Posted on 10/14/2019 10:45:03 AM PDT by BenLurkin
In the 1950s, researchers stumbled upon a new class of drugs that provided relief for those suffering from schizophrenia. These drugs were known as antipsychotics and, as the name suggests, they reduced symptoms like hallucinations and delusions primarily by reducing the levels of dopamine in the brain. This led clinicians and scientists to argue that dopamine was linked to the experiences of psychotic symptoms, and a concerted research effort ensued, seeking to solve the puzzle of why excess dopamine might produce hallucinations.
Although it was later shown that increasing dopamine could produce hallucinations, establishing a consistent link between them, it has not been clear why.
They achieved this by taking advantage of a simple fact: Your brain is lazy. It makes shortcuts to understand the deluge of information that bombards it daily. If youre presented with consistent information, consistently, your brain adjust its expectations of reality in turn. This is the basis of Bayesian theories of how we perceive the world that is, the brain makes inferences about the world around us based on statistics and probabilities on what is likely to occur.
[I]ncreasing dopamine made it more difficult for participants to adjust their perception an effect comparable to how the hallucinators had struggled. Moreover, the extent to which participants struggled was strongly associated with the severity of hallucinations but not with any diagnosis of schizophrenia. In other words, the difficulty appeared to be associated with a symptom, not a diagnosis.
Using brain imaging, the researchers also showed that an increased capacity for dopamine release, from a part of the brain known as the striatum (an area involved in schizophrenia), was associated with the severity of hallucinations. Together, these experiments showed that excess dopamine was associated with difficulty in accurately predicting reality.
(Excerpt) Read more at inverse.com ...
Thought you’d be amused...
Would you want the kind of people who use Twitter to have flying cars?
Wellnow. I had two places to go this morning, but it took me 20 minutes to get the ice and snow off the locks, windows, and doors before I could even get in the truck. Ice and snow were frozen onto the Frost Guard.
The first stop wasn’t so bad, I got to it mostly on side streets, but the second place proved a little problematic. I went to pull into a driveway from the median, and it was the wrong drive way, so I stayed in the median and inched forward a few feet before I decided to merge out into traffic.
Of course I had the blinker on. And WHOMP! A utility truck with a utility trailer on it was whizzing past me, and I realized he’d hit me. I saw two pieces of the bumper in the median. I put the flashers on, got out, retrieved the pieces and put them in the back of the Tracker, then headed on to make the U-turn to go into Great Clips to get my hair cut.
I made the U-turn and found another piece of the bumper in the middle of the road, and put the flashers on again while I dragged it (metal, this time, not composite) off the road and onto the grass.
I checked in at Great Clips, then called a friend from church and he came within five minutes, picked up the rest of the bumper and put it in the truck for me. Then he called the police.
Long story short, my hair was cut and the police came and took a report while I was in the chair. The consensus was that the utility trailer is what hit the Tracker, and the driver of the truck, (probably a big 3500+ series,) most likely didn’t even know my vehicle had been hit because the light was green and he just kept on going.
He may or may not call the police at a later date, but I was only shaken up, and wasn’t even cited, so I’ll survive to play another day.
So that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. The streets were icy and he was driving far too fast. But! I’ve lived to tell the tale.
I’m glad you made it home safely!
That makes me feel better about being stuck at home while the County does something about the water main. Their big truck is blocking our driveway.
I don’t know how much it will cost to have it fixed, but the front end alignment is really messed up so I’ll have to go see Casey on Monday and see how much it will cost for repairs on it. I doubt that he is back off vacation, yet, so I’ll just wait.
Oh dear. Your guardian angel would have told you to only pick on people your own size.
;>)
I learned a long time ago, Bob, that I have a fleet of guardian angels, and they have to work overtime, in shifts, to keep me out of trouble!
I don’t think the guy even knew that his trailer hit me because his truck was big enough (and so was the trailer he was pulling) that I doubt he even felt a thing. He was probably on the phone, anyway.
You have a point.
Plus, if we had flying cars, then where would we put the little crosses when someone drinks and drives.
Thank you.
Hey, y’all.
You’ve done time in the punitentiary, haven’t you?
Hello. The County is still digging out front. Fortunately, DP’s car isn’t in the driveway, so he’ll be able to go get Frank and Kathleen from day camp.
I shall give my coffee to wombats and thus destroy the world.
I think that’s a great plan. Take pictures!
Tom the Son came by and got a 2-gallon beverage dispenser and a French press coffee maker. He also left a sock that wasn’t his.
I haven’t been able to clean in his ex-room because Shannon was there.
Can you reasonably extrapolate between species? Have you tested a sample wombat population? For all we know, they could turn into democrats after the first dose.
Glad you’ll be able to retrieve Frank and Kathleen.
Wombats are usually slightly narcoleptic and docile.
Pump them full of enough caffeine and they might actually become dangerous.
“After all, it’s just a wombat. How dangerous could it be?”
Teeth and claws.
Frank and Kathleen are safely home. The county water guys dug up a lot more of the neighbors’ lawn than ours, fwiw. Both of us have crummy lawns anyway.
LOL!
Was lead astray in my early yout.
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