vaughanbell

NewSci on autism, free will and homo florensis

This week’s New Scientist has a slew of articles relevant to the mind, brain and behaviour.

The most notable is on the developing ‘autism rights’ movement, which aims to reframe autism and Asperger’s syndrome as a normal (if perhaps, less common) human variation.

This is championed by groups such as Aspies for Freedom, but has caused controversy, particularly with carers of people with autism who are more severely disabled by their condition.

New Scientist also tackles the ongoing implications of the discovery of the remains of homo florensis, the small humanoid nicknamed the ‘hobbit’.

Finally, there is an article on whether the universe is deterministic, i.e. purely ‘mechanical’ in nature, and whether this is compatible with notions of free will.

Sadly, none of these are available online, although occasionally they do appear in the days following publication. If any become available, we’ll be sure to link to them here.

Link to New Scientist table of contents.

Consciousness as a life / death decision maker

Slate has an insightful article on the possible legal consequences of developments in the neuroscience of consciousness, including implications for issues such abortion and right-to-die cases.

It also discusses some of the history and disparities between how different groups define life and death.

Religious conservatives want the law to define life as the existence of a single living cell containing human DNA. Yet their Schiavo campaign bolstered both the acceptance of consciousness as the boundary between life and death and the authority of neuroscience to measure it.

Link to article ‘The Consciometer’ via Metafilter.

Minsky slams modern AI

Marvin Minsky, one of the founders of artificial intelligence research, has slammed modern AI as “brain dead”.

Quoted in Wired magazine, he lambasted the last 30 years of work in the area, particularly the focus on creating AI driven autonomous robots.

However, the article finishes on a throwaway comment about the ‘moving goal posts’ problem in the perception of artificial intelligence, that belies much of the problem with how AI is perceived.

It is illustrated by the success of chess computers. In the 60s, it was said that computers will never beat people at chess, because that requires intelligence and computers aren’t capable of intelligent thought.

When computers regularly started winning matches in the 80s, it was claimed that playing chess wasn’t a test of real intelligence because computers could do it.

As there is no widely accepted definition for intelligence, this is often an example of the No true Scotsman fallacy.

Link to Wired article.
Link to Minsky on ‘Smart Machines’ from edge.org
Link to Wikipedia page on Minsky.

Art and the altered mind

Rolldance is a blog started by artist Laurie Buenafe that highlights the intersections between art, the mind and mental illness.

Creativity and mental illness have often been linked. A number of prolific artists who have been mentally ill, sometimes leading to some truly striking artwork, and many people suffering mental distress find relief in art and art therapy.

More recently, scientific evidence is now emerging to show that many of the same psychological attributes are associated with both psychosis and creativity.

Rolldance aims to keep the reader up to date on interesting news items relevant to understanding and coping with mental illness, as well as noting where art and the altered mind meet to good effect.

Link to Rolldance blog

Psychosis and modern-day hysteria

Mind Hacks favourite All in the Mind had a split edition on Saturday, discussing the topics of hysteria (otherwise known as conversion disorder) and the neuroscience of psychosis.

Conversion disorder is a poorly understood condition where physical symptoms, sometimes as severe as total paralysis, seem to be caused by psychological problems and have no basis in detectable damage to the nervous system or other parts of the body.

It is now thought that these sorts of problems occur on a continuum of medically unexplained symptoms and that milder forms are a significant part of a doctor’s caseload.

The second part of the programme discusses the dopamine hypothesis of psychosis, that argues that delusions and hallucinations can be largely explained by dysfunction to the dopamine systems in the brain.

My impression is that the discussion is a little uncritical of this over-simplified theory of the complex experience of psychosis, but is valuable as a clear explanation of the approach none-the-less.

mp3, Realaudio or transcript of 11^th June “All in the Mind”.

Link to editorial from Canadian Journal of Psychiatry on conversion disorder and related conditions (see side panel for further articles).

The madness of Batman

A story from NY Newsday queries professional psychologists about the mental health of Batman and the likely causes of his mental instability.

Batman is a fascinating character, not least because his mind and motivations have become an integral plot device in many films and graphic novels.

In fact, the portrayal of madness in the Batman universe is a topic I have tackled myself, in a past article for kuro5hin.org

Almost uniquely for such a popular genre, the plots of Batman revolve around mental illness, because, in addition to Batman’s own troubled thoughts, almost all the criminals are depicted as insane.

It is likely that Batman is both a mirror for our own stereotypes of madness, as well as a medium through which children get some of their first impressions of mental illness.

Link to ‘Is he really batty?’ from NY Newsday
Link to ‘Madness in Gotham’ from kuro5hin.org

A critical look at the genetics of orgasm

PsyBlog has done a great job of tracking down some critical views on recent reports that suggest there may be a genetic contribution to women’s ability to orgasm and whether this relates to an evolutionary role for sexual climax.

The comments are from psychologist Dr Petra Boyton and bear reading in full.

She criticises both the original research findings, and the subsequent way the media have reported the results.

Some criticisms are more telling than others – the fact that the research “wasn’t published in a recognised sex journal” seems a little circumstantial to me – but overall, it’s a well needed analysis of the recent media frenzy.

Link to article ‘ Women, orgasm and genetics’.
Link to article ‘Women! Don‚Äôt orgasm so easily’

2005-06-10 Spike activity

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

A widely reported story suggests that Ashkenazi Jews may be genetically more likely to be highly intelligent. Full text of research paper here.

Psychometrics, the science of measuring the mind, has a long tradition in Maori culture.

Cool demonstration of the rapid afterimage effect. Doesn’t seem to work in Firefox though.

In the USA, about one in four adults have the symptoms of at least one mental illness every year, and nearly half suffer disorders during their lifetimes, says new government report.

Cognitive Daily has a fascinating article on how children learn to walk.

A short article discusses sites on the internet that seem to promote eating disorders.

BBC Radio 4 has a news story and a radio programme (archived as a realaudio stream) on controversial psychiatrist and alien abductee researcher John Mack.

Also on BBC Radio 4:

1) Leading Edge discusses IBM’s project to simulate the brain, mentioned previously on Mind Hacks.

2) Material World discusses the science of film and emotion.

BrainMeta

I’m not quite sure what BrainMeta is exactly, but it sure is interesting.

It bills itself as

a community site that was established for the purpose of accelerating the development of neuroscience through web-based initiatives, which include the development, implementation and support of a wide range of neuroinformatics tools, services, and databases. BrainMeta also functions as an internet hub for fostering communication between individuals involved with the neurosciences.

It certainly has a mass of useful links and resources online that would pique the interest of the most hardened of academic neuroscientists.

But then has essays about “The Consciousness Singularity” when “history as we know it, will cease” and “our consciousness will be expanded beyond the confines of an egocentric sense of self”.

If anything, it’s great fun to explore, even if some of the the blue sky thinking (blue universe thinking maybe ?) is a little puzzling at times.

Link to BrainMeta.com

Mixed gender pornography boosts sperm production

Science journal Nature is reporting on a study which has found that sperm production is boosted when men view pornography including images of both men and women, rather than pornographic images of women only.

Although this seems to go against common perceptions about male sexual preferences, it is consistent with the theory of sperm competition, says study leader Leigh Simmons of the University of Western Australia, Perth. This states that males (of many species, including humans) should produce better sperm when faced with a female who has other mates, because this stimulates them to boost their chance of procreation.

It seems all this week’s science news is about sex. I guess summer is officially here, even in the world of science.

Link to story from nature.com

The genetics of female orgasm

New Scientist is reporting on a study into the <a href="genetics of the female orgasm. This is timely, as its evolutionary role is now a subject of much debate, as mentioned previously on Mind Hacks.

Spector’s team asked more than 6000 female twins to fill out a confidential questionnaire about how often they achieved orgasm during intercourse and masturbation. They received 4037 complete replies, which included answers from 683 pairs of non-identical twins and 714 pairs of identical twins.

According to a study published this week, up to 45% of the differences between women in their ability to reach orgasm can be explained by their genes.

There are two common ways that researchers compute genetic influence from twin studies however, one known as ‘pairwise concordance’ the other as ‘probandwise concordance’ (some details here).

Probandwise concordance typically suggests much higher levels of influence from the same data.

I’ve not been able to read the full text of the article, so can’t find out what method has been used to calculate concordance, but if anyone has, please get in touch.

Link to New Scientist story.
Link to summary from nature.com
Link to abstract of study from Biology Letters.

Out of the corner of my eye…

When we direct our attention to an object, we usually look directly at it, but research just published in the journal Neuron looks at how we focus our attention on things that we notice ‘out of the corner of our eye’.

A research team, led by David Melcher from Oxford Brookes University, has been investigating this process, known to psychologists as implicit selective attention.

They found when focusing on a certain attribute of visual experience – such as colour, the visual system automatically groups other objects of the same colour that move together, even if they are not directly involved in the task at hand.

They also found that objects are understood by the visual system in different ways, depending on whether the object was the focus of attention, or outside of it.

Objects being focused on were understood as wholes by using the fact that all the visual elements have the same surface, whereas objects outside the current focus were grouped in a more basic way, using the fact that visual elements are close together or move in a similar way.

Link to story from medicalnews.com
Link to summary of study from Neuron.
Link to lots of experiments, demonstrations and tutorials on attention.

Why can’t Robert Lansberry get his mail ?

Filmmaker Richard Pell has released online a compelling documentary that questions the distinction between psychosis, reality and reasonable paranoia.

It focuses on the life of the late Robert Lansberry, an anti ‘mind control’ protestor who heard voices he attributed to mind control technology. He also believed he was being targetting by the FBI and secret service, who were stopping him getting his mail.

It turns out however, that his mail was being intercepted by the authorities, as his FBI file shows. Furthermore, many of his concerns about mind control turned out to be less crazy than they sounded.

The documentary discusses research into conformity and mind control, genuinely carried out by the secret services during the 60s and 70s, and has archive footage and interviews with some of the people involved.

As well as giving an insight into a warm and fascinating character (who at one stage ran for office and gained over 30,000 votes) it questions the basis for understanding psychosis and paranoia in an increasingly paranoid world.

Link to documentary Don’t Call Me Crazy on the 4th of July

Cigarettes designed to “addict women”

A review of tobacco industry documents show research on psychological and behavioural needs in women was used to target cigarette advertising and ingredients, to increase smoking and reduce quitting rates.

The recently released review (PDF), published in the journal Addiction notes that:

A 1976 British-American Tobacco Company (BAT) review of gender differences (drawing on both internal and published studies) concluded that women were more motivated to smoke, smoked more for insecurity reasons and exhibited more neurotic traits.

The author further observed that higher neuroticism among women may intensify responses to smoking-related health pressures, and that female smokers found quitting more difficult and reported fewer successful cessation attempts.

In response, cigarette advertising and ingredients were altered to make them even more difficult to give up, and more attractive for new smokers.

Link to summary from Science Blog
PDF of full-text paper Designing cigarettes for women.
PDF of Addiction editorial Exploitation by design

IBM to simulate the “entire brain”

New Scientist is reporting that IBM will attempt to simulate the “entire brain” in collaboration with the Swiss Brain Mind Insititute using a specially modified computer system dubbed ‘Blue Brain‘.

It seems from the news reports that the system will attempt to simulate the physical properties of individual neurons and their connections – a science known as neuroinformatics. Both the New Scientist story, and another from Business Week, are a little light on detail however.

They both suggest that an initial project will be to simulate the structure and function of neocortical columns – the three dimensional, highly interconnected layers of neurons, famously found to be an essential part of the visual cortex.

Although impressive, this seems a far cry from simulating the ‘entire brain’, which would involve simulating 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses in real-time.

This assumes, of course, there is a good enough understanding of how each neuron and synpase works – a science which is still very much in development.

The project is long-term however (a decade is mentioned), so hopefully it will allow for some important developments, even if physically simulating the entire brain might be a little far fetched – even in the near future.

Link to New Scientist article ‘Mission to build a simulated brain begins’.
Link to Business Week article ‘Blue Brain: Illuminating the Mind’.

No function for the female orgasm ?

Elisabeth Lloyd caused a stir with a recent book that suggests the female orgasm has no evolutionary function, and she discusses her controversial views on ABC Radio’s All in the Mind.

Professor Lloyd has examined the current evolutionary theories and argues none adequately explain why females orgasm, as sexual climax is not needed for succesful conception in women, nor is it related to levels of fertility.

In contrast, males need to orgasm for successful reproduction. Lloyd argues that the female orgasm is only present due to the similar structure of early-stage embryos.

Male and female embryos share the nerve pathways necessary for orgasm, like they share the tissue structure for nipples, despite them being reproductively useful in only one half of adults.

Other theories, she claims, have been unduly influenced by ideas about what is sexually ‘normal’ or ‘appropriate’.

On a bit of a tangent, All in the Mind now produces its programmes as podcasts as well as Realaudio streams, allowing them to be downloaded for later listening.

Realaudio or mp3 of The Perplexing Case of the Female Orgasm.
Link to transcript.