5 ms·

Can someone translate this to lay terms?

by excitednumber 5y ago

TaupeRanger 5y ago
There's something similar in the brain activity of people that drink coffee. That's it really.
LesserEvil665 5y ago
Coffee turns you into Tweek from South Park.
SllX 5y ago
Well, I’m not really qualified, but reading the abstract, they took a bunch of pictures of the brains of a small group of people, did some stats analysis where it is all linked, and the pictures seem to suggest that the CD group might feel less, be worse at processing whatever it is they do feel and suck more at moving parts of their body compared to the NCD group because all the feely parts and some of the movey-limb parts have fewer functional connections. Anxiety might be higher, especially if they’re male. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was 4 years old, so that would suck and maybe explain why I can’t do sports so good. Not all bad news, the CD group might have more functional connections between the seeing parts of the brain and the movey parts. Just going to quote this last part, seems like plain enough English: “In conclusion, higher consumption of coffee and caffeinated products has an impact in brain functional connectivity at rest with implications in emotionality, alertness, and readiness to action.” So, if you drink a lot of coffee, for like a long time, your fight or flight instincts are probably cranked too high. I think they probably also want more grant money so that they can take more brain pictures which honestly seems like a cool gig.
- inopinatus 5y ago
  I can definitely see the academic appeal: "This is your brain" "This is your brain on high altitude Yirgacheffe" "This is your brain after a Jamaican blue mountain medium roast long macchiato served with a croissant and the wifi password" "Sir, please stop flirting with the wait staff"
- tpoacher 5y ago
  OOOOR, people with less functional connectivity seem to have a higher tendency to want to turn to coffee
  - coldtea 5y ago
    OOOOR not, if CD subjects get functional connectivity back after they lay off coffee for a while.
    - tpoacher 5y ago
      OOOOR not even that, if functional connectivity is what drives predisposition for coffee drinking in the first place.
graderjs 5y ago
I think it's not surprising. I think for any psychoactive compound you are going to have some profile of brain activity that's triggered by that psychoactive. And it's also the nature of brain connectivity that if you repeatedly trigger a certain pattern of activity you will reinforce the corresponding connectivity. In other words each psychoactive triggers a particular circuit and the way the brain responds to triggering a circuit is by strengthening it. So using different psychoactives will strengthen different circuits in your brain and each psychoactive will have its own characteristic circuit, that gets strengthened the more you use it. In that sense it's really just like any other repeated activity. If you want to be cute you can consider psychoactives as some sort of exercise for your brain. On the other side of that you can think of it as if you're focusing your brain activity on some particular circuits then other circuits will probably not be getting the same amount of balance detention but you would normally give them without the psychoactive. As a consequence of that their connectivity will decrease. The study states that (at least from the abstract) coffee drinkers have lower connectivity in regions associated with sense impressions (smell, taste, touch, etc), emotional and memory processing and the unconscious. And higher connectivity in regions associated with visual processing and motor skills. I think this is not exactly straightforward to translate from that to what it actually means for a person's experience, because the connection between brain and personal experience is complex. But the way I interpreted it is if you drink a lot of coffee you probably going to spend more time twitching your body and intently watching your surroundings than you are ruminating about emotions and memories and various sense impressions. Based on the subjective effects of cofger that people report and how you can observe the behavior people drinking coffee, probably not a bad interpretation: big eyed like a lemur or tarsier and restlessly leaping all about the place, like a monkey...or doing the mental equivalent settled in their chair glued to their laptop. but I suppose the crucial part of all this is that the connectivity affects do not just persist while the compound is in your bloodstream like the arousal effects do. the connectivity is like the tracks that the river carved out by flowing a particular way, so if you drink a lot of coffee I think what the study's saying is you're probably likely to spend more time focused on the outer world than you are on the inner experience and the connection to emotions, energies and so on. As a another thing to all that: at the same time laying down circuits, or strengthening the existing ones, through repeated use is not the only thing that a psychoactive does. They have other effects, like he arousal effects of having caffeine in your blood, and side effects, and more. But even if carving out brain circuits was the only thing that psychoactives did, there might be some circuits your don't want to strengthen (like mice getting addicted to cocaine by strengthening its dopamine reward circuit, by pressing the lever repeatedly).

Can someone translate this to lay terms?

TaupeRanger 5y ago

There's something similar in the brain activity of people that drink coffee. That's it really.

LesserEvil665 5y ago

Coffee turns you into Tweek from South Park.

SllX 5y ago

Well, I’m not really qualified, but reading the abstract, they took a bunch of pictures of the brains of a small group of people, did some stats analysis where it is all linked, and the pictures seem to suggest that the CD group might feel less, be worse at processing whatever it is they do feel and suck more at moving parts of their body compared to the NCD group because all the feely parts and some of the movey-limb parts have fewer functional connections. Anxiety might be higher, especially if they’re male. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was 4 years old, so that would suck and maybe explain why I can’t do sports so good. Not all bad news, the CD group might have more functional connections between the seeing parts of the brain and the movey parts. Just going to quote this last part, seems like plain enough English: “In conclusion, higher consumption of coffee and caffeinated products has an impact in brain functional connectivity at rest with implications in emotionality, alertness, and readiness to action.” So, if you drink a lot of coffee, for like a long time, your fight or flight instincts are probably cranked too high. I think they probably also want more grant money so that they can take more brain pictures which honestly seems like a cool gig.

inopinatus 5y ago
I can definitely see the academic appeal: "This is your brain" "This is your brain on high altitude Yirgacheffe" "This is your brain after a Jamaican blue mountain medium roast long macchiato served with a croissant and the wifi password" "Sir, please stop flirting with the wait staff"
tpoacher 5y ago
OOOOR, people with less functional connectivity seem to have a higher tendency to want to turn to coffee
- coldtea 5y ago
  OOOOR not, if CD subjects get functional connectivity back after they lay off coffee for a while.
  - tpoacher 5y ago
    OOOOR not even that, if functional connectivity is what drives predisposition for coffee drinking in the first place.

graderjs 5y ago

I think it's not surprising. I think for any psychoactive compound you are going to have some profile of brain activity that's triggered by that psychoactive. And it's also the nature of brain connectivity that if you repeatedly trigger a certain pattern of activity you will reinforce the corresponding connectivity. In other words each psychoactive triggers a particular circuit and the way the brain responds to triggering a circuit is by strengthening it. So using different psychoactives will strengthen different circuits in your brain and each psychoactive will have its own characteristic circuit, that gets strengthened the more you use it. In that sense it's really just like any other repeated activity. If you want to be cute you can consider psychoactives as some sort of exercise for your brain. On the other side of that you can think of it as if you're focusing your brain activity on some particular circuits then other circuits will probably not be getting the same amount of balance detention but you would normally give them without the psychoactive. As a consequence of that their connectivity will decrease. The study states that (at least from the abstract) coffee drinkers have lower connectivity in regions associated with sense impressions (smell, taste, touch, etc), emotional and memory processing and the unconscious. And higher connectivity in regions associated with visual processing and motor skills. I think this is not exactly straightforward to translate from that to what it actually means for a person's experience, because the connection between brain and personal experience is complex. But the way I interpreted it is if you drink a lot of coffee you probably going to spend more time twitching your body and intently watching your surroundings than you are ruminating about emotions and memories and various sense impressions. Based on the subjective effects of cofger that people report and how you can observe the behavior people drinking coffee, probably not a bad interpretation: big eyed like a lemur or tarsier and restlessly leaping all about the place, like a monkey...or doing the mental equivalent settled in their chair glued to their laptop. but I suppose the crucial part of all this is that the connectivity affects do not just persist while the compound is in your bloodstream like the arousal effects do. the connectivity is like the tracks that the river carved out by flowing a particular way, so if you drink a lot of coffee I think what the study's saying is you're probably likely to spend more time focused on the outer world than you are on the inner experience and the connection to emotions, energies and so on. As a another thing to all that: at the same time laying down circuits, or strengthening the existing ones, through repeated use is not the only thing that a psychoactive does. They have other effects, like he arousal effects of having caffeine in your blood, and side effects, and more. But even if carving out brain circuits was the only thing that psychoactives did, there might be some circuits your don't want to strengthen (like mice getting addicted to cocaine by strengthening its dopamine reward circuit, by pressing the lever repeatedly).