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 ...
I got my hair cut. The salon is closing tomorrow until Whenever.
I used to have a bumper sticker that said, “I Brake For Hallucinations”.
“...until Whenever.”
Probably going to need a blockade runner to get your hair trimmed soon.
Funny you should mention, trimmed my wife’s hair this afternoon. Salons are closed in San Antonio area.
LOL! Straight scissors today. Thanks for the reminder.
It’s going to get embarrassing if I don’t get a haircut soon and continue live-streaming from my channel. There’s only so much work a comb can do.
I hear you.
Just discovered the series on Amazon. It's live action, not anime. Only two seasons. But it's neat! I highly recommend it!
I missed this yesterday - might give it a try.
When I was studying both Japanese and Spanish in college, ‘long about 1987, I used to watch “The Fugitive Samurai” on television, in Japanese with Spanish subtitles.
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