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Everybody Loves Science!
pwhodges:
In parts of my childhood I had an enforced post-lunch "rest". That that didn't prevent me having ample time outside as well.
Case:
"Shared molecular neuropathology across major psychiatric disorders parallels polygenic overlap"
--- Quote ---Genes overlap across psychiatric disease
Many genome-wide studies have examined genes associated with a range of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the degree to which the genetic underpinnings of these diseases differ or overlap is unknown. Gandal et al. performed meta-analyses of transcriptomic studies covering five major psychiatric disorders and compared cases and controls to identify coexpressed gene modules. From this, they found that some psychiatric disorders share global gene expression patterns. This overlap in polygenic traits in neuropsychiatric disorders may allow for better diagnosis and treatment.
--- End quote ---
Would be great if this lead to advancements in the diagnostic process. Everybody with mental health trouble can relate to the feeling of wanting to "finally know what is wrong with me, already!" and wanting to have a diagnosis that is reliable, not another addition to a series of 'horrible words' that people with medical degrees have attached to them over the years (*).
Counter to what many people may expect prior to a consulting a mental health professional, a diagnosis doesn't have to feel like a condemnation to a life of medically confirmed deviancy and in-validity, but can rather feel like finally getting an answer to questions that has haunted them for long stretches of their lives. The first step of the four-steps method for dealing with OCD is derived from just such a moment of joy: "It's not me! It's (my) OCD" (to a young Case, OCD felt "like watching yourself go crazy, in full possession of all my mental faculties", so I can definitely relate to the feeling of relief: No, you're not crazy, it's just a part of your brain having a hiccup again).
But mental health diagnostic is rarely simple and clear-cut, it is hard to exclude subjective elements, and it requires a lot of experience.
As far as I can see, this may open the promise of giving psychiatrists another powerful tool.
(*) My last therapist could go on for quite a while about her young trainees' tendency of diagnosing a positively stunning number of female clients with Borderline Personality Disorder. In her opinion, such a diagnosis should not be given earlier than after half a year of weekly consultations, and not to clients younger than 25
Morituri:
I don't know what's actually correct. But to me, Dark Matter and Dark Energy are both profoundly unsatisfying ideas. These forces, this matter, are completely undetectable EXCEPT for the sole phenomenon which we interpret as evidence for it, and to me that seems like a warning that something is wrong with our thinking.
To me it seems that's more a matter of precisely describing the phenomena we need a theory to explain, than it is like formulating any kind of testable theory.
And I can't help thinking that the evidence we've got for them is no more evidence than we started with; we observe phenomena that do not match up with our model, and we're handling it by simply adding things that behave sort of but not really like things in our model, the way the Greeks added epicycles to the orbits of the planets even though, in violation of their own laws of the spheres as they understood them, these epicycles were ill-formed because there was nothing to anchor their centers.
Without any hint as to what's the actual reality, I just can't escape the feeling that these ideas, these things that "don't interact with matter" except by the *only* phenomena we need them to give us explanations for, are things that may be only imagined, the way perfectly sober and serious physicists of an earlier day believed in phlogiston and luminiferous ether. I think maybe they don't reveal things in our model that we can't otherwise detect; our need to invent them to make our model fit, may reveal that our model is itself flawed.
LTK:
Wow Case, I didn't know you were into neurogenetics. This is pretty heavy stuff, I think I got the gist of it, but I'm not entirely surprised that mental disorders are genetically linked this way. It's pretty well known that mental disorders are strongly comorbid: statistically, having one puts you at much higher risk of having more. Autistic people are more likely to be schizophrenic, people with OCD are more likely to be depressed, you name it. That disregulated activity of many of the same genes are behind all of them makes perfect sense.
Even knowing that didn't make it any easier to treat them, though. As with this result, I'm not sure what powerful tools you envision coming from this. It might open up more avenues for drug development, knowing which genes are involved and what resulting neurochemical imbalances require addressing, but that's just step one in a series of many, many steps towards a workable intervention. Theoretically you could devise a treatment that targets the disregulated genes and modifies their activity, but I don't know whether anything like that even exists, and if it does, it's probably highly invasive.
I'd still call it a very promising result and a win for science, but not a reason to throw a parade just yet.
Case:
--- Quote from: LTK on 10 Feb 2018, 15:00 ---Wow Case, I didn't know you were into neurogenetics.
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Neither did I. Is it dangerous? Does it come off in the wash? :oops:
(I followed a link from a German-language article in a "science-mag" called Quanta. Linking the popsci-article on an English-speaking board seemed pointless, so I linked the actual paper)
--- Quote from: LTK on 10 Feb 2018, 15:00 ---Even knowing that didn't make it any easier to treat them, though. As with this result, I'm not sure what powerful tools you envision coming from this.
--- End quote ---
They should be very manly and powerful, but not too manly to make me a coffee.
Jokes aside: I thought this might lead (at some point in the future) to procedures, tools ... wackamaguffins that make diagnosis easier and more reliable, by giving additional quantifiable & measurable results. I probably added a good dose of cheerful mal-comprehension to my cheerful ignorance.
P.S.: On top of that, I'm finalizing a paper right now ... seems the lingo ('rich new physics', 'promising avenues' - you know the drill) has started bleeding into my regular blurbing.
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