Gut feelings: the future of psychiatry may be inside your stomach Her parents were running out of hope. Their teenage daughter, Mary, had been diagnosed with a severe case of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as ADHD. They had dragged her to clinics around the country in an effort to thwart the scary, intrusive thoughts and the repetitive behaviors that Mary felt compelled to perform. Even a litany of psychotropic medications didn’t make much difference. It seemed like nothing could stop the relentless nature of Mary’s disorder. Their last hope for Mary was Boston-area psychiatrist James Greenblatt. Greenblatt started by posing the usual questions about Mary’s background, her childhood, and the onset of her illness. That’s what prompted Greenblatt to take a surprising approach: besides psychotherapy and medication, Greenblatt also prescribed Mary a twice-daily dose of probiotics, the array of helpful bacteria that lives in our gut. Her parents may have been stunned, but to Greenblatt, Mary’s case was an obvious one. Read next: Amar Toor
Memories Can Be Inherited, and Scientists May Have Just Figured out How In Brief Our life experiences may be passed on to our children and our children's children - and now scientists report that they have discovered that this inheritance can be turned on or off. What is Epigenetics? Epigenetics is the study of inherited changes in gene expression…changes that are inherited, but they are not inherent to our DNA. The question, of course, is how are these genetic “memories” passed on? This is the question that a Tel Aviv University (TAU) was seeking to answer when they reportedly discovered the exact mechanism that makes it possible to turn the transference of environmental influences on or off. Understanding the Mechanism According to their study, epigenetic responses that are inherited follow an active process as it gets passed on through generations. “We previously showed that worms inherited small RNAs following the starvation and viral infections of their parents.
Brain Stimulation May Induce the Human Will to Persevere - Wired Science The salience network, highlighted here in two epilepsy patients, is thought to mediate our response to important internal or external signals, such as pain or the sound of a siren. Image: Parvizi et al. Neuron 2013 One epilepsy patient reported a flushing in his chest and described a feeling of determinedness, like getting ready to drive through a storm. A second reported similar feelings, a response scientists involved in the study called “the will to persevere.” Both patients were reacting to an electric current delivered through an electrode implanted in the brain — put there to try to find the source of their seizures — which happened to stimulate one of the key nodes of a brain circuit known as the “salience network.” The new findings, published Dec. 5 in the journal Neuron, raise tantalizing questions about how differences in the network from one individual to the next contribute to differences in our ability to overcome challenges and cope with stress.
Health - Why feeling more pain may be better for you Psychology studies show painful experiences aren’t dictated by how long they go on for, and this could teach us an important lesson about everything from hospital operations to holidays, says Tom Stafford. When is the best treatment for pain more pain? When you're taking part in an experiment published by a Nobel prize winner and one of the leading lights in behavioural psychology, that is. The psychologist in question is Daniel Kahneman; the experiment described by the self-explanatory title of: When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End. Both trials were equally painful for the first sixty seconds, as indicated by a dial participants had to adjust to show how they were feeling. Next, the experimenters asked participants which kind of trial they would choose to repeat if they had to. These studies support what Kahneman called the Peak-End rule – that our perceptions about an experience are determined by how it feels at its most intense, and how it feels at the end.
Research Shows That Brain Training Is Nothing But The Placebo Effect In Brief Using some deliberate advertising. A group of researchers show that the placebo effect is more effective than brain training games when it comes to increasing intelligence. Its all in the advertising An experiment conducted by a team of researchers at the George Mason University finds that they can achieve what paid brain training programs claim—using a simple trick. They used two posters with different advertising messages to attract participants, but both posters lead to the exact same study, and the exact same activities. Fifty recruits were accepted to participate. All 50 participants took standardized tests to measure their fluid intelligence. This implies that the expectations set by the posters prior to the activities may have been responsible for the IQ rise and not the games themselves. False Advertising Early this year, online brain training company Luminosity had to shell out a hefty $2 million fine for false advertising.
Kvinnors och mäns hjärnor olika kopplade Forskarna har tagit fram nära 1.000 hjärnskanningar för att undersöka om det finns skillnader i hur nervbanor löper i mäns och kvinnors hjärnor. Bilderna visar att medelhjärnan hos en frisk kvinna har en högre koncentration av nervbanor mellan högra och vänstra hemisfärererna, medan medelhjärnan hos en frisk man har nervbanor som i högre grad går från de bakre delarna av hjärnan till de främre, det skriver bland annat The Guardian. ”Kvinnor har bättre simultankapacitet” Studien är gjord av forskare på Pennsylvaniauniversitet i USA, och publiceras i tidskriften Proceedings of the National of Science. – Den vänstra hjärnhalvan sysslar mer med logiskt tänkande, och den högra mer med intuitivt tänkande. Hon fortsätter: – Kvinnor är bättre på att tänka intuitivt. Vill förstå sjukdomar Den enda plats i hjärnan där män hade starkare koppling mellan vänstra och högra hjärnhalvorna var i cerebellum, som har stor betydelse för motoriken. Svårt att dra generella slutsatser
MSG and gluten intolerance: Is the nocebo effect to blame? Photo by Marina Helli/AFP/Getty Images While living in China from 2003 to 2005, I often served as the designated translator for fellow expatriates. Whenever we ate out, this involved asking our server which menu items contained MSG. After observing that no one reacted to the peanuts, I was inspired to conduct a simple (and admittedly unethical) experiment. An hour later? I repeated this experiment on multiple occasions, always with the same result. In April 1968, the New England Journal of Medicine published a letter by Robert Ho Man Kwok that described a strange set of symptoms: “Numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, general weakness and palpitation.” An editor at NEJM titled Kwok’s letter “Chinese-restaurant syndrome,” and thus began a minor epidemic. But after reading some of these studies, even a layperson will start to get suspicious. “The evidence that this infant had the Chinese Restaurant syndrome may be only circumstantial.
Are Stories A Key To Human Intelligence? : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture To be sure, we love a good story. Research suggests that anecdotes can be as persuasive as hard data, and that jurors are influenced by the quality of the prosecution's and defense's "stories" when deciding whether to find a defendant guilty. Even in science, we seek explanations, not mere descriptions; in history, we want a good narrative, not a mere sequence of events. But what's so great about stories? Stories have been studied in various forms across a range of disciplines, from literary and media studies to psychology and linguistics. One reason AI systems might need to understand or produce stories is because they interact with humans. Researchers in AI have explored a potential role for stories since at least the 1990s. These ideas have evolved into calls for computational "narrative intelligence," which computer scientist Mark Riedl defines as "the ability to craft, tell, understand, and respond affectively to stories."
A Neuroscientist's Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious - Wired Science WIRED: How do you square what you believe about animal consciousness with how they're used in experiments? Koch: There are two things to put in perspective. First, there are vastly more animals being eaten at McDonald's every day. The number of animals used in research pales in comparison to the number used for flesh. And we need basic brain research to understand the brain's mechanisms. My father died from Parkinson's. WIRED: Getting back to the theory, is your version of panpsychism truly scientific rather than metaphysical? Koch: In principle, in all sorts of ways. The theory also says you can have simple systems that are conscious, and complex systems that are not. The more relevant question, to me as a scientist, is how can I disprove the theory today. WIRED: I still can't shake the feeling that consciousness arising through integrated information is — arbitrary, somehow. Koch: If you think about any explanation of anything, how far back does it go?