An axolotl - apparently when given the thyroid hormone it reverts to its land-dwelling ancestor. Amazing! Dr Ramachandran has been studying acromegaly - it seems there has been an excess of growth hormone resulting in people with the disorder reverting to an earlier stage of evolutionary man - square jaws and and ridged eyebrows. Dr Rama seems to be brilliantly involved in many explorations of syndromes and the physicals of the brain. He is exciting and pioneering in his research. So many questions. No time to research it all. I should be studying - more avoidance!!
Although of course the topics are closely related and relevant.
I wonder if Dr Rama's mirror neurons he mentions, that seem deficient for example in people with autism, are linked at all with the recent investigations into pain synaesthesia. People who feel other people's pain - in extreme, i.e. limping at the sight of someone else twisting their ankle.
JB is certain my seeing of colours is a type of synaesthesia. I have not linked the colours with anything specifically occurring. I will try and note it.
Dr Rama has also observed how time goes faster when people are flirting. The olfactory bulb is smaller in people with autism and also with schizophrenia. Interesting. I wonder if this would link at all with Prof Fallons' psychopath brain. Ah an example of genetics potentially affecting individual behaviour but the influence of the environment triggering or not the disposition. That is a part of one of my essays and we are permitted to use material outside of the course (referenced of course).
Surely autism is a genetically influenced condition that occurs environment or not??
Time Magazine 19April2011
Are psychedelics good for you? It's such a hippie relic of a question that it's almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case, Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963. But should we be prying open the doors of perception again? Wasn't the whole thing a disaster the first time?
The answer to both questions is yes. The study of psychedelics in the '50s and '60s eventually devolved into the drug free-for-all of the '70s. But the new research is careful and promising. Last year two top journals, the Archives of General Psychiatry and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, published papers showing clear benefits from the use of psychedelics to treat mental illness. Both were small studies, just 27 subjects total. But the Archives paper--whose lead author, Dr. Carlos Zarate Jr., is chief of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Research Unit at NIMH--found "robust and rapid antidepressant effects" that remained for a week after depressed subjects were given ketamine (colloquial name: Special K or usually just k). In the other study, a team led by Dr. Francisco Moreno of the University of Arizona gave psilocybin (the merrymaking chemical in psychedelic mushrooms) to obsessive-compulsive-disorder patients, most of whom later showed "acute reductions in core OCD symptoms." Now researchers at Harvard are studying how Ecstasy might help alleviate anxiety disorders, and the Beckley Foundation, a British trust, has received approval to begin what will be the first human studies with LSD since the 1970s.
Psychedelics chemically alter the way your brain takes in information and may cause you to lose control of typical thought patterns. The theory motivating the recent research is that if your thoughts are depressed or obsessive, the drugs may reveal a path through them. For Leary and his circle--which influenced millions of Americans to experiment with drugs--psychedelics' seemingly boundless possibilities led to terrible recklessness. There's a jaw-dropping passage in last year's authoritative Leary biography by Robert Greenfield in which Leary and two friends ingest an astonishing 31 psilocybin pills in Leary's kitchen while his 13-year-old daughter has a pajama party upstairs. Stupefied, one of the friends climbs into the girl's bed and has to be pulled from the room.
A half-century later, scientists hope to unstitch psychedelic research from their forebears' excesses. Even as the Clinical Psychiatry paper trumpets psilocybin's potential for "powerful insights," it also urges caution. The paper suggests psilocybin only for severe OCD patients who have failed standard therapies and, as a last resort, may face brain surgery. Similarly, subjects can't take part in the Ecstasy trials unless their illness has continued after ordinary treatment.
Antidrug warriors may argue that the research will lend the drugs an aura of respectability, prompting a new round of recreational use. That's possible, but today we have no priestly Leary figure spewing vertiginous pro-drug proclamations. Instead we have a Leary for a less naive age: Richard Doblin. Also a Harvard guy--his Ph.D. is in public policy--Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in 1986 to help scientists get funding and approval to study the drugs. (Doblin, 53, says he was too shy for the '60s, but he was inspired by the work of psychologist Stanislav Grof, who authored a 1975 book about promising LSD research--research that ended with antidrug crackdowns.) Doblin has painstakingly worked with intensely skeptical federal authorities to win necessary permissions. MAPS helped launch all four of the current Ecstasy studies, a process that took two decades. It's the antithesis of Leary's approach.
All drugs have benefits and risks, but in psychedelics we have been tempted to see only one or the other. Not anymore.
Mmm
He defended the use of the drug LSD for its therapeutic, emotional and spiritual benefits, and even believed it showed incredible potential in the field of psychiatry. Leary also popularized the phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out". Both proved to be hugely influential on the 1960s counterculture. Largely due to his influence in this field, he was attacked by conservative figures in the United States, and described as "the most dangerous man in America" by President Richard Nixon.(information taken from Wikipedia)
Discuss the statement that "differences in genes between people can contribute towards differences in their behaviour".
The point I wish to make is that there are currently just a few conditions that occur regardless of the environmental situation. Therefore whilst genes clearly play a major part in creating the predisposition towards an individuals behaviour, genes alone are not the only contribution in the main. However reductionists would argue that humanity is seated in the physical brain which is purely genetic. I can use the diseases that will occur as the evidence for this part of the argument but things like Prof Fallon who so far has not shown signs of murdering anyone (tee hee) is evidence that environment can change the course of the predisposed behaviour - although his family suggest he is emotionally detached. Mmm more evidence in favour of -
The plasticity of the brain might be evidence that changes can occur - the development of stem cells etc, are evidence of something but I am not quite sure how to put this yet.
My real point is that clearly genes are a major contribution but cannot be considered the only cause towards differences.
Oh twin studies have shown twins separated at birth have certain inherited personality types - probability and heritability calculations. But then there is also the argument that they are often adopted into families with similar backgrounds.
I need to read Chapter 1 Book 1 all over again to draw out relevant points and evidence of my argument.
Well at least have a bit of a plan. Though I can see how my argument is evolving already.
Like Dr Rama said - have a bit of fun with the science.
Terminology, points to be made, evidence etc will all bolster the marking points.
As for how I am - well it's a little like a car engine nearly firing. I want to be able to return to work next week. Not for the job conditions, the work I love, financially I need to as my income starts to reduce to half as from this week I think. I will have to ask my dad for a loan and am terrified of his judgement. I hate being the failure he sees in me. Contributes to me not accepting myself and I am already in a deep state of that!
I think I am coming more to terms with the fact that the relationship I had is well and truly over. Whilst I had deep feelings for the man himself, I can see the dysfunction in my choice of entering into it after it initially being something that was connected strongly with sexual arousal. This did develop but I think I really want to be loved by a man of my visions. I really think I wanted the man to be that but of course it turned out, evidently, that he is not that man at all.
There is that sense of something being wrong with me if he were then able to go off and develop something as per my imagined love. But the truth is if he does find that contentment either in his own behavioural choices or how I imagine loving can truly be, then I would be truly happy. I would like to find it myself. What I want to learn in the meantime is how to be loving with myself. Then I can be even more certain of what is OK for me.
I do agree with SC that I need to have time to heal the wound tat I have kept re-opening. It just seems so sad that it's at this stage in my life and not earlier. However, that is the path I have travelled - I have had a lot of fun along the way. Truly. Even in the drinking drugging stages, although they brought me to my knees eventually. And at this stage the path took on a different direction. One that if I can stay with it is one of light and spirituality. Like I say it's like an engine firing and nearly catching, sometimes, catching and other times not even sparking.
I feel the catching and then dropping off. This is progress.
I am still convinced that hormones have contributed massively to the mood swings. I noticed this morning that I haven't felt extremely high in the past few days. Also that the darker thinking is on and off during a day. It seems to come on after lunchtime. I wonder if wheat is contributing or maybe sugar. I have read I think in the past research that these can have an influence. I noticed yesterday I had no appetite around lunchtime. I did not feel hungry until the evening.
So anyway, there is a change. Right now I want to get on and study. I am not sure if I will attend Art Natters. I will see how the studying goes.
Bliss
XX
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