Neuromanic

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Not all posts will be friends only, though, but some will be, now that I know how to keep this banner up the top ;)




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I did this ages ago on livejournal and it was cool back when I lived at my old house. But now I have a PO Box so anyone can have that :P I'm not usually into Christmas, let alone Christmas cards, don't really get them and I don't really give them out. But it was fun getting them in the snail mail. Opening letters from around the world ftw. I also used to love writing them too.

My PO Box:

PO Box 510
Chelsea
Victoria 3196
Australia

I've also screened all comments here.

http://twitter.com/nervous_neuron

Add me.

Currently at uni, attempting to do work, but it's failing.

Because the printer won't stop printing!! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! I don't know what the fuck they are printing, the whole internet or something.

I am trying to write the introduction for my paper, and this requires reading other papers and I cannot read bloody papers because the noise of the printer keeps distracting me. And I need to think of what papers to look up to read and I can't even think properly!

This is what I have done so far:
Serotonin is a monoamine that acts as a neurotransmitter. It has a variety of roles in behaviour modulation, and the diversity is from its actions on fourteen different cell surface receptor subgroups. The best characterized of these receptors is the 5-HT1a receptor (Pucadyil, Kalipatnapu, & Chattopadhyay, 2005). The 5-HT1a receptors have been implicated in depression, schizophrenia, memory formation and neural development [get a more extensive list of things with citations]. The 5-HT1a receptor is a pharmacological target of stuff [fond out exactly what stuff]. Therefore novel 5-HT1a agonists could provide enhanced pharmacological therapies against depressive and anxiety disorders.

Two novel 5-HT1a agonists are F15599 and F13714.


Fail fail fail! And the paper this is based on (the only paper about F15599) is really complicated :( It says 'g proteins' a lot and when my brain sees the word g protein, it goes like 'lol, time to shut down!!'.

And now the printer shut up! And now it is too quiet and that is distracting. And I am hungry and I have started an LJ entry so I can't stop it here. I would kill for a honey comb maxibon. No! We must kill for D2 receptor drug discrimination (the paper I am attempting to read now). And omg this paper gave me an idea of what to write, brb.

Ha, now I am printing out the entire internet. Well, okay three research papers. Serves the post grad room right. Even though that person who printed off the whole internet left. And I'm out of here to so I can get my maxibon. And then go home to raid on World of Warcraft. Oh yeah, for the select one or two of you that play, my guild got Heroic 25s Fraction Champions last night. Yes, spelling error intentional. We're working on twins now. We're third hordeside. Which isn't a big deal on Dath'Remar, especially horde. But who cares to them, I'm proud of it.

Maxibon.

Today we had a symposium today called Mending the Mind in the 21st Century: Translating research into practice. It was 10am-5pm of different people in our department (School of psychology, psychiatry and psychological medicine) discussing their research. There was awesome free food there. Some of these symposia and seminars can have really good catering. There were also posters up of people's research, and last week my supervisor asked if I'd like to submit one on my research project. We quickly chucked it together in two days, so there was time to print it. You can see it in the youtube video above. There was a competition where they had a bunch of people judge the posters.

Oh my gosh I was so nervous at the mingling part. I was trying to talk to people, and my brain just kept saying 'you make no sense, you make no sense, people will see you are a fool and don't belong here, you make no sense'. I ignored it as best as I could. But the annoying thing is here I can't just say 'I don't care what they think, because they're nobody in my life' as I do for strangers on the street, because I did want to impress. Not as in show off, but make a good impression. Every time I did something wrong, my brain screamed it at me. For example, I have the habit of talking over people before they finish speaking because I thought they had finished, but haven't. It looks like I'm rude and impatient, but I often don't know when they have finished talking and I want to say something before I forget and the topic changes. This isn't bad with talking to one person, but it's harder in a group of people. I either stay silent, or have to talk over somebody.

The thing is, I am trying to involve myself in the 'intellectual life of the university' as they call it as best as I can. Mainly so I can get to know the people in my area, etc. I don't know if that will help or hinder me. If I keep a low profile, I'll make a less of a fool of myself. But then I miss out on everything else. I reasoned that it would be better to get involved than not because if I don't, I won't get anywhere, so I won't have anywhere to fall from anyway. But if I do go and I do make a fool of myself, I'll only fall back to where I was, so I haven't lost anything. And this is all 'what if', anxiety stuff. It doesn't mean it will happen. Also my social skills problem (real or imagined) doesn't make me a bad person. At worst, I could be an annoying person, but more likely and eccentric or weird person. Which is what friends have said. And that doesn't matter as much.

But anyway, I scored First Place!! on the poster competition! It was funny, I wasn't paying 100% attention to the announcement because I didn't expect to win it! There were 40 posters in total, and another one had won at another symposium. I must admit, I was pleased with my poster, having never done one before. I used diagrams I had made for a youtube video (that isn't done yet) and quickly chucked it together. My supervisor edited the text, and it was good to go. But it was against everyone else who had far more experience. Actually, now I am doubting myself if it was first or third lol, because I wasn't paying attention properly. It doesn't really matter. They said the marks were the same for them, and the chair person had to make the call on the order.

Needless to say, this was a huge boost to my self esteem. My brain tried to shut it down too, like 'hmm, maybe my supervisor 'talked' to people'. But even then, lets take that, it was rigged in my favour. In actual fact, that would be a better outcome because that would mean that I'm someone worth getting to win, kind of like a popularity contest, if that makes sense. But really, that doesn't sound realistic, because it's not like it's a high stakes competition. You win like movie tickets or some crap, I haven't got the prize yet and I don't really care :P The point was, my work was noticed and that's important in academia, where I have to compete for funding and for publications as much as I dislike the idea. This has given me hope that I can do it. I've always been the person who just managed to get into where I want by a scrape. Into the undergrad course, into honours and into the PhD by a scrape. I don't care if I get into a postdoc by a scrape and be working happily by a scrape. As long as I make it. But I'm afraid the next time, it won't be by a scrape, it won't be in at all.

But yeah, this victory has given me hope that I might be able to survive in the world of academia. It's also given me a boost in terms of graphic design, even though I copied the layout from a template. Then again, so did others :P

I jizzed in my pants!!!!




Lookee this: “Neuroscience of fear and anxiety”

That is like one whole day of awesomeness. The AMYGDALA will be over 9,000. Iain McGregor and Pankaj Sah will be speaking at it, I know their research is good but I have not seen them in person. Iain visited our lab a month or so ago.... but I was not there!! I came in just as he had left!

I got the book Red Surf which I talked about on a previous entry. That shit is nasty because of the way it is written. It's written for children, so it's big font with pictures, but the pictures have a set colour palette. The first half of the book, they are yellow with greyscale. The other half is red with greyscale. And it is written in very simple language.

The ending of the Red Surf aka the morbid bit

Toddy still lay on his back and let the surf run over his legs. Bun then the horses came.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

It was the thudding of horses galloping, galloping. Galloping along the sand.

Toddy sat up. He saw the horses. And he saw the black horse galloping down on him. 'Mummy!' Toddy called out 'Mummy!' He started to get up.

Rex saw Toddy too. He saw him start to get up. He saw Carl and Pip running to Toddy. Running, running.

A scream came from behind Rex. It was Kerry. 'Look out, Rex!' she screamed. 'The kid! The kid!'

But Rex could not stop the big black horse. He pulled at the reins. He pulled and pulled. But the black horse went on. Galloping, galloping. Galloping on- galloping on and over Toddy. On and on.

Toddy lay in the surf again. But Toddy lay still now. Very still. The surf round Toddy turned pink. It turned pink, then it turned red. Kerry jumped from her horse. She came running to Toddy. She was sobbing and sobbing.

And Mrs Evans came running down the sand. Running and screaming, 'Toddy! Toddy!'

A little brown dog walked slowly on the sand. It lay down.

Rex stopped Rob along the sand. He turned the black horse and came riding back.

And Carl fell in the red surf beside Toddy and sobbed.


What I like about it and what makes it creepy is that is a rather violent scene, a kid being trampled to death by a horse while his mother watched. But the words themselves are not very violent and the description of the event is fairly observant as if the narrator of the story didn't quiet fully comprehend what had happened. Perhaps how an 8 year old might describe the events.

I had at the time seen movies considered violent for that age group (rated M for violence) and one of my favourite games was wolfenstein 3D. Point is - more violent then the book. But the violence in those sorts of movies was considered okay. It wasn't really tragic. The 'bad guys' deserve it (should have tortured them moar!!) and the 'good guys' - shit, it's bad luck. But nothing to worry about. Interesting way of thinking. And I suppose I could relate to the situation. While aliens will probably not come and start shooting everyone, it is more likely that you could watch someone get run over by a horse, or some other terrible accident like that.

Hello livejournal.

Tonight, I am going to write about something completely different, but on what's been on my mind for the last couple of weeks. It is something that sounds silly, but it's something that needs to be done. That is, I need to track down a bunch of children's books.

For a large part of my life, I've had times where I've experienced intrusive thoughts to do with being run over by a train as well as many nightmares on it. It happens usually when I'm going through some depressive episode, or just generally not feeling mentally well. I get so nervous when people get to near the edge of the platform, as my mind always plays them falling off onto the tracks and getting run over. It plays out quiet dramatically, something a little different each time. Like the person falls, the train comes, and everyone on the platform is screaming for the person to get out of there, but he can't,and just as he is half up the platform, the train comes and pulls him under as he just manages to face the train. Sometimes the person falls into the train, sometimes the person tries to run away from the train, or tries to duck under. I have similar dreams, a common one is being stuck in the car with my dad on the tracks and train is coming but my dad won't drive off the tracks.

I've come up with various theories on why these thoughts. But I recently remembered two books I read in grade two.One was about a kid who had his dad drive him around in an old car that stalled a lot. The kid was so scared that the car would stall on the tracks when the train was coming. But one day, the dad got a new car. The kid was so happy to get in that new car, having never to worry about the car stalling again. But in irony, that new car stalled on the tracks when the train came.

The other book, I remembered the title. It was called Red Surf. It was about some kids walking on the beach. One of them was playing in the surf. I don't remember exactly what was going on, but eventually these horses came and trampled all over the kid playing the surf.He screamed for his friends, but they didn't see. The surf turned red from all the blood.

While these books a rather light on the horror, I believe the realistic nature of it (I remember Goosebumps just came out around then)plus my young age meant those books really hit hard, and actually shaped my mind to this day. I remember the books were in the first person, and I had difficulty understanding those sorts of books, because when it was in first person, I read it like it was talking about me (I still do now, I tend to picture myself as the main character, for example, in Harry Potter, I'm Harry) so that forced me to visualize that stuff happening to me. I don't know if that's the book that caused this train anxiety. Like why don't I have the same thoughts about getting run over by horses on the beach? My memory of the red surf seems worse than the train one, just picturing myself crying out for help as I'm dying, but no one notices. But the train is more realistic, it's something that does happen. I could run away from horses, or at least hear them coming, but if I fall on the tracks or whatever, that's it. Bigger risk and hazard.

I think I tracked the books down too. Red Surf and The Last Trainboth by Robby Reece. Though I cannot find a single synopsis of the damn books! The only clues I have is that the books were labeled 'children' and written in 1988, meaning it would conceivably be in my grade two classroom. 'The last train' also seems like a conceivable title for the story. I remember it being considered an 'advanced book' for grade two, because I remember the books being graded. I wonder, if I was considered a beginner reader, I would have never come across the last train. I wonder in what ways media has shaped my anxiety in that seemingly critical period?

I found the red surf on ebay. I want to see if it's the same book, so I'm bidding on it. I don't know what good this will do. I almost feel like I have to prove that this distant memory, but very strong distant memory is correct and that it actually happened. I also think the train's story like was repeated in a Paul Jennings book, or a more popular sort of book.

EDIT: I found a synopsis for the red surf: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/3519928
I just read this book again and it has some quite graphic themes. Here is the blurb:
"Kerry and Rex liked to ride their horses along the sand. They liked to ride in and out of the white surf. But Rex liked to gallop fast. Faster and Faster. Too fast! Was that why the surf turned from white to pink...and then from pink to red?

Hello everyone. Today, you don't get an update on my uni life. Instead we go back in time to the 26th September, 2000. I was cleaning my room up a bit, and I found my old diary. I thought I'd transcribe the entry. I will keep it as original as possible, keeping spelling and grammar mistakes. I was 14 at the time.

26.9.00
Dear God and Kristina,
Ok I changed that well because II am writting to the future. Ah, scary, on the radio, someone is doing an add with Dear Diary. Freak! Yesterday, I read my first Diary, the one I got these pages from. It was written about for 3 years, Don't know. I better neaten my writting. It was a Crack up. The drawing where so funny! English was terible - I kept on saying eny - instead of any. And Diry? Geez! One entry said "I think Shane & steven like me." In my dreams! A lot happened to me. By the way, I think I got 83% for the Acid test!! I got the internet about 2 months ago. Iprimus it's a shit internet!!! We had to get it taken off. It kicked me off like every 10 mins. So now I am netless. Back to the Krisynet. Oh well I had my glory. I want the net back, not much chance though, Dad lost his job!

Dad went to hungary, he is back now! Guess what, my Dad found his real parent - well mum. This means I now have a nana. Cool, huh. This also means I've got more Uncles, Anties & Cousins. One of my 'new' cousins sent me this cute furry animal keyring. I <3 it. She is 9 and her name is Nora. *sticker saying 'happy'* Back to my Report - I got the best in English, Computers, Japanese & Science. I gave in my website - got it marked. Don't know the mark yet. It's the holidays. Hopefullym I'm going to see Scary Movie with Maria & Ola tomorrow. I'll change pens.

That's better. I saw revenge of the nerds II & III. Nerds II, they (a clan of nerds) went to California & the cool guys tried to muck up their plan of being accepted. Nerds III was the next generation, and it was when the Nerds took over Adam's college! In Nerds II, Louis (how the hell do ya spell it) was on a date with the girl he liked & waz saying what a nerd he was, and how cool she was. The she goes 'Steven (the anti nerd) doesn't have enough Glial cells to be a primate!' Lawis glasses fall & he's like - "Did you just say Glial?" Then she says something about the Glial cells ration to Neurons! Neurology. As she said that, I reacted and jumped. By the way Glial cells support neurons.

Also, today I was reading Brain Drain - Super Mario Bros. Choose your own adventure. I bought it in about grade 4. When you fill in the score, the lowest us bibem itger that 'Spagetti Synapses!" It is about the koopa's switching peoples brains, with none other than the Synapse switcher! Back then I had no idea what it was! I thought it could be the brand name, like Whmush Radio, but the brand names have something to do with the land. Of course - Neurology! The synapse is the gap between the neuron's axons & other neuron when they send nerve impulses! So it had something to do with Brains afterall.

Geez me and my neurons. Hey basically from the whole class only Grace had heard of Neurons. She knew what a neurosergan was. I bet Steph Hof knows though, She read Shinkei. That's japanese for nerve. It mentioned neurons - that's how I found out. John had to enter the game Shinkei wgar turned out to be AI - artificial intelegance. He was 'surrounded in writhering neurons" of the computer. They described nerves - like Cable-like-but alive - glowing with emotions. They were called nerves later. I thought I heard the word neuron before I just relised I did!! Ages ago when I still went to Tody Haynen Swimming, there was these posters and adds about research for - motor neurone desiese. I asked Mum what it was, she said something about muscles. Isn't it gunny how you find out stuff like that about 5 years later! Anyway my hand's getting tired so see ya later!

( My thoughts about it )
But this obsession thing, I always wonder, has it taken over my life in a good way or a bad way? What would happen if I didn't have them? I have spent so much of my life trying to answer the fucking question

Why do I have these obsessions!?!

or as I used to ask in my early childhood 'why is my brain like this?'? In before 'it doesn't matter'. It matters to me. As a side note, it would be cool to control what obsession I get next.

And I totally didn't mean to write that much. I just wanted to transcribe the diart entry. I feel like writing more, but I have togoto bed. Ah,I suck -_-. At least the thoughts aren't piling up inside my mind so much, and I can look over this post with a much clearer mind later on :)

These eyes are clearly showing the expression decisive. It's obviously not amused, aghast or bored.

Well not to me!! And I don't believe it is to other people either. Anyway, I planning to do a journal club paper about the effect of oxytocin administration on mind reading. Journal club = summarizing and evaluating a research paper at a lab meeting. The test they used was a variant of of the Mind in the Eyes test. You are given eyes like above and asked to make a choice out of four expressions. Apparently people are supposed to find most of them hard,but intuitively know them and happen to guess right.

Take the test for yourself.
I scored 15/36. I felt that I knew the answer to a mere one. First of all, referring to my example. She (looks like a she to me) looks blank to me. Like she's just posing for a photo. I didn't even know 'decisive' was an emotion let alone had an expression. Closest to me is 'amused' out the choices. The funny thing is, just now I went back and randomly clicked the buttons without looking so I could quickly get the answers. And I scored 17. SHIT I got more randomly guessing than actually trying! I need to l2mindread.

Then I don't get how they actually obtained the photos. How do they know that's the emotion they were actually feeling? Well then again, they probably look at the photo and knew she was decisive. But irl, facial expressions are dynamic, people don't just hold it in one position. Then there are people 'masking their true emotion', making it even more complicated. I also tend to look at people's eyes, I more tend to look at the mouth, but then again I don't even really pay attention to where I am looking in the first place.

Back to the start of the thought pattern, the test was done in 'healthy people', your stanard double blind placebo controlled trial. And yes, oxytocin improved the performance on the 'hard' ones but not really on the easy ones. But the improvement was small, on average, the oxytocin group got like 3 more correct answers? So while the oxytocin is having an effect, it's not going to turn us into mind readers.

And I'm getting tired so bed time.

Dear Kristina

I am pleased to advise that you have been accepted as a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
.
.
.
.
.
(i)Accepted under: Probationary candidature
(ii)Enrollment status: Full time
(iii)Department: Psychological medicine
(iv)Supervisor: Dr. Jillian Broadbear
(v)Approved field of study: The role of oxytocin in social cognition
(vi)Commencement date: 20th July


Fuck yeah!

OMG HAI LIVEJOURNAL!!!!

How r u?

Hmm, interesting...

Hmmm, I need to start using this again...

So, dad has one of those weight lifting set things. You know, witht the bar bell at the top, a thing to lie on, and weights at the feet. And a TONNE of get fit-lose weight-gain muscle, etc type books and videos. It's funny, some even talk about the physiology of muscle. I approve lol.

He never seems to use these things, maybe he thinks having it all lie around will help him lose weight or whatever he wants to do. So I use it. I've always been saying... I'm gonna gain muscle and get fit. Though you won't catch me at a gym no way. I'd totally embarass myself. So this set is perfect.

Anyway, I've been looking at The Book Of Muscle by Men's Health for different weights exercises. So, lets try out the bench press. EZ! Man, I'm good. Until I have to life what would be over my head if I were standing up. Damn, I can't go any further. Well, looks like my biceps are alright... but my triceps and shoulder muscles... suck. So, I can lift things off the ground well, but not past a cirtain height.

My aim is to get fit (reduce resting heart rate!) and increase muscle mass. Oh yeah! SO dad and I go for a walk, and I jump on the weights every 2-3 days, depending on how I feel.

I also don't like that most women's fitness books that I have seen are aimed at weight loss. I haven't seen any women's body building books around. Men cheat, they have extra hormones to help them out. Not fair. But anyway, the men's books still have instructions on how to do the actual exercises, and that's what is important at the moment, and I don't assume they're much different for women.

I found this interesting article on bodybuilding.com. 's bf got a job as a writer there, so I checked it out. This article: http://bodybuilding.com/fun/other44.htm
is about the issue of female body builders. The basic point is that nobody likes a muscley lady. On a man - the men like it because that's awesome, great work mate, and the women like it because it's hot and manly. But both sexes are 'eeww, that's gross' to a female. The article talks about competitions where women need to actually reduce muscle mass for 'health reasons'. Moar like making the women look hotter so more guys watch. And there is not much you can really do about that I guess. It's the way life is.

The article points out that men being like women is now getting better attention. More people have prollably heard of and seen drag queens, but drag kings isn't as big thing. It's there, but it's on the sidelines. For a woman to do men's stuff, you have to look hot. Take female wressling and boxing. The women have to be slim and feminine while fighting, and that's the appeal. Take even warcraft. Female orcs are the least popular, and even in game, people make comments about why I chose that particular race!

Well, for me, this is the way I like it. As I am not worried about sex appeal, it's great :) But for all the aspiring women out there who want to do things in men's domain, it's not so hot.

( DING 70!! )

Basically, the depression hypothesis. 'think emo' = percieve stress, which releases stress hormones (of which cortisol is one). These have been shown to cause cell death/prevent neurogenesis in the hipocampus (part of the brain most known for its role in declarative memory). It has also been shown that some types of antidepressants can stop this.

Srsly, who can be fucked writing up a thesis?