http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/05/brain_cells1_h-660x447.jpg

An estimated 10 to 20 percent (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22711522/) of troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which afflict 1.7 million Americans each year. Now the Pentagon’s rolling out a revolutionary initiative to treat the condition: brain implants that one researcher likens to “replacement parts” for damaged gray matter.

“When something happens to the brain right now, there’s so little that the medical community can do,” Krishna Shenoy, associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at Stanford University, told Danger Room. “Our goal is to understand — and then be able to change — how a brain responds to trauma.”

No surprise that military extreme science agency Darpa is behind the project, which is called REPAIR (http://www.darpa.mil/dso/solicitations/baa09-27.htm), or Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery. Yesterday, they announced an initial two-year round of $14.9 million in funding for four institutions, led by Stanford and Brown universities, that will collaborate on the brain-chip project. All in, it’ll involve 10 professors and their research teams, working in neuroscience, psychiatry, brain modeling and even semiconductors.

Significant progress has already been made in understanding brain injury. Scientists can create conceptual, mathematical models of brain activity, and are also able to record the electrical pulses emitted by individual neurons in the brain, which offers insight into how those neurons communicate. That knowledge has spurred rapid progress in neural-assisted prosthetic devices (http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrusts/bio/restbio_tech/revprost/index.htm), a program that Shenoy collaborated on with Geoffrey Ling, the same Darpa program manager behind REPAIR.

But what experts can’t yet do, Shenoy said, is alter those electrical pulses to turn brain circuits on or off. His team will use optogenetics, an emerging technique that involves emitting light pulses to precisely trigger neural activity, to develop an implanted TBI treatment device.

“Before this, emitting light into the brain would be like hitting it with a hammer,” Shenoy said. “What we’re doing now is pin-pointing a single neuron, and that neuron will naturally change its activity depending on the cue.”
The implants developed by the project will likely be composed of electrodes or optical fibers, and will sit on the surface of the brain. They’ll read electrical signals from neurons, and deliver appropriate light pulses to stimulate other brain regions in response. The implants would allow the brain to operate normally, by acting as substitutes for areas that were damaged or “unavailable.”
First up for Shenoy and company are optogenetic tests on mice, rats and eventually monkeys, to better understand how different regions of the brain interact. For example, how one area of the brain knows which signals to send to other parts. Once they’ve got that down, the researchers hope to develop chips that essentially mimic those interactions, so that an implant can “read a signal from region A, bypass damaged area B, and get that signal to C,” Shenoy said.

And while Darpa’s interested in ailing vets, the implants could have broad civilian application, including help for those who’ve suffered a stroke or undergone surgery to remove a brain tumor. If all goes according to plan, Shenoy expects implants for lab animals within four years.
Photo: National Science Foundation


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Not really there yet and still a long way to go but thats promising stuff and alot of good inovations are army based.

I like to volunteer AN as the their first animal to try this on. :)

DOnt think there is technology on this earth that can fix whats going on those in those animals' heads, or whats not going on in there, in these cases its best to put them to sleep.

Sounds a little too complicated when MDMA therapy is widely available, being researched in the US with amazing results and MUCH cheaper. Just give the poor guys some happy pills a few times a month and let them get absorbed back into society at their own pace. Their Grey matter will look like the picture above in no time!!! :)

Behrou MDMA has some pretty bad side effects, including dependence and it can actually cause physical damage to the brain also. I was quite curious about it a while ago but after some extensive research, the cat killed the curiosity instead of the other way around. Plus these guys aren't getting the implants to get happy, but to gain full function of the brain again.

But i just don't see how this is going to happen. How are they going to determine, then control the intervals to fire the electrode to have the desired effect? And i don't see how this is going to be usefull for anything other than a pin sized legions.

Behrou MDMA has some pretty bad side effects, including dependence and it can actually cause physical damage to the brain also. I was quite curious about it a while ago but after some extensive research, the cat killed the curiosity instead of the other way around. Plus these guys aren't getting the implants to get happy, but to gain full function of the brain again.


Dependence is definitely not one of the side effects of MDMA Doktor - I've been doing it for 10 years now every other day and I'm still not dependant!!! ;)

That's of course a "very bad joke" as Sammy would say and joking aside, I'd rate MDMA as one of the least addictive substances out there, much less than sleeping pills, Prozac, cigarettes, Tylenol, weed, alcohol and even Nyquil. This sentiment has even been echoed by the chairman of the ACMD (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs) a British tink-tank tasked by the government for the study of drugs. I remember discussing this in detail with Mahdi a long time ago in one of IC's very first few threads if you dig it up. The reason it is not addictive is that it's practically impossible to do MDMA on a daily basis (like all the other substances which I mentioned) even if you really tried. After the third or fourth day your body would just say no!

As far as the side effects go, they've been dozens and dozens of government sponsored research projects on the matter and the only one that seemed to prove conclusive was an Australian study a few years back in which they subjected mice (or rats) to doses of MDMA equivalent to taking about 20 of today's ecstacy pills (based on MDMA content) everyday for a very long period of time!!! Our poor four legged friends came down with serious memory problems after a few months and that research ended up being the cornerstone of governments telling their citizens see how bad ecstacy is. As if the dosage was not bad enough to make any objective, scientifically minded person cringe, it eventually turned out that the whole thing was a scam and that the reseracher had been giving our little buddies a substance like Valume (if I remember corrctly) and no MDMA was ever used. Big huge controversy ensued and then we started hearing comments like the one from the ACMD.

As an avid researcher on the topic (when I started doing it at 28) and someone who has used it for 10 years (although I joked about the frequency of course) I can tell you objectively that there can be sight effects associated with the use of MDMA. Given a strong enough dose of MDMA, which I would constitute as 150 mg (or equivalent to 3-5 of today's pills or 1-2 of pills 10 years ago), you can completely deplete your Serotonin levels which take around 1-2 weeks to get back to normal. There are two issues that come into play if you exceed these amounts (either in one time use or in the frequency of use):

If the dosage surpasses this amount in a single use, your brain starts to release more Dopamine and not enough Serotonin. There are studies suggesting that Dopamine may be neuro-toxic if the Serotonic reuptakes stay open (expecting to absorb depleted Serotonin) and instead reabsorb Dopamine. The studies have not been conclusive, but nonetheless valuable. This also suggests that smoking weed (and hence releasing more Dopamine) in the latter parts of the experience could increase the possibility of neuro-toxicity as euphoric and spiritually enlightning as it can be. Of course a little brain damage in the name of God or science may be worth the risk to some individuals! ;)

If the frequency of use is more often than the 1-2 week rest and recoup period for the brain, you could potentially regulate or train the way Serotonin is released and reabsorbed in your brain - i.e. your brain would be forced to release Serotonin not becuase of your moood but based on the clock that you're now resetting, release depleted Serotonin, etc. I have not seen any studies in this area and that's completely based on personal experience. It's best not to mess with the internal clock of one's body using any substance or activity.

Of course the most dangerous side effect among users is caused by the fact that kids don't follow these simple guidelines (and this is why education rather than prohibition is soooooooooo important), they go out three times in a week, pop 10 pills in a weekend, hardly get any sleep, smoke weed throughout the experience and all through the week until they're back at it again the next weekend. As you know sleep depravation can be a killer, even if it's not substance induced and smoking weed everyday has its own side-effets and negative influences on ones life (the most important one is becoming lazy). Memory problems and a certain indifference to life will ensue after a few years of doing this every week - I have seen that first hand in younger friends. Last, but certainly not least, is that it causes what I call the "Pink Floyd" syndrome - being propelled so far above social norms and collective intelligence that you feel completely alone - with a view of the world that is so simple and matter-of-fact, you'll fail to understand why people struggle with such simple things. Being way above the social collective leades to a certain indifference in life which can be detrimental to one's development within or interaction with that society.

All in all, using MDMA in a 125 mg dosage (half of what I mentioned above), once every 3-4 weeks is safer than drinking a Starbuck's coffee or a couple of glasses of tea everyday and the benefits far outweigh the potential problems (which are practically none at that dosage and frequency). If I had to go back and change things in my life since 28 when I first tried MDMA after a lot of research, I would not change a thing - but in the portion of my life before than, there would be a lot of things I would have changed.

Having said all that, I'd like to close by saying that if I had exposure to any of these substances (weed, ecstacy, blow, shrooms, etc.) in university, it is very likely that I would have not finished my school. I'm glad I have tried them and I've learnt amazing things on them and because of them, but that's because of the timing in my life and the reasons for which I used them. What I'm trying to say is that if you're considering any of this stuff or doing any of this stuff, just keep your school and its importance in perspective - I know you're smart enough that I don't need to be saying that to you, but sometimes it's important to hear it from someone else. There will be plenty of time through your mid 20's and early 30' which are the real party years of your life because you've established yourself and have nothing to prove to anyone - your only goal is to enjoy yourself and make-up for the lost party years in university.

And we are partying MAJOR after your graduation ceremony - that's a promise. :Ban-Cha:

Behrou jaan I'll reply to you more in depth when i get the time (i have a monster of a midterm coming up), but just to start off SSRI's such as Prozac are not dependance forming at all. I'm assuming that were both defining dependance forming as addictive here.

Secondly, remember that MDMA is an amphetamine and tolerance is built up very quickly to amphetamines (i'm assuming here that MDMA is not an acception, but i'll research it to be sure) leading to dependance. Amphetamines have some pretty nasty withdrawl symptoms too.

And Thirdly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence.png

And one more thing. Are you sure that Marijuana released dopamine? From what I know about cannabinoids, they don't fascilitate the release of any other NT's and they are considered to be NT's themselves. The only thing different about them is that they go through dendritic release, that is, instead of them being released at the axon terminal of a neuron, they are release by the "post synaptic neuron" via the dendrites and then exhert their effects on the "presynaptic neuron". Because marijuana is a depressant I'm assuming the effect that they exhert are inhibitory and they achieve this by decreasing the firing rate of the presynaptic neuron.

This is a great area of interest for me as you probably already know. Not just from a personal standpoint, but also a scholarly one.
I'll answer the rest of the post about the mechanism of MDMA soon.

Behrou jaan I'll reply to you more in depth when i get the time (i have a monster of a midterm coming up), but just to start off SSRI's such as Prozac are not dependance forming at all. I'm assuming that were both defining dependance forming as addictive here.


Ramin jaan, of course the medical community would say SSRI's are not addictive - they generate over $3 billion of revenue annually in the US alone in the Medical/Phamaceutical fields!!! SSRI's by their very nature are addcitive substances, meaning they have to be consumed often (at least once a day if I'm not mistaken) and for prolongued periods (some times permanantly). The dosage will often have to increase in the latter stages and if you stop taking them you start feeling bad. I don't know how you describe addiction, but that's the classical definition for me.

I know people who have been taking them for years and can not even imagine coming off of them - no worse than a heroin addict if you want me to be blunt. I also had a very good friend who was prescribed both Prozac and sleeping pills after his divorce because the doctors felt he was "depressed". He was already on them for about 6 months when I found out about it and I asked him to stop taking them for 3 days. On the 4th day I took him to a club and gave him an MDMA pill (although I prefer the more accurate term administered a does of MDMA ;)) . This guys had never even been to a club in his life and used to listen to Googoosh and Ebi all the time.

He was a little ansi, two hours later he was dancing the night away and making friends with every Iranian person in the club. Since I had done it the week before, I just had a couple of drinks and it basically came to a point that I had to drag this guy out of the club at 6:30 in the morning cause I was falling sleep. Make the long story short, he never took another Prozac, sleeping pill or even MDMA. All he needed was to feel good about himself for a few hours and start rebuilding his life from there. He started going to Latin clubs after that, making friends and now (8 years later) he is happily married to an Iranian girl - who's an absolutely beautiful soul with a super family. A happy ending to a nightmare started by simply filling out a prescription without curing the causes of the problem.

Myself, I have been to the doctor twice in the past 10 years. The 2nd time was years ago because I had serious problems sleeping (also a bad break-up situation). Happy that I got a cure for my problem I took the sleeping pills two nights and on the third morning I got up and threw the bottle out, realizing how easy it was to become depended on it. That night I went to a club by myself (which in itself is a very difficult choice for many people to make), popped a pill, sat there for exactly 4 hours, thought about my life and why I'm having these problems, went home and slept like a baby and in the days that followed I started tackling the problem rather than expecting some magic pill to take them away. What I learnt that night looking at my life on MDMA was that I needed to make some changes in the way I approached things and reacted to them and also how I could do that. Putting it to work beyond that is just a piece of cake. Of course this was related to a specific problem and I had already come to that same realization months earlier about my life in general, compliments of one of mankind's greatest inventions! ;)

By the way, the first time I went to the doctor, I was really sick, they gave me some anti-biotics and sent me home. My situation got even worse in the week that followed. Went back and they said "sorry, you have a viral infection and we shouldn't have given you anti-biotics". They ran every test known to man on me for a month and half after that. By this time I had gotten better on my own and on my last visit they asked me if they could do another set of tests!!! I obvioulsy told them to screw-off. I know you're going to be a good doctor Ramin jaan, because of your deductive reasoning, but don't let the establishment that's built on categorizing problems and prescribing drugs in an almost robotic way to make you into just that a robot. The human mind is a wonderful thing and if the medical industry has become about inputting symptoms and outputting prescription, we may as well have computers do the job 100 times better.

I can give you at least another 3 incredible examples of why I have completely lost my faith in the medical community, one of which includes another case of me being able to solve someone's problem in 5 days when doctors and specialists and dozens of tests failed them for over a month. :mf_seehearspeak:


Secondly, remember that MDMA is an amphetamine and tolerance is built up very quickly to amphetamines (i'm assuming here that MDMA is not an acception, but i'll research it to be sure) leading to dependance. Amphetamines have some pretty nasty withdrawl symptoms too.


Yes, both MDMA and MDA contain the amphetamine molecule while MDE from the same family as the former does not - the effects are almost identical although slightly subdued in MDE. What this suggests and I can confirm it through personal experience is that the Amphetamine like qualities of both MDA and MDMA are minor. Methamphetamine (or speed), the back end of the MDMA molecule is a nasty substance. I have done it only once in my life (knowingly) and would never touch it again - although as you know adulterated MDMA pills may contain meth and I have been very adamanet about staying away from those. It is a very destructive and addictive substance - although its addiction properties are not chemical, rather mental. It's the high that people chase ,and the ensuing sleep depravation which I touched on above, is the main reason they start burning out so quickly.

The reason they become addictive and I mentioned this above as well, is that you can practically take them all day, every day. Much like blow (coke) you can wake up in the morning and if you're not feeling well, you can do a bump. A few hours later, when the sketchy calm-down kicks in, you have to do another bump and so on. This is not the case with any of the MD family of substances. It's practically impossible to conitnue doing them and even if you wanted to, your body would say no at some point and just shut down. The difference is that on meth you're forcing your body to operate outside its normal parameters, often overpowering your mind. On the MD family, it's always your mind that's in control of your body (as it should be) and when it's time, the mind will simply shut the body down.

Having said all this, it is extremely important to note the dose and frequency I have mentioned above, for my argument to be in context.


And Thirdly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence.png


Ramin jaan, I can't comment on this picture alone without knowing what they defined as "active dose" for each substance. Is there an associated article that explains how they came up with this? Does it take into account the half-life of each substance for example, or did they assume for the letal dose that it must be taken all at once? If the active dose for MDMA is the generally accepted 100-125 mg and the lethal dose is for simultaneous consumption of the substance, I don't know anyone who is stupid enough to take 40 of today's pills (which on the high end contain 40 mg of MDMA) at once, unless they were trying to kill themselves. Of course, if that was the case, 80 tablets of Aspirin 325 would be both more accessible and a lot cheaper!!! ;)


And one more thing. Are you sure that Marijuana released dopamine? From what I know about cannabinoids, they don't fascilitate the release of any other NT's and they are considered to be NT's themselves. The only thing different about them is that they go through dendritic release, that is, instead of them being released at the axon terminal of a neuron, they are release by the "post synaptic neuron" via the dendrites and then exhert their effects on the "presynaptic neuron". Because marijuana is a depressant I'm assuming the effect that they exhert are inhibitory and they achieve this by decreasing the firing rate of the presynaptic neuron.


Your explanation is a little too technical for me bro, but I'm 99% sure that THC does release Dopamine, although if I recall correctly, it is an indirect effect - meaning your brain automatically releases Dopamine due to the effects of THC on your body. I don't know if this makes any sense.


This is a great area of interest for me as you probably already know. Not just from a personal standpoint, but also a scholarly one.
I'll answer the rest of the post about the mechanism of MDMA soon.

On the personal side, I think it should be an area of interest to every adult on this planet. On the scholarly side, I think this is the reason you will be a great doctor.

Good luck on your test and we'll talk about this some more when you're done...

I can already tell that this is going to be an discussion that I'm going to like. :)

I know you don't like to read long books and such, but have you ever read "The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxeley. He's the same guy that wrote "A Brave New World". The book is pretty much a first hand account of a mescaline (peyote) trip that he went on. He also has a book called "Heaven and Hell" where he talks about the general and universal need for "escape" in the human species since the start of time and talks about the important role that such escapes (whether drug induced or otherwise) have in society. They are actually pretty short reads and I highly recommend them.

I can already tell that this is going to be an discussion that I'm going to like. :)

I know you don't like to read long books and such, but have you ever read "The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxeley. He's the same guy that wrote "A Brave New World". The book is pretty much a first hand account of a mescaline (peyote) trip that he went on. He also has a book called "Heaven and Hell" where he talks about the general and universal need for "escape" in the human species since the start of time and talks about the important role that such escapes (whether drug induced or otherwise) have in society. They are actually pretty short reads and I highly recommend them.

LOL. You know it little bro. This short attention span is killing me! Making me miss out on a lot of good stuff like these books that sound absolutely fascinating. Would you believe I still haven't read Ishmael? :(

I think we're just going to have to sit down at some point and you can tell me all about these books. The short and sweetened version by Doktor R. :)

BTW, I had no idea that Mescaline and Peyote were the same thing. Always been interested in the latter in a spiritual sense, but have not had the pleasure - of course I would do it properly with the natives and the right rituals. It sounds like a pretty long trip though and even when it comes to that I have a short attention span! ;)

I'm coocking up a juicy response for this. Get yourself ready Mr. M. Muhahahaa!

I'm coocking up a juicy response for this. Get yourself ready Mr. M. Muhahahaa!

LOL. Bring it on dude - you know I love being challenged - although I reserve the right to say "you just have to wait and see for yourself" - seeing is believing ;)

Doktor R, you are needed in the emergency room with a follow up to the discussion here! ;)

Lol. It's coming. I had a week off between the end of the school year and summer school and i got lazy. Plus I think I can add more to this conversation with some first had experience. ;)

Dude, you're supposed to hold-off until graduation. Believe you me, I'd rather you didn't add to this conversation with first hand experience! ;) BTW Doki, why are you taking summer school?

I was kidding about the first had experience behrou jaan. lol
I had to drop a class last quarter and i wanna lighten my unit load for next year so i'm taking two classes during the first session of summer. :D I still owe you a response here and i promise that you'll get one.

I was kidding about the first had experience behrou jaan. lol
I had to drop a class last quarter and i wanna lighten my unit load for next year so i'm taking two classes during the first session of summer. :D I still owe you a response here and i promise that you'll get one.

Good idea bro - on both counts! And don't worry about a timely response - school's the most important thing right now. So, is next year your last one? I'm all pumped up about this graduation party! ;)

Behrou this next year is my last one for UNDERGRADUATE studies. As for the graduation party, YES! hahaha. And I promise that Mr. Allaf kon (aka jenaabaali) will have a response to the original subject of this thread soon.

What do you mean undergrad Doki? I thought you were already in the medical portion of the studies (i.e. you decided not to do your degree and went straight into med school). No?

Hahah. Well it's not impossible to do, but it's quite hard to get into medschool without some kind of degree Behrou jaan. Scratch that. It's quite hard to get in with a degree, it's very very hard to get in without one. I'm not even 100% set on medschool really. More like 98%.

Man, if that's the case, we may have to move the party date up. I'm going to be almost 40 by the time you graduate and sooner or later I have to start acting like a responsible adult - so I hear! ;)

So after further "research" :D into this matter, you'll be glad to know that I have reconsidered my original argument. And it turns out that MDMA (pure MDMA) is actually not that addicting because of it's recovery period. This makes it an anomaly though because it's still a methamphetamine.