Q: “Do animals get mental illnesses, just like humans? Or is your dog just dumb?”

A: Gawker’s Hey Science fields this one out to a few experts - a vet behaviorist, a Prof. of vet biosciences, vet neurologist and emergency vet all give an answer… and here’s the rub:

Animals do suffer from mental illnesses. Caveats: 1) not necessarily the same mental illnesses as humans, and 2) diagnosis of animal mental illness is based on animal behavior, a trickier task than the diagnosis of mental illness in humans. If you want to get your pet’s mental illness diagnosed, go to a certified veterinary behaviorist, not a bullshit “pet psychologist.”  [via, IMG]

wnyc:

Is There A Place For The Mind In Physics?

So I want you to do something for me. I want you to think of a blue monkey. Are you ready? OK, go! Visualize it in your head. Any kind of monkey will do (as long as it’s blue). Take a moment. Really, see the little blue dude! Got it? Great. Now, here is the question: Where did that thought fit into reality? How was it real? Where was it real?

Another way to ask this question is: Was the “blue monkey thought” just the electrical activity of your neurons? Was that all there was to it? If not, might your private internal screening of the blue monkey be something altogether different? Was it, perhaps, part of something just as fundamental as quarks and Higgs bosons?

This is the fundamental question behind philosopher Thomas Nagel’s controversial book: ”Mind & Cosmos: Why The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False”. I’ve been slowly making my way through Nagel’s short (though, at points, dense) volume for a few months now. Back in October our own most excellent philosopher of Mind, Alva Noe, presented his own take on Nagel’s work. Yesterday, Tania Lombrozo extracted some real-world questions out of Nagel’s philosophy. Today I want to begin thinking a bit about what and where the Mind might be in relation to my own science of physics. CONTINUED. 

UmYuss. But not really. 

“…psychopathy is best conceptualized as a neurodevelopmental disorder.”

Dr. Kent Kiehl is on this team which means a few things: it’s gonna be about fMRI, it’s gonna be about an incarcerated population or psychopaths and I should have contacted him a long time ago about how to be awesome. This study looks at the relationship of brain volumes in the paralimbic & limbic areas and psychopathic traits in male adolescents to see if they are the same as previously observed in incarcerated adult males. They found that:

Consistent with hypotheses and the adult literature, psychopathic traits (..cough cough) were associated with decreased regional gray matter volumes in diffuse paralimbic regions, including orbitofrontal cortex, bilateral temporal poles, and posterior cingulate cortex. 

Blues check: The above composite from their study, shows gray matter volumes significantly associated with Total Psychopathy Checklist–Youth Version scores, increases are in yellow-oranges and decreases are in blue. This is a fascinating link to make regarding a disorder that is usually considered a personality disorder. 

emergentfutures:

Drones Reimagined: Startup Plans Medical Supply Drone Network

Matternet has a vision of creating a network of autonomous flying drones that can deliver medical and other vital supplies to regions that either do not have access to such things, or find getting them tough. The drone network would serve areas with no serviceable road access, or places that have been devastated by natural disasters or war.

Full Story: InQuid

Autonomy/economy: 150 drones at $900k, $0.24 per flight.

Is It Time to Treat Violence Like a Contagious Disease?

…exposure to violence is conceptually similar to exposure to, say, cholera or tuberculosis. Acts of violence are the germs. Instead of wracking intestines or lungs, they lodge in the brain. When people, in particular children and young adults whose brains are extremely plastic, repeatedly experience or witness violence, their neurological function is altered.

Cognitive pathways involving anger are more easily activated. Victimized people also interpret reality through perceptual filters in which violence seems normal and threats are enhanced. People in this state of mind are more likely to behave violently. Instead of through a cough, the disease spreads through fights, rapes, killings, suicides, perhaps even media, the researchers argue. (…) “The underlying theme is learned behavior”…

(…) Such dynamics might sound almost mechanistic, as if violence could be considered in isolation from all the other factors — poverty, drugs, demographics, policing — that shape the society in which it occurs. That’s absolutely not the case, but neither are these factors solely responsible for violence outbreaks. [via]

- I Cannot Tell a Lie by Adrienne Anifant in John Jay’s JusticeMatters, Fall 2012 …which just arrived in the mail a few days ago. (I’ve said it a hundred times, amazing faculty [srsly, none better] but the admin could use a trailer load of help.)

Fascinating article about Professor Maria Hartwig’s work towards the effectiveness of interrogation techniques based on “embodied cognition” and new approaches for detecting deception which seek to, “…reduce false accusations, wrongful convictions, lengthy appeals and the concomitant stress and anxiety to the accused and their families.” Her recent work is funded by the FBI/High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group. Clearly, I’d love to meet her. So maybe I WILL. Operation cold email awesome people in effect. Boom. 

“To BD or not to BD: functional neuroimaging and the boundaries of bipolarity”

Bipolar disorders are major mood disorders defined by the presence of discrete episodes of depression and either mania, in bipolar I disorder, or hypomania, in bipolar II disorder. There is little contention that both are serious psychiatric conditions or that they are associated with substantial suffering, disability, risk of suicide and cost to the community. Recently, focus has shifted away from classic manic-depressive illness toward a ‘bipolar spectrum’ model, which allows for much softer presentations to be conceptualized as bipolarity, but the boundaries of this concept remain contentious. In this article, we will consider the contribution of neuroimaging to delineating the bipolar phenotype and differentiating it from similar disorders. [via]

Prediction: this model will be the case one day with psychopathy and other one card shark conditions, maybe not the next revision of the DSM…but eventually.