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Imagine if doctors could precisely insert a tiny amount of a custom drug into a specific circuit in your brain and improve your depression (or other mood problems) — instead of treating the entire brain. That's exactly what Duke University researchers have explored in mice. Stress-susceptible animals that appeared depressed or anxious were restored to relatively normal behavior this way, according to a study appearing in the forthcoming July 20 issue of Neuron. The plan was to define specific glitches in the neural circuits and then use a drug to fix them. The ambitious goal: go from a protein, to a signaling activity, to a cell, to a circuit, to activity that happens across the whole brain, to actual behavior.
The team started by precisely placing arrays of 32 electrodes in four brain areas of the mice [...] Then they recorded brain activity as these mice were subjected to a stressful situation called chronic social defeat.* This allowed the researchers to observe the activity between the prefrontal cortex and three areas of the limbic system that are implicated in major depression. To interpret the complicated data coming from the electrodes, the team used machine learning algorithms — identifying which parts of the data seemed to be the timing control signal between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system— and then zeroed in on the individual neurons involved in that cortical signal and its corresponding circuit.
They then applied engineered molecules called DREADD (Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drug), developed by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pharmacologist Bryan Roth, in very tiny amounts (0.5 microliter). A drug that attaches only to that DREADD is then administered to give the researchers control over the circuit. They found that direct stimulation of PFC-amygdala neural circuitry with DREADDs normalized PFC-dependent limbic synchrony in stress-susceptible animals and restored normal behavior. The researchers suggest that their findings also demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach that can be used to identify the large-scale network changes that underlie complex emotional pathologies and the specific network nodes that can be used to develop targeted interventions.
Dysregulation of Prefrontal Cortex-Mediated Slow-Evolving Limbic Dynamics Drives Stress-Induced Emotional Pathology (DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2016.05.038)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday June 28 2016, @08:20PM
A great many people hold to the proposition, in one form or another, that minds and subjective experiences are somehow fundamentally distinct from the rest of the natural world. Traditionally, it takes the form of the immaterial immortal soul common to many religions, but you find similar premises and conclusions underlying more modern philosophies such as Descartes and panpsychism.
Research such as this should be seen as overwhelmingly conclusive that all such notions are evidentially disproven -- and we've had compelling evidence ever since the Egyptians refined the art of brewing beer several millennia ago. Back then, the fact that your whole personality and ability to think was radically changed simply by drinking beer should have twigged people to the fact that the mind can be reliably and predictably altered by physical interaction. And today we can take that a great deal farther, to the point of precise interrelationships between specific physiological and mental states. Anything and everything about your mental state can be altered or erased (and sometimes restored) through specific manipulation of the brain, and we can observe changes in the brain directly correlated with changes of the mind. As a final check, the physics underlying everyday experience are completely known [preposterousuniverse.com], with all possibilities for avenues of interaction having been accounted for or ruled out.
So, if you still think that you have a soul, or that there's some sort of universal cosmic consciousness, or that your atoms must think because you think, or any other variation on that theme...I would encourage you to sit down, have a beer, and contemplate how, exactly, it is that the beer is able to work its magic on you.
One footnote: it is of course necessarily true that consciousness is an essential element of our own lives and our own experiences within the universe. Everything you observe consciously is intrinsically tied up with conscious observation -- your own. But to extrapolate from there that consciousness is fundamental to that which you observe...well, that's no different from seeing yourself in every mirror you've ever looked in and therefore concluding that you yourself are simultaneously in all mirrors everywhere. If you think your world is suffused with "Mind," it's because it is -- but, of course, it's your own mind that you carry with you everywhere, and you can't escape your mind. But outside your mind and the minds of other thinking entities, there's no mind whatsoever.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 28 2016, @10:13PM
Strictly speaking, the duality could still hold if one posits that the wetware is a sort of antenna or vessel for the soul ("ether body" is a closer and more accurate term).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday June 29 2016, @12:23AM
Not in our universe.
Your brain is made of atoms, which is a concise way of saying that it's made of electrons and quarks arranged in various ways via interactions most relevantly via electromagnetism. We know all the ways that you can do stuff to electrons and quarks, and the only relevant (macro-scale) ways involve electromagnetism and gravity. We also know that there aren't any unaccounted for electromagnetic or gravitational effects in brains, and that there aren't any structures that could support such.
Because of the rotational symmetry of Feynman diagrams, if you wish to claim some as-yet-undiscovered force that could be interacting with our brains in some way...that claim is equivalent to one that, if you smash electrons and / or quarks together at a certain energy, you'll generate a particle associated with this new force. But we've smashed electrons and / or quarks together at all relevant energies and not discovered anything we don't already know about -- with the Higgs being the final piece to complete the puzzle of the Standard Model.
Or, by analogy, a claim that there's an as-yet-undiscovered force interacting with brains is as deserving of serious consideration as a claim that the lost continent of Atlantis really is there in the middle of the ocean and we'll find it as soon as we finish adding enough detail to the empty spots on our global maps.
I should hasten to add -- Sean's is a claim of a very specifically limited nature; it just so happens that the limits encompass all of physics as has ever been applicable here on Earth. We know we can't explain black holes, for example, but we also know that there aren't any black holes in human brains -- with, of course, the notable possible exceptions of Drumpf and Brexit supporters.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday June 29 2016, @06:32AM
Have we really found out everything there is to know, or enough to be able to make statements like that so confidently? To be clear, while not an atheist I'm not one of those woo merchants, either; if we find evidence for a soul it's going to be just another kind of science, merely one we don't understand yet. Personally I think the natural/supernatural distinction is a false dichotomy...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday June 29 2016, @03:15PM
No.
Yes.
You're confident that the Sun rises in the East and that, if you draw a right triangle with 3" and 4" sides the hypotenuse will be 5", right?
The physics of human bodies and the everyday world and all of Earth and quite a bit beyond are all just as well known. We know there are limits to our knowledge, with black holes, dark matter, and the Big Bang being the most notable cases of things we can't explain. But, just as discovering, say, a new planet orbiting some distant star isn't going to change the fact that the Sun rises in the East, nothing we learn about cosmological-scale phenomena is going to change what we already know about how your body works.
If you want details, including the equation, see the link I included in the grandparent post...or, indeed, much of anything that Sean Carroll has said to or written for the lay audience recently.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday June 29 2016, @04:33PM
I want to believe this. I really do. Being a normal, atheistic "you're dead when you're dead" type would really help my state of mind, but I've seen and experienced some things that paradigm just can't explain. Really, I shouldn't be worried; they were uniformly positive, or at least just, but still...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday June 29 2016, @05:47PM
Experiences are all we ultimately have, and the overwhelmingly moving and powerful type are to be treasured most of all. But we're also constantly reminded of how even the most mundane experiences do not correspond well with anything outside of our minds. It's trivial (and fun) to demonstrate that with optical illusions, but just think about all the times you've ever been surprised or mistraken about something.
We know that it is trivial to induce overwhelmingly moving and powerful experiences by administering certain drugs, and that the experiences thus generated don't correspond with anything outside of the mind any more than our perceptions in optical illusions do. And impartial investigations of similar experiences not induced by drugs again uniformly demonstrate that the internal perception in no way represents external actuality.
Again, not to diminish the personal significance of such experiences -- far from it! It's just that it's important to keep things in perspective.
It might help to consider a thought experiment. One day, you have some spontaneous "natural" transcendent experience induced through meditation or a near-death experience or the like. Another day, you take an hallucinogenic drug and have a similar experience. Another day, you're put in a virtual reality environment and have yet another similar experience. And yet another day, it's "for real" this time and you actually really are opening the doors to the perception of an entirely different but still-real realm. How are you to distinguish the latter experience from the others? All of them happen in your mind and with equally-compelling numinous sensation.
The answer, of course, is to resolve it the same way you would the Müller-Lyer illusion: go grab yourself a ruler and compare it against each of the lines.
That's basically what the folks at CERN wound up doing...and they found the Higgs Boson, which was the last remaining pice of the Standard Model puzzle. In order for the Standard Model to not be an accurate description of reality, you have to propose some sort of radical conspiracy theory...maybe all the scientists in the world are secretly working together to deceive you, or maybe you're a brain in a vat, or maybe the vat is part of the Matrix, and so on. And while it's true that you can't disprove any of those conspiracy theories, that way madness truly lies. Lacking supportive evidence that this one particular conspiracy actually is a reasonable conclusion, you're much better off simply living your life.
And a final note. Let's say we are Holodeck characters in the Matrix vat brain dream. So what? Isn't this universe as we observe it amazing enough, even if there's something "outside" that's radically different from what we think it is? As The Bard so eloquently noted, all the world really is a stage, so shouldn't you deliver your lines as best you can, even if the theatre isn't where or what you think it is?
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday June 29 2016, @05:57PM
Oh, I'm with you on all the above. Believe me, I had my Plato's Cave phase back in 8th grade and decided since we can't know and it makes zero difference anyway, why bother? Epistemology is a bear, partly because we're trying to basically look at the back of our own skulls when we do it...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday June 29 2016, @06:46PM
Well, once you get past worrying about how impossible it is to dig all the way to the ultimate nature of reality, you're left with rational observation as the only sensical means for distinguishing what is and isn't actually real. Science is the most effective refinement of that technique yet demonstrated...and you'll not find any gods nor spirits nor other supernatural forces nor room for such anywhere in any science. If you want to posit that sort of thing, you're right back to the conspiracy theories.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday June 29 2016, @06:14AM
Case in point, reading your post triggered an Edie Brickell song to play in my head.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek