Tom Stafford's Blog, page 160

How reliable are fMRI results?

[image error]A new study has looked at the reliability of fMRI brain scanning results over time, finding that the same experiment will only only be moderately reproducible when conducted at two different times, suggesting that fMRI is much less reliable than most researchers assume.

The authors of the paper are the same ones who brought us the study showing that it's possible to find 'brain activity' in a dead fish if the analysis is done in a way that is common but prone to false positives.

The paper will ...

In Our Time on the Infant Brain

[image error]This morning's edition of BBC Radio 4's brilliant In Our Time was dedicated to the infant brain and has a wide ranging discussion about how ideas about the early development of the child developed into the modern age of neuroscience.

The streamed version will be available on the website permanently, but if you want to download the podcast you only have a week to do so from this page.

Melvyn Bragg and guests Usha Goswami, Annette Karmiloff-Smith and Denis Mareschal discuss what new research...

Cocaine, surgery and an experiment too far

[image error]William Stewart Halsted is known as the 'father of American surgery' and was widely-known to have been addicted to both cocaine and morphine for large stretches of his life. I always assumed this was due to recreational sampling of the medicine cabinet but it turns out it was the rather unfortunate result of some initially serious scientific experimentation.

I just found this article on Halsted from The Annals of Surgery that explains the astounding and tragic story.

Halsted's career changed...

All aboard the baby brain

[image error]The March edition of The Psychologist has just appeared online and has two freely available articles: one article investigates whether women really suffer a reduction in mental sharpness during pregnancy, and another interviews baby psychologist Alison Gopnik about her work.

This idea that pregnancy causes a slight reduction in mental sharpness, sometimes known as 'baby brain' or 'pregnesia', is widespread but the results from scientific studies are mixed, and at best show only a negligible...

Tipsy thinking

[image error]Discover Magazine has a great short article on misperceptions and counter-intuitive findings concerning alcohol and drinking.

The piece covers whether alcohol break-down product acetaldehyde plays as much a part in drunkenness as alcohol itself, misperceptions about the chances of women having their drink spiked to facilitate sexual assault, and mothers' perceptions about their kids future drinking patterns.

Alcohol is so embedded in most cultures that perceptions and reality intermix in...

Violent video games: small causal link with aggression

[image error]A new study just published in Psychological Bulletin has reviewed studies on the effects of violent video games and concludes that they cause a small but reliable increase in aggressive behaviour and anti-social thinking.

The study, led by psychologist Craig Anderson, is a type of meta-analysis which attempts to mathematically aggregate the results of past studies to see what the overall effect is.

There have been several similar studies in recent years which have come to different...

Sex on drugs

[image error]I just found a study which specifically investigated which drugs are preferred by clubbers for sex. The study was completed in Spain and it turns out booze is the punter's favourite, clearly contradicting the widely-held theory that alcohol was invented to help British people have sex.

[Which drugs are preferred for sex in nightlife recreational settings?:]

[Article in Spanish:]

Adicciones. 2008;20(1):37-47.

Calafat A, Juan M, Becoña E, Mantecón A.

Many people associate the use of alcohol and other...

When the ship goes down

[image error]The New York Times covers a new study on the co-operative behaviour of passengers when two famous sea-faring passenger liners sunk: the Lusitania sank fast, leading to every-man-for-themself type escape behaviour, whereas the Titanic took almost three hours to sink, meaning women and children were given priority and rank and social class were respected.

It reminds me of a famous, if not somewhat disheartening, study [pdf] on the predictors of survival after air crashes that was covered by...

Dark clouds and their silver linings

[image error]The New York Times has a thought-provoking article on the possible advantages of depression, suggesting that the negative form of thinking associated with depression may encourage people to focus on their problems to help them solve the life dilemmas that have contributed to their low mood.

The piece explores the idea that rumination, the constant mental re-running of worrying thoughts and concerns, might be a form of self-imposed problem solving that has been evolutionary selected as an...

A Shorter history of psychiatric diagnosis

[image error]The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article by historian of psychiatry, Edward Shorter, about the raft of new changes in the proposed revision of the DSM-V 'psychiatric bible' and how they reflect our changing ideas about mental illness.

For some reason the piece has been given the stupid of title of 'Why Psychiatry Needs Therapy', which is a mystery as it doesn't mention anything along these lines.

Shorter is one of the most highly-respected historians of the field, well known for his...