Mind Hacks

Neuroscientist Ruth McKernan was a guest on Radio 4’s midweek this morning, talking about her father’s death from a mystery illness, and how her scientific background shaped her coping and grief, an experience she has described in her book Billy’s Halo. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s synopsis:

Now, she tells the story of her father’s last year as a collection of cutting-edge scientific themes – memory, consciousness, microbes, stem cells – like pearls strung together on the thread of her father’s life. The result is an inspired blending of personal emotion, love and grief, with a crystal-clear scientific explanation of the way our brains and bodies work in sickness and in health.

Midweek’s host Libby Purves commented that it was clear from McKernan’s book that as she wrote about the emotional turmoil of her father’s passing, she struggled not to take a scientific perspective. On the contrary, McKernan said she wanted to write an objective, factual account of what happened, but couldn’t help her emotions from spilling over into her words.

Link to replay of Midweek on Radio 4 (McKernan was the second guest).
Link to Billy’s Halo on Amazon.

AADT have some intriguing coverage on recent concerns that popular sleep drug Ambien is linked to ‘sleep driving’ and ‘sleep eating’ in some people.

The issue has recently been covered by the New York Times owing to the increase in people who have had the drug detected in their body by toxicology tests after “bizarre” road traffic accidents.

A registered nurse who lives outside Denver took Ambien before going to sleep one night in January 2003. Sometime later — she says she remembers none of the episode — she got into her car wearing only a thin nightshirt in 20-degree weather, had a fender bender, urinated in the middle of an intersection, then became violent with police officers, according to her lawyer.

The woman, whose lawyer says she previously had a pristine traffic record, eventually pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of careless driving after the prosecutors partly accepted her version of events, said the lawyer, Lloyd L. Boyer.

A further article from the NYT examines a recent study which looked at Ambien users who seemed to compulsively eat while asleep.

Although sleep-walking and related behaviours and relatively common, some researchers suspect that the drug may make them more likely, although no clear explanation for why this might happen is available.

Link to ‘Dangers Begin to Surface for Sleep Drugs’ from AADT.
Link to NYT article ‘Some Sleeping Pill Users Range Far Beyond Bed’ (reg free link).
Link to NYT article ‘Study Links Ambien Use to Unconscious Food Forays’ (reg free link).

Amedeo Challenge, the site aiming to fund the creation of high-quality open-access medical textbooks, is now taking small and private donations.

On the donations page you can give towards a ‘bounty’ for the completion of a textbook on a number of different topics.

Medical professionals and researchers can work towards creating books to claim the bounty. So far, online books on HIV and influenza have already been published and bounties are available for books on tuberculosis and viral hepatitis.

Of interest to readers here might be proposed books on Alzheimer’s disease, neurology and Parkinson’s disease (I’ve just donated 50 euros towards the creation of an open-access textbook on neurology and can’t wait to see it online).

When completed the books will be freely available for online viewing, to print, and will not have restrictions to prevent them from being translated into other languages.

Unfortunately, medical textbooks can be incredibly expensive (50 euros would be a cheap one) which make them inaccessible to many doctors and researchers in economically deprived countries, not to mention impoverished students the world over.

High-quality open-access textbooks would, therefore, be of great advantage to the advancement of medical science and training throughout the world.

Even the smallest donations will be of use.

Spread the word!

Link to Amedeo Challenge.
Link to Amedeo Challenge donations page.

Carl Zimmer has deleted his post on the controversy surrounding an upcoming TV programme about a Turkish family who walk on ‘all fours’ (see previously on Mind Hacks).

Presumably, he could do without the headache (and who can blame him?).

Nevertheless, there’s a good analysis over at Gene Expression, to which an interesting comment has been added by one of the TV company’s production team, explaining Nicholas Humphrey’s views more accurately.

Humphrey was widely cited (seemingly incorrectly) as the person suggesting that the inherited problem in the family caused an ‘evolutionary regression’. It seems his actual analysis is a lot more measured.

Today is the start of Brain Awareness Week with a number of events happening across the globe.

Your local college, university or science museum might be putting on public events about the mind and brain, and encouraging lively debate and participation.

The Brain Awareness Week website also has plenty of resources, including everything from in-depth educational materal to puzzles and quizzes for younger children.

Link to Brain Awareness Week website.

As part of an anti-stigma campaign, mental health charity Rethink has unveiled a statue of Winston Churchill in a strait-jacket, to highlight the great war-leader’s struggles with mental illness.

Churchill was subject to severe bouts of clinical depression throughout his life (which he called his “black dog”). Despite these, he managed to lead and inspire millions of people through the difficult years of World War Two.

Demonstrating that there’s still some way to go before stigma is eradicated, the headline in one UK national daily newspaper, the Daily Express, is “Insult to Britain’s Greatest Hero”.

This leads me to ask, what is so insulting about the image? Actually putting someone in a strait-jacket is insulting, but depicting them in one is something quite different.

Although an outdated clich√©, the strait-jacket symbolises mental illness to many people and the statue is just meant to emphasise Churchill’s experience of mental distress

I’ve personally used Churchill as an example of hope to many patients I’ve met in psychiatric hospital and it usually comes as a surprise that he was mentally ill.

Hopefully, the controversy has served its purpose and more people are now aware that great things can come from troubled minds.

Link to ‘Churchill sculpture sparks uproar’ from BBC News.

There’s a storm brewing on Carl Zimmer’s blog The Loom over an upcoming documentary about a family that walks on ‘all fours’ – which some have claimed is the result of a genetic mutation that causes evolutionary regression.

Those with their heads more firmly screwed on suggest that it could result from inherited abnormalities to the cerebellum which has a significant role in supporting movement and balance.

There are now accusations that the family involved were paid off, and that other scientists weren’t allowed access to the family members, and tempers are starting to fray.

The discussion is ongoing.

Link to post and discussion on Carl Zimmer’s The Loom (see point 3).
Link to coverage of the story on World Science.

Why do I have a bad feeling about the upcoming BBC series Get Smarter in a Week? It’s discussed in this article in The Guardian.

Is it because it claims that ‘brain exercises’ can make someone ‘40% cleverer’ in a week (whatever that’s supposed to mean), or perhaps because this claim is based on a trial of 15 volunteers with no control group?

Control groups are essential because people can improve due to non-specific effects (such as the placebo effect or the Pygmalion effect) where simply being involved with people trying to help you can have a beneficial effect – regardless of how effective the actual treatment is.

Looking at the advice recounted in The Guardian article, it mostly seems quite sensible if continued in the long term, i.e. practising mental skills, eating well and staying fit (although I’m not sure there’s much evidence that having a shower with your eyes closed in likely to improve the mind in any significant way).

I suspect, however, that most people will come away from the programme with the idea that doing these activities for only a week will cause a permanent improvement in their intelligence.

One of the best ways of making yourself ‘cleverer’ is to understand how to evaluate scientific claims, particularly when they’re used as ideas for TV programmes.

Of course, this may all be hype before ‘Get Smarter in a Week’ hits the airwaves, but I’d question the use of misleading scientific claims to promote a popular science programme.

Anyway, I look forward to being pleasantly surprised (or not).

In the meantime, the best bets for sharpening your mental abilities are: eat healthily, exercise regularly, stay mentally active.

Oh, and consider watching less TV (see also this pdf). Strangely, that’s one they forgot to mention.

Link to uncritical Guardian article on ‘Get Smarter in a Week’.