Self medicating to achieve preferred brain activity levels.

In the normal situation of sitting in their home cage, subordinate monkeys displayed less activity than did the dominant monkeys in areas of the brain involved in stress and anxiety (the amygdala and hippocampus) and also in areas of the brain involved with emotional and social processing (anterior cingulate cortex).

Gould and Nader say these findings suggest monkeys that have to cope with constant, ongoing social stressors may have developed a lower level of brain activity even at rest. In the abnormal situation of being placed in an unfamiliar cage surrounded by unfamiliar and aggressively behaving monkeys, however, the subordinate monkeys showed pronounced decreased brain activity in areas of the brain involved with stress, anxiety, reward, and emotion, whereas the dominant monkeys showed increases in reward-related areas after the same situation.

In a separate part of the study, researchers looked at the effect of the stressful situation on the likelihood that monkeys would use cocaine. After the 40 minutes in the unfamiliar cage surrounded by other monkeys, each monkey could choose between pressing a lever that they knew delivered cocaine or one that they knew delivered a food reward. The subordinate monkey was more likely to choose cocaine while the dominant monkey was less likely to choose cocaine after this encounter, compared to their respective typical choices during the days preceding this encounter.

These differences in both brain activity and the likelihood of using cocaine between animals of different social rank offer clues to the social context of drug use and addiction in humans, say the researchers. Nader said, “We believe this type of research can be used to identify better treatment strategies, including providing environmental enrichment, that may affect the likelihood of abusing drugs.”

I suspect that this is a variant of the EF or FF decision. It depends on which moves the brain closer to the preferred state.

I suspect it also explains some of the bizarre behavior of scientists who fail to distinguish between descriptive expertise and normative expertise. Thrill seeking, in other words.

In a paper he was submitting to Science magazine on Monday, Hansen calls for phasing out all coal-fired plants by 2030, taxing their emissions until then, and banning the building of new plants unless they are designed to trap and segregate the carbon dioxide they emit. . .

"What's become clear to me in the past several years is that both the executive branch and the legislative branch are strongly influenced by special fossil fuel interests," he said, referring to the providers of coal, oil and natural gas and the energy industry that burns them.

In a recent survey of what concerns people, global warming ranked 25th.

"The industry is misleading the public and policy makers about the cause of climate change. And that is analogous to what the cigarette manufacturers did. They knew smoking caused cancer, but they hired scientists who said that was not the case."

Hansen says that with an administration and legislature that he believes are "well oiled, our best hope is the judicial branch."

He needs help.

While medication can help an individual, it may be at the expense of the species in the sense that the thrival of more naturally robust - ie. unmedicated - individuals is a fitness ratchet over time.

alligators have an unusually strong immune system that is very different from that of humans. Unlike people, alligators can fight microorganisms such as fungi, viruses, and bacteria without having prior exposure to them. Scientists believe that this is an evolutionary adaptation to promote quick wound healing, as alligators are often injured during fierce territorial battles. . .

Merchant and colleagues collected blood samples from American alligators. They then isolated disease-fighting white blood cells (leucocytes) and extracted the active proteins from those cells.

In laboratory tests, tiny amounts of these protein extracts killed a wide range of bacteria, including MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), the deadly bacteria that are moving out of health care settings and into the community. These “superbugs” are increasingly resistant to multiple antibiotics and cause thousands of deaths each year.

The proteins also killed six out of eight different strains of Candida albicans, the researchers say. Their previous research also suggests that blood proteins may help fight HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Civilization and socialization seem to be weakening humans, making them more docile, less disease resistant and bored. I wonder if we will respond to this by hacking that confers fitness? Unnatural selection may be needed to boost the diminishing effectiveness of natural selection in humans. Now that's real self medication.