Category: Other People

We often assume that psychology and neuroscience experiments tell us general things about how humans think and behave, but little attention is given to whether the people who volunteer for research studies are representative of the wider population.

PsyBlog has a concise summary of a recent study that looked at the sort of people who volunteer for research studies and how they differ from the general population.

Narcissists are over-represented amongst non-participators, as are those low on assertiveness. On the other hand, those high on obsessive-compulsive, histrionic, self-sacrificing and intrusive/needy measures are more likely to participate.

What is not clear is how these sort of differences affect different types of studies.

For example, will a study that is investigating memory by significantly affected by the fact that the participants are likely to be less narcissistic than the general population?

Link to PsyBlog post ‘Why do people participate in research?’.

Seed Magazine has a video of a fascinating conversation between sleep neuroscientist Robert Stickgold and film director Michel Gondry, director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Stickgold has reinvigorated sleep research by investigating the borderlands of consciousness with a series of novel experiments.

I wrote briefly about one of my favourites in Mind Hacks (the book):

An ingenious study published in Science did manage to investigate the role of some of the deeper brain structures in hypnagogia, specifically the medial temporal lobes which are particularly linked to memory function. The researchers asked five patients who had suffered medial temporal lobe damage to play several hours of Tetris. Damage to this area of the brain often causes amnesia, and the patients in this study had little conscious memory for more than a few minutes at a time. On one evening, some hours after their last game, the players were woken up just as they started to doze and were asked for their experiences. Although they had no conscious memory of playing the game, all of the patients mentioned images of falling, rotating Tetris blocks. This has given us some strong evidence that the hypnagogic state may be due (at least in part) to unconscious memories appearing as unusual hypnagogic experiences.

Michel Gondry is best known for being discovered by Bj√∂rk (no, not that one), directing a clutch of essential music videos (including The Chemical Brothers’ startling Let Forever Be), and moving into big cinema.

His biggest cinema success to date is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which has become a modern mind-bending classic with its feat firmly in cognitive science.

Gondry’s new movie, The Science of Sleep, also explores the mind’s outer reaches.

The pair discuss how psychology and art have tackled sleep, and how the logic of causation gets warped by both science and dreaming.

Link to Seed Magazine video with Stickgold and Gondry.
Link to fantastic article on the cognitive science of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

“You’re an autism mum. I see them all the time. I saw you that first day we met, how you agonised over your boy, mute in his pushchair while all the other pre-schoolers made their clever observations about the world; I see how you worry now over his odd way of walking, the animal noises he will sometimes make instead of words. And I see how no amount of pain in the experience of caring for your son will put to death the fire of love you have for him.”

Teacher Andy O’Connor speaking to the mother of an autistic boy in the novel Daniel Isn’t Talking, by Marti Leimbach. This book and four other fiction and non-fiction books on autism were intelligently reviewed by Adam Feinstein in the Guardian a few weeks ago.

Link to Daniel isn’t talking.
Link to Guardian review of five books on autism.

The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has a pdf of a gripping article on Private Harry Farr, a 25 year-old British soldier shot for cowardice during World War I, despite having being treated for shell-shock.

As with all other WWI soldiers executed for cowardice, Farr was pardoned earlier this year by the British Government.

The article is written by Professor Simon Wessley of King’s College London, who puts the Farr’s court martial and execution in context of the history of World War I, and in the context of what was known about trauma-related psychiatry at the time.

There is little dispute about the sequence of events on 17 September 1916 that led to the execution of Private Farr. Harry Farr was a member of 1st Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment, which was taking part in the battle of the Somme. That day his battalion was moving from their rear positions up to the front line itself. At 9.00 am that morning Farr asked for permission to fall out, saying he was not well. He was sent to see the medical officer, who either found nothing wrong with him, or refused to see him because he had no physical injury‚Äîthe Court Martial papers are unclear on this point. Later that night Farr was found still at the rear, and was again ordered to go the trenches. He refused, telling Regimental Sergeant Major Haking, that he ‘could not stand it’. Then Hanking replied ‘You are a fucking coward and you will go to the trenches. I give fuck all for my life and I give fuck all for yours and I’ll get you fucking well shot’. At 11.00 pm that night a final attempt was made to get Private Farr up to the front line, and he was escorted forward. A fracas broke out between Farr and his escorts, and this time they let him run away. The following morning he was arrested and charged with contravening section 4 (7) of the Army Act ‚Äî showing cowardice in the face of the enemy.

The article discusses why Farr was executed, when over 96% of soldiers convicted of cowardice escaped this punishment, and how the concept of psychological disorder was understood in 1916, particularly by a British Army in a precarious military position.

For more information on shell-shock, and a paper by pioneering WWI military psychiatrist W.H.R. Rivers on the condition, there’s a good overview available here.

pdf of article ‘The life and death of Private Harry Farr’.
Link to shell-shock info from FirstWorldWar.com

Wired has a brief interview with Daniel Levitin, ex-rock music producer and current Professor of psychology who is researching the neuroscience of musicians and music perception.

Levitin has just written a book entitled This is Your Brain on Music that describes his own take on how the mind and brain understand music, both as listeners, and as composers and performers.

The book has a flash-heavy website that contains several excerpts and interactive examples as both a preview and an accompaniment.

Levitin’s book comes at a time when there’s a huge upsurge in interest in understanding the neuroscience of music.

For example, there are now labs focusing on music and neuroimaging and the neuropsychology of music.

There’s even a recent academic book on the subject: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music.

Link to Wired interview with Professor Daniel Levitin.
Link to website for This is Your Brain on Music.

The Psychologist has just released an engaging open-access article on the psychology of celebrity worship [pdf] that attempts to explain why people spend time following the lives of celebrities and what benefits this attraction brings.

In adolescence, when celebrity fandom often peaks, research has suggested that celebrities might function as part of an extended social network.

In effect, these are pseudo-friendships that add to the existing social circle and provide opportunities for discussion, interest or intrigue.

However, there is now an increasing amount of research on people who take their fandom further than casual interest.

‘Celebrity worship’ is when someone spends a great deal of time thinking about a certain celebrity. Although not necessarily pathological, this level of intense interest has been correlated with a number of psychological disadvantages.

One finding is that people who worship celebrities for ‘intense-personal’ reasons (rather than just for the entertainment value) are likely to score badly on measures of cognitive flexibility – the ability to change strategy and switch ideas when problem solving.

It is unlikely that interest in Jessica Simpson affects your ability to reason (although sometimes I wonder), but perhaps those with poor cognitive flexibility are more likely to fixate on celebrities as a way of tackling minor difficulties with boredom or initiating social interaction.

It seems this interest can tip over into disorder for some people, leading to stalking or perhaps even de Clerambault’s syndrome – a psychotic disorder where the affected person has a delusion that the celebrity is in love with them.

The article is written by Drs David Giles and John Maltby, both of whom have conducted extensive research into ‘parasocial’ relationships with celebrities.

Although fascinating in itself, especially as we live in an increasingly celebrity-dominated media, this research has obvious implications understanding the psychology of obsession, stalking and related criminal behaviour.

pdf of article ‘Praying at the altar of the stars’.

Liz Spikol seems to have lived many lives in one. She is currently a journalist, broadcaster and blogger, and the managing editor of the Philadelphia Weekly, one of the city’s leading independent newspapers.

She has also experienced the extremes of mood and the unreal world of psychosis, which led to her being admitted to psychiatric hospital on several occasions.

This, and the day-to-day reality of managing a chronic mental illness, inspired her to write the award-winning newspaper column The Trouble with Spikol which combines biography, commentary and humour to demystify both mental health and the vagaries of modern life.

Liz recently began the anarchic blog of the same name to continue her quest to educate and entertain. She’s also been kind enough to talk to Mind Hacks about her life and work.

Continue reading “Five minutes with Liz Spikol”

Someone has put a series of the brilliant Mark Steel Lectures online which are an informative and hilarious romp through some of the most important historical figures in history.

They were created by the BBC for the Open University to both educate and enthuse people about history and contain wry insights into both the work and lives of the people featured.

The programmes on Freud, Aristotle and Descartes are likely to be of most interest to Mind Hacks readers, although the whole of this series has some fantastic gems.

Link to YouTube archive of the Mark Steel Lectures.

The University of California, San Diego have created an extensive online archive of material related to the pioneering Russian neuropsychologist A.R. Luria, who is often considered the ‘father’ of the modern neuropsychology.

Like another famous neuroscientist, Eric Kandel, he originally intended to look for a scientific basis for Freudian concepts of the mind.

As time went on, he began to develop short tasks designed to tap specific mental skills and abilities – a technique now almost universally used in cognitive and neuropsychology. The photo on the right shows Luria (in the white coat) testing a patient with one of his tasks.

His encounters with the large number of brain-injured soldiers returning from World War Two led Luria to make links between specific areas of the brain and certain mental functions, which he could test by using his tasks and testing their diagnostic accuracy.

Some of the tasks he developed to make and test these links are still used by neuropsychologists today.

As well as writing some of the most influential books on the practise of neuropsychology, he also wrote up detailed neuropsychological biographies of two remarkable patients.

The Mind of a Mnemonist was a case study of ‘S’, who had a striking form of synaesthesia that gave him a memory so reliable that one of his main problems was being unable to forget – meaning he often became overwhelmed by detail of his memories and could not focus on the most important aspects.

In contrast, The Man with a Shattered World recounted the story of a soldier who suffered selective impairments to memory, perception and language after suffering a head wound in battle.

Luria recounted the personal experiences and histories of these remarkable individuals alongside his scientific investigations into their brain function.

He called this deeply personal form of scientific investigation ‘romantic science’, and is cited by Oliver Sacks as a major influence on his own style of writing and subject matter.

The UCSD Luria archive has everything from essays on his work, to a video documentary about the man himself, and is a crucial resource for those interested both in this hugely influential figure and the history of neuropsychology.

Link to UCSD Luria archive.

Artist Susan Aldworth creates works based on neurology and brain scans, after her own experience of having an emergency angiogram after suffering a suspected stroke.

BBC News reports on her ongoing exhibition entitled ‘Matter Into Imagination‘.

The exhibition has just been moved from its previous home in the Menier Gallery, to the corridors of the Royal London Hospital, and the gallery of the Old Operating Theatre Museum near St Thomas Hospital in London Bridge.

If you’re not able to visit either of these exhibitions, Aldworth has an extensive gallery on her website that shows her brain-inspired paintings and sculptures.

Link to Susan Aldworth’s website.
Link to details of ‘Matter into Imagination’ exhibition.
Link to BBC News story ‘How brain scans inspired artist’.

Professor Sherry Turkle is a psychologist best known for her pioneering research into the psychology of computers and the internet, and particularly on how we interpret concepts such as the self and identity through the veil of technology.

Her book Life on the Screen was hugely influential as one of the first books on ‘internet psychology’ in the days when the internet had barely reached the mainstream.

She remains intensely interested in how technology affects the mind, behaviour and social world, and has kindly agreed to talk to Mind Hacks.

Continue reading “Five minutes with Sherry Turkle”

The Sunday Herald sent a reporter out to meet legendary chemist and psychedelic researcher Alexander Shulgin to discuss life, love and phenethylamines.

Shulgin has been the world’s foremost researcher of psychedelic compounds for many decades and has written about his research in several engaging books, including the notorious Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved.

The Sunday Herald finds him still with a huge enthusiasm for his work and eager to continue exploring.

“Primarily, it is about the conversion of a structure,” he tells me. “It’s a fun process and it’s tremendously fascinating.” He is more animated when speaking about the details of how he managed to alter a drug to change its effect than when asked about the effect those changes had when he tested the new compound on himself. In fact, for a man who has had so many psychedelic experiences, his stories of his ‘trips’ are disappointingly dull, while listening to him talk about experiments and chemical structures and hearing complex chemical names trip excitedly off his tongue is thoroughly entertaining.

“Chemistry is a music form to me,” Shulgin says and, for the past 70 years, he has been composing at a rate Beethoven would have been proud of.

Link to Sunday Herald article.
Link to Wikipedia entry on Shulgin.

Seed Magazine has a short but thought-provoking article on the yawn and the mysterious way they are ‘transmitted’ around a social group.

Scientists maintain that yawning has both social and physiological functions, and may even be useful clinically: Abnormal yawning can be symptomatic of pathology, such as tumors, hemorrhage or drug withdrawal. Researchers know that a system of several neurotransmitters and neuropeptides control yawning, but little is known about the exact mechanism underlying the action.

Until recently, it was thought that only humans and great apes were able to “catch” yawns. While humans yawn in the womb, they don’t fall prey to contagious yawning until about two years of age, which suggests a recent evolutionary origin.

The article also tackles the myth that yawns are brought on by lack of oxygen.

Link to ‘The Incredible, Communicable Yawn’ from Seed Magazine.

The Facial Action Coding System is a system for describing facial expression. It is based on 46 defined ‘Action Units’, which are each the contraction of a facial muscle or group of muscles.

So, the six basic emotional expressions can be expressed in terms of combinations of action units. Disgust is Action Unit 7 + Action Unit 9, for example.

Described in terms of the Action Unit space, each emotion must have an inverse (when all involved action units are inactive, and all action units not involved in the expression of that emotion are active).

Question: What do the Action-Unit Space inverses of the fundamental emotional expressions look like? Are they recognisable in any way as the opposite of the expression in emotional space? Does the action-unit inverse of sadness look like happiness, for example? What is the muscle-opposite of surprise, is it similar to the feeling-opposite (boredom presumably)?

Actor, writer and film director Stephen Fry recently visited the neuropsychiatric genetics unit at Cardiff University – which is not a combination I’d ever thought I’d be writing about.

Fry has bipolar disorder, sometimes called manic depression, which can cause manic highs or deep disabling depressions.

His visit was apparently part of a BBC documentary on bipolar to be shown later this year, and the unit is one of the leading research centres for the genetics of psychopathology.

Link to write-up from Cardiff University.

Admittedly, it’s a fairly transparent marketing ploy for the BBC Doctor Who magazine, but the top five people in a poll to determine a historical person readers would most like to meet include four people who would likely be diagnosed with mental illness.

The top five are Winston Churchill, Elvis Presley, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe and Martin Luther King.

It is likely that only Martin Luther King would be without a diagnosis. Churchill, Presley and Monroe all had significant periods of mental distress and Einstein reputedly had Asperger syndrome – although whether ‘illness’ is the best word to describe his unique way of looking at the world is another matter.

All great and fascinating people. Sadly, however, two of the four (Presley and Monroe) died in tragic circumstances.

Hopefully, both a wider recognition that mental distress and giftedness can go hand in hand, and continuing developments in mental health care will mean fewer great lives (whether famous or not!) will end in tragedy.

Link to ‘Churchill tops time travel list’ from BBC News.