Raising An Issue in Indian Psychology

A recent literature search threw up an interesting-looking paper; a randomised controlled trial (RCT) on the effect of yoga on gunas (personality) in healthy volunteers (free to read). I was surprised as I rarely come across academic papers on yoga, that too with explicit reference to 'gunas' in the title. . I couldn’t help noticing at the outset that the study appeared to have been carried out at the Department of Yoga Research, Swami Vivekananda Anusandhana Samsthana, a deemed-to-be yoga university. The study was also published in the International Journal of Yoga, which appears to be the university’s own journal publication. So there is plenty of scope for bias to creep in.

Despite that RCTs are the 'gold standard' of psychological research when done properly, the stated aims of this paper didn't exactly fill me with confidence. The study itself wasn't what interested me, but rather one of the tools that the researchers used to assess the participants' personalities. In psychology, personality is assessed using specific scales or questionnaires that have been designed to measure a particular construct, say, anxiety or depression. The Beck Depression Inventory is probably the best known and widely used example of a scale to measure depression, and you can find information about other scales at Wikipedia.

An important concept in the construction of such scales is known as construct validity, the ability of the scale to measure what it is supposed to measure. Using the BDI as an example, can it be that a set of questions is capable of measuring the presence and intensity of depression in a person? All other things being equal, the answer is that it is probably the most reliable tool we have for measuring depression at the moment and that it has been consistently used in a number of different medical fields. Much research has been done in the field of personality psychology in an attempt to construct a real-term workable scale with which to assess personality. Many scales exist, but generally speaking researchers have come to agree that personality can be defined in terms of the "Big 5" factors: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Psychopathy, and that all of our personalities can be measured in different ratings of these. The Reliability of such scales is another important issue that also means something different to the popular sense of the word, and we'll get to that at some point.

For this study the research team wanted to analyse the effects of a yoga course on personality and self-esteem, and they measured these with Karunanidhi's Self-Esteem Inventory (1996) and, wait for it, the Gita Inventory of Personality (Das, 1991). According to this paper, the GIP (referred to as GIN within the paper) was to measure three dimensions of personality: Sattva, Rajas and Tamas.

There is reason to suspect that, at least in the case of the GIP, something mischievous is afoot in the name of psychology. The Gita referred to is of course the Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindu scripture (traditionally believed to be 5000 years old), and the three personality dimensions being assessed are described in the 14th chapter of the text. I'm aware of issues of sensitivity surrounding cross-cultural research in psychology, the importance of accepting cultural boundaries, and so on. If you were to rely on Wikipedia, cross-cultural psychiatry (or transcultural psychiatry) is that which is "concerned with the cultural and ethnic context of mental disorders and psychiatric services".

I have to wonder, though, are cases like this something that ought to be a concern or to be praised? On one hand we have here a different outlook on personality that is independent of Western-oriented psychology, but on the other we have to wonder about the appropriateness of assessing people's individual personality traits on the basis of definitions provided in an antiquated religious text. Psychological research is frequently slighted or condemned (depending on who you listen to) as being overly WEIRD - analysing and assessing people that are dominantly Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic, and that is a fair criticism in context. In general, the field is crying out for fresh perspectives.

However, it remains unclear if ethnically contextual research from the other end of the spectrum will be able to provide new insight into the field of personality psychology if little to no effort is made to work collegially, and using similar standards of measurement with which to assess people and carry out much needed research.

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Deshpande S., Nagendra H.R. & Nagarathna R. (2009). A randomized control trial of the effect of yoga on Gunas (personality) and Self esteem in normal healthy volunteers., International Journal of Yoga, 2 (1) 13-21. PMID: 21234210

Primitive Physick - John Wesley

Christian theologian and cleric, John Wesley (1703-1791), who is credited with founding the Methodist denomination of Christianity, and due to whose teachings the Methodists were leading activists in the social issues of their day such as prison reform and abolitionism, is not necessarily someone we would expect to write a book detailing treatments for all sorts of medical ailments. But this is what he did in a relatively little-known work of his entitled Primitive Physick; Or An Easy And Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases. 

It is notable, however, that during his lifetime Wesley was considered a quack, both spiritually and medically (Madden, 2007). He led an itinerant lifestyle in order to preach as he never had his own church, and it is thought that the prevalence of disease as well as the prevalence and tendency of quacks who combined their treatments with theology were among the reasons behind writing this book.
 

According to Wesley, the word 'primitive' was akin to 'original' or 'early', and 'physic' was a general term for health care, especially “how to live in accordance with nature by proper diet and exercise, both to restore health and to retain it,” (Maddox, 2007). Taken together, Primitive Physick was a book that would be classed as holistic or alternative medicine today.

In Ingram's Patterns Of Madness In The Eighteenth Century: A Reader, it is noted that Wesley saw disease as a consequence of the Fall and thus regarded mankind as primarily responsible for its own sufferings. Wesley says as much in his preface:

"When man came first out of the hands of the Great Creator, clothed in body, as well as in soul, with immortality and incorruption, there was no place for physic, or the art of healing. As he knew no sin, he knew no pain, no sickness, weakness, or bodily disorder ... But since man rebelled against the Sovereign of heaven and earth, how entirely is the scene changed! ... The seeds of wickedness and pain, of sickness and death, are now lodged in our inmost substance; whence a thousand disorders continually spring, even without the aid of external violence."

Wesley covered the common illnesses of his day in alphabetical order; mental illnesses, curiously, are not distinguished from physical ailments, as in Wesley's view both are derived from man's first disobedience. They are thus stigmatised no more than other illnesses. 

What follows are Wesley's interesting and amusing remedies for various types of psychological conditions, especially the mania associated with rabies:

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44. An Hysteric Cholic.

164. Mrs. Watts, by using the cold bath two and twenty times in a month, was entirely cured of an hysteric cholic, fits, and convulsive motions, continual sweatings and vomiting, wandering pains in her limbs and head, with total loss of appetite.

165. In the fit, half a pint of water with a little wheat-flour in it, and a spoonful of vinegar.

166. Or of warm lemonade: tried.

167. Or, take 20, 30, or 40 drops of balsam of peru on fine sugar: if need be, take this twice or thrice a day:

168. Or, in extremity, boil three ounces of Burdock-seed in water, which give as a clyster:
169. Or, twenty drops of laudanum, in any proper clyster, which gives instant ease. 

45. A Nervous Cholic.

170. Use the cold-bath daily for three or four weeks.

171. Or, take quicksilver and acqua sulphurata daily for a month.

136. Hypochondriac and Hysteric Disorders.

426. Use cold bathing:

427. Or, take an ounce of quicksilver every morning, and ten drops of Elixir of Vitriol in the afternoon, in a glass of cold water.

151. Lunacy.

468. Give a decoction of agrimony four times a day:
469. Or, rub the head several times a day with vinegar, in which ground-ivy leaves have been infused:
470. Or, daily take an ounce of distilled vinegar:
471. Or, boil juice of ground-ivy with sweet oil and white wine into an ointment. Shave the head, anoint it therewith, and chafe it every other day for three weeks. Bruise also the leaves and bind them on the head, and give three spoonfuls of the juice warm every morning.
472. Or, be elecrified: tried.

152. Raging Madness.

473. Apply to the head, cloths dipt in cold water:
474. Or, set the patient with his head under a great water-fall, as long as his strength will bear: or, pour water on his head out of a tea-kettle:
475. Or, let him eat nothing but apples for a month:
476. Or, nothing but bread and milk: tried.

153. Bite of a Mad Dog.

477. Plunge into cold water daily for twenty days, and keep as long under as possible. This has cured, even after the hydrophobia was begun.
478. Or, mix ashes of trefoil with hog's-lard, and anoint the part as soon as possible. Repeat it twice or thrice at six hours distance. This has cured many: and particularly a dog bit on the nose by a mad dog.
479. Or, mix a pound of salt, with a quart of water. Squeeze, bathe, and wash the wound with this for an hour. Then bind some salt upon it for twelve hours.
N.B. The Author of this receipt was bit six times by mad dogs, and always cured himself by this means.
480. Or, mix powdered liver-wort, four drachms: black pepper, two drachms. Divide this into four parts, and take one in warm milk for four mornings, fasting. Dr. Mead affirms he never knew this to fail: but it has sometimes failed.
481. Or, take two or three spoonfuls of ribwort, morning and evening, as soon as possible after the bite. Repeat this for two or three changes of the moon. It has not been known to fail.
482. Immediately consult an honest physician.

References:

Ingram, Allan. Patterns of Madness In The Eighteenth Century: A Reader. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1998.

Madden, Deborah. 'A Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine': Religion, Medicine and Culture in John Wesley's Primitive Physic (Amsterdam/New York: Rodolpi, 2007).

Maddox, Randy.  “John Wesley on Holistic Health and Healing” in Methodist History, 46:1 (October 2007), 4-33.

Future of Clinical Psychology in the NHS

Nature (21 April 2011 edition) recently ran a series of special articles on the future of the PhD., all of which asked serious questions about the value of the doctorate in a job market that no longer appears to properly compensate the hard work of students with rewarding careers of their choice. Mark Taylor's editorial was quite frank: "Reform the PhD. system or close it down", suggesting updated and relevant curricula as well as cross-disciplinary communications as ways to move forward, and to discontinue 'redundant' programmes and use their resources for more productive lines.

Noah Gray, a senior editor at Nature, elaborated:

"..At some point we have to expand our view beyond academia and ask which jobs really need a PhD. and which don't. Academia asks a lot from its graduate students and isn't prepared or capable of providing a return on the investment of blood, sweat and tears made by the students. It only seems logical to contract somewhat, for the good of the students who are not aware of this difficult reality, rather than continue to exploit masses of under-compensated labor who may ultimately invest far more energy and time into a endeavor that will not place them in an adequate career."

In general it sounds a lot worse than it is; assuming that the ideas discussed in this series come to fruition, it becomes mainly an attempt at streamlining rather than wholesale cutting down.

It got me pondering the situation in the UK. Two years ago, the Feb 2009 issue of Clinical Psychology Forum (forum magazine of the Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society) published an interesting article/study regarding the future of clinical psychology placements within the NHS. While it is well known that clinical psychology is a highly competitive area and that more applications are turned down than accepted, there seems to be newer causes for worry other than excellence in academia or training. Harriet Francis-Ehnholm and Tanya Petersen (hereafter "the authors") introduce the topic by describing their attempt to undertake a survey of ClinPsy. trainees and their opinions about clinical psychology during a conference held at the University of Hertfordshire. In the 1990s a shortfall in NHS clinical psychologists was remedied by increasing the number of training places, 583 places were available in 2007 which was a huge improvement from 321 places in 1997. (The situation has improved since; Leeds Clearing House report 617 places were available in 2010, although it is humbling to note that 11,319 applications were made.) However in the face of funding cuts the reduction in the number of clinical psychology posts results in fewer clinical placements for those already in training, leading trainees to wonder about the availability of jobs after completing the course.

To get an idea of the trainees' views, the authors carried out a survey questionnaire that covered three main topics:

• What were trainees' thoughts about the future of the profession?
• Had working in an 'uncertain' climate affected trainees' views of clinical psychology?
• How does the next generation of psychologists intend to make the future more certain?

The surveys were distributed to the sample of 40 trainees, though only 24 returned a response! The results were more or less what one would expect: before the commencement of training job and security expectations were varied, which significantly narrowed after embarking on training and which resulted in envisaging a more constrained career path along with less security and choice. The interesting thing is that despite experiencing negative effects of funding cuts such as low morale and the threat of job cuts/service closures, all of them indicated that they still wanted to continue training to be clinical psychologists. Although it came to light that trainees felt they might benefit from advice on alternatives to working in the NHS and also on how to market the profession effectively to the public, they remained generally optimistic about the future of clinical psychology.

The authors concluded that while University of Hertfordshire trainees were fortunate not to experience the effects of any cuts in training places, they nevertheless experienced the effects of NHS funding crises on their clinical placements and of working in a climate of uncertainty. Now that things have moved on from 2009, that climate is sure to have worsened with service cuts, poor results and the resultant low morale that has emerged in clinical services across the board. A recent blog at The Psychologist by Christian Jarrett reports a disconcerting outlook for psychology as a whole in the UK as a result of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government's spending review; a 50% slashing of PGCE Psychology places, research councils announcing a redirection of neuroscience-allocated funds in line with their research priorities, and a possible restructure of client services.

It all begs the question as to what clinical psychology trainees might think now in this bleaker situation. If the authors' snapshot article is anything to go by, the anxiety and stress felt by current trainees is likely to be amplified even more in this uncertain situation of global economic worries. However, a surprising suggestion of the authors is for the NHS to modify their programmes and training accordingly, even to the extent of suggestion that trainees be provided with teaching in private practice and how to set about this type of work, in spite of the fact that this may cause a conflict of interest (you know, getting trained by the NHS to work in the NHS and then uh,... not doing that).

Considering all of this, what can prospective clinical psychologists look forward to? More uncertainty? Faint light on the horizon? Is it time to call for an open discussion?

When a Man becomes a Woman

Interesting article in The Guardian the other day, about how virtual reality (VR) can be used in certian circumstances to change a male's sense of self into that of a woman's, the perceived experience being so powerful that the men reacted quite sharply (i.e. like a woman) to a slap. Patronising as that sounds, the state of mind does remain an interesting feature and it reminded me of a particular religious tradition that urges it's male adherents to emulate a type of female consciousness. Perhaps I may write more on this later, here's the article for now:

Virtual reality used to transfer men's minds into a woman's body

Researchers projected men's sense of self into a virtual reality woman, changing the way they behaved and thought

* Ian Sample
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 May 2010 22.00 BST

Scientists have transferred men's minds into a virtual woman's body in an experiment that could enlighten the prejudiced and shed light on how humans distinguish themselves from others.

In a study at Barcelona University, men donned a virtual reality (VR) headset that allowed them to see and hear the world as a female character. When they looked down they could even see their new body and clothes.

The "body-swapping" effect was so convincing that the men's sense of self was transferred into the virtual woman, causing them to react reflexively to events in the virtual world in which they were immersed.

Men who took part in the experiment reported feeling as though they occupied the woman's body and even gasped and flinched when she was slapped by another character in the virtual world.

"This work opens up another avenue for virtual reality, which is not just to transform your sense of place, but also your sense of self," said Mel Slater, a virtual reality researcher at the Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies and University College London. "There isn't any other technology that allows you to look down and see another body that isn't yours and give you the illusion that it is," he said.

"If you can temporarily give people the illusion that their bodies are different, then the evidence suggests it also affects their behaviour and the way they think. They can have new experiences: a person who is thin can know what it's like to be fat. A man can have an experience of what it's like to be a woman."

In the study, 24 men took turns wearing a VR headset that immersed them in a virtual room. Some men saw the virtual environment through the eyes of a female character who was sitting down, while others had a viewpoint that was just to the side of her.

During the experiment, a second virtual female approached and appeared to rub the person's shoulder or arm. Researchers in the lab mimicked this sensation in the real world for some of the volunteers by rubbing their shoulder or arm, helping to reinforce their feeling of occupying the character's body.

Later in the study, the second character lashed out and slapped the face of the character the men were playing. "Their reaction was immediate," said Slater. "They would take in a quick breath and maybe move their head to one side. Some moved their whole bodies. The more people reported being in the girl's body, the stronger physical reaction they had."

Sensors on the men's bodies showed their heart rates fell sharply for a few seconds and then ramped up – a classic response to a perceived attack.

As expected, the body swapping effect was felt more keenly by men who saw their virtual world through the female character's eyes than those whose viewpoint was slightly to one side of her. In all cases, the feeling was temporary and lasted only as long as the study.

The study, which appears in the online science journal PLoS One, suggests that our minds have a very fluid picture of our bodies. The research is expected to shed light on the thorny neuroscientific puzzle of how our brain tells the difference between a part of our own body, and something else in the wider world.

The work might also improve rehabilitation for patients who have experienced strokes and other medical problems by immersing them in a world that helps them to use their bodies to the full again.

Mr. Crowley's Suicide Solution

Wine is fine,
But whiskey's quicker.
Suicide is slow with liquor.
Take a bottle, drown your sorrows,
THEN IT FLOODS AWAY TOMMORROW!!

So goes the first verse of 'Suicide Solution', an infamous song of Ozzy Osbourne's that deals with the dangers of alcohol abuse, and which was the central feature in two legal cases against him where he was charged with inciting the suicides of heavy metal fans after they listened to the song. In fact, controversy has dogged Osbourne since the beginning of his career with the founding of the influential heavy metal group Black Sabbath, who are credited with having invented the genre. Although Osbourne was found not guilty in those cases, other related matters referred to the issues of including satanic imagery in song lyrics, stage performances and album covers, as well as allegations of surreptitious backmasking of satanic messages in said albums, all things that were said to be bad infuences on young adults. Osbourne has claimed he harbours no satanic beliefs and that the inclusion of such imagery in his musical corpus was purely for reasons of showmanship.

Similarly, the music of Marilyn Manson is said to have contributed to at least one fan's suicide. But more seriously the students who carried out the Columbine High School massacre and the SuccessTech Academy shootings were said to have been heavily influenced by Manson's music. Around 50 churches were also burned down between 1992 and 1996 in Norway, for which many fans of the developing black metal scene claimed responsibility.

It isn't just the fans who are supposedly influenced adversely. Mayhem vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin, better known by his stage name 'Dead', was notorious for mutilating himself on stage with hunting knives and broken glass. Finally in 1991, and almost as a fitting homage to his nom de plume, he sat down among his bandmates and calmly slashed his wrists and neck with small cuts before inserting a shotgun into his mouth and blowing his brains everywhere. Other bandmates were famous for regular conflicts, culminating in the brutal murder of guitarist Øystein Aarseth by bassist Varg Vikernes.

If one looks deeper in the issue, one is sure to find many more horror stories of murders and depressive suicides with the common denominator of metal music. Indeed, one wouldn't be blamed for automatically assuming that individuals attracted to such music may tend to be prone to depression and/or exhibit anti-social behaviour of other kinds. But is there any actual data to substantiate this?

Vaughan Bell of mindhacks.com was kind enough to alert and send me a paper published late last year that attempts to analyse if there is a link between mental health and the enjoyment of such music. The main research questions that the study sought to answer were:

• Do metal music fans in France exhibit great levels of anxiety and depression?
• What variables mediate the levels of anxiety and depression for metal music fans?

Recours et al. (2009) surveyed 333 French metal fans by administering the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), a simple test that aims to detect, obviously, notable anxiety and depression. Among other things, they analysed differences in gender, age, status, education, motivation and level of participation in metal culture. This included intimate items such as the behaviour of participants at metal concerts and whether they had body modifications such as piercings and tattoos.

Summary of the very interesting results: Out of 333 participants, 282 were male (87.8%) and 39 were female (12.15%), the mean age of which was 22.6 years old. (age range: 13-44 years). Half of them were students, 41.7% of the rest being employed and the remainder being both students and employed. Average years immersed in metal music culture was 9.22 years with average concerts attended per year was 16. Slightly over one-third had a tattoo or piercing while just 5.3 had a combination of both. The most popular subgenres of metal music indulged in were death metal (37.7%), black metal (22.7%) and thrash metal (18%). Motivations for attending concerts included the expectedly high 95.9% to enjoy the music, followed by 84.6% attending for the "ambience". Only 33.9% cited drinking as a reason to attend, and very small percentages of people attended in order to sample drugs (4.98%), sell drugs (2.72%), and to fight (0.91%).

Factor analyses revealed a three-dimensional structure, and an orthagonal rotation was performed to analyse how pertinent the depression and anxiety factors were. These two factors ended up explaining 38.71% of the variance (27.55% = anxiety, 11.17% depression), with reliability factors using Cronbach's Alpha being 0.70 and 0.67 respectively. In plain language, this means that - based on the answers provided - the HADS test was 70% and 67% reliable in detecting anxiety and depression respectively.

All in all, the results showed that the respondents exhibited low levels of anxiety and depression. The HADS instrument can be used to determine an arbitrary cutoff point as there is no generally accepted cutoff. The creators of the instrument, Zigmond & Snaith (1994), recommended a cutoff of 7/8 for possible and 10/11 for probable anxiety or depression. Following previous research Recours et al. chose 11 as a cutoff score for each dimension of anxiety and depression, implying that respondents exhibiting a score greater than 11 would be considered to have a serious level of anxiety or depression. The results found the average scores to be 7.26 and 3.76 for anxiety and depression respectively, far below the chosen cutoff levels. However, as in all populations there were some individuals scoring above the cutoff (15.6% anxiety, 3.4% depression) but these cannot be said to be due to the influence of metal music.

Multiple regression analyses revealed that none of the other variables (age, gender, concert attendance, etc.) had a link to mental health in terms of either anxiety or depression, but surprisingly the same analyses revealed a relationship between mental health and writing song lyrics, drinking at concerts, and having scarifications. Also, links were revealed between mental health, education level and employment status. However, these relationships were still nowhere near the 'danger' cutoff point of 11.

In conclusion, the authors discuss the huge gender bias towards males among other things, and suggest it as being 'very' representative of the culture of metal music. Maybe so, but let's get to discussing the drawbacks of this study:

The study was carried out over the Internet. The HADS instrument is effectively a questionnaire that was administered over a non-personal medium, but even with personal contact there is no way to certify the replies as genuine. In this way Internet-administered tests contain an extra layer of uncertainty. The authors state that they considered 'personal' measures such as approaching "morbidly dressed" metal fans on the street, but this would isolate metal fans who do not attire themselves in such an "obvious" way. But at least they entered 10 different Internet forums dedicated to metal music in order to have a realistic possibility of contacting individuals with an almost certain interest in metal music and culture. However, another category of isolation occurs here as genuinely depressed people are least likely to complete a questionnaire.

Also, by the authors' admission, France happens to be a country where the growth of cults are strictly controlled, and where "French officials are particularly concerned about Satanic cults related to metal music". Apparently a Govt. ministry has warned parents to limit their children's exposure to metal music and also to monitor their access to metal-oriented websites. Could it be possible that the majority of the French metaller population aren't exposed to the most extreme of metal subgenres? After all, throughout the entire paper scant mention is made of any specific group and metal music is referred to in categorical format; black, death, and thrash. Passing mentions are made of Slayer, Black Sabbath, Megadeth and Metallica, bands that have a certain notoriety but are also decidedly mainstream. Aren't French teenagers aware of bands like Arch Enemy, Goatwhore, Amon Amarth, Dimmu Borgir, Extol, Kult ov Azazel, and others? These are things to consider.

It was also interesting to observe how the results pointed to an unnoted third factor before orthogonal rotation enabled relevance to the anxiety and depression factors. So I agree with the authors that further research needs to be undertaken in order to determine which factor(s) can aptly describe the 61.3% of the variance that wasn't accounted for by anxiety and depression.

In closing, the authors offer reasons for why the general conclusions point to lower levels of anxiety and depression among metal lovers. It is proposed that the predominant themes of satanism, gloom and death give airing to subjects infrequently discussed in society and which are treated in a somewhat taboo manner. Although metal music is classed as entertainment in contrast to real images of death, it presents such themes as "typical occurrences that are not outside the norm" and I interpret that as a desensitising factor of sorts. So metal music lovers who frequently indulge in this pastime are more often exposed to morbid themes that have the effect of eventually desensitising them and enabling them to treat it more of the entertainment that it is supposed to be.

But then, what of all the horror stories referred to earlier? What about Dead's suicide? What about the terrible Marilyn Manson-inspired school shootings? Ozzy Osbourne's "satanism"? A tentative proposal is that metal music has a malevolent effect on individuals with certain vulnerabilities, and this is precisely why further research is needed in order to uncover these details. It is for this reason that I do not heartily share the confident assertions of the authors that their "representative" sample (from one country!) indicates low levels of anxiety and depression among metal lovers. Typical quote:

"The results indicate that fans of metal music are in good health with respect to anxiety and depression ... [and] indicate that, contrary to critics who suggest that images of death and destruction in metal music have harmful consequences, the mental health of fans of this type of music is generally good."

Hmmm, when they put it that way it's hard not to agree, but only tentatively. A more accurate representation of this study is that it simply provides an indicative snapshot rather than a comprehensive description.

Speaking of which, it's been ages since I've been to a Motörhead concert...


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Recours, R., Aussaguel, F., & Trujillo, N. (2009). Metal Music and Mental Health in France Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 33 (3), 473-488 DOI: 10.1007/s11013-009-9138-2

Snaith, R. Philip, and Anthony S. Zigmond (1994). HADS: Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Windsor: NFER Nelson.

Ain't Taking This Lying Down..!

Apologies for the lack of activity in recent months, I have been absorbed in a number of promising projects as well as taking a much-needed vacation.

An interesting report in New Scientist magazine suggests that insults are handled better when lying down rather than sitting or standing up. According to the article, University students who were insulted while seated exhibited neural activity consonant with "approach motivation", which describes to desire to approach and explore. This activity appeared absent in a control group insulted while lying down. Eddie Harmon-Jones, a cognitive scientist at Texas A&M University, interprets this as suggesting that one might be more inclined to attack if one were in the upright state, whereas while lying down we may be more inclined to brood.

At first glance this seems a little odd to me. Brooding is quite different to receiving insults and possibly reacting to them. Brooding means a certain amount of thinking and contemplation is occurring. It isn't the done thing to offer or accept anecdotal evidence as important fact, but from personal experience I've sometimes become more enraged over an incident by brooding about it (while lying down) than I have reacted to insults while sitting or standing upright. Would that mean my reactions contradict this research? The real value of psychological research lies in the ability to translate insights and findings into our lives and observe how relevant or useful they are, and I also have to consider these things personally. I downloaded and read the paper for this experiment; technically it is not an actual paper but a 'short report', a brief description of the subject and experimental method followed by conclusions. A mini-paper. Here's an extract:

"Body movements affect emotional processes. For example, adopting the facial expressions of specific emotions (even via unobtrusive manipulations) affects emotional judgments and memories (Laird, 2007). Manipulated body postures can affect behavior: slumped postures lead to more ‘‘helpless behaviors’’ (Riskind & Gotay, 1982). Simple body postures may also affect other emotive responses and the neural activations associated with them."

That's from the very first paragraph, and to me it seems to get more unreal every time I think about it. I don't dispute that body postures can affect neural activation (anything can affect neural activation, that's kind of what the brain does in the first place, reacting and responding to stimuli) but it seems overstated a bit much. The link between body posture and affectability on emotional reaction looks tenuous when compared with something as fundamental as the availability of oxygen and the human requirement to inhale it to live. But let's take a look at the study: 23 females and 23 males (n = 46) were randomly assigned to write a polemical essay featuring their views on a hot topic (e.g. smoking in public, abortion, etc.) and were told assessment would be carried out by another participant. After attaching EEG sensors, participants were randomly assigned to the upright or lying positions on a reclining chair while hearing themselves being rated on six characteristics including intelligence (1 = unintelligent, 9 = intelligent). Needless to say, participants heard negative reviews of themselves and fumed.

To be more specific, all 'reclined' participants heard negative reviews of themselves while only half 'uprights' heard negative. The other half heard slightly positive reviews. It's good to add a little variety to these things to account for different causes and effects, but I think the total sample size here was too small. Gender effects were accounted for too; males and females were randomly assigned to the two conditions, and male participants heard male-voiced feedback with females hearing female-voiced feedback. For future research, switching gender-voice feedback would make an interesting manipulation.

The results showed that for those in the upright position, the left prefrontal cortex (PFC) was substantially activated more than those who were reclining. Even though both sets of participants expressed similar levels of anger in response to the negative feedback, the left PFC has been linked to anger and approach motivation. This suggests a marked reduction in approach motivation when lying down.

What this means in reality remains under question: Does body posture really affect emotional reactions that much? Similar levels of anger existed between both groups, but those who were lying down appeared less inclined to do something about it? How might those students have reacted with the absence of inhibitory factors? I know that this is preliminary research but these are just some of the questions that need to be researched and accounted for.

Why? Because although some people may consider a study like this to be "fluff psychology" and a little boring, clinicians need to take these types of things a little more seriously when you consider that a large proportion of serious neuroscience is carried out with reclining participants in fMRI-scanners. So I agree with the conclusion of Harmon-Jones' paper; that research is required to help evaluate neuroimaging techniques requiring supine positions. There may not be much to it, but it's worth an exploration.
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Harmon-Jones, E., & Peterson, C. (2009). Supine Body Position Reduces Neural Response to Anger Evocation Psychological Science DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02416.x

Psychic Phenomena Discredited Yet Again

Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and author of several books, and also a personal acquaintance of mine, recently teamed up with New Scientist magazine to carry out athe first ever science experiment using the popular Twitter microblogging site. A rather revolutionary idea. The premise of the experiment was to investigate remote viewing, the ability to gain information about a distant or unseen target by means of extra-sensory perception (ESP). Wiseman announced the experiment on his own Twitter page (@richardwiseman) and recruited a good number participants in that way. The experiment was covered in several newspapers, and sources such as the Guardian, Daily Mail, Daly Telegraph, Sky News and Fox News, generating a fair amount of publicity.

Those of us who are familiar with scientific research in the area of paranormal phenomena are keenly aware that experiments into the same have almost always reported nothing of substance, lending credibility to the idea that when tested under sufficient scrutiny, these psychic powers always tend to fail. This has always been a consistent finding when testing various instances of so-called psychic ability, and based on that it isn't too much to expect this experiment to generate interesting results either. However, informal experiment that it is, the application of stringent scientific principles to a wholly randomised and sufficiently chaotic source such as Twitter was an interesting exercise. I don't know if a journal paper will come out of this but it should make interesting reading.

Wiseman carried out his experiment in the following way. At 15:00 (GMT) each day he travelled to a randomly selected location and sent a 'tweet' (message) on Twitter, asking his participants to tweet back their inclinations about his location. Thirty minutes later, he posted another tweet that linked to a website containing photographs of five different locations (the actual location of Wiseman and four decoy locations) and arbitrarily labelled 'A' to 'E'. Participants would be asked to see the photographs, concentrate their abilities and then vote on the location they believed was correct. They would also be asked their gender, rate their belief in the paranormal, and whether they believed they had psychic ability. Voting would remain open for 1 hour. If the majority of people selected the correct location the trial would count as a success. But before carrying it out, Wiseman carried out a test trial to test the procedure and also familiarise the participants with the procedure of the experiment. After some necessary ironing out of the details, Wiseman proceeded to carry out four experimental trials on four successive days, with three or more successful trials considered as evidence of ESP.

The experiment was carried out as outlined above and the results of the trials were posted at the end of each day at Wiseman's blog (Trial 1, Trial 2, Trial 3, Trial 4). More than a thousand participants were reported to have taken part, with believers in paranormal phenomena claiming a high level of correspondence between their thoughts and the actual locations.

The results of the experiment were also posted on Wiseman's blog, essentially stating no differences in choice between paranormal believer and non-believers. The experiment thus failed to support the existence of remote viewing, and suggested that participants claiming paranormal belief were only proficient at claiming illusory correspondences between their thoughts and actual targets.

Certainly this is not an experiment conducted under orthodox means and there are a number of uncontrolled variables operating that were uncatered for. However, it seems that even an informal study using basic scientific procedures and relying on user input is capable of generating interesting results, even non-significant ones. Wiseman states that he hopes to provide further post-hoc analyses of his results such as the difference between paranormal believers and sceptics, males and females, etc., but one update so far states that the data from those who claimed psychic ability and also a high confidence in their choice of target location scored a zero out of four. Surprise surprise.

As I mentioned, it is unknown if a serious analysis can be made of this strategy or if a journal paper will be published, but I think that that even without the stamp of authority given to 'orthodox' experiments this study is still consistent with those orthodox studies of paranormal phenomena that reported insubstantial results. Not a good day for psychics.

Gonna (Evolve To) Sing You My Love Song

Why do we like to sing soppy love songs to our loved one? What is it about them that evokes a mood of affinity and bonding? Why do tears spring to our eyes when we hear a lyric that reminds us of a friendship, relationship or other close bond?

The composition and interpretation of music through song, dance, and playing a musical instrument, are complex and high-level tasks of the creative brain. Indeed, the 'creative' aspects of personality are thought to constitute a particular division of intelligence in itself. Although it is possible to gain a certain level of proficiency in playing the works of Beethoven and Mozart through social and/or environmental factors (parental support, music school), the phenomenon of the child prodigy does in fact suggest an innate genetic basis for talent. Creativity itself is a complex process that draws largely from areas of the right hemisphere, not activating the frontal lobes or cortices very much. And since we are talking mainly of cognitive processes,we can expect hormones such as arginine vasopressin (AVP), which helps to control higher functions such as memory and learning, to take a lead role. Given that this hormone is mediated by the AVP receptor 1A (AVPR1A) gene, that affects many behavioural, social and emotional traits such as male aggression, pair bonding, altruism, parenting, sibling relationships, love etc., it stands to reason that this key gene is the one to watch.



A team of researchers at Helsinki University, headed by Liisa Ukkola, carried out a study purporting to investigate the neurobiological basis of music in human evolution by analysing the role of the AVPR1A gene and five others and their effects on general creativity and musical aptitude by testing 343 multigenerational participants from 19 Finnish families, professional and amateur musicians alike. Ages varied from 9 to 93 (mean age 43) and DNA was obtained by 298 (86.9%) of those over age 15. Three measures were administered: an extensive online questionnaire to assess creativity in those who composed, improvised or arranged music; Carl Seashore's pitch and time discrimination subtests (SP and ST respectively); and a Karma Music Test (KMT) designed by one of the research team. The results showed that high scores on the music tests associated well with high levels of creativity, and also higher in creative individuals than non-creative individuals. Genetic testing confirmed that creativity was a heritable trait.

Wait a minute - what does all this have to do with the brain?

This study showed how auditory structuring ability (gleaned from the KMT test) were associated with the AVPR1A gene, with the strongest effect found in the RS1+RS3 haplotype. The ST and SP tests also suggested this association, and this was further confirmed when the associations were replicated with combined music test score (COMB). The kicker is that the AVPR1A gene is instrumental in modulating social and cognitive behaviours, and music is certainly a medium that initiates, enhances and accelerates certain behaviours! We all know about the peculiar social customs of singing songs of romantic content in order to attract the opposite sex, music played to enhance group cohesion and initiate vigorous hip-spinning activity, and mothers singing soothing lullabies to their offspring in order to induce a state of quietness.

But aside from all of that, the genetic studies provided interesting tidbits of information relating to the homologies of the AVPR1A gene as various alleles were recognised to associate with either composing, arranging and performing music. Higher spatial scores were found among musicians than non-musicians, a possible explanation being that musicians tend to need to read and memorise notes and/or sheet music. Research into the recently discovered TPH2 gene may uncover the details behind the numerical sense necessary to perceive rhythm. The A1 allele associated with the dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2) gene is suggested to be linked to courtship.

The releases related to this story hyped up the evolutionary implications in a big way but I can find very little basis for that in this paper. As usual, evolutionary extrapolations are mainly speculative but interesting nevertheless. The text specifically mentions that evolutionary contributions are speculated on the basis of PET imaging that show partial overlapping between music and language-related areas of the brain. As improvising music usually consists of collaboration with other musicians or between a performer and their audience it makes sense that the role of these brain areas and the genes associated with musical talent be highlighted as it has. As the paper itself says:

"Creativity is a multifactorial genetic trait involving a complex network made up of a number of genes."

And it is because of that and the connections to social/cognitive areas of the brain that there is justification for the idea that music enables and enhances social communication in a way that increases attachments. This can explain why people automatically feel closer when they find they share the same types of music.

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Ukkola, L., Onkamo, P., Raijas, P., Karma, K., & Järvelä, I. (2009). Musical Aptitude Is Associated with AVPR1A-Haplotypes PLoS ONE, 4 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005534

So Gay, So Very Gay

It's unbelievable what's uncovered sometimes. A recent survey of British psychologists and psychiatrists has uncovered that a sizeable amount have attempted to "convert" homosexual patients or clients to heterosexual orientations!

It's a well-known axiom that (biological) homosexuality is an orientation that cannot be changed, what to speak of the scientific consensus on the matter, and what do you think might happen if any such changes are encouraged? Psychological harm and damage.

After all, what is "normal"? Anyone with even a layman understanding of psychology and/or neuroscience will know that definitions of normality are as subjective as one's colour preferences. And when you have a discriminating society that is ever-willing to ostracise on the slightest grounds of anything perceived as different, it isn't that hard to imagine how seriously this counts as psychological abuse especially concerning a topic so fundamental to someone's 'personhood' as sexual identity.

Annie Bartlett and her colleagues sent postal questions to members of the British Psychological Society, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, in which they were asked to give their views on "conversion treatment" and to describe up to six patients they may have treated accordingly. Of the 1328 examinable anonymous responses received, a flabbergasting 17% reported having assisted in reducing, changing, suppressing their gay or lesbian desires. Of these 17% (222 practitioners), 159 of them (72%) thought that a "service" should be available for homosexuals who wish to change their orientation.

Am I missing something here? Did I suddenly enter the Twilight Zone and wind up in Iran or something? This is England 2009! And it was back in 1973 that homosexuality was removed as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), so why are these attitudes still prevailing in psychotherapeutic practice? Do old habits die hard? Because of the anonymous nature of the survey there is no information provided as to the average age of the sample, even when the authors selected a random sample of responses from the members of each organisation. Even though only 4% (55 respondents) of the total sample said they would consider therapy to change patient orientations upon requests for such therapy, it is much more worrying that the aforementioned 17% have actually attempted to do so. Considering the absense of compelling evidence that patients can even be successfully treated, trying to force or encourage such a change can only heighten and intensify the emotional conflicts that homosexuals may undergo (due to peer pressures, etc.) and cause lasting psychological damage.

This study appears to follow on from earlier 2004 research (also by the same authors) in which an oral history of homosexual patients was gained. 29 homosexuals who had received treatment for their "disorder" were interviewed about their experiences, which revealed a nominal amount of coercive and peer pressures and also resulted in lasting emotional distress.

What can I say? It's sad that these professionals appear to have no real knowledge of social identity issues. And I'd hate to be cynical, but what's the betting that serious conflict of interest issues are responsible for this grave failure of psychotherapeutic services? The type of conflict of interest that arises from personal convictions and beliefs?

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Bartlett, A., Smith, G., & King, M. (2009). The response of mental health professionals to clients seeking help to change or redirect same-sex sexual orientation BMC Psychiatry, 9 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1471-244X-9-11

Smith, G., Bartlett, A., & King, M. (2004). Treatments of homosexuality in Britain since the 1950s--an oral history: the experience of patients BMJ, 328 (7437) DOI: 10.1136/bmj.37984.442419.EE

Believer Brains Different from Non-Believer Brains?

As mentioned in an earlier blog about my research interests, my general (research) focus relates to issues of mental health (schizophrenic symptoms in particular) and I hope to build my career in that area. A side-interest of mine relates to neuropsychological and neurophysiological effects of religion. I am by no means any kind of expert on the matter nor am I intimately familiar with the breadth of literature that already exists on the subject. I like to briefly explore this issue for my own understandings and sometimes comment on any new findings.

Considering that the neurosciences as a whole are facing a rather misguided onslaught from Creationists (not-so-cleverly disguised members of the Intelligent Design lobby), it is likely that religious issues are likely to be brought oftentimes to the table in more or less the same manner as evolution has been and is being made a meal for the irrational and bloodthirsty.

Now last night I saw an interesting article entitled: "Brain Differences Found Between Believers In God And Non-believers". Doesn't that sound sensational? On the face of it it sounds as if something major has been discovered when the actual fact is that brain differences exist in all of us. Glaringly obvious, it is the reason why we all are different people. The individual differences are what make us unique. It is also the reason why people who suffer traumatic brain injury in similar areas exhibit symptoms that are similar to each other, but also different. Severity of injury is also a factor of course, but everyone's neurological makeup is different and will thus respond differently. So if brain differences are found between religious and non-religious people, is it really that much of a big deal?

Generally I prefer to read the actual papers of these studies and not Internet news articles, because by analysing the methodology and results of experiments it is possible to see whether the conclusions properly interpret the data. You'd be surprised how often they don't, or at least fall into the "correlation implies causation" trap. But before I go on, here's the basic info:

Michael Inzlicht and his colleagues at the University of Toronto carried out two studies (Study 1 = 28 participants, Study 2 = 22 participants, Total n = 50) by enabling participants to complete a Stroop Task while being hooked up to an Electroencephalogram (EEG) machine in order to measure their brainwaves. The Stroop Task is a well-known and frequently used psychological measure to test reaction times. It usually consists of looking at a series of words flashed briefly on a computer screen; by pressing a button (say, 'Enter') and another (say, the space bar) you confirm or deny the colour of the word that is displayed as fast as possible. If RED is displayed, you would press 'Enter' to confirm it, and if BLUE was displayed, you would press the space bar to deny it. As you might expect, this can get quite confusing especially as the task moves quite fast so it is natural to expect errors to be made. In this way it is a good way to measure response times and then analysing the correctness or erroneousness therein in terms of the study's aims.

And as these participants were hooked up to the EEG machine, they were measuring something called the error-related negativity (ERN), which is a waveform that is generated by the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of the brain, which is an area usually associated with regulating emotional and cognitive responses. The main difference between the two studies was that in the first, the participants were previously tested for aspects of their personality such as the need for closure, behavioural inhibition and activation, self-esteem and religious zeal; the second tested a different group of participants using a single-item measure of belief in God, an IQ test, as well as a measurement (popularly known as the 'Big 5 Test') of five prominent aspects of personality. The experimental method in both studies was otherwise the same.

To cut a long story short, it turned out that the religious participants in both studies scored a lower spike in terms of getting incorrect answers.

In other words, Inzlicht and his colleagues interpreted their data as saying religious people tend to be less anxious and less prone to error than non-religious people ("religious conviction is associated with reduced neural responsivity to uncertainty and error").

Does this make sense to you? Correlation does not necessarily imply causation. There are a number of reasons why this result could have been obtained. For a start, the authors saw fit to explicitly mention that all the participants were right-handed, which might have affected their response times in pushing buttons. Might left-handed people have fared better? That's just a tiny reason, though, but I notice that the Neurocritic has done a wonderful job of analysing it this study and has related it to an earlier study by Amodio et al. (2007), that tested for brain differences in politically liberal and conservative people. He has noted a disagreement as to what exactly the ERN represents; is it an objective or emotional response to error? Remember, the ACC is involved in mediating both cognitive and emotional responses. And also, since EEG measurements are taken via electrodes attached to the scalp, how can we say for sure if the response really originates from the ACC?

And what if the people just happened to be of relaxed dispositions and generally nice chilled-out people? A total sample size of 50 doesn't fill me with the confidence to extrapolate these results to larger populations. Epiphenom, who has also commented on this Inzlicht study, made note of another study (Santesso & Segalowitz, 2009) assessing ERN responses in teenage boys which found them to be negatively associated with risk-taking behaviours. In other words, low ERN makes you less concerned with outcomes in general. It is also associated with low empathy and the low capacity to learn from mistakes.

This doesn't necessarily mean that low ERN measurements translates to religious people being really a heartless and thick bunch (opinions vary, I know); I know plenty who are kind, caring, sympathetic, loving, and all of that. But it does make me curious as to why this effect of less anxiety/stress is found amongst religious people. I know of studies that appear to support the other end of the spectrum, that religious people tend to be more stressed, more anxious, than non-religious people. Just as this Inzlicht study has it's shortcomings, other studies have theirs' too. And as every study analyses an issue from a specific angle it wouldn't be fair to make generalised and sweeping statements. What this all means is that there are a variety of reasons why both religious and non-religious groups of people experience anxiety and stress, such as genetics and life experiences.

A Twitter friend let me know of Neuralgourmet's report (originally reported in a 2002 New Scientist article) of a study conducted by a Dr. Peter Brugger of University Hospital, Zurich, in which he found that administering doses of L-DOPA to a group of believers and non-believers to increase their brain's dopamine levels resulted in more errors being made than normal on a task that required distinguishing between scrambled and actual facial images. Dopamine is a neurochemical that plays an important role in behaviour, cognition, motivation/reward, sleep, mood, attention, learning, and many other important functions. It cannot cross the blood-brain barrier by itself and cannot directly access the Central Nervous System (CNS), and so L-DOPA is a precursor that is administered to raise dopamine levels to cross that barrier. It is used, for example, in treating Parkinson's Disease. Brugger's research showed that non-believers were more able to distinguish between the two categories of images, but the dopamine levels of believers did not have an effect on their performance. He interpreted the results as suggestive of a connection between religious beliefs and dopamine levels. Given the widespread function of dopamine in the brain, I will leave it up to the reader to decide for themselves how relevant and far-reaching these findings are.

It would be tempting to speculate such things as believers having high levels of dopamine (thus prone to religious belief) and genetics studies may or may not confirm this. But when all extraneous factors are controlled for as far as possible, what this all means for us at the end of the day is that there are a variety of complex and intertwining factors that account for the presence of religion, whether it has an effect on the brain or vice-versa. Perhaps Inzlicht himself has provided an apt way of looking at the issue; in his paper he has brought Marx up to date and termed religion as the "Xanax of the people".

One thing in this study that piqued my interest was the use of the Religious Zeal Scale (McGregor et al., 2008). I didn't realise a scale to measure zeal had been developed! I imagine it should come in handy for some specific studies; some of the questions were: "‘I aspire to live and act according to my religious beliefs," "My religious beliefs are grounded in objective truth," and the wistful "I would support a war that defended my religious beliefs."

Harumph.

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Michael Inzlicht, Ian McGregor, Jacob B. Hirsh, Kyle Nash (2009). Neural Markers of Religious Conviction Psychological Science, 20 (3), 385-392 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02305.x

Encephalon #64

The 64th edition of Encephalon - the neuroscience and psychology blog carnival - is now online and hosted by The Neurocritic. Head on over there to check out the contributions!

How Your Brain Creates God

Great article in the latest New Scientist (04 February 2009):
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Born believers: How your brain creates God

No wonder religion is so prevalent in human society – our brains are primed for it, says Michael Brooks

While many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.

This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.

Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. "It's not that religion is not important," says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, "it's that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress."

The origin of religious belief is something of a mystery, but in recent years scientists have started to make suggestions. One leading idea is that religion is an evolutionary adaptation that makes people more likely to survive and pass their genes onto the next generation. In this view, shared religious belief helped our ancestors form tightly knit groups that cooperated in hunting, foraging and childcare, enabling these groups to outcompete others. In this way, the theory goes, religion was selected for by evolution, and eventually permeated every human society (New Scientist, 28 January 2006, p 30) The religion-as-an-adaptation theory doesn't wash with everybody, however. As anthropologist Scott Atran of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor points out, the benefits of holding such unfounded beliefs are questionable, in terms of evolutionary fitness. "I don't think the idea makes much sense, given the kinds of things you find in religion," he says. A belief in life after death, for example, is hardly compatible with surviving in the here-and-now and propagating your genes. Moreover, if there are adaptive advantages of religion, they do not explain its origin, but simply how it spread.

An alternative being put forward by Atran and others is that religion emerges as a natural by-product of the way the human mind works. That's not to say that the human brain has a "god module" in the same way that it has a language module that evolved specifically for acquiring language. Rather, some of the unique cognitive capacities that have made us so successful as a species also work together to create a tendency for supernatural thinking. "There's now a lot of evidence that some of the foundations for our religious beliefs are hard-wired," says Bloom.

Much of that evidence comes from experiments carried out on children, who are seen as revealing a "default state" of the mind that persists, albeit in modified form, into adulthood. "Children the world over have a strong natural receptivity to believing in gods because of the way their minds work, and this early developing receptivity continues to anchor our intuitive thinking throughout life," says anthropologist Justin Barrett of the University of Oxford.

So how does the brain conjure up gods? One of the key factors, says Bloom, is the fact that our brains have separate cognitive systems for dealing with living things - things with minds, or at least volition - and inanimate objects. This separation happens very early in life. Bloom and colleagues have shown that babies as young as five months make a distinction between inanimate objects and people. Shown a box moving in a stop-start way, babies show surprise. But a person moving in the same way elicits no surprise. To babies, objects ought to obey the laws of physics and move in a predictable way. People, on the other hand, have their own intentions and goals, and move however they choose.

Mind and Matter

Bloom says the two systems are autonomous, leaving us with two viewpoints on the world: one that deals with minds, and one that handles physical aspects of the world. He calls this innate assumption that mind and matter are distinct "common-sense dualism". The body is for physical processes, like eating and moving, while the mind carries our consciousness in a separate - and separable - package. "We very naturally accept you can leave your body in a dream, or in astral projection or some sort of magic," Bloom says. "These are universal views."

There is plenty of evidence that thinking about disembodied minds comes naturally. People readily form relationships with non-existent others: roughly half of all 4-year-olds have had an imaginary friend, and adults often form and maintain relationships with dead relatives, fictional characters and fantasy partners. As Barrett points out, this is an evolutionarily useful skill. Without it we would be unable to maintain large social hierarchies and alliances or anticipate what an unseen enemy might be planning. "Requiring a body around to think about its mind would be a great liability," he says.

Useful as it is, common-sense dualism also appears to prime the brain for supernatural concepts such as life after death. In 2004, Jesse Bering of Queen's University Belfast, UK, put on a puppet show for a group of pre-school children. During the show, an alligator ate a mouse. The researchers then asked the children questions about the physical existence of the mouse, such as: "Can the mouse still be sick? Does it need to eat or drink?" The children said no. But when asked more "spiritual" questions, such as "does the mouse think and know things?", the children answered yes.

Default to God

Based on these and other experiments, Bering considers a belief in some form of life apart from that experienced in the body to be the default setting of the human brain. Education and experience teach us to override it, but it never truly leaves us, he says. From there it is only a short step to conceptualising spirits, dead ancestors and, of course, gods, says Pascal Boyer, a psychologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. Boyer points out that people expect their gods' minds to work very much like human minds, suggesting they spring from the same brain system that enables us to think about absent or non-existent people. The ability to conceive of gods, however, is not sufficient to give rise to religion. The mind has another essential attribute: an overdeveloped sense of cause and effect which primes us to see purpose and design everywhere, even where there is none. "You see bushes rustle, you assume there's somebody or something there," Bloom says.

This over-attribution of cause and effect probably evolved for survival. If there are predators around, it is no good spotting them 9 times out of 10. Running away when you don't have to is a small price to pay for avoiding danger when the threat is real. Again, experiments on young children reveal this default state of the mind. Children as young as three readily attribute design and purpose to inanimate objects. When Deborah Kelemen of the University of Arizona in Tucson asked 7 and 8-year-old children questions about inanimate objects and animals, she found that most believed they were created for a specific purpose. Pointy rocks are there for animals to scratch themselves on. Birds exist "to make nice music", while rivers exist so boats have something to float on. "It was extraordinary to hear children saying that things like mountains and clouds were 'for' a purpose and appearing highly resistant to any counter-suggestion," says Kelemen.

In similar experiments, Olivera Petrovich of the University of Oxford asked pre-school children about the origins of natural things such as plants and animals. She found they were seven times as likely to answer that they were made by god than made by people. These cognitive biases are so strong, says Petrovich, that children tend to spontaneously invent the concept of god without adult intervention: "They rely on their everyday experience of the physical world and construct the concept of god on the basis of this experience." Because of this, when children hear the claims of religion they seem to make perfect sense.

Our predisposition to believe in a supernatural world stays with us as we get older. Kelemen has found that adults are just as inclined to see design and intention where there is none. Put under pressure to explain natural phenomena, adults often fall back on teleological arguments, such as "trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe" or "the sun is hot because warmth nurtures life". Though she doesn't yet have evidence that this tendency is linked to belief in god, Kelemen does have results showing that most adults tacitly believe they have souls. Boyer is keen to point out that religious adults are not childish or weak-minded. Studies reveal that religious adults have very different mindsets from children, concentrating more on the moral dimensions of their faith and less on its supernatural attributes.

Even so, religion is an inescapable artefact of the wiring in our brain, says Bloom. "All humans possess the brain circuitry and that never goes away." Petrovich adds that even adults who describe themselves as atheists and agnostics are prone to supernatural thinking. Bering has seen this too. When one of his students carried out interviews with atheists, it became clear that they often tacitly attribute purpose to significant or traumatic moments in their lives, as if some agency were intervening to make it happen. "They don't completely exorcise the ghost of god - they just muzzle it," Bering says. The fact that trauma is so often responsible for these slips gives a clue as to why adults find it so difficult to jettison their innate belief in gods, Atran says. The problem is something he calls "the tragedy of cognition". Humans can anticipate future events, remember the past and conceive of how things could go wrong - including their own death, which is hard to deal with. "You've got to figure out a solution, otherwise you're overwhelmed," Atran says. When natural brain processes give us a get-out-of-jail card, we take it.

That view is backed up by an experiment published late last year (Science, vol 322, p 115). Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas in Austin and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, asked people what patterns they could see in arrangements of dots or stock market information. Before asking, Whitson and Galinsky made half their participants feel a lack of control, either by giving them feedback unrelated to their performance or by having them recall experiences where they had lost control of a situation. The results were striking. The subjects who sensed a loss of control were much more likely to see patterns where there were none. "We were surprised that the phenomenon is as widespread as it is," Whitson says. What's going on, she suggests, is that when we feel a lack of control we fall back on superstitious ways of thinking. That would explain why religions enjoy a revival during hard times.

So if religion is a natural consequence of how our brains work, where does that leave god? All the researchers involved stress that none of this says anything about the existence or otherwise of gods: as Barratt points out, whether or not a belief is true is independent of why people believe it. It does, however, suggests that god isn't going away, and that atheism will always be a hard sell. Religious belief is the "path of least resistance", says Boyer, while disbelief requires effort.

These findings also challenge the idea that religion is an adaptation. "Yes, religion helps create large societies - and once you have large societies you can outcompete groups that don't," Atran says. "But it arises as an artefact of the ability to build fictive worlds. I don't think there's an adaptation for religion any more than there's an adaptation to make airplanes." Supporters of the adaptation hypothesis, however, say that the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. As David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University in New York state points out, elements of religious belief could have arisen as a by-product of brain evolution, but religion per se was selected for because it promotes group survival. "Most adaptations are built from previous structures," he says. "Boyer's basic thesis and my basic thesis could both be correct."

Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford - the researcher most strongly identified with the religion-as-adaptation argument - also has no problem with the idea that religion co-opts brain circuits that evolved for something else. Richard Dawkins, too, sees the two camps as compatible. "Why shouldn't both be correct?" he says. "I actually think they are." Ultimately, discovering the true origins of something as complex as religion will be difficult. There is one experiment, however, that could go a long way to proving whether Boyer, Bloom and the rest are onto something profound. Ethical issues mean it won't be done any time soon, but that hasn't stopped people speculating about the outcome.

It goes something like this. Left to their own devices, children create their own "creole" languages using hard-wired linguistic brain circuits. A similar experiment would provide our best test of the innate religious inclinations of humans. Would a group of children raised in isolation spontaneously create their own religious beliefs? "I think the answer is yes," says Bloom.

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God of the gullible

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins argues that religion is propagated through indoctrination, especially of children. Evolution predisposes children to swallow whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them, he argues, as trusting obedience is valuable for survival. This also leads to what Dawkins calls "slavish gullibility" in the face of religious claims.

If children have an innate belief in god, however, where does that leave the indoctrination hypothesis? "I am thoroughly happy with believing that children are predisposed to believe in invisible gods - I always was," says Dawkins. "But I also find the indoctrination hypothesis plausible. The two influences could, and I suspect do, reinforce one another." He suggests that evolved gullibility converts a child's general predisposition to believe in god into a specific belief in the god (or gods) their parents worship.