Ideas

During the intermission between semesters I have two projects that I'm working on:

1) Finish revisions of my specialty paper. This is the report on the salvia experiment that we will be submitting for publication. I've been through several rounds of drafts and am circulating the paper among authors, and re-writing in perpetuity. I'll keep you posted.

2) I need to propose a dissertation. In a lot of ways you are defined by your dissertation, and so I want to choose something that I'd like to do more of. It is tempting to keep on with Salvia (I have some anxiety data that is interesting) but I don't really want to be 'Salvia guy.' Instead I'm more interested in the Chronic Mild Stress model that we used; I would like to work on some animal model for anxiety. I'm just starting to dip into the literature to see what is out there but if you know of anything exciting, be sure to let me know. :)

I'm Qualified

Sorry I haven't been posting. Instead of blogging I have been preparing for qualifying exams. I blogged about the first few papers I read for qualifying, but it was taking too much time. THe first step to quals was selecting a committee to evaluate me. I chose, Dr. Taylor (my Mentor; interested in hormones and works with rats), Dr. Griffin (my psycho-pharmacology professor; interested in trauma and recovery) and Dr. Bucur (my cognitive professor; interested in cognitive declines with aging). They assembled reading lists that I rad in preparation this exam. I read 115 journal articles (well maybe a dozen or so were actually book chapters), totaling 1,623 pages. I spent 18 hours across two days working on the written portion of the exam, the longest I spent answering one question was 4.5 hours. My written exam answers were composed of 10,425 words (29 pages). Then there was a terms test, which was a brief vocabulary test (apparently there were problems in the past). Last up was oral exams. Like a supreme court justice's confirmation hearing, oral exams involved a series of questions from my advisory committee. Long story short, I passed!

What do I qualify for? Well I am now qualified to be an official doctoral candidate. Even though I was accepted into grad school, and accepted into the PhD program that doesn't mean you are qualified to be a candidate for a PhD.

I plan to spend the next year blogging about the readings I did for this exam. Most (if not all) of the articles I read were interesting (to me anyway) and I have already taken copious notes. So it is my plan to post up two QUAL notes each week on Tuesday and Thursday for this next year. I plan to leave out most of the textbook chapters but there are a handful that are too good to pass up. I also plan to blog about BBoB (every three weeks) and ABDG (weekly) so that will be a lot of science review on this blog! I'll also be posting about my research, the animal lab here, and my general grad school experience as the thing is born. I've also decided to spin-off blogging about teaching into another blog: College Undergraduate Teaching Of Psychology (CUTOP)

Talk Sex wtih Dr. S

A professor at UMSL has begun a YouTube sex advice channel. I had the pleasure to observe her teaching a research methods class and she is excellent in the classroom. While you may bot be able to sit in on her lecture, hopefully this venue proves just as enjoyable:

Award-Winning Science

Yesterday the Graduate School at UMSL and Sigma Xi hosted the annual Graduate Student Research Fair. My poster took first prize ($750) for social sciences! Thanks to my co-authors, collaborator, and mentor for all of their help and input. If you are interested I'll embed a close digital approximation of my poster.



UPDATE: Some of you were having trouble viewing the poster. Try this link.

Homework from The MacGuffin

Recently The MacGuffin asked for evidence of peer-review of a 2007 JAMA article showing the efficacy of Topiramate in treating alcohol dependence. I ran down 10 quotes from some papers citing the work.

1. "Topiramate has demonstrated efficacy in the treatment of alcohol dependence in two placebo-controlled trials." (Garbutt 2009; Johnson et al., 2003; Johnson et al., 2007)
2. "a 14-week placebo-controlled trial of 300 mg per day of the anticonvulsant topiramate reported up to a 16% reduction in heavy drinking days, although the rate of modest side-effects was high." (Schuckit 2009; Johnson et al., 2007)
3. "Medications such as methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone are beneficial for the treatment of heroin addiction and naltrexone and topiramate for the treatment of alcoholism." (Chandler, Fletcher & Volkow 2009 ; Johnson et al., 2007)
4. "The results of this study support the efficacy of topiramate in the relapse prevention of alcoholism." (Baltieri, Dar, Riberio & de Andrade 2008 from Abstract)
5. "Results of published trials are promising, showing efficacy for drinking outcomes and quality of life as well as general safety." (Olmsted & Kockler 2008 from Abstract)
6. "Topiramate is the best studied of the anticonvulsant medications that have been evaluated for the treatment of alcohol dependence. It has been shown to be effective in reducing a variety of drinking outcomes among alcoholdependent patients (see table 3 for
   mechanism of action) in both a singlesite study (Johnson et al. 2003) and in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, multicenter trial (Johnson et al. 2007)." (Arias & Kranzler 2008)
7. "Both topiramate and naltrexone were efficacious in the treatment of alcohol dependence, and the treatment costs were similar. There is a trend for topiramate to be superior to naltrexone on critical measures of drinking; however, the study did not have adequate statistical power to establish this fact." (Florenz et al. 2008 from Abstract)
8. "Topiramate compared with placebo significantly (P <.05 for all comparisons) decreased obsessional thoughts and compulsions about using alcohol, increased subjects psychosocial wellbeing, and improved some aspects of quality of life, thereby diminishing the risk of relapse and longer-term negative outcomes" (Johnson BA 2008)
9. "Interestingly, topiramate – an anticonvulsant compound that blocks AMPA and kainate receptors, in addition to having other sites of action – reduces relapse rates in alcohol-dependent patients and the harm of excessive drinking (Johnson 2003). Moreover, in a recently published study, continuously drinking alcohol-dependent patients reach their abstinence goal significantly faster when treated with 300 mg/day topiramate compared with placebo (Johnson 2007)." (Spanagel & Kiefer 2008)
10. Lastly, it's not a direct quote, but in JAMA 299(4) there are three letters to the editor with negative criticism of the Johnson 2007 publication, and two responses to those ciriticisims (one from Johnson).
    

Johnson, B., Rosenthal, N., Capece, J., Wiegand, F., Mao, L., Beyers, K., McKay, A., Ait-Daoud, N., Anton, R., Ciraulo, D., Kranzler, H., Mann, K., O'Malley, S., Swift, R., & , . (2007). Topiramate for Treating Alcohol Dependence: A Randomized Controlled Trial JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 298 (14), 1641-1651 DOI: 10.1001/jama.298.14.1641

Reading List: Evolutionary Psychology: The Emperor's New Paradigm

I've always been suspicious about Evolutionary Psychology, and David Buller is as well. Let me be clear, I don't doubt evolution; I doubt in the methods and results ascribed to evolutionary psychology. So in short this paper is preaching to the choir. Prepare for some rah-rah in this post.

Tangent: I think the title of this article is inflammatory, just as much as "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience." It comes as no surprise to me that when scientists engage in tearing down other scientists research, we do so with no lack of venom. Criticizing (destructive or otherwise) the science of others is half of what science is (the other 90% is statistical errors), and we need to have a thick skin about it.

"Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it (Cosmides & Tooby 1997)."

This definition sets up the paradigm of evolutionary psychology (EP) with the goal to analyze human behavior as an adaptation that would have helped our ancient hunter-gatherer kin survive or reproduce. This seems logical enough, but how could this be science? In review of The Method, we see that logical observation is only half of the equation, and that relevant and testable explanations are also required (Copi 1982). In this paper Buller examines three 'discoveries' of EP and suggests that they are not sufficiently supported by evidence.

The Cheater-Detection Module

If altruism is an evolved adaptive behavior (a vampire bat regurgitates excess blood for others to eat so that when times are lean others will recipricate the behavior), then cheating would also be adaptive (vampire bats that do not regurgitate blood), and thus cheater-detection would be required for altriusm to remain an adaptive behavior (vampire bats that don't regurgitate for fat bats hording all the blood).
EP would then like to apply such a logical progression to human altriusm and the evolution of a cheater-detection module, and that this module would focus on social interactions. By manipulating the content of situations (social and otherwise) presented as part of the Wason selection task, EP researchers have shown results that appear to support this idea. Unfortunately, as Buller illustrates, the manipulations used were flawed at least linguistically if not also logically; by making the situation a social interaction researchers also changed the logical type of the situation from indicative (if statements) to deontic (must statments). Results: inconclusive.

Sex Differences in Jealosy

The thoeries from EP are that men are more concerned with sexual infidelity since his offspring would have to compete with another male's offsprings for maternal care. Likewise, women are more concerned with emotional infidelity since her mate might withdraw praternal care from her and her offspring. Thus men respond to sexual cues of infedility while women respond to emotional cues. EP researcher David Buss gathered survey data froma questionaire on infidelity to support this theory. And while it did show that men care more about sexual infidelity than women, it did not show that men cared more about sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity. Additionally female sexual infidelity is more (compared to males) indicative of general relationship dissatisfaction and is more likely to result in abandonment. So the percieved threat of the infidelity may be the cause of the sex-difference, rather than an adaptive behavior. Results: inconclusive.

Discriminative Parental Solicitude

EP suggests that substitute parents are more likely to engage in dangerous parenting than genetic parents. I'll restate that: Step-parents are more likely to abuse their kids than biological parents. This seems to be the best support by the available data (conservatively step-children are 8 times more likely to be physically abused). But the problem is that the data are confounded. Invariably these data come from offical state records, and unfortunately state records only note about half of the fatal maltreatment of children officially. Also, state child-protection workers often use the pressance of a step-parent as a diagnostic indicator of abuse, durther biasing the data. Results: inconclusive. In the interest of full-disclosure: I'm a step-father.

I'll close here with a direct quote from this paper:

"Thus, although the Evolutionary Psychology paradigm is a bold and innovative explanatory framework, I believe it has failed to provide an accurate understanding of human psychology from an evolutionary perspective."

D BULLER (2005). Evolutionary psychology: the emperor's new paradigm Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 (6), 277-283 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.003

Reading List: The ontogeny of behaviour in the albino rat

This article is in the section of classics that I am to reading for qualifying exams. It is certainly well cited, Google Scholar lists the citation count at 213! Indeed this paper was a "Citation Classic" in Current Contents in 1981. At the time Robert Bolles was still living and stated:

"I have always believed in the idea that experimenters should look at their animals...the human eyeball is the instrument of choice if you want to observe a new phenomenon, and particularly if you want to gain a new understanding of it."

In fact this article describes qualitatively the behaviors of infant rats from birth to about 24 days (rats are weened at day 21). In the first experiment, Bolles and Woods observed 13 litters with an average of 9 pups (117 pups) in their "natural" laboratory environment (cages). The animals were of the Sprague-Dawley line, which is still used today. They did use several different methods of observation and schedules of observation to arrive at a comprehensive guide to the ontogeny of lab rats.

They begin with postural observations, describing three postures that develop over time: lying, sitting and standing. Lying being the default resting position of the rat, often using other bodies for support. Sitting began on day 4 when subjects first began to lift their heads, and was fully developed by day 17 when subjects could sit and perform activities such as grooming. Also beginning on day 4 are the first attempts to support weight on the legs, and by day 10 the animals can support themselves. By day 13 they can run, by day 15 they can stand on three legs and scratch with the fourth. They can rear up on two legs with support for the front legs on day 16 and can rear independent of support (for the purpose of play-fighting with siblings) by day 18.

In similiar fashion reflexes are described. Without relating the specific timeline the reflexes are: twitiching, head waving, stretching and yawning, body flexion, righting reaction, freezing, sniffing, auditory orientation, and visual orientation. When describing startle response int he auditory orientation section there is a great footnote on the word "click:"

*The sound used was relatively well-controlled and constant, but, unfortunately rather poorly defined; it was the sound of a Parker T-Ball Jotter pen being retracted at a distance of approximately 1 foot.

Psychologists are hilarious. Also found it interesting that the animals did not freeze in fear until day 26 and they froze for approximately 15 seconds. I've never seen my rats hold still for that long unless they were sleeping.

Following reflexes functional activities are described. Here is the list: sleeping, consumatory behavior, locomotor activity, climbing, grooming, exlporation, manipulation, digging, and defacation. Here the theme of development was similiar as above, with rudimentary non-functional behaviors appearing first (such as scratching motion without making contact with the skin), that later developed into full-fledged adult-like behavior.

Ultimately we get a description of the social behaviors in the observed rats. Social behavior in young rats is evidenced by chasing and fighting. Bolles, and Woods observed rats begin this social play-fighting on day 14 when their eyes began to open.The activity peaks between day 20 and 30 when the whole litter engages in a high level of activity.

In a second experiment Bolles and Woods attempt to quantify the behaviors they observed in the first experiment. Using experimental methods the authors observed 12 rats (2 each from 6 litters) and summarized their behaviors as percentages. Here is Table 1 from their paper. There are many more graphs showing the time course of the development of behaviors and it really is a fascinating reference, but I won't reproduce all of that here.

The first point of discussion and perhaps the most salient is that from these findings we can view rats as a far more social animal that might otherwise be considered. Begining early social interactions are to wrangle for nursing or comfort, and later become play fighting and chasing. AS the authors noted this social behavior likely leads to long lasting changes in the adult organism and "offers interesting possbilities for research in this area." (See the next 45 years of rat studies for more on these possibilities)

R BOLLES, P WOODS (1964). The ontogeny of behaviour in the albino rat Animal Behaviour, 12 (4), 427-441 DOI: 10.1016/0003-3472(64)90062-4