did you hear the story about Socrates?
he sat outside all day reading some material he could not digest. by dusk a crowd had gathered and some youth threw sleeping bags by the hillside to see whether he might stay out all night. dawn arrived and before departing he offered a prayer to the social dynamic goddess. that's when Xanthippe doinked him on the head with a message in a bottle, "dude where are you?," it read. "everyone's having capers and bread at Protagoras' house"
WTF?
half of the stuff you post here makes no sense to me. initially, i thought i was dense, but now i'm thinking, it's you.
Coming back to the issue of AS or ASD, i just heard on the news interesting results with micro-brains in a petri dish vs autism: http://www.npr.org/s...sm-and-epilepsy
Pasca says the cells did migrate, in a surprising way. "They don't just simply crawl, but they actually jump," he says. "So they look for a few hours in the direction in which they want to move, they sort of decide on what they want to do, and then suddenly they make a jump."
Pasca suspected this migration process might be disrupted by a genetic disorder called Timothy syndrome, which can cause a form of autism and epilepsy. So he repeated the experiment, using stem cells derived from the skin cells of a person who had Timothy syndrome.
And sure enough, the cells carrying the genetic mutation didn't jump as far as healthy cells did. "They moved inefficiently," Pasca says.
Next Pasca wondered if there might be some way to fix the migration problem. He thought there might be, because Timothy syndrome causes cells to let in too much calcium. And he knew that several existing blood pressure drugs work by blocking calcium from entering cells.
So the team tried adding one of these calcium blockers to the petri dish containing clusters of brain cells that weren't migrating normally. And it worked. "If you do treat the cultures with this calcium blocker, you can actually restore the migration of cells in a dish," Pasca says.
Now, the experiment involved Timothy syndrome vs control and can't be generalized to all types of autism or epilepsy, nevertheless the calcium connection is puzzling. we do know that calcium is part of excitotoxicity mediated by NMDA stimulation.
we also do know that calcium blockers (CCB) are neuroprotective:
CCBs are antihypertensive agents that block various cal- cium channels, preventing the influx of calcium into the cell. Hypertension is a risk factor for dementia in general and AD in particular and increase of intracellular calcium is often one of the initial signs of neuronal cell death in neurodegenera- tive diseases. An in vitro study has suggested that blockade of specific calcium channels are necessary for CCBs neuroprotective effects from a-beta associated neurotoxicity (e.g., P/Q- and N-type calcium channels) [201]. CCBs can further be divided into dihydropyridine and non-dihydropyridine classes.
Most of the CCBs studied in AD are of the dihydropyridine class. Some of the physiologic effects observed with these compounds include improvement of regional cerebral blood flow (nilvadipine), reduced a-beta levels (nilvadipine, nitrendipine), antiinflammatory effects (nimodipine), and neuroprotection (isradipine, nimodipine) [202-206]. Several dihydropyridine CCBs have demonstrated the ability to lessen cognitive decline. Although correcting hypertension is likely beneficial in itself, clinical efficacy has occurred regardless of baseline hypertension status [207]. Treatment effects may also depend on BBB permeability as nilvadipine, a highly liphophilic and BBB permeable CCB, prevented cognitive decline in MCI patients whereas amlodipine, which has low lipophilicity and BBB penetration, did not demonstrate this benefit [208]. CCBs in general are also well tolerated [207]. A Cochrane review of the subject concluded that nimodipine may offer some benefit in the treatment of dementia caused by AD, vascular disease, or a combination of the two conditions [209].
Edit, for the person who just voted this post "pointless, timewasting" : fuck you too!
Edited by jack black, 27 April 2017 - 02:34 PM.