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 ...
My Favorite Son is coming over in a couple of hours to assemble the desk with me, and maybe even move the Secretary into the bedroom. At which point, we can unwrap the stuff in the Big Box and get that set up as well. Yippee!!
After which, he is taking me to lunch and also to a matinee of “Midway.” Such a GOOD son!! They will be leaving tomorrow. And I will miss them very much.
The migraine is still with me but has lessened somewhat to a dull throb, so hopefully, today’s activities will help it leave.
I hope your hike is uneventful. And of course, a Nap-With-A-Cat is mandatory on your return!
Did I mention that her new meds were on the kitchen counter while I spent an hour setting up a simple follow-up appointment, and when I was done, the were gone?
They are nowhere to be found, and she of course has no idea what they look like, and never saw them.
*sigh* We looked everywhere, up to inside the washer and drier.
Thank you.
Have a grand weekend, y’all.
We’re going to spend it looking for a Wallgreens pharmacy bag that my mother never saw, but remembers giving to me when I was on the phone trying to schedule her cardiac follow-up appointment.
Sorry about the SNAFU. Did you look in the garbage?
The desk is finished and I’m going to lunch with my son, then to a movie.
FReepmail me your phone number and I’ll send you a photo of the desk in progress and my son progressing.
Every trash container in the house, multiple times.
Mom even looked on the front porch. Why? No one knows.
It’s not in the refrigerator, the freezer the dish washer, any of the kitchen cabinets she can reach, either bathroom, her recliner, the pantry, the hall closets, the car, the service porch, her purse, the bookcases...
I don’t think it would be on your desk in progress.
Note that spell-checker would not have fixed that.. ;-)
But then you probably know that.. ;-)
Now she’s insisting that she brought the pills to me when I was on the phone trying to arrange her follow-up appointment (AFAIK, she slept through that whole process) handed them to me, and I looked for a place to put them on my desk, then threw them under my desk, and gave her a smug ‘Well, that takes care of THAT’ look.
She got REALLY PISSED when I insisted she look under the desk.
Ended up leaving while sobbing that “It’s always my fault”.
So were the pills under the desk?
Nope.
There are a couple of different versions. The one I learned was, “Tomado de la mano, yo voy con El,” repts., but on YouTube, it’s “Tomado de la mano, con Jesus yo voy.”
Pockets? Coat and pants pockets? Drawers?
Maybe on the floor between appliances in the kitchen?
Checked.
Didn’t check.
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