The 37th edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just pulled into town and is hosted on A Blog Around the Clock.
A couple of my favourites include a post on whether smiling actually makes you feel better, and one on some of the hidden motivators for our voting behaviour.
There’s much more great mind and brain writing in the mix (including a raft of new student writers), so have a browse and see what catches your eye.
Link to Encephalon 37.
The latest Scientific American has just hit the shelves and two of the feature articles are available online: one with tips for raising hard-working and motivated children from developmental psychology research, and another on whether neuropsychology helps us understand the gender bias in fields like maths and physics.
However, there is another, stand out article on psychopaths that describes what the term actually means in psychology.
It’s something that’s commonly but wrongly confused with psychosis, largely because they’re both unfortunately shortened to ‘psycho’, despite them being completely different.
This month, the articles in the print edition look particularly good. They cover everything from people who want to be amputees, to the psychology of terrorism, to psychedelic drug therapy, to phantom limbs and more.
Link to article on raising smart kids.
Link to article on gender and scientific achievement.
Link to article on psychopaths.
I’m just reading a book called The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness which sounds like some stoned hippy opus, but is actually a wonderfully written travel book into the neuroscience of naturally occurring altered states of consciousness.
It was recommended to me by Tom, who got sent a copy to review, and was so enthusiastic about it, he sent it to me afterwards. And I’m very glad he did.
The author, Jeff Warren, wants to experience various altered states of consciousness that are described in the scientific literature, like the hypnagogic state – the hallucinatory period when dropping off, or lucid dreaming, when you’re aware that you’re dreaming, or hypnosis.
So he travels the world meeting researchers, taking part in experiments, trying things out on himself, and explaining the science along the way.
And this he does very well. He manages to capture some of the key debates in the literature, explain some tricky concepts, as well as introducing us to often curious and compelling characters who research these phenomena.
He skilfully compares the myths, claims and speculation with what is known from scientific studies, and what he managed to experience himself.
There’s quite a large section of the book dedicated to sleep and dreaming, and if ever you thought sleeping was the uninteresting third of your life you spend unconscious, this is the book which will make you think again.
Just great fun, and, if you’ll excuse the slightly awkward metaphor, wonderfully eye-opening as well.
In the meantime, if you want a quick fix on the science of dreaming, the Washington Post had a recent brief article that discussed the topic.
Link to book’s website.
Link to Washington Post article ‘Dream on…’
This week’s New Scientist has a cover story on the psychology that goes on behind the scenes, in the subconscious.
Or you could call it the unconscious, or the pre-conscious. Despite the differences in terminology it’s much the same idea. Essentially, it’s the work the brain does that we’re not conscious of.
Unfortunately, the article has a bit of an excruciating tag-line:
Subconscious thought processes may play a crucial role in many of the mental facilities we prize as uniquely human, including creativity, memory, learning and language.
Next week: Sea contains water! Don’t be put off though, the article’s actually a good guide to some of the latest theories on how information crosses the consciousness divide.
What’s more, non-conscious thinking may actually work best in some cases where you might imagine rational, conscious thought is the best tool for the job. In situations where people have to make difficult choices based on large amounts of hard-to-assess information, psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has found that they are happier with their decision when acting on gut instinct than when forced to try to think the choice through rationally (New Scientist, 5 May 2007, p 35). Dijksterhuis is convinced that subconscious thought processes are superior in many situations – including most social interactions – because they allow us to integrate complex information in a more holistic way than can be managed by rational thought processes.
Something similar sometimes happens in problem solving, according to Jonathan Schooler from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. By asking subjects to explain their reasoning as they go, he has found that verbalising what they are doing has no effect on people’s ability to solve analytical, mathematical or logic problems but actually hinders performance on insight problems, such as solving a riddle – those for which the solution seems to pop out of the blue in an aha! moment. Remember that subconscious thought processes differ from conscious ones in that we are unable to articulate the former. So here, it seems, is experimental evidence for something we all instinctively know: that subconscious thinking is the source of our inspiration – it is central to creativity.
Rather ironically, for an article on the unconscious, it’s been hidden behind a pay wall. So you’ll need to get a copy from your newsagent, or if you want to expand the subconscious mind, photocopy it in the library.
Link to table of contents for this week’s NewSci.
I just found out that V.S. Ramachandran is giving a free talk, this Wednesday, at the Royal Society in London.
The talk is entitled ‘Nature and nurture in brain function: clues from synesthesia and phantom limbs’ and for those not able to make the event in person, it’s going to be webcast live.
Ramchandran is an excellent speaker, so shouldn’t be missed if you’ve not seen him talk before.
Link to details of Ramchandran talk.
Furious Seasons reports that the US state of Arkansas is suing drug company Johnson and Johnson over claims that they misrepresented the facts over their popular antipsychotic drug risperidone.
This, in itself, is not a new occurrence, as it joins a long list of US state lawsuits against drug companies. With rumours that a similar 26 state joint lawsuit is about to begin, this is an indication that the corporate drug world is about to be shaken up on a grand scale.
Most of the lawsuits are over allegations that drug companies hid or massaged evidence to show that their new generation (‘atypical‘) antipsychotic drugs were more effective or less harmful than is now thought, or that they illegally promoted their drugs for conditions for which they weren’t licensed.
Most of the most popular atypical antipsychotics were introduced in the 1990s and were marketed as having less side-effects than the older generation drugs.
One of the most unpleasant are extrapyramidal side-effects. Caused by changes the dopamine system they can include involuntary movements and muscle stiffness that can resemble Parkinson’s disease in some respects.
However, recent reviews have challenged the idea that the newer drugs have less of these side-effects and other evidence has suggested that they have a higher risk of inducing problems with weight-gain and diabetes.
The marketing was remarkably successful though and the idea that the newer drugs ’cause less side-effects’ still persists. Only this week, a letter published in New Scientist stated that the newer drugs benefited patients because they have fewer side-effects.
Later, marketing shifted to suggesting atypicals were better for the ‘negative symptoms’ of schizophrenia (impaired emotion and motivation), and later still to suggest that they improved cognitive function, largely based on industry funded clinical trials.
Two ongoing independent studies have been key in challenging some of these ideas. The UK’s CUtLASS project and the US’s CATIE project are not funded by drug companies and have found, contrary to industry research, that, for example, newer antipsychotics are no better than the older drugs in improving cognitive function and that they have no advantage in improving quality of life.
Antipsychotics are genuinely useful and probably one of the most significant medical advances of the 20th century. Before then, no effective treatment for psychosis existed.
However, when side-effects appear (which is not always the case), they can range from the unpleasant to the medically serious, so doctors and patients need to be fully informed about the risks.
The most recent lawsuit from the state of Arkansas [pdf] alleges that, among other things, the drug company deliberately rigged their clinical trials to show less side-effects, failed to warn clinicians about the dangers and promoted their drug illegally.
While people like psychiatrist David Healy have been making these allegations for years, the fact that a large number of US states are willing to take the allegations to court signals that we are about to see a huge battle, and hopefully a period of significant reform, in how drug companies develop, test and market their products.
Reform is sorely needed. As well as scientific manipulation, personal drug marketing to psychiatrists is largely based on ensuring a regular supply of lavish gifts and selective information – as detailed by an article in today’s New York Times.
As an aside, if you’re in London this Tuesday, a debate is being held at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital on exactly this topic.
It’s entitled “Swallowing it Whole: This house believes that psychiatrists are unable to resist the seductive messages on the pharmaceutical industry” and is likely to be a lively event.
Link to Furious Seasons on the Arkansas law suit.
Link to NYT article ‘Dr Pharma Rep’.
Link to details of the Maudsley debate.
The psychology and neuroscience writing carnival Encephalon published both its 35th edition and its 36th edition in recent weeks, and I seemed to have slept through these momentous occasions, so hopefully this post will make amends.
Encephalon 35 was hosted at The Primate Diaries and includes articles on, among other things, the neuropsychology of creative thinking and the link between education and Alzheimer’s disease.
Brain in a Vat was the place to be for Encephalon 36 which had many fantastic pieces, including one on embodied cognition and another on the growth of the brain in people diagnosed with ADHD.
That’s just a sample of the large selection of articles submitted to the carnivals, so have a browse through both editions to get a flavour of what’s been hot in the online mind and brain world.
One of the most interesting things about the recent election brain scan nonsense is not that it got to the front page of The New York Times, as that’s happened several times before, but that the slap down from the scientific community has been remarkably strong and public.
The media is obsessed by neuroscience but in a very odd way. This means that sometimes complete nonsense gets published, like on this occasion, or the focus is on the least important thing.
For example, there have been many reports during the last few days about a study on people with migraines.
Almost all the headlines are variants of the ‘Migraine Sufferers Have Different Brains’ line. This just isn’t news. We know migraine sufferers have different brains because they have migraines and its a brain difference. It’s like reporting that ‘taller people have different heights’.
What the study actually found was that the somatosensory cortex, an area of the brain that is involved with representing body sensation, is thicker in people with migraines. Most interestingly, this was most pronounced in the section of this brain area that maps to the head and neck.
It was a correlational study, so it’s impossible to say whether these differences cause, or are caused by, migraine, but it’s a fascinating finding. Isn’t this so this much more interesting than repeating the obvious?
The media love stories about the brain because they often sound like explanations even when they’re nothing more than descriptions.
This is why nonsense like the ‘election brain scans’ gets media attention. In this case, it wasn’t even as if the ideas were distorted in the retelling, it was clearly nonsense from beginning to end. But because it had all the trappings of science, it made headlines.
This time, however, the size of the backlash from the scientific has been unprecedented.
It got plenty of negative attention in the blogs, but it also inspired a list of leading neuroscientists to write to the NYT to criticise it, it got featured in The Guardian’s ‘Bad Science’ column and has just been roundly condemned in the editorial from this week’s Nature.
If brain scans could really predict how people will react when they encounter advertising, you’d think that FKF Research would use it on their own material.
Ironically, for a company that supposedly specialises in neuromarketing, they just got themselves some incredibly bad press.
Link to Nature editorial.
A study that successfully used personality-tailored training to reduce teen drinking is shortly to appear in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. It’s interesting because it’s one of a few studies that have found that the psychology of personality is useful for solving clinical problems.
Your average person on the street probably thinks that clinical psychologists spend a lot of time trying to ‘work out’ people’s personalities as a necessary part of treating them.
Of course, this is something that happens as the psychologist meets and talks to the patient, but considering that a great deal of research in psychology is focused on understanding personality, the findings and techniques barely make a scratch on clinical work.
This is largely because using psychological measures to find out whether someone is introverted, extroverted, conscientious, or any other of the so-called ‘big five‘ personality traits, have been found to be of little use in helping treat or prevent mental disorders or behavioural problems.
Compared to reliably assessing someone’s mood, anxiety, risk of self-harm, cognitive abilities or reasoning style, personality is rarely essential for clinical decision-making.
However, one related aspect of personality, similar to the ‘Openness to Experience’ in the ‘big five’ model, has been found to relate to substance misuse.
It’s called ‘sensation seeking’ and it’s been linked to risky behaviour, including binge-drinking and risky sexual encounters.
In this study, led by psychologist Dr Patricia Conrod, the research team assessed the personality of over 350 teenagers and specifically tailored a programme to focus on common differences between high and low sensation-seekers.
The programme had an educational component, a motivational part and a section that taught the kids skills how to solve problems, manage their thoughts and moods, and pick out common cognitive errors when reasoning about drinking.
It turned out that it was particularly effective in reducing binge-drinking in the high-sensation seekers, the most risky group.
As well as developing a useful way of reducing problem alcohol use in teenagers, it’s also interesting to see that a personality measure can be genuinely useful in the prevention of problems.
Clinical psychology is traditionally focused on trying to help with problems after they’ve happened, rather than before, which is perhaps why personality is not so useful. It’s just too subtle when something serious like mental illness affects the mind and brain.
Nevertheless, it’s possible that personality will be key in preventive programmes, where this more subtle approach has much more of an effect when the person is not trying to manage a mental crisis.
Link to abstract of study.
BBC Radio 4 has just kicked off a new series of All in the Mind with a programme on tasers and their use on people with mental illness, the psychoanalytic film festival and a tribute to the late great Irish psychiatrist Anthony Clare.
Not to be confused with the Australian radio show of the same name, All in the Mind takes a look at whether police are properly trained to detect mental illness in light of preliminary evidence that they may be using Tasers on people with psychiatric disorders more than other people.
The show also talks to some of the participants in the recent European Psychoanalytic Film Festival and traces the intertwined history of film and psychoanalysis.
Finally, the show broadcasts a tribute to Irish psychiatrist Anthony Clare, who, as we reported recently, passed away at the end of October. Among many other things, he was famous as a past presenter of the programme.
Link to first of the BBC All in the Mind new series.
Consumer Reports have created a sort of video film review for a popular US television drug ad, where they update the commercial with scientific findings that aren’t mentioned.
The advert is for a drug that aims to treat ‘restless legs syndrome’, and both the condition and the drug are apparently being heavily marketed in the US at the moment.
Consumer Reports have their own take on the ad, noting that the side-effects of the drug can be worse than the condition itself, and highlighting that although trials showed the drug was effective in up to 73% of people, placebo was effective in up to 57% of people.
It’s great to see a counter-point to this sort of advertising, especially when it’s produced so well.
Link to Consumer Reports page with embedded video (via TWS).
The Los Angeles Times has a moving video and photo essay about Lance Corporal James Blake Miller, made famous by the iconic photo taken during the battle of Fallujah, and his post-war struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
It’s somewhat ironic that the photo, which has become a symbol of the stoicism of the US Marine Corps, depicts Miller at a time when he was first struggling with the trauma of war.
The photo essay is by photographer Luis Sinco, who made the marine famous, and his been following Miller since he returned home from Iraq.
Sadly, Miller has suffered divorce, PTSD, depression and suicidal thoughts since his return owing to his experiences during the fighting.
It’s an incredibly powerful piece, with some quite poignant moments (e.g. being ignored by one politician who he had arranged to meet to discuss the effect of PTSD on troops), especially considering that mental illness in the US military is at an all time high.
Link to LA Times photo-essay on James Blake Miller (via MeFi).
A study shortly to be published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour reports that the menstrual cycle has an effect on women’s walking style and its attractiveness to men, but has also provoked speculation that highlights the worst in evolutionary psychology story-telling.
The study found that women’s walking style differed during the menstrual cycle, but that men rated it as most attractive when they were least fertile.
This contrasts with several previous studies have found that women dress, act and are perceived as most attractive during their most fertile time of the month.
Some researchers suggest that we’ve evolved so women subtly advertise their fertility to potential mates, perhaps, quite reasonably, as this happens in far more obvious ways almost uniformly throughout the animal kingdom.
So you might think that something to consider is that this finding is evidence against this idea, or that maybe the link with walking style is just a ‘side-effect’.
For example, estrogen affects dopamine function in the striatum, part of key action pathways in the brain, and the menstrual cycle is linked to changes in neuromuscular coordination. It could be that evolution has selected for the behaviour via these mechanisms, but it could also be that they have no evolutionary significance.
However, the alternative is barely considered in the paper or in the press reports. This from New Scientist:
However, Provost and her colleagues say there is in fact no contradiction between this research and other studies, as they are investigating two different kinds of signal. The previous research investigating men’s response to fertile women focused on signals such as smells and facial expressions, which can only be detected at close range. That makes evolutionary sense, as it would benefit a woman to advertise her fertility to a man that she has decided is worth having children with and has therefore allowed to get close to her.
In contrast, men can pick up on the attractiveness of a woman’s walk from long distance, and it can therefore act as an unwitting signal to less appealing males who she might not want to choose. So the advantage of having a less sexy walk around the time of ovulation becomes clear: it allows a woman to hide her fertile period from undesirable men who might take advantage of her at that time.
As an explanation, I actually quite like it, but there’s little consideration of the ‘side-effect’ idea, or even the contradictory evidence. For example, it goes against research which suggests that women dress more attractively during their most fertile time.
Evolutionary psychology is sometimes criticised for creating ‘just so stories‘ – unverifiable explanations that weave a story about how the data suggests that evolution has selected for a particular cognitive or behavioural difference.
It’s true to say that this accusation is levelled at evolutionary psychology more than is warranted. It does make testable predictions and all science involves some story telling to some degree.
Nevertheless, evolutionary psychology researchers would do well to show that they are considering the alternative explanation – that some behaviours might be associated with sex or fertility while having no influence on survival, the chance of mating, or passing on certain genes.
At this point I normally castigate the media for picking up on the sexy speculations and not the debate, but unfortunately, in this case, the scientific paper seems to make the same mistake.
The November edition of the newly minted Nature Neuroscience podcast Neuropod has just been released with features on the ‘brainbow‘ multi-colour neuron staining, the neurobiology and regulation of cannabis, the cognitive neuroscience of optimism, and the sleep cycle.
The interview on cannabis is with neuroscientist Paul Morrison and psychiatrist Robin Murray – two leading cannabis researchers.
Despite him leading recent research which has shown a modest but likely causal link between cannabis use and psychosis, Murray has always maintained a level-headed approach to the problem and is well-worth listening to (fast forward to 10 minutes in, if you’re in a hurry).
He’s on fine form and has this take on the effect of the drug on the political classes:
Essentially, cannabis is very bad for the brains of politicians, they do not know what to do. Firstly, they’re asked ‘have you ever smoked cannabis?’ and they don’t know whether to say yes or no, and then they have this belief that tinkering with the classification will actually do something.
Link to Neuropod webpage with audio.
One of the most commonly repeated facts about schizophrenia is that people diagnosed with the condition tend to do better in developing countries, rather than in rich Western countries. A new study has reviewed outcome studies from low and middle-income countries across the world and found the picture just isn’t that clear.
The original finding that people with the diagnosis do better in developing countries was from three World Health Organisation studies.
The recent review has criticised the previous studies for not adequately dealing with some important factors – like mortality.
It’s important to account for deaths in outcome studies, because they could skew the results, if not counted properly, to make outcome look better.
For example, three people with schizophrenia are assessed at the beginning of the study, a year later they are re-assessed, but sadly, one has died. Of the other two, one has improved and one got worse.
Death is, perhaps, the worst possible outcome, and since schizophrenia involves a high risk of suicide and is associated with a lower life expectancy, it is more likely in those affected.
If this isn’t noted, however, the follow-up results might suggest that out of the two remaining, half improved, and half got worse.
In fact, the outcome was worse in two thirds, as one got worse and one died, and only one third improved.
So not being able to account for deaths may make the picture look rosier than it is.
The study looked at these these factors, as well as other more socially relevant effects, such as on marriage, social relationships and employment – rather than purely examining clinical symptoms. It also investigated whether outcomes were different for males and females.
The conclusions of the study suggest that the picture is complex and dependent on many different influences, as it varies greatly between countries:
First, there appears to be great variation in clinical outcomes and patterns of course. Whereas, some studies in India strongly support the “better prognosis” hypothesis outcomes do not appear to be nearly as positive in Brazil and China. Additionally, limited evidence suggests that gender effects vary cross-nationally.
Second, similar patterns are found in the domains of disability and social functioning: good in most studies in India and Indonesia, but poorer in Nigeria, and much poorer in a cohort of untreated persons in Chennai, India. Social functioning by gender also varied: in the MLS [Madras Longitudinal Study], women had high levels, while in Nigeria women fared poorly. Outcomes in occupational and marital status also varied. A more important point, however, is that status in these 2 domains must be interpreted in the context of sociocultural norms and assessed, at least to some degree, qualitatively. Viewed from this perspective, the data in table 7 suggest that rates of marriage for people with schizophrenia are relatively low and rates of divorce/separation are high.
The study was conducted by a team of four researchers, from America, the UK, India and Nigeria and is published in November’s Schizophrenia Bulletin as an open-access paper, so the full text is freely available online.
Link to full text of study.
I’m currently involved with a research group investigating the neural basis of hypnosis and dissociative disorders and, if you live in London, we’d like to invite you to take part in our research.
Dissociative disorders are where people lose abilities that they normally have, such as limb movement, in the absence of underlying neurological illness.
However, for this stage of the research we’re inviting healthy participants to complete some short questionnaires and take a short test that measures how hypnotisable you are.
This will take place with group of other people and everyone gets an £8 volunteer fee for their time.
We’re running sessions at the Institute of Psychiatry in Camberwell, on the following dates:
2pm, Saturday 10th November
2pm, Saturday 17th November
2pm, Saturday 24th November
After taking part we may invite you to participate in further parts of the study at another time (such as a brain scan or some measures of memory or attention) but you are under no obligation to do so.
Each part is separate, and, if you are invited, volunteering for one part doesn’t mean you have to take part in any others.
Like all good scientific research, the study has been fully reviewed and approved by the local research ethics committee.
If you’re interested in finding out more, there’s further information on our study webpage where you can also contact me, ask questions, get sent the full information sheet, or volunteer for one of the sessions.
Link to study info and contact details.
Link to webpage to email me.
Mind Hacks 