Funny GIF of Laura Ingraham realizing that she's Nazi saluting at the Republican National Convention

[GilbertWham]

Badum-tish.

[nimelennar]

@Foggen

I guess I’m fundamentally rejecting the notion of a “random” effect on each infected individual.

Oh, I agree. In my original post, I said that I found that idea especially dubious, even with my limited knowledge of virology.. That said, that is exactly what its creator claimed:

Directly from the book:

Except extinction was not Bertrand’s goal—quite the opposite, in fact—which is why he created a randomly activating virus. Even though Inferno is now endemic in all human DNA and will be passed along by all of us from this generation forward, it will ‘activate’ only in a certain percentage of people. In other words, the virus is now carried by everyone on earth, and yet it will cause sterility in only a randomly selected part of the population.
[…]
Assuming Bertrand’s virus has taken hold, one third of the world’s population is now sterile … and one third of the population will continue to be sterile for all time. The effect would be similar to that of a recessive gene … which gets passed along to all offspring, and yet exerts its influence in only a small percentage of them.

And that’s directly from the “mouth” of a character in the book who is an ubergenius doctor, scientist, and researcher who worked directly with the person who designed the thing, so she should be considered a knowledgeable source on what it’s supposed to do.

[Melizmatic]

Damn, what a shit-show…

[sssss]

I’ve changed my profile picture to this image. Thank you.

[Snowlark]

@Wanderfound

That factor is kind of a chemical hijacking of the pair-bonding system (i.e. love, lust, family), which is also heavily dopamine-dependent. Neurologically, the brain activity you get after a shot of heroin (for example) is rather similar to what you get when you look at your spouse or child.

When it comes to the neurotransmission of social bonding, dopaminergic pathways are a relatively minor component compared to those of oxytocin and, to a lesser extent, serotonin. It’s still a critical component, don’t get me wrong, but dopamine isn’t the only reinforcing mechanism.

Dopamine has somewhat of a celebrity status as the ‘reward neurotransmitter’ thanks to simplistic representations of the neurophysiology underlying reward, pleasure, and reinforcement in pop-science literature. The reinforcement mechanism of opioid self-administration is two-fold, with dopaminergic signaling being downstream from opioid receptor system activation, the latter of which is what mediates the sense of pleasure. Dopamine just augments reinforcement.

All of this being off-topic, I’ll take my train off the tracks of this derailment now.

[abnercadaver]

That is indeed the case: the source of the classical painters is a few crowd scenes, like this one from Trajan’s Column, that seem to kinda sorta have people raising their arm in acclamation/salute.

[nimelennar]

@popobawa4u

But your 44.4% figure assumes that people always pair off into permanent couples to reproduce. People might instead choose to try numerous partners until they achieve pregnancy.

True. The end result might have been something out of a Margaret Atwood novel, or maybe even something less dystopian. However, I have no idea how to model that (or even whether that would have made the model simpler or more complex).

[8080256256]

That’s really cool, I had no idea this was the source.

But (given my existing bias), it really gives me the impression they are just randomly raising their arms (some of them) in a moment of excitement - rather than performing some formal gesture.

[Snowlark]

@nemomen

That’s a bit out of Mein Kampfort zone.

[Wanderfound]

(one last OT waffle before I also shut up)

@Snowlark

When it comes to the neurotransmission of social bonding, dopaminergic pathways are a relatively minor component compared to those of oxytocin and, to a lesser extent, serotonin. It’s still a critical component, don’t get me wrong, but dopamine isn’t the only reinforcing mechanism.

Dopamine has somewhat of a celebrity status as the ‘reward neurotransmitter’ thanks to simplistic representations of the neurophysiology underlying reward, pleasure, and reinforcement in pop-science literature. The reinforcement mechanism of opioid self-administration is two-fold, with dopaminergic signaling being downstream from opioid receptor system activation, the latter of which is what mediates the sense of pleasure. Dopamine just augments reinforcement.

Yup. I was leaving out a lot of detail in my digression-on-a-digression.

The initial conception of dopamine as a “reward” transmitter is substantially mistaken. Dopamine circuits fire up just as much for nasty/threatening stimuli as they do for rewarding ones.

Instead of the “reward” neurotransmitter, it’s better thought of as the “attention” neurotransmitter [1]. It fires up when your brain wants to let you know that something important is going on. Family, food, danger; all things that rightfully demand attention.

Oxytocin does appear to be key for pair-bonding, but also seems to have some potential involvement in addiction. There have been a few promising studies in recent years on the use of oxytocin as an addiction therapy. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18475254 and Carson DS[Author] - Search Results - PubMed

[1] Which, of course, is also an extreme simplification that will lead you astray if you take it too literally. Neurochemistry is complicated, yo.

[8080256256]

For internet use…

[jerwin]

[adonai]

Historical documents

[LDoBe]

So, forgive my lay interpretation,

If ADHD is generally a deficit in one’s ability to suppress impulses, then tourettes is something like a more extreme loss of impulse control?

I remember before I was medicated for ADHD and I couldn’t usually explain why I did anything, beyond “it felt like I should do it”.

[Wanderfound]

I don’t know enough about ADHD to give a good answer to that, and I’m not sure that anyone knows for sure. The neurological basis of ADHD is still a fairly unresolved research subject, AFAIK. Tourette’s is still pretty mysterious, too; what I was saying above about a dopamine link is an educated guess rather than a proven fact.

Technically, I have a Tourette-like acquired tic disorder, rather than “classic” Tourette’s. Standard Tourette’s is probably genetic and appears in childhood. I did twitch and mutter a bit as a kid, but my current condition didn’t appear until I was 40.

Subjectively, anecdotally, I can say that my memory and ability to concentrate is nowhere near what it used to be (which is why I’m no longer a working neuroscientist). It does feel like my mind is “twitchy” as well as my body.

However, the whole thing is complicated in my case by clinical depression (an extreme negative reaction to Sertraline is what initiated the tic disorder). Since depression is also known to damage memory and concentration, it’s difficult to differentiate causative factors.

[GilbertWham]

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed speed makes people swear more. You come across any info like that when you wrote the paper on 4-MMC?

[p96]

That, my friends, is a master troll. We say “Look, Nazi salute!”, and the right says “, idiots.”, and “I know, right, stupid commie libruls.”[sic]

[moosemalloy]

Yes, or trying to catch the free T-shirts. Heck, many of them are topless, they NEED those shirts.

[Wanderfound]

@GilbertWham

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed speed makes people swear more. You come across any info like that when you wrote the paper on 4-MMC?

That’s not something we looked at; my work was based around behavioural neuroscience using rodent models. Rats don’t swear a whole lot, as far as we know.

Stimulant drugs in general tend to be confidence-enhancing and disinhibiting, which are both factors that could be expected to loosen up the subjects’ vocabularies. Non-oxytocinergic stimulants like speed also tend to enhance aggression, which is likely to impact choice of language.

It would be difficult to differentiate voluntary and involuntary swearing in an intoxicated human subject.