Author: vaughanbell

The taste of musical notes

A paper published in recent issue of the scientific journal Nature, describes a case of a woman who has the synaesthetic experience of tasting sounds and seeing them as specific colours.

She is a professional musician and uses her unique gift to pick out specific notes and tone intervals. Her abilities were tested by asking her to identity specific tone intervals while tasting sour, bitter, salty or sweet solutions.

When compared to other musicians, she found it more difficult when the taste of the solution differed to the taste usually produced by the tone interval, than when they matched.

Link to study summary from nature.com.
Link to writeup from wired.com

How would clones think ?

In Michael Marshall Smith’s novel Spares, a disaffected cop decides to free human clones, kept for their body parts.

Although fiction, Smith’s book presents an interesting thought experiment and brings some salient questions to mind. For example, what would be the psychological effect of discovering that you had been cloned, or actually were a clone ?

With the science and ethics of cloning being debated widely in the media, ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind programme recruits a psychiatrist, a geneticist and an expert on ethics to discuss the possibilities.

Link to programme transcript.
Link to realaudio archive of radio programme.

National Geographic on the Mind

The latest issue of the National Geographic magazine is a special issue on the mind.

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It contains a compelling account of open brain surgery, where, as is usual, the patient is conscious and given tests during the operation to make sure removed sections are not crucial for language.

The other articles cover a variety of important developments in mind and brain science, including the neuropsychology of spiritual experience, emotion and navigation, plus some remarkable photographs.

Two of my particular favourites are articles on an exceptional autistic boy (mentioned in an earlier post by Tom) and a neurologist with hypergraphia – the incessant need to write.

There’s some excerpts and video footage freely available online, but the best content seems to be in the magazine only.

2005-03-04 Spike activity

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

spike.jpg

Judges are likely to rate people who perform last in a competition more highly, regardless of their ability.

Boston authorities are investigating an ex-stripper to see if she has been pretending to be a psychologist.

An excellent article on the burgeoning field of ‘neurotheology‘ – V.S. Ramachandran’s experiments on religion and temporal lobe epilepsy suggests they people with the condition may react more strongly to religious concepts.

Members of Mensa are to be DNA tested to study the link between high intelligence and dementia.

Article on Harvard psychologists’ studies of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens.

Simulating seizures

Engineers from UC Berkley have created a mathematical model of the brain as it undergoes an epileptic seizure, and matched it with recordings taken from electrodes implanted into the brain of a person with epilepsy.

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Epilepsy is often described as a ‘storm’ of electrical signals, suggesting lots of random and chaotic brain activity, but in fact, quite the opposite occurs – groups of neurons suddenly become inappropriately synchonised.

This can be seen from the image on the right – a graph of brain recordings taken from a person having a seizure. These were recorded from electrodes safely implanted into the brain by the UC Berkley team.

Instead of supporting their normal functions these neurons work in time with nearby neurons, that usually have a completely different role in the brain.

This can lead to loss of consciousness and limb shaking commonly associated with epilepsy. The rhythm of the muscle jerks are often dictated by the rhythm of the synchronised neurons.

Sometimes people just have absences, where they can lose consciousness for a few seconds with no other noticable effects. The person who has the seizure may not even know this is happening.

With some types of seizure, people may remain conscious, but have unusual sensations, feelings of deja vu, or perhaps just peculiar thoughts and mental images.

The effects of epilepsy vary greatly with the parts of the brain involved and from person to person.

The newly created mathematical model will allow researchers to create computer simulations of epilepsy, allowing theories to be tested out and ‘virtual experiments’ to take place.

Learn how to deal with epileptic seizures.

Link to item from UC Berkley News.
Link to story from sciencedaily.com.

Gay men and maps

Gay men seem to read maps in a similar way to women. Although this seems like an insigificant finding, it may help uncover some of the neural functions that are related to sexual preference, as these abilities are known to involve specific areas of the brain.

In fact, this isn’t the first study to find a similarities between gay men and women in spatial abilities. Result published in 2003 showed that both women and gay men performed better on a memory test for locations than straight men.

These sorts of abilities are known to rely heavily on area of the brain known as the hippocampus and differences in these abilities are likely to reflect differences in how these brain structures process information.

What is not clear however, is how much these differences can account for individual sexual behaviour. This is because sexual behaviour can be motivated by a wide range of different desires and motivations, all of which may be supported by complex network of brain structures. Few of these are currently known about or understood.

Link to story from New Scientist.
Link to story from The Telegraph.

Sharks, scary music and the temporal lobes

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The film starts. It’s a calm day at sea and there’s nothing for miles around except for a lone fisherman, relaxing and hoping for a catch. Deep below the water, something stirs. Urgent music starts, your adrenaline starts pumping and you know something terrible is about to occur. Your heart is racing, and according to recent research, so are your temporal lobes.

Neuropsychologist Nathalie Gosselin and her colleagues have been studying the brain’s response to scary music, and has recently published an intriguing study on a series of patients who have had parts of their temporal lobes and amygdala surgically removed, to treat otherwise untreatable epilepsy.

Gosselin’s team played the patients various pieces of music and found that although they could recognise peaceful, happy and sad music, their perception of scary music was impaired.

This wasn’t a problem with sensory monitoring of the music, as the patients performed normally when asked to detect subtle timing errors which had been implanted into some of the pieces.

It has been known for a while that the amygdala (which are located in the inner temporal lobes) are involved in the perception of emotion in other people’s faces, and this study shows that these areas may be essential in understanding fearful emotions in music, and perhaps other abstract aspects of the world.

Link to study summary.

The science and curiosities of psychology

Professor Anthony Walsh has compiled a comprehensive guide to psychology, full of curiosities, images and tutorials.

Some of my favourites include images of trepanning devices from the middle ages, a case study of Mollie Fancher, a curious patient from the 19th century and a Dr Walsh’s own guide to classroom decorum!

This is one of the most comprehensive online psychology resources I’ve discovered as yet, and certainly one of the most fun to browse through.

Good starting points are his pages on:
* Introduction to Psychology
* Abnormal psychology
* Statistical methods in behavioural science

2005-02-25 Spike activity

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

spike.jpg

An area of the brain may be responsible for warning us of risky outcomes and the possibility of making future mistakes.

New Scientist publishes a lead article on the use of psychedelic drugs for treating mental distress online.

Recent evidence suggests that some migraines may be linked to heart minor heart problems.

The relationship between distance and clarity of vision in face recognition research leads to important evidence for a murder trial.

Research shows that men are more committed to ‘e-relationships’ than women and internet dating relationships are generally more successful than previously thought.

A detailed diary kept by a mother of an autistic child leads to important insights into the development of play and social skill in autism. Other research shows that autistic people may have better visual skills than others.

Researchers measure the change to visual perception in a particular area of space when we focus our attention without moving our eyes.

New series of BBC ‘All in the Mind’ online

‘All in the Mind’, BBC Radio 4’s programme on the mind, brain and mental health starts a new season this week.

Each week’s edition is archived on the programme’s website, so you can listen in to the latest. The website also has a comprehensive archive of previous shows, so you can revisit any programme from the last few years.

Link to BBC ‘All in the Mind’ website

‘Mirror neurons’ track thoughts and intentions

In research published in PLoS Biology, scientists led by Marco Iacoboni discovered that the brain’s “mirror neurons” are active when we are trying to work out other people’s thoughts and intentions.

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‘Mirror neurons’ are a set of cells in the frontal lobe of the brain, named because as well as being active when we execute actions, they are also active when we observe the actions of someone else.

Iacoboni and his colleagues asked participants to watch various movie clips of actions and related scenes in a fMRI scanner. In their analysis, they contrasted the brain activity from actions where their was an obvious intention (like picking up a sandwich) with actions where no obvious intention was implied.

They discovered that part of the activity in the ‘mirror neuron’ system was specifically related to perceiving intentions, rather than watching actions in general.

The ability to understand other people’s intentions is known as “theory of mind” and is considered one of the building blocks of social interaction. This is the first study to show how the ‘mirror neuron’ system may be involved in reading others’ intentions and desires, and is an important step in understanding how the brain supports social functioning.

This is part of an increasingly popular area of science known as social cognitive neuroscience, which aims to understand the psychology and neuroscience of person-to-person interaction.

Synopsis of study, and a news story discussing it.
Full text of the study from PLoS Biology.

How to open the brain to everyone

The development of science needs the free flow of information, so scientists can both build on and test the work of others, and so the public can make informed democratic decisions about the role of science in society.

Most scientific journals are run by publishing companies that own the articles they publish. In fact, the results from the majority of publically funded science appears in these journals.

Why is so much science owned by private companies ? Part of the reason is that scientists jobs often depend on how many publications they produce, and there is a hierarchy of journals, so publishing in some journals (typically the more established and privately owned ones) counts for more in a scientist’s career.

Many scientists would like to publish in open access journals but don’t want their careers to suffer or to be out of a job.

The following suggests some ways in which you can support open access journals to boost their value in the science community, prevent career dilemmas, and help open up scientific research for the benefit of all.

Continue reading “How to open the brain to everyone”

History of neuropsychology: Guaranteed safe!

Professor Derek J. Smith has a detailed and comprehensively annotated neuropsychology timeline on his website.

For those of you who are worried that this thorough review of the history of brain science is just a honeypot, filled with fake links to gambling and porn sites, you may be rest assured that:

The remote hyperlinks have been selected for the academic appropriacy of their contents; they were free of offensive and litigious content when selected, and will be periodically checked to have remained so.

There’s other excellent writing and reviews by Professor Smith linked from his homepage. Explore in safety!

2005-02-18 Spike activity

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

spike.jpg

A recent study shows that the preference for side of body used to cradle infants is linked to the dominant hemisphere of the mother’s brain. Another example of how observing simple behaviours (like kissing) can show underlying brain structure.

Alphabets and writing may have been shaped by the constraints of our visual system.

For those who consistently over-commit themselves, research suggests it maybe because we are excessively optimistic about time for future tasks.

An article from Scientific American on what we do and don’t know about how anesthetics work.

Research challenges the idea that the visual system must separate objects from background before they are classified (PDF of full article).

Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips discusses his new book on sanity. A sign of the growing trend for a focus on positive psychology?

A gene known as ApoE, known to be involved in Alzheimer’s disease, has been linked to poorer memory even in healthy individuals. Part of ongoing push to understand the genetics of psychological abilities.

D√©j√† vu: Overdrawn at the memory bank

Déjà vu is one of the most fascinating of experiences and, until recently, was thought of as an interesting anomaly but virtually impossible to study scientifically.

This has recently begun to change. Psychologist Alan Brown is one of a number of scientists who have begun making considerable headway in researching this curious but fleeting state.

In Brown’s recent book (The Deja Vu Experience; ISBN 1841690759) he notes some interesting facts gleaned from research in this area, for example:

About two thirds of people experience it. It is more likely to occur indoors, while relaxing and in the company of friends. It occurs more often in the afternoon or evening, and towards the end of the week. It is more common in those who travel and remember their dreams. It is less common in people with conservative politics and fundamental religiosity. It decreases with age.

Exactly why the experience is linked to these things is not altogether clear, although research has made some progress in understanding which brain areas might be involved.

One clue has been from temporal lobe epilepsy, in which people can have intense feelings of d√©j√† vu, either as the main part of the seizure, or as a pre-seizure experience (called an ‘aura’). These studies have suggested that an area of the brain called the hippocampus and nearby area known as the parahippocampal gyrus (both strongly linked to the temporal lobes) are a likely source.

These areas are strong candidates for the source of déjà vu, as they have also been identified as involved in recognition and producing feelings of familiarity by previous research into memory function in healthy volunteers.

Link to excellent article on the science of déjà vu from The Chronical.
Link to NYT article on déjà vu.
Link to transcript of ABC Radio National programme on déjà vu.
Link to list of different types of déjà vu.