how risky something might be.

Errors or cognitive distortions are also discussed in detail, particularly with regard to how these might bias our reasoning to make certain things seem more or less risky, even if there’s no change in actual risk.

One crucial concept that Schneier talks about is that security is a feeling, generated by a complex interplay of innate and calculated responses.

Something similar has been discussed in the clinical literature, particularly in a theory of obsessive-compulsive disorder put forward by Henry Szechtman and Erik Woody [pdf].

Obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD is a disorder where people can feel they have to repetitively do certain actions – often some sort of checking or washing

Szechtman and Woody argue that most drives, such as hunger or sex, have a specific end point behaviour that leads to a feeling of goal satisfaction.

In contrast, the drive for safety has no specific action associated with it that ‘completes’ the desire (because you can always try and be more safe), and so they argue we’ve developed a feedback system (a ‘security feeling’) that signifies when we’ve done enough to be reasonably secure.

In OCD, this might go wrong. So even when the door is locked or you’ve washed your hands, the security feeling doesn’t kick in and you still have the strong desire to do it again.

Anxiety can make the feeling needed all the more, so when we’re anxious, we might need to check the door more, even though we specifically remember locking it.

It’s no surprise that OCD is an anxiety disorder and this may fuel the cycle.

Schneier isn’t discussing mental illness, but it’s interesting that this sort of approach can be widely applied as so much of our behaviour involves risk judgements.

Link to Bruce Schneier article ‘The Psychology of Security’.
pdf of paper ‘Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as a Disturbance of Security Motivation’.

Secret antipsychotic drug documents now online

Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly has been in the news recently over sealed documents leaked to the New York Times which suggest that they covered-up the dangers of their popular antipsychotic drug olanzapine.

In particular, it has been alleged that Eli Lilly knew about the drug’s side-effects before they were widely known but deliberately tried to obscure this information and market to non-specialist doctors who would be less aware of the problems.

Mental health blog Furious Seasons has obtained the documents and today, made them available online so you can read them for yourself.

How the documents got leaked in the first place is still a mystery, and the US federal judge involved in related court cases has asked the New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who broke the story, to explain himself in court. Currently, the paper is refusing to co-operate.

In reply to the allegations made in the newspaper reports, Eli Lilly have said that “The Times failed to mention that these leaked documents are a tiny fraction of the more than 11 million pages of documents provided by Lilly as part of the litigation process. They do not accurately portray Lilly’s conduct”.

Link to copies of Eli Lilly documents.
Link 1 and Link 2 of previous Mind Hacks coverage on the story.
Link to Eli Lilly response to allegations.

Last call for the encephalon express

We will be hosting the 16th edition of the psychology and neuroscience writing carnival Encephalon, next Monday (12th), here on Mind Hacks.

If you have written a post or article about the mind, brain or behaviour for the web and want to share your hard work, you can submit a link here to have it featured.

Get your submissions in by Sunday to guarantee they’ll be included. Thanks!

Insula reality

As a perfect follow-up to recent news that damage to an area of the brain called the insula makes it easier to kick an addiction, The New York Times has an article looking more generally at the function of this fascinating neural structure.

The article is by science writer Sandra Blakeslee who has a history of teaming up with cognitive scientists to make their work accessible to a wider audience.

Two of her most notable books have included the strikingly original On Intelligence with Jeff Hawkins, and Phantoms in the Brain with V.S. Ramachandran.

[There’s a wonderful typo on Blakeslee’s site where she’s listed him as ‘VR Ramachandran’, which makes me think that in the future, everyone will have own virtual Ramanchandran’s to pose neuroscience questions to]

The NYT article looks at what is known about the insula, and why it seems to have been relatively neglected by cognitive neuroscientists until recently.

According to neuroscientists who study it, the insula is a long-neglected brain region that has emerged as crucial to understanding what it feels like to be human.

They say it is the wellspring of social emotions, things like lust and disgust, pride and humiliation, guilt and atonement. It helps give rise to moral intuition, empathy and the capacity to respond emotionally to music.

Its anatomy and evolution shed light on the profound differences between humans and other animals.

The insula also reads body states like hunger and craving and helps push people into reaching for the next sandwich, cigarette or line of cocaine. So insula research offers new ways to think about treating drug addiction, alcoholism, anxiety and eating disorders.

Of course, so much about the brain remains to be discovered that the insula’s role may be a minor character in the play of the human mind. It is just now coming on stage.

Link to NYT article ‘A Small Part of the Brain, and Its Profound Effects’.

Reflected mysteries

“As long as our brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the structure of the brain, will also be a mystery.”

A quote by the Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ram√≥n y Cajal who won the Nobel prize for pioneering research into the fine structure of the nervous system, particularly the structure of the synapse.

From waves to the brain

Retrospectacle has a great beginner’s guide to hearing for anyone interested in how sound waves get converted into neural impulses for the brain.

The article describes the wonderful mechanics of the ear. It’s quite striking how much the physical make-up of the ear filters and ‘processes’ the sound waves before they even reach the sensory cells that connect with the nervous system.

All the hair cells sit on top of a firm but flexible membrane called the basilar membrane. As the stapes bangs against the oval window, a wave is transmitted through the basilar membrane. The distance this wave travels (and subsequently, the hair cells that are stimulated) are dictated by the frequency of the sound wave. The basilar membrane becomes stiffer at the top of the cochlea, which allows different parts of the cochlea to correspond to specific frequencies. High frequency sound-specifity corresponds to the base of the cochlea while the top (or “apex”) of the cochlea transduces low frequency sounds. The area on the cochlea where the most hair cells are stimulated during a given sound wave is considered the resonance point, and loudness can be perceived by the number and duration of hair cell stimulation at that point.

The article is both informative and wonderfully illustrated for those wanting to get a grip on one of our most interesting senses.

Link to Retrospectacle on ‘Basic Concepts: Hearing’.

Healthy relationships and the sound of success

PsyBlog has just started a series of articles investigating the psychology of relationships by examining recent research looking at how relationships may do our health as much good as a balanced diet and regular exercise.

Another article discusses why music is so commonly talked about when we’re getting to know someone. Partly, it seems, because we tend to see music choice as indicating something about personality.

Research has suggested that this might have some basis to it, as music choice seems to reliably indicate aspects of personality and reveals information not necessarily available through other sources.

Future articles in the series will explore other interesting aspects of relationships studied by psychologists.

Link to article ‘Why Health Benefits of Good Relationships Rival Exercise and Nutrition’.
Link to ‘Personality Secrets in Your Mp3 Player’.

Methamphetamine lollygagger

Thanks to Ian for emailing to congratulate Mind Hacks on hosting a Googlewhack – a Google search that turns up only one link. If you search for methamphetamine lollygagger on Google, the only hit is one of our pages.

God knows how Ian discovered this. Great name for a band though.

Of course, as soon as this page gets indexed it will no longer be a Googlewhack.

Little memory men and spirit voices

A curious footnote on p183 from Mary Roach’s wonderful book on the natural history of the dead body Stiff: The Curious Lives of the Human Cadaver (ISBN 0141007451):

People have trouble believing Thomas Edison to be a loopy individual. I offer as evidence the following passage on human memory, taken from his diaries: “We do not remember. A certain group of our little people do this for us. They live in the part of the brain which has become known as the ‘fold of Broca‘… There may be twelve of fifteen shifts that change about and are on duty at different times like men in a factory…. Therefore it seems likely that remembering a thing is all a matter of getting in touch with the shift that was on duty when the recording was done.”

As well as his idiosyncratic views on memory, Eddison also thought that departed spirits might communicate through electrical equipment. In his writing, he refers to a device he had specifically designed for communicating with the dead.

Later, Dr. Konstantin Raudive, a Latvian psychologist and student of Carl Jung, continued Eddison’s work by looking for the apparent voices of spirits that appeared on audio recordings (known as EVP).

Critics suggest that the apparent voices are nothing but our brains trying to making sense out of essentially random data – something known as apophenia.

Raudive is pictured on the right with one of his special devices.

An unusual chapter in the history of psychology.

Link to Fortean Times article on the history of EVP.

London cabbie navigates with hippocampus damage

The hippocampus is thought to be essential for navigation. Surprisingly, a paper published last year reported that a London Taxi driver, who suffered hippocampus damage on both sides of the brain, could successfully navigate around much of London.

London black cab drivers must pass ‘The Knowledge‘ to get a license.

It involves memorising London streets and being able to work out, from memory, the best route between any two places in the city.

In 2003, neuroscientist Dr Eleanor Maguire and her team won the Ig Nobel Prize (a humorous award for discoveries “that cannot, or should not, be reproduced”) for a study that found that the hippocampi of London Taxi drivers were larger than average, possibly because the drivers are constantly exercising their spatial memory.

Despite winning the Ig Nobel, this paper has been very important in understanding both spatial memory and how the brain grows during adult life.

The same team of researchers published a paper last year, looking at the navigation skills of a London taxi driver who suffered selective damage to both his hippocampi after a brain infection.

If the hippocampi were essential for navigation, it would be thought that such a person would have lost ‘The Knowledge’ or would be unable to use it in practice.

They tested the driver in a complete computer simulation of London (pictured left) and discovered, to their surprise, that he was surprisingly good at orienting himself in the city and navigating the main roads.

He often became lost, however, when he moved away from the main roads and had to rely on smaller roads for navigation.

This suggests that the hippocampus is necessary for the fine-grained knowledge of locations rather than navigation in total.

The researchers suggest that as roads become more familiar, they may become more like ‘semantic knowledge’ (facts like ‘Paris is the capital of France’) that you can remember without bringing to mind the context in which you learnt it, or last encountered it.

They note that the main roads may have become more familiar over time and so have acquired a more semantic-like status.

As this occurs, the information would become independent of the hippocampus, allowing the brain-injured taxi driver to keep some of his hard-won Knowledge.

Link to abstract of study on PubMed.

Prescribing ecstasy

Slate has an article on the use of MDMA (‘Ecstasy’) in the treatment of people with post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

Limited licenses have been granted to research the use of MDMA to assist in psychotherapy, particularly for trials in people with trauma-related stress.

It will shortly be trialled to see if it can help relieve anxiety and pain in terminal cancer patients.

The Slate article looks at these recent developments, and discusses how they might be practically applied in clinical treatment plans considering some of unwanted effects that might occur.

Link to article ‘What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been’ (via Dev Intel).

The romantic literature of recovered memories

The New York Times discusses a recent challenge laid down by psychologists skeptical of claims of recovered memories: find a single account of repressed memory, fictional or not, before the year 1800.

The researchers claim that the earliest account is from the 1782 novel Dangerous Liaisons and have published their findings in the journal Psychological Medicine.

They suggest that the idea of a recovered memory is a cultural invention and people are likely to arrive at the clinic with trauma and memory problems already shaped by these ideas.

The challenge has revisited a long-standing and heated debate over the reality of recovered memories that first exploded in the 1980s.

At the centre of the storm were people who claimed to have recovered memories of childhood abuse, often after hours of unusual or maverick forms of therapy.

The sheer numbers of people claiming to have uncovered repressed memories of abuse led some psychologists to question the reality of many of these memories and doubt that a healthy person could effectively repress whole episodes of their life, only to have them return later.

Researchers began to investigate the psychology of recovered memories in the lab and found evidence that false childhood memories could easily be induced in healthy participants [pdf] but also that memories could be deliberately ‘forgotten’ to some extent [pdf].

In response to the literary challenge, other researchers have offered earlier examples, but the challengers have dismissed them as not fitting their criteria adequately.

How much culture affects the expression of both normal and disordered thinking is currently a poorly-understood area and will probably become a major force in psychology over the coming decades.

Link to NYT article ‘A Study of Memory Looks at Fact and Fiction’.
Link to PubMed entry for the Psychological Medicine paper.

Furious Seasons

Furious Seasons is a blog about psychiatry and mental health by a ‘long-time psych patient’. What makes this blog different is that the author is also an award-winning investigative journalist.