Ice age

ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind recently had an excellent programme on amphetamine, discussing its varying uses from its original selling point as a widely abused nasal decongestant to its modern popularity as a kiddie behavioural control agent in the age of methylphenidate (Ritalin).

One of the most fascinating parts is where the guest, history of science professor Nicolas Rasmussen, discusses how after amphetamine was discovered in the 1930s the drug companies desperately tried to find an illness which it could be prescribed for.

Smith, Kline & French wanted to find a big market and so they looked at common diseases that you know might plausibly be treated by an adrenaline derivative and they tried it out on a huge range of conditions. Menstrual cramps, bed wetting, you name it — it turns out actually to work for bed wetting if you give it to little kids who have that problem, probably by making them sleep shallower — but also in psychiatry for depression, and that’s what really caught on.

They tried it for an enormous range of conditions through medical experts and the clinical trials where the drug didn’t work out well weren’t published, because that was already the arrangement then, when a drug company funded a trial unless it fit their marketing needs the results wouldn’t be published.

Great to see the spirit of the 1930s is still with us today.

The programme also discusses how the subculture use of the drug interacted with its ‘official’ uses in the mind of the public and policy makers to give speed the image it has today.

It seems the programme is based on a new book by Rasmussen called On Speed and I love the link at the bottom of the book’s website which says ‘Purchase On Speed’. I’ve drunk a lot of coffee. Will that do?

If you’re interested in a book on the science of amphetamines, Leslie Iverson’s book Speed, Ecstasy, Ritalin is simply wonderful and just so much fun to read, as I noted in an enthusiastic review last year.

The AITM programme is a fantastic introduction to the fascinating story of amphetamine, so a great place to begin.

Link to ‘Wakey Wakey! The many lives of amphetamine’.

2008-10-17 Spike activity

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

The Waves of Mu art project is reviewed by The Neurocritic. Looks as beautiful as it sounds.

BBC News says internet use ‘good for the brain’? The scientific article has not yet appeared and the guy has a book out on, er, how good the internet is for your brain. I remain suspicious until I see the hard data.

Fantastic Neurophilosophy piece discusses a new study where a man with a surgically re-attached hand shows brain re-organisation to its pre-amputation state.

The New York Times has another one of its great features on the personal experience of mental illness – this with stories of men and women with eating disorders.

Another fascinating study on the effect of death salience (reminding people of their mortality) finds it can influence environmental concerns – in either direction, according to the BPS Research Digest.

M’Lady, PsyBlog has a short but sweet piece on a study that has found romantic thoughts increase male chivalry.

A conversation between BBC News and a robot – who happens to be the winner of the 2008 Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence. You can have a conversation with the same robot yourself.

H+ Magazine launches for the transhumanist in your life. Full of slightly unrealistic but commendable neuroscience speculation.

Robert Burton, neurologist and author of ‘Being Certain’, is interviewed by SciAm Mind Matters.

Neuroanthropology has a video segment on what archaeology can tell us about early behaviour (sometimes called ‘cognitive archaeology’).

A patient left in the coma-like persistent vegetative state after a car crash recovers some function after magnetic brain stimulation, reports BBC News.

My Mind on Books previews an interesting looking tome called ‘Obsession: A History’.

The ever-excellent Cognitive Daily tackles whether love and sexual desire are the same.

Memory, brainwashing and the Cold War

I’ve just watched part two of Adam Curtis‘ series on the relationship between memory and the history of the 20th century where he explores the link between brain washing, the emergence of cognitive science and the politics of the cold war.

Curtis is a documentary maker who is particularly interested in the link between psychology and history and creates gripping programmes that are always thought-provoking even if you don’t agree with all of his analysis.

He has a gift for finding archive material and this programme is no exception where he finds film footage from previously secret research programmes.

The programme is actually from his 1995 series The Living Dead which tackles the relationship between memory and the political manipulation of history.

The first part is about how the ‘official’ memory of the Second World War was created – a process psychologists call ‘social remembering‘. Essentially, the social psychology of how we construct history, either on the scale of cultures, subcultures or families.

However, the second part focuses specifically on the rise of cognitive science and how theories of memory during the 50s and 60s were key to some of the Cold War efforts to research and create ‘brain washing’ and other mind manipulation techniques.

Curtis is probably best known to psychologists for his remarkably 2002 series Century of the Self where he tracked the Freudian idea of the self as one of the major social influences of the 20th century.

Virtually all of Curtis’ programmes are available on Google Video and they’re fantastic viewing. One of the few people who can genuinely said to be making powerful intellectual arguments on psychology through the medium of video.

Link to part two of The Living Dead.

The Lazarus sign: a slight return

Occasionally, brain-dead patients make movements, owing to the fact that the spinal reflexes are still intact. The most complex, and presumably the most terrifying, is called the Lazarus Sign. It is where the brain-dead patient extends their arms and crosses them over their chest – Egyptian mummy style.

About 20% to 40% of brain dead patients can show spontaneous movements particularly when the body is pricked with sharp objects.

While these movements are usually brief twitches, occasionally the movements can be in an extended sequence, as reported in this 1992 Journal of Neurosurgery case study about a 67-year-old lady who died from a brain haemorrhage.

At 11:15 am on February 20, brain death was declared and consent for final respirator removal was obtained from the patient’s family. The possibility of the appearance of Lazarus’ sign was explained to the family, and a video recording was made.

Five minutes after respirator removal, respiratory-like movements occurred three times; both shoulders adducted and slow cough like movements were identified. Lazarus’ sign immediately followed these respiratory-like movements. The forearms were pronated and the wrist joints extended bilaterally. Fingers on the left hand were extended, but those on the right were flexed as if grasping. Subsequently, flexion and extension in the knee and foot joints were repeatedly observed. Slow supination of both feet occurred. Finally, the left forearm was adducted to the side of the body, and the right hand pronated.

The movements continued for about 3.5 minutes, during which time blood pressure was 46/35 mm Hg and pulse rate was about 90 beats/min with a regular sinus rhythm. Cardiac arrest occurred at 11:35 am.

Link to PubMed entry for case study.
Link to brief popular article on Lazarus sign.

Myths of the sleep deprived

New Scientist has an interesting piece by sleep psychologist Jim Horne who sets about busting the myth that modern society causes large scale sleep deprivation.

It’s full of fascinating facts and uses the phrase “to eke out the very last quantum of sleepiness” which is just lovely.

Until recently, people living above the Arctic circle slept much longer in winter than in summer. There are reports from the 1950s of Inuit sleeping up to 14 hours a day during the darkest months compared with only 6 in the summertime. Given the opportunity, we can all learn to significantly increase daily sleep on a more or less permanent basis. When it is cut back to normal we are sleepy for a few days, and then the sleepiness disappears.

Far from our being chronically sleep-deprived, things have never been better. Compare today’s sleeping conditions with those of a typical worker of 150 years ago, who toiled for 14 hours a day, six days a week, then went home to an impoverished, cold, damp, noisy house and shared a bed not only with the rest of the family but with bedbugs and fleas.

What of the risk of a sleep shortage causing obesity? Several studies have found a link, including the Nurses’ Health Study, which tracked 68,000 women for 16 years (American Journal of Epidemiology, vol 164, p 947).

The hazard, though real, is hardly anything to worry about. It only becomes apparent when habitual sleep is below 5 hours a day, which applies to only 5 per cent of the population, and even then the problem is minimal. Somebody sleeping 5 hours every night would only gain a kilogram or so of fat per year. To put it in perspective, you could lose weight at the same rate by reducing your food intake by about 30 calories per day, equivalent to about one bite of a muffin, or by exercising gently for 30 minutes a week.

One of the lessons from sleep research is that we’re actually pretty bad at judging how much sleep we need and even how much we actually get.

This seems to be particularly the case for people with insomnia who tend to underestimate the amount they sleep and overestimate the time it takes them to drop off.

The article is great guide to sleep myths and how they’re addressed by the scientific research and surprisingly for New Scientist, the article is open-access.

NewSci staffer having sleepless nights over their closed-access policy or just someone asleep at the wheel? Answers on a night cap please…

Link to NewSci piece ‘Time to wake up to the facts about sleep’.

Encephalon 56 springs into life

The latest edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just hit the wires, if you interpret ‘just’ as meaning three days ago (sorry about that, I can only connect to the internet when sitting in the bathroom for reasons of signal unusualness). However, it’s being hosted by the excellent Combining Cognits and is ready for action.

A couple of my favourites include a post from The Neurocritic on a recent study on cortisol and anti-social behaviour and a piece from Sports are 80% mental on psychological momentum and winning streaks in sport.

There’s plenty more mind and brain writing, and good to see a few new authors in the latest run-down.

Link to Encephalon 56.

Test your moral radar

Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel and psychologist Fiery Cushman have designed a ‘Moral Sense Test‘ that asks respondents for their takes on various moral dilemmas so they can compare the responses of philosophers and non-philosophers.

You may recognise Schwitzgebel’s name as he writes The Splintered Mind blog that we often link to, owing to his talent for great ideas and explaining philosophy of mind in a compelling and eye-catching manner.

He’s been involved in project comparing the intuitions of philosophers and non-philosophers for a while now, and he’s now asking that you take part in the research.

The test takes about 15-20 minutes and has a number of interesting moral dilemmas for you to ponder.

Link to the ‘Moral Sense Test’.

Psychedelic Brittanica

Today’s Nature has an interesting review of a new book, called Albion Dreaming, on the history of LSD in the UK. The book also has a slightly ramshackle but wonderfully engrossing website which is full of fascinating information on LSD.

The site has a great collection of quotes by famous Britons where they describe their experiences with LSD. One of the most eloquent is by the actor, writer and general all round good chap, Stephen Fry, where he writes in his autobiography:

I don’t know if you have ever taken LSD, but when you do so the doors of perception, as Aldous Huxley, Jim Morrison and their adherents ceaselessly remind us, swing open wide. That is actually the sort of phrase, unless you are William Blake that only makes sense when there is some LSD swimming about inside you. In the cold light of the cup of coffee and banana sandwich that are beside me now it appears to be nonsense, but I expect you know what it is taken to mean.

LSD reveals the whatness of things, their quiddity, their essence. The wateriness of water is suddenly revealed to you, the carpetness of carpets, the woodness of wood, the yellowness of yellow, the fingernailness of fingernails, the allness of all, the nothingness of all, the allness of nothing. For me music gives access to every one of these essences of existence, but at a fraction of the social or financial cost of a drug and without the need to cry ‘Wow!’ all the time, which is one of LSD’s most distressing and least endearing side-effects.

The review notes that Albion Dreaming discusses how the UK played quite a significant role in the LSD revolution of the 1960s.

In fact, at one point, half the world’s LSD was produced in the UK before the production was smashed by Operation Julie. The BBC has a fantastic website about the history of Op Julie that talks to some of the key figures and discusses the legendary trip-impeding police operation.

Link to Nature review of Albion Dreaming.
Link to Albion Dreaming website.
Link to BBC website on Operation Julie.

Escaping down an electrode

Esquire magazine (of all places) has an excellent neuroscience article that discusses the case of Erik Ramsey, a young man with locked-in syndrome whose only hope for communicating with the outside world is a prototype brain computer interface that needs to be implanted directly into his cortex.

Locked-in syndrome is a condition that can occur after certain forms of brain stem stroke. The brain stem acts as the relay station to the peripheral nerves of the body, and hence the control of muscles.

The syndrome is where the person is mentally fine but are physically unable to move any muscle in the body, usually except muscles associated with eyes.

Current methods of communicating typically involve having someone hold up a board with the letters of the alphabet on it. The assistant starts reading off the letters and the locked-in person moves their eye when they arrive at the right letter, and through this method, they slowly spell out sentences.

Famously, Jean-Dominique Bauby created one of the most incredible books ever written, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, using this method after becoming locked-in.

There is currently a great hope for ‘brain computer interfaces’ that, with a bit of training, might allow locked-in people to communicate through a computer system that translates specific types of neural activity into letters or words.

This is usually described as translating ‘thoughts into words’ but most systems simply link specific patterns of brain activation to specific computer outputs, so as long as they can reliably distinguish between different types of brain activity and reliably produce specific responses the job is done.

In other words, if thinking of sea lions reliably produces an ‘A’ and thinking of a scratch-my-nose action reliably produces a ‘B’ (and so on) this is enough, but the leap between the content of thoughts and the output is not at the level of meaning (where thinking of sea lions would produce ‘sea lions’ as an output).

Interestingly, the training method most of these systems use largely relies on operant conditioning (a type of trial and error learning). We know that we can be conditioned to have certain responses unconsciously, so it may be the case that people using the system don’t ‘feel’ like their thinking about something specific for any particular response. Eventually it just ‘happens’, like driving a car.

The researcher behind the system described in the Esquire article is neuroscientist Phillip Kennedy who was recently featured in an excellent article from the Dana Foundation on his work.

Link to Esquire ‘The Unspeakable Odyssey of the Motionless Boy’ (via FC).
Link to Dana ‘Neural Implant Aims to Restore Speech to the Paralyzed’.

Channelling Colonel Saunders

Shirley Ghostman is a TV psychic whose guests are completely unaware that he’s a spoof and his over-the-top antics are just the creation of comedian Marc Wootton.

In one episode he goes up against well-known psychologist and skeptic Chris French whose dry responses turn out to be funnier than Ghostman’s camp send-up.

French is head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmith’s College in London, which studies the psychological attributes that lead people to believe in the paranormal.

Some of the unit’s publications are online in their archive although you’ll have to wait for one of the best, “The ‘Haunt’ Project: An attempt to build a ‘haunted’ room by manipulating complex electromagnetic fields and infrasound”, as it’s soon to be published in a special edition of the neuropsychology journal Cortex.

Link to Shirtley Ghostman vs a wonderfully sarcastic Chris French.

A bolt from the Blue Brain

Seed Magazine has got video of a great talk by Henry Markham, the director of the Blue Brain Project which is developing the world’s largest simulation of networks of individual neurons in an attempt to understand the large scale dynamics of the brain.

Their ambition is to be able to run a simulation on the scale of the whole human brain within a decade.

If you want a good summary of where the ambitious project is at, Seed recently had an excellent Jonah Lehrer piece on the research that we featured earlier this year.

Markham’s talk is interesting not solely for his take on the project and its aims, but also for the fantastic visualisation he uses to illustrate what it’s doing.

Link to video of ‘Designing the Human Mind’ talk.

Banjo brain surgery

Surely this must be the greatest headline for a BBC News story ever: Banjo Used in Brain Surgery.

Although the banjo wasn’t in the hands of the surgeons it was still an essential part of the operation. It was played by legendary Blue Grass musician Eddie Adcock who was having surgery to install a deep brain stimulation device to treat an essential tremor that had been affecting his playing.

The BBC News story has a video of the neurosurgery and the banjo playing, and it is pure genius. Probably the best thing you’ll see all year.

Essential tremor is a condition where there is a continuing deterioration in areas of the brain that control movement. This causes a tremor that usually appears when the person tries to act or move, although can lead to a ‘resting tremor’ that’s also present at other times.

Essential tremor is not Parkinson’s disease, which, while also associated with tremor, is a much more serious and disabling condition in many ways. There does seem to be a link though, as people with essential tremor are more likely to develop Parkinson’s, although this still only happens in the minority of cases.

However, deep brain stimulation can be used to treat the movement difficulties of both Parkinson’s and essential tremor. It involves sinking an electrode into the thalamus, a deep brain area that is part of the motor loop – a circuit that helps co-ordinate movement.

In fact, there are two parts to the motor loop – the direct and indirect pathway – an each play a complementary part in directing movement, and each of which needs to be balanced with itself and with each other. When damage to these circuits affects this balance, the result is that it causes too much activity one way, which causes a compensatory response the other, and so on.

Imagine two people, completely unaware of each other, trying to balance an uneven seesaw. The oscillations in the control system cause oscillations in movement, and this is what you can see in tremor.

DBS works by sending electrical impulses at a certain frequency into the thalamus to dampen down the oscillations. However, the oscillatory push-push cycle is not the same for everyone, and the best spot in the motor loop itself will also differ.

To get the best result the surgeons tweak the electrical pulse settings and try different areas.

To make sure it’s having the desired effect, the patient is awake and they ask them to move. When they see that they’ve hit the sweet spot and the pulses are in time, they know their job is done.

One of Eddie Adcock’s impairments is that he has tremor, but the main impact on his life is that it affects his banjo playing. So the most sensible thing to do is to tweak the system while he’s playing the banjo to optimise the effect for the thing that’s most important to him.

And that’s why a banjo was used in brain surgery.

Link to BBC video of ‘Banjo Used in Brain Surgery’.

2008-10-10 Spike activity

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

Pfizer have been caught manipulating studies. Again. This time for the drug Neurontin. The New York Times has the full story.

Neurophilosophy discusses a new way of understanding the neurobiology of hallucinations.

An excellent Carl Zimmer article on the genetics of intelligence is available from Scientific American.

Neurotopia examines a case of a phantom erectile penis after sex reassignment surgery.

A wonderful quote from Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Charles Sherrington starts an excellent piece on calcium imaging from Neurophilosophy.

The BPS Research Digest asks what is it about eye wiggling that helps people recover from trauma in an article on EMDR therapy.

Psychoanalytic Therapy Wins Backing. The New York Times reports on the recent meta-analysis that found that one year or more psychoanalytic therapy helps complex psychiatric patients.

NPR Radio has a short piece on research suggesting we may not be as good at multi-tasking as we think.

A new study [pdf] finding that 44% of children diagnosed with child bipolar disorder go on to have adult bipolar disorder is critiqued by Furious Seasons.

Advances in the History of Psychology has a short but interesting piece asking whatever happened to the male menopause?

A study that used electrodes implanted in the brain to record neural function during remembering is covered by PsyBlog.

Bogot√° bound

I’m off to Bogot√° to attend the annual conference of the Association of Colombian Psychiatry, so apologies if updates are a little erratic, but I shall try and report back with the highlights here.

I’ve been kindly invited to give a talk in a symposium on psychosis where I’ll look forward to getting a distinctly Colombian perspective on my interest in the neuropsychology of delusions.

Web therapy

Web Therapy is an incredibly funny and wonderfully made web series about a psychologist who does chaotic three-minute therapy sessions via webcam. It stars Lisa Kudrow, who plays the over-involved Fiona Wallace who can’t quite keep her personal issues out of the sessions.

It’s a really simple premise but is a very well observed satire on therapy and has some sublimely funny moments as Wallace tries to use the therapy sessions to justify her bad behaviour.

To be honest, the thought of Lisa Kudrow playing a psychologist kind of put me off, owing to a hang-over from Friends, but she plays quite a different character and does a fantastic job .

Link to Web Therapy (via BoingBoing).

The science of shrinking human heads

I’ve just found a wonderful article on how the Jivaro-Shuar, an indigenous people from the upper Amazon basin, shrink human heads after killing their enemies in battle. It’s from the medical journal Neurosurgery but it’s most fascinating for what it reveals about the complex customs and social relations that surround the practice.

The actual head shrinking is the end point in a raid on an enemies camp which apparently happens periodically, as they are almost always in revenge for being the victim of an earlier raid.

The victim of the revenge raid is not necessarily the perpetrator of the last attack. The new target is picked out by the shaman while under the influence of a hallucinogenic beverage called natéma (apparently a type of ayahuasca).

The significance of this vengeance cycle is remarkably similar to the one described by Jared Diamond in a New Yorker article on violence in the Handa people of New Guinea that we covered earlier this year.

The article does explain the process of shrinking heads, if ever you find yourself with a spare one, as well as the complex ritual and ceremonies that accompany the process and seem to pervade the whole life and identity of the Jivaro-Shuar.

Anyway, on to the head shrinking. After carefully removing the skin from and discarding the skull, a ritual pot is used to heat water.

As the water begins to grow warm, with a command, the headman leads the warriors in the rite: he seizes what remains of the head by its hair and, with the warriors‚Äô hands laid upon his hand grasping the victim‚Äôs head, he dips the head three times in the water. As he does this, he intones, ‚ÄúI dip the head in the boa‚Äôs water.‚Äù The warriors in turn respond, ‚ÄúHe is boiling the head.‚Äù The skin of the head is then placed in the vessel and allowed to steep for 15 to 20 minutes as the participants watch in silence. When the water reaches a boil, the vessel is removed from the fire, and the skin is recovered from the water with a stick and hung up on the tip of a spear to dry….

They retrieve the skin from its place on the spear and bind the hair on its scalp. Eyelet holes are pierced through the base of the neck, transforming the skin into a sort of pouch. The mouth is sewn shut with darts from below as the participants intone: “He is sewing.” The eyelids are sutured closed in a similar manner.

With the enemy’s skin now a pouch with a single mouth, the base of the neck, the skin is dried with heated sand and stones. The sand is heated on a round, hollow plate. The senior member of the party leads the warriors involved in the kill in scooping up the sand with a vessel and pouring it into the head, then shaking the head to drive the sand as far into the pouch as possible. This is repeated for hours as the participants repeat the chant, “I am pouring sand.” A large flat stone is likewise heated in the fire and used, held with the help of a leaf folded for the purpose, on the outside layer of the skin. The head is then complete.

Interestingly, once made, the heads are usually discarded as the significance lies in the process rather than the product.

It’s a completely fascinating article and really worth reading in full.

Link to article ‘The science of shrinking human heads’.
Link to PubMed entry for same.