Mind Hacks

An article in last month’s American Scientist offered an interesting theory of why some people are driven to find knowledge – because of the kick of natural opioids in the brain.

Sadly, the article is not freely available online, but the theory is outlined by neuroscientist Professor Irving Biederman in a pdf file he’s put online, and in a summary from Eureka Alert.

The idea is that the moment of finally understanding something causes a release of natural endorphins in the brain, providing a response to knowledge acquisition that conditions us to want more.

In other words, intellectual curiosity may be driven by an addiction to an opioid high.

Biederman’s theory was inspired by the well-known discovery that opioid receptors increase along the ventral visual pathway in the brain – the one that is most strongly associated with recognition and meaning.

At the moment, the theory is still largely speculative, although remains an interesting take on why humans are naturally curious.

Link to summary from Eureka Alert.
pdf of talk by Biederman outlining his theory.
Link to summary of Biederman’s American Scientist article.

There’s a funny and insightful article in Time Magazine by writer Michael Kinsley on the difficulty of selecting the right words to mark the point when you become conscious after brain surgery.

Kinsley wrote the piece before having surgery to implant a deep brain stimulation device to help alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

To much comic effect, the article discusses his dilemma over choosing something to say to make sure he seems cooly blasé, while not sounding like the surgery has affected his faculties.

Apparently, his surgery went fine but you’ll have to read the end of the article to find out what his first words upon awakening actually were.

Link to Time article ‘Yes, It Really Is Brain Surgery’.

Neurology has an interesting report on the use of low doses of the hallucinogenic drugs LSD and psilocybin to treat cluster headaches.

Cluster headaches are incredibly painful and tend to occur frequently, making them particularly distressing for sufferers.

There were anecdotal reports that LSD and psilocybin (the main active ingredient in ‘magic mushrooms’) helped relieve these headaches and researchers have started to investigate more fully.

The Neurology study interviewed 53 cluster headache patients who had used psilocybin or LSD to treat their condition and found a significant number had their condition improved.

As cluster headaches are associated with the abnormal release of serotonin in the brain, and LSD and psilocybin largely work on the serotonin system, there is some theoretical basis for how the drugs might work.

However, this is a complex and poorly understood area so further controlled trials are now being planned to see whether the improvement is anything more than the placebo effect.

Interestingly, the study thanks drugs information site Erowid, as the site was involved in data collection and recruiting participants.

Research into LSD treatment for headaches was discussed in a recent edition of BBC All in the Mind.

Link to full text of paper.

While wandering through a bookshop the other day I picked up a new book by pharmacologist Professor Leslie Iversen called Speed, Ecstasy, Ritalin: The Science of Amphetamines and have been thoroughly hooked [insert your own joke here] ever since.

It covers the history, chemistry, culture, safety and neuropsychology of a huge range of amphetamines and related compounds.

Included are the common ‘street’ amphetamines like speed and meth, pharmaceutical amphetamines like Ritalin and dexamphetamine, and the substituted amphetamines of the ecstasy family.

Oxford Unversity Press are usually good at putting excerpts of their books online (usually the introduction or first chapter) but sadly, there doesn’t seem to be anything similar online for this publication (OUP if you’re listening, now’s the time!)

You won’t find a more comprehensive guide to these fascinating drugs, and the book has the advantage of being written at a engaging pace without skipping over any of the in-depth science. It is not intended to be a ‘popular science’ book but is much more accessible than the majority of academic texts, even for non-specialists.

Even today, over-the-counter inhalers containing amphetamine-like drugs are still available as decongestants, although the compounds now used are ones that act solely on the norepinephrine system in the peripheral sympathetic nervous system and are devoid of psychostimulant properties or abuse potential.

A little known fact is that the popular ‘Vick inhaler’ contains 50mg of methamphetamine (described on the label by the synonym deoxyephedrine) in free base oil form; however, it is not the psychoactive D-isomer of the drug but L-methamphetamine [or levmetamfetamine], which has no psychostimulant properties but retains some sympathomimetic activity. Innocent users of the Vick inhaler to treat the symptoms of the common cold can get into trouble with the law if subjected to a drugs test, as this will indicate the presence of methamphetamine unless the test is sufficiently sophisticated to tell the difference between the L- and D-isomers of the drug! [p31]

Link to details of book Speed, Ecstasy, Ritalin.

There’s a short article from this month’s Scientific American available online where sleep specialist Professor Ernest Hartmann attempts to answer the question “Why do we dream?”.

Hartmann is a psychiatrist and the director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital in Boston, but notes that the exact function of dreaming is still largely a mystery, but summarises his recent popular scientific theory of its purpose.

Therefore I will try to explain a current view of dreaming and its possible functions, developed by myself and many collaborators, which we call the Contemporary Theory of Dreaming. The basic idea is as follows: activation patterns are shifting and connections are being made and unmade constantly in our brains, forming the physical basis for our minds. There is a whole continuum in the making of connections that we subsequently experience as mental functioning. At one end of the continuum is focused waking activity, such as when we are doing an arithmetic problem or chasing down a fly ball in the outfield. Here our mental functioning is focused, linear and well-bounded. When we move from focused waking to looser waking thought–reverie, daydreaming and finally dreaming–mental activity becomes less focused, looser, more global and more imagistic. Dreaming is the far end of this continuum: the state in which we make connections most loosely.

Link to Scientific American article ‘Why do we dream?’.