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Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
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Was Bin Laden Suffering From Lead Poisoning?
January 7, 2002
Space physiologist Karl Simanonok, PhD thinks that lead poisoning explain Osama bin Laden's madness. In a letter to Uniscience he writes, "When I managed the blood lab at a northern California clinic for the poor, Pakistani children were often found to be contaminated with lead from the black makeup called 'kohl' that their mothers applied around their eyes. Middle Eastern mothers use it on their boys just as much as their girls.
"Lead poisoning is especially bad for children because it can reduce their IQs dramatically and cause developmental problems. In both children and adults, problems associated with lead poisoning increase with blood levels, from behavioral and learning disorders to various physical ailments including high blood pressure and kidney problems, even at moderate levels. At very high levels, lead can cause convulsions, paralysis, coma or death.
"Besides the fact that many Arab cultures have a history of prolonged lead exposure through kohl, lead poisoning should especially be considered a possible factor in recent events because many Arab fighters, including some of the Taliban, traditionally use kohl around their eyes.
"Some pictures of Osama bin Laden certainly suggest he might be wearing kohl, and it is known that he suffers from kidney problems. Lead poisoning could explain bin Laden's kidney problems and could only contribute to the madness of suicide bombers under the influence of malignant religious views."
In support of his hypothesis, Dr Simanonok cited several reports, including Roger D Masters' Sept. 1999 Plenary Address to the Annual Conference of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences. Masters is Nelson D Rockefeller Professor Emeritus in the Dartmouth College Department of Government and head of the Dartmouth Foundation for Neuroscience and Society.
In his address Professor Masters said, "Studies reveal that hyperactive children and criminal offenders have significantly elevated levels of lead, manganese, or cadmium compared to controls; high blood lead at age seven predicts juvenile delinquency and adult crime. At the environmental level, our research has found that environmental factors associated with toxicity are correlated with higher rates of anti-social behavior."
Read more in Uniscience online
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Violent TV Changes the Brain
January 7, 2002
Research conducted over the past 30 years has shown that televised violence does influence viewers' attitudes, values and behavior. Now scientists have shown the areas of the brain that produce these effects.
Past research has shown that there seem to be three main areas of influence: aggression, desensitization and fear.
- Aggression
Viewing televised violence can lead to increases in aggressive behavior and/or changes in attitudes and values favoring the use of aggression to solve conflicts.
- Desensitization
Extensive violence viewing may lead to decreased sensitivity to violence and a greater willingness to tolerate increasing levels of violence in society.
- Fear
Extensive exposure to television violence may produce the "mean world syndrome," in which viewers overestimate their risk of victimization.
The exact neurological processes which led to these changes was unknown. However recent developments in the technology of what is called "brain-mapping" have enabled researchers to actually look inside the brain to see what was going on while people watched violent and non-violent TV. The results have been published in Psychiatric Times.
A team led by John Murray, PhD, professor of developmental psychology at Kansas State University, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the brains of eight children (five boys, three girls; aged 8 to 13 years) while they watched violent and nonviolent videotapes.
The violent video segments consisted of two, three-minute clips of boxing from "Rocky IV". The nonviolent video segments were two, three-minute clips of a National Geographic program on animals at play and "Ghostwriter," a children's literacy program set in a mystery context. In addition, they presented two, three-minute control, rest/fixation clips of an "X" on a blue screen.
They conducted whole-brain fMRI throughout the 18 minutes of viewing. In this study, they found that both violent and nonviolent viewing activated regions implicated in aspects of visual and auditory processing. In contrast, however, viewing violence selectively recruited right precuneus, right posterior cingulate, right amygdala, bilateral hippocampus and parahippocampus, bilateral pulvinar, right inferior parietal and prefrontal, and right premotor cortex.
In this way they found that viewing televised violence appears to activate brain areas involved in arousal/attention, detection of threat, episodic memory encoding and retrieval, and motor programming.
The regions of interest in the brain scans of the eight children included the amygdala, hippocampus and posterior cingulate. These areas of the brain are likely indicators of threat-perception and possible long-term memory storage of the threat-event (particularly, these patterns are similar to the memory storage of traumatic events in post-traumatic stress disorder).
"These activation patterns are important" says Dr Murray, "because they demonstrate that viewing video violence selectively activates right hemisphere and some bilateral areas that collectively suggest significant emotional processing of video violence."
In other words viewing TV violence can have the same effect on the brain as living in a violent home or neighborhood.
It's an interesting speculation: was the old Saxon saga Beowolf with it's tales of bloody deeds and conflicts with fierce dragons a contributory cause of those ancient people's violent behavior, rapine and looting? Would the people of Britain be Briton rather than Anglo-Saxon if the saga had not been created? BM
Read more in the Psychiatric Times online
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Schizophrenia "Linked to Racism"
December 8, 2001
Two recent research findings have thrown into doubt many of the established beliefs about schizophrenia. It now turns out that the disease may not be entirely genetic or the result of prenatal miswiring after all.
Racism and discrimination may be contributory factors in the development of the illness, according to a controversial scientific study published in the British Medical Journal.
The research suggests for the first time that social factors have a major effect on people from ethnic minority groups with a medical predisposition to mental illness. The team at the British Institute of Psychiatry found the rate of schizophrenia in non-white ethnic minorities was highest in those areas where this group comprised a small proportion of the population and lowest where they made up a large population.
Scientists believe the higher rate of schizophrenia in such groups may be explained by increased exposure to, and reduced protection against, stress and life events.
They point to stress being caused possibly by overt discrimination, institutionalised racism and perceived alienation and isolation. Reduced protection from the effects of such stresses could be due to decreased social networks or social buffers in small dispersed ethnic minority populations.
The team carried out their research on 15 electoral wards in Camberwell, south London, which has a large Afro-Caribbean and African ethnic minority population.
Professor Robin Murray, who devised the study, said: "Schizophrenia is thought to have a biological component, but what's interesting in this study is that social factors have a huge effect."
Incidence of schizophrenia among Afro-Caribbeans and Africans in their own countries was much lower, which could be explained by the existence of greater social support networks in their own countries.
Mr Murray said: "In slightly unfamiliar situations you are more suspicious and it may push people who are a bit paranoid to become psychotic. It's social factors at work, rather than something wrong with the brain. The black population in the UK has more difficulty integrating and some of the more susceptible people are developing psychosis, where they wouldn't have done elsewhere."
Research in the US has shown that minorities, especially Afro-Americans, are more prone to mental disorders than are members of the dominant, Caucasian, culture.
Schizophrenia Linked to Herpes
Separately, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have found a significant link between schizophrenia and genital herpes.
They say there is no clear explanation for the link. But they believe that contracting herpes during pregnancy or delivery may trigger psychosis in babies that are already genetically susceptible later in life.
Previous research has suggested that the development of psychotic illnesses may be linked to environmental factors. Being born in the winter, in a city, or to a mother who has an infection have all been implicated.
New Scientist magazine reports that Dr Stephen Buka and his team examined data from 3,804 babies born in Providence, Rhode Island, between 1959 and 1966.
Blood samples were taken from their mothers at their first antenatal check and thereafter every two months until delivery, when the final sample was taken. The researchers identified 27 who suffered psychotic illness as adults. Then they checked the maternal blood samples taken around the time of birth for signs of infection. They looked for evidence of pathogens known to affect neural development such as rubella, genital herpes virus and chlamydia, another sexually transmitted disease.
Only the genital herpes virus was significantly higher in maternal blood samples.
Paul Corry, of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, told BBC News Online: "Schizophrenia is a poorly understood illness. There are certainly genetic factors because you are at increased risk if a person in your family has the illness. However, there are also environmental factors because 60% of new cases have no family history of the illness at all. We welcome research into the area, but we would not expect to find a single cause for something as complex and misunderstood as schizophrenia."
Read more in the British Medical Journalonline
Read more in the BBC News
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When Power Does Not Corrupt
October 26, 2001
New research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reaffirms something that we have been saying for a long time -- that abusers are usually those who have a pretty low view of themselves.
The research was carried out by Jennifer Overbeck and Bernadette Park of the University of Colorado in Boulder.
The researchers took a number of participants at random and allotted them high-power or low-power roles in a computer E-mail game. In 3 studies, participants in the high-power role made decisions and determined the outcomes of interactions; low-power role players had no power and relied on high-power targets for outcome decisions. Studies 1 and 2 found that people who saw themselves as high powered better individuated low-power targets -- i.e. they empathised better with the low-powered.
However the third study showed that high-power role players' superior judgment can be impaired by including a task that directs their responsibility toward organizational rather than interpersonal concerns. In other words high powered people are better at looking after individuals rather than organizations.
This research tends to confirm one of the central pillars of the
Fortinberry-Murray Method which says that it is a lack of self worth, and thus empowerment, which leads to people becoming abusive or uncaring about others. Those who feel empowered have a need to prove their 'power' by disempowering others. BM
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology online
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In the Mind of a Hoaxer
October 26, 2001
A package arrives, or perhaps an envelope, from an unknown sender. Inside is a white powder. The building is cleared, the police called in, the suspicious substance taken away for testing. It turns out to be harmless -- but the fear and uncertainty caused are anything but. Hoaxers are doing the terrorists' work for them.
Suspect packages have turned up as far afield as Mexico, Malaysia, Australia, the UK and South Africa in the wake of the outbreak in the United States.
Psychologist Paul Mathias, a recently retired detective superintendent with the London, UK, Metropolitan Police, told the BBC that hoaxers often need to feel powerful and in control. "They like to feel that they can control the lives of others, that they can communicate but can't be identified.
"Often they may do it for their own sense of self-esteem. They are keen to identify themselves as somebody who controls lives, which is something they can't do in their everyday lives.
"With extensive coverage of the events of September 11 and fears of further terror attacks, some may feel that they want to play a part in pushing events along. The same thing happened with the IRA troubles," Mr Mathias says. "A number of hoaxers have been unable to offer any explanation other than they thought something should be happening."
Others may make bogus threats for attention, for revenge for some perceived slight, or even for a laugh, says Gerard Bails, a consultant forensic psychologist. And in some cases, those sending suspect packages will be sympathetic to the terror attackers' cause, Mr Bails says.
"This is an extremely effective terrorism technique because it causes disruption and chaos. It's a way of causing fear without actually fighting your enemy, without putting yourself in danger."
Recently experts warned that the fear of biological attacks may cause more illness than the weapons themselves. In a letter to the British Medical Journal, researchers in the UK, US, and Australia said fear and anxiety could remain high for years.
Already, there are reports of mass "sociogenic" illness. On September 29, for instance, paint fumes set off a bioterrorism scare at a school in Washington State, sending 16 students and a teacher to the hospital.
Mr Mathias puts this in part down to our herd mentality. "At workplaces where some people respond with extreme anxiety, others who might not normally react like that will feel they have to exhibit the same concerns." And it is this uncertainty that the hoaxers seek to exploit.
Already the US, Britain and Australia have taken steps to greatly increase the penalties for sending hoaxes through the mail or by other means.
Read more in BBC News
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The Mind of a Suicide Terrorist
September 21, 2001
Psychologists from all over the US have been tapped to explain the new breed of middle-class, middle-aged terrorist such as the ones responsible for the highjackings that resulted in the disasters at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These men were the guys next door: they had families, they frequented the local bars and eateries and they often had respectable jobs. So why did they end up on a suicide mission aimed at the destruction of innocent life?
"The profile of the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorists differs from earlier profiles," says Dr Mark Levy, a forensic psychiatrist at the University of California San Francisco who spoke to ABC News. "These men were older, more educated, and some had wives and families."
In the past "most suicide bombers were single, disenfranchised, depressed and infused with a religious fervor," says Gregg McCrary, a retired FBI special agent.
He points to a recent study in Israel of 74 suicide bombers, among whom the average age was 22. By contrast, the estimated 19 men who hijacked and crashed four passenger jets were well-trained, focussed, and often had years of experience and a particular expertise. They would have seemed to have had much to live for.
The question most asked is: were these men insane? Insanity implies that they would not understand the full impact of their acts. On this basis most experts agree that the perpetrators were not 'crazy' or insane.
"It is unlikely that any of the terrorists suffered from a serious mental illness," says Dr Park Dietz, a former FBI agent and founder of the Threat Assessment Group Inc., a private forensic consulting firm in Newport Beach, CA, also quoted on ABC News. In fact, quite the opposite may have been true because "in order to be chosen for such a mission, [the terrorists] would need to prove themselves trustworthy, reliable, and dedicated" to a cause, he says.
Dedicated is the operative word. Commitment to that cause, experts say, can be borne of personal experience with terror or violence, or a feeling of being persecuted.
While the experts can't assess why last week's hijackers, who died in the attacks they carried out, did what they did, the psychological motivation could stem from "rage and a sense of self-righteousness," says Dr Harold Bursztajn, co-director of the program in psychiatry and law at Harvard Medical School. He has profiled terrorists and often testifies as an expert witness in mass murder trials.
These individuals do not display symptoms of those who typically contemplate suicide, Bursztajn says. They are not "depressed, hopeless, and helpless" because "their primary aim is not suicide" but the accomplishment of an awful mission, he says.
Dietz adds that the terrorists took part "in a suicide mission on behalf of a cause; with the expectation of contributing to the accomplishment of a greater good." He points out that while "the terrorist on a suicide mission seeks revenge and publicity; their primary goal is political change."
It appears that suicide is a mere consequence of their mission, and the "terrorists see themselves as soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves for a higher purpose."
The experts also say they are not surprised the terrorists could live undetected among those they wish to kill. Indeed some people -- double agents, spies and so forth -- do this routinely. With such people there is a kind of split personalty where the person has two distinct and conflicting personalities.
A spy, or a terrorist living in America, may be able to isolate behaviors that even they find morally reprehensible while they at the same time live in a community, have a family, and blend in as a normal person.
Unlike a serial =iller, who feels some connection to the victims, "these terrorists are very impersonal, they see us as insects to be destroyed," says Bursztajn. They are capable of killing a neighbor they know well, or a faceless victim in the World Trade Center, he says. They can live among us and still kill us "just as a husband might kill his spouse and children even though he lives with them for years" and shows the outside world no signs of violent intentions.
Burstajn says the only way to spot anyone affiliated with the hijackers is to "beware of those who celebrate the mass murderers and those who apologize for them," perhaps indicating some sense of guilt by association.
One of the biggest factors in an "us and them" mentality is thinking in terms of generalizations rather than relating to individuals. In our Uplift Program we teach people how to use language concretely in order to create closeness and boundaries rather than barriers. AF
Reported in ABC News
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Schizophrenia 'linked to lack of sun'
July 30, 2001
Schizophrenia seems to be affecting an increasing number of people in the developed world, though there are no really reliable figures available. One of the problems is that it seems to be a syndrome (a number of symptoms classified under a single heading) rather than a single disease.
The causes that have been variously pointed to include genetics, childhood trauma, pre-natal experience and even pollution.
Now a study carried out by Dr John McGrath, a psychiatrist at the Queensland Centre of Schizophrenia Research in Brisbane, Australia suggests it could be the lack of UV light that is the key factor. According to Dr McGrath the season of birth accounts for more cases of schizophrenia than any other known risk factor -- including genetic causes. It has been known for more than 80 years that there was a seasonal peak of cases in North America and Europe in March. Babies born between February and April are 10% more likely to develop schizophrenia than those born at other times of the year. It has been suggested that mothers who had had an infection, such as flu, during the pregnancy at the time the babies' brains were being formed were more likely to have "schizophrenic babies".
Dr McGrath found that in Queensland, there is a peak in the birth of schizophrenic babies every three to four years. This does not coincide with the big flu outbreaks, but does happen with the same frequency that the El Nino weather system gives the area extremely gloomy weather and therefore a lack of UV light.
One of the things UV does is convert a cholesterol-like molecule in the skin to vitamin D. Dr McGrath said: "Vitamin D is low in winter, low in cities and low in dark-skinned migrants to northern climates."
Those are all high risk factors for schizophrenic births. However, it is not known what role vitamin D might play in the development of the brain, though experiments suggest it may be needed in building the brain and developing tissue. Tests on rats, carried out by Dr McGrath earlier this year, found pregnant rats deprived of UV light or vitamin D had offspring with enlarged ventricles, as seen in the brains of schizophrenics. But he warned pregnant women should not take vitamin D supplements because too much can cause birth defects.
McGrath's findings are not accepted by all of his colleagues. Gary Hogman, of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, commented that "Anyone looking for a single 'Big Bang' theory for the development of schizophrenia is likely to be disappointed.
"Schizophrenia remains poorly understood, but is almost certainly an umbrella term covering a range of conditions with a number of common symptoms."
Read more on BBC News
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Personality Influences Health, Safety Of Firefighters
July 30, 2001
The findings appear in the July issue of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. Researchers examined injury data from 171 firefighters from a major Midwestern US city over a 12-year period and found that certain personality traits, including introversion, were significantly related to higher injury rates on the job.
Also, female firefighters reported 33 percent more injuries than male firefighters in the study by Hui Liao, BA, Richard D. Arvey, PhD, and Richard J. Butler, PhD, of the University of Minnesota and Steven M. Nutting, MA, of the City of Minneapolis. The researchers say the higher injury rate for female fighters may be due to cultural influences -- they tend to report injuries more often than men.
It is possible, say the researchers, that introverted firefighters tend to call for assistance less frequently than their other male colleagues.
"Firefighters perform more safely and effectively if they cooperate well with each other," said the researchers. "Therefore, those who are more reluctant to interact with team members may seek less help from coworkers during an emergency, thereby exposing themselves to greater risks."
Also related to personality characteristics, the study found that firefighters who tended to ignore safety rules and regulations not only had accidents more frequently but also suffered more severe injuries, while conscientious firefighters performed more safely on the job.
One of the surprising findings was that married women firefighters tended to recover from their injuries sooner and return to work earlier. One explanation of this, according to the researchers, is that married female firefighters may be more cautious than unmarried female firefighters and therefor less likely to be exposed to certain injury risks.
The researchers say the study results have implications for other occupations that involve life-threatening risks that could lead to effective workplace safety interventions and a reduction in injury-related costs.
Next time I board a plane, I'm going to make sure that the pilot is a married extrovert! BM
Reported in Uniscience
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Divorce is Written in the DNA
July 30, 2001
A study by Beth Jerskey, Michael Lyons and their colleagues at Boston University in Massachusetts which was reported in the New Scientist suggests that genetics plays a large part in determining the longevity of marriages.
The study found that identical twins (who, of course, share the same genes) were more likely to follow the same patterns of divorce than non-identical twins, who share roughly half their genes like ordinary siblings. This suggests there's a significant genetic influence on divorce.
But there was no difference between identical and non-identical twins when it came to =hether or not they got married in the first place, suggesting this is entirely determined by your environment.
Lyons thinks the genetic influence on divorce is related to factors such as drug abuse, depression and alcoholism, which have a genetic component. The team found that twins who were pathological gamblers, for instance, were 2.8 times more likely to get divorced than the norm. "Almost any kind of psychopathology is going to make staying married harder," says Lyons.
I am not sure this proves what the researchers think it proves. For one thing many psychopathologies have their roots in environmental influences. Secondly, unless the twins were separated at birth it is impossible to separate environmental and genetic influences and thirdly their sample was taken from Vietnam veterans and their experiences may not, in any way, mirror the population at large. My own feeling is that divorce has much more to do with the strength or otherwise of a person's parents' marriage. If the twins were exposed to the same environment -- parental divorce for example -- then their reactions might well be the same. BM
Read more in New Scientist
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Parents Fighting Leads to Troubled Kids
July 10, 2001
If parental discord is intense, aggressive, concealed as quiet contempt, ended abruptly by one partner storming out or concerns the child, he or she is at risk of developing behavioural problems, the charity One Plus One says in a new book Not In Front of the Children.
The book is a review of over 200 research papers written by researchers across Europe, the United States and Australia over the past two decades. Between 40% and 50% of children exposed to very serious conflict in the home were found to develop behavioural problems.
Boys responded differently to girls. Girls tend to blame themselves, take responsibility and try to stop parents arguing, whereas boys are more likely to become aggressive and withdraw from the situation.
Director of One Plus One, Penny Mansfield, said the book aimed to explain to parents what kind of conflict affected children and why. "It is not enough for parents just to make sure they don't argue in front of the children," Ms Mansfield said. "Sometimes parents leave them completely in the dark, which adds to their problems.
"Parents should explain when conflict has been resolved -- or just give each other a hug -- so that children see an ending. "That way they can learn that you can disagree with people and they're not going to leave you -- family life is full of conflict, after all," she said.
Conflict in the home had a link with educational performance. "Educational performance is one of the things that does tend to be affected," Ms Mansfield said. "Parental conflict can lead to behavioural problems, to children who find it difficult to establish relationships with others and who fail to do well at school.
"These children are troubled and when they're troubled they tend to do less well at school, are more prone to depression, taking up smoking, and so on.
"When pupils display such signs, teachers should consider what may be going on at home and recognize this affected behavior in school," she added.
Sometimes it takes a large study to demonstrate the obvious. We Fortinberry-Murray practitioners have been saying this about the effects of parental conflict for a long time. Perhaps all would-be parents should be mandated to attend the Uplift Intensive and learn how to form functional relationships with their partners and children! BM
Read more on BBC News
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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