Being Human

The 75th edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience carnival has just appeared online, as if by magic, at Ionian Enchantement.

A couple of my favourites include an excellent piece from Cognitive Daily on mood and memory and great coverage by Neuronarrative of research showing fake video evidence can be persuasive, even to the people falsely implicated by it.

There are many cognitive rabbits being pulled out of internet hats, so roll up for more at the link below.

Link to Encephalon 75.

BBC News
Can politicians shape our behaviour?
BBC News
And they are now turning to the increasingly influential ideas of social psychology and behavioural economics in their search for answers. ...

Social Psychologists Meet In Sheffield
Medical News Today (press release)
The British Psychological Society's Social Psychology Section annual conference takes place from 15th - 17th September 2009 at the Edge, Sheffield.

and more »

The Social Ontogeny of Propositional Thinking
Metapsychology
... Bogdan tries to elicit the philosophical significance of mental evolution, incorporating conclusions from developmental psychology. ...

Developmental Psychologists Hold 2009 Annual Conference
Medical News Today (press release)
... and how they learn their food preferences were among the topics which were discussed at the Developmental Psychology Section Annual Conference 2009; ...

Baby See, Sometimes Baby Do: Babies Decide When To Imitate You
Medical News Today (press release)
... USA, presented at the British Psychological Society Division of Developmental Psychology Annual Conference on Thursday 10 September 2009. ...

and more »

Morphologica is a neuroscientist in the final stages of her PhD who also makes wonderful brain-inspired jewellery.

The piece in the picture is the lovely pyramidal neuron necklace, although there are also earrings and necklaces inspired by the double helix, the contours of the cortical surface and cell proliferation.

And if you're a jewellery wearer (sadly, I can never find the shoes to match) you can pick up any of the pieces from Morphologica's online store.

Link to Morphologica.

People on the move
Denver Post
ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE: Named Silvia Sara Canetto, a professor of counseling psychology and applied social psychology at Colorado State ...

High-quality child care leads to academic success for low-income kids
EurekAlert (press release)
... poverty," co-author Eric Dearing, an associate professor of applied developmental psychology in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, said. ...
Quality of early child care plays role in later reading, math ...EurekAlert (press release)

all 5 news articles »

Notion That Violence is Animalistic Reduces Support for War
Miller-McCune.com
... to be more dispositionally aggressive," psychologist Matt Motyl of the University of Virginia writes in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. ...

Arizona State University
Regents' Professor: Michael Saks joins ranks of distinguished scholars
Arizona State University
He holds a doctorate in social psychology from Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, and he has taught ...

Sustained by a Different Kind of "Nourishment" -- Melissa Binstock ...
MarketWatch (press release)
She is a Psychology major and plans to get a doctorate in the field of Social Psychology. She has received an award, attended an eating disorder conference, ...

and more »

Sustained by a Different Kind of "Nourishment" -- Melissa Binstock ...
MarketWatch (press release)
She is a Psychology major and plans to get a doctorate in the field of Social Psychology. She has received an award, attended an eating disorder conference, ...

and more »

This Saturday, I'm going to walk between the two poles of London's psyche, the Maudsley Hospital and the Tavistock Clinic, whose rivalries have shaped our understanding of the mind in both the UK and around the world. If you'd like to join me, you'd be more than welcome.

Both were galvanised by the experience of the First World War where 'war neuroses' became a major source of casualties as the mechanised slaughter took a massive toll even on the survivors.

The South London Maudsley pioneered the scientific approach to psychiatry focusing on statistical empiricism and neuroscience while the North London Tavistock pioneered the clinical use of psychotherapy developing group treatments and youth work.

The competition between the two institutions swayed between healthy rivarly to outright distrust and as a result both have developed as contrasting sides to the city's psyche each conveniently separated by the Thames.

The dark clouds of the Second World War brought an influx of European Jewish émigrés into London, including Sigmund and Anna Freud into the psychoanalytic community orbiting around the Tavistock; while the Maudsley benefited from the arrival of psychopathologists such as Alfred Meyer and William Mayer-Gross.

This cemented their reputation and their outlook and both remain centres of excellence nationally and internationally.

The walk is about 8 miles but I'm planning for a few minor detours for interesting sites (grounds of the old Bedlam Hospital, now the Imperial War Museum, St Thomas' Hospital and the like) and with stops for lunch and maybe the occasional pint, I reckon leaving the Maudsley at 11am, arriving at the Tavistock will be between about 4-5pm.

I've no idea if anyone else wants to walk across London, guided by psychiatric hospitals, but if you do drop me a line, and I'll email you the exact details nearer the time. I shall be going rain or shine so no need to commit. It's just so I don't have to think so bloody far ahead.

I'll post some details on the day via the Twitter (@vaughanbell) so you can always catch up at any point.

In summary, 11am, near the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill, Saturday 19th September, to walk to the Tavistock Clinic in the leafy suburb of Belsize Park for about 4-5ish.

Study: consumers attracted to status of 'green' products more than ...
National Post
The study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is the first to show that tapping people's yen for ...

and more »

Gettysburg Times
Janet Riggs inducted as Gettysburg College president
Gettysburg Times
... from Gettysburg College in 1977 with a BA in psychology and mathematics, Riggs received her MA and Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton University. ...

and more »

Psychiatric drugs are an essential tool in the treatment of mental illness but the pharmaceutical industry is still one of the most ethically dubious enterprises on the planet. That's why I use spoof drug ads, because sometimes only the best will do.

If you want to be part of the health care revolution, here's a selection of some of the finest drugs that money can't buy:

The Onion News Network reports on Despondex, the first depressant drug for persistent perkiness.

Havidol is the first and only treatment for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder. When more is not enough.

The happiest drug on the planet is clearly Progenivoritox, just be careful about those side-effects.

Panexa is a prescription drug that should only be taken by patients experiencing one of the following disorders: metabolism, binocular vision, digestion (solid and liquid), circulation, menstruation, cognition, osculation, extremes of emotion.

Depressed? Over worked? Job suck? Unappreciated? Family problems? Money worries? Well here's a pill for you! Fukitol.

So next time you're affected by drug companies hiding unfavourable results, burying data about side effects, illegally promoting pills for unlicensed conditions, stuffing doctors' pockets with cash and gifts, promoting scientifically unfeasible theories and pushing astroturfed health campaigns, ask the drug industry to continue their essential work without being so unnecessarily dodgy.

Warning: side effects may vary.

Colorado State University Psychology Professor Named Fellow of the ...
Media Newswire (press release)
FORT COLLINS - Silvia Sara Canetto, a professor of counseling psychology and applied social psychology at Colorado State University, has been named a Fellow ...
DAILY BRIEFINGThe Coloradoan

all 6 news articles »

Carl Zimmer has an interesting article in Discover Magazine on brain function and sex, one of the most neglected areas in contemporary neuroscience.

We know scandalously little about the neuroscience of sex. For example, we know more about the what the brain does during hiccups than during orgasm and yet very little sex research is completed in comparison to studies on other areas of human life.

Zimmer focuses on several recent neuroimaging studies on sexual desire and contrasts it with some case studies of altered sexuality after brain damage, particularly one of the first from 1945 - a patient named CW who showed a sharp increase in sexual desire associated with epileptic seizures.

Curiously though, the article implies that, in sex research, brain imaging is the way forward while case studies of brain damaged patients are a thing of the past, when this couldn't be further from the truth.

We have learnt far more about the link between brain circuits and human behaviour through studying patterns in what people can and cannot do after brain injury than we ever have through brain scans.

This is because scans can only tell us that activity is associated with a behaviour whereas studies of brain injury tell us whether the affected part of the brain is necessary for the function we're studying.

Think of it like this: if you didn't know how a car worked and wanted to work it out from scanning from the outside, seeing what parts were active when it moved would likely also identify the radio along with the engine.

But if we looked at a bunch of differently damaged cars we would be able to quickly work out that the radio was non-essential for driving because when it was damaged, the car could still move, whereas damage to the engine stopped it dead.

The same goes for sex research and as described in a recent scientific article on what altered sexual function after brain damage tells us about sexuality, 'lesion studies' have taught us a great deal, whereas the relatively few brain scanning studies are still just scratching the surface.

Both are important, of course, and there are advantages to each. Zimmer gives the example of an EEG study showing the progression of activity through the brain during sexual desire, something not possible just from studies of damage.

Nevertheless, researching brain dysfunction is still our most useful tool and one that has taught us the most about the neuroscience of human sexuality.

Link to Discover article 'Where Does Sex Live in the Brain?'
Link to article on what brain damage tell us about sex.

The Jamaican Creole phrase often spelled batty man, pronounced ['bati'man] (also botty boy ['bati'bwai]), would be more easily interpreted by other English speakers if it were spelled botty man, since the first element is botty, a familiar British hypocorism for bottom. (My point about the spelling is not a prescriptive one; I'm merely pointing out that the first syllable sounds like Standard English bot, not bat.) The literal meaning of the phrase into American English would be "butt man" or "ass man", and the free translation is "homosexual" (trading, of course, on the juvenile assumption that all gays are ever interested in is bottoms). The phrase appeared in a note near the naked corpse of John Terry, found at his home in Montego Bay last week. It saddened me to see, in a week when one country atoned just a little for its homophobic past with a genuine apology from its government, another country continuing to forge a place for itself in the annals of intolerance and moral backwardness.

John Terry was a British citizen with three children who had been separated from his wife for three years. He had lived for forty years in Jamaica, where he was an Honorary Consul to the British High Commission in the western town of Montego Bay — he was an unpaid assistant diplomat helping tourists solve their travel problems. The Queen had honored him with an MBE for this work. One night last week a young man who had gone home with him repeatedly hit him with a bedside lamp base until the sheets of his bed were spattered with his blood, and then asphyxiated him with a drawstring pulled tight around his neck. He left a note calling Terry a "batty man" and threatening all gays with a similar fate. (See this news story for a newspaper account.)

Jamaican culture is famously and murderously homophobic. In 2006 TIME called Jamaica the most homophobic place on earth. The murder rate for the country as a whole is the highest in the world, but for gays things are much worse. As recently as 2007 there was a Google-hosted Jamaican blog (gone now) called "Kill Batty Man", devoted to such themes as documenting gay-bashing on camera. Jamaican Creole has no obligatory inflectional marking of plurality on nouns, so kill batty man should probably be translated "kill homosexuals". And the proposal is not just humorous hyperbole, it seems.

Many ordinary Jamaicans actually seem proud of their attitude to gays. The YouTube video here about a crowd that gathered to beat up an inoffensive cross-dresser is neutral in its attitude, but the hostile comments below it are not. Nor are the sentiments of some of the gay-hating reggae songs by Jamaican recording artists like Buju Banton, Elephant Man, and Bounty Killer.

The poet Matt Harvey, on Radio 4 on Saturday morning, returned to the earlier story about Turing, commenting more eloquently than I could on homophobia and the prime ministerial apology to Turing (the poem was published here):

Alan Turing

here's a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we're sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
— very carefully scripted but at least it's not encrypted —
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?