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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
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Researchers use fruit flies, rats to study link between schizophrenia, hallucinogens
#13257806 - 09/28/10 07:21 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Researchers use fruit flies, rats to study link between schizophrenia, hallucinogens September 28, 2010 - lsureveille.com
For Charles Nichols, a typical day at work involves a hefty dose of hallucinogens, thousands of flies and frozen rat brains.
Nichols and his father are tag-team researchers exploring the effects of mind-bending drugs on schizophrenia.
Nichols, associate professor of pharmacology at the LSU Health Sciences Center, researches the relationship between drugs like LSD and the mental disorder.
His father, David Nichols, is a Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology at Purdue University. David Nichols doses rats with LSD every other day for three months to develop a model of psychosis of schizophrenia.
After he takes the rats on their three-month-long trips, he euthanizes them and extracts their brains. He then mails the frozen brains to his son for further research.
"The heart of it is LSD or schizophrenia has the ability to change how someone views reality," Charles Nichols said.
He said hallucinogenic drugs affect the same parts of the brain as schizophrenia, so understanding how drugs like LSD operate can give clues to how schizophrenia works.
Charles Nichols said the practical benefits of his research would be to develop a new drug to treat the disorder.
He said after the rats receive the prolonged LSD treatment, their behaviors change permanently. The rats become more aggressive and hyperreactive and show other symptoms similar to those of schizophrenia. He said he and his father aren't sure whether the rats have trips.
"Normal rats like sugar water, but LSD rats don't have a preference," David Nichols said.
Charles Nichols said he learned from the rats which genes are affected and is now testing gene expression in fruit flies. He uses the flies because it is easier to turn on and off gene receptors.
His lab in the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans is filled with glass tubes spotted with thousands of fruit flies. The lab is equipped with makeshift testing areas and fly traps to catch escapees.
Charles tests the effects of hallucinogens on the flies' visual perception by putting them in a spinning cylinder tube with a black stripe. A normal fly will follow the stripe, but a treated fly does not.
He studies aggression by placing two treated male flies together and watching the levels of aggression while they fight.
Affected fruit flies struggle with vision perception, aggression, memory problems, difficulty learning and are less likely to mate, he said.
After the battery of tests, Charles sedates the fly before examining its brain.
"LSD doesn't just affect the brain. It affects hormones and the immune system," he said.
He said LSD and drugs related to it have potent anti-inflammatory effects - something he observed randomly in the lab. He is now looking at the anti-inflammatory effects of four other hallucinogens provided by pharmaceutical companies for research.
Charles received a $350,000 grant for two years from the National Institute of Health in July to begin his research on the anti-inflammatory effects.
He uses tissue cells and cultured animal cells in hopes of one day making a drug based on hallucinogens that will be an intense anti-inflammatory.
He said the Drug Enforcement Agency monitors his work closely. The DEA randomly checks his lab books to make sure everything matches up and is accounted for. All drugs are locked in a safe in his office.
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Arden
לנשום

Registered: 09/01/08
Posts: 7,666
Loc: Α & Ω
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Re: Researchers use fruit flies, rats to study link between schizophrenia, hallucinogens [Re: veggie]
#13258670 - 09/28/10 11:26 AM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
After he takes the rats on their three-month-long trips
3 months? Just admit this is studying fucking brain damage and not schizophrenia (I thought we abandoned that psychotomimetic bullshit in the 60s). I've seen lectures by Nichols. For the most part, he's an over-confident and unenlightening materialist. Many, many things affect our perception of reality. A researcher cannot claim such a quality of psychedelics is the motivation for this type of research when the subjects are rats and fruit flies -- Shulgin himself has commented on this.
"Aggressive" behavior in flies, or their preference for "sugar water" is about as revealing of internal mental states as whether or not my dog chooses to shit in the bushes or in the kitchen.
Quote:
Affected fruit flies struggle with vision perception, aggression, memory problems, difficulty learning and are less likely to mate, he said.
No shit? How incredibly insightful! Sounds indistinguishable from old age.
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al32us
Sclerotia



Registered: 01/06/10
Posts: 127
Loc: Florida
Last seen: 5 years, 8 days
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Re: Researchers use fruit flies, rats to study link between schizophrenia, hallucinogens [Re: Arden]
#13259216 - 09/28/10 01:28 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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And prolonged indulgence of sugars can cause diabetes. Caffeine can spell havoc. Too much seafood and we can all suffer iodine poisoning(makes your eyes bulge from your skull, your brain may swell and VIBRATE. Not to mention seizures).
Extended exposure to ANYTHING causes peppermint* change to the human brain.
If anything I LOL on spellcheck for making people think like a schizophrenic would
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curenado
73rd Man



Registered: 04/01/03
Posts: 2,663
Loc: North Central Arkansas
Last seen: 1 hour, 56 minutes
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Re: Researchers use fruit flies, rats to study link between schizophrenia, hallucinogens [Re: al32us]
#13259400 - 09/28/10 02:04 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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Another bogus and cruel to animals study for the DEA propaganda machine?
Poor animals:( What soul-less, tiny, sick little f*cks.
I hope the God of fruit flies and rats stomps 'em to smoosh!
This is the epitome of a bogus propaganda study. Shame.

I'm glad we don't lock up the psychedelics here at Rosewood. Students or members could break a nail trying to break in all the time!
-------------------- Yours in the Natural State Land of Enchantment! "The woods are lovely, dark and deep; but I have patches to keep, and jars to sterilize before I sleep...." "When psychotomimetics become cultural, so does cultural psychosis"
Edited by curenado (09/28/10 02:06 PM)
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badchad
Mad Scientist

Registered: 03/02/05
Posts: 13,379
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Re: Researchers use fruit flies, rats to study link between schizophrenia, hallucinogens [Re: curenado]
#13259439 - 09/28/10 02:11 PM (13 years, 7 months ago) |
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I see it as potentially interesting research. Looking at immidiate early genes seems a reasonable step sicne second messenger pathways and receptor binding affinities have failed to discern why hallucinogens produce the effects that they do.
-------------------- ...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge. It is an indellible experience; it is forever known. I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did. Smith, P. Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27. ...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely. Osmond, H. Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436
Edited by badchad (09/28/10 02:12 PM)
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