The recently created Mental Health Update is a blog that collects mental health posts from across the internet.
Although it bills itself as providing the “Latest info on bipolar disorder, mad cow disease and other mental conditions”, which strikes me as a bit of an odd combination for a strapline, it is frequently updated and links to a suprisingly diverse number of stories and news sources.
Link to Mental Health Update.
Online media journal Stay Free! Daily takes a critical look at a recent newspaper report that anorexia is ’caused’ by a brain dysfunction rather than pressure from society.
The story is based on a recent paper from a research group led by psychiatrist Bryan Lask.
Their study found decreased blood flow in a variety of brain areas in a group of adolescents with anorexia, but found that this was not actually linked to any features of the eating disorder, contrary to what the newspaper headline suggests:
There appears to be no association between this reduction in blood flow and cerebral dominance, nutritional status, length of illness, mood, or eating disorder psychopathology. However, there is a significant association between reduced blood flow and impaired visuospatial ability, impaired complex visual memory, and enhanced
information processing.
This suggests that the underlying brain changes in anorexia do not directly affect eating, food or body perception – they are much more general.
How then, does this lead to anorexia ? Lask and his team suggest that a part of the brain called the limbic system might be involved, and that:
Within specific setting conditions such as sociocultural pressures to be thin and a driven and perfectionist personality, the limbic system imbalance may be triggered by such factors as puberty, dieting, weight loss, and various stressors.
In other words, without the pressures from society and a ‘perfectionist personality’, people who have these differences in brain function are unlikely to become anorexic. People who have both therefore, are at the greatest risk of wanting to starve themselves.
A recent study published in the British Journal of Psychology gives us a clue as to what might cause this pressure to be thin.
Researchers showed participants pictures of female bodies, digitally altered to be wider or more thin than average, and then asked them to pick out most attractive body shapes from a range.
After being shown thin bodies, participants tended to pick thinner bodies as the most attractive.
The authors argue that perception of attractiveness and beauty are relative to our experience of the most common body shape, suggesting that the promotion of thin bodies in the media may distort our idea of attractiveness by affecting the ‘data’ on which we judge normality.
Link to Stay Free! article.
Link to abstract of anorexia / neuroscience study.
Link to body shape study.
Some notable scientists have pitched into the gender determinism debate recently held between Pinker and Spelke, as previously mentioned on Mind Hacks.
The debate centred on the influence of biology, sex and gender on psychological abilities, and was inspired by controversial comments suggesting that women might be genetically less suited to science.
The commentary includes insights from psychologists Diane Halpern, Alison Gopnik and Nora Newcombe and geneticist David Haig.
Link to gender determinism commentary from Edge.org
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Review article from PLoS Medicine suggests schizophrenia is less prevalent than previously thought.
It seems to be artificial intelligence week:
1) The Yemen Times runs an article giving an introduction to AI.
2) An article on kuro5hin takes a critical look at the recent completion of a verbal analogy exam by an AI system.
3) AI seduces Stanford students reports Wired, although Stanford students seduce AI would be cooler.
An interview with the current director of the Kinsey Institute on sexual behaviour and sex research.
Paper on CogPrints on ‘A Psychedelic Neurochemistry of Time‘.
Researchers discover a map for smell in the brain.
The early stages of “early, intense romantic love may have more to do with motivation, reward and ‘drive’ aspects of human behavior than with the emotions or sex drive.”
Wired discusses the controversial use of cognitive neuroscience to design effective advertising – (Thanks Michal!).
Better educated women sleep more soundly, although the reverse is true for men. Coincidence ? I think not.
Spraying the hormone oxytocin into the nose makes people more trusting.
Article on Cognitive Daily examines research that suggests emotions don’t appear to affect trust when the person in question is a close friend, but play a strong role when the person is only an acquaintance.
Fantastic analysis of recent research showing cannabis may increase the risk of psychosis particularly in people with certain genes.
BrainBlog is a recent discovery of mine, that regularly updates with neuroscience and neuropsychology news.
It’s run by neuropsychologist Anthony Risser and is more explicitly academic than most other news sources, but often includes abstracts of interesting papers as soon as they hit the press – covering from everything from protein folding to news from the drug regulators.
An online article from Scientific American discusses the work of criminologist Russel Ogden, who has been researching the social organisation of the euthanasia underground.
The practice of assisted suicide is illegal in most countries and Ogden has been pressured academically and legally to give up his research or reveal the identities of anonymous interviewees in his study.
He has successfully continued his research while navigating the novel ethical issues his works brings-up, and has discovered some surprising facts about the existence of the often unacknowledged ‘euthanasia networks’.
[Euthanasia organisation] NuTech is at the forefront of what Ogden calls the “deathing counterculture,” in which nonmedical death practitioners offer referrals, consultations and house calls. “They are taking the place of physicians to deliver virtually undetectable death assistance,” says Ogden
Link to article A Culture of Death.
Link to abstract of paper Non-physician assisted suicide: the technological imperative of the deathing counterculture.
A team of researchers will use technology to extend the human senses, allowing people to sense magnetic fields, experience sight via tactile vibrations and see behind them.
The experiment is being conducted by Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, and artist and researcher Sarah Angliss – who has spent several years experimenting with the sensory and psychological properties of sound.
The volunteers augmented with the new technology will be asked to keep video diaries which will appear online, and members of the public can try the technology themselves at the Cheltenham Science Festival.
The experiment is intended in part as a demonstration of neural plasticity, the process by which the brain reorganises through experience to allow for new functionality.
Link to write-up from we-make-money-not-art.com
TheBrainFreeze.com is a website dedicated to ‘ice cream headaches’, a condition sometimes known as ‘brain freeze’. It hosts a short yet strangely compelling movie of people causing headaches in themselves with slushed ice drinks.
A 1997 article in the British Medical Journal explained why cold things cause headaches, and describes some good old-fashioned self-experimentation in the service of science.
Experimenting on himself, Smith characterised the features of the headache. Applying crushed ice to the palate, he found that ipsilateral temporal and orbital pain developed 20-30 seconds later. Bilateral pain occurred when the stimulus was applied in the midline. The headache could be elicited only in hot weather; attempts to reproduce the pain during the winter were unsuccessful, even with use of a cold stimulus of the same temperature.
Luckily for ice creams fans, the article shys away from medical scaremongering, recommending that “ice cream abstinence is not indicated”.
Link to TheBrainFreeze.com
Link to BMJ article on Ice cream headache.
Vote-to-print t-shirt shop Threadless must have some neuroscience fans amongst their users, as they’ve just printed another brain-based t-shirt.
This time it’s an abstract interpretation of a sagittal section through the head and brain, with the corpus callosum a riot of decorative trim.
Know of any other mind- or brain-based t-shirts ? Let us know.
Link to Think Slow t-shirt.
Psychologist Susan Blackmore has written an article for the Daily Telegraph, arguing that taking drugs has provided inspiration for her work.
So can drugs be creative? I would say so, although the dangers are great – not just the dangers inherent in any drug use, but the danger of coming to rely on them too much and of neglecting the hard work that both art and science demand. There are plenty of good reasons to shun drug-induced creativity.
Yet, in my own case, drugs have an interesting role: in trying to understand consciousness, I am taking substances that affect the brain that I’m trying to understand. In other words, they alter the mind that is both the investigator and the investigated.
She discusses her experience with a range of drugs, including cannabis, LSD, ketamine and MDMA and examines the influence on her own career choices and insights.
Interestingly, she’s taking part in a debate at the Cheltenham Science Festival on whether using drugs can tell us anything about ourselves, with neuroscientist Colin Blakemore and author Mike Jay.
Lets hope the irony of Cheltenham Science Festival being sponsored by a major pharmaceutical company won’t be lost on the panel.
Link to article I take illegal drugs for inspiration.
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Ex-automotive engineer is attempting to understand the brain in terms of thermodynamics and energy transfer.
Trying to describe the taste of wine in flowery language may ruin memory for its taste.
Scientists discover brain areas for understanding sarcasm. Full text of scientific paper is at this PDF.
Anorexia ‘caused by brain not society‘ claims report. Presumably society has no effect on the brain and we are all brains in vats.
It’s always good to see the annual ‘downloading the brain nearly here‘ story come round again. Presumably foot downloading will be tested first.
“The unpalatable truth is that falling in love is, in some ways, indistinguishable from a severe pathology“. Drug companies to market anti-love medication any day now.
Mothers’ ability for reading babies’ emotions more important than economic status for successful development.
Politicians take note: Charisma by numbers!
Review of the biography of the inventor of lobotomy from the British Medical Journal.
New Scientist have put their cover article on brain optimising technologies online – which covers everything from nutrition to neurofeedback.
Their story, 11 steps to a better brain, looks at the science behind techniques that have been shown to boost mental performance.
Some of the techniques are fairly common-sense approaches, like sleeping well and exercising, although the article explains exactly how these might affect thought and behaviour.
Others are a little more controversial and potentially hazardous, such as the use of stimulant drugs like modafinil and methylphenidate.
One particularly interesting part however, is the mention of mental training techniques to boost wider cognitive performance.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, they measured the brain activity of adults before and after a working-memory training programme, which involved tasks such as memorising the positions of a series of dots on a grid. After five weeks of training, their brain activity had increased in the regions associated with this type of memory.
Perhaps more significantly, when the group studied children who had completed these types of mental workouts, they saw improvement in a range of cognitive abilities not related to the training, and a leap in IQ test scores of 8 per cent
Interestingly, similar techniques are now being applied to traditionally hard-to-treat conditions such as schizophrenia that have been shown to have a positive impact on cognitive performance and brain function.
Link to 11 steps to a better brain.
A report in the medical journal Psychopathology notes that psychotic delusions increasingly concern the internet, suggesting high-technology can fulfil the role of malign ‘magical’ forces often experienced in psychosis.
Traditionally, psychiatry has considered the content of delusions as irrelevant and only sees the ‘form’ of a belief as important in diagnosis and treatment. For example, how true it is, how strongly it is held, how it was formed and so on.
This paper analyzes four case-reports and notes that, contrary to the traditional view, the cases are examples where an internet-theme has particular clinical implications.
In one case, a patient began to have paranoid thoughts and used an internet search engine to investigate suspicions about an ingredient on a chewing gum packet.
Her searches led her to believe she had discovered a secret terrorist network, and was therefore being personally targeted by the authorities using phone taps and hidden cameras.
Presumably, by using a different search engine, she would have found different pages, and her delusion would have been centred on something else.
The authors also consider that a person’s understanding of technology may be a limiting factor in their ability to incorporate it into a delusional system. People with a poor understanding for example, may be more likely to attribute seemingly supernatural abilities to technology.
As Arthur C. Clarke famously noted “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
In delusions that feature spirits or other supernatural forces, there is no objective limit to the perceived ‘powers’ of the ‘spirits’, making such delusions sometimes difficult to refute.
In contrast, technology-related delusions can be more easily tested against reality, making for a good prognosis by using techniques such as cognitive behavioural therapy.
The authors also note that cultural concerns can influence delusional beliefs, suggesting technology-related delusions will become more common as the use of high-technology grows.
Link to study abstract.
PDF of full text.
Disclaimer: This paper is from my own research group.
The latest edition of Scientific American Mind has just hit the shelves. Two articles have been made freely available online – one on lying and deceit and the other on the psychology of bullying.
The cover story on lying discusses the adaptive advantages of deception in its various forms throughout both the plant and animal kingdoms.
It also discusses the seemingly paradoxical process of self-deception:
[Benjamin Libet] found that our brains begin to prepare for action just over a third of a second before we consciously decide to act. In other words, despite appearances, it is not the conscious mind that decides to perform an action: the decision is made unconsciously… This study and others like it suggest that we are systematically deluded about the role consciousness plays in our lives.
This general model of the mind, supported by various experiments beyond Libet’s, gives us exactly what we need to resolve the paradox of self-deception–at least in theory. We are able to deceive ourselves by invoking the equivalent of a cognitive filter between unconscious cognition and conscious awareness.
The article on child bullying examines research into the motivations of bullies, and effective methods for children, parents and teachers to stop and prevent bullying in schools.
Other articles only available in the print edition cover the neuroscience of hypnosis, improving memory through visualisation techniques, an interview with consciousness researcher Christof Koch, dreaming, transcranial magnetic stimulation, sign language, neuromarketing and research into why people confess to crimes they haven’t committed.
Link to article Natural-Born Liars.
Link to article Stopping the Bullies
Dr. Victoria Zdrok is an ex-lawyer, international model, author, webmistress and clinical psychologist, and she has agreed to share her insights into the sexual psyche with Mind Hacks.
Providing a unique perspective on the amorous mind, Dr. Zdrok talks about her influences as a psychologist, her views on the current state of sex research and her own studies into the psychology of sexual fantasy.
Continue reading “Dr. Victoria Zdrok on the psychology of sex”
Discovery, the science programme from the BBC World Service, starts the first of a four part series on the psychology and neuroscience of memory.
“…its extraordinary capabilities, how and why it can go wrong – from the vivid intrusions of memory in post traumatic stress disorder to our uncanny ability to adopt memories that aren’t even our own. We’ll find out how and why memory fails and what we can do to improve it.”
The first programme looks at how memory is based in the neurons and structures of the brain and interviews a number of notable memory researchers such as Martin Conway and Kim Graham.
Unfortunately, it looks like the programme isn’t archived online for longer than a week, but the latest programme appears online each Wednesday at 09:00 GMT.
Realaudio archive of last week’s programme.
Link to webpage of BBC World Service Discovery programme.
Mind Hacks 
