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A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

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Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#51

Post by tux3 »

astrange wrote: post #24
xwdv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta be Lion’s Mane, or something with it. edit: haters will downvote me but look it up for yourself and upvote if you agree

It's BDNF. Lion's mane is just a supplement which promotes that, but there's other more effective ones. And of course the artificial ones are stronger (Noopept, Semax, ketamine).

>Ketamine, an N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist and putative antidepressant, may increase synaptic plasticity in prefrontal cortex through higher expression of BDNF. Furthermore, ketamine was shown to change resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC).

That is really fascinating! I wonder whether the lesions observed in chronic, heavy ketamine abuse are related to trophic effects.

A glance at search results sugget BNDF seems tighlty regulated, and linked to lesions in other rare conditions

(This makes me want to buy neuroscience books! Such an interesting field)

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#52

Post by dicknuckle »

markdown wrote: post #17
sp332 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are mods who would delete that in a heartbeat if they saw it.

Which is why Wikipedia is so western-centric. I could be the world expert in my field, say... coconut picking. I haven't published any papers about picking coconuts, and neither is it a subject that the newspapers want to write about. If I wrote wikipedia entry about picking coconuts, it would be immediately deleted because personal experience isn't a citable source. I need to tell some other fool about what I do, ha…

Wikipedia is trying to protect itself from undiagnosed Dunning-Kruger.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#53

Post by 1024core »

xwdv wrote: post #10
1024core wrote: post #8

FTA: > For human subjects he would replace the sciatic nerve with a chemical cocktail known to stimulate neural growth. Anyone know what this "chemical cocktail" is they're referring to?

Gotta be Lion’s Mane, or something with it. edit: haters will downvote me but look it up for yourself and upvote if you agree

I got some Lions Mane capsules, and tried taking them. The recommended dose is 3 capsules per day. I started with 1, but after a couple of days started having slight headaches. I didn't feel like continuing any more.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#54

Post by saalweachter »

HWR_14 wrote: post #37
pmoriarty wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-experimentation used to be a lot more common in medicine. There's an interesting history of it in a book called Who Goes First? https://www.amazon.com/Who-Goes-First-Lawrence-Altman/dp/052...

One of the two winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine from 2005 (Barry Marshall) gave himself ulcers just to prove he understood causation and the cure. He and his partner (Robin Warren) in the research won the prize for that treatment.

I was told a story about a neuroscience study that involved paralyzing the lead author with curare and manually manipulating his eyeball to study his perception as a result of the manipulation; I was told it was never repeated, although a quick Google to find a reference revealed at least one similar study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3232712/), so I guess it's more popular than it used to be.

Another famous one was Werner Forssmann, the first doctor to perform a cardiac catheterization, who performed the operation on himself first (then walked over to the X-ray room to get a picture to prove he succeeded).

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#55

Post by 1024core »

xwdv wrote: post #50
throwanem wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it in yours?

Yes I score several points higher consistently in IQ tests, and I have very wild and vivid dreams.

Sorry, meant to reply to you earlier.

I got some Lion's Mane capsules from Amazon (though I'm not sure how pure they are; for all I know they crushed up some whitecaps and put those in there). I started with 1/3 the recommended daily dose and started having slight headaches. That was the end of that experiment. :-(

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#56

Post by fouc »

gzer0 wrote: post #13

> His early fears of having damaged Kennedy for life turned out to be unfounded; the language loss that left his patient briefly locked in was just a symptom of postoperative brain swelling. While I am glad that there was minimal harm done here, I am perplexed as to why a Neurosurgeon would risk their decades of training and career for such a high-risk low reward surgery. This could have been a terrible ending. We sh…

He was 66-year old at the time of doing this. He wrote a scifi novel that was an expression of his dream and his drive to make it a reality.

He was fully prepared for a terrible ending. He weighed the risks and rewards, and thought it would be worth it.

And it was.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#58

Post by DSMan195276 »

fleetwoodsnack wrote: post #47
3np wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is (supposed to be) a collaborative effort, not a zero-sum competitive game like sports. Of course people might get competitive about their careers and feel pressured to stay on top. But the discovery of one researcher should not be to the detriment of others.

Not quite. You’re right that scientific knowledge and career prestige are not zero-sum competitive games, but the competition for scientific funding often is. Anyone who’s sat down to write a grant proposal knows what a struggle it can be to get support for even the most promising research. If (big if, but it is the topic of the discussion at hand) self-experimentation is increasingly normalized, and through normaliz…

> one can imagine the competition for said funds incentivizing researchers and labs to take extreme measures to garner attention and acquire support.

Yep, I think the realities of allowing such a thing are quite clear: You can't skip the rats and go straight to a human, but you could skip the rats and go straight to yourself. Having human data at an early stage would be a huge advantage for getting funding, and there would only be one way to get it.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#59

Post by throwanem »

xwdv wrote: post #50
throwanem wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it in yours?

Yes I score several points higher consistently in IQ tests, and I have very wild and vivid dreams.

How do you avoid the practice effect as a confounder in frequent IQ testing?

Don't get me wrong, if you feel like it helps you then go for it, but objective claims deserve objective evidence.

Re: A neurologist who hacked his brain and almost lost his mind (2016)

#60

Post by markdown »

wpietri wrote: post #20
markdown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why Wikipedia is so western-centric. I could be the world expert in my field, say... coconut picking. I haven't published any papers about picking coconuts, and neither is it a subject that the newspapers want to write about. If I wrote wikipedia entry about picking coconuts, it would be immediately deleted because personal experience isn't a citable source. I need to tell some other fool about what I do, ha…

The number of people who think themselves world experts in something is truly enormous. Wikipedia needs to be maintainable by people who aren't topic experts. They can't just go around anointing people that sound expert-y to them, as that would introduce far more bias, western and otherwise. Wikipedia's job isn't to push forward the frontiers of knowledge. It's to summarize the stuff you can look up elsewhere.

> Wikipedia's job isn't to push forward the frontiers of knowledge. It's to summarize the stuff you can look up elsewhere.

Citation needed.

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