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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

#141

Post by peet2521 »

I came to the comment section to mention other seratonergic drugs that do something similar to what the study mentions. Psilocin is a serotonin 2A agonist, LSD is a 1A agonist (according to a quick google search), and this new drug works on "4" receptors. All of which seem to have similar beneficial therapeutic effects when used properly.

In general, I'm very excited to see drugs like these being researched, including previously illegal "schedule 1" drugs that can (and probably should) be used in therapeutic settings.

If you're looking for some good content to learn more about this, Andrew Huberman is currently doing a handful of podcasts on drugs like these, and it's really educational. (Assuming you can handle his long-form podcast style)

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#142

Post by amelius »

podgorniy wrote: post #99
Palomides wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN comments are absolute garbage on anything medical, endless uneducated "theories" and emotional anecdotes you don't need to share your personal backstory, everyone knows someone with mental health or cancer or alzheimer's, your idea that DNA is like compiled code makes me think you should go read a book, and your self-medication is probably not scientifically founded

> HN comments are absolute garbage on anything medical They are of the same quality on other topics. You just know less about those other topics.

Other topics _except_ IT-related stuff, I guess.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#143

Post by grugagag »

noduerme wrote: post #44
freehorse wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>> Heart palpitations is a very common side effect due to it. This is the first time I've heard that, but - at some point in my life I found a technique for triggering mass bursts of seratonin when I want them. It's not that complicated; when I'm depressed and really need it, I just focus on a time when I felt my brain flooded with it. I habitually live with very low happiness but I'm familiar with the feeling of ove…

Wouldn’t this come with a crash as a payback?

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#144

Post by dagaci »

bla3 wrote: post #127
coldtea wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their intelligence in one area means they’re qualified to make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own That's exactly what it means. Or rather, not that they're "qualified (period)" to "make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own", but "more qualified than someone not as intelligent". And that's exactly what's the case in a general discussion, when expertise is not a…

Have you heard (intelligent!) non-tech people talking about tech? Why would (intelligent!) tech people fare better talking about non-tech? Domain knowledge is more important than intelligence almost everywhere.

The amazing thing about tech-people and especially developer and related is that they are expected to and required to grasp an understanding of other people’s professions in order provide products/services. So I would actually expect tech-people to be able to talk reasonably about non -tech areas and to be quite happy to be corrected when they are way off the track..

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#145

Post by swader999 »

xeonmc wrote: post #69
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…

Oh, that's disappointing. I was hoping for a drug that will finally help me understand how monads are just simply monoids in the category of endofunctors.

There is a drug already for that. Catnip.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#146

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

Etheryte wrote: post #67
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> for most drugs, the effects simply cease if you keep taking it due to tolerance I'm not sure that's the case in the broad sense. As a simple example, blood pressure medicine is taken daily for decades and it just keeps on giving.

There are definitely exceptions, that's true. Usually there's an interesting pharmacological reason why though.

For instance, SSRIs have this property, because for those drugs, the tolerance is the treatment effect. The tolerance has downstream effects on things like BDNF that are thought to be the true mechanism behind their efficacy. But this is also clear from the phenomenology observed, i.e people see improvements with a delayed effect.

This drug is very pharmacologically simple though. It's an extremely selective agonist for the 5-HT-4 receptor, and its effects are mostly acute, it seems(though due to a longish half-life it does take some time to reach steady-state with once daily dosing).

Now, I'm genuinely curious: does anyone know of a drug which,

1. Has acute psychoactive effects 2. Retains those effects under chronic same-dose usage 3. And the perceived effect can not be explained by correction of a rebound effect(i.e one cup of coffee in the morning might wake you up the same, but is it really, or is it just correcting an overly tired, mild withdrawal state associated with chronic use?).

I actually can't think of any.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#147

Post by grugagag »

Euphemistic wrote: post #103

"INCREASED FUNCTIONAL BRAIN CONNECTIVITY" sounds pretty neat. Instead of debating why the brain is or is not like a computer. Or why you or your sister-in-law's brain is addled by mental illness. Let's frame this optimistically, hopefully. Maybe there's a genius working that study or commenting here. Geniuses think different. 1. geniuses look at problems in many different ways. 2. geniuses make their thoughts visible…

How do you know? Do you think you may be one yourself?

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#148

Post by FrustratedMonky »

jkukul wrote: post #133
otikik wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical exercise for me is primarily a way to make my body produce drugs, to be in a better mood and sleep better. All the other benefits are icing on the cake.

Same here. One small caveat is that I must already be in a somewhat decent state to do physical activities. Sometimes I'm just too "mentally tired" to even get myself to exercise - it would be great to have a tool to get over the hump in moments like this.

Think this is kind of what parent was talking about the modern industrial world. We are all trapped in situations where it is hard to get exercise and sleep. Drugs are just way to paint over those problems.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#149

Post by FrustratedMonky »

martopix wrote: post #53

I remember during my PhD, already 5 or more years ago, the term "functional connectivity" was frowned upon by the computational neuroscience community and the concept was considered out of date.

Curious, what were they calling whatever took its place? I didn't know things were moving so fast that this is already passé.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#150

Post by downWidOutaFite »

coldtea wrote: post #128
downWidOutaFite wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they exempt from being garbage?

They are exempt from what they attribute to their lower-order siblings. When someone makes such a statement in a coversation, that should be the implicit charitable interpretation, so much so, that your kind of statement is uncharitable/disingenuous.

"You lower order sibblings are all garbage and I won't engage with you because I'm higher order and refuse to stoop to your level" is the most garbage comment on here.
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