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Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

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Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#31

Post by psychphysic »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #24
phreeza wrote: post #12

A note for people not familiar with the terminology - "functional connectivity" is a specific technical term that really just means temporal correlation between brain areas, as opposed to "structural connectivity" which refers to the actual neural pathways that are formed between brain areas. If you rephrase the headline as "Serotonin booster leads to increased correlation between activity in different brain areas" i…

The main reason it's not too exciting to me is much simpler. They tested it for 6 days. You can do all sorts of wonderful stuff with a drug for a few days. But for most drugs, the effects simply cease if you keep taking it due to tolerance. And there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of leeway to up the dose either because it's a laxative.

I think this is a overly pessimistic take.

It would be nice to see a longer term study. And no people shouldn't be buying this in IndiaMart but critical analysis of studies isn't just about being as pessimistic as possible.

It's overly pessimistic as it's not constructive. Instead of asking for longer term studies you declare the effect probably won't last.

There are loads of criticisms one could make of the study and wider hypothesis. But as with all criticism it should be constructive where reasonable.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#32

Post by laeri »

cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #6
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #4

Too bad it's also a laxative.

Magnesium is too, to a degree. With age, this is often a good property. There are plenty of opioid analogues to decrease it safely.

I think magnesium can also lead to other issues related to cardiac arrythms. I have no direct source to point to however.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#33

Post by ben_w »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #19

Something in our industrial processes must be screwing with people's serotonin levels because Psychedelics and other serotenergic drugs are becoming the defacto treatment method for a whole host of ailments. I personally suffer from IBS, migraines, sleeping problems, and mood swings, if I haven't taken a dose of psychedelics in the last 6 months. Now, getting regular exercise, eating well, staying hydrated, sleeping…

100-150 years ago we were using heroin, cocaine, and morphine for such things as cough syrups, hay fever, cola.

Ancient Romans used cannabis and opium for insomnia and earaches.

Wild animals get drunk on rotten fruit, cats stone themselves on catnip.

So you're not wrong to wonder why people take stuff, but none of that's new.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#35

Post by ljf »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #25
ljf wrote: post #3

About 2 years ago I wasn't in a good place. My wife had been ill for a year, I found the lockdown hard (though I agreed with them), and I was struggling at my job. I wasn't sleeping well and was settling into a funk. I started taking 5-htp [0] every evening before bed - and over about a month I felt like a changed man. It took about 6 months to fully sort my sleep out and get my head back to where I wanted it, and to…

One warning about 5-HTP here. It seems that it can be potentially cardiotoxic at higher doses, or so as I read.

Certainly and some people also get serotonin syndrome if they mix this with other antidepressant medications. Read up before taking but to me this just highlights the impacts it can have.

If it were patentable it would have had far more research I'm sure.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#36

Post by bbor »

code51 wrote: post #34

Could this potentially help schizophrenia, emotional regulation, impulsivity, reward processing, ADHD etc because of an improvement in functional connectivity?

This comment sums up why I’m so sad to be living in what I feel will be looked back on as the dark ages of neuroscience - these very very smart people are limited to “more correlated brain activity might help with everything!”

OTOH perhaps I don’t want to live in a world with happy pills… we should all be grateful

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#37

Post by freehorse »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #25
ljf wrote: post #3

About 2 years ago I wasn't in a good place. My wife had been ill for a year, I found the lockdown hard (though I agreed with them), and I was struggling at my job. I wasn't sleeping well and was settling into a funk. I started taking 5-htp [0] every evening before bed - and over about a month I felt like a changed man. It took about 6 months to fully sort my sleep out and get my head back to where I wanted it, and to…

One warning about 5-HTP here. It seems that it can be potentially cardiotoxic at higher doses, or so as I read.

This warning can never be overstated for 5-HTP. Higher doses/longer term use can have a lot of negative effects in the heart, as well as in the serotonin and dopamine system (even up to serotonin syndrome in the most extreme cases). A major problem is that the body does not have mechanisms to regulate conversion of 5-HTP to serotonin (5-HT), which is not a really good property of a supplement.

One should do their search before starting it, which anyway holds as advice for most supplements, but even more for this one. Anecdotes should not be taken as evidence of overall safety.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#38

Post by vanderZwan »

code51 wrote: post #34

Could this potentially help schizophrenia, emotional regulation, impulsivity, reward processing, ADHD etc because of an improvement in functional connectivity?

I can't speak for any other illness mentioned, but from what I've been told as someone with ADHD a significant part of the "nature" side of it is caused by either reduced serotonin sensitivity, a faster-than-normal re-uptake of serotonin whenever it gets released (meaning it doesn't get to do its job), or some other disruption of how serotonin is supposed to function in the brain.

So when it's caused by reduced sensitivity I would expect it to potentially be a treatment for that part of the illness, yes.

I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually turns out that ADHD has multiple potential causes that all lead to the same symptomatic serotonin disruption though, and that only a limited number of people who have it get benefits from this treatment.

And of course, that's just the "nature" side, as mentioned. There is also a "nurture" side of things where not getting the right help to deal with the consequences of ADHD leads to issues that need to be solved through therapy (although I suppose effective medication does make it easier to able to endure therapy).

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#39

Post by freehorse »

ljf wrote: post #35
alwayslikethis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One warning about 5-HTP here. It seems that it can be potentially cardiotoxic at higher doses, or so as I read.

Certainly and some people also get serotonin syndrome if they mix this with other antidepressant medications. Read up before taking but to me this just highlights the impacts it can have. If it were patentable it would have had far more research I'm sure.

> to me this just highlights the impacts it can have.

I believe it also highlights that the body cannot regulate its conversion to serotonin, as it does with L-tryptophan (which needs to be converted to 5HTP) for instance, which can result to these issues.

Also, the body does not regulate where in the body the conversion happens, you _really_ do not want it do be converted to serotonin in peripheral tissue (as it can cause heart issues), you only want it in the brain. Heart palpitations is a very common side effect due to it.

If it was patentable drug it would possibly have been banned/restricted as a drug like many other 5HT2b agonists (but it is not patentable as it is something that our own body makes), and research would have turned to something with less cardiotoxic effects.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#40

Post by noduerme »

phreeza wrote: post #12

A note for people not familiar with the terminology - "functional connectivity" is a specific technical term that really just means temporal correlation between brain areas, as opposed to "structural connectivity" which refers to the actual neural pathways that are formed between brain areas. If you rephrase the headline as "Serotonin booster leads to increased correlation between activity in different brain areas" i…

Getting neuron pathways that otherwise don't signal between each other to suddenly light up is also basically what LSD does, right?
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