146 posts · 59,175 views
Comments on neurobiology, neuroimaging, and psychiatry from a skeptical neuroscientist.
Neuroskeptic
146 posts
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- August 30, 2010
- 01:01 PM
- 51 views
Serotonin, Psychedelics and Depression
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Note: This post is part of a Nature Blog Focus on hallucinogenic drugs in medicine and mental health, inspired by a recent Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper, The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders, by Franz Vollenweider & Michael Kometer. That article will be available, open-access, until September 23. For more information on this Blog Focus, including a Table of Contents, please visit The Great Beyond.Neurophilosophy is covering the history o........ Read more »
Vollenweider FX, & Kometer M. (2010) The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders. Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 11(9), 642-51. PMID: 20717121
- August 26, 2010
- 05:14 AM
- 66 views
You Read It Here First
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Remember the paper from 2009 about combining two different drugs in the treatment of depression?It was about a clinical trial in which patients were randomly assigned to get just one antidepressant, fluoxetine, or two - mirtazapine & fluoxetine, mirtazapine & venlafaxine, or mirtazapine & buproprion. The people who got two antidepressants did better.But as I said at the time, in a comment beneath my post about it...All the first 6 weeks shows is that mirtazapine is better than placeb........ Read more »
El-Mallakh RS, Kaur G, & Lippman S. (2010) Placebo group needed for interpretation of combination trial. The American journal of psychiatry, 167(8). PMID: 20693473
- August 23, 2010
- 09:03 AM
- 60 views
Fish Out Of Water, On Ketamine
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Ketamine is a drug of many talents. Used medically as an anesthetic in animals and, sometimes, in humans, it's also become widely used recreationally despite, or perhaps because of, its reputation as a "horse tranquilizer".Ketamine's also a hot topic in research at the moment for two reasons: it's considered an interesting way of provoking the symptoms of schizophrenia, and it's also shown promise as a fast-acting antidepressant.Anyway, most ketamine research to date has been done in either huma........ Read more »
Zakhary SM, Ayubcha D, Ansari F, Kamran K, Karim M, Leheste JR, Horowitz JM, & Torres G. (2010) A behavioral and molecular analysis of ketamine in zebrafish. Synapse (New York, N.Y.). PMID: 20623473
- August 20, 2010
- 10:02 AM
- 73 views
Schizophrenia, Genes and Environment
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Schizophrenia is generally thought of as the "most genetic" of all psychiatric disorders and in the past 10 years there have been heroic efforts to find the genes responsible for it, with not much success so far.A new study reminds us that there's more to it than genes alone: Social Risk or Genetic Liability for Psychosis? The authors decided to look at adopted children, because this is one of the best ways of disentangling genes and environment.If you find that the children of people with schiz........ Read more »
Wicks S, Hjern A, & Dalman C. (2010) Social Risk or Genetic Liability for Psychosis? A Study of Children Born in Sweden and Reared by Adoptive Parents. The American journal of psychiatry. PMID: 20686186
- August 17, 2010
- 05:30 PM
- 82 views
What The Internet Thinks About Antidepressants
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Toronto team Rizo et al offer a novel approach to psychopharmacology: trawling the internet for people's opinions. It's a rapid, web-based method for obtaining patient views on effects and side-effects of antidepressants.They designed a script to Google the names of several antidepressants in the context of someone who's taking them, and checks to see if they describe any side-effects.A large number of URLs were rapidly screened through Google Search™, using one server situated in Ohio, USA. T........ Read more »
Rizo C, Deshpande A, Ing A, & Seeman N. (2010) A rapid, Web-based method for obtaining patient views on effects and side-effects of antidepressants. Journal of affective disorders. PMID: 20705344
- August 15, 2010
- 06:47 PM
- 83 views
Is Your Brain Autistic?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
There's been a lot of buzz and some scepticism about theNew brain scan to diagnose autismHere's a quick overview. Autism is believed to be a disorder of brain development. If so, it should be possible to diagnose it based on a brain scan. Unfortunately, it's not. You can't tell, from a scan, whether someone has autism or not. Not even if you're a world expert.There are reports of various differences between autistic and non-autistic brains - a bit smaller here, a bit bigger there - but there's a........ Read more »
Ecker C, Marquand A, Mourão-Miranda J, Johnston P, Daly EM, Brammer MJ, Maltezos S, Murphy CM, Robertson D, Williams SC.... (2010) Describing the brain in autism in five dimensions--magnetic resonance imaging-assisted diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder using a multiparameter classification approach. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 30(32), 10612-23. PMID: 20702694
- August 12, 2010
- 06:09 PM
- 73 views
Drugs for Starcraft Addiction
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Are you addicted to Starcraft? Do you want to get off Battle.net and on a psychoactive drug?Well, South Korean psychiatrists Han et al report that Bupropion sustained release treatment decreases craving for video games and cue-induced brain activity in patients with Internet video game addiction.They took 11 people with "Internet Game Addiction" - the game being Starcraft, this being South Korea - and gave them the drug bupropion (Wellbutrin), an antidepressant that's also used in drug addiction........ Read more »
Han DH, Hwang JW, & Renshaw PF. (2010) Bupropion sustained release treatment decreases craving for video games and cue-induced brain activity in patients with Internet video game addiction. Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology, 18(4), 297-304. PMID: 20695685
- August 12, 2010
- 06:52 AM
- 105 views
Very Severely Stupid About Depression
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
An unassuming little paper in the latest Journal of Affective Disorders may change everything in the debate over antidepressants: Not as golden as standards should be: Interpretation of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression.Bear with me and I'll explain. It's less boring than it looks, trust me.The Hamilton Scale (HAMD) is the most common system for rating the severity of depression. If you're only a bit down you get a low score, if you're extremely ill you get a high one. The maximum score's........ Read more »
Kriston, L., & von Wolff, A. (2010) Not as golden as standards should be: Interpretation of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. Journal of Affective Disorders. DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2010.07.011
Kearns, N., Cruickshank, C., McGuigan, K., Riley, S., Shaw, S., & Snaith, R. (1982) A comparison of depression rating scales. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 141(1), 45-49. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.141.1.45
- August 10, 2010
- 02:02 PM
- 118 views
Hauser Of Cards
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A major scandal looks to be in progress involving Harvard Professor Marc Hauser, a psychologist and popular author whose research on the minds of chimpanzees and other primates is well-known and highly respected. The Boston Globe has the scoop and it's well worth a read (though you should avoid reading the comments if you react badly to stupid.)Hauser's built his career on detailed studies of the cognitive abilities of non-human primates. He's generally argued that our closest relatives are smar........ Read more »
Hauser MD, Weiss D, & Marcus G. (2002) Rule learning by cotton-top tamarins. Cognition, 86(1). PMID: 12208654
Hauser MD, Glynn D, & Wood J. (2007) Rhesus monkeys correctly read the goal-relevant gestures of a human agent. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 274(1620), 1913-8. PMID: 17540661
Wood JN, Glynn DD, Phillips BC, & Hauser MD. (2007) The perception of rational, goal-directed action in nonhuman primates. Science (New York, N.Y.), 317(5843), 1402-5. PMID: 17823353
Hauser MD, Kralik J, Botto-Mahan C, Garrett M, & Oser J. (1995) Self-recognition in primates: phylogeny and the salience of species-typical features. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 92(23), 10811-14. PMID: 7479889
- August 9, 2010
- 01:33 PM
- 45 views
Zapping Memory Better in Alzheimer's
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Last month I wrote about how electrical stimulation of the hippocampus causes temporary amnesia - Zapping Memories Away.Now Toronto neurologists Laxton et al have tried to use deep brain stimulation (DBS) to improve memory in people with Alzheimer's disease. Progressive loss of memory is the best-known symptom of this disorder, and while some drugs are available, they provide partial relief at best.This study stems from a chance discovery by the same Toronto group. In 2008, they reported that st........ Read more »
Laxton AW, Tang-Wai DF, McAndrews MP, Zumsteg D, Wennberg R, Keren R, Wherrett J, Naglie G, Hamani C, Smith GS.... (2010) A phase I trial of deep brain stimulation of memory circuits in Alzheimer's disease. Annals of neurology. PMID: 20687206
- August 5, 2010
- 10:13 AM
- 68 views
Publication Bias: Not Dead Yet
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Suppose you do two clinical trials of a drug, and only one of them shows it to work. It would be entirely misleading to only tell people about that one, and sweep the negative result under the carpet - but it happens.That's publication bias. A simple but powerful remedy is to require everyone to publically announce their trials before the data comes in. The USA has led the way in this, with the public clinicaltrials.gov database, and for several years it's been a legal requirement that all clini........ Read more »
Bourgeois FT, Murthy S, & Mandl KD. (2010) Outcome Reporting Among Drug Trials Registered in ClinicalTrials.gov. Annals of internal medicine, 153(3), 158-66. PMID: 20679560
- August 4, 2010
- 03:44 PM
- 77 views
Real Time fMRI
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Wouldn't it be cool if you could measure brain activation with fMRI... right as it happens?You could lie there in the scanner and watch your brain light up. Then you could watch your brain light up some more in response to seeing your brain light up, and watch it light up even more upon seeing your brain light up in response to seeing itself light up... like putting your brain between two mirrors and getting an infinite tunnel of activations.Ok, that would probably get boring, eventually. But th........ Read more »
Hinds, O., Ghosh, S., Thompson, T., Yoo, J., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Triantafyllou, C., & Gabrieli, J. (2010) Computing moment to moment BOLD activation for real-time neurofeedback. NeuroImage. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.07.060
- July 29, 2010
- 12:08 PM
- 113 views
The Left Hand of Obama
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Voters in the 2008 Presidential election didn't have a meaningful choice. Whichever box they ticked, they were voting for a lefty.Yes, Obama and McCain are both sinistral, a rather unlikely occurrence since just 7-10% of adults are left handed. Netherlands-based neuroscientists Casasanto and Jasmin decided to make use of this coincidence to test the hypothesis that people tend to make "good" gestures with their dominant hand and "bad" ones with their off-hand, in a new PLoS paper: Good and Bad i........ Read more »
Daniel Casasanto and Kyle Jasmin1. (2010) Good and Bad in the Hands of Politicians: Spontaneous Gestures during Positive and Negative Speech. PLoS ONE. info:/
- July 22, 2010
- 11:05 AM
- 84 views
Zapping Memories Away
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Imagine you're about to have to do something horrible or embarrasing, like say, admitting that you read Neuroskeptic. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to switch off your memory for a while, so you at least didn't have to remember it?Well, now you can, as long as you have electrodes implanted in your brain. Lacruz et al, based at London's Institute of Psychiatry, report that Single pulse electrical stimulation of the hippocampus is sufficient to impair human episodic memory.They took 12 people who ........ Read more »
Lacruz ME, Valentín A, Seoane JJ, Morris RG, Selway RP, & Alarcón G. (2010) Single pulse electrical stimulation of the hippocampus is sufficient to impair human episodic memory. Neuroscience. PMID: 20643192
- July 21, 2010
- 04:44 AM
- 90 views
Clever New Scheme
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
CNS Response are a California-based company who offer a high-tech new approach to the personalized treatment of depression: "referenced EEG" (rEEG). This is not to be confused with qEEG, which I have written about previously. What is rEEG? It involves taking an EEG recording of resting brain activity and sending it - along with a cheque, naturally - to CNS Response, who compare it to their database of over 1,800 psychiatric patients who likewise had EEGs taken before they started on various dru........ Read more »
DeBattista, C., Kinrys, G., Hoffman, D., Goldstein, C., Zajecka, J., Kocsis, J., Teicher, M., Potkin, S., Preda, A., & Multani, G. (2010) The use of referenced-EEG (rEEG) in assisting medication selection for the treatment of depression. Journal of Psychiatric Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.05.009
- July 14, 2010
- 10:49 AM
- 151 views
Autism And Wealth
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
We live in societies where some people are richer than others - though the extent of wealth inequality varies greatly around the world.In general, it's sad but true that poor people suffer more diseases. Within a given country almost all physical and mental illnesses are more common amongst the poor, although this isn't always true between countries.So if a certain disease is more common in rich people within a country, that's big news because it suggests that something unusual is going on. Aut........ Read more »
Durkin, M., Maenner, M., Meaney, F., Levy, S., DiGuiseppi, C., Nicholas, J., Kirby, R., Pinto-Martin, J., & Schieve, L. (2010) Socioeconomic Inequality in the Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from a U.S. Cross-Sectional Study. PLoS ONE, 5(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011551
- July 6, 2010
- 11:42 AM
- 118 views
Brain Stimulation Can Stop the Rock
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Isn't it annoying when you get a song stuck in your head? Like, say, this one:Stop the rock, stop the rockStop the rock, stop the rockStop the rock, can't stop the rockYou can't stop the rock, stop the rockStop the rock, can't stop the rockYou can't stop the rock, can't stop the rock. etc.- Apollo 440, "Stop the Rock"You will probably be stuck with that tune for a few minutes, but with any luck it'll go away eventually. However, for the 63-year old Italian man reported on in a new paper by Cosen........ Read more »
Cosentino, G., Giglia, G., Palermo, A., Panetta, M., Lo Baido, R., Brighina, F., & Fierro, B. (2010) A case of post-traumatic complex auditory hallucinosis treated with rTMS. Neurocase, 16(3), 267-272. DOI: 10.1080/13554790903456191
- July 5, 2010
- 08:29 AM
- 128 views
XMRV and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Continued (Again)
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Yet more twists have emerged in the already serpentine tale of XMRV, the virus that may or may not be responsible for causing some cases of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), aka myalgic encephalomyelitis, (ME).First off, on Saturday 2nd July, a news item in Science magazine reported that two papers on XMRV were about to be published, but that the publication of both was "on hold" because they contradicted each other. One paper, from the US federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC), supposedly foun........ Read more »
Switzer, W., Jia, H., Hohn, O., Zheng, H., Tang, S., Shankar, A., Bannert, N., Simmons, G., Hendry, R., Falkenberg, V.... (2010) Absence of evidence of Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-related virus infection in persons with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and healthy controls in the United States. Retrovirology, 7(1), 57. DOI: 10.1186/1742-4690-7-57
Enserink, M. (2010) Conflicting Papers on Hold as XMRV Frenzy Reaches New Heights. Science, 329(5987), 18-19. DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5987.18
- July 2, 2010
- 05:10 PM
- 149 views
It's Like Cocaine, But No Fun
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
In a very interesting paper, Dutch pharmaceutical company NeuroSearch, in conjunction with Canadian research corporation Kendle Early Stage, report on Subjective and Objective Effects of the Novel Triple Reuptake Inhibitor Tesofensine in Recreational Stimulant Users.Tesofensine is a drug NeuroSearch are developing for obesity, and they report that it's shown excellent weight-loss-inducing properties in early clinical trials, although of course they would say that. What makes "tes-fens" so inte........ Read more »
Schoedel, K., Meier, D., Chakraborty, B., Manniche, P., & Sellers, E. (2010) Subjective and Objective Effects of the Novel Triple Reuptake Inhibitor Tesofensine in Recreational Stimulant Users. Clinical Pharmacology , 88(1), 69-78. DOI: 10.1038/clpt.2010.67
- June 28, 2010
- 07:50 AM
- 124 views
When One Neurotransmitter Is Not Enough
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Important news from San Francisco neuroscientists Stuber et al: Dopaminergic Terminals in the Nucleus Accumbens But Not the Dorsal Striatum Corelease Glutamate.The finding's right there in the title: dopamine is a neurotransmitter, and so is glutamate. Stuber et al found (in mice) that many of the cells that release dopamine also simultaneously release glutamate - specifically, almost all of the cells that project to the nucleus accumbens, involved in pleasure and motivation, also release glutam........ Read more »
Stuber, G., Hnasko, T., Britt, J., Edwards, R., & Bonci, A. (2010) Dopaminergic Terminals in the Nucleus Accumbens But Not the Dorsal Striatum Corelease Glutamate. Journal of Neuroscience, 30(24), 8229-8233. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1754-10.2010
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