Category: Nonsense

Psychiatrist Edward Hume has created uploaded a spoof paper on the the ‘etiology and treatment of childhood’, satirising the growing enthusiasm for diagnosing children with psychiatric disorders.

The paper was written by Jordan Smoller and published in the humorous book called Oral sadism and the vegetarian personality (ISBN 0345347005).

Childhood is a syndrome which has only recently begun to receive serious attention from clinicians. The syndrome itself, however, is not at all recent. As early as the 8th century, the Persian historian Kidnom made references to “short, noisy creatures,” who may well have been what we now call “children.” The treatment of children, however, was unknown until this century, when so-called “child psychologists” and “child psychiatrists” became common. Despite this history of clinical neglect, it has been estimated that well over half of all Americans alive today have experienced childhood directly (Suess, 1983). In fact, the actual numbers are probably much higher, since these data are based on self-reports which may be subject to social desirability biases and retrospective distortion.

Link to spoof paper (thanks for the correction Blar!).

Wendy, Stephanie and Marie, three high school psychology students, have voiced over Britney’s Baby One More Time video with lyrics about the occipital lobe.

It is, dare I say, a work of genius (and very funny to boot).

And if you’re interested in reading a study on the cognitive neuroscience of Britney’s brain, one was recently published by the Mackledoodle Institute of Radioscopy.

The findings are, er… unique.

Link to Britney Occipital Lobe video on YouTube.
Link to article ‘A Default mode of the brain function of Britney Spears’.

Another in the occasional series of PubMed typos. This time from the Scandanavian Journal of Social Medicine.

The last line accidentally describes the effect of exposure to solvents on one unfortunate individual:

A cohort study of disability pension and death among painters with special regard to disabling presenile dementia as an occupational disease.

Scand J Soc Med Suppl. 1980;16:34-43.

Mikkelsen S.

In the last decade several investigations have demonstrated an association between impaired cerebral function in employed workers and occupational exposure to organic solvents. Many case-histories and two case-referent studies indicate, that such an impairment might develop into disabling irreversible neuropsychiatric disease. The main purpose of this study was to further investigate the risk of chronic brain damage in solvent exposed workers. A cohort of 2601 male painters and 1790 male bricklayers from the Copenhagen area was identified retrospectively and followed Jan. 1,71-Dec. 31,75. For this period the incidence of disability pensioning and mortality was examined for the two occupational groups and for a “‘normal” population of Copenhagen men. Using bricklayers and Copenhagen men as referents, the painters had a relative risk of approximately 3.5 of being awarded a disability pension due to a state of being awarded a disability pension due to a state of cryptogenic presenile dementia. When indications of alcohol abuse, cerebral concussions or other etiologic factors were present, the relative risk was approximately 2. No excess risk was found for neuropsychiatric diseases other than presenile dementia. Other differences between the groups were found, but they were inconsistent and difficult to interpret. In the light of the findings of this and other studies, it seems likely, that chronic brian damage may result from industrial exposure to organic solvents.

Link to PubMed entry.

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker was a guest on the comedy show The Colbert Report where he talks about the brain, language and having bad hair days.

Pure Pedantry has embedded video of the interview if you want to catch the quickfire questions and cognitive one-liners.

For those not familiar with the format of the show, it is hosted by spoof conservative talk show host Stephen Colbert who often seems hilariously but unnervingly realistic.

Life-changing new drug Havidol (chemical name Avafynetyme HCl) has just been marketed for the widely under-recognised disorder Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD).

DSACDAD is a new diagnosis where sufferers experience symptoms such as “worrying about life, feeling tense, restless, or fatigued, being concerned about their weight, noticing signs of aging, feeling stress at work, home, or finding activities they used to enjoy, like shopping, challenging.”

The drug targets the recently discovered hedonine hormone to boost the brain’s reward system for when “feeling better is not enough”.

Havidol joins other next generation drugs Fukitol, Panexa, Progenitorivox and Proloxil as medications that not only affect the brain, but also purify the soul.

Link to Havidol website (via BoingBoing).
Link to previous Mind Hacks post on soul purifying pharmaceuticals.

Thanks to Ian for emailing to congratulate Mind Hacks on hosting a Googlewhack – a Google search that turns up only one link. If you search for methamphetamine lollygagger on Google, the only hit is one of our pages.

God knows how Ian discovered this. Great name for a band though.

Of course, as soon as this page gets indexed it will no longer be a Googlewhack.

If you’ve always harboured secret Dr Frankenstein fantasies (and let’s face it, who hasn’t?) what better way to unleash your inner re-animator than by having a glowing brain lamp?

Yes, it’s a plasma lamp in the shape of a brain, so you can dance lightening across your glass cortex with the touch of your finger.

Just don’t cackle loudly enough to frighten the locals, whatever you do.

Link to ‘Electra Brain’ details (via OmniBrain).

Biologist and reproductive scientist Prof David Clapham is interviewed in the New York Times, leading to a sublime moment halfway through the exchange:

Q. Among biologists, is sperm research very respected?
A. Well, in biology, all the glamour is in neuroscience.

Link to NYT interview with David Clapham (via Frontal Cortex).

…when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you sometimes find that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

Winnie the Pooh struggles with the problem of communicating qualia to external observers in A. A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner.

I’ve been notified of a rare case of focal retrograde amnesia that doesn’t seem to have been reported in the medical literature.

Focal retrograde amnesia is where memory for past events and personal information is lost, while the ability to remember new events is spared.

The case is described in Mr Bump Loses His Memory by Roger Hargreaves (ISBN 1844229866).

In this instance, amnesia seems to have been induced by falling out of the window while attempting to smell flowers in a window box.

BUMP!

Mr Bump sat up and rubbed his head. And as he rubbed, it dawned on him that he had no idea where he was.

He had no idea whose garden he was sitting in.

He had no idea whose house he was sitting in front of.

And he had no idea who he was.

Mr Bump had lost his memory.

Focal retrograde amnesia has been reported both after clear brain injury (particularly to temporal lobes) and when there is an absence of detectable brain damage.

The latter condition is sometimes called ‘functional’ or ‘psychogenic’ amnesia, and it might result from emotional disturbance rather than permanent impairment to memory structures in the brain.

As no neurological investigations were conducted after Mr Bump’s concussive head injury (despite clear indications of past traumatic injury), it is not possible to determine whether his amnesia was the result of organic damage or distress-related psychogenic factors.

As Mr Bump’s memory difficulties resolve after another minor blow to his head it is unlikely that the return of his memory can be explained by the spontaneous recovery of brain function, as this might only be exacerbated by further damage.

This might suggest that the original amnesia was psychogenic in nature. This make the case a particularly interesting example of this rare phenomena and additionally suggests a good prognosis for Mr Bump’s recovery of memory function.

However, in light of obvious past injuries, Mr Bump should be offered a full neurological and psychological assessment so any undetected neuropathology or psychiatric disorder or can be treated at the earliest opportunity.

Link to more on Mr Bump (thanks Tenyen!).

Online t-shirt retailers No Demographic have created a t-shirt with EEG (‘brainwave’) traces from each stage of sleep.

Sleep is divided into two main types: ‘rapid eye movement‘ or REM sleep, and non-REM sleep. The majority (but not all) dreaming happens in REM sleep.

REM sleep is sometimes called ‘paradoxical sleep’ in the research literature, because the brain is extremely active and far from relaxed.

However, because the brain interrupts the connection between the brain and the spinal cord (probably by inhibiting motor neurons in the pons), we don’t tend to move while all this activity is happening, even if we think we’re moving in our dreams.

Non-REM sleep is divided into stages 1-4. During a night’s sleep, we will go through several cycles of descending through sleep stages 1-4 and experiencing REM sleep.

Each of these stages has a distinctive profile which can be identified by EEG.

The No Demographic t-shirt has one trace from each of these cycles, so you can advertise your unconscious brain function to the world.

The t-shirt reminds me of one of my favourite works of art – a piece called Slumber by Janine Antoni.

Antoni records her own EEG signals while sleeping, weaves them into a blanket, and then sleeps in the blanket, reflecting the wonderful recursive world of sleep and dreams while contrasting modern neuroscience with the ancient art of weaving.

Link to No Demographic ‘Sleep Pattern’ t-shirt (via HYA).

It’s just struck me that Eric Kandel looks remarkably similar to Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

Is there something missing from Professor Kandel’s otherwise candid biography?

I think we should be told.

Medical history website Physick has some images of a wonderful papier mache brain created in the 19th Century as an anatomical aid for doctors.

Human cadavers were difficult to get hold of in the 19th Century (at least legitimately) and the whole exercise was a bit murky, even for medical education.

Consequently, a large number of anatomical models were created from wax, or in this case papier mache, to teach anatomy to medical students.

This means there’s now some beautifully crafted and artistic anatomical models in museums around the world.

Link to papier mache brain exhibit.
Link to Brain Hammer with more brain-related Physick exhibits.

Simply Physics has a wonderful page of photos depicting objects which have accidentally become stuck in MRI scanners because of the pull of the powerful magnets.

These include chairs, floor cleaners, oxygen tanks and bits of medical equipment.

They even have a video of a team of people trying to extract a swivel chair from an MRI machine using straps and some large pieces of wood for leverage.

The magnets in fMRI scanners are usually at least 1.5 tesla in strength and most are now 3 tesla.

The strong magnets cause all the hydrogen atoms in the human body to align. A radio pulse is then sent which knocks the atoms out of alignment. The amount of non-alignment caused by this will differ depending on the tissue density.

As the atoms are knocked out of alignment and re-align they return a radio pulse. This can be measured, and because the returned pulse is related to tissue density, the signal can be computed into a ‘3D map’ of the tissue.

Hence the name, Magnetic Resonance Imaging – magnets align the atoms, the atoms resonate with the radio pulse and the image is computed from the pattern of pulses.

The strong magnets means bringing certain metals into the scanning room can be dangerous.

If you go for an MRI scan you’ll be asked to remove all metal from your body and you’ll be interviewed to make sure you have no metal implants in you.

If loose metal objects enter the room they can fly towards the magnet causing injury to anyone in the way.

Unfortunately, people can sometimes wander unaware into the room with unsuitable objects.

This probably accounts for why so many of the objects stuck inside the scanners on the Simply Physics page are cleaning equipment, as cleaners have wandered in not realising the risks.

Link to Simply Physics gallery of MRI mishaps.

There’s a lovely typo in a 1976 paper from the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry that reports on a study about epilepsy after surgery. Check out the last sentence of the abstract:

Incidence of postoperative epilepsy after a transtentorial approach to acoustic nerve tumours.

J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1976 Jul;39(7):663-5.

Cabral R, King TT, Scott DF.

Sixty-nine patients who had neurosurgical treatment for acoustic neuroma by one of two different techniques were studied with a view to determining the incidence of postoperative epilepsy. Fourty-five patients who had larger tumours underwent a combined translabyrinthine and transtentorial neurosurgical approach. For the others with smaller neuromas a translabyrinthine method was used. Only the combined approach was associated with postoperative epilepsy, and it occurred in 22% of the patients. Epilepsy was associated with temporal love trauma during surgery.

Link to entry on PubMed.

Never afraid to flaunt their lack of irony, the website of the Centre for Internet Addiction Recovery now has podcasts, a blog, video streams, a mailing list and an online shop.

Internet addiction? Feh! Personally, I’m still trying to kick a heavy Fidonet habit I picked up in the early 90s.