“Romantic engagement can bias sensory perception. This 'love blindness' reflects a common behavioral principle across organisms: favoring pursuit of a coveted reward over potential risks.”
“we discover a dopamine-governed filter mechanism in male Drosophila that reduces threat perception as courtship progresses. We show that during early courtship stages, threat-activated visual neurons inhibit central courtship nodes via specific serotonergic neurons. This serotonergic inhibition prompts flies to abort courtship when they see imminent danger. However, as flies advance in the courtship process, the dopaminergic filter system reduces visual threat responses, shifting the balance from survival to mating.”
Yes, the #dopamine cartel … there's no more such thing as "art"
« The tech platforms aren’t like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don’t want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies—because they will be the dealers. » The Honest Broker
I feel like I cannabis has a very different effect on me than it does on most people; it never made me hungry, if anything it made me put off eating. After quitting I started eating a lot more regularly and gaining weight. I just used it to make boring things interesting, something I now use amphetamines for.
I've been thinking about gamifying the process of making new friends in my city. Kind of like a #LARP but your character is just yourself, and you earn points for showing up to small group events. Extra points for helping organize gatherings and coming up with creative ideas for people to get to know each other better.
...I've been thinking about this for over a year, maybe someday I'll have enough energy to actually start it.
Impact of social media and instant messaging apps on interpersonal relationships
My Perspective
Instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram Messenger, Signal Messenger etc. (primarily WhatsApp in India) do boost one to one connectivity among friends, acquaintances and family members. It also helps improve communication related to mostly once in a while transactional and sometimes friendly topics like family matters, medical, school and college education, fun side of personal life through photos and videos. Jokes and memes, through forwards, add spices to one to one communication. Group chats and social media like Facebook and Twitter strongly influences one to one communication through instant messengers.
There is another side of instant messaging i.e. the not so nice aspects. Dopamine is a brain chemical that plays a vital role in mood regulation of human beings. It seems that entire society is driven by the feel good factor due to constant availability of cheap dopamine through group chats and social media. Unless it is transactional or related to business, most one to one chats survive as long as the recipients gets positive social stimulus and dopamine influx. It doesn’t matter if something is good or healthy for us, as long as we get that quick dopamine fix.
From my experience of chatting since the days of Yahoo! Chat, I see that loss of reward stimuli and dopamine activity lead to one or both the recipients disengage at the slightest pretext. Read receipts, online status, last seen status etc. further add to anxiety and feeling unimportant or betrayed. There is lack of patience and empathy. Sharing contrarian or critical views, on matters connected to society and politics, often cause functional impairment and getting ignored or blocked.
#Parkinson’s disease is caused by the progressive loss of #dopamine-producing neurons. For about 90% of patients with advanced illness, this leads to difficulties with #walking, including balance deficits and freezing of gait. Conventional treatments, such as the drug #Levodopa, can improve symptoms but are unable to completely restore normal movement.
Interesting note for Fediverse/Mastodon users: you do not get a "view" count here, which makes some new folks (ie journalists/others) feel like they aren't being seen, even though their message is being read by lots of people. They only see the boosts and stars... So hit the "star" button often, especially on new people finally migrating here! #Feditips
Stock traders should be cut off from technology more advanced than clocks and stock tickertape. Genetic cul-de-sacs that can't rationalize human emotions other than FOMO shouldn't have access to this much unregulated dopamine.
Reviews both the adult and larval Drosophila brain circuits for feeding, sugar sensing, and associative memory, including the roles of neuromodulators and neuropeptides.
I guess it's time to finelly do my #introduction !
I'm a PhD student in Michaël Zugaro's lab
I'm studying the interaction between spatial coding in the #hippocampus and reward representation by #dopamine signaling, especially the VTA - Nucleus Accumbens pathway.
Doing ephys extra-cellular recordings in freely mooving rats trying to catch some chocolate milk!
The dying bird convinced me that mastodon was the way to go and I'm glad to see the neuroscience community growing!
I'm a bit shy on social media but I'll boost everything related to the brain that I find interesting 🧠 #PlaceCell#neuroscience#reward
1/8 Today was my first meeting with a new psych from #HMO, whom I was referred to after my plea to mental healthcare mgmt. My hope was that this was going to be a discussion leading to formal #assessment, but this doesn’t seem to be the case so far.
Within the first 20 minutes, I was told it’s common for parents to erroneously self-diagnose. He felt the same way after caring for his AuDHD child, he said.
2/8 I shared many examples from my life. Social, executive, and anxiety intertwined. I didn’t expect a quick judgement, but seeking formal assessment.
He agreed I have “markers” and recommended breathing exercises, to avoid retriggering trauma and anxiety, to increase #dopamine levels. In a few weeks we could talk about signing up for an #anxiety class. Does this mean I was heard? It felt like a deflection.
** IT’S HERE! FRIDAY NIGHT MUSIC THREAD ON #MastodonMusic **
Let’s party!
And what says party more than 80s music? (Drugs. The answer is drugs)
Post music from the 80s that gets you in the mood to par-tay
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🥂 Post often. Share. Make some friends. Vent! 🚬
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Call the police there's a mad man around
Running down underground
To a dive bar in a West End town
In a West End town a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
🥂 Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls Hendrick's Gin Negroni🍸
Recent brain research shows that you can only work 60 min. in one go with full effectiveness.
Then, the brain needs a break to reflect.
If you can, take a short walk and maybe a small snack you like; #dopamine, baby. 😉
If you don’t comply, you might get a "middle finger" by your 🧠.
BTW, if you manage to relax, your subconscious might even reward you with some solutions or creative 💡s.
Sweated blood yesterday and today trying to fill out just two more pages of necessary paperwork, and took several breaks in between to cover our freshly-mown front lawn with cardboard as the first step to grass replacement.
The latter was definitely more satisfying, and easier to measure the progress of. #Dopamine#KillYourLawn
Dopamine – The Secret Ingredient to Effortless Exercise?
A study led by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers suggests that dopamine, a brain chemical associated with pleasure and motivation, plays a critical role in how people perceive the amount of physical effort required for a task, especially in people with Parkinson’s disease, a condition characterized by dopamine deficiency. https://scitechdaily.com/dopamine-the-secret-ingredient-to-effortless-exercise/#dopamine#exercise