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 you’re 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 ...
The moon is beautiful! The laundry is done. The Favorites file has been restored. My brain is very tired, now from the stress. It feels all squeezed together.
DST must have been devised by the devil. Only he would be able to convince us that by moving the clocks forward, we would actually have 25 hours in a day instead of 24...
I think it was Woodrow Wilson. Jonah Goldberg says Wilson is the devil. Whenever he’s mentioned on the podcast, creepy villain music plays.
It’s quite cruel and irresponsible. Dogs, cats, horses....
Your puter needs an exorcism.
My house needs it so.... this week...
The battery in my phone doesn’t last long enough for podcasts or audio books.
Maybe that’s because I just buy the phones that have the features and capacity that I need. (Practical me!)
Happy Monday, all. I have safely traversed the border and am a New Yorker again, albeit an upstate one.
I’m now waiting for the train as we planned this trip for me to travel from here. If I were traveling from Albany I would have been on an earlier train. Future weeks - we’ll see.
I’ve already helped my F-I-L replace his laptop as his video chip picked the weekend I was planning to be here to flake out.
And work is still ... work. Mrs. ArGee is figuring out where to put things.
Maybe they can chalk it up to the Family and Emergency Leave Act.
I usually have mine plugged in on the counter.
Nah, they’re calling it “work.” Today he’s doing “training” that involves his sitting in the sunroom playing the guitar with Shannon.
Whatever ... they’re paying him.
Congratulations on the successful move!
I, for one, am very glad to know that all went well for you and Mrs ArGee. :o])
I move around too much to be tethered like I was when I was a CSR. And besides: I have yet to find earbuds that will fit my ears.
Excellent! I’m sure he gets the same pay as if he were under scrutiny!
In all the nastiness that went on, I lost my desk top photo and had to hunt for it, because it wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and then when I went to print a letter, I found that it would have “printed to the cloud,” which means nothing to me, and makes no sense at all. To me, that would be the same as saving it to the slave.
Except I’d have to hunt farther to get it back and still have to find a way to print a hard copy.
Anyway, after another 45 minutes, I finally got it all figured out and now my brain is feeling worse. So I’m going to watch some Murdoch Mysteries and drool before I have to make the bed and sort the pills.
2 words. Cloud based backup.
3 words. Cloud based backup and learn to count.
7 words. Cloud based backup and learn to count and stop editing your ... ach ... I’ll come in again.
Hey, y’all.
‘sup?
Posted from your friendly Amtrak train.
Well, silly me! I have one of those and now I have a new use for it. Thanks! Only, I haven’t found earbuds small enough to stay in my ears.
My bad.
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