Author: vaughanbell

The New York Times has a short piece on Peter Whybrow’s and John Gartner’s theory that Americans have a greater genetic propensity for hypomania, the elevated mood state sometimes found in bipolar disorder.

This, they suggest, explains aspects of American culture such as focus on energetic enthusiasm and respect for new ideas.

Interestingly, recent genetic evidence is now pointing to the fact that genes likely to be present in people diagnosed with schizophrenia overlap with those found in people diagnosed with bipolar disorder, suggesting that these may not be distinct disorders, but exist on a continuum.

If Whybrow and Gartner are right, therefore, might Americans be more likely to show traits of psychosis and schizotypy as well?

This may not necessarily be a bad thing, as high levels of these traits have been linked to greater mathematical ability and creativity.

Link to article ‘The Hypomanic American’.

Author Nicola Morgan has written a book on neuroscience for teenagers, that explains why teenage experience and behaviour seems so intensely different during adolescence.

The book, Blame My Brain, manages to accurately present scientific research, without presenting any ‘just so’ stories. Various theories and approaches are given where a strong conclusion is not widely accepted.

It also manages to explain neuroscience in a straightforward yet engaging way:

For a long time, people have assumed that this inability to get out of bed is just teenagers being lazy. We have blamed it on the fact that they choose to stay up too late and therefore can’t get up in the morning. But new research shows that laziness and deliberately late nights are not entirely to blame.

…

When the body clock switches off, it tells our bodies to start feeling sleepy, and the brain produces a hormone called melatonin. This chemical prepares our brains to be sleepy. Tests have shown that in adolescence, melatonin is produced much later in the evening than in younger children. About the same as adults in fact. This is why you don’t often feel sleepy until late in the evening.

It also includes plenty of tests and demonstrations that the reader can try out on themselves or their friends and family!

Link to details of Blame My Brain: The amazing teenage brain revealed.

New Scientist reports on a recent study that examines the effect of coffee on the brain. The good news is that it seems to do the frontal lobes, and the executive system, the world of good.

“The group all showed activation of the working memory part of the brain,” Koppelst√§tter explains. “But those who received caffeine had significantly greater activation in parts of the prefrontal lobe, known as the anterior cingulate and the anterior cingulate gyrus. These areas are involved in ‘executive memory’, attention, concentration, planning and monitoring.”

Just don’t mention the withdrawal headaches…

Link to article ‘Coffee’s effects revealed in brain scans’.

Poor sleep is the common result of stress or illness, but sleep researchers are increasingly coming to believe that insomnia itself is a separate disorder. Science News discusses the science of insomnia, and new developments in the neuroscience of ‘sleeping pills’.

One problem with previous types of sleeping pill (particularly the benzodiazepines) is that they become quickly addictive and so are indicated for short-term use only. The holy grail of sleep medication research is to find a compound which is non-addictive and not ‘fun’ enough to be abused.

Science News reviews various compounds that are new or currently in development, and their aim to safely mimic earlier medications, or hormones in the body that promote sleep.

For people who are having trouble sleeping, however, there are simple techniques which can significantly improve sleep time and quality.

The Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center has some online advice to help people manage their sleeping environment and habits to get the maximum benefit out of sleep.

Link to Science News article ‘Staring into the dark’.
Link to ‘Helpful Hints to Help You Sleep’.

If using vibrators to shrink your waistline makes you think of spam email, you may be surprised to find out it’s the basis of a fascinating neuroscience experiment published in open-access science journal PLoS Biology.

The study relies on an unusual effect called the Pinocchio illusion, which occurs when a vibrating sensation is applied to the outside muscle on one of the body’s joints. This causes a feeling of the joint closing, when in fact it remains in the same position.

This feeling of movement can conflict with other bodily sensations, and can produce the unusual feeling that body parts are becoming warped or elongated, just like Pinocchio’s nose.

In Ehrsson’s experiment, they applied a vibrating sensation (the blue boxes in the diagram) to the back of each wrist, which gave the false impression that the hands were moving in towards the legs.

While this was happening, Ehrsson and his team brain-scanned the participants to detect active brain areas, and compared conditions where participants were touching vs not touching their legs; and where the vibration was applied to the joint muscles vs another area on the hands.

Crucially, only in the condition when the participant’s hands were touching their legs and the wrist joint muscles were being vibrated, did it feel as if their waste was shrinking to accommodate the illusory movement.

The team found that the strength of the illusion was associated with activity in areas of the left parietal lobe, which are known to be involved in creating the sensation of body shape, also called ‘body image’.

The study suggests that the brain generates body image by making a best guess from the incoming tactile information.

In other words, because the wrist jounts were providing ‘false’ information – indicating that the hands were moving through space occupied by the legs – the brain simply ‘guessed’ that the waist must be smaller to make sense of the discrepancy.

If you want to try this effect at home, a couple of vibrating sex toys are probably your best bet. If you don’t have any, now’s your chance to freak out your local sex shop by asking them to recommend the best dildo for cognitive neuroscience experiments.

Link to study summary.
Link to full text paper.
Link to write-up from nature.com
Link to write-up from BBC News.