A new Duke University study in mice links three previous and, until now, apparently unrelated hypotheses about the causes of schizophrenia, a debilitating mental disorder appearing in late adolescence that affects how people think, act and perceive reality.
The brains of people with the schizophrenia show various abnormalities, including faulty neural connections or an imbalance of certain brain chemicals. However, it has been unclear whether such brain-based observations could be related to one another or could describe different types of schizophrenia.
Artificially induced SZ in mice-Mice can’t talk. They don’t much behave like humans. Why don’t the scientists take on some human beings with SZ? I think neuroscience has known these three factors involved in SZ for quite a while.These findings are redundant. It makes these scientists look like dummies. They were using Haloperidol-a very old, first generation anti-psychotic. Notice the arrogance on my part.
Yet another of a gazillion “research-supported” theories developed over the past century to “explain why.”
Look. If there’s any one thing we know about the etiology of sz, it’s that it’s been demonstrated to be so complex as to be almost pointless to pursue further.
We do know what the essential pathophysiology is and how to (rather crudely) treat it. If we’re going to spend more $$$$$$$$, let’s do so on developing medications that can increasingly selectively target Da saturation in the specific synaptic junctions already identified, as well as yet to be identified.
The more selectively the Da-antagonists can be targeted, the less sfx the sx pt will have to deal with.
A second direction I’d like to see explored is cross-fire proton micro-burning – a sort of “micro-lobotomy” – through specific synaptic junction sites for those who are not able to get symptomatic relief with Da antagonists.
Didn’t read about it; came up with the idea seven or eight years ago and floated it with 1) a psychiatrist who abandoned psychiatry for oncology (because of the lack of relative stress) and began operating the proton guns at a major onc center, and 2) the physicist / electrical engineer who designed and re-designed the gun barrels (or “nozzles”). We had several discussions all the way to preliminary (but so far as I know unpublished) monographs.
Proton radiation is pretty similar to the more common forms used for onc but with a much finer and more discretely “aimable” “stream,” making it possible to burn very small targets. There are only about five proton gun systems on the planet right now. One of the major problems of using the streams in white or gray matter is that burning in the brains relatively soft tissue is far riskier than burning in the relatively “harder” tissue in other parts of the body.
The bigger problem at that hospital, however, was that the eight nozzles were being used 24/7 (not kidding) for cancer pts, and use of them to experiment with knocking out CNS circuits (initially on animals) would have been “unethical” vis the onc pts from the p.o.v. of the administration, a point with which we all had to agree.
