Monday, December 19, 2011

Schizophrenia, Depression, the Hippocampus, and Information


19/12/2011 4:46PM

A review of a Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper, and then I just sortta wonder off and babble incessantly ... .


Nature publications generates some high quality reviews that are great for catching up on the latest developments in a given area. I've always  had a bit of interest in the hippocampus so was pleased that Nature Reviews Neuroscience offered the extensive review article below for free(each month the Review series and I believe some other Nature journals offer free articles).
Article:  A pathophysiological framework of hippocampal dysfunction in ageing and disease
Authors:   Scott A. Small, Scott A. Schobel, Richard B. Buxton, Menno P. Witter and Carol A. Barnes
Journal: Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Oct 2011.
Abstract | The hippocampal formation has been implicated in a growing number of disorders, from Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive ageing to schizophrenia and depression. How can the hippocampal formation, a complex circuit that spans the temporal lobes, be involved in a range of such phenotypically diverse and mechanistically distinct disorders? Recent neuroimaging findings indicate that these disorders differentially target distinct subregions of the hippocampal circuit. In addition, some disorders are associated with hippocampal hypometabolism, whereas others show evidence of hypermetabolism. Interpreted in the context of the functional and molecular organization of the hippocampal circuit, these observations give rise to a unified pathophysiological framework of hippocampal dysfunction.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Free Will, the Law, and other Meanderings.


I do get carried away. The below arose from a FB discussion. Normally I stay away from these debates but thought Sergio was worthy of a considered reply. No time to proof. Sorry about that.

6/10/2011 12:19AM


You're a good chap Sergio and worthy of a considered reply. I've done my best but it is well past midnight and work beckons ...

Warning! I have an unusual approach to these questions, my thinking very much informed by online discussions long ago with Frank Lefever and a few others. I am an iconoclast. One of my key epistemological heuristics is this: if many brilliant people have been trying to resolve issues over many decades, let alone centuries, then, in the absence of new information, I have no chance of developing any further insights and so will direct my attention elsewhere.

No time to proof this. Sorry.

1. I don't entertain free will, I am to blame for my actions.

I don't entertain free will because it provides no explanatory power. The great power of human cognition arises when we ask the questions that provide us with further insight into the relevant matter. Mathematicians refer to this as "fertility". So even an abstract idea can be useful but it must have fertility. This is why in science there is the insistence that ideas should be falsifiable. If we cannot prove or disprove idea how can we ever know if it is true? We still cannot say with certainty that free will is existent yet we continue on our way. Most people who don't believe in free will do not fall into antinomianism, the belief that they cannot be responsible for their actions. This was a big issue with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, many christians arguing that to believe God elects us "before the beginning of time"(Eph chapter 1 I think) is to invite moral anarchy. It doesn't. We far too often think about behavior being driven by thoughts. Now without venturing into radical behaviorism and its view that even thinking is behavior, a view I find favourable but wonder if it is just semantics, it is perfectly clear to me that my thoughts are but one aspect of how my behavior is formed. In fact I would argue that our thoughts about how other people perceive our behavior and our anticipation of the potential consequences of that perception is a far more powerful modulator of our behavior than our preferred philosophical position.

2. Neuroscience and Cognition.

The great fuss about how neuroscience is deepening our understanding of behavior is a fancy. Modern neuroscience is like a hunter gatherer looking for the first time at a car and seeing the wheels turn, thinks, the wheels make the car go forward. He sees the wheels, but the wheels do not move the car, the engine does. He cannot see the engine. Modern neuro-imaging is only seeing the wheels. It may even be worse than that, it may only be seeing the dust kicked up by the wheels. Even in recent months some long held assumptions about the classic model of neural function have been very much demolished. If you read enough of the literature, if you keep reading, you soon come across experiments that make a mockery of textbook explanations of neural function. There are deep and very difficult philosophical questions here, many of which revolve around Information Theory. That is a long and difficult road, I went down the road on a fast motorcycle, turned out the first corner was a decreasing radius turn and I'm still licking my wounds ... .

3. Blame is a reinforcer

If I am speeding down the road and without intention, quite unconsciously, I will still receive a speeding ticket and no amount of pleading will prevent that. If I unintentionally kill someone I will still be charged with manslaughter. That we know that breaking the law can have serious personal repercussions reinforces lawful behavior. Whether I break the law intentionally or unintentionally does not alter the fact that I broke the law. Unintentional breaking of the law may mitigate liability but it does not get me off the hook. So the linkage between "freely choosing" and "blaming" is not consistent. We blame people as a way of modulating their behavior and the behavior of others. Irrespective of my willing I am culpable for my actions. Even in cases of known psychopathology the pathology is at best a mitigating factor, it does get people off the hook and nor should it. The law is about much more than personal responsibility, it is very much about establishing reinforcement contingencies to maintain social order. The Law can never be a conceptually and philosophically consistent system. The Law is very much a response to the problem arising from the vagaries of human behavior and the environment. It is primarily driven by the need to maintain social order, not be a neat and tidy system of thought. In short, the world is messy so the Law will always be messy.

Obviously, the concept of free will is not a critical determinant of the legitimacy of our legal system.

4. Childrens' behavior is not guided by their belief in free will.

In fact children rarely if ever consider themselves to be free willing agents. Children are not engaging into those types of cognitive behaviors, that type of operational function only really emerges, at best, post puberty. Often never! Children are amongst the first to proclaim, "Johnny made me do it!" Adults abandon that habit because it becomes socially unacceptable. Not because they delve into the philosophical arguments surrounding Free Will but because it is in their best interests not to blame others. Blaming ourselves, as much if not moreso than blame from others, is a strong contingency that modulates our behavior. Blaming is not about free will, it is about behavior modification. Arminianism, the theological school of thought in opposition to Calvinism, can eat my shorts. I have no interest in free will,  that I consciously decide to do something provides me with absolutely no insight into the causes of my behavior. As the experiments of Sperry and Gazzaniga make worryingly clear, we have this habit of rationalising the causes of our behavior. We provides reasons after the event but the work of those two great neuroscientists indicate that we appear to make up stories to explain our behavior. As that wonderful line made by Geoff Goldbloom in the movie "The Big Chill" goes: You can go for a week without sex but can you go for a week without a rationalisation? (Same meaning, closely to that, and dreadfully true.)

5. The history of Free Will

My understanding is that the prominence of this concept in our culture primarily derives from the post Reformation great theological debates. I actually like the Calvinist approach because John Calvin himself was very much about setting up Geneva through laws, education, democracy, and social control. With regard to the latter he was sometimes unforgivingly ruthless and cruel. Eastern cultures, with Buddhism being a prominent example, don't seem as preoccupied with this question. Mayahana and Zen Buddhism will even assert that "self" and "free will" are illusions. Said conclusions arose from extensive exercises in enhancing "self awareness", which as the previously mentioned neuroscientists and many others have indicated, is hopelessly insufficient for understanding the true causes of our behavior. This again comes back to the theme of radical behaviorism that thought is behavior. The thoughts we acquire from our culture, not from our cognition, may be closer to the primary causes of our interest in this question than any "rational" deliberation of the legitimacy of that mode of analysis.

6. Self Awareness.

Who was that Greek chap, Aristotle? Was he the one who carried on about the need for self awareness. What are we observing when we observe "the self"? Look closely, you are not looking at some whole or some entity within yourself, you are thinking about individual instances of your behavior and attempting to coalesce these individual fragments into some coherent whole. The most successful areas of psychology are not in the "Big Ideas" but rather in the attempts to modify specific behaviors. For decades the psychologists peddled self-esteem as the cure all for so many human problems. Bollocks, the research of Ray Baumeister, circa 2002, pretty much put that fancy to rest. There is not so much talk about self esteem these days. Why? The studies don't support the claim that changing one's view of one's self makes any significant difference. Nonetheless I do believe our self perception does have implications for our behavior but that brings us back to the radical behaviorist idea of thinking being behavior.

I prefer the advice of Baumeister. Want to change your behavior? Then focus on those behaviors you wish to change. Establish in your life the appropriate environmental contingencies, and by environment I include the people around you, and your behavior will change. That is why religious bodies are so successful at behavior modification: the creation of a social environment that establishes multiple reinforcers modify behavior to be in accordance with the group. As the studies of Milgram and Zimbardo illustrate, or for that matter the SS of the Nazis, or even just plain being in a war zone, our environment, and especially the people in that environment, are vastly more determinative of our behavior than our philosophy. I grant you there are rare exceptions but as numerous historical examples illustrate, even the most religious of people can become murderous assholes. Only last night I heard a philosopher state how during the rise of Japanese militarism the Buddhists were often fully on board with justifying the incredible cruelty that Japanese military government managed to engender during that period. And contrary to the popular view, the Japanese at that time were far more brutal than the Germans. But that's another story.

Self awareness is also important but it can also be crippling. I prefer the attitude of Albert Camus, "Forever shall I be a stranger to myself."(The Myth of Sisyphus). Or this wonderful line from the great American street writer Henry Miller ....

Even the psychic invalid throws away his crutches, in such moments [large external threat]. For him the greatest joy is to realise that there is something more important than himself. All his life he has turned on the spit of his own roasted ego. He made the fire with his own hands.

Sexus, page 337.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Intrinsic and Probably Constitutive Arterial Cleansing

Cardiovascular Disease remains a big killer in modern societies. While various drug interventions have enabled millions to go on living when they would otherwise be dead, the spikes in obesity and type 2 diabetes in the last 30 years are harbingers of a cardiovascular disease epidemic in the making. This has already been hinted at with a piece of recent research. As stated in the news release:
A large study has revealed that the rate of strokeamong children, adolescents and young adults in the USA has been increasing at an alarming rate. The rate at which ischemic stroke patients are being hospitalized has also increased considerably, the authors reported in Annals of Neurology.
 If you go to the above link the authors have kindly provided a breakdown of the stats. The nutshell is that from 1995 to 2007 we have witnessed a 50% rise in ischemic stroke among males aged 35-44 years, a rise of 46% for males aged 15-34, for females the rates are considerably lower, 29% and 23% respectively.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Patrick Lockerby's Arctic Ice August 2011

Here's the link.
...
If we accept, as the perfectly normal Arctic behavior of many centuries, that ice extent should diminish in the last two weeks of August, it does not augur well for minimum extent in 2011.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Patrick Lockerby's Arctic Ice July 2011

You can read it here.

I am not interested in debates about AGW. I am interested in research items published and Patrick's monthly reports contain extensive data

Saturday, July 30, 2011

The Myth of Alzheimers

The Myth of Alzheimers: What You Aren't Being Told About Today's Most Dreaded Diagnosis
Peter J. Whitehouse, M.D., Ph.D, with Daniel George, M.Sc.
St. Martin's Griffin, New York, 2008

Peter J. Whitehouse is a respected neurologist with over 30 years experience in the relevant field.

The Website for the book. 

Amazon Link.

This text takes a courageous stand. I appreciate the central thrust of their argument but also believe they have somewhat overstated their case. Nonetheless this text offers some valuable insights into what is wrong with so much media reporting about dementia and helps us understand why the concept of a cure of alzheimer's is predicated upon faulty assumptions concerning the causes and nature of the condition.

It is pleasing to note that the authors are quite upfront and acknowledge that loss of cognitive function is inevitable with age. There is far too much nonsense out there which purports to provide strategies so that we can have a timeless mind that does not age. Such claims are errant nonsense peddled by the either the naive or dishonest who are more interested in selling books than being honest to the truth about aging. My typical response to people who make such claims is this:

You say you can halt brain aging. Tell me, could you run as fast as when you were 20 years old? Can you recover from sleep deprivation or a night out partying as quickly as when you were 20 years old? The brain is the most vulnerable organ in our bodies yet you expect me to believe that  with your greying and receding hair, your reading glasses, your creaking joints and liver spots, your spider veins and botox manipulated forehead, you have managed to protect your brain from the effects of aging. I suggest that to entertain such a fallacy is evidence to the contrary.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Typing Away Our Memories?

...
"I think [technology] might hurt the type of memorization that we usually think about, like remembering the name of an actress, but I think there might be some benefits, too," said study author Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Columbia University in New York City. ...


Yes, that is true. Remember that fairy tale that human memory is infinite? I used to laugh at that because it was obvious to me that my memory was anything but infinite. So in my early 20's I set about learning as much as I could about memory and devised a simple memorisation system that must have been effective because many people comment on the strength of my memory. My typical response is anyone can have a good memory they just need to know the tricks. That isn't really true. I was fortunate in that I inherited a good memory ability and then built on that. Nonetheless all of us need to think about the implications of relying *too much* on modern technology as an information storage utility.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Pregnant Arab Women often have very poor Vitamin D status

I had long speculated about the impact of completely covering the skin on vitamin D production. This study highlights the risk to pregnant Arabian women. If you are someone who doesn't receive daily sunlight exposure it is absolutely critical to take charge of your vitamin D status. Foods will not be sufficient, you will need supplementation.

Pregnant Arab women have an "extraordinarily high prevalence" of vitamin D deficiency - a potential health issue for them and their babies, according to a new Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study.


...

Alzheimers - Prevention is Better than Cure

This news article highlights the problem of treating dementias. The relevant article from Nature can be found here.

Prevention is always better than cure. In relation to dementias it is now clear that years, if not decades, before symptoms arise a neurodegenerative process has been in play. As noted at the top of the news release, once alzheimers is established there probably is never going to be a cure. We may be able to forestall progression of pathology but that is all we will be able to do.

While it is tempting to think that alzheimers is all about the brain we must remember that the brain functions within a body. Our overall health is fundamental to cerebral health. Due to my lack of reading lately I can't be sure about all the relevant factors but the below list will serve as a useful guide:


  • There has been a longstanding relationship between cardiovascular health and cerebral health. Maintaining good cardiovascular health is absolutely essential in addressing dementia. This appears to be particularly true for cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Keep check of these levels. Note however that for people over 60 there is evidence to suggest that slightly higher cholesterol levels are protective for the brain. Only slightly higher, the safer bet probably being higher but still within normal ranges.
  • Immunological status is very important. Preventing excessive inflammation is very important for protecting the brain because systemic inflammations plays a cardinal role in promoting dementias. Diet is very important here, as is adequate vitamin D intake. Because many people lose the ability to manufacture vitamin D with age, and because dietary sources are usually of low quantities, supplementation is often a good idea. Before going down that road though have your vitamin D status checked. If it is low start taking supplements.
  • Do not let low level infections linger. These promote systemic inflammation.
  • Maintain oral health. Poor oral health is not only a risk factor for dementias but also heart disease. Again, systemic inflammation can arise from poor oral health.
  • Maintain a appropriate fat intake. Keep the balance right. Avoid trans fats at all costs. Eat fish on a regular basis, watch your omega 3 - omega 6 balance because the modern diet tends to have too much omega 6 and too little omega 3, this promotes inflammatory mediators because omega 6 fats promote the generation of inflammatory prostaglandins while omega 3's promote anti-inflammatory prostaglandins. It is very important to cook fish the right way - baked or broiled, grilled and fried fish may actually promote dementias and heart disease because the high temperatures oxidize the fats.
  • Be very careful about sugar rich foods. Sugar in strict moderation is fine but many processed foods are loaded with too much sugar. Popular carbonated drinks are sugar laden and should not be consumed as a habit.