Just a quick note to say that BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week this week is Brain Matters by Katrina Firlik (mentioned previously here and here on Mind Hacks).
The book tackles Firlik’s work as a neurosurgeon and will be broadcast in five parts. Each will be available online for a week after broadcast.
This week’s BBC Radio 4 world radio roundup show A World in Your Ear featured highlights from recent broadcasts on mental health from around the globe.
In an excerpt from Sudan Radio counsellor Moses Mayuen Akuein discusses his work with trauma victims caught up in Darfur conflict, while Real Jamaican Radio discusses maintaining good mental health on a phone-in programme.
The show features numerous other highlights, including the incredibly moving story of Howard Dully (featured previously on Mind Hacks), who was lobotomised at the age of 12 and attempts to make sense of his experiences as an adult.
Link to A World in Your Ear webpage.
realaudio of programme.
Morgellons is claimed to be a new form of skin disease by its sufferers but has been largely ignored by the medical community and some have claimed it is, in reality, a psychotic syndrome akin to delusional parasitosis.
Outraged by the accusation that their symptoms may be a result of mental illness, proponents are producing fibrous outgrowths from their troubling skin lesions as evidence of its reality.
Although previously just a fringe concern, in the last few weeks Morgellons has gained a huge amount of publicity, with TV reports, magazine articles, newspaper stories and posts on some of the internet’s most popular sites.
Nevertheless, Morgellons challenges more than just the ability of the medical community to make sense of physical symptoms, and is a classic example of a syndrome on the borderlands of medicine.
Innovative autism community software project Reactive Colours had its official launch the other day, and is now sporting a new website and numerous ‘reactivities’ to download and play online.
The project is designed to encourage individuals with autistic spectrum differences and learning disabilities to use computers, through which they can develop mouse, keyboard, programming and screen skills and deliberately emphasise the characteristics of computing that are of potential significance to people on the autism spectrum.
The project is based on open-source principles and intended to be more than just a free download. Interested people are encouraged to contribute their own programming skills to the project.
The input of people with autism and Asperger syndrome is particularly encouraged, as they are likely to have the best insight into what sort of activities will engage those on the autism spectrum.
Mind Hacks covered Reactive Colours last year where we interviewed project leader Wendy Keay-Bright about the development of the idea.
Link to Reactive Colours website and community.
Link to Reactive Colours project description.
Disclaimer: I am an open licensing advisor to the project.
A couple of encouraging pieces of news for those following the progress of open-access science journals: The open access medical journal PLoS Clinical Trials has just launched, and recent research shows that science published in open journals is more widely cited and distributed.
PLoS Clinical Trials aims to publish studies into the effectiveness of treatments, regardless of whether they show an effect or not (to avoid the publication bias whereby trials showing ‘no effect’ are dismissed as uninteresting).
The journal also demands that trials are registered before they are submitted for publication, to avoid organisations hiding the results of trials which don’t support the effectiveness of their treatment.
Furthermore, PLoS Clinical Trials does not rely on advertising from drug companies or other vested interests, meaning they are less likely to be influenced by any outside commercial pressure.
In particular, these biases have been seen as a major problem for the effective evaluation of psychiatric drugs in particular, leading to the reform of procedures for publishing and registering drug company funded studies by some journals.
The article on the advantage of publishing on open-access journals is appropriately published in PLoS Biology, and shows that the advantage even holds over journals that make their articles freely available after a delay of 6 months.
Link to PLoS Clinical Trials.
Link to editorial ‘Open Access Increases Citation Rate’ from PLoS Biology
Link to research article from PLoS Biology.
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
As much sci-fi brain art as you can shake a stick at (via BrainWaves)
…and one amazing picture of neuronanoart (via Neurofuture).
Professor Alan Harvey discusses neural transplantation on ABC Radio’s In Conversation.
The New York Times on the neuroscience of chronic pain.
BBC Five Live broadcasts an investigation into illicit drugs on UK psychiatric wards (called ‘Drugs on the Brain’).
1 in 20 neothlithic skulls show evidence of early neuroweapon injuries.
This week’s New Scientist has a letter on the treatment of ADHD and the ethics of conformity.
PLoS Biology has a paper on how a relatively simple computational model can produce a realistic simulation of the brain’s visual system.
Cognitive Daily’s Dave Munger writes on how the psychology of uncertainty can effect the economics of conservation.
A review of scientific studies has found that chocolate, long used as an emotional pick-me-up, more often prolongs a bad mood rather than helps it.
In an article currently in press for the Journal of Affective Disorders, psychiatrist Gordon Parker and his team gathered evidence from decades of studies into the mood-altering effects of the cocoa-based confectionary.
Sadly, for those hoping for a high-street mood lift, they conclude that any positive effects are limited to the anticipation and sensory properties of the popular foodstuff. Carbohydrate-heavy sweets are likely to prolong any feelings of low mood.
Link to abstract of study ‘Mood state effects of chocolate’.
pdf of full-text article.
I’m always impressed by the way Cognitive Daily manage to break down sometimes quite complex research into straightforward explanations, and their and try-it-yourself experiment on visual working memory is no exception.
Their article is a wonderful tour through a recent paper that examines visual memory for briefly presented scenes.
BBC Radio 4 science programme Frontiers examines the psychology and neuroscience of time perception and considers how the sense of time can be warped when we’re put under stress.
In one part, the programme talks to psychologist David Eagleman who’s been running experiments with people doing ‘SCAD diving‘ – an activity where you jump free-fall off a 50 metre crane into a waiting net below.
He asks participants to try and judge time during the jump to see whether the stress of the situation genuinely affects people’s time perception – in an attempt to understand if things really go ‘in slow motion’ during emergency situations.
When a person’s life is in danger, a phenomenon known as ‘time-dilation’ can occur. This is when, during a car crash for example, time seems to slow down or become frozen.
In these cases the body’s internal clock speeds up when facing a potential catastrophe, so that it can take in more information more quickly and function more effectively in an emergency.
This is also a phenomenon actively sought by elite sportspeople, when they get ‘in the zone’.
Some of the chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine, can affect our perception of time. Deficiencies in these chemicals can lead to brain disorders.
In today’s technological age, the body’s natural clocks are being hijacked by timetables, schedules and diaries. By paying more attention to our watches, rather than our internal clocks, could we be losing touch with time as it should be perceived?
Link to Frontiers special on time perception.
realaudio of programme.
The Wikipedia article on the Philosophy of Mind is featured on the online encyclopaedia’s front page today, demonstrating how the philosophy articles have greatly improved during the last year.
The article gives a clear and comprehensive overview of this key field and is beautifully illustrated throughout.
Philosophy has a bit of an image problem among scientists. Some dismiss it as self-indulgent, but nowhere could it be farther from the truth than in cognitive science.
Philosophers now make up essential team members in many neuropsychology research groups, valued for their critical insight and knowledge of how certain types of difficult conceptual problems can be overcome.
I’m most familiar with the work of Professor Martin Davies who works with the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science and usefully makes all his work available online.
This is a good place to start if you want an introduction to how philosophy can contribute to the understanding of brain-injury, mental illness and the neuropsychological function of the health individual.
If you want a general introduction to the field, the Wikipedia article is your first port of call.
Link to Wikipedia article on Philosophy of Mind.
Link to Martin Davies’ publications.
Just in case you’re still looking for ways to mark National Epilepsy week, a recent edition of Case Notes had a special on epilepsy, outlining the science and impact of this curious condition.
In one particularly interesting section, they discuss research on using neuroimaging to replace the Wada test – the procedure where the barbiturate drug sodium amobarbital is injected into the carotid artery to temporarily disable one hemisphere of the brain.
This is used in people about to undergo neurosurgery to remove a brain area that may be causing uncontrollable and dangerous epileptic seizures.
It is particularly important to know which hemisphere of the brain is most involved in language, so the surgeons know where to tread carefully to make sure the patient’s language ability isn’t damaged.
Obviously, injecting strong sedative drugs directly into major brain arteries has its risks; both to the patient (there is a small risk of stroke), and the clinicians – such as the occasional patient going bezerk on the drugs.
This has led researchers to try and replace the Wada test with something less invasive and somewhat safer, namely scanning the brain with fMRI (e.g. see this pdf).
The technology is still being developed, however, as the results of the Wada test and an fMRI scan don’t always match, although new developments are improving the accuracy of these brain scan techniques as time goes on.
Link to webpage on Case Notes special on epilepsy.
realaudio of programme.
Link to information on the Wada test from epilepsy.com
Neurosurgeon and author Dr Katrina Firlik has kindly agreed to answer a few questions about her interest in brain surgery and neuroscience.
She also tells me that her new book (featured previously on Mind Hacks) has been released in the UK under the name Brain Matters (ISBN 0297848070).
Apparently, she will be in the UK to talk about her work in the near future, so we’ll post details as soon as we know them.
Anyway, on to the interview…
Continue reading “Five minutes with neurosurgeon Katrina Firlik”
The first part of a series on memory failures has just appeared on the increasingly compulsive cognitive science blog Developing Intelligence.
The site is run by cognitive neuroscientist Chris Chatham who summarises the ‘seven sins of memory’ – Daniel Schacter’s famous description of the seven ways in which memory can become distorted or degraded.
Schacter first described his ideas in a landmark paper and later in an accessible book of the same name.
Chris has a different approach, however, and will be setting out his alternative views over the coming week:
In contrast to Schacter’s “seven sins of memory” (1999), I argue that all types of memory inaccuracy arise from three distinct types of memory system failure: those of maintenance, of search, and of monitoring. Failures of maintenance include problems involving prospective memory (“forgetting to remember”), rapid forgetting, and absent-mindedness. Failures of search include retrieval-induced forgetting, tip-of-the-tongue phenomena, and amnesia. Failures of monitoring include source misattribution, memory biases, and suggestibility. Finally, other memory inaccuracies may actually result from interactions among multiple sources of failure.
In this week’s upcoming posts, I will review each of these categories of memory failure in turn, and describe how they can account for all types of memory inaccuracy when taken together.
Link to post at Developing Intelligence.
Neurofuture has collected a range of recent posts that have been inspired by recent research on the ‘neurobiological basis of dread’, although a particularly clear description of the study posted to Brain Ethics is, perhaps, a good one that’s missing.
The research was probably best summarised in the mainstream media in an article from Science.
The New York Times had slightly different angle on the story and asked the researchers about how you would go about avoiding feelings of dread.
The first study ever to look at where sensations of dread arise in the brain finds that contrary to what is widely believed, dread does not involve fear and anxiety in the moment of an unpleasant event. Instead, it derives from the attention that people devote beforehand to what they think will be extremely unpleasant.
So the solution to dread, the researchers say, is self-distraction.
Link to abstract of original scientific paper.
UK education and support charity Epilepsy Action has launched this year’s National Epilepsy Week, running from 14th-20th May.
The theme of the 2006 event is children and young people and the charity is focusing on encouraging schools to maximise the potential of pupils with epilepsy.
In a recent survey, only 19% of schools felt that staff knowledge of epilepsy was good.
Consequently, Epilepsy Action has produced a raft of information to support parents and teachers in their care of affected pupils, including an online guide: Essential Information for Teachers.
Even if you’re not involved with children or schools you can learn how to help someone who has a seizure. You could save their life.
Link to information on National Epilepsy Week.
Link to Essential Information for Teachers.
Link to first aid for seizures.
Katrina Firlik is a neurosurgeon. She’s one of the few female neurosurgeons in a largely male dominated profession and has written a book about her work and experiences called Another Day in the Frontal Lobe.
She’s recently been featured on numerous radio programmes and newspaper interviews (listed here), the best of which is probably an in-depth discussion about her work on an NPR radio show entitled A Surgeon’s-Eye View of the Brain.
A short excerpt of her book is available online:
The brain is soft. Some of my colleagues compare it to toothpaste, but that’s not quite right. It doesn’t spread like toothpaste. It doesn’t adhere to your fingers the way toothpaste does. Tofu — the soft variety, if you know tofu — may be a more accurate comparison. If you cut out a sizable cube of brain it retains its shape, more or less, although not quite as well as tofu. Damaged or swollen brain, on the other hand, is softer. Under pressure, it will readily express itself out of a hole in the skull made by a high-speed surgical drill. Perhaps the toothpaste analogy is more appropriate under these circumstances.
The issue of brain texture is on my mind all the time. Why? I am a neurosurgeon. The brain is my business. Although I acknowledge that the human brain is a refined, complex, and mysterious system, I often need to regard it as a soft object inhabiting the bony confines of a hard skull. Many of the brains I encounter have been pushed around by tumors, blood clots, infections, or strokes that have swollen out of control. Some have been invaded by bullets, nails, or even maggots. I see brains at their most vulnerable. However, whereas other brain specialists, like neurologists and psychiatrists, examine brain images and pontificate from outside of the cranium, neurosurgeons boast the additional manual relationship with our most complex of organs. We are part scientist, part mechanic.
She’s also an obvious neuroscience geek and has an online gallery of neuroanatomy drawings and a Cafepress store where you can buy t-shirts with them on!
Link to interview and discussion on NPR radio.
Link to Katrina Firlik’s website with book details.
Mind Hacks 