Measles is the Winner by TKO

Measles is so powerful that after we defeated it with vaccines, it came back even stronger to infect our minds!

We might think of vaccines as a meta-defense, a meta-immune system, which could also be called Public Health or even just modern medicine. Measles has found a way to penetrate this defense.

The anti-vax meme is, perhaps, the first example of a disease making the transition from the biosphere to the noosphere, so that we now, in order to fight measles, we need to inoculate our minds in addition to our bodies. (A mental vaccine, that is.)

Via Dawkins' Selfish Gene, we don't get measles, measles gets us. And in 2018-2019, it's doing a damn good job.

Here's a few newsbits on the subject:

Antivaxxers turn to homeschooling to avoid protecting their kids’ health
July 2019, Ars Technica

Analyzing a Facebook-fueled anti-vaccination attack - 'It's not all about autism'
Mar 2019, phys.org

An analysis of Facebook profiles for people who posted anti-vaccination sentiments reveals four key subgroups that are interconnected by various themes. Credit: Elsevier

...anti-vaccination arguments are not "all about autism" and center on four distinct themes that can appeal to diverse audiences in four distinct subgroups:

• "trust," which emphasized suspicion of the scientific community and concerns about personal liberty;
• "alternatives," which focused on chemicals in vaccines and the use of homeopathic remedies instead of vaccination;
• "safety," which focused on perceived risks and concerns about vaccination being immoral; and
• "conspiracy," which suggested that the government and other entities hide information that this subgroup believes to be facts, including that the polio virus does not exist.

Beth L. Hoffman et al, It's not all about autism: The emerging landscape of anti-vaccination sentiment on Facebook, Vaccine (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.03.003


Facebook Takes Steps to Curb Sensational Health Claims
Molly Schuetz, Bloomberg, July 2, 2019

Deprioritizing sensationalist health posts that make misleading claims or tout “miracle cures,” and posts that use health-related claims to promote products or services, such as weight-loss pills.

On Deceptive Language:
April Fools hoax stories could offer clues to help identify 'fake news'
Mar 2019, phys.org

"April Fools hoaxes are very useful because they provide us with a verifiable body of deceptive texts that give us an opportunity to find out about the linguistic techniques used when an author writes something fictitious disguised as a factual account," said Edward Dearden from Lancaster University, and lead-author of the research. "By looking at the language used in April Fools and comparing them with fake news stories we can get a better picture of the kinds of language used by authors of disinformation."

The researchers found that April fools hoax stories, when compared to genuine news:

• Are generally shorter in length
• Use more unique words
• Use longer sentences
• Are easier to read
• Refer to vague events in the future
• Contain more references to the present
• Are less interested in past events
• Contain fewer proper nouns
• Use more first person pronouns

Fake news stories, when compared to genuine news:

• Are shorter in length
• Are easier to read
• Use simplistic language
• Contain fewer punctuation marks
• Contain more proper nouns
• Are generally less formal—use more first names such as 'Hillary' and contain more profanity and spelling mistakes
• Contain very few dates
• Use more first person pronouns

Post Script
Study busts myths about gossip
May 2019, phys.org

"There is a surprising dearth of information about who gossips and how, given public interest and opinion on the subject," said Megan Robbins, an assistant psychology professor who led the study along with Alexander Karan, a graduate student in her lab.

If you're going to look at gossip like an academic, remove the value judgment we assign to the word. Gossip, in the academic's view, is not bad. It's simply talking about someone who isn't present. That talk could be positive, neutral, or negative.

"With that definition, it would be hard to think of a person who never gossips because that would mean the only time they mention someone is in their presence," Robbins said. "They could never talk about a celebrity unless the celebrity was present for the conversation; they would only mention any detail about anyone else if they are present."

• Younger people engage in more negative gossip than older adults. There was no correlation with overall frequency of gossip when all three categories were combined.
• About 14 percent of participants' conversations were gossip, or just under an hour in 16 waking hours
• Almost three-fourths of gossip was neutral. Negative gossip (604 instances) was twice as prevalent as positive (376)
• Gossip overwhelmingly was about an acquaintance and not a celebrity, with a comparison of 3,292 samples vs. 369
• Extraverts gossip far more frequently than introverts, across all three types of gossip
• Women gossip more than men, but only in neutral, information-sharing, gossip
• Poorer, less education people don't gossip more than wealthier, better-educated people.

Color-Brained

Smeared Sky Sunset - Timestacks - Matt Molloy

An Anthropologist on Mars. Oliver Sacks. Vintage, 1996.
“The Case of the Colorblind Painter”

“Individuals may only “see” a color (or make a perceptual categorization) if there is an existing cultural category or name for it. But it is not clear whether such categorization may actually alter elementary color perception.” (footnote 9 on page 17)

Chromatophenes (colored rings or halos) can be induced by the magnetic stimulation of the brain (the V4)
-Semir Zeki, neurophysiologist, 1970s; found in Sacks p28

Some particular part of the brain may be discovered as the generator of color, “But color vision, in real life, is part and parcel of our total experience, is linked with our own categorizations and values, becomes for each of us a part of our lifeworld, of us. … It is at higher levels that integration occurs, that color fuses with memories, expectations, associations, and desires to make a world with resonance and meaning for each of us. (p29)

The power of expectation and mental set in the perception of color is clearly shown in those with partial red-green colorblindness. Such people may not, for example, be able to spot scarlet holly berries against the dark green foliage, or the delicate salmon-pink of dawn – until these tare pointed out to them. “Our poor impoverished cells,” says a dyschromatope of my acquaintance, “need the amplification of the intellect, knowledge, expectation, and attention in order to ‘see’ the colors that we are normally ‘blind’ to.” (footnote 20 on page 29)

Cultural Evolution of Basic Color Terms
JULY 10, 2012
Seeing Red
JUNE 3, 2013

Louis Wain and the Evolution of Schizophrenia

the ontological evolution of schizophrenia

He was real good at drawing cats.
He developed mental illness later in life.
That's when he became real good at drawing schizophrenia.
[more]

see the parallels to 'visionary art' created by DMT-induced Alex Grey:

http://alexgrey.com/

Schizotypy
There is a continuum of personality characteristics and experiences ranging from normal dissociative, imaginative states to more extreme states related to psychosis and in particular, schizophrenia.
-wiki

"There is no try; only do or do not." Or not.

DSM RIP

(DSM) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

If this were to happen (the 'death' of DSM and a favoring of a cognitive science approach to understanding mental illness), I wonder what would be the effects on Juan Enriquez suggestion that Autism could be a form of cognitive evolution.
Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species? TEDxSummit, Jun2012

A fresh look at mental illness: Researcher points toward a new way to classify disorders

Peter Reuell, Jul 31, Harvard Gazette

clipped article:

Ask Assistant Professor of Psychology Joshua Buckholtz to explain his research into mental disorders, and he’ll likely start with a question that’s got more to do with basic medicine: When is the flu appendicitis?

The answer, of course, is never. Each is associated with a very specific — and nonoverlapping — set of biological causes and effects. Understanding what these are, Buckholtz explained, allows doctors to discriminate between the two with near-perfect accuracy. 

Unfortunately, Buckholtz said, the same cannot be said for mental disorders. 

According to Buckholtz, meeting the diagnostic criteria for multiple psychiatric disorders is the rule, rather the exception. 

“This tells us that there are either a lot of people who are unlucky enough to be afflicted with multiple distinct, unique disorders at the same time, or that something is very wrong with our method for classifying psychological disorders.” 

In a June 21 paper published in Neuron, Buckholtz and co-author Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, a researcher from the Central Institute of Mental Health and the University of Heidelberg in Germany, identify a biological reason for that disconnect. Extrapolating from what we know about the genetic causes of mental illness and their effects on the brain, they propose that many mental disorders appear to share symptoms because genes for mental illness cause changes in key brain circuits that affect a wide range of cognitive processes. 

“Individual genetic differences cause variability in the way that brain circuits function,” he continued. “These differences in brain circuit function lead to the wide range of variation in cognitive, emotional, motivation, and social function that we see in people all around us. The specific genes that are involved, and the way that these genes interact with the environments to which we are exposed, determine how specific brain circuits behave. When those circuits don’t function well, this is expressed as a deficit in whatever domain of cognition is supported by the ‘sick’ circuit. When these deficits cause dysfunction in everyday life, we call it a symptom. When those symptoms become impairing enough, someone comes to the clinic and receives a diagnosis.” 

“What we can say is that genetic and environmental risk factors for mental illness produce graded changes in the function of one or more brain circuits, producing graded changes in cognitive processes supported by those circuits,” Buckholtz said. “The changes in those cognitive processes will produce varying expression of symptoms that are shared across multiple disorders.” 

One possible impact of the paper’s findings, Buckholtz said, could come as researchers work to design a new way to classify mental disorders. 

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/07/a-fresh-look-at-mental-illness/

POST SCRIPT:

Brain change link to anti-social behaviour in girls
Caroline Parkinson, 21 October 2012, BBC

The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry study of 40 girls revealed brains of teenage girls with behavioural disorders are different to those of their peers.

The team found part of the brain called the amygdala was smaller in the brains of male and female teenagers with conduct disorder than in their peers.

Girls with conduct disorder also had less grey matter in an area of the brain called the insula - linked to emotion and understanding your own emotions.

"In the US, people are already using brain scans to argue diminished responsibility. I think we're too early in our understanding to really do that, but it is happening.
-Dr Graeme Fairchild, of the University of Cambridge 

"It suggests that at least a component of this has a biological basis - and there are people who don't believe there is one."
-Dr Michael Craig of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20002093

Uncovering secrets of how intellect and behavior emerge during childhood

November 8, 2012 in Medical Xpress, Genetics

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have shown that a single protein plays an oversized role in intellectual and behavioral development. The scientists found that mutations in a single gene, which is known to cause intellectual disability and increase the risk of developing autism spectrum disorder, severely disrupts the organization of developing brain circuits during early childhood. This study helps explain how genetic mutations can cause profound cognitive and behavioral problems.

The study focused on a critical synaptic protein known as SynGAP1.

"There are a few genes that can't be altered without affecting normal cognitive abilities," Rumbaugh said. "SynGAP1 is one of the most important genes in cognition—so far, every time a mutation that disrupts the function of SynGAP1 has been found, that individual's brain simply could not develop correctly. It regulates the development of synaptic function like no other gene I've seen."

Interestingly, inducing these mutations after the critical development period was complete had virtually no impact on normal synapse function and repairing these pathogenic mutations in adulthood did not improve behavior or cognition.

"A key finding is we were able to remove the mutation and restore SynGAP protein levels in adult mice with obvious cognitive and behavioral problems, but this intervention did not benefit the animals," Rumbaugh said. These results imply that very early intervention is essential in neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly for cognitive problems. The team is now aggressively searching for the optimal period during development in which repairing these mutations is most beneficial.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-uncovering-secrets-intellect-behavior-emerge.html

Novel studies of gene regulation in brain development may mean new treatment of mental disorders

December 2, 2012 in Medical Xpress, Genetics

modified

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the Institut Pasteur, Paris identified the hierarchical tree of CGG–TF networks that determine the patterns of genes expressed during brain development and found that some "master transcription factors" at the top level of the hierarchy regulated the expression of a significant number of gene groups.

Instead of a taking the approach that a single gene creates a single response, researchers used contemporary methods of data analysis, along with the Gordon supercomputer at the university's San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), to identify CGGs responsible for brain development which can be affected for treatment of mental disorders. The team found that these groups of genes act in concert to send signals at various levels of the hierarchy to other groups of genes, which control the general and more specific (depending of the level) events in brain structure development.

"We have proposed a novel, though still hypothetical, strategy of drug design based on this hierarchical network of TFs that could pave the way for a new category of pharmacological agents that could be used to block a pathway at a critical time during brain development as an effective way to treat and even prevent mental disorders such as ASD and schizophrenia," said lead author Igor Tsigelny, a research scientist with SDSC, as well as the university's Moores Cancer Center and Department of Neurosciences. "On a broader scale, these findings have the potential to change the paradigm of drug design."

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-gene-brain-treatment-mental-disorders.html

A Hierarchical Coherent-Gene-Group Model for Brain Development

Tsigelny IF, Kouznetsova VL, Baitaluk M, Changeux JP

Genes, Brain and Behavior - Nov 22, 2012 [Epub ahead of print]

Computers are better at diagnosing and treating patients than doctors
http://io9.com/5983991/computers-are-better-at-diagnosing-and-treating-patients-than-doctors


Mental Health Researchers Reject Psychiatry’s New Diagnostic ‘Bible’
Maia Szalavitz May 07, 2013

A Revolution in Mental Health

Paul Voosen, in the Chronicle of Higher Education

September 9, 2013

…most likely candidate for a revolution in mental health research: the National Institute of Mental Health’s RDoC or Research Domain Criteria project

My Brain Made Me Do It:

US courts see rise in defendants blaming their brains for criminal acts

The Guardian, Nov 2013