Evolution of the troubled mind

I just listened to a recent edition of ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind on evolutionary approaches to mental illness. While the topic isn’t new, it’s interesting that the two clinicians try to directly apply some of the ideas to their work treating patients with mental disorders.

Almost all evolutionary accounts of mental illness attempt to explain why we still have mental illness when it so markedly reduces the chances of reproductive success.

Most theories, and indeed the ones discussed on the programme, argue that in small doses the genes that raise risk for mental illness are useful in promoting creativity (e.g. psychosis / mania), maternal withdrawal (e.g. in post-pregnancy depression), self-preservation (e.g. anxiety) or some other presumably adaptive behaviour in specific situations.

I’m fairly tolerant of these theories, on the basis that they’re hard to demonstrate but plausible, but I have less time for Paul McClean’s ‘triune brain’ theory which one of the interviewers seems to favour.

In fact, everytime I hear the phrase ‘reptilian brain’, I reach for my spear.

This is often invoked in discussions about evolutionary psychology as a seemingly more sensible alternative to Freudian theories.

What makes me chuckle is that they are remarkably similar. Freud argued that we are a subject to evolutionary ancient drives of the Id that must be controlled by the Ego, McLean suggested that we are a subject to evolutionary ancient drives of the reptilian brain that must be controlled by the neocortex.

For an updated and significantly more sophisticated version of these arguments, neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp’s 2002 article [pdf] on the weakness of evolutionary psychology without neuroscience is well worth a read.

While we’re on the subject, distinguished biologist and sufferer of depression Lewis Wolpert recently published an open-access article on ‘Depression in an evolutionary context’ which is well worth a look.

Link on AITM on evolutionary approaches to psychiatry.
pdf of Panksepp’s article on ‘neurevolutionary psychology’.
Link to Wolpert’s article on evolution and depression.

Dr Mezmer’s Dictionary of Bad Psychology

The Devil’s Dictionary was a famously satirical book by Ambrose Bierce where he lampooned almost everything, in alphabetical order. He famously defined the brain as “an apparatus with which we think we think”, but now, a similarly cutting dictionary has been dedicated to psychology.

Dr Mezmer’s Dictionary of Bad Psychology contains a wealth of useful definitions, covering the everything from the hard edge of cognitive science to the fluffy gloss of pop psychology.

Behaviorism: A psychological movement, now extinct, that is built on the premise that you are what you do, and you do because of what you have done. Replaced by humanistic psychology (you are what you feel), cognitive science (you are what you think), Dr. Atkins (you are what you eat) and modern advertising (you are what we say).

Link to Dr Mezmer’s Dictionary of Bad Psychology.

Viktor Frankl and Man’s Search for Meaning

I’ve just finished reading the wonderful Man’s Search for Meaning, a 1946 book written by psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor E. Frankl, where he discusses his experiences and observations as a Nazi concentration camp inmate.

The book comes in two parts, the first recounts Frankl’s experience as an inmate in two concentration camps; the second discusses the ideas behind the form of psychotherapy he developed, called logotherapy.

Unlike narrative accounts of concentration camp life, such as Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, Frankl describes scenes rather than a story and uses them to explore the psychology of both the oppressed and the oppressors in the camp.

The book is particularly outstanding in that it explores the social complexities of the concentration camps with remarkable subtlety, noting when the failings of the inmates and the humanity of the guards were present. He highlights that these seemingly out-of-place responses had the most impact amid the brutality of camp life.

It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils. Certainly, it was a considerable achievement for a guard or foreman to be kind to the prisoners in spite of all the camp’s influences, and, on the other hand, the baseness of a prisoner who treated his own companions badly was exceptionally contemptible. Obviously the prisoners found the lack of character in such men especially upsetting, while they were profoundly moved by the smallest kindness received from any of the guards. [p93]

In a sense, Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment just re-iterated what Frankl was saying years before – that coercive systems breed their own conformity and that average people need extraordinary courage to step outside the norm.

Frankl’s form of psychotherapy is influenced partly by his wartime experiences and draws on the fact that some concentration camp inmates could still find purpose in their lives despite the hellish conditions.

The therapy attempts to help people who are experiencing inescapable suffering to cope better, by looking at ways in which they can find meaning in their lives.

Paradoxically, suggests Frankl, for some the experience of suffering is the one thing that inspired a discovery of meaning in a previously superficial existence. Accepting that all life involves some suffering allows us to use the experience to better understand ourselves and others.

Frankl was not the only mind doctor in the concentration camps, indeed he was among a long list of professionals who were interred.

Psychologist Bruno Bettleheim famously wrote the article ‘Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations’ after his experiences.

Bettleheim, best known for his work on child psychology, was a complex character whose reputation has fluctuated greatly since his death.

Even the story of his article on concentration camp psychology is fascinatingly complex, as recounted in a 1997 article [pdf] by Christian Fleck and Albert Müller.

Link to Wikipedia article on ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ (thanks Ceny!)
pdf of article ‘Bettleheim and the Concentration Camps’.

My mind on my money and my money on my mind

This is an excerpt from quite possibly the geekiest forensic pathology article I have ever read. Three pathologists discuss the physics of how a Mexican coin ended up in the brain of a dead shooting victim.

They speculate he may have been holding it in his hand while shielding his head and the bullet impacted on the coin and both ended up deep in the brain. Oh, but with maths.

The images on the left are an artist’s reconstruction of the position of the man when shot and the path of the bullet, and a photo of the coin in the dead man’s brain.

Items that become accessory or secondary projectiles usually possess a minimal amount of energy, producing superficial or insignificant wounds. The secondary projectile in this case, a coin, gained sufficient kinetic energy to penetrate the scalp, skull, and brain. We believe the coin was being held by the decedent in his left hand next to his head at the time of the shooting. The bullet passed through the hand, producing the described injury and picking up the coin as a secondary projectile before entering the head.

The coin, a 1970 Mexican 50-centavo piece, was 25 mm in diameter with a weight of 6.4 g. In comparison, the diameter of a 1970 U.S. quarter dollar coin is 24.3 mm with a weight of 5.6 g. Both coins contain a mixture of copper and nickel, and the U.S. coin is coated with silver. The mixture of nickel and copper is relatively soft and permits deformation, as seen in this case. The primary projectile, a .380-caliber automatic Colt pistol 9- √ó 17-mm Winchester Silvertip bullet, weighs 5.1 g, with a rated muzzle velocity of 304 m/second (1000 feet/second). The mass of the conjoined projectile more than doubled with addition of the coin, yet retained sufficient velocity to produce the described lethal injury.

We attempted to see if this would be theoretically possible using some simple physical principles. Under ideal conditions, this event represents a form of an inelastic collision. We assumed that there was conservation of momentum between the oncoming bullet and the departing conjoined bullet-coin mass that subsequently penetrated the skull and brain. If momentum is conserved during this collision, then the mass of the bullet multiplied by its velocity would equal the mass of the conjoined bullet and 50-centavo coin multiplied by their departing velocity. The velocity of the bullet just prior to striking the coin is unknown and could not be determined.

For our calculations, we used the known muzzle velocity of this ammunition, understanding the limitations of such an assumption. We also calculated the kinetic energy and momentum of the oncoming bullet and exiting conjoined bullet-coin before and after collision. The results indicate two things: as expected in an inelastic collision, the kinetic energy of the conjoined bullet and coin is much less than that of the oncoming bullet, and the velocity of the conjoined projectile drops by greater than a factor of two. No doubt some of this loss in kinetic energy resulted from the energy expended in deforming the Mexican coin. The calculated loss in velocity of the bullet postcollision slows this projectile (i.e., the conjoined bullet/coin) to <150 meters per second (<450 feet/second). However, this velocity would still be well in excess of the minimal velocity needed to penetrate skin and bone, which has been reported to be about 66 meters per second (200 feet/second).

Forensic pathology has this morbid deadpan geekiness about it which just makes it so interesting to read.

You can just see them in the pathology room, arguing about what happened and sketching calculations on the back of envelopes.

Link to PubMed entry for article.

The history and psychology of wine

The May issue of The Psychologist has a freely available cover article on wine which takes a suitably meandering route through the history and psychology of the fermented grape.

It’s full of fascinating facts from times past mixed in with recent findings from research studies.

I particularly liked this section, which starts with an ancient Persian decision-making technique (still widely used during weekends in London) and goes on to look at the influence of music on wine purchasing:

Many psychoactive substances have been associated with creativity, and ancient Persians are reported to have used wine to facilitate decision making. An issue would be explored whilst intoxicated and, the next day, the conclusions that stood up to sober scrutiny were adopted.

Some psychologists have demonstrated associations between music played in retail outlets and subsequent wine purchases. Playing classical or pop music does not influence the amount of wine purchased but appears to influence the average price of bottles selected, with classical music leading to sales of more expensive wines (Areni & Kim, 1993). It also appears that playing French or German music influences selections, with more purchases of wines from the same origin as the music (North et al., 1999).

There’s also plenty more ammunition in the article for anyone wanting to convince themselves that wine snobbery is bunk. For example, adding red food colouring to white wine is enough to convince wine masters that they can ‘nose’ red wine scents.

Unfortunately, the article on the webpage is almost impossible to read because of the broken formatting, so I suggest just reading it straight from the pdf.

Link to article ‘On vines and minds’.
pdf of same.

Full disclosure: I’m an unpaid associate editor of The Psychologist but am ignorant about wine!

2008-04-25 Spike activity

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

BBC science programme The Material World has a great feature on the blood-brain barrier. I love the blood-brain barrier!

In light of the recent resurgence of a penis theft panic in Congo, here’s a link to an old article of mine on the psychology of penis theft beliefs.

Sharp Brains rounds up a fantastic series of interviews with neuroscientists.

Professor Semir Zeki has a posse, sorry… blog.

The Times has a review of a new book on the behavioural genetics of personality.

A remarkably comprehensive article on the drug industry’s underhand tactics with antipsychotic drugs is published by the St Petersburg Times.

Cognitive Daily looks at the desensitising effect of violent video games.

Research to test human brain implants to control robot arms is submitted for review in Japan, reports Pink Tentacle.

The New York Times has an interview with Daniel Gilbert on the curious psychology of happiness.

Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg writes about brain science and the biology of belief.

ABC Radio National have had a couple of good shows on food and the evolution of the brain; and hearing, lip reading and language perception.

Does language shape cognition? The New York Times re-examines the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in light of new research.

Discover Magazine has an interesting short article on how earthquake prediction algorithms also apply to epileptic seizures.

The ‘top ten mind myths‘ series is concluded by PsyBlog.

Frontal Cortex has a fascinating discussion of how society regards MRI scans, compared to the limits of the science.

Current tools are not very good at identifying ‘kiddie psychopaths‘, reports the BPS Research Digest.

Treatment Online looks at a study that tracked how the balance of genes and environment differs on women’s paths to alcoholism.

Some recent books on consciousness are discussed by My Mind of Books.

Sexy serotonin tattoo

Carl Zimmer has been collecting science tattoos for a while now, but recently posted this tattoo of Hayley who has the molecular structure of serotonin tattooed elegantly over her body.

I’m sure there’s some relevant chat-up line for exactly such a situation when you meet someone with serotonin tattooed across their butt, but I’m too tired to try and formulate it, so I shall leave it as an exercise for the reader.

Of course, if you’ve been drinking, refrain from trying to incorporate G coupled receptors into your chat-up line, it’s obviously going to end with someone getting a slap.

Link to serotonin tattoo (thanks Sandra!).

I’m on the drug that killed Paul Erdős

In the wake of the Nature survey that found that 20% of scientists admit to using brain enhancing drugs, Wired has just published an article detailing what drugs their scientist readers use to keep on keepin’ on.

Although the drugs issue is obviously the headline-grabber, the publication also has a great feature on cognitive enhancement that largely covers tips, tricks and techniques to boost your mental skills that aren’t drug-related.

The article itself is anecdotally interesting, but has a curious tone throughout:

Surprisingly large numbers of people appear to be using brain-enhancing drugs to work harder, longer and better. They’re popping pills normally prescribed for narcolepsy or attention-deficit disorder to improve their performance at work and school.

“We aren’t the teen clubbers popping uppers to get through a hard day running a cash register after binge drinking,” wrote a Ph.D. research scientist who regularly takes a wakefulness drug called Provigil, normally prescribed for narcolepsy. “We are responsible humans.”

Whenever people talk about using drugs, they’re always keen to distance themselves from that sort of drug user. You know, the ones that aren’t responsible.

This belies the fact that most people use most drugs with few problems. Even teen clubbers popping uppers.

While all drugs have risks and illicit street drugs increase the health risks and definitely have an impact on body and brain function, it’s only a minority of drug users who have problems that interfere with their daily lives.

For example, a recent study found that 4% of Australian workers use the (fairly nasty) drug methamphetamine. The figure rises to over 11% for 18-29 year olds. That more than 1 in 10.

While the study found that using methamphetamine significantly increases chances of a range of health problems, it’s still the minority of users that report significant problems. This is the typical pattern for studies on drug use.

In other words, drugs are bad for you but most people manage the risks. A small minority, of course, don’t, and die instantly or suffer long-term consequences.

The benefit and using and abusing prescription drugs for ‘brain doping’ is largely in the fact that you can be sure of the purity of the product and that probably (depending on how you acquire them) you’re not funding a vicious criminal network.

At the end of the day though, the process is the same, whether you’re using legal drugs, illegal drugs, for recreation or for performance.

Just make sure you’re educated about the risks and know the consequences. Just like everything else in life.

Link to Wired.com Readers’ Brain-Enhancing Drug Regimens.
Link to Wired ‘Give Your Intellect a Boost’ techniques.

Champagne neuronova

Not a moment after I wonder whether Nature Neuroscience’s podcast has succumbed to rock n’ roll disaster, one of the NeuroPod team calls in to say all is well and the new edition is online.

Kerri from NeuroPod here. I’m happy to report that after a few months’ break, NeuroPod is back (April’s edition went live yesterday) and will be coming at you monthly for the rest of this year. They tried to make me go to rehab…and I said, neuro, neuro, neuro.

This month, we make some risky decisions, liken working memory to a digital camera, link stress and anxiety to genetics and explore the unfathomable world of the teenage brain.

I hope you enjoy the new show. We’re excited to be back, and very touched that we were missed.

Link to NeuroPod webpage.
mp3 of April NeuroPod.

Sweets with a neurotransmitter as an ingredient

We’ve featured various sorts of brain candy sweets before on Mind Hacks, but the Japanese sweets Aha! Brain take the concept a step further by including an actual neurotransmitter as an ingredient.

The lime flavour includes the neurotransmitter GABA, while other flavours have branched chain amino acids and something called forskolin in them instead.

All of which are important in brain functioning but whether actually eating them as sugar-coated candies will do you any good is anyone’s guess.

Link to description and brave first-person report!

Neuroscience of meditation and attention

This month’s Trends in Cognitive Sciences has a fantastic review article on the neuroscience of meditation – focusing on how the contemplative practice alters and sharpens the brain’s attention systems.

The full article is available online as a pdf, and discusses what cognitive science studies have told us about the short and long-term impact of meditation on the mind and brain.

Meditation is now being quite extensively studied by cognitive science owing to the clear effects it has on the brain, and on the increasing evidence for its benefit in mental health.

A recent review of ‘mindfulness’ meditation-based therapy found that although research is in its early stages and not all possibilities have been ruled out, there’s good evidence from the existing RCTs that it’s particularly good in preventing relapse in severe depression.

The Trends article, which largely focused on the neuroscience research, makes the distinction between two types of meditation: ‘focused attention’ meditation – that involves focusing on a particular thing and refocusing if you become distracted by thoughts or sensations; and ‘open monitoring’ meditation which involves nonreactively monitoring the content of experience and acting as almost a detached observer to feelings and mental events.

This is an excerpt where the authors discuss the experimental evidence for the long-term ‘open monitoring’ or OM meditation:

Long-term practice of OM meditation is also thought to result in enduring changes in mental and brain function. Specifically, because OM meditation fosters nonreactive awareness of the stream of experience without deliberate selection of a primary object, intensive practice can be expected to reduce the elaborative thinking that would be stimulated by evaluating or interpreting a selected object. In line with this idea, Slagter et al. recently found that three months of intensive OM meditation reduced elaborative processing of the first of two target stimuli (T1 and T2) presented in a rapid stream of distracters…

Because participants were not engaged in formal meditation during task performance, these results provide support for the idea that one effect of an intensive training in OM meditation might be reduction in the propensity to ‘get stuck’ on a target, as reflected in less elaborate stimulus processing and the development of efficient mechanisms to engage and then disengage from target stimuli in response to task demands. From the description in Box 2,we anticipate a similar improvement in the capacity to disengage from aversive emotional stimuli following OM training, enabling greater emotional flexibility.

Moreover, the article includes many other studies that have reported interesting effects. For example, highly experienced focused attention meditators need minimal effort to sustain attentional focus, while even short courses on meditation can improve attention and decrease stress.

Most of the techniques are taken from Buddhist meditation practices and I’m sure Buddhists are cracking a wry smile as cognitive science is just starting to catch on to what they’ve been noting for thousands of years.

As for the neuroscience, I’m sure the remarkably science-savvy Dalai Lama is fascinated as he’s held a number of conferences with leading researchers to discuss the the intersection between Buddhist practice and cognitive science.

Link to abstract of article.
pdf of full-text.

Neuro killed the radio star

The excellent Neuroanthropology has just had a brief round up of podcasts on neuroscience or anthropology so you can satisfy all your brain science and human diversity listening desires.

It’s a really comprehensive list (and the anthropology podcasts are completely new to me) so there’s likely to be something to discover even if you’re the most diligent podcast enthusiast.

However, Nature’s NeuroPod podcast is still eerily silent and has been since December. Has life on the road taken its toll? Has one of them gone into rehab? I think we should be told.

Link to Neuroanthropology’s podcast round up.

Eric Kandel on drugs, neurobiology and the unconscious

Neurophilosophy has found a new video interview with neurobiologist Eric Kandel who talks about everything from long-term memory to free will to the unconscious.

Essentially, it’s a series of short reveries and soundbites where Kandel gives his views on a series of topics.

Part of it is obviously PR for his company (which is trying to develop memory enhancing drugs), but it’s a good chance to get Kandel’s take on some core contemporary issues.

Plus we get to see his bowtie again. What more can you ask for?

Link to Kandel video interview.

Hearing voices with your head in the sand

UK TV station Channel 4 broadcast a docudrama last night called The Doctor Who Hears Voices, a fictionalised account of an apparently real-life situation where psychologist Rufus May (who played himself) treated a junior doctor who began hearing hallucinated voices.

I’ve not seen it yet, although should be interesting viewing as May is a UK clinical psychologist who was himself diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 18.

His story is an interesting journey in itself and he’s a valuable critic of the mental health system, even if you’re not fully in agreement with all of his views.

The reviews have largely been positive and the UK’s largest mental health charity Mind have sung it’s praises.

However, The Independent’s TV critic Brian Viner obviously didn’t like the programme, which is fair enough, but also manages to add some pretty appalling prejudice in his review:

May thinks that society should embrace mentally ill people, not shun them, an admirable – enough ambition that is slightly clouded by the stark statistic that 50 murders a year are committed by people with mental-health problems; 1,200 a year kill themselves.

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that people with schizophrenia are at much greater risk of being victims of violence that perpetrators (one study found 14 times greater chance of being a victim of a violent crime that being arrested for one).

But I’m still slightly startled that this is used, as well as the shockingly high suicide rate, as something that might “cloud” an ambition not to shun people with mental health problems.

If a torrent of the programme turns online, I shall post a link to it so you can make your own mind up, or if you’d rather take the Viner route, you can just re-arrange your prejudices rather than do any serious consideration.

Link to Channel 4 info on film.

War psychiatry – in 100 words

Every month, the British Journal of Psychiatry has a 100 word summary of key issues in mental health and psychopathology. March’s edition had a fantastic summary of military psychiatry by consultant psychiatrist to the UK Army, Simon Wessely.

War is hell, but it can be a job–a strange job in which one voluntarily (these days) exposes oneself to the risk of physical and psychiatric injury. Our generation think we discovered post-traumatic stress disorder, but it is neither new, nor the commonest, mental health problem in the UK Armed Forces. That ‘honour’ goes to depression and alcohol. Are these always the result of going to war? No, things are rarely that simple. Can we treat them? Sometimes–but what makes people good soldiers makes them bad patients. Can we prevent them? Possibly–but only if we don’t send people to war.

As a follow-up to our recent post on Tim Crow’s ideas on schizophrenia, this month’s BJP has a 100 word summary, by Crow, where he does a remarkable job of getting the details of the genetics and neurobiology into succinct description of his theory.

Link to ‘War Psychiatry – in 100 words’.
Link to ‘Psychosis: the price Homo Sapiens pays for language ‚Äì in 100 words’.