Philosophy posts

April 24, 2011
01:13 PM
997 views

Guess This Psychiatric Disorder

Here’s a question for you psychiatrists and clinical psychologists out there. What disorder is characterized by the following symptoms:1. Congenital onset2. Dwarfism3. Emotional lability and immaturity4. Knowledge deficits5. Legume anorexiaNational surveys over the past 20 years have shown that this condition is present in approximately a quarter of the US population at any given time. Still stumped?The name of this “debilitating disorder” is…..wait for it…..CHILDHOOD! Uh....you are the one with the issues - you are wearing only one sock!I took the above snippet on criteria for childhood from an entertaining article by Jordan Smoller (who is currently an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School). It’s an oldie but a goodie – it was published in 1985. I have pasted the entire thing below for your benefit and I highly recommend reading it. It’s pretty short, an easy read, and very entertaining (be sure to pay attention to the references!). Any article that has sentences like these:“Folk wisdom is supported by empirical observation -- children will rarely eat their vegetables (see Popeye, 1957, for review).” and“Impressive evidence of a genetic component of childhood comes from a large-scale twin study by Brady and Partridge (1972)….Among identical or monozygotic twins, concordance was unusually high (0.92), i.e., when one twin was diagnosed with childhood, the other twin was almost always a child as well.”is a winner in my book. In fact, I think we need an update to Smoller’s article since it’s about 25 years old. So here's psychbytes' addendum to Smoller's article."Given the current focus on neurobiology, molecular genetics, and statistical modeling, we need to clearly consider these criteria while defining “childhood” as well. It’s well known that childhood is associated with extensive “brain volume abnormalities” and “decreased functional connectivity” compared to adulthood. However, as with any other psychiatric disorder, we have few genes that have been associated with it, though statistical models show that childhood “runs in families” and that without a doubt, it has a “strong, genetic component”. Let’s also not forget that key features of childhood, such as height, weight, and age, show very few (if any) discontinuities with “adulthood”. Thus, if one were to fit latent variable models to such variables assessed in childhood, we would see that these are dimensional in nature, and thus the categorical concept of childhood is statistically untenable. Also, note that childhood is “comorbid” with several other mental and physical disorders. Perhaps, on the basis of this, as the DSM-5 leadership has advocated, maybe we need to eradicate the category of childhood, and evaluate it as a “cross-cutting dimension” in future versions of the DSM?"Now, clearly, all of this is meant to be satirical. But, humor aside, I think it gets at the heart of the definition of a mental disorder, and shows how scientific language can make almost anything sound abnormal or weird. It reminded me of the Nacirema series of articles in anthropology (which I also recommend reading). It also speaks to how defining a mental disorder solely on the basis of arbitrary criteria (see DSM 5 proposal for definition of mental disorder) such as “impairment”, “psychobiological dysfunction”, and “behavioral or psychological syndromes or patterns” is problematic.Don’t get me wrong – I am a researcher in psychology and neuroscience and I do think we need some sort of criteria to be set out for a mental disorder. I do believe things like schizophrenia and depression are disorders, and that childhood isn’t. But having read over this article and others like it, I am hard pressed to come up with a reason as to why I believe that. Smoller’s article below:THE ETIOLOGY & TREATMENT OF CHILDHOOD- Jordan W. Smoller, University of PennsylvaniaChildhood is a syndrome which has only recently begun to receive serious attention from clinicians. The syndrome itself, however, is not at all recent. As early as the 8th century, the Persian historian Kidnom made references to "short, noisy creatures," who may well have been what we now call "children." The treatment of children, however, was unknown until this century, when so-called "child psychologists" and "child psychiatrists" became common. Despite this history of clinical neglect, it has been estimated that well over half of all Americans alive today have experienced childhood directly (Seuss, 1983). In fact, the actual numbers are probably much higher, since these data are based on self-reports which may be subject to social desirability biases and retrospective distortion. The growing acceptance of childhood as a distinct phenomenon is reflected in the proposed inclusion of the syndrome in the upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, or DSM-IV, of the America... Read more »

Jordan W. Smoller. (1985) The etiology and treatment of childhood. Journal of Polymorphous Perversity, 2(2), 3-7. info:/

April 24, 2011
01:35 AM
1,134 views

Hiding Place for the Artsy-Scientist

by Paige Brown in From The Lab Bench

...exiled from the class of 'serious' scientists. A lullaby for a weaker child of chemistry. Enjoy your dreams of a lesser biology. She couldn't make it in the big leagues, they'd say. So I hide my dreams of translating science, colorful pages lost in a library of dull covers with obscure, impossible-to-pronounce titles. Surface Plasmon Resonance Series - Nanotechnology-based Sensors. Professor, here is my secret: such a library of science begs translation for the curious non-scientists. Thrilling stories of scientific discoveries that will make our fellow non-scientists as curious as we. Put me in coach. The only think I know better than science, is the art and draw of language.... Read more »

Editorial. (2011) Fix the PhD. Nature, 472(7343), 259-260. PMID: 21512527

April 21, 2011
01:06 PM
1,027 views

Ariel Casts Out Caliban: Bonobos, "Killer-Apes" and Human Origins

by Eric Michael Johnson in The Primate Diaries

In place of a guest post this week I'm very pleased to announce my cover article in the latest edition of Times Higher Education.--------------------------------------------The concept of the 'killer-ape' offers a pessimistic reflection of humanity and its genesis, but the latest research shows that a primate species whose success is based on mutual aid and pleasure, not violence, is a better model for human origins. Eric Michael Johnson considers the better bonobos of our nature."Nature never intends the generation of a monster."John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, in debate with Thomas Hobbes (1645)In 1607, after being held captive by the Portuguese in West Africa's Congo Basin for nearly 18 years, the English sailor Andrew Battell returned home with lurid tales of "ape monsters". The larger of the two creatures Battell described, according to the edited volume later published by travel writer Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, "is in all proportion like a man", but "more like a giant in stature...and has a man's face, hollow-eyed, with long haire upon his browes". These marauding beasts "goe many together, and kill many (villagers)...they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them". Battell's narrative, much of which was received second hand and sure to be highly imaginative, was nevertheless one of Western society's earliest introductions to our evolutionary cousins, the great apes.Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis ("How similar the ape, this ugliest of beasts, is to ourselves"). What the Roman poet Ennius presented in the 2nd century BC was a refrain that could be heard repeatedly during the subsequent two millennia whenever Europeans encountered this being that so threatened the line separating human and animal. The common depiction of non-human primates in the West as representations of sin and the Devil, wickedness, frivolity, impulsivity and violence would ultimately say more about our own discomfort at being reminded of similar qualities in ourselves than their nature.But it is the depiction of the ape as monster that is even more revealing. When Bishop John Bramhall challenged Thomas Hobbes' position on free will in 1645 by insisting that "Nature never intends the generation of a monster," he wasn't referring to apes but to what today we would call a mutant; something fundamentally unnatural and far removed from ourselves. For Battell, and those who came after him, to use this term repeatedly for describing great apes suggests that the experience was so profoundly disturbing that the only recourse was to relegate them to some narrow island of the mind where any similarities with humans could be ignored. The ape, to adopt lines from Shakespeare written at the time, was "a perfidious ... howling ... abominable monster", little more than "a born devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick".Read the rest of the article here and stay tuned for the next edition of the The Primate Diaries in Exile tour.Perelman, P., Johnson, W., Roos, C., Seuánez, H., Horvath, J., Moreira, M., Kessing, B., Pontius, J., Roelke, M., Rumpler, Y., Schneider, M., Silva, A., O'Brien, S., & Pecon-Slattery, J. (2011). A Molecular Phylogeny of Living Primates PLoS Genetics, 7 (3) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1001342... Read more »

Perelman, P., Johnson, W., Roos, C., Seuánez, H., Horvath, J., Moreira, M., Kessing, B., Pontius, J., Roelke, M., Rumpler, Y.... (2011) A Molecular Phylogeny of Living Primates. PLoS Genetics, 7(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1001342

April 21, 2011
01:06 PM
409 views

Ariel Casts Out Caliban: Bonobos, "Killer-Apes" and Human Origins

by Eric Michael Johnson in The Primate Diaries in Exile

In place of a guest post this week I'm very pleased to announce my cover article in the latest edition of Times Higher Education.--------------------------------------------The concept of the 'killer-ape' offers a pessimistic reflection of humanity and its genesis, but the latest research shows that a primate species whose success is based on mutual aid and pleasure, not violence, is a better model for human origins. Eric Michael Johnson considers the better bonobos of our nature."Nature never intends the generation of a monster."John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, in debate with Thomas Hobbes (1645)In 1607, after being held captive by the Portuguese in West Africa's Congo Basin for nearly 18 years, the English sailor Andrew Battell returned home with lurid tales of "ape monsters". The larger of the two creatures Battell described, according to the edited volume later published by travel writer Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, "is in all proportion like a man", but "more like a giant in stature...and has a man's face, hollow-eyed, with long haire upon his browes". These marauding beasts "goe many together, and kill many (villagers)...they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them". Battell's narrative, much of which was received second hand and sure to be highly imaginative, was nevertheless one of Western society's earliest introductions to our evolutionary cousins, the great apes.Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis ("How similar the ape, this ugliest of beasts, is to ourselves"). What the Roman poet Ennius presented in the 2nd century BC was a refrain that could be heard repeatedly during the subsequent two millennia whenever Europeans encountered this being that so threatened the line separating human and animal. The common depiction of non-human primates in the West as representations of sin and the Devil, wickedness, frivolity, impulsivity and violence would ultimately say more about our own discomfort at being reminded of similar qualities in ourselves than their nature.But it is the depiction of the ape as monster that is even more revealing. When Bishop John Bramhall challenged Thomas Hobbes' position on free will in 1645 by insisting that "Nature never intends the generation of a monster," he wasn't referring to apes but to what today we would call a mutant; something fundamentally unnatural and far removed from ourselves. For Battell, and those who came after him, to use this term repeatedly for describing great apes suggests that the experience was so profoundly disturbing that the only recourse was to relegate them to some narrow island of the mind where any similarities with humans could be ignored. The ape, to adopt lines from Shakespeare written at the time, was "a perfidious ... howling ... abominable monster", little more than "a born devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick".Read the rest of the article here and stay tuned for the next edition of the The Primate Diaries in Exile tour.Perelman, P., Johnson, W., Roos, C., Seuánez, H., Horvath, J., Moreira, M., Kessing, B., Pontius, J., Roelke, M., Rumpler, Y., Schneider, M., Silva, A., O'Brien, S., & Pecon-Slattery, J. (2011). A Molecular Phylogeny of Living Primates PLoS Genetics, 7 (3) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1001342... Read more »

Perelman, P., Johnson, W., Roos, C., Seuánez, H., Horvath, J., Moreira, M., Kessing, B., Pontius, J., Roelke, M., Rumpler, Y.... (2011) A Molecular Phylogeny of Living Primates. PLoS Genetics, 7(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1001342

April 20, 2011
07:57 PM
1,131 views

As opposed to the light of what?

by Jon Wilkins in Lost in Transcription

So, most biologists are familiar with the quotation by Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." In fact, in my experience, if you go to a biology conference, there's about a 50% chance that at least one of the speakers will introduce their talk with this line. What is typically not made explicit in these talks is, as opposed to what other light?

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=19
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I have most often heard this quotation used when the speaker is talking to an audience of ecologists or molecular / cell biologists. While both of those fields are clearly tied into evolutionary ideas, explicit thought about evolution is often secondary to other considerations, such as accurately describing the behavior of these very complicated systems on much shorter timescales (months or years in ecology, perhaps down to milliseconds in molecular biology). My sense has always been that people pull out this quotation when they get excited about an evolutionary question in their work, but somehow they feel some anxiety about how their colleagues will react. In a practical sense, then, people seem to quote Dobzhansky when they want to ask a why question. The "as opposed to what" part would be the more descriptive what, where, when, and how questions that constitutes the bulk of the work in biology.

Since this is one of those quotations that just floats around the community, what people may not know is that this was actually the title of one of Dobzhansky's papers. The paper, published in 1973, was written as a critique of anti-evolutionist arguments by creationists. The "as opposed to what" part, then, was originally divine intervention and intelligent design.

Theodosius Dobzhansky circa 1966. Photo via Wikipedia.
The interesting thing about this paper is that it is written from the perspective of a religious man, and the arguments are more theological than scientific or sociological in nature. Dobzhansky himself was a committed member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He argues that life is God's creation, but that natural selection is the mechanism that God has chosen.
It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's, method of Creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 B. C.; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.Dobzhansky then continues with many of the now-familiar arguments for the overwhelming empirical evidence supporting the fact of evolution – in the fossil record, in the patterns of diversity of life, and in the molecular similarities among all species. What strikes me as particularly interesting in the article is the argument that he invokes to defend against claims that God deliberately created patterns that resemble those that would result from an evolutionary process – for example, the claim that God created dinosaur fossils, when no dinosaurs ever existed, or that God made dinosaur fossils appear to be much older than they actually are.

He says that to claim that God arranged things in this way is blasphemous, as it accuses Him of "systematic deceitfulness." This, in fact, seems to be the core of Dobzhansky's argument. The evidence is so strong that it admits only two possible explanations: either evolution is true, or God is deceitful. He rejects the latter on the grounds that such a claim would be "as revolting as it is uncalled for."

Finally, Dobzhansky winds up with a quotation from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more – it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow – this is what evolution is.He notes that Teilhard (a Jesuit priest and paleontologist) was a deeply religious man, and that his faith was not at all in conflict with a belief in evolution and natural selection. I reproduce the quote here because it kicks ass.

Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973). Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution The American Biology Teacher, 35 (3), 125-129

... Read more »

Theodosius Dobzhansky. (1973) Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution. The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129. info:other/

April 19, 2011
04:09 AM
840 views

Language Is General?

by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic

So according to the authors of a paper in Nature:It suggests rather that language is part of not a specialised module distinct from the rest of cognition, but more part of broad human cognitive skills.The paper is Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. They found that the various grammatical rules governing the proper order of different words in a sentence changed over time, and crucially that there were no fixed associations between them: no correlations such that when one rule changed, another rule had to change at the same time.This, they say, is inconsistent with the currently dominant linguistic theory of "language universals" fixed by the structure of the human brain/mind. One of the authors has written an excellent explanation here and languagelog has a nice discussion here.Yet I'm not convinced that "broad human cognitive skills" can explain language. I'm not qualified to comment on the details of this study, but, I do know that the average 7 year old kid has effortlessly learned how to use at least one language, with the appropriate grammar, syntax, and a vocabulary of thousands of words.On the other hand, take my phone. My phone can't do that. It can, just about, take my voice and convert it into text. It gets it right most of the time. It has absolutely no idea what those words mean. All it can do is send them to Google and search for them.Speaking of Google, Google Translate is what you get when roomfuls of computers try to "do language". It's useful, it's cool, and it gets it more-or-less right most of the time. But the output it produces is stilted, often ungrammatical, and generally sounds nothing like a native speaker would ever produce.Let me repeat myself:Now my phone. My phone can do. It's just that text into voice can take me. Most of the time it gets to the right. It means what these words have absolutely no idea. It can be searched on Google for them is this. Speaking of Google, Translate Google is what you get when the language "not" show the state of the art computer trying to. It is useful to cool, but it is more or less right, most of the time. However, the output it generates is often ungrammatical exaggerated, what sounded like a native speaker so far generated in general.That's my last paragraph Google Translated to Japanese and right back. Hmm.On the other hand my phone can perform millions of arithmetical operations per second. The 7 year old probably takes a minute or two of hard effort to multiply two digits together. So who's got more "general cognitive ability"?To say that language is a manifestation of human "general" or "broad" cognition is to say that human general cognition is better at learning languages than it is at doing arithmetic: which rather begs the question of how "general" it is.This doesn't mean that language is a special module of the brain, or that there are "language universals" beyond the fact that they're all languages, though that seems like a pretty big one. But it would take very, very strong evidence to make me doubt that the existence of language is somehow built into the human brain.Dunn M, Greenhill SJ, Levinson SC, & Gray RD (2011). Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature PMID: 21490599... Read more »

Dunn M, Greenhill SJ, Levinson SC, & Gray RD. (2011) Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature. PMID: 21490599

April 13, 2011
06:30 AM
1,127 views

Are there Robots in your Backyard? Experts Give Urgent Warning about Spy Robots!

by Stuart Farrimond in Dr Stu's Science Blog

I can imagine what you’re thinking: In a fight between humans and robots, we would win hands-down – we can just pull their plug out! But robots have come a long way in recent years. Bill Gates recently said that we are standing at the dawn of a new era in robotics, likening this present … Continue reading »... Read more »

Lin, P., Abney, K., & Bekey, G. (2011) Robot ethics: Mapping the issues for a mechanized world. Artificial Intelligence, 175(5-6), 942-949. DOI: 10.1016/j.artint.2010.11.026

Calo, M. (2011) Peeping Hals. Artificial Intelligence, 175(5-6), 940-941. DOI: 10.1016/j.artint.2010.11.025

April 12, 2011
10:26 AM
1,146 views

House MD 1.01: Dignity in Death

by Pranab Chatterjee in Scepticemia

This is the first post in the new series on the blog where I analyze House MD episodes based on the content and scientific interpretation of the same. It is going to be a difficult ride trying to analyze a … Continue reading →... Read more »

Smith, K., Goy, E., Harvath, T., & Ganzini, L. (2011) Quality of Death and Dying in Patients who Request Physician-Assisted Death. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 14(4), 445-450. DOI: 10.1089/jpm.2010.0425

April 9, 2011
12:41 PM
1,049 views

The politics of the DSM 5 personality disorders

by Psychbytes in Psychbytes

Most science blog posts post a link to an academic article or two and discuss their merits or lack thereof. I am going to do something slightly different - I am linking to an entire special issue of a journal, with pdfs freely available online - and recommend that you do NOT waste any time reading any of it. All it really shows is a bunch of academics bickering over stuff that doesn't seem to make much of a difference. I imagine the DSM 5 PD workgroup meetings look something like this: South Korean politicians fighting Anyway, on to the articles. Out of all the changes being considered for the DSM 5, the personality disorder (PD) work group has proposed some of the most sweeping ones such as dropping 5 of the current PDs entirely and adding a dimensional component that somehow involved asssessing 6 trait domains and 37 facets for the remaining PDs. Not surprisingly, this has not gone over too well.The Journal of Personality Disorders has recently published a special issue (see link here with pdfs) that has invited articles by the DSM PD workgroup members and other commentaries in response to it. I repeat - don't bother reading any of it. Most of these articles are filled with jargon (SNAP, DAPP, NEO, DIPSI, HEXACO, OMGWTFBBQ), are quite boring, appear to be selective in whatever literature they cite, with quite a few of the authors increasing their self-citation count, while sniping at each other. Here's a brief rundown.In the first article, the workgroup (Andrew Skodol et al.) rehash their proposal, but note that "Feedback from the [DSM-5] website posting suggested that this system was too complicated, redundant with the full clinicians’ trait ratings, and unwieldy". Really? Nah! Say it ain't so! So their solution is to separate the 5 PD "types", from the "traits" and "facets" in the field trials, and somehow refine this system. How? It is not entirely clear.In the next article (Krueger et al.), the authors repeatedly talk about the "empirical structure of personality". Curiously, while there is some overlap in authors with the first one, they are not all identical. I suspect this means some sort of division among the PD workgroup members. Anyway, as the authors themselves acknowledge, the bulk of the evidence for their proposal uses a statistical technique called factor analysis, which is essentially based on a whole lot of correlations. Why this makes the authors' proposal or review any more "empirical" is pretty unclear to me. The authors also take some effort to delineate why Thomas Widiger's (another big name in the personality world) preferred model of personality may not be as "empirical" as theirs.The remaining articles are commentaries. Clarkin and Huprich's, and Zimmerman's, are worth skimming over, but don't really say anything that wasn't already known - i.e., the PD proposal is too complex to be clinically useful, and not really based on much evidence. Then, we have an article by the aforementioned Widiger, who hits back pretty hard at Lee Anna Clark and Robert Krueger (two other big names) for not using his preferred model of personality, and spends 13 pages or so picking apart the PD proposal and Clark and Krueger's work.This is followed by a couple of articles by Robert Bornstein (an expert on Dependent PD) and Elsa Ronningstam (an expert on Narcissistic PD). These two PDs are slated to be dropped. So, no prizes for guessing what these commentaries are about. And lastly, Joel Paris has an article on the use of endophenotypes for diagnosing PDs - though as he clearly notes, we don't have any yet (which DSM disorder does anyway?). In other words, an academic exercise in what might be useful if we ever find it.While I occasionally use some personality inventories in my work, most of my work doesn't involve the PDs, and as such, I have no strong ties to a 5-, 6-, or 18-factor model of personality. I picked up this special issue hoping for some sort of enlightenment on the PD proposal. Now, instead, I wish I could get back the hours I spent reading these articles. Skodol AE, Bender DS, Morey LC, Clark LA, Oldham JM, Alarcon RD, Krueger RF, Verheul R, Bell CC, & Siever LJ (2011). Personality Disorder Types Proposed for DSM-5. Journal of personality disorders, 25 (2), 136-69 PMID: 21466247Krueger RF, Eaton NR, Clark LA, Watson D, Markon KE, Derringer J, Skodol A, & Livesley WJ (2011). Deriving an Empirical Structure of Personality Pathology for DSM-5. Journal of personality disorders, 25 (2), 170-91 PMID: 21466248Clarkin JF, & Huprich SK (2011). Do DSM-5 Personality Disorder Proposals Meet Criteria for Clinical Utility? Journal of personality disorders, 25 (2), 192-205 PMID: 21466249Zimmerman M (2011). A Critique of the Proposed Prototype Rating System for Personality D... Read more »

Skodol AE, Bender DS, Morey LC, Clark LA, Oldham JM, Alarcon RD, Krueger RF, Verheul R, Bell CC, & Siever LJ. (2011) Personality Disorder Types Proposed for DSM-5. Journal of personality disorders, 25(2), 136-69. PMID: 21466247

Krueger RF, Eaton NR, Clark LA, Watson D, Markon KE, Derringer J, Skodol A, & Livesley WJ. (2011) Deriving an Empirical Structure of Personality Pathology for DSM-5. Journal of personality disorders, 25(2), 170-91. PMID: 21466248

Clarkin JF, & Huprich SK. (2011) Do DSM-5 Personality Disorder Proposals Meet Criteria for Clinical Utility?. Journal of personality disorders, 25(2), 192-205. PMID: 21466249

Zimmerman M. (2011) A Critique of the Proposed Prototype Rating System for Personality Disorders in DSM-5. Journal of personality disorders, 25(2), 206-21. PMID: 21466250

Widiger TA. (2011) The DSM-5 Dimensional Model of Personality Disorder: Rationale and Empirical Support. Journal of personality disorders, 25(2), 222-34. PMID: 21466251

Bornstein RF. (2011) Reconceptualizing Personality Pathology in DSM-5: Limitations in Evidence for Eliminating Dependent Personality Disorder and Other DSM-IV Syndromes. Journal of personality disorders, 25(2), 235-47. PMID: 21466252

Ronningstam E. (2011) Narcissistic Personality Disorder in DSM-V-In Support of Retaining a Significant Diagnosis. Journal of personality disorders, 25(2), 248-59. PMID: 21466253

Paris J. (2011) Endophenotypes and the diagnosis of personality disorders. Journal of personality disorders, 25(2), 260-8. PMID: 21466254

April 7, 2011
10:01 AM
1,005 views

Re-Defining Science Communication: Emerging Best Practices that Empower the Public

by Matthew C. Nisbet in Age of Engagement

Over the past few years, scholars and scientists have been re-examining both the goals and the nature of science communication initiatives. In a guest post today, Melanie Gade reviews much of this recent discussion and innovation. Gade is a graduate student in this semesters course on "Science ...Read More... Read more »

Nisbet, M., Hixon, M., Moore, K., & Nelson, M. (2010) Four cultures: new synergies for engaging society on climate change. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 8(6), 329-331. DOI: 10.1890/1540-9295-8.6.329

Groffman, P., Stylinski, C., Nisbet, M., Duarte, C., Jordan, R., Burgin, A., Previtali, M., & Coloso, J. (2010) Restarting the conversation: challenges at the interface between ecology and society. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 8(6), 284-291. DOI: 10.1890/090160

March 24, 2011
01:52 PM
1,313 views

Darwin Eats Cake: Red Queen

by Jon Wilkins in Lost in Transcription

So, have you spend all day looking for a comic that integrates Red Queen evolutionary dynamics, commentary on the application of parsimony arguments in biology, and Newt Gingrich's recent flip-flopping on Libya? No? Well, hopefully you'll enjoy this anyway. For a more viewable image, see the original at Darwin Eats Cake.
URL for hotlinking or embedding: http://www.darwineatscake.com/img/comic/11.jpg

For more on the flip-flop check out Think Progress or Weigel.

Van Valen, L (1973). A New Evolutionary Law Evolutionary Theory, 1, 1-30

... Read more »

Van Valen, L. (1973) A New Evolutionary Law. Evolutionary Theory, 1-30. info:/

March 22, 2011
11:18 AM
1,171 views

One Nanostep for Technology, One Quantum Leap for Psychiatry

by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers

do_sud_thumb("http://neurobonkers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/computer-doctor.jpg","One Nanostep for Technology, One... Read more »

Khodayari-Rostamabad A, Reilly JP, Hasey G, Debruin H, & Maccrimmon D. (2010) Diagnosis of psychiatric disorders using EEG data and employing a statistical decision model. Conference proceedings : .. Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Conference, 4006-9. PMID: 21097280

Khodayari-Rostamabad, A., Hasey, G., MacCrimmon, D., Reilly, J., & Bruin, H. (2010) A pilot study to determine whether machine learning methodologies using pre-treatment electroencephalography can predict the symptomatic response to clozapine therapy. Clinical Neurophysiology, 121(12), 1998-2006. DOI: 10.1016/j.clinph.2010.05.009

Charles DeBattista, Gustavo Kinrys, Daniel Hoffman, Corey Goldstein, John Zajecka, James Kocsis, Martin Teicher, Steven Potkin, Adrian Preda, Gurmeet Multani, Len Brandt, Mark Schiller, Dan Iosifescu, Maurizio Fava. (2011) The use of referenced-EEG (rEEG) in assisting medication selection for the treatment of depression . Psychiatric Research, 15(12), 64-75. DOI: The use of referenced-EEG (rEEG) in assisting medication selection for the treatment of depression

March 18, 2011
06:23 PM
1,467 views

Pair Bonding & Ritual Marriage

by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion

Over the past few years, something like a perfect storm has been brewing over human pair bonding and the profound impacts it has wrought on human social structure. This is a welcome development in a field that has long been dominated by those who wish to root the relatively modern idea of marriage in ancient [...]... Read more »

Chapais, B. (2011) The Deep Social Structure of Humankind. Science, 331(6022), 1276-1277. DOI: 10.1126/science.1203281

Hill, K., Walker, R., Bozicevic, M., Eder, J., Headland, T., Hewlett, B., Hurtado, A., Marlowe, F., Wiessner, P., & Wood, B. (2011) Co-Residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure. Science, 331(6022), 1286-1289. DOI: 10.1126/science.1199071

Lovejoy, C. (1981) The Origin of Man. Science, 211(4480), 341-350. DOI: 10.1126/science.211.4480.341

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March 15, 2011
08:15 AM
957 views

Chemero (2009), Chapter 5: Guides to Discovery

by Andrew Wilson in Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists

The dynamical stance laid out by Chemero in the previous chapter has a potential flaw (besides being a bit weak-ass) - it's not clear how it can serve as a guide to discovery. How do you do productive science taking this approach? Chemero is going to make two suggestions, only one of which I think works: first, he's going to suggest dynamical models such as the Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) model can serve to stimulate empirical work even when they are entirely phenomenological. This approach is, I think, entirely incorrect, and this chapter is full of serious problems (only some of which are unique to Chemero). Second, he's going to suggest that Gibsonian ecological psychology can actually solve the problem much more robustly anyway, by serving as an underlying theory of behaviour. This will work better, and I would advocate Bingham's model of coordination as an exemplar of this, more promising route.But first, the HKB model as guide to discovery (this chapter is largely the material from Chemero, 2000; I intend to turn this post into a paper to rebut that paper and point to the Bingham model as an alternative, so comments are especially welcome on this one). Time to get a little critical, I'm afraid.I've described the HKB model in detail here; it's Kelso's potential function model which describes the basic phenomena of bimanual rhythmic movement coordination. The key feature of the approach is to treat limbs engaged in coordinated actions as nonlinearly coupled oscillators, where the coupling requires energy to maintain and so would dissipate without maintenance (Kugler, Kelso & Turvey, 1980). Chemero's suggestion is that if this model can lead to useful experiments and be adapted to cope with new findings without losing this essential character, then this would demonstrate the HKB model and approach can serve as a guide to discovery for a science, specifically RECS. Problem 1One initial problem with this analysis crops up while Chemero is describing the HKB model. He goes over the basic features (c.f. Kelso, 1995) and then saysImportantly, the HKB model makes a series of specific predictions. First, it predicts that as rates increase, experimental subjects will be unable to maintain out-of-phase performance. Second, even at slow rates, only relative phase of 0 [0°] and .5 [180°] will be stable. Third, the behavior should exhibit critical fluctuations: as the rate approaches the critical value, attempts to maintain out-of-phase performance will result in erratic fluctuations of relative phase. Fourth, the behavior should exhibit critical slowing down: at rates near the critical value, disruptions from out-of-phase performance should take longer to correct than at slower rates.Chemero, 2009, p. 88 The first two are not predictions of the HKB model: they are experimental phenomena which the HKB model was built to describe. This matters, because Chemero wants the HKB to serve as a guide to discovery and counts these as evidence that it can do this. In fact, they simply reflect the phenomenological nature of the model and the modelling approach. The next section is a series of eight cases, seven about the HKB model, which supposedly show how it can act as a guide to discovery:Case 1: Modifying the HKB model with a noise term to fit the dataSchöner, Haken & Kelso (1986) added a noise term to the HKB data. It's not at all clear how this is supposed to count in favour of the HKB as a guide to discovery, given that noise terms are standard in models. All that happens is the model fits the data better; this is still, therefore, a development driven by the data, and not the reverse.Case 2: Reconceptualising learning as a phase transitionChemero then (incorrectly, as far as I can tell from reading the paper) describes the first extension of the HKB to include learning (Schöner & Kelso, 1988) as allowing the B/A ratio to vary over trials; this control parameter dictates the shape of the attractor layout, and learning then becomes a change in this layout - a phase transition. The article (and all the later empirical work with Pier Zanone) actually models learning as the imposition of a required relative phase, via a third term in the model (p. 86 of Schöner & Kelso, 1988). Learning is indeed a phase transition for the HKB approach, but one brought on by competition between the existing and target landscapes. Note that this led to various predictions which fell through when tested, and although incorrect predictions would presumably be a cause for concern in any guide to discovery, Chemero does not discuss any of this learning work.Chemero then makes another error, and cites a paper (Amazeen, Sternad & Turvey, 1996) which he claims demonstrates a phase transition due to learning. He describes the paper as training participants to wiggle their fingers in a difficult 5:4 poly-rhythm, which then led to a reorganisation of the attractor layout such that 180° became more stable than 0°. This paper has nothing to do with learning, however. There was no training involved, and the reversal in the stability layout was actually the result of detuning (if the two oscillators have different preferred frequencies, then (roughly) the HKB layout remains the same shape but is moved along the relative phase axis to a degree proportional to the frequency difference, hence the empirical result). I have no idea what happened here, but this case is a good lesson in the importance of reading the primary literature. Case 3: Modelling perception-action couplingsChemero is clearly familiar with detuning, because this case is about how extending the model to include a detuning term (Kelso, DelColle & Schöner, 1990) bolsters his case for the model as guide; it can now cope with new phenomena (coordination between a person and a metronome beating with a variable frequency). Incorporating detuning was a perfectly interesting addition, but describing this as modelling 'perception-action couplings' is entirely incorrect (and note the modification is data driven again). First, even 1:1, within person coordination entails perception, so detuning cannot be the move that incorporates perception-action couplings. Second, detuning doesn't actually impact the coupling at all, except indirectly by altering the motion to be perceived; detuning does not change the basic HKB shape, which emerges from the coupling requirement. Of course, the HKB model can't tell you about this; only a fully perception-action model can. This problem doesn't stem from Chemero; it's typical in the literature to not notice that within-person coupling entails perception. In essence, this is still model fitting, not guided discovery.Case 4: Social couplingSchmidt, Carello & Turvey (1990) showed that the basic HKB phenomena persist when the coupling is between people; Chemero describes this as social coupling and is excited by the fact that the HKB model could be extended to not just perceptual (Case 3) but social phenomena. This is entirely the incorrect way to analyse these results; the Schmidt et al paper is, in fact, perceptual coupling. Just because there are two people involved does not change this fact. In fact, the kinematics from this experiment were used by Bingham to drive the coordination displays in his first visual perception studies, effectively using them to make a point-light display. (There is an extensive research literature on biological motion perception which uses these types of displays to explore the motion based information underpinning our knowledge of people's gender, age, psychological state, etc; Nikolaus Troje's BioMotion lab has numerous excellent references and displays). Again, only a fully perception-action model, with specific hypotheses about the information involved, could enable you to understand this fact; the HKB approach simply doesn't provide the tools.Case 5: Asymmetries other than detuningTreffner & Turvey (1995) expanded the model with some additional terms to account for symmetry-breaking, i.e. asymmetries between the oscillators caused by things other than detuning. They coped with handedness and attention by adding two additional sine terms to the model, with parameters which could be set to weight their contribution to fit data from handedness and attention experiments. Again, a perfectly sensible exercise in model fitting, but there is still no guide to discovery: the asymmetries were phenomena the model could not cope with, not phenomena revea... Read more »

Chemero, A. (2000) Anti-Representationalism and the Dynamical Stance. Philosophy of Science, 67(4), 625. DOI: 10.1086/392858

March 14, 2011
08:40 PM
1,357 views

Bad Science: Idiots and Ecstasy

by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers

do_sud_thumb("http://neurobonkers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/thestupiditburnsmini.jpg","Bad Science: Idiots and Ecstasy")... Read more »

Ricaurte, G. (2002) Severe Dopaminergic Neurotoxicity in Primates After a Common Recreational Dose Regimen of MDMA ("Ecstasy"). Science, 297(5590), 2260-2263. DOI: 10.1126/science.1074501

Mithoefer MC, Wagner MT, Mithoefer AT, Jerome I, & Doblin R. (2010) The safety and efficacy of { /-}3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted psychotherapy in subjects with chronic, treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder: the first randomized controlled pilot study. Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England). PMID: 20643699

Halpern JH, Sherwood AR, Hudson JI, Gruber S, Kozin D, & Pope HG Jr. (2011) Residual neurocognitive features of long-term ecstasy users with minimal exposure to other drugs. Addiction (Abingdon, England), 106(4), 777-86. PMID: 21205042

Insel TR, Battaglia G, Johannessen JN, Marra S, & De Souza EB. (1989) 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine ("ecstasy") selectively destroys brain serotonin terminals in rhesus monkeys. The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, 249(3), 713-20. PMID: 2471824

March 9, 2011
08:49 PM
1,182 views

Drugs Misinformation Campaigns, The Untold Story

by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers

Why the drinks industry has spent millions spreading misinformation about drugs and how it continues to put lives in danger.... Read more »

Halpern JH, Sherwood AR, Hudson JI, Gruber S, Kozin D, & Pope HG Jr. (2011) Residual neurocognitive features of long-term ecstasy users with minimal exposure to other drugs. Addiction (Abingdon, England), 106(4), 777-86. PMID: 21205042

March 8, 2011
10:09 PM
1,808 views

Public Service Announcement: Drugs Misinformation Kills

by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers

Today I took a tough... Read more »

Halpern JH, Sherwood AR, Hudson JI, Gruber S, Kozin D, & Pope HG Jr. (2011) Residual neurocognitive features of long-term ecstasy users with minimal exposure to other drugs. Addiction (Abingdon, England), 106(4), 777-86. PMID: 21205042

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 something and finds an effect. Then someone else comes along and does a new study, of a related but different topic, and finds a different result. Both are right: there's a difference. Only if you, sloppily, decide that both studies were measuring the same thing does the "Decline Effect" appear.This is perfectly true and I've touched on it before, but I think it's a bit optimistic. It assumes that the first study was true. Sometimes they are. But because of the way science is published at the moment, a lot of results that get published are flukes. Some even say that the majority are.The problem is that there are so many ways to statistically analyze any given body of data that it's easy to test and retest it until you find a "positive result" - and then publish that, without saying (or only saying in the small print) that your original tests all came out negative. Combine this with selective publication of only the best data, and other scientific sins, and you can pull positive results out the hat of mere random noise.In the Nature article, Jonathan Schooler discusses this and suggests that an open-access repository of findings (meaning raw data rather than the end product of analyses) would be A Good Thing. I agree. However, he seems to think that if we did this, we might still observe the "Decline Effect", and would be able to find out more about it. He even seems to suggest that some kind of weird quantum effect might mean that scientists are actually changing the laws of reality by observing themPerhaps, just as the act of observation has been suggested to affect quantum measurements, scientific observation could subtly change some scientific effects. Although the laws of reality are usually understood to be immutable, some physicists, including Paul Davies, director of the BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University in Tempe, have observed that this should be considered an assumption, not a foregone conclusion. Hmm. Maybe. But there is really no need to posit such magical mysteries when plain old statistical conjuring tricks seem like a perfectly good explanation. On my view a raw result repository would not explain the decline effect, but just make it disappear.Schooler doesn't go into detail as to how this repository would be set up, but he does cite the fact that we already have a pretty good one for clinical trials of medicines conducted in the USA. Anyone running a clinical trial is required to register it in advance, saying what they're planning to do and crucially, to spell out which statistics they are going to run on the data when it arrives.What's really silly is that most scientists already do this when applying for funding: most grant applications include detailed statistical protocols. The problem is that these are not made public so people can ignore them when it comes to publication. Back in 2008 I suggested that scientific journals should require all studies, not just clinical trials, to be publicly pre-registered if they're to be considered for publication. This would be eminently do-able if there was a will to make it happen.Schooler, J. (2011). Unpublished results hide the decline effect Nature, 470 (7335), 437-437 DOI: 10.1038/470437a... Read more »

Schooler, J. (2011) Unpublished results hide the decline effect. Nature, 470(7335), 437-437. DOI: 10.1038/470437a

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 statements themselves were the same in each case. The preceding context determined how they were to be interpreted. So for example, the statement "It was bone-breaking" was literally true when it formed part of a story about someone in hospital describing an accident; it was metaphorical in the context of someone describing how hard it was to do something difficult; and it was nonsensical if the context was completely unrelated ("He went to the bar and ordered:...").Here's what they found. Compared to the literally-true and the nonsensical statements, which were a control condition, metaphorical statements activated the head of the caudate nucleus, the thalamus, and an area of the medial PFC they dub the "arMPFC" but which other people might call the pgACC or something even more exotic; names get a bit vague in the frontal lobe.The caudate nucleus, as I said, looks like a pair of glasses. Except without the nose bit. The area activated by metaphors was the "lenses". Kind of.Sarcasm however activated the same mPFC region, but not the caudate:Sarcasm also activated the amygdala.*So what? This is a very nice fMRI study. 20 people is a lot, the task was well-designed and the overlap of the mPFC blobs in the sarcasm-vs-control and the metaphor-vs-control tasks was impressive. There's clearly something going on there in both cases, relative to just reading literal statements. Something's going on in the caudate and thalamus with metaphor but not sarcasm, too.But what can this kind of study tell us about the brain? They've localized something-about-metaphor to the caudate nucleus, but what is it, and what does the caudate actually do to make that thing happen?The authors offer a suggestion - the caudate is involved in "searching for the meaning" of the metaphorical statement in order to link it to the context, and work out what the metaphor is getting at. This isn't required for sarcasm because there's only one, literal, meaning - it's just reversed, the speaker actually thinks the exact opposite. Whereas with both sarcasm and metaphor you need to attribute intentions (mentalizing or "Theory of Mind").That's as plausible an account as any but the problem is that we have no way of knowing, at least not from imaging studies, if it's true or not. As I said this is not the fault of this study but rather an inherent challenge for the whole enterprise. The problem is - switch on your caudate, metaphor coming up - a lot like the challenge facing biology in the aftermath of the Human Genome Project.The HGP mapped the human genome, and like any map it told us where stuff is, in this case where genes are on chromosomes. You can browse it here. But by itself this didn't tell us anything about biology. We still have to work out what most of these genes actually do; and then we have to work out how they interact; and they we have to work out how those interactions interact with other genes and the environment...Genomics people call this, broadly speaking, "annotating" the genome, although this is not perhaps an ideal term because it's not merely scribbling notes in the margins, it's the key to understanding. Without annotation, the genome's just a big list.fMRI is building up a kind of human localization map, a blobome if you will, but by itself this doesn't really tell us much; other tools are required.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... 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

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