Eating Disorders and the Not So Female Brain

Attempts to link eating disorders to a hypothetical "extreme female brain" involve some convoluted logic 

A well-known theory of psychological sex differences proposed that autism represents a manifestation of an ‘extreme male brain’ type. A recent paper has claimed that the opposite type, or ‘extreme female brain’ is manifested in eating disorder symptoms, such as anorexia and bulimia. The evidence provided in the paper for this notion seems rather mixed, especially considering that some of the results applied more clearly to males than females. Additionally, there is evidence that eating disorders and autism have certain features in common even though they are supposed to represent opposite brain types. Characterising certain conditions as extremely ‘male’ or ‘female’ based on gender stereotypes may actually create more confusion than real understanding.

Is there a distinct "female brain" type? (Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Autism and the ‘extreme male brain’

Simon Baron-Cohen[1] proposed that men and women have evolved different brain-types[2] specialising in either of two distinct information processing modes. The two modes are empathizing, considered to be the drive to understand other people’s thoughts and feelings in order to predict how they will behave, and systematizing, considered as the drive to understand the rules that govern a system in order to predict how the system works. Individuals have their own balance of how much they have developed either of these capacities and most people have reasonable ability in both. According to Baron-Cohen’s research, men tend to be more specialised in systematizing, whereas women tend to be more specialised in empathizing. Baron-Cohen applied this theory to understanding the nature of autism spectrum conditions including Asperger’s syndrome. People with autism tend to have social and communication difficulties due to impairments in their ability put themselves ‘in another person’s shoes’, that is, to imagine another person’s thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, autistic people often have particular strengths in understanding physical systems. For example, studies on autistic children have found that they tend to have an unusually good grasp of intuitive physics. Baron-Cohen therefore argued that autistic people have a profile of well develop systematizing and poorly developed empathizing. He referred to this profile as representing the ‘extreme male brain’ on the grounds that autism occurs many times more frequently in males than females.

Mr Spock: someone with an extreme male brain?

Baron-Cohen proposed that therefore an ‘extreme female brain’ type might exist. This profile would be associated with particular strength in the area of empathizing and difficulty in the area of systematizing. He argued that this profile should be more common in women than men but did not attempt to describe what such a condition might be like, although he suggested that people like this might get along well in modern society due to their well-developed people skills, as long as they could avoid dealing with modern technology. 

Evidence for an ‘extreme female brain’?

Bremser and Gallup (2012) proposed that eating disorders are a manifestation of an ‘extreme female brain’ (EFB) that is a ‘mirror image of autism’. They justify this on the grounds that eating disorders are much more prevalent in females than males and cite evidence linking eating disorders to sex hormones. Additionally, they claim that fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety play an important role in the development of eating disorders. They argue that fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety can be linked to high levels of empathizing. Therefore, high empathizing (a feature of the proposed EFB) could predispose a person to eating disorders by making them vulnerable to fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety.

Their argument for the connection between empathizing and social anxiety is that sociability can be represented on a continuum with social apathy (characteristic of autism) at one end and social anxiety at the high end. However, anxiety about social interaction indicates that one is lacking confidence in one’s social skills. According to Baron-Cohen though empathizing is supposed to be a particular strength of the EFB. I therefore find it puzzling that high levels of empathizing would be assumed to go hand in hand with inadequate social skills. Current theories suggest that social anxiety is associated with self-focused rumination (thinking about oneself too much during social interactions) which does not sound much like empathic concern for other people. Furthermore, their own results contradict their argument. They did find that fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety were positively related to disordered eating. However, self-reported empathizing was found to have no relation at all to fear of negative evaluation and to be negatively correlated with a measure of social anxiety. That is, people who were high in empathizing were actually low in social anxiety and vice versa.[3]

Restrictive eating is more common in women than men. (Image courtesy of sattva at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

A reasonably detailed description of the Bremser and Gallup study appears at Christian Jarrett’s blog. (A briefer description can be found here, while a more critical view can be found here.) Briefly, the authors performed a series of four studies to test their hypothesis that eating disorder symptoms are associated with a pattern of high empathizing and low systematizing. They did find modest positive correlations between self-reported empathizing and disordered eating when gender was not considered, apparently supporting their hypothesis. However, when they looked at differences between males and females there were some puzzling findings. In study 2 females who were either high or low in disordered eating did not differ in their level of self-reported empathizing (see Figure 2, p. 471). However, males who were high in disordered eating were higher in self-reported empathizing than males low in disordered eating. An even more puzzling finding was evident when they examined the relationship between emotion recognition (a test of empathic ability) and disordered eating (see Figure 1). Females high on disordered eating scored somewhat higher than other participants on this task, although it was not really clear from the authors’ report if this difference was statistically significant. What was more striking was that males high in disordered eating actually scored noticeably lower than all other participants on the emotion recognition task. Now remember that the authors’ hypothesis was that high empathizing would be associated with disordered eating, yet males with disordered eating actually scored worse than everyone else on a test of empathic ability, even though their self-reported empathy was higher. This suggests to me that these males had a lack of insight into their actual ability to register another person’s emotions. Yet quite oddly the authors claim that this anomalous finding actually supports rather than refutes their hypothesis:

“The data from males are consistent with the idea that disordered eating is associated with the hyper-empathizing that characterizes the EFB type.”

They attribute the failure of these males to correctly identify emotions as due to “hyper-mentalizing associated with the EFB” manifesting as “faulty inferences about mental states”. So they found a pattern associated with a particular group of males and then decide that this is evidence of an extreme female brain, even though none of the females manifested this pattern. Furthermore, failure in a test of empathic ability is interpreted as due to ‘hyper-empathizing’. In other words, when people are too high in empathizing they over-analyse other people and therefore make mistaken attributions about what they are thinking and feeling. The authors go on to explain: “This may be because they are using their own experience to model the experience of others, and their bias to classify emotions with a negative bias may influence their attributions.” In other words, they project their own concerns onto other people rather than trying to understand others on their own terms. This does not sound much like empathy to me. It actually sounds more like autism. People with autism also have trouble imagining that other people feel differently from themselves.

The authors actually cite research findings that people with eating disorders often show impaired emotion recognition. This would imply a failure of empathizing, yet Bremser and Gallup argue that this is actually due to “hyper-mentalizing”. They also appear to ignore previous research findings indicating commonalities between eating disorders and autism. For example, research had found that autism spectrum disorders sometimes precede the development of eating disorders and that 16% of teenage sufferers of anorexia have been estimated to have autism (Oldershaw, Treasure, Hambrook, Tchanturia, & Schmidt, 2011). Additionally, autism and anorexia may coexist within the same family suggesting they could have a shared genetic basis.

The authors argue that errors in emotion recognition tasks may be due to either a deficit in understanding (as in Asperger’s syndrome) or to abnormal or excessive attribution of mental states associated with psychotic type mental processes (referred to in the paper as schizotypal traits). I think they actually made a valid point about this. There is evidence that schizotypal traits play a role in eating disorders, particularly anorexia. This might seem to justify their claim that failures of emotion recognition are related to “hyper-mentalizing”. However, their own results show that although schizotypal traits were related to disordered eating they were largely unrelated to empathizing (see Table 7). Therefore their claim that “hyper-mentalizing” (associated with schizotypal traits) is related to “hyper-empathizing” seems unwarranted.

There was a significant correlation between the schizotypal scale ‘constricted affect’ and empathizing but this was in the negative direction. That is, people who were high in empathizing tended to be less constricted in their emotional expression. The authors noted that males who were low in constricted affect (and therefore emotionally expressive) also scored higher on disordered eating. In females there was no such relationship. The authors once again try to claim that this supports their theory by arguing that emotional expressiveness is a ‘feminine’ trait that is also related to empathizing. So therefore the finding that emotionally expressive men were more eating disordered is evidence of a relationship between the EFB and disordered eating. So yet again, a relationship found in men, but not women, is taken as evidence of a female brain type.

As previously noted the EFB is supposed to be high in empathizing and also poor in systematizing. Therefore, the authors predicted that disordered eating would be associated with poor systematizing. The actual results they found were mixed. Self-reported systematizing and a test of intuitive physics were unrelated to disordered eating. However, a test of mental rotation was found to have a significant negative correlation with disordered eating, indicating that those who performed more poorly on the mental rotation task had more disordered eating. Research has found that men tend to perform much better on tests of mental rotation than women, although some scholars have claimed that this is due to the psychological effects of gender stereotypes rather than innate differences between men and women (Ortner & Sieverding, 2008).  Bremser and Gallup did not report results for each gender so we do not know if men and women had different patterns of results. The authors acknowledge that self-starvation associated with disordered eating can produce deficits in task performance. This might explain why mental rotation was poorer in people with disordered eating. On the other hand, there were no impairments in performance on the intuitive physics task, so the results are difficult to interpret. 

What Conclusions can be drawn

Bremser and Gallup proposed that disordered eating would be associated with a pattern of high empathizing and poor systematizing they refer to as the EFB. They did find that there were modest positive associations between self-reported empathizing and disordered eating. Also, one of their studies found a moderate negative association between a systematizing task (mental rotation) and disordered eating, although two other studies using different systematizing measures found no such relationship. However, closer inspection of their results found that, when gender differences were reported, the relationship between empathizing and disordered eating occurred in men but not women. Their findings would seem to indicate that a pattern of high self-reported empathizing, poor emotion recognition, and emotional reactivity is associated with disordered eating in males but not females. Yet they claim this as evidence for an extreme female brain. Perhaps they should call this the ‘stereotypically feminine brain that leads to eating disorders in men’. Not nearly as catchy I know. Furthermore, they use some rather convoluted reasoning to explain why deficits in emotion recognition (that is, failures in empathizing) found in eating disorders should be associated with high empathizing by invoking “hyper-mentalizing”. The latter could plausibly be a feature of fear of negative evaluation and schizotypal tendencies, yet their own results indicated that these were unrelated to empathizing. There is in fact evidence for at least some overlap between eating disorders and autism, even though the EFB is supposed to represent the opposite of an autistic condition. I get the impression that the authors of this study decided that because eating disorders are so strongly associated with females that they would make a good candidate for an EFB, so they decided to try to force the result to fit their theory.

Image courtesy of Ventrilock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Williams Syndrome: a better EFB?

So if eating disorders are not a very good candidate for a manifestation of an EFB is there something that is? The most logical candidate I am aware of is a rare condition known as Williams Syndrome. This condition is associated with extreme friendliness and sociability, and high levels of empathy (Klein-Tasman & Mervis, 2003), as well as subnormal IQ scores and difficulty understanding how a whole is made up of its parts, although language skills are generally highly developed (Farran & Jarrold, 2003). Williams Syndrome has even been referred to at times as the ‘anti-autism’ syndrome. For example, while people with autism show a disinterest in looking at faces, people with Williams Syndrome are fascinated by them (Riby & Hancock, 2008). Williams Syndrome neatly fits the profile of Baron-Cohen’s proposed EFB in that it combines strength in empathizing and difficulty in systematizing and seems more like a true ‘mirror image’ of autism. However, Williams Syndrome apparently occurs equally in males and females. Therefore, even though it meets most criteria for an EFB it does not seem to be particularly female. Anorexia is a predominantly female disorder yet it has actually been linked with autism, a supposedly extreme male disorder. Perhaps this shows that stereotyping certain conditions as extremely ‘male’ or extremely ‘female’ is actually misleading and hinders understanding them. Just because men tend to have more interest in systematizing than women does not necessarily make it a male province. Nor should empathizing be seen as a particularly female one. Furthermore, describing systematizing as a male domain and empathizing as a female one might have the effect of alienating member of the opposite sex from activities associated with each one and of needlessly reinforcing limiting gender stereotypes.

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[1] Yes, he actually is related to Sacha Baron-Cohen of ‘Borat’ fame.

[2] The term ‘brain type’ seems a misnomer as the theory is based on observations about personality and behaviour rather than direct studies of the brain. However, to maintain consistency with the existing literature the term ‘brain’ will continue to be used in this article.

[3] See results for Study 3, Table 7. 

   
This post has previously appeared on my blog at Psychology Today Unique - Like Everybody Else.

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© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.  

References

Bremser JA, & Gallup GG Jr (2012). From one extreme to the other: negative evaluation anxiety and disordered eating as candidates for the extreme female brain. Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 10 (3), 457-86 PMID: 22947672

Farran, E. K., & Jarrold, C. (2003). Visuospatial Cognition in Williams Syndrome: Reviewing and Accounting for the Strengths and Weaknesses in Performance. Developmental Neuropsychology, 23(1-2), 173-200. doi: 10.1080/87565641.2003.9651891

Klein-Tasman, B. P., & Mervis, C. B. (2003). Distinctive Personality Characteristics of 8-, 9-, and 10-Year-Olds With Williams Syndrome. Developmental Neuropsychology, 23(1-2), 269-290. doi: 10.1080/87565641.2003.9651895

Oldershaw, A., Treasure, J., Hambrook, D., Tchanturia, K., & Schmidt, U. (2011). Is anorexia nervosa a version of autism spectrum disorders? European Eating Disorders Review, 19(6), 462-474. doi: 10.1002/erv.1069

Ortner, T. M., & Sieverding, M. (2008). Where are the Gender Differences? Male Priming Boosts Spatial Skills in Women. Sex Roles, 59(3-4), 274-281. doi: 10.1007/s11199-008-9448-9

Riby, D. M., & Hancock, P. J. B. (2008). Viewing it differently: Social scene perception in Williams syndrome and Autism. Neuropsychologia, 46(11), 2855-2860. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.05.003

Psilocybin could improve quality of life in the terminally ill

A recent study of people with advanced-stage cancer found that a single dose of psilocybin led to improvements in anxiety and depression. Psilocybin might enhance mood by shifting attention away from negative and towards positive emotional information. Mystical experiences occurring under the influence of psilocybin could help ease existential anxiety by changing a person’s attitudes towards death and dying. Research studies in this area have not used adequate experimental controls and therefore these results should be considered tentative until more rigorous research has been conducted. 

A pioneering studies in the 1970s found that psychotherapy combined with the use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD appeared to help to reduce depression, physical pain and anxiety about death in people with terminal cancer (Grof, Goodman, Richards, & Kurland, 1973). The authors’ impression was that the patients who made the most dramatic changes were those who had a “peak mystical experience” of oneness with the universe usually preceded by an experience of spiritual “death and rebirth”. Profound experiences of this nature were seen in 25% of sessions. The authors argued that profound religious and spiritual experiences, such as a “peak mystical experience” were particularly effective in helping patients accept death. However, they also noted that other kinds of emotional improvements frequently occurred even without the presence of a mystical experience.

This study was of an exploratory nature and due to the absence of any control group it is not possible to know whether the effects observed were specifically due to drug effects, the psychotherapy, or even placebo effects. In spite of these promising results, psychedelic drug research was effectively banned when these substances were made illegal. In recent years there has been something of a revival of interest in this area. A 2011 study again examined the use of psychedelic drugs in people with advanced-stage cancer (Grob et al., 2011). This study used psilocybin rather than LSD because research suggests that the effects of psilocybin are more euphoric and less likely to produce panic or paranoid reactions than LSD. The drug produced no adverse medical effects and was well-tolerated.

The treatment appeared to have beneficial effects on depression and anxiety. Six months after taking psilocybin, the patients had a significant reduction in depression. What I found particularly interesting was that they also showed a reduction in trait anxiety that was significant at 1 and 3 months after treatment. Trait anxiety refers to how much anxiety a person generally feels and is usually considered a stable feature of one’s personality, closely related to a broader trait called neuroticism. The results of this study might seem to suggest that psilocybin could produce a lasting change in this feature of personality. As noted in a previous article, another study using healthy volunteers found that psilocybin produced lasting changes in the personality trait of openness to experience (MacLean, Johnson, & Griffiths, 2011). However, this study found no change in other personality traits, including neuroticism. It seems plausible that when people have advanced-stage cancer their ratings of their general levels of anxiety would be elevated compared to healthy people due to their illness. If this is the case, perhaps psilocybin helped reduce their heightened anxiety to more normal levels. However, without knowing the patients’ levels of trait anxiety before their illness it is not possible to draw any definite conclusions.

Another limitation of this study, like the 1970s study cited earlier, is that there was no comparison group of patients who did not receive psilocybin to serve as an experimental control. For this reason, it is not possible to rule out the possibility that the beneficial effects observed were due to placebo effects. For example, the patients might have benefited simply from the care and attention they received from the researchers during the study. The authors of the study acknowledged this limitation and explained that they believed that it would have been unethical to withhold a potentially beneficial treatment from the terminally ill. One possible response to this is that the psilocybin treatment could have been compared to a more conventional treatment such as psychotherapy. If a single-dose of psilocybin could be shown to be as or even more beneficial than more costly and intensive treatment strategies such as psychotherapy then care of the terminally ill could be enriched.

In spite, of these limitations, the study results remain suggestive. Studies with healthy volunteers have found that after a single dose of psilocybin, volunteers reported improvements in mood, attitudes to life and the self, positive behaviour changes including improved relationships, and increased spirituality, as well as increased satisfaction with life that persisted for months afterwards (Griffiths et al., 2011; Griffiths, Richards, McCann, & Jesse, 2006). Interestingly, Griffiths et al. (2011) found that volunteers reported increases in “death transcendence”. That is, participants expressed an increased belief that there is continuity after death, e.g. belief that death is not an ending but a transition to something even greater than this life. It seems worth noting that all the participants in this study were involved in religious or spiritual activities prior to the study. Thus, they might have been especially receptive to the idea that “spiritual” experiences induced by the drug could represent real insights into reality.

A forthcoming paper on the effects of psilocybin on attention provides insights into why psilocybin might have beneficial effects on mood and relieving depression (Kometer et al., 2012). People who are depressed show a bias towards paying more attention to negative than to positive stimuli. Depressed people find it harder to recognise happy facial expressions and respond more slowly to positive compared to negative words in emotional tasks. This emotional bias has been linked to problematic functioning in the serotonin system in the brain. Psilocybin and LSD produce their hallucinogenic effects by acting on the serotonin system, and Kometer et al.’s study found evidence that psilocybin can influence attentional biases in a positive way. In this study, volunteers under the influence of psilocybin experienced increased positive mood and took longer to react to negative or neutral words compared to positive ones. Interestingly, these effects did not occur when participants had been administered a drug called ketanserin, which blocks serotonin receptors[1], before being given psilocybin. This suggests that psilocybin can induce biases of attention towards positive and away from negative emotional stimuli. Additionally, these effects appear to be due to the action of psilocybin on the serotonin system. If it is true that psilocybin treatment can be effective in reducing depression, these findings seem to suggest a plausible mechanism. This might explain why volunteers in the studies by Griffiths et al. reported persistent positive changes in their attitudes to many aspects of their lives.

The findings from these studies seem very promising. The research cited does seem to suggest that mystical experiences induced by psilocybin can help a person overcome the fear of death. Additionally, psilocybin seems to have a generally positive effect on mood and attitude that could alleviate depression. A limitation of the studies cited is that they did not use no-drug control groups for comparison to show that the effects were actually due to the drug rather than other factors such as placebo effects. Thus, it would be premature to definitely conclude that psilocybin is an effective treatment for depression and existential anxiety in people with cancer, even though the results seem very suggestive. More rigorous research designs are needed to provide more conclusive evidence. Additionally, it would be interesting to examine whether psilocybin might help a person with cancer accept death if they do not have any religious or spiritual beliefs. 

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[1] For those who are interested, ketanserin specifically blocks 5-HT_2A receptors. The 5-HT_2A receptor system has been implicated in depressive pessimism and is known to be affected by antidepressant drugs.  

This post has previously appeared on Psychology Today in my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else

Follow me on Facebook, Google Plus, or Twitter.

© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.  

Other posts about psychedelic drugs and/or spirituality

Psilocybin and personality

Psilocybin and brain function

DMT, aliens and reality – part 1

DMT, aliens and reality – part 2

DMT: Gateway to Reality, Fantasy or What?

Troubled Souls: Spirituality as a Mental Health Hazard

The Spirituality of Psychedelic Drug Users 

Peak Experiences in Psilocybin Users

References

            Griffiths RR, Johnson MW, Richards WA, Richards BD, McCann U, & Jesse R (2011). Psilocybin occasioned mystical-type experiences: immediate and persisting dose-related effects. Psychopharmacology, 218 (4), 649-65 PMID: 21674151

           Griffiths RR, Richards WA, McCann U, & Jesse R (2006). Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology, 187 (3) PMID: 16826400

            Grob CS, Danforth AL, Chopra GS, Hagerty M, McKay CR, Halberstadt AL, & Greer GR (2011). Pilot study of psilocybin treatment for anxiety in patients with advanced-stage cancer. Archives of general psychiatry, 68 (1), 71-8 PMID: 20819978

Grof, S., Goodman, L. E., Richards, W. A., & Kurland, A. A. (1973). LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy in Patients with Terminal Cancer. Int. Pharmacopsychiat., 8, 129-144.

            Kometer M, Schmidt A, Bachmann R, Studerus E, Seifritz E, & Vollenweider FX (2012). Psilocybin biases facial recognition, goal-directed behavior, and mood state toward positive relative to negative emotions through different serotonergic subreceptors. Biological psychiatry, 72 (11), 898-906 PMID: 22578254

MacLean, K. A., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2011). Mystical Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin Lead to Increases in the Personality Domain of Openness. Journal of Psychopharmacology. doi: 10.1177/0269881111420188

  

Your brain on psilocybin

As reported in a previous article, a number of fascinating studies recently have focused on the effects of the drug psilocybin, a classic psychedelic drug. Scientists still do not have a good understanding of the brain mechanisms by which psilocybin produces its effects. A recent study used brain scanning (specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging) to obtain a window into the brain of 30 volunteers injected with this drug in order to understand what happens during the transition between normal waking consciousness and the onset of drug effects (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012). The researchers were surprised to discover that drug effects were associated with decreases in activity in a number of key brain areas, rather than the expected increase. This finding has led to speculations about the relationship between brain activity and mystical states experienced under psychedelic drugs. However, the actual implications of the study’s findings are far from clear.

In this study, participants received two brain scans each, once after receiving a saline injection, and once after receiving a psilocybin injection. The effects on brain activity were then compared. After receiving psilocybin brain blood flow decreased, indicating reduced activity. In particular, activity in areas regarded as important network hubs that maintain the connectivity of the various areas of the brain showed the most consistent deactivation. These areas are known as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). (If you’re put off by neuroscience please don’t quit reading just yet! I’ll try to keep the brain science as simple as possible.) These two areas appear to play important roles in the regulation of self-awareness as they are particularly activated when people are asked to think about themselves for example (Wicker, Ruby, Royet, & Fonlupt, 2003). The authors thought it was quite interesting that these areas actually show much higher activity than other parts of the brain under normal conditions, yet showed the greatest deactivation under the drug. Additionally, the intensity of the alterations of conscious experience reported by the volunteers was proportional to the decrease in brain activity. That is, the more brain activity decreased, the more vivid the “trip” experienced.  

Why psilocybin might induce reductions in brain activity is not known, but it is natural to speculate. The authors argued that the findings are consistent with Aldous Huxley’s idea that normal consciousness acts like a “reducing valve” that actually constrains how much information a person normally takes in, so that one is not overwhelmed by chaotic stimuli. Therefore, the apparent “mind-expanding” effect of psychedelic drugs is due to a relaxation of this constraining effect. The reduced activity of the brains connector hubs might permit an “unconstrained style of cognition” producing psychedelic effects (Carhart-Harris, et al., 2012).

In an article for Time magazine, Carhart-Harris takes these speculations even further. Under high doses of psilocybin many people experience a sense of ego-transcendence in which the boundaries of the self appear to dissolve resulting in a blissful state of oneness with the universe. As noted earlier, areas of the brain associated with self-awareness, the mPFC and the PCC, showed a marked reduction in activity under psilocybin. This could imply that ego-transcendence might be facilitated by reduced activity in these brain areas. This idea seems appealing when considering that contemplative traditions aim to produce ego-transcendence by quietening the mind.

 However, let’s not jump to conclusions just yet. There is a potential problem with Carhart-Harris et al.’s interpretation of their results that they appear to have overlooked. Previous research has found that a number of areas of the brain, including the mPFC and the PCC actually show heightened levels of activity when a person is simply at rest and show decreased activity when concentrating attention on various tasks unrelated to thinking about oneself (D'Argembeau et al., 2005; Wicker, et al., 2003). So while it is true that these brain areas are important for self-awareness, simple tasks such as looking out a window or thinking about another person can reduce activity in these areas under normal circumstances. In the Carhart-Harris et al. study brain activity under psilocybin was compared to brain activity when simply resting. This is potentially a problem because activity in the mPFC and PCC tends to be highest when at rest. Therefore, reduced activity in these regions under psilocybin might simply be because volunteers were paying attention to the unfolding hallucinatory experience as opposed to thinking of nothing in particular. Future studies could test this by using a comparison condition where participants were engaged in an attentional task as opposed to simply resting. If there were noticeable differences in the degree of deactivation in the key brain areas this might provide evidence that these particular brain areas do play a special role in the psilocybin experience.

In spite of these concerns, I do think the idea that psilocybin permits an “unconstrained style of cognition” is an intriguing one. As discussed in my previous article there is a strong association between the personality trait absorption and the degree to which a person experiences alterations in consciousness under psilocybin (Studerus, Gamma, Kometer, & Vollenweider, 2012). Absorption is associated with a tendency to have unusual ideas and loose associations, suggesting that high absorption is associated with a style of cognition that is much less constrained than that of the average person. Additionally, one study of volunteers who had never taken psychedelic drugs before found that volunteers who experienced a profound mystical experience under psilocybin underwent a long-term increase in openness to experience (MacLean, Johnson, & Griffiths, 2011), a personality trait closely related to absorption. This suggests that for some people, taking psilocybin could lead to a lasting change in their cognitive style, perhaps related to the intensely “unconstrained” style experienced under psilocybin.

The study of the effects of psilocybin on brain function is in its infancy. More research into this area could lead to some intriguing findings about the relationship between the brain and consciousness.

Further reading

Another critique of the Carhart-Harris et al. study can be found here.

Follow me on Facebook, Google Plus, or Twitter.

© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided. 

This article also appears on Psychology Today on my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Other posts about psychedelic drugs and/or spirituality

Psilocybin and personality

Psilocybin for anxiety and depression in cancer

Peak Experiences in Psilocybin Users 

DMT, aliens and reality – part 1

DMT, aliens and reality – part 2

DMT: Gateway to Reality, Fantasy or What? 

Troubled Souls: Spirituality as a Mental Health Hazard

The Spirituality of Psychedelic Drug Users

References

            Carhart-Harris RL, Erritzoe D, Williams T, Stone JM, Reed LJ, Colasanti A, Tyacke RJ, Leech R, Malizia AL, Murphy K, Hobden P, Evans J, Feilding A, Wise RG, & Nutt DJ (2012). Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109 (6), 2138-43 PMID: 22308440

D'Argembeau, A., Collette, F., Van der Linden, M., Laureys, S., Del Fiore, G., Degueldre, C., . . . Salmon, E. (2005). Self-referential reflective activity and its relationship with rest: a PET study. NeuroImage, 25(2), 616-624. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.11.048

            MacLean, K., Johnson, M., & Griffiths, R. (2011). Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25 (11), 1453-1461 DOI: 10.1177/0269881111420188

Studerus, E., Gamma, A., Kometer, M., & Vollenweider, F. X. (2012). Prediction of Psilocybin Response in Healthy Volunteers. PLoS ONE, 7(2), e30800. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0030800

           Wicker, B., Ruby, P., Royet, J., & Fonlupt, P. (2003). A relation between rest and the self in the brain? Brain Research Reviews, 43 (2), 224-230 DOI: 10.1016/j.brainresrev.2003.08.003

Race, penis size, and pseudoscience

A forthcoming paper's claims about racial differences in penis size are unfounded.

A soon to be published study by Richard Lynn claims to have found scientific evidence that there are substantial differences in the average penis length of men from different races. These claims are in line with vulgar racial stereotypes and are part of a larger research agenda based on a belief in ‘race realism’. Advocates of race realism argue that there are real and pervasive differences between racial groups in personality, intelligence and social behaviour, that these differences have a genetic and evolutionary origin and that they can explain disparities in important social and economic outcomes between races. Lynn’s theories about race rest on shaky foundations and the data sources he uses as evidence for his claims about penis sizes are untrustworthy. For these reasons, his claims should be disregarded as unscientific.

World map of penis sizes - looks impressive, but where did this information come from?

Lynn’s (2012) proposal is based on the theories of the late J. Philippe Rushton. As noted in a previous article, Rushton, a notorious advocate of race realism, proposed that the major races can be sorted into a human hierarchy based on their supposed reproductive strategies. According to Rushton’s r-K life history theory, there are two main reproductive strategies forming ends of a continuum. The r-strategy involves large numbers of offspring with minimal investment, whereas the K-strategy involves fewer offspring and greater investment. According to Rushton, Africans are the most r-selected whereas Asians are the most K-selected, and Europeans are somewhere in between, although closer to Asians than Africans. Rushton claimed that these two reproductive strategies were associated with a whole suite of mental and physical characteristics including brain size, intelligence, criminality, and of course penis length. According to this theory, African men have the smallest brains and the largest penises, whereas Asian men are the opposite. This has been described as a ‘Goldilocks’ theory of race, in which European men are ‘just right’ having a combination of high intelligence and a reasonable genital endowment.

Rushton responded to criticisms of his racist theories by arguing that scientific theories should be judged on the merits of their evidence. Unfortunately for him, it is on scientific grounds that his theories fall apart (Weizmann, Wiener, Wiesenthal, & Ziegler, 1990). Weizmann et al. have argued that Rushton’s assignment of particular traits to either r or K strategies is completely arbitrary. He claims that the K strategy promotes altruism and cooperative behaviour, whereas the r strategy promotes inter-male aggression and criminality. However, according to biological models K strategies appear under conditions of intense competition for limited resources and so there is no reason to associate K with altruism or r with criminality. Additionally, the original theory predicts that unstable fluctuating environments would favour r-strategies, whereas stable, predictable environments would favour K strategies. Hot topical environments have higher levels of stability than colder ones. Therefore, according to this theory Africans, who developed in tropical environment, should be highly K-selected, contrary to Rushton’s theory.

 Rushton’s theory has also been criticised for naïveté about sexual matters (Weizmann, et al., 1990). He assumed that larger genital size means less sexual restraint, more frequent intercourse and therefore more frequent procreation. These assumptions are unjustified as humans regularly engage in non-procreative sexual activity. Furthermore, sexual mores within a society can change within a generation from prudishness to permissiveness and back again. Rushton’s theory assumes that sexual interests are genetically based, yet genes cannot substantially change within a generation. Rushton and Bogaert (1987) argued that blacks are more sexually precocious and less sexually restrained than whites, based on Kinsey’s out-dated and non-representative data. However, they ignore information from the same source that contradicted their theory, such as that blacks were more prudish than whites about nudity, and that blacks were less likely to have a prostitute as a first sexual partner. Kinsey also found that whites engage in more non-coital sexual behaviour, such as oral-genital contact, than Blacks. Rushton interprets this as indicating that Whites are less reproductively oriented (hence more K-selected) even though this contradicts his argument that K-strategies are associated with greater sexual restraint an presumably less sexual activity in general (Weizmann, et al., 1990).

Rushton assumes that because K-strategies are less reproductively oriented, members of the K-selected races should have fewer children. However, fertility is sensitive to environmental and social conditions (Weizmann, et al., 1990). In colonial times, North America experienced historically high rates of fertility, yet in modern times fertility in North America has declined to the low rates seen in modern European countries. Furthermore, Chinese peoples have historically had very high rates of fertility, in spite of being highly K-selected according to Rushton.      

 Lynn attempts to justify his belief that there are differences between races in penis length on the basis that European and Asian males have lower levels of testosterone than Africans and that the “reduction of  testosterone had the effect of reducing penis length, for which evidence is given by Widodsky and Greene (1940).” Widodsky and Greene (1940) is actually a study of the effects of sex hormones on the penises of rats. This is hardly convincing evidence that there are racial differences in testosterone levels or that a reduction in penis length ever occurred in human history.

Lynn's claims about differences in penis length between races build on earlier claims by Rushton and Bogaert (1987). The Rushton and Boagert paper is striking for its use of non-scholarly sources (Weizmann, Wiener, Wiesenthal, & Ziegler, 1991). These include a book of semi-pornographic “tall tales” by an anonymous nineteenth century French surgeon that makes wildly inconsistent claims about genital sizes in people of different races. Lynn also refers to this book without mentioning any problems with this as a source of information. Another odd data source cited by Rushton and Bogaert is an article authored by a certain “P. Nobile” published in Forum: International Journal of Human Relations. This publication is better known to the public as “The Penthouse Forum”, a popular men’s magazine.

The data sources that Lynn uses in his recent paper are hardly much better. One of them is a book by Donald Templer (another self-professed race realist^[1]) called Is Size Important? Templer is not a urologist but a psychologist so why he would claim to be an authority on this subject is unclear.^[2] Lynn’s other source is the world penis size website. These are both self-published sources that have not been independently verified. A blogger named Ethnic Muse has carefully examined this site’s references and found that a number of articles listed on the site either do not exist under the name given or do not discuss penis size at all. There are also numerous discrepancies between the values provided by the website and the actual values given by the references.^[3] Therefore, the information on this website cannot be trusted and no conclusions should be drawn from it.

Lynn’s paper was an attempt to validate one of the claims of Rushton’s r-K theory that there are predictable differences between races in a range of physical and psychological characteristics, including penis length. However, this theory is unscientific and makes arbitrary claims, many of which have been refuted in considerable detail (Weizmann, et al., 1990, 1991). Furthermore, Lynn did not consult authoritative sources for his paper, such as urologists or urology journals. The data sources he did use for his paper are untrustworthy and therefore his results, like his theory, should not be taken seriously.^[4] The very relevance of penis length to understanding whatever racial differences may exist would seem to be highly doubtful.

Notes
[1] Among other things, Templer apparently advocates the voluntary sterilisation of welfare recipients on eugenics grounds.
[2] I am grateful to an anonymous blog article for pointing this out.
[3] I can confirm this. One of the references cited is titled “Male penis length average in sub-Saharan Africa, circumcision and relation to AIDS: a review” and supposedly appeared in the journal AIDS and Behavior in 2007. I searched this journal and no article by this name could be found.
[4] A paper by Tatu Westling makes the ludicrous claim that a country’s economic growth is inversely correlated with penis size based on data from this website. 

This article also appears on my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else on Psychology Today. 

© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.  

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References
Lynn, R. (2012). Rushton’s r–K life history theory of race differences in penis length and circumference examined in 113 populations Personality and Individual Differences DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2012.02.016

Rushton, J., & Bogaert, A. (1987). Race differences in sexual behavior: Testing an evolutionary hypothesis Journal of Research in Personality, 21 (4), 529-551 DOI: 10.1016/0092-6566(87)90038-9

Weizmann, F., Wiener, N. I., Wiesenthal, D. L., & Ziegler, M. (1990). Differential K theory and racial hierarchies. Canadian Psychology, 31(1), 1-13. doi: 10.1037/h0078934

Weizmann, F., Wiener, N., Wiesenthal, D., & Ziegler, M. (1991). Eggs, eggplants and eggheads: A rejoinder to Rushton. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 32 (1), 43-50 DOI: 10.1037/h0078958

DMT, Aliens, and Reality—Part 2

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed Rick Strassman’s research on DMT. In particular I focused on the phenomenon of DMT users frequently encountering non-human entities of various kinds. These experiences have a striking similarity to alien abduction. Even more strangely, many participants came away convinced that these entities are somehow real. Strassman (2001) has speculated that these entities could be inhabitants of a parallel universe. I will not attempt to explain what such entities might represent, as this is not at all understood. What I will focus on are the psychological factors that influence people’s judgments about what is real and how these might explain why people come to believe in the existence of such beings.

The sheer vividness of the DMT experience is probably a major factor. As noted in Part 1, colours became much more intense than in real life. One participant described the colours as “10 to 100 times more saturated.” The content of the visions was so bizarre and unexpected that volunteers found it difficult to believe they could imagine such things. Additionally, volunteers generally felt that their thinking was clear and unimpaired. Psychedelic drug experiences tend to be associated with a feeling that one is experiencing something extraordinarily profound and this may increase a person’s confidence that they are experiencing something deeply real. 

However, there is considerable psychological research indicating that a person’s confidence in the reality of their experiences is actually a poor guide to the accuracy of what has actually occurred. For example, research on memory has found that even when people have complete confidence they have remembered an event accurately, their recall may be highly distorted. In one study, people who had been asked to describe their recollection of the space shuttle Challenger disaster a day after it happened had substantially inaccurate recall of the event three years later. Very few were correct about every single detail and fully a quarter were incorrect about every single detail. In spite of this, they had very high confidence in the accuracy of their recall and described their recollections as very vivid. The degree of emotion experienced at the time of the incident was unrelated to accuracy of recall. Even with highly salient and frightening events, confidence in memory is not a good guide to their accuracy. Some participants even protested that the original record of their recollections was not how they remembered it (Spanos, 1996). 

Furthermore, people may become convinced of the reality of memories that cannot possibly be real. For example, studies have been done in which participants were hypnotically “regressed” to the time of their birth or even before birth (Spanos, 1996). Those who were told (falsely) that it actually is possible to accurately recall infantile events produced detailed accounts consistent with what they believed might have happened. For example, some people recalled with great emotion having a twin who was aborted and even specified the twin’s sex. However, due to infantile amnesia it is simply not possible for people to accurately recall anything that happened at or before birth. Furthermore, foetuses do not have the ability to know what sex a twin is or understand the concept of abortion. In contrast, control subjects asked to think back to the day after their birth invariably described their experiences as fantasies.

People who believe they have they have been abducted by aliens are quite certain that these events actually happened in the physical world. This is in spite of the fact that abductees often live in crowded cities yet thousands of independent witnesses somehow fail to notice the presence of alien spaceships. Research studies on abductees have concluded that these people are not psychotic or otherwise deluded. On the other hand they frequently have pre-existing beliefs about the existence of aliens who have visited our world and also tend to hold other esoteric beliefs (e.g. in reincarnation) more strongly than other people (Spanos, 1996). Alien abduction experiences more often than not occur while people are falling asleep, dreaming, or waking up (Newman & Baumeister, 1996). Researchers therefore theorise that these experiences are related to hallucinatory experiences that can occur during the transition between sleeping and waking, and may involve sleep paralysis, out-of-body sensations and images of frightening monsters or entities. Furthermore, abductees’ accounts of aliens frequently contain details found in science fiction books and films. DMT entity descriptions could conceivably have been influenced by images from popular culture although this has not been investigated.

Another area that has not been investigated is that of personality differences that might influence the experience of and belief in non-human entities. The volunteers in Strassman’s study were all experienced users of psychedelic drugs. The reason for this was that experienced users were considered to be less likely to panic during the DMT trials and more likely to be able to provide a detailed description of their experiences (Strassman, et al., 1994). Experienced users of psychedelic drugs obviously have tried to experience the world in new ways, and they are no doubt eager for new experiences. Therefore, they may be more open than most people to unconventional views of reality.

As noted in a previous article, research on psilocybin found that responsiveness to the psychedelic effects of this drug was strongly correlated with the personality trait absorption. Absorption refers to a readiness to experience deep attentional involvement in which a person experiences a heightened sense of the reality of the object of their attention (Roche & McConkey, 1990). Additionally, information may be processed in “unconventional and idiosyncratic ways.” Absorption tends to be associated with mystical and paranormal beliefs (Lange, Thalbourne, Houran, & Storm, 2000). People high in absorption who take DMT might therefore be expected to have a particularly strong psychedelic response in which they experience a heightened sense of the reality of the phenomena experienced. Due to their general openness to unconventional beliefs and ideas it would not seem surprising that they would be inclined to credit the existence of non-human entities.  

It is unknown whether there were pre-existing differences in personality traits or mystical/paranormal beliefs between volunteers in Strassman's research who either did or did not experience entity contact. Future research could examine whether people who are high in absorption and related traits are more likely to experience contact with entities. Also, among those who do experience entity contact, absorption might be correlated with willingness to believe in their reality. Additionally, people who are inclined to believe that psychedelic drugs can reveal profound truths about the nature of reality might therefore be more inclined to believe they have experienced something real.  

In conclusion, the fact that some people have visions of intelligent non-human entities under the influence of DMT is puzzling and the reasons why this occurs cannot yet be explained. However, from a scientific viewpoint it would be extremely premature to jump to conclusions involving far-fetched theories of alternative realities. Sam Harris has argued that the fact that people can have profound mystical experiences (with or without psychedelic drugs) does not justify making metaphysical claims about the nature of reality or consciousness. He states, and I agree, that the full spectrum of human conscious experience can be studied rationally without engaging in pseudoscience. The fact that DMT volunteers were convinced that the entities they contacted were real does not provide evidence of the objective independent nature of these beings. Sane intelligent people can also be fully convinced of the reality of things that are known not to have happened. Future research on DMT could profit from taking into account psychological factors influencing a person's judgments about reality. 

Follow me on Facebook, Google Plus, or Twitter.

© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.  

This article has previously appeared on my Psychology Today blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

Other posts about psychedelic drugs 

DMT: Gateway to Reality, Fantasy or What?

Psilocybin and personality

Psilocybin and brain function

Psilocybin for anxiety and depression in cancer

The Spirituality of Psychedelic Drug Users

Peak Experiences in Psilocybin Users

References

Cakic, V., Potkonyak, J., & Marshall, A. (2010). Dimethyltryptamine (DMT): Subjective effects and patterns of use among Australian recreational users. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 111(1–2), 30-37. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2010.03.015

Lange R, Thalbourne MA, Houran J, & Storm L (2000). The revised transliminality scale: reliability and validity data from a Rasch top-down purification procedure. Consciousness and cognition, 9 (4), 591-617 PMID: 11150227

Newman, L. S., & Baumeister, R. F. (1996). Toward an explanation of the UFO abduction phenomenon: Hypnotic elaboration, extraterrestrial sadomasochism, and spurious memories. Psychological Inquiry, 7 (2), 99-126 DOI: 10.1207/s15327965pli0702_1

Roche, S. M., & McConkey, K. M. (1990). Absorption: Nature, assessment, and correlates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(1), 91-101. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.59.1.91

Spanos, N. P. (1996). Multiple identities and false memories: A sociocognitive perspective. Washinton DC: American Psychological Association.

Strassman, R. J. (2001). DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press.

Strassman RJ, Qualls CR, Uhlenhuth EH, & Kellner R (1994). Dose-response study of N,N-dimethyltryptamine in humans. II. Subjective effects and preliminary results of a new rating scale. Archives of general psychiatry, 51 (2), 98-108 PMID: 8297217

DMT, aliens, and reality, part 1

Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a naturally occurring psychedelic drug found in many plants and animals, and has been claimed to naturally occur in the human brain itself (Strassman, 2001). DMT, less well-known than other psychedelics such as psilocybin or LSD, is striking for the brevity and intensity of its effects. When smoked, for example, hallucinogenic effects begin almost immediately and resolve within 30 minutes. As a result, it is sometimes known facetiously as the “businessman’s lunch trip” (Cakic, Potkonyak, & Marshall, 2010). One of the most remarkable features of the DMT experience is the frequency with which users encounter non-human intelligences, often resembling aliens. Even more remarkably, some users come away from these encounters convinced that these entities are somehow real (Strassman, 2001). The psychological aspects of such experiences have not yet been adequately explored by scientific researchers.

Kaleidoscopic geometric patterns are typical of DMT visions. 

In the 1990s, psychiatrist Rick Strassman conducted pioneering research on the effects of DMT, described in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Strassman (2001) reported that “about half” of the 60 volunteers entered what he described as “freestanding, independent levels of existence” of a highly unusual nature. These places were inhabited by what volunteers described as intelligent “beings”, “entities”, “aliens”, “guides”, and “helpers”. These appeared in a variety of forms, such as “clowns, reptiles, mantises, bees, spiders, cacti, and stick figures.” These beings have been reported by other investigators, including Terrence McKenna, who described them as “self-transforming machine elves,” as well as in more sober case reports from research on people with schizophrenia conducted in the 1950s. Strangely enough, reports of these kinds of beings seem to be unique to DMT, as Strassman was unable to find anything similar in the research literature on other psychedelic drugs.   

There were some consistent themes in experiences of entity contact. Participants frequently reported that the beings seemed to be waiting for them. Volunteers were subjected to an examination by these beings in what appeared to be a technologically advanced setting. Volunteers felt like their mind and body was probed and tested, or even modified in some unexplained way. The beings communicated with the user through gestures, telepathy, or visual imagery. Sometimes the entities seemed loving and caring, other times emotionally detached. Strassman noted the striking parallels between these entity contact experiences and accounts of alien abduction. He considered that “alien abduction” experiences might occur due to the spontaneous release of naturally occurring DMT in the human brain, although this theory has never been tested.  

Intriguingly, many volunteers refused to believe that these experiences were hallucinations or dreams, as they seemed too real. Strassman reported being initially quite baffled by and unprepared for the frequency of these entity experiences among his volunteers. In his book he even entertains the idea that these entities are genuine inhabitants of some sort of normally invisible alternative reality, perhaps of a parallel universe.

From a hard-nosed scientific perspective, such claims are hard to believe, to say the least. The idea that there are invisible realities inhabited by intelligent entities that cannot be detected by any empirical means but can be perceived only by people who are in altered states of brain chemistry is difficult to reconcile with a modern scientific worldview. Strassman expresses a more general belief in what I would call psychedelic mysticism. This is the belief that psychedelic drugs including LSD and psilocybin, as well as DMT, can provide true insights into the deeper nature of reality. For example, after using these drugs, people may become convinced that there are realities beyond the everyday one, that there is life after death, and that there is an objective spiritual presence in the universe.

Why people encounter what appear to be non-human entities while on DMT but not on other drugs is currently unknown. The reasons why some volunteers were convinced these entities are real are also not understood but probably have a great deal to do with psychological factors that influence people’s judgments about what is real. I will discuss these factors in detail in my next post.

Follow me on Facebook, Google Plus, or Twitter.

© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.  

This article has previously appeared on Psychology Today on my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Other posts about psychedelic drugs 

DMT: Gateway to Reality, Fantasy or What?

Psilocybin and personality

Psilocybin and brain function

Psilocybin for anxiety and depression in cancer

The Spirituality of Psychedelic Drug Users

Peak Experiences in Psilocybin Users 

References

Cakic, V., Potkonyak, J., & Marshall, A. (2010). Subjective effects and patterns of use among Australian recreational users. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 111 (1-2), 30-37 DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2010.03.015

Strassman, R. J. (2001). DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press.

Strassman RJ, Qualls CR, Uhlenhuth EH, & Kellner R (1994). Dose-response study of N,N-dimethyltryptamine in humans. II. Subjective effects and preliminary results of a new rating scale. Archives of general psychiatry, 51 (2), 98-108 PMID: 8297217

Image credit: "Land of psychedelic illuminations" by Brian Exton of picturerealm.co.uk