A Short Break

Regular readers may have noticed the proliferation of humourous postings of late and a decline in "pure science" posts. I have to admit that I'm writing up a thesis at the moment and am understandably busy with it, so I hardly have much time to write some good analyses of current neuroscience or psychology issues. Hence the tendency to have a quick jab or poke fun as a means to relieve the stress on myself as well as have a laugh.

Not to worry though, I will be back with something of a bang by the end of next week. (Or realistically, a shaky sputtering!)

Are We Dead Yet?

For those who exemplified the definition of hysteria and apocalptic doom and gloom during the run-up to the Large Hadron Collider switch-on, they might like to breathe a sigh while looking at this.

And while we're on the subject of the LHC (oh-so-briefly!), if you still have some nagging doubts about the potentiality of the LHC to cause a major disaster, this website may answer your questions:

http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/

Hadron Switch-on

Now that the Large Hadron Collider has been switched on, we can expect a flurry of astounding news and reports that will contribute to the advancement of knowledge and science. For a start, it promises to recreate the conditions at the birth of the universe that will allow scientists a better view of how the universe came into being. Billed as "the largest experiment in the world" where protons will collide at 99.99% the speed of light, there isn't much remaining to say to people who continue to cling to beliefs about sky fairies and diablos as fundamental and important forces in the universes.

Except this:

Recapitulation of Criticism against the Theory of Childhood

From Ari Rahikkala's LiveJournal and Pharyngula: An awesome parody of ludicrous creationist nonsense arguments being presented in several scientific fields. I nearly cracked a rib laughing at this!

The theory of childhood, also known as child origin, is a damnable, loathsome and indefensible lie. How can any thinking person suppose all humans used to be babies once? Just consider these arguments:

There is no development path from babies to adults, no transitional forms between these two species. Show me even one baby with the head of a grown man on his body. Can you? No? Not even a bearded toddler? No adults with unfused skullbones, outside unfortunate disorders? Not even a tiny little newborn girl suddenly sprouting a respectable bosom? You can't find them, because they don't exist. There isn't a single transitional form between children and adults, and you will never find one because the theory simply is an unscientific lie.

The development of children has been well-researched in our six-month study following a sample of one thousand children and adults of various ages. We have conclusively proven that while there are minor changes in features like height and body fat, and replacement of deciduous teeth with permanent teeth, incontravertibly still every creature in the study that started out as a child had only slightly more adult features at the end of the observation period than at its beginning. Children and adults are separate kinds and there will never be sufficient changes to change one into the other. We reject any evidence from longer-term studies as we believe the laws of physics have changed within the last year.

To claim people come from children is demeaning and morally degrading. We have observed how children behave. If we acted like small children we'd all be demanding and impatient, and we'd be cheating, lying, and stealing from each other all the time. If the theory of childhood were true there would be no morality, and with no morality to build one on, no society. Childhood is a wicked lie used by charlatans to justify evils such as public schools.

There is no consensus on the theory of childhood in the scientific community. We should teach the controversy. Our children will be served well to learn that the prospect of them becoming adults is merely a theoretical idea. Many children come from families that do not subscribe to the theory of childhood, and they could be disturbed if the theory were taught as fact.

Hot Chicks Make Men Nervous

Yes, really, they do. It's a scientific fact.

As someone who has to read a lot of academic science papers, I occasionally come across studies that really should have been funded by the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious. I mean, really, it makes you wonder what some researchers are thinking when they carry out these sorts of studies, and whether they actually get grants to do this stuff?

Here, let me explain. An item in the latest BPS Research Digest let me know of an "eye-catching study that didn't make the final cut" (I wonder why?). The premise of this paper is that men with more attractive wives or girlfriends engage more in "mate retention behaviours" which may include actively trying to stop them talking to other men, reading their diaries or emails, and buying gifts to keep them interested. Hey, isn't that how a typical relationship is supposed to be? ;-)

I didn't bother reading the entire paper because the abstract alone was enough for a good laugh. I also have a deadline to meet so there may be more later. You'll have to forgive me for my lack of sophistry in this post because I just can't stop laughing. Let's go through it:

"More attractive women are more likely to be pursued as mates by men other than their long-term partner and, therefore, to place their partner at greater risk of cuckoldry (investing unwittingly in a child to whom he is genetically unrelated)."

This seems a fair enough intro. If your partner happens to be seriously hot it stands to reason that they'd have other guys lusting after them, covertly if not obviously. Let's say that the deal is done, she cheats on you, gets pregnant and decides to have the baby. Unless you're a total loser really, really nice guy, I don't think you'd be easily conned persuaded into bringing up another man's child. Why would you? But listen..

"Men partnered to more attractive women perform more mate retention behaviors – behaviors designed to thwart a woman’s infidelity. With greater risk of female infidelity, men may perform additional anti-cuckoldry tactics such as frequent in-pair copulations (IPC)."

In other words, SEX. And lots of it!

This really is the answer, apparently. If you're frightened that your girl may run off with another man and leave you, there's nothing like a page (or several) from the Kamasutra to put the spice back into things. To offset the "greater risk" of her cheating on you, it is essential to give her what she needs until she's screaming for a coffee break. Whoa Nelly, who knew science papers could make such sexist and racy reading!

And, by the way, is there anything more ridiculous as abbreviating sex? IPC? Couldn't they think of something a tad more interesting that doesn't remind you of the International Pipeline Conference? But then again, I suppose we are discussing plumbing of sorts..

"We secured self-reports from 277 men in a long-term relationship and investigated: (1) the relationship between female partner’s attractiveness and IPC frequency and (2) the mediating role of female partner’s attractiveness on the relationship between IPC frequency and male mate retention behaviors."

I would have loved to have seen that. In plain English, they "investigated" how hot the wives or girlfriends of 277 men and how often they had sex. I can just about imagine a panel of "experts" objectively rating people on standard attractiveness scales (so reminiscent of that paragon of impartiality, hotornot.com) but can you imagine asking people about the details of their sex lives? If you're familiar with the Beck Depression Inventory, you'll see how Item 21 rates "Loss Of Interest In Sex". When I administered this questionnaire in two of the studies I've been involved with, I can tell you that there was much twitching and nervous darting glances, polite coughs, and even an occasional giggle when it came to answering that particular question.

And all this when I minimised observer effects by leaving them to answer the questions by themselves. A seemingly innocent question that asks how much your interest in sex has decreased, if it has, can be a great opportunity for a reactive answer that may not be the whole truth. So imagine how awkward and embarrassing it must have been to ask people how often they had sex with their hot partners? Ah, the wonderful reliability of self-report measures....

And if that wasn't enough, the researchers then investigated to what extent the attractiveness of a woman had on the number of times they had sex and the occurrence of mate-retention behaviours! Really! I mean, wouldn't you wanna get down to it all the time if you had a hottie for a lover? This isn't really surprising stuff, but instead has a creepy feel of voyeurism about it which reminds me of a study I read as an undergrad about how the concept of "personal space" was investigated by researching men's urine flow in public toilets. But that's a story for another day...

Now here's the result of it all:

"The results indicated that female attractiveness: (1) predicts IPC frequency and (2) partially mediates the relationship between IPC frequency and male mate retention behaviors."

See what I mean? The Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious has surely had their hand in this! The results say that the 'hotness' of a female is a good determinant of how many times you'll have sex with her (no, really?!) and is also a factor in how far you'd go to keep her and fend off other mens' advances. I'm not going to delve into the complex nature of relationships nor am I suggesting that physical attractiveness is the only major factor in sexual relations. I mean, I understand the ongoing nature of psychological and sociological research and how the bottom-up approach provides a great and solid foundation for future researches, and it certainly helps to have papers to refer to over every little thing, but come on, I don't think that this paper really deserved all the fanfare it was given by the BPS Digest and how "eye-catching" it was. I am rarely moved to write something almost immediately after reading, but just the abstract alone was enough for me to raise my eyebrows and skip to the next item in my inbox.

But I think that, for those days when I'm in a lighter mood and full of the benevolent desire to spread mirth and joy everywhere, I can allow myself some light entertainment and blog on ridiculous papers like this one. Heck knows, I've seen enough of them as a researcher so it might be fun to poke fun at them as a blogger. I think this might be the beginning of a new series: From the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious. Catchy eh? :-)

Oh, and one last thing:

"The discussion addresses the mediated relationship, notes limitations of the research, and highlights directions for future research."

This line alone actually made me laugh out loud as well as make me want to download the paper and give it a fuller read. Heck, I might do that when I have a bit more time on my hands. "Directions for future research" indeed, that phrase kills me. :-)

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F KAIGHOBADI, T SHACKELFORD (2008). Female attractiveness mediates the relationship between in-pair copulation frequency and men’s mate retention behaviors Personality and Individual Differences, 45 (4), 293-295 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.04.013

Thoughts on Thatcher's Dementia

Mo wrote a post over at Neurophilosophy regarding a report Baroness Thatcher's declining mental health. Here's the comment I made there while responding to a previous commenter's remark:

"Polomint38's comment is especially poignant in light of a new article on ScienceDaily today: Even Without Dementia, Mental Skills Decline Years Before Death.

"It isn't very surprising that senior citizens generally experience decline anyway, it is interesting how this new longitudinal study shows how some skills can decline upto 15 years before death.

"Without being cruel to Thatcher, one can only wonder how much of an effect her mental decline could have had on her political savvy, and indeed for all politicians of a certain age. And by contrast, this makes the new breed of "younger" politicians look more impressive. Think Tony Blair (elected PM at age 43) and David Miliband (age 43). It is easy to think that younger politicians may be criticised for insufficient or lack of political experience, but at least we can surmise that they are reasonably sharp enough (cognitively speaking) to handle the pressures and the issues."

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Thorvaldsson, V., Hofer, S.M., Berg, S., Skoog, I., Sacuiu, S., Johansson, B. (2008). Onset of terminal decline in cognitive abilities in individuals without dementia. Neurology DOI: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000312379.02302.ba

Quotes of Whoa #5: Evolution of Mind

"[I]f history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure."

-- Edward O. Wilson, 'Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge' (1998), p. 262.

How Representative are Volunteers?

As if by magic, another item at the BPS Research Digest which is also relevant to my recent forays discusses the question of whether participants in psychology studies are "representative" of the total sample under review. It seems like the majority of those who take part in psychology studies are generally more "stable and outgoing", which begs questions about whether said studies are reliable in their testing of depression measures, for example.

To give some background, the popular five-factor model measures personalities in terms of five separate factors (known as the "Big 5" model): Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion and Psychoticism. A depressed person, for instance, might have a higher Neuroticism (or even Psychoticism!) measurement than most people and a lower Extraversion rating. On the opposite end, an outgoing and popular person is likely to have high ratings for Extraversion, Agreeableness, perhaps even Conscientiousness. It is easy to see how personalities can be generally rated and measured according to these five factors.

[And for those who think there is much more to personality than these five categories, yes, you would be right, but statistical factor analysis has shown that most personality quirks come under one of the five umbrella factors of the Five-Factor model. Other personality models exist, of course, such as the 16PF Model.]

A study by Lonnqvist et al. (2007) mailed 61 military officers a survey on values (out of the 158 who were originally approached) who had completed personality assessments three years previously as per army recruitment procedures. The results showed that the respondents evidenced lower measures of Neuroticism and higher measures of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Extraversion. That's just about what you might expect from a military officer, don't you think? Although I'm only going by the BPS Review, it is reported that measures were established as opposed to those who didn't return the survey. How do they know? Just because 97 officers didn't bother to return the survey doesn't mean that they evidence higher measures of Neuroticism, or even that they have lower measures of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Extraversion!

And what about gender differences? All of these military officers were male, could there have been a difference if females were included in the study? And above all, is it appropriate to make a massive generalisation about all or most psychology participants based on a sample of 61 military officers? Don't participants come from different strata of society and from all walks of life? I did a post-hoc power analysis to check the sample size and even though this study seems more than sufficiently powered (.99!), the way that simple criticisms like mine above don't seem to have been properly addressed doesn't exactly scream of reliability to me.

It would make sense, however, if this was some sort of pilot study and a larger and more inclusive study is in the works, but no mention of such has been made.

In any case, a second study (by the same researchers) also used a survey approach: siblings from 15 families assessed the personalities of their brothers or sisters and also asked to volunteer for further tests and interviews. The subsequent sibling ratings showed that 55 participants who volunteered for further testing scored higher for Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Agreeableness than the 29 who declined the option of further testing. This is consistent with the study of military officers, and leads to the general finding by Lonnqvist et al. that volunteers for pyschological studies "are ... better adjusted than nonvolunteers. More specifically, those who are willing to volunteer as research participants tend to be lower in Neuroticism and higher in Conscientiousness than are those who are reluctant to volunteer."

Despite the simple criticisms, the study is reliable enough to be considered carefully since it has implications for psychological research. It means that there is a reasonable-to-good chance that participants who choose to volunteer for studies, who have low Neuroticism levels, are more likely to exhibit positive responses to drug treatments for depression or other things like panic disorders. But more importantly, the results of personality questionnaires are likely to be skewed because of the likely preponderance of volunteers who are not really representative of the full range of Five Factors. This is certainly an issue to take into consideration.

So how to go about trying to find a representative sample? Lonnqvist et al. suggest "acquiring samples comprised of people who are required to serve as experimental participants (e.g. as part of their jobs or academic programs)." This is fair enough; in many universities it is a requirement for 1st-year undergrads to take part in studies of 3rd-year students to acquire course credits. This can be a good thing, but my experience is that such students usually do these things in a rush and are focused more on obtaining the course credits than conscientiously (pun intended) participating in the study. Also, undergraduate students aren't always the sample of choice for most studies.

Another recommendation is that the research should be presented in an "attractive" way in order to attract a wide range of people to take part. This would be a reasonable proposal since the mere increase in sample size may simply mean an increase in volunteers, yet efforts to test a wider range of people would be more likely to yield representative results. This isn't a very solid proposal though, in my opinion. A final recommendation was to "attempt to evaluate the representativeness of the volunteer sample against the relevant population on the variables of interest." Huh? Comparing the sample to the population, basically? Isn't the point of all psychological studies to extrapolate the findings to the general population? So in other words, there really isn't anything (much) you can do to make your sample more representative. Just try and present your study in a more "attractive" way, whatever that means.

I have a tip: Just be nice to people. Talk to them and inform them that you're doing a psychology study, and ask them politely if they'd like to help you by taking part. If you've caught them at a good time, chances are they'll agree to participate. And this isn't necessarily an indication of volunteering. Some participants may find it something of a cathartic experience to complete the BDI-II questionnaire, for example. At least, those I've tested anyway.

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Lönnqvist, J., Paunonen, S., Verkasalo, M., Leikas, S., Tuulio-Henriksson, A., Lönnqvist, J. (2007). Personality characteristics of research volunteers. European Journal of Personality, 21(8), 1017-1030. DOI: 10.1002/per.655

How Clinical is Non-Clinical?

So far in my budding career I've been involved in three psychology studies, all of which required the recruitment of non-clinical participants. Even before that, my psych undergraduate final-year project on schizophrenia was carried out by surveying non-clinical participants. For the benefit of lay readers, non-clinical participants refers to "normal" people who are recruited to take part in the study and are different to results gleaned from sufferers of psychosis, anxiety or other conditions which happen to be under the experimental purview, and who are generally termed as "clinical participants". The usual trend in studies like these are to compare the results of "normal" versus "abnormal" people to an experimental condition, in order to compare any differences between the two groups and statistically interpret them to arrive at conclusions. Non-clinicals popularly consist of family, friends, even complete strangers (those willing to take part in your study anyway!). Another popular recruitment strategy is through local (or even national) newspapers, community notices, bulletin boards, and so on.

Given this background, a recent item in the British Psychological Society Research Digest caught my eye, an item to do with the assumption of mental health among non-clinical participants. You see, if you want to compare the results between "normal" and "abnormal" people, you had better make sure that the two groups are representative! In other words it would be fair to presume that the "normals" are of sound mental health, but a recent experimental study by Thurston et al. (2008) suggests that quite a substantial number of them have their own psychiatric problems, some of whom were receiving therapy. This would mean that non-clinical participants are perhaps not that representative after all!

The gist of the study is something like this: 224 families were assessed after being recruited through newspaper advertisements mainly in South-Eastern USA, and found that 11% of the teenagers, 20% of the mothers, and 13% of the fathers met the diagnostic criteria for one or more psychiatric disorders. On therapy concerns, the chips fell so that 12% of the teenagers, 20% of the mothers and 11% of the fathers were receiving it.

What this all means is that the validity of studies comes under question. When studies are carried out in comparing performances or responses of clinical and non-clinical participants, how valid can they be when there is a reasonable chance that the non-clinical participants have mental health issues? It certainly casts a new light on things. I wouldn't go as far to call every such study into question, but it perhaps gives cause to re-evaluate studies that reported a finding of some controversy. However, Thurston's team suggested that differences identified in previous studies between clinical and non-clinical groups may have been down to a factor other than the clinical status of the two. Variances may be good for something after all as any psych statistician could verify.

In terms of recommendations, Thurston's team suggest that screening of participants should take place. Hmmmm, I think this might be a tad too much on the time-consuming side. Taking the time and costs involved in running a typical study into account, is it feasible to screen participants with procedures apart from the usual demographic details that ascertain suitability for the study in the first place? And what exactly would screening involve? Administration of the BAI and/or BDI-II scales, with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale thrown in for good measure? Again, it does seem a lot of time and effort to spend. One of the studies I'm associated with at the moment involves the administration of these measures and more, but only because various measures of mood are essential to the study. How ironic this all is, when clinical participants are relatively easy to acquire and it looks like considerable energy is to be expended in ensuring that non-clinicals are the right kind of non-clinicals!

Indeed, Thurston et al. say they have no "perfect answer" as to whether objectionable non-clinicals ought to be removed from studies, but that it is the responsibility of the researcher to weigh the costs and benefits of any exclusionary criteria for a particular study. Hmph, that sounds about right.

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Idia B. Thurston, Jessica Curley, Sherecce Fields, Dimitra Kamboukos, Ariz Rojas, Vicky Phares (2008). How nonclinical are community samples? Journal of Community Psychology, 36 (4), 411-420 DOI: 10.1002/jcop.20223

Quotes of Whoa #4: Genetic Destiny?

"Once we realise that the basic wiring plan of the brain is under genetic influence, it's easy to see how not only animals but also people can have very similar brains and yet be so different, right from the start of their lives. Genetic forces, operating on the synaptic arrangement of the brain, constrain, at least to some extent, the way we act, think, and feel ... Still, it's important to recognise that genes only shape the broad outline of mental and behavioural functions, accounting for at most 50 percent of a given trait, and in many instances for far less. Inheritance may bias us in certain directions, but many other factors dictate how one's genes are expressed.

"For example, if a woman consumes excessive alcohol during pregnancy, or a child has a diet deficient in certain nutrients, a brain genetically destined for brilliance can instead turn out to be cognitively impaired. Likewise, a family history of extraversion can be squelched in an orphanage run with an iron fist, just as a natural tendency to be shy and withdrawn can be compensated for to some degree by the supportive encouragement of parents. Even if it becomes possible to clone a child who has died at a tender age, it's probable that the look-alike, having his own set of experiences, is going to act, think, and feel differently ... Genes are important, but not all-important."

-- Joseph LeDoux, 'Synaptic Self' (2002), p. 4-5.

Quotes of Whoa #3: The Synaptic Self

"My notion of personality is pretty simple: it's that your 'self,' the essence of who you are, reflects patterns of interconnectivity between neurons in your brain. Connections between neurons, known as synapses, are the main channels of information flow and storage in the brain. Most of what the brain does is accomplished by synaptic transmission between neurons, and by calling upon the information encoded by past transmission across synapses.

"Given the importance of synaptic transmission in brain function, it should be practically a truism to say that the self is synaptic. What else could it be? Not everyone, however, will be happy with this conclusion. Many will surely counter that the self is psychological, social, moral, aesthetic, or spiritual, rather than neural, in nature ... even a partial understanding of the synaptic basis of who we are is, for me, an acceptable goal. For seeking knowledge about the brain is not only a valid scientific pursuit; it can also improve the quality of life, as when it uncovers new ways of treating neurological or psychiatric disorders."

-- Joseph LeDoux, 'Synaptic Self' (2002), p. 2-3.

Quotes of Whoa #2

"Just how do genes affect individual behaviour? In the simplest terms, they do so by making proteins that shape the way neurons get wired together."

-- Joseph LeDoux, 'Synaptic Self' (2002), p. 4.

The Genius of Charles Darwin

I've always been relatively vague on the topic of evolution after never getting around to studying it properly, and the minor forays I made to read some evolution websites turned up far too many 'debate' sites for me to discern between the facts of evolution from the controversies. Although I could guess at the rationale behind ideas such as natural selection, it was too fuzzy and vague for me to understand properly.

So it was a certain amount of delight that I watched Channel 4's 'The Genius of Charles Darwin', a 3-parter to commemorate nearly 150 years of Darwin's famous work 'On The Origin of Species'. Needless to say, this series of documentaries would provide a clear account of evolution and also some fair discussion of controversy. And to top it all off, it was presented by none other than Richard Dawkins, one of the astoundingly clear science writers of our time, to say the least!

Dawkins is often criticised for his strident pro-atheism tone - and when you get past this to view his credentials as an evolutionary biologist, you find that he is unfairly criticised as a "PR man for evolution" as was said recently by Tom Wolfe. I disagree, because more people pay attention to Dawkins' atheist critique than they do to his science tomes and it isn't difficult to see that he is actually in a position to know what he's talking about. I think there is an undercurrent of envy where Dawkins is concerned as it's quite a feat to have your first book still in print 32 years after it was first published and still as popular as ever, selling over a million copies and being translated into 25 languages. What to speak of the fact that it was required reading for me as a psychology undergraduate. So no, after having read his works (and criticised some of them too) I do have an enduring respect for Dawkins as a voice of authority in his field.

The first programme was more or less a biography of Darwin and described his travels to the Galapagos Islands whereby he embarked on a scientific voyage of discovery in terms of his evolutionary findings. It was a delight to follow his incredulity as discovering two slightly different types of rhea and wondering why, according to the paradigm of his day, God had created these types and indeed why different variations are found among all types of species. It became clear that as Darwin found more and more examples of variation amongst species, they counted as evidence piling up to discount the Biblical account of creation. And furthermore, these variations become specialised (natural selection) due to the influence of the environment. Eventually with slow progress (over millions of years), these variations may become so specialised that the entity can be considered an entirely different species. Conversely, species who do not develop crucial survival skills are driven extinct by natural processes. Dawkins gave a fascinating example during his narrative that was graphically illustrated with footage: Imagine a world where predators, over several generations, improve and enhance their hunting capabilities by means of sharper teeth, faster legs and general all-round improvement in order to catch their prey, yet also the prey develops with faster legs in order to run away from said predator! Dawkins described it as an escalation, even as a type of "arms race". Fascinating.

But what was even more fascinating than that is when he avoided the 'simian ---> man' paradigm that religionists have a major problem with by discussing how man is involved in a similar arms race with viruses, observing how the majority of the current European population are the descendants of those who fortunately survived medieval plagues which gives support to the natural selection idea. While there are an abundance of lethal and potentially lethal viruses around, one of the biggest ones today is HIV/AIDS. Dawkins broached the topic of reports of human resistance to the HIV-virus, even visiting a Kenyan sex worker to briefly interview her about her supposed resistance. The implications of this are astounding and were outlined clearly: As some individuals have an in-built resistance to HIV locked away in their genotypes they will survive and pass their genes to the next generation to bring about 'stronger' and HIV-resistant humans, whereas unfortunate individuals who contract HIV that develops into AIDS will be driven extinct by such natural processes. Natural selection is a cruel mechanism indeed.

OK, I'm aware that I'm discussing all of this in very brief terms but, what else can be done? This all goes to show how biological evolution is the driving mechanism of life. More exciting issues are certain to be raised in the next two parts of this series. A small example of this was given in the form of a brief interview with Craig Venter, one of those who mapped the human genome. This stupendous piece of scientific achievement is enough evidence to prove that evolution is a fact, as it shows a significantly large amount of genes is shared by all forms of life.

Almost predictably, opposition to evolution was represented by 15-year-old children in a school science class that Dawkins attended to lecture. I felt it was an attempt at poignancy in the sense of educating the next generation. But it was definitely embarrassing trying to watch a bunch of 15-year-olds tangle with an Oxford professor. Their scepticism and criticisms of evolution were horribly ignorant, weak with foundations in religious beliefs and upbringing, and were terrible and cringeworthy to watch. But rather than spend too much time directly discrediting these beliefs Dawkins chose to make the topic of atheism an implied conclusion of evolution and also of the programme as a 'sub plot', with various types of digs made throughout the programme. I think that the programme was spoilt by this as it wasn't terribly necessary to discuss or even critique the idea of creation as "God's handiwork" except just to mention how Darwin himself realised this, which was already done earlier in the programme. It seems symptomatic of Dawkins that every time he gets a chance to take the floor he takes the opportunity to have a jab at religion and this gets tiring after a while. It wouldn't matter so much in a documentary that specifically discusses religion and religious issues (like his own 'Root of All Evil' series) but I would have thought that a science documentary would have focused almost entirely on the mechanics of evolution. Either way, the anti-religion jabs weren't too bad and were only indulged in to show the schoolkids how wrong they were by taking them to a beach and inviting them to find their own mini-fossils and unusual rock formations that point to a history of the earth longer than that delineated in old scriptures. Although this little outing succeeded in making the kids think a bit more deeply about their beliefs, none of them gave them up on television. As Dawkins put it, spending a few hours with these kids is no competition for a lifetime of religious indoctrination.

All in all, a good programme and a breath of fresh air. Plenty of whoa to keep me interested. I'll be looking forward to the next installments.

The Neural Buddhists

Index - Article - One - Two - Three - Four

Some time ago I engaged in a discussion about the existence of the soul with members of a Net forum that I hang out at, which is a place that is generally spiritual in its outlook and topics of discussion. While some discussion occasionally takes place on scientific subjects, I do not think that these are covered in much depth. In any case when one member posted The Neural Buddhists article from the New York Times, which happened to be the most emailed article that day, I posted my thoughts on it.

What follows is that article interspersed with my thoughts. This led to an interesting discussion about the existence of a soul between myself and several forum members, which I would like to outline in forthcoming posts on this blog. Some details will be changed in order to make the points clear and coherent for this blog audience but the verve will remain the same. So without further ado:

"In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called 'Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,' in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.

"To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are 'hard-wired' to do this or that. Religion is an accident. In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic helmet around their heads and they will begin to think they are having a spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.

"Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material and 'the soul is dead.' He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists. Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.

Comment: I have to admit that the question of whether the soul exists or not is one of my current muses. Just a couple of days ago I read a transcript of a 1999 debate (actually a discussion) between Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker who more or less presented the "hardcore materialism" and "cognitive neuroscience" viewpoints respectively. Perhaps I need to read through it again to refamiliarise myself with his points but I found Pinker's candour refreshing: the soul can't exist because the brain is essentially modular; there is a module for "this" and a module for "that", if a module stops functioning through brain injury or whatever then that part of the person is gone. The person may lose their ability to see, think or feel in a certain way, or in cases like Phineas Gage they undergo a complete personality transformation. This and other examples provide evidence of a sort that shows that the mind is an entity in the physical world as much of its functioning is due to the proper functioning of neural correlates.

Incidentally, this started me thinking about the institutional belief in the the eternal existence and indivisibility of the soul which is a hallmark of Hindu/Buddhist religions that generally proclaim the view that "Consciousness is the symptom of the soul". So then, what about paraplegics and quadriplegics? They are paralysed from the waist or neck down, so those parts of the body are now soul-less since they are no longer conscious? The soul is divisible after all?

"The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as 'The Origin of Species' reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world. And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible."

Comment: I would prefer it if faith in God was undermined or completely eradicated altogether, but this is utopian and probably will never happen. We as a race will probably kill ourselves over religion instead of living long enough to intellectually evolve to the state of realising the utter redundancy of religion in an organic manner. Such a bitter irony.

"Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development. Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

"Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real."

Comment: I'm not too well-read on the capabilities of the parietal lobe, but it doesn't strike as sensible to say that a module primarily concerned with spatial orientation can "transcend itself" to feel things that are essentially emotional in content, a characteristic of the temporal lobes or general limbic system. I'd be interested in reading Newberg's papers though, I'll have a root around on PubMed when I get a chance.

In any case, I find that a good dose of chocolate helps me feel transcendent and aware of a larger presence. Forget about soma and LSD, Cadbury's Dairy Milk is where it's at! ;-)

"This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism. If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion."

Comments: Good tips. I especially like Gazzaniga and Damasio.

"First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is."

Comment: I don't see how No. 4 follows from No. 3, neither do I agree with this guy's definition of "sacred". People can have moments of elevated experience from viewing a wonderful piece of art or a nice example of architecture, or even a great book, which can overwhelm one to the point of ecstasy and fill one with a boundless sense of appreciation for the amount of work that has gone into producing such an example of beauty. Standards are variable. I suppose this is "sacred" in some way, when one's heart is touched in this way, but trying to extrapolate that into some kind of definition of God (how nice and ambiguous his definition is, it may as well not exist at all!) is a bit much if you ask me.

Besides, this guy is skirting over at least 6000 years of human history. People haven't gone to war throughout the centuries over some feelgood feeling.

"In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate."

Comment: Hmmm, I don't really think there was any "debate" at all. How exactly is one supposed to "debate" the contention that something doesn't exist? Prove that it exists? Where is this proof then?

"The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism."

Comment: I think that most intelligent people have already figured out that religions are a huge mess of constructs and shaky scaffolding ostensibly based on some original emotions and feelgood feelings that really were as feelgood as it was possible to be then. Except for Islam and Mormonism I'd say. This is not an out-of-this-world observation.

I do find it rather interesting how some prominent neuroscientists have Buddhist interests. I wonder why? I'd like to do some reading on that. Or if somebody with greater access to PubMed or PsycInfo than I could send me an article from a journal that I don't have access to, I'd really appreciate it. Here's the reference for you lovely people willing to do me this favour:

Mikulas, W. (2007). Buddhism & Western Psychology: Fundamentals of Integration. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14:4, 4-49.

If you have an ATHENS login, you can get it from here. I downloaded this article a while back when I had a better login but carelessly deleted it. Now my current login is insufficient for this journal.

"In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation."

Comment: Sure, but I don't think science and mysticism are joining hands. They might do so in very small ways such as OXSCOM's attempt to understand pain, but not in terms of the bigger picture. Just because Stephen Jay Gould tried to butter both sides of the debate up with his ideas of separate magisteria (see his 'Rock of Ages') doesn't mean that these magisteria exist, and certainly doesn't mean that these magisteria can overlap or unite.

"Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day."

Comment: What does he mean "going to"? Every dog has its day and, in my opinion, religion's day ended back in the 19th Century or so. As far as I'm concerned, religion and religious people have nothing substantial to contribute to any such "debate". Instead of defending the idea of a personal God, perhaps they should set about proving that one exists in the first place. Then there would be no need of any such defence. Hahaha, this one line shows the redundancy of this argument.

"I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects."

Comment: It is indeed a most wondrous and fascinating journey.

Index - Article - One - Two - Three - Four

Quotes of Whoa #1

As part of the whoa-ness theme of this blog, a large amount of whoa can be found in science soundbites. I'm gonna start a series of these Quotes of Whoa and post them as and when I find them. Here's the first one, aptly from one of my favourite books, and quite a perfect example of what fascinates me about neuroscience:

"A piece of your brain the size of a grain of sand would contain one hundred thousand neurons, two million axons and one billion synapses, all 'talking to' each other. Given these figures, it's been calculated that the number of possible brain states - the number of permutations and combinations of activity that are theoretically possible - exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe."

-- V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms In The Brain (1998), p. 8.

Project Tidbits

It ain't really good practice to blog about the research one is doing in order to avoid the risk of it being stolen from right under your nose, so I'm not gonna spill any details of the project I'm involved in now. Except just to say that it is going to be very exciting to break new ground in a relatively under-researched area of neuropsychology. :-)

Nothing to stop me from dishing out a few tidbits with some details changed though, and here's one:

"Neurophysiologically, a recent study by Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Williams (2003) demonstrated that the social pain of ostracism is similar to physical pain at the neurophysiological level ... The exclusion of participants led to increased activity in their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and the right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC). The ACC is the same region active during physical pain, suggesting that ostracism taps primal reactions of hurt. Self-reports of distress were highly correlated with ACC activity. The activity in the RVPFC moderated feelings of distress for the intentional (but not intentional) ostracism, suggesting that this regulates the ACC activity."

Cool, huh? ;-)

To think that intentionally or unintentionally excluding people from activities activates the same neural pain centres as when you're getting punched. Something to think about there....

My Research Interests

A question which I often get relates to my research interests: What are they?

They ain't as easy to explain, unlike most people, because I'm actually interested in a wide variety of stuff. But I can tell you what drove me into this field which would give an idea of the interests I currently hold.

After years of engaging in lively Internet debates with people on a variety of subjects such as science, multimedia computing, and religion, I developed a curiosity within me to try to understand what it is that makes people so annoyingly stubborn about their point of view and why they try to hold to their views even after contrary evidence is presented. A good example of this is the fundamentalist religious mind or even religious minds in general; Why do people deeply believe in God so much so that they would kill each other in his name or at least get ultra-defensive when they feel their beliefs are under threat. You could even say that some of these people are crazy. And this took place in the wider context of my developing interest into how people think. You know, the actual neurological processes involved in thinking: How does it take place? I felt convinced that a neurological understanding of the process may provide answers as to how thoughts are generated within the brain and then solidified (metaphorically speaking!) into beliefs and maintained thereby to form belief systems and internal paradigms.

I have a good neuropsychology textbook that has given me the answer to this. I expect it's easy enough to think about thinking in terms of neurons, axons, dendrites, action potentials, synaptic vesicles, nerve endings and so on, whereby the rest of (neuro)psychology largely analyses and explains how these processes act as a basis for the individual to interact with other people and situations. The sheer physicality of the thinking process is fascinating enough in that it all takes place faster than lightning speed, what to speak of the oceanlike expanse of the field in attempting to understand the depth of the multifarious interactions involved. And what happens when something goes wrong? This is the situation of those who suffer from various types of mental disorders. Think of the most sophisticated and complicated piece of electronic equipment that you have in your home and what it looks like inside; a few circuit boards and a shedload of wiring to make it do what it does, right? The brain is the most complex piece of hardware nature has ever created with a million billion wires in place. What happens if some wires are disconnected? Or plugged into the wrong port?

It's probably wrong of me to oversimplify conditions like schizophrenia and the like in this way, but a cursory understanding of the neurosciences suggests that mental disorders are often down to the concept of "faulty wiring". These conditions are also not just something that happens as a result of birth or genetics, but may also occur due to brain injury. So this is one of the reasons that sparked my interests in psychology as a whole: the process of thinking and what happens when things go wrong, and how the "normal" mind can be destabilised through stress and/or torture to slip into "insanity".

One of the first books I read as a psychology undergraduate was V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms In The Brain, for which I had to write a review. This book fascinated and deeply impressed me and I strongly recommend it to everyone who has even a passing interest in brain function. A certain chapter within that book acted as a catalyst for my feelings on religion and sparked an interest in the neuropsychology of religious experience, whereby I have learnt that religious feelings and associated states of bliss and ecstasy are associated with temporal lobe function. This comes in a wider context of neural correlates for every brain state, implying that religious visions and the like may be a purely neural function and not a real happening. I hope to discuss these concepts on this blog in the near future.

So those are my two main interests thus far: Mental disorders (and phenomena such as auditory and visual hallucinations) and the neuropsychology of spiritual experience.

Is the brain irrelevant to psychology?

This interesting item in the BPS Research Digest caught my eye: Is the brain irrelevant to psychology? Hmmm, at first glance I'd say no. But then I'm rather biased since I've spent the best years of my life making brain function the centre of my universe, but seriously, it still astounds me as to who can ask a question as ridiculous as this?

Lately I've had discussions on this topic on two separate occasions, both with people who seemed somehow convinced (yet producing little to no evidence to support their views) that brain function is either something that is "not quite fully understood" or that it's relevance to psychology is marginal until fully understood. Both these views were held by people with degrees in something other than psychology (anthropology and biology, actually) and it was plainly obvious that their viewpoints smacked of dualism, which, in all entirety, is almost completely irrelevant to the neuroscience field which employs a monistic viewpoint. With extremely good reason too.

However, this item was irritating for another reason: Opposing arguments are almost always brought by philosophers! Jerry Fodor, in this case. I don't know about you, but I've always been mildly irritated by how philosophers who talk about neuroscience topics almost always serve to act as a spanner in the works. If I was an optimist (which I am, but not an overly enthusiastic one) I'd appreciate their arguments as something to think about and which can provide good ideas for further research. But that's just it: We neuroscientists end up having to do all the hard slog while the philosophers sit around like armchair critics trying to poke holes in studies.

But anyway, enough of my Friday night rant, have a look at the item for yourselves and see how silly dualistic/philosophical arguments can be easily consigned to the garbage heap:

Cognitive neuroscience explores how our mental faculties emerge from, and are organised in, the slimy tissue of our brains, and it's currently a thriving field. But some critics argue it's a dead-end, that biology is irrelevant to psychological accounts of how our minds work. In the words of philosopher Jerry Fodor, "If the mind happens in space at all, it happens somewhere north of the neck. What exactly turns on knowing how far north?"

Now, writing in a special journal issue on the interface between psychology and neuroscience, language expert Peter Hagoort has hit back, arguing that knowing something about the biology of cognition can help to shape psychological models.

Hagoort cites two key examples to support his claims. A little background is required.

When we encounter an unexpected word in a sentence ("He spread his warm bread with SOCKS."), a negative spike in electrical activity recorded from the surface of the scalp is detectable 400ms later and is thought to reflect the extra brain processing required for the surprise word.

Meanwhile, when we encounter a grammatical anomaly (e.g. "The boys kissES the girls") - there is a positive, more posterior, spike of activity, 600ms afterwards. This latter effect is observed even with nonsense sentences that violate grammatical rules, thus showing that the spike is independent from the processing of meaning.

Taken together, Hagoort says these findings have implications for psychological models of language processing because they endorse the idea that meaning and grammar are not handled by a "general-purpose language processor", as he puts it, but rather they are "domain specific" - in other words, processed independently.

For his second example, Hagoort points to a brain imaging study that showed the pleasantness of a smell was rated differently depending on whether it was accompanied by the label "cheese" or "body odour". Crucially, the brain imaging data showed the verbal label affected processing in the actual smell centre of the brain. "This example illustrates something that would not so easily be found out with a behavioral method: that language information acts directly in the olfactory input system," Hagoort said.

Reference: Hagoort, P. (2008). Should Psychology Ignore the Language of the Brain?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(2), 96-101. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00556.x (Access is currently free).

Addendum: Yes, I have heard of Jerry Fodor and ideas on modularity and, while he is not just a philosopher, he is also a cognitive scientist and is thus in a position to know something of what he's talking about. My remarks against philosophers were directed to people such as Daniel Dennett. Shock horror! Yes, Daniel Dennett. As an undergraduate I hugely enjoyed studying the 'Consciousness' module and devoured the textbook, and found that Dennett was a prime example of one of those who act as the proverbial spanner. As Blackmore described issue after issue, Dennett seemed to pop up everywhere as a naysayer.

Ah well, perhaps I'm wrong and I was just in a bad mood when I read that book.

Facebook generation may be 'dangerous'

I caught this article on the BBC News site today ('Mental risk' of Facebook teens) and, although I understand the reasoning behind it, I'm not sure an entirely accurate picture is painted of teenagers.

Children growing up alongside the rise of social networking websites may have a "potentially dangerous" view of the world, says a leading psychiatrist.

Dr Himanshu Tyagi said sites such as Facebook and MySpace may be harmful.

He told the Royal College of Psychiatrists annual meeting people with active online identities might place less value on their real lives. And the West London Mental Health NHS Trust expert added this could raise the risk of impulsive acts or even suicide.

I read a story a while back about a boy who committed suicide after his girlfriend dumped him by email. You gotta wonder about the effect of reading cold words like that in equally cold black-and-white print and the emotional effects thereof, completely bereft of the 'personal touch' of face-to-face interactions in discussing a matter that is, in all respects, rather delicate. It is very easy to dismiss such people as being weak-minded for committing suicide in general, but such statements don't reflect the gravity of the situation or correctly identify/explain the depth of the mental processes involved.

So I can appreciate the point about how sites such as Facebook and Myspace (a significant advancement from plain email) could cause people to attribute a lot of importance to interactions taking place in a virtual world, but it is important to distinguish between people who correctly use such platforms as an extension of their lives rather than as a substitute, and people who tend to be emotionally vulnerable or sensitive and are likely to be profoundly affected by virtual interactions. Cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking are also huge problems in this respect.

Dr Tyagi said that people born after 1990 did not know a world without the widespread use of the internet. He warned that the current crop of psychiatrists were perhaps not fully prepared to help young people with internet-related problems. While social networking sites offered great benefits, he said, there were potential pitfalls.

This much is true; I first started using the Net around 1997 and it is rather disturbing to think about kids 7 or older using it, especially in those days when the Net really was all about freedom and lack of censorship, when a single typo in the URL downloaded the most horrific porn for you or took you to racist "White Power" sites, etc. Well, things are slightly better these days but not all that different. If we use porn as an example, several studies have been carried out that support the theory that occasional or regular viewing of porn can contribute to a variety of disturbing behaviours such as decreased respect for females, disturbing trends in sexual behaviour, and other negative symptoms. Unless some good 'nanny' software is installed, it is pretty easy for kids these days to download all this stuff and view them with a click of a mouse.

And it's not just porn that's a problem, it's just about everything. The sheer accessibility of the Net allows it to be viewed by almost everyone without so much as an age-check that has no real verification ability. Not that I am a fan of censorship but I can see how it can have an effect on young minds and quite probably be the cause of some serious warping.

It is also an open issue that internet issues have not been adequately studied. A few low-level studies have been done but not nearly enough to give psychologists any real guidance for issues that may arise in therapy and counselling sessions. Applying real-life strategies for bullying, for example, may not work in quite the same way for the phenomenon of cyber-bullying as the environment and methods by which it takes place may be similar but the differences are significant. So yes, it is definitely true that psychiatrists and psychologists alike are not adequately equipped to deal with patients with internet-related problems.

"It's a world where everything moves fast and changes all the time, where relationships are quickly disposed at the click of a mouse, where you can delete your profile if you don't like it, and swap an unacceptable identity in the blink of an eye for one that is more acceptable." He said: "People used to the quick pace of online social networking may soon find the real world boring and unstimulating. It may be possible that young people who have no experience of a world without online societies put less value on their real world identities and can therefore be at risk in their real lives, perhaps more vulnerable to impulsive behaviour or even suicide." He called for more investigation and research into the issue.

However, Graham Jones, a psychologist with an interest in the impact of the internet, said that while over-use of social networking sites could lead to problems, the risks posed by them had been overplayed. He said: "For every new generation, the experience they have of the world is a different one. "When the printing press was first invented, I am sure there were crowds of people saying it was a bad thing. In my experience, the people who tend to be most active on sites such as Facebook or Bebo are those who are most socially active anyway - it is just an extension of what they are already doing."

I can agree with this much. As tragic and heartbreaking was the suicide mentioned earlier, such cases are ultimately exceptions and isolated examples. But these issues are definitely ones to think about.

Does the crowd affect the result?

I'm quite a tennis fan. Not playing, mind you, but I do enjoy watching the matches on Eurosport whenever one of the major Grand Slams are going on, just as I am avidly following Wimbledon right now. (I'm a fan of Rafael Nadal, if you must know.)

I never really thought much about sport psychology as an undergraduate. "Sport psychology" - how terribly boring! The lecturer of that subject was almost always seen wearing a tracksuit, which gave me the impression that her students were having a bit of a laugh playing games all day and getting experiments out of it. It seemed like a bit of an easy life and a fast-track career path to becoming a PE teacher.

Until I read a general review of the research in that field and was impressed with it; the psychology behind concepts like being "in the zone" and the effect of teamwork upon individual performance suddenly made sense to me and gave me a new-found respect. Although I still wouldn't consider getting into that field (everyone has their own interests after all) I do think that it can contribute a lot to public education.

Hence a story on BBC News today. The recent fourth-round match between Andy Murray and Richard Gasquet was something to behold. Given that British players don't have a great record and after hearing that Murray was two sets down, I didn't bother to watch it. I couldn't escape the news of Murray's astounding third-set comeback and eventual winning of the match though, and I sat through an enjoyable hour-long replay being broadcast at the BBC site. If you ask me, I will agree that Murray's comeback was incredible and that his achievement was not to be understated. However, I think that he was also very lucky: The match lasted about 5 hours in total (finishing at 9.30pm in bad light), the Wimbledon crowd were openly baying support for Murray and there was also the small matter of Gasquet getting tired and making some very bad shots as a result. But the behaviour of the crowd was definitely an issue as they roared their support for every winning Murray move, and Murray wasn't exactly blushing because of it either.

This begs the question:


Does the crowd affect the result?

Two sets down against Richard Gasquet, Andy Murray seemed dead and buried. But backed by a vociferous crowd he turned it around and won the match. So how much influence can the audience at a sporting occasion have?

At times during his five-set thriller Andy Murray looked as if he was conducting the crowd on Wimbledon's Centre Court, and he paid great tribute to their influence afterwards. But there is disagreement in the world of sports psychology over just how much the crowd can achieve.

MAKES HOME TEAM PLAY BETTER?

It doesn't need a survey to tell you that the vast majority of sport fans believe in the power of home advantage, and believe that the crowd has the key role in that advantage. "There's plenty of research out there which says crowds have an effect on athlete performance," says Matt Jevon, a sports psychologist who works with stars in golf, motorsport, rugby and tennis. In footballing terms it's often referred to as the "12th Man", the power of the crowd to amplify the abilities of the home team and weaken the away team. Dutch club Feyenoord went as far as dedicating the number 12 shirt to the fans. And certain football stadiums are notorious to opposition fans because of the consistency of the noise generated by the crowd and the perceived difficulty in going there. Valencia's precipitous Mestalla stadium, the red wall of Liverpool's Kop, Celtic's Parkhead on a European night and the notorious cauldron of Galatasaray's Ali Sami Yen are all well-known internationally.

But there are plenty who say home advantage is down to a more complex raft of factors than just the noise. "It is not really the crowd that has the biggest effect, it is a shot of testosterone when you are playing at home," says sports psychologist Sandy Wolfson. The testosterone boost starts happening even before the crowd arrive, and may relate to a sense of primitive territoriality. Some animals perform better in conflicts with rivals when defending their home territory than attacking foreign territory. Then there's also travel fatigue, disorientation, and unfamiliarity with an idiosyncratic pitch to be considered.

MAKES REFEREE PERFORM BADLY?

Another factor that may explain home advantage is the crowd's effect not on the players, but on the match officials. "In football, it's the referees that make the difference. If there is a harsh challenge, the crowd roars and the referee reacts," says Prof Ellis Cashmore, author of Sport and Exercise Psychology. It is common to see a referee miss a bad tackle on a player from team A, realise he has made a mistake, have booing directed at him, and then be lenient to the players of team A for a few minutes afterwards.

A Harvard University study last year of 5,000 English Premier League matches suggested away teams gave away more penalties. The crowd effect was particularly pronounced on inexperienced referees. In boxing it has occasionally been suggested that judges have a subconscious home bias, for example unwittingly favouring the American fighter in a Las Vegas bout over his foreign opponent. In tennis of course, the decisions are too clear cut for subconscious bias to be possible. And yet there was a key decision that went in favour of Murray in his match with Gasquet. The Frenchman was desperate to go off for bad light and resume play in the morning. The crowd would have reacted angrily if this had happened. And in the event, both the umpire and tournament referee seemed happy that the light was adequate for play to continue.

MAKES OPPOSITION PLAY BADLY?

In the Murray/Gasquet match, the Frenchman was visibly annoyed by the amount of crowd noise immediately before points and between serves. Making noise between the first and second serve is considered particularly unacceptable in tennis, but occurred numerous times during the fifth set. Gasquet has a reputation as a psychologically frail player, and it's not beyond the realms of possibility that this was putting him off. "During the first couple of sets Gasquet had got the crowd pretty quiet," says Jevon. "They were sitting there thinking 'another British loss'. As soon as there was a pick-up in the crowd noise and involvement, Gasquet wasn't mentally tough enough."

Coping with an unexpected Murray resurgence was difficult, but allied to a sudden jump in pro-Murray crowd volume it was very problematic. "You can't be human and not notice these things," says Jevon. "The more you try and block something out the more you have to deal with it."

In golf, another game where the competitors are accustomed to quiet, it has been suggested that when a player is barracked, as Colin Montgomery often has been in the US, his performance could be affected. In Italy's clash with Spain in Euro 2008, the Italian forward Antonio Di Natale was roundly booed by the audience as while "injured" and off the pitch, he rolled back onto it in order to get the referee to stop the game and thereby stop a Spanish attack. When it came to the penalty shoot-out his poor effort - amid whistles and jeers - was easily saved.

DISTRACT THE SUPPORTED PLAYER?

Of course support can be too much. There has been at least one survey suggesting that it is an advantage to take a penalty shoot-out in front of the opposing fans, the theory being that the pressure becomes too great in front of your own fans. And there are plenty who thought Tim Henman struggled to cope with the pressure lumped on him by the crowds. "There is some lab evidence that the support of crowds can have a negative effect," says Prof Wolfson. "The performers always think the supporter or the audience had a positive influence but sometimes it didn't."

And if you want to be gee'd up when you're down, and you get the crowd going, as soon as you've turned things round, you still want to be able to screen out excess noise so you can concentrate. "You have got to be confident as a team that you can cope with the outcome of you stimulating that kind of support," says Jevon. In Murray's battle with Gasquet, the commentators noticed he was focusing on particular individuals in the crowd to motivate himself. This controlled use of crowd energy could be the answer.