5 ms·

It's amazing how far the medical world has come in treating ailments of the body, but we've made comparatively little headway in ailments of the brain.

toasted-subs 3y ago
There's a million reasons why. And I can't get into it without being called a quack. And yes, washing hands is common practice now.
whatscooking 3y ago
We haven’t gotten far at all. We treat symptoms, not diseases
FollowingTheDao 3y ago
Last I checked my brain was part of my body. And that is why so little headway has been made, people keep thinking the body and brain act independently of each other.
pixl97 3y ago
If instead of saying brain you say "The most complicated structure found in the known universe so far" it starts to make a little more sense on the enormity of the problem at hand. Most organs are composed of one or only a few types of cells and their particular arrangement doesn't matter that much. For example swapping kidneys between people doesn't change who they are (mostly, smaller edge conditions apply here). But we can't swap brains because the brain encodes your 'youness'.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  You can also think of "the brain" as a collection of 10-20 separate organs, rather than one super complex one.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    While true, the complexity of each organelle in the brain is still much higher than that of the typical organ elsewhere in the body. That and there is a high degree of connectivity and feedback between components where the API is completely and totally undocumented. It's not that you don't know what the known API calls do, you don't have any clue on how many API calls there even are. Accidently emulating one of these calls when attempting to trigger a different behavior can lead to wildly unexpected outcomes.
    - BurningFrog 3y ago
      The fact that these APIa are undocumented clearly disproves the existence of a (benevolent) God.
    - wheelerof4te 3y ago
      I just love the programmer's analogy here.
  - Filligree 3y ago
    Those 10-20 organs are all individually super complex…
maybelsyrup 3y ago
You’re correct overall, and I know what you mean. But to offer a small and somewhat provocative nitpick: these (the psychoses or any other so-called mental illness) aren’t “ailments of the brain”, as they’ve never been shown to be. None has any demonstrated underlying pathology, much less a clinically useful one.
- throwaway60707 3y ago
  You sure? Schizophrenia is directly linked to dopamine. So is ADHD, but in the opposite way (not enough dopamine). Both were demonstrated on fMRI. Psychosis is a physical issue in the brain (too much dopamine making the brain fire when it shouldn't) that's solved by administering dopamine antagonists (= antipsychotics).
  - atchoo 3y ago
    There is little surprise that if a brain is behaving differently, that we can see differences in neurotransmitters. Like the Serotonin Hypothesis, that doesn't mean the neurotransmitters themselves are part of the physical cause and not just a consequence. It's like trying to diagnose and treat a political crisis by observing telephone connections. We see stark changes in telephone use in a crisis. If we meddle with the telephone exchanges we might improve or harm various types of event. It's not really about the telephone calls though, we are just hacking at the messaging of an external event we are ignorant of. A conspiracy theory induced panic might be superficially "solved" but cutting all the the phone lines. We have not identified or solved the cause though and people don't find life without telephones (dopamine) worth living so they plug them back in (quit their anti-psychotics).
    - throwaway60707 3y ago
      Well, sure. I guess nobody thinks that the dopamine just appears/disappears by itself. Of course there is an underlying structural cause. But currently we're unable to image live people at that resolution, not even dead people yet.
  - copperx 3y ago

toasted-subs 3y ago

There's a million reasons why. And I can't get into it without being called a quack. And yes, washing hands is common practice now.

whatscooking 3y ago

We haven’t gotten far at all. We treat symptoms, not diseases

FollowingTheDao 3y ago

Last I checked my brain was part of my body. And that is why so little headway has been made, people keep thinking the body and brain act independently of each other.

pixl97 3y ago

If instead of saying brain you say "The most complicated structure found in the known universe so far" it starts to make a little more sense on the enormity of the problem at hand. Most organs are composed of one or only a few types of cells and their particular arrangement doesn't matter that much. For example swapping kidneys between people doesn't change who they are (mostly, smaller edge conditions apply here). But we can't swap brains because the brain encodes your 'youness'.

BurningFrog 3y ago
You can also think of "the brain" as a collection of 10-20 separate organs, rather than one super complex one.
- pixl97 3y ago
  While true, the complexity of each organelle in the brain is still much higher than that of the typical organ elsewhere in the body. That and there is a high degree of connectivity and feedback between components where the API is completely and totally undocumented. It's not that you don't know what the known API calls do, you don't have any clue on how many API calls there even are. Accidently emulating one of these calls when attempting to trigger a different behavior can lead to wildly unexpected outcomes.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    The fact that these APIa are undocumented clearly disproves the existence of a (benevolent) God.
  - wheelerof4te 3y ago
    I just love the programmer's analogy here.
- Filligree 3y ago
  Those 10-20 organs are all individually super complex…

maybelsyrup 3y ago

You’re correct overall, and I know what you mean. But to offer a small and somewhat provocative nitpick: these (the psychoses or any other so-called mental illness) aren’t “ailments of the brain”, as they’ve never been shown to be. None has any demonstrated underlying pathology, much less a clinically useful one.

throwaway60707 3y ago
You sure? Schizophrenia is directly linked to dopamine. So is ADHD, but in the opposite way (not enough dopamine). Both were demonstrated on fMRI. Psychosis is a physical issue in the brain (too much dopamine making the brain fire when it shouldn't) that's solved by administering dopamine antagonists (= antipsychotics).
- atchoo 3y ago
  There is little surprise that if a brain is behaving differently, that we can see differences in neurotransmitters. Like the Serotonin Hypothesis, that doesn't mean the neurotransmitters themselves are part of the physical cause and not just a consequence. It's like trying to diagnose and treat a political crisis by observing telephone connections. We see stark changes in telephone use in a crisis. If we meddle with the telephone exchanges we might improve or harm various types of event. It's not really about the telephone calls though, we are just hacking at the messaging of an external event we are ignorant of. A conspiracy theory induced panic might be superficially "solved" but cutting all the the phone lines. We have not identified or solved the cause though and people don't find life without telephones (dopamine) worth living so they plug them back in (quit their anti-psychotics).
  - throwaway60707 3y ago
    Well, sure. I guess nobody thinks that the dopamine just appears/disappears by itself. Of course there is an underlying structural cause. But currently we're unable to image live people at that resolution, not even dead people yet.
- copperx 3y ago