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Brain breakthrough: Dopamine doesn't work at all like we thought it did
  • I studied parts of the basal ganglia, part of the dopaminergic circuits of motor control. I'm not sure if it's a poorly written (news) article or the scientist was overstating his position - I don't know any neuroscientists who think dopamine is "sprayed" across the brain.

    Edit: The paper is a breakthrough because it's reporting the first-ever direct imaging of dopamine signaling. But the news article mischaracterizes it.

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  • Have you tried learning Japanese / English after learning the other? I studied Japanese and learned how to pronounce the /r/ in Japanese correctly.

    For some people, the difficulty is less in production, and more in interpretation for someone who is native Japanese speaking and later learned English.

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  • Chiming in with more context, my PhD was in neuroscience and I worked in a language lab. As others have stated, there is a critical window for learning a language. The biology behind it is fascinating.

    As early as about 9 months of age, your brain begins to decide what speech sounds are important to you. For example, in Japanese the difference between /r/ and /l/ sounds doesn't matter, but in English it does. Before 9 months, most babies can tell the difference between the two sounds, but babies living in Japanese-speaking environments (without any English) LOSE this ability after 9ish months!

    Language is more than just speech sounds, though. Imagine all these nuances of language - there are critical moments where your brain just decides to accept or reject them, and it's coded somewhere in your DNA.

  • Am I supposed to be enjoying any of this?
  • At three months, my son started smiling. That's when it got way easier. The post partum spouse care can be so hard - especially when there are complications.

    Do you have any family (parents, siblings, in laws) you can ask for help? We basically had live in help for the first two months, I don't know if I could have done it without them.

  • Owning dog or cat could preserve some brain functions as we age, study says
  • Very few things are proved definitively in science. You test a hypothesis with statistics, which always carries a margin of error. Usually, it's 5% - the probability that your data randomly supports your hypothesis, even though there's no true relationship.

    Personally, I prefer when journalists coach their language to avoid overstating the truth.

  • How do you do your interior styling?
  • If you're working on a budget like I was when starting out on my own, I recommend your first purchase to be a bed frame. You can use Ceaigslist / FB marketplace to find some really cheap used options. From there, you can start buying (used) furniture that matches the bed frame. Personally, I needed a nightstand immediately after the bed frame because I wanted to put my glasses somewhere.

  • The FDA Is Approving Drugs Without Evidence They Work
  • The consent process for clinical trials has a ton of guidance (ICH GCP), but the onus is on the clinical monitors and hospitals to make sure it's done correctly. Many trials now generate supporting documentation in which hospital staff are required to describe the circumstances in which consent was acquired. If the documents are generated, then it's auditable.

    Things get a bit hairy when you look at trials in Alzheimer's and other cognitive disorders, because the patient may not be coherent enough to withdraw from the trial. In those cases, a legal guardian is responsible for the decision.

  • The FDA Is Approving Drugs Without Evidence They Work
  • The article brings up some great points, some of which that I, an industry insider, weren't even aware of, especially the historical context surrounding the AIDS epidemic. I'll jump into the thread to critique an issue within the article.

    One of the four pillars recommended by the FDA (control groups) are great in theory but can lead to very real problems in practice, specifically within indications that have an unmet treatment need or are exceptionally rare conditions.

    If you have a disease that is 99% fatal but has 0 standard of care treatment options, is it ethical to ask a participant to enroll in a clinical trial and potentially not receive the study treatment/be on placebo? Or, what if the trial involves an incredibly invasive procedure like brain surgery - is it ethical for people to do a placebo procedure? Food for thought - and an explanation for why so few trials meet all four criteria proposed by the FDA.

    Happy to answer questions about the industry if anyone has them.

  • Savannah Sparrow at the Pond (or maybe a female Red-Winged Blackbird?), in South Ohio
  • Hmm. I think you might be right. I thought the yellow face was enough to distinguish it as a Savannah Sparrow, but the dark legs might indicate it's a blackbird. I had no idea the females looked like that. And that area is basically swarming with blackbirds, so it's a lot more likely.

  • Living within 1 mile of a golf course associated with 126% increased odds of developing Parkinsons
  • It's a reasonable theory. We have seen people develop Parkinsonian symptoms after exposure to toxins before - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9918159/

    The statistics are interesting. If I understand correctly, they picked a group of people with Parkinson's and then identified 20 community-dwelling demographic-matched seniors who were the same age at the time of diagnosis. Then, they looked at the closest distance that the people lived to a golf course within 3 years prior to diagnosis, and computed the likelihood of developing Parkinson's based on demographics, distance to a golf course, and certain characteristics of the water and soil.

    I'm not sure your assessment of the odds is accurate going from 9 out of 9000 to 10 out of 9000 should be an 11% increase. This paper shows something like 100% increase within 3 miles of a golf course. So that's 9 in 9000 to 18 in 9000. Still low risk but enough to make scientists go "huh" and maybe for politicians to consider changing regulations about pesticides (I wish). It's not just golf courses to worry about, though. Think of all the farmers, too, who are exposed to similar toxins.

    The drinking water angle was added to see of certain soil or sources of drinking water would impact the odds of PD diagnosis. The paper was based on data from Minnesota iirc, so I would expect more rural people to have private wells. My understanding was it was less about "statistical significance" and more about "seeing if this variable can explain away the apparent impact of golf course proximity".

  • How are we enjoying Last Epoch ?
  • It's in a good sweet spot, IMO. Not as steep a learning curve as PoE was for me, and easier to just start a character from scratch than Grim Dawn. I feel like the skill tree rewards going in blind, and I've played so much GD that I can't really make a character unless I have a specific build planned out.

    On the flip side, I much prefer GD's end game than LE. I think it's related to the fact that I don't like the seasonal aspect very much, but that's just my opinion. I joined late last season and didn't finish my first character (Mage who cast a high crit Glacier, focusing on the third hit of the chain). Maybe that'll change if I finish my Sentinel.

  • Charles Mingus - Moanin'

    Mingus is one of my favorites.

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    [DISCUSSION] Radiologists, how many MRI phantoms does your team have?

    I got into an interesting discussion at work about an MRI sequence I've never used before. For context, I did a bunch of brain imaging in grad school, and now at work I'm encountering things that aren't the brain. Shocking.

    The technique in question is trying to look at the amount of cartilage in a joint. I assumed the best way to identify potential problems with the MRI is to use a phantom like this one: https://www.truephantom.com/product/adult-knee/. We did this in grad school, but our phantom was basically an expensive jug of fancy water, which, apparently, looks enough like a brain to calibrate the machine.

    It turns out the hospital just takes a random resident, puts them in the MRI, and takes MRIs of their joints. I'm assuming it's because the hospital doesn't want to pay $10k for a fancy fake knee.

    So now I'm curious, if the radiologists and radiology-adjacent folks are out there, how many different phantoms do your teams own?

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    A Double-crested Cormorant enjoys the sunrise over Lake Ossipee, NH, USA

    !

    Taken through the lens of my very basic binoculars with my mediocre phone camera.

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)NE
    Neuromancer49 @midwest.social
    Posts 5
    Comments 129