Saturday, March 2, 2013

Seeing the invisible

I have written a lot about how sociopaths don't really have magic abilities to read people's minds or predict the future, that we just have a unique perspective that allows us to see things that other people don't (and possibly see other things less well). I thought this NY Times video illustrated this concept well:



How useful might it be to see the world this way? It just depends. Similar to a sociopath. Sometimes it is no advantage at all. Other times it could be a disadvantage. But it definitely would impact the way you see the world, to be constantly aware of these things that remain virtually hidden to everyone else. Maybe it would seem a little isolating. Maybe it would make it difficult for you to trust other people's reality, because it seems incomplete compared to yours. Maybe you eventually learn to just keep these observations to yourself. Or maybe you learn to exploit them. But you just have different options than other people do.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Common genetic risk basis for psychiatric disorders

The NY Times reports the findings of a new study that links the same genetic glitch to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, major depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And sociopathy? I see autism and ADHD on there, both of which I think are related to sociopathy.


Their study, published online Wednesday in the Lancet, was based on an examination of genetic data from more than 60,000 people worldwide. Its authors say it is the largest genetic study yet of psychiatric disorders. The findings strengthen an emerging view of mental illness that aims to make diagnoses based on the genetic aberrations underlying diseases instead of on the disease symptoms.

Two of the aberrations discovered in the new study were in genes used in a major signaling system in the brain, giving clues to processes that might go awry and suggestions of how to treat the diseases.

“What we identified here is probably just the tip of an iceberg,” said Dr. Jordan Smoller, lead author of the paper and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. “As these studies grow we expect to find additional genes that might overlap.”
***
Researchers had already seen some clues of overlapping genetic effects in identical twins. One twin might have schizophrenia while the other had bipolar disorder. About six years ago, around the time the new study began, researchers had examined the genes of a few rare families in which psychiatric disorders seemed especially prevalent. They found a few unusual disruptions of chromosomes that were linked to psychiatric illnesses. But what surprised them was that while one person with the aberration might get one disorder, a relative with the same mutation got a different one.

Jonathan Sebat, chief of the Beyster Center for Molecular Genomics of Neuropsychiatric Diseases at the University of California, San Diego, and one of the discoverers of this effect, said that work on these rare genetic aberrations had opened his eyes. “Two different diagnoses can have the same genetic risk factor,” he said. 

In fact, the new paper reports, distinguishing psychiatric diseases by their symptoms has long been difficult. Autism, for example, was once called childhood schizophrenia. It was not until the 1970s that autism was distinguished as a separate disorder.

I thought this was very interesting, especially the one twin schizophrenic and the other bipolar. I get a lot of emails and see a lot of comments where people mention that there is someone in their family who is a narcissist or BPD or bipolar. It could be that being exposed to these people in an intimate, familial setting could be the environment that is triggering otherwise unrelated genes in sociopaths, etc.? Or maybe we all share more in common genetically than we had previously considered. Right aspies?

Of course the predicament here is that if we killed sociopaths or put them on an island, that really wouldn't weed out the gene, would it? Sterilize sociopaths? Same argument would apply to anyone who shared the genetic risk factor, maybe bipolar, autistics, etc.? Genocide targeting sociopaths may have gotten just a little bit more complicated.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Quote: Real life

“Real life consists of the tensions produced by the incompatibility of opposites, each of which is needed”

 ― E.F. Schumacher

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Alexithymia

Here's another word I hadn't heard before until recently: alexithymia. According to wikipedia, it is a decreased ability to identify, understand, and describe one's own emotions. It is supposed to be common (10%) with a high comorbidity.

Does this sound like anyone you know?


Nick Frye-Cox, a doctoral student in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, says people with alexithymia can describe their physiological responses to events, such as sweaty palms or faster heartbeats, but are unable to identify their emotions as sad, happy or angry. In addition, those with alexithymia have difficulty discerning the causes of their feelings or explaining variations in their emotions, he said.
***
“People with alexithymia are always weighing the costs and benefits, so they can easily enter and exit relationships. They don’t think others can meet their needs, nor do they try to meet the needs of others.”

This is going to blow your minds, but alexithymia has been linked to lack of empathy:

Because awareness of emotional states in the self is a prerequisite to recognizing such states in others, alexithymia (ALEX), difficulty in identifying and expressing one's own emotional states, should involve impairment in empathy. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared an ALEX group (n = 16) and a non-alexithymia (non-ALEX) group (n = 14) for their regional hemodynamic responses to the visual perception of pictures depicting human hands and feet in painful situations. Subjective pain ratings of the pictures and empathy-related psychological scores were also compared between the 2 groups. The ALEX group showed less cerebral activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the dorsal pons, the cerebellum, and the left caudal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) within the pain matrix. The ALEX group showed greater activation in the right insula and inferior frontal gyrus. Furthermore, alexithymic participants scored lower on the pain ratings and on the scores related to mature empathy. In conclusion, the hypofunction in the DLPFC, brain stem, cerebellum, and ACC and the lower pain-rating and empathy-related scores in ALEX are related to cognitive impairments, particularly executive and regulatory aspects, of emotional processing and support the importance of self-awareness in empathy.

This is all sort of interesting and new to me. It's only been relatively recently that I've identified my emotions as being present, but difficult to identify, whether nervousness, love, or even just a general inability to give feelings that context that they need to become emotions. Consequently they aren't meaningful to me in the way that I imagine they are for others -- I don't feel the same way about them.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Guest post: Violent children


Treatment Or Help For Children Who Have Threatened Or Showed Violence

Violence and Children

We live in a culture that seems to becoming increasingly violent. Not only are adults violent, but children can also exhibit violent behavior. More often than not, violent behavior in children is not taken seriously. Parents, teachers and other adults are very quick to say that this type of behavior is a phase that the child is growing through and end it will end soon. However, violent behavior in children is something that should always be taken seriously.

What Causes Violent Behavior in Children?

There are a variety of things that can cause a child to become violent. Children who grow up in a home where violence is common are more likely to become violent. Other problems in the home, such as poverty and divorce, can trigger violent behavior in children. Furthermore, children who spend a lot of time watching violent television shows and playing violent video games are more likely to become violent.

What Are Some of the Warning Signs?

A child who is prone to violent behavior will usually exhibit warning signs. Some of those signs include irritability, intense anger and frequent loss of temper. Children who are prone to violent behavior may also get frustrated easily.

How Can Violent Behavior In Children Be Treated?

Again, violent behavior is something that needs to be stopped early. This behavior will only continue to get worse as a child gets older. Children who have had a history of violence should be seen by a mental health professional. The goal of professional treatment is to get child to control his or her anger and to teach him or her how to express it in a healthy way. Treatment will also teach a child how to accept responsibility for his or her own actions.

How Can Violent Behavior In Children Be Prevented?

One of the best things that can be done to prevent violent behavior in children is to reduce the child's exposure to violence. Children should not spend a lot of time watching violent movies and television shows. Parents also need to make sure that they avoid harshly punishing their children because that can also cause violent behavior. It is quite obvious that exposure to violence can cause a person to become violent.

*This is an informational article about violent behavior in children. If you want to get help for troubled teens, then you should read more articles on this website.*

Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

.

Comments are unmoderated. Blog owner is not responsible for third party content. By leaving comments on the blog, commenters give license to the blog owner to reprint attributed comments in any form.