Subject: Monkey Brains, Well Done, Coming Right Up

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 12, 2004

"Bad News, Con Chemistry Coming"

was the title of this email forward

From: Dan Lavender

Subject: bad news, con chemistry incoming

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/press/prworkaholicmonkey.cfm

Using a new molecular genetic technique, scientists have turned
procrastinating primates into workaholics by temporarily suppressing a
gene in a brain circuit involved in reward learning. Without the gene,
the monkeys lost their sense of balance between reward and the work
required to get it, say researchers at the NIH's National Institute of
Mental Health (NIMH).

"The gene makes a receptor for a key brain messenger chemical,
dopamine," explained Barry Richmond, M.D., NIMH Laboratory of
Neuropsychology. "The gene knockdown triggered a remarkable
transformation in the simian work ethic. Like many of us, monkeys
normally slack off initially in working toward a distant goal. They
work more efficiently-make fewer errors-as they get closer to being
rewarded. But without the dopamine receptor, they consistently stayed
on-task and made few errors, because they could no longer learn to use
visual cues to predict how their work was going to get them a reward."

Richmond, Zheng Liu, Ph.D., Edward Ginns, M.D., and colleagues, report
on their findings in the August 17, 2004 Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, published online the week of August 9th.

Richmond's team trained monkeys to release a lever when a spot on a
computer screen turned from red to green. The animals knew they had
performed the task correctly when the spot turned blue. A visual cue-a
gray bar on the screen-got brighter as they progressed through a
succession of trials required to get a juice treat. Though never
punished, the monkeys couldn't graduate to the next level until they
had successfully completed the current trial.

As in a previous study using the same task, the monkeys made
progressively fewer errors with each trial as the reward approached,
with the fewest occurring during the rewarded trial. Previous studies
had also traced the monkeys' ability to associate the visual cues with
the reward to the rhinal cortex, which is rich in dopamine. There was
also reason to suspect that the dopamine D2 receptor in this area might
be critical for reward learning. To find out, the researchers needed a
way to temporarily knock it out of action.

Molecular geneticist Ginns, who recently moved from NIMH to the
University of Massachusetts, adapted an approach originally used in
mice. He fashioned an agent (DNA antisense expression construct) that,
when injected directly into the rhinal cortex of four trained monkeys,
spawned a kind of decoy molecule which tricked cells there into
turning-off D2 expression for several weeks. This depleted the area of
D2 receptors, impairing the monkeys' reward learning. For a few months,
the monkeys were unable to associate the visual cues with the
workload-to learn how many trials needed to be completed to get the
reward.

"The monkeys became extreme workaholics, as evidenced by a sustained
low rate of errors in performing the experimental task, irrespective of
how distant the reward might be," said Richmond. "This was
conspicuously out-of-character for these animals. Like people, they
tend to procrastinate when they know they will have to do more work
before getting a reward."

To make sure that it was, indeed, the lack of D2 receptors that was
causing the observed effect, the researchers played a similar
recombinant decoy trick targeted at the gene that codes for receptors
for another neurotransmitter abundant in the rhinal cortex: NMDA
(N-methlD-aspartate). Three monkeys lacking the NMDA receptor in the
rhinal cortex showed no impairment in reward learning, confirming that
the D2 receptor is critical for learning that cues are related to
reward prediction. The researchers also confirmed that the DNA
treatments actually affected the targeted receptors by measuring
receptor binding following the intervention in two other monkeys'
brains.

"This new technique permits researchers to, in effect, measure the
effects of a long-term, yet reversible, lesion of a single molecular
mechanism," said Richmond. "This could lead to important discoveries
that impact public health. In this case, it's worth noting that the
ability to associate work with reward is disturbed in mental disorders,
including schizophrenia, mood disorders and obsessive-compulsive
disorder, so our finding of the pivotal role played by this gene and
circuit may be of clinical interest," suggested Richmond.

"For example, people who are depressed often feel nothing is worth the
work. People with OCD work incessantly; even when they get rewarded
they feel they must repeat the task. In mania, people will work
feverishly for rewards that aren't worth the trouble to most of us."

Also participating in the research were: Drs. Elisabeth Murray, Richard
Saunders, Sara Steenrod, Barbara Stubblefield, Deidra Montague, NIMH.

--
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc.
(4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected, Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
> Using a new molecular genetic technique, scientists have turned
> procrastinating primates into workaholics by temporarily suppressing a
> gene in a brain circuit involved in reward learning. Without the gene,
> the monkeys lost their sense of balance between reward and the work
> required to get it, say researchers at the NIH's National Institute of
> Mental Health (NIMH).

Boy I hope they don't do that to people.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

In most cases they don't need to.

I wonder what a pill like that would do to one's sense of irony.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Cardinal Vertigo <vertigo@alexandria.cc>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
> nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>wrote:
>>"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
>>
>>>Using a new molecular genetic technique, scientists have turned
>>>procrastinating primates into workaholics by temporarily suppressing a
>>>gene in a brain circuit involved in reward learning. Without the gene,
>>>the monkeys lost their sense of balance between reward and the work
>>>required to get it, say researchers at the NIH's National Institute of
>>>Mental Health (NIMH).

Hey, is that the NIMH from "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH?"

>>Boy I hope they don't do that to people.
>
> In most cases they don't need to.
>
> I wonder what a pill like that would do to one's sense of irony.

It'd be sort of funny if it left one's sense of irony completely intact.

"Where are my Good Citizen pills? I have to be at work in 15 minutes
and you know I can't handle it sober."

I'm still waiting for the headband from Neuromancer that what's-her-name
wore to work while she was saving up for all her hip cyberassassin mods.

--
"That's a tall order, indeed."
- Charles de Gaulle, in response to a heckler who shouted "Death to
the idiots!"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
> I wonder what a pill like that would do to one's sense of irony.

Well you don't seem to need one.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

Yeah, my sense of irony was beaten flat by alt.slack in the 90s and
I've kept it down since then by using marijuana.

Why aren't you at work or asleep or something, anyhow?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

To me, sleep is work and work is sleep.

Hey, if you didn't see the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, you
missed out. A scarlet centaur threw a neon slow motion javelin and it
hit a fifty foot tall cycladic head that rose out of the ground, which
then split into floating fragments revealing a classical torso sculpture
with another classical torso sculpture inside it, and then a guy walked
on top of a rotating ten foot cube thirty feet in the air. I can hardly
wait to see the ones in China. Ever since I saw the closing ceremonies
in Sydney, the surreal Olympic spectacles have become my primary source
of religious awe.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

I guess these days, LSD just isn't what it used to be. That was about
the only way I ever got ANY religious awe since I was about 12.
Otherwise, plenty of awe but not the religious kind. Except maybe when
I look in a mirror. Then I start feeling worshipful.

On the GOOD days.


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