I just have to send a big appreciative Thanks! to the folks at Foyles, not just for hosting our talk the other week (and suggesting it!), but for making Foyles the store in London to buy Mind Hacks, and being great fun with it too. There are three people in particular: Anna, Dominic and Michael in the computer books dept. So if you’re passing (it’s just outside the cafe), give them a fright and go say Hello from us 🙂
Neuroanthropology
Historian Anne Harrington discusses the public fascination with the lives of people with injured brains, recounted in books such as Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Interviewed on ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind, Harrington considers how these detailed case studies have influenced neuroscience, from early description by Russian neuropsychologist A. R. Luria, to the variety of similar books available today.
These literary accounts have been christened ‘neuroanthropology’ by some, highlighting their focus on the effects of brain injury on day-to-day reality and human existence.
One of my favourites is a recent book by Paul Broks entitled Into the Silent Land (first chapter) that combines case studies, neuropsychology, philosophy of mind and a sometimes hallucinatory style.
Realaudio or transcript for All in the Mind interview with Ann Harrington.
Link to interview with Paul Broks from amercianscientist.org
Link to A.R. Luria archive, with audio and video.
More mind hacks
While mistyping my Google search terms, I found the similarly named mindhack.net, a site also concerned with tweaking the human mind.
Mindhack.net (in contrast to this site, mindhacks.com) relies solely on user contributions – sort of like a tradetricks.org for psychology.
Although it seems to have been a little quiet of late, it has plenty of fascinating material in its archives, and is undoubtedly an underused resource.
Link to mindhack.net
‘Dhat’ and semen loss
An article by psychiatrist Athula Sumathipala that discusses a curious syndrome involving pathological anxiety about semen loss, has just become available online from last year’s British Journal of Psychiatry.
The syndrome, known as dhat, involves feelings of fatigue, weakness, anxiety, loss of appetite, guilt and sexual dysfunction, all attributed to the loss of semen.
Dhat is typically associated with India and China, where it was discussed in ancient texts. Sumathipala’s review makes it clear however, that such concerns have been prevalent in the west as well.
In fact, they were discussed as far back as early medical texts by Galen, and formed the basis of relatively recent (although spurious) theories on madness and masturbation.
The article starts with a discussion on the shaky psychiatric concept of a culture-bound syndrome – a supposedly culturally specific mental illness – and describes the curious syndrome in detail in the Results section of the paper.
Link to full text of article from the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Link to an Introduction to Culture-Bound Syndromes from the Psychiatric Times
2005-04-01 Spike activity
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
A new edition of Scientific American Mind is available in the shops and two articles are freely available online. One on deja vu and the other a critical look at the Rorschach inkblot test.
An article on Kuro5hin discusses the psychology and construction of the ‘Big Five‘ personality model.
A paralysed man is able to control household appliances through an implanted brain chip (story from Guardian and BBC).
An article from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette discusses the work of psychologist Jennifer S. Lerner on the effect of emotion on decision-making and risk-taking.
A personality analysis of Adolf Hitler, commissioned by the forerunner to the CIA during the 1940s, is published online by Cornell University.
Teasing is “an indispensable social tool, vital to all healthy relationships”.
Fantasy friends
While most children believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny at some point, researchers are now starting to discover that children’s fantasy worlds are more subtle than previously suspected, and may even last into adulthood.
An in-depth article from Science News Online examines a child’s understanding of fantasy characters and how imagination is being used to help children cope with traumatic and painful medical procedures.
One surprising finding is that although one third of 7-year olds seem to have imaginary friends, similar experiences can last into adulthood. Some professions may even rely on this experience to help their work.
Psychologist Marjorie Taylor interviewed 50 fiction writers ranging from an award-winning novelist to scribblers who had never been published. Of those authors, 46 provided vivid examples of made-up characters who had taken over the job of composing their life stories and who sometimes resisted their creators’ attempts to control the narrative. Some fictional folk wandered around in the writers’ houses or otherwise inhabited their everyday world.
Link to article from Science News Online.
Previously on MindHacks: Imaginary friends are linked to positive psychological development in children.
More cartoon fun
Further to the dinosaurs Vaughan speaks of below, there is a Flash-based dynamic comic* at Neuroscience for Kids which is a nice intro to the entire nervous system, with Sam and his friendly neurons. In addition, there are also suggestions for a number of neuroscience-based fun lesson plans, like synaptic tag.
Sam’s brainy adventure: link
*No, a cartoon this does not make. Although action within panels, rather than dynamic transitions such as Scott McCloud’s The Right Number (click where it says to preview the work, unfortunately the full deal does cost an imposing 50c to view), does start to push the boundaries somewhat. But speech bubbles and panels maketh the medium – at least, McCloud would argue that.
Banishing depression with exercise
This week is Mental Health Action Week, and a major attempt is being made to highlight the beneficial effects of exercise in treating depression.
Depression is commonly treated with antidepressant drugs, and for some people, these may be the most effective treatment.
For mild or moderate depression however, regular excercise is known to work as well as medication in some people.
Exercise is also known to complement the use of antidepressant drugs, may prevent further relapses, and could help counter the slightly increased risk of heart problems recently linked to depression.
Although doing exercise may seem daunting during a period of depression, a gentle start is a good way to ease yourself into the habit.
If you live in the UK, you may be able to get referred to a tailored exercise programme, prescribed by your GP.
Link to more information from mentalhealth.org.uk
Tyrannosaurus reflex
In a wonderful comic strip, dinosaurs explain the neural mechanism of why locking the hands together can release the knee jerk reflex.
It’s not often the finer points of neurological examination are explained by cartoon dinosaurs, but may this be the first in a long line of comic book / neuroscience fusion spectaculars.
Link to dinosaur / neurophysiology comic strip (via tradetricks.org)
Link to information about the reflex examination.
Turn on, tune in, spin out
Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell studies attention deficit disorder (ADD) and is becoming increasingly concerned that using information technology is causing an acquired form of the condition.
He argues that the constant task-switching required when using the likes of mobile phones, email and instant messaging can lead to an effect he has called ‘Attention Deficit Trait’ or ADT.
This shares some of the same features of ADD, such as impaired concentration, restlessness and increased distraction, but seems to improve when individuals are away from the workplace.
In contrast, ADD is usually thought to be a relatively fixed condition, presumably present from birth, although not diagnosable until about 6 years of age.
As outlined in a recent Scientific American article (PDF), it is known that simple television viewing can have both short and long term effects on the mind, including impairments in basic cognitive functioning.
Cynics might suggest that the same parallels might not apply to other technology and this might be Hallowell’s attempt to make a name for himself in the lucrative world of business psychology.
It is unlikely however, that information technology is entirely neutral with regards to psychological function, although there is relatively little hard evidence to judge how positive or negative these effects might be.
Link to interview with Dr Halliwell on ADT.
Link to summary from techdirt.com.
PDF of Scientific American article on the psychological effects of television.
2005-03-23 Spike activity
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news, with internet radio easter special:
An archive of old advertisements for hypnotism books and training guides.
Researchers argue Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was inspired by the hallucinogenic effects of ergot.
Scientists link gene to dyslexia (again).
A specialist in the psychology of trauma recounts his own experience of being in a near-fatal car crash and his view on the psychological effects of post-trauma stress.
New York Times article on people who have a compelling desire to have a limb amputated.
Recent work in the field of neuroeconomics (the neuropsychology of economic decision making) is challenging traditonal notions of rationality.
People tend to fancy others with differing facial features, but trust those with similar features.
Terri Schiavo case highlights lack of knowledge in certain areas of neurology.
25% of US adults have received mental health care over a two-year period.
Article from Psychology Today on the co-option of psychological terms into everyday language.
Easter radio special
A few things to relax with over the easter holiday… Mind and brain radio programmes from around the world, broadcast over the last week and archived for your listening pleasure:
BBC Radio 4 had a series of five 15-minute programmes on the work of Sigmund Freud.
An edition of Check Up, also on Radio 4, tackles obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD.
And one more from Radio 4… This week’s edition of Material World discusses the neurobiology of body clocks and circadian rhythms.
ABC Radio National edition of All in the Mind discusses the neuroscience of movement and dance (transcript, realaudio).
Another Radio National programme, Ockham’s Razor, takes a critical look at mental illness and society (transcript, realaudio).
Scientists who decoded movement signals from an awake human with brain-implanted electrodes are interviewed on the SETI Radio Network’s science show Are we alone ? (mp3).
Do you really want to quit?
I have a question about dialog boxes on my computer. This is something I mentioned last night, and I’d appreciate some help.
Below is a picture of a well-assembled dialog box. UI folks say that dialog box options should be verbs, not nouns, but that’s not important here. (ie, you should have options “Don’t save” and “Save” for the question “Save this document?” instead of the buttons “OK” and “Cancel.”) I’m going to talk about why it’s well-assembled, but first:
Mac trivia! While the Mac (actually, the Lisa, but the Lisa informed the Mac) was being designed, the “OK” button did used to be an action: it used to be labeled “Do It.” But the space between the two words was too small, and the users read the button label as “dolt” and got kind of offended and wouldn’t push it. True fact!
Back to that dialog box…
When faces fade
Prosopagnosia is an inability to recognise faces. It most commonly occurs after brain injury, although this week’s New Scientist reports on a recently completed study on a type of inherited prosopagnosia, suggesting a genetic basis for face recognition.
The research was an international effort, led by husband and wife team, geneticists Thomas and Martina Grüter. Notably, Thomas has a particular interest in this area, as he has prosopagnosia himself.
Unfortunately, the New Scientist article is only available to subscribers The full article is now available online, and Mind Hacks has spoken to two members of the research team about this intriguing study: Thomas on his own experience of prosopagnosia and the genetics of face recognition, and neuropsychologist Hadyn Ellis on the implications for the developing field of ‘cognitive genetics’.
What motivates cognitive science ?
Online editions of The Times and Guardian have a review of neurobiologist Steven Rose’s new book The 21st Century Brain, that discusses the motivations behind the funding and support for neuroscience research.
Rose is a controversial critic of many aspects of mainstream science, and his new book argues that the recent explosion in psychology and neuroscience has been driven by funders only wanting directly marketable results, rather than knowledge about the brain for the good of all. This, he argues, goes hand-in-hand with profit-driven drug development, neuromarketing and other explicity commercial projects.
What Rose seems particularly concerned about, is not commercial projects per se, but the effect that such funding is having on neuroscience itself. For example, the promotion of purely biological theories of mental illness by drug companies has worried many scientists who want a more wide-ranging approach.
Link to book review from The Guardian.
Link to book review from The Sunday Times.
Link to book review from Times Online.
Reminder: Talk at Foyles is tomorrow, Wednesday
Just so you all the Londoners know, Mind Hacks at Foyles is at 6.30pm tomorrow. They’re expecting the tickets to sell out later today, so grab yourself a ticket if you haven’t already. See you then! ps. Bring a pen, for experimental purposes.
The fine art of neuroscience
This week’s issue of the science journal Nature has a number of articles on science and art. Sadly most are closed-access, although one gem is freely available.
An article by psychologist Patrick Cavanagh discusses the techniques of visual art and how they can inform neuroscience, particularly in understanding the construction of the visual system.
Artists use this alternative physics because these particular deviations from true physics do not matter to the viewer: the artist can take shortcuts, presenting cues more economically, and arranging surfaces and lights to suit the message of the piece rather than the requirements of the physical world.
In discovering these shortcuts artists act as research neuroscientists, and there is a great deal to be learned from tracking down their discoveries. The goal is not to expose the ‘slip-ups’ of the masters, entertaining as that might be, but to understand the human brain. Art in this sense is a type of found science – science we can do simply by looking.
If this is a topic that interests you, you could do a lot worse than tracking down the 17th March edition of Nature at your local library. The other articles in this series tackle links between science, poetry and music, to name but a few.
Link to Kavanagh’s article The Artist as Neuroscientist from nature.com
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