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- April 12, 2011
- 04:16 AM
- 510 views
First Fish, Now Cheese, Get Scanned
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Here at Neuroskeptic we have closely followed the development of fMRI scanning on fish.But a new study has taken it to the next level by scanning... some cheese.OK, this is not quite true. The study used NMR spectroscopy to analyze the chemistry of some cheeses, in order to measure the effects of different kinds of probiotic bacteria on the composition of the cheese. NMR is the same technology as MRI, and indeed you can use an MRI scanner to gather NMR spectra.In fact, NMR is Nuclear Magnetic Re........ Read more »
Rodrigues D, Santos CH, Rocha-Santos TA, Gomes AM, Goodfellow BJ, & Freitas AC. (2011) Metabolic Profiling of Potential Probiotic or Synbiotic Cheeses by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy. Journal of agricultural and food chemistry. PMID: 21443163
- April 1, 2011
- 02:51 AM
- 834 views
Women Are Better Connected... Neurally
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Note: Please ignore the early draft of this post that I accidentally posted earlier because I'm stupid.The search for differences between the brains of men and women has a long and rather confusing history. Any structural differences are small, and their significance is controversial. The one rock-solid finding is that men's brains are slightly bigger on average. Then again, men are slightly bigger on average in general.A new paper just out from Tomasi and Volkow (of cell-phones-affect-brain fam........ Read more »
Tomasi D, & Volkow ND. (2011) Gender differences in brain functional connectivity density. Human brain mapping. PMID: 21425398
- March 30, 2011
- 11:41 AM
- 913 views
Neuroskeptic Irreverent and Sometimes Profane, Study Finds
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
I was most surprised and honored to find out this morning that the Annals of Neurology has declared Neuroskeptic to beIrreverent, sometimes profane, and can skirt the boundaries of good taste. Nonetheless, Neuroskeptic covers a rich mixture of important, engaging, or amusing topics focusing on the basic and clinical neurosciences, and does so in a data-driven, user-friendly, and comment-enabled format. Neuroskeptic is only one of a number of increasingly used web sites and blogs dedicated to pro........ Read more »
Hauser, S., & Johnston, S. (2011) Scientific literacy and the media. Annals of Neurology, 69(3). DOI: 10.1002/ana.22410
- March 26, 2011
- 06:50 AM
- 898 views
Fake Clinical Trial - Real Problems
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Here at Neuroskeptic we've seen our fair share of dubious clinical trials over the years, but the Indian Journal of Psychiatry has just published one which really takes the biscuit, because it was completely made up.Luckily, the trial is actually a rather neat spoof paper, written for educational purposes to highlight bad practices in the design and writing up of clinical trials. It's accompanied by a serious piece which analyzes these problems. They're both open access so you can take a look.Th........ Read more »
Andrade C. (2011) A 6-week, multicentre, randomized controlled clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of placeboxetine hydrochloride in the treatment of major depressive disorder in an Indian setting. Indian journal of psychiatry, 53(1), 69-72. PMID: 21431013
Andrade C. (2011) Placeboxetine for major depressive disorder: Researcher, author, reader, and reviewer perspectives on randomized controlled trials. Indian journal of psychiatry, 53(1), 73-6. PMID: 21431014
- March 24, 2011
- 04:20 PM
- 968 views
A Stroke Of Good Fortune Cures OCD?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A 45 year old female teacher had a history of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, along with other problems including ADHD. Her daughter, and many other people in her family, had suffered the same problems and in a few cases had Tourette's Syndrome.But all that changed - when she suffered a stroke. This is according to a brief case report from Drs. Diamond and Ondo of Texas:[she] had a long history of constant intrusive and obsessive thoughts that interrupted her daily activities and sleep. Sh........ Read more »
Diamond A, & Ondo WG. (2011) Resolution of Severe Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder After a Small Unilateral Nondominant Frontoparietal Infarct. The International journal of neuroscience. PMID: 21426244
- March 20, 2011
- 02:52 PM
- 967 views
Depressed or Bereaved? (Part 2)
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
In Part 1, I discussed a paper by Jerome Wakefield examining the issue of where to draw the line between normal grief and clinical depression.The line moved in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM diagnostic system when the previous DSM-III edition was replaced by the current DSM-IV. Specifically, the "bereavement exclusion" was made narrower.The bereavement exclusion says that you shouldn't diagnose depression in someone whose "depressive" symptoms are a result of grief - unless they're p........ Read more »
Wakefield JC. (2011) Should Uncomplicated Bereavement-Related Depression Be Reclassified as a Disorder in the DSM-5?: Response to Kenneth S. Kendler's Statement Defending the Proposal to Eliminate the Bereavement Exclusion. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 199(3), 203-8. PMID: 21346493
- March 18, 2011
- 10:26 AM
- 926 views
A Look Inside A Brain
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A remarkable paper just out in Nature has revealed images of the brain's structure and function in unprecedented detail: Network anatomy and in vivo physiology of visual cortical neurons.Harvard Medical School researchers Bock et al took a mouse - just one - and used two forms of microscopy to investigate a small patch of it's primary visual cortex, the area which receives input from the eyes.First, they used two-photon calcium imaging to look at the functional properties of individual cells. Th........ Read more »
Bock DD, Lee WC, Kerlin AM, Andermann ML, Hood G, Wetzel AW, Yurgenson S, Soucy ER, Kim HS, & Reid RC. (2011) Network anatomy and in vivo physiology of visual cortical neurons. Nature, 471(7337), 177-82. PMID: 21390124
- March 15, 2011
- 04:09 AM
- 869 views
Neural Correlates of 80s Hip Hop
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A ground-breaking new study reveals the neurological basis of seminal East Coast hip-hop pioneers Run-D.M.C.The study is Diffusion tensor imaging of the hippocampus and verbal memory performance: The RUN DMC Study, and it actually has nothing to do with hip-hop, but it does have one of the best study acronyms I have ever seen.RUN DMC stands for the "Radboud University Nijmegen Diffusion tensor and Magnetic resonance imaging Cohort study".Or maybe it does relate to rapping. Because the paper is a........ Read more »
van Norden AG, de Laat KF, Fick I, van Uden IW, van Oudheusden LJ, Gons RA, Norris DG, Zwiers MP, Kessels RP, & de Leeuw FE. (2011) Diffusion tensor imaging of the hippocampus and verbal memory performance: The RUN DMC Study. Human brain mapping. PMID: 21391278
- March 10, 2011
- 02:20 PM
- 908 views
Depressed Or Bereaved? (Part 1)
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
My cat died on Tuesday. She may have been a manipulative psychopath, but she was a likeable one. She was 18.On that note, here's a paper about bereavement.It's been recognized since forever that clinical depression is similar, in many ways, to the experience of grief. Freud wrote about it in 1917, and it was an ancient idea even then. So psychiatrists have long thought that symptoms, which would indicate depression in someone who wasn't bereaved, can be quite normal and healthy as a response to ........ Read more »
Wakefield JC, Schmitz MF, & Baer JC. (2011) Did narrowing the major depression bereavement exclusion from DSM-III-R to DSM-IV increase validity?: evidence from the National Comorbidity Survey. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 199(2), 66-73. PMID: 21278534
- March 6, 2011
- 06:27 AM
- 950 views
Paxil: The Whole Truth?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Paroxetine, aka Paxil aka Seroxat, is an SSRI antidepressant.Like other SSRIs, its reputation has see-sawed over time. Hailed as miracle drugs in the 1990s and promoted for everything from depression to "separation anxiety" in dogs, they fell from grace over the past decade.First, concerns emerged over withdrawal symptoms and suicidality especially in young people. Then more recently their antidepressant efficacy came into serious question. Paroxetine has arguably the worst image of all SSRIs, a........ Read more »
Carpenter DJ, Fong R, Kraus JE, Davies JT, Moore C, & Thase ME. (2011) Meta-analysis of efficacy and treatment-emergent suicidality in adults by psychiatric indication and age subgroup following initiation of paroxetine therapy: a complete set of randomized placebo-controlled trials. The Journal of clinical psychiatry. PMID: 21367354
- March 3, 2011
- 09:47 AM
- 1,067 views
Earthquakes And Antipsychotics
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
According to a clever little paper just out from Italy, prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs skyrocketed in the months following a major earthquake. But there are some surprising details.On 6th April 2009, an earthquake hit L'Aquila, a medium-sized city in central Italy. Out of about 100,000 people living in the L'Aquila area, over 600 died and over 60,000 were displaced: a major disaster for the local people.Rossi et al from the University of L'Aquila looked at medication prescription in the 6........ Read more »
Rossi A, Maggio R, Riccardi I, Allegrini F, & Stratta P. (2011) A quantitative analysis of antidepressant and antipsychotic prescriptions following an earthquake in Italy. Journal of traumatic stress, 24(1), 129-32. PMID: 21351173
- March 1, 2011
- 09:08 AM
- 1,013 views
The Mystery of "Whoonga"
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
According to a disturbing BBC news story, South African drug addicts are stealing medication from HIV+ people and using it to get high:'Whoonga' threat to South African HIV patients"Whoonga" is the street name for efavirenz (aka Stocrin), one of the most popular antiretroviral drugs. The pills are apparantly crushed, mixed with marijuana, and smoked for its hallucinogenic effects.This is not, in fact, a new story; Scientific American covered it 18 months ago and the BBC themselves did in 2008 (a........ Read more »
Cavalcante GI, Capistrano VL, Cavalcante FS, Vasconcelos SM, Macêdo DS, Sousa FC, Woods DJ, & Fonteles MM. (2010) Implications of efavirenz for neuropsychiatry: a review. The International journal of neuroscience, 120(12), 739-45. PMID: 20964556
- February 25, 2011
- 05:42 AM
- 1,000 views
The Decline And Fall of Effects In Science
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Nature has a piece called Unpublished results hide the decline effect.This refers to the fact that many scientific findings which seem to indicate something big is happening, end up getting smaller and smaller as more people try to replicate them until they, eventually, may vanish entirely.The Last Psychiatrist's take is that "The Decline Effect" just represents sloppy thinking, treating different things as if they were all instances of The One True Phenomenon. Someone does a study about somethi........ Read more »
Schooler, J. (2011) Unpublished results hide the decline effect. Nature, 470(7335), 437-437. DOI: 10.1038/470437a
- February 24, 2011
- 03:51 AM
- 971 views
Cell Phones Are Somehow Related To The Brain
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
The BBC saysMobile phones 'affect the brain'The paper's from Nora Volkow and colleagues from NIDA in the USA. Volkow's best known for her work on addiction.47 people got 18FDG Positron Emission Tomography. This method measures brain glucose use as a proxy for how hard cells are working. They say that this makes it better than other kinds of PET which merely measure regional blood flow. I bet they really wanted to do this study with fMRI, because PET scans cost loads, but of course you can't take........ Read more »
Volkow, N., Tomasi, D., Wang, G., Vaska, P., Fowler, J., Telang, F., Alexoff, D., Logan, J., & Wong, C. (2011) Effects of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Signal Exposure on Brain Glucose Metabolism. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 305(8), 808-813. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2011.186
- February 22, 2011
- 03:30 PM
- 938 views
The Brain's Sarcasm Centre? Wow, That's Really Useful
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A team of Japanese scientists have found the most sarcastic part of the brain known to date. They also found the metaphor centre of the brain and, well, it's kind of like a pair of glasses.The paper is Distinction between the literal and intended meanings of sentences and it's brought to you by Uchiyama et al. They took 20 people and used fMRI to record neural activity while the volunteers read 4 kinds of statements:Literally trueNonsensicalSarcasticMetaphoricalThe neat thing was that the statem........ Read more »
Uchiyama HT, Saito DN, Tanabe HC, Harada T, Seki A, Ohno K, Koeda T, & Sadato N. (2011) Distinction between the literal and intended meanings of sentences: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of metaphor and sarcasm. Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior. PMID: 21333979
- February 19, 2011
- 02:06 PM
- 938 views
The Web of Morgellons
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A fascinating new paper: Morgellons Disease, or Antipsychotic-Responsive Delusional Parasitosis, in an HIV Patient: Beliefs in The Age of the Internet“Mr. A” was a 43-year-old man...His most pressing medical complaint was worrisome fatigue. He was not depressed...had no formal psychiatric history, no family psychiatric history, and he was a successful businessman.He was referred to the psychiatry department by his primary-care physician (PCP) because of a 2-year-long complaint of pruritus [i........ Read more »
Freudenreich O, Kontos N, Tranulis C, & Cather C. (2010) Morgellons disease, or antipsychotic-responsive delusional parasitosis, in an hiv patient: beliefs in the age of the internet. Psychosomatics, 51(6), 453-7. PMID: 21051675
- February 13, 2011
- 02:33 PM
- 665 views
The Mystery of Stiff Person Syndrome
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
"Stiff Person Syndrome" (SPS) is a rare neurological disease with a silly name but serious symptoms.Not in fact a disorder caused by an overdose of Viagra, the defining feature of SPS is uncontrollable muscle rigidity, which comes and goes in bouts, but generally gets worse over time. However, other symptoms are seen including depression, anxiety, and other neurological features such as cerebellar ataxia.What causes SPS? Well, it's been known for over 20 years that most SPS patients have antibod........ Read more »
Geis, C., Weishaupt, A., Grünewald, B., Wultsch, T., Reif, A., Gerlach, M., Dirkx, R., Solimena, M., Perani, D., Heckmann, M.... (2011) Human Stiff-Person Syndrome IgG Induces Anxious Behavior in Rats. PLoS ONE, 6(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016775
Manto MU, Hampe CS, Rogemond V, & Honnorat J. (2011) Respective implications of glutamate decarboxylase antibodies in stiff person syndrome and cerebellar ataxia. Orphanet journal of rare diseases, 6(1), 3. PMID: 21294897
- February 9, 2011
- 04:13 PM
- 836 views
Antidepressants Don't Work...In Fish
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Here at Neuroskeptic fMRI scanning and antidepressants are both big topics.As I discussed lask week, fish - specifically salmon - are the next big thing in fMRI and the number of salmon brains being scanned is growing at a remarkable rate. But fish haven't made much of an entrance into the world of antidepressants...until now.Swedish scientists Holmberg et al have just published a paper asking: Does waterborne citalopram affect the aggressive and sexual behaviour of rainbow trout and guppy?SSRI ........ Read more »
Holmberg A, Fogel J, Albertsson E, Fick J, Brown JN, Paxéus N, Förlin L, Johnsson JI, & Larsson DG. (2011) Does waterborne citalopram affect the aggressive and sexual behaviour of rainbow trout and guppy?. Journal of hazardous materials. PMID: 21300431
- February 8, 2011
- 05:00 PM
- 675 views
The Social Network and Anorexia
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Could social networks be more important than the media in the spread of eating disorders?There's a story about eating disorders roughly like this: eating disorders (ED) are about wanting to be thin. The idea that thinness is desireable is something that's spread by Western media, especially visual media i.e. TV and magazines. Therefore, Western media exposure causes eating disorders.It's a nice simple theory. And it seems to fit with the fact that eating disorders, hitherto very rare, start to a........ Read more »
Becker, A., Fay, K., Agnew-Blais, J., Khan, A., Striegel-Moore, R., & Gilman, S. (2011) Social network media exposure and adolescent eating pathology in Fiji. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 198(1), 43-50. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.110.078675
- January 28, 2011
- 06:24 PM
- 539 views
Premature Brain Diagnosis in Japan?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Nature has a disturbing article from their Asian correspondent David Cyranoski: Thought experiment. It's open access.In brief: a number of top Japanese psychiatrists have started offering a neuroimaging method called NIRS to their patients as a diagnostic tool. They claim that NIRS shows the neural signatures of different mental illnesses.The technology was approved by the Japanese authorities in April 2009, and since then it's been used on at least 300 patients, who pay $160 for the privilege. ........ Read more »
Cyranoski, D. (2011) Neuroscience: Thought experiment. Nature, 469(7329), 148-149. DOI: 10.1038/469148a
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