Hey there,
My name's Matthew and I'm about start my PhD in pharmacology. I still have a fair amount of time to decide upon my project and am looking through the forums not just for leisure but as a source of ideas for future studies.
The areas I'm interested in working involve:
psychopharmacology, neuropharmacology, neurophysiology, drug dependence, altered states of consciousness (pharmacological and non-pharmacological).

Looking forward to the exchange.

Welcome Dr., may you potentially cure some neurolgical infections here at BM.

will you be cutting up brains?
What tools and methods are at your disposal?

.... or maybe you are here to infect?

fight the serotonin hypothesis fraud. fight the fraud of fake antidepressants which help no one, and take the place of REAL antidepressants

http://www.biopsychiatry.com

http://www.empathogens.com

Currently at my disposal:
EEG
ECG
TMS
Prepulse inhibition of the startle reflex (PPI)
HPLC
GC-MS (There should be one I can use)

Thinking of trying to use binaural beats and/or TMS to manipulate people's EEG output. Then seeing if these induced state changes affect PPI.
I will also try to incorporate a clinical study to see whether entrainment through binaural beats is helpful in relieving anxiety and/or inducing sleep in a drug dependent population experiencing withdrawal. Incorporated in this somewhere will probably be some analytical work using saliva and the presence of stress hormones in the aforementioned population.

I'm not too interested in doing animal work (prefer human studies), but there is the opportunity there too.

Still developing

Hi there welcome to the site,
Another clever person I see not sure what all the letters mean but it looks interesting stuff and you are definately in the right place for learning. Its a great site !

emma
xxxxxx
solartrinity

Welcome here!
Could be quite hard to get some consciousness into an organ bath!

Toooooooooone!!! Welcome back, old buddy!!! I thoght maybe the worst!!! Glad to see you just got busy with other things and forgot about us for awhile. How's life? Depression improving, I hope?

Hi, you selected right forum, we all here deal with human brains in some way or another.

How do you look at new diets comprised of special combination of natural products for psychopharmacology, neuropharmacology, neurophysiology applications?

I'm certainly interested in this area. I've modified my diet immensely over the last 6 months. One of the PhD students did a study looking at amino acid depletion and performance on the stroop task and comparing them with deficits that schizophrenic patients have. Mostly serotonin and dopamine depletion.


Something which has been mentioned to me before and which I'm interested in would be dietary modification during withdrawal to help with sleep specifically but also anxiety, energy, alertness, nausea and general mood. I've noticed there's a few dietary supplement and nootropic buffs around here. I'm not too aware of the nootropics yet and their effects, but they could make for interesting studies; an exploratory eeg study in 'healthy' people, the idea I mentioned above could incorporate nootropics somewhere, a neuropsych study tracking the deficits in dependent populations...

1. Help with sleep

Shor term diet: A cup of hot milk mixed with honey and a small piece of batter. Should be dinked after 7:00 pm. Helps to sleep well.

2. Anxiety

Long term diet: Regular Tea making and drinking.

3. Energy

a) Well poached whipped beef well mixed with eggs, some little flour, cook in boiled water eat with butter.

A set of diets can be provided to meet that objective. But I also will mention a salad. The Tabouleh salad mentioned below, eaten in the morning helps organism to start effectively utilize accumulated energy.
http://mideastfood.about.com/od/soupssalad...oulehrecipe.htm

c) Boiled eggs with butter in the morning.

4. Alertness

Small quantities of slices of pickled salmon soaked in apple vinegar, eaten with bread with butter along with red wine is nice refreshment.

But Tabouleh salad in the morning on empty bell is much more effective and less expensive.

5. Nausea

One small cup of brine оf pickled cucumbers.

You do not like such representation?

Ok since we are on the topic of diet (I think?) I will mention my latest endevour~ I am doing a little experiment with fatty acids.

Per diem intake:
ALA -- 22.2g
LA -- 5.4g
OA -- 7.5g
EPA -- 4g
DHA -- 3.7g

I have cut out all other fat from my diet, so I am consuming about 42.8g of fat a day. Sometimes I will take in a little extra fat in the form of walnut butter, but I believe walnuts contain omega acids? I also take in fat from raw tuna and salmon, primarily to keep creatine abundant.

On top of the selective fat intake, I have eliminated half of my usual NaCl from my diet, replacing it with KCl. I am also trying to consume at least 24g of dietary fiber a day, 12g being soluable.

I am planning on continuing this for one month, and seeing how my overall health is effected. It has been a little over a week, and my results have been pretty interesting. I have gained 5 lbs, but dropped 2% body fat. My blood pressure went from 127/76 to 121/73. My mood has generally improved, and the effects of caffiene are much more pronounced.

I generally incline to indicate natural products, it is a philosophy, besides any person can cook suggested stuff from natural ingredients. Certainly it is much plausible to indicate quantities as well, but people are different, and brain diets have specific individual peculiarities. That is why one always should have freedom of choice, at least in quantities.

Interesting. What are the principles of choosing the proportions?

For the EPA/DHA I have just read that 4g is like they typical studied dose. For the ALA LA and OA, it is just 3x the daily dose on the bottle of flax oil. As for the fiber, I just wanted to make sure I was getting a much higher intake than the typical person.

Really across the board, I was just trying to get rediculously high intake to test the effects.

Brine of pickled cucumber for nausea?? Cups of tea work well to take the edge off my hangover nausea.
I might try the tabouleh salad myself, looks good.

Unfortunately, I'm trying to replace pharmaceutical interventions for these ailments and so need to be quite strong in their action to replace things like diazepam and temazepam.



Ive just started taking fish oil tablets daily, eating more olive oil and eating less dairy fats. I've noticed since eating less dairy that I no longer have a constantly stuffy nose!

I mean the salted water in which the cucumbers are kept. If in small quantities it really helps.



I think I can help you in your research. I understand that you need solid arguments for replacement. I will think for sometime and will suggest you a strategy for your consideration.

Can you conduct clinical tests or other kind of tests?

Thanks, its an idea I'd certainly like to explore at the moment. But even if I don't do it somebody else may like to in the future. Where do these particular remedies come from?

We can conduct many kinds of tests, the equipment I have on hand is mentioned earlier and we would be able to make up any number of questionnaires and/or reliable indicators of efficacy. A placebo can even be incorporated with appropriate blinding.

A number of indicators could be for sleep in particular:
Sleep length, time and quality. There are questionnaires for these which could be filled out by clinical staff and/or the patients.
Rates of temazepam administration at night and a direct comparison of effects with temezepam
Early morning alertness and sleep inertia

You are welcome.
It is just experience.

I will try to develop a special ontology for the approach so it be easy to systemize what I am going to suggest.

Hope something good will come out of that.

Orbz,

Sorry for replying with delay.
Have considered possibility of developing new terminology related with food classification in accordance to its impact on issues you are interested in?

I'm currently developing a circadian rhythm study during methamphetamine withdrawal, and an EEG study looking specifically at the crash phase.

You have just reminded me of the food idea again. I can see these two areas combining. With the studies I have in mind I now have more potential outcome measures for dietary intervention. In this area I think foods high in tyrosine and tryptophan and foods that minimise anxiety/stress would be ideal places to start. Also probably anything that induces deep relaxed sleep, we have a new gadget to measure sleep without the encumbrance of a full EEG but not the quality of an EEG.

I need to do the first studies first for a baseline, so you have some time to think... probably measured in years; based on the rates of people seeking treatment at the clinic over here and the numbers needed for a good sample size.

Thinking about this now, I should probably be measuring melatonin as well...

Try looking at where the brain activates when having a enlightening experience and the associated chemicals and see if you can reproduce the effects of enlightenment through pharmacology

You could make the first enlightenment pill.

Ok, no problem, I can wait for eternity.

It is extremely important to choose correct words for drafting new knowledge.

I will write on Brain Meta Monthly a special issue provided with historic references about correct choice of the Words in scientific theories and direct relation of that choice with the speed of Scientific Progress.

Ohhh Yes. The Magic words Enlightenment Pills!!!

Some Parmesan, some Chicken, some lamb Meet, some Haricot (French/kidney bean), something else. Delicious soup. )))))))))))))))))))))))

It looks like we are standing on the verge of new Golden Age.

You will be the First Orbz, the "Gods" will definitely help you.

Awesome, sometimes these things just get so incredibly pedantic.

Yes, its certainly something my lab is interested in. The biggest problem really being ethics approval in politically saturated environments where the Federal government sports a ridiculous zero tolerance approach, although my state government is marginally better.... not much.

You may be aware of this study ( http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/101/46/16369 ), we would really like to see if some certain drugs can actually imitate these effects. We have a good idea where to start, the problem really is in maintaining the effects over a long period of time without withdrawal or being dependence inducing. This would most likely involve co-training with drugs as a spur and meditation to back it up. Certainly, I think so anyway, very worthwhile looking into.

Never mind. Paying attention to details is an expression of high culture. The other thing is that we should not permit details to overlord over our Common Sense.
Golden Middle. Remember.

I understand the problem.

The diet approach is able to overcome all the barriers created by anybody.
It is quite different logic.

Look: (i) manmade food additives (ii) nature made food.

A balanced and wisely chosen diet can do miracles.

Max grasped the mood and introduced excellent magic phrase: Enlightenment Pills.

Using that construct one can make a serous progress by introducing another magic phrase: Enlightenment Diet. If the Diet be simple, easy in keeping by an ordinary man, not requiring regular visits to special restaurants, then it will yield fantastic results. The key idea is that the diet should be drafted on the base of absolutely available natural products.

A popular book can be named Enlightenment Diet.

Do you have your own particular enlightenment diet?
I notice I do much better when most of what I eat is fruit and veges and very little of anything else.

In the part of the world I am living in (during this century ( ; I am joking) it is quite difficult to preserve the enlightenment diet, that is why I do eat in Gargantua & Pantagruel mode. But I do plan to change that mode for realization of my projects of cosmic importance, in view of that I plan to extract from that Gigantic diet the fruitful core.

Fruits, vegetables, a little good red wine, series of salads, special soups and tea, cheese with some leaves and bread and butter keep fresh indeed.

But to derive a fruitful core a special set of words should be developed. Only correct keys and categories selection will make possible to develop the Enlightenment diet. The diet should be such that many people, without difficulties be able to use it in any part of the world. It is quite a difficult task. Many nations have their Diet based on their religious views, no doubt that those diets are based on some certain and specific ontology which is not revealed up to date, but it has some very certain logic which is lost.

Look, we already derived the first Key phrase “Enlightenment diet”. You see it contains in itself great power, like a magic word. Any good cook who will once hear that phrase will feel some spark in his mind. That spark will help him to reconstruct his entire mental database as the mind already will search for data which can be systemized under that magic phrase. So even only this single phrase can incline many to Generate New Knowledge.

That is why I suggest starting from selection of correct words. You know correct words are everything.

[/quote]

Try looking at where the brain activates when having a enlightening experience and the associated chemicals and see if you can reproduce the effects of enlightenment through pharmacology

You could make the first enlightenment pill.
[/quote]

MDMA?

You assume that the human ambiguous term enlightenment has a biological significance. Why would you assume this? Even if brain areas lit up how could you associate them with a term that may have no basis in biochemistry or physiology? Now if you were to try and refine the term into, say, insight, that might be worth researching further in the context of nootropics ( http://elvers.stjoe.udayton.edu/history/hi...ple/Kohler.html ).