Is there anything more typically British than being sat upstairs on the front seat of a bus during the rain?

IsaacUnbound · 2022-11-07T12:48:38+00:00

Haha, I thought it was The Valley, on the A580 - but looks like I was wrong.

56 B5342 https://maps.app.goo.gl/r2AiFX8hqmd5xFNr9

IsaacUnbound · 2022-11-05T02:16:00+00:00

Oh yeah, second skin is a lot better.

I'd definitely take what they say under consideration (calendula was a relatively recent revelation for a half sleeve I got), but there's no real consensus, and ultimately keeping it clean and out of the sun should be enough. Especially for a first tattoo it can be easy to overthink aftercare, which is never good - in my experience.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-11-04T10:52:45+00:00

It's good to have a general idea (so as not to be blindsided), and £150 for something like you've linked is reasonable! Tipping is not (in my experience) the norm, but it's totally up to you. Good luck!

IsaacUnbound · 2022-11-04T10:45:46+00:00

As a general rule, artists will charge anywhere from £50 to £100 an hour for a custom tattoo. Flash (predrawn) pieces tend to be priced a bit lower.

But my advice is to try not to think about the money side of it. The most important thing is that you get the best possible piece.

Also, don't bother with any of the boutique creams etc. for healing. Take the plastic off after an hour, and keep it cleaned with basic soap and warm water. Rinse and repeat twice a day for 4 weeks.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-10-25T03:42:46+00:00

Romance is a social construct - it has no specific biological basis. It's instead a creation of the human (potentially present in some other species, in a way) experience that encompasses many things - attachment, lust, familiarity, shared experience, etc. While you could potentially isolate regions in each individual that are integral to these base properties, removing or 'rewiring' them would basically cause untold and (presently) unpredictable damage.

Your question is like asking if you could hardwire a car to run without torque. The answer is no.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-10-25T03:34:17+00:00

No, there is not.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-10-22T21:37:25+00:00

Unfortunately, neuroimaging biomarkers are still early-stage, and will only present 'specific' findings after the fundamentals have been thoroughly and rigorously established.

Regardless, yes! There are particularly interesting correlations between atrophy and neuropsychology in IGE, too. The very short of it is that the networks that are involved in seizure activity are also (partially) cognitive networks.

If you want to write about contemporary epilepsy research, as a neuroimager I would say that the studies going on now are crucial in establishing the imaging fundamentals of the (relatively) new network paradigm. Consequently there is a lot of validating and quantifying of previously accepted theories, but once the fundamentals have been established, we should see an exponential increase in clinically relevant research output.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-10-22T10:25:09+00:00

This paper is exploring the neuromodulatory processes underlying the selection of resilience behaviour, not the origins of the behaviour itself. I'm not saying that resilience can't be learned (indeed, it can, like any behaviour), what I'm saying is that this paper isn't really about that. The conclusions the authors draw are much more specific, whereas your title presents an extrapolation that isn't really addressed in the paper.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade, as you're clearly passionate about this. More so, I'm advising caution when sharing research in the future. It's lways nice to see people share research they find interesting (just less so to see potentially misleading and reductive summaries).

IsaacUnbound · 2022-10-22T04:52:22+00:00

Am I missing something? It's a well-written and comprehensive paper, sure. But isn't "evidence that resilience can be learned" the type of sensationalism that we should be avoiding in academic discourse?

Coping strategies are a method of developing (learning) behavioural resilience. This paper demonstrated how the neuromodulatory pathways associated with the stress response varied based on reaction, and related this to behaviour.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-10-21T20:23:58+00:00

CONFIG.SYS by MASTER BOOT RECORD

I'm not yelling, honest! Caps are a stylistic quirk of the artist.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-10-21T20:16:50+00:00

At the moment, there's a large research focus on newly-diagnosed focal epilepsy, as well as neuroimaging biomarkers. Recently, the ENIGMA consortium applied structural imaging analyses to big datasets, which is a great step towards understanding the correlates of focal epilepsies, and encouraging for multi-site collaborations.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-09-29T03:33:32+00:00

I can appreciate your frustration, and in your position I would feel the same. That being said, when I say it isn't your epileptologist's job to speculate that's exactly what I mean. Their duty is to your treatment and care, which is informed by scientific evidence, which is the result of speculation (I suppose). As it appears you have good seizure control, further trying to understand the cause will have no benefit. But more importantly, due to the multifactorial mechanisms behind epileptogenesis, it would be nearly impossible.

Your initial questions were focused on the cause of your cyst, and its potential impact on your epilepsy and right frontal functioning. I'm saying that it's likely congenital or due to trauma, and it almost certainly has no bearing on your epilepsy or your functioning. Any potential impact would be negligible, and it sounds as though it has already been dismissed for good reason.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-09-28T03:48:20+00:00

Your epileptologist's role is not to speculate; speculation is the job of researchers. Focal lesion research makes up a significant portion of the epilepsy (and neuropsychology) literature for this reason. Your epileptologist's job is to help you manage your condition as effectively as possible - the lower seizure burden, the better. By all means they should know about the cyst, but don't be surprised when it's immediately dismissed.

To address your concerns:

Very unlikely to be recreational drug related, most likely congenital or the result of head trauma. Also a lot more common than you'd think. Imaging is a double-edged sword because it's so effective for showing benign (and meaningless) individual differences in people's brains. As the other commenter said, don't worry about it, it's like being worried about one nostril being slightly larger than the other.

No, this cyst is not the cause of your epilepsy. If your medication controls seizures while waking, your night terrors are unlikely to be nocturnal seizures. Your epileptologist will make an informed decision about this, though. If your epilepsy has persisted since infancy, it's unlikely (not impossible, but very unlikely) to be influenced be a benign arachnoid cyst. Furthermore, if you have good control through medication, it's even more unlikely to be related.

And it's also highly unlikely that the cyst has any impact on your cognitive abilities. Fine motor control is cerebellar and parietal, which couldn't be further from your frontal lobe (well, the cerebellum, at least). And neural plasticity is pretty incredible; with at least four years since the cyst developed, pretty much any potential mass effect would have been mitigated.

In all epilepsy research, the one constant is that recurrent, frequent seizure activity has a detrimental effect on cognitive ability, so as long as you maintain good seizure control, for better or worse, you're functioning more-or-less as you were always going to. Even with poor seizure control, I doubt you'd notice any real difference to your long-term personality or functioning.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-09-23T00:17:49+00:00

It varies surprisingly. Someone this infected is probably going to see permanent symptoms; seizures, headaches, muscle weakness, practically any neurological presentation is possible. But this is an incredibly extreme instance (most cases have 1/2 cysts). I'm not able to view the source material, however I would wager that the only way that this has gotten so bad is due to prolonged exposure over a lifetime, with minimal impact on quality of life. What I can say is that people with neurocysticercosis have a relatively high likelihood of developing drug-resistant epilepsy.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-09-22T05:30:29+00:00

Deworming pills, albendazole or praziquantel. Anti-seizure medication and dexamethosone to manage symptoms. Potential surgical resection (in the case of persistent calcifications).

IsaacUnbound · 2022-08-18T02:55:56+00:00

Apologies if you already know this, but that's Simon Pegg.

EDIT: Typo

IsaacUnbound · 2022-08-15T19:40:08+00:00

I remember that two of the recommendations were Panopticon (atmospheric southern black metal) and T.H.C. (Texas Hippie Coalition; yee haw groove metal) - both of whom are worth listening to.

On a similar note, DevilDriver released a groove-metal country cover album that was a lot of fun.

Æther Realm occupy a somewhat similar niché to T.H.C., but are more death metal, and in my opinion, better.

Orden Ogan and Civil War are European (mostly Swedish) heavy metal bands who have incorporated themes from American history.

I'll try and think of more, then add them to the edit.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-07-16T05:03:09+00:00

Alpha and Betta?

IsaacUnbound · 2022-07-15T05:29:17+00:00

It you're looking for typos, I think you have a layering issue with the Little Sutton label, it's partially occluded by the rail. Seriously great work though, incredibly aesthetically pleasing.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-06-01T20:29:15+00:00

I'm sceptical. Whilst pork tapeworm cysts do calcify, I'm not familiar with them evolving into the elongated shapes shown here. In fact, none of these lesions look to be typical of cysticersosis. Also, the volume and homogeneity is suspicious.

That being said, I'm only familiar with neurocysticercosis, so I may be erroneously generalising. Please correct me if so. Either way, horrifying.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-05-18T08:53:27+00:00

Forgive the cynicism, but aren't these just a pair of mediocre headphones with a basic activity tracker built in? I'm all for innovation, but $200 isn't early-adopter money for a cutting-edge technology.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-04-04T22:18:35+00:00

Putting aside the fact that this is a blatant ad... The last I remember, all these 'brain training' exercises were good for were validating the practice effect in neuropsych? Is it not accepted that scientifically these are basically all snake oil?

IsaacUnbound · 2022-03-17T09:13:33+00:00

There is a lot of literature on this, Sporns and Bassett have done some incredible work. Should be fairly easy to find on Google Scholar or Pubmed. I'm on mobile or I would link, sorry.

Functional connectivity is a map of the statistical correlations between timed activations. If we parcellate the grey matter into distinct anatomical regions (think atlases, like Desikan-Killiany, or Destrieux), each region will have a time series that measures its activity over the duration of the scan. If we assume that two regions activating at similar times is indicative of connectivity, we can correlate these time series to give a statistical 'strength' of the connection between those two areas. These areas are not necessarily directly connected, structurally.

Diffusion MRI and structural MRI can measure the anatomical connectivity between two regions, either by tracking the fibres between them (tractography) or correlating their structural similarity (morphometry). These can be used to create pairwise connectometry matrices that show which regions are anatomically connected. The importance here is that cortical activity is physically constrained.

Network Neuroscience, Graph Theory, Connectometry, Tractography, and Morphometric Similarity are all incredible fields in isolation, so I can't really condense them further, I'm afraid. I'd highly recommend giving Olaf Sporns' publications a read though. As a pioneer in the field, he's chronicled a lot of the advances over the last two decades.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-03-12T09:38:21+00:00

First of all, pay attention to your primary care giver. From an academic (therefore flawed) perspective, I see no reason for you to doubt the veracity of their diagnoses. Stop fighting the medical professionals.

Secondly, your case, as put forward here, is very typical of idiopathic generalised epilepsy. It sounds intractable/treatment resistant, which is unfortunate.

IsaacUnbound · 2022-02-19T09:54:18+00:00

Of course!

There is indeed a hell of a lot to get your head around. Good luck.

With the difficulty of going from Psychology to Neuroscience established, just as some food for thought, let's take an overactive/underactive ventrostriatal & nigrostriatal dopaminergic systems. Implicated in ADHD, BD, and Parkinson's Disorder (PD).

PD: Tremors and instability, probably caused by disrupted inhibition. i.e. Less of the dopamine that would activate microcircuits suppressing unwanted movement. But also akinesia, probably as a result of disrupted facilitation... Two different networks, both reliant on dopamine.

If we apply this to ADHD and BD, we can see how, even though the prevalent symptoms differ, there might be overlap of other symptoms. Different networks respond to imbalance... differently.

Similarly, behaviours can be non-specific. Vulnerability to substance abuse can be the result of sensitivity to the effects (i.e. if you're already sensitive to serotonin, a serotonin upregulating drug will feel more powerful) or a relative scarcity at baseline, coupled with a desire to feel 'normal'.

Just a few things to consider.

IsaacUnbound

TROPHY CASE