Mind Hacks

Neuropsychology of combat and chemical warfare

American medical journal JAMA has just published two fascinating articles on the impact of war: one on the neuropsychological effects of combat duty on US soldiers, and the other on the impact of chemical weapons on the mental health of Iranian chemical warfare survivors.

The study on US soldiers has been covered by the New York Times and the original research paper is freely available online.

It found that compared to non-deployed soldiers, previously deployed soldiers in Iraq scored worse on measures of sustained attention, verbal learning, and visual-spatial memory and had higher scores on measures of tension and confusion. In contrast, their general reaction time had improved.

The authors of the study suggest that these differences may result from the effects of persistent arousal on the brain which heighten the ability to react quickly at the expense of dampening attention, learning, and memory for things that are not threat-relevant.

The research on the impact of chemical weapons focused on three towns in northern Iran (Oshnaviyeh, Rabat and Sardasht) that had suffered either ‘low-intensity’ conventional warfare, ‘high-intensity’ conventional warfare or a mixture of conventional and chemical warfare in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Researchers interviewed civilian residents of the towns and found frightening levels of lasting PTSD, anxiety symptoms and severe depressive symptoms, particularly in those who had experienced the additional horror of chemical weapon attack.

The chances of mental disorder were 7.2 to 14.6 times higher for chemical weapons survivors than for individuals who had experienced ‘low-intensity’ warfare.

Link to New York Times article (via Frontal Cortex).
Link to full-text JAMA paper on US soldiers.
Link to abstract of paper on chemical warfare.

Schizophrenia between ourselves

The BBC Radio 4 discussion programme Between Ourselves had a frank and insightful discussion with two people who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia about the experience of voices, delusions, mental health care and the reaction of others.

One of the people interviewed is Dolly Sen, London-based artist, writer, and film-maker who has been heavily involved in Creative Routes, the respected arts organisation run by mental health service users.

One thing that many people might find surprising is that both the guests note that their voices are often unpleasant, but they feel that there would be ‘something missing’ from their lives if they suddenly disappeared.

Both of the guests also talk about the low points and fears caused by the overwhealming delusions they have experienced, and the distress caused by some bad experiences of hospitalisation.

As well as the negative experiences, Sen also describes some of the positive experiences of psychosis, saying “The best part of my voices is that I feel sometimes that the stars are talking to me and their giving me their song and their poetry and their magic”.

All in all, the programme is a fantastic account of the kaleidoscopic experience of psychosis that can be both troubling and profound.

Link to webpage with realaudio archive of Between Ourselves.

Applied sleep science

Science has an engaging article on how to apply the science of sleep in the service of improving your own night’s sleep, with plenty of clear advice and links to the research.

A bit bizarrely, it’s in their ‘Career Development’ section, presumably based on the idea that getting a good night’s sleep is good for your career.

Despite the slightly awkward spin, it’s useful look at how sleep research can be directly applied to optimising your downtime.

Link to ‘Forty Winks: Science and Sleep’.

Parasite culture

Could a wide-spread brain infection account for differences in cultures across the world? Possibly, is the surprising answer from a new research paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.

If cognitive parasitology isn’t your thing (and it may not be, as I just made that up) the research is expertly discussed by Carl Zimmer.

The disease caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii is called toxoplasmosis and has been linked to ‘personality’ changes in rats and mice.

Although controversial, some suggest that this infection may also be linked to personality changes in humans, suggesting that different rates of infections in different countries may lead to differences in ‘national character’.

You’re best going to Zimmer’s write-up for a concise take on the major implications, but I’ll leave you with an intriguing point he finishes on:

“[This] raises another interesting question: what about other parasites? Do viruses, intestinal worms, and other pathogens that can linger in the body for decades have their own influence on human personality?”

Link to Zimmer’s article ‘A Nation of Neurotics? Blame the Puppet Masters?’.

Mark Steel lectures on Freud, Aristotle, Descartes

Someone has put a series of the brilliant Mark Steel Lectures online which are an informative and hilarious romp through some of the most important historical figures in history.

They were created by the BBC for the Open University to both educate and enthuse people about history and contain wry insights into both the work and lives of the people featured.

The programmes on Freud, Aristotle and Descartes are likely to be of most interest to Mind Hacks readers, although the whole of this series has some fantastic gems.

Link to YouTube archive of the Mark Steel Lectures.

Drug dangerousness ranked by UK advisors

The UK goverment commissioned psychopharmacologist Professor David Nutt and neuroscientist Professor Colin Blakemore to rank recreational drugs by their dangerousness.

The list has just been published in today’s The Independent and gives some surprising results. Unusually, the list contains both legal and illegal drugs.

The drugs were ranked by ratings which took into account a combination of their physical damage, social harm and addictive properties.

In rank order of harmfulness:

1. Heroin
2. Cocaine
3. Barbituates
4. Street methadone
5. Alcohol
6. Ketamine
7. Benzodiazepines (e.g. Vallium)
8. Amphetamines
9. Tobacco
10. Buprenorphine
11. Cannabis
12. Solvents
13. 4-MTA
14. LSD
15. Methylphenidate (Ritalin)
16. Anabolic steroids
17. GHB
18. Ecstasy
19. Alkyl Nitrites (poppers)
20. Khat

I would like to point out to my ex-girlfriend that Red Bull is not listed among them.

There’s more information on each drug here and an article about the consultation here.

Apparently, the government were a little reticient to publish the report, considering the legal clasification is completely out of whack with this analysis.

SciAm on the expert mind

This month’s Scientific American has a fantastic article on the psychology of expert skills which they’ve made freely available online.

It discusses how research into the cognitive processes and neuropsychology of chess masters is informing wider questions of how experts differ from novices and what mental skills underlie the mastering of a subject.

…much of the chess master’s advantage over the novice derives from the first few seconds of thought. This rapid, knowledge-guided perception, sometimes called apperception, can be seen in experts in other fields as well. Just as a master can recall all the moves in a game he has played, so can an accomplished musician often reconstruct the score to a sonata heard just once. And just as the chess master often finds the best move in a flash, an expert physician can sometimes make an accurate diagnosis within moments of laying eyes on a patient.

But how do the experts in these various subjects acquire their extraordinary skills? How much can be credited to innate talent and how much to intensive training? Psychologists have sought answers in studies of chess masters. The collected results of a century of such research have led to new theories explaining how the mind organizes and retrieves information.

Link to SciAm article ‘The Expert Mind’.

Neurosurgery: Live!

OR-Live is a website that carries videos of surgical procedures, including a section where you can watch neurosurgery in action.

A brain clipping and coiling procedure to repair an aneurysm will be broadcast live today, and if that doesn’t take your fancy, there’s plenty more in the archive.

One of my favorites is a temporal lobectomy (removal of part of the temporal lobe) that was completed to remove the source of untreatable epileptic seizures.

It has a winning combination of a fascinating surgical procedure and a slightly uncomfortable professor of neurosurgery looking a bit awkward in front of the camera.

The site is a little confusing in that you need to use the ‘Watch Live Webcast’ link to launch an archive recording as well as see a live broadcast.

Link to neurosurgery at OR-Live (via Neurocontrarian).

Encephalon #3 arrives

Issue 3 of neuroscience writing carnival has just been published on Thinking Meat and contains articles on everything from whether video games desensitise us to violence to whether spindle neurons will be the next fashionable thing after ‘mirror neurons’ have lost their media sparkle.

See the complete issue for a raft of other commentaries on current mind and brain issues.

Link to Encephalon #3.

What do antidepressants do?

There’s a thought-provoking piece in the latest issue of open-access medical journal PLoS Medicine on whether antidepressants ‘correct’ a problem in the brain, or just create an altered state that may be useful for people with low-mood problems.

It is notable that the way psychiatric drugs are described is usually because of marketing. For example, SSRIs are classed as ‘antidepressants’, dopamine agonists and ‘antipsychotics’ and drugs like sodium valproate as ‘mood stabilizers’.

These terms have been promoted by drug companies in an effort to establish a market for particular compounds and imply that they directly affected these conditions. Often, they have been invented to replace previous labels which were no longer useful in marketing the drug.

The authors of the PLoS Medicine paper argue that trials have shown that, for example, opiates and amphetamine-like drugs can have beneficial effects in depressed patients but are not considered ‘antidepressants’.

The paper also tackles the idea that depression is ’caused by low serotonin’ in the brain and that antidepressants ‘correct’ this problem.

The low serotonin theory of depression must rank as one of the most widely known and least supported scientific theories, as there is comparatively little evidence that backs this explanation.

The authors argue that instead of trying to explain the action of a drug in terms of a disease it is meant to ‘correct’, it is more accurate to describe the drug in terms of its general actions in the brain which could be coincidentally useful in treating certain conditions.

I suspect, this is what inevitably happens anyway, owing to the needs of marketing.

Typically, when a drug is discovered, it is targeted at a condition which is likely to be profitable (depression being the classic example). At this point, it is usually marketed as an anti-something-or-other.

Later, when the profits begin to come in, the pharmaceutical company looks to widen the market and tests it on other, less prevalent, but hopefully still profitable conditions (e.g. social phobia).

For example, SSRI drugs (such as Prozac) are now indicated for depression, PTSD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders and panic disorder to name but a few.

The marketing then begins to place less emphasis on its original label, so it is seen as more wide acting.

Have a look at the archives of the front page of the Seroquel website before and after it gained approval for the treatment of bipolar disorder and notice how the term ‘antipsychotic’ is suddenly not so prominent.

Perhaps to put the paper in context, psychiatrist Dr Joanna Moncrieff, one of the authors of the PLoS Medicine paper, is co-chair of the Critical Psychiatry Network – a group of psychiatrists who dispute the predominance of biological models of mental disorder and campaign for a less coercive psychiatry.

Link to PLoS Medicine article ‘Do Antidepressants Cure or Create Abnormal Brain States?’

Psychology Wiki on recovery from brain injury

The Psychology Wiki is a wide-ranging Wikipedia-like resource that is edited by psychology professionals and students. It focuses on the mind and brain and contains a number of fantastic articles.

They’ve just announced their first ‘featured article’, an comprehensive piece on the science of Recovery from Acquired Brain Injury.

The article examines the neuroscience of brain injury and the mechanisms that support subsequent recovery. It also looks at practical steps and the experience of the recovery process.

There’s plenty more fantastic material on the wiki, and if you want to share your knowledge I’m sure they’d be pleased to have you pitch in.

Link to Psychology Wiki.
Link to article ‘Recovery from Acquired Brain Injury’.

Dennett interviewed on explaining religion

ABC Radio’s All in the Mind sees the return of long-time presenter Natasha Mitchell with an interview with philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett on a scientific approach to understanding religion.

Dennett is tackled on some of the issues raised in his recent book Breaking the Spell (ISBN 0713997893) and particularly on his reliance on the controversial theory of memes to back up his arguments:

Mitchell: Many would argue that the idea of memes is a seductive idea, others would say, ‘pseudo-scientific wordplay Dan Dennett, this is no more scientific than religion’.

Dennett: Memetics has not been turned into a science yet and it may not be turned into a science, except insofar as we come to understand that if you’re going to do a scientific study of culture you have to keep the space open for cultural themes to change without being changed deliberately by anybody.

Regardless of your views on any of Dennett’s points, he is always an engaging speaker and well worth listening to.

Link to audio and transcript of All in the Mind.

Me and My Memory

As part of the BBC Memory Season, BBC Radio 4 are running a series of programmes on people with unique memories – either because of disorder or because of remarkable talents.

The series is called Me and My Memory and started last Wednesday.

All the programmes are archived online, and the first was on prosopagnosia – the condition where people are unable to recognise others by their faces.

In this case, the programme talks to a woman who developed prosopagnosia after viral encephalitis, a brain infection that damaged parts of the brain involved in face recognition.

Future programmes will be on developmental amnesia, a memory champion, confabulation and mild cognitive impairment.

Link to homepage for Me and My Memory series.

Mind-reading competition

brain image interpretation.jpg Don’t worry, this isn’t about telepathy and doesn’t involve Uri Gellar.

No, it’s about a team of three Italian researchers who won $10000 in a brain-activity interpretation competition organised by the University of Pittsburgh earlier this year.

Entrants were provided with the fMRI data and behavioural reports recorded when four people watched two movies. The competitors’ task was to create an algorithm that could use the viewers ongoing brain activity to predict what they were thinking and feeling as the film unfolded. The crunch test came from a third film. This time the competing researchers were shown the viewers’ brain activity only, and they had to predict the behavioural data – what the viewers had reported seeing and feeling during the film on a moment-by-moment basis. The full rules are here.

The Italians – Emanuele Olivetti, Diego Sona, and Sriharsha Veeramachaneni were the most accurate, achieving a correlation of .86 for basic features, such as whether an instant of the film contained music. The full results are here.

I heard about this from the latest Nature Neuroscience editorial. They discuss the competition in the context of the increasing trend for researchers to see if they can predict what people are thinking based on their overall brain activity (this often gets discussed in relation to lie detection), rather than the more traditional correlational/localisation approach of seeing what brain activity occurs where, when people are thinking certain things.

The Nature Neurosci. editors welcome the shift:

Neuroimaging‚Äôs obsession with localization has often led to accusations that it is little more than phrenology. By using population responses across the whole brain to ask how rather than where information is processed, neuroimaging may be starting to come of age.

Link to the competition website.

Amateur psychiatry is booming

World of Psychology has a short but interesting article on the increasing trend for people to order unprescribed psychiatric medication as a form of self-treatment or simply to get their kicks.

The trend is being fuelled by ‘no prescription’ web sites that will deliver drugs to anywhere in the world and online instructions of dubious origin.

Link to article ‘Self-medicating Online’.

Manic exhilaration

There’s a wonderful piece in yesterday’s British Medical Journal by Raquel Duarte, a fourth year medical student at Edinburgh University, on the sheer exhilaration of being with a manic patient.

She describes the first time she interviewed a manic patient during her attachment to a psychiatric ward.

…my patient sat down in the family room of the inpatient ward, and I proceeded to obtain a full, detailed psychiatric history‚Äîor rather, I tried to. The truth is, she just talked‚Äîabout everything from art, to politics, to literature. Because of my complete inability to direct the interview, I let her carry on. “Been here almost three hours already… Damn, shouldn’t have giggled at the SHO. Never mind, I’ll just have to come back again tomorrow.” Resigned to the fact that I’d have to meet this patient many times before I could get all the relevant facts, I relaxed and was surprised to find myself enjoying all the irrelevant bits of the conversation.

We both laughed and chuckled like a couple of schoolgirls, me and this 65 year old woman, as I got caught up in her contagious joy and boundless energy. Amid deliberations on Monet and reflections on the situation in the Middle East, she told me about her experience of terrible confusion that somehow, like in a dream, makes perfect sense. I heard about her tragic losses and deep despair, about the havoc this disease can wreck on a family and about how her faith had sustained her throughout. “Mania… psychosis… depression.” She didn’t just give me a history of bipolar illness, she told me a story and took me on a journey to discover a person struggling with a disease but who, in spite of or perhaps because of it, was a whole and wonderful human being.

Unfortunately, the whole piece is not freely available available online, but for those who can access the BMJ, you can read it here.