Mind Hacks

The museum of narcoculture

The Washington Post has an absolutely astounding gallery that looks inside Mexico’s ‘Museum of Drugs’ that is only open to government and army officials and chronicles the ongoing narcowar.

It’s not only a museum of drugs samples and smuggling methods, it also captures some of the culture of the narcotraffickers – including captured diamond encrusted guns and items from branded clothing created by cartels for their members.

Around the corner, the exhibits show how drugs are smuggled, and here human ingenuity is on full display. There is dope hidden inside picture frames, logs, gas tanks, clay pots, tamales, concrete blocks, truck tires, soda cans, car bumpers, shoes, stuffed armadillos and a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

There is a kind of James Bond or Dr. Evil quality to some exhibits. An attache case confiscated from an outlaw surveillance team holds computer boards and other gadgetry to monitor cellphone calls. The cartels now employ their own fleets of semi-submersible submarines. On display is a large sea buoy with a coded beacon device the traffickers attach to huge payloads of drugs they can dump into the sea and pick up later.

Also, apparently, the narcos now have their own line of clothes. There are dark blue polo shirts sporting a kind of family crest for the Zetas, a notorious cartel founded by former special forces soldiers that controls vast swaths along the Gulf of Mexico from Brownsville, Tex., to Cancun. The shirts, which appear to be 100 percent cotton, are emblazoned with a Z and the words: “Cartel del Golfo.”

One of the most fascinating pictures is of a shrine to the unofficial saint Jes√∫s Malverde, literally worshipped by the drug trafficker subculture to bring good luck. It turns out there are a great deal of Malverde videos on YouTube, some of which are tribute videos, others are clips of films or songs about him.

The museum is clearly curated with a great deal of care and consideration and has an slightly uncanny kitsch style that belies its morbid undertones.

Link to WashPost gallery of Mexico’s drug museum.
Link to WashPost article on a visit to the museum (via BoingBoing).

The ominous power of confession

I’ve just read a remarkable article [pdf] on 125 proven cases of wrongful conviction in the US justice system where the accused made a false confession.

While we tend to think that no-one would confess to a crime they’ve never committed the phenomenon is a lot more common than we assume. The article cites studies where convicted people have been subsequently proved innocent, largely through DNA evidence, and 14-25% had made a false confession.

Research has now established that certain police interrogation techniques can lead to false confessions, and it is not only through intimidated suspects confessing even though they know they’re innocent. In some cases, categorised as ‘coerced-internalized’ false confessions, the person starts to doubt their own memory and actually comes to believe that they did commit the crime.

Interestingly, there is evidence that this is most likely to occur in the most serious crimes, possibly because the police themselves are under pressure to solve the cases. In this study, 81% of false confessions were for murders, 9% for rapes and 3% for arsons.

The article also outlines the impact of a confession on the justice system. We discussed an experimental study on the persuasive effect of confessions previously, but below is a remarkable run down of evidence from the ‘real world’.

I’ve taken out the numerical references for ease of reading, but if you want to check out the sources for the following section, it’s taken from p920:

…a suspect‚Äôs confession sets in motion a virtually irrefutable presumption of guilt among criminal justice officials, the media, the public and lay jurors. A suspect who confesses‚Äîwhether truthfully or falsely‚Äîwill be treated more harshly at every stage of the criminal justice process. Once police obtain a confession, they typically close the investigation, clear the case as solved, and make no effort to pursue other possible leads‚Äîeven if the confession is internally inconsistent, contradicted by external evidence or the result of coercive interrogation.

Like police, prosecutors rarely consider the possibility that an entirely innocent suspect has been made to confess falsely through the use of psychologically coercive and/or improper interrogation methods. When there is a confession, prosecutors tend to charge the defendant with the highest number and types of offenses and are far less likely to initiate or accept a plea bargain to a reduced charge. Suspects who confess will experience greater difficulty making bail (especially in serious cases), a disadvantage that significantly reduces a criminal defendant‚Äôs likelihood of acquittal.

Defense attorneys are more likely to pressure their clients who have confessed to waive their constitutional right to a trial and accept a guilty plea to a lesser charge. Judges are conditioned to disbelieve claims of innocence and almost never suppress confessions, even highly questionable ones. If the defendant‚Äôs case goes to trial, the jury will treat the confession as more probative of the defendant‚Äôs guilt than virtually any other type of evidence, especially if‚Äîas in virtually all high profile cases‚Äîthe confession receives negative pre-trial publicity.

Confession evidence (regardless of how it was obtained) is so biasing that juries will convict on the basis of confession alone, even when no significant or credible evidence confirms the disputed confession and considerable significant and credible evidence disconfirms it. Sadly, if a false confessor is convicted, he will almost certainly be sentenced more harshly

The article, ‘The Problem of False Confessions in the Post-DNA World’, originally published in the North Carolina Law Review is quite long but a gripping read.

pdf of article.
Link to citation and summary of article.

Coming down like a ton of clicks

BoingBoing has found a brilliant spoof video report on ‘Does the Internet make you dumber?’ which finishes on a surprisingly profound note.

It’s a hugely entertaining riff on some of the recent ‘is the internet affecting the brain?’ hang-wringing from the tech savvy chaps from the popular Search Engine podcast.

Link to brilliant ‘Does the Internet make you dumber?’ video.

The Rough Guide to Brain Training (Moore & Stafford, 2010)

The Rough Guide to Brain Training is a puzzle book which incluces essays and vignettes by myself. The book has 100 days of puzzles which will challenge your mental imagery, verbal fluency, numeracy, working memory and reasoning skills. There are puzzles that will look familiar like suduko, and some new ones I’ve never seen before. Fortunately the answers are included at the back. Gareth made these puzzles. I find them really hard.

I have 10 short essays in the book, covering topics such as evidence-based brain training, how music affects the developing brain, optimal brain nutrition and what the brains of the future will look like. As well as the essays, I wrote numerous short vignettes, helpful hints and suprising facts from the world of psychology and neuroscience (did you know that squids have dounut shaped brains? That you share 50% of your genes with a banana? That signals travel between brain cells at up to 200mph, which is fast compared to a cycle courier, but slow compared to a fibre optic cable). Throughout the book I try to tell it straight about what is, isn’t and might be true about brain training. I read the latest research and I hope I tell a sober, but optimistic, message about the potential for us to change how we think over our lifetimes (and the potential to protect our minds against cognitive decline in older age). I also used my research to provide a sprinkling of evidence-based advice for those who are trying to improve a skill, study for an exam or simply remember things better.

Writing the book was a great opportunity for me to dig into the research on brain training. It is a topic I’d always meant to investigate properly, but hadn’t gotten around to. The claims of those pushing commercial brain training products always seemed suspicious, but the general idea – that our brains change based on practice and experience – seemed plausible. In fact, this idea has been one of the major trends of the last fifty years of neuroscience research. It has been a big surprise to neuroscientists as experiment after experiment has shown exactly how malleable (aka ‘plastic’) the structure and function of the brain is. The resolution of this paradox of the general plausibility of brain training with my suspicion of specific products is in the vital issue of control groups. Although experience changes our brains, and although it is now beyond doubt that a physically and mentally active life can prevent cognitive decline across the lifespan, it isn’t at all clear what kinds of activities are necessary or essential for general mental sharpness. Sure, after practicing something you’ll get better at it. And doing something is better than doing nothing, but the crucial question is doing something you pay for better than doing something else that is free? The holy grail of brain training would be a simple task which you could practice (and copyright! and sell!!) and which would have benefits for all mental skills. Nobody has shown that such a task or set of tasks exists, so while you could buy a puzzle book, you could also go for a jog or go to the theatre with friends. Science wouldn’t be able to say for certain which activity would have the most benefits for your mental sharpness as an individual – although the smart money is probably on going jogging. It is to the credit of the editors at the Rough Guides that they let me say this in the introduction to the Rough Guide to Brain Training!

There wasn’t room in the book for all the references I used while writing it. This was a great sadness to me, since I believe that unless you include the references for a claim, you’re just spouting off, relying on a dubious authority, rather than really talking about science. So, to make up for this, and by way of an apology, I’ve put the references here. It will be harder to track specific claims from this general list that it would be with in-text citations, so if you do have a query, please get in touch and I promise will point you to the evidence for any claims I make in the book.

Additionally, I’ll be posting here a few things from the cutting room floor – text that I wrote for the book which didn’t make it into the final draft. Watch out, and if you do get your hands on a copy of this Rough Guide to Brain Training, get in touch and let me know what you think.

Amazon link (only ¬£5.24!)

Scientific references and links used in researching the book

Bragging for beginners

The BPS Research Digest covers an interesting study on the perception of boasting, looking at whether there are specific contexts in which bragging actually leads people to think more highly of you and whether there are those where people end up thinking you’re a bit of an arse.

It turns out, there are. Participants were asked to rate the character and personality of a chap called ‘Avi’ who boasted about his A grade exam performance in a number of scenarios. The results showed that bragging only had the desired effect when someone else brought up the subject that Avi wanted to boast about:

The crux of it: context is everything when it comes to boasting. If Avi’s friend raised the topic of the exams, Avi received favourable ratings in terms of his boastfulness and likeability, regardless of whether he was actually asked what grade he got. By contrast, if Avi raised the topic of the exams, but failed to provoke a question, then his likeability suffered and he was seen as more of a boaster.

In other words, to pull off a successful boast, you need it to be appropriate to the conversation. If your friend, colleague, or date raises the topic, you can go ahead and pull a relevant boast in safety. Alternatively, if you’re forced to turn the conversation onto the required topic then you must succeed in provoking a question from your conversation partner. If there’s no question and you raised the topic then any boast you make will leave you looking like a big-head.

I was interested that the study was from Israel and wondered how well the results apply to other countries.

I’ve informally noticed that the social acceptability of ‘talking oneself up’ varies greatly between countries – from the USA, where moderate self-praise is standard social currency, to the UK, where it is only acceptable when followed by a self-deprecating comment or joke, to Sweden where it is only acceptable when one is threatened by armed men or the future of the world hangs in the balance.

However, I’ve not been able to track down any studies on the topic, so I’m not sure how well my observations reflect the wider world.

Link to BPSRD on bragging study.
Link to DOI entry and abstract of study.

Animal mind reading

RadioLab has a fantastic programme on what animals can understand about the minds of humans, their own species, and other creatures.

When we gaze into the eyes of our beloved pets, can we ever really know what they‚Äôre thinking? Is it naive to assume they might be experiencing something close to the emotions we feel? Or, on the contrary, is it ridiculous to assume that they AREN‚ÄôT feeling anything back? In this hour of Radiolab, we explore what science can say about what goes on in the minds of animals.

Wonderfully put together, fantasti… oh you know the rest.

Link to RadioLab ‘Animal Minds’ episode.

The hazards of injecting toad venom

The Journal of Forensic Sciences has an interesting, if not tragic, case of a death after the injection of toad extract. The injector apparently though he was injecting MDMA (‘escstasy’) but the substance he was sold turned out to contain lethal levels of bufotenine, a toad venom, which is occasionally used as a hallucinogenic drug.

From the case study:

A 24-year-old male was observed to collapse and die soon after an intravenous injection of 35‚Äì40 ml of what was thought to be ‚Äòecstasy‚Äô (methylenedioxy-methamphetamine or MDMA). A friend had injected a smaller volume (20 ml) and had vomited but survived. The decedent was a known intravenous amphetamine user but was not known to abuse any other illicit drugs. The body was transferred to FSSA for autopsy along with a plastic bag containing the injected material and the empty syringe…

The basic extract was also found to contain paracetamol, promethazine and diclofenac, in addition to bufotenine…

Bufotenine (dimethylserotonin) is a tryptamine derivative alkaloid related to the neurotransmitter serotonin. It is found naturally in certain plants and in the secretions of various toads. Resibufogenin, cinobufagin and bufalin, known collectively as bufadienolides, are nitrogen-free steroidal lactones that are also found in toad venom. They may be cardiotoxic, having a similar effect to digoxin [an extract of the foxglove plant]. Toad secretions have also been dried and smoked as bufotenine has hallucinogenic effects, resulting in classification as a prohibited substance in Australia.

Link to PubMed entry for case study.

American madness

The New York Times has a thought-provoking article on culture and mental illness, arguing that the American view of the disordered mind has been exported around the world and has influenced how other cultures actually experience mental distress.

It’s probably worth saying that none of the examples are solely ‘American’, although clearly it has had a huge influence our ideas about mental illness, despite being reined in on several occasions. Indeed, if mental illness had been truly Americanised, we’d all be living in a Freudian world by now.

However, the main thrust of the article to highlight the importance of culture in the shaping of mental illness:

In the end, what cross-cultural psychiatrists and anthropologists have to tell us is that all mental illnesses, including depression, P.T.S.D. and even schizophrenia, can be every bit as influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations today as hysterical-leg paralysis or the vapors or zar or any other mental illness ever experienced in the history of human madness. This does not mean that these illnesses and the pain associated with them are not real, or that sufferers deliberately shape their symptoms to fit a certain cultural niche. It means that a mental illness is an illness of the mind and cannot be understood without understanding the ideas, habits and predispositions ‚Äî the idiosyncratic cultural trappings ‚Äî of the mind that is its host.

The essay has some important points (although with a few minor errors – for example, zar is not a Middle Eastern condition – but the name for a group of spirits which are believed to possess people and can lead to both helpful and disordered states) but you can it’s trying to walk a thin line between outlining the influence of culture on mental illness and avoiding suggesting that mental illness is nothing but the product of culture.

With this in mind, some of the explanations are a little one-dimensional: ‘expressed emotion’ accounts for differences in how patients with schizophrenia manage across cultures, Western-style anorexia appeared in Hong Kong due to the popularisation of the American diagnostic criteria, and so on, when the actual explanations are likely to be more complex and involve a range of biological, medical and social factors (Neuroanthropology has a really good take on this and I recommend their commentary).

I am hoping that this is because the article is taken from a much larger book which explores this topic in more detail, but as a quick introduction to some ideas about how out beliefs about illness can shape how we experience the illness itself, it is a good read.

UPDATE: I’ve just noticed Somatosphere also have a good discussion of the article that’s well worth checking out.

Link to NYT on ‘The Americanization of Mental Illness’.
Link to excellent Neuroanthropology culture.

The temperance pill

New Scientist has an excellent article looking at current attempts to develop a pill that will treat alcoholism or help people reduce their cravings for booze.

It’s a really well-rounded piece that captures the problems with the ‘cure in a pill’ method as well as the neuroscience behind attempts to alter the chemistry of craving and addiction.

Apart from drugs to treat associated mental illnesses, one of the few widely used treatments at the moment, naltrexone, is designed to make booze less pleasurable by blocking opioid receptors, but it is far from effective for everyone:

Naltrexone’s biggest stumbling block, however, is that it fails to treat some of the more painful aspects of abstinence. Drinking dampens the brain’s response to stress – indeed, many heavy drinkers become hooked on alcohol for this reason alone. The result is that going cold turkey without also calming the brain’s stress pathways can be a distressing experience. “People feel just terrible,” says George Koob, a specialist in the neurobiology of addiction at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. “These individuals are miserable. They have panic attacks.”

Targeting these drink-hijacked stress pathways – often without even touching the brain’s pleasure circuits – is now the hottest area in alcoholism research.

And several of the new drugs outlined in the article are designed to do exactly this.

It’s probably worth mentioning that, apart from naltrexone, probably the only other widely used medication is disulfiram, which, rather than change the cravings, just makes the patient unpleasantly ill if they do drink alcohol as a form of chemical dissuasion.

Of course, if the patient is determined to continue drinking, they’ll just stop taking the drug, a problem with all chemical treatments, and so comprehensive addiction treatment needs to be more than just medication.

Link to NewSci on ‘Could popping a pill stop you hitting the bottle?’

The case of the haunted scrotum

This is quite possibly the oddest example of an illusory face I have ever discovered.

Seeing meaningful information in meaningless data is a psychological effect known as pareidolia or apophenia and this is an example that was published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1996:

The case of the haunted scrotum

A 45-year-old man was referred for investigation of an undescended right testis by computed tomography (CT). An ultrasound scan showed a normal testis and epididymis on the left side. The right testis was not visualized in the scrotal sac or in the right inguinal region. On CT scanning of the abdomen and pelvis, the right testis was not identified but the left side of the scrotum seemed to be occupied by a screaming ghostlike apparition (Figure 1). By chance, the distribution of normal anatomical structures within the left side of the scrotum had combined to produce this image. What of the undescended right testis? None was found. If you were a right testis, would you want to share the scrotum with that?

J R Harding
Consultant Radiologist, Royal Gwent Hospital

Link to PubMed entry for ‘The case of the haunted scrotum’.

Motivated reality

Neurophilosophy has a great piece on a new study finding that the perception of distance to an object was altered by how much someone wanted it, with a greater desire leading the people in the study to perceive the object as closer. This a summary of one of the several experiments that demonstrated the effect:

Participants were asked to throw a small rubber bean bag towards a gift voucher placed on the floor in front of them, and told that the person whose toss landed closest to the voucher would win it. One group was told that the voucher had a value of $25, thus making it desirable to them, while the other was led to believe that it was worthless. This experiment confirmed the earlier ones – those participants who believed the voucher was worth something perceived it to be nearer, and consequently underthrew the bean bag so that it fell short of the target.

As Mo notes, these experiments are related to what is known as the ‘New Look’ movement in psychology which arose in the 1940s as a direct challenge to the behaviourists who said that all mental states, such as beliefs and desire, were illusions and had no scientific basis.

The New Look theories argued that our perception of reality could be directly influenced by our desires and set about proving behaviourists wrong by using their own tools, physical measurements of perception, to prove them wrong.

The movement was sparked by a 1947 study by psychologists Jerome Bruner and Cecile Goodman that has become a classic in the field and is still fascinating today.

They asked children to estimate the size of coins using an adjustable ‘collar’ and found the kids consistently judged the coins to be bigger than identically sized cardboard circles, suggesting the monetary value of the coins was influencing how big they perceived the dimensions to be.

But the clincher for the idea that value and desire altered perception was that the children from poorer backgrounds perceived the coins to be bigger than children from richer backgrounds.

The study caused huge interest and many studies followed in the subsequent years, partly as the field allowed the combination of both experimental psychology and Freudian-inspired ideas about the power of unconscious motivations.

These latest studies, covered expertly by Neurophilosophy, follow in the same tradition.

Link to Neurophilosophy on how ‘Desire influences visual perception’.
Link to full text of Bruner and Goodman’s classic study.

The Year in Robotics

MIT’s online magazine Technology Review has a good short article reviewing the year in robotics, giving the highlights of the latest developments from 2009.

The piece has loads of links so you can read up, and sometimes see, the robots in action and it looks like giving robots ‘social skills’ to interact with humans has been a big area of progress:

The socialization of robots was an important area of research this year. Many researchers believe that giving robots social skills will make them better at assisting people in homes, schools, offices, and hospitals. Andrea Thomaz, a TR35 innovator for 2009, created robots that can learn simple grasping tasks from human instructors who use social cues, such as verbal instructions, gestures, and expressions.

Another robot, made by a group at Carnegie Mellon University, guides conversations by making “eye contact” to suggest that it’s time to speak (“Making Robots Give the Right Glances”). Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, created a machine-learning program that lets a robotic head develop better facial expressions. By looking in a mirror, the robot can analyze the way its motors move different parts of the face, and create new expressions (“A Robot that’s Learning to Smile”). And a virtual robot mimicked sneakiness, hiding in virtual shadows and darting between obstacles to remain undetected (“Modeling Sneaky Robots”).

Link to Tech Review Year in Robotics.

2010-01-08 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

New Scientist looks at a new theory of synaesthesia that goes beyond the ‘crossed senses’ idea.

Looking younger may be a matter of looking less masculine, according to a study covered by the Psychology of Beauty blog.

The Psych Files show interviews psychologist Scott Lilienfeld on his new book on 50 myths of popular psychology.

There’s a review of Stanislas Dehaene’s new book Reading in the Brain by psychologist Alison Gopnick in The New York Times.

The Neurocritic looks at whether roller coasters cause more brain damage than pillow fights.

How is the internet changing the way we think? asks Edge. Answers from numerous contributors. Beard stroking abound.

The BPS Research Digest covers a study suggesting that prejudice towards migrants stems partly from the fact that they’re awkward to think about.

Autism clusters linked to parents’ education not environmental factors finds new study covered by Scientific American. Predictable nuttiness in the comments. Also good <a href="Autism 'Clusters' Linked To Parents' Education
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122256276&ps=cprs”>coverage from NPR.

Not Exactly Rocket Science covers a fascinating study on how we get tripped up by the details when trying to see ourselves as others do, who are more likely to focus on the ‘bigger picture’.

Cocaine vaccine leads addicts to take 10 times more cocaine according to a new study covered by Popular Science. That’ll be the same effect as when addicts prescribed methadone ‘top up’ with heroin then.

The Times on how regional accents are strengthening in the UK despite predictions that increased mobility would lead to their loss.

A new TED talk shows Ramachandran still sipping the mirror neuron Kool-Aid. They’re responsible for building civilisation apparently. I say they also shot JFK.

GimpyBlog has an excellent piece about how media psychologist Aric Sigman has been off on another confused ramble about how product placement apparently damages childrens’ impulse control which could lead to violence!

Neuroscientist Curtis Bell has is asking people to sign a “Pledge by Neuroscientists to Refuse to Participate in the Application of Neuroscience to Violations of Basic Human Rights or International Law”. Neuroethics at the Core kick off a debate on the issue.

New Scientist has an essay by Ray Tallis on why you won’t find consciousness in the brain.

Athletes, doctors, and lawyers with first names beginning with ‚ÄúD‚Äù die sooner, according to a study just published in Death Studies.

NPR has a brief segment on how WWII conscientious objectors doing civil service exposed mental ward horrors.

The brain’s flexible perception of time is covered in an article for The New York Times.

XKCD has a great parody of the recent ‘disappearing g-spot’ research.

There’s an awesome article at The Boston Globe on how our assumption of how much <a href="Think you have self-control? Careful.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/01/03/think_you_have_self_control_careful/
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/01/self-control_redux.php”>self-control we have affects our ability to exercise self-control.

BBC News reports that France is considering a law against ‘psychological violence’. Paris waiters to be first against the wall.

Straight thinking neuroscientist Lise Eliot is interviewed in Discover Magazine about the evidence for human sex differences in the mind and brain.

The New York Times has a piece on how armodafinil, the right-handed molecule of stay-up-forever drug modafinil (armodafinil = R-modafinil, geddit?) is closer to being approved for jet lag (yes, jet lag). See our piece from last year for more background on the new drug

A film by drug lord Pablo Escobar’s son on coming to terms with his father’s atrocities and halting the cycle of violence is covered by Time.

The New York Times reviews a new book on psychedelic experiments in the Harvard psychology department of the 1960s.

Psychologist is in America’s top 100 jobs (at sexy 69) and with psychiatrist at 98, according to a survey by The Wall Street Journal (philosopher is 11th!). Compare recent survey by CNN Money (psychologist 23rd, psychiatrist 24th).

The Times reviews the new exhibition on ‘identity’ at London’s wonderful Wellcome Collection.

A new study in JAMA showing antidepressants only effective for severe depression is covered by The New York Times.

The Sunday Times has a review of the new book ‘Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World’. Someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.

There’s an interesting piece on the psychology of conspicuous consumption over at New Scientist.

Dr Petra has a fantastic A-Z guide to ‘sex in the noughties’: A-G, H-O and P-Z.

Journalists, lawyers, business people, marketers. Want to get up to speed on the latest neuroscience without the crap? The University of Pennsylvania is running it’s Neuroscience Boot Camp again this August.

The evolution of projectile weapons

American Scientist has a fascinating podcast on the evolution of the human capacity for killing at a distance – in other words, the cultural evolution of projectile weapons.

The talk is by anthropologist Steven Churchill who looks at what motivated the development of projectile weapons – initially rocks, slings and spears and – and what effect these developments had on the culture of ancient peoples.

He starts as far back as the time when neanderthals and modern humans were both in existence and discusses how the development of these weapons may have influence the competition between the two species.

He also discusses how these weapons may have affected human evolution and notes that these weapons make group attacks easier, meaning that it was probably easier for societies to police themselves and so leading to selection against aggressive individuals.

A thoroughly fascinating discussion, where Churchill talks about historical evidence as well as his own studies where he’s asked people to test the limits of using ancient weapons.

Link to ‘The Evolution of the Human Capacity for Killing at a Distance’.

The chopstick: reloaded

The New York Daily News reports on a 14-month old Chinese boy who survived brain surgery to remove a chopstick that accidentally ended up in his brain after entering through the nose.

If your jaw has dropped, amazed at such a freaky and unusual accident, you may comfortably close your mouth – there is a surprisingly large medical literature on stray chopsticks that have become lodged in the brain.

In fact, there are no less than 13 published articles on this serious neurological condition. Here are some of the more notable ones:

A case of unusual difficult airway because of an intracranial foreign body of bamboo chopstick. [link]

Transoral penetration of a half-split chopstick between the basion and the dens. [link]

Transorbital penetrating injury by a chopstick–case report [link]

Intracerebellar penetrating injury and abscess due to a wooden foreign body–case report. [link]

Chopsticks and suicide [link]

Unusual craniocerebral penetrating injury by a chopstick. [link]

Link to New York Daily News on boy with chopstick in brain.

A clarion call for a decade of disorder

This week’s Nature has an excellent editorial calling for a greater focus on the science of mental illness and summarising the challenges facing psychology and neuroscience in tackling these complex conditions.

It’s generally a very well-informed piece, but it does make one widely repeated blunder in the last sentence of this paragraph:

Frustratingly, the effectiveness of medications has stalled. Nobody understands the links between the symptoms of schizophrenia and the crude physiological pathologies that have so far been documented: a decrease in white brain matter, for example, and altered function of the neurotransmitter dopamine. The medications, which are often aimed at the dopamine systems associated with delusions, have advanced over the decades not in their efficacy but in a reduction of their debilitating side effects.

The idea that newer antipsychotic drugs have less side-effects is a myth, albeit one that was widely promoted by drug companies in the early days of the newer ‘atypical antipsychotics’.

The early antipsychotics were notorious for causing a syndrome of Parkinson’s disease-like abnormal movements owing to their long-term effect on the dopamine system.

The popular newer generation drugs do indeed produce fewer of these problems, although the difference is much smaller than was originally thought. But in addition, they tend to cause metabolic syndrome – weight gain, diabetes, heart problems – something which wasn’t such an issue with the older drugs.

In other words, the side-effects aren’t less, they’re just different. While the old drugs were more likely to produce movement problems, the newer are more likely to make you fat and give you diabetes.

Although antipsychotics were one of the most important medical advances of the 20th century, as the Nature editorial notes, there has been no improvement in the ability of these drugs to actually treat psychosis in the last few decades.

One of the main problems is that the most effective antipsychotics seems to have the highest levels of side-effects and a huge advance would simply be the production of a drug that was of equal effectiveness but less damaging to patients’ health.

Apart from this minor error, the Nature piece is an excellent brief summary of where psychiatric research is at, and where it needs to go to better tackle these episodes of mental turmoil, and comes highly recommended.

Link to Nature piece ‘A decade for psychiatric disorders’.