The Lobotomist documentary available online

After being put back from January, the fantastic documentary on Walter Freeman and the rise and fall of the frontal lobotomy is finally available to view online.

Unfortunately, it’s been cut up into little chunks and is only available as a Quicktime or Windows Media stream, which makes it a pain to watch and completely inaccessible to anyone not using Windows or Mac.

Needless to say, a better quality version is available on some torrent servers as a sensibly packaged video file and the healthiest torrent seems to be this one.

It’s a fantastically well-researched and balanced documentary, looking at the history of the procedure, Freeman’s over-identification with the operation and its abandonment as the problems became clear.

The tale is tragic for many reasons, not least of which is Freeman’s flawed personality and unwillingness to admit that the lobotomy was not the miracle cure he initially claimed.

There’s plenty more background information on the programme website and the Neurophilosophy article on the history of the procedure has some more details.

Link to The Lobotomist website and streamed version.
Link to Mininova torrent.

The ghost of moral madness

Only the morally weak and degenerate became mentally ill in the 18th century. At least, that’s what the popular theories of the time suggested. Madness was caused by moral failings and those who lost their mind were sinners.

We like to think that we live in enlightened times and that only in the far outskirts of the religious fringe are mental disorder and immorality thought to be (presumably gay) bedfellows.

Politics is one of the few areas were accusations of mental illness are considered fair game. I don’t mean simply calling someone or their ideas ‘mad’, ‘loony’ or ‘crazy’. I mean suggesting a politician or a political group has a diagnosable mental disorder.

US psychiatrist Lyle Rossiter published a book in 2006 claiming that liberalism was a form of clinical mental illness. Bang up to date with the latest in 1920s Freudian analysis, Rossiter claims that liberalism is caused by problems with relationships as a child, leading to a pathological fear of abandonment and an obsessive need for an omnipotent control of others.

Presidents fair little better. A 2004 book claimed George W Bush is an untreated alcoholic, while a 2000 book claimed Clinton was racked with compulsions.

In the UK, so many people accused Tony Blair of being insane that an article was published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that gathered the accusations and wondered why otherwise respectable clinicians feel the need to diagnose public figures.

It seems this is one of our last bastions of publicly acceptable prejudice against mental illness. We would be horrified if politicians were labelled epileptic because of their views, but barely blink an eyelid when they’re called schizophrenic.

This makes it all the more ironic that numerous successful politicians have been genuinely mentally ill. Winston Churchill was famously pursued by his ‘black dog’ throughout his time as Prime Minister and a recent biographical study by Duke University found evidence for psychiatric problems in 37 US Presidents from 1776 to 1974.

One of the most remarkable stories from recent years comes from Scandanavia, where Kjell Magne Bondevik, the then serving Prime Minister of Norway, announced he needed three weeks sick leave owing to an episode of depression.

Bondevik returned to work and was re-elected in the subsequent election. He’s now retired from politics, campaigns to fight the stigma associated with mental illness and was recently interviewed (realvideo) about his experiences on BBC’s Newsnight programme.

It’s a optimistic story for many reasons, but the fact that the Norwegian electorate seemed more concerned with his past record than his diagnosis gives us genuine hope that we’re slowly banishing the ghost of moral madness.

Link to JRSM article ‘The Madness of Politics’.
realvideo of Kjell Magne Bondevik interview.

Maternal disorder

The drowning of five children by their mother, Andrea Yates, was a case that forced many to confront an issue that most would rather ignore. Yates was one of the rare cases of women with puerperal (childbirth associated) psychosis who kill their children.

This week’s ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind talks to three forensic clinicians who research and work with women who have either killed or injured their children while mentally ill.

It’s an extraordinarily emotive issue, both due to the cries of condemnation from those appalled by what they consider ‘evil’ acts, and the concerns of others worried that focusing on the issue will strengthen the largely unfounded stereotype of the ‘dangerous mentally ill’.

All in the Mind manages to tackle the issue incredibly sensitively, a rarity in a world where these tragic situations only ever seem to get attention as sensational news stories or political point-scoring.

The programme looks at the sorts of mental states which have led to these tragedies and talks to two female forensic psychiatrists about how they deal with the strong emotions that these cases stir up.

If you’re interested in a more academic approach to the research in this area, psychiatrist Margaret Spinelli wrote an important 2004 article on maternal infanticide in the American Journal of Psychiatry that’s freely available online.

The programme also tackles the difficult subject of female sex offenders and how clinical science is being applied to preventing and treating this subset of the forensic population.

Link to AITM on maternal disorder.
Link to AJP article on maternal infanticide.

War apparently boosts Iraqi teenagers’ self-esteem

Who would have guessed the Iraq war would be so uplifting to the children of Baghdad? According to research funded by the US Military, the invasion boosted the self-esteem of Iraqi teenagers.

The BPS Research Digest covers the study which took place in the summer of 2004, a year after the invasion.

With this new found benefit of invasion, the next target seems obvious – those self-deprecating Canadians!

Link to BPS Research Digest write-up of the study.

Psychology Today, every day

Psychology Today is a bimonthly US magazine that’s traditionally been thought of as a ‘pop psychology’ publication but has made efforts in recent years to be more scientific. They’ve just launched a blog network and have attracted some big names in academic psychology to contribute.

Authors include psychiatrist Peter Kramer, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa and MIT media lab cognitive scientist Dan Ariely, as well as the regular editorial staff from the magazine.

Some of the authors aren’t due to start in earnest until the beginning of March, but there’s some good material on there already and looks very promising.

Link to Psychology Today blogs.

2008-02-22 Spike activity

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

The New York Times tackles the debate about whether psychiatric drugs can increase suicide in some instances.

To the bunkers! Agent Kurzweil at work again: Machines to match man by 2029. Virtuality and reality to merge.

Yale psychiatrist Charles Barber argues in the Washington Post that healing a troubled mind takes more than a pill.

PsychCentral covers a new guide on how to apply research findings to treatment with psychological therapies.

How the Media Messes with Your Mind: Scientific American has a brief article on how recognising two common fallacies can help you separate fact from media fiction.

Neuroanthropology asks whether studies on culture and neuroscience are all brain and no culture?

Philosopher and New Mysterian Colin McGinn reviews Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia in the New York Review of Books.

The non-sight senses of blind people are not more acute but they may develop new skills to compensate, reports PsyBlog.

Vivid but inconclusive examples vs ambiguous scientific data: The New York Times on the renewed debate over drug side-effects in light of latest school shooting.

In some very limited circumstances a laser could be used to transmit sound to the ear with a recently uncovered military technology, reports Wired.

Artists create a humanoid robot which uses brainwave activity recorded during sleep to playback an interpretation of your dreams.

Powell’s has an in-depth review of ‘The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder’.

The end of the Flynn effect? The BPS Research Digest on a study that found a decline in IQs when measured in 2004.

Cognitive Daily looks at a study which asks whether music preferences are a guide to personality.

An Unquiet Lecture

Someone’s uploaded a video to YouTube of the fantastic Kay Redfield Jamison discussing her own experiences with bipolar disorder.

Jamison is a psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts on the science of the condition that’s often called manic depression.

She was known for her groundbreaking work on the disorder for many years before she ‘came out of the closet’ and described her own experience in her powerful and lyrical autobiography An Unquiet Mind.

Having attempted suicide and become quite psychotic at times, she has experienced the most extreme edges of the condition.

In this lecture, rather than presenting any of her considerable scientific research, she discusses the subjective experience of the highs, lows and distortions of thought that can occur in this mood disorder.

Link to Kay Redfield Jamison lecture (via AHP/WoP).

Child’s play is a tough problem

Children’s play has long fascinated psychologists. The post-Freudians saw it as a direct expression of the human unconscious and its often been seen an essential, if not slightly mysterious, element of a healthy childhood.

The New York Times has a wonderfully in-depth article on the latest scientific discoveries on the role of play in development, most of which attempts to answer the question ‘if play is so energy consuming and dangerous, why do almost all mammals engage in it when young?’.

One fascinating bit discusses ‘play signals’, body postures that are specifically used by humans and other mammals to advertise the fact that they’re playing, and so none of the rough-and-tumble is mistaken for aggression:

Social play has its own vocabulary. Dogs have a particular body posture called the ‘‘play bow’’ — forelegs extended, rump in the air — that they use as both invitation and punctuation. A dog will perform a play bow at the beginning of a bout, and he will crouch back into it if he accidentally nips too hard and wants to assure the other dog: ‘‘Don’t worry! Still playing!’’

Other species have play signals, too. Chimps put on a ‘‘play face,’’ an open-mouthed expression that is almost like a face of aggression except that the muscles are relaxed into something like a smile. Baboons bend over and peer between their legs as an invitation to play, beavers roll around, goats gambol in a characteristic ‘‘play gait.’’ In fact, most species have from 10 to 100 distinct play signals that they use to solicit play or to reassure one another during play-fighting that it’s still all just in fun. In humans, the analogue to the chimp’s play face is a child’s smile, an open expression that indicates there is no real anger involved even in gestures that can look like a fight.

…[in humans] Brown could detect some typical gestures that these 2- and 3-year-olds were using instinctively to let one another know they were playing. ‚Äò‚ÄòPlay movement is curvilinear,‚Äô‚Äô he said. ‚Äò‚ÄòIf that boy was reaching for something in a nonplay situation, his body would be all straight lines. But using the body language of play, he curves and embraces.‚Äô‚Äô

The article also looks at the possible benefits of play for brain development, and what role play takes in the learning of social roles and moral behaviour.

Link to NYT article ‘Taking Play Seriously’.

The science of ‘voodoo death’

Can you die from a voodoo curse? Physiologist Walter Cannon was better known for his work on emotion but was fascinated by the idea that someone could die from fright – something he nicknamed ‘voodoo death’.

He collected anecdotes from around the world of people who had died after being cursed in a now classic 1942 article.

But rather than simply recount the tales as curiosities, he speculated on the medical basis of how someone might die of fright – triggering a whole line of research into neurocardiology, the study of how the brain and heart work together.

Cannon’s ideas were recently revisited by physician Esther Sternberg who looked at whether scientific developments since 1942 have made us any the wiser to this intriguing phenomenon.

While there is no clear idea on whether the belief in a curse directly kills many people, it seems Connon’s ideas on fear’s effect on the body had remarkable foresight and preceded many later discoveries about body-brain connections.

If you’re interested in hearing more, psychiatrist Stuart Brown gave one of the prestigious 2006 ‘TED’ talks on play, which is available to view on the National Institute of Play’s website.

Link to Cannon’s 1942 “Voodoo” Death article.
Link to Sternberg’s 2002 update.

Three impossible things before breakfast

The Guardian has a insightful piece by journalist Rik Hemsley describing his personal experiences with Alice in Wonderland syndrome, where the ‘body image’ or ‘body map’ becomes distorted, leading the affected person to feel like particular parts of the body, or the whole of it, have changed size or shape.

It doesn’t usually involve direct visual hallucinations, but can lead to the sensation that the world around you has grown to an enormous size, or that you have shrunk.

It was first described by psychiatrist John Todd in a 1955 article that you can read freely online, which I discovered when writing an previous post on the neurology of Alice in Wonderland.

It’s usually associated with epilepsy or migraine although is actually quite common, although not always in such an intense form as The Guardian article describes.

Children often experience it but grow out of it as they reach adulthood (both of which happened to me).

Link to Guardian article ‘I have Alice In Wonderland syndrome’ (via BB).
Link to full-text of Todd’s original article.

Five auditory illusions

In one of its rare fits of generosity, New Scientist has put a feature online that demonstrates five cool auditory illusions.

Possibly the freakiest, is psychologist Diana Deutsch’s illusion called ‘Phantom Words’. For me at least, I began by a hearing certain phrase, only to hear it transform over time into something else.

The ‘temporal induction of speech’ illusion is a wonderful example of how our brain fills in missing information better when there’s sound rather than silence in the way.

All of them are well-worth checking out and accompany this week’s special issue on the psychology and neuroscience of music, all of which is sadly behind a pay wall.

Link to NewSci ‘five great auditory illusions’.
Link to music special issue table of contents.

Personality plagiarism rife on internet dating sites

When you present yourself to potential suitors in an online dating profile, you are, in the terminology of psychology, ‘constructing the self’. Perhaps it’s not surprising then, that the most attractive profiles are being ripped off and plagiarised by lazy daters wanting to freeload on the most creative members’ personalities.

The Wall Street Journal has an article which looks on how this practice has developed and uncovers several cases where romantic lines, funny descriptions and personal reflections are copied over and over again.

Psychologist Sherry Turkle’s ground-breaking book Life on the Screen looked at the online construction of the self during the days of text based communication, MOOs and MUDs.

As we become increasingly tied to our online profiles, owing to the popularity of sites like MySpace, Facebook and numerous dating services, it’s not surprising that they become more intimately associated with our own ideas about who we are.

They are also more easily copied than offline ways of expressing ourselves, leading to the situation where daters wanting to get lucky can just remix other people’s personalities to maximise their chances of success.

Link to WSJ article ‘The Cut-and-Paste Personality’.

A bait and switch trick on torture and psychologists?

A poster on Metafilter has collected together news reports on the growing number of psychologists leaving the American Psychological Association in protest at their failure to condemn members who take part in the ‘War on Terror’ interrogations.

One of the most surprising aspects is from a contributor who suggests that the APA released a different text to the one approved by a 2006 committee vote that was intended to condemn abusive practices by psychologists.

The campaign group Coalition for an Ethical Psychology released a report [pdf] claiming that the original statement reviewed by the committee defined torture in terms of the United Nations criteria, but the published resolution had been changed to refer to the US Constitution, providing a definition of torture that is being used to allow abusive interrogations.

Strong public protests over the PENS Report [which condoned psychologists participating in interrogations, without mentioning torture or other abuse] prompted the APA Divisions for Social Justice and others to craft a new resolution prohibiting psychologists from participating in abusive detainee interrogations. In August 2006, after much discussion and debate, the APA’S Council of Representatives passed a Resolution Against Torture, Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment.

However, the version published by the APA differed from the version discussed and passed by the Council, in at least one significant respect: in the document reviewed by Council, psychologists were instructed to look to the United Nations Principles of Medical Ethics and international instruments for definitions of unethical behavior and “torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.” In the published document, the definition of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment instead was taken from the 5th, 8th and 14th amendments to the US Constitution, precisely the same definitions that had been used by the CIA, the DoD and the Bush Administration to assert that the abusive interrogation techniques in use at Guant√°namo, CIA black sites, and elsewhere were not “torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

The more recent August 2007 resolution refers to both the United Nations and the US Constitution criteria, presumably making for a much stricter definition, although still fails to define some key definitions concerning distress.

However, the fact that an earlier version was ‘switched’ is quite concerning as it has become clear that psychologists are an incredibly valuable part of interrogation or ‘Behavioral Science Consultation Teams’ (aka ‘biscuit teams’).

In contrast, psychologists’ colleagues in both the American medical and psychiatric associations have outright banned their members from participation.

In practice, this hasn’t stopped some physicians becoming complicit in these interrogations, but many US psychologists are embarrassed by their parent organisations unwillingness to take the equivalent ethical line when the profession is increasingly seeking equal status to doctors.

Link to MeFi on psychologists leaving the APA (via BoingBoing).

Diagnostic handshake

Mark Gurrieri was diagnosed with a brain tumour after shaking a doctor’s hand. BBC News has an interesting piece on the incident, where the doctor noticed that Gurrieri’s hand was spongy and swollen, suggesting a growth hormone problem that can be caused by a tumour on the brain’s pituitary gland.

Mr Gurrieri underwent tests and was found to have acromegaly – caused by a tumour in the pituitary gland which leads to excess growth hormone.

The condition is seen in just three people per million, and can have serious effects if left undiagnosed.

It causes problems with vision and can lead to diabetes and blood pressure problems.

If untreated acromegaly can also cause premature death.

Mr Gurrieri thought his hands were getting bigger because of too much DIY and working in his restaurant kitchen.

Link to BBC News article ‘Handshake diagnosed brain tumour’.

Encephalon: the new dawn

If you’ve been wondering what happened to the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival, it’s been on a brief hiatus while its management has been passed on to new hands.

It was previously managed by Mo at Neurophilosophy, whose time has now been largely captured as a neuroscience postgrad.

Luckily, the ever capable Alvaro Fernandez from Sharp Brains has taken the helm and just published the first edition of its return.

Fittingly, it’s a bumper issue, and contains articles on everything from Renaissance brain look-alikes to whether robots can feel emotions.

The next edition will be hosted on Mind Hacks on March 3rd so if you want to submit an article, just email a link to

encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com

and we’ll feature it.

Link to new Encephalon.

Push my brain button

You can promote almost anything with a few words about the brain because it sounds like science. This week’s Bad Science column takes a close look at ‘Brain Gym’, a scheme introduced into large numbers of UK schools that attempts to boost brain function by getting the kids to do, well, complete nonsense.

For example, a “back and forward movement of the head” apparently “increases the circulation to the frontal lobe for greater comprehension and rational thinking”. According to this wisdom, a good clip around the ear has remarkable brain boosting properties.

One of my favourite examples of nonsense neuroscience is the use of the ‘explanation’ that an activity is pleasurable because it ‘boosts endorphins’ or ‘releases opioids’ in the brain.

Here’s a great example from the widely distributed and widely discarded London newspaper The Metro which managed to give a cod brain science explanation in a (NSFW but remarkably dull) article on bondage and whipping.

Apparently:

The person getting the flogging (the bottom) gets pleasure from natural opiates generated in the brain and the person doing the flogging (the top) gets pleasure watching their partner… Even a runner’s high after exercise is nothing compared with the boost of natural opiates that can be released in a flogging.

Apart from the fact that they don’t know the difference between opiates (derivatives of the opium poppy) and opioids (any substance that binds to opioid receptors, including the brain’s naturally produced chemicals) this really explains nothing about why being flogged is supposed to be pleasurable.

Opioids are definitely part of the experience of pleasure, but they’re also part of the experience of pretty much everything else.

Experiencing pain is one thing that definitely causes increased opioid activity, but if pleasure were that simple, we’d find fighting so much fun that Planet Earth would be be like Texas Chainsaw Massacre with a laugh track.

These attempts at an explanation are really nothing more than placebos that still don’t tell us how we experience pleasure as a result of the activity, or what role opioids play in this process.

Even if pleasure was purely opioid release, the trick with an explanation is to explain how and why this occurs, not just say that it does.

It’s not that these simple links aren’t important, but they’re not explanations in themselves, even though they’re often presented as such.

My other pet hate is when something pleasurable is described as having the same effect on the brain as one of the four dopamen of the neurocalypse: ‘drugs’, ‘sex’, ‘gambling’ and ‘chocolate’.

Almost any one is used to explain the effect of the others, and if you’re really lucky, all four will be invoked to make for an exciting-sounding but often scientifically empty article.

This is another example where the crucial information is how these activities have their effect on the dopamine system, not the fact that they do.

So, as with the faux science that supposedly supports ‘Brain Gym’, always ask yourself how it occurs, rather than relying on the illusion of brain magic.

Link to Bad Science article on why we fall for brain-based promotions.