Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine

The Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine is an open access journal publishing negative data sets, that encourage discussions on ambiguous, unanticipated or provocative results with regard to currently accepted concepts. 
Thereby, the journal wants to challenge present scientific models and dogmas. In particular, the publication of work demonstrating that standard methods and techniques are sometimes inapplicable to some studies is of a great advantage to other researchers in their respective fields. Also, scientists and physicians are invited to publish clinical trials that do not show a higher efficacy in therapy than current treatments. This can eventually lead to the improvement of experimental design and treatment strategies.
As traditional journals infrequently publish negative studies, valuable information often becomes inaccessible to other researchers to evaluate and analyze. In particular, negative or controversial results contradicting prevalent theories aren't easily published - although they might be innovative.
Of course, not all null results and controversial data would necessarily be groundbreaking. In short, the journal believes that the publication of such results is an important influence on the scientific community to consider and improvise upon in their own research.

Check this out: http://www.jnrbm.com/

by Nicole Hentschel
This article originally appeared on June 1, 2011 in  Volume 4 - Issue 2, "Good Scientific Practice"

The Journal of Unsolved Questions (JUnQ)

PhD students from the Graduate school of Material Science (MAINZ) launched a scientific journal to publish negative results.
In the journal of Unsolved Questions (JUnQ), scientific projects gain interest that would never be published in traditional scientific journals: those with negative or inconclusive results. As most of the research projects fail to show positive results with clear conclusions, many results are not published. Accordingly, a lot of information is not available to the scientific community and gets lost.
This Journal provides a platform to exchange data on projects which did not work and are unfinished. Thereby, JUnQ wants to establish the publication of negative results as an important milestone for scientific communication especially among different disciplines to overcome biases and fraud. In addition to these articles, JUnQ also publishes short essays about open scientific questions which have not been solved yet but are important to the science community. According to good scientific practice, the articles are peer-reviewed by independent referees of the respective scientific field. Furthermore, the essays about open questions will be broadly reviewed in order to only publish scientific questions that do not contain false facts.

PUBLICATION OF NEGATIVE DATA AS AN IMPORTANT MILESTONE

Beyond that, JunQ wants to reflect about the day-to-day business in science from a meta-perspective. This will be achieved through different formats. Thus, this summer semester, JUnQ organized a lecture series with the topic "Publish or Perish...?" which discusses the influence of prevalent publication practices in natural sciences.
The first issue of JUnQ was published on January,1^st, 2011 and contained two articles and 4 open questions. To get a copy and more information about JUnQ, go to http://junq.info. Articles and Open Questions can be submitted to JUnQ@uni-mainz.de.

by Nicole Hentschel
This article originally appeared on June 1, 2011 in  Volume 4 - Issue 2, "Good Scientific Practice"

Foreign Accent Syndrome

It's summer in Berlin and tourists are crowding the subway. Listening to foreigners pronounce the names of the stations can be hilarious.

Nearly all of us may have talked with a foreign accent just for fun - joking with friends. But in very rare cases, a person's voice takes on a dramatically different sound which listeners perceive as a foreign accent.

This phenomenon is called Foreign Accent Syndrome. It is an unusual neurological disorder with only 60 cases reported worldwide. Usually, it occurs after a severe brain injury, such as stroke or trauma. Doctors believe that it is caused by the damage of tiny brain regions associated with language and phonetic characteristics. As a consequence, the person suffering from the syndrome may draw out or clip vowels which, gives the impression they are speaking in a foreign accent. This syndrome is mostly transient, fading after 30 minutes, half a year or more than one year.
Indeed, evidence suggests a functional and causative role of the cerebellum in this speech disorder. It might result from a disruption of a close functional interplay between the cerebellar and cerebral speech centers involved in motor speech planning.

by

thedailyenglishshow.com via flickr

by Nicole Hentschel, Alumni Medical Neurosciences 
this article originally appeared 2011 in CNS Volume 4, Issue 1, Neuroenhancement

The Greatest Neuroscientific Blunders: The Rise and Fall of Lobotomy

December 13 marks the 61st day of death of António Egas Moniz. Having developed the surgical procedure "lobotomy" he received the Nobel Prize in 1949.
In remembrance of Moniz, todays post features an article that originally appeared August 2010 in Volume 3, Issue 2 "Special Focus on Technology Transfer".


Lobotomies were performed at a time when an effective treatment for chronically institutionalized

António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz
29 November 1874 - 13 December 1955
Image via Wikipedia

patients with different kinds of severe psychiatric disorders - such as schizophrenia, affective disorders and obsessive-compulsive syndromes (Swayze, 1995) did not exist. In this psycho-surgical procedure, connections from-and-to the prefrontal cortex were cut or frontal tissue was destroyed. The procedure was based on the theory that malformed or damaged nerves connecting the frontal lobe with the rest of the brain were the reason for psychiatric disorders.
Egas Moniz pioneered the lobotomy in 1935 after attending a frontal lobe symposium. In this symposium, it was reported that frontal and prefrontal cortical damage in chimpanzees led to a massive reduction in aggression. With the help of a neurosurgeon he performed his first so-called prefrontal leucotomy (white matter destruction) on a female manic depressive patient. A series of holes were drilled on either side of the woman's skull and ethanol was injected to destroy the fibers connecting the frontal lobe with the rest of the brain. Moniz reported that the patient was less anxious and paranoid and pronounced the operation a success. Subsequently, they used a special wire knife, called leucotome, to cut out small cores of brain tissue.

LOBOTOMY WAS QUICKLY ACCEPTED 

AS A LEGITIMATE THERAPY

Being intrigued by Moniz's work, Walter Freeman introduced the lobotomy to the United States in 1936. Together with neurosurgeon James Watts he first refined the technique developed by Moniz and called it lobotomy (white and grey matter destruction). However, Freeman considered the procedure too time-consuming and not easily available to those that need it the most: Patients in state mental hospitals having no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia. He developed the transorbital lobotomy, the worst form of psychosurgery, which was also known as the ice-pick lobotomy. With the patient rendered unconscious by electroshock, an ice-pick like instrument was hammered through the eye socket. Once inside the brain, the instrument was moved back and forth; this was then repeated on the other side. This new technique could be performed in 10 minutes without a neurosurgeon — and became subject to widespread use. Even children were treated by Freeman. Despite the award of the Nobel prize to Moniz in 1949, the lobotomy procedure was largely discredited and finally replaced by the antipsychotic drug chlorpromazine in the 1950s.

THE PROCEDURE WAS DISCREDITED IN THE 1950s

The lobotomy technique was performed without any immediate means to verify the success of the resulting operation - the neurosurgeons could not know for certain if they had severed the nerves or not. Thus a lobotomy usually led to mixed results with many patients being permanently disabled. Convulsive seizures were reported subsequent to a prefrontal lobotomy in 5 to 10 percent of all cases. Post-operative blunting of the personality, apathy, and irresponsibility were a common occurrence rather than a rare exception. Other side effects included destructivness, childishness, lack of tact or discipline, and post-operative incontinence. The most famous case was the lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy, the sister of President John F. Kennedy. Her father, Joseph Kennedy, had complained to doctors about the 23-year-old's moodiness which eventually led to her being subjected to a lobotomy. However, instead of improving her mental state the procedure resulted in Rosemary being reduced to an infantile state which included incontinence. Her father hid the nature of Rosemary's affliction for years and described it as the result of mental retardation.
As there were no alternative therapies for severe mental disorders in the 1930s, it is not surprising that the lobotomy was quickly accepted as a legitimate therapy and was considered a therapeutic advance. However, from today's point of view, the lobotomy is seen as a brutal intervention into the brain, a region unique to human beings and the seat of all higher cognitive functions. When considering the lobotomy one can not help but agree with Swayze (1995) who wrote: "If we learn nothing else from that era, it should be recognized that more rigorous, prospective long-term studies of psychiatric outcome are essential to assess the long-term outcomes of our treatment methods."

 by Nicole Hentschel