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Culture and depression

New data may help doctors more accurately diagnose patients

The expectation that East-Asian people emphasize physical symptoms of depression (e.g. headaches, poor appetite or aches/pains in the body) is widely acknowledged, yet the few available empirical studies report mixed data on this issue. A new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) debunks this cultural myth, and offers clinicians valuable insight to into cultural context when assessing a patient, leading to more accurate diagnosis.

Lead by CAMH Clinical Research Director Dr. R. Michael Bagby, in collaboration with Dr. Andrew Ryder, Concordia University, Steven Heine, University of British Columbia and a number of collaborators from Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, People's Republic of China, this study recruited more than 200 participants, half from an outpatient clinic in China, and half from a clinical research department outpatient clinic at CAMH, and tested two central hypotheses: 1. East-Asian participants will emphasize somatic or physical symptoms of depression more than North American participants, and 2. North American participants would emphasize psychological symptoms of depression (e.g. report feeling sad, crying spells, or a loss of self-confidence) more than East-Asian participants. Dr. Bagby and his team also wanted to examine the role stigma and alexithymia (difficulty using words to describe emotions) play in how each culture presented and expressed depression symptoms.

This rigorous work is one of only a few studies to address these questions with a direct cross-cultural comparison of clinical patients. Also, it is the only study to use three assessment tools (spontaneous report of problems during unstructured discussion with doctor; clinician-rated symptoms in a structured clinical interview; and a symptom rating scale in questionnaire form) translated into both English and Chinese (Mandarin) and modified to address cross-cultural differences.

As Dr. Bagby explains, "the onset of depression triggers a biological response that takes place within a specific social context, resulting in a cascade of somatic and psychological experiences that are interpreted through a particular cultural lens. Careful translation and adaptation of our assessment tools helped us clarify if different approaches lead to different symptom profiles and conclusions about patients."

Overall, the data demonstrate a consistently greater level of psychological symptom reporting in the North American sample, regardless of assessment tool. This suggests a tendency for Western cultures to emphasize psychological symptoms of depression (psychologization), rather than a tendency for those from East-Asian cultures to emphasize physical symptoms (somatization).

East-Asian participants did report a significantly higher level of somatic symptoms when reporting through the spontaneous interview and structured clinical interview. Also, these participants reported higher levels of stigma and alexithymia. A refined examination of this link revealed that the observed cross-cultural differences in somatic symptom scores relates, in part, to cultural differences in internally versus externally oriented thinking. This suggests that people who do not frequently focus on their internal emotional state are more likely to notice somatic symptoms.

While this data may help clinicians be more aware of how culture can impact how people talk about their illness, this data does not constitute a norm for depression worldwide. More work should be done to understand the interaction of biology, culture and individual differences in predicting variations in how people present symptoms of depression.

With thanks to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

MIT-led team finds language without numbers

Amazonian tribe has no word to express 'one,' other numbers

An Amazonian language with only 300 speakers has no word to express the concept of "one" or any other specific number, according to a new study from an MIT-led team.

The team, led by MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences Edward Gibson, found that members of the Piraha tribe in remote northwestern Brazil use language to express relative quantities such as "some" and "more," but not precise numbers.

It is often assumed that counting is an innate part of human cognition, said Gibson, "but here is a group that does not count. They could learn, but it's not useful in their culture, so they've never picked it up."

The study, which appeared in the June 10 online edition of the journal Cognition, offers evidence that number words are a concept invented by human cultures as they are needed, and not an inherent part of language, Gibson said.

The work builds on a study published in 2004, which found that the Piraha had words to express the quantities "one," "two," and "many." The MIT researchers observed the same phenomenon when they asked Piraha speakers to describe sets of objects as they were added, from one to 10.

However, the MIT team decided to add a new twist--they started with 10 objects and asked the tribe members to count down. In that experiment, the tribe members used the word previously thought to mean "two" when as many as five or six objects were present, and they used the word for "one" for any quantity between one and four.

This indicates that "these aren't counting numbers at all," said Gibson. "They're signifying relative quantities."

He said this type of counting strategy has never been observed before, although it may also be found in other languages believed to have "one," "two," and "many" counting words.

The paper is part of a larger project that investigates the relationship between Piraha culture and their cognition and language, testing some claims by Daniel Everett, a linguist at Illinois State University, in a 2005 issue of Current Anthropology.

One other discovery of the project is that the Piraha can perform exact matching tasks as long as there is no memory component to them, but once there is a memory component, they approximate their matches. This suggests that language is a cognitive technology that aids humans in memory tasks.

Lead author of the paper is Michael Frank, a graduate student in Gibson's lab. Other authors are Evelina Fedorenko, a postdoctoral associate at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and Everett.

massachusetts institute of technology

Eastern Independence, Western Conformity? Study on Pen Selection Helps to Clarify Japanese and American Misconceptions

While the act of selecting an everyday writing utensil seems to be a simple enough task, scientists have found that it actually could shed light on complex cultural differences.    

Psychologists Toshio Yamagishi, Hirofumi Hashimoto and Joanna Schug from Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan used the seemingly simple task of pen choice to determine if Japanese and American cultural differences are a function of social constraints. According to the scientists, previous psychological research on the topic has been flawed since it tends to attribute an individual’s culture-specific behavior to their inherent preferences.    

“In this perspective, preferences are the dominant determinants of behavior only in a social vacuum where individuals do not need to consider the reactions of others,” wrote the authors in the June 2008 issue of Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science. “And we believe cultural psychologists would agree that culture-specific behavior does not occur in a social vacuum.”    

The psychologists hypothesized instead that individuals may be maintaining culture-specific behaviors by repeatedly relying on proven social strategies. For example, what appears to be a person’s preference for conformity in Japanese culture alternatively might be an individual’s avoidance of a social stigma.    

To support this theory, the scientists arranged a series of studies designed to disprove, or at least argue against, the widely accepted stereotype that Americans prefer qualities of uniqueness while the Japanese intuitively value conformity. American and Japanese participants were presented with various scenarios that asked them to select, actually and hypothetically, a pen from a cup filled with four pens of one color and one pen of another, alternating between green and orange. The results show that both American and Japanese participants were more likely to select a majority pen over the uniquely-colored pen if they had been previously monitored by other participants or asked to choose with an experimenter present.    

The results also revealed that the American and Japanese participants reacted similarly in situations that had a clearly defined impact on others -- as was the case with purchasing a pen, which obviously did not affect anyone else. And only the scenarios in which the social relevance was ambiguous, such as hypothetically selecting a pen to take a survey, did Japanese participants choose the majority, and Americans the unique, pens. The findings not only suggest that innate cultural differences were not the deciding factor, but that the default reaction for pen choice may be strongly correlated with differences in social constraints.    

As Yamagishi explained, “What is typically interpreted as differences in the ‘preference’ for uniqueness and conformity among Japanese and Americans is actually a reflection of how people interpret ambiguous situations. By default, Japanese tend to view situations as ones in which they are under surveillance from others, whereas Americans tend to view the same situations as ones in which no one cares about their choices.”

Author Website

Facial Reconstruction Will Soon Be A Quick And Easy Process

A researcher from the Physical Anthropological Laboratory of the University of Granada has created the most complete database to date to identify human remains and bodies in the advanced states of decomposition using a 3d computerised technique for facial reconstruction. The method will reduce the time and cost associated with the identification process and will almost dismiss the need to perform expensive DNA testing. This is because the facial reconstruction will give additional details that can be used to decide whether is is necessary to carry out a DNA test or not

Thanks to Lorena Valencia Caballero , the author of this technique, forensic doctors will be able to determine the general and individual facial features of the person. Miguel Botella López , the director of the Physical Anthropological Laboratory, has led this study; and since it has produced a complete database, the researchers are now looking for a company or research group to develop the relevant computer software.

Check out this video from Science News site of the UGR

Old Growth Crystals shows planetary evolution record

Three billion year old zircon microcrystals found in Ontario are proving to be a new record of the processes that formed continents and their natural resources, including gold and diamonds.

The recent discovery was made by an international team of researchers led by Earth Sciences professor Desmond Moser at The University of Western Ontario. Measuring no more than the width of a human hair, the 200-million-year growth span of these ancient microcrystals is longer than any previously discovered.

The findings provide a new record of planetary evolution and contradict previous experimental predictions that the crystals would change when exposed to heat and pressure upon burial in the deep Earth. Instead, they have an incredible 'memory' of their time below volcanoes, of transport to the shores of ancient oceans and of their
burial beneath now-extinct mountain ranges billions of years before the time of dinosaurs.

Containing trace amounts of uranium, the crystals continued to grow over hundreds of millions of years, even as the planet evolved and underwent a series of dramatic shifts. "The oldest pieces of our planet are crystals of zircon," says Moser. "These crystals are the memory cells of the Earth and with our study we can now say they are an accurate recorder of planetary evolution over eons -- in the same way that rings on an old tree can record changes in a forest over hundreds of years."

Keeping with the tree analogy, Moser found that these crystals had roughly circular growth zones that he was able to date and analyze with specialized equipment, ion probes. These zones track the formation of the early North American continent, from its beginning as a series of volcanic island chains, to its eventual fusion into a large, thick continental plate that became the core of North America.

As the crystals formed around the same time as gold, diamond and other metal deposits, this research provides not only insight into the formation of Earth itself, it can also help answer the question, "Did plate tectonics operate early in our planet's history or did some other process create the large metal and diamond deposits of the Canadian Shield?" "It also provides a new tool for dating the appearance of oceans on other rocky planets like Mars, where Rover results indicate zircon crystals should exist" says Moser.

Over the course of millions of years, the crystals have been pushed back to the surface from depths of 30 kilometres by a series of pushes on the edges of the original continent, which give us globally-rare exposures in northern Ontario. "It's not every day you find a piece of the deep Earth that you can walk around on and explore," Moser says.

Moser's findings are further detailed in the March issue of Geology, published by the Geological Society of America.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Western Ontario.

Iraqi adolescents have higher self-esteem when the threat of War is high

University of Cincinnati researchers are reportedly saying that there is a significant pattern among Iraqi adolescents and their reaction to the war in Iraq. The higher the perceived threat of the war, the higher the teens reported their self-esteem.

These findings come from a 2004 survey of 1,000 Iraqi adolescents in 10 neighborhoods in Baghdad, some what small considering the size the war has become.

Steve Carlton-Ford, a University of Cincinnati, says the findings  are giving us a rare look at the impact of war on adolescents. In general, sociologists and psychologists have mostly been examining how war affects small children, so this is new type of research being conducted. Carlton-Ford adds that in the cases of young children, conflict-related events typically lower a child’s psychological well-being.

The authors found that despite obvious threat to the adolescents’ feeeling of security, the youth were coping pretty well in 2004, with self-esteem levels comparable to that of Palestinian youth. “In the presence of war related trauma you generally observes lower levels of psychological well-being, and most of the time, lower self-esteem” write the authors. The results, however, are consistent with a prediction that self-esteem  is higher among the individuals who face indirect threats to central components of their social identities (rather than directly facing traumatic war-related events).

In other words, in a situation where we observe a broader social context involving the presence of foreign forces combined with general violence throughout Baghdad and Iraq, there can be seen a heightened sense of self, at least to the extent that one’s self is tied to one’s nation.”

The study suggests future surveys of adolescents under conditions of armed conflict to track their
self-concept as they become young adults.

Here are the results taken from Source

Iraqi Neighborhoods Surveyed
Al-Adhimiya
Al-Kadhimiya
Sadr City
Al-Dourah
Al-Ghazaliya
Al-Jamiah
Al-Khadhra
Al-Shoula
Hay Al-Mekanik
Al-Rahmaniyah

Average age: 15

Gender
Female   29.5 percent
Male       70.5 percent

Ethnicity
Arab                88.9 percent
Kurds & Others  11.1 percent

Religion
Sunni Muslim       36.3 percent
Shi’a Muslim          57.5 percent
Christian and other religion  6.2 percent

Most Important National Concern
Multi-National Forces Leaving        41.7 percent
Peace          28.6 percent
Security       19.6 percent
Democracy    5.3 percent
Jobs               40 percent
No response    0.8 percent

Most Important Personal Concern
Family                        46.5 percent
Country                       25.7 percent
Good job                     15.1 percent
Friends                        5.2 percent
Soccer (football)            3.9 percent
No response/other         3.6 percent

Self-Regard               13.1 (low=5; high=16)
Self-derogation            4.09 (low=2; high=8)
Family threat               6.46 (low=0; high=9)
National threat               4.85  (low=0 to high=6)

Read more in the Latest Articles of the Journal of Adolescence

 

Cave men wore boots too!

Footwear is a fashionable item that has been oogled over by Women around the world for years, However it seems that toe bones from a cave in China suggest that people have been wearing shoes for atleast 40,000 years !!!

Erik Trinkaus  from Washington University in St Louis, measured the shape and density of toe bones from the 40,000 year old skeleton that was found in Tianyuan cave near Beijing. They compared these bones with those from 20th century Americans, and bones from various periods in between.                                                                                 
Shoes alter the way a person walks. With a rigid sole the toes curl far less than when barefoot and less force is passed through the bones, leading to obvious differences in the three recent populations. "Modern shoe-wearing Americans have wimpy little toes," says Trinkaus. Barefoot native Americans have strong, large toes. Shoe-wearing predecessors lie somewhere in between.

Trinkaus and Shang found that the Tianyuan toe bones were most si
milar to the more recent bones, showing that this person from the past regularly wore shoes!

Columbus gave us syphilis!!

Is Columbus to blame for bringing the nasty syphilis pathogen to Europe? Kristin Harper (Emory University, Atlanta, USA) Has been looking back in time to figure out the source of this pain in the crutch!

The syphilis-causing treponemes strains originated most recently in South America with their closest relatives of the disease. Harper says this information supports the hypothesis that syphilis came from the 'New World', but while it is generally agreed that the first recorded epidemic of syphilis occurred in Europe in 1495, controversy has raged ever since over the origin of the pathogen. In many cases, skeletal analysis has been inconclusive, due to faults with dating the bones and lack of further evidence.

To make the research even harder the family of treponema bacteria causes different diseases that share some symptoms but have different methods of transmission, for example syphilis is sexually transmitted, but yaws and endemic syphilis are tropical diseases that are transmitted through skin-to-skin or oral contact.

One theory for this European invasion of the disease is that a mutation took place to allow the pathogen to survive in much cooler harsher conditions.

Read the full article at DailyScience!