Tag: brain

Scientists encode memories in a way that bypasses damaged brain tissue

On By A.P.In brain computer interface, brain-machine interface, neural prosthetics, neuroprosthetic device, Neuroscience, The Future, The SingularityLeave a comment

Researchers at University of South Carolina (USC) and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have developed a brain prosthesis that is designed to help individuals suffering from memory loss.

The prosthesis, which includes a small array of electrodes implanted into the brain, has performed well in laboratory testing in animals and is currently being evaluated in human patients.

Designed originally at USC and tested at Wake Forest Baptist, the device builds on decades of research by Ted Berger and relies on a new algorithm created by Dong Song, both of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. The development also builds on more than a decade of collaboration with Sam Deadwyler and Robert Hampson of the Department of Physiology & Pharmacology of Wake Forest Baptist who have collected the neural data used to construct the models and algorithms.

When your brain receives the sensory input, it creates a memory in the form of a complex electrical signal that travels through multiple regions of the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. At each region, the signal is re-encoded until it reaches the final region as a wholly different signal that is sent off for long-term storage.

If there’s damage at any region that prevents this translation, then there is the possibility that long-term memory will not be formed. That’s why an individual with hippocampal damage (for example, due to Alzheimer’s disease) can recall events from a long time ago – things that were already translated into long-term memories before the brain damage occurred – but have difficulty forming new long-term memories.

Song and Berger found a way to accurately mimic how a memory is translated from short-term memory into long-term memory, using data obtained by Deadwyler and Hampson, first from animals, and then from humans. Their prosthesis is designed to bypass a damaged hippocampal section and provide the next region with the correctly translated memory.

That’s despite the fact that there is currently no way of “reading” a memory just by looking at its electrical signal.

“It’s like being able to translate from Spanish to French without being able to understand either language,” Berger said.

Their research was presented at the 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in Milan on August 27, 2015.

The effectiveness of the model was tested by the USC and Wake Forest Baptist teams. With the permission of patients who had electrodes implanted in their hippocampi to treat chronic seizures, Hampson and Deadwyler read the electrical signals created during memory formation at two regions of the hippocampus, then sent that information to Song and Berger to construct the model. The team then fed those signals into the model and read how the signals generated from the first region of the hippocampus were translated into signals generated by the second region of the hippocampus.

In hundreds of trials conducted with nine patients, the algorithm accurately predicted how the signals would be translated with about 90 percent accuracy.

“Being able to predict neural signals with the USC model suggests that it can be used to design a device to support or replace the function of a damaged part of the brain,” Hampson said.
Next, the team will attempt to send the translated signal back into the brain of a patient with damage at one of the regions in order to try to bypass the damage and enable the formation of an accurate long-term memory.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-09-scientists-bypass-brain-re-encoding-memories.html#nRlv

The human brain is particularly vulnerable to trauma at two distinct ages

On By A.P.In brainLeave a comment

Our brain’s ability to process information and adapt effectively is dependent on a number of factors, including genes, nutrition, and life experiences. These life experiences wield particular influence over the brain during a few sensitive periods when our most important muscle is most likely to undergo physical, chemical, and functional remodeling.

According to Tara Swart, a neuroscientist and senior lecturer at MIT, your “terrible twos” and those turbulent teen years are when the brain’s wiring is most malleable. As a result, traumatic experiences that occur during these time periods can alter brain activity and ultimately change gene expressions—sometimes for good.

Throughout the first two years of life, the brain develops at a rapid pace. However, around the second year, something important happens—babies begin to speak.

“We start to understand speech first, then we start to articulate speech ourselves and that’s a really complex thing that goes on in the brain,” Swart, who conducts ongoing research on the brain and how it affects how we become leaders, told Quartz. “Additionally, children start to walk—so from a physical point of view, that’s also a huge achievement for the brain.

Learning and understanding a new language forces your brain to work in new ways, connecting neurons and forming new pathways. This is a mentally taxing process, which is why learning a new language or musical instrument often feels exhausting.

With so many important changes happening to the brain in such a short period of time, physical or emotional trauma can cause potentially momentous interruptions to neurological development. Even though you won’t have any memories of the interruptions (most people can’t remember much before age five), any kind of traumatic event—whether it’s abuse, neglect, ill health, or separation from your loved ones—can lead to lasting behavioral and cognitive deficits later in life, warns Swart.

To make her point, Swart points to numerous studies on orphans in Romania during the 1980s and 1990s. After the nation’s communist regime collapsed, an economic decline swept throughout the region and 100,000 children found themselves in harsh, overcrowded government institutions.

“[The children] were perfectly well fed, clothed, washed, but for several reasons—one being that people didn’t want to spread germs—they were never cuddled or played with,” explains Swart. “There was a lot of evidence that these children grew up with some mental health problems and difficulty holding down jobs and staying in relationships.”

Swart continues: “When brain scanning became possible, they scanned the brains of these children who had grown up into adults and showed that they had issues in the limbic system, the part of the brain [that controls basic emotions].”

In short, your ability to maintain proper social skills and develop a sense of empathy is largely dependent on the physical affection, eye contact, and playtime of those early years. Even something as simple as observing facial expressions and understanding what those expressions mean is tied to your wellbeing as a toddler.

The research also found that the brains of the Romanian orphans had lower observable brain activity and were physically smaller than average. As a result, researchers concluded that children adopted into loving homes by age two have a much better chance of recovering from severe emotional trauma or disturbances.

The teenage years

By the time you hit your teenage years, the brain has typically reached its adult weight of about three pounds. Around this same time, the brain is starting to eliminate, or “prune” fragile connections and unused neural pathways. The process is similar to how one would prune a garden—cutting back the deadwood allows other plants to thrive.

During this period, the brain’s frontal lobes, especially the prefrontal cortex, experience increased activity and, for the first time, the brain is capable of comparing and analyzing several complex concepts at once. Similar to a baby learning how to speak, this period in an adolescent’s life is marked by a need for increasingly advanced communication skills and emotional maturity.

“At that age, they’re starting to become more understanding of social relationships and politics. It’s really sophisticated,” Swart noted. All of this brain activity is also a major reason why teenagers need so much sleep.

Swart’s research dovetails with the efforts of many other scientists who have spent decades attempting to understand how the brain develops, and when. The advent of MRIs and other brain-scanning technology has helped speed along this research, but scientists are still working to figure out what exactly the different parts of the brain do.

What is becoming more certain, however, is the importance of stability and safety in human development, and that such stability is tied to cognitive function. At any point in time, a single major interruption has the ability to throw off the intricate workings of our brain. We may not really understand how these events affect our lives until much later.

http://qz.com/470751/your-brain-is-particularly-vulnerable-to-trauma-at-two-distinct-ages/

Computers are now able to predict who will develop psychosis years later based on analysis of their speech patterns.

On By A.P.In Medicine, Neuropsychiatric Disease, Psychosis, schizophreniaLeave a comment

An automated speech analysis program correctly differentiated between at-risk young people who developed psychosis over a two-and-a-half year period and those who did not. In a proof-of-principle study, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center, New York State Psychiatric Institute, and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center found that the computerized analysis provided a more accurate classification than clinical ratings. The study, “Automated Analysis of Free Speech Predicts Psychosis Onset in High-Risk Youths,” was recently published in NPJ-Schizophrenia.

About one percent of the population between the age of 14 and 27 is considered to be at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. CHR individuals have symptoms such as unusual or tangential thinking, perceptual changes, and suspiciousness. About 20% will go on to experience a full-blown psychotic episode. Identifying who falls in that 20% category before psychosis occurs has been an elusive goal. Early identification could lead to intervention and support that could delay, mitigate or even prevent the onset of serious mental illness.
Speech provides a unique window into the mind, giving important clues about what people are thinking and feeling. Participants in the study took part in an open-ended, narrative interview in which they described their subjective experiences. These interviews were transcribed and then analyzed by computer for patterns of speech, including semantics (meaning) and syntax (structure).

The analysis established each patient’s semantic coherence (how well he or she stayed on topic), and syntactic structure, such as phrase length and use of determiner words that link the phrases. A clinical psychiatrist may intuitively recognize these signs of disorganized thoughts in a traditional interview, but a machine can augment what is heard by precisely measuring the variables. The participants were then followed for two and a half years.
The speech features that predicted psychosis onset included breaks in the flow of meaning from one sentence to the next, and speech that was characterized by shorter phrases with less elaboration. The speech classifier tool developed in this study to mechanically sort these specific, symptom-related features is striking for achieving 100% accuracy. The computer analysis correctly differentiated between the five individuals who later experienced a psychotic episode and the 29 who did not. These results suggest that this method may be able to identify thought disorder in its earliest, most subtle form, years before the onset of psychosis. Thought disorder is a key component of schizophrenia, but quantifying it has proved difficult.

For the field of schizophrenia research, and for psychiatry more broadly, this opens the possibility that new technology can aid in prognosis and diagnosis of severe mental disorders, and track treatment response. Automated speech analysis is inexpensive, portable, fast, and non-invasive. It has the potential to be a powerful tool that can complement clinical interviews and ratings.

Further research with a second, larger group of at-risk individuals is needed to see if this automated capacity to predict psychosis onset is both robust and reliable. Automated speech analysis used in conjunction with neuroimaging may also be useful in reaching a better understanding of early thought disorder, and the paths to develop treatments for it.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-08-psychosis-automated-speech-analysis.html

New evidence that sleeping on your side may be better for the brain

On By A.P.In brainLeave a comment

Removal of waste, including soluble amyloid β (Aβ), from the brain may be most efficient in the lateral vs. the prone position, according to an experimental study published in the August 5 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Hedok Lee, PhD, from Stony Brook University in New York, and colleagues examined whether body posture impacts cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)-interstitial fluid (ISF) exchange efficiency. They quantified CSF-ISF exchange rates using dynamic-contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and kinetic modeling in the brains of rodents in supine, prone, or lateral positions. Fluorescence microscopy and radioactive tracers were used to validate the MRI data and assess the influence of body posture on clearance of Aβ.

The researchers found that glymphatic transport was most efficient in the lateral vs. the supine or prone positions. Transport was characterized by “retention” of the tracer, slower clearance, and more CSF efflux along larger caliber cervical vessels in the prone position, in which the rat’s head was in the most upright position (mimicking posture during the awake state). Glymphatic transport and Aβ clearance were superior in the lateral and supine positions in optical imaging and radiotracer studies.

“We propose that the most popular sleep posture (lateral) has evolved to optimize waste removal during sleep and that posture must be considered in diagnostic imaging procedures developed in the future to assess CSF-ISF transport in humans,” the authors write.

The Healing Power of Caring and Hope in Psychotherapy

On By A.P.In psychiatrist, Psychiatry, psychologist, psychologyLeave a comment

By Allen Frances, MD

There are 3 consistent research findings that should make a world of difference to therapists and to the people they treat.

1. Psychotherapy works at least as well as drugs for most mild to moderate problems and, all things being equal, should be used first

2. A good relationship is much more important in promoting good outcome than the specific psychotherapy techniques that are used

3. There is a very high placebo response rate for all sorts of milder psychiatric and medical problems

This is partly a “time effect”—people come for help at particularly bad times in their lives and are likely to improve with time even if nothing is done. But placebo response also reflects the magical power of hope and expectation. And the effect is not just psychological—the body often actually responds to placebo just as it would respond to active medication.

These 3 findings add up to one crucial conclusion—the major focus of effective therapy should be to establish a powerfully healing relationship and to inspire hope. Specific techniques help when they enhance the primary focus on the relationship; they hurt when they distract from it.

The paradox is that therapists are increasingly schooled in specific techniques to the detriment of learning how to heal. The reason is clear—it is easy to manualize technique, hard to teach great healing.

I have, therefore, asked a great healer, Fanny Marell, a Swedish social worker and licensed psychotherapist, to share some of her secrets. Ms Marell writes:

Many therapists worry so much about assessing symptoms, performing techniques, and filling out forms that they miss the wonderful vibrancy of a strong therapeutic relationship.

Thinking I can help someone just by asking about concerns, troubles, and symptoms is like thinking that I can drive a car solely by looking in the rearview mirror. Dreams, hopes, and abilities are seen out of the front window of the car and help us together to navigate the road ahead. Where are we going? Which roads will you choose and why? It surely will not be the same roads I would take. We are different—we have to find your own best direction.

If we focus only on troubles and diagnosis, we lose the advantage of capitalizing on the person’s strengths and resources. If I am to help someone overcome symptoms, change behaviors, and climb out of difficult situations, I need to emphasize also all the positives he brings to the situation. Therapy without conversations about strengths and hopes is not real therapy.

And often most important: Does the patient have a sense of humor? Laugh together! Be human. No one wants a perfect therapist. It is neither credible nor human.

Symptom checklists and diagnoses play a role but they do not give me an understanding of how this person/patient understands his world and her troubles.

And don’t drown in manuals, missing the person while applying the technique.

People come to me discouraged and overwhelmed—their hopes and dreams abandoned. Early in our time together, I ask many detailed questions about how they would like life to change. What would you do during the day? Where would you live? What would your relationship to your family be like? What would you do in your spare time? What kind of social circle would you have? By getting detailed descriptions, I get concrete goals (eg, I want to go to school, argue less with my parents, spend more time with friends).

Almost always, working with the family is useful; sometimes it is absolutely necessary. What would be a good life for your child? How would it affect you?

Sometimes our dreams are big, perhaps even too extravagant; sometimes they are small and perhaps too cautious. But dreams always become more realistic and realizable when they are expressed. Sharing a dream and making it a treatment goal helps the person make a bigger investment in the treatment, and to take more responsibility for it. He becomes the driver and the therapist may sit in the back seat.

Because my first conversation is not just about symptoms and troubles, we start off on a basis of realistic hope and avoid a negative spiral dominated only by troubles. Problems have to be faced, but from a position of strength, not despair and helplessness.

Having a rounded view of the person’s problems and strengths enriches the therapeutic contact and creates a strong alliance.

Thanks, Ms Marell, for terrific advice. Some of the best natural therapists I have known have been ruined by psychotherapy training—becoming so preoccupied learning and implementing technique that they lost the healing warmth of their personalities.

Therapy should always be an exciting adventure, an intense meeting of hearts and minds. You can’t learn to be an effective therapist by reading a manual and applying it mechanically.

I would tell therapists I supervised never to apply what we discussed to their next session with the patient, lest they would always be a week behind. Therapy should be informed by technique, but not stultified by it.

See more at: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blogs/couch-crisis/magical-healing-power-caring-and-hope-psychotherapy?GUID=C523B8FD-3416-4DAC-8E3C-6E28DE36C515&rememberme=1&ts=16072015#sthash.2AOArvAW.dpuf

New study identifies potential new class of more rapidly acting antidepressant medications

On By A.P.In Depression, Medicine, Neuropsychiatric Disease, Psychiatry1 Comment

A new study by researchers at University of Maryland School of Medicine has identified promising compounds that could successfully treat depression in less than 24 hours while minimizing side effects. Although they have not yet been tested in people, the compounds could offer significant advantages over current antidepressant medications.

The research, led by Scott Thompson, PhD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM), was published this month in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

“Our results open up a whole new class of potential antidepressant medications,” said Dr. Thompson. “We have evidence that these compounds can relieve the devastating symptoms of depression in less than one day, and can do so in a way that limits some of the key disadvantages of current approaches.”

Currently, most people with depression take medications that increase levels of the neurochemical serotonin in the brain. The most common of these drugs, such as Prozac and Lexapro, are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. Unfortunately, SSRIs are effective in only a third of patients with depression. In addition, even when these drugs work, they typically take between three and eight weeks to relieve symptoms. As a result, patients often suffer for months before finding a medicine that makes them feel better. This is not only emotionally excruciating; in the case of patients who are suicidal, it can be deadly. Better treatments for depression are clearly needed.

Dr. Thompson and his team focused on another neurotransmitter besides serotonin, an inhibitory compound called GABA. Brain activity is determined by a balance of opposing excitatory and inhibitory communication between brain cells. Dr. Thompson and his team argue that in depression, excitatory messages in some brain regions are not strong enough. Because there is no safe way to directly strengthen excitatory communication, they examined a class of compounds that reduce the inhibitory messages sent via GABA. They predicted that these compounds would restore excitatory strength. These compounds, called GABA-NAMs, minimize unwanted side effects because they are precise: they work only in the parts of the brain that are essential for mood.

The researchers tested the compounds in rats that were subjected to chronic mild stress that caused the animals to act in ways that resemble human depression. Giving stressed rats GABA-NAMs successfully reversed experimental signs of a key symptom of depression, anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure. Remarkably, the beneficial effects of the compounds appeared within 24 hours – much faster than the multiple weeks needed for SSRIs to produce the same effects.

“These compounds produced the most dramatic effects in animal studies that we could have hoped for,” Dr. Thompson said. “It will now be tremendously exciting to find out whether they produce similar effects in depressed patients. If these compounds can quickly provide relief of the symptoms of human depression, such as suicidal thinking, it could revolutionize the way patients are treated.”

In tests on the rats’ brains, the researchers found that the compounds rapidly increased the strength of excitatory communication in regions that were weakened by stress and are thought to be weakened in human depression. No effects of the compound were detected in unstressed animals, raising hopes that they will not produce side effects in human patients.

“This work underscores the importance of basic research to our clinical future,” said Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, who is also the vice president for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean of the School of Medicine. “Dr. Thompson’s work lays the crucial groundwork to transform the treatment of depression and reduce the tragic loss of lives to suicide.”

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20150714/New-study-identifies-potential-antidepressant-medications-with-few-side-effects.aspx

Antidepressant Clinical Trials Exclude about 80% of People with Depression

On By A.P.In Depression, Neuropsychiatric Disease, PsychiatryLeave a comment

A provocative new study suggests that more than 80 percent of people with depression in the general population aren’t eligible for clinical trials of antidepressant drugs.

Researchers comment that at least five patients would need to be screened to enroll just one patient meeting the typical inclusion and exclusion criteria for antidepressant registration trials (ARTs).

Drs. Sheldon Preskorn and Matthew Macaluso of University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita and Dr. Madhukar Trivedi of Southwestern Medical School in Dallas led the study.

The investigation illuminates some major differences between patients with depression seen in everyday clinical practice and those enrolled in ARTs. This awareness is meaningful as ARTs commonly lead to FDA drug approval for depression medications.

The study appears in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice.

Antidepressant registration trials use certain inclusion and exclusion criteria to create a group of patients with similar characteristics. These criteria increase the chances of detecting true drug effects, while reducing “false signals” of safety problems or side effects.

For example, ARTs commonly exclude patients with other medical problems — if their illness worsened during the study, it might raise inaccurate safety concerns about the drug being studied.

To find out how these inclusion and exclusion criteria affect patient selection for ARTs, the researchers analyzed more than 4,000 patients from the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study.

Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, STAR*D was the largest and longest study of depression treatment ever conducted. To ensure that the “real world” population of patients with depression was represented, STAR*D used minimal exclusion criteria.

The researchers found that more than 82 percent of STAR*D patients would not be eligible for enrollment in current ARTs, based on a list of “usual” inclusion and exclusion criteria. Fourteen percent would be excluded on the basis of age alone–that’s because most ARTs exclude patients older than 65. Another 15 percent would be excluded because their depression was less severe than a commonly used cutoff point.

More than 20 percent of STAR*D patients would be excluded from ARTs because of a “clinically significant or unstable general medical condition.” Twenty-one percent of women would be excluded because they were not using birth control to prevent pregnancy during the study.

Because many ARTs use stricter criteria, the true exclusion rate is probably even higher, the authors note.

For example, more recent studies have used even higher severity thresholds for enrollment, which would eliminate more than 90 percent of the STAR*D population. The researchers also point out that all of the STAR*D patients had obviously agreed to participate in that research study — which is something many people with depression might be unwilling to do.

The researchers hope their work will help drug developers understand how inclusion and exclusion criteria may affect enrollment in ARTs, and help them in developing an appropriate recruitment plan and timeline.

“The timelines in most drug studies are unrealistically short and their recruitment plans are often woefully inadequate, resulting in studies that take longer than expected to complete and frequent budget overruns,” the researchers write.

Failure to consider the effort needed for ART recruitment might lead to lost revenue, delays in bringing a drug to market, or failure to develop a potentially effective medication.

The findings may also help to explain to healthcare practitioners why ARTs tend to overestimate the benefits of antidepressant treatment in “real world” patients with depression. “Obviously,” the researchers add, “the more patients who are excluded from the ARTs, the greater the chances that the results will not generalize to the routine clinical practice.”

http://psychcentral.com/news/2015/07/15/antidepressant-clinical-trials-exclude-many-people-with-depression/86887.html

Analysis of an artist’s drawings as he proceeds through LSD hallucinogenic experience

On By A.P.In UncategorizedLeave a comment

The following nine drawings were made a half century ago by an artist under the influence of LSD, or acid, during an experiment designed to investigate the psychedelic drug’s effects . The unnamed artist was given two 50-microgram doses of LSD, one 65 minutes after the other, and had access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. The subject of his art was the assisting doctor who administered the drug. Though records of the identity of the principal researcher have been lost, it was probably a University of California-Irvine psychiatrist, Oscar Janiger. Janiger, known for his LSD research, died in 2001.

“I believe the pictures are from an experiment conducted by the psychiatrist Oscar Janiger starting in 1954 and continuing for seven years, during which time he gave LSD to over 100 professional artists and measured its effects on their artistic output and creative ability. Over 250 drawings and paintings were produced,” said Andrew Sewell, a physician at Yale School of Medicine who has done research on psychedelic drugs.

During the experiment, the artist reported how he felt the acid was affecting him as he drew each sketch. To add some modern understanding of how LSD affects the brain to the artist’s scrawlings, we reached out to Sewell and a few other psychologists for insight on what was probably going on in the artist’s head.

Attending doctor’s observations: The first drawing is done 20 minutes after the first dose. Patient chooses to start drawing with charcoal.

Artist’s Comment: “Condition normal … no effect from the drug yet.”

Analysis: According to Duncan Blewett and Nick Chwelos, psychiatrists who conducted extensive LSD research in the 1950s, symptoms set in sometime between 15 minutes and two hours after taking the drug, and usually after about half an hour.

“The period of waiting for the drug to have an effect is important, since the psychological set which is established at that time can determine much of what follows,” they wrote in 1959 in “The Handbook for the Therapeutic Use of LSD.” “Boredom on the part of either the subject or therapist must be avoided. The therapist should also aim at preventing the development of a pattern in which the subject is waiting intently for any change which might be ascribed to the drug. Finally, the therapist should be particularly careful to prevent the build-up of apprehension in the subject.”

Observations: Eighty-five minutes after first dose, 20 minutes after second dose. The patient seems euphoric.

Artist’s comment: “I can see you clearly, so clearly. This… you… it’s all … I’m having a little trouble controlling this pencil. It seems to want to keep going.”

Analysis: Research suggests that “LSD experiences may wildly enhance artists’ creative potential without necessarily enhancing the mechanisms needed to harness that creativity toward artistic ends,” anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios wrote in her book “LSD, Spirituality and the Creative Process” (Park Street Press, 2003).

In other words, artistic technique doesn’t necessarily keep pace with the flow of ideas during an acid trip. But practice can help. “With practice, most of Janinger’s artists became adept at working under its influence,” said Sewell.

Observations: Two hours, 30 minutes after first dose, 85 minutes after second dose. The patient appears very focused on the business of drawing.

Artist’s comment: “Outlines seem normal, but very vivid everything is changing color. My hand must follow the bold sweep of the lines. I feel as if my consciousness is situated in the part of my body that’s now active my hand, my elbow… my tongue.”

Analysis: “Janiger believed that LSD favored the prepared mind and that formal artist training would be the best preparation to handle the creative explosion that came from LSD use,” Sewell told Life’s Little Mysteries. “He ultimately concluded that the art was no better or worse, but it was different. LSD is not a creativity tool, nor does it unlock creativity. Rather, it makes accessible parts of the individual not normally available.

“People who are already artists or craftsmen when they take LSD benefit from it, but uncreative people are not suddenly made so. He also concluded that although LSD could be a powerful instrument to free the artist from conceptual ruts, it did little to facilitate the development of technique.”

Observations: Two hours, 32 minutes after first dose. The patient seems gripped by his pad of paper.

Artist’s comment: “I’m trying another drawing. The outlines of the model are normal, but now those of my drawing are not. The outline of my hand is going weird, too. It’s not a very good drawing, is it? I give up I’ll try again …”

Analysis: When under the influence of LSD, “some people describe a kind of frustration with language or art that does not allow for a 3-D experience ,” Erika Dyck, medical historian and author of the book “Psychedelic Psychiatry” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), told Life’s Little Mysteries.

Observations: Two hours, 35 minutes after first dose. The patient follows quickly with another drawing. Upon completing it, he starts laughing, then becomes startled by something on the floor.

Artist’s comment: “I’ll do a drawing in one flourish … without stopping … one line, no break!’

Analysis: “Paintings produced under the influence of LSD tend to have the following characteristics,” Sewell said. “The artist’s work tends to fill all available space and resists being contained within its borders; alternately, figures may shrink or become embedded in a matrix. Figure and ground becomes a continuum, with less differentiation between object and subject. The object is in continuous movement, with greater vibrancy and motion. There is greater intensity of color and light. There is an elimination of detail and extraneous elements. Objects may be depicted symbolically or as abstractions. They may also become more fragmented, disorganized, and distorted.”

Observations: Two hours, 45 minutes after first dose. The patient tries to climb into the activity box, and is generally agitated responds slowly to the suggestion that he might like to draw some more. He has become largely nonverbal. Patient mumbles inaudibly to a tune (sounds like “Thanks for the Memory”). He changes medium to tempera.

Artist’s comment: “I am … everything is … changed … They’re calling … your face … interwoven … who is…”

Analysis: “Common reactions to LSD include a retreat into often less verbal forms of communication, more abstract ideas,” Dyck said, “or, at the very least, ideas that are difficult to describe or even paint in a conventional way.”

Observations: Four hours, 25 minutes after the first dose. The patient retreated to the bunk, spending approximately two hours lying, waving his hands in the air. His return to the activity box is sudden and deliberate, changing media to pen and watercolor. He makes the last half-a-dozen strokes of the drawing while running back and forth across the room.

Artist’s comment: “This will be the best drawing, like the first one, only better. If I’m not careful I’ll lose control of my movements, but I won’t, because I know, I know.” [Repeats “I know” several more times.]

Analysis: A group of Italian scientists led by G. Tonini also investigated LSD-influenced art making. “When done under the influence of these drugs, [the art] reflected psychopathological manifestations markedly similar to those observed in schizophrenia,” Tonini wrote in 1955.

Observations: Five hours, 45 minutes after the first dose. The patient continues to move about the room, intersecting the space in complex variations. It’s an hour and a half before he settles down to draw again he appears to be over the effects of the drug.

Artist’s comment: “I can feel my knees again; I think it’s starting to wear off. This is a pretty good drawing this pencil is mighty hard to hold.” (He is holding a crayon.)

Analysis: “LSD can give people a different perspective than the one they usually have,” Sewell said. “What they do with that is up to them. It is not a ‘creativity pill.’ The best analogy is travel. It can broaden the mind … or not. It depends where you go and what you do there.”

Observations: Eight hours after the first dose. The patient sits on the bunk bed. He reports that the intoxication has worn off except for the occasional distorting of our faces. We ask for a final drawing, which he performs with little enthusiasm.

Artist’s comment: “I have nothing to say about this last drawing. It is bad and uninteresting. I want to go home now.”

Analysis: In a later interview, Janiger said that after the artists in his studies were done tripping, “99 percent expressed the notion that this was an extraordinary, valuable tool for learning about art and the way one learns about painting or drawing. Almost all personally agreed they would take it again.”

“In 1971, Carl Hertzel, a professor of art history at Pitzer College in Claremont, undertook a stylistic assessment of the artwork, which was published by the Lang Art Gallery also in 1971,” Sewell said. “In 1986, 25 of the original artists participated in an exhibit called, ‘The Enchanted Loom: LSD and Creativity’ in which they commented on their own artwork, mostly positively.”

http://www.livescience.com/33166-slideshow-scientists-analyze-drawings-acid-trip-artist.html

How LSD works in the brain

On By A.P.In ayahuasca, DMT, Drugs, hallucinogen, ibogaine, LSD, lysergic acid diethylamaide, mescaline, Neuroscience, peyote, psilocin, Psilocybin, salvia divinorumLeave a comment

by Natalie Wolchover

The main theory of psychedelics, first fleshed out by a Swiss researcher named Franz Vollenweider, is that drugs like LSD and psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms, tune down the thalamus’ activity. Essentially, the thalamus on a psychedelic drug lets unprocessed information through to consciousness, like a bad email spam filter. “Colors become brighter , people see things they never noticed before and make associations that they never made before,” Sewell said.

LSD, or acid, and its mind-bending effects have been made famous by pop culture hits like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” a film about the psychedelic escapades of writer Hunter S. Thompson. Oversaturated colors, swirling walls and intense emotions all supposedly come into play when you’re tripping. But how does acid make people trip?

Life’s Little Mysteries asked Andrew Sewell, a Yale psychiatrist and one of the few U.S.-based psychedelic drug researchers, to explain why LSD short for lysergic acid diethylamide does what it does to the brain.

His explanation begins with a brief rundown of how the brain processes information under normal circumstances. It all starts in the thalamus, a node perched on top of the brain stem, right smack dab in the middle of the brain. “Most sensory impressions are routed through the thalamus, which acts as a gatekeeper, determining what’s relevant and what isn’t and deciding where the signals should go,” Sewell said.

“Consequently, your perception of the world is governed by a combination of ‘bottom-up’ processing, starting … with incoming signals, combined with ‘top-down’ processing, in which selective filters are applied by your brain to cut down the overwhelming amount of information to a more manageable and relevant subset that you can then make decisions about.

“In other words, people tend to see what they’ve been trained to see, and hear what they’ve been trained to hear.”

The main theory of psychedelics, first fleshed out by a Swiss researcher named Franz Vollenweider, is that drugs like LSD and psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms, tune down the thalamus’ activity. Essentially, the thalamus on a psychedelic drug lets unprocessed information through to consciousness, like a bad email spam filter. “Colors become brighter , people see things they never noticed before and make associations that they never made before,” Sewell said.

n a recent paper advocating the revival of psychedelic drug research, psychiatrist Ben Sessa of the University of Bristol in England explained the benefits that psychedelics lend to creativity. “A particular feature of the experience is … a general increase in complexity and openness, such that the usual ego-bound restraints that allow humans to accept given pre-conceived ideas about themselves and the world around them are necessarily challenged. Another important feature is the tendency for users to assign unique and novel meanings to their experience together with an appreciation that they are part of a bigger, universal cosmic oneness.”

But according to Sewell, these unique feelings and experiences come at a price: “disorganization, and an increased likelihood of being overwhelmed.” At least until the drugs wear off, and then you’re left just trying to make sense of it all.

http://www.livescience.com/33167-how-acid-lsd-make-people-trip.html?li_source=pm&li_medium=most-popular&li_campaign=related_test

Medication for Parkinson’s disease shown to lower morality and increase willingness to harm others

On By A.P.In Depression, morality, neurodegeneration, Neurology, Neuropsychiatric Disease, Parkinson's disease, Psychiatry, psychologist, psychology, psychopath, psychopathic personality, psychopathyLeave a comment


Healthy people who are given commonly prescribed mood-altering drugs see significant changes in the degree to which they are willing to tolerate harm against themselves and others, according to a study published Thursday. The research has implications for understanding human morality and decision-making.

A team of scientists from the University College London (UCL) and Oxford University found that healthy people who were given the serotonin-boosting antidepressant citalopram were willing to pay twice as much to prevent harm to themselves or others, compared to those given a placebo. By contrast, those who were given a dose of the dopamine-enhancing Parkinson’s drug levodopa made more selfish decisions, overcoming an existing tendency to prefer harming themselves over others.

The researchers said their findings, published in the journal Current Biology, provided clues to the neurological and chemical roots of common clinical disorders like psychopathy, which causes people to disregard the emotions of others.

The researchers compared how much pain subjects were willing to anonymously inflict on themselves or other people in exchange for money. Out of 175 subjects, 89 were given citalopram or a placebo and 86 were given levodopa or a placebo.

They were anonymously paired up into decision-makers and receivers, and all subjects were given shocks at their pain threshold. The decision-makers were then allowed to choose a different amount of money in exchange for a different amount of shocks, either to themselves or the receivers.

On average, people who were given a placebo were willing to pay about 35p per shock to prevent harm to themselves and 44p per shock to prevent harm to others. Those who were given citalopram became more averse to harm, paying an average of 60p to avoid harm to themselves and 73p per shock to avoid harm to others. This meant that citalopram users, on average, delivered 30 fewer shocks to themselves and 35 fewer shocks to others.

However, those who were given levodopa became more selfish, showing no difference in the amount they were willing to pay to prevent shocks to themselves or others. On average, they were willing to pay about 35p per shock to prevent harm to themselves or others, meaning that they delivered on average about 10 more shocks to others during the trial than those who took a placebo. They also showed less hesitation about shocking others than those given the placebo.

Similar research conducted by the same team in November found that subjects were willing to spare the stranger pain twice as often as they spared themselves, indicating that they preferred harming themselves over others for profit, a behavior known as “hyper-altruism.”

“Our findings have implications for potential lines of treatment for antisocial behavior, as they help us to understand how serotonin and dopamine affect people’s willingness to harm others for personal gain,” Molly Crockett of UCL, the study’s lead author, said in a press release. “We have shown that commonly-prescribed psychiatric drugs influence moral decisions in healthy people, raising important ethical questions about the use of such drugs.

“It is important to stress, however, that these drugs may have different effects in psychiatric patients compared to healthy people. More research is needed to determine whether these drugs affect moral decisions in people who take them for medical reasons.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/antidepressants-affect-morality-decision-making-new-study-finds-1995363