Replies to post #460528 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Think about it. Could very well be why both you guys are here. He needs it a bit more than you do, i think - "Good reminder B4.. exposing the brain to new things To give that plasticity a workout. Noted it seemed to be something relatively new fo B402. A few of some more plasticity mentions on the board:

Brain Sex Differences Related to Gender Identity Development: Genes or Hormones?
[...]
In transgender individuals, the administration of gender-affirming hormonal treatment may influence anatomical and functional brain characteristics, considering the high density of oestrogen and androgen receptors here expressed [96,97,98]. Indeed, in transwomen oestrogen plus anti-androgen treatment resulted in reducing brain volume and increasing ventricles dimensions [99] and led to a general decrease in cortical thickness [100]. On the other hand, testosterone treatment in transmen determined an increase in total brain and hypothalamus volumes [99], as well as in cortical thickness and cortical-subcortical volumes, specifically the right thalamus [100]. Aside from those changes in grey matter, Rametti et al. [27] described in transmen an increase of FA values in two white matter fascicles a few months after the start of testosterone treatment. The authors hypothesised that testosterone treatment may induce the latter changes through its anabolic and anticatabolic action. In transwomen, the suppression of testosterone levels due to antiandrogens may cause a reduction of grey matter, leading to a decrease in cortical thickness and expansion of ventricles in addition to a putative direct effect of oestrogens [100]. Although the limited number of longitudinal studies does not allow to draw firm conclusions, this evidence again highlights the plasticity of the brain in response to sex hormones even in adulthood.
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LOLs. Welcome to the Human Brain Project
[...]
While The Virtual Brain is currently being adapted to address additional diseases, the team in Marseille is using the extensive neuroscience resources on EBRAINS to push the model’s predictive power to new limits: The team is making major steps towards bringing high-resolution anatomical data from the HBP’s human brain atlas into the simulation framework. Their latest release of The Virtual Brain is now fully integrated with the digital atlas tool siibra, which facilitates the incorporation of brain region features from different sources into the computational models. This was only made possible through the tight linkage of services on EBRAINS and the close collaboration of teams in the HBP community.

HBP researchers have already applied multi-scale simulations to target Parkinson’s disease (Meier et al. 2022). A team from the Charité in Berlin has generated the first multi-scale model of how a Parkinson’s brain responds to deep brain stimulation, a common treatment, whose outcomes have, thus far, been hard to predict. Simulating electric stimulation across multiple levels of brain networks can help clinicians preview their likely effects and plan therapies accordingly.

In the case of Parkinson’s, it is not enough to focus on the activity of single neurons or the small subcortical nuclei, because it neglects what happens at the whole-brain scale. The new approach enables researchers to both monitor some structures in high detail, spatially and also at a temporal scale, and to observe the whole-brain effect of the simulation. The study marks the first published case of a multi-scale co-simulation of the human brain applied for a clinical use case, and the methodology has been made openly available on EBRAINS. This could be translated into future medical applications that improve prediction and personalisation when performing deep brain stimulation.

The multi-scale approach is also applied to HBP research on consciousness. Theoretical neuroscientists at the University of Paris-Saclay model brain states from the microscopic scale up to the whole-brain level (Goldman et al. 2023). They work in close collaboration with experimental and clinical colleagues in the HBP who study consciousness and its disorders at the University of Milan and the University of Liege. Other multi-scale approaches have yielded new insights into plasticity, a brain mechanism important for learning (van Keulen et al. 2022) (see p. 51), and into the cerebellum, a part of the brain central for motor control (De Schepper et al. 2022).

While neural modelling and simulation have made their first major steps into large-scale clinical translation, research on basic mechanisms of brain diseases using these approaches has been broad and dynamic. For example, HBP researchers have applied modelling approaches to better understand patient outcomes in ALS (Polverino et al. 2022) and effects of damage to brain connectivity in Multiple Sclerosis (Sorrentino et al. 2022), neural stimulation effects on depression (An et al. 2022 ) and brain aging (Escrichs et al. 2022), and they have shown how AI-based brain simulations can be used to improve the classification of Alzheimer’s disease, accurately classifying patients at different stages of the disease (Triebkorn et al. 2022).

By necessity, neuroscience has traditionally been separated into top-down and bottom-up approaches. Top-down refers to looking at the whole brain and extrapolating what’s happening at a smaller scale and bottom-up means analysing a smaller scale phenomenon and drawing conclusions on what happens on the whole-brain level. Combining these two approaches is now not only possible, as recent HBP breakthroughs have shown, but indeed necessary (d’Angelo & Jirsa 2022). Multi-scale modelling and simulation have not only added value to research but have become a guiding principle for modern neuroscience.

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[...] 72 Amazing Human Brain Facts (Based on the Latest Science)
[...]
33. The popular myth that we use only 10% of our brains is flat-out wrong.

Brain scans clearly show that we use most of our brain most of the time, even when we’re sleeping. (44)

34. There is no such thing as a left-brain or right-brain personality/skill type.

We are not left-brained or right-brained; we are all “whole-brained.” (See #33)
[...]
But it has since been discovered that your brain has the capacity to change throughout your lifetime due to a property known as brain plasticity.

The brain can continue to form new brain cells via a process known as neurogenesis. (50)

It was once thought that the brain recorded memories like a camera, but this is not how memory works.

Rather than being discrete recordings of experience, memory-making is more akin to the creation of improvisational jazz.

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Those three from 2024. Peeking some more. Umm, aren't as many recently as thought there may be. Two from 2018:

Who's Really Leading the Democratic Rebellion Against Pelosi?
[...]
Moulton was reportedly recruited to run for Congress by “New Politics,” a group that seeks to elect both Democratic and Republican veterans. It describes itself as “bipartisan,” a word will come up again in the story of the anti-Pelosi rebellion. New Politics’ other success story is Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who notably blamed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, rather than the ill-advised Iraq war, for the rise of ISIS.

Moulton, who reportedly backed that tragic misadventure, enjoyed the early support of two generals who helped lead it, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal. (Unfortunately, both are now disgraced: McChrystal for disrespecting the civilian chain of command, and Petraeus for revealing secrets to an extramarital lover as he cheated on his wife, a crime that would have likely led to criminal indictment for a less well-connected official.)

As the Washington Post reports, Moulton “has aligned with Republicans on some policy bills, ranging from a ban on the gun accessories used in last year’s mass shooting in Las Vegas to a recent legislation allowing veterans to use medical marijuana.”

Moulton had praise for Pelosi when he was asked about her last year, saying she had achieved an “awful lot.” He told Politico’s Michael Kruse that he thought much of the Republican criticism of her was “unfair,” but added, “the reality is that we’re losing.”

Well, Pelosi’s winning now. What’s his rationale for opposing Pelosi today? “If that many seats change hands,” Moulton said after the election, “that’s just all the more reason the American people are calling out for change.”

Heads, he wins. Tails, Pelosi loses.
[...]
Moulton has been well-rewarded for his ideological plasticity. During his short political career, Moulton has received a total of $1,723,870 from the investor class that comprises the so-called “FIRE” sector—financial, insurance, and real estate. He has also received more than $160,000 from Pharma. (These figures come from Open Secrets.)

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Gender: When the body and brain disagree
[...]
A wide spectrum in animals

Explainer: Male-female plasticity in animals
plasticity-animals" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer ugc" target="_blank">https://student.societyforscience.org/article/explainer-male-female-plasticity-animals

Transgenderism is unique to humans. Yet research has turned up lots of variety within the sexual development and behavior of animals. Like people, animals exhibit behaviors typical of males and females. Still, many social and other behaviors in animals do not fit neatly into those categories, notes Paul Vasey. He works at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. As a comparative psychologist, he studies how behaviors in humans and animals differ or appear the same.

With such a wide range of differences in sexual development and behaviors in the animal kingdom (see Explainer: Male-female plasticity in animals), Vasey says that it’s not surprising to see similar variation among people too. “There’s a continuum,” he concludes “— in both the animal kingdom and in humans.”

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Back to 2014:

Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath
Neuroscientist James Fallon discovered through his work that he has the brain of a psychopath, and subsequently learned a lot about the role of genes in personality and how his brain affects his life.
[...]
You used to believe that people were roughly 80 percent the result of genetics, and 20 percent the result of their environment. How did this discovery cause a shift in your thinking?

I went into this with the bias of a scientist who believed, for many years, that genetics were very, very dominant in who people are—that your genes would tell you who you were going to be. It's not that I no longer think that biology, which includes genetics, is a major determinant; I just never knew how profoundly an early environment could affect somebody. [my e.]
[...]
I gave a talk two years ago in India at the Mumbai LitFest on personality disorders and psychopathy, and we also had a historian from Oxford talk about violence against women in terms of the brain and social development. After it was over, a woman came up to me and asked if we could talk. She was a psychiatrist but also a science writer and said, "You said that you live in a flat emotional world—that is, that you treat everybody the same. That’s Buddhist." I don't know anything about Buddhism but she continued on and said, "It's too bad that the people close to you are so disappointed in being close to you. Any learned Buddhist would think this was great." I don't know what to do with that.

[ In A Burned-Out World, Global Leaders Make Room For Well-Being In Their Definition Of Success
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Sometimes the truth is not just that it hurts, but that it's just so disappointing. [mine] You want to believe in romance and have romance in your life—even the most hardcore, cold intellectual wants the romantic notion. It kind of makes life worth living. But with these kinds of things, you really start thinking about what a machine it means we are—what it means that some of us don't need those feelings, while some of us need them so much. It destroys the romantic fabric of society in a way.
[...]
My bias is that even though I work in growth factors, plasticity,

[see post this is in reply to .. and .. excerpt ..

Synthesis view
Few would argue against the noble goal of helping all children meet the same set of high standards. Neurocognitive research provides strong evidence that the human brain is adaptable well into adulthood. However, genetic signals play a large role in the initial structuring of the brain and there is a a limit to how much and how quickly cells enlarge and add synapses. This suggests that the human mind may lose its plasticity in learning after reaching a certain age. There is a learning cap determined by genetic as well as socioeconomic factors that determines how far and fast a student can develop during their school years. The NCLB's requirement that all children must reach the same set of standards at the same time fails to acknowledge this.
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memory, and learning, I think the whole idea of plasticity in adults—or really after puberty—is so overblown. No one knows if the changes that have been shown are permanent and it doesn't count if it's only temporary. [mine] It's like the Mozart Effect—sure, there are studies saying there is plasticity in the brain using a sound stimulation or electrical stimulation, but talk to this person in a year or two. Has anything really changed? An entire cottage industry was made from playing Mozart to pregnant women's abdomens. That's how the idea of plasticity gets out of hand. I think people can change if they devote their whole life to the one thing and stop all the other parts of their life, but that's what people can't do. You can have behavioral plasticity and maybe change behavior with parallel brain circuitry, but the number of times this happens is really rare.

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2012

Drug firms walking away from dementia research
[...]
But for dementia patients, their families and doctors, therapeutic developments have been despairingly slow.

But the science is making progress, according to Dr Bryce Vissel, who is the head of research into neural plasticity and regeneration at the Garvan Institute.

"Out of some of these unfortunate and expensive - and very, very expensive - failures in clinical trials in these new drugs, targeting the main cause of Alzheimer's has begun to emerge large bodies of groups of scientists who work together worldwide to analyse the data of these clinical trials in great detail," he said.

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There were more. A few in some of F6's huge posts.

[B402]

Personally I think the founders didn't want just the population centers deciding elections

Right now imagine CA cities, NYC and Chicago bringing their politics to all of America...
Be like bringing Fla, to all of America ;)

No thanks

As for one going rogue, the founders never could imagine what all has brought it about...I think they'd be pretty disgusted with all forms of American politics, congress, money and corporate influence.... All of it and say its time again......

[janice shell]

I bet the founding fathers when giving so much credence and power to political parties

They didn't. They were wary of political parties.

I agree about the Electoral College. I've thought it should be eliminated since I was in elementary school, for whatever that's worth. Which is nothing.