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 ...
Well, who would?
We just finished measuring the specific gravity of minerals. Now it’s naptime. We’ll do the second Mineral Identification exercise after nap.
Shower curtains are extremely disarming.
Disarming I could live with. It’s the other stuff they try to take.
Shower curtain: “let’s take this dude’s dignity!”
Then it falls down.
Priceless.
Lol
I hope you can get your face back on.
I’ve always been suspicious of shower curtains and toasters; I simply don’t articulate it.
Patrick was right with you on the toasters.
Why would you want the left hand of God on the right arm of God?
LOL!
A masterpiece modernised.
Evening. It stopped raining here.
They’re always up to something.
Especially toasters, sitting there obsessing about toast.
Nothing worse than rain...except wind.
Our monsoon has stopped for now.
Almost continuous rain from Nov1 until a week or so ago.
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McD0n@ld$ have closed all their UK troughs. Drive through only for time being.
EU closes external borders...the irony.
Large supermarkets are giving Disabled and pensioners the first hour after opening to themselves.
First five cases in this county,,,,any guesses on where they flew in from?
Red Dwarf: the toaster that keeps on giving. :)
“You don’t know what he’s like! He’s obsessed!”
China, Italy, *cough* “asia” as they like to call it now?
Hey, if he wanted his arm that way, it would be that way.
Given their proclivities, you really can’t expect much more of them. Expectations can really goof up a relationship.
I obsess about toast sometimes.
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