Fetal Hypothalamus Controls Mother’s Contractions
By swivelchair | June 25, 2008
The fetus tells the mother when it is ready to be born when its hypothalamus becomes activated — probably releasing oxytocin, which reacts with the mother’s oxytocin receptors - not in the mother’s brain, but in the womb lining cells. Interesting.
Stimulation of Fetal Hypothalamus Induces Uterine Contractions in Pregnant
Rats at Term
Hisashi Endoh1,2, Takashi Fujioka1, Hideki Endou1, Yukiko Inazuka1, Susumu Furukawa2 and
Shoji Nakamura1
1Department of Neuroscience and 2Department of Reproductive, Pediatric, and Infection Science,
Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi 755-8505, Japan
Short title: Fetal brain induced maternal uterine contraction Summary sentence: Activation of the fetal hypothalamus induces uterine contractions through oxytocin receptors in term pregnant rats.
DOI:10.1095/biolreprod.108.069120
Topics: Analytical methods, Bonding, Brain anatomy, Love, Nature vs. nurture | No Comments »
Microsoft Sevice Pack 3 is Evil
By swivelchair | June 25, 2008
It took me (since I don’t have an IT department) over 6 hours to upload Service Pack 3 and figure out how to get it to talk to my antivirus software and then my wireless unsecured network was refusing to recognize me. Then, it turns out that you also have to upload the newest flash player to re-do the damage done by Service Pack 3’s old flash player which has some kind of security defect or something. And that was on one desktop computer. This is probably the best advertising for Google ever.
Sphere: Related ContentTopics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday Dysfunctional Roundup: Corporate Fraud Version
By swivelchair | June 20, 2008
If you’ve worked at a company, you could go on all day about the dysfunction — but in the end, in any hierarchy, you survive by making decisions based on self-preservation, rather than good of the organization as a whole. So, once a company becomes successful, it is doomed to wallow in its own waste, because the people running it don’t want to give up the gig. To steal a short explanation from a former biopharma general counsel, “money attracts flies.”
So, it’s a Big Lie is that people running things know what they’re doing. So how do they get in charge? I’ve blogged about potential reasons for this before, for instance, here, discussing Mr. Ican’s view of corporate CEO’s (which he now blogs here, and sadly, has to have sanitized and lawyered up . No worries, the factually unsupported accusations chez Neurological Correlates, le dernier cri du rants about corporate narcissism and bullying can make up for whatever would be taken out. )
And how do these incompetent leaders get followers? Here’s the typical conversation:
Technical worker, “Let’s develop this technology, it works great and has a market.”
Boss, “No”
What Boss is thinking, “If I say ‘yes’, I’ll be wrong 50% of the time. If I say ‘no’, I’ll be correct 100% of the time. I don’t want to take a chance on getting fired, so I’ll just always say ‘no’ until my boss tells me to say ‘yes.’”
Anyway, maybe because the prosecutors have spent all spring putting together the cases and now want to go on vacation, the corporate fraud news is front and center, lots of perp walks — here it is, your Friday Dysfunctional Roundup.
![\](http://neurologicalcorrelates.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/grandville-metamorphosis-1.jpg "Grandville - Metamorphosis (\")
Hundreds Arrested in Mortgage Fraud Sweep
By JASON RYAN More than 400 people have been arrested since March as part of a sweeping Justice Department crackdown on alleged mortgage fraud schemes. …
Houston Chronicle, United States - 14 hours ago
The company announcement said Frank A. Bennack Jr., Ganzi’s predecessor, would resume those duties while the board of directors forms a search committee to …
Ex-Bear Stearns Fund Managers Indicted for Fraud (Update3)
Bloomberg - 41 minutes ago
By Patricia Hurtado and Thom Weidlich June 19 (Bloomberg) — Former Bear Stearns Cos. hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin were indicted for mail fraud and conspiracy in the first prosecution stemming from a federal investigation of last …
AssociatedPress
Bloomberg - 11 hours ago
Israel, 48, pleaded guilty in 2005 to securities fraud. His sentence was among the longest for a white-collar offender in the seven years since Enron Corp. …[Swivelchair note: I'm working up a post which analyzes Mr Israel's letter to the judge at his sentencing hearing -- schwew.]
Globe and Mail, Canada - Jun 10, 2008
As for Ms. Donio’s phony academic credentials - a degree from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and a doctorate in cognitive science from the Massachusetts …
www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/05/25/hedgefund_0525.html - 56k -
National Post, Canada - 3 hours ago
TORONTO - The RCMP unleashed the largest white-collar crackdown in Canadian history yesterday, with fraud-related charges against nine former senior …
Forbes, NY - 23 hours ago
Earlier this month, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung daily in Zurich said US authorities had urged Switzerland to help in the tax fraud inquiry involving UBS.
New York Times, United States - 11 hours ago
Three years after the investor and arts patron Alberto W. Vilar, below, was indicted on charges of securities fraud and money laundering, his trial will …
Tampa Tribune, FL - 1 hour ago
By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune TAMPA – The wife of a man serving a 15-year prison sentence for bankruptcy fraud also will serve time behind bars. …
Out-Law.com, UK - Jun 17, 2008
He is accused of operating a 10-year stock option backdating fraud from 1995 to 2005. The company’s former chief financial officer William Ruehle is also …
Minneapolis Star Tribune, MN - May 22, 2008
A court filing says UnitedHealth Group chief Stephen Hemsley had more involvement in options backdating than had been revealed in earlier investigations
Topics: Authoritarianism, Behavior, Corruption, Machiavellianism, Neuro Financial Doc Review, bullying, lawsuit | No Comments »
Eyelashes: a monograph
By swivelchair | June 17, 2008
by Shakotte
(via Flickr Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License)
Well, here it is: lush eyelashes from a glaucoma med. Maybe a cure for baldness.
I was thinking about eyelashes two (three?) Thanksgivings ago when my friend’s aunt was telling me about her second husband’s father (now deceased) , “Frank the Eyelash.” He was in “the family” they say and was called “Frank the eyelash” because he would pull out the eyelashes of those who couldn’t pay the “protection” money. So, unfortunately, when I hear “eyelash” my Skinnerian response is to put my hands over my eyes and scream, “I’ll pay! I’ll pay! Take my money!” 
Glaucoma medicine, containing a prostaglandin-prodrug molecule, bimatoprost, causes lush eyelash growth (”eylash hypertrichosis”, see a review article here, and a Pubmed abstract from 2001 here, on a related molecule, and then you can click related articles to see more current studies). This may be useful for hair growth in other types of hair, given its mode of action. Minidoxol acts by encouraging prostaglandin synthesis - this idea is just to add the prostaglandin directly.
I thought this was interesting because the molecule is a prostaglandin F2α receptor agonist . F2α prostaglandin receptors are found during pregnancy — and people sometimes get lush hair when pregnant. Oxytocin stimulates the release of prostaglandin F2α during preganancy. So, there you go: prostaglandin F2α and lush hair. That may explain why women don’t go bald — because women produce more oxytocin which stimulates more prostaglandin F2α which grows hair. Jus’ sayin.
Cosmetic therapies are a growth area in the biopharma market. Pricing is tough, though because cosmetic applications are not reimbursed with insurance. If the molecule is an old one and the cosmetic use is new (which I suspect is the case here) then it may be tough to get patent coverage — and competition may take away the profit margins.
Perhaps there would be insurance reimbursement if you are diagnosed with trichotillomania and this is a therapeutic, rather than a cosmetic application. Although hair-pulling (including eyelash pulling) is related to anxiety and obsessive/compulsive disorders, apparently the behavior is more toward the impulse-end, rather than the compulsive end, of the scale (the paper cited is in pediatrics; children are frequently treatable). Maybe if they can’t get by with glaucoma, trichotillomania will suddenly become a very common condition among those who are sick of runny mascara.
Now I have written the sum total of everything interesting I know about eyelashes.
Sphere: Related ContentTopics: Molecules, Obsessive compulsive behaviors, Pharmaceuticals, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday Dysfunctional Roundup: “[blank] cam (”dash cam” “phone cam” “web cam”"gun cam”"bus cam” misc. surveillance etc.) 16+ stories
By swivelchair | June 13, 2008
Technorati Starts Collecting User’s Thoughts Directly via WTF
O’Reilly Radar, CA - Jun 9, 2008
Tammy NYP was a Singaporean teen who had a sex-phonecam-video released by some enemy cheerleaders. It was the hottest search on the internet for a while, …
Police: Man Exposes Self At Wal-Mart
WSMV, TN - 5 hours ago
Authorities said that surveillance video captured a picture of the man who performed the act in a pet food aisle of a discount chain store. …
Video: Drink-driving mother lets toddler take the steering wheel
Mirror.co.uk, UK - Jun 9, 2008
… driver and a foetus with an itchy pedal foot. See the dash-cam footage of Green’s arrest here before discussing this odd story in the Mirror.co.uk forums.
UPDATE: Feds Suspect Israel Faked Suicide
FINalternatives, NY - 2 hours ago
… than a dozen along Israel’s Armonk, NY, driveway. Surveillance videos of the bridge were inconclusive, police say. The FBI is now poring over the tapes.
Sphere: Related Content
Topics: Behavior, Dysfunctional Roundup | No Comments »
Lie Detection: Easier when liars tell the story in reverse
By swivelchair | June 12, 2008
Lying liars who lie in reverse order as they tell their story are easier to detect than those who tell the story chronologically. This is because the increase in cognitive load is too much for the whole thing to go off as smoothly as when the story is told in the order in which the “script” is learned.
“Little American Brown Weasel“
Vrij et al., Increasing cognitive load to facilitate lie detection: the benefit of recalling an event in reverse order,” Law and Human Behavior 32:253-265 (June 2008, visited 06.11.08), abstract reprinted below:
Sphere: Related ContentTopics: Corruption, Lying and cheating | No Comments »
Money, it’s a hit: want it or have it
By swivelchair | June 11, 2008
When you have money, life is good. When you want money, life could be better. Here’s the abstract from Vohs et al (HT Neuroscientifically Challenged who has a great analysis of the whole paper):
ABSTRACT—Money plays a significant role in people’s lives, and yet little experimental attention has been given to the psychological underpinnings of money. We systematically varied whether and to what extent the concept of money was activated in participants’ minds using methods that minimized participants’ conscious awareness of the money cues. On the one hand, participants reminded of money were less helpful than were participants not reminded of money, and they also preferred solitary activities and less physical intimacy. On the other hand, reminders of money prompted participants to work harder on challenging tasks and led to desires to take on more work as compared to participants not reminded of money. In short, even subtle reminders of money elicit big changes human behavior.
So when you want money, you have goal oriented behavior and tend to focus on that to the exclusion of altruistic behavior. And, exposure to money “cues” makes you want money — like, say, living in the suburbs in a house with a mortgage you can’t afford driving an SUV which costs $100 to fill the tank.
I was going to go on and on about corporate life, but best to just listen to Pink Floyd (click for Youtube clip):
Money, get away
Get a good job with more pay and your O.K.
Money it’s a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I’ll buy me a football team
Money get back
I’m all right Jack keep your hands off my stack.
Money it’s a hit
Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
I’m in the hi-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet
Money it’s a crime
Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie
Money so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it’s no surprise that they’re
giving none away
Topics: Altruism/moral behavior, Behavior, Machiavellianism, Neuromarketing, greed | No Comments »
Looking for a wife who is nice, safe, and goes to sleep early? Answer, plus a joke.
By swivelchair | June 10, 2008
Marry a nice Finnish girl born prematurely. In Finland, very low birth weight girls grow up to be more conscientious, more agreeable, less open to new things, have lower hostility and aggressiveness, and go to sleep earlier than controls.
This reminds me of a joke: The mother sends the daughter off into the world to go find a husband. The daughter returns after a year, walking down the gangplank at the airport followed by a man wearing a suit of animal skins stitched together, a large ceremonial mask, a necklace of teeth, and carrying sacks of herbs and ground up antlers. The mother gasps, “No, I said a rich doctor!” 
Full abstracts after the jump
Sphere: Related ContentTopics: Behavior, Happiness, Humor, Love, Sleep or Circadian clock, joy | No Comments »
Penn and Teller: Twelve Step Programs Are Bullsh** - I kind of disagree sort of
By swivelchair | June 9, 2008
The recovering alcoholics in my life sometimes act like they’re from Jupiter. (Everyone seems to be a recovering something these days. . . ) Their default position is negative attributional bias -they constantly are attacking based on presumed negative intention of others. They then confabulate to back fill facts to match their mis-reading of social cues. When I’ve presented proof positive of a good intention, the look on their face is shock — it’s really like they have to go back and call into question all of their other judgments about the world and people around them. So they grind in their heels, and refuse to cooperate. Or when everyone else is sitting around laughing at Monty Python’s lumberjack, and they chime in, “Yeh! They should try lapdancing!” a totally inappropriate comment, and the laughter stops and people just look at them, it has to be pretty confidence-shaking. They say things like, “whaddya think I am, stupid?” when they are being extremely stupid, and have a belief that the world is playing one big elaborate trick on them and everyone is mocking them.
Yet, the twelve step programs, to the extent that they go, even to pick up dates, seems to provide them with a framework to understand the world - the world which they totally don’t have the neural wiring to properly interpret.
Penn and Teller say that Twelve Step programs are Bullsh**. I say, Messrs. Penn and Teller, lighten up. If you had your white matter burnt out and constantly misread the social intentions of others, you’d be freaked out and looking around for a higher power to settle down with too.
Penn and Teller Bullsh**: Twelve Steps 1 of 3 (10:07)
Penn and Teller Bullsh**: Twelve Steps 2 of 3 (9:50)
Penn and Teller Bullsh**: Twelve Steps 3 of 3 (9:49)
I agree with the videos — the twelve step mumbo jumbo is bullsh** . I think, nevertheless, twelve step programs provide a framework for people who lack the ability to have insight into their problems.
Sphere: Related ContentTopics: Addiction, alcohol or drugs, Addiction/Compulsion/Obsession, Bonding, Conditions or Diagnosis, Humor, Nature vs. nurture, Obsessive compulsive behaviors, anger, white matter | No Comments »
Quick post: What’s the fuss about resveratrol when you can have a 5HT2c appetite suppressant do the same thing?
By swivelchair | June 7, 2008
The new fountain of youth may be an empty cupboard.
Starve a little and you’ll live longer, is the new conventional wisdom –when you restrict calories, lots of good things happen to prevent aging.
Looking back at the people posting on the lorcaserin post who are on the trial and who don’t feel like eating — isn’t that extreme caloric restriction, too? Aren’t there health-prolonging effects of lorcaserin (and other 5-HT2c agonists)?
(Vintage stop motion puppet-toon of Little Miss Muffet, Old Mother Hubbard, Queen of Hearts, and Humpty Dumptycourtesy Internet Archive.org)
Resveratrol — found in red wine, among other things — is though to have a similar effect.
(See, here, for a recent PLOS paper on overlapping transcript profiles, and here for a Bloomberg report). I won’t go into all the ins and outs of NFkβ, except to say that extreme caloric restriction seems to be a life-prolonging effect, so long as it doesn’t go on too long.
The big pharmas are interested in this — Glaxo just acquired Sirtris for $750MM this week — a company that is commercializing resveratrol-analogs and related molecules.
What’s the big deal with resveratrol and why is Sirtris worth almost a billion dollars?
Topics: Behavior, Obesity, Pharmaceuticals | No Comments »
Neuro Literature Review: “Neurotech” in Portfolio.com May 2008 is Great
By swivelchair | June 7, 2008
How could I have missed this? Here’s a brief review of Portfolio.com May 2008 “neurotech” articles and graphics.
Starting with the graphic (click to go to the article) - it’s pretty telling: the two “neurotech” areas most associated with “character flaws” are the lowest revenue business areas — obesity and addition. (Graphic is modified to point that out). With large market size, why is that?
Probably because obesity and addiction are thought to be “character flaws” at some level. But that’s the point: more and more, “character flaws” are found to have neurological correlates (hence the name of this blog). Mental health is actually physical health, except localized to the brain (or things that act on the brain).
The “market size” graphic is a put-off for me because, in the blue-capsule graphic above, this is revenue — a moving target for any number of reasons. Probably there is no other good way to convey a current market snapshot because the largest patient populations (like obesity and addiction) have the lowest revenues. Anyway, revenues aren’t profits, and I won’t get started on creative accounting here.
The second theme, to me, is the brain research tidal wave. My own view is that this is as significant as biotechnology research in the late 20th century.
And that’s tough to capture in a business journal, word-limited article. Nevertheless, “The ultimate cure“, by David Ewing Duncan, is a very fast read, executive summary-type article about the businesses, players, targets, technology and politics involved in monkeying around with peoples’ brains. This article is a good present-day snapshot. Appropriate for the forum. Got to the point. Hit the highlights without being too gee-whiz science, and appropriately managing expectations of the reader. (Take away business proposition: too early.)
One thing I would like to see in a business journal writing about new technology: what are the business models? How does a stem cell company make money? How about a nicotine-agonist company when people could just use a nicotine patch? Any big companies looking for bolt-on acquisition? Probably a little too deep for this publication, where most people on line have the attention span of an ADD gnat.
So, appropriately, the interactive graphics pretty much play to the ADD gnat crowd, and I thought they were great — just enough detail that someone on a Monday morning, before their coffee could gain some knowledge without having to learn trigonometry (click on figure below for link):
So, thank you Portfolio.com, nicely done.
The only thing that bothers me is mainstreaming the term, “neurotech”. “Nanotech” also bugs me, too b-schoolish. How about neurohealth? Or, getting to specifics, neuro-pharma ?
Sphere: Related ContentTopics: Addiction, alcohol or drugs, Conditions or Diagnosis, Nature vs. nurture, Neuro Book Review, Pharmaceuticals | No Comments »
Friday Dysfunctional Roundup: “Dysfunction*” and “Narcissis*” in the news (14+ stories)
By swivelchair | June 6, 2008
Brain Dysfunction in Cribbing Horses Gives Researchers Something …
TheHorse.com, KY -
In the first study of its kind, researchers from the United Kingdom have discovered that cribbing horses learn differently than horses that don’t crib. …
Emotional trauma linked to brain dysfunction
Los Angeles Times, CA -
Healthy adults who were near the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks may actually have less grey matter in one part of the brain as a result of what …
Kephart: ‘Profound level of dysfunction’ in DC
Daily Republic, SD -
The average South Dakotan doesn’t realize the “profound level of dysfunction” in the nation’s capital, Kephart said. He believes communication between the …
Trial paints picture of dysfunctional parents
Stuff.co.nz, New Zealand -
By KIM RUSCOE - The Dominion Post | Friday, 23 May 2008 There were no fancy children’s toys in their nursery - just a sofa, heater to keep the room warm and …
“Dysfunctional office syndrome costs businesses millions” says …
Online Recruitment, UK -
The people assessment company has coined the term “dysfunctional office syndrome” to describe situations where a blend of corrosive personalities is …
Man Allegedly Had Own Father Killed To Take His Job
CityNews, Canada -
There are dysfunctional families and then there’s this - a suspect in India is accused of ordering a hit on his own father. The reason? He wanted his job. …
Dysfunctional executive watch
CNET Blogs, CA -
Here’s the first installment of Train Wreck’s first recurring post: Dysfunctional Executive Watch. It’ll show up whenever there’s enough material. …
CNN’s Toobin accused the Clintons of having “deranged narcissism”
Media Matters for America, DC -
What Obama should do about the Clintons
The Week Daily -
… who “is also a cad and a narcissist” whose mere presence reminds people about everything that was “dysfunctional” about the Clinton White House. …
Reforming California?s Budget
KCBS, CA -
The governor described California’s budget system as “dysfunctional,” noting the state routinely uses one-time revenue to fund on-going programs.
Time to exhale
MSNBC -
And the more the media fuel the “Clinton as narcissist” message, the harder it will be for Clinton to dial down her supporters’ anger. …
Fugitive at Large
Wall Street Journal -
Even so, the picture that emerges here is not of a certifiable pervert, but more of a narcissist — a hallmark, perhaps, of an artistic temperament and ego …
No Menage-a-trois For Obama By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Town Hall, DC -
The public Bill Clinton has morphed over the past few months from a statesman and philanthropist to a petulant, angry, cursing, spoiled narcissist, …
Masculine Pathology: A World Out Of Control Ruled By Men Who Are …
CounterCurrents.org, India -
Narcissistic personality disorder, sociopathy, and psychopathy have one thing in common: they are disorders whose primary personality trait is the obsession …
‘She needs to be in her own cage’
Annapolis Capital, MD -
He described Schreck as narcissist and said that even the most clinically depressed people will have good days and realize what is happening around them. …
Upper House MP Michael Veitch approved
Daily Telegraph, Australia -
School board, altruism and self-interest
Pocono Record, PA -
Peter Kim’s sentence includes lifetime probation, ‘deniers group …
Longmont Daily Times-Call, CO -
… Johnson said during Kim’s sentencing Wednesday morning, noting that Kim has been diagnosed with extreme narcissism and antisocial personality disorder. …
Ex-chief judge sits down with EWN
7Online.com, NY -
“Rather than see a psychiatrist, because of my own narcissism and political ambitions, and because of the fact that I had aspirations to one day, perhaps, …
Sphere: Related Content
Topics: Animal, Behavior, Dysfunctional Roundup, Narcissisim | No Comments »
The day Big Law lost its power: the Sushi Memo
By swivelchair | June 6, 2008
Here’s the date: July 9, 2003 - the date of the sushi memo, and the day Big Law lost its power and control.
The significance: Power can’t be taken for granted anymore.
The Sushi Memo is emblematic of the absolute power of white shoe lawyers. A partner (I’m guessing with a power-trip history) delegated sushi-finding to a paralegal - who, in due course, duly prepared a memo, duly captioned, “Sushi Options.” Shortly thereafter, the “sushi memo” hit the