Neurological Correlates

Dogs, fireworks, cure?

A double-blind placebo-controlled study into the efficacy of a homeopathic remedy for fear of firework noises in the dog (Canis familiaris).

Treatment for fear of fireworks in dogs.

Relationship between paw preference strength and noise phobia in Canis familiaris.

Frequency of nonspecific clinical signs in dogs with separation anxiety, thunderstorm phobia, and noise phobia, alone or in combination.

Evaluation of dog-appeasing pheromone as a potential treatment for dogs fearful of fireworks.

Management of fear of fireworks in dogs.

What do we want?

Stock prices having some kind of positive relationship with the value of the underlying assets.

What do we have?

Stock prices based on fictitious hypertrading programs that bid up the price like a paid shill on e bay.

Stock price have been untethered from underlying company valuations since, um, p/e’s went from an average of about “4″ to, say, “30″.

What happened?

Well, international money came in. Once that happened, in the early ’90’s,  then it had to go somewhere. Why not the stock market?

And so stock prices became inflated.

Programed trading, where soviet rocket scientists write algorithms to trade based on the zillionth of a second, then made stock prices hyperinflated. It’s like being on e bay - if you bid against a paid shill, those porcupine quills will end up at a hyperinflated cost. (Don’t worry, here’s an e bay guide to porcupine quills).

(As an aside, Auctionsniper is a handy tool to use for e bay bidding).

There are also other shenanigans, like front running, but that’s trivial compared to the programmed trading effect. (Unless the GS or other client services portals take the client data and use that to front run, then it’s the reason why GS is so “smart” — they jump ahead in line, buy up the stock, and sell it at the higher price. Story is developing. . . )

As an anonymous blogger metaphorically holed up in my scrap wood shack typing out manifestos against Wall Street, perhaps my opinion will be viewed as delusional conspiracy theory. (No, the porcupine quills are not as a voodoo fetish, they are decorative. My voodoo dolls are the lazy kind, just a pin cushion shaped like a tomato, that serves all purposes).

Here’s an interesting segment from Bloomberg via Zerohedge (yet again):

Cognitive behavioral therapy for schizophrenia, bipolar or major depression is about as effective as the therapeutic equivalent of a sugar pill.

From the University of Hertfordshire: The authors noted that not a single trial employing both blinding and psychological placebo has found CBT to be effective in schizophrenia and surprisingly few well-controlled studies of CBT in depression.

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Thank you, scientists in De Crespigny Park , for mapping the white matter of psychopaths* and showing where the wiring is frayed.  H.a. l.l.e.l.u.j.a.h.

Add this to a report out of Haifa surmising the part of the brain damaged in psychopaths, and probably responsible for callous horrific behavior — you get the whole story: a direct line showing how psychopath brains are dysfunctional due to faulty neural wiring from the threat center to the compassion center.

When I first started blogging about this I thought psychopaths were “unplugged” — that they have a white matter disconnect. (Link to posts under “white matter” category). Well,  this is it.

* The term “psychopath” used here as synonymous with “sociopath”, to mean someone lacking a moral center, whether or not they have antisocial behavior.

The De Crespigny Park recent report uses imaging to demonstrate psychopaths have wobbly white matter running from the amygdala to the orbitofrontal cortex, the uncinate fasciculus (here).

The more highly rated on the psychopathy scale (PCL-R), the more frayed the wiring. The scientists back-tested this twice — first, by demonstrating that this was limbic-specific and not found in other white matter tracts, and second, by demonstrating that this was not just random, by comparing to the white matter of former druggies. Nope. The results are for real. (Abstract and cite below). (The illustration has two arrows pointing to the right and left sides of the uncinate fasciculus)(The right had one is hard to see because it’s white, sorry).

Another report by the group in Haifa associates orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) dysfunction with that special kind of callousness that psychopaths show - a profound lack of capacity for altruism.

Psychopaths know other people think things — they just don’t care.  So you have people who know how to manipulate, but have no moral center (because it’s disconnected).  Everything else is more or less connected — it’s just the moral center that’s unplugged.

This explains a lot:

1. Some psychopaths are prone to smoking. Smoking tobacco ups your white matter integrity. Maybe smoking is a way to treat frayed white matter. Maybe all psychopaths should take up smoking.

2. Psychopaths have nervous energy/anxiety, and are prone to bursts of rage. Frayed white matter is implicated in anxiety disorders, and is also associated with low levels of serotonin transporter protein (the 5-HTTLPR). A report on “Intermittant Explosive Disorder” (and I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like a number of people in my orbit) demonstrates that people with unbridled impulsive  hostile aggression have an  “uncoupled” amygdala/orbitofrontal circuit.

3.  White matter integrity seems to be heritable.  Apologies to the parents out there. This makes an abundance of sense to me. I think there’s a trinucleotide repeat aspect in there somewhere, and a gene dosage effect (or something) inherited from the Y chromosome. But, white matter in the frontal lobes may be most affected by environment. The frontal lobes are late in developing. Perhaps parents can catch the psychopathic behavior and take steps to modulate white matter formation during development. I think that the brain can be induced to be more plastic at the cellular level, and tht white matter modulation could be done at any age. I wouldn’t try it at home with any adult psychopaths in my own orbit, though.

4.  You can have high functioning psychopaths.  Probably their gray matter — the modular components of the brain — are more or less intact (it seems).  Some psychopaths have reduced activity in the frontal lobes, and some thinning of the gray matter, and there may be some lesions. My guess is that high functioning sociopaths have less damage in the gray matter, but more severe damage in the white matter disconnect.

5. Psychopaths misinterpret social cues and have negative attributional bias.  The amygdala reactivity predicts automatic negative evaluations for facial emotions. Where there’s no feedback loop from the reasoning part of the brain, the amygdala is on its own.  Schzo-psycho  patients who don’t recognize fearful faces well seem have no strong amygdala activation. Or, even just due to anxiety (see point #2 above),  they may have negative attributional bias.

6. Psychopaths seem to have a 6th sense in picking targets. Perhaps psychopaths smell fear?  This makes sense if the white matter disconnect doesn’t register odor but can detect chemosensory information. I wonder if white matter disconnected from the olfactory doubles up on the chemosensory tracts.  A really great study was done, demonstrating that anxiety chemosensory information travels the empathy pathway in the recipient’s brain.  Sweat was taken from nervous people and separately from people doing sports.  Test subjects smelled each kind of sweat under a brain scanner. The “nervous” sweat lit up pathways involved in empathy. I don’t know how this can relate to the white matter impairments, but odor and chemosensory information can be decoupled and sent on separate pathways. I wonder if a perfume containing sweat of people doing sports would be a good psychopath repellent.

7.  Psychopaths seem to have a double dose of the wiring disconnects that people with autistic spectrum have.  People with autistic spectrum conditions — who may be slow to get that other people think things, but when it’s explained to them, they care very much - seem to have a different pattern of white matter wiring,  reported here, particularly in the left uncinate fasciculus.  Psychopath white matter is dysfunctional on both the right and the left sides.

8. Psychopaths seem to calm down as they get older, and that may be because people — not just psychopaths — have a Last in First Out (”LIFO”) white matter degeneration. The frontal lobe white matter is the last in during development, so it’s the first out.

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IG report after report detailed the dismal state of federal agencies, and after an especially depressing testimony given by the Madoff whistleblower, I wrote, White Shoe Whistleblowers - Forget the regulators, just put up “madoffisaponzi.com” February 4th, 2009

Well, the whistleblower fairy has now arrived: Zerohedge.

Zerohedge is a blog I read for financial news and analysis. I understand about 30% of it.

At the risk of being sued for copyright infringement, here’s a really long quote:

*  *  *

Since FINRA and the Securities and Exchange Commission believe in going only after $1,000 insider traders with the full weight of their enforcement teams, yet ignore major market manipulation in futures and other markets, Zero Hedge wanted to present readers an opportunity to be heard by the market’s regulators.

* * *

I take this opportunity to welcome any and all readers to provide information they believe captures wrongdoing in the financial system - in the absence of objective, unbiased and fair external regulators, it is the responsibility of everyone, but most notably insiders, to cleanse the system.

Zero Hedge will filter the data and forward our work product directly to appropriate Attorney General offices and local FBI branch offices. In retrospect, approaching the SEC and FINRA is futile, as they are both as much an integral part of the system as the perpetrators they are supposed to protect against. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we are very, very pissed off.

So…

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If you are reading for some neuroscience, check back in later in the week, and thanks for stopping by and have a great Sunday.

This post is about our health care issues.

Q: True or False: If current trends continue, by the year 2019 the number of uninsured people in the United States will be greater than the populations of Texas and California combined.

Here’s another factoid: . . .Moreover, it is still legal in 9 states for insurers to reject applicants who are survivors of domestic violence.¹⁸

OK.

My track record on posts about health care policy is not good, and I’ve alienated a number of readers, a few of whom have gotten quite hostile.

So it is with trepidation of alienating even more blog readers that I’m posting the  Neurological Correlates Health Care Policy Omnibus Blog Post. Yikes.

Here goes:

1. It’s about the money.

Prof. Reich (fmr. Sec’y of Labor) says it best:

. . .Without a public [health insurance ] option, the other parties that comprise America’s non-system of health care — private insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and medical suppliers — have little or no incentive to supply high-quality care at a lower cost than they do now.
Which is precisely why the public option has become such a lightening rod. . . . No other issue in the current health-care debate is as fiercely opposed by the medical establishment and their lobbies now swarming over Capitol Hill. Of course, they don’t want it. A public option would squeeze their profits and force them to undertake major reforms. That’s the whole point.

*  *  *

Here’s how insurance companies work. Take three buckets — in bucket, for premiums, an out bucket for paying claims and a middle bucket where the premium payments are held:

It’s the middle bucket — the one where the insurance companies invest the premiums — that’s the problem.

In good years, stock market up, shareholders (of the insurance companies) are happy. In bad years, market goes down, investments stink, share price goes down.

And in any year it behooves the insurance company to use premium payments to capitalize adventure rather than to pay off a breast cancer claim.

That’s why the private health insurance companies are in such a  snit.   How are they going to use the premiums for capital?

(Confession: This is cribbed from a talk given by Gerry Spence,  his korney-with-a-kapital-k homespun- aw- shucks- I’m- just- a -country -lawyer- for- the-little- guy explanation is the best 30-second explanation I’ve heard.) (*See below for a tirade against this whole practice).

OK. It’s the middle bucket full of premium payment money that’s the problem.

A public health insurance option would have the middle bucket full o’ money, but it would be invested prudently.  A public insurer doesn’t have a fiduciary duty to shareholders, with the duty to maximize share price. It has the duty to pay out claims. So with a public health insurer, the premiums would be lower.

It’s the middle bucket. This is why we need a federal regulator of insurance.  The middle bucket  is part of the financial services industry.   Dust off that old X-shaped desk from Drexel Beverly Hills**, and put the CFTC, SEC, Insurance Czar and Fed all together at the same desk at once.

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When I hear the word “Belgium“  I’m immediately suspicious. This  post is about diamonds, guns, blood, unspeakable acts against children, governmental corruption and money.

Belgium (or the Netherlands, actually) is one of the few industrialized nations that doesn’t have to answer a US subpoena for documents in a US lawsuit.  (It isn’t a party to portions of the Hague Convention relating to producing documents relevant to a US lawsuit, here).   That is a relief for those wishing to do dastardly deeds that could be proved with documents — no documents, no proof, natch. Scare up a Belgian domicile and you won’t be troubled by those pesky internal memos in any ensuing civil lawsuit and any Letters Rogatory (the Hague Convention version of a subpoena) will be just a nice billet doux from some litigant.

So, dear blog readers, this Friday Dysfunctional Roundup, my gift to you, is  another conspiracy theory.   Free.  A bargain at twice the price.

Actually, it’s not really a theory, more like an observation:  companies who don’t want to be caught doing something set up shop in Belgium.  (Not just the whole Netherlands Antilles tax thing, either). Here are some interesting businesses found in the wonderful land of waffles:

1.  Diamonds are a Belgian economy’s best friend.   A currency with little paper trail and lots of suave rat-pack type films. According to the Guardian UK,

. . .’This is what puts Belgium on the map,’ said Freddy Hanard, the chief executive of the city’s World Diamond Centre. ‘Every diamond that enters or leaves passes through this office.’That is a lot of gems – four out of five uncut diamonds produced anywhere in the world and more than half of the polished stones travel from Australia, Russia, Canada, India, Botswana and London to Antwerp for buying and selling.. . .

2. And, for the longest time, another great money-maker was international arms. (And the whole colonialization thing is too much to discuss here). So you see, diamonds, guns, and no paper trail. What a swell place.  This is the subject of an  excellent conspiracy theory that I wish I would have thought of.

3.  One US biopharma has a human blood processing facility in Belgium.  I thought this was odd — why pay for blood donors in the US, and then ship the blood to Europe for processing into pooled blood products? But: recall, in the 1980’s, hemophiliacs were dying from AIDS from the drug prepared from human blood (Factor VIII). (I’m not implicating this company in that, I have no idea).  I don’t think anyone would repeat the ’80’s — plasma is heat treated and donors are screened, and blood is tested with the latest diagnostics ,  and the local blood banking and research services are extremely important research areas and for humanitarian good. . .  but where recombinant clotting factors are available, what’s up with using plasma derived clotting factors? Again, I don’t know, I’m asking, and I wish some smart investigative journalist would look into this.

4. The child rapist/murderer/porn/trafficker busted in Belgium a while ago was thought to be linked to the elite and powerful worldwide; the most horrific of the unspeakable was rumored to be ordered up by those who paid for it. This was never proved. At first,  Belgian authorities bungled the investigation. Then things got really bizarre: the chief prosecutor killed himself. Or so they said.  Ultimately the whole tragedy was material in uncovering incompetency or worse in the Belgian government. This later resulted in Belgium adopting anarchy as a governmental policy. Things seem to have calmed down somewhat.

5.  Fortis, the Belgian insurance giant, went broke, was bailed out, and now shareholders are rebelling against the Belgian government who owns it. Belgium’s PM proffered his resigned and the Fortis CEO resigned.

6.  Not at all indicative of anything, but in the news, an extremely troubled 18 year old Belgian woman had 56 stars tattooed on her face recently, apparently in a tragic case of tattoo-remorse, lied about her role in it.  (Tattoo removal technology is improving, so perhaps she can come away relatively unscathed.)

Now, don’t get me wrong. Belgium is a wonderful place to visit.  They just opened up a Goldfish Hotel for people to drop off their goldfish before they go on a trip. And they opened up a new Magritte museum.  Seriously, some of my best friends are Belgian.  To do my part in rehabilitating Belgium’s image, here’s a recipe for delushious Belgian Waffles from Antwerp Tourist Guide:

(The secret is to use sparkling mineral water to make the waffles light and fluffy)

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Having first promulgated a Goldman, Sachs Conspiracy last October (Goldman Sachs- Cheney - Paulson: A conspiracy theory) and then ridiculed by no less than the NYT,  (New York Times Sez Neurological Correlates Sustains Crazy Goldman Sachs Conspiracy Theory) and then finding that I’m not just an anonymous blogger metaphorically holed up in a scrap wood shack writing an anti-Goldman manifesto, but that the uber-cool Mr. Taibi of Rolling Stone actually did some investigative journalism on this (Goldman Sachs Conspiracy Club: Add Rolling Stone), I’m feeling now validated that the one and the same Mr. Taibbi has written the definitive article on Goldman, here (thanks ZeroHedge for the Scribed insert). See below.

One thing: Carbon credits. I’m OK with that.  Another post another time.

Taibbi-Goldman-Sachs

Do you sneeze when you suddenly go into bright light?

Certain members au château Swivelchair do this, and it is called a “photic sneeze“.

It has to do with electrical charge crossing over from the neural wiring for the eye to the one related to the nose.  Apparently, overstimulating the optic nerve triggers the trigeminal nerve nuclei pathways.

I don’t think anyone really knows the precise neural pathway, although here is an excellent blog post from A.E. Brain.  For a great Scientific American article and reader comments, see here.   SciAm also published an expert comment .

The photic sneeze reflex is  of course preventable with sunglasses.  There is a photic sneezing support group.

Photic sneezing is hereditary. Go to the movies during the day and watch the families come out from the dark theater into the bright afternoon light.  You can see which family members have photic sneezing.  (Anecdotally, it seems to segregate out with redheads at the movie theaters in the malls around these parts, so I wonder if there’s a melanin/neuromelanin angle to this. I mean, from what I hear from my horribly rude friend who stares at families coming out of matinees to see who has photic sneezing).

Low level electrical stimulation up the nose can cause a sneeze — this was first reported in cats, and later in a 3-person healthy human study.    On the sneeze-reflex and its control. In this study, the electrically-stimulated sneeze reflex also was reversed by an anesthetic to the mucus membranes. Therefore, one would think that among its many benefits to the fine citizens of Los Angeles,  Botox could also prevent sneezing one might later regret.

You scoff now. But if you are being driven by a photic sneezing relative and you are on one of those cell-phone deadening canyon roads  in LA, with straight up on one side, and straight down on the other, botox up the nose to prevent photic sneezing seems totally reasonable.  Particularly when les lunettes de soleil sont disparu at the beach.

The thought is that figuring out photic sneezing will be instrumental in figuring out  and preventing seizure-related conditions. Perhaps the best known photic-induced conditions are in the migraine - epileptic seizure spectrum.  In fact, one can even get “Flicker illness” when being medi-vac’d because helicopters produce 24-27 flashes per second.  Flicker illness: an underrecognized but preventable complication of helicopter transport.

OK. Have you ever sat down next to someone in a public place and had them start sneezing? Run.  Sneezing induced by sexual ideation or orgasm: an under-reported phenomenon. On the other hand, an eroto-sneezing significant other could be a bonus — the equivalent to wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve,  so to speak.  Maybe there’s an evolutionary advantage in that.

(This post is categorized under “synesthesia” because it relates to crossing neural wiring resulting in involuntary behavior from sensory input.)

My plan is to regrow myself, top to bottom, using stem cells. This post is why my current endogenous stem cells won’t do the trick and I’ll probably need to have some removed and fooled with and put back in.

Alternatively, I’ll start a website akin to this:

There is no doubt in my mind that the stem cell technology is on its way, and that a little bio-baggie full of cells nipped here and tucked there will do the trick. Hopefully my would-be heirs will be pleased to know they don’t have to wait around to inherit anything because I plan on not being dead, at least not totally. A teensy drop of dementia, or at least selective loss of episodic memory, before regrowing the brain stem cells, would be good.  Specifically, this is related to an Austin Powers costume party circa 1997.

Regardless, unless you’re a neonate, you stem cells probably won’t work.  At least not well.  It’s a dicey matter, growing those stem cells. Too much, too juvenile-like growth, you get cancer. Not enough, you get cells that take up space at best (and go toxic at worst).

So, why won’t my existing non-neonatal non-umbilical stem cells work? Any 8th grader can just capture them (a little CD34 binding, some magnets, you all know the drill), culture them up,  put them in a drip bag, and mainline right back in.

A recent report by Kaspar et al.  found that as  stem cells age ( at least mesenchymal stem cells, “MSC’s”)  they become more susceptable to being a zombie (senescence) and they have reduced migratory ability (stem cells home in and travel to the injury to repair it)  :

. . .Thus, we postulate two main reasons for the compromised cellular function of aged MSCs: (a) declined responsiveness to biological and mechanical signals due to a less dynamic actin cytoskeleton and (b) increased oxidative stress exposure favoring macromolecular damage and senescence. These results, along with the observed similar differentiation potentials, imply that MSC-based therapeutic approaches for the elderly should focus on attracting the cells to the site of injury and oxidative stress protection, rather than merely stimulating differentiation.

Stem cell scientists: kindly take out my CD34+ cells, pick out the ones that aren’t overly oxidatively damaged, put in some extra actin-encoding genes, and add a little dash of , you know,  je  ne sais quoi.  A little more charm and irresistability, a little less, um Austin Powersishness,  next time around would be good.

Grit Kasper, Lei Mao, Sven Geissler, Albena Draycheva, Jessica Trippens, Jirko Kühnisch, Miriam Tschirschmann, Katharina Kaspar, Carsten Perka, Georg N. Duda, and Joachim Klose, “Insights into Mesenchymal Stem Cell Aging: Involvement of Antioxidant Defense and Actin Cytoskeleton,” Stem Cells Vol. 27 No. 6 June 2009, pp. 1288 -1297, doi:10.1002/stem.49

See also, A. J. Simonnet, J. Nehme, P. Vaigot, V. Barroca, P. Leboulch, and D. Tronik-Le Roux, “Phenotypic and Functional Changes Induced in Hematopoietic Stem/Progenitor Cells After Gamma-Ray Radiation Exposure, ” Stem Cells 2009 27:1400-1409 doi:10.1002/stem.66

Two things, (1) posting slow down; and (2) Citizen journalists prove the pen/pixel/cameraphone is mightier than the sword.

(1). The dog ate my blog posts.

Seriously. I’ve been swamped.  I have some very huge document work to do and that sort of burns me out from blogging, so it will probably be mid-July before I’m back on any kind of schedule here.

Not that there’s not a lot to say.

(2). Iran, YouTube, citizen journalism.

Backing up, one ongoing theme of this blog is that the hallmark of abuse is secrecy, and that the only way to stop abusive behavior, whether at home, in the executive suite or in a country, is to shine a light on it.

I’ve posted on whistleblowers who sent blast e mails, or just on bypassing regulators totally.  I try not to be politically partisan (except for some ridiculously stupidly hideously wrongheaded California propositions) and point out, thanklessly I might add, flaws in others,  left or right.

This Iran thing is the “shine a light on it” theory in action, as I understand it.

I don’t know the Iranian politics well enough to know if it is a theocracy or a dictatorship or what.  Apparently the Iranian citizens want to move on with their lives, and feel there was massive fraud at the ballots.   (Something the U.S. would never do).

Let’s say you want to be a totalitarian dictator. Step 1 is to have no first amendment rights, at all.   Hey, there was no Pravda in Ivestia and no Ivestia in Pravda, and that worked out OK-ish.

So you, as a Dictator wannabe, take  total control over the media. This was pretty easy when you’re Mao, and your marching through Chinese equivalent of  South Dakota and you can just sort of take over any country bumpkin newspapers along the way. No problemo.

It’s tougher these days. What’s a dictator to do? There’s the internet. All bets off there.

So the sensible dictator will take to terrorizing their populations to make up for lack of control over the media. Free journalism? The consequences are too terrible to contemplate. (Exhibit A.) Same result,  you control the information flow.

The time and energy devoted to terrorizing your population can leave a rogue state dictator simply exhausted.  The whole budget goes into maintaining power. That, of course, results in a failed prison-state. No fun. It’s better to be adored and admired. You sort of have to have some little teensiest bit of delusion.  But at least you’re in power, and can die of natural causes.

But, what about when journalists are anonymous? How can you terrorize anonymous citizen journalists?

So that is why I think the Iranian YouTubes, social network organized protests, live bloggs or tweets, and cell phone calls are significant. Apparently Iranian government has done the “foreign journalist censorship” drill, but what are they going to do about the guy who hangs out his apartment window and films this?

Just like Holla-Back, where you can post cell phone photos of  subway exhibitionists, led to increased prosecution for exhibitionism, Iranian post-election videos from Tehran are shining a light on what’s happening. I think this took the oldsters by surprise.  They weren’t prepared and are now scrambling for a PR blitz.   (You can quibble about the journalistic value or even if Twitter is pertinent, but this is the first time we’ve seen serious mainstream coverage of citizen journalism.)

I mean, here you have the most popular guy on the planet (Pres. Obama and his photogenic family who hangs out with Oprah, can you get more popular than that?) vs.  Mullahs.  Oprah vs.  the Ottoman Empire. No contest.

I think this one might be the biggee.   Brutal crackdown or give it up? I don’t know.   But if you’re a dictator wannabe, maybe you’ll think twice before looking like a loser on Youtube.

Agar slants in tubes labeled with Sharpie marker.

Conservatively, about 2% of the published scientific research data is fake, at any one snapshot in time, if I’m reading the report by Fanelli et al. correctly. And that’s just for the researchers who didn’t want to look like they were lying in response to a questionnaire, “Do you ever lie?” and most said, “Um, sometimes.” (The study was  a retrospective analysis of a bunch of previous surveys, but still, it was self reporting — and if you say, “No, I never lie,” you’d look like you were lying so who knows.). Ok. I get that. I’ve seen that.

(Your loyal bloggist  gave up being a scientist because I was an unqualified disaster in the lab, plus, the start up companies I worked for at the time bounced my paychecks. So I never faked data, it wouldn’t have helped anyway. Once I injected myself with something by accident. To this day, I still look between my knuckles to see if there’s any weirdness. I can’t really tell.  Every time I come down with something, in the back of my mind is “I wonder if it was that supernatant that I injected a long time ago?”.  So my failed scientific career is a monkey on my back.  Probably the worst was when I stayed up all night growing some cultures and spinning out some DNA, and I had an ethanol precipitation in the microfuge going on and one of the tubes opened up and washed away all the labels (I must not have used a Sharpie which only washes off with acetone, that I now in my post-science life refer to as nail polish remover.)  It wasn’t the staying up all night that bothered me it was having to tell my boss that I screwed up the labels and didn’t know what was in what tube.  True dat.  Moreover, the act of putting a label on the reagent bottles was something of a fine art in that lab, as our student intern decided to label the 7N NaCl “Earle Klugh” and the KI was “George Winston” and tween or some detergent was “Michael Jackson” (back before he fell from grace).  Sigh.  )

But. I think science fraud is more prevalent than 2-3%, mostly because of people’s reactions to me. I may not be a scientist, but I’m not overly stupid, either (usually). And some scientists tend to be arrogant and lay on the jargon specifically to set up a barrier to entry for people like me.  If someone can’t explain to me what they’re working on in a few minutes so that I understand it, they’re usually trying to buffalo me.  It’s not very often, but every once in a while. . .

Now, I’ve seen some doozies. Usually, there’s a Dr. Frankenstein who bullies the Igor into doing the dirty work, and sometimes it’s not even fake data, sometimes, it’s just lying about what results mean. Like, when you claim 99.999% purity, but that’s with respect to your starting source. Where you look at what’s in the test tube, you have 50% pure, 50% junk.  I won’t go into what name brand editorial boards of name brand peer reviewed publications can do if you submit something that maybe one of them has file for a patent on. . .

But I don’t think the scientific system is any more, or less, free from fraud and greed than the financial industry or any other industry. It’s just harder to understand and there tends to be layers of secrecy.

Actually, having just thought about that last sentence after I typed it, maybe that’s not even true.

The sad thing is that usually, they don’t need to fake any data. Usually they’re on to something — it’s  just not as unambiguous as they would like.  Everyone likes nice clean photos of  a fat, smiling, brightly-lit cell saying “See? Here I am. You’re a genius.”

Usually, however,  there’s all sorts of background goop, and the cell is not smiling, and it’s looking dull and hungover and saying “whew where am I? Who are you?”.  There is a temptation to just blot out non-specific binding.

But even if you do blot out the background to make your result seem more clear, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a result. Leave the background in there. It’s a methods problem.  Solve the methods problem and you get two papers or patents, instead of just one fake one. See?

My sense is that the really outre fakers probably are pretty rare, and more common are the fakers who enhance results to bring them into high relief.  Like being in the top 3 for the Tour de France and taking EPO. You’re almost there, and you just want to get some more oxygen to make sure.

Harvey Milk

I have a problem with two court cases: one, the fake Rockefeller, and two,  upholding Prop 8.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

(To steal DiFi’s usual quote, when she was mayor of SF.)(An aside: If you google “Feinstein” and “dumb, dumb, dumb” she said that frequently.)

Hey MacArthur geniuses studying Neuroscience and the law, what say you about this?

1. Fake Rockefeller case.  Defense puts up “he was kicked as a puppy, so he grew up and kicked his own puppy” defense.  Name of defense docs: Dr. Ablow and Dr. Howe.   Dr. Howe even testified that the guy has a “diagnosis unto himself.” The defense experts also opined that fake Rockefeller had untreated mental illness throughout their marriage (the better part of a decade) and so despite his being a raging narcissist, if others didn’t (a) recognize he had a mental illness and (b) force treatment on him,  they basically consented to being victims.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.  Strike this from the record. Are these experts for real?

But that’s secondary:

1. Free will or no? Did the defendant have the capacity to form the intent to commit the crime (mens rea).  Nothing these experts have pointed to defeats that. Even if the defendant is diagnosed as a “one person DSM” category, did  he have free will to form intent?

2. Isn’t failing to recognize and get treated for a personality disorder an aggravating circumstance, rather than a mitigating one?

The other defense theory is that the defendant lacked mens rea because he had a long history of untreated mental illness.  So he was a kicked puppy who was damaged, and failed to seek help to prevent his harmful behavior.  This is supposedly a mitigating factor. And, it’s the ex-wife’s fault  - she should have forced him to get treatment! (I’ll ignore that bit of stupidity).

So. . why is refusing to get treated a mitigating factor, why isn’t it an aggravating factor?

Why should we reward continued atrocious personality diordered behavior with a step down in charges or sentencing? If this individual is so disordered, shouldn’t he be locked up in the hospital for the criminally insane for an unspecified period of time (rather than in the general prison population for a defined sentence)?

Is this like the “every dog gets one free bite” rule? Even in California dogs don’t get one free bite, whether they were kicked as puppies or not.

So my questions: 1) Even if someone is whacked out on a severe personality disorder, don’t they still have free will sufficient to form criminal mens rea? and 2) Isn’t having untreated mental illness where there’s an intentional refusal to get treatment an aggravating circumstance, rather than a mitigating circumstance, because that is an additional layer of bad intent on top of an already criminal bad intent when committing the crime?

This judge isn’t managing this case well at all. If I were judge, I wouldn’t have allowed any of those bozo expert witnesses.  Junk science, I’d rule.  I’d want an fMRI expert from MIT across the river, a geneticist to see if the defendant has the capacity to form human attachment (re: vasopressin alleles and the like), and testimony from the child.

Now that would make a good trial AND maybe some justice.

2.  California Supreme Court and same-sex marriage.  This is an arbitrary and capricious distinction for denying equal protection. (See here).

So, if you want the rights and obligations of California’s Family Laws,  one party must have the anatomical sexual equipment that the other lacks.

Puhleeze. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

What’s LA county office of marriage licenses gonna do, ask people to pull down their pants?  What if you have two x chromosomes, yet male anatomical plumbing? And why does this even relate to formation of a partnership? In general, the California Family Code points to the California Corporations Code and says the fiduciary rules of a partnership apply as between spouses.  What does male or female anatomy have to do with that? Nothing. Even for procreation.  And procreation is not a requirement last time I checked the marriage statutes. Do you need particular anatomy to form an LLC? No. And, after all, under the California Family Code, it’s all a financial deal, no fault divorce, and once you’re married, you can do as you please, even if you then become a different gender.

But none of that even matters. What matters is the ability to bond with another human being.  The ability to form a binding contract.

You have to be 18, and able to contract. I get that. Do you need the anatomy that your partner lacks? No.  Not really.

A better distinction, if you want to get all biological about it, is whether the partners in the marriage are capable of forming any kind of bond via affiliative neuro-molecules at all: are they mountain voles or prairie voles? Forget the reproductive plumbing, if you don’t have the neural wiring to actually commit when you say “I do” then there is a fraud, and the marriage contract is void ab initio.  So it boils down to probably vasopressin receptor alleles, at the first instance. Or at least that ’s something to consider. Reproductive anatomy is irrelevant as far as I’m aware on whether you are biologically capable of forming social bonds. Reproductive anat0my isn’t even a good proxy.

California Supreme Court totally screwed up. The court kept the Constitutional amendment by  holding that horrifically ridiculous Prop 8 was properly on the ballot and the majority rules. If there was a prop correctly on the ballot that said, “only people of  a single race may marry each other” (that didn’t come out correctly, but you know), would they up hold that?  Cal Supremes, bad law, bad decisions, and Rose Bird is turning in her grave. Jerry Brown - fix this, it’s your fault.

Say you’re the target of workplace bullying or your spouse verbal  abuses  you (which may be a mate retention strategy, here). What does that do to your brain?

Five selected references, single line summary, (oversimplified and mostly in rodent models) and some editorial remarks:

Increased phasic dopamine signaling in the mesolimbic pathway during social defeat in rats.

Social defeat makes some of your striatal neurons have a hair trigger, indicating (to me) the propensity for overreaction.

Adolescent male rats exposed to social defeat exhibit altered anxiety behavior and limbic monoamines as adults.

Social defeat leaves a long lasting imprint on your brain physiology, indicating (again, to me) there are systems in place for preventing plasticity.  I think there’s an immune system aspect in here somewhere, because both the immune system and the neural system deal with long term “memory” formation at the cellular level, relating to experience.

Chronic psychosocial stress in the absence of social support induces pathological pre-pulse inhibition in mice.

You get by with a little help from your friends. (At least if you’re a mouse).  Social support tamps down on stress-induced hair - trigger synapse firing, indicating (to me, sigh) perhaps the oxytocin or vasopressin (affiliative) systems  override the stress-induced hair-trigger synaptic firing.

Social defeat stress activates medial amygdala cells that express type 2 corticotropin-releasing factor receptor mRNA.

After social aggression, your have more stress-related brain receptors, indicating a higher responsiveness to stress hormones (like, corticoids).

Catecholaminergic input to the oxytocin neurosecretory system in the human hypothalamus.

Stress seems to  be anti-matter to enzymes that break down anti-stress molecules (like oxytocin).  Oxytocin, the feel good chemical, floats around until there’s too much of it and it’s eaten up by evil anti-oxytocin enzymes.  (And yes, this explanation is totally scientific, the enzymes wear Dearth Vader gas masks).  Evil anti-oxytocin enzymes normally float around in the aqueous part of your brain tissues. But, stress puts a stop to that.  The evil oxytocin eating enzymes turn hydrophobic and get swamped in  the cell membranes.

This makes sense, you don’t want enzymes breaking down anti-stress hormones when you’re stressed. (The counter argument: No, Swivelchair, oxytocin isn’t anti-stress.  It makes you more stressed. Oxytocin leads to aggressive behavior. You recognize faces, you notice people more, not necessarily feeling happy. So when you’re stressed, you need to be on the double high alert. So this in fact makes you more stressed because now you are doomed to attack the person in the next cube who is stressing you out and they will probably call security, and you will be put walked out with the security guards and then be labeled forever as a trouble maker. That leads to higher stress. It is much better to be catatonic when stressed, because then you can ignore big problems. And if you ignore then they go away.) There. Equal time rule.

Enough of this nonsense.  Exactly how does all this mumbo jumbo benefit me?

How about a new kind of happy-pill-target: an enzyme antagonist (is that the right word? Reverse agonist?) Anti-anti-oxytocin.  (Compare: “bread maker maker“.)

Something that the enymes will bind to selectively, to keep the enzymes from chewing up the “feel good” molecules like oxytocin or vasopressin.  Preferably “Oxy-Guard XL - extended release tabs” –  released in a sustained form, like in little tiny time pills. (Branding departments, thank me later).

Exhibitionism is all about power. Here’s “Bruno” at the other night’s MTV Award:

So, “Bruno” appropriately attired as a winged Angel with backless chaps (le dernier cri?)  swings on guidewires over the MTV audience before announcing the award to Zak Efron.  Oops, mishap! And “Bruno’s” silver lame covered string bikini area is wedged up underneath Eminem’s nostrils.

Entertainment on MTV! Finally. WAIT! IT WAS STAGED? Developing. . .Here’s what I thought was fantabulously interesting: Eminem apparently storms out in a huff.

What a diva! I mean Eminem, not “Bruno”.

“Bruno” couldn’t have picked a better target.  Brilliant! The Daily Mail reported with British understatement:

. . .Eminem, who released Relapse - his first album in five years - last month, is not used to being on the receiving end of jokes.

Eminem’s snit wasn’t about homophobia or anything of the sort. This was about power.   Eminem’s power was upstaged by Mr. Baron-Cohen (aka, Bruno).   And the real reason I found this maybe the most interesting thing on TV in a long time:  This was a real response to a fake power play.

Mr. Baron-Cohen’s “Bruno’s” exhibitionism was used for power, but in such a publicly bizarre way that you have to get the joke to really appreciate how uproaringly hilarious it is, if you enjoy tormenting those totally lack introspection (here, Eminem). It wasn’t a real power play, everyone knew, or was it? Eminem somehow didn’t restrain his synapses.

The score –  Bruno: 1; Eminem: negative 5 zillion.

What Eminem should have done: laugh it off and worry about it later. Of course, then this would have been unfunny (in that it would have been too inside baseball if Eminem laughed and winked like he was in on the joke).

(N.b.,  Men wearing very little silver, or gold,  lamé, is the new normal au Monde du Swivelchair, and I find men in backless silver lame chaps to be, well,  vin ordinaire, after all, I was recently  in close association with my new BFF’s, the Thunder from Down Under while at the Macy’s in Las Vegas. Or was it the American Storm? No matter. The Eminem intemperate outburst was, to me, exciting and outrageous and risque and naughty! Titillating! Relapse? The name of the new album? Of course! It’s sold like 5MM copies. Maybe it’s Eminem who gets the last laugh. See? I’m smitten with the entire episode.)

Here’s a post from last year re: exhibitionism. (This one was getting lots of hits from exhibitionists (or those  iso exhibitionism activities). But no one left a comment. I’m guessing this post sort of deflated any enthusiasm).

Exhibitionists: Flashing your privates is about power, not sex.

May 28th, 2008

So, what possesses anyone to show their genitals to a stranger in public? Research on exhibitionism discussed.

[Read more →]

If you are intensely watching a ball game, you may not notice when someone with a gorilla suit walks into the middle of it.  This post relates to why we may not even realize we are being duped (or, perhaps seduced) by a psychopath when it happens:  sustained inattentional blindness (sort of).

I was reading a comment on this blog from someone claiming to be a self-diagnosed sociopath. While I have no idea if this individual is for real,  it took me about three re-reads to even notice that the language is typical for someone who never wants to be pinned down: sentences give with one hand and take away with the other. (The comment is here).  (After all, if you actually lie, it is so much to remember. Better to just never say anything you can’t deny saying later.)

So.  Why didn’t I see this doublespeak immmediately? After all, the commenter did identify themselves as a potential sociopath.

On to gorilla suits, one of my favorite things in life.

About 10 years ago a paper came out with this photo:

Basically, when told to intensely watch one team handling the ball  (say, the white shirts) in a complicated game, there are a fair number of people who just plain don’t notice an unexpected visual stimulus: the guy in the gorilla suit in the middle of it all (here, thumping his chest). This behavior has been dubbed, “inattentional blindness”:

Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice a fully-visible, but unexpected object because attention was engaged on another task, event, or object.

Daniel J Simons, Christopher F Chabris, “Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindnessfor dynamic events ,” Perception, 1999, volume 28, pages 1059 - 1074. (This work won an Ig Nobel prize in 2004, see here, and Dr. Simon’s visual cognition lab description and related work is here). (Scholarpedia article written by Dr. Simon here).

When I was reading anonypath’s comment in this blog (here, scroll down) I was intensely focused.  Yet, clear as a bell, is the  hallmark psychopath doublespeak — like, the inconsistencies “I don’t want to cause trouble” vs. “people will notice I manipulate them” (paraphrasing) etc.  I was focused on trying to figure out how or whether to respond, or even  if to delete, or if I would look like a weasel if I put in the usual disclaimer “Readers: I have no idea who this person is” etc. I didn’t really notice the total incongruities until I lightened up.

Your loyal bloggist is working on the “sustained inattentional blindness” hypothesis:  did I fail to notice the “gorilla suit”  the first few re-reads?

Perhaps when one’s synapses are in military formation for a particularly salient environmental cue, one’s other synapses are goofing off and not really paying attention to anything.  

I’m going to guess that 99% of the people out there either failed to show up for or slept through BIO101 where the whole DNA thing was discussed. But — don’t be turned off just because this post is about DNA and RNA and you can never remember what is what.  DNA encodes RNA which then is a template for ribosomes to make proteins. Got it? Good. Because Fragile X premutations have messed up RNAs that block the ribosomes from making protein.  But — there are small molecules that can straighten out the RNA so that the ribosomes can make protein.  (The protein is good, you want the protein).

Fragile X premutations   - even without any Fragile-X-ish phenotype  - may be prone to higher incidence of neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as attention deficit and alcoholism.  (Previous posts here, and here).

Jumbled up RNAs  prevent protein production, and that low level of FMR1 protein may kick off the series of events that leads to the problems.   In a petri dish at least, using chemicals that unjumble the RNA, protein production resumes to healthy levels. 

Noa Ofer, Pnina Weisman-Shomer, Jeny Shklover, and Michael Fry, “The quadruplex r(CGG)_n destabilizing cationic porphyrin TMPyP4 cooperates with hnRNPs to increase the translation efficiency of fragile X premutation mRNA,” Nucleic Acids Res. 2009 May; 37(8): 2712–2722 (via PMC2677883).

“So what?” you may think, “these small molecules never work, and anyway, they are not specific enough, and plus they have 101 delivery problems for them to actually be any kind of therapeutic drugs. And, you’d need to educate an entire sales force, so the NPV is zero, and they should never be developed, and anyway, why not just use antibody or peptibody therapeutics since there are already known regulatory hurdles anyway?” (This is the argument for making a non-decision when you work at a drug company, and you really don’t want to make a decision, because you could be wrong. But if you don’t decide anything, you can’t be wrong and you’ll get your bonus.)

But give these small molecules a chance. Small molecules targeting specific little molecular targets (here RNAs, but also proteins or even DNAs), are really beginning to become a viable business strategy.

Lately I’ve been looking at aptamers , the sort of unemployed brother in laws of small molecules that no company could really make a go of for the past 20-ish or so years (with exception). The small molecues for Fragile X premutatation target “G-quadruplexes” (and,  strictly speaking aren’t aptamers, per se).

These molecules, like siRNAs, need a boat load of formulaton work for drug delivery, because when you put a little piece of DNA into your mouth, or nose, or blood stream, it gets recognized as something to be chewed up by your local enzymes.  (The delivery aspect is where some people are putting down bets).

( As an aside, recent research points to no correlation of Parkinson’s with Fragile X premutation; I haven’t updated research on “non-symptomatic”  Huntington’s although this is also a trinucleotide repeat disorder).

Humans and birds are the only animals who appreciate the Back Street Boys (that I’m aware of, and probably more so in birds than humans):

Why is this?
Although Mr. Timberlake may be extremely attractive to the avian crowd, this post is not limited to ’90s boy bands, but rather is about music, vasopressin and sex.

Anyway.

According to new research out of Finland, the land so obviously well known for it’s melodious population (??), genes associated with human bonding and affiliative behavior are associated with musical ability. The study examined Finnish families of professional musicians for selected genetic alleles (dopamine, serotonin, etc. see the paper), and found that particular arginine vasopressin receptor allelic variants are most strongly associated with various measures of musical ability. (More on Finland here).

Birds and humans have a natural tendency to associate music with affiliative behavior. Snowball, the dancing and singing sulfer-crested cockatoo in the video, was found to move in rhythmic synchrony with music — not just as an artifact or randomly. The avian version of vasopressin is vasotocin, and bird songs are the avian version of texting for social behavior, like sex or aggression. Bird brains are fairly plastic with seasonal rewiring for mating or aggression or nesting or hatching eggs (depending on the climate, apparently).  Accordingly, birdsongs are different in different times of year. (This fits well with my current hypothesis, “when the weather’s hot so are the people”).(Nothing personal Finlanders).

With humans, arginine vasopressin receptor alleles are involved in social behaviors, like mate bonding (or cheating on your mate). Particular alleles are also associated with other creative endeavors, like creative dance.  Music, dance, vasopressin. . . . there must be at least a dotted line to courtship.. . .or just sex.

Perhaps one may find exemplars of this in the Los Angeles ecosystem. For example, the Rainbow on Sunset ecosystem, habitat of   ’80s big hair bands,  provided the ecologically coordinated resources of recreational drugs, heavy metal music and mating behavior described in the nature documentary,  “Women of The Sunset Strip” .

From Ukkola et al., citations omitted, full cite below:

Interestingly, AVPR1A has been known to modulate social cognition and behavior (see the recent review by Donaldson and Young ) making it a strong candidate gene for music perception and production. Several features in perceiving and practicing music, a multi-sensory process, are closely related to attachment . Based on animal studies Darwin proposed in 1871 that singing is used to attract the opposite sex. Furthermore, lullabies are implied to attach infant to a parent and singing or playing music together may add group cohesion. Thus, it is justified to hypothesize that music perception and creativity in music are linked to the same phenotypic spectrum of human cognitive social skills, like human bonding and altruism both associated with AVPR1A. It is of notice that both altruism (also called pathological trusting), and intense interest towards music and relatively sparse language skills are the characteristic features of Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS), a neurodevelopmental syndrome with elfin facial features, supravalvular aortic stenosis, hypercalcemia and scoliosis . AVPR1A is also associated with autism, an opposite phenotype withpoor social communication skills .

Ukkola LT, Onkamo P, Raijas P, Karma K, Järvelä I, 2009 Musical Aptitude Is Associated with AVPR1A-Haplotypes. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5534. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005534

Per Nations Report Card (National Center for Education Statistics).

Questions 5-6 are based on the following map.
6.	The movement of what international product is shown on the map? Give two reasons why the product is shipped to the places indicated on the map.

Yet another pillar of my community has been indicted, this time for failure to pay taxes for 4 years, to the tune of only a little over $1MM — not even enough to really make a difference in lifestyle.  Indictment means criminal. Why would this person risk it all for this? (Photo is Leona Helmsley, just for illustration).

Quite naturally, like everything else in life, I went on line for the answer, this time to SSRN the source of all knowledge and wisdom. SSRN sez:

Coleman, Stephen,The Minnesota Income Tax Compliance Experiment: Replication of the Social Norms Experiment(November 1, 2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1393292

The paper reports a repeat of a previous study demonstrating that when the state tax authorities notify taxpayers that most people pay their taxes, people want to fall in with social norm compliance and pay up. Here’s the paragraph that had a modest effect on taxpayer compliance in Minnesota:

According to a recent public opinion survey, many Minnesotans believe that other people routinely cheat on their taxes. This is not true, however. Audits by the Internal Revenue Service show that people who file tax returns report correctly and pay voluntarily 93 percent of the income taxes they owe.

Yet, this doesn’t get to the point: rich people don’t have that social norm compliance. And, they can easily hide their income because it is mostly not from  wages.  (See “Rich Cheat More on Taxes, New Study Shows. . . )If you have businesses, rents, capital gains, and all sorts of trusts, it’s easier to bog things up than if you’re a straight salary schmoo.

Although plenty of wealthy folks are tightwads, why would someone risk their freedom for such a small amount of money? Social norm compliance? But how do they know what’s the social norm? Who passes along this information, that, “it’s not tax fraud, it’s tax avoidance, and who doesn’t like Bermuda or Lichtenstein?”

Likely suspects: brand name professional firms, the law firms and accounting firms, cow-towing to their clients so they don’t get fired. It’s social norm compliance among the service providers. You don’t want to be the only one advising your client not to have “an aggressive tax-minimization strategy” or “planned stock sales” or any of the rest of it.

I agree that it’s social norm compliance, but here, the lever seems to me to be on the service providers that the wealthy folks rely upon, rather than the taxpayers themselves.

Say you are male and worried your female significant other is going to run off with the pool guy.  What do you do?

You cleverly devise a mate retention strategy — and what better mate retention strategy than to insult her in an attempt to make her feel as though she is unworthy of the pool guy? Brilliant.

Insulting your gal is not without cost to self, however.  The woman may say, “Enough of this nonsense, I’m leaving with the pool guy.” Nevertheless, a man who is perceived (by his mate) as having a “lower mate value” than the woman more frequently insults the woman.

Emily J. Miner , Todd K. Shackelford, Valerie G. Starratt, “Mate value of romantic partners predicts men’s partner-directed verbal insults, “  Personality and Individual Differences 46 : 135–139  (January 2009) doi:10.1016/j.paid.2008.09.015

. . .Although both men’s and women’s mate values are related to men’s use of partner-directed insults, men’s mate value, but not women’s mate value, uniquely predicts men’s use of partner-directed insults. Put differently, independent of their partner’s mate value, men of low mate value deploy more partner-directed insults than men of high mate value. The current research documents a pattern of results for men’s mate value and partner-directed insults similar to previous results which linked men’s mate value to men’s mate retention behaviors (Miner et al., 2009). The comparable pattern of results identified in the current and previous research is consistent with other work indicating that partner-directed insults are a form of mate retention, specifically cost-inflicting mate retention behaviors (McKibbin et al., 2007). The current research also is consistent with previous results indicating that men of lower mate value perform a more diverse set of mate retention behaviors to retain their partners than do men of higher mate value (Miner et al., 2009). The current results also are broadly consistent with the Competitively Disadvantaged Male hypothesis of male sexual coercion, which suggests that low mate value men may perform more sexually coercive behaviors than high mate value men because oftheir relative inability to attract and retain faithful sexual partners
(Figueredo & McCloskey, 1993).. . .

Say you are bipolar. Then someone tells you “Oh - your problem is a white matter disconnect that makes you process your emotions in a distorted way.”

Does that knowledge improve your quality of life?

Here’s the white matter reference:

Fei Wang, Jessica H. Kalmar, Yong He, Marcel Jackowski, Lara G. Chepenik, Erin E. Edmiston, Karen Tie, Gaolang Gong, Maulik P. Shah, Monique Jones, Jodi Uderman, R. Todd Constable, Hilary P. Blumberg, “Functional and Structural Connectivity Between the Perigenual Anterior Cingulate and Amygdala in Bipolar Disorder,” Biological Psychiatry - 12 May 2009 (10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.03.023)

*  *  *

This post is a review of the  talk, “Bad to the Bone: Horrors!–Can Our Genes Help Make Us Act Badly?” by  Dr. Barbara Oakley , author of “EVIL GENES- Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend,“  who is on the California leg of the book tour.

I attended the Cal Tech talk,  at the Baxter Hall auditorium. The talk started at 2:17 (to be precise) after some remarks from Dr. Michael Shermer, leader of the Skeptics Society the event hosting organization. (Dr. Shermer extemporized about an LA Times editorial criticizing atheists, noting: “40% of Americans believe the earth was created 6000 years ago — about the time the Babylonians invented beer.”)

Dr. Oakley’s talk was what you’d expect if you’d read her book –  engaging,  educational, and go see her even if you have to drive a long way.

I wanted to see more data, current studies and have the luxury of a real scientist explaining this stuff to me, rather than me putting on hip boots and wading into PubMed by myself and muddling through things.

But that’s not the point. The point is that this is the tipping point: the neuroscience of psychopathy presented for the non-science major crowd. Dr. Oakley brings these concepts mainstream. This talk hits the concepts where most people can access it, without the neuro mumbo jumbo.

Dr. Oakley’s personal experience with her own family of origin clearly clicked with the audience.  She tells the story of her sister, who was stricken with polio at a young age, and grew up to have psychopathic tendencies from whatever angle you look at it.  Incredibly, her sister kept a diary - and was very articulate.  So we see the objective behavior and we understand the subjective thought. Very moving. And disturbing.

Dr. Oakley is far more charitable than I would be, even understanding that psychopathy is caused by an organic deficit, much like, say, mental retardation or addictions. Perhaps because her sister was stricken with polio as a young child, and the virus is known to have neurological residue in parts of the brain relating to attention. A child in an iron lung is a sympathetic figure, even if they do grow up to be holy terrors.

Dr. Oakley also pointed to (and has a horrific personal experience with)  Slobodan Milosovitch, the genocidal maniac - - who, when at the World Court  and cross examined as to why the bodies of civilians bore marks of torture — replied “I can’t hear you my [translation] headphones aren’t working.”

And that’s the gist of it: psychopaths don’t want to have working headphones.  They totally duck introspection.

But, what to do with the slidey scale of free will and personal responsibility?

I think most behaviors are organically caused, yet I blast psychopaths.  (See here, “Neurodiversity editorial: Do we have to accept sociopaths?” a post I wrote which was apparently picked up as a rallying cry for sociopaths to feel victimized).

Perhaps there is only limited free will in thought, but there is a volitional acceleration in denying  introspection.  (I previously wondered if this was sort of anosognosia) .

So maybe that’s the free will component. If you know you have a distorted way of thinking, then you have the knowledge to at least stop it from hurting anyone else. If you choose to just let ‘er rip, well, no diminished capacity for you.

And the talk. Baxter Auditorium was nearly full. (500 people? 1000? I’m a bad judge). People came into a dark lecture hall on a brilliant spring SoCal day. I was initially distracted by Dr. Oakley’s heavy  sweater and wanted to say “don’t you know you can’t throw a stone in LA without hitting an image consultant!!!!” but, that’s the Publisher’s PR agent’s job, now, isn’t it? She also needs to de-academic-ize her powerpoints (blue background, bullet points, you know). A more Ken-Burnsian presentation would go over well.  I would have liked to seen more brain animations or even some animations explaining why evolution didn’t breed this out of us already (a question from the audience).  I’ll wait for the 6 part HBO special.

In the auditorium, I sat about 3/4 of the way up and everyone below me was totally still except for involuntarily nodding their head in recognition of Dr. Oakley’s anecdotes. She had that crowd in the palm of her hand.

She told one anecdote about working in Antarctica. There was a scrawny assistant who would impersonate the big boss when answering the phone, as a power trip. Finally the big boss himself called and busted the assistant. “Who is this?” asked the big boss after the assistant impersonated him on the phone. “Why, it’s you!” said the assistant.

Now, if you know psychopaths, you know they think the truth is relative. It’s what you can get away with.  As  Bart Simpson said, “You can’t prove it so I didn’t do it.”

The anecdote was doubly interesting for me because while having flaming margaritas up on Sunset a few years ago I met a psychopath who is a screenwriter who actually did a stint in Antarctica.  (I asked him why he went to Antarctica, and he said he was trying to impress a girl.)  The screenwriter went on to write thrillers about urban areas, but should have written about a psychopath in Antarctica who snows people. Seriously.  I’m wondering if that assistant could have been the same person, maybe younger.

About the audience.  White.  White, white and more white. Lots of seniors. Some students. Faculty-lounge.  No African-Americans that I saw, and few people of any color.  The midwest starts at Glendale.

I wondered, in advance, if there would be shrinks in the audience who would challenge the neuro- point of view, and Dr. Oakly deserves a medal for diplomacy in that one.  (”Shrinks” being shorthand here for lcsw, therapists, counselors, the entire field).  The problem is the total lack of data supporting the psychological framework.  She started off the lecture by noting that you just can’t do a PubMed on “evil” or “relatives who screw you over” or even the web-hit-wonder “malignant narcissist”.   It was validating for me to see that she came upon the term, “Machiavellian” just as I had, as one of the few search terms that actually gets hits.   I wish that the shrinks and the neuro-s would get together and agree on some terminology, and lets all just move on with our lives instead of arguing semantics.

But, the lack of PUBMED hits is a symptom of the underlying problem: no data.

People who are sub-clinical, the high-functioning psychopaths or borderline personality (or, “borderpaths”), aren’t seeking help, so they aren’t studied, and that’s that.  In fact, the shrinks ,  don’t recognize these people as being treatment-worthy, usually, until there’s some sort of threshold met. An arrest. A rehab stint. The bread and butter for most shrinks are the people who have been run over by the psychopath/borderline.

I was hoping to see some debate on the shrinks vs. neuro. I think the mental health field is way undereducated, to the point of basically folk medicine. (Remember when ulcers were considered a by-product of anxiety? Nope, we now know its Heliobacter pylori).

The sociological fall out for this is stunning. We get psychopaths in the executive suite because the HR consultant administers Meyers-Briggs or MMPI’s or that ridiculous color-square personality test instead of a brain scan, gene-scan or some other relevant analysis. (A note: the most psychopathic CEO I’ve worked with required his lieutenants to have periodic personality tests and keep those little color-chart things on their desks.) A fiduciary duty to only hire HR consultants who actually assess the BOD or Exec Suite’s neural functioning would go a long way toward preventing this kind of psychopathic self-selection in hierarchical organizations.For that matter, Vegas drive-through weddings should also offer drive-through brain scans, you could keep it in your wedding album.  I digress.

Sitting in the audience and looking at the other people I had the impression that the biology of evil  is about to break out of  academia and into the wild. The scientist establishment has let us down. They are holed up in the faculty lounge arguing about pixels or voxels or the definition of  “borderline” or whatever.  Dr. Oakley is democratizing of science and getting this information to the rest of us.

(Note: I’m still reading the book, “EVIL GENES- Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend”. So far, the book is an easy read, and the organization is just right.  This one goes on the shelf next to “The Sociopath Next Door” — the two together should really be just made of bullet-proof material and sewn into a vest, it’s all most people need to know about dealing with psychopaths/sociopaths in their own lives.  )

I’m here to recruit you:  Just got the notice from Dr. Barbara Oakley , author of “EVIL GENES- Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend,“  who is on the California leg of the book tour.  She is giving a talk,  entitled “Bad to the Bone: Horrors!–Can Our Genes Help Make Us Act Badly?”

(Although I’d love to meet the author and blog readers I can’t come out of the closet as an anonymous blogger yet without probably torching various aspects of my real  life. . .hm. Perhaps stickers or T-shirts made with the admittedly somewhat lame logo

so Anti-Sociopath Activists recognize each other at these events, there are zillions of us. . . right?)

Here’s the schedule:

Sunday, May 17, 2:00 PM, at:

The California Institute of Technology
1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena CA 91125,

Saturday, May 16, 3:00 PM at the:

Faulkner Gallery, Central Public Library,

40 East Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101,

on Thursday, May 21st at 1:00 PM at:

Emeritus College (a program of Diablo Valley College)
1250 Arroyo Way, Walnut Creek, CA 94596

and on Friday, May 29, 7:00 PM, at:

Timber Cove Inn
21780 North Coast Hwy 1
Timber Cove, CA 95450
(707) 847-3231

Stalking in the news:
‘He won’t let go’: Husband stalks divorce-seeking wife from his cell
Stalker case sent to High Court
Teacher accused of stalking student
Judge’s Ex Faces Charges of Stalking DC Magistrate
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So I’ll punt to other great article of interest:

Prof. Agin (via HuffPo) discusses psychopathy in world leaders;

Prof Agin (via HuffPo), Alzheimer’s Disease and Darwinian Evolution: Is There a Connection?

Clinton Calahan, on Dissident Voice, “Beware the Psychopath, My Son”

Postcards from the ID’s category, “Competency to Stand Trial” (Jermiah Dwyer is a forensic psychology expert in criminal cases, and has written extensively on competency to stand trial - at the forefront of neuro - law.)

Ask Metafilter, tag, “Cheating” (see related NC post, Law and neuroscience: What’s love got to do with it? Plenty. Prairie voles and Justininan law and marriage laws depending on intent of the parties.)

The Killers’ Spaceman (this is random).

Mate bonding was a basis for animal ownership under Justinian law.  Usually, you only owned wild animals while they were on your property.  (In contrast, if your domesticated goats wondered away, you still owned them, but had to pay damages for anything they ate on someone elses property). With wild bees, for example, you only owned them while they were in your hive.  If they decided to hive elsewhere, too bad, no bees for you. But, the exception was for  birds who had the intention to return, like  swans, who mate for life. If a male or female swan wandered away, it was considered cruel (or maybe inconvenient) to keep the swan away from its mate. Same with cygnets. So now you can discuss with knowledge the cygnet exception to the usual Justinian law rule that you only own animals while they are on your property.

Don’t ask in what biotech context I had to learn about this kind of law. It’s not pretty.

Consider:  The biology of loyalty, or intent to return. Should marriage be based on “intent” rather than gender identity or orientation or even number of people or anything else?

We know the fundamentals of the biology of affiliative behavior. Prairie voles are monogamous, but mountain voles are irredeemably disloyal. This is largely ascribed to vasopressin, or vasopressin receptors — the same kinds attributed to human males who display lack of human bonding.

So: ipse dixit legal beagles, the law hath spoken and we are all in pari delicto. Marriage laws should depend on whether the party has the intent to return after straying. People who are prairie vole- like should be considered married, and people who are mountain vole- like should be considered just passin’ through. How to prove? Use the vasopressin receptor allelic mix as a proxy, get it Dauberted.

An editorial note: California’s prop 8 (against same-sex marriage) is hideously ridiculous and not based on any kind of biology-based affiliative behavior I can see. Gender or orientation, imo, is irrelevant to whether a person is capable of bonding with another.  (I think it’s irrelevant. In  LA county, everyone is on the lookout for a better offer. The marriage office should just shut down, because no one has intent to stay married,  in my orbit anyway).

Here’s an update on praire voles, just substitute the word “human” for “vole”:

Variation in oxytocin receptor density in the nucleus accumbens has differential effects on affiliative behaviors in monogamous and polygamous voles.Ross HE, Freeman SM, Spiegel LL, Ren X, Terwilliger EF, Young LJ.J Neurosci. 2009 Feb 4;29(5):1312-8.

The CRF system mediates increased passive stress-coping behavior following the loss of a bonded partner in a monogamous rodent.Bosch OJ, Nair HP, Ahern TH, Neumann ID, Young LJ.Neuropsychopharmacology. 2009 May;34(6):1406-15. Epub 2008 Oct 15.

Field tests of cis-regulatory variation at the prairie vole avpr1a locus: association with V1aR abundance but not sexual or social fidelity.Ophir AG, Campbell P, Hanna K, Phelps SM. Horm Behav. 2008 Nov;54(5):694-702. Epub 2008 Jul 30.

For more on family annihilators, see here and also see the stats here. City editors, what’s up? Are you all horrible people?

Rae Taylor, “Slain and Slandered, A Content Analysis of the Portrayal of Femicide in Crime News,” Homicide Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, 21-49 (2009) DOI: 10.1177/1088767908326679

The present study is a content analysis of crime news to determine how femicide victims are portrayed by a Florida metropolitan newspaper. The analysis consisted of 292 domestic homicide-related articles published by one newspaper from 1995 to 2000. The data were analyzed to determine effects on newsworthiness, context revealed, and patterns of victim blame. A dichotomy concerning victim blame emerged from the analysis, suggesting victims are blamed directly and indirectly for their own femicides. Direct tactics include using negative language to describe the victim, highlighting her choices not to report past incidences, and portraying her actions with other men as contributing to her murder. Indirect tactics include using sympathetic language to describe the perpetrator; emphasizing the perpetrator’s mental, physical, emotional, and financial problems; highlighting the victim’s mental or physical problems; and describing domestic violence in terms that assign equal blame to both partners.

How’s that for headline writing?  Dopamine transporter alleles with repeats produce more dopamine transporter — and so the need for more dopamine hits. Title, link, and one-line oversimplified summary.

1.  Relationships Between Angry-Impulsive Personality Traits and Genetic Polymorphisms of the Dopamine Transporter.

This allele is associated with angry-impulsive personality traits.

2. Variation in dopamine genes influences responsivity of the human reward system.

People with the 9-repeat allele anticipate rewards and have the strongest responses to rewards.

3. Dopamine and opioid gene variants are associated with increased smoking reward and reinforcement owing to negative mood.

9-repeat allele was associated with increased smoking amount due to bad mood, but not with increased reward experienced.

4. ADHD and DAT1: Further evidence of paternal over-transmission of risk alleles and haplotype.

Although the 9-repeat allele isn’t specifically mentioned, this is a small study indicating a trend for paternal transmission of DAT alleles associated with ADHD.

Delay discounting is associated with wobbly white matter in adolescents, particularly in regions known to be associated with cognitive inhibition.

Sooooo… the prudent and reasonable person not knowing if one has such wobbly white matter would naturally take extra time in doing virtually everything in life as a precaution against the  Bad Decision Dinosaur.

Olson EA, Collins PF, Hooper CJ, Muetzel R, Lim KO, Luciana M.White matter integrity predicts delay discounting behavior in 9- to 23-year-olds: a diffusion tensor imaging study. J Cogn Neurosci. 2009 Jul;21(7):1406-21.doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21107

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