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Antipsychotic drugs

May 20, 2013 by .

flat,550x550,075,fA German study just published by Moritz and colleagues provides an interesting insight into antipsychotic drugs used in the treatment of schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses. Data was collected by asking psychiatric patients to complete a questionnaire about their experiences in taking antipsychotic medication for their mental disorder. The conclusion was that such drugs are effective because they dampen emotion rather than treating any specific symptoms. ‘Doubt, numbing and withdrawal were the main subjective antipsychotic effects’. Basically such drugs just keep patients quiet – an effect which many patients find unpleasant. One reviewer says ‘It is clear we need better ways to help people’.

You can read fuller details of the study here (which contains some evaluative points) and here.

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Spot the mistake

May 14, 2013 by .

I came across this rather fun little study:428357-man-leaning-on-his-guitar-case

This experiment tested the assumption that music plays a role in sexual selection. Three hundred young women were solicited in the street for their phone number by a young male confederate who held either a guitar case or a sports bag in his hands or had no bag at all. Results showed that holding a guitar case was associated with greater compliance to the request, thus suggesting that musical practice is associated with sexual selection. (Guéguen et al., see here).

Interesting conclusion – but is it justified?

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IDA

May 3, 2013 by .

AQA A A2 students are encouraged to include evaluation points relating to issues, debates and/or approaches. Common debates include determinism/free will and reductionism a. Popular issues include gender bias and cultural bias. The following comments from the AQA Report on the Examination provide some very useful advice for students on these debates/issues;

January 2013 report: Determinism

All explanations/theories in psychology are determinist, as they are trying to explain the reason people do things. 2008-11-05-determinism.jpg.pagespeed.ce.18t5oDdlxISo referring to any particular theory as ‘determinist’ is trivial. It is only in specific areas that it becomes an important issue e.g. evolutionary and genetic theories of aggression suggest that individuals do not have free will and choice Read the rest of this entry »

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Ganzfeld experiments

April 30, 2013 by .

The excellent Brian Dunning has produced a podcast in his Skeptics series on Ganzfeld experiments, see here.

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Daily hassles

April 29, 2013 by .

A team of Californian researchers, led by Susan Charles, recently published a study linking daily hassles to depression (Charles et al., 2013). A group of just over 700 participants were studied for eight consecutive days. On each day they reported daily hassles and also how negative they were feeling. Ten years later the same participants were re-assessed. The researchers found that those participants who experienced negative emotions on days with high levels of daily hassles were more likely to be depressed. This suggests that people who are stressed by their daily hassles are more likely to suffer from mental health issues later in life.

 

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Research into paranormal experience

April 17, 2013 by .

I’ll say at the outset that I am not a believer in paranormal phenomena – but the research reported below shows that we should always keep an open mind. There may be quite rational explanations for some supposedly paranormal (or anomalistic) experiences. Then, of course, they are not anomalistic after all.

aura1Some people claim to be able to see a halo or aura around other people – a kind of glow, which is often colourful. Recent research has offered a possible explanation for this based on synthesthesia, a condition where people experience crossing between their senses. In other words the stimulation of one of their senses causes a perception in one or more different senses. The consequence is that, for example, different words have specific colours or ‘taste’ different.

The well-known neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran tested a 23-year-old young man (TK) who has both synesthesia and Asperger disorder (see here). TK also claimed to see a coloured light around people that varied with their emotions. When TK observed one of the volunteers he reported seeing a blue aura. When they stood the volunteer in front of a white screen TK was slower to identify blue letters projected onto the apparent blue aura but had no difficulty with orange letters. People without synestheia had no difficulty reporting letters of any colour. This suggests that the perception of an aura may be explained as a form of synesthesia.

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Psychological treatment for schizophrenia

April 8, 2013 by .

Family interventionA few months ago there was an item on this blog about the comments on AQA A markschemes that stated that answers using psychoanalysis as a psychological therapy for schizophrenia would be unlikely to gain high marks. We do not believe this is a justifiable position. However, regardless of whether the board is right or wrong in their position, we plan to update our textbook to include a different therapy – family intervention. We also are providing a copy of this insert free, click family intervention to download.

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A different way to treat depression

April 5, 2013 by .

i-6a041a6d7ab2fae892dcac5e57f13dbb-soussignan1Some of you will be familiar with research that shows that emotional feelings can be triggered by the body, rather than the other way round. We are happy because we smile, rather than smiling because we are happy. For example, if people put a pencil between their teeth and are asked to rate a cartoon or video, they find them funnier than people who place a pencil between their lips (try it and see which is more like a smile). See here for descriptions of such studies.

989BoFig2An American dermatological surgeon, Eric Finzi, has applied this to the treatment of depression. He injects botox into the ‘frowning’ muscle of depressed patients (the corrugator muscle) to prevent it contracting. He suggests that people can cure themselves by just looking happy and has success stories to support this, documented in his book The Face of Emotion: How botox affects our mood and relationships.

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Publication bias

March 30, 2013 by .

ThompsonAn interesting analysis was recently published showing that the Russell group of Universities have a strong tendency to publish research with significant findings only. Actually a ‘strong tendency’ is an understatement. The analysis found, for example, that researchers from the University of Birmingham published 119 pieces of research during the study period of which only 9% had non-significant findings.

What is especially remarkable about this piece of research is that it is by a sixth form student, Chloë Thompson from The Becket Sixth Form in Nottingham. She did work experience with Clive Adams at Nottingham University, who also works with the Schizophrenia Group of the Cochrane Library (a huge free-to-access database of research on medical and health issues).

The value of this research is that it supports the current pressure on medical research institutions to publish all of their results, not just the positive ones, so that doctors have a truer picture of findings. This is a movement spearheaded by Ben Goldacre in his recent book Bad Pharma.

 

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Obedience to authority

March 24, 2013 by .

compliance-movie-poster-slice1Some of you may be familiar with the MacDonald’s incident of 2005 where a hoax caller masqueraded as a policeman and delivered orders over the phone. Astonishingly he was obeyed despite the extreme nature of his instructions (read about the event here). I recently gave a talk in London including this event in my talk and one of the teachers directed my attention to a new film Compliance, which tells the story of the incident.

In my talk I distinguished between obedience in situations such as the MacDonald’s incident, which can be explained in terms of agentic shift and socialisation to obey orders from an authority figure, and obedience to the directions of the Nazi regime which can’t be explained in this way – Haslam and Reicher re-analysed Milgram’s original data (see here) and concluded that participants were identifying with the science of the experiments, which is why they obeyed, not because they were ‘just following orders’.

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