Friday 31 December 2010

An unusual thing just happened. What may or may not have been a couple had a blazing row on the tube. Its actually rare. But one member of this couple, the hot female one, waqs deaf I think.

I admit a lot of insecurity around home to treat deaf people correctly but I had a moment of pure drunken sanity. I treated them as I would any other bickering couple on the train. I tried to steam in. I don't like seeing the arguments which aredso natural to any true human relationship, and this relationship was more true than many, many others.

I just for one stupid moment in my life treating an equal as an equal by interupting the deaf ladys rant against her husband.

To the people on the carriage I must have looked like a drunk, insensitive twat. I wonder how many thought I was a dick for doing what I just did to a deaf person. I went too far and spoke too fast too.

I wonder if the person opposite me is thinking I'm insensitive, and perhaps I am. No one likes a stranger stepping into an argument. I do it anyway. Deaf, blind, ugly or even sober. I try to treat people equally.

Thursday 30 December 2010

Unshared perceptions update

So I've not smoked skunk in a while. I'm not eating, unhappy, no fun, work al the time and am probably depressed.

I feel like people who couldn't know know I'm suicidal. How? I don't know. It doesn't make sense.

I feel like my electronic life is manipulated. Its making me unhappy rather than angry so the docility is effectively what antipsychotics do. This isn't all paranoia. A severe trigger is what happened through facebook several months ago. There have been other improbable to the point of impossible things happen like access to a paper which became paywalled.

I wonder if people are sick enough to torture me like this. I try to remind myself of Hanlons Razor. Think stupidity before malice. Its so common.

My anonymous blog has been discovvered by my employer. Its unfortunate but I refuse to stop posting honesty, angry, weird, scary posts.

I'm concerned that people have been sent into my life as a setup. For example the therapist I met in the pub. Id not seen him there before but he's a regular. Apparently. I may have missed him as a regular because I don't check every individual who goes in there.

There was the situation in the local supermarket which I intervened in. A guy seemed like he was having a bad day, was angry, depressed and lashed out at someone physically. I still wonder if it was a setup.

There was another time I stepped in when a customer was angry at a cashier in another supermarket. I jsut said a few words. That felt like a setup from god because my bladder made me have to curtail my shopping trip then the urge to pee subsided just before this incident.

The time I intervened in a fight, a heroes moment for anyone if I had any interest in being a hero, felt unusual too but that was too hard to setup.

I'm always calculating what's real,what might not be and what might be real but is unusual. I end up socially blunted because I can't infer from tells other people can use. I can't understand people so I give the benefit of the doubt.

The hardest things are relationships. Both friendships and love. I feel like I'm calculating so much to know what is real, what is delusion and what is the influence of my entity.

The song which sang itself to me has been half right but I can barely understand these metaphors. It has been a cold, lonely summer and the letter sealed with a kiss may be one of my belles. But its not so easy for me to believe any of that is true.

The tube system is fucking with me perhaps too.

Evidence in mental healthcare

How is it that treatments can be allowed which aren't supported by the
best evidence techniques? I fear the dissolution of NICE will make the
situation worse rather than better. Doctors are as dogmatic as priests.
I remember speaking to a doctor about the meta-analyses which show
antidepressants to be as effective as a sugar pill which a patient
thinks is an antidepressant. He said that was bollocks because he'd seen
them work...

I suspect that as new scientific methods are developed things like CBT,
antipsychotics and other treatments may all be shown to be considerably
less effective than once thought. I think whole new paradigms of thought
will quickly show that mental health is just social control. Making
normal what is different rather than treating illness.

The question of human suffering still exists of course. It seems
evidence-based methods are ignored when looking at treatments because
most things fail the test of good evidence.

What's the test of good evidence? Lots of high quality trials. All data
published, even when it doesn't support the researcher's bias. Bias
eliminated wherever possible - I mean triple blind studies. More
sophisticated measures and measurement of human suffering - and this
doesn't mean more biological techniques (I fear unhappy people being
told their not unhappy because their serotonin levels are within the
normal range). Fucking huge sample sizes. Decent long term follow up
such that studies - more longitudinal studies. Most of all there needs
to be ethical consideration of what's being done. The medical profession
can't be trusted. They used the chemical cosh to treat old people with
dementia because society didn't want to deal with old people's symptoms.
They do the same thing to kids.

Proper evidence tecdhniques are the first and last bastion against the
evils and attrocities which have been committed by doctors in the name
of treating supposed illness. It seems there is no other law to stop
them killing people unnecessarily. When I explianed to a senior police
offer that the Royal College of Psychiatry had admitted that 1,800
people every year had been killed unnecessarily he was shocked but
explained at best this could be considered manslaughter (and, of course,
a profession can't be jailed). When I explained that doctors are now
measured on how few of these drugs they use rather than their use in the
community banned I think he could see my point that the medical
profession is becoming akin to murder. They treat behaviour with
alternatives to straitjackets, alternatives which they now know kill.
The straitjacket is safer but the inhumanity is more obvious.

I don't know how the evidence paradigm needs to change to shift the role
of psychiatry away from murdering people to treating society but this is
the most essential shift needed in mental healthcare. It is needed now
but it will take a century to develop. The dogma is so strong that they
are treating genuine illnesses rather than enforcing norms of behaviour
developed post-Industrial Age to make machine-like people for the
factories and offices and call centres.

It seems every generation there is a call for evidence in mental health,
for the use of real science in a field that uses false science to
support what it does. I know in a century I will be right. People will
ask how people in our time could have allowed the things that are done
to the mentally ill. I feel no joy or smugness in being right, not when
this means a century more of oppression, incaceration and death of
fellow human beings. All in the name of healthcare.

Humour and mental health research

Its funny but only in a way to stop myself from crying.

The randomised allocation to control or active groups but blind, ie no one knew, was a signifcant advancement in medical science. It disproved the value of insulin shock therapy. Other ways to cause seizures were better.

I guess that's why electrocuting people was better but recent high quality reviews show electroshock to be bullshit.

Funny ain't it. Shocking perhaps? Science in mental health saves lives and confirms effectivness.

Some dickheads call it an art, not a science. Guess who can suck on my chocolate salty balls?

Wednesday 29 December 2010

Let wisdom guide? Let them suck on my chocolate salty balls

This seems to be an important thing to say.

Let wisdom guide is the motto of the Royal College of Psychiatry.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I think many psychiatrists understand the social model and hoe it has more relevance in mental health than with physical illnesses. It's about the impact caused by the fuckedupness of society.

There is psychopathology but there's the social and occupational outcomes which are poorer. As society advances this becomes less. For example as society advanced it accepted that black people wanted to be free. The illness of drapetomania (admittedly never codified in a psychiatric manual) became a non-illness and the outcomes less. Of course now slavery doesn't exist and perhaps people are willing to accept that black people held in servitude might want to run away a lot and this is a sane thing. It may even be laudable.

And so society can change so mental illness is healed without treating the individual. I think most women nowadays haven't been masturbated by their doctor yet this was an approved treatment two centuries ago for the endemic of hysteria. Today the prevalence of conversion disorders or sexual dysfunction which would be the modern equivalents are tiny compared to prevalence way back in the day. And so few doctors masturbate their female patients in modern times. Those which do risk getting struck off if found out.

Changing society becomes a priority of any wise system of mental health.

But perhaps I'm wrong.

I'll let the reader decide. Let wisdom guide or let the Royal college of psychiatry suck on my chocolate salty balls?

They do so little society changing its not funny. They leave charities to do the work.

Once again another ramble on medicine, mental health problems and the hippocratic oath

Wierdos are often if not always mentally ill. Gandhi was a wierdo but so were many of the murders of our era.

I wonder how much of severe mental illness is about using science to enfore the judgements of the playground. Early detection could be just asking school kids who they thought was weird and justified by the risk of producing a person with risk of a dangerous personality disorder in adulthood. The illness paradigm is so useful to allow behavioural modification. Its also useful to incarcerate people who've committed no crime. And all done because social judgements of abnormality can be called illness.

And yet there is a risk to the general public from a tiny percentage from wierdos though most are harmless and the rest work in IT (sorry. Inappropriate joke). The risk is not as high as manslaughter and manslaughter with knowledge of death from the medical profession in their treatment of unwanted behaviour and emotion. But no one considers or questions this. The privilege of medicine, the healing profession of which each member first takes the oath of first do no harm before becoming a doctor, seems to be impeachable even upon revelation of manslaughter.

But there is still the problem of wierdos who are dangerous as well as the stigma wierdos who aren't get just like many black men have to suffer.

I want no more death. Not from wierdos or warmongering politicians. I find it hard to say this but behavioural control and modification may be required to stop people and societies and professions killing people.

Let those not have the privilege of lack of criticism given to those who deal with health and life. Let those not have the privilege of the hippocratic oath. Let that only be extended to healers who first do no harm, not those who think behaviour and emotion is a medical illness.

What point is there in any other perspective apart from the biomedical one?

So in mental health there are more paradigms and perspectives than in any other science. The prevailing one is the biomedical perspective because it's what the power holders, doctors, believe in. Throughout their training they're taught that mental illness is a biological problem to be treated biologically. In their profession this dogma is beginning to change somewhat with the acceptance of the possibility of CBT as a useful treatment for a supposedly biological problem but in the main the understanding of the medical profession as a whole is still biological cause.

Well of course there's a point. There's the point of truth. The point is the people with the power aren't interested in the truth. I think psychiatrists inevitably do have to understand the different paradigms and perspectives. It may make staying in their profession very difficult. Each may have thier own justification for why it's not a system of enforcement of norms and social judgements rather than anything to do with medicine alternatively they may justify the need for this form of social control to be done by doctors.

Outside the psychiatric profession everything from depression to schizophrenia to any of the little know 'illnesses', for example biastophilia, are understood as biologically caused illnesses. A more advanced definition may be mental 'diseases' which a person has no control over.

Then there's the sociological and anthropological persppective. To me it's the most significant and from it can be pulled lots of examples to show it's nothing like a genuine illness though the science can be applied to justify it as an illness. I would be fascinated to see the study which justifies homosexulaity or drapteomania as a mental illness using the same techniques as are used for ADHD or other modern supposed illnesses caused by biological deficit (rather than difference) and treated with chemicals rather than acceptance of difference.

But whatever. It doesn't really matter. Doctors who used lobotomies have degrees. Doctors who unnecessarily electrocuted people have degrees. Doctors who masturbated women have degrees. Doctors who killed 1,800 old people every year when they used antipsychotics on them have degrees in medicine.

They have the power and they can dismiss the 'lay' perspective that they are breaking the Hippocratic Oath, the one they take when they become doctors, and by doing so no longer have the privilege of status of a healer who does no harm. They are the same as prison guards or Stalin's secret police (NKVD?).

They twist science to justify what they do but they're destroying the human race's potential, allowing societies malformation to get worse and they're fucking cunts. Same goes for a lot of mental health campaigns that don't tackle societal change or rely on biomedical bullshit.

They can all suck on my chocolate salty balls.

Tuesday 28 December 2010

Roadmap of mental health research

This was something I suggested for the job I get paid to do.

The term roadmap is an IT term and is sort of like a strategy or a list
of what's going to happen in the future. What I mean it to mean in this
context is the research required to reach a point where something can be
achieved.

The more studies I read the more I think that nothing really works in
mental health, not compared to the placebo effect. It seems every decade
shows horrific treatments don't work. Treatments like the lobotomy and
leucotomy, insulin shock therapy and now ECT.

There is a set of scientific principles which the critical psychiatry
movement use. It's the sort of thing that tries to make mental health a
science rather than an art (a butchery of what the word art means.
Really they mean their treatments are unscientific. Art is not the
antyonym of science. Barbarism is, perhaps, a better antonym.).

So much research fails to take into account these principles. Of course
it's expensive to do this high quality scientific studies. Cheap studies
serve little to no purpose though. Their usually excluded from
systematic reviews and high quality meta-analysis.

There are things which need to be established properly. It seems as
science is applied in mental health care more and more treatments which
were established stop being established, for example SSRIs are more
often starting to compare poorly to the placebo effect and when
publication bias is taken into account effect sizes dwarf into
insignificance. The same is true for psychological therapies. There are
no new placebo controlled antipsychotic trials as far as I am aware
however I haven't looked into this enough to confirm.

The reason for this desperate need to spend research money wisely, so
rather than researching the effect of antidepressants on morality (an
immeasurable construct with the science of today) as was done in Oxford
lets relook at the measures, design a proper public funded
antidepressant trial which looks at long term outcomes, is well
designed, has whopping great sample sizes, is as free from bias as
possible (triple blind design) and will actually reach a scientific
conclusion and a proper one that can stand up to criticism by critical
psychiatrists.

The critical psychiatry movement is the modern antipsychiatry movement.
In the 1970s in was the antipsychiatry movement which focused the desire
of the profession to become more scientific. Bentall and Moncrieff in
the UK, Whitaker in the US and others are the pioneers of the
application of science to the human condition.

They're the force that drives the increase in the use of good evidence
and good science. Anything less can suck on my chocolate salty balls.

Sham ECT: the new best treatment

I'm reading a critical ECT review at the moment. It seems the majoirty
of trials are severely flawed. It's the same with a lot of
antidepressant research. Even the STAR*D public-funded trial ended up
being a bit of a farce when it came to using rigorous scientific
methods, for example maintaining the same measures throughout.

The ECT review is showing sham ECT to be just as effective in the long
term. People actually recover from intractable conditions (which is
usually when ECT is used in the modern day rather than to 'treat'
challenging' patients). This makes it by far the most cost effective
treatment in mental healthcare. Sham ECT I mean. Not ECT.

A fake ECT study could be designed with the highest methodological
rigour such that no medical staff involved with the care of the patient
could see which patient was getting ECT and which one was getting sham
treatment. Patients would be randomly assigned. There would be a period
of time before return to whatever facility they were incarcerated for
their mental health.

The point of this bit of the trial design is simple. It's so no one can
no that both active and control group recieved ECT. The results aren't
important though they would be signficant if they showed greater
improvement in the active group. What's important is that patients get
better using an effective and safe treatment. Admittedly the cost of the
study may be more than the cost of ECT in clinical practice but it would
be offset by the fewer side effects and reduced risk of mortality.

The possibility of using totally fake treatments to fool clinicians and
patients into make better outcomes for patients may be unethical but as
the paper I'm reading points out the Hippocratic Oath does sort of say
first do no harm. It's more unethical for doctors to break the oath
which is fundamental to their profession.

The pragmatic view would be this idea creates an amazingly effective and
safe treatment for chronic and treatment resistant conditions though
there's still an unexplored component: the nocebo effect.

Biastophilia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biastophilia>

This (and other) term is the one given to rape as a mental illness. It's
quite specific and doesn't cover all rapes, just those who can only get
aroused by rape I think.

Monday 27 December 2010

Paywalling as a way to protect the power based of doctors

Paywall is the new term which means papers (or other information) that's
pay for access.

Here's an example.

Suicide as escape from self.
Baumeister, Roy F.
Psychological Review, Vol 97(1), Jan 1990, 90-113. doi:
10.1037/0033-295X.97.1.90
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/rev/97/1/90/

This paper has been cited by almost 500 other articles but a member of
the public can't access it for free. Most scientists have access to a
wide range of journals so reading research is a pleasant experience.
People working at newspapers have budgets to access papers and are often
allowed free access to journals and papers.

A member of the public doesn't have access to systems like Athens nor
can't afford journal subscriptions unless they're relevant to their
profession. But every patient needs to know what the latest research is
because often doctors don't know what's the latest developments in their
speciality or other specialities. They also have their own biases to
deal with, and this includes dealing with health economics rather than
quality of life.

In mental health it's more relevant than physical health. I read a lot
about suicide to try and help myself. I've found the work of Schneidman
to be really helpful. Other papers too help me understand myself. But I
can't get access to so many papers. I read an inordinate number of
papers so couldn't afford to pay for them and I don't work in mental
health anymore so can't justify subscriptions nor could I afford to
subscribe to all the journals I read papers from.

So only doctors and psychiatrists can read these papers and thereby
continue to hold their power, the power of knowledge. I, of course, have
lived experience to learn from but they disregard my personal experience
because they have a medical degree. I am, after all, mad and that's the
best way to dismiss my analysis.

I'd really like to read this paper because it talks about the
egocentricity of rational suicide. It's so fascinating to read someone
write about something they have no experience of but I value their
analysis even if they don't value my own. My degree in mental health
comes from the university of life.

In the modern age knowledge is power and paywalling is a way for the
medical profession (and others) to maintain their power over patients.
The problem is doctors don't keep up with all the research the way an
expert patient might. They don't spend their hours in solitude reading
study after study looking for answers. Their time is limited and they
need a life even if I don't.

In my interactions with doctors the number of studies I've read and can
quote from is one of the most powerful ways to redress the balance of
power. It's been very effective, for example the last time I saw a
psychiatrist I was able to challenge the value of applying a label such
that he referred me to the treatment I'd asked for without applying a
diagnostic label. Unfortunately the therapist at the very late initial
assessment couldn't listen to me and what I wanted, judged me then
referred me to a service I didn't want. My mental health detriorated
significantly though I'm dragging myself out of the rutt now. For her a
patient couldn't have the power of self-referral to access psychological
support. I had to do what she said first.

And I'm much better now. I'm hardly experiencing any suicidal thoughts
though I'm planning to kill myself through an assisted suicide in 4
years. How egocentric of me.

Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality: Scientific American

<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=long-live-the-web>

I love Tim Berners-Lee. He invented the World Wide Web. What an amazing
claim to fame. He's totally brilliant too. In this article he outlines
the vision of the web and how he wants it to continue. I really hope the
industry listens.

He's an idealist and a visionary. Now the web in monetised and his
complaints are the complaints everyone has. It's always profit-based
shite that makes for poor usability, experience and hassle for users.

The open source movement continues to be the bastion of idealism. It's
being heralded by Google which is great whereas Apple and Microsoft (and
others) still favour closed code and high profit models based on
revenue. Google is, I hope, the future. Apple and Microsoft can suck on
my chocolate salty balls. The whole patent wars thing really pisses me
off. It just gets in the way of progress and makes lawyers rich. Any
company that can afford a world wide patent gets lots of them to secure
the technology and make people pay lots of money to use it. Often the
ideas are come up with by employees who never see a fraction of the
profits made from patents. Of course neither do those in the open source
movement. They give their time freely.

Like anything great the web was made by idealists and visionaries. Had
the US military had their way no one but them would have access to the
empowering technology of interconnection of computers and networks. It's
idealists and visionaries like Nicholas Negropronte who come up with the
One Laptop Per Child project only to have the ideas stolen by the
manufacturers of netbooks and other devices as well as the manufacturers
each vying for their share of the project for their benefit rather than
the greater good.

These individuals are the knights of the modern age fighting the tyranny
of evil, the tyranny of copyright and profit, of ideas and technologies
kept secret or used for profit over advancement of the human race, of
selfishness over selflessness. The latter is perhaps the great war of
the modern age as it's been for the entirety of human civilisation. The
change to selflessness may, in itself, be the most significant measure
of human advancement.

But perhaps that's just my stupid bias to believe that advancement is
about selflessness and equality rather than promotion of the ideal that
might is right. I like my bias though.

Location-based mobile marketing becomes a reality

Where Inc. awarded geofence patent covering mobile commerce - Mobile
commerce Daily - Legal/privacy
<http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/where-awarded-geofence-patent-covering-mobile-commerce/>

It was Bluetooth which provided the basis for mobile proximity
marketing. GPS and new platforms are taking this a step further.

It's exptraordinary the rise in takeup in the US and the UK and other
European nations will follow suit a year or two after the US trends.

"
Where do you see location-based mobile marketing going in 2011?
We anticipate that the market will grow exponentially in 2011.

In September we announced 1 billion ad requests on our Where Ads Network.

That number doubled in November.

We think that more big brands will get in the game with real budget
dollars, not just test dollars.
"

Sunday 26 December 2010

More about masturbation and fantasy than I ever thought I'd be interested to read about

Bering in Mind: One reason why humans are special and unique: We
masturbate. A lot
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=one-reason-why-humans-are-special-a-2010-06-22>

Having half a brain ain't so bad

Strange but True: When Half a Brain Is Better than a Whole One:
Scientific American
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-when-half-brain-better-than-whole&ref=rss>

I'm wholly skeptical of this. WTF? Removing half a brain has relatively
small impacts? I'm surprised a person can even walk. I think there's a
lot of informationleft out in this coverage or the effects of this
procedure haven't been fully explored. The human brain is an amazing
thing but functioning well after losing an entire hemisphere is
surprising. Shows how little we really use our brains if a relatively
high level of function is possible with just half of it.

The future of input technology

Kinect hacks let you control a web browser and Windows 7 using only The
Force (updated) -- Engadget
<http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/25/kinect-hack-lets-you-control-a-web-browser-using-only-the-force/>

This is getting more mature. TVs with web cams and this sort of
technology will soon be with us. There's a limited set of gestures
consumers will be willing to learn so the utility is limited for the
mass market in the short term. Gaming may have new avenues though. With
time and exposure people will become used to standardised movements and
the vocabulary of gestures will increase.

Text input remains a challenge but voice command technology may get
better so people can simple say what channel they want. In fact high
quality speech recognition could mean this technology won't hit the
shelves apart from gaming. This is the hard thing predicting what
technology will be seen in the mass market. Robustness is very important
as is capturing the imagination of the markets who will push products to
the early adopters and eventually the mass market.

Early adopters are willing to put up with some of the idyosyncracies and
bugs of early implementations of these advaned technologies but the
thing which holds back many technologies from mainstream success is
these bugs. Companies really need to get the technology to work
successfully for the average person unless the product has very high
utility for a specific purpose, for example the spreadsheet and email in
the workplace.

It's one of the barriers for mobile AR gaming. It's the very latest
generation of high end smartphones that offer the hardware needed to
make these workable. Fast processors and accurate sensors aren't
available as standard on mass market phones. By 2012 they will be and
mobile gaming will finally be the hit it was expected to be. It's
already started to become the new frontier with hundreds of thousands of
apps made for the iPhone and Android phones. AR technology takes it one
step further and the phone is the only platform capable of engaging in
the new gaming frontier. Whole new avenues of gaming will be created.

If schizophrenia is a brain illness why isn't it detected by brain scans

As far as I am aware there's no biological test for schizophrenia used
in UK clinical practice. While the medication acts at a biological level
based on a dopamine hypothesis (which is probably bollocks given that
the drugs were invented to sedate people without sending them to sleep
and the drugs don't work on all people nor do they attempt to regenerate
the supposed deficits in brain matter) doctors use testing based on
symptoms of behaviour.

So when my mum showed symptoms of multiple sclerosis to confirm the
diagnosis they did an MRI and a lumbar puncture. That's how they worked
out with a high degree of certainty that she has MS even though it's
rare in Asians.

There are tests in development but currently there's a high degree of
subjectivity. This subjectivity leads to one of the big problems in
mental health in the UK and US: the overdiagnosis of black men. Many
reasons are given but none of them totally explain the high levels of
overdiagnosis nor cases of people with disorders on the schizophrenia
spectrum who leave the UK and go to the West Indies then don't have a
diagnosis of schizophrenia there.

It may also change the high rate of diagnosis in London. It's something
like twice the rate in other cities in the UK. For the life of me I
can't think why at a brain illness level. I think there may be more
stresses and there may be more need for people to be 'normal' but this
isn't relevant to a brain illness. That sort of thing would need more of
something in the air or water.

What is experiencing god called?

Today without the cultural explanations given by religion the experience
of god is either schizophrenia or a dissociative disorder (or one of the
others). Though there are exclusions used in DSM for religious
explanations this doesn't make sense if schizophrenia is considered as a
brain illness.

Saturday 25 December 2010

A quote from CS Lewis that has a lot of relevance in mental health and rights

"...a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the
most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than
under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may
sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those
who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do
so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

Reposted from Mary Maddock's (Mind Freedom Ireland's) Facebook status

Friday 24 December 2010

The High-k Solution - IEEE Spectrum

<http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-highk-solution/0>

This is an example of just how hard it is to keep progress in
microprocessors. The silicon oxide layer was the barrier to smaller,
much more low power chips. The layer had got down to 5 atoms of silicon
across in 65 and 45nm chips which we've seen in recent years. The
problem has been worked on for over a decade. Mass production of chip
elements 5 atoms thick is extraordinary but the solution is even more
extraordinary. The very latest generation of chips will see the
transistor change at a fundamental level and layers of materials will be
deposited at a single atom thick. The technique sounds fantastical. A
gas is pumped in which reacts with the surface layer of the chip to
produce a single layer of molecules coating a surface then other gases
are pumped in which react with the first layer to produce multilayered
materials with each later a single atom in thickness.

I wish there was something half as clever in mental health science and
technology. They can't even get the fucking measures right. They're
battling a placebo effect that is as effective as treatments which have
billions spent on R&D. Of course silicon science is much simpler than
the human condition but the rate it's accelerating there'll whole new
consciousnesses developing before the human race can understand its own.

Guide to buying a cheap smartphone

1 - buy on ebay
2 - buy a model released last year or the year before.
3 - Research widely. Many early model smartphones have quirks or lack
the processing power for the very best applications.

I've recently got a T-mobile G1/HTC Dream. It's the first Google phone.
There's a huge community of developers making software upgrades for the
phone. The main reason I chose it was as an alternative to a light,
portable laptop. My primary use for a laptop is text and internet
access. When I was taking photos I'd need a proper business
ultraportable but editing photos on the move wasn't part of my current
requirement.

The G1 can't multitask well and augmented reality applications are
limited in their performance however many useful applications like Beer
Goggles work well. There's lots of community upgrades which can install
customised and new versions of the Android operating system however
installing these is best done by technical users.

Thursday 23 December 2010

Molten-AlloyDriven Self-Assembly for Nano and Micro Scale System Integration 227

http://bardeen.ee.washington.edu/research/mems/publications/2007/journals/Saeedi-FDMP-2007.pdf
Ehsan Saeedi, Shaghayegh Abbasi, Karl F. B¨ohringer and Babak A. Parviz
FDMP, vol.2, no.4, pp.221-245, 2006

Some information on the state of manufacturing micro- and
nanotechnology circuits. From the paper it seems microelectronics is a
much more mature technology then nanotech. In 2006 Nanotech was faced
with many obstacles for creating functional large scale integrated
circuits. In 2006 there were many challenges and much of the work was
highly experimental.

4-5 years in the cutting edge of technology can bring significant
advances though. Very Large Scale Integration is probably not possible
at the moment and the paper gives no estimates of what yield levels are
like. This is the significant challenge with VLSI. Making devices with
hundreds of millions of components all which work perfectly is very
hard. Bell Labs when first experimenting with integrated circuits in the
mid-20th century said they couldn't be made because though they could
fabricate 20 transistors onto a silicon or gallium arsenide wafer (can't
remember if they'd started to use silicon yet) they couldn't do it
reliably enough for a production line. When I was at university they
could fabricate 2 billion transistors onto a 1cm square of silicon in
the lab however these ultra-high densities have not been seen in
commercial products since I left university almost a decade ago. Yield
is a critical factor in large systems integration technology reaching
the market place.

The potential of nanotechnology is huge as the science starts making
functional units and small circuits at the nano scale. I'll have to work
through the calculations but I think a high quality bionic contact lens
will require nanotechnology to achieve realistic levels of resolution.
Even a 1 megapixel bionic lens needs to fit the LEDS into a 1.2mm circle
(roughly) which means each pixel consisting of 3 LEDS (Red Green Blue)
will be less than a micrometre. One megapixel is a 1000 x 1000 screen
which when placed over the eye won't give very high resolution. 5000 x
5000 will make a photorealistic rendering of information using a bionic
contact lens but the technology to produce this sort of very high level
of miniaturisation and high productions yields is, in my opinion, a very
far distance in the future..

Tuesday 21 December 2010

A quote from a film that speaks more than words the value of lived experience in mental health.

""Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until
you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the
Radley porch was enough."

It's from the great work To Kill A Mockingbird
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird

It means a lot in mental health.

Permanent digital overlay and physicality and double bagger birds

I'm thinking about this because a mate of mine just pointed out one
small area of social change caused by the bionic contact lens. No more
"double bagger birds", i.e. no more ugly women so ugly that they need
two paper bags of their head while making love in case the first one
breaks. The guy's got a PhD but it's his sense of the future that's his
true wisdom. It's a brutally British phrase and he's talking about the
end of ugliness.

Imagine a world when digital overlay over the real is possible all the
time. It might not happen for a century but eventually people will
become able to be fused with technology in ways we can barely comprehend.

One way that's starting is the overlay of information on the real world.
This is Articulated Naturality and augmented reality. People may think
that this would never be a permanent feature of their lives in their
lifetimes but that's what people said about the internet a decade ago
and within a decade 99% of phones will be internet connected and
augmented reality a hasbeen technology.

So what if people who were 'ugly' (different from the consensus
construct of beauty) could be who ever they wanted without resorting to
plastic surgery. Or the person who can't stand to see ugly people can
overlay 3D avatars over people.

In a hundred years people will still be people but technology will have
advanced. What if people are still trapped in the value of physicality,
of beauty over other attributes? What if there are whole new options for
people to conform or not experience non-conformity?

There are philosophical questions of what is beauty to an individual and
there are sociological question or perhaps more humanitarian questions
suchn as how do we help people to enjoy but not overvalue physical
beauty in their relationships, interactions and expectations of people.
Those are harder to answer and to act upon. They're for another lifetime
perhaps.

really useful book on the optics of the human eye

Optics of the human eye - Google Books
<http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=MHgx-jBA0TAC&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=field+of+view+human+eye&ots=DGJujLC898&sig=XJEbATplJ0kMTjidiP9zXTrxHao#v=onepage&q=field%20of%20view%20human%20eye&f=false>

Reference for 5 million cones figure.

Diversity and mental illness (and learning difficulties) (a rambling rant)

Diversity is a complex concept. It's not just about race. It's about gender, religion and ultimately individual diversity on many measures.

The mental health system fundamentally works against diversity in its aspect as a system of enforcing temporary cultural or social norms. The hospitalisation of black activists in the 1970s using the diagnosis of schizophrenia is as potent example of this as the overdiagnosis rate of black men with schizophrenia today (very high rates of overdiagnosis in the UK and US but not in the Caribbean.

I wonder how many essential human experiences are incorrectly lost because of mispathologisation based on the system as a from of socio-political control.

Psychiatry's greatest failing in the aspect of diversity - true diversity - in the treatment of mental illness is the treatment of the individual, i.e. by choosing to treat individual in reduces diversity of the human experience, condition, behaviours, emotions, choices and ways of being. I think that covers everything the mental health system chooses to define.

No. Wait. I've made a mistake. I forgot about learning disabilities. These are often let out of the definition of mental ilness but they're mental illnesses as much as any other is. The social model is disability is the only unifying concept for the spectrum of things in my opinion. The biomedical model of illness is not true in clinical practice nor modern use of diagnosis. The biomedical model may not justify the medicalisation of behaviour, emotion, experience of consciousness or IQ.


Anyway, by treating the individual psychiatry fundamentally reduces the diversity of the human race and attempts to produce automotons (human beings that are like machines). Many constructs do, for example much of formal education is to mould a human being into a robot ready for the factories (which means all work and education establishments which follow the factory mode of work invented as part of the Industrial Revolution). None apart from psychiatry calls itself healthcare so none but psychiatry have the privilege of medicine (which allows the use of dangerous treatments such as ECT to treat what is considered a biological illness and allowed because every dotor used to take a Hippocractic Oath at the moment they graduate to become a doctor which says something along the lines of "first, do no fucking harm to your patient, you twats." OK. I added the last two words. Not sure Hippocrates would be so forthcoming but I think even he would be outraged at what the medical profession embodied in psychiatry has become.

Treating physical illness is different from treating the outcomes, the prognosis according to the social model of disability and the occupational/social outcomes psychiatric research, of mental illness. Making people more 'normal' and making society less diverse...may be a necessary evil. The paradigm of medicine should be applied though. The paradigm of socio-political controlling forces that work to make humanity into a thing for the value of the 'machine' (the society that needs robots rather than humans) needs a different sort of analysis and one without the privilege of 'do gooding' that comes with associating this paradigm with the medical profession.

It is not the only route of compassion in seeing that certain types of behaviour can be treated by considering a person's individuality a biological problem. Society can be changed and the diversity of the human race preserved for future generations who will need to exploit the value of the severely mentally 'ill' for the benefit of a society far in advance of what shit we live amongst in 2010.

After all, any advanced society is a more equal society. But perhaps that's just my bias. To see the individual as equal to any other. To see our potential unrealised to be something we all have in common. To see our humanity in our difference rather than our similarity, but to see this most of all as the strength of the human race I have to put up with being a member of.

Monday 20 December 2010

The game layer on top of the world | GadgetGybe (and madness)

<http://www.gadgetgybe.com/gadgets-blog-search/game_layer-seth_piebatsch/>

There's a link to a Ted.com broadcast about a new game layer. I'll have
to watch it at some point.

There are the exciting new technologies which will change the way people
are entertained.

Here's a video of an experimental concept for multiplayer AR gaming in a
cinema. It's worth watching without sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tus58EUr0fM

Of course you can watch it with sound but the effect of the point I'm
making works better with the sound off.

In the next ten years it will become normal to see people acting totally
crazy because they're playing a game in the real world but the game
exists in an imaginary environment, the digital game environment, which
only they and other game players can see.

The people in the video look like they've gone mad. Of course it isn't
the same thing as madness. Clearly people are enjoying the experience
and they can chose to stop it. The projections are a shared 'delusion'
and there is a real computer programmer who's created the environment.
It just looks exactly like what a person expects a room full of mad
people to look like.

One of the changes in society the mobile phone handsfree made possible
was for people who hear voices or need to talk to themselves can use a
handsfree set to disguise their difference. People with Bluetooth
headsets look like they're talking to themselves until the observer sees
the headset. There's some potential for the discountability of other
behaviours thanks to virtual information overlaid on the real world that
can only be seen by people using the right equipment

Sunday 19 December 2010

Was Time to Change the biggest marketing promotion ever

If I said to you lets promote a new industry. I need £22 million and
four years. I'll be clever about it and get the people to do the work too.

And so the mad pound was born. It won't be called the mad pound of
course. The mental health fraternity/sorority are a bit sensitive when
it comes to words. The market for people with a mental health experience
(MPMHE). It's just not as catchy as the mad pound.

Four years ago the idea of a business targeting the mentally ill market
wouldn't really be considered outside the third sector. Today there is
an emerging new market which was promoted by the Time to Change
antistigma campaign.

The campaign sought to change discrimination and stigma amongst other
objectives. In so doing it helped many people create an identity around
their supposed illness. It allowed people a sense of pride rather than
the negativity caused by stigma.

It's just like homosexuality 50 years ago. Today there is a thriving
pink pound, a market which is full of people who had to hide their
supposed illness because of the stigma. Now people can be open and can
be mad pride like things changed in the 1970s for gay men and women.

I don't know what the figures are because I'm not aware of anyone who
collects data on the new market of the mentally ill.

What would these business be like? Well I remember speaking to the Chief
Executive of Travel Matters, a company staffed by people with mental
illnesses. It's a highly successful social enterprise organisation. I
was contacting them for a brief for one of the directors at one of the
UK's leading mental health charities for a Radio 4 interview on travel
and mental health. It surprised me that they didn't offer travel
services specifically tailored to the mentally ill. These would be the
sort of services that could be marketed to the capitalise on the
opportunity of the mad pound.

With 300 in every 1000 people in the UK experiencing a common mental
disorder every year the potential market is huge. Many of those may be
on low income however the size of the market means it's still a
significant opportunity. The opportunity has been created by the changes
brought about by Time to Change so while not everyone will want to
identify themselves as mentally ill many more will do so. Many will also
want products designed for the mentally ill because human suffering and
emotional problems is something that is part of the human condition.

Everybody wants their holiday to go smoothly. Everyone wants to be able
to trust their travel agent. Everyone wants to have good customer
service and be treated like a person. Everyone wants travel agents to
tell the truth. People with mental illnesses can be more sensitive to
the vagaries of customer service and product quality so products
tailored to their needs are desirable by everyone. In a sense they form
the canary in the mine.

Reaching the market is difficult because there are few pervasive
marketing networks. The magazines have small circulation and are niche
products. Mental health TV is in it's infancy. There aren't mass
distribution lists of the mentally ill. Many people are senstiive about
their information being used in this way and perhaps more sensitive than
the general public.

It's just a matter of time though. Time to Change is almost over but the
other charities will have to take up the battleflag and carrying on the
war for their objectives. The inertia created by the campaign will drive
forward and individual's and organisations fill the void when Time to
Change ends next year.

Augmented Reality Marketing In 2010 And Beyond

<http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/12/13/augmented-reality-marketing-in-2010-and-beyond/>

Long list of current AR efforts.

Saturday 18 December 2010

I'm really please to know that Jacqui Dillon has a cat.

I don't know why this pleases me. It just does.

Title of recent review of literature by John Read and Richard Bentall on ECT

The effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy: A literature review.
Epidemiologia e Psychiatria Sociale

Friday 17 December 2010

Just be glad...

...you're not in a psychiatric ward over Christmas.

I was reminded of this thought today. It used to be one of my happy
thoughts, i.e. the thoughts I used to help myself realise I should be
happy. After a comment of Facebook it was brought home to me that some
people spend their Christmases not with loved ones eating themselves
sick and opening presents.

It's not just people in psychiatric wards. It's people in prisons and
other detention facilities. It's the homeless. It's those who are alone.

It's worth thinking about them. Not just to shift my mood out of this
quagmire. It's to realise that Christmas doesn't somehow feel right when
everyone, everywhere can't share in the indulgence. I know it's good to
have one happy day where perhaps people don't have to think about others
who are less fortunate. It's just that I'm a miserable git I think. It
makes me see things so differently.

An essential website for navigating business lingo

This is the sort of thing that David Brent from The Office would love.

http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html

Self-identity and diagnosis

While some people consider mental illnesses real illnesses others
consider them types of people and experiences. So homosexuality is a
different experience of sexuality and are people who consider themselves
homosexual as a distinct type different from heterosexuals.

The same thing can apply with mental illnesses so people can make part
of their identity the 'illness' and they'd be right in doing it. It's
not always positive though. Not for me when I was first diagnosed with a
psychiatric illness - when I was first told I was mad. Now I'm
different, at least on the outside.

Thursday 16 December 2010

So some of this early years shit the government's going on about is actually based on evidence

Here's one paper I've come across this evening which shows the
possibility for enriched environemnts for 3-5 year olds helping in later
life.

Effects of Environmental Enrichment at Ages 3-5 Years on Schizotypal
Personality and Antisocial Behavior at Ages 17 and 23 Years -- Raine et
al. 160 (9): 1627 -- Am J Psychiatry (abstract only)
<http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/160/9/1627>
"
Effects of Environmental Enrichment at Ages 3–5 Years on Schizotypal
Personality and Antisocial Behavior at Ages 17 and 23 Years
Adrian Raine, D.Phil., Kjetil Mellingen, M.A., Jianghong Liu, Ph.D.,
Peter Venables, Ph.D., and Sarnoff A. Mednick, D.Med.

OBJECTIVE: Methods to prevent two major mental disorders, schizophrenia
and conduct disorder, have been elusive. This study assessed the effects
of an early nutritional, educational, and physical exercise enrichment
program on adult outcome for schizotypal personality, conduct disorder,
and criminal behavior. METHOD: Eighty-three children were assigned to an
experimental enrichment program from ages 3 to 5 years and matched on
temperament, nutritional, cognitive, autonomic, and demographic
variables with 355 children who experienced usual community conditions
(control group). Both self-report and objective measures of schizotypal
personality and antisocial behavior were obtained when the subjects were
ages 17 and 23 years. RESULTS: Subjects who participated in the
enrichment program at ages 3–5 years had lower scores for schizotypal
personality and antisocial behavior at age 17 years and for criminal
behavior at age 23 years, compared with the control subjects. The
beneficial effects of the intervention were greater for children who
showed signs of malnutrition at age 3 years, particularly with respect
to outcomes for schizotypy at ages 17 and 23 and for antisocial behavior
at age 17. CONCLUSIONS: The results are consistent with an increasing
body of knowledge that implicates an enriched, stimulating environment
in beneficial psychological and behavioral outcomes. These findings have
potential implications for the prevention of schizophrenia and criminal
behavior.
"

Video Vault Now Live... | Hidden Creative

<http://www.hiddenltd.com/blog/video-vault-now-live>

An archive of augmented reality videos

A little on the 3D printer

This was a fantastical technology a decade ago but they predicted
desktop units within the decade. Low and behold there are desktop units.
There are even inexpensive ones below £200. There are colour ones though
the cheaper models and one colour.

It's not quite become the market that's dominated the headlines or
advertising slots in the media. People still need to assemble their
items so it's not quite as convenient as ending the problem of posting
online purchases. The major breakthrough will be materials which have
properties alterable at the print stage so it becomes possible to print
a pair of spectacles with a single print material that can be
transparent or take the properties of metal.


Microtrends: Printing in 3D - Times Online
<http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article1839765.ece>
"
Microtrends: Printing in 3D
3D printing is cool, expensive and heading for the mainstream. It lets
you print out anything you can build on your computer screen into a
little plastic model
Tom Whitwell

Imagine a machine the size of a photocopier which fills up with a fine
white powder. Once it's finished, you fish around in the powder and pull
out a solid plastic model of whatever was on your computer screen, in
full colour. Three-dimensional printing is gradually, and rather
expensively, approaching the mainstream.

The real thing: If you've got $40,000, you can buy a Z Corp Z450 colour
3D printer, which is the real deal, straight out of Star Trek. It lays
down layers of starch-based powder, zaps it into shapes and paints them
different colours. It takes a few hours to make impossible-looking
plastic models. There's a video of the Z450 in action here at YouTube,
and here's the company home page.

The sugar printer: Physicist and blogger Windell Oskay got bored of
waiting for an affordable 3D printer, so built his own. The Candyfab
4000 uses three sacks of granulated sugar, an aquarium pump, a car jack
and some recycled printer parts. It works, and produces much larger and
cheaper models than the professionals can. As they're made of melted
sugar, they're also edible. Here's a Flickr set of the sugar printer in
action.

Print yourself: Fabjectory rents time on a Z450. They use it to make and
sell 6in high models of avatars – the characters players create to
represent themselves in games like Second Life and World of Warcraft.
For $100 and up, a Fabjectory rep will meet you in Second Life,
virtually photograph you, and a beautiful little model will be on its
way in a few days.

Impossible sculptures: Californian artist Bathsheba Grossman uses a
truly extraordinary $425,000 machine that can print 3D objects in a
mixture of stainless steel and bronze. She prints out intricate
mathematical sculptures which are 3.5in across and cost $360. They're
the perfect gift for that special geek in your life.

Do it yourself: Because not everyone has the $7,000 for even the most
basic commercial 3D printer, plenty of people are trying to build cheap
3D printers themselves. The RepRap project (slogan: 'Wealth without
money') is based at Bath University. They're trying to develop a
self-replicating machine: A cheap 3D printer which can print its own
parts, and could ultimately cost as little as £300. For $3,000, you can
already buy a Fabber kit from Fab@Home, to build a cool-looking perspex
kit which makes rather blobby rubber objects.
"

Wednesday 15 December 2010

Research methodology and looking for alternative correlations

The genetics and dancers research started me thinking about this. So the
authors tested their hypothesis that there's a genetic association with
professional dancers and it turned out to be true. The association was
more than for professional athletes and the control group.

When I think of genetics I think of something that happens over a long
period of time whereas society changes quickly. Genes that have evolved
'selfishly' (according the the game theory mathematics used on gene
evolution science) but the time in which the societies in which they
express are different geographically and temporally.

Genes can also be associated with higher associations with other
phenotypes other than those studies. The research is limited by the
imagination of the authors, so they could have also chosen to add a drug
user group, serious amateur dancers and religious dancers. The last
category may have had a higher association with the gene and a
significantly higher association in Africa or five hundred years ago.

The controls are also interesting. They've just assumed to be this
random mass of homogeneous entities that provide a standard measure.
Within the control group there would be people who also had this gene
but weren't professional dancers. Understanding how the gene expressed
in their profession and/or understanding how the behaviour expressed in
other ways would provide a better understanding of the relationship
between genotype and phenotype than the research on genetics and dancing
published in PloS Medicine.

Genetics applied to mental health is fascinating. It often forgets that
the 'disease' hasn't always been a disease nor will it always be
considered as a disease. It's just behaviour, emotions and experiences
of consciousness. The reliability and validity of the labels is pretty
poor but disappears into the reliability and validity of astrology when
used in clinical practice or outside the most rigorous clinical trials.
Other factors also have a huge influence on the individual's
presentation of a supposed mental illness. Genetics may work with ease
with physical diseases just as positivistic science also seems to work
well however in mental health the science isn't really there to form a
grounding for the genetic evidence to be truly understood and the
variables and considerably larger and less well understood. I hope that
presents a challenge to the scientists working in this field rather than
something they'd dismiss as not true.

If a behavioural and emotional disorder or class of disorders has a lifetime prevalence of over 50% does this constitute something which is normal?

Depression and anxiety and other common mental disorders have a high
lifetime prevalence. In America it's estimated in one study at near or
above 50%. With the extension of grief to become a common mental
disorder (rather than a psychiatric illness) this will tip the scales.

Surely grief is normal? Perhaps it's only because the American system of
healthcare is private insurance backed and there's a need for insurers
to have diagnoses to provide care grief is becoming a mental illness.

It really does beg the question as to what a mental illness is and what
is treatment. Grief is an experience synonymous with the human
condition. Everyone experiences the death of a loved one or thing.

A lot of people also experience high levels of anxiety or misery during
those life. Those lucky few who don't need help in my opinion because
these pathological experiences have value and ,may exist because of the
highs of intense periods of happiness and carefreeness the likes of
which automotons will never experience.

Pathology is therefore based on distress or an aspect of pathology. But
it is remembering that these things aren't truly illness that is
important. There is also a definition of mental illness that revolves
around concepts of normality. By definition a mental illness or a mental
health problem can't really be one if it's normal, i.e. if everyone
experiences it naturally.

That's sort of the argument why grief shouldn't be pathologised. But
psychiatric reasoning for pathologisation of each diagnoses shifts and
changes like a politician justifying a bad decision. There's no simple,
single reason which covers the spectrum of behaviours, emotions and
experiences of consciousness covered by the expanse of conditions in
psychiatric reference manuals, manuals which psychiatrists are meant to
know throughly.

The notion of mental illness as a normal thing is quite strange to the
old guard in any camp of mental health thinking. For them there has
always been a divide between the mentally ill and the mad, just like
there's supposedly a clear divide between homosexuality and
heterosexuality. Except there isn't and there aren't these clear divides
between automotons and the mad.

But those who insist that grief shouldn't be pathologised need to
consider their perspective just as those who consider it should be
pathologised should also consider their persepctive carefully. Disorder
versus distress are perhaps the two important paradigms to think of.
Take what you will from the thought about this paragraph. I'm bored of
this post.

Neurobiological and psychological effects of exhaustion syndrome

Exhaustion Syndrome Explored | Psych Central News
<http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/11/23/exhaustion-syndrome-explored/21139.html>

"
A new research paper from Sweden discusses the condition termed
exhaustion syndrome, also called burnout and exhaustion depression.

Investigators believe the condition leaves objectively measurable
changes in the brain — including reduced activity in the frontal lobes
and altered regulation of the stress hormone cortisol.

A research team at Umeå University wanted to study whether this patient
group had any susceptibility factors that could explain the development
of their disorder.

The patient group is distinguished by being anxious and pessimistic,
with a weak sense of self, common in many psychiatric disorders. What
was special about this group was that they stood out as persistent,
ambitious, and pedantic individuals.

Being ambitious, fastidious, and overachieving also appears to make a
person more prone to exhaustion syndrome.

Regulation of the stress hormone cortisol is also impacted in the group,
with altered sensitivity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA
axis).

According to Agneta Sandström's dissertation, individuals with
exhaustion syndrome show reduced brain activity in parts of the frontal
lobes. Her paper addresses whether it is possible to use
neuropsychological tests to confirm and describe the cognitive problems
reported by patients suffering from exhaustion syndrome.

Above all, patients with exhaustion syndrom demonstrate problems
regarding attention and working memory. Patients were asked to perform
working memory tests while lying in a functional magnetic resonance
imaging machine.

Exhaustion syndrome patients proved to have a different activity pattern
in the brain when they performed a language test of their working
memory, and they also activate parts of the frontal lobe less than
healthy subjects and a group of patients who had recently developed
depression.

The HPA axis in the patient group shows reduced sensitivity in the
pituitary, with less secretion of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)
following stimulation with corticotropin (CRH), as well as heightened
sensitivity in the adrenal cortex, with increased release of cortisol in
relation to the amount of ACTH secreted.

There is also a difference in the diurnal rhythm of corisol, with the
patients presenting a flatter secretion curve than the other two groups.
The researchers could not detect any reduction in the volume of the
hippocampus, in the patient group.

The proportion of individuals with measurable levels of the
pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin 1 is higher in the patient group.

In summary, the studies indicate that there is an association between
personality, general health, cognitive ability, and neuroendocrinal
dysfunction in exhaustion syndrome.

Sandström has also found support for there being similarities with
clinical depression, but with well-defined differences.
"

Mobile phones applications and charities

This sounds like a really crappy application for teenagers. The goal is
laudable but the app itself doesn't look very entertaining.

The Salvation Army drives mobile giving via teen-focused social justice
app - Mobile Commerce Daily - Applications
<http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/the-salvation-army-drives-mobile-giving-via-teen-focused-social-justice-app/>

Charities still think a mobile phone is something used to make telephone
calls, at least in the UK. They're so much more. They're an opportunity
for charities looking to experiment with new channels of revenue
generation,. brand awareness and campaigning.

Many UK charities were slow to realise the potential of social network
applications. May have yet to catch up. Charities form part of the Third
Sector and this sector is historically IT naive.

Going from one end of the spectrum to the other, going from working at a
national mental health charity to a bleeding edge technology firm is
enlightening. Charities are focused on value from their IT and a no risk
strategy. Where I used to work the fastest PC was slower than the
fastest mobile phone next year, all apart from one which was purchased
by an employee who was a fellow power user and got so friustrated with
the IT he bought his own computer in. My personal IT situation is
currently little better but this is a problem of expendiency, i.e. I
haven't got time to build and setup a new PC. I just need to get on with
my job.

This mentality is a leftover from the charity sector. I know that
getting my setup sorted will improve productivity in the long term and
greatly reduce my frustrations however I felt I need to get the core
part of my role sorted first and this meant getting a site ready very
quickly with some good, high brow content.

I'm a professional blogger and this sounds impossible to people in the
charity sector because they still think news and opinion are things only
found in newspapers. New media is a new area for them as it is for me.

I'm blogging on mobile phone and other technology related to a brand. I
come across a lot of new ideas which would be useful for charities to
increase their impact and reach a young audience but I think few
charities would understand the opportunity. The big marketing companies
understand it though. They're fighting for purchase in the new estate of
mobile phones for brand awareness and product promotion, utility and new
avenues for generating leads and sales. These are all things
successfully charities do to but they call it raising awareness,
campaigning, fundraising and other charity concepts.

Maybe they need a consultancy? A not-for-profit charitable one of course.

A great quote on Civilisation

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and
justice he is the worst.
Aristotle

Tuesday 14 December 2010

affquake - Google Search

<http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&client=opera&hs=nSK&rls=en&q=affquake&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=>

Emotional controlled gaming. This example may be the first ever.
Galvanic skin response is used to measure arousal. High levels of
arousal make the player's Quake character bigger but easier to hit. A
startled response makes the Quake character jump back. There's a post on
the Google page from one of the original undergraduate team doing the
project.

A right to die?

It's really very hard to ruminate about this. I have conflicting
personal responses. Assisted suicide is illegal over here but just like
cannabis I can just hop on a plane and get what's illegal here legally
elsewhere.

The Swiss have a good system set up. There's not huge numbers of people
queuing to use facilities like Dignitas or Exit. Dignitas is the only
one that accepts people from other countries though. It also accepts
people who've had mental health problems.

I have the option of a peaceful option and one I can plan towards. It
doesn't have to be messy and though I can use a method with a very high
chance of success there's nothing like the reliability of the methods
used at Dignitas. I assume it's a quiet, peaceful death and one where I
can have a period of contemplation before I die. My organs should be ok
for donation, what's left of them after the way I've treated my body.

And as I look forward to that day I contemplate other matters. Not the
suffering of my friends and family which is what a decent person would
be thinking about in these circumstances. I think about the question of
whether it should truly be a right?

In an abstract sense of course it is a right. All I truly own is my life
and while that too can be taken it's no one else's property but mine. My
life is my own to end.

But then comes the problems of mental illness and temporary states of
willingness to die. I've left a four year time between now and when I
die however there have been other times when I have acted in emotion or
haste and attempted suicide.

I think most people will want to see what I'm doing as a sign of mental
illness but it isn't. They'll want to pathologise it so they can modify
my thinking. It is compassion in a way but it is also fundamental to
what the mental health system is wrongly used for.

It can be rational to want to die. It can also be a response to life
events but one that won't change. Fundamentally it is my right to decide
and mental illness can't be used as a weapon to control me if I disagree
with consensus thinking or attitudes so that all my decisions and
actions that are considered undesired can be pathologised.

I think about this idea of the value of a right to die for everyone
because it's an important question. People may not understand but that
doesn't give them the right to control my life or control my death.

But then this right means people die. It is their own free will but they
still die. I'm against that sort of thing at a fundamental level too.

If it boils down to practicality then the practicality is 6000 people a
year successfully take their life in the UK and over 10% of people who
have had their life terminated at Dignitas were from the UK (this is
true as a of a few years ago at least). In fact the UK suicide rate may
be fractionally higher if the Oxford suicide research team don't take
into account the deaths at Dignitas. They provide a very important
sample for research and perhaps a unique opportunity.

Just like the UK law on drugs, it's not about practicalities though.
It's about a dominant sense of morality that means drugs are illegal as
is assisted suicide.

Both these laws will change though.

Extraordinary pricing for 3D printers

At the time I read about this technology the prices for a laser printer
was about what these object printers cost now.
http://www.reprapcentral.com/vmchk.html

These are based on rapid prototyping machines and still only print using
a single material. The hoped break through which would make the
technology more useful was materials which could have properties based
on variables tha could be applied in these printers, for example being
blasted with a certain wavelength to make the transparent or opaque. I
don't this technology ever matured though.

List of all big technology events this year

http://mashable.com/2010/12/13/100-upcoming-social-media-tech-events-19/

Geo-SEO

I'm not even sure what the term means but I like. It's silly and rhymes.

It will happen of course: it's the science of how localised search
results get prominence.

I hope someone else calls it Geo-SEO and not GSEO or an acronym of
proximity or other technology synonyms for geolocation.

An example of taking a positive from severe mental health problems

I found myself saying the sentence, "I'm coming up with ideas like a
schizophrenic in a cannabis factory."

Fucking irritating Facebook

I'm just having one of those moments that gets me irritated by new
technology.

Facebook has a new profile design. It offered me the option to change. I
didn't respond so it automatically switched me over. I couldn't be arsed
to look through the settings to disable the new design so I left it.

Recently I've tried to add links to my Wall but it keeps crashing my
browser. They've clearly not tested it properly. And now once I've had
to go through the hassle of restarting my browser I'll have to waste my
time going through all the settings.

This is just fucking irritating. I didn't chose to have the new Wall and
now it's crashing my machine. There was the same problem with the
Facebook photo uploader. It was crap and took too long. Using the older
one was easier but they disabled it so I ended up emailing my photos
across instead.

As my dogma of engineering and progress new things have to be at least
as good as the old one. Facebook clearly hasn't got that element sorted.
But they're not really a great company. Just one with a good idea.

Fucking fascists. Censoring art.

Amisulpride in low doses treats depression by increasing dopamine activity but in higher doses inhibits dopamine activity to treat psychosis

Amisulpride - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amisulpride#Pharmacology>

Now this is news to me.
"
Amisulpride functions primarily as a D2 and D3 receptor antagonist. It
has high affinity for these receptors with dissociation constants of 2.8
nM and 3.2 nM, respectively. Although standard doses in the 400 to 1200
mg a day range used to treat psychosis inhibit dopaminergic
neurotransmission, low doses in the 50 to 200 mg range preferentially
block inhibitory pre-synaptic autoreceptors. This results in a
facilitation of dopamine activity, and for this reason, low dose
amisulpride has also been used to treat clinical depression.
"

What a funky drug. In low doses it facilitates dopamine activity but in
high doses it inhibits it.

When major tranquilisers were first introduced the psychiatric community
thought they would increase levels of depression. I wonder if at the
time they even had a dopamine hypothesis or just guessed but based on a
different understanding, a truthful one that the drugs were just like a
chemical straitjacket (and produced a similar docility-inducing effect
to a lobotomy).

PErhaps I'm simplifying brain neurochemistry too much in assuming that
because this drug is used to treat clinical depression when it's used as
a dopamine facilitator the opposite effect which it produces when it's
used as a tranquiliser might cause depression. After all, it's a
serotonin hypothesis for depression and a dopamine one for psychosis
which justifies the entire biomedical model of treatment...but that
myth's been dispelled so many times now that it's not correct to call
mental illness an illness unless the use of words to describe things
unrelated to fundamental concepts is considered an acceptable use of
language.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm oversimplifying this but perhaps it's worth noting
that antipsychotics are now being used in the treatment of depression.
In America there are new drugs being licensed for treatment resistant
depression which combine antidepressants and antipsychotics in a single
pill. I don't know if it's antipsychotics used to promote dopamine or
inhibit dopamine which is how these new drugs attempt to work with
treatment resistant depression.

Totally nucking futs - a printer that prints itself

While looking for information on the state of play of object, Z- or 3D
printers I came across this extraordinary concept: a printer that prints
itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RepRap_Project

So it's an object printer capable of making the bits to make itself.
Spooky eh? It's what cell replication is like.

It's also a totally brilliant idea for the economics of 3D printers. I
hadn't even thought about this when I heard about this over a decade
ago. The first unit is expensive but afterwards it's just the advanced
polymers and a few other bits that are expensive. (Why do I suddenly
feel like I sound like a 3D printer salesman...).

This is a revolutionary ownership model and very third wave of humanity.
Henry Ford never thought that factories might build factories one day.

I'm a cunt

I said this to a very well paid dual diagnosis therapist I met in the
pub last week.

He wasn't very happy that I said it and told me not to. It was offensive
to women.

I apologised and said I was a cock. He thought that was ok.

Comparison of Two Pharmacological Treatments of Pedophilia - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov

<http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00601276?cond=%22Paraphilias%22&rank=3>

This is probably where I'll get abuse for my views. This terminated
trial is an example of how drug are used for thought and behaviour
change. Yes, it's for paedophilia and everyone knows that's a terrible
thing. It's not really an illness though it may or may not be possible
to 'treat' it with drugs. It's only an illness in the same way
homosexuality was considered an illness.

As psychiatry is revealed to be a system of thought and behavioural
control is becomes less and less something that is considered with the
same status as the real medical field. The example I've chosen is a hard
one because people would feel the need to 'treat' these people however
lets step away from the language of health. Let's not say "cure" because
that implies no challenge and innate goodness in the activity. Say brain
wash and behaviour modify, just as was done to homosexuals in the past.

Of course paedophilia is a terrible thing but it is still a cultural
construct of problematicness. There are tribes where the chief deflowers
every girl and this is an accepted part of the culture so it becomes
normal and there is as much, or even less, trauma than how many women
lose their virginity. For some this can happen drunk round the back of
some local pub.

It needs to be managed as a behaviour and thought pattern but there are
ethics that must be applied. Within psychiatric these ethics don't exist
because they're focused on disease management principles, principles
which are based around saving patients lives rather than making changes
in people to make them fit into cultural norms.

How many dual diagnosis patients does it take to change a lightbulb?

NHS answer: who cares? It's drink that's their problem. They don't get
to have light till they stop drinking.

Monday 13 December 2010

This is an ace video

Speaks of out time.

Get MAD!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=454910539281&oid=137026386324178&comments

Society doctors

Consider that mental illness can be healed (or caused) by society
changing. One aspect is increased acceptance. Another is social systems
and formal constructs changing, for example the introduction of
flexi-time. Another is actual social or cultural influence, for example
whatever is behind the significant shift in the prevalence of
hysteria/conversion disorder plus specific sexual disorders or the rapid
change of the presentation of anorexia in Hong Kong after a media story
published Westernised symptoms.

This is little regarded in psychiatric research and there's a dearth in
this activity from the psychiatric profession.

Death is perhaps a poor word to use since it implies a need or want for
interventions in society designed by psychiatrists, a profession where
sociology (perhaps precisely socio-politics but I think you know what I
mean) is rarely considered in early learning or ongoing education.
Psychiatrists and psychiatry focus on changing the individual and seeing
deviance from undefined, and often unchallenged, norms of behaviour as
an illness to be changed at individual level.

I say we need a new profession! Heck. We says we need a new profession,
one not borne from a bastardisation of another profession as in
pychiatry, the illegitimate son of medicine and social/behavioural
regulation.

So perhaps entitling this post Society Doctors was a bad start. Bugger.
But you know what I mean. A professional body of people who's goal it is
to heal the illness in society which creates disability according to the
social model expanded to consider societal disability, i.e. the
disability that causes the difference between rich and poor
(irrespective of common constructs of social disability). This is an
objective of psychiatry as it is an objective for anyone who wants
equality but expands the ideal of social disability to a wider section:
those who are disabled by disadvantage.

Who but the odd idealist truly seeks to create more equality.
Politicians will use such idealism as rhetoric to get elected but
history shows they lose this idealism quicker than voter can learn to
hate democracy because their elected officials can lie. Every decade
seems to produce more and more reports and pieces of research but with
no action. The rich die richer and later. The poor die poorer and earlier.

Put it this way, low socio-economic status can be more disabling than a
person with a common mental disorder born into a very wealthy home.
(This is not to say that those who have money and suffer a common mental
disorder nor am I saying they are in no way disabled by society, just
the comparison between two individuals needs to be illustrated to bring
poverty into the sphere of social disability).

It sounds like a strange idea - healing society to heal individuals -
but it makes sense in my head.

Is modern life a cause of mental illness?

I'm considering Hysteria and how this diagnosis has gone from endemic
prevalence to relative obscurity. One might suggest this was an
achievement of psychiatry and psychoanalysis or one might suggest that
this is due to a change in society.

My bias is the latter so I'll wander along that thought process.

The idea of split personality is falsely associated with the modern
diagnosis of schizophrenia. Split personality is still considered by
many as schizophrenia and by attachment of that label it's immediately
considered a pathological state.

And yet how many of us have different personalities. Perhaps these are
personalities that we control and are therefore different to a person
with dissociative identity disorder. Nonetheless one might suggest that
we don't look examine people's personality to look for signs of their
different personalities showing in every day life.

I'll give the example of lawyer. In the office they are one person. In
their private life they may be a very different person. In court they'll
be different. In their family life they may be different.

These are all areas where people have to play roles. They are roles
which people have to develop into. Not everyone is flexible and
malleable to easily fit into these different roles. Even for those that
are it takes time. The change make not always be what the individual is
suited to so there's a force applied to get them to develop the
personality or façade required for each of their roles.

Is this correct though? Is society forcing people to behave in ways
they're not meant to be like. It's as though people are required to
change to suit the task which is agreeable in the context of
productivity yet denies the human.

The flexibility of personality seems an important requisite of modern
life but perhaps this is something only few people can achieve. Actors
and actresses might excel at their ability to play these roles having
had the training to dissociate themselves from their external
presentation. Others may have higher levels of connectivity between
their inner self and outer presentation, for example the person who
wears their heart on their sleeve or the person with no poker face.

Our internal selves are forced to present ourselves differently in
different areas of life but this seems nonsensical to someone coming
from a perspective where society is built for the human race rather than
the other way around. People are forced to sheer themselves internally
to fit within their various roles, to wear the many "hats" (as De Bono
puts it) as is expected of a 'normal' human being. It's as though
society wants people to have multiple personalities as long as all the
personalities are under control yet vilifies those who don't have their
personalities under control.

And, as in my view happened to the majority of what was diagnosed as
hysteria, could a change in society offer a way to salve the souls of
those trapped in pain through society's requirement of controllable
multiple personalities and façades of characters we're asked to don to
work and play well?

Sunday 12 December 2010

The risks of social media and people power

Vodafone website hijack Blog | False Economy
<http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/vodafone-website-hijack>

"
Earlier today, campaigners noticed that tax dodgers Vodafone were
running a competition through Twitter for the best tweet containing the
hashtag #mademesmile.

The company was automatically publishing all such tweets on its website
competition page. Within an hour, Vodafone's website was inundated with
anti-tax avoidance messages.
"

Examples on the site.

Friday 10 December 2010

The Three Musketeers and idealism in organisational behaviour

!One for all and all for one." It's the motto of the Three Musketeers
and the unofficial motto of Sweden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unus_pro_omnibus,_omnes_pro_uno#Unofficial_motto_of_Switzerland

It wouid be great if organisations and communities are like this in an
idealist's sense. I think there's probably a continuum of this sentiment
upon which different organisations and social groups score upon.

It feels like a very socialist ideal to me. It's what I'd want from my
squad if I were ever a soldier.

It's about employees being allowed flexibility in supporting their
colleagues in work and can informally extend to the nature of work
relationships/social cliques. Workloads in any organisation that has to
react to the environment they do business in requires needs this
capacity to be able to meet these needs. This can be done through hiring
additional human resource as well. It's an option which is commonly used
and often works for relatively menial tasks. But at other times it's
skilled staff with knowledge of the organisation and the systems that
are needed fast. Cross trained staff with workload planning to allow for
the spare resource to react to each others varying work needs can mean
projects can be delivered better and on schedule.

There's also the impact of very high stress levels. In many
organisations people work at a continual rate of high stress. Meeting
the demands of peak loads can take those stress levels beyond the apex
of the stress-performance/cognition curve so work becomes less
effective. Riding this curve is a fine art but if done well the highest
productivity and performance can be achieved with the mimimum negative
impact on employee physical and mental health.

I guess anyway.

The cake scene from Brass Eye

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwylBRucU7w&feature=player_embedded

A lot of information on mental augmentation.

Thislink is one of those gems if you're interested in far out
technology. Mental augmentation. Biochips that make us smarter.

http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1992/WildPalms.html

"
__________________________________________________________

IEEE Transactions on Medical Electronics v15 n3 July-September 1971, pp.
1175:1195


An Invasive Approach to High-Bandwidth
Neural-Electronic Interfaces

Dexter Wyckoff
principal scientist, Mimecom Seldon Research Center, Sebastopol , California

Rajiv Kamar
research neurobiologist, Department of Psychology, University of
California at San Francisco

Fred Wright
computer systems engineer, Project One, Berkeley, California


ABSTRACT In previous years one of the authors (Wyckoff) reported on the
development of synthetic neurotransmitter analogs that, administered
intravenously, enhanced certain mental functions, including memory
formation and recall, and ability to maintain attention for extended
periods. Further efforts in that direction yeilded diminishing returns.
In an offshoot of this work, the authors investigated the possibility of
augmenting mental function by physically linking brain structures to
external computer hardware. After locating a suitable neural connection
site (the mammalian corpus callosum) we developed hardware and software
for the task. This paper describes our first unambiguously successful
results, obtained in a juvenile squirrel monkey, which was able, in
consequence, to play chess and to read at the level of a schoolchild,
activities far outside of its normal competence.
Our approach generalizes straightforwardly to human augmentation, and
points to the additional possibility of gradually migrating memories,
skills and personality encoded in fragile and bounded neural hardware to
faster, more capacious and communicative, and less mortal, external
digital machinery--thus preserving and expanding the essential
functional of a mind, even as the nervous system in which it arose was
lost. A mind and personality, as an information-bearing pattern, might
thus be freed from the limitations and risks of a particular physical
body, to travel over information channels and through the ether, to
reside in alternative physical hosts.

Introduction Traditionally human central nervous systems (CNS) and
electronic computation and communication devices have been linked via
the bodily senses and musculature--an approach requiring only simple
technology and incurring little medical risk. Unfortunately this
straightforward avenue has very low information bandwidth: effectively a
few kilohertz of sensory information (primarily vision) into the CNS,
and a mere one tenth of that figure out. Much higher transfer rates are
observed within the CNS. In particular, the corpus callosum connects the
right and left cerebral hemispheres with 500 million fibers in the
human. Each fiber signals on average at about ten hertz, for an
aggregate rate of several gigahertz: about one million times the
bandwidth of the senses. The corpus callosum connects to all major
cerebral areas, offering a spectacular opportunity for electronic
interaction. The primary challenges are the invasive nature and massive
scale of any comprehensive link. In other publications we have described
the design of "neural combs" which can be inserted non-destructively
into nerve bundles to make contact with a large fraction of the fibers:
they are scaled up relatives of cochlear implants used in nerve-deafness
surgery. This paper describes experiments in which neural combs were
implanted into the callosa of primates, and connected to a computers
running adaptive algorithms that modeled the measured neural traffic and
correlated it with sensory, motor and cognitive states, and later
impressed external information on this flow.
The animals (squirrel monkeys) used in the experiments have a CNS size
about one two hundredth that of a human, with a corpus callosum of less
than ten thousand fibers, greatly simplifying both the surgical and
computational aspects of the work. In each experiment a neural comb with
two thousand microfiber tines at ten micron separation, each carrying
along its length one hundred separate connection rings, was carefully
worked between the axons in the callosum of the experimental animal.
After a week to heal surgical trauma, a cable bundle from the comb to a
PDP-10 ten teraops multiprocessor was activated, and signals from the
tines were processed by a factor-analysis program. Once a rough
relational map had been obtained, a functional map was constructed by
presenting the animal with controlled sensory stimuli, and inducing it
to perform previously trained motor tasks, while correlating comb
activity. The functional map was further refined by processing the
responses to synthesized sensations introduced via the comb. After
several days of stimulation and analysis, the PDP-10 had a sufficiently
good model of the callosal traffic that we were able to elicit very
complex and specific behavior, including some that seem quite beyond the
capacities of the unaugmented animals.
Our most notable results were obtained with animal number three (#3),
out of five subjects. In one demonstration, we interfaced #3 to the
Greenblatt chess program, supplied with the PDP-10 software. We began by
fast-training #3 to discriminate individual chess pieces we presented.
Fast-training is similar to conventional operant conditioning, but
greatly accelerated because the responses we seek and the intense
rewards we generate involve fast, unambiguous, callosal signals, rather
than clumsy physical acts. We then configured the PDP-10 to reward the
animal (by generating callosal stimuli similar to those occurring
naturally when tasty fruit is seen) when it scanned the chess board each
time its turn to move arose. During the scan, the callosal recognition
and location signals for the various chess pieces are translated, by a
program module we wrote, into a chessboard configuration, which is fed
to the chess program, which returns a suitable move. Our program then
stimulates #3's food grasping behavior, directed at the piece to be
moved: in consequence, the animal avidly grasps it. Next, the target
square is singled out for attention, causing the piece to be moved
there. The attractiveness of the piece is then reduced and the animal
loses interest, and releases it. It took several intense weeks of effort
to "debug" this program. Among the problems we encountered were #3's
inattention to other pieces on the board: in early tries it would often
incidentally upset them when reaching for the piece to be moved. We now
activate an aversion response we had noticed in the mapping process: as
best we can determine, #3 now feels about a chess move as it would feel
about a luscious fruit that must be gingerly teased out of a thorn bush.
Another problem was the animal's wandering interest as it waited for its
opponent to move. We solved this by a mild invocation of its response to
certain predators. It now quietly but alertly, somewhat apprehensively,
awaits the move, drawing no attention to itself.
Another demonstration gave #3 more autonomy. We fast-trained the animal
to recognize individual letters of the alphabet, and to scan strings of
such letters it encountered. The letter strings were fed to a dictionary
look up program, whose output was then translated into appropriate
recognition signals for the objects, events and actions in the text. #3
soon learned to respond the labels of containers, and to choose those
whose contents were of interest (usually culinary). When the program is
running, #3 also shows an interest in books, and registers appropriate
reactions such as appetite, excitement, fear, lust and so on appropriate
to the stories it reads. Stories about food and outdoor adventures seem
to be preferred: curious for an animal that was raised in an indoor
breeding colony, and has spent the last five years in small laboratory
cages.
In future work we plan to expand the behavioral latitude available to
our animal subjects while executing programmed tasks, by writing richer
programs more responsive to the animal's internal imperatives, and also
by providing means for the animal to invoke major programs on its own
initiative. These extensions are, of course, interesting in the context
of future applications to human interface.


EMAIL text archive, Kyoto University datacenter, December 2010

Date:
Tuesday, 9 February 1999, 3:27 UT
To:
Chickie Levitt <chickie@neuro.usc.edu>
From:
Ushio Kawabata <ushio@kyotou.jp>
Translation:
jp1->am1
Encoding:
text:rsa-pubkey

Your musings yesterday on a permanent broadband mental link to the
worldnet were very thought-provoking. I think you are right, it would
allow the human mind to bootstrap itself in an effective way into an
entirely new, and much larger, arena of possibilities. In the early
stages the effect would be of an expanded mind, with the contents of the
world libraries as accessible as one's own memories, and the
computational capacities of the world's computers as available as one's
own skills. As integration proceeded, one might slowly download one's
entire personality into the net, being thus freed from all limitations
of the body. It is hard, from our present standpoint, to even imagine
what might be seen and reached from that perspective.

Have you any ideas on how to proceed? There was an article yesterday
article in Comp.Par on Andrew Systems' Crystal 3. It is probably
powerful and small enough to serve as a data compressor for a link: only
1/20 cubic meter for 10 TeraOps: Perhaps one could carry it in a
backpack for a perpetual connection?

********************

Date:
Tuesday, 9 February 1999, 8:16 UT
To:
Ushio Kawabata <ushio@kyotou.jp>
From:
Chickie Levitt <chickie@neuro.usc.edu>
Translation:
am1->jp1
Encoding:
text:rsa-pubkey

Usio-samba!
Well, it would still give a pain to carry your brain. A backpack
compressor might offer higher bandwidth to the net, but would be much
less convenient than a straightforward Eye-glass optic nerve interface
(and considerably more risky). I've been thinking of a way around having
to put all the processing in electronics, and still get higher overall
bandwidth in a vastly more compact form. *If* we could get the neural
connections to cooperate----to crossbar and compress the calloflow----we
could save 99% of the computation and external communication, making
callosum interface practical---- with data rate low enough for a
sat-cell relay. So then, you would have to carry around only a standard
multiplexer and sat-cell transceiver. The hard parts of the operation
can be distributed anywhere over the worldnet!

********************

Date:
Tuesday, 9 February 1999, 8:18 UT
To:
Chickie Levitt <chickie@neuro.usc.edu>
From:
Ushio Kawabata <ushio@kyotou.jp>
Translation:
jp1->am1
Encoding:
text:rsa-pubkey

That would be artful - a few chips at your end, giving access to the
world's data and processing power. Not only images and sounds, as with
Eye-glasses, but, with callosum access, feelings, motor sensations and
more abstract mental concepts, since the connection is to your cortical
areas for those functions. One could be in touch with almost anything in
the web with an intimacy now possible only with one's own thoughts! (on
the other hand, there is danger from useless net blabber all day long:
like mental tunes that will not cease).

Small problem: The crux of your suggestion is to build biological neural
structures to do most of the job we have been doing in electronics. How
does one persuade the neurons to, so conveniently, arrange themselves to
compress your callosum flow for satellite transmission?

********************

Date:
Tuesday, 9 February 1999, 8:19 UT
To:
Ushio Kawabata <ushio@kyotou.jp>
From:
Chickie Levitt <chickie@neuro.usc.edu>
Translation:
am1->jp1
Encoding:
text:rsa-pubkey

Well, that's the hard part all right. I have been reading in
sci.bio.research about gene hacking by the nerve repair crowd at
Hopkins. They've managed to develop viral vectors that infect neurons
and bugger their genetic initiator sequences so neural stem cells begin
differentiating in mid growth program of just about any structure they
want. They can grow an isolated callosum! - Though the ends come out
tangled, since there's no place for them to connect to.

********************

Date:
Tuesday, 9 February 1999, 8:19 UT
To:
Chickie Levitt <chickie@neuro.usc.edu>
From:
Ushio Kawabata <ushio@kyotou.jp>
Translation:
jp1->am1
Encoding:
text:rsa-pubkey

There must be many difficulties there. My friend Toshi Okada, who does
gene-engineering at Tskuba, tells me that in embryology, almost half the
information required to properly grow cell structures comes from the
previously grown structure: expressing the DNA code alone is not
sufficient to build working assemblies in most instances. Though perhaps
additional coding could be added to substitute for insufficient external
framework? That would be rather like building scaffolding in preparation
for construction proper.

********************

Date:
Tuesday, 9 February 1999, 8:20 UT
To:
Ushio Kawabata <ushio@kyotou.jp>
From:
Chickie Levitt <chickie@neuro.usc.edu>
Translation:
am1->jp1
Encoding:
text:rsa-pubkey

They've done some of that, but still get some distortion. It gets better
if the growth is started in the generally right kind of preexisting tissue

I'm thinking of growing a couple of square centimeters of cortical
tissue with callosal fibers that seek out and merge with an existing
callosum. The DNA hackery would be encoded into an RNA virus deposited
on the same electronic chip that contains the digital data interface.
The chip would have chemical target sites for one end of the new nerve
growth, and would be powered by body metabolism via an integrated ATP
fuel cell. Implant the chip somewhere on the edge of the corpus callosum
on the brain midline, and the virus will cause the surrounding brain
structure to grow a biological data-compressing interface between the
chip and the callosum.

The chip would have to be connected to some kind of external antenna to
communicate, maybe a thin wire through the skull, like a hair.

********************

Date:
Tuesday, 9 February 1999, 8:20 UT
To:
Chickie Levitt <chickie@neuro.usc.edu>
From:
Ushio Kawabata <ushio@kyotou.jp>
Translation:
jp1->am1
Encoding:
text:rsa-pubkey

Most interesting proposal! I'll ask Toshi if you can use some of
Tskuba's gene modeling and embryology software to help you with the
design. They've become quite good in the last few years.
I will contact you then.

Best wishes - Ushio


MILESTONES IN MENTAL AUGMENTATION
(side-bar to article in New Scientist, Stepping Out - The Mind
Unbounded, February 16, 2010)

1780
Luigi Galvani demonstrates a connection between nerves, muscles and
electricity by animating frog legs with electricity applied to nerves
leading to muscles, thus hinting at how the internal workings of a mind
could be coupled to external artificial devices.
1906
Ramon Cajal and Camillo Golgi receive Nobel Prize for developing nerve
staining methods and elucidating the detailed structure of the cerebrum
and cerebellum, so providing a rough roadmap for later intervention.
1929
Hans Berger invents the electroencephalogram (EEG) for recording
electrical activity in the human brain: a first crude, one-way channel
into the functioning of the mind.
1952
James Watson and Francis Crick determine the structure of DNA and its
mode of replications, and suggest its role as the control code for
biological growth, so laying the foundation for molecular biology, and
eventually the engineering of biological structures, including neural
assemblies for electronic interfaces.
1953
Wilder Penfield produces maps of the cortex by means of electrical
probes of its surface during brain surgery--evoking specific memories,
sensations and motor responses by stimulating specific locations, thus
establishing the geographic nature of mental organization, and
incidentally providing the first examples of artificial interaction with
the internal workings of the mind.
1959
Robert Noyce and Jack Kirby invent the integrated circuit, a way of
placing many electronic components on a single piece of crystal,
initiating at least a half century of exponential growth in electronic
complexity, the creation of mind-like machines, and eventually the
merger of biological and artificial minds.
1960
Frank Rosenblatt develops and reports on learning experiments with the
Perceptron, an artificial neural net: a way of organizing electronic
components in a structure that anatomically and functionally matches the
organization of biological brains.
1967
George Brindley and William Lewin implant an electrode array into the
visual cortex of a congenitally blind subject, and generate visual
phosphenes (spots) by camera-controlled computer activation of this
array, restoring some sight to a nerve-blind volunteer, and providing an
early major demonstration of a computer-nervous system symbiosis.
1969
Dexter Wyckoff and Rajiv Kamar demonstrate the neural comb, a low-noise,
high-bandwidth external channel to the nervous system, providing for the
first time potentially total external access to higher mental functions.
1971
Wyckoff, Kamar and Fred Wright use a neural comb with a PDP-10 computer
to enable a squirrel monkey to play chess and to read, an early example
of mental augmentation by electronic means.
1974
Walter House and Janet Urban install a cochlear implant driven by an
external computer, restoring partial hearing to a nerve-deaf patient,
and creating a successful medical niche for electronic substitution of
lost sensory functions.
1982
William DeVries installs first permanent artificial heart implanted in a
human subject, causing a major shift in the public perception of the
relation of "natural" biological functions to "artificial" mechanical
devices.
1987
Josephine Bogart and Paul Vogels install a neural comb in the corpus
callosum of an epileptic patient, and program an external computer to
interrupt seizures: the first human application of a neural comb.
1991
Carver Meade develops an artificial retina, integrating tens of
thousands of artificial neurons on an integrated circuit, developing
some of the analog techniques used in the electronic portions of future
"neurochips."
1994
Ushio Kawabata develops a successful predictive model of human cortical
behavior building on Edelman's "neural darwinism" formulation, an
essential step in providing the engineering environment used to design
the neural structures grown by neurochip viruses.
1997
Ushio Kawabata and Chickie Levitt develop an information-efficient
method of deriving functional neural anatomy from dense observations of
nerve signals, so laying the foundation for the mental mapping process
used to adapt a neurochip to its host.
2000
Chickie Levitt and Toshi Okada develop a genetic design for a neural
interface between the human callosum and a data transmission integrated
circuit. This design is encoded into RNA viruses which are part of
neurochip implants, and act by infecting nearby neural tissue, so
causing the growth of connective and data-compressing neuron structures
that connect the electronic portion of the neurochip with the brain.
2003
Chickie Levitt combines previous electronic, genetic and neural
innovations to produce the first complete, functional, self-connecting
neurochip.
2005
The first experiment with neurochips is partial success. A
neurochip-augmented chimpanzee demonstrates an equivalent human IQ of
190 for two months, before dying of a brain tumor.
"

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We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"