Hans de Vries

Do they actually do MRI scans of peope admitted to psychaitric wards as a routine? Just askin'

What kind of changes occur in the brain due to psychosis/schizophrenia? Is there actual loss of neurons and damage to white matter tracts? If yes, can similar permanent brain changes occur due to milder psychiatric diseases i.e. depression/anciety or bipolar?

In the pipeline there are two drugs for autism that work on oxytocin. Maybe thay can work on psychopathy as well? Both have shown very promising effects (in phase 2 trials so far) for a condition once considered completely treatment-refractory.

No. If it was a viable approach, it would have been approved already.

Any potential pharmacological pathways? Two drugs for autism are currently in developmen, a condition previously considered untreatable.

What are some potential pathways towards reversing structural deficits in the brain that are responsible for lack of empathy/inability to bond with other people, oresent in psychopathic individuals?

Autistics have a strongly logical thinking process and a strong predisposition towards memorizing facts and putting them into categories. This is different from neurotypicals who have thinking process strongly driven by emotions and shaped largely by social consensus. Is it possible for a neurotypical to naturally possess the same thinking style without having other traits of autism (social awkwardness, repetitive behavior, sensory processing difficulties etc.)?

Hi. How do we move past the stagnation of psychiatry? It is not moving forward very much. In treating depression/anxiety/OCD we are stuck with SSRI/SNRI since late 1980s and they are marginally more effective than tricyclic antidepressants which were discovered in 1950s almost by accidens. Newest drugs for schizophrenia are no more effective in treating it than drugs introduced in 1950s. For many things (negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, autism etc) we have no effective methods of treatment at all.

In many psuchiatric/neurodevelopmental disorders extensive loss of grey matter and damage to white matter tracts is clearly present. In schizophrenia thinning of grey matter all across the brain is extensive, it can reach as much as 25% in some regions. What would be some potential strategies to restore lost grey matter? There is almost no neurogenesis in adult human brain outside a small part of hippocampus.

Clinical trials as of now are very long and expensive, it takes $1-2 bln and 8-10 years for a promising molecule to be tested and approved. MAny promising drugs cannot be tested in trials because they cannot be patented. Are there any potential ways to shorten the process and make it less expensive?

Psychiatry does need a major revamp IMO.

But if you managed to swap someone's whole DNA without causing an autoimmune response, what would happen? Bone structure is fixed in late adolescence-early adulthood so it would not change at all probably - but other things are far from fixed. Skin and hair are growing continuously. Brain structure and function is not fixed either and it is mediated by levels of various neurotransmitters, hormones, enzymes, probably hundreds of different types of proteins that we aren't even aware of yet.

I am one of those people who experienced a sudden spike of interest in all things nuclear after watching HBO's Chernobyl. I meant external source ofc.

Don't ask why I'm asking this I know that in ARS gut lining is destroyed together with bone marrow which is IIRC main reason of death in ARS. What are effects of gamma radiation on other cell types such as muscles, nerve cells, and internal organ tissues?

If we used gene editing to quickly replace someone's DNA (I'm talking of an adult person) with DNA from another person, what would happen to him/her? Since everyone's biochemistry is slightly different, would ut kead to significant physical changes?

Among five higher order personality traits (the Big Five) there is a trait called Neuroticism. It describes a generic tendency to experience negative emotions. Correlation between Neuroticism and depression is ca. 0.7 which is similar to the levels of correlation between various tests for depression/anxiety.

I am a bit confused about what exactlty will be possible with this tech. Imagine the technology is perfected and we are indeed able to perfectly edit DNA of every cell in the body. IT surely opens posibility of genetically engineering embryos - but what about adult humans? Could we alter traits of adult organisms and if yes, to what degree?

What's different in the brains of people who are high on sensation seeking vs average or low sensation seekers?

Psychology is a science because scientific method is used in it as in any other science. Psychology uses scheintific methods of collecting data, analyzing them, conducting experiments etc. And psychology of today is vastly different from the one 50 years ago. It is turning more and more into direction of applied neuroscience - more and more use of brain imaging and hard data rather than hypotheses about phalluses.

What are possible applications of magnetic brain stimulation besides treating depression/anxiety? Can it be used to change certain abilities of the brain or change personality traits? I think it's a fascinating technology that warrants more discussion here.

What's the difference in function between left amygdala and right amygdala/ What function do various sub-parts of the amygdala have?

What would happen if the Earth suddenly started spinning at the speed of light? Since its mass would go to infinity in infinitely small period of time, would it immediately turn into a black hole with infinite mass exerting such a gravitational force to start pulling the entire universe towards itself at lightspeed?

We will be able to do that soon with most cancers. We already have CAR T in use https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/research/car-t-cells We also have drugs like Ipilimumab and Pembrolizumab that "force" the immune system to attack cancer cells. A combination of Ipilimumab and Nivolumab wuadrupled 5 year survival for metadtatic melanoma

Petro Poroshenko with Ukrainian army soldiers. One of them carries the logo of Waffen SS Totenkopf Viking division: Its not an isolated case - there is at least one official Interior Ministry formation that uses insignia of Waffen SS (yes, two of them at the same time) as official emblem.

This has been more or less the case since 1991. Even though majority of Ukrainians use Russian, the sole official language since 1991 has been Ukrainian. Yanukovych finally changed that iin 2012, by granting Russian the status of a regional language - and there was a massive fistfight in the parliament over that. After Euromaidan the law was abolished and further restrictions on the use of Russian have been made - ban on import of Russian language books, quotas in media etc. among other things. Mind you, the whole conflict isn't solely about language, far from that. Linguistic policy is just the tip of the iceberg.