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 ...
She drooped and purred loudly as if she didn’t know how close she came to landing on her head.
Ironing that outfit wouldn't help it.
Happy Monday!
I’ll be more than happy to crochet a tchotchke for Elen, USMC. It would be my honor!
Good for Vlad! A family needs a Date-keeper to remind them there are other places in the world than where the house sits.
Catz are like that. They have nine lives so only the hooman gets scared to death for the catalumps’ life.
Nope. I’m afraid the wrinkles in the Morning Floof are permanent.
Good morning.
I was up a good portion of the night coughing and hacking and just being miserable, and it looks as though, once again, the laundry will have to wait until tomorrow to be done.
I just don’t think I can do it without making everything worse. Needless to say, I’m tired of this.
I’m sure you are. Have you tried some Vick’s Vapo-Rub? It’s a universal panacea around here.
I use Watkin’s which is, in my mind, a lot better than Vick’s. I just opened a brand new tin of it. It works the best on me, with my scarred lungs. That Pertussis as a tot really did a job to me.
Anyway, since I’ve confined myself to quarters, maybe I can get some letters written.
Two things, though. The abscess in Kaylee’s brain was walnut-sized (her hubby posted the x-ray on FB) and I remembered where the vaporizer is: I gave it to a guy who had four kids....
Funny, but when I left Vegas, I vowed to leave my memories behind as well, and that included everything but Charlie. The mirror didn’t make it off the wall because I couldn’t lift it. And the pantry didn’t make it off the patio.
Anyway, new week, new something. :o|
It’s cold here again. Some brother is having a hot shower.
Another, “If you look at it this way,...”
It rained during the night. It’s 44 degrees, and I don’t want to be out in it for anything, even to check the mail. However, I’ve got some letters to take over to the mail drop and also pick up my bills *ick* so I’ll wear a mask to keep the worst of damp out of my lungs.
Then I’ll sort clothes so that with any luck at all, I can hit the ground running in the morning. Well, shuffling, anyway... :o|
Shuffling gets the pituitary pitootin’.
That’s one way of looking at it!
Someone tried to break into my mailbox. I’ve had so much trouble with my mail since I moved here that I’m sorely tempted to rent a PO box again. It’s getting to the point that I’m afraid to send for anything. And afraid to write to someone who writes back!! No one should have to live like this! GAH!!!
Well, that’s just rotten.
I’ll tell Chuck face to face today, and take my phone over to take a picture of the damage. I’m surprised I could even open it, as the mechanism seems to be bent, as well. He should still be there when the mail comes, so he can point it out to the carrier. This is just getting stupid.
Just yours, or were they all jimmied? Maybe the carrier got frustrated and hit it with a hammer!
Nope, just mine. There was one in the lower bank a few doors to the right that had obviously been jimmied at one time in the past and had been “repaired,” but this is new, since Saturday morning, early.
They are doors. The bank of five opens from the top for the carrier to drop the mail in and the resident opens the door from the left to the right. So it was someone trying to see what was in it. Someone with bad eyesight? I have no clue. I feel like taking my industrial sized Marks-A-Lot over and drawing a large “6” on the door. The worst that could happen is that they paint it over.
Or clean it off with rubbing alcohol.
Or that. Either way, I don’t take kindly to someone messing with my mail. Which probably came when I realized at 12, that my mother was opening my letters from an equally 12 year old girl, from the Territory of Hawai’i. Or maybe we were even younger, because we became pen pals when a student teacher from Hawai’i spent some time in our 3rd grade class.
We had been writing for a while by then, and suddenly, the letters came to me already opened. *sizzle* So these days, I have a thing about mail being tampered with. (I had a husband or two that did the same thing...)
I can see your point.
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