Mind Hacks

2005-10-14 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

Former wold champion boxer Frank Bruno admits cocaine may have played a part in his earlier mental breakdown.

The LA Times discusses a form of religious obsessiveness called scrupulosity.

A poem by Adrian Mitchell is chosen as the poem that most people would like to see launched into space for any other life forms to potentially read (encounter?).

A forensic lab worker is investigated for stealing human pituitary glands to dope racehorses.

1980’s photos from parties at an abandoned psychiatric hospital (via BoingBoing).

China opens an internet addiction clinic.

The brain’s language areas become more lateralised with age.

New research shows how HIV affects the brain (I can’t find the original scientific paper yet though).

Researchers ‘identify’ (doesn’t say how) influential words in CVs and job applications.

Early life stress can increase risk of memory loss in later life.

A former crack user talks about his addiction.

Where and how is human morality processed and represented by the brain? A freely available review by Jorge Moll and colleagues in the latest issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience proposes a new model based on neuroimaging and clinical data ‚Äì the event-feature-emotion complex framework (EFEC) ‚Äì that makes specific predictions about the kinds of moral impairment that will follow from damage to different brain regions.

In contrast with earlier models that have advocated the idea of a rational prefrontal cortex suppressing our amoral emotional drives, the EFEC framework posits a more integrative three-way system, whereby the prefrontal cortex stores information about moral values, social interactions and expected outcomes, the emotional limbic system codes for the reward value of our behavioural choices, and the superior temporal sulcus allows us to extract relevant functional and social features from the environment, like a sad face or aggressive gesture.

The review gives the example of localised cognitive processes that would occur in response to the sight of an orphan girl. The prefrontal cortex will predict the kind of life the girl is likely to have, the superior temporal sulcus will detect the sadness in her face and body language, and recognise her helplessness, and the limbic regions will give rise to feelings of sadness, anxiety and attachment. Taken together, ‚Äúthese component representations give rise to a ‚Äògestalt‚Äô [unified] experience by way of temporal synchronisation‚Äù, the authors say.

Continue reading “The moral brain”

Genetics of slow wave sleep

Researchers have identified a gene that seems to be involved in the amount of deep or ‘slow wave’ sleep a person gets during the night.

Slow wave sleep, typically characterised by EEG readings of less than 5 cycles per second, is thought to be important for allowing the brain to change its structure.

This process of reorganisation is known as ‘plasticity’ and is thought to be particularly important for the consolidation and filtering of memories.

Led by sleep researcher Julia R√©tey, the team from the University of Zurich found that different versions of the gene related to the breakdown of the neurotransmitter adenosine were present in people who differed in their duration of slow wave sleep.

Interestingly, caffeine’s sleep fighting properties are thought to be due to the fact that it blocks adenosine receptors, suggesting that the adenosine system may be a crucial piece in understanding how and why we sleep.

Link to article on study from Science website.
Link to study abstract.
Link to excellent Wikipedia article on sleep.

Online survey aims to prevent missing persons

Researchers from the University of Sydney are asking anyone who has suffered from anxiety or depression to complete an online survey in a research project that is aiming to understand the role of mood and stress in motivating missing persons.

Nearly 2,000 people go missing in the UK every year, with other countries also having significant numbers of people who seemingly ‘disappear’.

It is thought that some people who do become missing may be suffering with problems of anxiety, stress, depression or low mood.

The University of Sydney study is asking people who are currently experiencing such difficulties, or who have experienced them in the past, to complete a short anonymous online questionnaire.

Importantly, you don’t have to have actually ‘gone missing’ yourself, only to have experienced anxiety or depression, although the study asks about the desire to leave your current situation.

The study aims to prevent further occurrences of people going missing through a better understanding of such thoughts and behaviour. It also plans to minimise the suffering of the families of missing people by providing the most appropriate services available.

Link to Missing Persons Study at the University of Sydney.

“Eyeballs sound like creaking doors”

ABC Radio’s Health Report has a programme about Superior Canal Dehiscence Syndrome, a condition that leads to supersensitive hearing. So sensitive, in fact, that whispers can sounds like thunder, and sufferers can hear their own bloodflow and eyeball movements.

The condition is thought to occur due to a crack in the bony casing that surrounds the inner ear.

Normally, sound is channeled from the outside world, through the ear canal to the inner ear. Here lies the cochlea, the organ that translates sound waves to nerve impulses for the brain.

This arrangement efficiently picks up and filters external sound. When the bony casing to the inner ear is damaged, however, the filtering is thought to stop working as efficiently, so sounds ‘leak in’ from other places – including from the inside of the body.

People with this condition have very sensitive hearing, sometimes leading to pain and discomfort. Occasionally, their strange experiences are mistaken for mental illness, where unusual perceptions can sometimes occur.

A person interviewed for the programme describes her experience as where:

Eyeballs sound like creaking doors, eyelids opening and closing have a scratchy sound, bones and joints creak.

mp3 or realaudio of programme audio.
Link to programme transcript.

Ask philosophers about the mind

Ask Philosophers is a site where anyone can pose a question to be answered by some of the leading lights in world philosophy, including specialists in the philosophy of mind.

Scientists are often disappointingly dismissive of philosophy, usually without a good understanding of the breadth and depth of the modern discipline.

Philosophers are increasingly taking the role of ‘theoretical scientists’ – by understanding the scientific data in great detail and applying the tools of conceptual analysis to make sure current theories are conceptually water tight (or highlighting areas where they are not).

This is particularly important in the cognitive and clinical sciences because many philosophical problems are encountered on a day-to-day basis.

For example, the mind-body problem – that tries to understand the relationship between physical biological processes and thought – comes into stark relief when a clinician encounters a patient with brain injury.

Similarly, the age-old philosophical problems of understanding belief and knowledge become particularly important when the medical community have to define what it is to have a delusion – something that is usually considered a form of ‘damaged’ belief.

In the Ask Philosophers philosophy of mind section there are already some fantastic questions and answers online.

One person asks if a person who is given medication to make her forget a potentially terrifying surgical experience was ever actually afraid, another asks about whether it is possible to think about the thought you are thinking.

Anyone can pitch a question, so if you have any burning queries, philosophy’s finest are waiting for your challenge.

Link to Ask Philosophers Mind section.

2005-10-07 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

Users are more likely to agree with opinions when they’re delivered by a computer generated head that mirrors their movements.

The Times discusses a recent meeting on the ‘Science of Happiness and the new focus on ‘positive psychology’.

An outbreak of a rare form of the brain infection encephalitis threatens parts of India.

PINs, codes and passwords strain the brain (via BrainBlog).

Scientific American discusses research on what are being increasingly called ‘Halle Berry neurons‘ (see also previously on Mind Hacks).

Clowns help children cope with uncomfortable surgery but annoy Doctors (I love the image of a Clown squirting surgeons with trick flowers during surgery, much to the child’s delight).

A symposium on LSD is announced for 2006, on the centenery of its ~~discovery~~ discoverer (via MetaFilter).

Do computer harm children’s development? Yes, argues educator Lowell Monke.

Brains needed!

The UK Parkinson’s Disease Society Tissue Bank is asking people to donate their brains after they die, to aide the fight against Parkinson’s disease.

The service, located in London’s Imperial College, gets only one donation from someone with a healthy brain compared with 25 donations from people with Parkinson’s disease.

Postmortem brains of healthy people are essential so researchers can compare diseased tissue with unaffected tissue and draw valid and accurate conclusions about the condition.

Parkinson’s disease is known to occur when dopamine neurons die in the brain’s nigrostriatal pathway. It is not clear exactly why this happens, however.

Research that compares the postmortem brains of affected and unaffected people is, therefore, an essential part of understanding why this occurs, hopefully leading to the development of new treatments.

So, if you want to help in this essential research, you can will your brain to the Parkinson’s Disease Society Tissue Bank.

Link to UK Parkinson’s Disease Society Tissue Bank (Thanks Dr Petra!).

Scientific American web awards

Scientific American have given out their 2005 Science & Technology Web Awards and Mind Hacks made the list:

For anyone who ever fell asleep in their own drool while trying to read a neuroscience textbook, welcome to Mind Hacks, Tom Stafford and Matt Webb’s riveting companion blog to their book of the same name, which takes a decidedly fun approach to neuroscience. Emphasizing an empirical approach to understanding one’s own brain, the site reports on the latest developments in such areas as reasoning, memory, attention and language, plumbing the depths of journals and magazines, obscure Web sites and personal experience. A hearty banquet results: the musings of a man mistaken for a sex bot, an interview with a software developer, and reflections on why we laugh are all on the highly unpredictable and entertaining menu.

It’s always great to get awards but it’s even better to hear that there’s plenty of people out there enjoying what we’re doing and finding new angles on the fascinating world of psychology and neuroscience.

Link to Scientific American Science & Technology Web Awards 2005.

UK ‘Kinsey report’ reveals 1950s sex lives

BBC News describes a suppressed sexual behaviour survey conducted in the 1950s, in the wake of the Kinsey Reports that first described the then shocking truth about the sexual behaviour of American participants.

The British survey followed the Kinsey’s studies by only a few years, but reportedly revealed information considered too uncomfortable to publicise and subsequently remained unpublished (although the BBC story doesn’t indicate who was responsible for suppressing it).

Findings in the survey included:

One in four men admitted to having had sex with prostitutes, one in five women owned up to an extra-marital affair, while the same proportion of both sexes said they had had a homosexual experience.

The techniques used in the study would be considered vastly unethical by today’s standards, and were even dodgy when compared to the research methods used by Kinsey on the other side of the Atlantic.

The research is further discussed in a BBC television programme called Little Kinsey to be shown on BBC Four on Wednesday 5 October, at 2100 BST.

Link to “Britain’s secret sex survey”.

Non-invasive neuroprosthetics

Nature reports that by simply recording the brain’s electrical signals from electrodes on the scalp, researchers have enabled trained participants to reliably control computer equipment, a feat normally associated with physical implants in the brain.

This is part of the growing science of neuroprosthetics, that aims to create technology that directly interfaces with the brain.

It is being particularly championed for people with paralysis, who do not have the use of their limbs, or people with damaged sensory organs, who might have their senses improved by technological replacements.

Previous trials of the technology have resulted in electronic implants to replace damaged retinas and a microchip implant that allows a paralysed man to control a computer.

These sorts of technologies typically require complex, experimental and invasive surgery, so being able to control technology via a skull cap and surface electrodes would be a more convenient option.

One of the disadvantages, well known to scientists who use forms of EEG recording to research the brain, is that the skull ‘smears’ the signal from the brain. Furthermore, muscle activity can introduce large amounts of electricial noise into the recording.

To get round this, mathematical analysis is used to filter out the unwanted interference, usually by averaging over several trials of the same task, allowing underlying brain activity to be inferred.

This is not an exact science, however, meaning the moment-to-moment ‘decoding’ of electrical activity needed for instant control of technology is more difficult to acheive.

Link to article ‘Computer users move themselves with the mind’.

‘Connectome’ call for human brain mappers

An article in open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology reviews current knowledge and calls for a comprehensive map of the brain’s connections.

Echoing the aims of the Human Genome Project the authors argue that a detailed ‘connectome’ is needed to fully understand how different areas of the human brain interconnect.

There is already a good understanding about how some areas of the brain connect, but it is currently not available in a single database, and there are crucial pathways that are not described in sufficient detail.

Having accurate information about the physical layout of the brain would allow a better understanding of the significance of brain activity from neuroimaging studies, and the effects of brain damage on areas not directly affected by the injury.

The paper in PLoS Computational Biology is part of a growing trend to integrate measures of activity (typically attributed to averaged or relatively rough locations in the brain) with detailed anatomical maps.

A recent toolkit released for SPM – a popular brain scan analysis package – allows researchers to judge the probability of activity arising from different areas in the brain, each is which is distinguished by differences in the microscopic structure of the neural tissue.

Link to article ‘The Human Connectome: A Structural Description of the Human Brain’.

2005-09-30 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

People who are known to be pathological liars may show differences in the white matter in the frontal lobes of the brain.

Cognitive therapy may be as effective as antidepressants as a treatment for severe depression, finds recent study.

Satirical piece proclaims Tom Cruise to lecture on the ‘The Modern Science of Mental Health’.

Brain scanners useful as lie detectors claims new study – and even good enough to “detect terrorists” claims another (dig those “fund me!” buzzwords).

Research on brain function during sleep suggest that the coherent activity of wakefullness connectivity breaks up into ‘islands’ during the night.

BrainBlog reports that UK soap Coronation Street will feature a character with dementia.

The psychology of religion

Online boffin club Edge has an article by psychologist Daniel Gilbert that discusses a psychological approach to understanding religious belief.

One of the difficulties with combining science and religion is that science typically deals with predictions that can be falsified by experiment (allowing theories to be created and tested) whereas the main spiritual tenants of religion tend to take the form of non-falsifiable hypotheses.

For example, many forms of the hypothesis that ‘there is a God’ cannot be falsified, as it is not clear what evidence would constitute a refutation.

This is in contrast to many other hypotheses associated with religion, such as creationism, that makes specific predictions that can be falsified – e.g. in one of its forms, that the world was created only a few thousand years ago.

Gilbert starts off his article with a commonly produced but mistaken assumption: “no one has yet produced a shred of empirical evidence for the existence of God”.

Here he mistakes ’empirical’ for ‘experimental’, as empirical evidence is that which is based on experience and observation, of which experiments are only a certain type (albeit ones that are formalised and highly valued).

There is certainly plenty of empirical evidence about. Many religious people will be able to provide examples of how they have personally experienced the effect or presence of ‘supernatural’ influence in their lives, or can provide examples where many people witnessed a supposed example of divine intervention.

The question is not over whether there is evidence, but whether it is valid (the phenomena was genuinely as experienced) and how it should be interpreted (whether it supports the concept of the divine, or a particular idea of ‘God’).

Link to article “The Vagaries of Religious Experience”.

Population control – for hire

Slate reports on the rise of psychological population control, often called PsyOps, as a form of commercial service.

According to the report, a company called Strategic Communications Laboratories Ltd was advertising itself at a notable London arms fair, suggesting that it could fool the population into believing any number of things in an attempt to divert attention from a presumed ‘actual’ catastrophe or similar dangerous situation.

When the Slate reporter suggested it sounded like propoganda, a member of staff was quoted as denying the fact, saying:

“If your definition of propaganda is framing communications to do something that’s going to save lives, that’s fine,” says Mark Broughton, SCL’s public affairs director. “That’s not a word I would use for that.”

The company’s website suggests otherwise though, stating they can provide training “for up to 250 staff, including specialised (and tailored) persuasion and propaganda courses.”

Their entry in the Defence Suppliers Directory further outlines the sort of work they’re willing to undertake:

Campaigns may range from homeland security and compliance issues to humanitarian and healthcare behaviour changes. In special circumstances the company will undertake political projects, especially if the sovereignty of the country is at stake, and – very occasionally – corporate campaigns.

Research has shown that attitudes and behaviour correlate poorly. However, SCL claim they can specifically influence behaviour: “for instance – you require a significant number of the electorate to vote for you, it is far more important to get their vote than it is for them merely to hold a favourable attitude towards you.”

The PsyOps field is certainly a murky one. As a tool it could be used both to prevent public panic during an emergency, and to prop up a failing government that would otherwise fall.

Unfortunately, it is often difficult to judge whether such companies are having a positive or negative effect on society, because by their very nature, it is difficult to see how and where they are influencing public behaviour.

Link to Slate article “You Can’t Handle the Truth: Psy-ops propaganda goes mainstream”.
Link to SCL website.
Link to SCL entry in Defence Suppliers Directory.

Synapse wins Science visualisation contest

The National Science Foundation and the journal Science recently ran a competition to produce the best scientific images. The winner in the illustration category was an image of a neuron, moments before it transmits a signal across the synapse.

The full size version of the image is both strangely beautiful and visually stunning.

Science also has a short article to accompany the image, that describes how it was created and the biological techniques it was based on.

Link to Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.