I found this an intriguing perspective on cancer. There are many interesting concepts explored in this video.
(1) Systemic thinking about cancer | Miscellaneous | Heatlh & Medicine | Khan Academy - YouTube
Scientists uncover new targets for treating Parkinson's disease (medicalxpress.com)
Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have found that people with Parkinson's disease have a clear "genetic signature" of the disease in their memory T cells. The scientists hope that targeting these genes may open the door to new Parkinson's treatments and diagnostics.
How meditation can help you make fewer mistakes
Meditating just once proves to make a differenceMost notably, the unexpected nature of our results (i.e., inconsistency with our a priori hypotheses) in conjunction with the small effect size of the reported Pe modulation and lack of behavioral performance discrepancies across groups challenge the strength of our findings and cast doubt over the postulations advanced above. Such skepticism is compounded by our EEG methodology,I'm struggling to believe that just 20 minutes of meditation can have a real world effect on error monitoring. The results in Table 2 are not that pronounced so I am surprised to read in the news article:
These findings are a strong demonstration of what just 20 minutes of meditation can do to enhance the brain's ability to detect and pay attention to mistakes," Moser said. "It makes us feel more confident in what mindfulness meditation might really be capable of for performance and daily functioning right there in the moment."That is even more surprising given the paragraph above states there was no improvement in actual task performance!
He was very good at maths at home but at Uni he was average, though scored well in physics classes. The attitude of Einstein displayed in this essay reminds me of a story about another brilliant man who would fall asleep during presentations. His reason being he was only interested in his problems, not other peoples' problems. Einstein demonstrated the most common quality in genius: sustained focus. Which reminds me of the story about a famous golfer playing at St. Andrews and is about to make an important shot when a train goes by. He makes the shot and someone asks him if the train distracted him. What train? he replied. Hmmm, what was that about focus, I'll go back to watching TV now.
The Guardian publishes virtual signaling articles with monotonous regularity. The editor needs to offer advice to the virtue signaling authors that the subtle and not so subtle demonising of "white people" is discriminatory because white people is a ridiculous category.
Diets: how scientists discovered that one size doesn’t fit all
For any given food, some people’s glucose levels would spike dramatically, while others hardly seemed to react at all. This couldn’t be explained away as a random fluctuation because the same person responded similarly each time they ate that particular food. For one middle-aged woman, for example, her blood glucose level spiked every time she ate tomatoes. Another person spiked especially strongly after eating bananas.That is very surprising. Even the macronutrient source independent of caloric content can cause changes in blood sugar. That is a very interesting finding. So we would choose our calories wisely. It might explain something that happens to me after I have been fasting. I will start feeling fatigued and by far the best pick me is eating an orange. The effect is immediate. Perhaps that explains why I have always loved oranges.
Recently a new gym opened near my home. I had just starting gym training again at another gym but because this new gym was closer to home and at my preferred shopping centre I decided changing gyms might boost my motivation. Well that was the excuse but the new gym had a special deal going which meant lower subscriptions and no sign up fee which certainly encouraged the change. Another big advantage of a new gym is low membership. It is working out well because I never have to wait to use a machine, there isn't a lot of talking within earshot, and having sub-clinical ADHD the lack of distraction keeps me focused.
The Neurocognitive Basis of Bias Against People Who Look Different
Summary: Neuroimaging revealed when people saw an anomalous face, the fusiform gyri and amygdala showed significant neural responses. Activity in a region of the left amygdala, which correlated with less pro-social responses to the anomalous face, appeared to relate to the participant’s belief about justice in the world and their degree of empathetic concern.
The neuroimaging findings are consistent with a mountain of literature finding that facial disfigurement has many negative consequences. I've been sitting on this for weeks letting various ideas float through my mind during the interminable hours of insomnia.
The result doesn't surprise me because much earlier studies made it obvious that maintaining regular sleep patterns is important for health. Our sleep cycle is regulated by our circadian rhythms. That is about much more than sleep because our circadian rhythms have body wide implications for metabolism.
Coalition unlikely to lift unemployment benefits when jobkeeper scrapped in March
The proposed change to the national anthem from "young and free" to "one and free" is another example of how symbolism dominates proposed solutions to indigenous issues. It is ridiculous to think that removing the word "young" from the song will result in any improvement for indigenous people but obviously Scotty from Marketing thinks it is a great way to kick of 2021.
The problem with the idea is that delusions in the pathological sense are typically fearful and often involve irrational beliefs. For example believing one has supernatural powers. For a working definition think "Scientologist" and "Tom Cruise". The definition of delusion in the article is:
Delusion: A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly held despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (i.e., it is not an article of religious faith).
My emphasis.
There is no incontrovertible evidence for or against the existence of God.
There is incontrovertible evidence that Dawkins is not a student of human perception and cognition so he is deluded when he rants about faith in god being a delusion. He has confused belief in God with religious belief. Freeman Dyson believed in God and he was regarded as the smartest man in the world. Many people from all walks of life believe in God but do not have religious beliefs.
One could argue that many economists suffer from the delusion that they are scientists. 🤣
If sustaining a belief impairs your daily functioning and disrupts your social relationships, then your belief is more likely to count as a delusion.
That is the critical issue about delusions. Religious belief reinforces social relationships within the group however religious belief can also break social relationship beyond the group. Belief in God, which is a separate question from religious belief, does not intrinsically disrupt social relationships and does not impair daily functioning.
As both a psychiatrist and a patient, I know how slippery a diagnosis can be
At the outset I must make this perfectly clear. Psychiatric disorders exist, have as yet an undiscovered physical substrate which may have a genetic and environmental components, typically a result of the gene and environmental interaction. Psychiatric drugs have made huge improvements to society and individuals. My focus on this post is where psychiatry and psychology needs to change.
The controversies surrounding psychiatric diagnosis are decades old. Thomas Szasz is the seminal figure on the issue and his work, "The Myth of Mental Illness"(1961), began a debate that continues today. Today the problem is worse. The above article is another example of how psychiatry as a profession and our culture needs to seriously reevaluate how psychiatric diagnoses are made and how psychiatric conditions are treated.
New Antidepressants Can Lift Depression and Suicidal Thoughts Fast, but Don’t Expect Magic Cures
Ketamine is an NMDA antagonist. I've long had concerns about using it for depression treatment because the NMDA receptors play a cardinal role in activating the CREB pathway which in turns is important for synaptic consolidation. So the long term use of ketamine, which will be required because the effect only lasts a few days, raises troubling questions about synaptic density.
