ScienceDaily: Bipolar Disorder News
Lithium reduces risk of suicide in people with mood disorders, review finds
The drug lithium is an effective treatment for reducing the risk of suicide and possibly deliberate self harm in people with mood disorders, an evidence review finds.
Psych Central News
Imagination Can Influence What We See & Hear
If the answer is yes, then you may be reassured as new research from Sweden shows that our imaginations may affect how we experience the world more than we perhaps think.
Researchers determined that what we imagine hearing or seeing “in our head” can change our actual perception.
The study sheds new light on a classic question in psychology and neuroscience — about how our brains combine information from the different senses.
“We often think about the things we imagine and the things we perceive as being clearly dissociable,” says Christopher Berger, a doctoral student at Karolinska Institutet and lead author of the study.
“However, what this study shows is that our imagination of a sound or a shape changes how we perceive the world around us in the same way actually hearing that sound or seeing that shape does.
“Specifically, we found that what we imagine hearing can change what we actually see, and what we imagine seeing can change what we actually hear.”
As found in the scientific journal Current Biology, the study consists of a series of experiments that make use of illusions in which sensory information from one sense changes or distorts one’s perception of another sense. Ninety-six healthy volunteers participated in total.
In the first experiment, participants experienced the illusion that two passing objects collided rather than passed by one-another when they imagined a sound at the moment the two objects met.
In a second experiment, the participants’ spatial perception of a sound was biased towards a location where they imagined seeing the brief appearance of a white circle. In the third experiment, the participants’ perception of what a person was saying was changed by their imagination of a particular sound.
According to the scientists, the results of the current study may be useful in understanding the mechanisms by which the brain fails to distinguish between thought and reality in certain psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.
Another area of use could be research on brain computer interfaces, where paralyzed individuals’ imagination is used to control virtual and artificial devices.
“This is the first set of experiments to definitively establish that the sensory signals generated by one’s imagination are strong enough to change one’s real-world perception of a different sensory modality” said Henrik Ehrsson, Ph.D., the principal investigator behind the study.
Source: Karolinska Institutet
Do You Know the Differences Between these Two Types of Killers?
As published online in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior, Northwestern Medicine researcher Robert Hanlon, Ph.D., found that the minds of murderers who kill impulsively, often out of rage, and those who carefully carry out premeditated crimes, differ markedly both psychologically and intellectually.
“Impulsive murderers were much more mentally impaired, particularly cognitively impaired, in terms of both their intelligence and other cognitive functions,” said Hanlon.
“The predatory and premeditated murderers did not typically show any major intellectual or cognitive impairments, but many more of them have psychiatric disorders,” he said.
The study is the first to examine the neuropsychological and intelligence differences of murderers who kill impulsively versus those who kill as the result of a premeditated strategic plan.
Among its findings:
- Compared to impulsive murderers, premeditated murderers are almost twice as likely to have a history of mood disorders or psychotic disorders — 61 percent versus 34 percent.
- Compared to predatory murderers, impulsive murderers are more likely to be developmentally disabled and have cognitive and intellectual impairments — 59 percent versus 36 percent.
- Nearly all of the impulsive murderers have a history of alcohol or drug abuse and/or were intoxicated at the time of the crime — 93 percent versus 76 percent of those who strategized about their crimes.
For the research, 77 murderers from typical prison populations in Illinois and Missouri were classified into the two groups (affective/impulsive and premeditated/predatory murderers).
Hanlon compared their performances on standardized measures of intelligence and neuropsychological tests of memory, attention and executive functions.
He then spent hours with each individual, administering series of tests to complete an evaluation.
“It’s important to try to learn as much as we can about the thought patterns and the psychopathology, neuropathology and mental disorders that tend to characterize the types of people committing these crimes,” he said.
“Ultimately, we may be able to increase our rates of prevention and also assist the courts, particularly helping judges and juries be more informed about the minds and the mental abnormalities of the people who commit these violent crimes.”
Source: Northwestern University
Man pointing a gun at the camera photo by shutterstock.
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