Neuroscience: Reliability of neuroscience research questioned

neurosciencestuff:

New research has questioned the reliability of neuroscience studies, saying that conclusions could be misleading due to small sample sizes.

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A team led by academics from the University of Bristol reviewed 48 articles on neuroscience meta-analysis which were published in 2011 and concluded…

(Source: bristol.ac.uk)

neurosciencestuff: Brain Games are Bogus A decade ago, a young Swedish researcher named Torkel Klingberg made a spectacular discovery. He gave a group of children computer games designed to boost their memory, and, after weeks of play, the kids showed improvements not only in memory but in overall intellectual ability. Spending hours memorizing strings of digits and patterns of circles on a four-by-four grid had made the children smarter. The finding countered decades of psychological research that suggested training in one area (e.g., recalling numbers) could not bring benefits in other, unrelated areas (e.g., reasoning). The Klingberg experiment also hinted that intelligence, which psychologists considered essentially fixed, might be more mutable: that it was less like eye color and more like a muscle. It seemed like a breakthrough, offering new approaches to education and help for people with A.D.H.D., traumatic brain injuries, and other ailments. In the years since, other, similar experiments yielded positive results, and Klingberg helped found a company, Cogmed, to commercialize the software globally. (Pearson, the British publishing juggernaut, purchased it in 2010.) Brain training has become a multi-million-dollar business, with companies like Lumosity, Jungle Memory, and CogniFit offering their own versions of neuroscience-you-can-use, and providing ambitious parents with new assignments for overworked but otherwise healthy children. The brain-training concept has made Klingberg a star, and he now enjoys a seat on an assembly that helps select the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The field has become a staple of popular writing. Last year, the New York Times Magazine published a glowing profile of the young guns of brain training called “CAN YOU MAKE YOURSELF SMARTER?” The answer, however, now appears to be a pretty firm no—at least, not through brain training. A pair of scientists in Europe recently gathered all of the best research—twenty-three investigations of memory training by teams around the world—and employed a standard statistical technique (called meta-analysis) to settle this controversial issue. The conclusion: the games may yield improvements in the narrow task being trained, but this does not transfer to broader skills like the ability to read or do arithmetic, or to other measures of intelligence. Playing the games makes you better at the games, in other words, but not at anything anyone might care about in real life. Read more

neurosciencestuff:

Brain Games are Bogus

A decade ago, a young Swedish researcher named Torkel Klingberg made a spectacular discovery. He gave a group of children computer games designed to boost their memory, and, after weeks of play, the kids showed improvements not only in memory but in overall intellectual ability. Spending hours memorizing strings of digits and patterns of circles on a four-by-four grid had made the children smarter. The finding countered decades of psychological research that suggested training in one area (e.g., recalling numbers) could not bring benefits in other, unrelated areas (e.g., reasoning). The Klingberg experiment also hinted that intelligence, which psychologists considered essentially fixed, might be more mutable: that it was less like eye color and more like a muscle.

It seemed like a breakthrough, offering new approaches to education and help for people with A.D.H.D., traumatic brain injuries, and other ailments. In the years since, other, similar experiments yielded positive results, and Klingberg helped found a company, Cogmed, to commercialize the software globally. (Pearson, the British publishing juggernaut, purchased it in 2010.) Brain training has become a multi-million-dollar business, with companies like Lumosity, Jungle Memory, and CogniFit offering their own versions of neuroscience-you-can-use, and providing ambitious parents with new assignments for overworked but otherwise healthy children. The brain-training concept has made Klingberg a star, and he now enjoys a seat on an assembly that helps select the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The field has become a staple of popular writing. Last year, the New York Times Magazine published a glowing profile of the young guns of brain training called “CAN YOU MAKE YOURSELF SMARTER?”

The answer, however, now appears to be a pretty firm no—at least, not through brain training. A pair of scientists in Europe recently gathered all of the best research—twenty-three investigations of memory training by teams around the world—and employed a standard statistical technique (called meta-analysis) to settle this controversial issue. The conclusion: the games may yield improvements in the narrow task being trained, but this does not transfer to broader skills like the ability to read or do arithmetic, or to other measures of intelligence. Playing the games makes you better at the games, in other words, but not at anything anyone might care about in real life.

Read more


neurosciencestuff: Either mad and bad or Jekyll and Hyde: media portrayals of schizophrenia Stigma can take a heavy toll on people who suffer from mental illness. Being shunned, feared, devalued and discriminated against can impair recovery and deepen social isolation and distress. Many sufferers judge stigma to be more difficult to cope with than the symptoms of their illness. Thankfully, there are grounds for hope. Australian researchers have shown that mental illness stigma, such as the unwillingness to interact with affected people, generally declined from 2003 to 2011. Some credit for this improvement must go to media campaigns by beyondblue and SANE, and to the willingness of many people to speak publicly about experiences that would once have been shamefully private. The dark cloud inside this silver lining is schizophrenia, a serious condition that impairs thinking, emotion and motivation. While Australians’ attitudes towards depression have become more accepting, the stigma of schizophrenia has remained largely unchanged. Misusing and misunderstanding People with schizophrenia are still perceived as dangerous and unpredictable, and these perceptions have increased in recent years. Attitudes to people with schizophrenia have also worsened in the United States at the same time as attitudes to depressed people have improved. Just as the media can take some credit for the declining stigma of other conditions, it must take some of the blame for the continuing stigma of schizophrenia. Media portrayals commonly associate it with violence and danger. Schizophrenia is also often misused to refer to split personality or incoherence. This Jekyll-and-Hyde misconception persists despite countless corrections. One study of Italian newspapers, for instance, found that the term was employed in this way almost three times as often it was used correctly to refer to people with the diagnosis or their illness. But just how negative are current media depictions of schizophrenia? My students and I recently examined this question in a study that we published in the academic journal Psychosis. We located every story published in major national, state and territory online and print news media outlets in the year ending August 2012 that cited schizophrenia or schizophrenic. We then counted how many stories misused these terms and coded how often the condition was linked to violence or presented in a stigmatising way. Our results were striking. Almost half (47%) of stories linked schizophrenia to some form of violence, and 28% of these associated it with attempted or completed homicide. The schizophrenic person was identified as a perpetrator of violence six times more frequently than as its victim. Schizophrenia was misused as a split metaphor in 13% of stories. And fully 46% of stories were coded as stigmatising. It’s hardly surprising that the public’s views of the condition continue to be laced with fear and loathing if they usually find schizophrenia presented in the context of violent aggression or as a metaphor for internal contradiction. Better ways What can be done about all of this? For one thing, journalists and the general public need to become aware that schizophrenia doesn’t mean split personality and it bears no resemblance to caricatures of craziness. This mistaken usage should be retired not because the police say it’s offensive, but because it perpetuates a misunderstanding that hurts real people. Journalists and editors also need to think carefully before linking schizophrenia to violent behaviour. Often the proposed link is dubious and speculative, and adds nothing important to the story. Just as violence supposedly committed by people experiencing mental illness is over-reported – producing an exaggerated sense of their dangerousness – their victimisation is often under-reported. An equally important corrective would be to publish more stories that feature people with schizophrenia living well, present their everyday struggles and adversities or showcase promising treatments and research findings. Coverage can be improved. Our study found that stories from broadsheet newspapers were less stigmatising than tabloid stories, and longer, more developed stories were less stigmatising than briefer ones. This is not a matter of white-washing the news. People with schizophrenia are indeed at a somewhat increased risk of committing violent offences (and of being their victims). They can behave in challenging ways. But the media landscape that our study surveyed is so tilted towards depicting schizophrenia as dangerous that it’s seriously unbalanced. The news media can do better and, if they do, the stigma of schizophrenia may start to erode.

neurosciencestuff:

Either mad and bad or Jekyll and Hyde: media portrayals of schizophrenia

Stigma can take a heavy toll on people who suffer from mental illness. Being shunned, feared, devalued and discriminated against can impair recovery and deepen social isolation and distress. Many sufferers judge stigma to be more difficult to cope with than the symptoms of their illness.

Thankfully, there are grounds for hope. Australian researchers have shown that mental illness stigma, such as the unwillingness to interact with affected people, generally declined from 2003 to 2011. Some credit for this improvement must go to media campaigns by beyondblue and SANE, and to the willingness of many people to speak publicly about experiences that would once have been shamefully private.

The dark cloud inside this silver lining is schizophrenia, a serious condition that impairs thinking, emotion and motivation. While Australians’ attitudes towards depression have become more accepting, the stigma of schizophrenia has remained largely unchanged.

Misusing and misunderstanding

People with schizophrenia are still perceived as dangerous and unpredictable, and these perceptions have increased in recent years. Attitudes to people with schizophrenia have also worsened in the United States at the same time as attitudes to depressed people have improved.

Just as the media can take some credit for the declining stigma of other conditions, it must take some of the blame for the continuing stigma of schizophrenia. Media portrayals commonly associate it with violence and danger.

Schizophrenia is also often misused to refer to split personality or incoherence. This Jekyll-and-Hyde misconception persists despite countless corrections. One study of Italian newspapers, for instance, found that the term was employed in this way almost three times as often it was used correctly to refer to people with the diagnosis or their illness.

But just how negative are current media depictions of schizophrenia? My students and I recently examined this question in a study that we published in the academic journal Psychosis. We located every story published in major national, state and territory online and print news media outlets in the year ending August 2012 that cited schizophrenia or schizophrenic.

We then counted how many stories misused these terms and coded how often the condition was linked to violence or presented in a stigmatising way.

Our results were striking. Almost half (47%) of stories linked schizophrenia to some form of violence, and 28% of these associated it with attempted or completed homicide. The schizophrenic person was identified as a perpetrator of violence six times more frequently than as its victim.

Schizophrenia was misused as a split metaphor in 13% of stories. And fully 46% of stories were coded as stigmatising.

It’s hardly surprising that the public’s views of the condition continue to be laced with fear and loathing if they usually find schizophrenia presented in the context of violent aggression or as a metaphor for internal contradiction.

Better ways

What can be done about all of this? For one thing, journalists and the general public need to become aware that schizophrenia doesn’t mean split personality and it bears no resemblance to caricatures of craziness. This mistaken usage should be retired not because the police say it’s offensive, but because it perpetuates a misunderstanding that hurts real people.

Journalists and editors also need to think carefully before linking schizophrenia to violent behaviour. Often the proposed link is dubious and speculative, and adds nothing important to the story. Just as violence supposedly committed by people experiencing mental illness is over-reported – producing an exaggerated sense of their dangerousness – their victimisation is often under-reported.

An equally important corrective would be to publish more stories that feature people with schizophrenia living well, present their everyday struggles and adversities or showcase promising treatments and research findings.

Coverage can be improved. Our study found that stories from broadsheet newspapers were less stigmatising than tabloid stories, and longer, more developed stories were less stigmatising than briefer ones.

This is not a matter of white-washing the news. People with schizophrenia are indeed at a somewhat increased risk of committing violent offences (and of being their victims). They can behave in challenging ways. But the media landscape that our study surveyed is so tilted towards depicting schizophrenia as dangerous that it’s seriously unbalanced.

The news media can do better and, if they do, the stigma of schizophrenia may start to erode.


“Whenever I run into a fresh technical problem, I often think of this: “Why does Grandma remove the chicken’s legs when she makes soup?” Aunt Dorothy: “It’s easier to cut the chicken when it’s cold that when it’s hot.” Uncle Bob: “Greater surface area better infuses the broth with fat.” Aunt Sue: “To allow the dark meat and white meat develop flavor on their own.” Aunt Jean: “Smaller pieces allow the chicken to cook faster and more thorougly.” Grandma: “So that it fits in the pot.” by @edw519”
— Check you’re wearing trousers first | Hacker News
approachingsignificance: Mining Books To Map Emotions Through A Century Researchers were able to chart historical periods of positive and negative moods through literature. Values above zero indicate generally “happy” periods, and values below the zero indicate generally “sad” periods. Credit: Alberto Acerbi, Vasileios Lampos, Philip Garnett, R. Alexander Bentley/PLOS ONE

approachingsignificance:

Mining Books To Map Emotions Through A Century

Researchers were able to chart historical periods of positive and negative moods through literature. Values above zero indicate generally “happy” periods, and values below the zero indicate generally “sad” periods.

Credit: Alberto Acerbi, Vasileios Lampos, Philip Garnett, R. Alexander Bentley/PLOS ONE


Einstein speech : The common language of science

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Alcohol: A Dangerous Toxin Foreign to Human Bodies?

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neurosciencestuff: Monday’s medical myth: alcohol kills brain cells Do you ever wake up with a raging hangover and picture the row of brain cells that you suspect have have started to decay? Or wonder whether that final glass of wine was too much for those tiny cells, and pushed you over the line? Well, it’s true that alcohol can indeed harm the brain in many ways. But directly killing off brain cells isn’t one of them. The brain is made up of nerve cells (neurons) and glial cells. These cells communicate with each other, sending signals from one part of the brain to the other, telling your body what to do. Brain cells enable us to learn, imagine, experience sensation, feel emotion and control our body’s movement. Alcohol’s effects can be seen on our brain even after a few drinks, causing us to feel tipsy. But these symptoms are temporary and reversible. The available evidence suggests alcohol doesn’t kill brain cells directly. There is some evidence that moderate drinking is linked to improved mental function. A 2005 Australian study of 7,500 people in three age cohorts (early 20s, early 40s and early 60s) found moderate drinkers (up to 14 drinks for men and seven drinks for women per week) had better cognitive functioning than non-drinkers, occasional drinkers and heavy drinkers. But there is also evidence that even moderate drinking may impair brain plasticity and cell production. Researchers in the United States gave rats alcohol over a two-week period, to raise their alcohol blood concentration to about 0.08. While this level did not impair the rats’ motor skills or short-term learning, it impacted the brain’s ability to produce and retain new cells, reducing new brain cell production by almost 40%. Therefore, we need to protect our brains as best we can. Excessive alcohol undoubtedly damages brain cells and brain function. Heavy consumption over long periods can damage the connections between brain cells, even if the cells are not killed. It can also affect the way your body functions. Long-term drinking can cause brain atrophy or shrinkage, as seen in brain diseases such as stroke and Alzheimer’s disease. There is debate about whether permanent brain damage is caused directly or indirectly. We know, for example, that severe alcoholic liver disease has an indirect effect on the brain. When the liver is damaged, it’s no longer effective at processing toxins to make them harmless. As a result, poisonous toxins reach the brain, and may cause hepatic encephalopathy (decline in brain function). This can result in changes to cognition and personality, sleep disruption and even coma and death. Alcoholism is also associated with nutritional and absorptive deficiencies. A lack of Vitamin B1 (thiamine) causes brain disorders called Wernicke’s ncephalopathy (which manifests in confusion, unsteadiness, paralysis of eye movements) and Korsakoff’s syndrome (where patients lose their short-term memory and coordination). So, how much alcohol is okay? To reduce the lifetime risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury, the National Health and Medical Research Council recommends healthy adults drink no more than two standard drinks on any day. Drinking less frequently (such as weekly rather than daily) and drinking less on each occasion will reduce your lifetime risk. To avoid alcohol-related injuries, adults shouldn’t drink more than four standard drinks on a single occasion. This applies to both sexes because while women become intoxicated with less alcohol, men tend to take more risks and experience more harmful effects. For pregnant women and young people under the age of 18, the guidelines say not drinking is the safest option. So while alcohol may not kill brain cells, if this myth encourages us to rethink that third beer or glass of wine, I won’t mind if it hangs around.

neurosciencestuff:

Monday’s medical myth: alcohol kills brain cells

Do you ever wake up with a raging hangover and picture the row of brain cells that you suspect have have started to decay? Or wonder whether that final glass of wine was too much for those tiny cells, and pushed you over the line?

Well, it’s true that alcohol can indeed harm the brain in many ways. But directly killing off brain cells isn’t one of them.

The brain is made up of nerve cells (neurons) and glial cells. These cells communicate with each other, sending signals from one part of the brain to the other, telling your body what to do. Brain cells enable us to learn, imagine, experience sensation, feel emotion and control our body’s movement.

Alcohol’s effects can be seen on our brain even after a few drinks, causing us to feel tipsy. But these symptoms are temporary and reversible. The available evidence suggests alcohol doesn’t kill brain cells directly.

There is some evidence that moderate drinking is linked to improved mental function. A 2005 Australian study of 7,500 people in three age cohorts (early 20s, early 40s and early 60s) found moderate drinkers (up to 14 drinks for men and seven drinks for women per week) had better cognitive functioning than non-drinkers, occasional drinkers and heavy drinkers.

But there is also evidence that even moderate drinking may impair brain plasticity and cell production. Researchers in the United States gave rats alcohol over a two-week period, to raise their alcohol blood concentration to about 0.08. While this level did not impair the rats’ motor skills or short-term learning, it impacted the brain’s ability to produce and retain new cells, reducing new brain cell production by almost 40%. Therefore, we need to protect our brains as best we can.

Excessive alcohol undoubtedly damages brain cells and brain function. Heavy consumption over long periods can damage the connections between brain cells, even if the cells are not killed. It can also affect the way your body functions. Long-term drinking can cause brain atrophy or shrinkage, as seen in brain diseases such as stroke and Alzheimer’s disease.

There is debate about whether permanent brain damage is caused directly or indirectly.

We know, for example, that severe alcoholic liver disease has an indirect effect on the brain. When the liver is damaged, it’s no longer effective at processing toxins to make them harmless. As a result, poisonous toxins reach the brain, and may cause hepatic encephalopathy (decline in brain function). This can result in changes to cognition and personality, sleep disruption and even coma and death.

Alcoholism is also associated with nutritional and absorptive deficiencies. A lack of Vitamin B1 (thiamine) causes brain disorders called Wernicke’s ncephalopathy (which manifests in confusion, unsteadiness, paralysis of eye movements) and Korsakoff’s syndrome (where patients lose their short-term memory and coordination).

So, how much alcohol is okay?

To reduce the lifetime risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury, the National Health and Medical Research Council recommends healthy adults drink no more than two standard drinks on any day. Drinking less frequently (such as weekly rather than daily) and drinking less on each occasion will reduce your lifetime risk.

To avoid alcohol-related injuries, adults shouldn’t drink more than four standard drinks on a single occasion. This applies to both sexes because while women become intoxicated with less alcohol, men tend to take more risks and experience more harmful effects.

For pregnant women and young people under the age of 18, the guidelines say not drinking is the safest option.

So while alcohol may not kill brain cells, if this myth encourages us to rethink that third beer or glass of wine, I won’t mind if it hangs around.


neurosciencestuff: Brain-to-brain interface allows transmission of tactile and motor information between rats Researchers have electronically linked the brains of pairs of rats for the first time, enabling them to communicate directly to solve simple behavioral puzzles. A further test of this work successfully linked the brains of two animals thousands of miles apart—one in Durham, N.C., and one in Natal, Brazil. The results of these projects suggest the future potential for linking multiple brains to form what the research team is calling an “organic computer,” which could allow sharing of motor and sensory information among groups of animals. The study was published Feb. 28, 2013, in the journal Scientific Reports. “Our previous studies with brain-machine interfaces had convinced us that the rat brain was much more plastic than we had previously thought,” said Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., PhD, lead author of the publication and professor of neurobiology at Duke University School of Medicine. “In those experiments, the rat brain was able to adapt easily to accept input from devices outside the body and even learn how to process invisible infrared light generated by an artificial sensor. So, the question we asked was, ‘if the brain could assimilate signals from artificial sensors, could it also assimilate information input from sensors from a different body?’” To test this hypothesis, the researchers first trained pairs of rats to solve a simple problem: to press the correct lever when an indicator light above the lever switched on, which rewarded the rats with a sip of water. They next connected the two animals’ brains via arrays of microelectrodes inserted into the area of the cortex that processes motor information. Read more

neurosciencestuff:

Brain-to-brain interface allows transmission of tactile and motor information between rats

Researchers have electronically linked the brains of pairs of rats for the first time, enabling them to communicate directly to solve simple behavioral puzzles. A further test of this work successfully linked the brains of two animals thousands of miles apart—one in Durham, N.C., and one in Natal, Brazil.

The results of these projects suggest the future potential for linking multiple brains to form what the research team is calling an “organic computer,” which could allow sharing of motor and sensory information among groups of animals. The study was published Feb. 28, 2013, in the journal Scientific Reports.

“Our previous studies with brain-machine interfaces had convinced us that the rat brain was much more plastic than we had previously thought,” said Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., PhD, lead author of the publication and professor of neurobiology at Duke University School of Medicine. “In those experiments, the rat brain was able to adapt easily to accept input from devices outside the body and even learn how to process invisible infrared light generated by an artificial sensor. So, the question we asked was, ‘if the brain could assimilate signals from artificial sensors, could it also assimilate information input from sensors from a different body?’”

To test this hypothesis, the researchers first trained pairs of rats to solve a simple problem: to press the correct lever when an indicator light above the lever switched on, which rewarded the rats with a sip of water. They next connected the two animals’ brains via arrays of microelectrodes inserted into the area of the cortex that processes motor information.

Read more


Robert Axelrod - The Complexity of Cooperation

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