Hi, it's been a while. I haven't written anything this year. My last post was December 31, 2022.
The main reason is that I've had to deal with more loss and grief in my life. Someone close to me was diagnosed with cancer, endured months of radiation and chemotherapy, and died anyway.1 I've also had some deflating garbage to wade through at work. My enthusiasm for doing anything has been rather low.
Besides all that, Blogger is a terrible platform for blogging. The interface changed a while a back and ever since then, composing in the little box has been unpleasant. It takes forever to get the formatting and spacing right. I could modernize the look from a “classic” theme 2 to one that has a “Layout” view...
...but that doesn't improve the writing experience.
So. I already have a WordPress blog. I may start posting there. The old neurocritic.blogspot.com site would become an archive of posts from 2006 – 2022.
The bigger question is whether I have anything relevant to say any more.
Footnotes
1 ...less than three months later. If you ask me, the cause of death WAS the treatment (and its side effects).
3 There are other platforms, sure. In a hilarious meta-example, a post on Medium provided a tutorial on Substack, which started as a platform for e-mail newsletters (whether monetized or not). But it also has a very blog-like look — here's Margaret Atwood's, for example. Now they have Substack Notes, which is in the running as yet another Twitter replacement. Here's a thread on dumplings.
As 2022 draws to a close, the SNL Trend Forecasters have agreed to divulge their predictions for the most — and the least — exciting research fads for the New Year.
The Neurocritic: How do you guys predict today's most popular neuroscience trends?
Trend Forecasters: Oh, well we have 4,000 computers, they're all big they all make charts and they beep LOUD.
Hey Posterior Cingulate — we see you! You're fresh, you're mysterious, you're misunderstood. But we know you exist far beyond the default fashion mode. The new tripartite view proposes...
...that the broader PCC region contains three major subregions — the dorsal PCC, ventral PCC and retrosplenial cortex — that respectively support the integration of executive, mnemonic and spatial processing systems. This tripartite subregional view reconciles inconsistencies in prior unitary theories of PCC function and offers promising new avenues for progress.
Claustrum, we're in love with you and it's not only because of the holidays. You're connected to everything and everyone.
Santa Claustrum
Initial speculation claimed you were responsible for consciousness (Crick & Koch, 2015), but subsequent studies in human epilepsy patients showed no alterations in consciousness with unilateral or bilateral electrical stimulation (Bickel & Parvizi, 2019). Instead, you're critical for cognitive control. The fresh functional model is called network instantiation in cognitive control (Madden et al., 2022).
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine ... now posit that Crick may have been incorrect: They developed a new theory — built on data — that the claustrum behaves more like a high-speed internet router, taking in executive commands from “boss” areas of the brain’s cortex that forms complex thoughts to generate “networks” in the cortex.
The most exciting recent work (in mice) has shown that claustro-cortical circuits are organized into functional modules (McBride et al., 2022)...
Frontal areas are more inhibited, while posterior areas are more excited
Upper layers are more excited, while deeper layers are more inhibited
Your superiority complex is tired, temporal difference error. We know you consider yourself the “biggest success story in computational neuroscience.” But every week a new finding prompts a mathematical tweak and an update of your impenetrable model.
You spent years developing your brilliant smartphone app that improves memory in older adults, drawing on the basic science of hippocampal replay (e.g., speeding up 24 sec video clips by 3×).
Autobiographical memory cues are created by recording an 8 sec audio cue to accompany a 24 sec video recording of a daily event, which is rated for significance. In your recent paper, fMRI scanning occurred after a two week or 10 week intervention. In comparison to baseline (non-reviewed) events, repeated replay of autobiographical memory cues enhanced episodic recollection and increased the differentiation of activity patterns in the
hippocampus in older adults (Martin et al., 2022). Bravo, HippoCamera! Take a bow Barense, Honey, and Martin!
BRAIN Initiative,2 you're so far behind the times that YOU ARE OUT. Didn't you get the memo that Neuroscience Needs Behavior back in 2017? Or read the review on Quantifying Behavior [in worms and flies] to Solve Sensorimotor Transformations, which covered papers going back to 2008 and earlier? The patentedHippoCamera was developed behind your back with funding from the Canadian government and private foundations. And the clever use of remote memories recorded by the 1 Second Everyday app (Bainbridge & Baker, 2022) was funded by NIH Intramural funds. The fact that you waited until 2023 to fully announce BBQS projects in humans and non-humans speaks volumes to the value you place on understanding behavior. GO TO BED!
One recent uptick in human brain complexity was revealed from analysis
of postmortem tissue in 17 subregions of prefrontal cortex (PFC). Zhong and colleagues (2022) found that 60 neuropeptides and 60 neuropeptide receptors are expressed in at least one of the PFC subregions. The data are freely available and incorporated into the Human Protein Atlas— which has about 5 million individual web pages. The authors encouraged efforts to explore these neuropeptide receptors as potential targets for drug development in neurology and psychiatry, which has been neglected by pharmaceutical companies in recent years.
You're a failure, psychiatric neuroimaging!! Nour, Liu, and Dolan wrote a 20 page paper detailing your many shortcomings and faults. For instance, explanatory aspirations in resting-state studies are laughable:
“...bridging a gap between descriptive accounts of neural data and psychopathology requires a model that relates network properties ... to specific computational processes. Absent such a model, we argue that further large-scale data collection will be insufficient to yield breakthroughs in probing a fundamental understanding of cognition or psychiatric illness.”
We needn't go further than listing other direct quotes from their paper:
“...functional neuroimaging plays no role in clinical decision making.”
“While the computational psychiatry literature has identified
associations between model-informed neural activity and psychiatric
variables, effective clinical translation has been lacking.”
“Casting a cold eye on the psychiatric neuroimaging literature invites a
conclusion that despite 30 years of intense research and considerable
technological advances, this enterprise has not delivered a
neurobiological account (i.e., a mechanistic explanation) for any
psychiatric disorder, nor has it provided a credible imaging-based
biomarker of clinical utility.”
Ouch! You've done nothing for us, psychiatric neuroimaging. You haven't even embraced the correct level of analysis (i.e. manifolds). GO TO BED!
The minimally invasive BCI was developed with funding from DARPA (among others), and initial results from sheep were reported in Nature Biotechnology (Oxley et al., 2016). Its placement in the superior sagittal sinus (via the jugular vein) produces high-fidelity recordings from motor cortex without the need for risky cranial surgery. The brain.io™ motor neuroprosthesis transmits cortical signals from the Stentrode to a receiver implanted in the chest, and a machine learning algorithm decodes the neural activity and translates the signals to digital commands.
Two paralyzed participants with ALS achieved typing click selection accuracy of 93% within 86 days and 71 days of machine-learning supervised training (Oxley et al., 2021). Typing rate was relatively slow (13.8 and 20.1 correct characters per minute, respectively) in comparison to some other BCI cases, but those all entailed craniotomies.1 Nonetheless, both participants were able to text, e-mail, browse the internet, shop online, and manage finances (Oxley et al., 2021). The COMMAND Early Feasibility Study is an ongoing clinical trial of the Synchron device that will enroll six patients.
Neuralink, you're out! So go back to hell. Stop flaunting your wealth, Neuralink. We all know you have to die for your hubris. You think you'll have FDA approval in six months, but that's what you said in 2019. Many of your claims are sheer fantasy, like you'll be able to cure everything from addiction to strokes.
Your Fall 2022 update was more technically impressive, but still claimed your device will be able to restore vision — prompting eminent vision scientist Brian Wandell to call out this BS:
He [Musk] specifically said this would work for the congenitally blind because they still have a visual cortex.
Two hundred years of experiments on site restoration in human, and many fundamental cellular experiments of visual development and the limits of adult plasticity, show this is false.
What are your favorite neuroscience trends for 2023? What should be kicked to the curb?
Footnotes
1 Most notable was BrainGate participant T5, with an astonishing 90 characters per minute. Two microelectrode arrays were implanted in the hand area of the precentral gyrus, and neural activity produced by imagined handwriting was decoded and translated into text in real time (Willett et al., 2021).
Crick, F. C., & Koch, C. (2005). What is the function of the claustrum?. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 360(1458), 1271-1279.
Foster, B. L., Koslov, S. R.,
Aponik-Gremillion, L., Monko, M. E., Hayden, B. Y., & Heilbronner,
S. R. (2022). A tripartite view of the posterior cingulate cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 01 Dec 2022.
Madden, M. B., Stewart, B. W., White,
M. G., Krimmel, S. R., Qadir, H., Barrett, F. S., ... & Mathur, B.
N. (2022). A role for the claustrum in cognitive control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Zhong, W., Barde, S., Mitsios, N., Adori, C., Oksvold, P., Feilitzen, K.
V., ... & Hökfelt, T. (2022). The neuropeptide landscape of human prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
119(33), e2123146119.
Just in time for Halloween, I had a hideous surgery to repair a fractured elbow. This entailed receiving a nerve block that made my hand feel like a dead appendage, which was quite spooky indeed.
Spooky
Dead Hand
I'm supposed to keep the arm elevated above my heart (which isn't conducive to sitting here and typing), so that is all for now.
Happy Halloween!
Actual e-mail sent to the post-op contact person the night of my surgery:
In terms of possible delusions in living human beings, Le délire des négations—the nihilistic delusion that one is dead —evokes the most harrowing existence imaginable. The French neurologist Jules Cotard first described the syndrome that bears his name (1882, English translation):
I hazard the name of delirium of negations to designate the state of the patients ... in whom the negative disposition is carried to the highest degree. [They are] asked their name – they have no name; their age – they are ageless; where were they born – they were not born; ... if they have a headache, stomach ache, pain in some part of their body – they have no head, no stomach, some even have no body... For some the negation is universal, nothing exists anymore, they themselves are nothing.
Cotard presented the case of Miss X, a 43 year old woman with severe “melancholic anxiety” who tried to end her own life (1880, English translation):
...She affirms that she has neither brain nor nerves, nor chest, nor stomach, nor intestines; all that remains is the skin and bones of the body, disorganized (these are [her] own expressions). This delirium of negation extends even to the metaphysical ideas which were formerly the object of [her] firmest beliefs; She doesn't have a soul, God doesn't exist, neither does the devil. Miss X… being no more than a disorganized body, does not need to eat to live, she cannot die a natural death, she will exist eternally unless she is burned, fire being the only end...
Cotard delusion has been observed in a wide variety of psychiatric and neurological conditions, including psychotic depression, schizophrenia, encephalitis, subdural hemorrhage, arteriovenous malformations, migraine, Parkinson's disease, stroke, and epilepsy (Gerrans, 2022). From a neurobiological perspective, it's nearly impossible to construct a unified theory of the dysfunctional brain systems that underlie the delusion. Hence, some studies have focused on patients who manifest Cotard delusion after stroke, brain injury, or anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis for clues on potential brain regions that may be implicated in these cases.
One prominent account of Cotard holds that people suffering from the delirium of negation are completely devoid of emotional responses. The nihilistic delusion is an attempt to make sense of this anomalous experience. Davies and Coltheart (2022) are critical of this view because there's no evidence that emotional reactivity is abolished in Cotard delusion. They also cite 12 case reports of patients who show a variety of affective states that collectively encompass anxiety, fear, guilt, distress, paranoia, aggression, agitation, anguish, despair, euphoria, grandiosity, irritability, sadness, and worry.
An alternate account places the anomalous experiences of depersonalization and derealization, rather than lack of emotion, as the central “surprising events” that trigger nihilistic delusions (Billon, 2016; Davies & Coltheart, 2022). These patients describe phenomena such as “I feel myself detached from my own body” and “feelings of unreality and difficulties in deciding whether events ... were real or just imagined”. The injured brain areas in these patients included insular cortex and right temporal-parietal regions.
A Death blow is a Life blow to Some Who till they died, did not alive become — Who had they lived, had died but when They died, Vitality begun.
In contrast, Gerrans (2022) proposes that depersonalization and Cotard delusion result from different ruptures in the sense of self. He provides an extensive and accessible review of the interoceptive active inference model and predictive coding of bodily states in the anterior insula cortex. Depersonalization may arise from imprecise interoceptive predictions, but reality testing remains intact. On the other hand, Cotard delusion represents a complete rupture from reality.
Within this framework, depersonalisation experience involves a selective failure to annex a class of experience to a largely intact hierarchical self-model. The Cotard delusion is a result of the destruction or degradation of that model. It is consistent with this view that there can be overlap between symptoms of depersonalisation disorder and Cotard syndrome, especially while the delusion develops because of nature of self-modelling. However the delusion reports the experience of human life without an intact regulatory self-model whereas in depersonalisation the self-model is largely intact.
A key component of the “depersonalization first, Cotard second” view should account for why the former is relatively common, while the latter is quite rare.
Cotard, J. (1880). Du Délire
hypocondriaque dans une forme grave de la mélancolie anxieuse, mémoire
lu à la Société médico-psychologique dans la séance du 28 juin 1880, par
M. le Dr Jules Cotard.
Cotard, J. (1882). Du délire des négations. Arch de Neurol, 4, 282-296.
The more you study the brain, the more unknowable it becomes. The level of complexity is baffling, and this is true whether the brain belongs to a human or a crab.1 The latest uptick in human brain complexity was revealed from analysis of postmortem tissue in 17 subregions of prefrontal cortex (PFC). Zhong and colleagues (2022) found that 60 neuropeptides and 60 neuropeptide receptors are expressed in at least one of the PFC subregions.
All the data are freely available (links are in the open access article) and incorporated into the Human Protein Atlas— which has about 15 million individual web pages (according to Wikipedia).
There is a growing literature that suggests that circuits can have
degenerate solutions, that is similar looking behavior with different
underlying parameters across individuals. ... Moreover, repeated
performance of the same task is often associated with variable activity
in the network generating this task [57∗∗].
Reference
Zhong, W., Barde, S., Mitsios, N., Adori, C., Oksvold, P., Feilitzen, K.
V., ... & Hökfelt, T. (2022). The neuropeptide landscape of human prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
119(33), e2123146119.
modified from Fig. 2 (Zhong et al., 2022). Expression levels of (A)Neuropeptides (NP) and (B)Neuropeptide Receptors (NPR) in human PFC. The color code indicates the type of genes (orange, precursor; green, NP; blue, NPR). Red arrows in A and B point to the transcripts studied with ISH (in situ hybridization).
"The self is the psychological counterpart of the default mode functionality of the brain." (Scalabrini et al., 2021).
The self studying how "The Self" is represented and constructed by the brain is apex meta-neuroscience.1 We can say that the self is a manifestation (or an illusory byproduct) of activity in the default mode network (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus, and angular gyrus), but what does this really mean? How do we relate specific neural states to aspects of a changeable self? In a field increasingly focused on remote control of genetically-defined microciruits, pinning down subjective internal phenomena seems presumptuous and hopelessly overambitious.
But of course, the inherent challenge of studying complex subjective experiences hasn't stopped scientists from trying. One active area of research involves characterizing the neural correlates of internal responses to traumatic events. This is of great clinical relevance, because the long-term persistence of fear, hypervigilance, negative affect, and intrusive memories after trauma can be disabling (post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD). Alterations in one's sense of self (dissociation) can also occur in PTSD, and is the focus of the rest of this post. Dissociative symptoms can include:
Depersonalization: Persistent or
recurrent experiences of feeling detached from, and as if one were an
outside observer of, one’s mental processes or body (e.g., feeling as
though one were in a dream; feeling a sense of unreality of self or body
or of time moving slowly).
Derealization:
Persistent or recurrent experiences of unreality of surroundings (e.g.,
the world around the individual is experienced as unreal, dreamlike,
distant, or distorted).
In states of depersonalization/derealization (which can occur independently of PTSD), one feels disconnected from the self and/or external reality. Dissociative symptoms are considered a maladaptive (but protective) response to stress and trauma. The standard method of eliciting dissociative symptoms during fMRI scanning is script-driven imagery (SDI), a highly unpleasant manipulation. Before the experiment, the participant recounts a narrative of the traumatic event, which is subsequently read back to them in the scanner. The presence of acute dissociative symptoms is determined by questionnaires and interviews before, during, and after the scan.
Early studies reported increased activity in prefrontal (and other) cortical regions in the SDI condition compared to baseline (Lanius et al., 2002) or a neutral script condition (Hopper et al., 2007), which was related to the severity of dissociative symptoms. This fits a theoretical perspective where higher cortical regions are tamping down limbic (and emotional) responses to the trauma induction. It should be mentioned that dissociative responses to SDI are generally less common than vivid re-experiencing of the trauma (30% vs. 70% in Lanius et al., 2002). Drawbacks of these studies include small samples sizes and inconsistencies in the fMRI results.
Mertens and colleagues (2022) set out to replicate these findings in a larger, more homogeneous population of 51 female survivors of childhood abuse. The study included additional questionnaires and separation of the SDI condition into “script listening” and “focused recall” phases (previous studies only included the latter). The experimental design included three runs of neutral script (30 sec each of listening/imaging and focused recall of the event) and three runs of trauma script, which was effective in increasing self-reported ratings of dissociative symptoms, e.g. “Did what you were experiencing seem unreal to you, like you were in a dream or watching a movie or play?” and “Did you feel like you were a spectator watching what was happening to you, like an observer or outsider?” (rated on a 0-6 scale).
– click on image for a larger view –
The fMRI results indicated that a wide swath of left cerebellum, occipital cortex, and supramarginal gyrus (parietal lobe) were more active in the trauma script than neutral condition, and this was specific to the script listening phase (no differences were observed during the focused recall phase). The same pattern was seen in the amygdala in a region of interest analysis. Importantly, there was no relationship between any of the clusters and any dissociation measure (amygdala and insula shown below).2
Fig. 2 (Mertens et al., 2022). Script-elicited signal activation clusters and corresponding brain-behaviour correlates (N = 51).
The authors tried a number of different analytic techniques to try and find a relationship between activation clusters and dissociative symptoms, but they could not. In their conclusions, they mentioned the significance of the replication crisis in neuroimaging and noted that “the current (null) findings highlight the difficulty of extracting reliable neurobiological biomarkers for complex subjective experiences such as dissociation.” Identifying who we are and what we experience via spatio-temporal patterns of brain activity are problems that do not have an imminent solution.
Footnotes
1Self = a self-aware entity with fully-realized consciousness (whatever this means)
2Here, the number of self-report and clinician-rated measures was impressive, e.g. Dissociative Experiences scale (trait dissociation), Cambridge Depersonalization Scale, Clinician Administered Dissociative States Scale, Responses to Script-Driven Imagery, etc.
It's 2022, and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) has just issued a belated apology because two of their past Presidents published papers on “aversion therapies” for “converting” gay and transgender individuals to the socially prescribed norms of sexuality and gender identity.
Well, they didn't actually say this, nor did they name the prominent and distinguished clinical psychologists who authored these papers. Although these luminaries signed on to the mea culpa, there was no direct admission of the harm caused by these ill-advised practices. Instead, the document focused on “the courageous and historic role that some of our members have played in advancing SGM [sexual and gender minority] rights and mental health (e.g., Drs. Charles Silverstein and Gerald Davison).”
The ABCT Board of Directors and past leadership have
released an apology for behavior therapy’s contributions to the
development and practice of sexual orientation and gender identity and
expression change efforts [SOGIECEs].
...[ABCT] apologizes for our historic role in the development and use of so-called “conversion therapies,” practices that have caused untold harm to members of the sexual and gender minority (SGM) community for over 50 years. To this day, publications written by ABCT members – including members in prominent leadership roles – are used by anti-SGM activists to justify their ongoing use of these damaging so-called “therapies.” ABCT deeply regrets behavior therapists’ role in the creation, study, and use of these practices, and recognizes and accepts responsibility for the ways in which both our actions and inactions have harmed SGM people. ABCT recognizes it is time for us to document our history and legacy and say that we are truly sorry.1
But documentation of this history and legacy is rather sketchy... Without naming names, the Apology cited the recent review of Capriotti and Donaldson (2022), which in turn asked “Why don’t behavior analysts do something?” about retracting the unethical paper of Rekers and Lovaas (1974). The conversion therapy work of Barlow and Hayes was mentioned here as well.
I wrote to Barlow in 2013 to ask him about this early research on SGM people.2 I didn't really expect an answer, especially since I'm an obscure anonymous
blogger. Nonetheless, I wanted to give him the opportunity to respond
before I posted about his work.
Dear Dr. Barlow,
Congratulations on your
receipt of the 2012 James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the APS for
your distinguished contributions to the field.
I am a blogger
writing a post about past treatments for homosexuality and came across
references to your early work on aversion therapy in gay men, which I
found unfortunate.
I wondered whether you had a statement about that work in light of
contemporary views of homosexuality, or whether you had issued such a
statement in the past.
But it was also during this time [late 60s-early 70s] that I undertook what has come to be from my own personal point of view the most regrettable initiative in my clinical research career. Specifically ... I began treating and evaluating the effects of [covert sensitization] treatment in individuals with what came to be called paraphilias but what was then called sexual deviation (Barlow, 1974a). While our focus was mostly on pedophilia (e.g. Barlow, Leitenberg, & Agras, 1969), the aggressive behavior of rapists (e.g. Abel, Barlow, Blanchard, & Guild, 1977), and other paraphilias (e.g. Hayes, Brownell, & Barlow, 1978), included in this series of studies were participants presenting with same-sex arousal patterns with consenting adults. (e.g., Barlow, Leitenberg, & Agras, 1969). At that time homosexuality was considered a disorder in all systems of nosology and, under extreme pressures from society and the associated stigma, these individuals sought out treatment; so very few clinicians even gave it a second thought. But by the mid-1970s several individuals began questioning these treatment goals.
These practices were “embedded in the continually shifting landscape of cultural values and mores” and homosexuality wasn't de-pathologized until “later in the decade” of the 1970s [it was actually 1973] and “most of the work was on paraphilias” [but many papers were on attempted conversion of gay men and transgender women (who were called male transsexuals)]. Most importantly, Barlow did not acknowledge the harm inflicted on the recipients of his treatments.
What else should I be? All apologies What else could I say? Everyone is gay --Nirvana
Footnotes
1One of the action items is that disclaimers will be added to SOGIECE papers previously published in ABCT journals. My initial search turned up only one. Barlow DH (1973). Increasing heterosexual responsiveness in the treatment of sexual deviation: A review of the clinical and experimental evidence. Behavior Therapy 4:655-671
2The SGM terminology was unfamiliar to me before now. I also wondered whether the acronym SOGIECE was real, but apparently it is.
ADDENDUM (June 12 2022): Dr. Hayes has issued a personal apology for his role in conversion therapy. Also, he has published on ACT to lessen the impact of internalized homophobia (which is quite common in LGBTQ+ persons, as I know from personal experience).
Barlow DH, Abel GG, & Blanchard EB (1977). Gender identity change in a transsexual: an exorcism. Archives of sexual behavior, 6 (5), 387-95. PMID: 921523
Although the prevention of transsexualism is the ideal, work in this area has been fraught with ethical problems, and data on the possibility of prevention, or even what to prevent, are not available...
Barlow DH, Agras WS, & Leitenberg H (1972). The contribution of therapeutic instruction of covert sensitization. Behaviour research and therapy, 10 (4), 411-5. PMID: 4637499
The patient descriptions are distressing, e.g. a boy raped by a male relative: “The first S was a 15-yr-old male who had engaged in homosexual behavior for 4 yr after being seduced [sic] by an uncle.”
Barlow
DH, Leitenberg H, & Agras WS (1969). Experimental control of sexual
deviation through manipulation of the noxious scene in covert
sensitization. Journal of abnormal psychology, 74 (5), 597-601. PMID: 5349402
Hayes
SC, Brownell KD, & Barlow DH (1983). Heterosocial-skills training
and covert sensitization. Effects on social skills and sexual arousal
in sexual deviants. Behaviour research and therapy, 21 (4), 383-92, PMID: 6138027
“Heterosexual responsiveness, measured by penile responses and reports of
behavior, was strengthened in three homosexuals through a fading
procedure [slides of nude females superimposed on slides of nude males.]. ... The results suggest that fading
was responsible for altering stimulus control of sexual arousal and that
aversive techniques may not be necessary in the treatment of sexual
deviation.” [well that's a relief...]
Barlow DH, Hayes SC, Nelson RO, Steele
DL, Meeler ME, Mills JR. (1979). Sex role motor behavior: A behavioral
checklist. Behavioral Assessment. 1:119-38. [I could not find a copy of this; however, the items appear in Hayes et al. 1984]. Examples:
one cis-male cross-dresser into BDSM (among the rapists, pedophiles, and exhibitionists) listened to arousing scenarios followed by humiliating consequences while his penile circumference was measured.
no gay or trans subjects here, but other papers have used the D word (“deviant”).
Leonard SR, Hayes SC. (1983). Sexual fantasy alternation. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry. 14(3):241-9.
four bisexual men (three white, one black) who were “confused” about their sexual orientation
but only the black man was medicated (with a potent antipsychotic)
“Subject 3 was a 32 yr old, black, married, blue collar worker and father of five. His heterosexual history was extensive. He reported a 3 yr history of homosexual activity ocurring during drinking episodes. At the time of referral and throughout the study, he received medication (Thorazine 25 mg daily) from a physician at the referring agency.”
I have
THOUGHTS. Some on how some therapy orientations get a pass in criticism
but more on ABCT having a statement signed by its presidents when at
least two (Barlow and Hayes) have published papers on behavioral
modification of sexuality https://t.co/1JdyaN6YEq
— Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces, PhD (@lluaces) June 9, 2022
While I applaud @ABCTNOW's
proactivity and (relative) transparency, this letter fails to name two
current high-profile members: David Barlow and Steven Hayes. Encouraging
readers to 'educate themselves' falls short of the work this letter
intends to do.https://t.co/f6Wuv6ObUu
Thank you for your belated apology. If I may humbly ask, why did it take so long, when members of the LGBTQ+ community have been seeking such acknowledgments for years? https://t.co/UISL0haq
Born in West Virginia in 1980, The Neurocritic embarked upon a roadtrip across America at the age of thirteen with his mother. She abandoned him when they reached San Francisco and The Neurocritic descended into a spiral of drug abuse and prostitution. At fifteen, The Neurocritic's psychiatrist encouraged him to start writing as a form of therapy.
