Does anybody have any good material on reliably conducting single subject designs within a psych/neuropsych framework? I ask because I want to study things where it would be hard to find volunteers to undergo such extreme measures for scientific purposes (also the ethics committee may have objections).

On top of this does anyone have some good ideas for single subject experiments?
Currently I'm looking at various deprivation states- food, sexual, sensory etc.

Well, I've always been curious about polyphasic sleep cycles. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep) You've no doubt heard of the DaVinci sleep cycle? This is a sort of sleep deprivation, but apparently the body adapts and increases REM sleep to compensate.

I'm curious to know:

• Can it be sustained?
• Does it have an effect on brain patterns?
• Does it severly change the subject's affect?
• Is it healthy?

I haven't found any great studies on it. Please let me know if you're aware of any.

I actually tried it for 10 days. I was sleeping less that 4 hours per day, and I felt wonderful. At least until I went out and drank too much. The alcohol must've messed up the cycle. It was quite an experience, and I love to talk about it.

I also know someone who did it for a month. He quit when he gained weight. (He was working out at 6:00 am every morning. I can't say if it was a result of that or not. You get quite bored when you're awake 20 hours a day.)

I hadn't thought that much about sleep, sounds interesting but and I'll have a look at it. Most studies on the DaVinci sleep have been mostly people telling of their own experience. Having a quick look through I couldn't find any studies on it. This kind of thing would be ripe for an EEG study and general neurophys/psych. Will look closer into it.

What exactly do you mean by single subject experiments? You mean sticking "single subjects" in an fMRI device or something else?

Experiments where n=1, mostly due to the extreme nature of the study. Lots of measurements of the one person. For example "Refeeding David Blaine--studies after a 44-day fast.
N Engl J Med. 2005 Nov 24;353(21):2306-7."

If you need a subject, I'm your guy--you can kick ethics to the curb with me I have already done my own food, sexual, and sensory deprivation experiments, but with no quantitative measures. My last experiment was actually this week. It was somewhat interesting. I deprived myself of light (as much as possible) for 5 days. I found the bathroom to be a pretty good place to eliminate all light sources. The results were actually pretty interesting.

When I first entered the dark bathroom I couldn't see so much as a few inches in front of my face. After about 5 min, I began to "see" bright white light. The imaginary light moved very quickly and sparatically, like tv static. After about an hour, the white light began to slow, and I could see the outline of everything in the bathroom. After another two or three hours, the static stopped moving all together, and I could see everything in the bathroom moderately well, but void of color.

Just my guess, but I believe the white light I saw had to move in order for me to develop sight in what I thought to be complete darkness. I think this, because I once used a flashlight to see the blood vestles (I think they were at least) in my eyes. To do this I looked at a black wall, and flashed the light up at the bottom of my eye. By moving the light source, I could see the shadows of my blood vestles (or so I think, it was kind of a branching shape). Without the motion, I couldn't see the branching shadows--perhaps this is why my mind produced artificial motion, because without it, I couldn't possibly see in the dark?

I'll keep you in mind!

Any psychological effects that you noticed from being in the dark so long? I'm considering trying to obtain complete darkness somehow.

I've tried sexual and short periods of fasting. How long was your sexual deprivation for and what were the requirements? It's one of my favourites, heard of the Coolidge effect?

I didn't really have any psychological effects from being in the dark--I got pretty bored though

The Coolidge Effect: I am in a different town, with different girls every night. On the first tour, I was sexually active, and did not experience the "coolidge" effect; with my ex gf of two and a half years, I never once got tired of sexual interaction with just one partner, so introducing multiple partners really made no difference in sex drive. Perhapse I did not have a single partner for a long enough period of time to experience the effect.

My sexual deprivation: never lasted more than a week (for absolute deprivation). Being 17 this has always been the hardest experiment lol. I am on 7 months of relative sexual deprivation though--sexual contact with others limited to a hug and nothing more, cuddling is not even allowed. I am planning on keeping this up for the next 5 years. No psychological effects so far, I just get a lot more work done...

One thing I have found pretty interesting is the correlation (or lack there of) between exercise and sex drive for me. If I work out intense for a week, my sex drive initially sky rockets. If I keep working out at the same intesity, by week two I have almost no sex drive whatsoever, even though I imagine testosterone levels must be increasing. It takes about a month to return to some normalcy. Durring training, my sex drive fluxuates drastically for no apparent reason before leveling out, do you have any explination?

Other deprivation experiments I have done:
Auditory deprivation
Fasting (only for 5 days)
Sleep -- deprivation and varying quantities of time.
Social

Check out this link http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/19/17/7648 Maybe this is why I have 0 sex drive on shrooms, but am over active with pot ok so psilocin and serotonin are a bit different, but they both effect the same area of the brain right?
5-HT2?

I have a quick question: does serotonin inhibit dopamine, or just sex drive? It seems like after taking psilocin, THC loses its appeal.

some good links on sleep, including polyphasic sleep:
http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm
http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleepchart.htm

I tried sleep deprivation (less than 4 hrs per night) for a period of 6-8 weeks in my early teens and kept a sleep journal during the experience. I found that physical exercise helped eliminate grogginess and that TM meditation helped to maintain and increase alertness, but it required lots of effort to maintain this sleep schedule, and I think at the end of the experiment, the sleep deprivation caught up to me, big time.

The Coolidge Effect may be true of animals (not human) since they lack our imaginative capabilities but is not generally applicable to humans. Monogamous relationships aren't necessarily accompanied by flagging libidos. I don't see why they should be. I mean, if you're in a monogamous relationship, you can have sex practically whenever you want, and if you get bored with the partner, you can use your imagination to increase desire. I'm mainly just going by my own experience though.

Oh wait I just thought of something... I have totaly experienced the Coolidge Effect! Your mention of imagination got me thinking. Any given piece of pornography is only entertaining for so long, then the picture or video loses appeal; swaping the image with a new subject will increase libido untill that new subject gets old.

I can almost guarentee that you will have the same effect~

It must be encoded in the human male genome to download and amass porn. Yes, that can provide raw material for the imagination.

I believe the Coolidge Effect can be explained by economics. Combine diminishing marginal return, and diminishing marginal benefit. There must be some optimal number of spouses, and # of encounters between swaping partners for the greatest umm productivity

Its certainly true of humans, and what you suggested at the end is in fact evidence of the Coolidge effect in humans. Waning desire towards the companion is counteracted by doing more and more imaginative things to raise sexual interest to get the same buzz as when you were first attracted to the person (eventually you'll both be wearing leather, with a gimp ball in your mouth whilst she spanks you with a table tennis paddle shouting that she's the queen of Egypt... either that or just restrict the amount of sex you have. I'm presuming here that its dopamine that's responsible and there's most likely evidence around for that assumption). This buzz would probably reappear instantaneously with a new partner. This could probably explain, amongst other things, an awful lot about infidelity in relationships.

My sexual deprivation was a bit different. I would have regular sexual contact, but no orgasm or ejaculation. This lasted for a little over three months. Something strange started to happen after sex. After we stopped, about five minutes later I would feel strangely euphoric and calm. This feeling would last for sometime afterwards. I am currently doing this again, and getting stronger feelings but also whilst during sex I get incredibly pleasurable feelings almost to the point of bliss. You also don't get the comedown associated with regular intercourse. There's some interesting reading on this area.


hahaha.... yes that's certainly a side effect.


I could only speculate, as your body gets used to the physical exertion it doesn't have as much of a need to release endorphins and other adaptive changes that happen make you used to the feeling. I have a hunch that constantly increasing intensity and pressure on the body, may lead to constant increase in sexual drive. But you will probably just level out again. Merely speculation


nice paper, I'm going to have a good look through it. Yes, 5-HT2A agonism is associated with a decrease in sexual function, while cannabis has effects on the dopaminergic system, as well as many, many other systems.


That's probably not going to be such a quick answer. It is probably enough to say that dopamine increases sex drive while serotonin decreases sex drive.

Certain serotonin neurons are inhibitory towards dopamine neurons, but certain serotonin agonists inhibit the inhibition of these neurons, leading to an increase of dopamine levels. I don't really know much more.

It can be done. The most famous was the guy who stayed awake for something like 10 days straight. You should be able to find it by Googling. It's hard to do, because you need to have a good control condition. You can either be your own control (compare your behavior while under sleep deprivation or not) or find something where the results are so outlandish it's clear that your treatment (experimental condition) had an effect.

Also, many vision experiments require only 2 or 3 subjects. I don't know if I've ever seen any with only one, though.

--
Please take a moment for science.

Could a 3 week, once a day PET study be done? (excluding limiting factors like costs and resources)

Yeah,i think a 3 week, once a day PET study can be done.

Was thinking in terms of chronic exposure to radioactive/toxic substances.

Not that I'm going to get the money and resources for it anyway...

It's good that a researcher thinks about these things. The radioactive (positron-emitting) sugar used for these studies is said to have a low level of harm, but you won't find me volunteering.

Found something...

"N = 1"
William F. Dukesa

Psychological Bulletin
Volume 64, Issue 1, July 1965, Pages 74-79