Mind Hacks

No sooner than we post something about psychedelic drug research becoming mainstream than a newspaper reports on a psychologist being barred entry to the US because he wrote an article on a 1967 LSD experience.

Dr Andrew Feldmar (pictured right) is a Vancouver based psychologist and psychotherapist who was attempting a regular cross-border visit, this time to meet a friend in Seattle.

When crossing the border, he was stopped for a random check and security typed his name into Google – bring up a link to a 2001 paper on the hot topic of psychedelics and psychotherapy.

The official said that under the Homeland Security Act, Feldmar was being denied entry due to “narcotics” use. LSD is not a narcotic substance, Feldmar tried to explain, but an entheogen. The guard wasn’t interested in technicalities. He asked for a statement from Feldmar admitting to having used LSD and he fingerprinted Feldmar for an FBI file.

Then Feldmar disbelievingly listened as he learned that he was being barred from ever entering the United States again. The officer told him he could apply to the Department of Homeland Security for a waiver, if he wished, and gave him a package, with the forms.

Feldmar trained under R.D. Laing, the radical psychiatrist and psychotherapist who himself took LSD in an attempt to better understand psychosis and altered states.

As a curious aside, the article notes that Feldmar first tried LSD after being offered a 900 microgram dose (that’s one big hit of acid), not by Laing, as you might have guessed, but by cognitive neuroscientist par excellence Zenon Pylyshyn, who was his collaborator at the time.

Pylyshyn had reportedly tried LSD out of curiosity but had since become interested in other things and had some of the compound left over.

Link to article ‘LSD as Therapy? Write about It, Get Barred from US’ (via BB).
Link to Feldman’s article ‘Entheogens and Psychotherapy’.

The 21st edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has just been published on neurobiology of aging blog Ouroboros.

A couple of my favourites include Dr Deborah Serani discussing a to-be-released psychotherapy game for the Nintendo DS, and Neurophilosopher with a wonderfully in-depth article on Dostoyevsky’s epilepsy.

There are many more fantastic articles in this edition, and it looks beautiful. Head on over.

Link to Encephalon 21.

A new edition of Scientific American Mind has arrived with two freely available articles online: one on the distortion of body image in eating disorders and the other on whether brain scans could be a communication channel for people in coma-like vegetative states.

Perhaps the key feature of eating disorders such as anorexia is not just that the person wants to be thin, but that they have a disturbance in their body image so they think they are fat, even when dangerously undernourished.

The SciAmMind article looks at research which attempts to understand how and why body image becomes disturbed and how this can contribute to disorded eating patterns.

This second article discusses the implications of a study [pdf] published recently by Adrian Owen and colleagues suggesting that some patients in a persistent vegetative state or PVS might actually have conscious awareness which they can’t outwardly express (see previously on Mind Hacks).

The first step is getting a general understanding of the patient’s state of mind. Clinicians divide disorders of consciousness into three categories: coma, in which a patient is neither awake nor responsive; vegetative, in which a patient is awake but unresponsive; and minimally conscious, in which a patient is awake and responds to stimuli but has limited capacity to take willful actions. Typically doctors make these categorizations by observing a patient at the bedside. By this method alone, a patient thought to be vegetative could actually be aware.

“It’s really a conundrum. The way that consciousness is typically measured is by basically asking somebody to tell you that they are conscious,” Owen says. “So if someone wasn’t unconscious but couldn’t respond and tell you that, they would be classed as unconscious.” In Owen’s team’s case study, reported in the September 8, 2006, issue of the journal Science, the researchers asked the vegetative patient to imagine herself doing various tasks, including walking through the rooms of her home, while they scanned her brain using fMRI. The resulting images showed that her response matched that of healthy test subjects – she understood the commands and intentionally decided to comply.

Other articles available in the print edition or to subscribers tackle food addiction, brain development in adolescence, perceptual integration, the psychology of stalkers, lithium in the treatment of neurological disorders, pain disorders and implanted ‘brain chips’.

Link to contents for April 2007 issue.
Link to article on body image and eating disorder.
Link to article on communicating in vegetative state.

Being at St Clements is a one night only art event being held in London on the night of Tuesday 24th April to showcase a project combining the talents of dedicated artists and patients from a psychiatric hospital.

The event will present some brand new multimedia works, including a never before seen video and animation projects, sound installations and an exhibition of digital prints.

It will also include a live show to keep you entertained throughout the evening.

The event is being held at the SPACE Gallery, 129-131 Mare Street, London, E8 3RH. 6 – 9pm (Live show @ 7pm).

Link to details of event (thanks Tenyen!).

BBC Radio 4 recently broadcast a documentary on the effects of the new generation of anti-sleep drugs on health and society.

Drugs, such as modafinil and adrafinil, seem to remove the need for sleep and promote alertness while having minimal side-effects in most users.

Unlike older drugs which prevent sleep, such as amphetamine, these drugs typically don’t feel pleasurable and have few other effects, meaning they are less likely to be used recreationally or lead to compulsive use.

Originally used to treat sleep disorders, there is now a large grey market for these compounds, as people use them to extend their work or play time.

The BBC documentary tackles the possible effects on society of being able to easily manipulate and delete the need for sleep at will, as well as investigating the possible mind and brain consequences of not sleeping for long periods.

Link to The Defeat of Sleep webpage with embedded audio.

I returned from lunch and was surprised to find an email from The Mind Lab giving details of the ‘chocolate vs kissing’ study we reported on earlier and dismissed as rubbish. So, is it junk?

Well, it certainly wouldn’t get published in an academic journal, but it’s certainly not as far-fetched as it seemed from the press releases.

Notably, it’s described as a ‘pilot study’ which is often a test-run study done by scientists to try out methods, equipment, ideas or get some initial data.

The email from Dr David Lewis noted that it was for a larger piece of research investigating the role of certain food stuffs in enhancing vigilance in groups whose performance often seriously, and sometimes fatally, affected by fatigue – such as long distance drivers and combat troops.

After reading the report, the premise still seems a bit daft (melting chocolate vs kissing? why?), the number of participants low (only 12), the methods not as robust as they could be and the data presented as summary graphs only with no statistical analysis.

But, for the first time ever for a ‘PR study’, I was provided details of the study when they were requested, so at least I can see that for myself.

Whether it’s healthy that research labs should be ‘selling’ pilot studies (which can’t really be used to draw any firm conclusions) for the advertising industry to promote as science is another matter.

The report is available from The Mind Lab on request.

Link to The Mind Lab.

Yahoo! News is reporting that psychology has been ranked the 9th most satisifying job in America.

The ranking is from a project from the University of Chicago called the ‘General Social Survey’ which monitors changes in attitude and behaviour across various populations.

I can’t actually find the original research online, but any pointers would be gratefully received.

For a list of the most and least satisifying jobs, follow the link below.

Link to Yahoo! News story ‘Survey Reveals Most Satisfying Jobs’.

This week’s New Scientist has two articles of interest to mind and brain enthusiasts: one on gender identity disorder in adolescents, and the other on the psychological effects of modern media.

Unfortunately, neither are open access articles, so you’ll need to track down a copy at the newsagent or library if you want to have a look.

The article on gender identity disorder (GID) in children is particularly interesting, as transexuals often report that they felt from an early age that they were the ‘wrong sex’.

Gender identity disorder is where a person feels themselves to be male when they are bodily male, or male when they are bodily female.

There is some evidence that the ‘felt sex’ is reflected in brain structure, with male-to-female transsexuals having structures that are more female-like.

In adult life, some people choose to have hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery to change from male to female or female to male.

Some clinics are now treating children as young as 12, more often with hormone therapy, causing significant controversy.

It’s probably worth noting that not everyone in the transgender community appreciates that their wish to be another sex is classified as a disorder in itself, even if they do accept it can create a significant amount of psychological distress.

Furthermore, some people don’t see gender as a one-or-the-other classification and might consider themselves to be neither or both.

The article on the psychological effects of media examines how television and computer games might be altering our cognitive abilities.

In a nutshell, the research suggests that increased television viewing correlates with attentional problems, but computer game players tend to have better attentional skills.

The article also gives advice for parents on managing TV viewing to reduce the negative impact on children.

As a complete aside, the ‘leet among you might be interested to know that this week’s edition of NewSci is issue number 2600. j0!

Link to contents for this week’s NewSci.