Category: News

The Royal Institution are running an event on Thursday 27th April in London entitled Who’s the greatest? Minds that changed our minds where the greatest contributors to modern psychology and psychiatry will be debated.

The four luminaries being championed include inventor of psychoanlaysis Sigmund Freud, philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers, psychologist and intelligence researcher Hans Eysenck, and inventor of cognitive behavioural therapy Aaron T. Beck.

The debate will be hosted by King’s College London. Tickets cost ¬£8, with a discount for RI members and students. See you there!

Link to details of Who’s the greatest? event.

Neuroscientist Baroness Greenfield was featured on Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning [realaudio] arguing that children are being medicated for ADHD when the problem might be caused by the over-use of ‘electronic media’ leading to short attention spans.

One of the difficulties with this argument is that an attention problem in children with ADHD has yet to be reliably pinned down.

Current theories tend to emphasise more general processes like behavioural inhibition, inhibitory control and executive dysfunction.

Some researchers are so unimpressed that they argue that ADHD is just a vague label for the outcome in any number of different behavioural and emotional problems.

Therefore, even if ‘electronic media’ did lead to short attention spans, this probably has little to do with ADHD as it is diagnosed in the clinic.

Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether the constant use of ‘electronic media’ does lead to a short attention span. In fact, it probably has the reverse effect.

A study published in Nature in 2003 reported that people who play video games have better visual attention than people who do not.

A 2005 study reported that children diagnosed with ADHD perform no worse than other children on standard computer games, and on a neuropsychological test of attention designed to be more ‘game-like’ to keep children’s interest.

At a recent conference preliminary data was presented from a study that suggested ADHD could be helped by getting affected children to play Dance Dance Revolution!

Perhaps the point about ‘electronic media’ has clouded a more important ethical issue that Baroness Greenfield addresses – the widespread medication of children with amphetamines or amphetamine-like drugs to treat behavioural problems.

A hundred years ago ADHD-like behaviour was undoubtedly dealt with by corporal punishment. This raises the question of whether medicalising and medicating this behaviour is just a more expedient, or a genuinely more humane approach to dealing with problematic children.

UPDATE: There’s a short piece in The Guardian about the topic and the subsequent political debate.

realaudio of interview with Baroness Greenfield.

I’ve just discovered ‘Research TV’ which features loads of free videos, or ‘vodcasts’, including several on psychology and neuroscience:

Link to Scanning brainwaves to read the mind, about combining MEG and fMRI brain imaging techniques.
Link to Hemianopia: looking into the dark.
Link to A happy marriage helps beat flu.
Link to Fit to fight depression.
Link to Brain Scans show ADHD differences.
Link to Not exactly brain surgery, about a virtual reality simulator for surgeons.
Link to Older and Wiser?: Tackling problems of the ageing brain.
Link to Magnetic milestones in children’s brain tumour treatment.
Link to Job satisfaction depends on happiness.

There are probably others that I’ve missed too. I just watched the first one on ‘Scanning brainwaves’ and it includes some excellent shots of what a MEG scanner looks like with somebody in it (I’ve seen a fMRI scanner loads of times but not a MEG one), and in another clip you can also hear just how noisy an fMRI scanner is.

Warwick University are apparently behind Research TV, with Birmingham uni, Nottingham uni, King’s College and Durham University as partners.

Link 1 and link 2 for previous Mind Hacks posts about online neurosci videos.

Insight into self-harming from Lovisa Pahlson-Moller, a 22-year-old who said she first self-harmed when she was just six years old. She hasn’t cut herself for two years thanks partly to the relief that’s come from writing a book about her feelings. Interview and book extract.

Also there’s an extended interview here with Chris Holley, the nurse behind a controversial project at St George’s Hospital, Stafford that allows patients to continue harming themselves under supervised conditions. BBC News coverage here.

Today’s New Scientist has two articles of interest to mind and brain enthusiasts: a critical analysis of mood stablising drugs, and an account of a new brain intervention that involves passing a small electrical current through the head.

The article on mood stabilisers is largely an edited version of an article by psychiatrist David Healy published in a special issue of PLoS Medicine (mentioned previously on Mind Hacks).

The other feature article is on a technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), something I’ve not heard of before but which seems to have some serious research supporting its use.

It sounds like quackery, but it’s not. A growing body of evidence suggests that passing a small electric current through your head can have a profound effect on the way your brain works. Called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), the technique has already been shown to boost verbal and motor skills and to improve learning and memory in healthy people – making fully-functioning brains work even better. It is also showing promise as a therapy to cure migraine and speed recovery after a stroke, and may extract more from the withering brains of people with dementia. Some researchers think the technique will eventually yield a commercial device that healthy people could use to boost their brain function at the flick of a switch.

Unfortunately, the article isn’t available freely online, but you should be able to get the issue from your local newsagent or library.

Link to table of contents for this week’s issue.

US Judge Wayne Salvant has ordered that Steven Kenneth Staley, a death-row inmate who is so severely mentally ill as to be unable to comprehend his situation, can be forcibly medicated so he can be executed while mentally competent.

A stay of execution was previously granted as he was judged not to understand his situation due to impaired mental functioning.

Staley is not the first prisoner to find himself in this situation. In 2004, Charles Singleton was forcibly medicated and subsequently executed in Arkansas.

His case was considered by an appeals court that decided by 6 votes to 5 that forcible medication for execution was acceptable.

In 1986, the US Supreme Court stated that the execution of the insane was barred by the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, although the definition of insanity is left to individual states.

In 2002, the state of Texas executed Monty Delk. His last words were recorded in the state’s execution report:

At his execution, Delk screamed profanities and gibberish. When the warden asked if he had a final statement, Delk shouted. “I am the warden! Get your warden off this gurney and shut up!” At 7:47 p.m., the warden signaled for the lethal injection to begin. After spouting more profanity, Delk blurted out, “You are not in America. This is the island of Barbados. People will see you doing this.” Then, abruptly, he stopped speaking, and his mouth and eyes froze wide open. He was pronounced dead at 7:53 p.m.

Link to article on Staley judgement from The Star-Telegram.
Link to article on Singleton execution from CNN.

Psychiatric nurse and mixed media artist Ben Guiver’s experimental radio broadcast is available to download today.

The show – a kind of remix of texts by Francois Roustang, Will Self, Hakim Bey, Adam Phillips and Jean Baudrillard – complements his exhibition of photographs and paintings at London’s Foundry called “A sense of Scale”, and will also be broadcast on Resonance FM at 7pm (BST).

Guiver, who runs an art group for people with mental health problems, told The Guardian: “The texts I’ve selected for my radio show deal with different types of social matrixes. It is about the privatisation of culture in the west and the cycle of intimidation”.

Link to A Sense of Scale exhibition info and radio downloads.

Open-access journal PLoS Medicine has a special on disease mongering – the practice of promoting medical conditions in an effort to boost drug sales.

Drugs are, of course, incredibly useful in treating suffering and disease, but their reality doesn’t always match the marketing of either the compound or the diagnosis.

For example, the definition of many psychiatric conditions is often based on fuzzy criteria on what constitutes a mental disorder and what constitutes normal human suffering or impairment.

The official acceptance of a diagnosis can involve intensely political decisions because if a group of experiences are defined as a mental disorder, the government or insurance companies can be called on to provide care for the affected people.

If a drug company can get their medication licensed as an ‘approved’ part of the care package, they can obviously make a huge amount of money.

This has led to drug companies funding pressure groups both to get a condition recognised with an ‘official’ diagnosis or to raise awareness of certain diagnoses (which has the effect of increasing the rates of diagnoses, and, of course, prescriptions).

This is not to deny that people may genuinely be suffering, but whether that suffering is best treated by a particular drug is another matter.

Here is where science is supposed to settle the matter, except for the fact that drug companies have been known to suppress drug trials that find no effect, and ghost-write scientific papers to which respected scientists add their names (and prestige).

Individual doctors are persuaded to prescribe certain drugs by free gifts, meals, air tickets to visit conferences, and large-scale sponsorship of academic meetings.

It’s all very murky and quite insidious. The PLoS Medicine collection has articles that point out some of the marketing practices that support this process.

Of particular interest to readers here might be the articles on female sexual dysfunction, bipolar disorder and ADHD, although the whole issue is quite thought-provoking.

The issue coincides with a conference currently being held on the same topic in Australia.

Link to PLoS Medicine collection on disease mongering (thanks Petra!)
Link to conference website.
Link to 2002 British Medical Journal special on disease mongering.
Link to coverage from BBC News.

Steven Levitt, the economist, and Stephen Dubner, the journalist – authors of Freakonomics – appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme yesterday.

The pair are (in)famous for their alternative explanations of historical phenomena, based on their application of economic tools of analysis to social patterns. For example, they’ve argued that the 50 per cent fall in crime in the USA in the last 15 years was caused by the legalisation of abortion in the 1970’s. Unwanted children are known to be at increased risk of becoming criminals, and so the reduction in the number of unwanted kids has meant less crime (so the logic goes).

In this interview they suggest that, so long as it doesn’t spread to humans, the threat of bird flu here in the UK may paradoxically lead to health benefits as a result of millions of anxious people washing their hands more often.

Setting yourself achievable goals is a sensible step on the way to getting what you want in life.

So why, in the twenty-first century, do people have to dress up such a simple idea with kookie language and daft explanations?

TV presenter Noel Edmunds said his successful return to primetime TV was thanks to ‘cosmic ordering’. He apparently wrote on a piece of paper what he wanted, before putting it under his pillow. He thinks he told the cosmos what he wanted and the cosmos duly granted it. There’s even a book on it at the top of the Amazon best-seller list.

Thankfully, on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, psychologist Prof. Richard Wiseman debunked the idea that the cosmos really does listen out for everyone’s private requests before granting them. It has far more to do with the fact that ‘lucky’ people “know what they want in life and recognise opportunities when they come along”.

Unfortunately, the editors of the programme gave equal weight to the opinions of astrologer Jonathan Cainer – “you decide what you want…you announce to the universe that it’s your intention to get it…and it works, without a shadow of a doubt it works…And in my column I tell you when the best time is to put your order in”, he said. Later he added “you can wish for harm to others and there’s a strong chance it will happen”. None of which was challenged by the interviewer.

OK, I’ll have a go: “Dear Cosmos, please shut down the BBC Today programme for broadcasting absolute piffle”.

Link to audio of the interview with Wiseman and Cainer.

A quick update on our previous post on the BBC All in the Mind LSD special. The realaudio archive of the show is now available online (now also linked from the original post).

Furthermore, BBC News has an additional article summarising the programme, and there’s an interesting snippet (i.e. gossip) about the new series from The Telegraph.

Apparently, Claudia Hammond is a “glamorous psychology writer”. Probably, just like us here at Mind Hacks (*cough*).

Link to BBC All in the Mind website.
Realaudio of programme audio.

BBC All in the Mind has just kicked off a new series with an excellent special edition on the latest developments in LSD research and therapy, and with a slew of new presenters.

The programme examines the science of how LSD acts on the mind and brain, as well as research on the use of psychedelics to treat cluster headaches and mental distress.

It‚Äôs nearly 40 years since LSD was made illegal, but now there’s growing scientific interest in studying hallucinogenic drugs. In the 50s LSD was believed to be a wonder drug and used widely in psychiatry to treat conditions from depression to addiction.

In this week’s programme Claudia finds out about the new research underway using psychedelics, and asks whether modern psychiatry is really the place for drugs like LSD, magic mushrooms and Ecstasy.

There are now three presenters to replace the previous All in the Mind frontman, Raj Persaud.

They include: Claudia Hammond, a psychology lecturer, author and past presenter of the excellent BBC series Emotional Rollercoaster (still archived online); Clinical psychologist and writer Tanya Byron, who was in a number of acclaimed child management programmes; and psychiatrist Kwame McKenzie, who is currently assistant editor at the British Journal of Psychiatry and a lecturer in psychiatry.

The diverse set of presenters should bring a fresh perspective on current mind and brain issues, and I’m hoping the programme is going to involve more in-depth whole programme discussions, as has been demonstrated this week.

The audio of the LSD programme will be archived online later today. I’ll update this page to link to it when it arrives online.

The audio of the programme is now online and linked below.

Link to BBC All in the Mind website.
Realaudio of programme audio.

A Polish reader posted the following on a previous post and I thought I would flag up for everyone here:

I’d like to invite you to participate in discussions on the new forum about neuroscience and cognitive science – http://kognitywistyka.fora.pl
It is generally in Polish but there is also an English section (the main page –> “In English”).

In Poland almost no-one is interested in cognitive science or neuroscience so we strongly need support. The forum is a part of http://www.kognitywistyka.net , the most popular vortal on cognitive and neural science in Central Europe.

Please help us to develop the forum and to propagate neuroscience and cognitive science in Poland.

If you have any questions, please contact the administrator at the address swacewicz(at)kognitywistyka(dot)net. In order to avoid abuse, you need to be a registered user to start new threads and write replies in the English section (but reading is always possible). In order to register, you have to click “Rejestracja” (at the main page – meaning: register) –> “Zgadzam siƒô na te warunki” (meaning: I agree) and fill the forms. Translation:
Użytkownik Рuser
Adres email – email address
Hasło Рpassword
Potwierdź Hasło Рconfirm password
Then change the value of “jƒôzyk forum”(language of the forum) into ‘english’. That’s all.

Every international guest will be welcomed warmly.

So if you’d like to talk cog sci and spread the word in Poland, you now know where to go!

The Wikipedia article on eliminative materialism has undergone a radical transformation since the end of January. It is now a clear and comprehensive introduction to one of the most important philosophical approaches to modern cognitive science.

Philosophers, unfortunately, have an image problem. Ask the average person in the street about what philosophers do and you’re likely to be informed that they try and work out whether God, reality or each other exist.

In reality, a significant number are involved in the cognitive sciences and are doing some much needed structural work on the foundations.

Philosophy of mind focuses on understanding and testing the foundations of psychology and cognitive science, and is now an essential partner in the bid to explain human thought.

The majority of theories about the mind make assumptions about the sort of mental states we have. Many of these assumptions are taken from everyday language and culture, and are usually described by ‘common sense’.

For example, the everyday concept of ‘belief’ features regularly in scientific explanations of the mind, despite the fact that this concept is often applied so widely in natural language as to be seemingly contradictory in places.

A school of thought called ‘eliminative materialism’ argues that these ‘common-sense’ concepts are like the ancient four humours theory of medicine – which said that the body and mind are controlled by levels of ‘blood’, ‘black bile’, ‘yellow bile’ and ‘phlegm’.

Although this theory was assumed to be true at the time, modern science hasn’t given us an improved explanation of the ‘four humours’, it has rejected the idea as completely ridiculous.

Eliminative materialism argues that everyday concepts like ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ will suffer the same fate because of their inconsistencies, and that theories that use these concepts are ultimately flawed.

Supporters also point to the lack of clear evidence that these everyday concepts are linked to any consistent pattern of brain activity. This might suggest that these concepts are also not supported by other, similarly intentioned, approaches.

If eliminative materialism is accurate, many past theories will have to be re-thought, and how we test, create and think about the mind and brain will change radically.

It is not clear, however, whether it is accurate, and the recently updated Wikipedia page gives an excellent and evolving account of the arguments.

Link to Wikipedia article on eliminative materialism.

Wired has some brief coverage of the USA Memory Championship, which was won by a journalist who entered as research for a book!

This was Foer’s first time competing, but he’d covered it as a freelance science journalist, he said. This year, he decided to experience things from the inside as research for a book he‚Äôs writing on memory, and was shocked at the results.

“I really did not expect to win,” Foer said. “I thought maybe I‚Äôd crack the top five.”

He practiced for the competition starting in July, and his techniques echoed those used by other contestants. He’d spend five to 10 minutes several times a week trying to memorize the order of playing cards in a deck. He also mentally linked integers from 1 to 100 with images and letters to help in remembering lists of numbers. Thirteen, for example, is his girlfriend, he said.

Link to ‘Flexing Brains: Feats of Memory’.