Some genetic and epigenetic correlates of vulnerability and resilience

Hat tip to Andy Smarick from Flypaper for alerting me to a fascinating article by David Dobbs in The Atlantic. It relates to the interaction between genetic and environmental factors to produce either vulnerable or resilient phenotypes based on the same risk allele. The specific risk allele is one for ADHD and externalizing behaviours.

Dobbs explained as follows:

"Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people."

Related: Can the right kinds of play teach self-control?

Music training helps with dyslexia?

By now it is known that the so-called Mozart Effect is a myth. Just listening to music does not have the specific cognitive benefits claimed.

There has, however, been some research suggesting that music training and playing a musical instrument does have cognitive benefits. It is known that lack of phonemic awareness is one of the most important determinants of dyslexia.

Prof. Nina Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology, Physiology and Communication Sciences at Northwestern University, recently claimed that music training enhances brainstem sensitivity to speech sounds. She added:

"Playing an instrument may help youngsters better process speech in noisy classrooms and more accurately interpret the nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice."

According to ScienceDaily, her and other neuroscientists' research suggest that music education can be an effective strategy in helping typically developing children as well as children with developmental dyslexia or autism more accurately encode speech. Something to think about for schools who have scrapped music training.

but, a contrary view that came to my attention later:

Music therapy no help to dyslexics.

Related: Children who grow up in noisy homes may have lower verbal abilities.

Repeat after me: "Teaching to learning styles does not work"

I despair of ever weaning gullible teachers of the nonsense of teaching to learning style. Educational consultants are not going drop learning style theory from their repertoire while there is good money to be made. Thank your to Donald Clark and Wil Thalheimer for the following from the Association of Psychological Science:

"We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all." (p. 105)

Reference: Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105-119.

Concussion is serious, really

From ScienceDaily, Mild traumatic brain injury, not so mild after all. I've blogged before here and here about the negligent manner in which childhood concussion is often handled, especially at sporting events. ScienceDaily reports on the molecular mechanisms involved in mild brain injuries, as determined by a team led by Douglas Smith, MD, the director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair and professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

"Despite the prevalence and impact of mTBI, little is known about how mTBI affects nerve cells and connections in the brain, and therefore clinical outcomes after injury. Smith and colleagues have begun to amass data from human and animal studies on mTBI at 2-4 days after injury using advanced neuroimaging techniques. They have found distinct changes throughout the white matter in the brain. Also, protein markers of brain pathology were identified after mTBI in the blood of mTBI patients."

This is significant, especially in view of the greater importance ascribed to white matter and to disconnection syndromes in modern neuroscience.

Orac trashed the EPFX/QXCI!

The redoubtable Orac from Respectful Insolence comprehensively trashed the Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface (a quack name for a quack device used by ???) in a recent post. It's a repeat of a previous post that I wish I've known about when I previously blogged on the same issue. Read Orac's post, The miraculous quest for quantum woo, before you waste you money on this scam. All you gullible South Africans so taken in by "quantum medicine", hear Orac speak:

"The beauty of this woo is that quantum theory is invoked to explain almost every "alternative medicine," from homeopathy to acupuncture, and it's all packed into a single volume of concentrated woo (a veritable black hole of woo, so to speak)."

How to scam someone

Jeremy Dean from PsyBlog has a typical insightful post on the how scam artists deceive. In The 7 Psychological Principles of Scams, he identifies these principles as:

1. Distraction
2. Social compliance
3. Herd principle
4. Dishonesty
5. Deception
6. Need and greed
7. Time pressure

Read his post and try not to be the next victim.

Irrationally positive

Donald Clark from Donald Clark Plan B reviewed the new book by Barbara Ehrenreich, Smile or Die, in a post entitled Beware of the happy campers. I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my to buy list, as I've always enjoyed Barbara Ehrenreich's columns.

From Amazon:

"This brilliant new book from the author of Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch explores the tyranny of positive thinking, and offers a history of how it came to be the dominant mode in the USA. Ehrenreich conceived of the book when she became ill with breast cancer, and found herself surrounded by pink ribbons and bunny rabbits and platitudes. She balked at the way her anger and sadness about having the disease were seen as unhealthy and dangerous by health professionals and other sufferers. In her droll and incisive analysis of the cult of cheerfulness, Ehrenreich also ranges across contemporary religion, business and the economy, arguing, for example, that undue optimism and a fear of giving bad news sowed the seeds for the current banking crisis. She argues passionately that the insistence on being cheerful actually leads to a lonely focus inwards, a blaming of oneself for any misfortunes, and thus to political apathy. Rigorous, insightful and bracing as always, and also incredibly funny, "Happy Face" uncovers the dark side of the 'have a nice day' nation."

Back to Donald Clark. He echoed my thoughts in many of my previous posts when he wrote:

"There’s something odd about relentlessly jolly people, a sort of deep sadness. But this is nothing compared to the people who sell ‘happiness’ as a commodity – behind the smile lies a lie and a hefty daily rate. I have an instinctive distrust of motivational speakers, positive psychologists, life coaches, NLP fanatics and other happy-clappy types. Call me old fashioned, but I’m a sucker, not for pessimism, but for realism."

Well said.I agree with him distinguishing "jolly people" from those who sell "happiness" for a living. Even among the latter group, you have those who are sincere and those are charlatans. I would not be so negative about naturally upbeat people, they are great to be around, even if their views sometimes have to be tempered with realism.















The childrens' cartoon series (also enjoyed by many adults, including me), Spongebob Squarepants, has two characters on the two extremes of being positive and being negative. Spongebob and Squidward, to my mind both deliciously dysfunctional.

Some research bearing on the issue: Brain Activity Levels Affect Self-Perception: 'Rose-Colored Glasses' Correlate With Less Frontal Lobe Use

Bohr was a gunfighter!

Niels Bohr needs no introduction. He was one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics, often being associated with the Copenhagen interpretation. The Bohr-Einstein debates on the nature of quantum physics have become legendary.


Bohr made headlines again more than forty years after his death, not due to his contributions to physics, but due to his contributions to the science of gunfighting! Bohr was a gunfighter. His "gunfights" with fellow physicist, George Gamow, may also become legendary! I quote from a recent article, The gunfighter's dilemma:

"It turns out that the celebrated Danish physicist and Nobel laureate, Niels Bohr, liked to take time off from figuring out the structure of the universe by watching westerns. Bohr noticed that the man who drew first invariably got shot, and speculated that the intentional act of drawing and shooting was slower to execute than the action in response. Here was a hypothesis that could be tested, and with the aid of cap guns hastily purchased in a Copenhagen toyshop, duly proved it. In a series of mock gunfights with colleagues Bohr always drew second and always won."

Bohr's "research" was recently replicated in a laboratory:

"Welchman's team organized simulated "gunfights" in the laboratory, with pairs of volunteers competing against each other to push three buttons on a computer console in a particular order. The researchers observed that the time interval between when players removed their hands from the first button and when they pressed the final button was on average 9% shorter for the players who reacted to an opponent moving first. However, those who reacted to a first move were more likely to make an error, presssing the buttons in the wrong order. Welchman speculates that this rapid, if somewhat inaccurate, response system may have evolved to help humans deal with danger, when immediate reaction is essential and the risk of an error worth taking."

The effect, however, was small, not enough to overcome the time lost by drawing second. So why did Bohr always win? Simple, he was a gunfighter. Good thing for Einstein that their debates never became duels!

The Midmar Mile - again!

Last year I swam the Midmar Mile and vowed not to do another dam swim. It was for frogs, I said.

Here is part of it, the biggest open water swim in the world!

Photo from the Midmar Mile website.

Well, here I am again, not quite as fit as I should be, but preparing to swim the Midmar Mile again. Not that great an achievement, there are some octogenarians also taking part! In my case it's for a good cause; to get sponsorships to have an internet Wi-Fi linked notebook computer in every class in Muriel Brand School. This is the school of which I am the principal, a special school mainly for children with cerebral palsy. Every class has been challenged to get R5 000,00 (about $650,00) in sponsorships, which will buy a basic notebook computer. The sponsorships are coming in and while we shall probably not reach the target, we'll get some way to doing so.


My swim, for men 31 year and older (wish there was a separate one for the over 50's!) will be on Valentine's Day, 14 February. At least I won't be alone, Rolandi Greyvenstein (one of my teachers), my son and four of his school friends, as well as some of his teachers (Hoërskool die Anker - The Anchor High School) will also swim. In addition to this, we form part of the Blackfin Swimming Club contingent, probably about 30 swimmers in all.

Any reader of my humble blog who would like to contribute to the cause, can e-mail Muriel Brand School at mbrand at uskonet dot com for details on how to go about it. If we get enough computers, I can stick to the swimming pool in future!

Daydreaming, neural connectivity and intelligence

Jonah Lehrer from The Frontal Cortex reports on research that links resting state activity (the state in which daydreaming occurs) in the brain with the stimulation of long-range neural connectivity and hence intelligence. He refers to an article by Whitfield-Gabrieli and Gabrieli in Mind Matters and states:

"(they) ... outline some interesting new research on the link between resting state activity - the performance of the brain when it's lying still in a brain scanner, doing nothing but daydreaming - and general intelligence. It turns out that cultivating an active idle mind, or teaching yourself how to daydream effectively, might actually encourage the sort of long-range neural connections that make us smart. At the very least, it's time we stop discouraging kids from staring out the classroom window, because mind wandering isn't a waste of time."

He quotes Whitfield-Gabrieli and Gabrieli in their discussion of research by Ming Song:

"Like prior researchers, they found that the posterior cingulate cortex is the hub of the human brain - it is the most widely and intensively connected region of the human brain at rest. Moreover, the strength of connectivity among distant brain regions was greater in people with superior than average IQ scores. Another 2009 study came to a similar conclusion, and noted that the strongest relations between resting connectivity and IQ were observed in the frontal and parietal brain regions, which have been most associated with performance on IQ tests.

Thus, remarkably, the strength of long-distance connections in the resting brain can be related to performance on IQ tests. We are often impressed when people make creative connections between ideas - perhaps long-range connectivity in the brain empowers such mental range."

Interesting stuff indeed, but still no justification for therapies that focus without evidence for effectiveness on the claimed improvement of inter- and intra-hemispheric connectivity.

Trauma debriefing in schools ineffective?

I have long wondered about the effectiveness of trauma debriefing in schools and whether it may not cause more harm than good. ScienceDaily may have the answer:

Recent systematic reviews indicate that psychological debriefing of adults does not prevent post-traumatic stress disorder and it may even increase the risk of this disorder. While there is little research on the effectiveness and safety of these interventions in schools, "the evidence clearly points to the ineffectiveness of these interventions in preventing post-traumatic stress disorder or any other psychiatric disorder in adults. (They) urge that psychological debriefing not be performed after traumatic incidents in schools, and that more research is needed to assess psychological and mental health interventions prior to implementation in schools.

It has become the custom in South Africa that after traumatic events trauma debrievers from different disciplines and presumably different competencies descend on schools en masse. I'm not sure that they do any good, or may even cause harm.

Vygotsky and Piaget: Outdated theories?

Donald Clark in Donald Clark Plan B can usually be trusted to cut through to the quick. His take on Vygotsky and Piaget will not endear him to educationists who hold them dear. Vygotsky especially is held in high regard by so-called progressive educators.

Donald Clark has the following to say about Vygotsky:

"Why have learning academics been so keen to resurrect an old Marxist theorist, dress up half-baked sociology and pretend it’s psychology? Having worked my way through 'Thought and Language' and 'Mind in Society' along with several other Vygotsky texts, I'll be damned if I can see what all the fuss is about. He is to the psychology of learning what Lysenko was to genetics. Indeed the parallel with Lysenko is quite apposite. Forgoing the idea of genetics he sees interventionist, social mediation as the sole source of cognitive development. Vygotsky is a sort of ‘tabla rasa’ Lamarkian learning theorist. ... Vygotsky puts learning before development - a sort of social behaviourist. This is in direct contradiction to almost everything we now know about the mind and its modular structure (this sentence used outside the original sequence). He is simply wrong."

He also does not spare Piaget:

"... there’s almost nothing left of his theories that is remotely useful to a new teacher. His four-stage theory of child development has been so completely wiped out by subsequent studies, that there’s nothing left. It’s merely an exercise in the history of science. What’s shocking is the way he’s still revered and taught in (such) courses. It’s like teaching Lamarck, not Darwin.

The good news is that his mistakes led to more rigorous studies that really did unravel child development, although one wonders why he is taught at all. The bad news is that the hole was filled by an even less rigorous and more flawed theorist, Lev Vygotsky. Don’t get me started on him!

What's worrying is the fact that teachers are coming out with a fixed view of child development based on 'ages and stages' that are quite wrong. This leads to amateurish teaching methods and a lack of understanding of when and how to teach numeracy and literacy. The 'whole-language' teaching fiasco in primary schools was the perfect storm of this amateurish approach.

The sad fact is that education and training is still soaked in this dated theory, as they suffer badly from 'groupthink'. The community literally thinks that theories are sound if a) they've been around for a long time (sorry, but in science, especially psychology, the opposite is true) b) everyone does it (that's precisely the problem)."

I'm not an expert on Vygotsky and Piaget, but I can't fault Donald Clark's conclusions. My concern is that these theories are often taught uncritically in education faculties at universities (at least in South Africa). As I've remarked in the past, critical and scientific thinking do not feature strongly in most teachers' training (in South Africa). Purveyors of scientifically questionable educational techniques often mention Piaget and Vygotsky as influences on their eclectic theories. This makes their theories seem more familiar to teachers and fool their bullshit detectors, which are rarely effective in any case. My solution? Teach student teachers the rudiments of critical and scientific thinking!

NLP - the cradle of budding quacks?

During my journeys into the dark heart of educational quackery (OK, that's a bit over the top, but I like it), I was struck by how often quacks claim the magic über quack affirmation - NLP Master Practitioner. What should be a source of embarrassment to be mentioned behind closed doors, becomes a beacon to attract the gullible. Which self help guru coined the phrase "... turn the negatives into positives"? NLP is clearly a quacking granfalloon, but it also seems to be the cradle of many budding educational quacks.

Wikipedia is a usually a good source to start reading up on any topic. It is also for Neuro-linguistic Programming. The danger with Wikipedia articles on questionable practices is that they may been be written by practitioners in mufti. In this case Dave Snowden, a critic of NLP, is one of the authors/editors of the article, which makes for a more objective view. It is always instructive to look at the discussions between the authors/editors on the discussion pages of any Wikipedia article. In this case there are interesting discussions between Snowden and some NLP supporters. The discussions range from guardedly civilized to downright hostile.

I'm not going to spend too much time here on NLP, as there's a lot of information on the Web. Here are two useful links:

Wikipedia on NLP.
Barry Beyerstein on pseudoscience.

Where will Chopra draw the line?

Deepak Chopra, the doyen of quantum quacks, is not a happy man. He has been quite vocal lately about the constant criticism he attracts from science based skeptics. He seems to be specifically irritated by Michael Shermer. But let him speak:

"It used to annoy me to be called the king of woo woo. ... I had an unpredictable reaction. I realized that I would much rather expound woo woo than the kind of bad science Shermer stands behind. He has made skepticism his personal brand, more or less, sitting by the side of the road to denigrate "those people who believe in spirituality, ghosts, and so on," as he says on a YouTube video." (This after a square-off with Michale Shermer on Larry King Live).

Chopra explained his views at the Indian Astrology Conference:

"Western science is still frozen in an obsolete, Newtonian worldview that is based literally on superstition -- and we can call it the superstition of materialism -- which says you and I are physical entities of the physical universe, ..."

Here he was essentially referring to his understanding of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. The Copenhagen interpretation (especially as he (mis)understands it), however, is not generally accepted. See here for a good discussion by Wadhawan and Kamal.

Regarding medical practice, Chopra and co-authors made the
following statement in an article entitled The Mythology Of Science-Based Medicine in the Huffington Post:

"We are not suggesting that Americans adopt any and all alternative practices simply because they are alternative. These, too, must demonstrate their effectiveness through objective testing."

That is exactly what proponents of science-based medicine have been saying all along! Someone, I can't recall who, said that there are only two types of medicine - scientifically supported and scientifically unsupported. In view of that, I wonder how Chopra would judge something such as "Prof" William Nelson's Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface, or SCIO/QXCI, a bullshit device that I've blogged about before here and here.

I'm interested to know, where will Chopra draw the line? Why then, should all so-called alternative medicine not be subjected to objective scientific validation?

Back to the future

Techno-junkies, but anti-science; conspiracy minded, but gullible; cynical, but superstitious. These are some of the contradictions I see in people around me. Constantly on their Blackberry's, jabbering about Botox and whether to innoculate their children. Big pharma is screwing them, but quantum quacks are trusted. AGW is a conspiracy, but they call up the dead. Their tolerance for cognitive dissonance must be off the scale.

Eighty years ago the poet C. Louis Leipoldt decried quackery and superstition in South Africa. Yet those I know from that era, including my parents (father, 85 and mother, 79) who had no training in science, have a great appreciation of science and a fair amount of general knowledge about the ideas of the Curie's, Einstein, Darwin and Bohr. They grew up in a time when people were excited by science and new discoveries. They seem less gullible than most younger people I have contact with. Evidence? No, I have no specific evidence - just observation. Yes, that is subject to confirmation bias and may well be inaccurate, but I don't think it is.

The older people I know trust mainstream medicine (OK, they have a weakness for homeopathy), consider Chopra's quantum quackery to be bullshit, find The Secret hilarious and consider John Edwards to be a charlatan. They experienced the tragedy of terrible illnesses such as polio and diptheria. They had the good sense to see that their children (us) were immunized when vaccines became available, as we did for ours. They did not look to celebrities for advice in matters of science and medicine.

I repeat this graphic I used earlier - are we on our way down?