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 ...
Back from the Quinceanera. When it was over, we celebrated Rafaela’s birthday. There was cake, but I gave mine to James. He said it tasted like waffles. The choir ate almost all my bean salad and said they liked it.
I need to get some fish out of the freezer to cook for supper, because the bean salad was supposed to be my next two meals. I didn’t think people would like it!
Not everyone that has hallucinations has a mental disorder.
I have seizures. Seizures from epilepsy are neurological, not mental. My seizures are simple partial seizures and they involve hallucinations.
Thanks, Ben Lurkin, for the use of your thread, and thank you, Darks, for bringing us all to this point intact!! I love you guys!! <3
Moving day!! Thanks to Ben Lurkin, we have a home for the next few thousand posts! All y’all know where the hot chocolate and the brownies are. I was tired of chocolate chip cookies and wanted something gooey and decadent, so frosted brownies won this round!
Achoo! Robt sneezes in from north TX.
Go away Morgan Fairchild! The Toad and I have a special relationship!
Hello, Rob’t! I have seen you in forever. I think the last time we exchanged posts, you were somewhere on the Iberian Peninsula. THAT was a very long time ago!!
It’s good to see you!
‘Face
Happy birthday! You share a birthday with Rafaela from my choir, who is six feet tall and very glamorous.
I hope someone found you some chocolate!
It’s my driveway. I think.
That might not be illusory.
Deer are crazy, even when everything is “normal”.
Did we change languages and I missed the notification?
Thanks. Good info. Maybe the squirrel did it.
I used to love seeing large bucks in the wild but after the windshield and buck meeting am rethinking the beautiful dangerousness. Thanks Darks for your time and efforts for the flying ship. That basement, in the flying ship, is scary.
I’ll see stupid stuff in real life and then I recall a dream that I had recently - usually the night before. Just yesterday I took the dog out for a walk and the leash had a knot in it. The dream the night before I was reeling up a cable and had to stop quickly as there was a knot in the cable.
It happens so often that I wonder if I just don’t have a thousand dreams about dumb stuff like that, and then the following day something triggers my memory of it. It probably happens once or twice a week.
Twice that I recall I had very detailed dreams of an event. One was of a dumb thing, but very long and detailed and it all matched up. The other was of my dreaming of a ski race that I was preparing for - that one predicted my placement in the race correctly and the sequence of the places. Weird. Although with the ski race one our coach had us visualizing the race as we practiced every day, visualize the finish line, the hills, etc. So that one makes a bit of sense being so focused on one thing for so long.
Pardon me for sticking my nose in here, but...
It sounds to me like you should start writing your dreams down, as well as the times that they actually happen, and try not to tell too many people. What you have is a gift, and if it is abused, as in telling a lot of people, it may be “taken” from you.
I see it as a preparation for sometime in the future when those dreams may be the things that save your life and the lives of those around you.
But my Day Job is interpreting dreams, so you can blow it off if you want.
:o]
‘Face
So funny, Delta!!
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