Do older adults benefit from videogames?

Brain training games claim to boost your mental skills. But while practicing a game might make you better at it, research in young people has shown it doesn’t improve how well you perform other cognitive tasks in everyday life. Now a new study suggests the case may be different for adults above the age of 60. Researchers at the University of California have designed a driving game called NeuroRacer. In this Nature Video, we see how the game can improve an older player’s short-term memory and attention, skills which decline with age.

Read the original research paper here:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12486 (from Nature)

Interesting TED Talks: Faith Jegede: “What I’ve learned from my autistic brothers”

Faith Jegede tells the moving and funny story of growing up with her two brothers, both autistic — and both extraordinary. In this talk from the TED Talent Search, she reminds us to pursue a life beyond what is normal.

Writer Faith Jegede draws on her experiences growing up with two autistic brothers in order to spread awareness and understanding about this increasingly common diagnosis (from TED)

 

 

I was pleasantly surprised by this. Some very interesting points about “normality” that are often forgotten by scientists/clinicians/researchers/etc.

Eye Movements and Lie Detection – Another Myth?

This is not a proper post. It is more like a long tweet. Having done a similar study last year and finding no significant results I felt I had to share this with you.

You have probably heard that right-handed people look up to their right when they are telling a lie, while they look up to their left when they are telling the truth. Surprisingly, even though many people believe this is to be scientifically established, a quick google search comes up with no relevant peer-reviewed papers. Richard Wiseman and colleagues investigated this notion with three different studies. All three studies provided no evidence to support the notion. So it seems that the patterns of eye-movements do not aid lie detection.

Why did this myth survive for such a long time? Probably thanks to psychologists’ reluctance to publish negative results…

Here is the abstract:

Proponents of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) claim that certain eye-movements are reliable indicators of lying. According to this notion, a person looking up to their right suggests a lie whereas looking up to their left is indicative of truth telling. Despite widespread belief in this claim, no previous research has examined its validity. In Study 1 the eye movements of participants who were lying or telling the truth were coded, but did not match the NLP patterning. In Study 2 one group of participants were told about the NLP eye-movement hypothesis whilst a second control group were not. Both groups then undertook a lie detection test. No significant differences emerged between the two groups. Study 3 involved coding the eye movements of both liars and truth tellers taking part in high profile press conferences. Once again, no significant differences were discovered. Taken together the results of the three studies fail to support the claims of NLP. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The rest of the article can be found on PLoS ONE.

Brain Disease and Creativity

Readers of this blog probably know I’m very interested in creativity. Recently, I came across a very interesting  review paper on artistry in brain disease by Schott.  Even though, many studies focus on the loss of various abilities as result of brain injury or disease, this review is focused on cases where brain disease resulted in enhanced artistic creativity in people with an interest in art or emergence of artistic creativity in art naive patients. Pictures created spontaneously by patient with brain disease sometimes present an excellent opportunity for studying that disease and revealing underlying mechanisms of cerebral dysfunction. It can also provide some useful information about creative processes in the healthy brain.

Dementia and stroke are very common. However, cases of patients who exhibit enhanced artistic output in these and other neurological disorders are rare or very rare. Miller et al. (2000) showed that enhanced artistry is probably more common but it is often under-reported, since new or preserved visual or musical ability was found in 17% of 69 patients with frontotemporal dementia.
In fact, frontotemporal dementia seems to be the brain disease more closely associated with increased creativity. Miller et al. (1996) were the first to report a patient with frontotemporal dementia that had developed new artistic creativity in the face of advancing dementia. A number of papers (Tanabe et al., 1996; Snowden et al., 1996), as well as Miller at al.’s seminal letter in the Lancet published in the same year brought more attention to the subject of preserved or increased artistic creativity in the presence of brain disease. Miller et al. (1996) described a 68-year-old male with a 12-year history of frontotemporal dementia,who, at the age of 56 years, started to paint having had no previous interest in art.

Patients with Alzheimer’s disease have also been reported to exhibit enhance artistic creativity. Professional painter, Danae Chambers, whose dementia started at around the age of 49 years (Fornazzari, 2005) is a striking example. Even though she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and her MRI scan revealed mild to moderate brain atrophy, there was no effect on her talent and creativity. However, it should be noted that typically during the progression of the disease stylistic changes leading to frank deterioration and eventual cessation of painting have been reported, especially in professional artists (see Crutch and Rossor, 2006).

In the case of autism there have been several cases of even very young autistics who could produce impressive works of art. A famous example is Stephen Wiltshire, who was able to draw astonishingly faithful architectural representations at the age of 7 years (Sacks, 1995).

According to Schott unexpected artistic creativity experienced by many patients has many features that suggest compulsive behaviour. Moreover, emergence of artistry after brain disease reflects innate rather than learned skills.

The brain correlates of emergent artistic creativity are rather obscure. It appears that dysfunction of the anterior temporal lobes is important if not crucial for the production of unexpectedly enhanced artistry, but the findings are often inconsistent. In some cases frontal lobe involvement is present too (Seeley et al., 2008).  Thus creative drive is thought to increase not only with abnormalities of temporal lobe function and ‘release’ of frontal lobe-mediated creativity, but also by involvement of the dopaminergic mesolimbic system (Flaherty, 2005)

One might wonder; is this emergence of artistic talent observed in patients with various brain diseases really creativity?

De Souza et al. (2010) then concluded: ‘The emergence of artistic talent in patients with fvFTLD is explained by the release of involuntary behaviors, rather than by the development of creative thinking’, and also recommended avoiding consideration of ‘pseudo-creative production, or the emergence of “artistic talent”, as a mastered mental production’.

The author, however, disagrees and concludes:

…the notion of pseudo-creation and identification of ‘artistic talent’ create more difficulties than enlightenment; rather, they emphatically confirm the importance of patients’ pictures. The evidence for creativity surely lies in the creation itself rather than in perfusion patterns or psychological tests.

Schott, G. (2012). Pictures as a neurological tool: lessons from enhanced and emergent artistry in brain disease Brain, 135 (6), 1947-1963 DOI: 10.1093/brain/awr314

Female-To-Male Transsexual People and Autistic Traits

The ‘extreme male brain’ theory suggests females with Autism Spectrum Conditions are hyper-masculinized in certain aspects of behaviour.  Jones and colleagues (2007) predicted that females with Gender Identity Disorder would have elevated  Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores.

AQ scores from five groups were compared: the first group consisted of 61 transmen (female-to-male transsexual people, the second of 198 transwomen (male-to-female transsexual people), the third one of 76 typical males, the fourth of 98 typical females, and the fifth of 125 individuals with Asperger Syndrome (AS).

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) are characterized by difficulties in social interaction and communication, alongside restricted interests and repetitive behavior (APA 1994). The diagnosis of ASC is more common in males. The Extreme Male Brain (EMB) theory of autism proposed by Baron-Cohen and Hammer in 1997 attempted to explain this . According to the EMB individuals with an ASC display an extreme of the typical male pattern of cognition and behaviour.

Studies on females with ASC have found that they are hyper-masculinized in specific aspects of behaviour and cognition. Also, women with ASC report higher rates of tomboyism in childhood (Ingudomnukul et al., 2007).  Also, female-to-male (FM) transsexuals (referred to as ‘transmen’) follow a handedness pattern more similar to genetic males (less exclusively right-handed) (Green & Young, 2001) and the same has been found among women with ASC (Soper et al., 1986).

Jones et al. used the AQ to test the specific prediction from the EMB theory that transmen will have more autistic traits than typical women, and that a higher proportion will score in the ASC range for autistic traits. Their scores were compared to maleto-female transsexual people (‘transwomen’).

The AQ is a self-report questionnaire published by Baron-Cohen and colleagues in 2001 and consists of 50 item. It assesses social skills, communication skills, imagination abilities, attention switching, and attention to details.

Scores on the AQ can be used to categorise individuals as having the ‘broader autism phenotype’ (BAP: defined as AQ 23-28), ‘medium autism phenotype’ (MAP: defined as AQ 29-34) or ‘narrow autism phenotype’ (NAP: defined  as AQ 35+) (Wheelwright et al. 2010).  The transmen had significantly more autistic traits than control men and their mean AQ score lied in the BAP range. Approximately 30% of the transmen group had an AQ in the MAP or NAP range. Transmen had a 11-fold increase in the rate of NAP relative to typical males.

This study confirms clinical case studies and reports in adolescents and children that genetic females with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) have an increased number of autistic traits. The results of this study show that transmen relative to control women exhibit more autistic traits.  In addition to that, transmen had more autistic traits than control men, and their mean AQ score lies in the Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) range.

The authors speculated:

that this increased number of autistic traits is likely to have made the transmen (in their childhood and adolescence) less able to assimilate in a female peer group, instead gravitating towards males. This may also have led to difficulties socializing in a female peer group, and a feeling of belonging more in a male group, thus increasing the probability of GID.

Very interesting findings but what I’ve been thinking while reading the paper was the possible effects of hormone treatment on the AQ scores. Jones et al. had an answer to that:

…a proportion of the transsexual groups were taking hormone treatments and for obvious ethical reasons it was not possible to control for this factor but it is of interest that analysis comparing those on or off testosterone treatment did not lead to significantly different AQ scores.

They go on suggesting that current sex steroid levels do not seem to affect AQ, which seem to depend mostly on foetal levels of sex steroids.

Jones RM, Wheelwright S, Farrell K, Martin E, Green R, Di Ceglie D, & Baron-Cohen S (2011). Brief report: female-to-male transsexual people and autistic traits. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 42 (2), 301-6 PMID: 21448752

Eye Movements as an Objective Measurement of Mind Wandering

We spent a lot of time mind wandering. Cognitive neuroscience has recently started investigating this phenomenon. However, the subjective nature of mind wandering makes capturing and measuring it exceptionally difficult. As a result, there is still no way to objectively measure mind wandering. In the majority of published studies researchers ask participants at random intervals how focused they are on a given task. Uzzaman and Joordens in a recently published paper explored the use of eye movements as an objective measure of mind wandering while participants performed a reading task.

from http://www.eyedoctorguide.com/eye_twitching/the-muscles-of-eye-movement.html

Eye movements are thought to reflect (to some degree) cognitive processes (for a brief overview of eye movement research, see the Scholarpedia entry). Uzzaman et al. study was based on an earlier paper by Reichle, Reineberg, and Schooler (2010) who suggested that eye movements may provide an objective measure of mind wandering. Reichle et al. investigated this hypothesis by comparing the fixation-duration during mind wandering and normal reading episodes. The results were very encouraging and suggested that the participants’ eye movements became progressively decoupled from the ongoing task (i.e., text processing) during mind wandering episodes.

Uzzaman et al. used a reading task coupled with a self-classified probe-caught mind wandering paradigm to obtain a subjective account of mind wandering episodes. They recruited 30 participants who were explicitly informed of the definition of mind wandering episodes prior to the start of the experiment and were instructed that they would be asked to report their mind state at random intervals. The authors defined explicitly mind wandering “as reading without text comprehension, or thinking about anything other than the text on hand”. They also provided several examples to make sure the participants fully understood the concept.

The participants read sixteen pages of “War and Peace” by Tolstoy on a computer screen while their eye movements were tracked and recorded. Randomly every 2–3 min, a probe would appear on top of the text asking what was the mind state of the participants at this specific point. Participants would have to answer to continue the experiment. On average participants received 10 probes in total, in which mind wandering was reported on 49% of them.

The eye movement behaviours of the participants were categorised into mind wandering or reading conditions, based on their self-reports. This analysis was conducted for the 5 s time interval preceding the probe for reading and wandering conditions within each participant. Nine pairs of eye movement variables were analysed (e.g., count of blinks, fixations, saccades, fixation duration, within-word regression count), which displayed different degrees of sensitivity to mind wandering.

Statistical differences were found in two of the eye movement variables, run count and  within-word regression count. Run count was defined as the “the total number of runs, where a run is two consecutive fixations within the same interest-area” and  within-word regression count as “the sum of all fixation durations from when the word was first fixated upon, till the last fixation”.  

Specifically, there were fewer within-word regressions for periods before mind wandering episodes compared to periods before reading reports (z = −2.305, p = 0.021). Also, the total run count was also lower during mind wandering episodes (z = −1.997, p = 0.046). In addition, fixation count, saccade count and total number of saccades within the interest-area were lower during mind wandering reports, although these variables fell slightly short of the conventional significance criterion (all z < −1.755,p > 0.079).

During comprehensive reading all the words were being cognitively processed deeply and effort was put forth. On the contrary, a different pattern was observed during mind wandering episodes, as it was suggested by the lower number and duration of within-word regressions that shows that the  text was not being processed deeply, and as a result limited lexical information was being extracted. As a result, reading became less effortful and more automatic.

The current study revealed a correlation between subjective reports of mind wandering, and objective ocular behaviour. These findings could be further exploited in future studies and lead to the development of algorithms that would mathematically predict the likelihood of mind wandering based on eye movements. Such a development might provide valuable insights into the neural correlates of mind wandering.
Uzzaman, S., & Joordens, S. (2011). The eyes know what you are thinking: Eye movements as an objective measure of mind wandering Consciousness and Cognition, 20 (4), 1882-1886 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2011.09.010

Reichle ED, Reineberg AE, & Schooler JW (2010). Eye movements during mindless reading. Psychological science, 21 (9), 1300-10 PMID: 20679524

Music and the Brain: Depression and Creativity Symposium

If you’re following this blog, you probably know that I’m very interested in creativity. I was delighted to find this video on YouTube and decided to share it with you:

Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, convened a discussion of the effects of depression on creativity. Joining Jamison were two distinguished colleagues from the fields of neurology and neuropsychiatry, Dr. Terence Ketter and Dr. Peter Whybrow. The Music and the Brain series is co-sponsored by the Library’s Music Division and Science, Technology and Business Division, in cooperation with the Dana Foundation.

The “Depression and Creativity” symposium marks the bicentennial of the birth of German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), who died after a severe depression following the death of his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, also a gifted composer.

One of the nation’s most influential writers on creativity and the mind, Kay Redfield Jamison is a noted authority on bipolar disorder. She is the co-author of the standard medical text on manic-depressive illness and author of “Touched with Fire,” “An Unquiet Mind,” “Night Falls Fast” and “Exuberance: The Vital Emotion.”

Dr. Terence Ketter is known for extensive clinical work with exceptionally creative individuals and a strong interest in the relationship of creativity and madness. He is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and chief of the Bipolar Disorders Clinic at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Dr. Peter Whybrow, an authority on depression and manic-depressive disease, is director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is also the Judson Braun Distinguished Professor and executive chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. (description take from here).

And here’s the video:

Effects of Individual Differences and Culture on Eye Movements

Can fixation durations and saccade lengths in one task predict eye movements in other tasks for a given viewer? This was one of the questions posed by a Rayner and colleagues in an interesting 2007 study.

Surprisingly, only a few studies to date have addressed this issue. The first one was by Andrews and Coppola (1999), who recorded eye movements of 15 viewers while they were performing five different tasks.: (1) natural occurring eye movements in darkness, (2) viewing simple textured patterns, (3) scene perception, (4) visual search, and (5) reading. The authors concluded that apart from the visual environment, idiosyncracies also have a significant effect on eye movements.

In addition to examining the stability of eye movements across different tasks, Rayner et al also examined the possibe cultural differences influence on eye movements across the different tasks. Previous studies have provided some preliminary evidence of cultural differences. More specifically, Chua, Boland, and Nisbett (2005) examined the eye movement patterns of Chinese and native English speaking participants when looking at scenes. Cua et al found that Chinese were more likely to look at the background information in a scene, while the Americans looked at the foreground objects longer and sooner than the Chinese.

Rayner et al recruited seventy-four participants, which were divided into three different groups based on their knowledge and fluency of English and Chinese. The first group, the American group, consisted of native English speakers, the second , the native Chinese group consisted of 3 native speaking Chinese participants (who learnt to speak english later in their life), and finally, the Bilingual group consisted of Chinese participants who were either born in the USA or moved there before the age of 5. The right eye movements of each participant were tracked. All participants performed the following six tasks: (1) English reading, (2) face processing, (3) scene perception, (4) visual search, (5) Chinese character count, and (6) Chinese character search. In the English reading task, 40 English sentences were read . In the face processing and scene perception tasks, participants were shown 16 pictures of female faces and 24 pictures of scenes and asked to remember them for a later memory test. In the visual search task, participants were asked to find a brown square that was part of an array of brown circles and pink squares. In the Chinese character count task, participants counted the occurrences of a Chinese character in a paragraph of Chinese text. Finally, the participants who could read Chinese read 36 Chinese sentences.

Fixation duration and saccade size were used as primary indices of temporal and spatial processing in the tasks.

It is generally assumed (see Rayner, 1998) that (1) fixation duration reflects the time needed to process the informa-tion around fixation and the time needed to plan the next saccade and (2) saccade size is related to how much information can be processed on a fixation and how the next saccade target is selected.

The results of the present study suggest that fixation durations for a given individual tend to be fairly stable across different tasks. For the American and Bilingual groups, fixation durations in English reading did not correlate especially well with fixation durations in the other tasks, while for the Chinese group fixation durations in English reading did tend to correlate highly with the other tasks. Fixation durations in scene perception and face processing were highly correlated across all three participant groups. Saccade length did not correlate as well across tasks as did fixation duration. The correlations, however, tended to be positive when the reading tasks were eliminated from the analysis.

No correlation was found between fixation duration and saccade length across all of the tasks. According to Rayner et al this could be evidence that the mechanism responsible for determining when to move the eyes is largely independent of the mechanism responsible for determining where to move the eyes next.

Reading visual tasks are in general more understood than other visual tasks. The correlations in fixation durations for these different tasks does, however, suggest that there might be common aspects of processing between them. The nature of these mechanisms is not very clear. Rayner et al. suggest that:

Perhaps in non-reading tasks, some kind of timing mechanism determines when the eyes move; such a common timing mechanism would be expected to lead to correlations across tasks, particularly in fixation durations (and to a lesser extend, saccade length). Another possibility is that something like visual saliency.

Another interesting finding of this study was that the more experience participants had with either English or Chinese, the shorter the fixations and the longer the saccades they made. This effect did not depend on cultural characteristics of the participants. As far as the effect of culture on eye movements is concerned, only a few differences were identified. Chinese participants had systematically shorter fixations in the scene perception, face processing, and Chinese count tasks than the Americans. Their performance was similar on the two search tasks. The difference in the duration of fixation observed between Chinese and American participants is due to the Chinese trading off number of fixations with fixation duration. In other words, while they made somewhat shorter fixations, they also made slightly more fixations.

Rayner K, Li X, Williams CC, Cave KR, & Well AD (2007). Eye movements during information processing tasks: individual differences and cultural effects. Vision research, 47 (21), 2714-26 PMID: 17614113

“Owls” more likely to have ADHD?

Is there any relationship between chronotype and Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms? Are evening oriented individuals more likely to have ADHD? This was the main question posed in a (relatively) recent article by Caci and colleagues.

ADHD is the most common neurodevelopmental disorder (Faraone et al., 2003) and affects about 3–6% of children (Tannock 1998). ADHD is defined by either an attentional dysfunction, hyperactive/impulsive behaviour or both (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Therefore, the diagnosis of ADHD has three subtypes: the Inattentive subtype (ADHD/IA), which is characterised by significant levels of inattention but subthreshold levels of hyperactive/ impulsive symptoms, the Hyperactive/Impulsive subtype (ADHD/HI), which is defined by hyperactivity/ impulsivity but not of inattention symptoms, and the Combined Inattentive-Hyperactive/Impulsive subtype (ADHD/C), which is characterised by maladaptive levels of both symptom clusters.

Morningness is a stable characteristic which reflects the phase of circadian system. It is a continuum with evening types at one end and morning types on the other. Previous studies have found that the evening orientation might be a risk factor for various disorders including depression and personality disorders. Morningness is also a heritable trait (Vink, Groot, Kerkhof, & Boomsma, 2001) and determined by genetic factors (Mishima, Tozawa, Satoh, Saitoh, & Mishima, 2005). Impulsivity and novelty seeking, two characteristics associated with particular ADHD subtypes are negatively related to morningness. Specifically, evening oriented individuals often score higher on tests assessing those traits. In addition to that, there is evidence that morningness is implicated in the variation of performance (Natale, Alzani, & Cicogna, 2003). Variability in various cognitive tasks is a common finding in many studies examining individuals with ADHD. Individuals with ADHD have also been found to experience a number of sleep related disorders such as sleep-onset difficulties, agitated sleep, and a higher number of nocturnal awakings.

Caci et al. examined the relationship between morningness and ADHD. Their hypothesis was that adults suspected of having ADHD are more evening oriented than are adults without ADHD. They recruited 354 participants and assessed their scores in the Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM), a measure of morningness, and the Adult Self-Report Scale v1.1 (ASRS), a self-reported questionnaire used for screening of ADHD in adults. ASRS includes two subscales for inattention and hyperactivity symptoms. This allowed Caci et al to examine the relationship between possible ADHD subtypes and morningness.

The results of the study confirmed the hypothesis; participants with higher scores on the ASRS reported having an evening orientation. The effect was stronger in participants with higher scores on the subscale of inattention. No correlation was found between hyperactivity and morningness. This provides evidence for the existence of different endophenotypes in ADHD. Since the sample used in this study consisted of healthy volunteers, it would be interesting to try to replicate this finding in diagnosed individuals with ADHD.

PS: After writing this post, I realised there’s a new study published in Nature by Baird et al. (2011) that examines endocrine and molecular levels of circadian rhythms in ADHD and seems to confirm the morningness hypothesis proposed by Caci et al. According to this paper, adult ADHD is accompanied by significant changes in the circadian system. I might write a post about it in the near future.

 

Caci H, Bouchez J, & Baylé FJ (2009). Inattentive symptoms of ADHD are related to evening orientation. Journal of attention disorders, 13 (1), 36-41 PMID: 19387003

Ode To The Brain

The Symphony of Science is a musical project of John D Boswell, designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form. The project owes its existence in large measure to the classic PBS Series Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steve Soter, as well as all the other featured figures and visuals. Continuation of the videos relies on generous support from fans and followers.

Read more about the project here.

Here’s one of my favourites, “Ode To The Brain”.