My soup

A study just published in the British Journal of Psychiatry has found that only 23% of the population are without symptoms of personality disorder.

If you’re not familiar with it, personality disorder is a somewhat controversial diagnosis which essentially classifies people who we might otherwise called ‘extremely difficult’ but to the point where they cause themselves significant life problems.

This new survey used the standard diagnostic criteria, but instead of giving people a “you’ve got it or you haven’t” all-or-nothing diagnosis (given when a certain threshold of symptoms are reached) the researchers totalled up the symptoms to make a sliding scale.

The study found that even those who wouldn’t qualify for a diagnosis but still had some symptoms were more likely to have had a history of running away from home, police contacts, homelessness and sexual abuse and were less likely to be employed.

Of course, what the study could be describing is simply that people who have had a rough time come out the worst for wear.

The question is not so much whether this is a high or low figure, but at what point psychiatry and mental health services should offer assistance.

For many years psychiatry has been suffering from ‘mission creep’ where things previously thought to be unhelpful but normal (e.g. low mood after a divorce, shyness) have become classified and promoted as mental illnesses with the accompanying pharmacological treatment.

At what point we decide that something is a mental illness has become one of the central psychological and cultural questions of the 21st century.

Link to summary of study at the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Está feo eso de generalizar, pero creo sinceramente que hombres y mujeres no somos iguales. Se deba a algo puramente biológico o a una cuestión de educación, entorno y costumbres, nuestra forma de comportarnos y de reaccionar ante lo que nos rodea es normalmente muy distinta. Lógicamente, eso no tiene nada que ver con la capacidad intelectual de cada sexo, aunque Nintendo no parece pensar igual.

La compañía nipona ha organizado una serie de eventos en varias ciudades de Estados Unidos que servirán para promocionar Professor Layton and the Unwound Future y para que hombres y mujeres compitan entre sí. Básicamente, lo que hará Nintendo es colocar una serie de cabinas estilo londinense con consolas y demos del juego e invitar a los que pasen por allí a probar sus desafíos, contabilizando de forma independiente la puntuación lograda por hombres y mujeres.

El primero de estos eventos tendrá lugar en San Francisco el próximo 7 de septiembre de 11 a 18 horas y después se repetirá en Boston, Chicago y Philadelphia. El juego, por cierto, se pondrá a la venta en Estados Unidos el 12 de septiembre y en Europa el 22 de octubre. En el viejo continente, por cierto, recibirá el nombre de Professor Layton and the Lost Future.

A 1999 case report describes a 29-year-old man who developed the delusional belief that he was pregnant.

Mr. R., a 29-year-old married man from a semi-urban background with 8 years’ education, was brought by his wife to the outpatient department at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India, with a 2-month history of suspicious and assaultive behaviour. He would look at the sky and say that everyone including God was trying to assault him. He also claimed that there was a baby in his abdomen.

He believed that he had Jesus in his abdomen to start with, but later reported that Jesus had flown away through his mouth, but was replaced by a human baby. He was sure that the child was 40 days old and it was the same child his wife was having. He could also feel the movements of the child and was sure that it was growing. However, he did not have any other symptoms of pregnancy. He was withdrawn and his food intake was inadequate.

Although the case reported here wasn’t the first case of male delusional pregnancy ever described (though, admittedly, they are rare) this one was of particular interest because, although the gentleman recovered, he later developed another brief psychosis where the delusion returned.

For the second time, he believed himself to be carrying a child. Curiously, both incidents occurred when his wife was genuinely pregnant.

Although there is no clear explanation for why it occurred in this particular case, there is, however, evidence that men show hormone changes when their female partners are pregnant, possibly linked to a well-known syndrome called ‘Couvade syndrome‘ where men can show sympathetic signs of pregnancy.

We’ve discussed delusions of pregnancy before although they are, unsurprisingly, much more common in women.

Link to PubMed entry for case report.

Como ya sabrán, Pepe Domingo Castaño, Paco González y buena parte del equipo de “Carrusel Deportivo” han abandonado una radio, la SER, para fichar por otra, la Cope. Manolo Lama seguirá sus pasos en breve, cuando finalice la millonaria cláusula de rescisión que le obliga a permanecer unos meses más en la emisora de Prisa. Con estos movimientos de fichas la información futbolística veraniega ha quedado patas arriba: los fichajes periodísticos han eclipsado a los de jugadores y entrenadores. ¿A quién le importan Villa o Mourinho si puede seguir escuchando “¡Pepe, un purito!” gratis y con solo mover unos milímetros el dial? En la Cope están que se salen, “hemos formado un equipo ganador”. En Prisa tienen una pataleta de mucho cuidado: demandaran a la Cope por “competencia desleal”.

Desde El Descodificador sólo puedo decir a Prisa que lamento su pérdida. No la del equipo de “Carrusel”, un grupo de periodistas gritones, en ocasiones machistas y soberbios, que tiene todo el derecho del mundo a elegir el lugar donde descargar su humor tabernario. Lo que lamento es la pérdida de modales, perspectiva y credibilidad que el fútbol (y sus secuelas radiofónicas y televisivas) están provocando en El País, mi periódico de toda la vida.

Busquen en la hemeroteca los últimos días… El pasado martes día 17 El País nos contó, a cuatro columnas y con todo lujo de detalles, cómo suscribirnos a Canal + Dos por apenas 15 euros al mes. El miércoles día 18 dedicaron el mismo espacio de la página de comunicación (todo) a la rabieta de la Ser con la Cope por haberles desmantelado la plantilla de deportes. El jueves día 19 continuaron con la misma campaña, defendiendo a cuatro columnas a la emisora de PRISA: “La SER sale reforzada de la agresión sin precedentes de la COPE”, titularon. El viernes 20 dieron la gran noticia, también a cuatro columnas, del fichaje de Michael Robinson por “Carrusel” (Cadena SER). Y el sábado 21 entrevistaron a toda página a José Ramón de la Morena, presentador de “El Larguero” (Cadena SER). ¿Otra vez José Ramón de la Morena? Sí, ¡la segunda entrevista en veinte días!: el domingo 1 de agosto ya le habían entrevistado, en la misma página y con la misma extensión (ocupando todo el espacio).

“Esta profesión tiene un lado oscuro”, decía de De la Morena en esa última entrevista. Y tanto. Ayer en la página de comunicación de El País se podía leer, también a cuatro columnas: “La Liga se juega en Digital +”. Hablaban del comienzo de la competición, y de cómo podemos verla en C+, en Canal + Liga, en Canal + HD… No decían en ningún momento que esa misma Liga se juega también en otras cadenas, algunas de pago y otras no, con lo que la información resultaba incompleta, tendenciosa y hasta patética. Sentí que había tirando a la basura el euro y veinte céntimos que me costó el periódico: estaba pagando promoción a precio de información.

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Well, fuck.

I’ve just read a jaw-dropping Slate interview with the co-founder of the Innocence Project, an organisation that has uncovered hundreds of wrongful convictions on the basis of DNA analysis techniques which weren’t available when the case was prosecuted.

The interview is repeatedly astounding and has some terrifying insights into personal conviction, group think and the difficulty of admitting errors.

It tackles how individual motivations and perception mesh with the social structure and tools of the legal system to sometimes produce gross miscarriages of justice.

How do most wrongful convictions come about?

The primary cause is mistaken identification. Actually, I wouldn’t call it mistaken identification; I’d call it misidentification, because you often find that there was some sort of misconduct by the police. In a lot of cases, the victim initially wasn’t so sure. And then the police say, “Oh, no, you got the right guy. In fact, we think he’s done two others that we just couldn’t get him for.” Or: “Yup, that’s who we thought it was all along, great call.”

It’s disturbing that misidentifications still play such a large role in wrongful convictions, given that we’ve known about the fallibility of eyewitness testimony for over a century.

In terms of empirical studies, that’s right. And 30 or 40 years ago, the Supreme Court acknowledged that eyewitness identification is problematic and can lead to wrongful convictions. The trouble is, it instructed lower courts to determine the validity of eyewitness testimony based on a lot of factors that are irrelevant, like the certainty of the witness. But the certainty you express [in court] a year and half later has nothing to do with how certain you felt two days after the event when you picked the photograph out of the array or picked the guy out of the lineup. You become more certain over time; that’s just the way the mind works. With the passage of time, your story becomes your reality. You get wedded to your own version.

And the police participate in this. They show the victim the same picture again and again to prepare her for the trial. So at a certain point you’re no longer remembering the event; you’re just remembering this picture that you keep seeing.

Link to Slate interview with Innocence Project co-founder.

Say hello to Meiolania damelipi, a species of turtle that has been extinct for about 3,000 years. Does it look familiar to you? As if you'd seen it somewhere before? Geekosystem explains it far better than I ever could:

M. damelipi bones were found during an archeological dig in the ancient village site of a seafaring Pacific island culture. From Wired:

The bottom layer of the garbage pile, dated to 3,000 years ago, had many meiolaniid bones. The top layer, dated to 2,800 years ago, had none.

Truly, it is a sobering reminder of the affect that the human race has had on the planet even before we developed nuclear bombs, plastic, and carbon-based – Oh who are we kidding…

Do meiolaniids look like Bowser, or do they look like Bowser?

Yes, there's a striking resemblance to Nintendo's famous Bowser, King of the Koopas. Moreover, there's a striking resemblance to Bowser's bleached bones variation, Dry Bowser, from New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart Wii, and Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Winter Games. That fossil just plain looks mean. It's a perfect facial likeness. I feel the innate need to knock it off a bridge into a lava pit just looking at it.

The Economist has a great article on how computer models of how bees, ants and birds operated in swarms, are being deployed as ‘artificial intelligence’ systems to solve previously unassailable problems.

To be honest, the premise of the piece is a little too grand to be plausible: the introductory paragraph announces “The search for artificial intelligence modelled on human brains has been a dismal failure. AI based on ant behaviour, though, is having some success.”

This is really not true, as artificial intelligence has actually been a great success when applied to limited and well-defined problems. The article really just explains how the study of swarm intelligence has allowed us to tackle a new set of limited and well-defined problems that were previously out of easy reach.

However, it does give some fantastic examples of how swarm behaviour, where the combination of simple individual behaviours can solve complex problems, can be applied to a range of problems:

In particular, Dr Dorigo was interested to learn that ants are good at choosing the shortest possible route between a food source and their nest. This is reminiscent of a classic computational conundrum, the travelling-salesman problem. Given a list of cities and their distances apart, the salesman must find the shortest route needed to visit each city once. As the number of cities grows, the problem gets more complicated. A computer trying to solve it will take longer and longer, and suck in more and more processing power. The reason the travelling-salesman problem is so interesting is that many other complex problems, including designing silicon chips and assembling DNA sequences, ultimately come down to a modified version of it.

Ants solve their own version using chemical signals called pheromones. When an ant finds food, she takes it back to the nest, leaving behind a pheromone trail that will attract others. The more ants that follow the trail, the stronger it becomes. The pheromones evaporate quickly, however, so once all the food has been collected, the trail soon goes cold. Moreover, this rapid evaporation means long trails are less attractive than short ones, all else being equal. Pheromones thus amplify the limited intelligence of the individual ants into something more powerful.

Link to Economist article ‘Riders on a Swarm’.
Link to Wikipedia article on swarm intelligence.

I’ve started watching “The Day The Universe Changed” in 10 minute bites on youtube.

I love this contemporary review from the Sydney Morning Herald:

This series, in which he verbally dances through the earth-shattering events in history is, quite simply, exciting. Like an intravenous slug of ice-cold Akvavit, he provokes shivers of shock and pleasure. His mix of cleverness, egotism, fun, imagination and accessibility is similar to the television styles of Robert Hughes or J.K.Galbraith, except that Burke is also naughty — like a mischievous elf.

Mind-Gangster # 1.