Category: Remembering

The Psychologist has a fantastic article on one of the first psychological ability measures, created not by a psychologist but by the inventor of the domestic light bulb, Thomas Edison, who devised his trivia-based ‘brainmeter’ test as a way of selecting employees.

Although earlier tests had been in use, such as the prototype of the modern IQ test created by French psychologist Alfred Binet, they were designed to detect disability rather than ability – specifically, to identify children with learning difficulties.

Edison’s test was quite different though. It consisted of a 163 seemingly unconnected obscure general knowledge questions of which the pass mark was arbitrarily set at 70%.

The test was considered by be nonsense by psychologists of the day, lacking both statistically validity and a proven connection with other mental abilities, but it became wildly popular and became a frequent media topic:

After the complete test was leaked to newspapers, the questions spread across the country in a national craze. ‘If You Cannot Answer These You’re Ignorant, Edison Says,’ declared one Pennsylvania newspaper, while police in Massachusetts picked up a deranged young man claiming that he was on the run from assassins who were after his book of Edison test answers, ‘valued at $1,000,000’.

Journalists gleefully sprang Edison questions on politicians, professors and captains of industry. New York‚Äôs governor failed; so did the mayor of New York City, its police commissioner and, rather alarmingly, its superintendent of schools. One particularly enterprising reporter tracked down Edison’s son Theodore, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also failed. ‚ÄòDad would find me amazingly ignorant,‚Äô the younger Edison admitted.

His father faced a media circus: the Fox movie studio ran mock Edison tests of biblical trivia to advertise its ‘super-screen spectacle’ The Queen of Sheba, while ads for Vogue magazine assured women readers ‘Never mind the Edison questions! All you need to know is how to be becomingly dressed’. Others were more seriously interested in its value: within days, the Eastman Kodak company announced a similar test for its employees, and the elite Groton School in Massachusetts extended its use to applicants.

The article goes on to explain that Edison’s ‘brainmeter’ test was the inspiration for the American college entry exam, the SAT, which is still in use today.

There turns out to be a few articles on Edison’s test in the archives of The New York Times, my favourite, from 1921, being titled “EDISON BRAINMETER DIVIDES THE CRITICS; Comments on Questionnaire Continue and About One-Half Are From Scorners. COLLEGE MEN NOT SOOTHED Suggestion That Chess Game Would Be a Better Test Meets With Favor From Players.”

Link to The Psychologist article ‘163 ways to lose your job’.

Full disclosure: I am an unpaid associate editor and occasional columnist for The Psychologist and I file all knowledge under the categories ‘psychology/neuroscience’ and ‘miscellaneous’.

Nature.com reports that the remarkable Kim Peek, inspiration for Dustin Hoffman’s character in the 1988 film Rain Main, has passed away.

Despite clear and disabling difficulties in day-to-day living, Peek accumulated an encyclopaedic knowledge of numerous subjects areas, could read two pages of a book at once and could instantly calculate the day of the week for any given date.

For many years Peek was thought to have autism, but scans completed in 1988 by neuroscientist Daniel Christensen and colleagues indicated that there were significant brain abnormalities, most strikingly a malformed cerebellum and an absence of the corpus callosum – the bundle of fibres that connect the two hemispheres of the brain.

Among other findings, this suggested that the most likely diagnosis was a genetic condition called FG syndrome.

Perhaps the best profile of Peek, co-written by Christensen, appeared in Scientific American [pdf] which captured both the man himself and discussed the science behind his remarkable abilities.

He was also the subject of numerous documentaries and you can view one of the best of them, Kim Peek – The Real Rain Man, on YouTube.

UPDATE: SciAm have made their article on Kim Peek freely available on their website as a tribute.

Link to announcement from Nature.com.
pdf of excellent SciAm article ‘Inside the mind of a savant’.
Link to documentary Kim Peek – The Real Rain Man.

An ingenious technique, just published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, was used to look at patterns of stress in their lives of long-dead people from Peru, some who lived more than a thousand years ago.

The study analysed strands of hair from bodies dug up from five archaeological sites for traces of the hormone cortisol – known to be released when we experience stress.

Hair grows about a centimetre a month and as the body creates the hair, it incorporates traces of chemicals that are present at the time. This means it is possible to look back over the length of a strand of hair and see which chemicals were affecting the person’s body at the time when that bit of hair was formed.

This is the basis of drugs tests that analyse hair for substances like heroin and cocaine, but a few years ago it was discovered that cortisol also left its mark.

A team of researchers, led by anthropologist Emily Webb, took this idea and applied it to the hair of long-dead people from ancient sites across Peru to see how stress affected their lives in the months and years before their deaths.

The researchers found that, in general, stress increased in the months leading up to death – perhaps suggesting death through chronic illness or maybe that the individuals were aware of their impending demise.

The results also showed that in some individuals, stress could suddenly drop for certain periods, perhaps for a month at a time, whereas for others the patterns of stress seemed to go in cycles.

What this does suggest is that then, as now, while there are clearly some things which tend to stress us all, many stress responses are highly changeable and probably quite individual.

Link to DOI entry and summary of study.
Link to write-up by ars technica (via Neuron Culture).

Neurophilosophy has an excellent write-up of Project HM, the ongoing mission to thinly slice and digitise the brain of Henry Molaison, famous as amnesic Patient HM, who died last year.

Molaison was only one of a very few patients who had a radical operation that removed inner sections of both temporal lobes to cure otherwise untreatable temporal lobe epilepsy.

At the time, it wasn’t known that removing the hippocampus on both sides of the brain would lead to a profound amnesia that left the patient with the inability to create new ‘declarative’ memories – ones that can be recalled into the conscious mind.

The procedure was only carried out on a handful of patients before the profound effects became clear. The neurosurgeon William Scoville later campaigned against its use.

The rest, as they say, is history and owing to Molaison’s cheerful participation in numerous memory experiments we know a great deal more about the neural basis of memory. Hopefully the new high resolution digitised brain slices will allow a fine detail look at the relationship between HM’s brain and his abilities.

You’ll not find a better account of the project, so do head over and check out the Neurophilosophy piece.

My only slight addendum would be that the distinction between short and long-term memory was not initially drawn from HM. This distinction was originally made by ‘father of psychology’ William James who described it as ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ memory in his 1890 book Principles of Psychology.

However, because HM had intact short-term memory (for example, he could repeat telephone numbers back to himself) but was not able to store anything effectively in long-term memory, he gave the first clues that this distinction was reflected in the structure of the brain.

This was all but confirmed in 1970 when neuropsychologists Tim Shallice and Elizabeth Warrington reported on Patient KF who had the reverse pattern of impairment – no short term memory, but with with normal long-term memory.

This showed that each of the two forms of memory could be independently impaired after brain damage and so almost certainly depend on distinguishable brain systems.

Link to Neurophilosophy on ‘Project H.M. Phase I’.
Link to Project HM website.

We’ve mentioned the famous 19th century neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell several time before on Mind Hacks, as he is well known for his early reports of phantom limbs and his creation of the ‘neurosis of modern life’ diagnosis ‘neuraesthenia’.

What I didn’t know was that in 1896 he also wrote an article in which he gives one of the first reports about the experience of tripping on peyote – a cactus that contains the hallucinogenic drug mescaline.

Weir reports that he became interested in the substance after learning about the traditional use of the plant by Native Americans in New Mexico and acquired some to try himself.

His article appeared in the British Medical Journal where he describes his experiences, and it’s quite an amazing document. This is a vivid part where he describes the experience of hallucinating a ‘Gothic tower’:

When I opened my eyes all was gone at once. Closing them I began after a long interval to see for the first time definite objects associated with colours. The stars sparkled and passed away. A white spear of grey stone grew up to huge height, and became a tall, richly finished Gothic tower of very elaborate and definite design, with many rather worn statues standing in the doorways or on stone brackets. As I gazed every projecting angle, cornice, and even the face of the stones at their joinings were by degrees covered or hung with clusters of what seemed to be huge precious stones, but uncut, some being more like masses of transparent fruit. These were green, purple, red, and orange; never clear yellow and never blue. All seemed to possess an interior light, and to give the faintest idea of the perfectly satisfying intensity and purity of these gorgeous colour-fruits is quite beyond my power. All the colours I have ever beheld are dull as compared to these.

As I looked, and it lasted long, the tower became of a fine mouse hue, and everywhere the vast pendant masses of emerald green, ruby reds, and orange began to drip a slow rain of colours. All this while nothing was at rest a moment. The balls of colour moved tremulously. The tints became dull, and then, at once, past belief vivid; the architectural lines were all active with shifting tints. The figures moving shook the long hanging lines of living light, and then, in an instant, all was dark.

The whole article is freely available online if you want to read the entire account which explores the hallucinatory state in some depth.

Link to ‘Remarks on the Effects of Anhelonium Lewinii (the Mescal Button)’.

I’ve just found this interesting 1927 news item from Science magazine lambasting the rise of ‘quack psychologists’ that were apparently troubling the American public at the time. It’s interesting because it has a dig a two very specific groups of unorthodox psychological groups:

PSEUDO-PSYCHOLOGISTS, who promise, like fairy godmothers, to turn every-day human beings into fascinating personalities or into great financial successes, are creating large groups of discontented individuals, according to Dr. E. A. Shaw and George E. Gardner, of the Harvard University Psycho-Educational Clinic.

These two clinical psychologists state in a report to the National Committee for Mental Hygiene that “character analysts” and “practical psychologists” are responsible for many of the dissatisfied, badly adjusted cases that come to the Harvard Clinic. Gilt edge promises made to all, irrespective of ability and training, lead individuals to false hopes and discontent with kinds of work for which they are suited. And repeated failures to attain the heights so glowingly described as well within reach can lead an individual to serious mental upsets.

The psychological quack, half informed concerning scientific psychological principles, undertakes in a conference or by lectures, and for no small fee, to advise men and women about their mental and vocational ills. The two Harvard psychologists explain that “these men, we maintain – and their numbers are growing day by day – are a detriment to the mental health of the community. In their doctrines and platitudes there is just enough of truth and of falsity to make them dangerous.”

One serious result of the situation pointed out is that the work of the “analysts” becomes confused in the eyes of the public with the work of well-trained vocational advisers and directors of personality clinics who conscientiously and carefully study the individual who comes to them for help and who advise him according to his real possibilities.

The reference to “character analysts” and “practical psychologists” is not just a general dismissal of the poorly trained practitioner, it refers to two specific movements that departed from the established mainstream.

“Character analysts” undoubtedly refers to followers of analyst Willhelm Reich who was originally a follower of Freud before foolishly engaging in some free-thinking which got him kicked out of the inner circle.

His book Character Analysis departed from the traditional Freudian focus on individual symptoms to consider the interplay of the whole personality. It has become a classic in psychoanalysis but as he wandered from the Freudian path, he and his followers were ostracised.

Reich took a distinctly odd turn in later years, believing the power of orgasm, called orgone, could be stored in batteries and could be absorbed from the sky by the use of a special machine called a cloudbuster. Incidentally, this story inspired the Kate Bush song Cloubusting, which describes Reich’s obsession with the machine and his eventual downfall.

“Practical psychologists” refers to a movement of amateur psychologists that created their own popular clubs to discuss and ‘translate’ lab findings to the populace.

They saw themselves as liberating psychology from the ivory towers of the university but they were despised by academic psychologists for their uncritical thinking and, probably worse in their eyes, popularism.

The Psychologist had a great article on the growth of this movement in the UK, if you want more on what pop psychology looked like in the early 20th century.

Some years before the publication of this news piece, Freud had written his famous paper on ‘Wild Psycho-Analysis’ which clearly stated that true analysts had to toe the line and had to be taught by one of the initiated – everyone else was to be considered a dangerous amateur.

I have no idea who Dr E.A. Shaw was, but George E. Gardner was a orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis based at the prestigious McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, so you can see how they were using the talk reported in the Science piece to bolster the established Freudian approach to the mind.

Link to PubMed entry for news report.

BBC Radio 4 has an excellent documentary on how ‘brain washing’ techniques and psychological coercion were used by the British military for interrogations during the Second World War.

Newly uncovered documents implicate psychiatrist Alexander Kennedy in the use of sensory deprivation, disorientation and mind-altering drugs on prisoners during secret service interrogations on foreign soil.

The piece has uncanny echoes of the recent debate about Guantanamo Bay and ‘war on terror’ interrogations with the extensive use of contractors and the leader of the government, Harold Wilson Macmillan, falsely denying that anything abusive took place.

The techniques are surprisingly similar to those later researched by the CIA MKULTRA programme and many of the sensory deprivation and disorientation techniques clearly survived until the ‘war on terror’.

It’s an interesting complement to the recent BBC documentary (‘Revealing the Mind Bender General’) we discussed previously about the role of British psychiatrist William Sargant in what seems like a continuation of this research in post-war London.

BBC News has a brief summary of the programme if you don’t catch it in the next few weeks as it is likely to disappear from the now crippled BBC archive in the near future.

Link to BBC Radio 4 edition of Document on WWII ‘brain washing’.
Link to BBC News piece ‘Britain’s WWII brainwashing’.

Originally published earlier this year in Prospect magazine, Tom has put a copy of his fantastic article online where he discusses our capacity for improvisation and how it links with a post-brain damage condition call confabulation where patients seem unable to stop themselves inventing unlikely stories.

Confabulation occurs most typically after frontal lobe damage and causes patients to give clearly false information either spontaneously or when they’re asked a question without any obvious intention to deceive the questioner.

It’s generally thought to be a problem with retrieving memories. The idea is that, initially, remembering activates a whole load of loosely associated information and then a filtering processes narrows it down to only the most relevant and likely memories.

Confabulation is thought to occur when brain damage impairs this filtering process so patients will recount incoherent information because they can’t easily distinguish between likely memories and other the contents of their mind.

Tom discusses how, in healthy people, the strength of this filtering process could be ‘turned down’ to allow theatrical improvisation and instant creativity.

In those patients with frontal damage who do confabulate, however, the brain injury makes them rely on their internal memories—their thoughts and wishes—rather than true memories. This is of course dysfunctional, but it is also creative in some of the ways that make improvisation so funny: producing an odd mix of the mundane and impossible. When a patient who claims to be 20 years old is asked why she looks about 50, she replies that she was pushed into a ditch by her brothers and landed on her face. Asked about his good mood, another patient called Harry explains that the president visited him at his office yesterday. The president wanted to talk politics, but Harry preferred to talk golf. They had a good chat.

Improvisers tap into these same creative powers, but in a controlled way. They learn to cultivate a “dual mind,” part of which doesn’t plan or discriminate and thus unleashes its inventive powers, while the other part maintains a higher level monitoring of the situation, looking out for opportunities to develop the narrative.

In fact, this is in line with work on Jazz musicians that we discussed last year.

This particular study found that activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) – a large chunk of the frontal lobes – reduces during Jazz improvisation, suggesting that the mental controls are eased up allowing a more free flowing mental style.

Link to Tom’s Prospect article ‘Tall Stories’.

New Scientist has a gallery of striking photos taken from Christopher Payne’s book that details his photographic tour of abandoned asylums in the US.

In both the UK and the US, and, I suspect, in many other countries, there are numerous unused decaying mental asylums that have become obsolete as ‘care in the community’ has become the flag under which mental health services have been reformed or ignored.

The NewSci gallery captures the faded grandeur of some of these impressive buildings and has photographs of the devices and technology from a psychiatry of a bygone era.

As we discussed previously, many of the buildings are being converted into hotels, flats and the like with their past history hushed up, but what this photo set shows is that many more beautiful and architecturally unique buildings are simply being left to rot before they’re demolished.

By the way, the website of the book also has a fantastic slideshow with many more stunning photos – only hampered by the crippled flash interface. Look for the ‘Play Slideshow’ link at the bottom to kick it off.

Link to NewSci gallery of old asylum photos.
Link to website of Chris Payne’s ‘Asylum Book’.

Looking back on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Somatosphere discusses how the wall became incorporated into German psychological theories as a diagnosis, a metaphor and a social force.

Apparently, an East German psychiatrist even went as far as suggesting a specific diagnosis of ‘the wall disorder’:

“…the book Die Berliner Mauerkrankheit (The Berlin wall disease) written by a prominent East German psychiatrist, Dietfried M√ºller-Hegemann (1973), shortly after the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 (but not published until after his emigration to the West). M√ºller-Hegemann drew on his collection of patient histories to highlight the deleterious social and psychological consequences of a society encircled by the wall. He investigated what Berliners had already started to talk about‚Äîwhether the newly built wall was causing a novel psychological disease: ‚Äúthe wall disorder,‚Äù

Link to Somatosphere on the Berlin Wall in German psychology.

Harvey Cushing was not only a pioneering neurosurgeon but a fantastic artist, as can be seen from his amazing scientific illustrations. It turns out, he gave a few below-the-radar tributes in his drawings, as he based several illustrations of brain surgery ‘patients’ on portraits of his colleagues.

On the left is a drawing from Cushing’s 1908 book Surgery: Its Principles and Practice. It shows a craniotomy in a patient with a gunshot wound that had damaged the motor cortex (actually, I’ve flipped this image so it better matches the picture below).

The image at the bottom is a portrait of the Canadian physician William Osler, and you can see that the ‘patient’ is really a portrait of Osler.

Apparently, the two men had a warm friendship and a strong mutual admiration:

Osler and Cushing became firm friends, with their common bond a scholarly interest in medical biography and an avid love of books. Geoffrey Jefferson graciously assessed Cushing’s ties with Osler:

“The friendship which sprang up between the two proved to be a vital factor in his life, and probably no less in Osler’s‚Ķ. No special reason requires to be shown for matters of feeling; not the least was that they just liked one another a lot. They shared ideals in the meaning and the uses of the medical life in its highest intellectual plane, as well as at a humanitarian level, as the similarities of their writings on these subjects show”…

After Osler’s death in 1919, responding to the invitation of Lady Osler, Cushing spent 5 years writing his monumental opus, The Life of Sir William Osler. Published in two volumes, it was awarded a Pulitzer prize for literature

I found this interesting snippet in a great article on the history of modern brain surgery in a 2003 article from the Journal of Neurosurgery.

Link to PubMed entry for history of neurosurgery article.

One of the most important films in the history of psychiatry, depicting treatment of ‘shell shocked’ British soldiers during World War One, has just been made freely available online by UK medical charity the Wellcome Trust who are currently releasing lots of their archive footage.

The film was made by Sir Arthur Hurst in 1917 when large numbers of soldiers with ‘shell shock’, later to be called ‘war neurosis’, were returning from the front – in this case to a make-shift military hospital in South Devon, England, which was previously an agricultural college.

Time and time again you’ll read in news articles that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the new name for what used to be called ‘shell shock’ but this is false and you can easily see why in the film.

The most prominent symptoms of the World War One patients are ‘hysterical’ symptoms. These are symptoms that appear to be due to nervous system damage (such as paralysis, tremor or blindness, to name but a few) despite the fact that it is possible to demonstrate that the parts of the nervous system involved in the seemingly impaired ability are working perfectly fine.

A long-standing idea is that these impairment are caused by the subconscious mind ‘converting’ emotional distress into physical symptoms, but there is little good evidence to say whether this is likely or not.

These conditions are now diagnosed as ‘conversion disorder‘ or ‘dissociative disorder‘ and, while it is accepted that trauma may play a role in triggering them it is not a requirement.

This makes it quite different from PTSD, which requires the patient to have experienced a traumatic event and that includes symptoms of hyperarousal (feeling ‘on edge’), having intrusive memories of the event, and avoiding reminders of the trauma.

As we’ve discussed before on Mind Hacks, PTSD was a direct result of the Vietnam war (indeed, it was originally called ‘post-Vietnam’ syndrome) and was partly introduced as a way of allowing veterans to get treatment for their war-trauma-related psychiatric difficulties.

The 1917 film was hugely important because it unequivocally showed to a wide audience that mental stress could lead to dramatic physical difficulties, highlighting the importance of psychiatry which was often considered to be a ‘second rate’ medical speciality.

It is also an important historical document because it shows some dramatic symptoms that rarely appear in such a stark form and also outlines the treatments of the day.

The first patient seen is Pte. Meek, age 23. He has complete retrograde amnesia, hysterical paralysis, contractures, mutism and universal anaesthesia. There is a shot of him in a wheelchair with a nurse, and the intertitles explain that he is completely unaware of the efforts to overcome the rigidity of his ankles, and a man is seen trying to bend his feet. He had a sudden recovery of memory nine months later, with gradual recovery of body functions. Seven months after this we see him teaching basket-making, which was his peacetime job. Two and a half years after onset he makes a complete recovery, and there is a shot of him running up and down stairs waving his arms.

The next patient is Pte. Preston, who has amnesia, word blindness and word deafness, except to the word ‘bombs’, and his response to this is shown. When a doctor says ‘bombs’, he dives under a bed. Pte Ross Smith is also seen, who has a facial spasm. The spasm ceases under hypnosis, but return on waking. He has a lateral tremor of the head, treatment being relaxation and passive movements. There is a shot of him lying in bed having his head moved around.

You can watch the film at the Wellcome website, or they’ve uploaded it as five parts to YouTube. The first part is here and you can click through the rest.

Link to film and info from the Wellcome Trust.
Link to first part on YouTube.

The first neurology book printed in English was called ‘De Morbis Capitis’ and appeared in 1650. An old article from the Archives of Neurology discusses the book and has a lovely excerpt where it discusses numerous bizarre-sounding cures for brain diseases.

The full title of the book is the wonderful “DE MORBIS CAPITIS; Or, Of the chief internal Diseases of the HEAD. With Their Causes, Signes, Prognosticks, and Cures, for the benefit of those that understand not the Latine tongue”.

It was written by the country physician Robert Pemell who outlines the best rural neurological knowledge of the time.

This part from the Archives of Neurology article that discusses some of the ‘cures’ is both delightful and frightening in equal measure:

Ingredients in other remedies are marjoram, hyssop, lavender (a stimulant), rosemary, thyme, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Animal extracts included the brain of a hare, “much commended as having a peculiar property for the Paralyticall.” Diet is an important component in both the treatment and prevention of disease. Patients with paralysis, a disorder caused by an overabundance of thick humors, are counselled to “abstain from all gross and flegmatic meat…”

Physical remedies are also described by Pemell. Some are simple. “Make a noise in the ears of the (epileptic) party; for hereby the faculties are more stired up.” “Let the soles of the feet be well rub’d, and bathed with salt and vinegar.” Some are more elaborate. Apply “a female pigeon (the fethers being first leptick; for hereby the fit is abated, and the venomous vapours are drawn away.”

Link to PubMed entry for Archives of Neurology article.

While strolling through town the other day, I came across this fantastic memory and brain-themed poster.

It’s from the University of Antioquia’s museum who are holding an art and literature competition to celebrate 200 years of Colombian independence.

Click the image for a bigger version or hit the link below if you want to see it in all its glory.

Link to bigger version.

We often think that pressure on young women to be thin is a modern phenomenon, but a fascinating letter to the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry published in 2000 noted that this is not a new development. The authors cite evidence from Ancient Rome showing a similar cultural pressures were widespread:

Garner et al. (1985) wrote about the present “unprecedented emphasis on thinness and dieting” which is one factor responsible for the increase in anorexic and bulimic disorders. It is generally believed that dieting in pursuit of a thinner shape and slimness as a standard for feminine beauty are modern attitudes. However, a clear account can be found in the ancient comedy Terence’s Eunuchus.

Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) (c. 190–159 BC) was a Roman comic poet. His 6 surviving comedies are Greek in origin but describe the contemporary Roman society. Eunuchus was probably presented in 161 BC. In this comedy, a young man named Chaerea declares his love for a 16-year-old girl whom he depicts as looking different from other girls and he protests against the contemporary emphasis on thinness: “haud similis uirgost uirginum nostrarum quas matres student demissis umeris esse, uincto pectore, ut gracilae sient. si quaest habitior paullo, pugilem esse aiunt, deducunt cibum; tam etsi bonast natura, reddunt curatura iunceam. itaque ergo amantur.” (She is a girl who doesn’t look like the girls of our day whose mothers strive to make them have sloping shoulders, a squeezed chest so that they look slim. If one is a little plumper, they say she is a boxer and they reduce her diet. Though she is well endowed by nature, this treatment makes her as thin as a bulrush. And men love them for that!) Then he describes the girl he loves: “noua figura oris . . . color uerus, corpus solidum et suci plenum” (unusual looks . . . a natural complexion, a plump and firm body, full of vitality). So he opposes vividly the typical thinness of the girls of these times to the blossomed body of the girl he loves.

This Roman pressure on girls to diet to meet the social expectations for thinness represents a clear precedent for the current emphasis on thinness. It is clear that in Ancient Rome, as in today’s society, there were multiple factors related to the development of body image concerns which today are often a precursor to eating disorders. These include cultural pressures to strive to develop and maintain a particular body shape in order to be considered attractive and then valued as a woman. Here, Terence mentions Chaerea’s preference for a plumper girl, while mothers usually wished their daughters to be thinner. Although the media influences that today are critical in influencing images of a perfect body were not present in Ancient Rome, it is clear from this part of the text that pressures concerning appearance existed long before the 20th century.

Link to PubMed entry for letter.

The Guardian’s Improbable Research column covers a clever study on the incredible memory of waiters in Buenos Aires who can take orders from a large table of customers without writing anything down.

Instead of coming up with some abstract computerised lab task, the researchers tested their drink ordering skills and then swapped places to test how they were remembering all the orders.

Eight customers sat at a table, and ordered drinks. When the waiter brought the beverages, the scientists tallied up how many were served to the people who had ordered them, and how many delivered to someone else. All the waiters performed admirably.

The customers later ordered more drinks, then switched seats before the waiter returned. This produced dreary results. The scientists tried this on nine waiters, only one of whom consistently delivered drinks to the right people.

Interviewed afterwards, waiters said they generally paid attention to customers’ locations, faces and clothing. They also disclosed a tiny trick of the trade. They “did not pay attention to any customer after taking a table’s order, as if they were protecting the memory formation in the path from the table to the bartender or kitchen.”

Link to Improbable Research column on the study.
pdf of scientific paper.
Link to PubMed entry for same.