Category: News

ABC Radio’s The Philosopher’s Zone had an edition last week on ‘neuroethics’ – the branch of moral philosophy that deals with the difficult issues raised by our increasing ability to manipulate the brain.

For example, a lab at Georgia Tech have created The Hybrot, a robot controlled by the brain cells of a rat.

Some might question whether it is ethical to use sentient creatures for parts in mechanical devices.

If you have no ethical qualms about this, what about using human brain cells to do the job, donated by a card-carrying organ donor after an irreversible coma?

Perhaps it would make a difference what the device was, so a medical device to help someone move again might be acceptable, but an intelligent house-cleaning robot might seem too trivial to make human brain cells an acceptable component.

The Philosopher’s Zone examines neuroethics as a new discipline that aims to make sense of similarly taxing situations, often faced by clinicians and scientists in their day-to-day work.

If you’re interested in hearing more, Dana hosted a public panel discussion on these issues last year, and have put the video online.

Link to The Philosopher’s Zone on neuroethics.
Link to Dana panel discussion on neuroethics.

Neurologists of the world rejoice. The chap at Extrasensory Epilepsy Healing can cure epilepsy with the power of his mind, and takes all types of credit cards over the internet.

If this isn’t revelation enough, it turns out that epilepsy, long thought to be a neurological disorder, is actually a problem with the pancreas.

If John Hughlings Jackson were alive to today, he would no doubt be feeling a little sheepish at this exciting news.

The New York Times has published part 3 in its series on child mental health with a look at how psychiatric drugs are being prescribed to children, and the evidence on their benefits and side-effects.

We featured the publication of the first two parts in the series on Mind Hacks. These looked at the impact of emotional and behavioural disturbance in children and the difficulties of adequately diagnosing child mental illness.

In contrast, the final part looks at the thorny issue of medicating disturbed children.

The article notes that some children are being prescribed a number of psychiatric drugs – a practice known as polypharmacy – despite limited or non-existent evidence for how effective this might be.

In fact, even the long-term effects of single drugs in children are poorly researched, with most ‘long-term’ studies lasted no more than two years.

The dilemma is that genuine long-term studies that would test for differences in adulthood after drug-treatment as a child could take 10-15 years.

This is a very long-time to wait if you’ve got a seriously mentally ill child on your hands and access to a drug which is known to help in the short-term.

Perhaps the more difficult ethical situations (as with most of mental health) do not involve the most severely distressed or impaired people.

These might be children whose behaviour is considered disruptive, who might be consistently unhappy, or who are considered not to be fulfilling their potential, but are not completely impaired in their day-to-day life.

For example, a medication such as the amphetamine-like drug methylphenidate (Ritalin) might genuinely improve school performance in these cases.

If the drug helps, is this a mental disorder? Either way, if the drug helps, should it be prescribed?

Teachers might have an interest in having medicated (and therefore better behaved) children in their classroom to maximise learning for everyone in the class.

Parents might want their child to make full use of their educational opportunities, even if that means taking a drug.

Child psychiatry is necessarily family and school-oriented, so it would take a brave doctor to refuse to prescribe when both school and parents are united in their opinion, even if they might only be focused on the desired change in the child’s behaviour, and not considering any other impact these drugs might have.

Furthermore, considering that childhood mental disorders can be triggered or made worse by inadequate social and emotional care, some worry that these drugs are being used to pacify children without addressing what might be the root cause of the problem in the family.

As the other articles in the series have done, this article combines both the experiences of families living with these difficulties and dilemmas, and includes comments from researchers and clinicians dealing with the problems from a professional standpoint.

Link to article ‘Proof Is Scant on Psychiatric Drug Mix for Young’.

Cognitive science blog Cognitive Daily has started a new weekly podcast of their fantastic summaries of scientific studies.

The first is a 10-minute run through of two recent articles: one on a study that looked at whether police were more likely to shoot at black suspects, and the other on why people with ‘tone deafness’ have trouble understanding rhythm.

Currently, the podcast is in m4a format, which may be a bit frustrating if you don’t own an Apple iPod or similarly compatible player, but otherwise I look forward to hearing a lot more.

Link to first Cognitive Daily podcast.

This week’s edition of ABC Radio All in the Mind is a special investigation into brain-computer interfaces, the science of putting computer equipment under direct neurocognitive control.

This could either be done by non-invasively reading brain activity, or in the case of people with disorders that affect their movement, by implanting electrode arrays into the brain directly.

Artist Pro Hart died of it, so did actor David Niven – the nightmarish legacy of Motor Neurone disease which paralyses the body as the disease progresses. Communication can become restricted to an eye-blink, with the mind remaining intact and active in a frozen body. But the technological cutting edge of the brain-computer interface could make a difference, and help people communicate with the outside world using the only thing they have left…their mind. Turn on the TV, switch off the lights and even send emails, just by thinking about it? No, it’s not hocus-pocus.

Link to AITM edition on ‘The Brain Computer Interface’ with audio.

Both the British and American Journals of Psychiatry are now broadcasting their own monthly podcasts that discuss some of the feature articles in each month’s issue.

Unlike many of the articles themselves, the podcasts are freely available to download from the moment they’re released.

The British podcasts are hosted by Dr Raj Persaud and involve interviews with researchers and discussions about the issues raised by their findings.

In contrast, the American podcasts sound like an excessively thorough lecture given by a voice synthesiser.

I suspect the American version is an attempt to produce an audio version of the academic paper, while the British podcasts could probably picked up by non-specialists who could still get an understanding of the area, and by specialists who would enjoy them even if they’d already read the paper itself.

It’s interesting to see how many scientific journals are now creating podcasts to accompany their publication, and hopefully this will make research more widely accessible to the public at large.

Link to British Journal of Psychiatry podcasts.
Link to American Journal of Psychiatry podcasts.

Issue 12 of psychology and neuroscience writing carnival The Synapse is now welcoming readers with a selection of the lastest articles from the last week. This edition is hosted by Dr Deborah Serani and includes posts on everything from creativity to prion infection.

There’s an interesting snippet on the Wired blog about Hitachi developing ‘home’ brain imaging technology which they hope will allow thought-based computer interaction by 2011.

Hitachi’s system doesn’t invasively co-opt the nervous sytem, instead using a topographic modelling system to measure blood flow in the brain, translating the images into signals that are sent to the controller. So far, this new technique only allows for simple switching decisions, but Hitachi aims to commercialize it within five years for use by paralyzed patients and those undergoing “cognitive rehabilitation.

Link to Wired Blog entry.

From the BPS Research Digest:

The idea that creative geniuses might not be entirely sane isn’t exactly new. But just how much do creative types have in common with people suffering from psychosis? Well, according to Daniel Nettle at the University of Newcastle, serious poets and artists have just as many ‘unusual experiences’ as people diagnosed with schizophrenia. What saves them from the disabling effects of schizophrenia is that they don’t suffer from the lack of emotion and motivation ‚Äì known as ‘introvertive anhedonia’ ‚Äì also associated with the illness.

Nettle used a measure of schizotypy on the participants in his study. Schizotypy is based on the concept that schizophrenia-like experiences can occur in everyone to some degree, and those with schizophrenia simply experience more intense and distressing versions of the milder experiences that other people have.

Link to more from BPS-RD (and link to full-text paper).
Link to Wikipedia page on schizotypy.

Synesthete.org is a website that has a series of online tests where you can test yourself for synaesthesia – the condition where senses are crossed so, for example, you might be able to taste shapes or see colours associated with specific numbers.

The site is run by the Eagleman Lab at the Baylor College of Medicine who study links between perception and action, as well as the curious world of synaesthesia.

If you’re a researcher, you can also use the site to test and collect results on your own participants, and the same tests are also available as downloadable software for the Matlab package.

It’s now known that synaesthesia is partly inherited, so if you find that you or one of your family members seems to have the condition, others in the family may also have similar abilities.

Link to synesthete.org.

As an update to a previous post on John E. Fryer’s dramatic role in getting homosexuality de-listed as a mental illness in 1973, thanks to the reader who emailed to say that the radio programme This American Life has a special on the fascinating story of the people behind the wider campaign.

The programme also charts the personal family story of Alix Spiegel, the producer of the This American Life series, whose grandfather was John Spiegel, president of the American Psychiatric Association when homosexuality was finally removed from the diagnostic manual.

She tells how the issue had a significant impact on psychiatry and society, but also on her family (you’ll have to listen to find out why).

The story recounts one curious event when psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, then head of the diagnostic committee, visited a clandestine gay psychiatrists’ party to meet gay psychiatrists for himself, and was surprised to see many of the psychiatric establishment there.

Although it will cost you 99 cents to download the mp3 of the programme, and audio can be streamed for free from the webpage.

Link to page for ’81 words’ programme with streamed audio (speaker icon).

The British Psychological Society Research Digest blog, run by our own very own Christian Jarrett, seems to have undergone a bit of a change and is now posting in daily bite-sized chunks rather than in two week mega-servings.

A couple of things I picked up from it recently include video from the recently sold-out Royal Society conference ‘Mental Processes in the Human Brain’ and a piece on the seeming impossibility of successfully predicting which soldiers might have mental health problems once they get deployed.

There’s also a wonderful piece on the psychology of why young children think they’re invisible when they close their eyes!

There’s much more where that came from, and now it’s delivered daily.

Link to rejigged BPS Research Digest.

The plot line of this upcoming movie sounds very odd (and it must be said, very original):

“Heartbroken by a break-up with his girlfriend Desiree, twentysomething Zia (Almost Famous’ Patrick Fugit) kills himself – only to wake up in the afterlife: a purgatory populated exclusively by other suicides, where the jukeboxes only play Joy Division and Nirvana, all the colours seem desaturated, and life is more or less the same as back in the real world – ‘just a little worse’. Learning that his beloved ex has also taken her life, he hooks up with a Russian misfit (whose final moments, seen in flashback, provide one of the film’s funniest scenes), and a moody Goth hitchhiker (Shannyn Sossamon), and sets off in a battered station wagon to find her; the resulting road-trip – including a scene-stealing cameo by Tom Waits – forms the basis of this ruefully funny road movie.”

It’s got excellent reviews so far, so I’ll be interested to see how it manages to deal with such a sensitive issue.

Link to official site.
Link to IMDB entry.

New Scientist turns 50 today, and to celebrate, they’ve reprinted some classic news stories from their archives and have predictions from a clutch of contemporary scientists.

The only neuroscience-related story from the archive is the discovery of endorphins, natural pain-killing opioids in the brain, from way back in ’76.

Cognitive scientists make more of a showing in the section on predictions about the future with Rodney Brooks, Steven Pinker, Elizabeth Loftus, Igor Aleksander, Geoffry Miller, Terry Sejnowski, Eric Horvitz, Frans de Waal and Michael Gazzaniga all making their pitches.

Some of the feature articles, only available to paying subscribers, also tackle mind and brain issues, as the magazine attempts to describe some of the biggest problems still facing science.

Articles on ‘What is consciousness?’, ‘What is reality?’, ‘What comes after Homo sapiens?’ and ‘Do we have free will?’ all cover areas of interest to psychology and neuroscience enthusiasts.

Link to NewSci 50th anniversary edition details.

The New York Times has published the first two parts of an ongoing series on the experience and difficulties of diagnosing mental illness in children.

The area of child mental illness is controversial, largely because diagnosis is so difficult.

Diagnosing adults is tricky at the best of times, but mental disorder seems to appear differently in children and is often classified using specific diagnoses.

Some disorders, such as conduct disorder or childhood autism, can only be diagnosed in children, while others, such as psychotic disorders, could technically be diagnosed but are incredibly rare in pre-adolescents.

Some diagnoses are subject to significant cultural differences. For example, some American psychiatrists are diagnosing children with bipolar disorder as young as 6-years-old, while most British psychiatrists tend to be quite unhappy with this, and in practice, rarely diagnose anyone under 18 with the condition.

At the moment, awareness of ‘Juvenile Bipolar Disoder’, as it has been christened, is being heavily promoted in America.

For example, the Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation website even lets you ‘screen’ your own child with an online questionnaire to see if they have the condition.

Cynics may note that the organisation is sponsored by, among others, Novartis Pharmaceuticals and make accusations of disease mongering, while supporters would argue that it is increasing awareness of an under-recognised disorder and hope that it will lead to better treatment for children in distress

One of the concerns of these diagnoses, is that they typically lead to substantial drug treatment, the long-term effects of which are not well understood or researched.

The first NYT article explores the experience of one family who had a daughter who developed behavioural problems and started experiencing psychotic symptoms at the age of 7, a very uncommon occurrence.

The second article looks at the process of diagnosis itself, and what difficulties psychiatrists face when trying to separate bizarre but normal childhood fantasy from troubling thoughts and feelings.

This is an especially difficult task in children who do not necessarily have the language or mental abilities to fully communicate their own experiences.

Both articles have video and a photo essay to accompany them. Presumably, more articles in the series will be forthcoming.

Link to NYT article ‘Living With Love, Chaos and Haley’.
Link to NYT article ‘What‚Äôs Wrong With a Child? Psychiatrists Often Disagree’.

There’s a news story and video clip on the BBC News website about a reporter’s experience of being inside the new 7-tesla fMRI scanner at Nottingham University.

Tesla is a measure of magnetic field strength and the greater the field strength of an fMRI scanner, the more detailed images it is likely to produce.

Most scanners are 1.5-tesla, or more recently, 3-tesla, with only a few 7-tesla machines in existence.

You’ll occasionally hear scientists who work with fMRI-scanners proudly announce the field strength as if it were a measure of, well… I’m sure you can guess.

The report is interesting both for the 1970s footage of Nobel Prize winning MRI inventor Peter Mansfield inside the first ever MRI machine, and for the completely bizarre ‘MRI picture frame’ example used half way through the clip.

Link to BBC News story and video clip link.
Link to info page on Nottingham Uni’s 7-tesla scanner.