Hearing voices: Social context influences psychosis

Reblogged from NeuWriteSD.org:

“People are always selling the idea that people with mental illness are suffering. I think madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better.”

These are the words of John Nash, Jr., the Nobel Laureate who inspired the book and the movie A Beautiful Mind and who suffered from schizophrenia, including paranoid delusions of grandeur during which he felt he could intercept secret messages with important content instructing him on how to rescue the planet.

How individuals experiencing psychotic symptoms come to interpret such messages is a fascinating question. In a recent academic talk, Stanford psychological anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann addressed this question by arguing persuasively for the influence of culture on the symptomatology of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia (for a great recap of a similar talk by Luhrmann, see this blog post from PLoS). Strikingly, she claims, positive psychotic symptoms, in particular hearing voices, manifest differently in different cultures. 

Continuing reading here...

Lithium: Wonder Drug? Part I

Reblogged from my post on NeuWriteSD.org:

I’m so happy ’cause today
I’ve found my friends
They’re in my head

What comes to mind when you hear the word lithium? A drug used to manage life-threatening mood disorders? A potentially deadly toxin? A chemical found in trace amounts in many compounds in nature? (Or maybe just the Nirvana song?)

Any of these answers would be felicitous. A recent New York Times Sunday Review piece by psychiatrist Dr. Anna Fels touted the potential benefits of the naturally-occurring element, atomic number 3 on the periodic table. Dr. Fels’ primary argument was that lithium, widely known for its use as a mood stabilizer for individuals with severe mood disorders, also has a positive effect on mood and cognition in non-clinical populations in trace amounts.

Continue reading here...

Oxytocin, bonding, and breastfeeding

Reblogged from NeuWriteSD.org:

Valentine’s Day is a time for expressing love, and while its title may initially conjure up socially normative images of candle-lit dinners, long-stemmed roses, and canoodling with a romantic partner, I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about the kind of love that prevents our species from dying out: that of a mother and infant. The bonding that takes place in the first six months of life is complex and still quite mystifying, but likely involves the touch, attention, and care of the mother, as well as a whole lot of hormones. And one aspect of an infant’s first few months that encompasses all of these factors is breastfeeding. Not only is breastfeeding important for nutrition, including brain and body development, but it is also an important factor in the earliest stages of human social development. Here we will touch on just some of the science behind why choosing to breastfeed may lead to benefits for babies and their bonds with their mothers.

Read more at NeuWriteSD.org.