Mind Hacks

The Broken

I seem to have accidentally written dialogue about the Capgras delusion for the 2008 psychological horror film The Broken.

The therapist in this clip says “Have you ever heard about the Capgras syndrome? It’s a rare disorder in which a person holds a belief that an acquaintance, usually a close family member or spouse has been replaced by an identical looking imposter.”

This is taken from the Wikipedia entry for the Capgras delusion, the first sentence of which I wrote in the first version way back in 2003.

The film, by the way, is excellent with a fantastic twist ending, although it stops at what I thought was perhaps the most interesting part when the character realises the truth and attempts to comprehend what this means about herself.

Anyway, my next project is to get a line from the schizophrenia article into a Madonna song.

Wish me luck.

Link to clip from The Broken.
Link to Wikipedia entry for the Capgras delusion.

Back channelling to the future

The staff at Link√∂ping University joke that the cognitive science students have kogvet-sjukan, Swedish for ‘cognitive science disorder’, because they have an incurable enthusiasm for anything related to understanding the mind. After two fantastic days at a conference there, I can see why.

I’ve been to a fair few conferences in my time, but few have been as friendly, interesting and well-organised as KVIT, and it is all the more impressive that it is entirely organised by students.

One of the most bits for me was linguist Jens Allwood’s talk on intercultural communication, where he described cultural differences in how people manage conversation flow.

I’ve always been fascinated by why people from some cultures make sounds during conversations that, to my English-attuned ears, sound unusual. For example, Japanese speakers often make expressions of surprise or interest that seem quite colourful.

These ‘yes, I’m listening’ or ‘yes, continue’ vocal prompts and noises that we make are known as ‘back channelling’, and can also include movements such as nods, or the use of eye-contact.

In some cultures, such as in Japan, eye contact is used far less during conversation, because it might be considered too intense, or it’s considered disrespectful, or even threatening.

So people from cultures that use less eye contact need to signal that they’re following the conversation in other ways, and hence they rely much more on vocal noises, which, to many English speakers, sounds a little odd.

In contrast, people from cultures where eye-contact is frequently used during conversations, like in Latino countries, speakers typically use much less vocal back channelling.

There’s a great review of some of this research in one of Allwood’s papers that’s available online as a pdf.

The others speakers at the conference included an art curator, a primate researcher, an AI consciousness engineer, a psychologist, an interaction designer and an emergency response co-ordinator, all of whom apply cognitive science to their work. Can you think of a more interesting line-up?

However, despite it being attended by people from Holland, Germany, and countries across Scandanavia, I was surprised to see few people from the rest of Europe.

As perhaps one of the best kept secrets in cognitive science, you should seriously consider going next year. The kogvet-sjukan affected Swedes will give you a warm welcome, stimulate your brain and put on impressive dinners with a tradition of raucous and risqu√© cognitive science sketches and songs.

Link to KVIT conference page.
pdf of Allwood’s chapter on intercultural communication.

2009-05-08 Spike activity

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

The excellent Holford Watch blog has a right-on-target debunking of a Daily Mail article that uncritically reprinted dodgy ‘hole in brain’ SPECT scans to ‘show’ we’re “wrecking” our brains with caffeine, alcohol, bad living etc.

Harvard Magazine discuss how their neuroscientists are working to ‘untangle the brain: from neuron to mind’.

Daniel Lende, co-founder of the brilliant Neuroanthropology blog, wins a university award for his work on the anthropology of drug use, HIV, PTSD and his online writing. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen a blog being recognised by mainstream academia. Congratulations!

New Scientist reports on commercial text analysis programmes that rate emotional content.

There’s a brief but good infographic about the history and development of ‘behavioural economics‘ in Foreign Policy magazine.

Scientific American on recent revelations that Masters and Johnson may have faked their ‘gay cure’ case studies.

Eavesdrop on the world! I’ve just discovered searching Twitter for ‘overheard‘.

Science Policy magazine has an article about what the recent fMRI ‘voodoo’ criticisms mean for the role of fMRI in court. This month’s Wired UK has an awesome article on similar territory, but it’s not available online yet.

Researchers find the earliest signs of autism in infancy, reports Time magazine.

Time magazine reports on the recent STAR*D study that used ‘real world’ patients for an antidepressant trial, rather than the highly selected samples usually used, and found that rates of improvement were less.

New antipsychotic iloperidone is approved by the FDA, reports Furious Seasons.

New Scientist reports that IQ correlates with health and there are hints that some of the relationship might be explained by common genetic factors.

There’s an excellent post about pop stars, drug use, society and double standards at Frontier Psychiatrist.

Cognition and Culture has an interesting piece on cross-cultural variation in creationism.

A genetic study into narcolepsy, a disorder where people suddenly and uncontrollable fall asleep, finds an intriguing link with genes for the immune system. Science News covers the discovery.

Developing Intelligence covers a lovely study finding that physically taking a step back is associated with improved problem-solving.

A concert combining the music of Yo-Yo Ma and the neuroscience of Antonio Damasio is reviewed in The New York Times. There are also some interesting comments from Jonah Lehrer who also saw the performance.

Cognitive Daily cover a study that possibly tells us why it’s hard to ignore that attractive stranger that walks past, even when we’re with our partner.

Why does the vaccine/autism controversy live on? asks Discover Magazine in an article that discusses the social factors behind the deadly but popular myth.

Advances in the History of Psychology has an interview with the author of a new book on Skinner.

Exploding head syndrome

I’ve just found an article with two interesting cases of ‘exploding head syndrome’ – a medical condition where affected people spontaneously hear an exceptionally loud explosion-like noise.

The condition is relatively harmless, causing people only to be startled, and it doesn’t seem linked to seizure activity or epilepsy. Owing to the fact it’s both benign and uncommon, it’s not been widely studied and so its cause remains a mystery.

Case 1
A 48-year-old man was seen in December 2006. For the past several months about three to four times a month, he had been having attacks of a peculiar sensation in the head likened to the noise of an exploding bomb only at night while going off to sleep. The ‘explosion’ would wake him up and disappear completely the moment he woke up.

There was no headache and no associated symptoms such as nausea, vomiting or any visual sensation. For the past 3 months, the frequency of these sensations had increased and had been occurring nearly daily at the time of consultation. The noise occurred only once during every night, after which he could go off to sleep. His past medical history had been unremarkable and he had never suffered from any significant headache problem. General physical and neurological examination had been unremarkable. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of brain with contrast had been normal. He was prescribed Flunarazine 10 mg daily. At 6 months’ follow-up he had much improved and noticed the exploding head symptom only on two occasions.

Case 2
A 65-year-old man was seen in February 2007. He was hypertensive and diabetic (both well controlled on oral medication) and had been having infrequent attacks of International Headache Society migraine headache (every 2‚Äì4 months) without aura since the age of 15 years. For the past 4 months prior to consultation, every 2‚Äì3 weeks, he had been awakened while going off to sleep only during taking a daytime nap by a sudden exploding (like a bomb bursting) noise in his head lasting for only few moments.

This noise was always accompanied with jerky elevation of his right arm and a queer sensation in the right side of his chest (not arm) and again lasting only momentarily. He felt quite well on waking up and could go off to sleep again. These were never accompanied by any visual flashes and never occurred during sleep at night. These sensations were very different from his migraine headaches, which lasted for several hours and the noises were not accompanied by any nausea or vomiting.

Physical examination was normal and his blood presswure in the clinic was 136/80 mmHg. He had already had a MRI of brain with contrast, MR angiography of brain and two interictal sleep EEG recordings performed before consultation with the author, all of which were normal. A video EEG with daytime sleep recording was performed, but no event could be captured.

Link to article with case studies.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

Paranoia espresso

A case study just out in CNS Spectrums describes an apparent case of ‘caffeine-induced psychosis’. The summary is below although the full paper is available online as a pdf.

If you’re a regular coffee drinker, I don’t think you should worry though. It’s impossible to say whether caffeine was the definite cause in this case, and the gentleman concerned was drinking about 36 cups of coffee a day.

Caffeine-induced psychosis

Hedges DW, Woon FL, Hoopes SP.

As a competitive adenosine antagonist, caffeine affects dopamine transmission and has been reported to worsen psychosis in people with schizophrenia and to cause psychosis in otherwise healthy people. We report of case of apparent chronic caffeine-induced psychosis characterized by delusions and paranoia in a 47-year-old man with high caffeine intake. The psychosis resolved within 7 weeks after lowering caffeine intake without use of antipsychotic medication. Clinicians might consider the possibility of caffeinism when evaluating chronic psychosis.

pdf of full-text article.
Link to PubMed entry for same.

Sweden bound for Scandinavian cognitive science

Apologies if updates are a little sporadic over the next couple of days as I’ve been kindly invited to speak at KVIT 2009 in Sweden, which is the only cognitive science conference I know of that has an accompanying music video.

It looks like it should be a fantastic few days and it’s my first time in Scandinavia, let alone Sweden, so I look forward to meeting some of their many talented mind and brain scientists.

If I manage to get some internet access, I’ll try and get some updates online.

Link to KVIT 2009.

100 years of attitude

I’ve just noticed an excellent article in the Times about Rita Levi-Montalcini, the Nobel prizewinning neurologist who’s still working at 100.

Levi-Montalcini won the Nobel in 1986 for her discovery of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that helps control when and where brain cells grow.

Fiercely independent, she’s escaped fascist regimes, anti-semitism and the bombing of Turin, where she continued her work by setting up a laboratory in a country cottage.

Do the workings of the brain still hold mysteries? ‚ÄúNo, it is much less mysterious. We have the most amazing scientific and technological advances. We have been able to see how the brain does work. And now discoveries are being made by by anatomists and physiologists or experts in behavioural science, physicists and mathematicians, computer experts, biochemists, and molecular scientists. The barriers are breaking down between disciplines. At 100 years of age I am still making discoveries about the factor that I myself discovered more than half a century ago.‚Äù

Despite her neurobiological nous, cognitive neuroscience is obviously not her strong point as she does spout some nonsense about brain hemispheres in a few places though, like “The important thing is to have lived with serenity using the rational left-hand side of one’s brain, and not the right side, the instinctive side, which leads to misery and tragedy.”

Or the backside, which leads to… oh forget it.

Link to the Times on Rita Levi-Montalcini.

The hunting of the SNARC

Cognitive Daily has an excellent article on the fascinating SNARC effect, where we react quicker to numbers with the hand that most approximates their position in space as if they were written out in front of us.

In other words, people react faster with their left hand for small numbers, and faster with their right hand for big numbers. This suggest that our number concepts are mapped partly mapped out in space.

Of course, this has largely been tested on English readers, who all read left to right, but Cognitive Daily reports on some new research that tested Arabic readers, for whom larger numbers would be on the left, and found that they show show the same effect, but in reverse.

Finally, the study investigated the effect on Israeli students, who know both left-right and right-left texts, as they learn both English and Arabic, and found that the effect didn’t appear.

In case you’re wondering, SNARC stands for the rather unwieldy phrase ‘spatial numerical association of response codes’.

While we’re on the subject of the excellent Cognitive Daily blog, you may be interested to know that they’ve started a new in-depth feature called ‘Cognitive Monthly‘ which you can download to your computer, iPhone or Kindle reader for $2.

They kindly sent me a free copy of the first edition, on the psychology of film and theatre, and I can heartily recommend it as excellent.

Link to post on culture and the SNARC effect.
Link to Cognitive Monthly details.

Mad pride of place

Newsweek has a good article on the ‘Mad Pride’ movement in the US, a British import where those diagnosed with mental illness reject the medical view of their experiences and decide to live with ‘extreme mental states’ both good and bad.

It makes a good complement to last year’s New York Times article on ‘mad pride’ although this focuses on the impressive The Icarus Project, a group of activists who campaign for mental health reform and work to support those who decide to forego psychiatric treatment.

After all, aren’t we all more odd than we are normal? And aren’t so many of us one bad experience away from a mental-health diagnosis that could potentially limit us? Aren’t “normal” minds now struggling with questions of competence, consistency or sincerity? Icarus is likewise asking why we are so keen to correct every little deficit‚Äîit argues that we instead need to embrace the range of human existence.

While some critics might view Icaristas as irresponsible, their skepticism about drugs isn’t entirely unfounded. Lately, a number of antipsychotic drugs have been found to cause some troubling side effects.

There are, of course, questions as to whether mad pride and Icarus have gone too far. While to his knowledge no members have gravely harmed themselves (or others), Hall acknowledges that not everyone can handle the Icarus approach. “People can go too fast and get too excited about not using medication, and we warn people against throwing their meds away, being too ambitious and doing it alone,” he says.

Link to Newsweek article ‘Listening to Madness’.

Help, I’m a prisoner in a brain fiction factory

The Sunday Times has one of the most gullible neuroscience articles I’ve read in a very long time. While most mainstream press articles are happy to make a hash of one study at a time, this manages to misinterpret virtually every headline-grabbing neuroscience experiment from the last couple of years.

The article claims that neuroscience is much more advanced than we realise and sets out to demonstrate this by over-interpreting recent discoveries, padding the article with false information, and using fallacies to discuss the implications.

It’s full of howlers:

Then, in the 1980s, a range of new technologies began to emerge, including positron emission tomography (Pet) computerised axial tomography (Cat) and, perhaps the best known, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

PET was invented in the late 1960s / early 1970s, CAT was invented at virtually the same time, and fMRI was invented in the 1990s.

In a simplistic example, a scientist might show a picture of a scantily-clad woman to a man, and then see the parts of the brain associated with sex and lust lighting up as they consumed more oxygen. Meanwhile, the areas linked to reasoning and morality might go dark as they rapidly shut down.

I’m not sure whether “simplistic example” is a malapropism, a Freudian slip, or a grim admission of the the nonsense to come. Not only is the description of the technique completely misleading (all functional scans are comparisons between different situations, not just a measure of one reaction) but the example is completely bizarre.

The piece then goes on to suggest that neuromarketing gives a better idea how to market products (not one example to date), that brain scanning is a form of advanced lie detection (so advanced it doesn’t work very well) and that studies on the neuroscience of criminal behaviour (like writing crap brain articles) “suggest it could be wrong to hold such people responsible for their actions” (you wish).

I can’t face going through the rest of the examples because I keep weeping over my computer, but look out for the ‘this complex human attribute = this one brain area’ drivel, a profound confusion where brain activation is used to justify a behavioural or psychological conclusion, and the invention of the term “brainjacking” which is reported as if it’s already used.

I also noted that one of the quotes has just been lifted from other news reports.

Perhaps its only redeeming feature is that it could be a useful teaching aid if you’re giving a class on how neuroscience gets misrepresented in the media because it has at least virtually every type of slip-up in one handy place.

Link to ropey Sunday Times article.

Art and mental illness at the birth of modern psychiatry

If you’re in London before the end of June, make sure you drop into the Wellcome Collection museum which has two fantastic free exhibitions on the art and history of mental illness. If you can’t make it, the exhibition website is excellent and has video and images from the shows.

The first exhibition, Madness and Modernity, explores mental illness and the visual arts in Vienna in 1900, then the epicentre of the medical world.

Modern psychiatry was beginning to emerge and the ‘mad doctors’ employed some of Europe’s most pioneering architects to create asylums that were intended to be therapeutic by their very design.

For example, this poster is for one of the newly developed asylums of the time, as well as being beautiful in itself. The image to the right is the somewhat more intimidating ‘Tower of Fools’.

Also the use of art as a tool to document and disseminate ideas about mental illness became popular, as did an interest in the ‘art of the insane’.

There’s a video on the site which is a wonderful summary of the exhibition as well as being a great standalone discussion of how art and psychiatry influenced each other in the heady culture of 1900s Vienna.

The other exhibition is a series of diary paintings made by artist Bobby Baker from 1997-2008, as she charted her experience of mental illness and treatment. They’re only really done justice when seen as larger pictures, and the online gallery will give you a feel for their impact and humour.

A couple of things you can’t get online are the free events that accompany the exhibitions, which sadly seem all booked up, and the bookshop, which has a special section where they’ve collected (curated?) a great collection of books on almost everything to do with madness, the mind, art and history.

If you’re just visiting the website, you may need to do a bit of clicking around to see the best of the online material, but it’s well worth the visit. Watch the video if nothing else.

Link to Wellcome Collection Art and Mental Illness website.

Full Disclosure: I’m an occasional grant reviewer for the Wellcome Arts scheme, but I’m not associated with this exhibition in any way.

Tell me about your mother superior

I found this fascinating aside in a 1969 article on ‘Psychiatric Illness in the Clergy’ about a group of monks who underwent psychoanalysis, causing two thirds of them to realise they were “called to married life”.

The Pope immediately banned psychoanalysis from the priesthood as a result:

[Bovet] suggests that many clergy would benefit from psychotherapy during their training. This was attempted in Mexico when in 1961 a group of 60 Benedictine monks underwent group and individual psychoanalysis. However, of the original 60 monks taking part in this experiment, only 20 are still monks ; and of the 40 who have left the monastery it is reported that “there are some who realized that they were really called to married life” (Lemercier, 1965).

The Papal Court answered this “threat” the following decree: “You will not maintain in public or in private psychoanalytical theory or practice, under threat of suspension as a priest, and you are rigorously forbidden under threat of destitution to suggest to candidates for the monastery that they should undergo psychoanalysis” (Singleton, 1967).

This would not be the last time psychotherapists cause stirrings in the faithful.

The book Lesbian Nuns, Breaking Silence contains a chapter by the former Sister Mary Benjamin of the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent in California.

Psychotherapists Carl Rogers and William Coulson arranged for the nuns to take part in encounter group, essentially a form of fashionable 60s group psychotherapy aimed at well people rather than patients for ‘personal growth’.

The effect was disastrous for the convent, with hundreds of the nuns defaulting on their vows, and several, including Sister Mary Benjamin, discovering repressed lesbian desires.

The convent eventually collapsed and was closed in 1970.

There’s a brief online article that also recounts this story and I was intrigued to see a footnote at the end:

Having abandoned his once lucrative career, Dr. William Coulson now lectures to Catholic and Protestant groups on the dangers of psychotherapy, with a particular emphasis upon the “encounter group” dynamic.

There’s a whole novel right there in that footnote.

Link to summary of ‘Psychiatric Illness in the Clergy’.
Link to online article about Dr William Coulson.

Between a rock and a kind face

Newsweek has an article on human good and evil that trots out the usual Milgram-fuelled moral pondering before morphing into a fascinating piece on the psychology of compassion.

The most interesting part is where it discusses which psychological traits predict compassionate behaviour:

A specific cluster of emotional traits seem to go along with compassion. People who are emotionally secure, who view life’s problems as manageable and who feel safe and protected tend to show the greatest empathy for strangers and to act altruistically and compassionately.

In contrast, people who are anxious about their own worth and competence, who avoid close relationships or are clingy in those they have tend to be less altruistic and less generous, psychologists Philip Shaver of the University of California, Davis, and Mario Mikulincer of Bar-Ilan University in Israel have found in a series of experiments. Such people are less likely to care for the elderly, for instance, or to donate blood.

The Newsweek article labels these characteristics ’emotional traits’ but the researchers are actually using the psychological concept of attachment – an approach to relationships and human interaction style that can be seen throughout the lifespan.

The same research team has completed studies showing that increasing people’s perceived security increases altruistic behaviour.

Link to Newsweek on ‘Adventures In Good And Evil’.

2009-05-01 Spike activity

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

Wired has a great piece on illusionist Teller and how stage magic could help cognitive science.

Some fascinating research on the use of video to give insight to brain injured patients unaware of their own paralysis is covered by BPS Research Digest.

The Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry has a case report on restless legs syndrome affecting a phantom limb.

The curious link between the urban environment and schizophrenia is explored by Frontier Psychiatrist.

Channel N finds a video lecture on mental illness and creativity by Kay Redfield Jamison.

Funny or offensive? Probably both. The Onion has a satirical news report on World’s Oldest Neurosurgeon Turns 100.

BoingBoing finds an usual vintage comic book series entitled ‘The Strange World of your Dreams‘.

In 2001, all illicit drugs were decriminalised for personal use in Portugal. Time magazine investigates what happened, it turns out drug use has fallen.

The New York Times has an extended article on the meeting of Zen Buddhism and Freudian psychoanalysis.

A wonderful neurophilosophical quote from Melville’s Moby Dick is captured by Brain Hammer.

Cognition and Culture reviews new book ‘The Art Instinct’.

Do ‘brain training‘ games really work? asks ScAim. The answer, a bit.

PsyBlog has an excellent post on the psychology of consumption.

The media creates concept of media psychologists, encourages them to be unethical, then acts amazed when they are, says Dr Petra.

Wired talks to psychologist Craig Haney about the mental impact of solitary confinement.

Important new research on the genetics of autism spectrum is covered by Not Exactly Rocket Science.

BBC News reports on musician Prince discussing his childhood epilepsy and how he revealed it in a coded message on The Love Symbol Album.

Lithium levels in drinking water linked to fewer suicides

Higher levels of naturally occurring lithium in the water supply are associated with fewer suicides in the local population, reports a study just published in The British Journal of Psychiatry.

Lithium is one of the fundamental elements, but is also used by psychiatrists as one the most effective drug treatment for mood disorders, in the form of lithium carbonate and lithium citrate, where it is also known to reduce the risk of suicide.

This new study suggests that even trace amounts might have an influence on the whole population level, and this is not the first time this link has been made.

A 1990 study found higher levels of lithium in drinking water were linked to fewer incidences of crimes, suicides, and arrests related to drug addictions.

This leads to the intriguing question of whether lithium should be added to the water supply as a public health measure.

The idea of adding psychoactive substances to the water supply sounds creepy, but some might argue that if we add fluoride simply to prevent tooth decay, boosting lithium concentrations to the high end of naturally occurring levels to reduce deaths could be justified.

Philosophers and conspiracy theorists start your engines.

Link to BJP lithium study.
Link to DOI entry for same.

Extreme altitude climbs and the Sherpa brain

It’s now well known that high altitude mountain climbing damages the brain and causes a marked reduction in mental functioning.

I naively assumed this was true for everyone but I just found an intriguing 1996 study that compared brain function of lowland mountain climbers and Nepalese Sherpas after ascent to high altitude, which found that the Sherpas suffer few of these neurological problems.

Are Himalayan Sherpas better protected against brain damage associated with extreme altitude climbs?

Garrido E, Segura R, Capdevila A, Pujol J, Javierre C, Ventura JL.

Clin Sci (Lond). 1996 Jan;90(1):81-5.

1. The potential risk of brain damage when low-landers attempt to climb the highest summits is a well-known fact. However, very little is known about what occurs to Himalayan natives, perfectly adapted to high altitude, when performing the same type of activity.

2. Taking into account their long-life climbing experience at extreme altitudes, we examined seven of the most recognized Sherpas with the aim of performing a comprehensive neurological evaluation based on medical history, physical examination and magnetic resonance brain imaging. We compared them with one group of 21 lowland elite climbers who had ascended to altitudes of over 8000 m, and another control group of 21 healthy individuals who had never been exposed to high altitude.

3. While all of the lowland climbers presented psychoneurological symptoms during or after the expeditions, and 13 of them (61%) showed magnetic resonance abnormalities (signs of mild cortical atrophy and/or periventricular high-intensity signal areas in the white matter), only one Sherpa (14%) showed similar changes in the scans, presenting neurological symptoms at extreme altitude. The neurological examination was normal in all three groups, and no neuroimaging abnormalities were detected in the control group.

4. The significant differences, in both clinical and neuroimaging terms, suggest that Sherpa highlanders have better brain protection when exposed to extreme altitude. Although the key to protection against cerebral hypoxia cannot be established, it is possible that an increase in the usually short period of acclimatization could minimize brain damage in those low-landers who attempt the highest summits without supplementary oxygen.

Link to study of neurology of lowland climbers and Sherpas.