Live data from Hacker News

Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

neurosciencenews.com

1–10 of 246 posts

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#5
Original DOI link:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nm.4274

Edit: Please read abandonliberty's comment below before reading mine. I didn't properly elucidate the position on the harms v. benefits tradeoff (net harm) the way abandonliberty did.

My own opinion: it wouldn't be terribly surprising to see many harmful substances only be harmful to a majority subset of a population space, though that's why the scheduling system (theoretically) exists -- to allow drugs to be classified based on harm v. benefit to various populations. Whether Nicotine should be scheduled is... well, given the number of people addicted to it, probably not the easiest conversation to have. I originally thought it was Schedule II (high abuse potential but with some medical benefit, which would certainly fit our potential future understanding of nicotine based on studies like this), but it turns out my original hunch was faulty googling.

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#8
For those who have seen severe mental illness up close, this is not surprising in the least. Many, many people with schizophrenia or other disorders characterized by psychosis self-medicate heavily with cigarettes. Huddled masses of patients smoking outside are fixtures of most psychiatric treatment facilities.

Re: Nicotine Normalizes Brain Activity Deficits That Are Key to Schizophrenia

#9
Can anyone with access to the paper give a few technical details? The abstract mentions "Chronic nicotine administration" does this mean the nicotine dosage is high enough to not be a viable basis for treatment?

The linked article claims that this could be a basis for new drug research, which sounds exciting, but how much do we already know about drugs that affect the nicotinic receptors?

Post reply on HN