The picture above is apparently what RNF123 looks like!

Dreams, drugs, intelligence, memory, infant brains, psychoanalysis, human evolution and many more – Loads of online broadcasts from Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ Radio 4 series to be found here – all free – it makes one proud to be a licence payer….

The big news is that there was no overlap between the depression genes and the stress genes. This suggests that the idea that stress causes depression may be wrong. And, furthermore, she claims the reason antidepressants are often ineffective is because they treat stress and not depression and she has now shown that the two are not linked, though they may co-occur. So that’s one reason why antidepressants only work for some people (those suffering from stress and depression). Before you say ‘ah well, this is just an effect in rats’, Redei claims that rat brains are very similar to human brains, so it is reasonably to draw analogies. It also may explain why we like cheese. (No, that last bit was a joke).

DNA analysis of thousands of people in three separate studies has shown that the disorder is linked to the interaction of a large number of genetic variants on chromosome 6, in an area called the Major Histocompatability Complex which has one role in the immune system and another in controlling the switching on or off of other genes.

How many variants are there? Well, over 30,000 were identified as being much more common in schizophrenics than non-schizophrenics apart from people with bipolar disorder.

So not only is the genetics of schizophrenia far more complex than had been thought, environmental influences are also involved, but there could be a previously unexpected overlap between the two psychopathologies, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (manic depression).

But the simple Vulcan salute left makers of the new Star Trek film with a galactic-sized headache – because Mr Spock just couldn’t do it.

After much head-scratching, experts on the $150 million blockbuster – which boasts stunning high-tech effects – hit upon a low-tech but logical solution – gluing actor Zachary Quinto’s fingers together, The Mail on Sunday newspaper in the UK reports.

Quinto, 31, admitted he found it impossible to form his fingers into the distinctive V-shaped gesture, saying: “It’s much harder than it looks. Seriously.”

One on-set insider said: “Zach could do the salute some of the time but only after he’d positioned his fingers the right way off-camera.

“In some scenes he has to do the salute while speaking his lines so they ended up using skin-protective superglue, like they use in hospitals, to stick his fingers together.”

William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in the long-running TV show and the first seven Star Trek films, was also unable to do the salute, so he used fishing line to tie his fingers together”. (Link)

So what’s going on there then? If the first Spock had Vulcan Hand Signal Ability (hereafter referred to a ‘VHSA’) why not the new guy?

Is it a genetic thing like tongue rolling? You’ve got the gene or you haven’t? Or is it a learnt thing like juggling or tying shoelaces? Once you’ve got the enactive ‘muscle memory’ in place you don’t have to think about VHSA anymore? Surely if it was a practice thing then the new Spock would beat himself up trying to master this skill…. I’m sure Christian Bale would put the effort in if he found himself in such a position.

My own limited research during lunch today indicates that it does get easier with practice, but you still have to think about the physical position of your fingers quite a lot. It also seems to help if you position your fingers whilst your arms are lowered and then raise them, but I’m not sure it looks as cool. So I don’t know… maybe I’ve just got the VHSA gene. But if I have, what possible evolutionary advantage could that have? I’m pretty certain that the ability to mimic characters from Star Trek is unlikely to enhance one’s reproductive potential……

(Couldn’t quite work out where this fitted in on the syllabus, but obviously had to get it in somewhere so, if you click on the ‘see rest of post’ link below, it’ll take you to the “VHSA Research Methods Worksheet”).

THE VULCAN HAND SIGNAL ABILITY (VHSA) RESEARCH METHODS WORKSHEET

(Cut and paste these questions into a word doc, paste in a picture of Spock… job done)

There are many ‘correct’ answers to these questions. It’s just to get you thinking. It’s ok, as long as you make some decisions and can explain why you made those decisions.

1) What type of research would you use to investigate the idea that VHSA might be, at least in part, genetic? What kind of data would you be looking for? If VHSA is genetic, what sort of patterns or links should we find? Where? What type of research participants would you use? How many? What would your target population be? How would you select your sample of participants?

2) What type of research would you do to determine whether VHSA could be learnt? Propose a hypothesis that you could test. What would your dependent and independent variables be? How would you ‘operationalise’ VHSA? What would your results look like? How would they be presented or displayed?

This is based on American research using rhesus macaque monkeys because they are the only other primates with a particular genetic trait. Usually we are homozygous for this  emotion-regulating serotonin transporter gene, having either two long (L/L) or two short (S/S) versions. But previous research has shown that there are a few people - more common in those of Asian descent – who are heterozygous and have social anxiety and similar behaviours. Rhesus macaque monkeys are the only other primates with this genetic trait. The research showed that those with the S/L version spent less time looking directly at the faces and eyes of other monkeys, and were less likely to want to look at a picture of a high-status male monkey, and also were less likely to be risk takers, than those who were homozygous.

Platt says, “For both human and non-human primates, faces and eyes are a rich source of social information, and it’s well-established that both humans and macaques tend to direct visual attention to faces, especially the eye region. Rhesus monkeys live in highly despotic societies and convey social rank information by making threats and showing dominant and submissive behaviors.”

The findings could give researchers a new model to help in studying social anxiety, and perhaps more serious disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

According to Watson, “Altogether, our data show that genetic variation in serotonin function does contribute to social reward and punishment in macaques, and thus shapes social behavior in both humans and rhesus macaques. This study confirms rhesus monkeys can serve as a model of what goes on in our brains, even in the case of social behavior.”

How similar are we to primates such as rhesus monkeys?

What are the arguments fordoing psychological research on animals such as these, and what are the arguments against this?

Researchers in Germany and the USA have been studying why some people develop PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) but others, in the same traumatic circumstances, don’t get the disorder and manage to cope with just bad memories.

The answer appears to be nature, not nurture, and is linked to one of the permissive amines, dopamine. People who carry a fairly common variation of a dopamine gene known as COMT show an exaggerated “startle” reflex when they view unpleasant scenes or pictures, and this makes it harder for them to control or regulate their emotional response or arousal.  This variant increases the sensitivity of these individuals, and with other genetic and environmental factors involved these people are more prone to develop anxiety disorders such as PTSD.

COMT codes for an enzyme which breaks down dopamine, which means that the enzyme damps down the dopamine’s effect.  There are two variants or alleles of this gene, Val158 and Met158. Approximately half the population carries one of each, they are heterozygous. The other half are homozygous; about a quarter have two Vals, and a quarter have two Mets.

The sample was a group of 96 young women, average age 22 years. They were shown some happy pictures, animals or babies; neutral pictures, household items; and upsetting pictures such as weapons or injured crime victims. There were 12 pictures of each type, each with a 6 second duration. At random intervals a loud noise sounded as a startle probe, and the startle response to this was measured from contractions of the eye-blink muscles.

The two-Met women showed a significantly stronger startle reflex to the noise and more general anxiety than the Val-Met or two-Val women. This suggests that the Met alleles code for less dopamine-destroying enzyme and so in these individuals their dopamine levels are higher and could last longer than in the other two types. More dopamine in the pre-frontal cortex and limbic system (areas associated with emotional arousal, memory and attention) could cause these people to focus on emotionally arousing stimuli,and be unable to tear their eyes or attention away. This could lead to greater upset and a more serious anxiety, or even an anxiety disorder.

This conclusion is only a suggestion, it is a hypothetical construct. But it is interesting that only humans amongst the primates have these alleles. The other primates, such as chimpanzees, have just the two-Val combination, so this indicates the Met allele is a relatively recent – in evolutionary terms – mutation.

Now why might it have been adaptive, beneficial, for our ancient ancestors to have this extra allele, so that it is was passed down the generations? Why might being two-Met have helped survival?

Montag, C., Buckholtz, J.W., Hartmann, P., Merz, M., Burk, C., Hennig, J. and Reuter, M. (2008) COMT Genetic Variation Affects Fear Processing: Psychophysiological Evidence,  Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol 122, No. 4