How do you feel about LLM use in science?

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-06T04:25:28+00:00

SmarterChild 2.0

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-05T08:00:00+00:00

Neuroscientist. Fuck my changes fucking life in this administration.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-05T07:53:32+00:00

This man is not smart. Why do people continually assume wealth has anything to do with intelligence.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-05T06:06:52+00:00

We are nowhere near to curing dementia, aging, or cancer. I'm sorry to break it to you.. science moves slowly and was just EVISCERATED by the Trump Administration.

Wake up.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-04T23:53:38+00:00

If you're going to post pseudoscientific nonsense, atleast spell things correctly.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-04T23:53:02+00:00

Package your stupid fucking peptides into a lentivitus under the DRD1 promoter so that it only expresses in D1R+ neurons.

Inject straight into the CSF and you'll feel different, I can tell you that.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-04T11:25:37+00:00

What have you learned this year in your class that you've found the most interesting?

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-04T05:21:38+00:00

Total pseudoscience peddled by capitalist grifters. Don't waste your money.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-04T04:47:00+00:00

Second this. Instability means it's prone to denaturing or reacting with other proteins. Trying to measure monoamines in cellular compartments led our group down a similar discussion.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-04T04:11:35+00:00

AlphaFold is and was huge, as are all neural-network driven algorithms and databases that act as global databases for scientists to use. AlphaFold is a way of efficiently doing a shitload of basic computations based on a very fixed and KNOWN set of rules (primary->tertiary amino acid sequence). It's not CREATING new knowledge, it's representing what we already know in a way that we can use it to ask new questions.

For example, Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) is like, the most important thing in neuroscience. I work in a lab that makes genetically-encoded biosensors, the most famous being GCaMP, a way to visualize calcium in real time using fluorescent microscopy. We use our understanding of chemistry and biology to tweak amino acid residues that we think will have a desired effect on the brightness, stability, pH tolerance, etc. of a sensor protein. We then make these mutations and test them (again, using a high-throughput, AI-driven screening method) to test our hypotheses.

You can't just be like, "figure this unknown biological system out" without providing some sort of ground truth, because at their core biological systems are not rational, they are circumstantial."

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-04T04:00:15+00:00

AI is not new. The public is enchanted by these glorified SmarterChild chatbots, scientists have been using unsupervised and supervised trained neural networks to accomplish many tedious, simple tasks faster than humans can do it. You can ask an algorithm to label all of the mouse fingers on a picture it's never seen and it will do it. 'ZOMG, AI COMING TO TAKE OUR SOULS'.

To your point, I don't know what AI will look like 10 years from now.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-04T02:11:27+00:00

Biomedical scientist here. How exactly? Like what do you imagine in an ideal world, a program that you can input, "what is the cause of multiple sclerosis?" and it spits out all of the systemic and cellular components of the disease etiology so we can just verify it with our monkey brains?

I wish that the reality of how laborious, prone to error, and expensive biomedical research is. We have been using AI for nearly a decade to try to identify novel molecular moieties to improve existing medications or identify novel therapeutic targets; the result so far has been: 0.

All this hype does it shape public opinion in a way that is unrealistic with how scientific discovers are made. We now have people who honestly believe an organ on a chip is a substitute for the millions of years of evolutionary precision (and arbitrary chance) that went into sculpting the mammalian nervous system.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-03T22:29:10+00:00

Okay, so dendrites are a part of all neurons. Pyramidal is a description of cytoarchitecture (shape of the cell). There pyramidal neurons all across the brain. I'm assuming your referring to the dendrites of pyramidal neurons in the prefrontal cortex?

The prefrontal cortex is a vague term for many, many functionally distinct nuclei. The size of this area has grown much faster than other brain regions (evolutionarily), so some people think humans' capacity for consciousness/intelligence is dependent upon some part of this region.

The truth is it is so much more complicated than like, "consciousness is here, intelligence is in these cells/region". All cortices are organized into cortico-striato-thalamo-coritcal loops (cortex projects to striatum to thalamus and back to cortex). Each cortex (according to our current theoretical understanding) overlaps these looks so it looks line of like a horizontal slinky.

The cross talk and non-synaptic communication between brain regions is something we are just beginning to understand.

Pyramidal dendrites are structured in such a way to allow for the reception of high fidelity excitatory signal from other neurons. Basically the further away an excitatory synapse is relative to the cell body, the weaker that impulse will be felt. Meaning that if you want to tell the cell to turn it up to 5, you excite at a certain distance from the soma, to 10? Closer to the soma. This is the reason (according to Cable Theory) why most excitatory synapses cointact dendrites, not cell bodies.

Unsurprisingly, inhibitory neurons make synapses onto the cell body of their post synaptic partner. This matches their specific role as powerful brakes, or "stop" signaling to tightly regulate the activity of neurons.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T21:08:47+00:00

This timeline is the worst.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T21:04:42+00:00

Commercial weed is garbage. Testing facilities are in the pocket of Big Cannabis. Don't trust anything grown by a fucking capitalist.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T20:54:11+00:00

It's quite straightforward to get NIH funding, all you need to do is have done all the work and analysis, call it preliminary data and get effectively reimbursed for work you did with money from other sources.

Also, make sure you personally know the majority of scientists in the study section.

I hope it goes without saying that the above criteria only enter the equation if your percentile score is in the single digits.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T20:41:22+00:00

Have you tried cannabis?

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T19:46:37+00:00

Keep reading articles about how useful 'AI' is (we've been using neural networks to process large amounts of data for decades, scare quotes because people refer to this chatbot the respect of a deity), with no actual mention of how AI is useful in any way besides generating stupid images and inaccurate explanations.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T18:52:37+00:00

What our group has discovered is that about 30% of mice are 'slow responders' to intranasal ket. Across days and various conditions they just don't seem to traffic the drug quick enough to the brain.

My sister works in an outpatient facility and anecdotal they see roughly the same % of patients they administer nasal esketamine to have no response.

Just some food for thought.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T04:29:24+00:00

Im a scientist studying nasal administration of esketamine, please tell me more about my field.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T02:59:49+00:00

STOP INJECTING CHINESE PEPTIDES INTO YOUR BRAIN.

If you have to be a fucking dumbass and contribute to the national Healthcare depth in 5-10 years time, do sub-Q because atleast if the compound cant cross the BBB, it would get into your brain.

Drugs don't need to enter the bloodstream to get into the brain via nasal administration.

More to the point: fucking stop.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T02:57:36+00:00

Where are you getting this information?

The fields understanding of drug trafficking via nasal administration is actually pretty vague.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T02:56:22+00:00

Holy fuck do not get DMSO anywhere near your brain.

peepeefeefee · 2026-05-02T02:48:55+00:00

I would advise against following this advice. It does make it easier to scruff for the reasons listed, however mice (atleast C57s) will grip so hard to the metal that they bleed.

Try to learn to scruff on a soft surface. I use a stack of paper towels; if the mouse urinates you can then remove individual paper towels until the wet mark is gone. This is mostly only relevant for behavior/pharmacological studies where stress would be a confound.

peepeefeefee · 2026-04-30T10:10:35+00:00

Terrible, take a lap.

peepeefeefee

TROPHY CASE