Category: News

I shall be giving a talk at the Dublin science cafe on Thursday 12th July on the neuropsychology of hypnosis. Come along if you’re in the area and would like to join the discussion.

The talk will happen at The Mercantile on Dame Street. We’ll kick off at 7.45pm, it’s free to attend and everyone is welcome.

I’m relatively new to hypnosis research, having started working with a research team investigating the psychology and neuroscience of hypnotisability about a year ago, but am completely fascinated by this intriguing process.

Susceptibility to hypnosis differs between individuals, is stable across the lifespan, and is known to be partly inherited and has been linked to a specific dopamine modulating gene. In addition, structural and functional brain differences have also been found between people who differ in hypnotic suggestibility.

As well as discovering more about the intriguing process of hypnosis, this sort of research is helping us make sense of poorly understood disorders such as conversion disorder – where patients might experience paralysis despite having no detectable physical problems.

For example, one study found that similar brain areas are involved in paralysis linked to conversion disorder, and paralysis caused by hypnosis, perhaps indicating that suggestion plays a powerful role in conversion disorder syndromes.

Other studies have used hypnosis to investigate brain areas linked to experiences of external control in psychosis, pain relief and control of attention in healthy individuals.

I’ll be looking at some of these areas, and others, in the talk, but if you can’t make it, Dr Matt Whalley’s website on the science of hypnosis is probably the single best resource on the net.

Link to talk details.
Link to Dr Matt Whalley’s Hypnosis and Suggestion site.

Salon claims to have uncovered evidence that two psychologists have been involved in developing military and CIA interrogation techniques “which likely violated the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners”.

The online magazine has been investigating the role of psychologists in ‘war-on-terror’ interrogations for some time.

Last year they broke the story that the American Psychological Association endorsed the participation of psychologists in military interrogations when American medical associations had explicitly banned their members from taking part as they considered it against their ethical code.

The article caused a storm of controversy among psychologists, not least because the committee that drafted the guidelines had a majority of members with direct ties to the military.

Despite protests from members, the APA still fell short of bringing their code of conduct in line with their medical colleagues, although they did require their members to intervene and report abusive practices.

Now, Salon claim that two psychologists have been involved in a joint US military / CIA project to develop potentially abusive interrogation techniques by ‘reverse engineering’ a training programme to help special forces troops resist abusive interrogations.

There is growing evidence of high-level coordination between the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military in developing abusive interrogation techniques used on terrorist suspects. After the Sept. 11 attacks, both turned to a small cadre of psychologists linked to the military’s secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program to “reverse-engineer” techniques originally designed to train U.S. soldiers to resist torture if captured, by exposing them to brutal treatment. The military’s use of SERE training for interrogations in the war on terror was revealed in detail in a recently declassified report. But the CIA’s use of such tactics — working in close coordination with the military — until now has remained largely unknown.

Furthermore, APA members have now written an open letter claiming that another psychologist has been involved in similar practices.

If the accusations turn out to be true, it makes for truly grim reading for a profession that usually prides itself on its ethical standards and robust code of conduct.

Link to Salon article ‘The CIA’s torture teachers’.

A new series of BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind has just kicked off with the first programme investigating the psychology of Formula 1 drivers and including an interview with an Iraqi psychiatrist involved in rebuilding the country’s mental health services.

The programme talks to Jenson Button, Honda’s top driver, Tony Lycholat, Head of Human Performance at Honda, and Dr Kerry Spackman a neuroscientist who is consultant to the Maclaren team.

In relation to mental health in Iraq, Dr Sabah Sadik is interviewed about his role as National Advisor for Mental Health to the Iraqi Ministry of Health.

The Iraqi mental health system has virtually collapsed since the invasion in 2003, and as recently reported by the Washington Post, the conflict has left intense psychological scars on many of the country’s children.

Link to first in the new series of BBC All in the Mind.

The New York Times continues its theme of investigating psychiatry and mental health with an article noting that US psychiatrists receive drug company ‘gifts’ worth the largest amount among all the medical specialities.

The data is only from two states, because they are the only ones which have gone public with their records of payments to doctors.

The practice is widespread and usually doesn’t take the form of direct cash payments, but instead funds everything from trips to conferences (which are often little more than marketing presentations in luxurious holiday destinations), to expensive meals and outings, to footing the bill for medical school events and symposiums.

The extent of the funding is quite eye-opening: the article reports that the average payment to each psychiatrist in Vermont last year was over $45,000 dollars.

Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday that drug company payments to psychiatrists in the state more than doubled last year, to an average of $45,692 each from $20,835 in 2005. Antipsychotic medicines are among the largest expenses for the state’s Medicaid program.

Over all last year, drug makers spent $2.25 million on marketing payments, fees and travel expenses to Vermont doctors, hospitals and universities, a 2.3 percent increase over the prior year, the state said.

The number most likely represents a small fraction of drug makers’ total marketing expenditures to doctors since it does not include the costs of free drug samples or the salaries of sales representatives and their staff members. According to their income statements, drug makers generally spend twice as much to market drugs as they do to research them.

The state of psychiatric drug marketing is shocking. It’s gone beyond the point of promotion to what seems to be little more than outright bribery.

As you might expect, this practice has a strong and significant effect of the prescribing behaviour and attitudes of doctors when medical decisions should be taken on the best empirical evidence rather than on marketing information provided by commercial vendors.

UPDATE: An important clarification from Doctor X, taken from the comments:

While I am concerned about the influence of big pharma on psychiatry, I was taken aback by the figures presented in the Times story. I did a little checking and found that the Times article grossly misrepresented the facts as presented in the original Vermont report. The $45,000 per year figure is for the top 11 psychiatrists who are recipients of pharma money. The report does not indicate the average or median for psychiatrists across the state, but extrapolating from the report figures it looks like $1000.00 per year is probably more typical and closer to the median figure for all psychiatrists. The mean is probably in the neighborhood of $4,000 per psychiatrist, a figure that is probably skewed upward by a heavily lopsided distribution of money and fees paid to top recipients.

Further explanation here.

Link to NYT article ‘Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts’.

To celebrate the launch of a redesign, Scientific American have made the July edition freely available online as a pdf file. The cover story examines the search for how the brain encodes memories.

The issue is only available online until the end of June (one more week!) so you’ll need to be quick, but it’s a copy of the entire issue.

On a related note, the June 25th podcast is on the neurology of boxing-related brain damage.

pdf of July 2007 Scientific American (via Neurophilosopher).
Link to July edition table of contents.

Edition 25 of psychology and neuroscience writing carnival Encephalon has just been published on PsyBlog.

A couple of my favourites includes GrrlScientist on why smart people don’t all make smart choices and Memoirs of a Postgrad on whether AI systems will need bodies to be truly intelligent.

It has all the latest on the last fortnight’s mind and brain writing, so head on over for more great articles.

Link to Encephalon 25.

A Blog Around the Clock has a couple of useful posts that collect the highlights from one of the biggest international sleep research conferences.

Sleep 2007 finishes today in Minneapolis and is a mecca for psychologists and biologists wanting to understand this still mysterious process.

If you want to have a look at exactly what’s been discussed, the programme is available online, although A Blog Around the Clock links to more comprehensive articles about some of the most interesting developments.

Link to A Blog Around the Clock conference coverage part 1.
Link to A Blog Around the Clock conference coverage part 2.

CogNews.net is a website that takes feeds from a number of cognitive science sites and puts them in one place for your viewing pleasure.

It has three categories with feeds from a few essential sites in each: Mind and Cognition (which includes us!), Neuroscience, and Artificial Intelligence and Robots.

The site has been put together by Marek Kasperski who obviously gets as much of a kick from cognitive science as we do.

Link to CogNews.net.

Humbug has put together a wonderful periodic table of blogs and it looks like Mind Hacks is the mercury of the internet. I’m hoping it’s because we’re shiny and interesting rather than neurotoxic.

Link to Humbug periodic table.

The Times has an interesting piece on a police interview technique that asks the suspect to tell the story in reverse order. A recent study has found this makes it more likely that liars will give themselves away.

The research has been conducted by Prof Aldert Vrij and colleagues who specialise in the psychology of police interviews and deception.

The idea behind it is that you have to expend considerable effort when you’re lying not to look stressed and to make sure your story doesn’t contradict itself.

One way of making this less easy, is to put additional strain on your mental resources by asking you to do something more difficult with the story.

This is especially tricky for liars, because for people who are telling the truth, explaining the events in reverse order is less of an effort than for people who are making the story up.

When someone is using their concentration to do this harder task, they will concentrate less on making sure they look comfortable with their story, and so are more likely to let signs of stress slip out.

On the other hand, they may have to concentrate harder on making themselves look relaxed, and make some errors in their story.

This is known as a type of ‘cognitive load‘ interview and is routinely used in police investigations.

It’s not a sure fire way of detecting deception, because liars who are better at concentrating will be less likely to give themselves away, but it seems to increase the chances of the police working out if the suspect is trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

Deception Blog has some more information about the technique, and some links to additional coverage if you want to explore further.

Link to Times article on the technique.
Link to round-up from Deception Blog.

Lie Lab is a three-part TV series where they use the not-very-accurate brain scan lie detection method to test high profile people who have been accused of lying.

The programme quotes a 90% accuracy for fMRI lie detection, but this is a best estimate and has been found in group studies, in lab conditions, where the lies are relatively benign – such as saying you haven’t seen an image when you’ve been shown it earlier.

It’s not clear how well they detect highly motivated lies. Also, it seems that the brain scans are better at detecting lies than truths.

This is important, because you could get a 100% lie detection rate by classifying everything as a lie. Being able to adequately separate truth and lies is the key to accuracy.

The first episode tested two ex-Guantanamo bay detainees accused of being terrorists but eventually release without charge, the second tested a woman convicted of poisoning her daughter with salt who protests her innocence.

Needless to say, the results are largely inconclusive.

If the technology were any better, I’d write in and see if they can get Tony Blair for the grand finale.

The best thing about the programme is Prof Sean Spence, who’s done some of the key research studies on the neuroscience of lying and fMRI lie detection, and does his best to point out the ambiguity of the whole process.

UPDATE: Thanks to Deception Blog for pointing out that the series is available over the web for viewers in the UK or Eire via Channel 4’s on demand service. It’s on some private bittorrent trackers but I’ve not seen it on any publice ones yet. Keep a look out.

Link to Lie Lab website.
Link to Spence’s research papers (most of which are open-access).

A study just published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal reports that children are twice as likely to be prescribed Ritalin after their parents have divorced.

Ritalin is the trade name for the amphetamine-like drug methylphenidate. It is typically prescribed for ADHD, a diagnosis which describes problems with staying focused, impulsiveness and / or hyperactivity.

Drug companies and some charities have invested a lot in selling the idea that ADHD is a purely neurological disorder and that the child’s family life has little to do with it.

This study suggests that this isn’t the case, and that the child’s environment and relationships, in combination with possible genetic and neurological differences, have a significant effect on their behaviour.

Actually, this won’t be news to most clinicians, who know that relationships and the environment have an effect even on conditions known to have a clear and defined neurological basis. For example, loneliness is known to contribute to the risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

In a sense, all psychological problems are problems with the brain, because the brain and the mind are just different ways of describing the same thing, and the environment has its effect through our neurons.

But this doesn’t mean it is possible to explain all human behaviour on only one level, and doing so will only give you part of the picture.

This study provides evidence that child behavioural problems are not best understood as neurological problems only, or that Ritalin is being used inappropriately to manage the behaviour of distressed children. Most probably, it’s a bit of both.

To be fair, this isn’t the only interpretation. The researcher notes that the known genetic component of ADHD could mean that the parents of children with behavioural share similar traits and so might be more likely to divorce because of this. It would be surprising if this accounted for the whole effect though.

People often use psychiatric diagnoses as if they’re explanations when really they’re nothing more than descriptions. The idea is that science will ‘fill in the gaps’ and explain how these differences occur.

The trouble is, the behaviour described by an ADHD diagnosis could occur because of genetic influences on brain development, because divorce is causing emotional distress, because the child is being bullied, or for any number of other reasons.

Ritalin is likely to help regardless of what is causing the child to be disturbed, because it helps the child focus by boosting attention.

The question is, should children be prescribed drugs because they are distressed by a divorce? There’s no definite answer in every case as each child and each situation is different.

But perhaps we should be concerned that children are likely being prescribed psychiatric drugs as a ‘quick fix’ for emotional distress and behaviour problems when research shows that parent training programmes are safe and effective.

Link to full-text scientific paper.
Link to write-up from Yahoo! News.

The New York Times is reporting that James Watson, co-discover of DNA, will have the whole of his DNA sequence made publicly available, with the exception of one gene known as apolipoprotein E.

Watson doesn’t want to know which version of the gene he has, as it is one of the strongest predictors for the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

In fact, it’s the only gene which has specifically been shown to increase risk for the brain disorder.

The gene for apolipoprotein E, or ApoE as it is more widely known, comes in three main forms or alleles called ApoE ε2, ε3 and ε4.

Studies have consistently shown that the more ApoE Œµ4 alleles you have, the higher the chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease and the younger the age it will begin to take effect.

In fact, having two ApoE Œµ4 alleles virtually guarantees you’ll have Alzheimer’s by the age of 80 and if you do get Alzheimer’s disease, the presence of this allele seems to make it more likely that you’ll experience delusions and psychosis.

The gene codes for the apolipoprotein which combines with fats (such as cholesterol) in the body and transports them to various places, including the liver, where they are broken down.

Alzheimer’s disease is linked to the accumulation of ‘amyloid plaques’ and ‘neurofibrillary tangles’ in the brain, both of which are abnormal clumps of protein.

The presence of the ApoE ε4 allele makes these protein clumps more likely, even in people who have not developed the disorder.

However, the exact link between ApoE and fat processing, protein clumps and Alzheimer’s disease is still not fully understood.

What Watson does understand, however, is that he could work out how likely he is to develop Alzheimer’s disease from the versions of the gene he carries, and it seems he’d rather not live with the knowledge.

This is not an uncommon situation, as people with genetic disorders, or people whose close family have genetic disorders, often have to decide whether they want to know the chances of them or their children developing a potentially life-threatening disease.

Genetic counselling is a service that assists the the person in understanding the risks and possible outcomes based on the science of genetics, as well as dealing with the emotional impact of the sometimes difficult process of discovery and decision-making.

Link to NYT article ‘Genome of DNA Discoverer Is Deciphered’.

The latest edition of Scientific American Mind has just been published, and as is customary, two of the feature articles are freely available online.

The first is on the psychology of teams and how science is attempting to understand what makes a successful and productive working party.

The article describes effective team learning strategies and how emotions help groups bond during work.

These researchers trained college students to assemble transistor radios either alone or in groups of three. A week later the subjects were tested with their original group or, for people who received solo training, in newly formed groups. Members of groups that had trained together remembered more details, built better-quality radios and showed greater trust in fellow members’ expertise. People in newly formed groups were less likely to have the right mix of skills to complete the task efficiently and knew less about one another’s strengths.

The second article looks at the controversial topic of prescribing psychiatric drugs to children and evidence that the use of psychiatric drugs alters the growing brain.

This is weighed up against the evidence that in children with serious mental illness, an untreated disorder may alter the growing brain.

It’s a difficult topic because it often boils down to picking the lesser of two evils, although, because of lack of research, it’s often not easy to tell which will have the least negative effect for any given child.

It’s a fascinating article on one of the major issues facing psychiatry today.

There are also articles on expertise and the role of mirror neurons in stroke recovery in the full edition, as well as all the regular features.

Link to article ‘The Science of Team Success’.
Link to article ‘Kids on Meds — Trouble Ahead’.

The New York Times has a review of a new book on how people have overcome brain damage through neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to re-organise itself.

While this is nothing new, the brain has always had this ability, the discovery is relatively recent and rehabilitation is increasingly designed to take advantage of this process.

The book is called The Brain That Changes Itself and is apparently a series of case studies of how people’s lives have been improved by technology, psychotherapy or behavioural changes.

I suspect much of the excitement about neuroplasticity has been generated by the popularity of ‘cognitive fitness’ games, books and video games, all of which are based on the idea that you can ‘train your brain’ like a muscle.

While there is some truth in this, the effects are much less than many people might expect and certainly, most people don’t completely recover from brain injury.

I wonder if this book, like Peter Kramer’s 1994 book Listening to Prozac (ISBN 0140266712), will showcase the success stories, while most people’s experience will be much more modest.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with presenting the highlights of new and exciting therapies, but I wonder whether it raises some people’s expectations unrealistically.

Anyway, I’ve not read the book yet so I will have to see how it is tackled when I get a copy, and we’re certainly crying out for an accessible treatment of the subject.

Brain Damage, Brain Repair (ISBN 0198523378) is a great academic text, but it’s hardly something you’d take to the beach with you.

Link to NYT review.
Link The Brain That Changes Itself book / author’s website.

Wired and The New York Times have just each published an article about the use of virtual reality to simulate the experiences of schizophrenic psychosis. This is a PR success for its creator, Janssen-Cilag Pharmaceuticals, but its hardly news, as they’ve been showing the system since 2000.

The system originally had the appalling name ‘Paved With Fear’ and was unveiled in September 2000.

The company, who manufacture the antipsychotic drug risperidone (aka Risperdal), toured the world with the ‘Paved with Fear’ truck.

The rig allows users to put on the VR goggles and explore a virtual world, while the software is programmed to simulate hallucination-like experiences – abusive voices, visual scenes transforming into sinister images and so on.

It was covered in 2002 by an NPR radio show that has some audio and images from the simulation.

In one simulation, a schizophrenic has auditory and visual hallucinations while trying to refill a prescription, and sees the word “poison” on a bottle of pills.

Its not often you meet psychotic patients who hallucinate drug company PR, but Janssen seem to think that refusing their product is a sign of madness.

The system has been taken around the world and show to police, psychiatrists and families of people with mental illness.

The system has since been re-branded with the less stigmatising name ‘Virtual Hallucinations’ and continues to make the headlines, despite the fact that many other people have used VR to simulate psychosis.

I wrote an article in 2004 about some of the systems and talked to their creators, and got some feedback from a programmer and a psychologist who have experienced psychosis themselves.

They concluded that while VR simulations might be a useful simulation of the perceptual disturbance in psychosis, it also involves distortions of meaning and thinking that can’t be captured.

The systems covered in the article were based on experiences taken from patient interviews and were made independently.

Psychiatrist Dr Peter Yellowless recently published a paper on the system he developed, and one system has been built in online virtual word Second Life. There are instructions online so you can try it yourself.

Link to NYT article ‘A Virtual Reality That’s Best Escaped’.
Link to 2004 article on using VR for psychosis simulation and research.
Link to summary of Yellowlees’ paper on psychosis simulation.
Link to instructions for Second Life simulation.