A biotech company says it put dopamine-making cells into people’s brains
A biotech company says it put dopamine-making cells into people’s brains
The experiment to treat Parkinson’s is a critical early test of stem cells’ potential to tackle serious disease.
A biotech company says it put dopamine-making cells into people’s brains::The experiment to treat Parkinson’s is a critical early test of stem cells’ potential to tackle serious disease.
This could help with more than just Parkinson's. ADHD, schizophrenia, depression, OCD, restless leg syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome... these are all linked to abnormal dopamine levels.
I'm excited to see how this goes. The article makes it sound like their results have been just barely higher than what they might expect from a placebo, but hopefully that won't be the end of it.
72Yea. I have ADHD. Gimme dem dopamine cells. I'm tired of people talking shit because I take a prescribed stimulant.
43I personally would prefer more testing of psychedelics, like psilocybin. While that acts on the 5HT2A receptors causing more serotonin to be available (similar to SSRIs) it could potentially help with all of those conditions you listed as well. It absolutely helps my depression and anxiety and seems to have helped others.
Oh. You can't patent a widely available mushroom. I grow and give them out for free.
17i hate giving anecdotal evidence, but i wasn't expecting it to be such a black and white change for me personally.
i can draw a clear line between the previous twenty years of my life, and a few years ago.
it's just weirdly amazing to able to have a small thing go wrong and just be like "ah dangit." rather than having a depressive spiral and mourning my own existence for the rest of the day.
not that i don't sometimes have pessimistic thoughts or bad days, it's just not overwhelmingly defining of my every moment.
at the very least, i'm eager to see a lot more research being done. if it is legitimate, and others can have the same change in life experience that i've had, then it's a damn tragedy it hasn't been studied more thoroughly ages ago.
13
If we can get to a point where I am retired and can get a Joywire like in Rimworld, I am definitely doing it.
36I'm glad I'm not the only person to immediately think of the Joywire from RimWorld.
7
Sounds kinda ominous until you read the subheading haha
21Oh okay! That’s weird! I am a little hesitant of having any cells injected into my brain tbh
16if i develop parkinsons in my late ages, id be down partially so that future generations can get better and more refined treatments.
6I'll be a guinea pig
5As someone with severe depression, I'd willingly jam a hot poker through one of my eyes and into my brain if I actually thought it'd help
3
A) We already don't know how neurons interconnect (eg why infants loose ~ 70% of their neuron connections between 1 and 3 years). B) That's not how dopanime works C) That's not how Parkinson works either
14For the uninitiated, can you elaborate?
Why is this not how it works?
11Sure.
The problem is that the brain is not a squishy uniform cell mess that just reacts to some chemicals (dopamine/serotonine/...). All of those are neurotransmitters to specific classes of neurons that have a very specific topological position to perform their function.
So if you just throwing in random neurons here and there, they won't do anything. They are not contributing to any pathways.
Serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and dopamine generator drugs (aka opioids) make the signal send by the "correct" neurons that are there stronger, contributing to the desired effect.
The problem with Alzheimers is the death of "correct" neurons, that occurs before Alzheimer is manifested. So just injecting new ones is unlikely to do anything.
Moreover, the neurons don't just live outside brain. They need to be immortalized to live in a Petri dish. And to acheive it, the only way we can go now is to add factors that in the context of human organism are considered as cancerous.
So it's a combo of "unlikely to be efficient" and "potentially likely to lead to cancer". With Parkinson the tradeoff might be acceptable, but this kind of projects is definitely that raises some red flags for me.
6
Oh no, that's terrible, where? Where exactly?
5Is this kinda a Lifetime subscription for MDMA?
4
Soo kinda like the hippies. Just tech instead of chemicals...
5They had me in the first half ngl
3If it works, it would be interesting to see if it could also work for people with other forms of brain injury/damage.
Could you use it to help restore function to someone who had a stroke?
2Please , pump me brain full of tiny dopamine generators, baby! Wait ! What do you mean it's dangerous and experimental? No, No, No, you don't understand ! I fucking beg you ! Please, for the love of God !
Read it as if it was like a 50s era movie and a woman is begging for the main character attention. With all the overreactions and gesticulations. (that's what my brain imagined )
-7…What?
Your brain is already full of those things. Them not working properly is partly how things like Parkinson's and ADHD come about. Going by the article, while there was noticeable improvement in Parkinson's symptoms, it also wasn't a complete cure, and the patient didn't have a massive seizure, so it's not as though they're flooding their brains with grams upon grams of the stuff.
3I meant more like nanobots. Why are people taking the dumb dialogue bit my half awake brain thought too seriously . Isn't "read it as if it was a drama show from the fifties" enough to understand it as over exaggeration.
1