"Directing" the decision-making of monkeys

Scientists estimate ultrasonic brain manipulation could eventually be used to study and treat decision-making disorders like addiction in humans. Photo by QuinceMedia/Pixabay

In UPI, Brooks Hays reports in part,

Scientists have for the first time directed the decision making of monkeys using remote, ultrasonic brain stimulation.

For the study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers had a pair of macaque monkeys participate in a visual test designed to investigate basic decision making.

The monkeys were made to look at a target at the center of a screen before being presented with a second and third target to the left and right sides of the screen, one following the other.

Typically, macaques and other monkeys glance at the target that appears first, but researchers were able to alter the tendency by directing low-intensity ultrasound waves at the frontal eye fields of the two monkeys, the brain region that controls eye movement.

Read more here.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds

A driven man overcomes addictions to excel in his chosen field

Drugs, terrorists, and our addictions

Dan Miller in Panama writes,

Most heroin consumed in America enters across our southern border.

hat’s the border that Trump wants to close and Hillary wants to keep open for the Mexican criminal cartels, rapists, other criminals and potential Democrat voters; U.S. citizen or non-U.S. citizen? What difference it make now? Just play Catch and Release.

Heroin is not the only “recreational” drug transiting our southern border.

The author quotes an article by Joseph Wouk,

[D]eeper and more alarming than the Venezuelan homicide toll, there appears to be an imminent threat to the entire Western hemisphere from partnerships between Venezuelan drug traffickers and terrorist networks like Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups that act a proxies for Iran.

Together, terrorism and illegal drugs represent a significant export for Venezuela. Iran and Venezuela partner together to move terrorist cells and drugs to hubs in the United States and throughout North America.

Hezbollah’s annual budget of more than 100 million dollars is provided by the Iranian government directly and through a complex system of finance cells scattered around the world, from Bangkok and Paraguay to Michigan and North Carolina.

Far from being the passive beneficiaries of drug-trafficking expats and sympathizers, Hezbollah has high-level officials directly involved in the South American cocaine trade and its most violent cartels, including the Mexican crime syndicate Los Zetas. Hezbollah’s increasing foothold in the cocaine trade is facilitated by an enormous Lebanese diaspora.

At the same time, the U.S. administration continues to purchase 10% of its oil (roughly 300 million barrels per year) from Venezuela, the same entity that it sanctioned in 2011 for shipping gasoline to Iran.

This is all happening while terrorist groups are regularly connecting to drug cartels in the region, and forging a deepening narco-terror machine that in turn is funding terrorist activities.

Read more here.

There are no psycho-utopias other than drugs, romantic/sexual passion, or through God.

Dr. Joy Bliss writes this in Maggie's Farm about addiction:

For one thing, in every country there is a strong market for opiates. For another, in every country there are illicit entrepreneurs eager to supply it. Demand will never go away. For another, pain meds like Oxy are one of the blessings of modern medicine. Relief of intractable pain whether from metastatic cancer or otherwise, is a gift to patients so there is the good with the bad, as always with everything in life. People using Oxy can be fully functional in work and life.

I have come to believe that "the war on drugs" is pointless. All it does is to drive up prices, and thus drive up crime. That is what prohibition does, every time. Rehab and detox are available everywhere in the US for those who decide to give it a try. I am in favor of some form of medically-monitored drug legalization as exists in England. There will always be addicts in this world, people addicted to all sorts of things besides "substances." People often habitually do what they feel like, even if it is unwise immediate gratification. That is one reason many are disappointed in life. Human nature at its least admirable. There is no fix for that, so it has to be accepted. There are no psycho-utopias other than drugs, romantic/sexual passion, or through God. Just my professional opinion.

However, that is more of a medical view than a moral view.

Addiction to stimulants

Do you believe you need to take a stimulant in order to perform well or compete with others who are also taking stimulants? Alan Schwarz writes in the New York Times,

The number of stimulant misusers who become addicted is unclear. But supply has risen sharply: About 2.6 million American adults received A.D.H.D. medication in 2012, a rise of 53 percent in only four years, according to Express Scripts, the nation’s largest prescription-drug manager. Use among adults 26 to 34 almost doubled.

...Those lawyers said they and dozens of young colleagues at their firms had casually traded pills to work into the night and billed hundreds of extra hours a year in the race for partnerships.

One said he had originally taken 20 milligrams of Adderall a day, moving up to 100 milligrams — almost double the highest dose recommended by the Food and Drug Administration — by getting prescriptions from multiple doctors, a felony in Texas. His productivity, he said, thrilled his unquestioning bosses and clients.

Then came the downside: rapid heartbeat, profuse sweating and acute anxiety due to sleep loss. These overwhelmed any positive effects on his work performance, he said, and transformed his personality to the point that his wife divorced him. After he lost his job, he spent six weeks at a drug treatment center.

“It’s a crutch, and it becomes a crutch immediately,” said the lawyer, who recently joined a smaller firm in Texas.

Read more here.
The Schwarz article focuses on prescription drug stimulants. But how about Red Bull and Monster drinks?

Thanks to Instapundit




,