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Pychology + Marketing

New Research Report: What Google’s Doing To Your Memory

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Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips – Abstract

The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can “Google” the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.

Check it out at ScienceMag.org.

Progressive Disorders: Quick Facts on Multiple Sclerosis & Alzheimer’s

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Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disorder in which cells target a part of your body. There is no way to turn it off, therefore it is a progressive disorder.

  • Affects 2.5 million people in North America + Europe
  • Immune system attacks myelin
  • Formation of scar tissue
  • Results in numbness, weakness, tremors, and vision disturbances
  • More common in women
  • May experience flare-ups due to stress and/or illness

Drugs can slow down multiple sclerosis, but cannot stop it entirely.

Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer's Disease is a Progressive Disorder
Alzheimer's Protein Fibril

Not all memory impairment is due to Alzheimers. Alzheimers is a progressive disease that affects about:

  • 10% of US population over 65
  • 30% of US population over 85

Typical symptoms of Alzheimer’s include memory declines, confusion, irritability and difficulty eating/eliminating. Brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s Disease include:

  • Neurofibrillary tangles
  • Amyloid plaques – scar tissue, dead neurons
  • Changes in memory structures – hippocampus/amygdala, ventricles get larger
  • The disease attacks acetylcholine neurons that are responsible for neurons
  • Some evidence of chronic immune activity in the brain

Studies indicate that there is no clear evidence that sundowning in more common in Alzheimer’s patients, although it does occur.

Perception: Learning Eye Anatomy

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Anatomy of the Eye - DiagramBefore you can understand the psychology of perception, a basic knowledge of eye anatomy is necessary.

  • Cornea – Protective membrane on the outside of the eye. If you have an astigmatism, the cornea isn’t as smooth as it should be.
  • Iris – Colored muscle, changes the size of the pupil.
  • Pupil – Black spot that is the hole through which light enters the eyeball.
  • Lens – Focuses light onto receptors.
  • Cilliary Muscles – Pull tight to help us focus.
  • Retina – Layers of different kinds of cells.
  • Fovea – Central point of focus within retina, cleanest, crispest, sharpest point of focus.

Psychology & the Eye

This book from Oliver Sacks a physician, best-selling author, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, talks about many of eye-related disorders. If you’re familiar with “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” you’ll also like this book. In particular, there is a great story on binocular disparity.

The Bilingual Advantage

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A cognitive neuroscientist, Ellen Bialystok has spent almost 40 years learning about how bilingualism sharpens the mind. Her good news: Among other benefits, the regular use of two languages appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Dr. Bialystok, 62, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, was awarded a $100,000 Killam Prize last year for her contributions to social science. We spoke for two hours in a Washington hotel room in February and again, more recently, by telephone. An edited version of the two conversations follows.

Read the entire article at The New York Times.

Biopsychology of Drug Addiction

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Specificity of Drug Tolerance

Drug Tolerance is a decreased sensitivity to a drug that develops due to exposure. In short, more and more of a drug is needed to achieve the same response. It can also be shown when the same dose has effect over time. This is sown by a shift to the right in the dose-response curve.

  • Cross Tolerance – Exposure to one drug can produce tolerance to other drugs that act by the same mechanism
  • Drug Sensitization – Increases in the sensitivity to a drug. You can become tolerant to some effects of a drug, but not others.
  • Not a unitary phenomenon – When a drug is administered at active doses, all kinds of changes can occur to reduce its effects.

How Drug Tolerance Happens

  • Metabolic Tolerance – Changes that reduce the amount of the drug getting to an activation site (increasing the rate it is broken down in the liver)
  • Functional Tolerance – Results from changes that reduce the reactivity of the sites of action to the drug; tolerance to psychoactive drugs (those that change your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and behaviors) is typically functional, and shown by many experiments to be the result of Pavlovian conditioning. In one experiment (Crowell, Hinson & Siegel, 1981), rats injected with alcohol only demonstrated hypothermic effects (temperature reducing) only when they were given alcohol in the same room as it was previously administered. This, and many other experiments, demonstrates the Situational Specificity of drug tolerance.

Conditioned Compensatory Responses – According to Siegal, conditional stimuli that predict drug administration elicit conditional responses opposite to the unconditional effects of the drug – ie, if someone is in a situation where previous drug use has occurred, changes in the nervous system occur to counteract the effects. The day you experience a Conditioned Compensatory Response, you have a craving or physiological need for a drug.

Physical Dependence on Drugs

Occurs when people suffer from withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking a drug, and it is eliminated from their system. Withdrawal symptoms are almost always the opposite of the initial effects of a drug, which suggests that they are produced by the same neural changes that produce drug tolerance.

Biological Theories of Drug Addiction

What is Drug Addiction?

Addicts are habitual users; however, not all habitual users are addicts. The difference is that addicts continue to use a drug despite adverse on their health/life, and repeated, failed efforts to stop using it.

Physical Dependence Theory of Addiction

The earliest models of addiction were based on a theory that suggested drug addicts are driven by an aversion to withdrawal symptoms. However, attempts to gradually curtail drug use in addicts show that nearly all detoxified addicts return to former drug-taking habits. Another piece of evidence is that some drugs, like cocaine and amphetamines, do not produce withdrawal symptoms. Finally, some drugs involve cycles of binges and detoxification, which indicated detoxification does not prevent addicts from renewing their habits.

Positive Incentive Theory

The Positive Incentive Theory suggests that addiction is caused by the anticipated pleasure of taking a drug. Robinson and Berridge’s Incentive Sensitization Theory argue that it isn’t the liking of drug taking, but the anticipated pleasure, that creates addiction, so that in cases of chronic use, the incentive value is often disproportionate to the actual pleasure derived from it. Hence, even though the drugs result in misery, addicts continue to crave them even more.

What Causes a Drug Addict to Relapse?

  • Stress – The major factor in relapse.
  • Priming – Users who have abstained believe that their addiction is under control; however, one use and they often plunge back into addiction;
  • Environmental Cues – Anything previously associated with the drug (times, places, people, objects) associated with the drug can induce relapse.

Facts About Commonly Used Drugs

Tobacco and alcohol have much larger negative health effects on Americans than marijuana, cocaine and heroin

Tobacco

  • Nicotine is the major psychoactive ingredient
  • Responsible for over 3 million deaths per year worldwide (about 450,000 in the US, and about 20% of all deaths in Western countries)
  • High tolerance develops
  • 70% of experimenters become addicted versus 10% for alcohol and 30% for heroin
  • Only 20% of attempts to quit are successful for 2 years or more
  • Nicotine addiction has a genetic component with 65% heritability
  • Smokers are actually more tense than non-smokers; stress level increase between cigarettes
  • Buerger’s Disease – Blood vessels in the legs constrict when nicotine enters the system, leads to gangrene and amputation
  • Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth and early death of a child; levels of nicotine in breastfed infants is nearly as high as in the blood of their smoking mothers

Alcohol

  • 100,000 Americans die each year from alcohol-related diseases and accidents, and is involved in about 3% of all deaths in the US
  • Alcohol is classified as a depressant because it decreases neural firing; at low doses, it can stimulate neural firing and sociability
  • Alcohol has a major genetic component; 55% heritability
  • Blood levels at 0.5% causes risk of death from respiratory depression
  • A  hangover is actually alcohol withdrawal
  • Delirium tremens (DTs) – third phase of withdrawal which starts about 1 to 2 days after cessation, and lasts 3 to 4 days, causes hallucinations, delusions, agitation, confusion, high temperature, and increased heart rate
  • Chronic alcohol consumption is associated with extensive brain damage
  • Korsakoff’s Syndrome – neuropsychological disorder characterized by severe memory loss, sensory and motor dysfunction, and dementia

Marijuana (Cannabis Sativa)

  • Psychoactive ingredient is THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) which are in the form of a sticky resin on the leaves and flowering part of the plant; when extracted, this is called hashish
    Can be smoked, or baked into an oil-rich substrate and ingested orally
  • Usage goes back 6,000 to China
  • George Washington grew cannabis for rope
  • Some laws classify marijuana as a narcotic; however, the structures of the active ingredients, physiological and behavior effects bear no resemblance to other narcotics
  • High  doses impair psychological functioning – short term memory impairment and ability to perform multi-step tasks, slurred speech, limited ability to have a meaningful conversation
  • Seems to curb aggressive behavior
  • Low addiction potential, but tolerance does develop, no obvious withdrawal symptoms
  • Most scientists agree that small amounts have few, if any, permanent adverse effects, and long-term adverse effects are fewer than legal drugs like alcohol and nicotine
  • Respiratory problems are common, as is elevated heart rate
  • Anadamide is a clone of the THC-like chemical that binds to the receptor, but function is still unknown; it may protect the brain from excitotoxicity; mice without these receptors are more susceptible to seizures

Cocaine & Stimulants

  • Stimulants increase neural and behavioral activity
  • Coca-Cola is a mild stimulant that uses caffeine, but originally contained small amounts of cocaine
  • Cocaine is derived primarily in Peru and Bolivia from the coca bush
  • Cocaine hydrochlorida is the white powder most people are familiar with, and it is usually snorted or injected
  • Crack is an impure form of cocaine residue that is usually smoked
  • 1.5 million Americans used cocaine or crack in the last month
  • Often consumed in binges, like alcohol
  • Cocaine psychosis is similar to paranoid schizophrenia
  • Extremely addictive, but mild withdrawal symptoms
  • Blocks the reuptake of catecholamines (dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine)
  • Amphetamines (speed) has effects similar to cocaine; methamphetimines (METH) and MDMA/Esctacy are other popular forms of amphetamines
  • Stimulants are neurotoxins and a large cause for concern; MDMA has been shown to have toxic effects on serotonergic and dopaminergic neurons, and has been shown to cause brain damage
  • Women who use stimulants while pregnant often have children with lower IQs

Opiates: Heroin & Morphine

  • Opium contains morphine and codeine, a weaker derivative
  • Unmatched at painkillers, and can be used to treat coughs
  • Also highly addictive
  • Practice of eating opium became popular in the Middle East around 4000 B.C.
  • Harrison Narcotics Act 1914 made it illegal to sell or use opium, morphine or cocaine, but not heroin, which can penetrate the blood-brain barrier
  • In 1989, Bayer Drug Company marketed heroin, which was available without a prescription, as a non-addictive super-aspirin; it became illegal in 1942
  • About 130,000 Americans currently use heroin
  • Direct health hazards of chronic exposure are fairly minor
  • Dr. William Stewart Halsted, one of the founders of John Hopkins, is rumored to have regularly used opiates
  • Moderate withdrawal symptoms comparable to the flu; sometimes exaggerated in media; not as dangerous or terrifying as withdrawal from barbiturates or alcohol
  • Treatment programs report about a 10% rate

Addictions: Neural Mechanisms of Motivation

Drug Self-Administration Paradigm – Laboratory rats and primates can learn to self-administer addictive drugs, just like humans do
Conditioned Place Preference Paradigm – Drug-free rats will prefer the less comfortable compartment in which drugs were previously administered; importance is that they are tested while drug-free to avoid effects of drugs on behavior

Dopamine & Drug Addiction

Mesotelencephalic Dopamine System – The neurons which compose the brain’s dopamine system are the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental areas in the brain. Most of the axons of dopaminergic neurons have cell bodies in the substantia nigra and project into the dorsal striatum (nigrostriatal pathway). The degeneration of this pathway is associated with Parkinson’s disease.

Get Help for Drug Addiction

If you, or someone you know, suffers from Drug Addiction, get help from a professional. Each drug addiction counseling session an addict undergoes is a step towards building a brighter future without drugs.