#17 - Mutations of Mind, with Michael Golding

Christofer and psychiatrist Michael Golding speak about the interaction between creativity and physiology, and mental illness, in this episode of Do Explain. They discuss the evolutionary process of the mind, psychiatry, IQ, the analogy between cancer and schizophrenia, the dangers of cannabis, LSD and MDMA, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and other related topics.

Michael Golding is a Board Certified psychiatric physician with more than 20 years of experience treating psychiatrically disordered patients in back wards of psychiatric hospitals, in prisons, and in outpatient clinics. He has also been the Chief Psychiatrist of one of the largest prison system in the country. He completed psychiatric residency training at the University of North Carolina and completed a National Institure of Mental Health Fellowhip in Psychobiology and Psychopharmacology. He is an evolutionary epistemologist and loves the ideas of Charles Darwin, Karl Popper, and David Deutsch and is currently applying them to model knowledge growth in economic systems. He is also writing a book on psychiatric differential diagnosis to help the lay person understand the relationship between general medical and psychiatric practice.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mgoldingmd

Notes on discussed syndromes provided by Michael:

Klüver Bucy Syndrome: Docility, Fearless, Hypersexual. Stimulation of parts of amygdala in normals creates fear and rage. Activation or inactivation of different brain regions predictably creates different qualia, as experienced by conscious humans.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klüver–Bucy_syndrome (includes bilateral damage to amygdala)

Phenylketonuria: IQ varies from completely normal (if severely restrict phenylalanine consumption) to profound intellectual disability (if no dietary restrictions). Is the intellectual disability due to poor ideas (not restricting phenylalanine) or poor genetics (not being able to properly metabolize phenylalanine)? Those with different genetic/psychiatric disorders have varying levels of ability to learn based on differences in their diet. In the case of Phenylketonuria, the more the phenylalanine consumed, the lower the IQ.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylketonuria

Angelman’s Syndrome: Consistent intellectual understanding of a 3 year old. Stops learning beyond that. So patient has human level understanding, but consistently does not progress intellectually due to physiological interference with learning.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelman_syndrome

Prader-Willi: Constant hunger and just a bit of intellectual disability. So similar (in some ways) genetic problem to those with Angelman's Syndrome, but only mild intellectual disability. Differences in hardware/physiology interfere or promote efficiency in learning.

REM behavioral disorder: 

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/rem-sleep-behavior-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20352920

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