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Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

economist.com

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Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#231

Post by kouru225 »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #230
kouru225 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s comments like this that completely prove my point. The idea that psychiatry is “religious” is absurd.

Well it's not a popular idea. Perhaps you're deeply immersed only in religion, or only in science, and sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees. I forgive you. But it's a tale as old as time: when any community schisms, and there's a rejection of the "original traditions" the new guys limp along without 'em for a long time, and gradually, piecemeal, they realize they miss those things, or those things were ess…

I don’t disagree with the fact that all these things (government, psychiatry etc) function similar to how religion used to function, but I do vehemently disagree with the fact that these things are bullshit. Ever thought that the reason why things never disappear is cause they have a function that’s useful? And maybe the reason why they’re constantly changing is because the people who study them are in a constant process of identifying their useful aspects and isolating those useful aspects from the dead weight: throwing out the bath water and keeping the baby so to speak?

Edit: and most importantly, the fact that they have changed makes them something new that should be re-evaluated on its own.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#232

Post by jaggederest »

stevezsa8 wrote: post #151
pixl97 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you? I'm a type 1 diabetic, I have a continuous monitor that tells me what my glucose level is. This monitors actual interstitial fluid level and not blood sugar, this means there can be a pretty large delay between what's measured just under the skin versus what my blood stream is experiencing. If a rapid drop occurs there can be a lead time that I'm unaware of it, but others are because I'll behave in a 'cranky…

My wife is also T1, diagnosed a couple years back with a week in ICU. She pulled through and now has a CGM and pump. What really surprised me was her blood sugar rockets up when she has video meetings with a certain difficult colleague. While other chilled colleagues have no such effect. That made me wonder if interacting with difficult people causes more physiological changes than I realised.

Epinephrine causes the body to release sugar into the bloodstream - it's one of the reasons you get shaky when your blood sugar gets low (if you're not T1DM at least) - your body is attempting to increase blood sugar by epinephrine. So in reverse, stressful situations that cause the release of epinephrine increase blood sugar.

There's a similar issue with e.g. running as a T1DM (as I understand it, not being one) - when you're running, your body will pump out sugar, but when you stop running, it doesn't stop instantly, so your blood sugar can spike high post-exercise. Or you can run out of sugar and crash hypoglycemic.

It's amazing that CGMs exist that can, to some degree, compensate for these things, but man the body's autoregulation on 50 different axes is fascinating.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#233

Post by AnthonBerg »

whimsicalism wrote: post #224
AnthonBerg wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PACE trial has been widely discredited. From Wikipedia: ”A 2010 meta-analysis of trials that objectively measured physical activity before and after CBT showed that although CBT effectively reduced patients' fatigue questionnaire scores, activity levels were not improved by CBT and changes in physical activity were not related to changes in fatigue questionnaire scores.“ Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chro…

As I said in another comment, > These are politicized by certain patient advocacy groups and associated publishing circles but the evidence is considered pretty strong in the broader medical sphere. The “critiques” of the PACE study are mostly based around p-hacking the objectives until you get the results you want. PACE participants saw significantly fewer hospitalizations, lower mortality, and better reported quest…

From the paper “The Neurobiology of Long COVID”:

Demonstrated effects of reactive microglia after COVID-19 include a reduction in oligodendrocytes and myelinated axons, highlighting disrupted myelin homeostasis.

—

The UK Biobank study discussed above compared magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data before and after SARS-CoV-2 infection in 401 individuals and 385 matched controls. MRI data obtained an average of 141 days following COVID-19 diagnosis revealed widespread structural abnormalities, including a small but significant global decrease in brain volume, changes throughout the olfactory system, and structural abnormalities in the limbic system, cerebellum, and major white matter tracts (fimbria and superior fronto-occipital fasciculus)

—

Concordant findings in an MRI study of individuals with persistent cognitive impairment after COVID-19 found white matter hyperintensities correlating with verbal memory deficits

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Another imaging and neuropsychological assessment of 223 individuals who recovered from mainly mild to moderate SARS-CoV-2 infections and 223 matched healthy controls found that among the 11 MRI markers tested, significant differences between groups were found in global measures of mean diffusivity and extracellular free water, which were both elevated in the white matter of post-SARS-CoV-2 individuals

—

And so on and so forth. Those are the first immediately obvious passages describing structural alterations to brain tissue in that one paper.

These are severe physiological issues. This is literal brain damage. This is a paper pointing to craters.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#234

Post by AnthonBerg »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #233
whimsicalism wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in another comment, > These are politicized by certain patient advocacy groups and associated publishing circles but the evidence is considered pretty strong in the broader medical sphere. The “critiques” of the PACE study are mostly based around p-hacking the objectives until you get the results you want. PACE participants saw significantly fewer hospitalizations, lower mortality, and better reported quest…

From the paper “The Neurobiology of Long COVID”: Demonstrated effects of reactive microglia after COVID-19 include a reduction in oligodendrocytes and myelinated axons, highlighting disrupted myelin homeostasis. — The UK Biobank study discussed above compared magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data before and after SARS-CoV-2 infection in 401 individuals and 385 matched controls. MRI data obtained an average of 141 day…

Will CBT help with impaired oxygen perfusion of tissue caused by a pathogen known to cause pervasive vascular damage and severely deranged blood clotting?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002628622...

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#235

Post by xpe »

geye1234 wrote: post #226
xpe wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said 'can'. I didn't say 'always'. A deterministic computer program _can_ generate rational argument; e.g. it can use logical deduction a.k.a. forward-chaining. Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. This seems like a miscommunication. Perhaps an unavoidable one?…

> Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. That's not my claim. Basic observation of oneself or others make this, as you say, strikingly obvious :) My claim is rather that causality can't be a sufficient explanation for rationality. By this I mean that we can't explain rational…

Thanks for giving it another try.

> My claim is rather that causality can't be a sufficient explanation for rationality. By this I mean that we can't explain rational thought by referring to the cerebral states that are associated with it.

I'm zooming in on "explain" here. And I'm not getting it.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing -- I'm not even following -- and I have some guesses as to why:

1. Are you offering a critique of the lack of free will argument I made?

2. If so, I'm not able to figure out where it lands: for? against? something else?

3. Either way, I haven't yet figured out what you mean by "explain" here.

4. Most broadly, I'm not seeing why this matters. I want to understand, but I haven't yet figured out how to get there.

If you are laying out a known philosophical position, could you please point me to a resource that explains it?

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#236

Post by xpe »

geye1234 wrote: post #226
xpe wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said 'can'. I didn't say 'always'. A deterministic computer program _can_ generate rational argument; e.g. it can use logical deduction a.k.a. forward-chaining. Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. This seems like a miscommunication. Perhaps an unavoidable one?…

> Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. That's not my claim. Basic observation of oneself or others make this, as you say, strikingly obvious :) My claim is rather that causality can't be a sufficient explanation for rationality. By this I mean that we can't explain rational…

> We can't explain rational thought by referring to the cerebral states associated with it, because the question of whether a thought is rational is [independent] of its associated cerebral state.

If you had to write this over again to a broader audience, would you choose the word _explain_ here? In the context of this conversation especially, 'explain' is highly overloaded. Which sense do you mean? Perhaps what you mean is closer to _assess_ or _prove_?

Are you essentially saying this: the rationality of a statement is _assessed_ by the degree to which it adheres to the logic of rationality?

Since this is obvious, I'm inclined to think I'm still not following what you are actually trying to get across.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#237

Post by xpe »

geye1234 wrote: post #226
xpe wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said 'can'. I didn't say 'always'. A deterministic computer program _can_ generate rational argument; e.g. it can use logical deduction a.k.a. forward-chaining. Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. This seems like a miscommunication. Perhaps an unavoidable one?…

> Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. That's not my claim. Basic observation of oneself or others make this, as you say, strikingly obvious :) My claim is rather that causality can't be a sufficient explanation for rationality. By this I mean that we can't explain rational…

> When we say thought is correct or incorrect, rational or irrational, we refer to the content of the thought, not the brain state.

Yes, I agree. You've setup an example that emphasizes _conceptual_ understanding of what a person is thinking _about_.

This part is obvious too. But you want to take it further. I'm trying to puzzle that out next.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#238

Post by xpe »

geye1234 wrote: post #226
xpe wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said 'can'. I didn't say 'always'. A deterministic computer program _can_ generate rational argument; e.g. it can use logical deduction a.k.a. forward-chaining. Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. This seems like a miscommunication. Perhaps an unavoidable one?…

> Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. That's not my claim. Basic observation of oneself or others make this, as you say, strikingly obvious :) My claim is rather that causality can't be a sufficient explanation for rationality. By this I mean that we can't explain rational…

Ok, I think I'm working my way towards the part of the argumentation that has a bearing on free will.

> But if thought is entirely generated, and sufficiently explained, by causal processes, it can only reflect the brain state, and can't be right or wrong.

Not so. The above claim is confusing two things: (1) how a thought is generated (causality); (2) what a thought represents (conceptualization)

Whether a conceptualization is true or false is _independent_ of its causal origins.

This is obvious to me. But not to you? Or is more miscommunication afoot?

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#239

Post by xpe »

geye1234 wrote: post #226
xpe wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said 'can'. I didn't say 'always'. A deterministic computer program _can_ generate rational argument; e.g. it can use logical deduction a.k.a. forward-chaining. Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. This seems like a miscommunication. Perhaps an unavoidable one?…

> Your claim seems to be that causality (governing the behavior of human thought and action) does not _necessarily_ result in rationality (in that human)? Of course -- this is obvious. That's not my claim. Basic observation of oneself or others make this, as you say, strikingly obvious :) My claim is rather that causality can't be a sufficient explanation for rationality. By this I mean that we can't explain rational…

To expand the conversation a bit with the hopes of breaking out of what seems to be some kind of language trap ... Let's talk about how a person and a computer can arrive at / prove truth.

A person's brain can generate true concepts in many ways. One way is careful logical thinking based on true premises. Another is some other manner of thinking (pick whatever you like) which ends up being true.

Speaking of combinatorics and algorithms now, there are many ways to validate truth. It depends of course on the style of logic in play. Depending on the set of logical primitives available (e.g. modus ponens), there are many different computational pathways get from a set of premises to a conclusion. In other words, there are many ways to prove the Pythagorean Theorem.

I don't think we'll disagree. But maybe? Or maybe we'll get clear on some language barrier?

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#240

Post by harry8 »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #160
tetris11 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PANDAS > Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections (PANDAS) is a controversial hypothetical diagnosis for a subset of children with rapid onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or tic disorders. > The proposed link between infection and these disorders is that an autoimmune reaction to infection produces antibodies that interfere wit…

When you consider that chronic and acute autoimmune disease is totally a thing. For instance Hashimoto's disease where the immune system attacks the thyroid is chronic progressing. Thyroiditis, is acute and resolves. It would seem the burden of proof is on those that say the brain isn't subject to autoimmune disorders. Because everything else is.

>It would seem the burden of proof

Or maybe we could reserve judgement about all possibilities that cannot be ruled out until more evidence comes in?

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