Scientist, writer, human.
PhD Neurophysiologist, writer, game designer, and artist.
#neuro #neuroscience #science #research #jhu #neurons #johnshopkins #SciFi #cognition
| Website | https://isaacostlund.io/ |
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaacostlund/ | |
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#Danaher is a medical company that is using a "printer ink" model for life-saving tuberculosis testing. Cheap devices, 300-500% markup on disposables. Price gauging poor countries for diagnostic tests that will save children and ailing adults from a CURABLE disease is abhorrent.
Could be! Perhaps if this had been done younger it would have been easier, I know some therapies and positive thinking habits are easier to establish in childhood. Could definitely be related.
Unfortunately no. The findings of my #research can be broken into two prongs:
1) Where THC causes plasticity in the brain (GABA neurons of the VTA)
2) Adults show LESS #plasticity from both THC and "normal" stimulus.
#2 means adults require more #THC (or more repetition/intensity of an event or effort) in order to "code" those longer changes.
Happy to talk further if needs more clarification!
My paper is out! It's free to access!
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2022.1067493/full
We discovered that #marijuana (THC specifically) reduces #GABA #neuron activity. This helps explain some of the rewarding and calming effects of THC because the depression of GABA #neurons means increased dopamine release, which generally makes us feel pretty good.
Don't smoke too young though, we also found #THC is MUCH more influential in adolescents, and sometimes struggles to reverse!
The ventral tegmental area (VTA) mediates incentive salience and reward prediction error through dopamine (DA) neurons that are regulated by local VTA GABA neurons. In young mice, VTA GABA cells exhibit a form of synaptic plasticity known as long-term depression (LTD) that is dependent on cannabinoid 1 (CB1) receptors preceded by metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) signaling to induce endocannabinoid production. This LTD was eliminated following chronic (7–10 consecutive days) exposure to the marijuana derived cannabinoid Δ9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). We now examine the mechanism behind THC-induced elimination of LTD in adolescents as well as plasticity induction ability in adult versus young male and female mice using whole-cell electrophysiology experiments of VTA GABA cells. Chronic THC injections in adolescents resulted in a loss of CB1 agonist-mediated depression, illustrating chronic THC likely desensitizes or removes synaptic CB1. We noted that seven days withdrawal from chronic THC restored LTD and CB1 agonist-induced depression, suggesting reversibility of THC-induced changes. Adult mice continue to express functional mGluR5 and CB1, but require a doubling of the synaptic stimulation compared to young mice to induce LTD, suggesting a quantitative difference in CB1-dependent plasticity between young and adult mice. One potential rationale for this difference is changes in AMPA and NMDA glutamate receptors. Indeed, AMPA/NMDA ratios were increased in in adul...
In 2017 a man, after some thought, had a simple but genius idea and took a camera on a Southwest flight from Portland, Oregon to St. Louis and captured one of the most breathtaking images of all time.
Jon Carmichael's "108" is probably my favorite #eclipse image and provokes introspection every time I see it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna101420
A woman with paralysis speaks through a digital avatar after 18 years.
Brain-computer interfacing #BCI is an incredible field and one I've always been interested in. I can't believe how far it has come in the last 10 years.
I can't imagine the pain of being trapped, silent and aware, for that long. Hopefully this tech helps her find some happiness, and others who can benefit from it as well!
@zakalwe yeah, me too. We had other work in our lab that showed aerobic #exercise helps restore neural #plasticity.
But that's woooork and I don't wanna
@chiasm the open access journals already extant are important and should be recognized for this. And I agree that most of the articles are difficult to approach so even if people have access to them they may not understand them. I still believe most of the "best" journals are limiting access to our detriment.
Hmm, but some sort of funding or maybe a position by journals for simplified but accurate reviews for the layman might be valuable. Instead of hoping the #media does it well.
We worry about the spread of #misinformation and "alternative facts" while gating academic and scientific research behind paywalls that grossly limit public access.
