8 ms·

>> Alcohol intake explains 1% of the variance in global GMV and 0.3% of the variance in global WMV across individuals beyond all other control variables (both p

>> Alcohol intake explains 1% of the variance in global GMV and 0.3% of the variance in global WMV across individuals beyond all other control variables (both p < 10−16). Definitely shows there is some grey and white matter reduction... but the impact doesn't seem drastic? Do I use that 1%? Do other activities reduce my brain of 1%? I don't know the scale of volume they use. I could be wrong. And looking at figure 2[1], age is also a major factor for change in white/grey volume (which they normalize). [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5/figures/2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5/figures/2

idiotsecant 4y ago
You have to admit the same argument in other contexts is a little funny. Like if you were exposed to an industrial pollutant that was shown to reduce your brain mass by 1% I don't think many people would be saying 'do I really need that brain material?' Obviously this is more than a little influenced by enjoying the effects of a drug.
- bergenty 4y ago
  I mean a pollutant has no upside. Being intoxicated has a lot of upsides including a good time, stress relief, community etc.
  - gruez 4y ago
    The pollutant isn't being dumped into the environment for fun. It's almost always done in service of some sort of economic activity (eg. farming, power generation, resource extraction). In this context the upside is the associated economic activity.
    - kergonath 4y ago
      Taking alcohol is my choice. I make that choice because I think the trade off is worth it, but I respect other people who think otherwise and do not drink. It is nobody’s choice to live in a polluted atmosphere and you cannot opt out.
    - Teever 4y ago
      That argument assumes high efficiency in society when we both know that society is anything but.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Well, on one hand, I drink alcohol on my own choice, it’s not much my choice if some pollutant is dumped into the air.
  - IMTDb 4y ago
    > it’s not much my choice if some pollutant is dumped into the air Aren't you enjoying the benefits of those pollutants ? The sheer fact that you are posting on HN means that you have access to a device that was produced thousands of miles away and got delivered to you. No one forced you to own one, that was your choice. Just because you are not the one physically emitting the stuff does not mean you share no responsibility for it.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      The reception your comment got says a lot about the HN community's ability to have adult discussion about subjects involving bodily harm. The supply chain for our basic necessities of life maims and kills people but we consider putting food on plates to be well worth the tradeoffs. Having a blood diamond on your ring is not something we consider to be worth the tradeoffs. The tradeoffs made to get a smartphone or computer into a consumer's hand, along with the tradeoffs of consuming booze, exist somewhere in the nuanced continuum between those fairly extreme example points.
      - Chris2048 4y ago
        You are assuming that there is an explicit decision made wrt trade-offs. A simpler explanation is - a "blood" diamond has a fairly explicit consequence, manufacturing consequences aren't so obvious or necessary. I'd also note that it should be possible to police these things - diamonds without blood, tech without pollution - consumer boycotts aren't often so successful vs legal policy changes.
- taneq 4y ago
  You certainly see arguments like “lowering the speed limit by X% would reduce road fatalities by 1%” and people saying “no thanks, I’ll take the risk”.
- taeric 4y ago
  Pulling in something we all agree is bad feels like you are trying to trick us into agreeing with you. What about exposure to television programming? Does that have an impact on brain mass? Soft drinks? Carbohydrates? Music?
- amelius 4y ago
  Other example: more than 3.5 million people die each year from outdoor air pollution. Yet nobody seems to be alarmed by it to the point that anything changes. It's only when there is a direct short-term life-threat that people seem bothered to take action (see COVID).
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  People genuinely don’t really care about air pollution in neighborhood’s broadly, actually. I mean, consider the fact brake pads can still be made with asbestos and are aerosolized every time a car brakes. But it genuinely hasn’t stopped cars.
  - ikr678 4y ago
    That says more about the US than it does 'people' - quite a few countries banned asbestos brakes decades ago (UK 1999, Aus 2003, Germany 1993).
  - worewood 4y ago
    > But it genuinely hasn’t stopped cars. I disagree; in fact, brake pads have stopped cars. ;)
  - empyrrhicist 4y ago
    And my crazy neighbors insist on burning leaves instead of just mulching/composting. It's atrocious outside, and its all so pointless.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Driving 1% of the variance is not the same as reducing your brain mass by 1%. Without knowing anything about the brain, Reducing your brain mass by 1% sounds pretty crazy to me, and probably has extreme negative effects very far before hitting 100% loss. It’s not absurd to say the negative effects of air pollution on this specific outcome are mostly negligible but still not want air pollution for other reasons. Which is a hypothetical statement of course because we don’t have any data here.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  Outdoor air pollution doesn't taste good and it's not my choice. There's a huge difference between "This is slightly dangerous" and "This is slightly dangerous but a lot of fun"
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Well, a pollutant has no use. That’s the difference. I’d like to see the same comparison between people living in cities or countryside.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    >Well, a pollutant has no use. That’s the difference. Every piece of technology that carried your commentary from your fingertips to my eyeballs has a nonzero environmental impact. Some watershed in Asia had to be fractionally (after all, the mine likely supplied material for far more devices than yours and mine) poisoned so you could say that. Is that sufficient purpose? Keep in mind modern society exists at the end of a very, very, very long and interconnected supply chain so the raw material from the mine probably (fractionally, of course) finds its way into smoke alarms and pacemakers. Trying to define "purpose" is an unbelievably complex can of worms.
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
The old mantra of people only use X% of their brain has been found to be hogwash. We use all of our brain, so I’d be very worried about a poison that even takes 1%. > The notion that a person uses only 10 percent of their brain is a myth. fMRI scans show that even simple activities require almost all of the brain to be active. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321060#takeaway https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321060#takeaway
- gruez 4y ago
  But the parent isn't asking whether you use 10% (or even 99%) of your brain. He's asking what type of impact 1% reduction in brain mass results in.
  - JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
    What would happen if you disabled 1% of your cpu? People might say what’s a loss of 1% but I’m reminded of data from sports science where 1% more performance is an absolutely astounding amount that separates world class from the pack. I don’t want to be in the mind pack!
Mathnerd314 4y ago
Treating patients with morbid obesity led to a 2% increase in total brain matter (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871403X21001150 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871403X2...), and depression causes differences around 2% in brain areas (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6306287/#!po=29.1667 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6306287/#!po=29...). The study says one additional drink/day is a change of 0.034 SD or around 0.3% change. So around 6 drinks/day is enough to cause changes similar to these.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  I'm considered by many folk to be a fairly heavy drinker, but 6 drinks a day, every day, is seriously indicative of what I'd call a real fucking drinking problem that one should get professional help for.
  - DanBC 4y ago
    > 6 drinks a day, every day, One glass of wine, 125 ml, at 8%, is one UK unit. Half a .75l bottle of wine at 14% would be 5.25 units. It's not unusual in the UK for people to drink half a bottle of wine each evening, and then more on the weekends. We drink a lot. It causes a lot of harm.
  - Mathnerd314 4y ago
    I didn't see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5/tables/2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5/tables/2. It looks like going from 0 to 3 drinks would be a 2% decrease in brain matter.
    - JetAlone 4y ago
      I'm trying to understand. The impact reported by the study seems to compound with higher amounts (I would imagine as liver and kidney throughput is exceeded and the poison hits you more directly). Standard Control: GMV WMV 0–1 AU −0.030 −0.020 1–2 AU −0.127 −0.074 2–3 AU −0.223 −0.129 So cumulatively, 0-3 drinks is is GMV: -0.380, WMV: -0.223 What I don't know and can't seem to find with a quick search is the conversion method for IDP standard deviations in brain matter relate to absolute percentages of brain matter (which I assume is not linear?). If your comment is correct, then these numbers correlate to an absolute reduction of 2% of brain matter? I also see that the third drink seems to do about 50% more standard deviation movement than the former 2 put together. EDIT: Never mind it's been a while since I took statistics, I remembered that standard deviations _are_ a linear amount. I'd been thinking of percentile placement on a normal distribution.

idiotsecant 4y ago

You have to admit the same argument in other contexts is a little funny. Like if you were exposed to an industrial pollutant that was shown to reduce your brain mass by 1% I don't think many people would be saying 'do I really need that brain material?' Obviously this is more than a little influenced by enjoying the effects of a drug.

bergenty 4y ago
I mean a pollutant has no upside. Being intoxicated has a lot of upsides including a good time, stress relief, community etc.
- gruez 4y ago
  The pollutant isn't being dumped into the environment for fun. It's almost always done in service of some sort of economic activity (eg. farming, power generation, resource extraction). In this context the upside is the associated economic activity.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    Taking alcohol is my choice. I make that choice because I think the trade off is worth it, but I respect other people who think otherwise and do not drink. It is nobody’s choice to live in a polluted atmosphere and you cannot opt out.
  - Teever 4y ago
    That argument assumes high efficiency in society when we both know that society is anything but.
the_only_law 4y ago
Well, on one hand, I drink alcohol on my own choice, it’s not much my choice if some pollutant is dumped into the air.
- IMTDb 4y ago
  > it’s not much my choice if some pollutant is dumped into the air Aren't you enjoying the benefits of those pollutants ? The sheer fact that you are posting on HN means that you have access to a device that was produced thousands of miles away and got delivered to you. No one forced you to own one, that was your choice. Just because you are not the one physically emitting the stuff does not mean you share no responsibility for it.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    The reception your comment got says a lot about the HN community's ability to have adult discussion about subjects involving bodily harm. The supply chain for our basic necessities of life maims and kills people but we consider putting food on plates to be well worth the tradeoffs. Having a blood diamond on your ring is not something we consider to be worth the tradeoffs. The tradeoffs made to get a smartphone or computer into a consumer's hand, along with the tradeoffs of consuming booze, exist somewhere in the nuanced continuum between those fairly extreme example points.
    - Chris2048 4y ago
      You are assuming that there is an explicit decision made wrt trade-offs. A simpler explanation is - a "blood" diamond has a fairly explicit consequence, manufacturing consequences aren't so obvious or necessary. I'd also note that it should be possible to police these things - diamonds without blood, tech without pollution - consumer boycotts aren't often so successful vs legal policy changes.
taneq 4y ago
You certainly see arguments like “lowering the speed limit by X% would reduce road fatalities by 1%” and people saying “no thanks, I’ll take the risk”.
taeric 4y ago
Pulling in something we all agree is bad feels like you are trying to trick us into agreeing with you. What about exposure to television programming? Does that have an impact on brain mass? Soft drinks? Carbohydrates? Music?
amelius 4y ago
Other example: more than 3.5 million people die each year from outdoor air pollution. Yet nobody seems to be alarmed by it to the point that anything changes. It's only when there is a direct short-term life-threat that people seem bothered to take action (see COVID).
SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
People genuinely don’t really care about air pollution in neighborhood’s broadly, actually. I mean, consider the fact brake pads can still be made with asbestos and are aerosolized every time a car brakes. But it genuinely hasn’t stopped cars.
- ikr678 4y ago
  That says more about the US than it does 'people' - quite a few countries banned asbestos brakes decades ago (UK 1999, Aus 2003, Germany 1993).
- worewood 4y ago
  > But it genuinely hasn’t stopped cars. I disagree; in fact, brake pads have stopped cars. ;)
- empyrrhicist 4y ago
  And my crazy neighbors insist on burning leaves instead of just mulching/composting. It's atrocious outside, and its all so pointless.
oneoff786 4y ago
Driving 1% of the variance is not the same as reducing your brain mass by 1%. Without knowing anything about the brain, Reducing your brain mass by 1% sounds pretty crazy to me, and probably has extreme negative effects very far before hitting 100% loss. It’s not absurd to say the negative effects of air pollution on this specific outcome are mostly negligible but still not want air pollution for other reasons. Which is a hypothetical statement of course because we don’t have any data here.
GauntletWizard 4y ago
Outdoor air pollution doesn't taste good and it's not my choice. There's a huge difference between "This is slightly dangerous" and "This is slightly dangerous but a lot of fun"
dr_dshiv 4y ago
Well, a pollutant has no use. That’s the difference. I’d like to see the same comparison between people living in cities or countryside.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >Well, a pollutant has no use. That’s the difference. Every piece of technology that carried your commentary from your fingertips to my eyeballs has a nonzero environmental impact. Some watershed in Asia had to be fractionally (after all, the mine likely supplied material for far more devices than yours and mine) poisoned so you could say that. Is that sufficient purpose? Keep in mind modern society exists at the end of a very, very, very long and interconnected supply chain so the raw material from the mine probably (fractionally, of course) finds its way into smoke alarms and pacemakers. Trying to define "purpose" is an unbelievably complex can of worms.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

The old mantra of people only use X% of their brain has been found to be hogwash. We use all of our brain, so I’d be very worried about a poison that even takes 1%. > The notion that a person uses only 10 percent of their brain is a myth. fMRI scans show that even simple activities require almost all of the brain to be active. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321060#takeaway https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321060#takeaway

gruez 4y ago
But the parent isn't asking whether you use 10% (or even 99%) of your brain. He's asking what type of impact 1% reduction in brain mass results in.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  What would happen if you disabled 1% of your cpu? People might say what’s a loss of 1% but I’m reminded of data from sports science where 1% more performance is an absolutely astounding amount that separates world class from the pack. I don’t want to be in the mind pack!

Mathnerd314 4y ago

Treating patients with morbid obesity led to a 2% increase in total brain matter (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871403X21001150 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871403X2...), and depression causes differences around 2% in brain areas (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6306287/#!po=29.1667 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6306287/#!po=29...). The study says one additional drink/day is a change of 0.034 SD or around 0.3% change. So around 6 drinks/day is enough to cause changes similar to these.

nibbleshifter 4y ago
I'm considered by many folk to be a fairly heavy drinker, but 6 drinks a day, every day, is seriously indicative of what I'd call a real fucking drinking problem that one should get professional help for.
- DanBC 4y ago
  > 6 drinks a day, every day, One glass of wine, 125 ml, at 8%, is one UK unit. Half a .75l bottle of wine at 14% would be 5.25 units. It's not unusual in the UK for people to drink half a bottle of wine each evening, and then more on the weekends. We drink a lot. It causes a lot of harm.
- Mathnerd314 4y ago
  I didn't see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5/tables/2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5/tables/2. It looks like going from 0 to 3 drinks would be a 2% decrease in brain matter.
  - JetAlone 4y ago
    I'm trying to understand. The impact reported by the study seems to compound with higher amounts (I would imagine as liver and kidney throughput is exceeded and the poison hits you more directly). Standard Control: GMV WMV 0–1 AU −0.030 −0.020 1–2 AU −0.127 −0.074 2–3 AU −0.223 −0.129 So cumulatively, 0-3 drinks is is GMV: -0.380, WMV: -0.223 What I don't know and can't seem to find with a quick search is the conversion method for IDP standard deviations in brain matter relate to absolute percentages of brain matter (which I assume is not linear?). If your comment is correct, then these numbers correlate to an absolute reduction of 2% of brain matter? I also see that the third drink seems to do about 50% more standard deviation movement than the former 2 put together. EDIT: Never mind it's been a while since I took statistics, I remembered that standard deviations _are_ a linear amount. I'd been thinking of percentile placement on a normal distribution.