Intuitive Thinking

The Death Penalty and Internet Activism

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:59:00 -0400

Two Men Sent to Die

Yesterday, 9/21/11, two men were sent to die. One of them was a white supremacist in Texas, convicted for the murder of a black man in perhaps the most horrific manner from 1998. The other was Troy Davis, a man more than likely innocent of the crime of killing a police officer in 1989. The evidence in the case of Lawrence Brewer, the white supremacist, was overwhelming, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The evidence in the case of Troy Davis, based on eyewitness testimony (which has been shown again and again that it is the most unreliable piece of evidence to rely on ) was limited. Yet he was still convicted and sentenced to death despite the overwhelming possibility that he was an innocent man. I am sure many of the people reading this have some knowledge about the case, so I will not go into it further.

In my personal belief, no matter the case of Brewer or Davis, guilt vs innocence, the use of capital punishment is flawed and in the simplest terms, wrong. The State should not be the ones to decide who lives or who dies, period. An archaic system of “eye for an eye” being fed by us, the taxpayers, unwillingly to determine who in society is “fit to live.” This is perhaps mostly a moral and emotionally driven argument to simply say “it is not right for the government to sentence people to death,” though on a rational scale, the idea that death, a natural part of the human life cycle, is in the hands of the State, is reprehensible and irresponsible. But these two men are not alone, as there are over 3000 people currently sitting on death row in the United States. Innocent or guilty, there is something wrong with this picture. Are there people who probably don’t deserve to live? Perhaps. Is this something that should be decided upon by a government system? Of course not. Brewer’s case was particularly horrific, and the evidence was overwhelming in showing that he participated in such a horrible murder, but while one group condemns the system for the execution of an innocent man - and possibly many more innocent people along the way - I cannot imagine why people would support the system being used in any form.

Internet ADD and Activism

I also write this because I am interested in the internet activism side of this coin. Online petitions were written for Troy Davis, Facebook posts, tumblr rebloggings, Twitter exploding with trending topics (although some claim Twitter banned the #TroyDavis hashtag from trending), while the old-fashioned vigils and protests were being held. Troy Davis became highlighted in the annuls of internet activism, next to the struggles of Iranians, the victims of the Norway shootings, and so on. However, at my most cynical, many will probably forget him and the cause against the death penalty when another activist trend will begin. Which is a shame, but it is a point to be spoken of in the case of making a difference with the tools of the internet.

The internet has made it possible for activism to highlight the struggles of many in different parts of the world, especially in the times of Twitter, Facebook, and tumblr (my bias against Facebook states that more people would rather use it to talk about That Funny Thing Their Kid Did, How Annoying Was That Commute to Work, or find out what their exes are doing these days and dammit they better be miserable). The problem is it has also created Internet ADD. There are so many injustices and crimes in this world, from a national scale of government corruption, to natural disasters, to the world of high school bullying and homophobia, that when gathering a group together to try to make a difference, the focus is scattered. With the world being blown up and exposed on the forces of internet blogs, you’re not fighting for one cause, you’re fighting for a thousand.

End the Use of the Death Penalty

I bring it back to the death penalty. This is the sort of archaic method that should be protested because it can be stopped. It shouldn’t be forgotten and only brought up again when a man such as Troy Davis is being sentenced to die. It shouldn’t be cheered on or ignored even when someone such as Lawrence Brewer is being strapped to the gurney. It shouldn’t be a here today, gone tomorrow cause, it should be put to an end. If not for moral reasons, than for simple, practical reasons such as saving the taxpaying citizen a few bucks.

The Flashed Face Distortion Effect Abstract. We describe a novel...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:33:17 -0400

The Flashed Face Distortion Effect

Abstract. We describe a novel face distortion effect resulting from the fast-paced presentation of eye-aligned faces. When cycling through the faces on a computer screen, each face seems to become a caricature of itself and some faces appear highly deformed, even grotesque. The degree of distortion is greatest for faces that deviate from the others in the set on a particular dimension (eg if a person has a large forehead, it looks particularly large). This new method of image presentation, based on alignment and speed, could provide a useful tool for investigating contrastive distortion effects and face adaptation.

Source

You're So Vain: Narcissism May be on the Rise

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:09:42 -0400

Charming, charismatic, exciting and attractive are words often used to describe people who at the same time are selfish, manipulative, egomaniacal and lack empathy.

Reality TV shows are filled with people with these traits. Perhaps you’ve dated the captivating man who is also paranoid and overly sensitive. Or have a friend who is the life of every party but grows inordinately depressed without constant praise and admiration.

The descriptions are traits of narcissistic personality disorder, a mental disorder of people who have an inflated sense of their own importance.

Personalities in the center of two high-profile cases both have been described in media reports as narcissists: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief accused of sexual abuse and rape, and Casey Anthony, who was acquitted Tuesday of the murder of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie.

The nation’s attention may have been held by these two cases because while our friends, family and co-workers may not fall to the extreme end of the spectrum, we all know and are drawn to narcissists — at least at first, until their dark side emerges. And, psychologists maintain, deep within we all have a healthy dose of narcissism in our blood.

The problems start when narcissism, which bolsters positive attributes such as confidence and self-esteem, becomes unhealthy and out of control and the individual is unable to maintain healthy personal and professional relationships.

New studies indicate that narcissism may be on the rise. “Almost twice as many college students are answering the majority of the questions in the narcissistic direction in the nationwide sample,” Jean Twenge, co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic Living in the Age of Entitlement, said Wednesday. “It was 17 percent in 1982; and in 2009 - which is the latest data we have - it was 30 percent.”

The results were based on Narcissistic Personality Inventory tests given college students, said Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and a Psychology Today blogger.

Stephen Diamond has written about the Anthony case in his Evil Deeds blog on the Psychology Today website. Although the forensic psychologist had no direct involvement in the case and has never interviewed Anthony, he said testimony in the trial showed she exhibits many of the traits of NPD. “It can get complicated, and we my never know,” Diamond said Tuesdayin a phone interview. “Egoism is very powerful. When we talk about narcissism, it’s that extreme of egoism and egotism. We all have an ego; we are all narcissists to some extent.”

Disordered behaviors begin and become chronic, he said, when individuals are unable to recognize and take responsibility for their narcissism. It can be hard to treat, and Diamond said it takes time and work with a therapist to get it under control.

The Mayo Clinic defines those with NPD as believing “that they’re superior to others and have little regard for other people’s feelings.” But behind an ultra-confident mask “lies a fragile self-esteem, vulnerable to the slightest criticism.”

Narcissists construct a false self that is meant to hide and protect a hurt and wounded self, Diamond explained. Narcissism can be the result of childhood physical or mental trauma and either too much praise and coddling or too much criticism and neglect, he said.

Scott Barry Kaufman, a personality psychologist and teacher at New York University, explored what he called “the peacock paradox” in the August issue cover story of Psychology Today.

“Narcissists will be thrilled to hear that as a group, they are rated as more attractive and likeable than everyone else at first appearance,” Kaufman wrote. He points to a Washington University study in which researchers found that narcissists are “considered more stylishly clad, cheerful and physically appealing at first sight than those who score lower in narcissism.”

As adolescents we are at the height of our natural narcissism, his article noted. Then as we age, the tendency declines and remains at a healthy level.

Many like to point the finger for the rise in narcissism at social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, which allow users to be even more narcissistic and self-absorbed.

“The change has been going on long enough, that it can’t be solely due to social media,” Twenge said. “We definitely think that’s one of the causes, but it’s not the only one.”

In her book, she identified other possible causes: a change in parenting toward focusing on the individual and feeling good about yourself all of the time; celebrity culture, TV and other media; and easy credit, which allows people to look better off than they actually are.

Diamond agreed that narcissism is a large and growing problem in our culture.

“In the culture we’ve come to value, this narcissistic persona - this being special, this being unique, this being high-status, this kind of arrogance, this preoccupation with being super-successful, super-beautiful, super-sexy - we’ve come to identify with that,” he said. “The problem is, we’ve gotten away from knowing who we are.”

Source

A Brief History of MDMA (Ecstasy)

Fri, 13 May 2011 11:08:00 -0400

A Brief History of MDMA (Ecstasy)

You Are Not So Smart: Debunking Many Common Misconceptions

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 10:52:03 -0400

You Are Not So Smart: Debunking Many Common Misconceptions:

Really interesting site.

Dream Sleep May Be an Indicator of Parkinson's Disease

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:10:33 -0400

Source

During a large-scale study of the socioeconomic costs of this neurodegenerative disease, Danish researchers, some from the University of Copenhagen, discovered that very early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease may be revealed in dream or REM sleep.

Parkinson’s disease is a brain disease best known for the trembling it causes. It is an incurable, chronic disease and gradually affects the muscles and mental capacity, seriously afflicting the lives if the patient and his or her immediate relatives.

“In the study we saw that eight years before diagnosis, Parkinson’s sufferers exhibited work and health indications that something was wrong,” says Poul Jennum, professor of clinical neurophysiology at the Center for Healthy Ageing, University of Copenhagen, and the Sleep Centre at Glostrup Hospital.

Among the very early symptoms is the sleep disorder RBD, or REM sleep behaviour disorder. REM is a particular stage of sleep in which we dream, and our eyes flicker rapidly behind our eyelids, hence the term REM, or Rapid Eye Movement. To prevent us from actually acting out our dreams the body usually shuts down our muscle movement during REM sleep, but in RBD it is still active, and REM sleepers with RBD display a range of behaviours from simple arm and leg spasms to kicking, shouting, seizing or jumping out of bed.

“In some cases their behaviour may be violent and result in injuries to the patients or their partners,” Professor Jennum explains.

Early symptoms of Parkinson’s may be other brain disorders

“Our hypothesis is that the very earliest stages of Parkinson’s disease show up as various other diseases such as RBD,” Jennum says.

In recent years, great advances have been made in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, but we still do not have therapies to mitigate the later symptoms, costs and increased mortality of the disease.

“This may become possible if we are able to intervene earlier, and if we are able to find clear indications of Parkinson’s disease eight years sooner than we are now, this may give us an important tool. The question is of course whether we can actually say that RBD is always a very early marker for Parkinson’s disease. That is what we are now investigating at the Sleep Centre at Glostrup Hospital,” says Jennum. Parkinson’s disease has considerable costs

Not surprisingly the study showed that Parkinson’s sufferers are more often in contact with all sections of the health service, more often unemployed, more often on benefits, and on average cost the health service DKK 50,000 a year more than healthy control subjects.

For the study, researchers used the National Patient Register to identify all the patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease between 1997 and 2007. 13,700 patients were compared to 53,600 healthy patients of the same sex, social class, educational background etc.

The study was carried out by researchers from the Center for Healthy Ageing, the Danish Center for Sleep Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Glostrup Hospital, Bispebjerg Hospital and the Danish Institute of Health Research, and was published in the Journal of Neurology, February 2011.

An On-Off Switch for Anxiety

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 18:40:00 -0500

Researchers discover a brain circuit that can instantly dampen—or exacerbate—anxiety in mice

With the flick of a precisely placed light switch, mice can be induced to cower in a corner in fear or bravely explore their environment. The study highlights the power of optogenetics technology—which allows neuroscientists to control genetically engineered neurons with light—to explore the functions of complex neural wiring and to control behavior.

In the study, Karl Deisseroth and collaborators at Stanford University identified a specific circuit in the amygdala, a part of the brain that is central to fear, aggression, and other basic emotions, that appears to regulate anxiety in rodents. They hope the findings, published today in the journal Nature, will shed light on the biological basis for human anxiety disorders and point toward new targets for treatment.

“We want to conceptualize psychiatric disease as real physical entities with physical substrates,” says Deisseroth. “Just like people who have asthma have reactive airways, people with anxiety disorders may have an underactive projection in the amygdala.”

The researchers engineered mice to express light-sensitive proteins in specific cells in the amygdala that send out neural wires, known as axons, to different substructures. Using a specially designed fiber-optic cable implanted in the animal’s brain, researchers found that aiming the light to activate one specific circuit had an immediate and potent effect on the animal’s behavior.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Kay Tye, a postdoctoral researcher in Deisseroth’s lab and lead author on the study. Mice are naturally fearful of exploring open areas, she explains. Under normal circumstances, the animal “will poke its nose out and then scurry into a corner,” says Tye. “But when you turn on the light, the animal begins exploring the platform with no visible signs of anxiety. Then you turn the light off, and it scurries back in to the corner.”

The researchers could induce the opposite effect using a light-sensitive protein that silences the cells instead of activating them.

Shining light on the bodies of the cells, which in turn activates axons in multiple circuits, had no effect on the animals’ behavior, highlighting how important it is to be able to target individual circuits in the brain.

“Our understanding of the more precise circuitry within the amygdala is just now beginning to take off,” says Kerry Ressler, a neuroscientist at Emory University who was not involved in the study. “Optogenetics, where scientist can activate specific cell populations and even parts of cells, is a powerful approach to dissect how the amygdala modulates fear and anxiety.”

Ki Ann Goosens, a neuroscientist at MIT who was not involved in the study, says the research could help explain individual variation in baseline anxiety levels. “The findings tell us that this circuit contributes to an individual set point for anxiety,” she says.

“It may be a theme that some major sources of dysfunction in psychiatric disorders lie in the flow of information between different brain regions,” says Deisseroth. “This is something that optogenetics is uniquely suited to address.”

Researchers hope the discovery will ultimately enable the development of new treatments for anxiety disorders that are free of the side effects of existing drugs. Benzodiazepines, such as valium, are sedating and carry the risk of addiction. Mice given benzodiazepenes become less fearful and more exploratory, but the drug also affects their movement, making them sluggish, says Tye. Activating the circuit with light doesn’t seem to elicit this problem. “These animals are sniffing, grooming, doing everything normally,” she says.

To make more selective anti-anxiety drugs, scientists would need to target only the subset of cells that make up this circuit, which may prove difficult to do chemically. But Deisseroth is already working on another approach, using a noninvasive method of stimulating the brain called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The technology uses magnetic fields to activate neurons on the surface of the brain, and is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat depression. By combining TMS and functional brain imaging, Deisseroth is now examining whether it’s possible to noninvasively stimulate specific circuits in the human brain. His first study, which has just begun, will focus on a circuit that his team has previously linked to Parkinson’s disease.

Tye is working to better understand the role that the circuit identified in the current study plays in fear as opposed to anxiety. While the two terms tend to be interchangeable in everyday usage, neuroscientists define fear as a response to a specific thing—a loud sound, for instance, or oncoming traffic. Anxiety, on the other hand, is chronic, generalized fear. “Fear can be important for survival, but anxiety disorders are maladaptive,” says Tye.

Source

"Altruistic" brain region found

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 18:30:43 -0500

Scientists say they have found the part of the brain that predicts whether a person will be selfish or an altruist.

Altruism - the tendency to help others without obvious benefit to oneself - appears to be linked to an area called the posterior superior temporal sulcus.

Using brain scans, the US investigators found this region related to a person’s real-life unselfish behaviour.

The Duke University Medical Center study on 45 volunteers is published in Nature Neuroscience.

Selfless tendencies

The participants were asked to disclose how often they engaged in different helping behaviours, such as doing charity work, and were also asked to play a computer game designed to measure altruism.

The study authors say their work could have important implications.

They are now exploring ways to study the development of this brain region in early life and believe such information may help determine how altruistic tendencies are established.

Researcher Dr Scott Huettel explained: “Although understanding the function of this brain region may not necessarily identify what drives people like Mother Theresa, it may give clues to the origins of important social behaviours like altruism.”

Reciprocal helping

Dr George Fieldman, member of the British Psychological Society and principal lecturer in psychology at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, said it was conceivable that there would be a region of the brain involved with altruism.

He added: “If you can educate from an early stage to be more altruistic that would be good for the community, and if you could also show that had an impact on brain development that would be very interesting.”

He said true altruism was a rare or even intangible thing.

“Altruism is usually reciprocal - you do something for someone and you expect something back ultimately.

“The other types are kin altruism, giving to ones relatives, and being cheated or cuckolded.”

He said it would be interesting to study people at the extremes of altruism and selfishness and see if their brains differed significantly.

Source

Empowered women smoke more

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:57:33 -0500

THE roaring twenties in the US: hemlines rose, women got the vote and the accessory du jour was a cigarette hanging nonchalantly out the corner of a lipsticked mouth.

In the west, smoking among women has long been associated with empowerment. Now this pattern looks set to repeat itself as women in poorer countries become more liberated, says a report in this week’s Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Sara Hitchman and Geoffrey Fong at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, analysed the relationship between gender inequality and smoking prevalence in women compared to men in 74 countries. It is estimated that, worldwide, men are five times as likely to smoke as women, but the results showed that in countries where women are more empowered their smoking rates are catching up or exceeding men’s, regardless of the country’s wealth.

“Tobacco industry marketing strategies over the years have targeted women in countries where their independence is growing,” says Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the charity Action on Smoking and Health in London. She cites the example of a cigarette brand from the 1960s whose slogan read: “You’ve come a long way, baby”.

“This study highlights the need to act quickly to curb smoking among women, particularly in developing countries where female smoking rates are quite low,” says Douglas Bettcher, director of the Tobacco Free Initiative at the WHO.

Source

“The Hollow Mask Illusion” Telling the front from...

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:54:15 -0500

“The Hollow Mask Illusion”

Telling the front from the back of a mask can be more difficult than it seems. Thanks to an effect called the hollow-mask illusion, the brain can have trouble deciding if the image is convex or concave.

But, it seems, not everyone struggles to correctly determine the mask’s orientation. New research shows that people with schizophrenia are immune to the effect – a finding that means the illusion could provide a diagnostic test for the condition.

In the study, volunteers were monitored in an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner as they looked at photos. Some of these were normal pictures of faces, but others had been inverted as in the hollow-mask illusion. All the participants with schizophrenia could distinguish between the two types of photos, whereas control volunteers without the condition were fooled 99 per cent of the time.

People with schizophrenia, which affects about 1 per cent of the population, are already known to be immune to certain visual illusions. Immunity to the hollow-mask illusion, says Danai Dima, of Hannover School of Medicine in Germany, suggests that the “bottom-up” process of collecting incoming visual information from the eyes, and the “top-down” process of interpreting this information is different in people with schizophrenia.

“The term ‘schizophrenia’ was coined almost a century ago to mean the splitting of different mental domains, but the idea has now shifted more towards connectivity between brain areas,” says Dima.

The prevailing theory is that perception comprises three main components: sensory input (bottom-up); the internal production of concepts (top-down); and a control component, which covers interaction between the two first components. “Our study provides further evidence of ‘dysconnectivity’ between these components in the brains of people with schizophrenia.

Source

I mostly wanted to post this because I started seeing the Charlie Chaplin mask in .gif form floating around the internet a bit lately.

Neuroscience and Free Will

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:24:49 -0500

Neuroscience and Free Will

Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:32:23 -0500

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as “information operations” at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

“My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,” says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. “I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.”

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on “hostile foreign groups.” Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a “propaganda rider” that also prohibits such manipulation. “Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans,” says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “It’s what you learn on day one.”

When Holmes and his four-man team arrived in Afghanistan in November 2009, their mission was to assess the effects of U.S. propaganda on the Taliban and the local Afghan population. But the following month, Holmes began receiving orders from Caldwell’s staff to direct his expertise on a new target: visiting Americans. At first, the orders were administered verbally. According to Holmes, who attended at least a dozen meetings with Caldwell to discuss the operation, the general wanted the IO unit to do the kind of seemingly innocuous work usually delegated to the two dozen members of his public affairs staff: compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their “hot-button issues.” In one email to Holmes, Caldwell’s staff also wanted to know how to shape the general’s presentations to the visiting dignitaries, and how best to “refine our messaging.”

Congressional delegations – known in military jargon as CODELs – are no strangers to spin. U.S. lawmakers routinely take trips to the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they receive carefully orchestrated briefings and visit local markets before posing for souvenir photos in helmets and flak jackets. Informally, the trips are a way for generals to lobby congressmen and provide first-hand updates on the war. But what Caldwell was looking for was more than the usual background briefings on senators. According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a “deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds.” The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes how Caldwell could secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge. “How do we get these guys to give us more people?” he demanded. “What do I have to plant inside their heads?”

According to experts on intelligence policy, asking a psy-ops team to direct its expertise against visiting dignitaries would be like the president asking the CIA to put together background dossiers on congressional opponents. Holmes was even expected to sit in on Caldwell’s meetings with the senators and take notes, without divulging his background. “Putting your propaganda people in a room with senators doesn’t look good,” says John Pike, a leading military analyst. “It doesn’t pass the smell test. Any decent propaganda operator would tell you that.”

At a minimum, the use of the IO team against U.S. senators was a misue of vital resources designed to combat the enemy; it cost American taxpayers roughly $6 million to deploy Holmes and his team in Afghanistan for a year. But Caldwell seemed more eager to advance his own career than to defeat the Taliban. “We called it Operation Fourth Star,” says Holmes. “Caldwell seemed far more focused on the Americans and the funding stream than he was on the Afghans. We were there to teach and train the Afghans. But for the first four months it was all about the U.S. Later he even started talking about targeting the NATO populations.” At one point, according to Holmes, Caldwell wanted to break up the IO team and give each general on his staff their own personal spokesperson with psy-ops training.

It wasn’t the first time that Caldwell had tried to tear down the wall that has historically separated public affairs and psy-ops – the distinction the military is supposed to maintain between “informing” and “influencing.” After a stint as the top U.S. spokesperson in Iraq, the general pushed aggressively to expand the military’s use of information operations. During his time as a commander at Ft. Leavenworth, Caldwell argued for exploiting new technologies like blogging and Wikipedia – a move that would widen the military’s ability to influence the public, both foreign and domestic. According to sources close to the general, he also tried to rewrite the official doctrine on information operations, though that effort ultimately failed. (In recent months, the Pentagon has quietly dropped the nefarious-sounding moniker “psy-ops” in favor of the more neutral “MISO” – short for Military Information Support Operations.)

Under duress, Holmes and his team provided Caldwell with background assessments on the visiting senators, and helped prep the general for his high-profile encounters. But according to members of his unit, Holmes did his best to resist the orders. Holmes believed that using his team to target American civilians violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which was passed by Congress to prevent the State Department from using Soviet-style propaganda techniques on U.S. citizens. But when Holmes brought his concerns to Col. Gregory Breazile, the spokesperson for the Afghan training mission run by Caldwell, the discussion ended in a screaming match. “It’s not illegal if I say it isn’t!” Holmes recalls Breazile shouting.

In March 2010, Breazile issued a written order that “directly tasked” Holmes to conduct an IO campaign against “all DV visits” – short for “distinguished visitor.” The team was also instructed to “prepare the context and develop the prep package for each visit.” In case the order wasn’t clear enough, Breazile added that the new instructions were to “take priority over all other duties.” Instead of fighting the Taliban, Holmes and his team were now responsible for using their training to win the hearts and minds of John McCain and Al Franken.

On March 23rd, Holmes emailed the JAG lawyer who handled information operations, saying that the order made him “nervous.” The lawyer, Capt. John Scott, agreed with Holmes. “The short answer is that IO doesn’t do that,” Scott replied in an email. “[Public affairs] works on the hearts and minds of our own citizens and IO works on the hearts and minds of the citizens of other nations. While the twain do occasionally intersect, such intersections, like violent contact during a soccer game, should be unintentional.”

In another email, Scott advised Holmes to seek his own defense counsel. “Using IO to influence our own folks is a bad idea,” the lawyer wrote, “and contrary to IO policy.”

In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesman for Caldwell “categorically denies the assertion that the command used an Information Operations Cell to influence Distinguished Visitors.” But after Scott offered his legal opinion, the order was rewritten to stipulate that the IO unit should only use publicly available records to create profiles of U.S. visitors. Based on the narrower definition of the order, Holmes and his team believed the incident was behind them.

Three weeks after the exchange, however, Holmes learned that he was the subject of an investigation, called an AR 15-6. The investigation had been ordered by Col. Joe Buche, Caldwell’s chief of staff. The 22-page report, obtained by Rolling Stone, reads like something put together by Kenneth Starr. The investigator accuses Holmes of going off base in civilian clothes without permission, improperly using his position to start a private business, consuming alcohol, using Facebook too much, and having an “inappropriate” relationship with one of his subordinates, Maj. Laural Levine. The investigator also noted a joking comment that Holmes made on his Facebook wall, in response to a jibe about Afghan men wanting to hold his hand. “Hey! I’ve been here almost five months now!” Holmes wrote. “Gimmee a break a man has needs you know.”

“LTC Holmes’ comments about his sexual needs,” the report concluded, “are even more distasteful in light of his status as a married man.”

Both Holmes and Levine maintain that there was nothing inappropriate about their relationship, and said they were waiting until after they left Afghanistan to start their own business. They and other members of the team also say that they had been given permission to go off post in civilian clothes. As for Facebook, Caldwell’s command had aggressively encouraged its officers to the use the site as part of a social-networking initiative – and Holmes ranked only 15th among the biggest users.

Nor was Holmes the only one who wrote silly things online. Col. Breazile’s Facebook page, for example, is spotted with similar kinds of nonsense, including multiple references to drinking alcohol, and a photo of a warning inside a Port-o-John mocking Afghans – ”In case any of you forgot that you are supposed to sit on the toilet and not stand on it and squat. It’s a safety issue. We don’t want you to fall in or miss your target.” Breazile now serves at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he works in the office dedicated to waging a global information war for the Pentagon.

Following the investigation, both Holmes and Levine were formally reprimanded. Holmes, believing that he was being targeted for questioning the legality of waging an IO campaign against U.S. visitors, complained to the Defense Department’s inspector general. Three months later, he was informed that he was not entitled to protection as a whistleblower, because the JAG lawyer he consulted was not “designated to receive such communications.”

Levine, who has a spotless record and 19 service awards after 16 years in the military, including a tour of duty in Kuwait and Iraq, fears that she has become “the collateral damage” in the military’s effort to retaliate against Holmes. “It will probably end my career,” she says. “My father was an officer, and I believed officers would never act like this. I was devastated. I’ve lost my faith in the military, and I couldn’t in good conscience recommend anyone joining right now.”

After being reprimanded, Holmes and his team were essentially ignored for the rest of their tours in Afghanistan. But on June 15th, the entire Afghan training mission received a surprising memo from Col. Buche, Caldwell’s chief of staff. “Effective immediately,” the memo read, “the engagement in information operations by personnel assigned to the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan is strictly prohibited.” From now on, the memo added, the “information operation cell” would be referred to as the “Information Engagement cell.” The IE’s mission? “This cell will engage in activities for the sole purpose of informing and educating U.S., Afghan and international audiences….” The memo declared, in short, that those who had trained in psy-ops and other forms of propaganda would now officially be working as public relations experts – targeting a worldwide audience.

As for the operation targeting U.S. senators, there is no way to tell what, if any, influence it had on American policy. What is clear is that in January 2011, Caldwell’s command asked the Obama administration for another $2 billion to train an additional 70,000 Afghan troops – an initiative that will already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion this year. Among the biggest boosters in Washington to give Caldwell the additional money? Sen. Carl Levin, one of the senators whom Holmes had been ordered to target.

Rolling Stone

godfreeyouth: Left brain: I am the left brain. I am a...

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:23:47 -0500

godfreeyouth:

Left brain: I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Right brain: I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.

Teen marijuana use is on the rise - Alcohol use declining

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:53:00 -0500

Sixteen percent of eighth-graders say they’ve used marijuana in the past year — up from 14.5 percent in 2009, according to the “Monitoring the Future” survey, an annual study of substance use among a nationally representative sample of 42,000 eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This trend, in combination with a similar uptick in marijuana use among high school students, should be a major cause of concern for parents and educators, says NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow, MD.

“We know that the younger the age of initiation, the greater likelihood they will become dependent,” she says. According to Volkow, the rise may be the result of marijuana legalization efforts. But while such campaigns tout the medicinal effects of marijuana for chronic pain sufferers, “we know unequivocally that marijuana affects learning and memory,” she says. “It’s a loss for adolescents exposed to this, and a loss for all of us.”

The survey’s results weren’t all bad. Binge drinking is declining, with 23.2 percent of high school seniors saying they’d had five or more alcoholic drinks in a row over the last two weeks, as compared to 25.2 percent in 2009 and 31.5 percent in 1998.

Source

2 cents:

Perhaps as marijuana becomes closer to legalization/decriminalization across the country, with some states having more lax laws than others, availability is easier. Also, as with most people I know who smoke regularly, there is probably less stigma from their parents - anecdote, but friends I knew would smoke with their parents. Also there is a rise in “Weed Culture” - influential celebrities who don’t shy away from their admittance of pot use. Do teens try to emulate celebrities? Perhaps, on a certain level. I have nothing against marijuana, and use it myself every so often, but I think as it becomes even more mainstream in culture, it is seen as safer than alcoholic binge drinking.

My only issue with the pot use and teens is the developing mind. The brain is still in a delicate phase as an adolescent, and overuse could lead to learning and memory problems. The THC in marijuana blocks neurotransmitters and interferes with certain functions. For example, the THC blocks cannabinoid receptors in the hippocampus which affects short term memory, causing some issues with problem solving and recall. As a relaxing agent, there are benefits, and especially it is helpful in medicinal use.

As in everything, balance is key, and on a political note, I don’t believe in anti-marijuana laws (or any anti-drug laws - my political beliefs are against the so-called War on Drugs which I believe increases gang and gun violence, fills prisons on taxpayers’ dime, and so on. All you have to do is look at the increase in mob violence during Prohibition to compare.)

Brain Function Linked to Birth Size; Study Sheds Light on Mental Health Problems Later in Life

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:06:34 -0500

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2011) — Scientists have discovered the first evidence linking brain function variations between the left and right sides of the brain to size at birth and the weight of the placenta. The finding could shed new light on the causes of mental health problems in later life.

The research, conducted at the University of Southampton and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit at Southampton General Hospital, reveals that children who were born small, with relatively large placentas, showed more activity on the right side of their brains than the left. It is this pattern of brain activity that has been linked with mood disorders such as depression.

The study adds to a growing body of evidence showing that adverse environments experienced by fetuses during pregnancy (indicated by smaller birth size and larger placental size) can cause long-term changes in the function of the brain.

“The way we grow before birth is influenced by many things including what our mothers eat during pregnancy and how much stress they are experiencing. This can have long-lasting implications for our mental and physical health in later life,” explains Dr Alexander Jones, an epidemiologist, who led the study at the University of Southampton.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to link growth before birth to brain activity many years later. We hope this research can begin to shed new light on why certain people are more prone to diseases such as depression.”

The neurological responses of 140 children from Southampton, aged between eight and nine, were monitored for the study. Tests evaluated blood flow to the brain in response to increased brain activity, exposing differences in the activity of the two sides. Dr Jones measured tiny fluctuations in the temperature of the tympanic membrane in each ear, which indicate blood flow into different parts of the brain.

Disproportionate growth of the placenta and the fetus is thought to occur in pregnancies where the mother has been experiencing stress or where there have been problems with the availability of nutrients. Previous research has linked this pattern of growth to other diseases such as hypertension and greater physical responses to stress in later life.

The research by Dr Jones and colleagues, has been published in the online science journal, PLoS ONE.

Source

2 cents: This is really interesting. It adds to what I remember from Psychology of Child Development, how the environment of the mother effects the development of the fetus. Stressors in the environment (example, abusive situations, socioeconomic status, depression, etc) can invariably place stress on the fetus which leads to altered development of the brain, the body, etc., even how the brain chemistry of the child works. The fetal environment is so important in development, and I am hoping that further research on these correlations can lead to better treatment of depression and other mental disorders.

Feeling Chills in Response to Music

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 13:30:00 -0500

Los Angeles, CA (December 7, 2010) - Most people feel chills and shivers in response to music that thrills them, but some people feel these chills often and others feel them hardly at all. People who are particularly open to new experiences are most likely to have chills in response to music, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).

Researchers Emily Nusbaum and Paul Silvia of University of North Carolina at Greensboro asked students about how often they felt chills down their spine, got goose bumps, or felt like their hair was standing on end while listening to music. They also measured their experience with music, and five main dimensions of personality: extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Of all these dimensions, only openness to experience was related to feeling chills. People high in openness are creative, curious about many things, have active imaginations and like to play with ideas, and they much more frequently feel chills in response to music.

Why might people high in openness to experience report feeling chills more often? Surprisingly, people high in openness didn’t have chills because they tended to listen to different kinds of music. Instead, people with a lot of openness to experience were more likely to play a musical instrument themselves and they rated music as more important in their lives than people low in openness. Not surprisingly, people high in openness also spent more time listening to music.

“There are a lot of ways in which people are basically alike, but the experience of chills isn’t one of them,” said the authors. “Some people seem to have never experienced chills while listening to music — around 8% of people in our study — but other people experience chills basically every day. Findings like these are what the make the study of personality and music interesting — music is a human universal, but some people get a lot more out of it.”

Source: http://scienceblog.com/40882/feeling-chills-in-response-to-music/

Full Research PDF (subscription required): http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/10/07/1948550610386810.full.pdf+html

2 cents: Other articles I read related ‘openness” as a more broad term, for people who seek new experiences in general. This is related to open minded people - one article related it to people who have a curiosity about drugs (which I have nothing against) - in which I wonder about personality types. For example, would the typical Type A controlling personality get these shivers vs someone more laid back? I experience these shivers while listening to my favorite songs by certain bands, and I feel I am a genuinely curious person, mostly laid back, but that is merely anecdotal.

This tumblr is about articles and research related to Psychology...

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:31:00 -0500

This tumblr is about articles and research related to Psychology topics, with my own added insight and opinions added in. I am a third year undergrad student in Psychology and want to make this to help enhance my education. I enjoy reading all topics related to human behavior, evolutionary psychology, I/O psychology, and so on.

“The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best” - Paul Valery