Brain lamp

Designer Alexander Lervik created this wonderful table lamp based on a 3D reconstruction of his own brain scan.

“MYBrain. The table lamp

A replica of the designer’s brain, originated from an MR scan at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

The image was processed through a 3D-printer, and became this unusual lamp shade design. Yes, it is bright.”

Although perhaps the coolest, this is not the first brain lamp we’ve come across.

Indeed, it would make a good accompaniment to the plasma brain lamp we featured back in early 2007.

Link to designer’s page for the brain lamp (via BoingBoing).

Lost in translation

ABC Radio National’s The Philosopher’s Zone recently broadcast a programme that tackled the philosophy of translating between languages – discussing whether particular ideas are just harder to express in certain languages, and whether it is possible ever to tie a word to a definite meaning.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m fascinated by words which don’t translate across languages, especially when they related to mental states or psychology.

One of my favourites is the Portuguese word saudade, which, as far as I can work out, refers to a type of wistful or sombre yearning for something that you’ve experienced in the past, with the underlying feeling that the wished for thing might never return and that the feeling is all that you have.

The programme looks at these issues beyond the case of single words, asking whether some sorts of thinking are a product of the language, which possibly allows for concepts to be dealt with in a different manner.

One of the most striking differences lies between analytic philosophy, largely produced by native English speakers that entails legal or scientific style reasoning as applied to concepts, and continental philosophy, which often deals with criticising the concepts of language itself and relies much more on rhetoric and analogy.

The most famous continental philosopher are French (Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze etc), so this provides a useful starting point for discussing whether the different approaches to philosophy are just the result of culture, or stem from the tools of language itself.

The second part of the programme deals with W.V. Quine’s views on language, which suggest that there is no definite distinction between statements we assume are meaningful by definition (e.g. a bachelor is an unmarried man) and those which are only true with reference to the outside world (e.g. the sun is shining in London).

Interestingly, the programme avoids discussing Wittgenstein, who thought that all philosophical issues were really just difficulties brought about by language.

Anyway, a fascinating discussion of an important topic.

Link to The Philosopher’s Zone on the philosophy of language.

Demanding sex differences

Language Log has a great post looking at differences in empathy between males and females, and highlights a new study showing race differences as well.

The punchline is that it’s actually really hard to say whether either of these results reflect true differences because the samples tend to be unrepresentative of the population, and measures of empathy tend to be influenced by the social situation in which they’re taken.

They grab this paragraph from a review article on empathy measurement:

In general, sex differences in empathy were a function of the methods used to assess empathy. There was a large sex difference favoring women when the measure of empathy was self-report scales; moderate differences (favoring females) were found for reflexive crying and self-report measures in laboratory situations; and no sex differences were evident when the measure of empathy was either physiological or unobtrusive observations of nonverbal reactions to another’s emotional state.

This article is from way back in ’83, but more recent studies have tended to support the main idea that the overall difference between men and women in empathy is fairly negligible when behaviour, rather than self-report, is examined.

These sorts of social influences on experimental findings are known as ‘demand characteristics‘.

The classic example is an attractive female researcher asking men about penis size, but the effects can be quite subtle and only come to light in subsequent replications of the study (if at all!).

One of my favourite studies in this area looked at the supposed tendency for people who experience ‘sensory deprivation’ to have hallucinations and suffer severe emotional and cognitive impairment.

In 1964 psychologists Martin Orne and Karl Scheibe compared two groups of participants in a sensory deprivation experiment.

One group of participants was greeted by white coated researchers standing next to emergency equipment, were asked for their medical history and given serious looking tests, were told to report any strange sensory distortions and were informed that if they wanted to stop the experiment, they had to press a panic button.

The other group was greeted informally by researchers in casual clothes, weren’t given any medical checks, and were told to report their experiences freely as they occurred. To stop the experiment, they just had to knock on the window.

The actual sensory deprivation procedure was the same for both groups, but the participants given the formal medical introduction reported greater emotional disturbance, unusual experiences and mental distress. Furthermore, they tended to do much worse on the cognitive tests given afterwards.

While this didn’t ‘disprove’ any of the unpleasant effects of sensory deprivation, it did show that they are heavily mediated by expectation which is implicitly inferred from the testing situation.

Needless to say, this can affect any type of study, so scientists are always on the look out to see if it might be responsible for new findings.

Link to Language Log article on empathy, sex and race.
Link to study on demand characteristics and sensory deprivation.

Court imitates life in antipsychotic drug battle

The New York Times has an article which skilfully captures one of the central dilemmas in mental health: deciding whether the benefits of psychiatric drugs outweigh their side-effects for any individual patient.

The story centres on the ongoing court case where the state of Alaska are suing drug company Eli Lilly over claims that the multinational failed to inform professionals and the public about the side-effects of the antipsychotic drug olanzapine (Zyprexa) despite knowing about them for some time.

Olanzapine is a useful and effective drug for managing psychosis and, for some people, the only effective treatment for severe mental illness.

But, like the other newer generation drugs in this class, causes weight gain and significantly increases the risk for heart disease and diabetes. Like all other antipsychotics, it can also leave you feeling groggy and reduce your ability to experience pleasure (owing to the fact it affects the dopamine ‘reward’ system).

While mental health professionals tend to focus on the benefits of the drug for the person’s mental state, patients tend to focus on its negative effects on their health and enjoyment.

This differing focus is partly because the mental health professionals, on the whole, are not the ones who have to take the drugs and experience their side-effects, but also because psychosis often means the person does not realise their thinking has become disturbed, meaning they don’t see the point of being prescribed medication in the first place.

This dilemma was rather poignantly mirrored in the Alaska court house. While the Alaska vs Eli Lilly case was going on in one courtroom, in the next was a case concerning whether an obviously disturbed man should be compelled to take olanzapine by his hospital.

The NYT piece covers the two cases, drawing parallels between the individual dilemma and the landmark legal action, and captures the dilemma very succinctly.

Link to NYT article ‘One Drug, Two Faces’ (via Furious Seasons).
Link to Furious Seasons coverage of the Alaska vs Eli Lilly case.

Why do some people sleepwalk?

I just found this short-but-sweet explanation for why sleepwalking occurs by neurologist Antonio Oliviero. It appears in this month’s Scientific American Mind:

People can perform a variety of activities while asleep, from simply sitting up in bed to more complex behavior such as housecleaning or driving a car. Individuals in this trancelike state are difficult to rouse, and if awoken they are often confused and unaware of the events that have taken place. Sleepwalking most often occurs during childhood, perhaps because children spend more time in the “deep sleep” phase of slumber. Physical activity only happens during the non–rapid eye movement (NREM) cycle of deep sleep, which precedes the dreaming state of REM sleep.

Recently my team proposed a possible physiological mechanism underlying sleepwalking. During normal sleep the chemical messenger gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) acts as an inhibitor that stifles the activity of the brain’s motor system. In children the neurons that release this neurotransmitter are still developing and have not yet fully established a network of connections to keep motor activity under control. As a result, many kids have insufficient amounts of GABA, leaving their motor neurons capable of commanding the body to move even during sleep. In some, this inhibitory system may remain underdeveloped—or be rendered less effective by environmental factors—and sleepwalking can persist into adulthood.

As a bonus, the page also has an explanation of why we experience the painful ‘brain freeze’ sensation when we eat ice cream too quickly.

UPDATE: Thanks to Danielle for sending this fascinating snippet:

I used to have a VERY SEVERE sleepwalking problem. This past summer, I researched the use of GABA for mild anxiety. Although there was a great deal of question over whether it could cross the blood-brain barrier, I thought it was worth a try. It didn’t work for anxiety at all – but I was surprised to notice that it cured my sleepwalking, which was completely unexpected! Now that I know more about the connection between GABA, slow-wave sleep, & sleepwalking, it makes sense. I think there may be real treatment or research potential there, but I have no idea to whom I should report this. Maybe you can do something with it?

Link to SciAmMind sleepwalking and brain freeze explanations.

The Lives They Left Behind

PsychCentral has alerted me to a wonderful online exhibit based on the lives of several psychiatric patients whose belongings were found in suitcases in an old asylum attic years after they had passed away.

All the individuals were patients at the Willard Asylum, some for as long as 62 years.

Unfortunately, the site is a bit over-Flashed which means it’s not the most intuitive to navigate, but it’s worth grappling with the menus at the bottom of the screen as the stories are incredibly touching.

The photo on the right is of ‘Frank’:

On June 7, 1945, Mr. Frank #27967 went into the Virginia Restaurant on Fulton Street in Brooklyn and was served a meal on a broken plate. He became upset and caused a disruption outside the restaurant, yelling and kicking garbage cans. The police were called, and, instead of arresting him, brought him to the psychiatric ward at Kings County Hospital. From there, he was transferred to Brooklyn State Hospital, and on April 9, 1946, he was admitted to Willard, one of a growing number of African American patients transferred to Willard from New York City in the 40s, due to over-crowding…

Mr. Frank # 27967 never escaped the consequences of that day outside the restaurant in 1945. In 1949, he was transferred from Willard to the Veterans Administration hospital in Canandaigua, NY, and in 1954 to the VA hospital in Pittsburgh. He died there 30 years later, having spent more than half his life in an institution.

The site also has a great deal of information about the hospital itself, audio recordings of memories of the institution and more information about the book and touring exhibition which is on the road right now.

In fact, it’s currently on show at the Cayuga Museum of History and Art in Auburn, New York.

Link to The Lives They Left Behind online exhibit.

Where angels no longer fear to tread

The Economist has an article which serves as an interesting summary of some of the recent work on the psychology and neuroscience of religious belief.

It’s a little bit clumsy in places. For example, it summarises some of the work on the role of the temporal lobes as saying that “religious visions are the result of epileptic seizures that affect this part of the brain”.

Certainly, temporal lobe seizures are associated with religious experiences. A recent review reported that about 0.5% to 3% of people with the condition experience them.

But this work suggests that this is only one factor and actually minor functional changes are probably more important in the general population [pdf].

It’s also important to note that this sort of neuroscience research typically looks at beliefs and experiences concerning the ‘supernatural’ elements of religion.

However, the Economist article also discusses some recent psychological research looking at the influence of religion on social reasoning and touches on the possible evolutionary explanations for the widespread and persistent nature of religious ideas.

Link to Economist article ‘Where angels no longer fear to tread’.

Common scents and the psychology of smell

Nerve has a brief but interesting interview with psychologist Rachel Herz who talks about her research on the sense of smell and how it can influence our mind and behaviour.

I’ve not encountered Herz’s work before but it turns out she’s done a great deal of scientific research on the psychology and neuroscience of smell and has just written a book, The Scent of Desire, which seems to present the science of smell in an accessible format.

The interview contains a number of gems, but this particularly caught my eye:

Why do we grow accustomed to odors, but not to something like sound? In other words, why is the stench of garbage outside my apartment nowhere near as distracting as the drilling?

When we experience olfactory adaptation, the receptor literally stops responding to a chemical in the air after about twenty minutes. We adapt to all the sensations that are out there, but when the drilling starts and stops, your attention focuses on it and you’re irritated.

Smell is a fascinating area, perhaps because it is relatively unstudied (especially compared to vision).

We previously covered an interesting review article that talked about the fact that the brain has two smell networks – something that came us a complete surprise to me.

Link to Nerve interview with Rachel Herz.
Link to more info on The Scent of Desire book.

Seduction of the Innocent and the myth of Wertham

The New Yorker has a wonderful article on the famous American crackdown on horror comics in the 1950s, a campaign sparked by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham.

Wertham wrote the influential book, Seduction of the Innocent, which claimed that the comics of the time caused juvenile delinquency.

He listed themes that supposedly ran through various popular story lines, highlighting homosexual themes (Batman and Robin), bondage (Wonder Woman) and numerous examples of what he considered to be extreme violence.

It became a best-seller and eventually led to a Congressional inquiry into the morality and effect of comic book industry on young people.

Fearing state censorship, the comics book industry imposed their own code which, for years afterwards, virtually eliminated depictions of violence, gore, most supernatural themes, or anything that might be considered to hint at sexuality.

As a side-effect, it did lead to some curious titles that were deliberately intended to be more ‘wholesome’. As we discussed previously on Mind Hacks, one of these was the ‘Psychoanalysis’ series of comics.

The New Yorker article is so interesting because it looks at a new book which suggests that Wertham was not some sort of crazed censorship-fiend, as he’s sometimes depicted, and notes that he was actually against the subsequent censorship of comics.

Despite his concerns about delinquency and homosexuality, which seem a little odd in modern light, he had other more laudable aims which seem equally as relevant today and may have been hijacked by others:

He was against the code. He did not want to censor comic books, only to restrict their sale so that kids could not buy them without a parent present. He wanted to give them the equivalent of an R rating. Bart Beaty’s “Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture” ($22, paper; University Press of Mississippi) makes a strong case for the revisionist position. As Beaty points out, Wertham was not a philistine; he was a progressive intellectual. His Harlem clinic was named for Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law. He collected modern art, helped produce an anthology of modernist writers, and opposed censorship. He believed that people’s behavior was partly determined by their environment, in this respect dissenting from orthodox Freudianism, and some of his work, on the psychological effects of segregation on African-Americans, was used in the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education.

Wertham thought that representations make a difference—that how people see themselves and others reflected in the media affects the way they think and behave. As Beaty says, racist (particularly concerning Asians) and sexist images and remarks can be found on almost every page of crime and horror comics. What especially strikes a reader today is the fantastic proliferation of images of violence against women, almost always depicted in highly sexualized forms. If one believes that pervasive negative images of black people are harmful, why would one not believe the same thing about images of men beating, torturing, and killing women?

Interestingly, Wertham was not the only mind doctor involved in comics.

Psychologist William Moulton Marston was the creator of Wonder Woman and a lot of his personal and scientific interests appear in the stories.

He lived in a polyamorous relationship with two women (one, Elizabeth Marston, a noted psychologist herself) and was particularly interested in using blood pressure as part of lie detection technology (his ideas are still used in the polygraph test today).

Consequently, William and Elizabeth created Wonder Woman to be a strong, liberated female character who had a Lasso of Truth which would wrap itself around villains and prevent them from lying.

 
Link to New Yorker article ‘The Horror’ (via BB).
Link to info on book ‘Fredric Wertham And The Critique Of Mass Culture’.

Little known, and even less forgiven

The picture is of the memorial to Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, a 17th century treatise on depression and still one of the greatest books in the history of medicine.

It is built into one of the pillars in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, as he was both a vicar in the city and one of the governors of Christ Church college.

While Burton demonstrated his remarkable scholarship in the book, he had more than simply an academic interest in the subject matter.

He suffered severe depression during his life and admitted in the preface to the book (writing under the pen name Democritus Junior), that it served to keep his spirits up by keeping him busy.

His final piece of advice to sufferers of melancholy was “be not solitary, be not idle”, which holds equally well today as it did in 1621.

The book was a huge success and was highly regarded among Burton’s peers, but he was obviously down on himself until the end, as his monument contains a curious Latin epitaph which he wrote himself. It reads:

Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus,
Hic jacet Democritus junior
Cui vitam dedit et mortem
Melancholia.
Ob. 8 Id. Jan. A. C. MDCXXXIX.

It apparently translates to “Little known, and even less forgiven, here lies Democritus Junior, who gave his life and death to Melancholy. Died 9th January, 1639”.

The book is still widely read and can regularly be seen on the shelves of high-street book shops.

Link to Wikipedia article on Burton’s book with link to full-text.

Playing mind games, off the shelf

PhysOrg has a brief article on the various ‘mind reading’ headsets that are in the pipeline and could make it onto the gaming market this year.

The article mentions several systems that are apparently close to release and notes some of technology which is intended to allow ‘thought control’ of games:

Emotiv, a company based in San Francisco, says its mind-control headsets will be on shelves later this year, along with a host of novel “biofeedback” games developed by its partners.

Several other companies Рincluding EmSense in Monterey, California; NeuroSky in San Jose, California; and Hitachi in Tokyo Рare also developing technology to detect players´ brainwaves and use them in next-gen video games.

The technology is based on medical technology that has been around for decades. Using a combination of EEGs (which reveal alpha waves that signify calmness), EMGs (which measure muscle movement), and ECGs and GSR (which measure heart rate and sweating), developers hope to create a picture of a player´s mental and physical state. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), which monitors changes in blood oxygenation, could also be incorporated since it overcomes some of the interference problems with EEGs.

I’ll be intrigued to see how well they work, but I suspect they’ll be more of a novelty than a genuinely useful addition for avid gamers, at least at first.

This is largely because the main technology for reading brain activity is EEG.

Even with thousands of pounds worth of kit, neuroscientists get participants to do the same task over and over and then average the results to get a reliable waveform.

This is partly because this technology is a relatively crude measure of the total electrical activity that happens over a large area (so on any one occasion the wave will be influenced by a number of other brain functions going on at the same time), and partly because the electrical activity from something as small as the eye-blink muscles drowns out the signal from the brain.

It’s interesting that the article mentions near infrared spectroscopy as another possible way of reading brain function (as used by Natalie Portman).

This involves beaming near-infrared light into the head, where it penetrates the skull and gets absorbed by brain to differing degrees, depending on how much blood is in the area. The amount of light that bounces back can be used to infer blood saturation and, hence, brain activity.

However, changes in blood flow lag behind the activity of the neurons by up to 5 seconds (and interestingly, this varies as we age). This is because blood is ‘called in’ to replenish the local nutrients that are instantly available but in short supply.

Similarly, systems that measure skin conductance or heart rate (a proxy measure for arousal or stress) have a similar problem with lag.

So gamers wanting to control games at the ‘speed of thought’ are likely to be disappointed. EEG is too noisy, NIRS is too slow.

What the headsets might do well, however, is something quite different.

The MIT Affective Computing group have spent several years looking at how computers could present information differently depending on the emotional state of the user.

According to Jonathan Moreno’s book Mind Wars this is also something that the US Military has great interest in, and you can also see how it would enhance games.

The readings from the headset will probably do a better job of keeping track of the easier to measure and relatively slow moving responses like arousal and stress, and these could be used by game designers to enhance your experience (maybe to slow things down if you’re too stressed and under-performing to avoid frustration, or to pump-things up at tense moments).

One of the most interesting possibilities is what might happen when hackers got hold of the systems.

Suddenly, they’ll be thousands of people with standard kit for reading physiological responses and, to a certain extent, brain function.

As soon as someone finds a way to reliably read a novel type of brain function, even with this limited technology, everyone will be able to use it.

Furthermore, it might lead to some fascinating home cognitive neuroscience experiments and demonstrations. Imagine having a home NIRS system – rock on!

Link to PhysOrg article on ‘Mind Gaming’ (via 3QD).

Normality bites

BBC Radio 4 has just concluded another run of its fantastic series Am I Normal? which looks at the science of differences in our minds, brains and abilities.

The series has done a remarkably good job in exploring the psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience of common human concerns and how they differ across the population.

This stretches from distinct pathologies and medical disorders at one end, to normal variation at the other – although ‘normal variation’ itself contains a diverse array of differences.

The latest series looked at shyness and social phobia, dyslexia, maths and selective mathematical difficulties and, finally, insomnia and sleep.

Insomnia is particularly interesting because psychological concerns are known to play a huge role in maintaining the patterns of broken sleep and subsequent anxiety.

For example, a well-replicated finding is that people with insomnia vastly under-estimate the amount of sleep they get during the night, sometimes sleeping several more hours that they think they do (Tom discussed some of this research in on Mind Hacks back in 2004, and the full text of a recent scientific paper on the topic is available online as a pdf).

Evidence also suggests that worry feeds into this biased perception of sleep, and that there is also quite a discrepancy between how people with insomnia perceive the impairments they experience in their waking life, and what neuropsychological tests actually find.

This isn’t to suggest that people with insomnia are exaggerators (it’s worth noting that they do have genuine sleep difficulties), simply that one of the main difficulties is how they evaluate their sleep and its impact – which tends to prolong or make the problem worse.

This is why psychological and behavioural treatments (such as cognitive therapy or changing the environment or daily routines) are particularly effective in treating sleep difficulties.

Link to BBC Radio 4 Am I Normal? series (via BPSRD).

Defining brain death and the controversies of existence

The Boston Globe has an interesting article on the concept of ‘brain death’. The criteria for brain death are being contested and it’s become a hot issue, partly because the US allows organs from consenting donors to be removed when brain death has been diagnosed.

The ‘dead donor rule’ stipulates that it’s only possible to remove organs in cases where a person has died, and this can either be after cardiac death, where the heart and lungs stop functioning, or after brain death, where the brain suffers irreversible damage which causes coma where the patient is kept alive solely by life support.

Most organs donated from the deceased come from people who have been diagnosed as brain dead. Organs remain viable for only about an hour or two after a person’s last heartbeat. Brain dead patients are ideal candidates for organ donation, then, because they are kept on ventilators, which means their heart and lungs continue to work, ensuring that a steady flow of oxygen-rich blood keeps their organs healthy. Surgeons remove the donor’s organs, then shut off the ventilator. The patient’s heart eventually stops.

Yet a small but vocal minority in the medical community has always insisted that some brain dead patients may not be dead. For instance, one study documented some kind of brain activity in up to 20 percent of people declared brain dead, suggesting to some critics that doctors sometimes misdiagnose the condition. Although some neurologists contend the claim, University of Wisconsin medical ethicist Dr. Norman Fost points to research showing that many “brain dead” patients have a functioning hypothalamus, a structure at the base of the brain that governs certain bodily functions, such as blood pressure and appetite.

It’s an challenging that speaks directly to our idea of what divides life and death. There is no question that any of the patients will recover, regardless of any residual activity detected in their brain.

But it prompts the question of what sort of brain activity we consider human enough to constitute life.

Of course, the issue is compounded by the importance of life-saving organ donation operations, for which suitable organs are almost always in short-supply.

Link to Boston Globe article ‘Fatal flaw’.

Pavlov: the name that rings a bell

Mental Floss, an emporium of thought-themed merchandise, do this witty Pavlov t-shirt in either a long or short-sleeved version.

Actually, they do quite a few psychology themed t-shirts although they have a distinctly early 19th century feel to them.

For those still on a behaviourist tip, Advances in the History of Psychology have an interesting piece on common errors in psychology textbooks, with one about an oft-repeated legend concerning the bearded Russian dog harasser:

…a wide array of textbooks seem to repeat a version of the story of Pavlov‚Äôs mugging in which he laid his wallet beside him on a seat at New York‚Äôs Grand Central Station and, upon discovering it missing after an extended intellectual reverie, philosophically mused ‚Äúone must not put temptation in the way of the needy.‚Äù

In fact, according to the contemporary New York Times account of the event, Pavlov and his son were confronted by a three men after having boarded a train and had their money forcibly taken from them.

Link to Mental Floss t-shirts.

2008-03-21 Spike activity

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

Medication is the least effective way of treating children with conduct problems, according to a recent review.

Truth serum art chaos! The Arts Catalyst has a secret psychology art-science project you can participate in on March 29th in Liverpool.

The New York Times has a rather timely election themed article on the psychology of rumours.

“You know, just the other day, on this very blog, I swore I would never read another imaging paper again…” Evidence we are helpless to resist (the colours! the colours!) as Mixing Memory discusses a recent brain imaging study on the influence of language on colour perception.

Child-like intelligence created in Second Life. Surely this isn’t news?

Treatment Online examines a study which has found differences in a gene linked to neural connectivity in people with autism spectrum diagnoses.

The New York Times has an article on the popularity of sewing wild oats throughout the animal kingdom.

The key Freudian concept of transference captured in the lab, and reported by Cognitive Daily. See an earlier Mind Hacks post for more on the science of transference.

The Guardian reports that the Pentagon delayed mild brain injury screening in an attempt to prevent medicalisation of psychogenic problems.

<a href="Tiredness 'raises sleepwalk risk'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7300527.stm”>Sleepwalking is more likely to occur when people are recovering from sleep deprivation, reports BBC News.

As a nice complement to our recent post on authenticity, Psychology Today’s Matthew Hutson discusses the psychology of authenticity in the art world.

Is someone at New Scientist trying to win a bet over how many times they can get the word ‘telepathy’ into print? This time an article about a possible US military ‘telepathic’ ray gun‘ that has nothing to do with telepathy. Sadly.

Imminent gnome attack! Wired report on how World of Warcraft could be used to study terror tactics.

Channel N has a remarkably well-explained video introduction to body dysmorphic disorder.

It is better to give than receive. At least in terms of your happiness, reports Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Better living through reckless self-experimentation

Scientific American have just concluded its series on scientists who have experimented on themselves in an effort to better understand the mind, brain and body.

The first piece is about Kevin ‘Captain Cyborg’ Warwick, who seems mainly to have been experimenting with the media rather than himself.

I’ve always considered him the poor man’s Stelarc to be honest, but then again, Stelarc hasn’t had a distinguished research career in robotics so swings and roundabouts I guess.

A further story discusses Olivier Ameisen, a cardiologist who became alcoholic and treated himself with baclofen, a drug then untested for the condition.

There’s a couple of people who experimented on their children, which doesn’t really count as self-experimentation in my book, but they make for good reads nonetheless.

One covers Deb Roy’s recording of the entire first two years of his child’s vocalisations and speech to help understand how language develops.

The other describes Jay Giedd’s project to brain scan his daughter every three months from the age of four upwards. Interestingly, it got stopped by the ethics committee because she might feel pressured to take part. Surely bribery by Pokemon cards would have solved that problem?

While there are several other scientists discussed, the only other one of psychological interest in the legendary Alexander Shulgin who has spent most of his life synthesising new hallucinogenic drugs and trying them on himself. He’s now 83. There’s a moral in that story somewhere.

Link to SciAm’s self-experimenters series.