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Luria archive sheds light on ‘father of neuropsychology’

The University of California, San Diego have created an extensive online archive of material related to the pioneering Russian neuropsychologist A.R. Luria, who is often considered the ‘father’ of the modern neuropsychology.

Like another famous neuroscientist, Eric Kandel, he originally intended to look for a scientific basis for Freudian concepts of the mind.

As time went on, he began to develop short tasks designed to tap specific mental skills and abilities – a technique now almost universally used in cognitive and neuropsychology. The photo on the right shows Luria (in the white coat) testing a patient with one of his tasks.

His encounters with the large number of brain-injured soldiers returning from World War Two led Luria to make links between specific areas of the brain and certain mental functions, which he could test by using his tasks and testing their diagnostic accuracy.

Some of the tasks he developed to make and test these links are still used by neuropsychologists today.

As well as writing some of the most influential books on the practise of neuropsychology, he also wrote up detailed neuropsychological biographies of two remarkable patients.

The Mind of a Mnemonist was a case study of ‘S’, who had a striking form of synaesthesia that gave him a memory so reliable that one of his main problems was being unable to forget – meaning he often became overwhelmed by detail of his memories and could not focus on the most important aspects.

In contrast, The Man with a Shattered World recounted the story of a soldier who suffered selective impairments to memory, perception and language after suffering a head wound in battle.

Luria recounted the personal experiences and histories of these remarkable individuals alongside his scientific investigations into their brain function.

He called this deeply personal form of scientific investigation ‘romantic science’, and is cited by Oliver Sacks as a major influence on his own style of writing and subject matter.

The UCSD Luria archive has everything from essays on his work, to a video documentary about the man himself, and is a crucial resource for those interested both in this hugely influential figure and the history of neuropsychology.

Link to UCSD Luria archive.

Coma – the comedy

Nigel Smith is a respected British comedy writer whose new show Vent has just hit BBC Radio 4. It is based around his experiences of suffering a demyelinating brain stem lesion and falling into a serious coma.

Luckily, Smith has recovered, although still has difficulties with many everyday activities, but has managed to write a dryly comic show about the darkest of times with some wit and panache.

The show is full of reverie and comic fantasy, contrasted with incisive commentary on the banality of everyday family life when a member is less than willing to engage in conversation.

“Some rules about comas: 1) Mothers never switch off the life support. They can’t do it. Maybe it’s love? Maybe it’s for the first time since you were on the tit, they’ve got you where they want you. They finally know where you are, they know you’re warm, you’re eating regularly and you’re having those quiet nights in they always dreamed of.”

The show is archived online, so you can listen to past episodes if you’re not in the UK.

Link to audio archive of Vent.
Link to Times article on Smith’s experiences.

A visual history of pharmaceutical drug ads

There’s a wonderful collection of borderline-psychedelic drug adverts taken from the Spanish magazine Cl√≠nica Rural during the 1960s.

There’s now quite a collection of drug adverts on the net, giving an interesting historical and cultural insight into how mind altering medication has been pitched to consumers over the years.

The Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art is one of my favourites, which contains some equally kitsch artwork from 1956 to the present.

Alternatively, this gallery has a collection of American drug adverts including the surprising advert for the drug Thorazine captioned “Tyrant in the house? Thorazine can help control the agitated, belligerent senile”.

At the time of this advert, drugs like Thorazine (also known by its generic name chlorpromazine) were marketed as major tranquillisers.

One of its other trade-names was Largactil, intended to communicate the idea that it was ‘large acting’ and could be used to treat most forms of mental disorder.

This class of drug was then re-branded as ‘neuroleptics’, and now as ‘anti-psychotics’, showing the ongoing process of marketing and re-marketing that occurs as drug companies position themselves to best promote their wares.

Link to Spanish drug ads gallery (via BB).
Link to the Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art.
Link to vintage drug ads page.

Measuring depravity

Depravity is a concept often used in criminal trials when making decisions on the seriousness or gravity of a particular crime. The depravity scale is a project to develop a measure of depravity, and is asking members of the public to help develop it.

It is the brainchild of forensic psychiatrist Dr Michael Welner who wants the concept of depravity to be more rigorous and psychometrically sound, so it can be measured reliably.

The depravity scale website asks members of the public to rank specific scenarios for how depraved they are, to get an estimation of how people understand and use the concept of depravity.

The scale has not been without controversy, however, with some professionals questioning whether psychiatry should become involved in making moral decisions.

Forensic psychiatry is particularly interesting in this regard, as it attempts to distinguish ‘bad’ from ‘mad’.

This project is also interesting in light of the history of psychiatry and madness. The idea that mental illness is the result of the breakdown of the mechanisms of mind and brain is a relatively new idea, and traditionally mental illness was seen as a moral failing.

Psychiatry (or mad-doctoring as it was known then) brought madness into the medical realm, where previously it was the domain of the church. Just like today, there were accusations that doctors were interfering in moral issues.

Link to The Depravity Scale website.
Link to story on the project from Psychiatric News.
Link to NY Daily News story on the scale.

Syd Barrett has left the building

BBC News are reporting that Syd Barrett, the troubled genius and founding member of Pink Floyd, has passed away.

Barrett was rumoured to have had mental health difficulties, and his later solo albums are repleat with commentaries on the experience of mental turmoil.

He is commonly cited as one of the most influential musicians of his generation.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Time magazine on prosopagnosia

The curious condition of prosopagnosia (something referred to – somewhat incorrectly – as ‘face blindness’) is featured in a short article in Time.

Prosopagnosia is a term used to refer to quite a broad range of neuropsychological difficulties that impair people from recognising others by their face, despite the fact that they may recognise them by other features (such as by voice, or even by a distinctive tatoo) and have little trouble with recognising non-face objects.

The article focuses on recent findings that prosopagnosia can result from inheriting genetic traits, rather than only from brain injury, as was previously thought.

For years, prosopagnosia was associated with damage to the fusiform gyrus and was considered quite rare owing to the fact that this brain structure is quite protected from most sorts of head injury.

The inherited version of the recognition disorder seems much more common, although, perhaps, is less severe is many cases.

The Time article reports on the experiences of some people with the disorder, and some of the recent research on the inherited condition.

We previously featured an interview with Dr Thomas Grueter, one of the researchers mentioned in the article. Interestingly, he has prosopagnosia himself.

Link to Time article ‘Do I Know You?’.

The theft of humanity

An article in American Scientist bemoans the division of research into schools and traditions in modern universities as counter productive, and argues that the cognitive and biological sciences are now at the forefront of combining science and art practice.

I would probably argue philosophy has always had a similarly broad outlook, but the author argues that science is where the new action is.

…but while humanistic scholars have been presuming core facts about human nature, human capacities and human being, scientists have been getting to work. One of the most striking features of contemporary intellectual life is the fact that questions formerly reserved for the humanities are today being approached by scientists in various disciplines such as cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, robotics, artificial life, behavioral genetics and evolutionary biology.

Link to article ‘Science and the Theft of Humanity’ (via 3Quarks).

Between a thing and a thought

Artist Susan Aldworth creates works based on neurology and brain scans, after her own experience of having an emergency angiogram after suffering a suspected stroke.

BBC News reports on her ongoing exhibition entitled ‘Matter Into Imagination‘.

The exhibition has just been moved from its previous home in the Menier Gallery, to the corridors of the Royal London Hospital, and the gallery of the Old Operating Theatre Museum near St Thomas Hospital in London Bridge.

If you’re not able to visit either of these exhibitions, Aldworth has an extensive gallery on her website that shows her brain-inspired paintings and sculptures.

Link to Susan Aldworth’s website.
Link to details of ‘Matter into Imagination’ exhibition.
Link to BBC News story ‘How brain scans inspired artist’.

Five minutes with Sherry Turkle

Professor Sherry Turkle is a psychologist best known for her pioneering research into the psychology of computers and the internet, and particularly on how we interpret concepts such as the self and identity through the veil of technology.

Her book Life on the Screen was hugely influential as one of the first books on ‘internet psychology’ in the days when the internet had barely reached the mainstream.

She remains intensely interested in how technology affects the mind, behaviour and social world, and has kindly agreed to talk to Mind Hacks.

Continue reading “Five minutes with Sherry Turkle”

Synapse vol 1 n 2

The most recent Synapse has just been published on A Blog Around the Clock with a collection of new psychology and neuroscience writing for your reading pleasure…

In addition, there’s also a neuroscience competition embedded in this edition:

This time, you have a puzzle to solve. Next to each entry, there is an image depicting the structural formula of a neurotransmitter, neurohormone or neuromodulator. Your job is to figure out what they are and leave the answers in the comments (or in your own posts that link to this edition)…

The winner – whoever is the first to correctly identify all ten compounds – will be highlighted first and with an extra post, when I host Encephalon, the other neurocarnival, later this Fall on November 6th.

There’s a few of the ‘classic nine’ in there, and the molecule accompanying the Mind Hacks post looks to be related to glycine, but I haven’t got any further than that.

Best of luck!

Link to latest Synapse neuroscience writing carnival.

John Beloff has left the building

The Guardian has the obituary of Dr John Beloff, the British researcher who was one of the pioneers of academic parapsychology.

Beloff had already been conducting research in parapsychology. In 1961, he and a physics student, Leonard Evans, carried out an innovative experiment in psychokinesis (PK) – that is, roughly, mind over matter. In this experiment, radioactive decay served as a source of randomness, and the objective was to influence the radioactive source so that its particle emissions were non-random. This was the first instance of what later became a standard approach to PK research, and it marked an important advance over using more mathematically and physically complex objects (for example, falling dice or coins) as PK targets. Although the Beloff and Evans experiment yielded null results, their report has been cited more often than any other of his experimental papers.

Link to obituary of Dr John Beloff.
Link to John Beloff’s website.

From bad to worse: the worst ideas on the mind

As a follow on to their previous ‘greatest minds on the minds’ event, the Royal Institution will be hosting a lively event in London to find out what is the worst idea ever to grace the worlds of psychology and psychiatry.

The debate will happen on Tuesday 18 July and will feature lobotomy, post-trauma counselling, drug company advertising and Freudian psychotherapy.

Interestingly, Freud also featured as one of the ‘great minds’ featured in the last debate. The fact he turns up in both is a lovely illustration of his still controversial legacy.

Lobotomy is notorious for its over-zealous application and long-term damaging effects, post-trauma counselling – otherwise known as ‘debriefing’ – has been shown to make trauma worse in some people, and drug company advertising is widely cited for its insidious effects on both doctors and patients.

As with the previous event, the debate will finish with an audience vote to settle the matter. Let the battle begin!

Link to details of event from the Royal Institution.

2006-07-07 Spike activity

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

Seed Magazine has an insightful article on being seduced by the flickering lights of fMRI.

Also see the April 2006 issue of Cortex for a more in-depth approach (warning: their website doesn’t work in Firefox).

Differences in the placenta of pregnant women may predict later autism in baby, suggests new study.

Popular Science on the next generation of artificial limbs, fused directly to human bone and interfaced with the brain.

Training your husband using operant conditioning and animal training techniques (via Dana Leighton).

New study suggests metabolic syndrome may be a health risk for some who take antipsychotic drug clozapine.

BrainDigg is like Digg but for neuroscience stories.

Paranoid and suspicious thoughts more common than thought, suggests new survey.

Stroke leaves Geordie women with Jamaican-like voice in a case of foreign accent syndrome (with video).

Mixing Memory tackles debates over the representation of knowledge in a well-thought out article on a complex area.

Actress Ashley Judd reveals her experience of depression.

Limb amputation reduces brain volume in thalamus

There’s a fascinating study in the journal Neuroimage that reports that people who have had a limb amputated show reduction in the volume of grey matter in the thalamus – a complex deep brain structure.

The study, led by neuroscientist Dr Bogdan Draganski, scanned the brains of 28 patients whose limbs had been surgically removed.

The reduction in grey matter volume was typically found on the opposite side of the thalamus to the amputated limb.

As movement-related brain structures are largely involved with actions on the opposite side of the body, this suggests that the absence of the limb is affecting an area directly involved in its coordination and control.

Crucially, the amount of grey matter reduction was correlated with the time since the limb was amputated, suggesting that the brains of the patients were continuously reorganising in light of the serious change in action, sensation and body image.

These findings are likely to have significant implications for the field of neuroprosthetics that aims to interface prosthetic replacements for damaged body parts directly with the nervous system.

Knowing how the nervous system changes over time in response to injury will enable neuroprosthetic devices to make best use of the remaining function.

Link to abstract of study.

NYT on the ‘grim neurology’ of teenage drinking

The New York Times has published an extensive article on the effect of drinking on the teenage brain.

Increasing research is now being conducted on the effect of teenage substance use on the brain, as it has recently been discovered that adolescents do not just have ‘young adult’ brains in all respects.

It now seems that the brain may be particularly sensitive during the teenage years, and significant substance abuse may have more of an impact during this time than later in adult life.

While much research has been conducted on cannabis use during adolesence, owing to its effect of increasing the risk of psychosis, attention is increasing being focused on alchohol.

Mounting research suggests that alcohol causes more damage to the developing brains of teenagers than was previously thought, injuring them significantly more than it does adult brains. The findings, though preliminary, have demolished the assumption that people can drink heavily for years before causing themselves significant neurological injury. And the research even suggests that early heavy drinking may undermine the precise neurological capacities needed to protect oneself from alcoholism.

Link to NYT article ‘The Grim Neurology of Teenage Drinking’.

Neuroethics Society launches

Brain Ethics has picked up on the launch of the Neuroethics Society – a professional organisation for those interested in the ethics of neuroscience and neurological enhancement.

It is being kicked off by neuropsychologist Professor Martha Farah who is one of the pioneers in the field and wrote an influential article on neuroethics [pdf] that introduced the field to many in the mainstream of cognitive science.

The society is hoping to organise some upcoming conferences and focus some much needed attention in the increasingly pervasive influence of neurotechnology on society.

Link to Brain Ethics on launch of the Neuroethics Society.
Link to Neuroethics Society webpage.
pdf of Martha Farah’s article ‘Neuroethics: the practical and the philosophical’.