The Entirely Legitimate Encephalon #67

(Updated! New post from Channel N -see below.) Welcome to the 67th edition of Encephalon, the regular neuroscience and psychology blog roundup. In honor of the recently revealed hilarious petty corruption in British politics, I demanded a hefty bribe to do this post... Wait, did you just read that? I'll give you £50 if you keep quiet about it. Ok, £100. I've got a reputation to uphold.
Anyway, in no particular order - certainly not in the order of the sum they paid me - here are your links for this edition:

• New! Channel N features a talk by MacArthur Genius and neuro-robotics pioneer Yoky Matsuoka. If you ever want a bionic limb, she's the person to call.
  
• In honour of old St Paddy, PodBlack Cat deals with the psychology of "luck", superstition, and Irish movies. Apparantly, there are now breeds of clovers which always have four leaves - where's the fun in that?
  
• Neurophilosophy's Mo writes about a pair of fascinating neuroimaging studies about limb amputation and the brain's construction of the body image.
  
• Ward Plunet of BrainHealthHacks has three recent posts looking at possible links between obesity and cognitive ability - could be controversial.
• Ouroboros discusses an interesting discovery which reveals another piece of the puzzle about the genetics of familial Alzheimer's disease.
• Hesitant Iconoclast of the NeuroWhoa! blog presents a well thought out two-part post about the search for the brain's "God Spot", and what it might mean if there isn't one.
• The Neurocritic is, as ever, critical, about lie detection and about the latest potential weight loss pills.
  
• SharpBrains, the homeland of Encephalon, has a useful set of links to the best brain health articles from the past month, and also discusses the deeply unhealthy goings-on at JAMA regarding conflicts of interests, an antidepressant trial, and some impressive academic fisticuffs.
• Neuronarrative discusses two fMRI studies which are rather topical in the current economic climate. One is about what happens when we take expert's advice when making decisions and the other about the "money illusion". Finally, there's a post featuring four expert responses to the Susan Greenfield Facebook-destroys-the-brain controversy (which I wrote about previously) which are rather enlightening.
• BrainBlogger provides a typically accessible write-up of a small but exciting study about the possible utility of lithium in Lou Gherig's disease, and a large study of the possible cognitive consequences of the metabolic syndrome.
• Finally, The Mouse Trap's Sandeep has an extensive and very thought provoking two part series of thoughts on the psychology of pleasure, pain and bipolar disorder, and to round out this issue, discusses an imaging study about how we know the difference between reality and fiction. Did I really accept bribes to produce this issue?

That's it for this issue! The next Encephalon is slated to be hosted over at Ouroboros, so get writing and e-mail submissions to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com by April 13th.

Sumo Wrestling: Part 9

Location: Ryogoku Kokugikan, Tokyo, Japan
Event: Grand Sumo Tournaments
Date taken: September 22^nd, 2008
Camera equipment: Nikon D300 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D

Cosmic Ordering, CAM and the NHS

A while back, I argued that it might not be a good idea to encourage the use of therapies, such as homeopathy, which work via the "placebo effect". (I've also previously said that what people call "the placebo effect" very often isn't one).

But there's more to say on this. Let us assume that homeopathy, say, is nothing more than a placebo (which it is). Let's further assume that homeopathy is actually quite a good placebo, meaning that when people go to see a homeopath they generally leave feeling better and end up experiencing better health outcomes - for whatever reason. This second assumption is exactly that, an assumption, because to my knowledge no-one has done a study of whether people who use homeopathy actually feel any healthier than they would if they had never heard of homeopathy and just got on with their lives. But let's assume it works.

Now, does this mean that homeopathy is a good thing? Well, sure, if it makes people feel better, it's a good thing. However - it doesn't follow that homeopathy, or any other form of complementary and alternative medicine which works as a placebo, should be available on the NHS. Many have argued that if CAM works, even if only by the placebo effect, it's still a useful thing which the NHS should support if patient's request it. I disagree.
A while back, South Bank University in London was widely mocked for getting a psychic to give a training session on "cosmic ordering". Cosmic ordering is the belief that you can get what you want in life by placing an order with the universe in the form of wishing really hard and then some quantum stuff happens and - I can't write any more of this. It's all crap. Anyway, the head of South Bank defended the session on the grounds that the staff requested it, liked it and found it useful.

Now if I applied for funding from my University to pay for a night down the pub for the whole of my Department I'd get the beaurocratic equivalent of a slap in the face. This despite the fact that people would enjoy it, it would help with team-building, and reduce stress levels. The point is that despite a Departmental night down the pub being, probably, a good thing in many ways, it's just not the kind of thing a University is responsible for. It would be incredibly unprofessional for University money to be spent on that kind of thing.

Likewise, it was unprofessional of South Bank to pay for a psychic to give a training course, even though the attendees liked it. Sorry to sound anal but Universities don't exist to give their staff what they want. They exist to pay their staff in exchange for their professional services & to help them carry out those services.

Likewise, the NHS, I think, doesn't exist to make people feel good, it exists to treat and prevent medical illnesses. So people like homeopathy and find it's helpful for relieving stress-related symptoms. Does that mean the NHS should be paying for it? Only if you believe that the NHS should also be paying for me to take a holiday to Thailand. I don't believe in homeopathy, but I do believe that a week on a Thai beach would do wonders for my stress levels. Or maybe I'd prefer a sweet guitar - I find playing guitar is great for relaxation, but it would be even better if I had a £700 model to play on. My well-being levels would just soar, if only until the novelty wore off. You get the point.

Most "complementary and alternative medicine" is medicine in appearance only. Just because homepaths hand out pills doesn't mean that what they do has anything to do with medicine. It's ritual. It's close to being entertainment, in a sense - which is not to belittle it, because entertainment is an important part of life. I'm sure there are many people for whom their sessions with their homeopath are really very useful. I just don't think the medical services should necessarily be paying for everything that people find helpful.

[BPSDB]

Nikko: Kegon Falls

After visiting Toshogu, Futarasan Shrine and Taiyuin-byo, I decided to explore deeper into the Nikko National Park. A single-trip bus ticket from the train station to the Kegon Falls (Kegon-no-taki) is already ¥1,100, so I bought a 2-day bus ticket, even though I was only on a day trip. The bus ride was around 50 minutes without any traffic congestion.

The main waterfall of the Kegon Falls is 97 metres high, making it one of Japan's three highest waterfalls. Besides their beauty, the Kegon Falls are infamous for suicides, especially among Japanese youth.

In order for me to see the waterfall from the bottom, I was ripped of another ¥530 for the return ticket of the elevator ride. There is no alternative way down to the viewing platform.

The elevator came to a terminal at one end of a white tunnel that looks like something that one would see in a sci-fi movie.

The viewing platform is at the other end of the tunnel. I could already hear the humbling sound of the main waterfall before I came out of the tunnel.

There wasn't any fall colour. Everything was green as I was there some time end of spring. I wasn't that disappointed of not seeing it in fall colours as the greens is equally fascinating.

The water falls down to a rocky stream which is surrounded by greens as well. The water is so clear that it feels like cleansing the soul.

On the other side of the viewing platform is the smaller waterfall of the Kegon Falls. Without a sense of scale, it looks like what one could see in a Japanese garden.

I met with a group of tourists form Australia and had a great chat with them. They thought I was a professional photographer, so I was obliged to help them with their group photos. After I had snapped enough photos down at the viewing platform, I headed back to the white tunnel again.

I was then elevated back to reality again.

Encephalon #67 is coming...

ENCEPHALON, the regular psychology and neuroscience blog carnival, will shortly be arriving at Neuroskeptic. The last few editions were awesome, so don't let me down here - get writing, or get submitting things you've already written, about the brain, the mind, and all that kind of thing.

As always, please email submissions to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com by the 30th March.

Encephalon #67 is coming...

ENCEPHALON, the regular psychology and neuroscience blog carnival, will shortly be arriving at Neuroskeptic. The last few editions were awesome, so don't let me down here - get writing, or get submitting things you've already written, about the brain, the mind, and all that kind of thing.

As always, please email submissions to encephalon{dot}host{at}gmail{dot}com by the 30th March.

Serotonin, Hallucinations & Psychosis

Serotonin, as every newspaper reader knows, is the brain's "feel good chemical". Of course, it's a little bit more complicated than that. A lot more complicated, in fact. But even amongst scientists who are aware of the complexity of serotonin pharmacology, the functions of serotonin are still generally thought of in the context of mood and emotion.
What everyone tends to forget is that serotonin has a wild side. There's a long line of research, stretching back to the 40s, on the role of serotonin in perception and hallucinations.

It all started on Bicycle Day - the 1943 day that Albert Hofmann first experienced the psychedelic effects of LSD ("acid") while riding his bike home from the lab where he first synthesized the drug. Serotonin was discovered in 1948. It was soon noticed that the chemical structure of LSD bears a striking similarity to serotonin - as does psilocybin, the major psychoactive ingredient in "magic mushrooms":You don't need to be a chemist to appreciate the resemblance. So it would be a very reasonable assumption that hallucinogenic drugs work by interfering with the brain's serotonin pathways, and therefore that the serotonin system is somehow involved in regulating thought and perception. Somehow, LSD inteferes with the serotonin system in the brain to cause profoundly altered states of conciousness. That's pretty important.That's also the easy bit. What's been difficult has been working out what hallucinogens actually do in the brain specifically, and how this produces their psychoactive effects. Trends in Pharmacological Sciences has a nice review article on this. To cut a long story short, we still don't know how LSD works, although since research has mostly dried up since the 1970s (everyone's studying happy pills now) this isn't all that surprising.

What has emerged is that LSD and similar compounds all activate the 5HT2A receptor. Interestingly, so do drugs which are chemically rather different, but with similar hallucinogenic effects, such as mescaline, favored by Native Americans and Matrix fans alike. The more potent a drug is at activating the receptor, the less of it you need to take to trip out.

So, does this mean that 5HT2A = hallucinogenic effects? The problem with this nice simple theory is lisuride, a potent 5HT2A agonist with no hallucinogenic effects at all. This troublesome result might not disprove the 5HT2A theory, however, in the light of a 2007 experiment finding that LSD has different effects on target cells from lisuride, despite them both binding to the same receptor. Presumably LSD and lisuride do subtly different things to the same receptors (read the paper for a more detailed account).

There's loads more to be said about hallucinogen pharmacology, and I'll be covering some of it in the future. What's interesting - and frustrating - is how few psychopharmacologists are aware of the field. A lot of hallucinogen research is really groundbreaking; the finding that two different agonists of the same receptor can have quite different effects is a really important one. It's certainly a humbling result. After Hallucinogens Recruit Specific Cortical 5-HT2A Receptor-Mediated Signaling Pathways to Affect Behavior, it's impossible not to get to wondering whether other receptors in the brain might have equally complex lives. Hallucinogen research underlines how imperfect our current understanding of the brain is. Plus, hallucinogens are really a lot sexier than antidepressants. Given all of which, it's a shame so few scientists are studying them. Acid - it's not just for ageing hippies.

Link Erowid.org has made available Hofmann's personal archive of over 4,000 papers relating to LSD. A dream come true if that kind of stuff floats your boat & well worth a browse for historical interest.

M GEYER, F VOLLENWEIDER (2008). Serotonin research: contributions to understanding psychoses Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 29 (9), 445-453 DOI: 10.1016/j.tips.2008.06.006

González-Maeso, J., Weisstaub, N., Zhou, M., Chan, P., Ivic, L., Ang, R., Lira, A., Bradley-Moore, M., Ge, Y., & Zhou, Q. (2007). Hallucinogens Recruit Specific Cortical 5-HT2A Receptor-Mediated Signaling Pathways to Affect Behavior Neuron, 53 (3), 439-452 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2007.01.008

Sumo Wrestling: Part 8

Location: Ryogoku Kokugikan, Tokyo, Japan
Event: Grand Sumo Tournaments
Date taken: September 22^nd, 2008
Camera equipment: Nikon D300 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D

Portraits of Man's Best Friends

I went to the 19^th All Breeds Championship Dog Show organised by the Sarawak Kennel Association (SKA) today with a few friends who are into photography. We were quite disappointed when we were near the ring area as lighting was poor and the environment not conducive for taking photos.

When we were about to leave, we saw some dog owners walking their dogs at the patio, so we asked for their permission to photograph their precious. They were all more than willing for us to 'shoot' their pets.

Nature "Does" Science Communication

The past few weeks has seen Nature (and Nature Neuroscience) run a series of features about science communication - science journalism, science blogging, and so on. They're all worth reading, and very readable, but, perhaps inevitably they raise more questions than they answer.

The basic assumption behind all of the articles is that communicating science to the public is A Good Thing, and scientists should be trying to help with it - whether by blogging about science, or helping to write press releases, or talking more to journalists.
I'm not sure about this. Sure - good, accurate information about science should be available to anyone who looks for it. But the same goes for history, or politics, or cricket. If people want to know about something, they should be able to read good stuff that's been written about it. I think there is an awful lot of great science writing out there, both in books, in print, and online. You can never have enough of it, though, so scientists should certainly be encouraged to write about science or help others to write about science in this way.

What I find questionable, though, is the idea that people who aren't really interested in science should be the targets of science communication. The Nature editorial of 19th March warns that

An average citizen is unlikely to search the web for the Higgs boson or the proteasome if he or she doesn't hear about it first on, say, a cable news channel. And as mass media sheds its scientific expertise, science's mass market presence will become harder to maintain.

Which is true, but I can't help but ask, why should the average citizen know or care about the Higgs boson? I find the Higgs boson quite interesting, although I admit, not as interesting as the brain. But I don't think that everyone should share my tastes. Personally, I find cricket deadly boring; I've never read the cricket pages of the newspaper, and I don't think I ever will. But some people are really into it, and good for them. If you prefer cricket to particle physics, who am I, or the editors of Nature, to say that's a problem?

The obvious response to what I've just said is that in a democracy, people have to know about science, because a lot of the major challenges facing our society involve science. If the public are ignorant about science, we won't be able to deal effectively with, say, climate change. There's probably some truth in that, but I suspect it's more important to educate people about climate change specifically, than to try to get them interested in Higgs bosons and hope that their passion for physics somehow "spills over" into a concern for the environment.

So, personally, I'm not really concerned if the public aren't interested in science. What concerns me is when they're actively fed inaccurate information about science. This just my personal take, but I would far rather that the newspapers never run another story about neuroimaging, say, than they keep on running rubbish ones.

Nature (2009). It's good to blog Nature, 457 (7233), 1058-1058 DOI: 10.1038/4571058a

Brumfiel, G. (2009). Science journalism: Supplanting the old media? Nature, 458 (7236), 274-277 DOI: 10.1038/458274a

Nature (2009). Filling the void Nature, 458 (7236), 260-260 DOI: 10.1038/458260a

Nature Neuroscience (2009). Getting the word out Nature Neuroscience, 12 (3), 235-235 DOI: 10.1038/nn0309-235

Blue Jeans Blues

This is a set of photos that I have edited to the retro style which was the theme during the day of shooting with Candies' Model Agency. It is supposed to bring out the feeling of the old blue jeans day. I hope I have done it to a certain extent in this series of photos.