Category: News

Resident Evil and Silent Hill have been given a psychoanalytic interpretation by two academics wanting to undercover the underlying symbolism of these popular video games.

The analysis attempts to illustrate how “the poststructuralist divide between Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis plays out in the differences between the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series”.

Needless to say, the article is steeped in the language of psychoanalysis and postmodernism. But if you can get through the jargon, it’s an entertaining essay on the narratives used in the game play and plot of the two games.

Silent Hill significance stems from its avant-garde status: it anticipates our familiarity with these conventions and works to subvert them, problematizing our desire for stability and coherence. These subversions work by collapsing the distances between player, avatar, and game unsettling our expectation to retain a clinical distance between the twisted world of our avatars and the sacred normality of our own real world.

This is epitomized near the end of Silent Hill 3 when a professorial character inquisitively questions the “enjoyment” that Heather, our avatar, draws from killing the threatening abjections around her. When she responds that she has only killed monsters, Vincent replies with “they look like monsters to you…” Our game play, which until this point has been comfortably positioned as an analytic activity helping Heather work through her traumas, becomes traumatic.

Vincent punctures the fictional fantasy screen, speaking not only to Heather, but also to us. Suddenly the game world collapses around us-for a moment we are subjected as murders, potentially as psychotic as our avatar and/or as one of the very psychopaths we so confidently believed we were killing.

Nothing can be trusted. No longer is it clear that we are working to uphold symbolic order. No longer is it clear that any such order ever has or could so securely exist. Put simply, Resident Evil maintains desire for a Freudian dynamic (one in which order is out there), Silent Hill opens us up to a Lacanian one (one in which, to quote Derrida, “order is no longer assured”

Link to ‘Saving Ourselves: Psychoanalytic Investigation of Resident Evil and Silent Hill’.

So when did Discover magazine get so good? They’ve got an excellent ‘Mind and Brain’ section with a long list of feature articles freely available online.

Actually, what I wanted to feature was a one off magazine called ‘Discover presents The Brain: An Owner’s Manual’, which I found on the shelves of my local newsagent.

It’s labelled ‘Spring 07’, so is obviously current, but I can’t find anything about it on Discover’s website.

Check it out if you get the chance though. It’s solely dedicated to psychology and neuroscience and has some fantastic articles, but also includes some beautiful photos of intricate brain structures and has some neuropsychological tests to try.

Also, there are interviews with psychologist, author and diagnosed bipolar patient Kay Redfield Jamison, and Nobel prize-winning biologist and consciousness researcher Gerald Edelman.

Why this special issue isn’t mentioned on their website is something of a mystery though.

Link to Discover magazine ‘Mind and Brain’ section.

The Washington Post has a fascinating article on the work of neuropathologist Dr Bennet Omalu (pictured right) who is researching whether American footballers are more likely to get dementia by examining their brains – after they’ve died.

The technique itself isn’t particularly controversial as the post-mortem study of brain tissue is one of the mainstays of neuroscience research.

It is difficult work, however, as it often involves asking the relatives at the point of death whether the body of their loved one can be examined for medical research, usually involving removing parts and examining them under a microscope.

Omalu thinks that the blows to the head suffered during Americfan football may increase the risk for early onset dementia and claims to have found tell-tale signs in the brain.

The idea that persistent low level head injury might raised the risk of dementia is not particularly new.

There are even some research findings suggesting that late life brain function is worse in ex-footballers and the risk for dementia may indeed by higher.

The Washington Post article is an interesting insight into an essential but difficult type of neurological research.

Link to Washington Post article ‘Brain Chaser Tackles Effects of NFL Hits’.

The May edition of top brain research journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience is available online for anyone who completes the free site registration.

The issue contains a round-up of recent neuroscience news, as well as some in-depth reviews of depth perception, the genetics of nervous system development, olfactory memory in fruit flies, neural cycle cyle regulation and a fantastic article on the epigenetics of psychiatric disorder.

Epigenetics describes the process of how genes actually ‘do their work’.

DNA has two main functions. The ‘template function’ of DNA is to pass on genes through generations and allow different traits to be inherited.

The ‘transcriptional function’ of DNA is to allow these genes to be expressed at appropriate times and places (and not expressed at others) so the work can be done.

Almost every cell in the body has a copy of the DNA and, therefore, all the genes, but there are many types of cells with many diverse functions.

This is because not all genes are transcribed and expressed at once. Genes are expressed selectively.

This allows the body to have a diverse range of differently structured cells, and it allows the same cells to do different work at different times.

In a famous 1998 paper, Kandel noted that the transcriptional function of genes, that determines which proteins are expressed at any particular time, can be regulated by social, environmental and experiential (learning-based) factors.

This is why epigenetics is so important, because it is one way of understanding how genes and the environment interact.

We know that it is possible to inherit a variable risk for mental illness, and that life experiences are likely to combine with this risk to trigger mental illness in some people.

The Nature Reviews Neuroscience article looks at the latest research on how this occurs and how it might be different in various types of psychiatric disorder.

Link to May’s Nature Reviews Neuroscience (via Pimm).
Link to PubMed entry (with full text links) for Kandel’s classic 1998 paper.

Slate has just released a special series on the brain – taking a critical look at some of the most recent developments in the field and asking researchers how neuroscience has changed their life.

There’s a wonderful article by developmental psychologist Alison Gopnick on getting past the hype surrounding mirror neurons – which are being used to explain almost every form of human behaviour despite the lack of evidence.

A host of brain researchers note how neuroscience has impacted on their day-to-day life and changes the way they see the world.

Most strikingly, Christof Koch notes that his research into consciousness convinced him to become vegetarian as “mammals can consciously experience the pains and pleasure of life”.

There’s also a few articles on cognitive enhancement: notably, one on the history and myths behind popular ‘brain supplement’ ginkgo biloba and another on neuroplasticity and the new craze for ‘brain training‘ programmes.

Neurotheology, the neuroscience of religious and spiritual experience, also gets a look in with an article examined the development of this new discipline and another on whether technology could induce spritual experiences via the brain.

I have to say, the article on the ‘five biggest neuroscience developments of the year’ is a bit ropey.

For example:

2. The neural alteration of morality. Six people with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were presented with moral dilemmas (e.g., would you smother a baby to prevent bad guys from finding and killing people in hiding) and were found to be two to three times more willing to kill than people without brain damage. The advertised conclusion is that such willingness to kill is objectively immoral. The feared conclusion is that if brain design determines what’s moral, you can change morality by changing the brain – and once technology manipulates ethics, ethics can no longer judge technology.

In fact, we’ve known for a very long time that brain damage can make people less moral, as the case of Phineas Gage suggested, and modern studies of ‘acquired sociopathy’ have reported.

It’s also interesting that the study in question found patients with ventromedial brain damage were actually more moral in utilitarian terms.

They were less swayed by the normal emotional response to making decisions that required trading off considerations of group welfare against emotionally negative behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives).

Whether this is less moral, depends on your moral framework.

Generally, though, the series is well worth checking out and has some fascinating insights and commentary.

Link to Slate special series on the brain.

A psychology and a neuroscience book have made two of out of the six entries shortlisted for the UK’s premier science book prize.

The award is the The Royal Society Prize for Science Books, previously called the Aventis Prize.

Daniel Gilbert’s entertaining book on the sometimes paradoxical world of the psychology of contentment, Stumbling on Happiness (ISBN 9780007183135), is one of the six.

In Search of Memory (ISBN 0393058638), Eric Kandel’s memoirs and discussion of the neuroscience of memory, also makes the list.

The full shortlist is at the link below.

Link to BBC News article on the 2007 shortlist.

No sooner than we post something about psychedelic drug research becoming mainstream than a newspaper reports on a psychologist being barred entry to the US because he wrote an article on a 1967 LSD experience.

Dr Andrew Feldmar (pictured right) is a Vancouver based psychologist and psychotherapist who was attempting a regular cross-border visit, this time to meet a friend in Seattle.

When crossing the border, he was stopped for a random check and security typed his name into Google – bring up a link to a 2001 paper on the hot topic of psychedelics and psychotherapy.

The official said that under the Homeland Security Act, Feldmar was being denied entry due to “narcotics” use. LSD is not a narcotic substance, Feldmar tried to explain, but an entheogen. The guard wasn’t interested in technicalities. He asked for a statement from Feldmar admitting to having used LSD and he fingerprinted Feldmar for an FBI file.

Then Feldmar disbelievingly listened as he learned that he was being barred from ever entering the United States again. The officer told him he could apply to the Department of Homeland Security for a waiver, if he wished, and gave him a package, with the forms.

Feldmar trained under R.D. Laing, the radical psychiatrist and psychotherapist who himself took LSD in an attempt to better understand psychosis and altered states.

As a curious aside, the article notes that Feldmar first tried LSD after being offered a 900 microgram dose (that’s one big hit of acid), not by Laing, as you might have guessed, but by cognitive neuroscientist par excellence Zenon Pylyshyn, who was his collaborator at the time.

Pylyshyn had reportedly tried LSD out of curiosity but had since become interested in other things and had some of the compound left over.

Link to article ‘LSD as Therapy? Write about It, Get Barred from US’ (via BB).
Link to Feldman’s article ‘Entheogens and Psychotherapy’.

The 21st edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just been published on neurobiology of aging blog Ouroboros.

A couple of my favourites include Dr Deborah Serani discussing a to-be-released psychotherapy game for the Nintendo DS, and Neurophilosopher with a wonderfully in-depth article on Dostoyevsky’s epilepsy.

There are many more fantastic articles in this edition, and it looks beautiful. Head on over.

Link to Encephalon 21.

A new edition of Scientific American Mind has arrived with two freely available articles online: one on the distortion of body image in eating disorders and the other on whether brain scans could be a communication channel for people in coma-like vegetative states.

Perhaps the key feature of eating disorders such as anorexia is not just that the person wants to be thin, but that they have a disturbance in their body image so they think they are fat, even when dangerously undernourished.

The SciAmMind article looks at research which attempts to understand how and why body image becomes disturbed and how this can contribute to disorded eating patterns.

This second article discusses the implications of a study [pdf] published recently by Adrian Owen and colleagues suggesting that some patients in a persistent vegetative state or PVS might actually have conscious awareness which they can’t outwardly express (see previously on Mind Hacks).

The first step is getting a general understanding of the patient’s state of mind. Clinicians divide disorders of consciousness into three categories: coma, in which a patient is neither awake nor responsive; vegetative, in which a patient is awake but unresponsive; and minimally conscious, in which a patient is awake and responds to stimuli but has limited capacity to take willful actions. Typically doctors make these categorizations by observing a patient at the bedside. By this method alone, a patient thought to be vegetative could actually be aware.

“It’s really a conundrum. The way that consciousness is typically measured is by basically asking somebody to tell you that they are conscious,” Owen says. “So if someone wasn’t unconscious but couldn’t respond and tell you that, they would be classed as unconscious.” In Owen’s team’s case study, reported in the September 8, 2006, issue of the journal Science, the researchers asked the vegetative patient to imagine herself doing various tasks, including walking through the rooms of her home, while they scanned her brain using fMRI. The resulting images showed that her response matched that of healthy test subjects – she understood the commands and intentionally decided to comply.

Other articles available in the print edition or to subscribers tackle food addiction, brain development in adolescence, perceptual integration, the psychology of stalkers, lithium in the treatment of neurological disorders, pain disorders and implanted ‘brain chips’.

Link to contents for April 2007 issue.
Link to article on body image and eating disorder.
Link to article on communicating in vegetative state.

Being at St Clements is a one night only art event being held in London on the night of Tuesday 24th April to showcase a project combining the talents of dedicated artists and patients from a psychiatric hospital.

The event will present some brand new multimedia works, including a never before seen video and animation projects, sound installations and an exhibition of digital prints.

It will also include a live show to keep you entertained throughout the evening.

The event is being held at the SPACE Gallery, 129-131 Mare Street, London, E8 3RH. 6 – 9pm (Live show @ 7pm).

Link to details of event (thanks Tenyen!).

BBC Radio 4 recently broadcast a documentary on the effects of the new generation of anti-sleep drugs on health and society.

Drugs, such as modafinil and adrafinil, seem to remove the need for sleep and promote alertness while having minimal side-effects in most users.

Unlike older drugs which prevent sleep, such as amphetamine, these drugs typically don’t feel pleasurable and have few other effects, meaning they are less likely to be used recreationally or lead to compulsive use.

Originally used to treat sleep disorders, there is now a large grey market for these compounds, as people use them to extend their work or play time.

The BBC documentary tackles the possible effects on society of being able to easily manipulate and delete the need for sleep at will, as well as investigating the possible mind and brain consequences of not sleeping for long periods.

Link to The Defeat of Sleep webpage with embedded audio.

I returned from lunch and was surprised to find an email from The Mind Lab giving details of the ‘chocolate vs kissing’ study we reported on earlier and dismissed as rubbish. So, is it junk?

Well, it certainly wouldn’t get published in an academic journal, but it’s certainly not as far-fetched as it seemed from the press releases.

Notably, it’s described as a ‘pilot study’ which is often a test-run study done by scientists to try out methods, equipment, ideas or get some initial data.

The email from Dr David Lewis noted that it was for a larger piece of research investigating the role of certain food stuffs in enhancing vigilance in groups whose performance often seriously, and sometimes fatally, affected by fatigue – such as long distance drivers and combat troops.

After reading the report, the premise still seems a bit daft (melting chocolate vs kissing? why?), the number of participants low (only 12), the methods not as robust as they could be and the data presented as summary graphs only with no statistical analysis.

But, for the first time ever for a ‘PR study’, I was provided details of the study when they were requested, so at least I can see that for myself.

Whether it’s healthy that research labs should be ‘selling’ pilot studies (which can’t really be used to draw any firm conclusions) for the advertising industry to promote as science is another matter.

The report is available from The Mind Lab on request.

Link to The Mind Lab.

Yahoo! News is reporting that psychology has been ranked the 9th most satisifying job in America.

The ranking is from a project from the University of Chicago called the ‘General Social Survey’ which monitors changes in attitude and behaviour across various populations.

I can’t actually find the original research online, but any pointers would be gratefully received.

For a list of the most and least satisifying jobs, follow the link below.

Link to Yahoo! News story ‘Survey Reveals Most Satisfying Jobs’.

This week’s New Scientist has two articles of interest to mind and brain enthusiasts: one on gender identity disorder in adolescents, and the other on the psychological effects of modern media.

Unfortunately, neither are open access articles, so you’ll need to track down a copy at the newsagent or library if you want to have a look.

The article on gender identity disorder (GID) in children is particularly interesting, as transexuals often report that they felt from an early age that they were the ‘wrong sex’.

Gender identity disorder is where a person feels themselves to be male when they are bodily male, or male when they are bodily female.

There is some evidence that the ‘felt sex’ is reflected in brain structure, with male-to-female transsexuals having structures that are more female-like.

In adult life, some people choose to have hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery to change from male to female or female to male.

Some clinics are now treating children as young as 12, more often with hormone therapy, causing significant controversy.

It’s probably worth noting that not everyone in the transgender community appreciates that their wish to be another sex is classified as a disorder in itself, even if they do accept it can create a significant amount of psychological distress.

Furthermore, some people don’t see gender as a one-or-the-other classification and might consider themselves to be neither or both.

The article on the psychological effects of media examines how television and computer games might be altering our cognitive abilities.

In a nutshell, the research suggests that increased television viewing correlates with attentional problems, but computer game players tend to have better attentional skills.

The article also gives advice for parents on managing TV viewing to reduce the negative impact on children.

As a complete aside, the ‘leet among you might be interested to know that this week’s edition of NewSci is issue number 2600. j0!

Link to contents for this week’s NewSci.

Dublin’s National Gallery of Ireland has a free exhibition looking at how the uncanny, fantasy and imagination have been represented in Irish art.

Although only three rooms, there are some wonderful pieces, many of which explicitly touch on psychological themes.

This is an extract from the programme:

The Fantastic has manifested itself in various ways, some subtle and some more dramatic and outrageous. The most obvious manner in which the concept was presented in both literary and visual terms was by drawing the viewer’s attention to the ambiguity of everyday experience. This effect can be considered in terms of the idea of the uncanny, where the familiar is made to appear strange and disturbing.

Sigmund Freud, writing on this phenomenon in 1919, expressed his fascination with the way in which an artwork could affect a strong psychological response in the viewer or reader by creating something that was both familiar and alien at the same time. He believed that the uncanny triggered repressed memories from childhood and it is notable that many of the artworks in this exhibition which evoke the uncanny, refer to childlike forms or activities.

There’s also various free talks associated with the exhibition, the best of which looks to be ‘The Fantastic in Art: The Inner World of the Imagination’ which unfortunately happens at the inconvenient time of 10.30am on Tuesday 17th April.

The exhibitions runs until the 12th August.

Link to exhibition information.

BBC News has an interesting video report on a hand-held device that uses near-infrared light to penetrate the skull and test the cortex for haematomas – a type of potentially dangerous blood clot caused by head injury.

The device is called the InfraScanner and doesn’t create the sort of brain scans you might be used to seeing, but instead is a hand-held device specifically designed to diagnose this specific type of injury.

It uses technology called ‘near infrared spectroscopy‘ that involves rays of near infrared light being beamed into the head.

This light can penetrate through the skull and a few centimetres into the brain.

Some of this light is reflected back and some is absorbed, depending on what the light encounters on its path.

By measuring the light that get reflected back, it’s possible to determine the structure of the underlying material.

The device uses these principles to work out whether the area under the scanner is normal brain tissue or has a bleed in it.

This can be life-saving information and being able to do this on the spot, rather than needing to give someone a full brain scan, would obviously be incredibly useful.

The technology is also being used in a more complex form called Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to look at brain activation during mental tasks, in a similar way to other types of brain imaging.

The advantage with fNIRS, however, is that it doesn’t involve being put into a big tube (like fMRI), injected with radiation (like PET), doesn’t need a shielded room (like MEG) and has better spatial resolution than EEG.

The technology is still relatively new though and it can only look at surface brain structures, but looks like a promising technology, particularly when it can be modified into hand-held diagnostic devices.

There’s a excellent review of its use in brain imaging in a recent scientific paper (if you have access to the journal) and in a freely available article (pdf) from an IEEE engineering magazine.

Link to video report from BBC News.
Link to PubMed abstract of scientific review.
pdf of magazine article on fNIRS.