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Discussing news, views and chews on Neuroscience.

Hesitant Iconoclast
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August 30, 2008
10:10 PM
1,186 views

Hot Chicks Make Men Nervous

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

Yes, really, they do. It's a scientific fact.As someone who has to read a lot of academic science papers, I occasionally come across studies that really should have been funded by the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious. I mean, really, it makes you wonder what some researchers are thinking when they carry out these sorts of studies, and whether they actually get grants to do this stuff?Here, let me explain. An item in the latest BPS Research Digest let me know of an "eye-catching study that didn't make the final cut" (I wonder why?). The premise of this paper is that men with more attractive wives or girlfriends engage more in "mate retention behaviours" which may include actively trying to stop them talking to other men, reading their diaries or emails, and buying gifts to keep them interested. Hey, isn't that how a typical relationship is supposed to be? ;-)I didn't bother reading the entire paper because the abstract alone was enough for a good laugh. I also have a deadline to meet so there may be more later. You'll have to forgive me for my lack of sophistry in this post because I just can't stop laughing. Let's go through it:"More attractive women are more likely to be pursued as mates by men other than their long-term partner and, therefore, to place their partner at greater risk of cuckoldry (investing unwittingly in a child to whom he is genetically unrelated)."This seems a fair enough intro. If your partner happens to be seriously hot it stands to reason that they'd have other guys lusting after them, covertly if not obviously. Let's say that the deal is done, she cheats on you, gets pregnant and decides to have the baby. Unless you're a total loser really, really nice guy, I don't think you'd be easily conned persuaded into bringing up another man's child. Why would you? But listen.."Men partnered to more attractive women perform more mate retention behaviors – behaviors designed to thwart a woman’s infidelity. With greater risk of female infidelity, men may perform additional anti-cuckoldry tactics such as frequent in-pair copulations (IPC)."In other words, SEX. And lots of it!This really is the answer, apparently. If you're frightened that your girl may run off with another man and leave you, there's nothing like a page (or several) from the Kamasutra to put the spice back into things. To offset the "greater risk" of her cheating on you, it is essential to give her what she needs until she's screaming for a coffee break. Whoa Nelly, who knew science papers could make such sexist and racy reading!And, by the way, is there anything more ridiculous as abbreviating sex? IPC? Couldn't they think of something a tad more interesting that doesn't remind you of the International Pipeline Conference? But then again, I suppose we are discussing plumbing of sorts.."We secured self-reports from 277 men in a long-term relationship and investigated: (1) the relationship between female partner’s attractiveness and IPC frequency and (2) the mediating role of female partner’s attractiveness on the relationship between IPC frequency and male mate retention behaviors."I would have loved to have seen that. In plain English, they "investigated" how hot the wives or girlfriends of 277 men and how often they had sex. I can just about imagine a panel of "experts" objectively rating people on standard attractiveness scales (so reminiscent of that paragon of impartiality, hotornot.com) but can you imagine asking people about the details of their sex lives? If you're familiar with the Beck Depression Inventory, you'll see how Item 21 rates "Loss Of Interest In Sex". When I administered this questionnaire in two of the studies I've been involved with, I can tell you that there was much twitching and nervous darting glances, polite coughs, and even an occasional giggle when it came to answering that particular question.And all this when I minimised observer effects by leaving them to answer the questions by themselves. A seemingly innocent question that asks how much your interest in sex has decreased, if it has, can be a great opportunity for a reactive answer that may not be the whole truth. So imagine how awkward and embarrassing it must have been to ask people how often they had sex with their hot partners? Ah, the wonderful reliability of self-report measures....And if that wasn't enough, the researchers then investigated to what extent the attractiveness of a woman had on the number of times they had sex and the occurrence of mate-retention behaviours! Really! I mean, wouldn't you wanna get down to it all the time if you had a hottie for a lover? This isn't really surprising stuff, but instead has a creepy feel of voyeurism about it which reminds me of a study I read as an undergrad about how the concept of "personal space" was investigated by researching men's urine flow in public toilets. But that's a story for another day...Now here's the result of it all:"The results indicated that female attractiveness: (1) predicts IPC frequency and (2) partially mediates the relationship between IPC frequency and male mate retention behaviors."See what I mean? The Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious has surely had their hand in this! The results say that the 'hotness' of a female is a good determinant of how many times you'll have sex with her (no, really?!) and is also a factor in how far you'd go to keep her and fend off other mens' advances. I'm not going to delve into the complex nature of relationships nor am I suggesting that physical attractiveness is the only major factor in sexual relations. I mean, I understand the ongoing nature of psychological and sociological research and how the bottom-up approach provides a great and solid foundation for future researches, and it certainly helps to have papers to refer to over every little thing, but come on, I don't think that this paper really deserved all the fanfare it was given by the BPS Digest and how "eye-catching" it was. I am rarely moved to write something almost immediately after reading, but just the abstract alone was enough for me to raise my eyebrows and skip to the next item in my inbox.But I think that, for those days when I'm in a lighter mood and full of the benevolent desire to spread mirth and joy everywhere, I can allow myself some light entertainment and blog on ridiculous papers like this one. Heck knows, I've seen enough of them as a researcher so it might be fun to poke fun at them as a blogger. I think this might be the beginning of a new series: From the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious. Catchy eh? :-)Oh, and one last thing:"The discussion addresses the mediated relationship, notes limitations of the research, and highlights directions for future research."This line alone actually made me laugh out loud as well as make me want to download the paper and give it a fuller read. Heck, I might do that when I have a bit more time on my hands. "Directions for future research" indeed, that phrase kills me. :-) _____________________________F KAIGHOBADI, T SHACKELFORD (2008). Female attractiveness mediates the relationship between in-pair copulation frequency and men’s mate retention behaviors Personality and Individual Differences, 45 (4), 293-295 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.04.013... Read more »

F KAIGHOBADI, & T SHACKELFORD. (2008) Female attractiveness mediates the relationship between in-pair copulation frequency and men’s mate retention behaviors. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(4), 293-295. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.04.013

August 20, 2008
11:11 PM
1,084 views

How Clinical is Non-Clinical?

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

So far in my budding career I've been involved in three psychology studies, all of which required the recruitment of non-clinical participants. Even before that, my psych undergraduate final-year project on schizophrenia was carried out by surveying non-clinical participants. For the benefit of lay readers, non-clinical participants refers to "normal" people who are recruited to take part in the study and are different to results gleaned from sufferers of psychosis, anxiety or other conditions which happen to be under the experimental purview, and who are generally termed as "clinical participants". The usual trend in studies like these are to compare the results of "normal" versus "abnormal" people to an experimental condition, in order to compare any differences between the two groups and statistically interpret them to arrive at conclusions. Non-clinicals popularly consist of family, friends, even complete strangers (those willing to take part in your study anyway!). Another popular recruitment strategy is through local (or even national) newspapers, community notices, bulletin boards, and so on. Given this background, a recent item in the British Psychological Society Research Digest caught my eye, an item to do with the assumption of mental health among non-clinical participants. You see, if you want to compare the results between "normal" and "abnormal" people, you had better make sure that the two groups are representative! In other words it would be fair to presume that the "normals" are of sound mental health, but a recent experimental study by Thurston et al. (2008) suggests that quite a substantial number of them have their own psychiatric problems, some of whom were receiving therapy. This would mean that non-clinical participants are perhaps not that representative after all!The gist of the study is something like this: 224 families were assessed after being recruited through newspaper advertisements mainly in South-Eastern USA, and found that 11% of the teenagers, 20% of the mothers, and 13% of the fathers met the diagnostic criteria for one or more psychiatric disorders. On therapy concerns, the chips fell so that 12% of the teenagers, 20% of the mothers and 11% of the fathers were receiving it.What this all means is that the validity of studies comes under question. When studies are carried out in comparing performances or responses of clinical and non-clinical participants, how valid can they be when there is a reasonable chance that the non-clinical participants have mental health issues? It certainly casts a new light on things. I wouldn't go as far to call every such study into question, but it perhaps gives cause to re-evaluate studies that reported a finding of some controversy. However, Thurston's team suggested that differences identified in previous studies between clinical and non-clinical groups may have been down to a factor other than the clinical status of the two. Variances may be good for something after all as any psych statistician could verify.In terms of recommendations, Thurston's team suggest that screening of participants should take place. Hmmmm, I think this might be a tad too much on the time-consuming side. Taking the time and costs involved in running a typical study into account, is it feasible to screen participants with procedures apart from the usual demographic details that ascertain suitability for the study in the first place? And what exactly would screening involve? Administration of the BAI and/or BDI-II scales, with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale thrown in for good measure? Again, it does seem a lot of time and effort to spend. One of the studies I'm associated with at the moment involves the administration of these measures and more, but only because various measures of mood are essential to the study. How ironic this all is, when clinical participants are relatively easy to acquire and it looks like considerable energy is to be expended in ensuring that non-clinicals are the right kind of non-clinicals!Indeed, Thurston et al. say they have no "perfect answer" as to whether objectionable non-clinicals ought to be removed from studies, but that it is the responsibility of the researcher to weigh the costs and benefits of any exclusionary criteria for a particular study. Hmph, that sounds about right.__________________________________________Idia B. Thurston, Jessica Curley, Sherecce Fields, Dimitra Kamboukos, Ariz Rojas, Vicky Phares (2008). How nonclinical are community samples? Journal of Community Psychology, 36 (4), 411-420 DOI: 10.1002/jcop.20223... Read more »

Idia B. Thurston, Jessica Curley, Sherecce Fields, Dimitra Kamboukos, Ariz Rojas, & Vicky Phares. (2008) How nonclinical are community samples?. Journal of Community Psychology, 36(4), 411-420. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.20223

August 21, 2008
11:46 PM
1,021 views

How Representative are Volunteers?

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

As if by magic, another item at the BPS Research Digest which is also relevant to my recent forays discusses the question of whether participants in psychology studies are "representative" of the total sample under review. It seems like the majority of those who take part in psychology studies are generally more "stable and outgoing", which begs questions about whether said studies are reliable in their testing of depression measures, for example.To give some background, the popular five-factor model measures personalities in terms of five separate factors (known as the "Big 5" model): Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion and Psychoticism. A depressed person, for instance, might have a higher Neuroticism (or even Psychoticism!) measurement than most people and a lower Extraversion rating. On the opposite end, an outgoing and popular person is likely to have high ratings for Extraversion, Agreeableness, perhaps even Conscientiousness. It is easy to see how personalities can be generally rated and measured according to these five factors.[And for those who think there is much more to personality than these five categories, yes, you would be right, but statistical factor analysis has shown that most personality quirks come under one of the five umbrella factors of the Five-Factor model. Other personality models exist, of course, such as the 16PF Model.]A study by Lonnqvist et al. (2007) mailed 61 military officers a survey on values (out of the 158 who were originally approached) who had completed personality assessments three years previously as per army recruitment procedures. The results showed that the respondents evidenced lower measures of Neuroticism and higher measures of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Extraversion. That's just about what you might expect from a military officer, don't you think? Although I'm only going by the BPS Review, it is reported that measures were established as opposed to those who didn't return the survey. How do they know? Just because 97 officers didn't bother to return the survey doesn't mean that they evidence higher measures of Neuroticism, or even that they have lower measures of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Extraversion!And what about gender differences? All of these military officers were male, could there have been a difference if females were included in the study? And above all, is it appropriate to make a massive generalisation about all or most psychology participants based on a sample of 61 military officers? Don't participants come from different strata of society and from all walks of life? I did a post-hoc power analysis to check the sample size and even though this study seems more than sufficiently powered (.99!), the way that simple criticisms like mine above don't seem to have been properly addressed doesn't exactly scream of reliability to me.It would make sense, however, if this was some sort of pilot study and a larger and more inclusive study is in the works, but no mention of such has been made.In any case, a second study (by the same researchers) also used a survey approach: siblings from 15 families assessed the personalities of their brothers or sisters and also asked to volunteer for further tests and interviews. The subsequent sibling ratings showed that 55 participants who volunteered for further testing scored higher for Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Agreeableness than the 29 who declined the option of further testing. This is consistent with the study of military officers, and leads to the general finding by Lonnqvist et al. that volunteers for pyschological studies "are ... better adjusted than nonvolunteers. More specifically, those who are willing to volunteer as research participants tend to be lower in Neuroticism and higher in Conscientiousness than are those who are reluctant to volunteer."Despite the simple criticisms, the study is reliable enough to be considered carefully since it has implications for psychological research. It means that there is a reasonable-to-good chance that participants who choose to volunteer for studies, who have low Neuroticism levels, are more likely to exhibit positive responses to drug treatments for depression or other things like panic disorders. But more importantly, the results of personality questionnaires are likely to be skewed because of the likely preponderance of volunteers who are not really representative of the full range of Five Factors. This is certainly an issue to take into consideration.So how to go about trying to find a representative sample? Lonnqvist et al. suggest "acquiring samples comprised of people who are required to serve as experimental participants (e.g. as part of their jobs or academic programs)." This is fair enough; in many universities it is a requirement for 1st-year undergrads to take part in studies of 3rd-year students to acquire course credits. This can be a good thing, but my experience is that such students usually do these things in a rush and are focused more on obtaining the course credits than conscientiously (pun intended) participating in the study. Also, undergraduate students aren't always the sample of choice for most studies.Another recommendation is that the research should be presented in an "attractive" way in order to attract a wide range of people to take part. This would be a reasonable proposal since the mere increase in sample size may simply mean an increase in volunteers, yet efforts to test a wider range of people would be more likely to yield representative results. This isn't a very solid proposal though, in my opinion. A final recommendation was to "attempt to evaluate the representativeness of the volunteer sample against the relevant population on the variables of interest." Huh? Comparing the sample to the population, basically? Isn't the point of all psychological studies to extrapolate the findings to the general population? So in other words, there really isn't anything (much) you can do to make your sample more representative. Just try and present your study in a more "attractive" way, whatever that means.I have a tip: Just be nice to people. Talk to them and inform them that you're doing a psychology study, and ask them politely if they'd like to help you by taking part. If you've caught them at a good time, chances are they'll agree to participate. And this isn't necessarily an indication of volunteering. Some participants may find it something of a cathartic experience to complete the BDI-II questionnaire, for example. At least, those I've tested anyway.________________________LÃ¶nnqvist, J., Paunonen, S., Verkasalo, M., Leikas, S., Tuulio-Henriksson, A., LÃ¶nnqvist, J. (2007). Personality characteristics of research volunteers. European Journal of Personality, 21(8), 1017-1030. DOI: 10.1002/per.655... Read more »

Jan-Erik Lönnqvist, Sampo Paunonen, Markku Verkasalo, Sointu Leikas, Annamari Tuulio-Henriksson, & Jouko Lönnqvist. (2007) Personality characteristics of research volunteers. European Journal of Personality, 21(8), 1017-1030. DOI: 10.1002/per.655

March 23, 2009
06:50 PM
905 views

The "Cancer Faith" Study

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

An interesting study released earlier this week attracted the attention of many bloggers and commentators. It's basic premise is that religious patients with advanced cancer are more likely to opt for aggressive end-of-life treatment. In other words, the more religious they are, the more likely it is that they will place less faith in God and more faith in medical treatment and technology. Let's analyse:

Andrea Phelps and colleagues acknowledge that religion and beliefs account for a high amount of coping strategies employed by patients with advanced cancer, as it affords them a sense of "meaning, comfort, control, and personal growth while facing life-threatening illness." Rather understandably, positive strategies are employed that highlight God's "loving care" rather than the negative strategies that view the condition as "divine punishment", which are said to be uncommon. Aside from simply coping with disease, faith is said to be a major factor in medical decisions; Other research in similar areas found that after oncologist recommendations it was faith that was said to be the second most important factor in deciding the course of the treatment, and also that 68% of a sample of a thousand individuals explicitly stated that their faith would guide their medical decisions if they experienced a critical injury, with 57% believing that a divine cure could be obtained in the case of medical incapability to resolve the issue. So while there is evidence that religion is associated with a preference for receiving intense treatment, Phelps and her colleagues wanted to find out whether patients who relied heavily on their religious faith were more likely to receive intensive medical care, such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation or being placed on a mechanical ventilator, before death.... Read more »

Phelps, A., Maciejewski, P., Nilsson, M., Balboni, T., Wright, A., Paulk, M., Trice, E., Schrag, D., Peteet, J., Block, S.... (2009) Religious Coping and Use of Intensive Life-Prolonging Care Near Death in Patients With Advanced Cancer. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 301(11), 1140-1147. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2009.341

March 10, 2009
12:00 AM
902 views

Believer Brains Different from Non-Believer Brains?

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

As mentioned in an earlier blog about my research interests, my general (research) focus relates to issues of mental health (schizophrenic symptoms in particular) and I hope to build my career in that area. A side-interest of mine relates to neuropsychological and neurophysiological effects of religion. I am by no means any kind of expert on the matter nor am I intimately familiar with the breadth of literature that already exists on the subject. I like to briefly explore this issue for my own understandings and sometimes comment on any new findings.... Read more »

Michael Inzlicht, Ian McGregor, Jacob B. Hirsh, & Kyle Nash. (2009) Neural Markers of Religious Conviction. Psychological Science, 20(3), 385-392. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02305.x

March 27, 2009
03:28 PM
891 views

So Gay, So Very Gay

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

It's unbelievable what's uncovered sometimes. A recent survey of British psychologists and psychiatrists has uncovered that a sizeable amount have attempted to "convert" homosexual patients or clients to heterosexual orientations!

It's a well-known axiom that (biological) homosexuality is an orientation that cannot be changed, what to speak of the scientific consensus on the matter, and what do you think might happen if any such changes are encouraged? Psychological harm and damage.

After all, what is "normal"? Anyone with even a layman understanding of psychology and/or neuroscience will know that definitions of normality are as subjective as one's colour preferences. And when you have a discriminating society that is ever-willing to ostracise on the slightest grounds of anything perceived as different, it isn't that hard to imagine how seriously this counts as psychological abuse especially concerning a topic so fundamental to someone's 'personhood' as sexual identity.... Read more »

Bartlett, A., Smith, G., & King, M. (2009) The response of mental health professionals to clients seeking help to change or redirect same-sex sexual orientation. BMC Psychiatry, 9(1), 11. DOI: 10.1186/1471-244X-9-11

May 27, 2009
07:02 AM
841 views

Gonna (Evolve To) Sing You My Love Song

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

Why do we like to sing soppy love songs to our loved one? What is it about them that evokes a mood of affinity and bonding? Why do tears spring to our eyes when we hear a lyric that reminds us of a friendship, relationship or other close bond?The composition and interpretation of music through song, dance, and playing a musical instrument, are complex and high-level tasks of the creative brain. Indeed, the 'creative' aspects of personality are thought to constitute a particular division of intelligence in itself. Although it is possible to gain a certain level of proficiency in playing the works of Beethoven and Mozart through social and/or environmental factors (parental support, music school), the phenomenon of the child prodigy does in fact suggest an innate genetic basis for talent. Creativity itself is a complex process that draws largely from areas of the right hemisphere, not activating the frontal lobes or cortices very much. And since we are talking mainly of cognitive processes,we can expect hormones such as arginine vasopressin (AVP), which helps to control higher functions such as memory and learning, to take a lead role. Given that this hormone is mediated by the AVP receptor 1A (AVPR1A) gene, that affects many behavioural, social and emotional traits such as male aggression, pair bonding, altruism, parenting, sibling relationships, love etc., it stands to reason that this key gene is the one to watch.A team of researchers at Helsinki University, headed by Liisa Ukkola, carried out a study purporting to investigate the neurobiological basis of music in human evolution by analysing the role of the AVPR1A gene and five others and their effects on general creativity and musical aptitude by testing 343 multigenerational participants from 19 Finnish families, professional and amateur musicians alike. Ages varied from 9 to 93 (mean age 43) and DNA was obtained by 298 (86.9%) of those over age 15. Three measures were administered: an extensive online questionnaire to assess creativity in those who composed, improvised or arranged music; Carl Seashore's pitch and time discrimination subtests (SP and ST respectively); and a Karma Music Test (KMT) designed by one of the research team. The results showed that high scores on the music tests associated well with high levels of creativity, and also higher in creative individuals than non-creative individuals. Genetic testing confirmed that creativity was a heritable trait.Wait a minute - what does all this have to do with the brain?This study showed how auditory structuring ability (gleaned from the KMT test) were associated with the AVPR1A gene, with the strongest effect found in the RS1+RS3 haplotype. The ST and SP tests also suggested this association, and this was further confirmed when the associations were replicated with combined music test score (COMB). The kicker is that the AVPR1A gene is instrumental in modulating social and cognitive behaviours, and music is certainly a medium that initiates, enhances and accelerates certain behaviours! We all know about the peculiar social customs of singing songs of romantic content in order to attract the opposite sex, music played to enhance group cohesion and initiate vigorous hip-spinning activity, and mothers singing soothing lullabies to their offspring in order to induce a state of quietness.But aside from all of that, the genetic studies provided interesting tidbits of information relating to the homologies of the AVPR1A gene as various alleles were recognised to associate with either composing, arranging and performing music. Higher spatial scores were found among musicians than non-musicians, a possible explanation being that musicians tend to need to read and memorise notes and/or sheet music. Research into the recently discovered TPH2 gene may uncover the details behind the numerical sense necessary to perceive rhythm. The A1 allele associated with the dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2) gene is suggested to be linked to courtship.The releases related to this story hyped up the evolutionary implications in a big way but I can find very little basis for that in this paper. As usual, evolutionary extrapolations are mainly speculative but interesting nevertheless. The text pecifically mentions that evolutionary contributions are speculated on the basis of PET imaging that show partial overlapping between music and language-related areas of the brain. As improvising music usually consists of collaboration with other musicians or between a performer and their audience it makes sense that the role of these brain areas and the genes associated with musical talent be highlighted as it has. As the paper itself says:"Creativity is a multifactorial genetic trait involving a complex network made up of a number of genes."And it is because of that and the connections to social/cognitive areas of the brain that there is justification for the idea that music enables and enhances social communication in a way that increases attachments. This can explain why people automatically feel closer when they find they share the same types of music.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ukkola, L., Onkamo, P., Raijas, P., Karma, K., & Järvelä, I. (2009). Musical Aptitude Is Associated with AVPR1A-Haplotypes PLoS ONE, 4 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005534... Read more »

Ukkola, L., Onkamo, P., Raijas, P., Karma, K., & Järvelä, I. (2009) Musical Aptitude Is Associated with AVPR1A-Haplotypes. PLoS ONE, 4(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005534

August 28, 2008
01:00 PM
837 views

Thoughts on Thatcher's Dementia

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

Mo wrote a post over at Neurophilosophy regarding a report Baroness Thatcher's declining mental health. Here's the comment I made there while responding to a previous commenter's remark:"Polomint38's comment is especially poignant in light of a new article on ScienceDaily today: Even Without Dementia, Mental Skills Decline Years Before Death."It isn't very surprising that senior citizens generally experience decline anyway, it is interesting how this new longitudinal study shows how some skills can decline upto 15 years before death."Without being cruel to Thatcher, one can only wonder how much of an effect her mental decline could have had on her political savvy, and indeed for all politicians of a certain age. And by contrast, this makes the new breed of "younger" politicians look more impressive. Think Tony Blair (elected PM at age 43) and David Miliband (age 43). It is easy to think that younger politicians may be criticised for insufficient or lack of political experience, but at least we can surmise that they are reasonably sharp enough (cognitively speaking) to handle the pressures and the issues."____________________Thorvaldsson, V., Hofer, S.M., Berg, S., Skoog, I., Sacuiu, S., Johansson, B. (2008). Onset of terminal decline in cognitive abilities in individuals without dementia. Neurology DOI: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000312379.02302.ba... Read more »

V Thorvaldsson, S Hofer, S Berg, I Skoog, S Sacuiu, & B Johansson. (2008) Onset of terminal decline in cognitive abilities in individuals without dementia. Neurology. DOI: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000312379.02302.ba

March 15, 2009
06:12 AM
802 views

No More God Spot?

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

Back in 2005 when I was an enthusiastic undergraduate, I was amazed at the scientific knowledge that proliferated on theories of religion. After reading Ramachandran's impressive Phantoms In The Brain and gaining an acquaintance with the neurobiological structures that underly religious experience, I became aware of scientific research that was suggesting the existence of a "God Module" in the brain, a system of specialised neural circuitry that appeared to be the central mediator of religious emotions and feelings as well as other things. The evidence seemed to point towards the temporal lobes and the larger limbic system as the location of this "God Spot", as evidenced by this 2004 TIME article: 'Is God In Our Genes?' It sounded great, we were finally boiling down religion to it's essential neural components! And I'll be honest in saying that I was an enthusiastic follower of this theory.... Read more »

Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2009) Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811717106

March 17, 2009
12:36 AM
702 views

Further Thoughts On 'No More God Spot?'

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

Regarding my previous blog of a few days ago, discussing the recent research by Kapogiannis et al. (2009) on the psychological and neuroanatomical framework of religious belief they've provided, I had some further thoughts on the study that I'd like to delineate. But first, just a quick note. Some may wonder whether my treatment of the issues reveal a sympathy in me for affairs religious and/or that I might be a - shock horror! - a Creationist (ID) infiltrator. I'm putting that to bed right now: I am NOT an IDiot! :-)... Read more »

Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2009) Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811717106

July 22, 2009
08:28 PM
661 views

If You Had Half a Brain..

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

A great story made its way onto the interwebz lately. The Daily Mail reports:"A 10-year-old girl born with half a brain has both fields of vision in one eye, scientists said today. The youngster, from Germany, has the power of both a right and left eye in the single organ in the only known case of its kind in the world."University of Glasgow researchers used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to reveal how the girl’s brain had rewired itself in order to process information from the right and left visual fields in spite of her not having a whole brain."BBC News goes further with:"In the case of the German girl, her left and right field vision is almost perfect in one eye. Scans on the girl showed that the retinal nerve fibres carrying visual information from the back of the eye which should have gone to the right hemisphere of the brain diverted to the left ... 'Despite lacking one hemisphere, the girl has normal psychological function and is perfectly capable of living a normal and fulfilling life. She is witty, charming and intelligent.'"Get that? The only known case in the world where brain plasticity (the ability of the brain to reorganise itself after injury) is displayed for all to see. Plasticity doesn't always work this way, there are many cases where plasticity effects haven't achieved the mark of restoring all or most of the impaired brain function. Epilepsy patients, for example, who undergo a hemispherectomy (removal of a half of a brain) in order to prevent the onset of severe seizures, among other things tend to lose an entire field of vision in both eyes; they only see people and objects in one half of their visual field, as in the illustration below:Neither was this a case of brain injury; the anonymous girl (known only as 'AH') failed to adequately develop her cerebral right hemisphere in the womb. As a result, she is without a right-brain and also without the use of her right eye. She also has a slight left-hemiparesis (weakness affecting half of the body) but close to normal vision in both hemifields of her normal left eye.In a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team led by Lars Muckli of the University of Glasgow used fMRI to investigate how the visual cortex had remapped itself. In a healthy individual, the cerebral cortex contains "maps" for vision, sound, motion and touch, which develop and modify over time dependent on several factors including genetic cues and neural activity. In the mammalian brain (that is, human brain) the visual cortex is made up of distinct sections dealing with vision, the main one being an area known simply as 'V1', the primary visual cortex. 'V2' deals with quarterfield representations in the area of vision, effectively dealing with the 'up' and 'down' areas of both the right and left hemispheres of vision, while 'V3' is a structure in front of V2 that, among other things, performs a supporting role for V2. There is also the question of retinotopic maps, a direct mapping of the spatial arrangement of the retina, located in visual structures including the cortex and thalamus.As per materials provided by the University of Glasgow, "visual information is gathered by the retina at the back of the eye and images are inverted when they pass through the lens of the pupil so that images in your left field of vision are received on the right side of the retina, and images from the right are received on the left." The part of the retina close to the nose is known as the nasal retina whereas the other part is referred to as the temporal retina, being in proximity to the temples. Both halves transmit received information through separate nerve fibres. In a normal situation, the nerve fibres of the nasal retina cross over in the optic chiasm, a brain structure located at the bottom of the brain near the hypothalamus, and are processed by the hemisphere on the opposite side. The nerve fibres of the temporal retina remain in the same hemisphere (ipsilateral), meaning that the left and right visual fields described earlier are processed by opposite sides of the brain.[DIGRESSION]Vision is not the only modality to be processed in this strange way. It actually reflects the larger processing activities of the intact brain which tends to process all other modalities in opposite sides of the brain. To wit, touch and hearing for example that is "entered" into the right side of the body (right body, right ear) are processed by the left-brain, and touch/hearing entered into the left body/ear is processed by the right-brain. This is generally referred to as contralateral processing, when input is processed by the 'opposite' half of the brain. Those inputs processed by the 'same' side of the brain is known as ipsilateral processing. For more information, please read about Basic Visual Pathways.[/DIGRESSION]The MRI scan displays the complete lack of a right-hemisphere: The optic chiasm is shown here (top l-r) in the transverse and enlarged transverse planes, and (bottom l-r) in the coronal and saggital planes. A rudimentary optic nerve is pointed out in the enlargement by the green arrow but with no discernible optic tract, and it can also be seen how the left-hemisphere is spilling over into the right-domain. The vacant right-hemisphere is filled with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).In AH's fascinating case, it was found that the nasal retinal nerve had connected to her left-brain. A possible interpretation for AH's condition is suggested by the authors: The lack of a right-brain prevented an opposite connection from being made, which led the optic nerve fibers to "connect" with ipsilateral structures instead.Remembering that normal cases require a crossing in the optic chiasm, and AH's connections were essentially ipsilateral, how exactly does AH see both visual fields with only one eye? After all, if the entire right hemisphere is missing, AH should see only the left hemifield. The answer lies with the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN), a structure that is embedded deep in the thalamus and which processes visual information from the retina. In AH, both the nasal and temporal retina would need to be mapped onto the LGN to allow for the processing of both hemifields. Again a similar suggestion of ipsilateral projections were presented as being the solution, instead of the usual contralateral connections, and that a mirror-symmetric representation of the hemifields would be received and processed by the thalamus. Similar cases have been seen in achiasmatic dogs where optic nerve fibres terminated in the ipsilateral LGN.'Islands' were also found to have formed in the left-hemisphere to deal especially with processing of the left hemifield, to compensate for the missing right-brain activity.The loss of AH's right-hemisphere was discovered at age 3 when she was treated for brief seizures and twitching taking place on her left side. It is speculated that the right-brain failed to develop between Day 28 and Day 49 of embryonic development. Despite the situation, she is able to engage quite capably in activities that require a fair amount of balance, such as riding a bicycle or roller-skating. Truly an extraordinary case in more ways than one.For a professional view, please see Dr. Steven Novella's entry on this case.---------------------------------------------------------------------... Read more »

Muckli, L., Naumer, M., & Singer, W. (2009) Bilateral visual field maps in a patient with only one hemisphere. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0809688106

March 17, 2010
06:25 AM
577 views

700-year-old Brain Found Preserved!

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

Evolutionary psychology tends to receive harsh criticism, and often rightly so. One of the main reasons for this is the severe lack of evidence for many of it's proposals given that the paucity of fossilised brains fails to bolster many a case. And it isn't even anyone's fault. That's just the way it goes sometimes, that the brain is a jelly-like substance that is subject to decay after death, and there's no way we can objectively analyse or verify any differences in brains of long ago with brains of today.

This isn't set to change anytime soon, but the remarkable discovery of a medieval child's brain was the subject of a Neuroimage paper published recently. This is extremely exciting on many counts: the brain has been so fantastically preserved that it is possible to identify the frontal, temporal and occipital lobes, and even the sulci and gyri, the grooves and furrows channeled into brains.... Read more »

Papageorgopoulou, C., Rentsch, K., Raghavan, M., Hofmann, M., Colacicco, G., Gallien, V., Bianucci, R., & Rühli, F. (2010) Preservation of cell structures in a medieval infant brain: A paleohistological, paleogenetic, radiological and physico-chemical study. NeuroImage, 50(3), 893-901. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.01.029

September 14, 2009
02:14 PM
543 views

Thugs left man with half a head

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

Horrified Steve Gator had to have the front of his skull removed by stunned surgeons after his head was smashed against a pavement in the sickening attack. And now the 26-year-old has been told that the teen attackers who disfigured him will escape justice after his case was dropped.

Steve, of Romford, Essex, was attacked after confronting one of the yobs who had been taunting him about his cousin. Another of the violent louts hit him so hard that he was sent flying and struck his head on the path. Steve plunged into a coma for two weeks as his shattered mum and distraught family kept a bedside vigil at Queen's Hospital, Romford.... Read more »

Stiver, S. (2009) Complications of decompressive craniectomy for traumatic brain injury. Neurosurgical FOCUS, 26(6). DOI: 10.3171/2009.4.FOCUS0965

September 8, 2009
11:17 AM
490 views

Ain't Taking This Lying Down..!

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

An interesting report in New Scientist magazine suggests that insults are handled better when lying down rather than sitting or standing up. According to the article, University students who were insulted while seated exhibited neural activity consonant with "approach motivation", which describes to desire to approach and explore. This activity appeared absent in a control group insulted while lying down. Eddie Harmon-Jones, a cognitive scientist at Texas A&M University, interprets this as suggesting that one might be more inclined to attack if one were in the upright state, whereas while lying down we may be more inclined to brood.... Read more »

Harmon-Jones, E., & Peterson, C. (2009) Supine Body Position Reduces Neural Response to Anger Evocation. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02416.x

March 5, 2010
01:17 PM
455 views

Mr. Crowley's Suicide Solution

by Hesitant Iconoclast in NeuroWhoa!

Wine is fine,
But whiskey's quicker.
Suicide is slow with liquor.
Take a bottle, drown your sorrows,
THEN IT FLOODS AWAY TOMMORROW!!

So goes the first verse of 'Suicide Solution', an infamous song of Ozzy Osbourne's that deals with the dangers of alcohol abuse, and which was the central feature in two legal cases against him where he was charged with inciting the suicides of heavy metal fans after they listened to the song. In fact, controversy has dogged Osbourne since the beginning of his career with the founding of the influential heavy metal group Black Sabbath, who are credited with having invented the genre. Although Osbourne was found not guilty in those cases, other related matters referred to the issues of including satanic imagery used in song lyrics, stage performances and album covers, as well as allegations of surreptitious backmasking of satanic messages in said albums, all things that were said to be bad infuence on young adults. Osbourne has claimed he harbours no satanic beliefs and that the inclusion of such imagery in his musical corpus was purely for reasons of showmanship.... Read more »

Recours, R., Aussaguel, F., & Trujillo, N. (2009) Metal Music and Mental Health in France. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 33(3), 473-488. DOI: 10.1007/s11013-009-9138-2

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