If any of this is true, I can see why a number of docs ended up misssing.

Anyone interested could read the well-known story of the Canadians D. O. Hebb, or Ewen Cameron (as Hebb rolls over in his grave for linking the two), or of research at Britain’s Porton Down facility.

Of course, O’Mara is correct about the “folk” psychology aspect, re its applicability to what we know about brain functioning. My only point is that the CIA and OLC were not succumbing to “folk” psychology, and had in fact been very active in researching the physiology of stress. No, it was a deliberate obfuscation on their part.

I’m once again disappointed (but not surprised) that no discussion focussed on strictly deprivation techniques, since these were applied to a wider group than waterboarding. There are no hypercapnia or hypoxia antecedents to the disorders produced by those techniques to fall back on in relating torture to studies of confabulation, which have almost all (that I can tell, and I would welcome references to the contrary if you have them) been done on people with lesions from strokes (the studies cite subjects who have other causes, but seem to usually end up concentrating on people who have had ruptures or surgery on their anterior communicating arteries).

My guess is that while studies on the effects of isolation might show deficits in function in the same regions in fMRI, the absence of specific, focal lesions might make them harder to detect or show direct causality. Many of the precursors to the memory disorders mentioned by Prof. O’Mara, though, are similarly generalized, e.g. those having to do with changes in neurotransmitter levels due to cortisol and catecholamines. Microscopic level changes won’t be that easy to assess, but they are odds on more likely (there are studies in adolescent animals showing deprivation causes distruptions in the formation of filipodia and dendritic spines) e.g. loss of synapses would be hard to detect, and studies involving intrinsic plasticity (a big favorite of mine), which would be even more microscopic (redistribution or loss of ion channels) are even further away from possibility right now. (this is all guessing, but I haven’t found any such studies, and most of the studies on the microscopic stuff is necessarily on animals, not people).

However, something must account for those prisoners who show a wide range of symptoms but have never experienced the high stress levels and hypoxia of waterboarding, just the slow steady degeneration of extreme isolation. After all, people who are hallucinating and incoherent to the point of not being fit to stand trial do have something wrong with them. The net result of a combination of lack of good ways to measure some forms of neural degeneration in torture victims, and the very, very deep association of torture with acute pain episodes, is to miss many victims, isn’t it? All the more reason for supporting the International Covenant for Protecting all Persons from Enforced Disappearance, so that such isolation, incommunicado detention, and deliberate creation of places beyond the law won’t slip through the cracks as mere precursors to be noticed only if the prisoner subequently ends up on the rack or dead.

[Sorry for the rambling]

As I read this Jeff, I could not help but think about this post by Spencer back in May.

Thank you for your efforts on a difficult subject. Look forward to your response to Dr. Morgan.

Jeff:

Professor O’Mara’s essay is an excellent brief review of the relevant literature on stress, as it pertains to the kinds of torture conducted by the CIA, and its effects upon memory, and the presumed ability to produce accurate information.

My own knowledge of psych related topics comes out of learning and memory (related to teaching and learning). Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with that material pretty much knows that stressed out kids (and adults) don’t process information well, nor do they remember.

Any first or second grade teacher worth a damn can pretty well point out which kids in their classes need some ’stress reduction’ so their recall improves. So seeing this all sanctified with government acronyms makes me somewhat irritable. It’s a safe bet all those military contractors were making a damn sight more than your local teachers. And evidently, knew less about the effects of stress on learning and memory, the way that I read your post.

Good grief.