Psychology Research

Evolutionary Novelties ponders placentas : For me one of the most visceral confirmations of the common descent of humans and other mammals came while witnessing the birth of my children. Having grown up on a small farm, I have vivid memories of the birth of kittens, lambs, and goats; and after the births of my children, I was struck by the similarity of human placenta and umbilical cord to those of other mammals. Given common descent, how did something as complex as the mammalian placenta originate in the first place? The answer, according to research published last summer in Genome Research, involves the evolutionary mechanisms of co-option and gene duplication. The post then reviews a recent paper that examined the placenta’s genomic evolution by looking at the mouse genome, which has been thoroughly mapped. The visceral re-enforcement of common ancestry I felt when seeing a human placenta and umbilical cord extends to the genes used in developing placentas, which themselves have ancient origins, and are shared across many organisms. Definitely worth a read. Read the comments on this post…

Sasha, the Amur tiger ( Panthera tigris altaica ), photographed at the Bronx Zoo. Read the comments on this post…

Why is there “junk DNA”? What is Junk DNA? What is a Pseudogene? What is Gene Duplication? Goodness, you certainly do have a lot of questions. And some of them can be answered, or at least addressed, on examination of a very interesting new paper recently published about a gene that became a useless “pseudogene” a very long time ago and has recently been revived by evolution to serve once again as an active member of the community we know of as the genome. In humans. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

An article just published online for the Behavioural Science and Law journal discusses whether magnetic brain stimulation could be used in lie detection and interrogation. It is based on the premise that as cognitive neuroscience works out the brain circuits for lying, a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation ( TMS ) could be used during an interview to disrupt the function of these pathways. The article specifically pitches this idea as a possible ‘lie detection’ method, as so far, research conducted by the authors suggest that disrupting parietal cortex function, on average, slows the response time for lies and but doesn’t affect response time for truthful responses – albeit in a very controlled laboratory experiment. In other words, the idea is that TMS could be used to help distinguish truthful responses from untruthful ones. My first thought on reading this was that someone is bound to be thinking of this technique as a way of inhibiting the relevant circuits to prevent lying, or at least increase the likelihood of truthful responses. It’s probably true to say that deception research is in its very early days and its not even clear whether such things as distinct ‘deception circuits’ even exist. However, from what we know from now-public secret military research in this area, it’s clear that many of these sorts of techniques are simply tested empirically. Essentially, whether there is a good theoretical basis or not, national security agencies are much more likely simply to try the techniques and see what the outcome is. The Behavioural Science and Law article sticks firmly to the possible civilian uses for this technology, discussing the legal and ethical issues within a domestic law framework, but you can bet that the spooks are already thinking ahead on this one. Link to ‘Non-invasive brain stimulation in the detection of deception’. Link to PubMed entry for same.

An article on the psychological characteristic of vicious dog owners has just appeared online in the compelling academic publication, The Journal of Forensic Sciences , finding that those who who own dangerous dogs are more likely to endorse antisocial and psychopathic character traits and more likely to report criminal behaviour. The study was led by psychologist Laurie Ragatz who collected data from 869 college students who completed an anonymous online questionnaire assessing type of dog owned, criminal behaviors, attitudes towards animal abuse, psychopathy, and personality. It’s only a correlational study but the introduction has a nice summary of the research findings as well as a previous study on the same topic: Each year, 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs, of which 386,000 are seriously injured and over 200 die. Several dog breeds have been labeled “vicious” or of “high-risk” for aggression. To date, only one empirical study has examined the characteristics of persons who choose to own their high-risk dogs. Barnes et al. reports that owners of Akitas, Chow-Chows, Dobermans, Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, and Wolf-mixes endorsed approximately 10 times more criminal convictions than owners of nonvicious dogs. Further, vicious dog owners reported more crimes involving aggression, children, alcohol, and domestic violence than owners of nonvicious dogs. The current research sought to replicate and extend these findings with a college sample. The present study compared nondog owners and owners of vicious, large, and small dogs on engagement in criminal behavior, general personality traits (i.e., impulsive sensation seeking, neuroticism-anxiety, aggression-hostility, activity, and sociability), psychopathy, and attitude towards animal maltreatment. …As hypothesized, a significant difference in criminal behavior was found based on dog ownership type. Owners of vicious dogs were significantly more likely to admit to violent criminal behavior, compared to large dog owners, small dog owners, and controls. The vicious dog owner sample also engaged in more types (i.e., violent, property, drug, and status) of criminal behavior compared to all other participant groups. Personality traits were examined and vicious dog owners were significantly higher than controls on impulsive sensation seeking. Examining psychopathic traits, owners of high-risk dogs endorsed significantly more characteristics of primary psychopathy (e.g., carelessness, selfishness, and manipulative tendencies) than small dog owners. Comparing owners of vicious dogs to other groups, no significant differences were found regarding secondary psychopathy (e.g., impulsiveness or self-defeating behaviors) or attitudes towards animal maltreatment. Among the college sample, the vicious dogs were predominantly male and weighed 68 pounds. The owners had more self-reported overall criminal behaviors as well as violent criminal behavior. They endorsed significantly more sensation seeking and primary psychopathic traits. Link to article. Link to DOI entry for same.

If you ever wanted to peer deeply into the decayed and shriveled eyes of Otzi, the 5,000 year old iceman, now you can. High resolution images of Otzi are available on the web, and you can pan and zoom all over his body. You can also find 3D images, and special closeups of his tattoos. Read the comments on this post…

We’ve reported before on brain imaging research that shows brain activity in those in a ‘persistent vegetative state’. What I didn’t know until today was that one subject in this research, Kate, has since woken up. This YouTube video tells Kate’s story: Kate suffered from what was probably brain stem encephalitis at the age of 23. She was the first patient to be scanned by Adrian Owen as part of his research into the mental lives of those in persistent vegetative states. Findings from this research support what Kate herself is able to say in the video: we need to be very careful before making life and death decisions on behalf of people who appear unresponsive.

I was surprised by the response to my brief post on the question of whether group (race or gender) differences in intelligence are a valid topic for scientific investigation: not only because of the volume of comments, but also because the ensuing debate was largely civil and on-topic. The post was sparked off by two conflicting essays in the most recent issue of Nature , one by Steven Rose opposing research into such differences , and another by Ceci and Williams arguing that sealing off certain lines of enquiry – however contentious – is dangerous and unscientific . There’s now more on this topic on the two Gene Expression blogs. On GNXP Classic, ben g argues that Rose’s essay contains scientific flaws ; I’m not at all qualified to comment on the scientific arguments (and would encourage readers to do so over at GNXP ), but I agree with ben’s closing comments: This is an argument for more research, not less. This is an argument for genome-wide association studies, which will allow us to pinpoint the genes that effect intelligence and how they interact with the enviornment. This is an argument for more research on the neuroscience behind IQ and intelligence. This is an argument for further funding of projects to map out the genetic differences between human populations world-wide. There’s no debate about whether this research is “permissible” – as Razib notes in a post on ScienceBlogs GNXP , while there will never be a large NIH-funded project explicitly exploring group differences in cognition, such data will emerge naturally from the synthesis of the types of studies ben describes above , all of which are already underway to some extent. As Razib argues, the genetic studies will become faster, cheaper and larger with advances in DNA sequencing technology . It’s only a matter of time before the relevant intersecting data-sets are used to crunch the numbers. I’d argue that this is a good thing – arguing about data is always infinitely preferable to arguing about ideas . So long as open scientific discourse is permitted in this field, any shoddy, politically-driven findings will be rapidly swept away by hard data from large, well-designed studies. But will open scientific discourse be permitted? This is why Rose’s implicit argument – that anyone who even considers the question of group differences in cognition is a bigot – is so dangerous. Who would you rather have crunching the numbers above: respectable researchers with a sound knowledge of the limitations of genetics and psychometrics, or individuals working in their basement with a political axe to grind? Labelling the field off-limits to “civilised” scientists essentially guarantees the latter. I’ll leave it to Razib to spell out the likely consequences of studies into the genetic basis of intelligence – it’s difficult to speculate about this area given how little we currently know about the genetic architecture of cognitive and behavioural traits, but his projections seem plausible to me.   Subscribe to Genetic Future . Read the comments on this post…

The mainstream media are just queuing up to fail in their reporting of the propranolol story from a couple of days ago. To reiterate: Propranolol is commonly used to treat high blood pressure and prevent migraines in children. But Merel Kindt and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam have found that it can do much more. By giving it to people before they recalled a scary memory about a spider, they could erase the fearful response it triggered. The critical thing about the study is that the entire memory hadn’t been erased in a typical sci-fi way. Kindt had trained the volunteers to be fearful of spidery images by pairing them with electric shocks. Even after they’d been given propranolol, they still expected to receive a shock when they saw a picture of a spider – they just weren’t afraid of the prospect. The drug hadn’t so much erased their memories, as dulled their emotional sting. It’s more like removing all the formatting from a Word document than deleting the entire file. The drug is not a ” memory-wiping pill ” (Guardian). It cannot “erase bad/painful memories” ( Sun / Fox News / Metro / Daily Mail ) and it won’t give you a ” spotless mind ” (Scotsman). Perhaps it’s unsurprising given that massive wire agencies said similar things. The Press Association led with claims that the drug can ” erase fearful memories “. Reuters at least said more cautiously that it was a ” step towards erasing bad memories “. To quote the person who actually did the research (and thanks Merel for chiming in on the earlier post):  “There was no memory erasure, just elimination of the fearful response.” The problem with all of this, of course, is that people have straw-manned the research and are falling over themselves to publish trite editorials that (a) are irrelevant to the actual study and (b) serve to stoke public outrage over an ethical dilemma of their own concoction. There are exceptions. The Boston Globe got it right and has a brilliant bit at the end that lays out in four simple sentences the bottom line, cautions, what’s next, and where the research was published. It has however accompanied the article with an incongruous photo of a koala, presumably some sort of mix-up with the Australian bushfire story. The mental health charity MIND released a long and well-considered statement , which showed that they had actually read the paper and understood the science. The charity’s CEO, Paul Farmer, said: “This is fascinating research that could transform the treatment for phobias and post traumatic stress disorder. Around 10 million people in the UK have a phobia and about 3.5% of the population will be affected by post traumatic stress disorder at some point yet our understanding of how to treat these conditions is still limited. While we welcome any advancement in this field we should also exercise caution before heralding this as a miracle cure. “Eradicating emotional responses is clearly an area we would need to be very careful about. It could affect people’s ability to respond to dangerous situations in the future and could even take away people’s positive memories. We would not want to see an ‘accelerated Alzheimer’s’ approach. “We still have limited research on how to treat complex mental health problems, with the focus often on pharmacological solutions. Drugs are a somewhat sledgehammer approach and can have unintended consequences. We know from other psychiatric drugs, for example antipsychotics and antidepressants, that individuals react in hugely varied ways to treatments and are often vulnerable to unpleasant side effects. “We would need to see much more research into the risks and benefits into this treatment before it becomes a reality.” All of that was culled by the BBC into the following: But British experts questioned the ethics of tampering with the mind. Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, said he was concerned about the “fundamentally pharmacological” approach to people with problems such as phobias and anxiety. He said the procedure might also alter good memories and warned against an “accelerated Alzheimer’s” approach. Do you think it carries the same meaning or sense? Read the comments on this post…

Research out of Princeton University and noted at this past weekend’s annual AAAS meeting gives weight to an idea that cognitive and social scientists have tentatively considered for years: Given sufficient provocation, men view women as sex objects. Men are more likely to think of women as objects if they have looked at sexy pictures of females beforehand, psychologists said yesterday. Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated. Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other peoples’ emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures. Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, said the changes in brain activity suggest sexy images can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon. This makes perfect sense, given that when males view pictures of NASCAR events, daffodils, and human waste, anecdotal evidence suggests that they are inclined to think of not only various power tools, but also limitless varieties of copulatory activity. In the study, Fiske’s team put straight men into an MRI brain scanner and showed them images of either clothed men and women, or more scantily clad men and women. When they took a memory test afterwards, the men best remembered images of bikini-clad women whose heads had been digitally removed. This is merely a symbolic leveling of the playing field. If men in lust-struck states are operating without benefit of their brains, then it is only just that the objects of their lust be rendered similarly decerebrate. In the final part of the study, Fiske asked the men to fill in a questionnaire that was used to assess how sexist they were. The brain scans showed that men who scored highest had very little activity in the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions that are involved with understanding another person’s feelings and intentions. “They’re reacting to these women as if they’re not fully human,” Fiske said. “Not fully human” is as likely to mean “superhuman” as “subhuman,” correct? Looks like further research is needed . Read the comments on this post…