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[martinuzz]

The magazine Psychological Science will publish an article this week about effects of the common household painkiller paracetamol on emotions.
Their studies seem to suggest that it does not only dampen pain, but emotions as well.

I wonder if paracetamol (and all other painkillers using acetominophen as an active substance) will disappear from the supermarkets soon, and be classified as psycho-active drug.

[ChairmanPoo]

I doubt it. At most they'll add an extra warning to the prospect.

[Sergarr]

Who needs emotions, anyway?

[scrdest]

Who needs emotions, anyway?

Everyone. For basic decisionmaking processing. There are already experiments showing that.

[Sergarr]

Who needs emotions, anyway?

Everyone. For basic decisionmaking processing. There are already experiments showing that.

Experiments on normal people, or experiments on scientists? I'd think the latter class would retain more of their decision-making processing without emotions.

[wierd]

Well, not everyone.

Emotions ARE very well correlated with strong memory retention, which helps to shape decision making later, but dulled emotional responses just means the neocortex does more of the work, instead of the limbic system.  You might make more "shockingly rational" (as in, decisions you may regret later because you later feel the decision was 'monsterous', but which is/was perfectly 'rational') decisions with your limbic system supressed/dulled, but it could also help with being more objective overall, since emotive decision making would be dulled.

More curiously, since it seems to work on both positive and negative emotional states, it could be useful for helping to control mild anxiety disorders, as well as mild bouts of manic behavior, and do so in a reasonably safe manner.

Drug efficacy studies for those uses should get some funding. The cheapness and availability of the compound as an OTC pain reliever would make it readily available for the many thousands of untreated sufferers from such conditions, and it does not have the addictive/dependence problems often plaguing more high-powered psychoactive pharmaceuticals.

[Eagleon]

Also, you know, that empathy thing. We don't need it, we have colds to take care of!

After viewing each photo, participants were asked to rate how positive or negative the photo was on a scale of -5 (extremely negative) to +5 (extremely positive). They then viewed the same photos again and were asked to rate how much the photo made them feel an emotional reaction, from 0 (little or no emotion) to 10 (extreme amount of emotion)...
...For example, people who took the placebo rated their level of emotion relatively high (average score of 6.76) when they saw the most emotionally jarring photos of the malnourished child or the children with kittens...
...People taking acetaminophen didn’t feel as much in either direction, reporting an average level of emotion of 5.85 when they saw the extreme photos.

http://news.osu.edu/news/2015/04/13/emotion-reliever/

Drug efficacy studies for those uses should get some funding. The cheapness and availability of the compound as an OTC pain reliever would make it readily available for the many thousands of untreated sufferers from such conditions, and it does not have the addictive/dependence problems often plaguing more high-powered psychoactive pharmaceuticals.

As one of those aforementioned sufferers, this is exactly the kind of thing that used to (irrationally) give me nightmares about the antidepressants I once took. It's a little unsettling that there are probably parents that give it to children on pretty much a constant basis, practically from birth.

[SirQuiamus]

Paracetamol is contained in many preparations, available as both over-the-counter and as prescription-only medications. Because of its wide availability paired with comparably high toxicity, (compared to ibuprofen and aspirin) there is a much higher potential for overdose. Paracetamol toxicity is one of the most common causes of poisoning worldwide. In the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, paracetamol is the most common cause of drug overdoses. Paracetamol overdose results in more calls to poison control centers in the US than overdose of any other pharmacological substance, accounting for more than 100,000 calls, as well as 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and 458 deaths due to acute liver failure per year.

Also, that head transplant thing is patently ridiculous. If we already have the technology to fix a severed CNS, why the hell aren't doctors curing quadriplegic patients by reconnecting their spinal cords, without head-swapping?

[Moghjubar]

Paracetamol is contained in many preparations, available as both over-the-counter and as prescription-only medications. Because of its wide availability paired with comparably high toxicity, (compared to ibuprofen and aspirin) there is a much higher potential for overdose. Paracetamol toxicity is one of the most common causes of poisoning worldwide. In the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, paracetamol is the most common cause of drug overdoses. Paracetamol overdose results in more calls to poison control centers in the US than overdose of any other pharmacological substance, accounting for more than 100,000 calls, as well as 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and 458 deaths due to acute liver failure per year.

Also, that head transplant thing is patently ridiculous. If we already have the technology to fix a severed CNS, why the hell aren't doctors curing quadriplegic patients by reconnecting their spinal cords, without head-swapping?

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/21/paralysed-darek-fidyka-pioneering-surgery

[SirQuiamus]

...oh yeah, now I remember. I think there was one patient who ended up with a spine full of phlegm.

EDIT: But still...

While some patients with partial spinal injury have made remarkable recoveries, a complete break is generally assumed to be unrepairable.

[Moghjubar]

Always gotta be a first.

"The 38-year-old, who is believed to be the first person in the world to recover from complete severing of the spinal nerves...."

[ChairmanPoo]

*shrug*
In his  protocol, quoted in a previous post, the guy believes, based on published work in animal models, that by severing the spine in certain special circumstances, he can achieve axonal regeneration.

I'm still skeptical, but the idea is not baseless. I do think that it's at the very least impractical, even if it is ultimately performed and works as intended.

[wierd]

IIRC, the research in animal models showed that when the sheathing around the neural tube in the spine is damaged, the surrounding tissues release a kind of toxic agent that then further degenerates the tissue inside leading to localized apoptosis, and scar tissue formation at the injury site, which is then what prevents regeneration of the neural bundle.

the olfactory bulb transplant proceedure puts specialized basal and glial cells into the mix, which carve paths through the scar tissue and guide axon growth through it, allowing the axons to reconnect.  In the case of the trial proceedure done in europe, where the guy is now "walking" again (with a walker), they also introduced a severed section of tendon as a graft medium, as a significant portion of the neural tube had been lost due to this apoptosis-- IIRC, a good 2 to 3 cm worth. 

The process was novel, because nasal neurons were not thought capable of relaying motor stimulus signals, and thus not suitable as a reservoir of suitable transplant tissues, despite being basically the only fully and freely regenrating neural tissue found in humans. (whole new neurons are produced and integrated by the olfactory bulb. Not just old cells learning new tricks.) The trial proceedure however demonstrates that this is not the case, and that olfactory neuron precursor cells and glial helper cells can be used thereputically for motor and sensory nerve damage related conditions.

Give it a few decades. I bet people with serious spinal trauma will be treated with the regularity that open heart surgery is done now.

[Moghjubar]

Asthma root cause probably found, treatable with existing drug for osteoporosis.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3050951/Major-asthma-breakthrough-scientists-discover-root-cause-condition-say-new-treatment-5-years-away.html

[Bauglir]

Do... do you have a source that isn't the Daily Mail?