Finding A Curative And Preventive Basis For Mental Illness.

Mentally ill people need help not stigma
Image credit to Imagebuddy

I just finished a 4-week rotation through Psychiatry, and I must say I have learnt a lot about the disorders of the mind. Before the rotation, I used to have this stigma and nausea towards anything that has to do with mental illness and those with it because of the way the society has painted them--they are mad people. But the truth is people with illness of the mind are normal human beings with families, friends, dreams and ambitions; some have good education and are in different professions. Our first lecture introduced us to Psychiatry, and in it I learnt that everyone's mind is like an elastic spring suspended from a hook, with a board on one end. Now, life drops different loads on this board (what we call psychological stressors--challenges and trials), which stretch the elastic spring (remember Hooke's Law in Physics); but almost all the time, our minds will return to their original length after a "normal brief period" of reacting to the stretching (in the form of crying, sadness, feeling depressed, losing interest in everything, fear and anxiety, and so on) when we've got over the psychological stressors (every challenging period passes). It's important to note that some people's minds have higher elastic limits than others' (they can withstand much more severe psychological stressors than others) because of their genetic makeup. Hence, when those whose minds have low threshold for withstanding challenges are faced with very severe psychological stressors, their minds are stretched beyond their elastic limits and what results is mental illness--a state in which their minds remains in this stretched mode for an unusual length of time, in the form of depression, mania, obsession, hallucinations, compulsion, changes in personality and so on. 

Find Out How This Technology Takes People's Facial Pictures Without Seeing Them

Hello my friends the world over; I know I have been unbearably absent (for almost six months now) and I'm truly sorry for that, though the reason was beyond my control (I have been preoccupied with attending to my foremost duties, encompassed in Med School). However, I'm back here for you, though I can't promise to be regular because I don't make promises and fail to keep them. To begin with my resumption, do you think it's possible to create a 3-D image of your face without seeing you (to either draw you or take a shot with my camera)? Well, it could have been described as magic in the 1980s, but the capability of our human mind is limitless and its manifestation in science and technology pushes boundaries further every day, and below is just a demonstration of that boundary pushing. Enjoy

I read the story of a man in the US who was charged with rape and murder, and jailed for over 35 years back in the early 1980s, but by 2011 he was released from prison after concrete evidence emerged that he didn’t commit the crime and that the real offender was finally apprehended after matching the DNA samples collected from the crime scene back in the 80s. I was furious after reading the story and wondered what limitations in the investigation could have led to wasting 30 precious years of an innocent man’s life. But it happened that after running the DNA samples obtained at the crime scene  through the FBI crime databases containing DNA and fingerprints of convicts and previously arrested suspects, and after comparing with DNA samples of suspects arrested after the crime, there was no single match because the culprit was a first time offender who went on the run; and this man who ranked higher among the arrested suspects ended up in jail: and I’m sure many people are serving jail term out of similar situations.

Snapshot. Image credit to Parabon NanoLabs

This was a very helpless situation for the man; but such state of helplessness could become a thing of the past, like the time period called 1980s, with the work of a company called Parabon NanoLabs in Columbia, US because it shares my concerns for such terrible setbacks to forensic crime investigations. By leveraging the unlimited potentials of the Human Genome Project and harnessing the power of modern genomic sequencing, scientists and tech experts at Parabon NanoLabs have developed a technology they call Snapshot that can construct a 3-D facial image of any person with DNA samples from them. Let’s say it’s a tech form of genotype to phenotype translation we’ve been taught in Biology, Physiology and so on. But Snapshot creates these facial images by scanning and interpreting genotype data sets (several groups of unique DNA sequences called short nucleotide polymorphisms), input into it from any genome, which are very strongly linked to phenotype data sets such as pigmentation (eye, hair and skin

colours); the shape of your nose and mouth, and other facial morphological features; presence of skin spots; ancestry and other features that distinguish one person from another.

To further strengthen the reliability of this technology, DNA samples from convicted criminals have been used construct their facial images from Snapshot and then compared with their photographed images, with greater than 80% accuracy in features like pigmentation and ancestry; features like presence of skin spots scored below 50% due to inclusion of DNA sequences that express more than one feature, and the guys at Parabon are working to eliminate this ambiguous sequences and scale down to only ones that are unique to specific features in very closely related people like those from the same family.

In addition, I did watch a few episodes of Criminal Minds, a TV series where FBI Behaviour Analysts create psychosocial profiles of suspects from the patterns and nature of crimes at crime scenes; even if a bit of this is done in real life, it’s still based on the database of arrested suspects and convicts whose psychosocial statuses have been profiled and whose crimes are well documented. But what happens when a serial killer, who has never been suspected and arrested before, doubles as a very smart chess player and commits his crimes based on moves (I learnt there are millions, if not billions, of possibilities for the first four moves on chess)? Definitely, Criminal Minds will remain behind TV screens unless investigation agencies have the time, resources and manpower to bring over a million Behaviour Analysts to such crime scenes. However, with this novel technology called Snapshot, such suspects can’t play chess with their DNA sequences; and if it is combined with Criminal Mind-like investigations, crime investigators will certainly make definitive criminal diagnosis for almost every case so that innocent people, like the US man I read about, wouldn’t have their life years taken from them. 

Finally, this Snapshot technology seems to fundamentally focus on the crime investigations sector; but I think so many other sectors can benefit immensely from this technology. Feel free to exercise your imaginative rights and comment on further present and future applications of the technology. Thank you.

I wrote this piece primarily for the June edition of Klatsch Magazine run by Just4meds, a social media site for people in the medical profession--from medical students and students in other allied medical fields to consultants in these medical fields--to interact with each other anywhere in the world. Just4meds was founded and is run by a classmate of mine at the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan and the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Smart Education Curriculum: Bringing the Extra-educational Means through which technology trends into the Classroom.

Smart Education in South Korea. Image credit to Advance Technology Korea

I can't remember who I was discussing with some time ago but one thing I got from the conversation was this in my own paraphrase: people born in this technology age cannot do without or (get to the very highest level in harnessing their full potentials) without technology, be it in their jobs, startup companies and, which is the focus if this piece, education.

Many developed and developing countries' governments and private corporations are making efforts in bringing technology into the school setting-by providing tablet computers stuffed with books and 3-D interactive materials for the primary and secondary school students; the higher institutions are not left out of this. And this has greatly helped the students to develop their potentials in their school works and projects.

While these successes are being recorded, I still believe there are much more rooms for great improvements. Yes tablet computers with all the materials have been provided (they are helping because we use our PCs and ipads to play games, watch movies and listen to music; and hence there is a very high tendency we'll always study and work on our school projects using them). However, having incorporated the tools of technology into our education (though here in Nigeria we still have a long way to go), we're neglecting the means through which technology is permeating its way into the favorites and choices of the everyday life of young people (the main segment of the society fully immersed in the educational institution).

But before I hit my target, I give an illustration. Here in Nigeria last year the universities' lecturers embarked on a 6-month long strike demanding as the major priority improved funding of the nation's universities which are owned by the government. After so many negotiations, the lecturers' body and the federal government of Nigeria signed an agreement in which the government endorsed to pump in #220 billion ($1.3 billion) annually for the next 5 years into the universities for massive infrastructural development and other upgradings. While I hailed this achievement, I discovered another problem (wahala in the Nigerian pidgin English): the hardware (the infrastructure of our universities) of the problem is being addressed, but nobody is talking about the software (the lecturers-I mean the way these lectures deliver their lectures to students).

In most Nigerian tertiary institutions, some lecturers, I'm sorry to say, are luddites (ludite from Ned Lud one of the workers who led a protest against the industrial revolution in factories in the early 19th century when machines were taking over the works done manually by workers) and old fashioned in even the knowledge base of their specialty: imagine a lecturer detesting the use of electronic boards and projectors in teaching students; students using their phones and tablet computers to read, reminding them that in their own days they carried their big books to the libraries and read them from cover to cover. Another set of lecturers would teach students with notes they made in the 1980s and 90s and expect them to give them back in exam exactly what they taught them: if any student dared including new stuffs and updates as regards the particular course such a student might fail the course. And so this is the wahala I saw after the strike issue. 

Smart Education: personalizing teaching to student needs. Image credit to Smarttech

The world is changing and the knowledge database of each discipline is expanding at an incredibly exponential rate because of the rapid advances in science and technology. And for the disciples of each of these areas of knowledge to keep up, the tools of technology and the various means through which these tools are used (especially in the extra-school setting) are indispensable and must be incorporated into the academic learning setting.

Efforts are already being made in this direction (educational games and so on). Another strong extra-school means through which tech tools are voraciously being used is the social media-Facebook, Twitter and so on. This can be incorporated into the educational curriculum (but how many teachers and lecturers will agree to this at least in my country, Nigeria?.....That's the problem). However, some teachers, not in Nigeria unfortunately, are already experimenting this idea. According to a report on the New York Times, some high school teachers in Iowa, US are already experimenting with incorporating social media into classroom teaching and discussion in which students use Twitter to contribute to discussions on various topics in class, and some of them have recorded increased participation of their students in such discussions because social media (in this case Twitter) which appeals to them has been infused into what otherwise was a boring topic to them. The report also highlights some universities which have developed their own on-campus social media forums for academic discussions.

Though there are many critics of this approach, and it is understandable as there are tendencies of distraction, but it is still being experimented on and can be improved on. One such way is to configure such forums to monitor and indicate when a student has strayed off the subject of discussion ONLY DURING THE CLASSROOM DISCUSSION; it will possibly get better with time. And other social media like Facebook can be incorporated by schools and universities; and universities can develop their own online discussion forums linked to Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networks to be used as part of some classroom teaching and discussion.

I hope universities here in Nigeria can embrace this modality as one of its teaching methods. There are signs they will with time; one sign, though it is still at the student level, is the social education network Acada360 co-founded by Mr. Godswill Oyor, a Law graduate of my school, the University of Ibadan. Acada360, I will say is still evolving, is where students in Nigerian universities can upload their notes taken by them in class and get rewards when other students download them. I got to know about this site today on Instagram. Social media technology has come to stay and rapidly advance and our school curriculum must capitalize on its positive prospects.