Category: Nonsense

The delightful conclusion to an 1890 article on ‘Cycling for the Insane’ published in The Journal of Mental Science:

For most of us the exquisite loveliness and delight of a fine summer’s day have a special charm. The very life is luxury. The air is full of sound and sunshine, of the song of birds, and the murmur of insects; the meadows gleam with golden buttercups, we almost fancy we can see the grass grow and the buds open; the bees hum for very joy; there are a thou sand scents, above all, perhaps, that of new-mown hay.

There are doubtless many patients before whom “all the glories of heaven and earth may pass in daily succession without touching their hearts or elevating their minds,” but, in time, it is possible even these would, by means of cycling, have their love of Nature, which had been frozen or crushed out, restored. Thus all Nature, which is full of beauties, would not only be a never-failing source of pleasure and interest, but lift them above the petty troubles and sorrows of their daily life.

Oddly, the article also mentions that both amphibious and aerial bicycles have been invented, with “the cost of each machine not being more than ¬£20”!

Link to sadly pay-walled article.

I’ve just found a very funny YouTube video that attempts to explain everything you need to know about French psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan in one minute. It’s not entirely safe for work, which is part of its charm.

Clearly, it’s not intended to be taken too seriously, which I first suspected when it introduced Lacan’s ideas as “like Freud on high grade cocaine mixed with hallucinogens – and we mean that in the most admiring sense”.

The creator of the Lacan video, writer Mark Fullmer, has also just posted another – this time a rap about ‘philosophies of psychoanalyst and theorist Julia Kristeva‘.

In true hip hop style, it also waxes lyrical about how hot she is.

Link to ‘Jacques Lacan in 1 Minute’.
Link to the ‘Hot Kristeva Rap’.

Wooly Thoughts are a small online company who design and sell patterns for amazing optical illusion knitwear.

Some of these are for sweaters or scarfs that display well-known optical illusions such as café wall or the Necker cube illusions.

However, the company has also designed knitwear specific illusions that use raised stitches that involve two colours, one of which is only visible when viewed from the side.

This means that when seen from the correct angle, images jump out on what would otherwise seem to be little more than a plain striped pattern. If that wasn’t awesome enough, some of the patterns are for MC Escher designs.

UPDATE: Grabbed from the comments – thanks Alice!

I’m a big fan of illusion knitting (scroll down for v rough video [of a knitted DNA strand illusion!]):

The people behind woollythoughts.com do some of the best I’ve seen. Their “moonrise” is incredible (it can be quite hard to make the illusion knit patterns work).

Link to Wooly Thoughts website (via @alicebell).

Morphologica is the online Etsy shop of a neuroscience postgrad who makes laser cut jewellery and ornaments from the images she sees during her time in the lab.

We’ve mentioned her neuron earrings before but her drinks coaster in the shape of a dendritic tree is just fantastic.

And if your drink of choice is something strong, there’s a lovely symmetry as your drink leaves the dendritic tree, is absorbed by your body, to be passed on to the dendrites in your brain.

Although the analogy stops there really, as dousing your coaster in water ain’t gonna sober you up, I’m afraid.

Link to Morphlogica last cut dendrite coaster.

Nature Neuroscience are about to publish a study that attempts to explain the biological basis of mouse acupuncture. If you’re checking in case you have accidentally slipped between universes, don’t worry, you haven’t. It’s just that this one has gone a bit strange.

The full paper is not out until later today and will eventually appear here, so I will reserve my full judgement (because, you never know, mouse acupuncture might be the next cure for cancer) but Not Exactly Rocket Science has read the paper and has a report of the bizarre study.

Apparently, it attempts to show a ‘biological basis’ for acupuncture by putting needles into mice at ‘traditional acupuncture points’ and then looks at the biochemical effects, particularly the release of a chemical called adenosine and riffs on the apparent ‘pain relieving effects’ from there.

The trouble is, no-one has reliably shown that acupuncture is more effective than placebo, and secondly, the Nature Neuroscience study itself apparently had no control condition, so you can’t even tell whether the effect in this study was specifically due to ‘acupuncture’ or not.

Just in case Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science has got it completely wrong, I’ll have whatever he’s smoking, and if he hasn’t, I’ll have whatever they’re smoking in the Nature Neuroscience office.

Link to Not Exactly Rocket Science coverage.
Link where paper will eventually appear.

I originally thought that this might be one of the traditionally light-hearted articles about medical problems in fictional characters published around Christmas but it appeared in a October 1996 edition of the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

I don’t have access to the full text of the article so I can’t say for sure but it seems to be serious. God knows how it got published but it remains a fascinating if bizarre insight into one of the lesser touted ‘addictions’.

Carrot addiction.

Kaplan R.

Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 1996 Oct;30(5):698-700.

OBJECTIVE: A case report of carrot addiction is presented with a review of the literature and comment on the role of beta carotene in addictive behaviour.

CLINICAL PICTURE: The addiction occurred in a 49-year-old woman under conditions of stress due to marital problems, leading to a depressive illness and increased smoking. The patient maintained that the sensations of carrot craving and withdrawal were quite distinct from those associated with smoking.

TREATMENT: The patient was advised to record her daily carrot consumption.

OUTCOME: The patient did not return for several months, but stopped eating carrots after an operation, at which time she also stopped smoking.

CONCLUSION: Compusive carrot eating, regarded as a rare condition, has received scant documentation, unlike hypercarotenemia due to unusual diets or food fads. Nervousness, craving, insomnia, waterbrash and irritability are associated with withdrawal from excessive carrot eating. The basis for the addiction is believed to be beta carotene, found in carrots. Does carrot eating, an aggressively oral activity, merely act as a behavioural substitute for smoking? Or does beta carotene contain a chemical element that replicates the addictive component of nicotine? Further study of this unusual but intriguing addiction may reveal more about the basis of all addictions, with particular implications for the cessation of cigarette smoking.

UPDATE: Blimey. Turns out the article is serious. Thanks to Avicenna for pointing out that the full article is available online.

Carrots. Just say no.

Link to PubMed entry for ‘carrot addiction’ article.

The cover of the May edition of the neurology journal Brain is really quite lovely.

Each of the circles is an individual EEG brain map of people with movement problems associated with Fragile X syndrome. The signals are evoked in response to word repetition and each activity map has been drawn from a study published in the same edition.

Don’t be fooled be the fact that the circles make up a brain-like shape as a whole, they don’t represent individual points on a single brain, each of the maps has just been arranged in this way for artistic purposes.

The description rather charmingly says “The maps are rearranged into a familiar shape!” The clue is in the title I presume.

Often when I mention the journal to non-neuroscientists they chuckle as the name seems funny. I’m long past the point where it seems at all abnormal but, presumably, if I saw a plumbing magazine called ‘Pipe’ or a fishing magazine called ‘Rod’ I would find them equally amusing.

Link to cover info for May’s edition of Brain.

For some reason, I find this study that analysed children’s drawings of dentists hilarious.

You can almost sense the existential despair of someone who spent months of their life analysing kids’ unconscious representations of dentists to discover they just think of them as the guy with the furniture and a patient.

Children’s drawings about dentistry.

Community Dent Oral Epidemiol. 1976 Jan;4(1):1-6.

Taylor D, Roth G, Mayberry W.

Drawings about the dentist at work were solicited from 1,101 children in grades 2, 4, 6 and 8 in an urban school district. A system to classify the contents of these drawings was developed. The frequency of various items occurring in the children’s drawings was determined. The “typical” or most frequent child’s drawing of the dentist at work was described. This drawing contained a normal dental chair, dentist, a patient in the chair and dental cabinetry or furniture. The picture was a very matter-of-fact representation. Abnormal or bizarre pictures occurred infrequently. A few children drew pictures that did not relate to dentistry.

Link to PubMed entry for study.

This is a fantastically odd letter about hypnotising animals that appeared in a 1992 edition of the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Hypnotising lobsters, etc.

Sir: I was very surprised that the idea of hypnotising lobsters was thought to be evidence of gullibility requiring further photographic proof (Brooks, Journal, July 1992,161,134).

As a young child in rural Ireland I was taught to ‘hypnotise’ various animals by my mother. My particular expertise was in hypnotising turkeys and geese, for which I gained immense kudos as most of my peers were afraid of them. The technique involved stroking them firmly on the back of the neck, until the head rested on the ground at which point a white line was drawn in front of their heads. I often had dozens of them all over the yard, immobile until either they were moved or a loud noise disturbed them.

One recognised technique for hypnotising young children involves gentle, firm massage as this produces the relaxation and narrowing of attention required for induction.

My interest in hypnosis has continued although I confine my practice to people and my cat, Martha, when she requires calming at the vet’s.

P. Power-Smith

Link to copy of letter.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

The Times has an interview with neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, largely to do with the recent political tussles in UK science, but where she uses the opportunity to comment on how computer games are ‘as much of a risk to mankind as climate change’. But wait, the best is yet to come – this part is as beautiful as it is baffling:

She is concerned that those who live only in the present, online, don’t allow their malleable brains to develop properly. “It’s not going to destroy the planet but is it going to be a planet worth living in if you have a load of breezy people who go around saying yaka-wow. Is that the society we want?”

It certainly is not, and I for one would staunchly defend society against such a malign influence.

To be fair, this is probably a transcription error as Greenfield often talks about digital technology being full of “yuk and wow“, but the delightful phrase has triggered something of a fan club (nothing to do with me I might add) and there is now a hashtag, a Twitter stream, a poster and even a T-shirt.

Although I’ve disagreed with the Baroness on many occasions, it seems she hit the nail on the head with this particular prediction, as it seems that there are now a load of breezy people who go around saying yaka-wow.

UPDATE: This is pure genius.

Link to Greenfield interview in The Times.

There’s a great comedy sketch from British duo Mitchell and Webb about an egotistical brain surgeon on YouTube.

It’s sarcastic, cutting and you can see the punchline coming a mile off, but still good for laugh as it satirises the effect of the ego on typical British small talk.

The only similar joke I’ve ever tried was to say to a neurosurgeon in the pub “that’s lucky, I’ve got this thing in my temporal lobe that’s been playing up, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind having a quick look”.

Lead balloon.

Link to Mitchell and Webb brain surgeon sketch.

There’s a bizarre case report in the latest edition of Psychological Medicine where some Australian psychiatrists who specialise in disorders of old age got called out to a zoo to assess an elderly gorilla who was behaving strangely.

Unfortunately, the case report is full of medical jargon although it becomes quite charming when you realise that the psychiatrists just went about assessing the gorilla, running their standard tests as best they could, as if it was just another patient.

The bit where the doctors test the gorilla’s eye-tracking by waving a date around in front of it is pure joy.

In July 2006, in response to a call from the Melbourne Zoo, a home visit was made to examine a 49-year-old female Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), who had recently developed a confusional state with the following observed behaviors:

being apparently lost in her enclosure, which she had occupied for 15 years; unable to find her food; defecating in her nest; unable to locate the entry to her night den after being outside in the enclosure; loss of her dominant role as the senior matriarch and being bullied by younger females; apparently unable to see things in certain areas of her enclosure; being less responsive to her favorite keeper, who had cared for her since 1980.

The staff of the Zoo raised the question: is she developing a dementing illness? A domiciliary consultation by a psychogeriatrician from the University of Melbourne was therefore requested to assess this.

Previous history
The female gorilla had a history of low-grade cardiac disease associated with hypertension, and a serious renal infection had resulted in surgical removal of one kidney in 2003.

Examination
She was enticed to the edge of her enclosure to accept her favorite snack of dates, walking with a slow but steady gait. Using offered dates as targets for an ocular [eye] movement examination, the presence of nystagmus was identified, together with bilateral upward gaze palsy. In a team discussion with her keepers and the veterinarian, an observation schedule was developed for use over the next three weeks to track her behavior. At follow-up review, one month later, the observation schedule revealed fluctuating but slow improvement in all domains. On further examination, her ocular signs had settled.

Diagnosis
A diagnosis of post-TIA delirium was made. Her behavior and general function steadily improved over the next two months. Cerebral infarction [damage due to blood supply blockage] has previously been reported in a 29-year old chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes (Fish et al., 2004).

Outcome
Her physical decline occurred during 2007, and she was euthanized in November 2007 at the age of 50 years.

Autopsy report
There were multifocal to coalescing often aggregated, multiple small soft, white plaques within the meninges over the middle and posterior dorsal midline surface of the cerebrum (consistent with prominent arachnoid granulations).

Discussion
Autopsy revealed cerebral hemorrhages at globus pallidus and internal capsule, thus confirming the clinical diagnosis. Examination of the heart confirmed chronic myocardial fibrosis, and a pancreatic islet cell carcinoma [cancer] had metastasized [spread] to lung and liver. We suggest that the observation schedule so developed may be of use in future to observe other primates in captivity which develop confusional states.

I was also delighted to read that the scientific name for a Western Lowland Gorilla is ‘gorilla gorilla gorilla’.

Link to PubMed entry for case report.

What is Jesus’ Myers-Briggs personality profile? Rather to my surprise, it turns out that lots of people have tried to answer this question.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaire was created as a systematic approach to classifying people’s personality based on categories originally proposed by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

The Mormon Matters website has a completely charming article that attempts to analyse Jesus’ personality in terms of the Myers-Briggs types and concludes he’s an INFP – an Introverted, iNtuiting, Feeling, Perceiving type.

If this seems a little flippant for you – pay attention Anglican Vicars: the Sermons That Work website has a pre-written sermon that discusses Our Lord’s Myers-Briggs type and informs the flock that he’s likely a INFJ – an Introverted, iNtuiting, Feeling, Judging type.

Profiling Jesus seems to have become a minor passtime in some circles. In fact, Yahoo! Answers has a thread where people were discussing the possibilities. The thread is marked as a ‘Resolved Question’ (!) with the best answer being voted as ENFJ – an Extroverted, iNtuiting, Feeling, Judging type.

Anecdotal evidence! I hear you cry. Fear not, there is some peer-reviewed data on the personality of the Messiah.

The Journal of Psychology and Theology published a paper entitled “Students’ perceptions of Jesus’ personality as assessed by Jungian-type inventories” back in 2004. You can read the full text online, but the abstract alone is pure joy:

The present study was the first phase of an exploration of college students’ perceptions of the personality of Jesus Christ as assessed by two Jungian-type inventories, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers, 1998) and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (Keirsey, 1998), which categorize personality along four dimensions: Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Judgment/Perception. Along with an overall exploration of students’ perceptions, the present study focused on whether students were likely to make self-based attributions in their perceptions of Jesus’ personality. Results indicated that students perceived Jesus to be an Extravert Feeler and made self-based attributions along the Sensing/Intuitive dimension, with 43% perceiving Him to be an Intuitive-Feeler and 37% perceiving Him to be a Sensing-Judger. Perceptions of Jesus as a Judger or Perceiver were divided, with those placing more importance on modeling Jesus more likely to see Him as a Judger, and those placing less importance on modeling Him perceiving Jesus as a Perceiver.

Since we’re already working on his Myers Briggs profile, I wonder if someone would hazard a guess at how he would score on the… oh stop it already. You’ll only give Dan Brown ideas.

Link to study on students’ MBTI profiles for Jesus.

This is, I assume, the first neuropsychological test to appear on a bog roll. The ‘Mind Trainer Toilet Roll‘ has a different puzzle on each sheet and it includes the Stroop test, one of the most studied tests in cognitive science.

This means you’ll never be without the opportunity to measure attentional inhibition of automatic cognitive processes in the bathroom.

Now if only I could get a bidet that measured working memory, my life would be complete.

Link to Mind Trainer Toilet Roll.
Link to Wikipedia page on the Stroop effect (via @jonmsutton)

Louann Brizendine is a neuropsychiatrist who seems intent on bolstering sex stereotypes with poor science. Presumably in the service of promoting a new book, she has an article on CNN which attempts to explain ‘why men obsess over sex’ but which has lots of odd errors and strange unsubstantiated claims.

The thing that immediately struck me was in the initial paragraphs:

Our brains are mostly alike. We are the same species, after all. But the differences can sometimes make it seem like we are worlds apart.

The “defend your turf” area — dorsal premammillary nucleus — is larger in the male brain and contains special circuits to detect territorial challenges by other males. And his amygdala, the alarm system for threats, fear and danger is also larger in men. These brain differences make men more alert than women to potential turf threats.

Male and female humans are indeed the same species, but we are not a species which has a dorsal premammillary nucleus because it’s only been identified in the rat.

Furthermore, there is no reliable evidence that amygdala size differs between the sexes in humans and a recent study that looked specifically at this issue found no difference.

The rest of the article is full of Brizendine’s usual style which is to take a common stereotype of male or female behaviour and then to ‘explain’ it with a overly-simple, one dimensional and usually not directly tested brain explanation.

For example:

All that testosterone drives the “Man Trance”– that glazed-eye look a man gets when he sees breasts. As a woman who was among the ranks of the early feminists, I wish I could say that men can stop themselves from entering this trance. But the truth is, they can’t. Their visual brain circuits are always on the lookout for fertile mates. Whether or not they intend to pursue a visual enticement, they have to check out the goods.

Got that? Testosterone is responsible for men looking at breasts, perhaps even falling into an irresistible tit-driven trance, and we can’t help it. Are there any scientific studies on whether hooter staring is related to testosterone levels? (Sadly) No.

And there’s plenty more unlikely claims along similar lines. Apparently oxytocin is responsible for ‘nice’ grandpas whereas ‘grumpy’ grandpas can be explained by a drop in testosterone in later life.

Please make it stop.

UPDATE: Thanks to @willoller and Bergen who pointed out that the dorsal premammilliary nuclei have been identified in humans. Interestingly, however, I can only find one study which has ever investigated it in humans and nothing which suggests it is a “defend your turf” area. This conclusion seems entirely drawn from rat studies (e.g. this one) and what Brizendine seems to be doing, in this and other recent articles, is taking findings from rat studies and talking as if they were directly relevant to humans which is dubious to say the least.

Link to awful ‘Why men obsess over sex’ article (via @sarcastic_f)

Spike Milligan was one of the best loved, most influential and least predictable of British comedians, not least because he experienced the highs and lows of manic depression which, on several occasions, led to his hospitalisation.

As a prolific writer Milligan often wrote about mental health and the book, The Essential Spike Milligan, has several of his sketches and poems on the topic.

The book also contains a gem of a letter that Milligan wrote to a student magazine where he expounds upon the difficulty of maintaining one’s mental health in the modern world in his trademark scattershot style.

To the Editor, Rag Mag, Gloucester College of Education, 1968

You say your mag is in aid of mental health! Dear Lad, there’s no such thing, if there was anybody in a position of power with any semblance of mental health do you think the world would be in this bloody mess? Young minds at risk is different. Anyone with a young mind is taking a risk – young means fresh – unsullied, ready to be gobbled up in an adult world bringing the young into the visionless world of adults, like all our leaders. Their world is dead – dead – dead, and my God, that’s why it stinks! They look at youth in horror – and say ‘They are having a revolution’, but what do they want? I say they don’t know what they want, but they know what they don’t want, and that is, the repetition of past mistakes, towards which the adult old order is still heading. War – armistice – building up to pre-war standards – capitalism – labour – crisis – war and so on. I digress.

Mental Health. I have had five nervous breakdowns – and all the medics gave me was medicine – tablets – but no love or any attempt at involvement, in this respect I might well have been a fish in a bowl. The mentally ill need LOVE, UNDERSTANDING – TOLERANCE, as yet unobtainable on the N.H.S. or the private world of psychiatry, but tablets, yes, and a bill for ¬£5 5. 0. a visit – if they know who you are it’s ¬£10 10. 0. – the increased fee has an immediate depressing effect – so you come out worse than you went in.

As yet, I have not been cured, patched up via chemicals, yes. Letter unfinished, but I’ve run out of time – sorry!

Regards,
Spike

Link to details of The Essential Spike Milligan.