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Algorithm Can Identify Suicidal People Using Brain Scans (wired.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from WIRED: In a study published today in Nature Human Behavior, researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh analyzed how suicidal individuals think and feel differently about life and death, by looking at patterns of how their brains light up in an fMRI machine. Then they trained a machine learning algorithm to isolate those signals -- a frontal lobe flare at the mention of the word "death," for example. The computational classifier was able to pick out the suicidal ideators with more than 90 percent accuracy (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). Furthermore, it was able to distinguish people who had actually attempted self-harm from those who had only thought about it. In today's study, the researchers started with 17 young adults between the ages of 18 and 30 who had recently reported suicidal ideation to their therapists. Then they recruited 17 neurotypical control participants and put them each inside an fMRI scanner. While inside the tube, subjects saw a random series of 30 words. Ten were generally positive, 10 were generally negative, and 10 were specifically associated with death and suicide. Then researchers asked the subjects to think about each word for three seconds as it showed up on a screen in front of them. "What does 'trouble' mean for you?" "What about 'carefree,' what's the key concept there?" For each word, the researchers recorded the subjects' cerebral blood flow to find out which parts of their brains seemed to be at work.
An abstract of the nature.com article is here.
I hope this algorithm will help prevent suicides.
However, the increasing ability of machines to read minds is getting a little scary. Some day we'll be able to read someone's emotions without hooking the person up to a machine - just point a reader at their head.
Government employee: What do you think of our dear leader?
The person's brain shows the emotion of revulsion.
Government employee: Off to a re-education camp, for you and your family!
Yes. There are no distinguishable brain characteristics for this kind of thing, every person is different, there are no physiological comonalities that denote a decision people will each feel very differently about. More sci-fi bullshit from futurist nincompoops tested on a small, hardly representative group of people one time, if not an outright simulation. Spare us. Very little in real life is that linear.
While the most common reason for suicide is linked to a depressive state, it is not always the case that depression is linked to any ongoing psychological abnormality that could be diagnosed clinically, or that anyone would have a reason to want to do a brain scan on you in the first place over.
In fact, there are some life experiences that, if you didn't experience any kind of depression, and could always completely detach yourself from any emotional investment, then *THAT* would be an indication of something being wrong with you. Losing a beloved family member, sudden unwanted changes in living circumstances, being wrongfully accused of a crime... all of these things and more can be legitimate reasons for a depressive state that can turn suicidal.
But such depression is entirely circumstantial, and not indicative of a larger scale psychological dysfunction... and because of its ephemeral nature, would not generally be caught on anything like a brain scan.
While the theory for this might seem wonderful, I have serious doubts it would actually ever save anyone's life.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The full paper (or at least some version of it) is available online here:
https://nocklab.fas.harvard.edu/files/nocklab/files/just_2017_machlearn_suicide_emotion_youth.pdf
It's probably a preprint without the last-minute changes, but it should be good enough to understand the research.
Then they recruited 17 neurotypical control participants and put them each inside an fMRI scanner. While inside the tube, subjects saw a random series of 30 words. Ten were generally positive, 10 were generally negative, and 10 were specifically associated with death and suicide.
I sure hope no one of any importance in a decision-making position of authority confuses this bullshit with real, legitimate research. Control size was 17. Seventeen controls? How many people are on an professional football team? If you picked 17 people at random, it's easy to get all, or almost all professional football players, and you could extrapolate from that that all, or almost all humans, can play football on a professional level, and all they need is the helmet and pads.
Seventeen is not a large enough sample size for jack or shit. Also, 30 words? Generally negative? Generally positive? According to WHOM? I'll bet for SOME people, the word "Palestinian" is positive, and for some negative. Same for the words "black" and "white". Depends on your point of view, so the 'word list' is garbage... and if only TEN of each group were considered wholly negative or entirely positive...
Yeah, this is bullshit and it's sad if anyone buys into the nonsensical and/or unbelievable drivel. This is gallons and gallons of stew from barely ONE oyster.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
I'm pretty sure this detector would be making lots of false positive detections when scanning black/death metal fans. Death and suicide are a hot topic in this kind of music. Horror books/movies fans might be affected too.
I assume that people who commit suicide without doing some suicidal ideation first are relatively rare(and likely most common in 'never take me alive!' type scenarios, not standard mental health practice); but this thing seems totally useless if what it detects is mere suicidal ideation, rather than actually picking out the differences between people who think they would be better off dead and the ones who go through with it.
Especially given that depression tends to ruin your focus, motivation, and ability to execute a plan (even one you fully agree would be in your interests); people who would merely prefer to be dead are a larger group, likely by a fair margin, than ones who do something about it. If all your fancy brain scan can do is provide the same 'are you thinking about suicide?' data that a few minutes of sympathetic questioning by a vaguely competent counselor or psychologist can, it is a scientific curiosity. What would actually be interesting is telling us which of the suicidal ideators are justing fantasizing; and which ones are preparing.
(Now, if you really wanted to get futuristic, you could look into having a reasonably efficacious treatment option available for those you identify...)
I do see merit in this. People who commit suicide have eroded a control in their minds, or never possessed it in the first place. Words like death, dying, graphical images etc lose all meaning with the right conditioning. Think of it like taking the safety catch off a pistol. All someone needs to do now is to pull the trigger.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck