440 posts · 266,172 views
Comments on neurobiology, neuroimaging, and psychiatry from a skeptical neuroscientist.
Neuroskeptic
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- June 1, 2010
- 11:52 AM
- 534 views
SSRIs and Suicide
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Prozac and suicide: what's going on?Many people think that SSRI antidepressants do indeed cause suicide, and in recent years this idea has gained a huge amount of attention. My opinion is that, well, it's all rather complicated...At first glance, it seems as though it should be easy to discover the truth. SSRIs are some of the most studied drugs in the world. We have data from several hundred randomized placebo-controlled trials, totaling tens of thousands of patients. Let's just look and see wh........ Read more »
Dudley, M., Goldney, R., & Hadzi-Pavlovic, D. (2010) Are adolescents dying by suicide taking SSRI antidepressants? A review of observational studies. Australasian Psychiatry, 18(3), 242-245. DOI: 10.3109/10398561003681319
- May 28, 2010
- 11:13 AM
- 644 views
This Is Your Brain's Anti-Drug
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
What's your anti-drug? Well, it might well be hemopressin. At least, that's probably your anti-marijuana.Hemopressin is a small protein that was discovered in the brains of rodents in 2003: its name comes from the fact that it's a breakdown product of hemoglobin and that it can lower blood pressure.No-one seems to have looked to see whether hemopressin is found in humans, yet, but it seems very likely. Almost everything that's in your brain is in a mouse's brain, and vice versa.Pharmacologically........ Read more »
Dodd, G., Mancini, G., Lutz, B., & Luckman, S. (2010) The Peptide Hemopressin Acts through CB1 Cannabinoid Receptors to Reduce Food Intake in Rats and Mice. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(21), 7369-7376. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5455-09.2010
- May 27, 2010
- 11:17 AM
- 643 views
Do Genes Remember?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Almost all neuroscientists believe that memories are stored in the connections between neurons: synapses. Learning, then, consists of the strengthening of some synapses, the weakening of others, and maybe even the formation of entirely new ones. But a paper from Catherine Miller and colleagues suggests that changes to DNA are also involved: Cortical DNA methylation maintains remote memory.DNA is a series of bases, and fundamentally there are just four: C, A, T and G. However, the Cs and the As c........ Read more »
Miller, C., Gavin, C., White, J., Parrish, R., Honasoge, A., Yancey, C., Rivera, I., Rubio, M., Rumbaugh, G., & Sweatt, J. (2010) Cortical DNA methylation maintains remote memory. Nature Neuroscience, 13(6), 664-666. DOI: 10.1038/nn.2560
- May 15, 2010
- 05:40 PM
- 741 views
Do It Like You Dopamine It
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Neuroskeptic readers will know that I'm a big fan of theories. Rather than just poking around (or scanning) the brain under different conditions and seeing what happens, it's always better to have a testable hypothesis.I just found a 2007 paper by Israeli computational neuroscientists Niv et al that puts forward a very interesting theory about dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, and dopamine cells are known to fire in phasic bursts - short volleys of spikes over millisecond timescales - in........ Read more »
Niv Y, Daw ND, Joel D, & Dayan P. (2007) Tonic dopamine: opportunity costs and the control of response vigor. Psychopharmacology, 191(3), 507-20. PMID: 17031711
- May 12, 2010
- 11:53 AM
- 547 views
Happiness Is Not A Fish You Can Eat
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Wouldn't it be nice if you could improve your mental health just by eating more fish?Well, yes, it would... except for people who hate fish, who would be doomed to misery. But is it true? A new paper from Finnish researchers Suominen-Taipale et al looks at this issue: Fish Consumption and Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in Relation to Depressive Episodes: A Cross-Sectional Analysis. The results are complex, but essentially, negative.The authors looked at a large sample (total n=6,500) of Fin........ Read more »
Suominen-Taipale, A., Partonen, T., Turunen, A., Männistö, S., Jula, A., & Verkasalo, P. (2010) Fish Consumption and Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in Relation to Depressive Episodes: A Cross-Sectional Analysis. PLoS ONE, 5(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010530
- May 6, 2010
- 06:13 PM
- 575 views
Mice That Fight for Their Rights
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Israeli biologists Feder et al report on Selective breeding for dominant and submissive behavior in Sabra mice.Mice are social animals and like many species, they show dominance hierarchies. When they first meet, they'll often fight each other. The winner gets to be Mr (or Mrs) Big, and they enjoy first pick of the food, mating opportunities, etc - for as long as they can remain dominant.But what determines which mice become top dog... ? Feder et al show that it's partially under genetic control........ Read more »
Feder, Y., Nesher, E., Ogran, A., Kreinin, A., Malatynska, E., Yadid, G., & Pinhasov, A. (2010) Selective breeding for dominant and submissive behavior in Sabra mice. Journal of Affective Disorders. DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2010.03.018
- May 2, 2010
- 08:58 AM
- 547 views
Prozac and the Killer
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Uh-oh, here's a troubling paper: Effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors on motor neuron survival.According to Anderson et al,Motor neurons were challenged with fluoxetine and paroxetine at clinically relevant doses ... In fluoxetine-treated motor neurons there was ~52% cell death while in paroxetine-treated cells there was 14% cell survival.... Both SSRIs decreased cell survival in a dose-dependent manner. This study is provocative enough to call for further in vivo studies.Stan........ Read more »
Lily B Anderson,, Phaedra B Anderson,, Thea B Anderson,, Amy Bishop,, & James Anderson. (2009) Effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors on motor neuron survival. International Journal of General Medicine, 109-115. info:/
- April 30, 2010
- 11:28 AM
- 937 views
New, Voodoo-Free fMRI Technique
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
MIT brain scanners Fedorenko et al present A new method for fMRI investigations of language: Defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects. Also on the list of authors is Nancy Kanwisher, one of the feared fMRI voodoo correlations posse.The paper describes a technique for mapping out the "language areas" of the brain in individual people, not for their own sake, but as a way of improving other fMRI studies of language. That's important because while everyone's brain is organized roughly th........ Read more »
Fedorenko, E., Hsieh, P., Nieto Castanon, A., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., & Kanwisher, N. (2010) A new method for fMRI investigations of language: Defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects. Journal of Neurophysiology. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00032.2010
- April 21, 2010
- 12:50 PM
- 788 views
Of Yeast and Men
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Nature reports on the Dissection of genetically complex traits with extremely large pools of yeast segregants.Ehrenreich et al have a new way of mapping the genetic basis of complex traits in yeast, "complex" being what geneticists call anything which isn't controlled by one single gene. They dub their approach "Extreme QTL mapping". This suggests images of geneticists running experiments atop Everest, or perhaps collecting blood samples from lions with their bare hands, but actuallyExtreme QTL ........ Read more »
Ehrenreich IM, Torabi N, Jia Y, Kent J, Martis S, Shapiro JA, Gresham D, Caudy AA, & Kruglyak L. (2010) Dissection of genetically complex traits with extremely large pools of yeast segregants. Nature, 464(7291), 1039-42. PMID: 20393561
- April 19, 2010
- 08:05 AM
- 562 views
Neural Correlates of Being a Total Bad-Ass
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A new fMRI study in PLoS reports Differential Brain Activation to Angry Faces by Elite Warfighters, the elite warfighters being US Navy SEALs.SEALs are indeed pretty elite. This being a British blog, I wouldn't want to say that they're the world's elitest naval special forces unit. That's the British Special Boat Service. But they could still kill you ten times before you knew they were there (unless you're in the Special Boat Service.)Anyway, San Diego researchers Paulus et al scanned 11 SEALs........ Read more »
Paulus, M., Simmons, A., Fitzpatrick, S., Potterat, E., Van Orden, K., Bauman, J., & Swain, J. (2010) Differential Brain Activation to Angry Faces by Elite Warfighters: Neural Processing Evidence for Enhanced Threat Detection. PLoS ONE, 5(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010096
- April 13, 2010
- 02:17 PM
- 506 views
The Hunt for the Prozac Gene
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
One of the difficulties doctors face when prescribing antidepressants is that they're unpredictable.One person might do well on a certain drug, but the next person might get no benefit from the exact same pills. Finding the right drug for each patient is often a matter of trying different ones until one works.So a genetic test to work out whether a certain drug will help a particular person would be really useful. Not to mention really profitable for whoever patented it. Three recent papers, pub........ Read more »
Binder EB, Owens MJ, Liu W, Deveau TC, Rush AJ, Trivedi MH, Fava M, Bradley B, Ressler KJ, & Nemeroff CB. (2010) Association of polymorphisms in genes regulating the corticotropin-releasing factor system with antidepressant treatment response. Archives of general psychiatry, 67(4), 369-79. PMID: 20368512
Uher, R., Perroud, N., Ng, M., Hauser, J., Henigsberg, N., Maier, W., Mors, O., Placentino, A., Rietschel, M., Souery, D.... (2010) Genome-Wide Pharmacogenetics of Antidepressant Response in the GENDEP Project. American Journal of Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09070932
Garriock, H., Kraft, J., Shyn, S., Peters, E., Yokoyama, J., Jenkins, G., Reinalda, M., Slager, S., McGrath, P., & Hamilton, S. (2010) A Genomewide Association Study of Citalopram Response in Major Depressive Disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 67(2), 133-138. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.08.029
- April 8, 2010
- 03:51 PM
- 612 views
Social Learning in Antisocial Animals
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
In an unusual study with potentially revolutionary implications, Austrian biologists Wilkinson et al show evidence of Social learning in a non-social reptile.Social learning means learning to do something by observing others doing it, rather than by doing it yourself. Many sociable animal species, including mammals, birds and even insects, have shown the ability to learn by observing others doing things. It's often seen as a distinct form of cognition, separate to "normal" learning, which evolve........ Read more »
Wilkinson, A., Kuenstner, K., Mueller, J., & Huber, L. (2010) Social learning in a non-social reptile (Geochelone carbonaria). Biology Letters. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0092
- April 7, 2010
- 08:48 AM
- 718 views
Why Do We Dream?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A few months ago, I asked Why Do We Sleep?That post was about sleep researcher Jerry Siegel, who argues that sleep evolved as a state of "adaptive inactivity". According to this idea, animals sleep because otherwise we'd always be active, and constant activity is a waste of energy. Sleeping for a proportion of the time conserves calories, and also keeps us safe from nocturnal predators etc.Siegel's theory in what we might call minimalist. That's in contrast to other hypotheses which claim that s........ Read more »
Hobson JA, & McCarley RW. (1977) The brain as a dream state generator: an activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process. The American journal of psychiatry, 134(12), 1335-48. PMID: 21570
Hobson, J. (2009) REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(11), 803-813. DOI: 10.1038/nrn2716
- March 31, 2010
- 09:18 AM
- 754 views
Predicting Psychosis
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
"Prevention is better than cure", so they say. And in most branches of medicine, preventing diseases, or detecting early signs and treating them pre-emptively before the symptoms appear, is an important art.Not in psychiatry. At least not yet. But the prospect of predicting the onset of psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia, and of "early intervention" to try to prevent them, is a hot topic at the moment.Schizophrenia and similar illnesses usually begin with a period of months or years, general........ Read more »
Ruhrmann, S., Schultze-Lutter, F., Salokangas, R., Heinimaa, M., Linszen, D., Dingemans, P., Birchwood, M., Patterson, P., Juckel, G., Heinz, A.... (2010) Prediction of Psychosis in Adolescents and Young Adults at High Risk: Results From the Prospective European Prediction of Psychosis Study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 67(3), 241-251. DOI: 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2009.206
- March 24, 2010
- 06:27 PM
- 533 views
How Blind is Double-Blind?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
There's a rather timely article in the current American Journal of Psychiatry: Assuring That Double-Blind Is Blind.Generally, when the list of the authors' conflicts of interest (550 words) is nearly as long as the text of the paper (740 words), it's not a good sign, but this one isn't bad. Perlis et al remind us that if you do a double-blind placebo controlled trial:The blind may be compromised in a variety of ways, however, beginning with differences in medication taste or smell. Of partic........ Read more »
Perlis RH, Ostacher M, Fava M, Nierenberg AA, Sachs GS, & Rosenbaum JF. (2010) Assuring that double-blind is blind. The American journal of psychiatry, 167(3), 250-2. PMID: 20194487
Moncrieff J, Wessely S, & Hardy R. (2004) Active placebos versus antidepressants for depression. Cochrane database of systematic reviews (Online). PMID: 14974002
- March 20, 2010
- 03:00 PM
- 734 views
Absinthe Fact and Fiction
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Absinthe is a spirit. It's very strong, and very green. But is it something more?I used to think so, until I came across this paper taking a skeptical look at the history and science of the drink, Padosch et al's Absinthism a fictitious 19th century syndrome with present impactAbsinthe is prepared by crushing and dissolving the herb wormwood in unflavoured neutral alcohol and then distilling the result; other herbs and spices are added later for taste and colour.It became extremely popular in th........ Read more »
Padosch SA, Lachenmeier DW, & Kröner LU. (2006) Absinthism: a fictitious 19th century syndrome with present impact. Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy, 1(1), 14. PMID: 16722551
- March 17, 2010
- 05:32 AM
- 826 views
Mmm... Food-Induced Seizures
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
In a tasty new paper, British neurologists Kate El Bouzidi et al report on the case of a woman who suffered epileptic seizures whenever she saw, or tasted, food:A 44-year-old right-handed woman was walking in the Scottish highlands. Upon unwrapping her lunch, she had a focal seizure with witnessed onset on the right side of the face and secondary generalization... She was airlifted to hospital. Three weeks later, the smell of food triggered another seizure and she was admitted to the neurology u........ Read more »
El Bouzidi K, Duncan S, Whittle IR, & Butler CR. (2010) Lesional reflex epilepsy associated with the thought of food. Neurology, 74(7), 610-2. PMID: 20157165
- March 15, 2010
- 05:52 AM
- 656 views
How to Stop Smoking
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
1. Don't smoke.2. See 1.This is essentially what Simon Chapman and Ross MacKenzie suggest in a provocative PloS Medicine paper, The Global Research Neglect of Unassisted Smoking Cessation: Causes and Consequences.Their point is deceptively simple: there is lots of research looking at drugs and other treatments to help people quit smoking tobacco, but little attention is paid to people who quit without any help, despite the fact that the majority (up to 75%) of quitters do just that. This is good........ Read more »
Chapman S, & MacKenzie R. (2010) The global research neglect of unassisted smoking cessation: causes and consequences. PLoS medicine, 7(2). PMID: 20161722
- March 10, 2010
- 05:10 PM
- 875 views
Can We Rely on fMRI?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Craig Bennett (of Prefrontal.org) and Michael Miller, of dead fish brain scan fame, have a new paper out: How reliable are the results from functional magnetic resonance imaging?Tal over at the [citation needed] blog has an excellent in-depth discussion of the paper, and Mind Hacks has a good summary, but here's my take on what it all means in practical terms.Suppose you scan someone's brain while they're looking at a picture of a cat. You find that certain parts of their brain are activated to ........ Read more »
Bennett CM, Miller MB. (2010) How reliable are the results from functional magnetic resonance imaging?. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. info:/
- March 8, 2010
- 03:45 PM
- 739 views
Life Without Serotonin
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Via Dormivigilia, I came across a fascinating paper about a man who suffered from a severe lack of monoamine neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin etc.) as a result of a genetic mutation: Sleep and Rhythm Consequences of a Genetically Induced Loss of SerotoninNeuroskeptic readers will be familiar with monoamines. They're psychiatrists' favourite neurotransmitters, and are hence very popular amongst psych drug manufacturers. In particular, it's widely believed that serotonin is the brain's "happ........ Read more »
Smaranda Leu-Semenescu et al. (2010) Sleep and Rhythm Consequences of a Genetically Induced Loss of Serotonin. Sleep, 33(03), 307-314. info:/
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