Electrocution during sexual activity

Another in my occasional series on the surprising diversity of human sexuality as demonstrated by the forensic pathology literature.

This is a case report from the The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology on a couple who sadly died while trying a fatal mix of sex and electricity.

Warning: it’s a little uncomfortable in places, so not for the faint hearted.

The intriguing thing about the forensic pathology literature is that it probably only reflects the tip of the iceberg, so far greater numbers of people are likely to be engaging in similar but safer sexual practices.

Link to abstract of ‘Electrocution during sexual activity’.

Win a prize! Awkward acronyms in cognitive science

BBC News is reporting that Scotland has launched a ¬£40 million neuroscience research project called SINAPSE, short for ‘Scottish Imaging Network: A Platform for Scientific Excellence’.

SINAPSE joins a long list of awkward acronyms in the world of psychology and neuroscience, and I’d like to launch a competition to find the most inventive.

These days, even research projects need a snappy title, and research teams are constantly coming up with ways of fitting the project description into a jazzy sounding acronym.

Some of my favourites include:

NEMESIS: Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study
CUtLASS: Cost Utility of the Latest Antipsychotic Drugs in Schizophrenia Study
AESOP: Aetiology and Ethnicity of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses
FACETS: Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States
NeuroproMiSe: Neuroprotective strategies for multiple sclerosis

If you know of any awkward, contrived or borderline inappropriate acronyms (I work in a mental health service called SLAM!) for anything mind or brain related, send them in.

They could be for theories, services, departments, projects or events.

Add your suggestions to the comments, or email them to me at V dot Bell at iop dot kcl dot ac dot uk with ‘awkward acronym’ in the subject line.

Points will be given for the most awkward or spectacular, and I’ll send the winner a copy of David Lodge’s excellent book Thinks, a novel about cognitive scientists.

UPDATE: Get your submission in before Monday 20th August to enter!

In deep: the sociology of gang culture

The Freakanomics blog has an insightful interview with sociologist Prof Sudhir Venkatesh who spends time with US street gangs studying gang culture and organised crime.

Q: What role do women play in gangs?

A: In the 1970s and 1980s, female gangs were independent organizations in places like New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. They tended to be non-criminal, and usually distributed common funds to their members for day care, rent, groceries, and other needs of single mothers. On occasion, they might have engaged in petty fighting, but not often. They were largely political outfits and functioned like social service agencies in ghetto communities that lacked services.

But toward the end of the ’80s, they became wrapped up in drug trafficking ‚Äî and, just like gender subordination in corporate America, they were under the thumbs of males in the gang who controlled the economy. They were indeed “peons” who were given the lowest level jobs by men ‚Äî e.g., watching out for cops, holding drugs, cleaning up after gang parties, prostitution ‚Äî and they had no power at all. No surprise that the female gangs dissolved over time.

Link to Prof Venkatesh interview (via BoingBoing).

Excellent BBC Brain Story series available online

I’ve just noticed that probably one of the best TV series on psychology and neuroscience ever produced, the BBC’s Brain Story, is available on public bittorrent servers for download.

It is a six part series covering virtually every area of contemporary neuropsychology, including the major researchers, discoveries, techniques and even many of the patients who have been the subjects of classic case studies that have helped us understand the curious effects of brain injury.

It is presented by neuroscientist Prof Susan Greenfield and sadly has never been made available by the Beeb, despite it being both a fine teaching aid and completely compelling viewing.

I was blown away by this series when it first appeared and since managed to get a bootlegged copy, but I’ve never seen it on public servers before.

It’s a landmark series in its accuracy and scope, and because it’s so engrossing for both the seasoned professional and the general viewer.

You can find all six episodes by searching torrentspy.com for “brain story”.

WARNING: TorrentSpy is not safe for work due to porn ads and it’s got an annoying amount of popups. However, you can click here to run the search.

I’ve also tried to capture the direct links to the torrent files below, so hopefully these should do the trick without opening any intermediate webpages.

Episode 1: All in the Mind
Episode 2: In the Heat of the Moment
Episode 3: The Mind’s Eye
Episode 4: First Among Equals
Episode 5: Growing the Mind
Episode 6: The Final Mystery

There’s an introductory guide to bittorrent here if you don’t know how to use it. Each episode is approximately 700Mb and lasts 50 minutes.

If you have trouble viewing the video, download VLC media player, free software which plays almost every video format.

Fine science. Fine television. Shouldn’t be missed.

Fresh psychologist torture role revelations

The last fortnight has been a grim period for psychology as a two major news sources have published additional revelations about the key role of psychologists in military interrogations that many deem tantamount to torture under international law.

As we’ve reported earlier, online news source Salon have been investigating the role of contracted psychologists in creating an abusive and likely-illegal CIA interrogation programme.

They’ve also been covering the unbelievably flaccid response of the American Psychological Association who have yet to explicitly ban their members from participating in these interrogations, in direct contrast to the clear non-participation policy adopted by their medical colleagues.

In fact, the APA seems even to allow participation in unethical practices when following orders from a “governing legal authority” – the so-called Nuremberg defence.

Mainly a professional matter until now, the story has become huge during the last fortnight as articles in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair have reported a raft of additional disturbing revelations.

The Vanity Fair article investigates the role of psychologists, named as James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates, in developing practices that reportedly include ‘waterboarding‘ (simulated drowning), isolation, sleep deprivation, environmental extremes, ritual humiliation and severe psychological pressure.

It has been widely cited that this is derived from a ‘reverse engineering’ of the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) programme, designed at the end Korean War, ironically, to protect US troops from the effects of torture.

Notably, the article quotes several senior military and civilian psychologists who are scathing about the lack effectiveness and scientific evidence for the technique.

Both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker report that the method was used on ‘Al-Qaeda lieutenant’ Abu Zubaydah. The New Yorker article has this interesting snippet:

Nevertheless, the SERE experts’ theories were apparently put into practice with Zubaydah’s interrogation. Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he was not only waterboarded, as has been previously reported; he was also kept for a prolonged period in a cage, known as a “dog box,” which was so small that he could not stand. According to an eyewitness, one psychologist advising on the treatment of Zubaydah, James Mitchell, argued that he needed to be reduced to a state of “learned helplessness.” (Mitchell disputes this characterization.)

The description of the cage as a “dog box” is interesting when put in context.

‘Learned helplessness‘ is a theory of clinical depression that was proposed by psychologist Martin Seligman. It was developed, to be blunt, by torturing dogs.

In a series of experiments Seligman found that if a dog was prevented from escaping an electric shock it eventually gave up trying, just remaining passive while being electrocuted.

The idea was that depression might be similar: a state of helpless, hopeless passivity caused by a series of unavoidable painful events.

Although ‘learned helplessness’ in animals is still used as a model of depression it has never been convincingly shown that it explains depression in humans.

There’s much more information in the full articles that can be summarised here, but needless to say it is a mixture of the disturbing and shameful.

The Vanity Fair and The New Yorker articles are complimented by an article in this month’s Psychologist that charts the history of psychologists assisting in developing and deploying abusive interrogations.

Unfortunately, the current situation may well be the most reprehensible episode so far.

Link to Vanity Fair article ‘Rorschach and Awe’ (via Corpus Callosum).
Link to New Yorker article on interrogation ‘black sites’.

Brands affect perceptions of preschoolers

A recently published study on brand influence has reported that preschool children perceive carrots to taste better when they come out of a McDonald’s bag, even though the company doesn’t sell carrots.

The study shows that even very young children have internalised advertising and that it significantly affects their perception of the outside world.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the strength of the effect was found to correlate with the number of TVs present in the child’s house.

The research team was led by Prof Thomas Robinson and was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

The team tested 63 three to five year-olds and asked them to taste a number of foods. One sample of the food was presented in McDonald’s packaging, another sample was presented in a similar plain paper bag.

These included foods genuinely from McDonald’s and others that the company don’t sell (milk, apple juice and carrots).

Children consistently said the food from the McDonald’s packaging actually tasted better, regardless of whether it was actually from the company, or whether the company even had it on their menus.

The researchers then looked at what might be linked to the strength of this effect, and found that how often the child eats at the fast food chain was a significant factor.

However, another significant predictor was how many televisions the family had in their home, suggesting that exposure to advertising itself might play a part.

Link to full-text of scientific paper.
Link to write-up and ’60 sec podcast’ from SciAm.

Questioning Alzheimer’s

BBC Radio 4’s medical programme Check Up just broadcast a phone in on Alzheimer’s disease with neuroscientist Prof Clive Ballard.

The programme tackles issues of diagnosis, treatment and what actually happens in the brain.

I’m often surprised about how little people know about this relatively common neurological disorder.

One of the most common questions I have been asked is ‘what is the difference between dementia and Alzheimer’s disease?’

Dementia just describes any condition where the brain declines more quickly than would be expected due to normal ageing.

The MRI scan on the right shows the brain of a person affected by Alzheimer’s. Notice the ‘shrinkage’. Click for a comparison.

There are various different types of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is one specific type where the brain is affected by amyloid plaques (abnormal clumps of protein) and neurofibrillary tangles (tangled bundles of protein fibres).

It’s possible to have these without suffering dementia, but it seems when the impairment reaches above a certain threshold, the brain quickly declines.

Although there are clear physical changes in the brain which indicate the disease, it’s actually impossible to diagnosis Alzheimer’s for sure until after the person has died and a brain autopsy can be completed.

So, to diagnose someone, a clinician might use a number of methods. In order of reliability they include history of memory and behavioural change, simple mental tests (commonly the MMSE), or a more comprehensive neuropsychological assessment that may be repeated over time to look for the exact pattern of change.

A truly comprehensive assessment will include all of the above, although it’s actually quite rare that this happens.

A full neuropsychological assessment for diagnosis has been an innovation of specialised ‘memory clinics‘ that might also provide a treatment service and family support.

Alzheimer’s seems to particularly affect key memory structures, and problems with memory are one of the most distinctive signs of the disorder.

However, less known are behavioural difficulties, personality change and psychotic symptoms (delusions and hallucinations) which occur in a significant proportion of suffers and are often more distressing for friends and family than the forgetfulness.

The programme tackles a wide range of issue including the role of medication, healthy living, the possible effectiveness of ‘brain training’ and how to deal with some of the challenges in living with someone with the condition.

The Alzheimer’s Association have created a fantastic tour that’s definitely worth a vist if you want a wonderful visual guide to the brain and how it breaks down during the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

Link to Check Up on Alzheimer’s disease.
Link to Alzheimer’s information.
Link to fantastic tour of brain changes in Alzheimer’s.

Sage psychology journals free ’till September

The BPS Research Digest has discovered that all 36 psychology journals by academic publisher Sage have been made freely available until the September.

Some require a free registration to view, but some key journals are available right off the bat, including Personality and Social Psychology Review (the May edition is particularly good).

The BPSRD has a list of direct links to the other freely available journals.

Link to BPSRD on freely available Sage journals.

Wheat from the chaff in neuro-journalism

The Neuro-Journalism Mill is a blog run by science organisation the McDonnell Foundation that examines recent brain press stories and marks them as wheat – high quality accurate neuroscience stories, or chaff – exaggerated, inaccurate or oversimplified hack pieces.

Wouldn’t you know it, the ‘chaff‘ articles vastly outnumber the ‘wheat‘.

Actually, some of the ‘chaff’ headlines alone are pretty funny.

“Men’s Brains Have More Cells, Say Scientists Who Counted”

“Cockroaches Can Learn — Like Dogs and Humans”

“Learn More About the Cognitive Paparazzi!”

“Why Do Most 16-Year-Olds Drive Like They’re Missing a Part of Their Brain?”

Link to The Neuro-Journalism Mill (via BrainWaves).

A social history of death and dying

BBC Radio 4’s social history and sociology programme Thinking Allowed recently had a programme on how death and dying customs have changed over time and how obituaries say as much about society as they do about the deceased.

A guest on the show is sociologist Prof Allan Kelehear who discusses his book A Social History of Dying (ISBN 9780521694292) that charts how changes in the physical process of death have meant our social customs have altered to better make sense of new forms of dying.

In ancient times, death was generally quick and sudden, and so little ceremony was needed and people were generally left where they died.

However, as humans became better at avoiding a violent end, death was more often due to disease which was a slower process and so changed the social customs related to the dying process.

Kelehear argues that as we have become better at predicting death, even through the modern times, we’ve developed ways of preparing for our imminent demise, both socially and psychologically.

The other guest is sociologist Prof Bridget Fowler who has analysed obituaries through the ages to answer the question, ‘who have we considered worthy of an obituary?’

As obituary is a type of ‘social memory’, something we decided to record because we feel other people should know it for the future, it also reflects the cultural assumptions about who and what are important at the current time.

Unsurprisingly, obituaries have typically been concerned with the deaths of the upper classes, but she notes that their style is changing and has become somewhat more democratic and surprisingly frank in some instances.

Link to Thinking Allowed on the sociology of death and dying.
Link to A Social History of Dying on Google Books.

OCD in Time Magazine

Time magazine has a feature article on the science and treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, where a person is affected by intrusive thoughts, or feels compelled to complete repetitive actions, or both.

It is strongly linked to anxiety, and a typical pattern is where an intrusive thought causes stress, and the person feels compelled to complete one or more actions to reduce the anxiety.

This is not always the case, however, and some people suffer intrusive thoughts on their own, or, more rarely, compulsive acts on their own – although some researchers just think that the latter is just because some people don’t recognise their thoughts very well and compulsions are probably always linked to obsessions.

Crucially, the intrusive thoughts are ‘ego dystonic’, meaning they seem to be in conflict with the persons existing desires, beliefs or self-image, and so are quite distressing.

They can be about almost anything, and can occasionally seem a little bizarre, but typically focus on concerns about safety and danger.

For example, a parent might be plagued by thoughts that they will harm their child with a knife, despite the fact that they have been a model parent and have never put them in undue danger, or someone might worry that they will give ‘germs’ to their family which will kill them.

This can lead to compulsive behaviours, such as repeatedly checking there are no knives in the kitchen drawer, or continuous hand-washing to be absolutely sure that all the ‘germs’ are removed.

These may take hours everyday, meaning the person can be quite impaired in day-to-day life, and can become quite distressed if something prevents them from completing their compulsion.

The title of the article (‘When Worry Hijacks The Brain’) is a little inaccurate as it’s not really a problem with high levels of general worry (this is something known as GAD), it’s more often a problem with a specific thought that re-occurs.

Luckily, we know that psychological therapies, such as behaviour or cognitive behavioural therapy are some of the most effective treatments, with SSRI medication also having a significant beneficial effect.

Interestingly, the article mentions ‘strep throat‘, a common throat infection that is usually painful but harmless.

There’s now some limited evidence that in a tiny minority of childhood cases it is linked to OCD. A theory originally thought to be completely wacky, but now taken more seriously by medical researchers.

It’s still not clear whether the infection definitely causes the disorder in some cases, but it is being investigated as an interesting correlation that merits further investigation.

Link to Time article on OCD.
Link to more info on OCD from mental health charity Mind.

SciAmMind on altruism, money and leadership

The August edition of Scientific American Mind has just arrived online and in the shops. The freely available articles from this edition tackle teamwork and finance as one investigates the psychology of leadership and the other looks at the role of altruism in financial decision-making.

The article on leadership contrasts the traditional view of leadership, often based on a combination of top-down charisma and coercion, with a more recent view that emphasises a leader of someone who facilitates communication and understand the group values and emotional intelligence.

It particularly explores the role of ‘social identity’ in leadership, the idea that people define part of themselves in relationship to the group and a good leader is someone who uses this as the most effective way of bonding and focusing the team.

The article on altruism in financial reasoning looks at the increasing amount of research that shows that individuals are not perfectly rational wealth accumulators and will often incorporate notions of fairness and social concern into monetary decisions, even when this can lead to a loss.

Ockenfels’s Equity, Reciprocity and Competition (ERC) theory, which he developed with economist Gary Bolton of Pennsylvania State University, states that people not only try to maximize their gains but also watch to see that they get roughly the same share as others: they are happy to get one piece of cake as long as the next person does not get two pieces. This fairness gauge apparently even has a defined place in the brain. On eBay, however, fairness takes the system only halfway, researchers have now learned; eBay’s reputation system is critical for augmenting the level of trust enough for the market to work.

Circumstance also sculpts behavior, studies have revealed, regardless of natural character traits or values. That is, whether a person is competing in a market of strangers or negotiating with a partner can make a big difference in whether fairness, reciprocity or selfishness will predominate. In fact, the ERC theory hints at ways to alter economic institutions to nudge people to compete—or cooperate—more or less than they currently do.

Other feature articles in the print edition include ones on the effect of language on decision-making, the psychology of college drop-out, the professed fantasies of school shooters, consciousness and physical sensation, and inherited prosopagnosia (face-blindness).

Link to table of contents for August SciAmMind.
Link to article ‘The New Psychology of Leadership’.
Link to article ‘Is Greed Good?’

The obvious and not-so-obvious in psychology

Tom has written an excellent article for The Psychologist on the not-so-obvious findings in psychology which has just been made freely available.

There are certain predictable responses you get if you introduce yourself as a psychologist.

The most common is “are you analyzing me?”, followed by “can you read my mind?”. The best answer to both, of course, is ‘sometimes’.

Occasionally, a bright spark will tell you “psychology, well, it’s just obvious isn’t it?”, which, to be frank, I wish it was. But sadly, it’s fiendishly complicated.

Tom’s article gathers a whole bunch of counter-intuitive research findings for exactly such situations:

I used to keep a stock of ‘unobvious’ findings ready to hand for occasions like this. Is it really obvious that people can be made to enjoy a task more by being more poorly paid to recruit for it (cognitive dissonance: Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)? That a saline solution can be as effective as morphine in killing pain (the placebo effect: Hrobjartsson, 2001)? That students warned that excessive drinking is putting many of their peers at risk may actually drink more, whereas advertising the fact that most students don’t drink, or drink in moderation, is the thing that actually reduces binge drinking (Perkins et al., 2005)? That over a third of normal people report having had hallucinations, something we normally experience solely with mental illness or substance abuse (Ohayon, 2000)? Or that the majority of ordinary Americans could be persuaded to electrocute someone to death merely by being asked to by a scientist in a white coat (Milgram, 1974)?

There’s many more great examples, including touching on the cognitive bias that leads people to think they understand more than they do when they have little knowledge.

Priceless stuff.

Link to article in The Psychologist on the ‘obvious’.

Gene may influence traumatic memory impact

The Science website is reporting on a study that has found that people with a variant of the ADRA2B gene, which regulates the effect of key memory neurotransmitter norepinephrine, are more likely to have enhanced memory for emotional and traumatic events.

A strong emotional response at the time of an event is known to make the event more memorable, and the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, also known as noradrenaline, has been found to be a key player in this process.

The researchers, led by neuroscientist Prof Dominique de Quervain, wondered whether a version of the ADRA2B gene, that codes for the alpha-2b norepinephrine receptor, would influence emotional memory recall.

One of the defining features of post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD is that distressing memories of the original trauma intrude into everyday life.

People differ in their tendency to remember emotional memories, so understanding the factors behind this difference might help us better understand why some people can survive trauma with little long-lasting disturbance, while others are seriously affected.

The team determined the genotype (gene version) of 435 young Swiss adults and 202 refugees from the Rwandan civil war.

The Swiss volunteers were shown a series of pictures from the International Affective Picture System, a series of photos that range from the pleasant (e.g. sunsets) to the disturbing (e.g. mutilated bodies) that have been rated for their emotional impact.

Participants with a common variant of the ADRA2B gene were more significantly more likely to recall the emotional, but not the neutral pictures.

The refugee participants were asked to recall memories from their time in Rwanda during the civil war.

Participants with the same gene variant that was linked to an increase in emotional picture recall in the Swiss participants, recalled significantly more traumatic incidents than others.

However, the rate of PTSD in the refugee sample did not depend on gene version.

This is possibly because a diagnosis of PTSD requires three things: intrusive traumatic memories, hyperarousal (a feeling of being ‘on edge’ all the time) and avoidance of the reminders of the trauma.

The gene variant was only linked to the likelihood of re-experiencing traumatic memories, and not the other symptoms, suggesting that the effect is specific to memory and not trauma in general.

Link to write-up from Science.
Link to abstract of scientific paper.

LSD, hypnosis and the Catholic Church

I found this interesting snippet, among many interesting snippets, on p194 of David Healy’s book The Creation of Psychopharmacology (ISBN 0674015991), a history of the science and medicine of psychiatric drug development.

It discusses the similarities between the reaction of the authorities to LSD in the 1960s and the reaction to hypnotism in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The LSD story has a backdrop of considerable historical resonance. It seemed that under the influence of LSD mainstream cultures were inhibited, that a dose of LSD would lead to a humanizing of society and a democratizing of values. A similar story had played out two hundred years earlier with the development of mesmerism (hypnosis).

Mesmerism led to a perception among “therapists” that the entire social order could have resulted from suggestion. Many viewed mesmerism not just as a means of correcting the problems of an individual but as a means of changing society. Quite a few of the men who signed the early documents triggering the French Revolution were also members of Franz Mesmer’s Society of Harmony.

One of the responses of the establishment was to proscribe mesmerism, and later hypnosis. Mesmerism remained officially banned for almost a hundred years; it took the influence of the most famous clinician of his day, Jean-Martin Charcot, to bring it back to the scientific doman.

But the work of Charcot and Janet on hypnotism created further problems. It began to seem that many religious phenomena, including the stigmata of saints were hypnoid phenomena, and this perception led to the suggestion that saints exhibiting such effects were in fact hysterics.

Hypnosis fell under a further cloud when its use by Freud was associated with his claims that hysteria was linked to sexual abuse during childhood. There was widespread disquiet. The Catholic Church, for example, proscribed hypnosis in the 1880s, and the ban was not lifted until 1955.

The image is part of a larger painting called ‘A Clinical Lesson with Doctor Charcot at the Salpetriere, 1887’ painted by Andr√© Brouillet.

It depicts Charcot and one of his most famous ‘hysterical’ patients Blanche, being supported by Joseph Babi≈Ñski.

Freud had a copy of this picture in his consulting room, and it can still be seen in his old house, now the Freud Museum in London.

UPDATE: Jeremy, of the excellent Advances in the History of Psychology has emailed to say that they recently posted a summary of papers that look at the history of LSD, psychology and psychiatry. Thanks!

Link to book info.
Link to The Creation of Psychopharmacology on Google books.

2007-08-03 Spike activity

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

RadioLab has an edition on time, which includes a section with Oliver Sacks talking about patients with altered time perception.

Cannabis likely raises the risk of psychosis. Nothing we didn’t already know and best to read the original paper [pdf] as the story went completely bizarre as soon as it hit the press. Also discussed on The Lancet podcast [mp3].

Scientific American covers a new theory about the role of spontaneous genetic mutation in risk for autism.

A Wired columnist tries online sex therapy and reports back.

Neurophilosopher has a great article on reconstructive memory and cinema.

My ex-gay life: New York Edge has an article by someone who went through modern-day ‘gay conversion therapy’.

PsychMinded reports that a £16 million campaign to combat stigma related to mental illness has been launched in the UK.

What is guilt for? PsyBlog looks at psychological research which might provide the answer.

Blog around The Clock picks out a great selection of recent psychology news stories.

Verbal reassurance can dull the effect of pain, but only if it’s from someone we identify with, reports the BPS Research Digest.

Retrospectacle has an excellent review of the neuroscience of ADHD.