Tom Stafford's Blog, page 134

Through a monitor darkly

An online meth house, created in virtual world Second Life, has been created, tested and found to reliably induce drug cravings in methamphetamine users - in an experimental study just published in the journal Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

A 'meth house' is where methamphetamine users go to buy, take or make speed and regular users may spend long periods of time there. Being able to reliably induce drug cravings in the research lab is useful as it allows controlled studies to be...

The case of the unknown father

[image error]Arthur Conan Doyle is famous for the creation of Sherlock Holmes but a lot less is known about his father. Practical Neurology has an interesting article about art and epilepsy which discusses Doyle senior's artistic talents and how he was eventually committed to an asylum.

Probably more famous as the father of Arthur Conan, Charles Altamont Doyle (1832–1893) was said to have epilepsy for the last 10–15 years of his life. The cause on his death certificate was epilepsy of 'many years'...

How murder fell out of fashion with the rich

[image error]Murder has become largely confined to the poor and disadvantaged whereas historical records show that in times gone past it was used equally by all levels of society.

This is taken from a 1997 study called 'The Decline of Elite Homocide', published in the journal Criminology, which attempts to explain how homicide has become less democratic over time.

The criminological literature consistently reports a negative relationship between social status and interpersonal homicide. Regardless of the...

A bit of all right

[image error]An interesting point made in a new book about the psychology of being wrong, appropriately called Being Wrong by author Kathryn Schulz.

Taken from The New York Times book review:

Schulz begins with a question that should puzzle us more than it does: Why do we love being right? After all, she writes, "unlike many of life's other delights — chocolate, surfing, kissing — it does not enjoy any mainline access to our biochemistry: to our appetites, our adrenal glands, our limbic systems, our swoony...

Stanley Milgram, the 70s TV drama

[image error]The website for 'The Man Who Shocked the World', a biography of Stanley Milgram, is a goldmine of information about the psychologist who became famous for his obedience experiments. The little known facts section has an interesting snippet about a 70s TV drama based on the experiments which starred William Shatner as the Milgram character.

In August, 1976, CBS presented a prime-time dramatization of the obedience experiments and the events surrounding them, titled "The Tenth Level." William...

2010-07-23 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

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Newsweek has an excellent series on the psychology and culture of beauty.

'A single brief electrical pulse to the hippocampus caused momentary amnesia'. Neuroskeptic covers a fascinating human study.

AP News has an interesting piece on whether mind-bending movies set in mental space are the new Westerns.

You all know the top drawer neuroscience blog The Frontal Cortex has just moved to Wired? A great piece on why money doesn't make us happy

Attraction runs in the family

[image error]The 'incest taboo' is the aversion to being sexually attracted to our own family and evolutionary psychology has suggested it is an inherited adaptation to promote genetic diversity. A brilliant study just published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin provides evidence that this is actually a cultural phenomenon, received wisdom if you like, because when awareness of the relationship is hidden, people find individuals who resemble their family more sexually attractive.

Th...

There's a party in my dream and everyone's invited

The consistently amusing NCBI ROFL blog has found a fantastic case study, originally published in Sleep Medicine, of a woman who started sending emails during sleeping-walking episodes when her dose of sleeping pill zolpidem was increased.

As we've discussed previously, zolpidem has an association with unusual sleepwalking behaviours, but sending email invitations to dream parties is apparently a first.

Brilliantly, the case report contains copies of the emails (a bit strangely, both are...

A rare glimpse of childhood schizophrenia

[image error]The LA Times has an article and video about a young girl who has one of the very rare cases of childhood schizophrenia. In this instance, it is particularly unusual because the affected child is only six years old.

One of the biggest mysteries in psychiatry is why psychosis, the occurrence of delusions and hallucinations, doesn't typically first appear until about 17 years of age for males and about 20 for females.

It's curious because from a psychological perspective, all the things that are s...

The blessed neuroscientist

[image error]Neurosurgery has an article on the 17th Century neuroanatomist Niels Stensen who not only made major contributions to our understanding of the brain but was beatified - the first step to becoming a saint - by Pope John Paul II in 1988.

His work was not restricted to the brain and was a founding figure in both geology and palaeontology, but his willingness to test received wisdom with regard to brain anatomy led him to overturn some key assumptions of the time:

Stensen contested the anatomic...