Is the virtual world somehow tricking the brain beyond a reasonable doubt?
Is the human mind designed/evolved enough to withstand the brainwashing that takes place when bombarded with digital stimuli?

Online Gaming, Second life, Virtual worlds, Chat rooms and Communities all seem to be a form of digital crack that we all joke about but are we actually sending false signals to our brains that are becoming so real that we can no longer distinguish between real and virtual?

Like with actual Crack, our brains are being rewarded with Dopamine every time we succeed at a positive interaction withing this new world. The chemical reward gets recorded in our brain and somehow starts registering Real-world responses up against the Virtual-world experiences.

It looks like the virtual reactions and responses are starting to outweigh the real world interactions causing our brains to make a deformed choice.

... Just my ramblings!

Exctacy is a crappy drug but i do concur, pure mdma is a whole another thing. At least a week in between is needed to regain the serotonin and dopamin levels. Those supplements are new idea for me, that could really help. The backend is not anyway so bad if you keep your head up and really, really don't do any other drugs at same time. Alcohol really worsens the day after effects.. Clean and happy life and positive attitude reduces the side effects to bare minimum.

I'm seeing in the lit. that most people get it by either eating undercooked infected cats or by eating or drinking water or food that is contaminated by feces from infected cats (and of course, people have pet cats that could be carriers). It just so happens that many many water supplies in Canada and the USA are fed from fresh water supplies run off from fields containing infected animals. I think it's a fair guess to say that insufficient treatment of that water be it from wells or municipal sources could be the middle-man. There is record of occasional outbreaks of infections in which this source is the only reasonable suspect. Bottom line, I think we know who to blame...

It looks like it generally forms cysts in varying places including the brain which winds up effecting serotonin, dopamine, and testosterone levels in the infected individual.

This abstract is easy to read and worth a look. I'd copy/paste it, but that'd be pushing it. Just click:
Waterborne toxoplasmosis - Recent developments

Higher prevalence of toxoplasmosis in victims of traffic accidents suggest increased risk of traffic accident in Toxoplasma-infected inhabitants of Istanbul and its suburbs

Even more interesting (read this one for sure):
Gender differences in behavioural changes induced by latent toxoplasmosis

Food Reward in the Absence of Taste Receptor Signaling

Neuron, Volume 58, Issue 2, 24 April 2008, Page 295
Ivan E. de Araujo, Albino J. Oliveira-Maia, Tatyana D. Sotnikova, Raul R. Gainetdinov, Marc G. Caron, Miguel A.L. Nicolelis and Sidney A. Simon


Summary

Food palatability and hedonic value play central roles in nutrient intake. However, postingestive effects can influence food preferences independently of palatability, although the neurobiological bases of such mechanisms remain poorly understood. Of central interest is whether the same brain reward circuitry that is responsive to palatable rewards also encodes metabolic value independently of taste signaling. Here we show that trpm5−/− mice, which lack the cellular machinery required for sweet taste transduction, can develop a robust preference for sucrose solutions based solely on caloric content. Sucrose intake induced dopamine release in the ventral striatum of these sweet-blind mice, a pattern usually associated with receipt of palatable rewards. Furthermore, single neurons in this same ventral striatal region showed increased sensitivity to caloric intake even in the absence of gustatory inputs. Our findings suggest that calorie-rich nutrients can directly influence brain reward circuits that control food intake independently of palatability or functional taste transduction.

Full Article (Subscription only):

http://preview.tinyurl.com/57pgmn

I have been around ECT, as it's called, for many years. It can be a life-saving intervention in severe depression. It's especially effective in major unipolar depression with pyschomotor slowing. You must realize that these patients can develop such pyschomotor slowing that they become catatonic, unable to eat, or get out of bed. Lay people tend to think of this as voluntary on the part of the patient. It's not.

Modern ECT is very safe. It probably has its effect by increasing brain levels of norepinephrine and dopamine. Many anti-depressants, such as Effexor, mainly target norepinephrine pharmacologically.

The main side-effect of ECT therapy is short-term memory loss. This brings up a whole new interesting subject, the physiology of short-term versus long-term memory. They are processed differently by the brain. ECT affects one, but typically not the other.

There is a high relapse rate after ECT and that is something people need to know. I think it approaches 50%.

"Let's say you're in a situation where crystal meth can help you. Like -- I don't know -- you have too many teeth." -Dave Attell

The brain shutting down dopamine transmitters in response is one of those things I like to mention to intelligent design advocates.

Dystonic reactions, while rarely serious, are nevertheless distressing to those having these involuntary muscle contractions. This is a relatively common side- effect of the neuroleptic class of drugs, i.e Haldol. The drugs mess with your brain's dopamine receptors. Benadryl (the over-the-counter allergy medicine), is the most commonly used antidote.

the dopamine "reward" systemis not always what makes people do altruistic things. If I've already eaten and I opt to make diner for the family, trust me, I'm not getting any kind of "good feeling" or dopamine; I'm doing my responsibility. The dopamine "reward" system is only in place for things you don't normally do or are new to you; over time and repetition, the surge of dopamine is no longer necessary for the person to perform the task. Otherwise we'd constantly be doing "altruistic" things whether they needed to be done or not.
Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine when people try that whole "there is no such thing as altruism" argument; it's fallacious. People actually do perform unpleasant tasks merely because it is "right" or their perceived resonsibility. THere isn't always a good feeling to spur them on. Ask any parent of a newborn on the second week of 2am feedings and diaper changes.

for that definition of altruism...

...what about the personal feeling of reward coming from your brain's chemical reward system by means of dopamine? Does that count as a reward? Would anybody be altruistic without this reward system?

There are stages of grief, and some folks get stuck in one stage or the other, depending on the gravity of the loss. In a relationship, the gravity depending on attachment and intensity, and time passed. If enough time passes with this event, with masses of people stuck in what should be a passing denial stage, you tend to get seriously fucked-up ways of thinking, as most who are interested in meaning and substance beyond some addictive chemical release of dopamine, or a Levi-rise, have seen here on the Sift, as your reliable nay-sayers, pop in and out with some cut-and-paste-, parroted, explanation, as to why it is absurd to believe conspiracies, yadda yadda yadda, ad infinitum, go fuck yerselves.

Proximity and vested interest also plays a part in the denial. This is why people in other countries, pretty much overwhelmingly side with those who say 9/11, was a carefully orchestrated, take-down of the towers, and WTC 7, for political, and financial gain. So, some of the pseudo-intellectual twits among us, would do well with a simple translation: THE DESTRUCTION OF THESE SYMBOLIC STRUCTURES, THE TIMING, THE "OFFICIAL", SO-CALLED, INVESTIGATION, THE OVERWHELMING AMOUNT OF CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE TO THE "OFFICIAL" STORY, ALL POINT TO ONE THING-THE "TERRORISTS", ARE NOT WHO YOU THINK THEY ARE, THE U.S. GOVT. IS NOT WHAT YOU IMAGINE IT TO BE, AND SOME PEOPLE, ARE MAKING AN AWFUL LOT OF MONEY, BY CONSIDERING THE MASSES IDIOTS....which, unfortunately for us masses, is predictably true.

When history is re-written concerning these events, and school children in 2025, remember some imaginary buildings called the Worldwide Trade Center (name changed to further re-program the meatbot) they will understand that no matter what happened on that day in 1999, it is much better to sit quiet and still, take what you are given, remain calm, and return to their regularly, programmed, schedule.

Enzoblue, I think his argument is that the singularity advocates are proposing large modifications to humanity based on the assumption that it will amplify every positive aspect of the human condition and stretch it out over eternity. He challenges this assumption through thought experiments that suggest the singularity might not make us happy; in fact it might make us miserable by robbing us of our most cherished sources of transcendence. At the very least, he argues, we don't know what the new human experience might be like after the singularity because it will be so alien to the current human experience.

I don't think he is saying that all advancement should be targeted towards making us happier. But if a piece of technology's appeal is based on its promise to make us happier we should take the time to think through its ramifications (especially in cases like this which can shake everything to the core) because we certainly have difficulty predicting what will make us happy (e.g.,
http://www.videosift.com/video/Malcolm-Gladwell-on-spaghetti-sauce-happiness-TED-talk http://www.videosift.com/video/The-misguided-Pursuit-of-Happiness--Dan-Gilbert-TEDTalks).

He is championing the case for restraint before we smash the atom so to speak. I also think his usage of the word 'happiness' encapsulates more than the pedestrian need to maximize our individual dopamine levels; it also encapsulates notions of transcendence, meaning, altruism to the extent that our selfish genes will allow us to derive happiness from these 'higher' ideals.

I've had most every drug around, and SSRIs take the cake.

Kicking heroin, nicotine, alcohol, benzos (valium)... they can be pretty bad, but even the horribly taboo heroin is just a "really bad flu" for a while.

SSRIs gave me the worst headaches, messed up vision and balance, all kinds of bad stress and mental mess... they are by far the worst withdrawl I've ever had.

But... they are considered "non-addictive" because they don't touch dopamine. What idiocy.

Oh... anybody stopping SSRIs should switch to prosac - the 9.4 day halflife makes for a MUCH smoother withdrawl.

rembar -- the real question is not whether *you* can cause your prefrontal cortex to get rearranged, raise dopamine levels, pump out endorphins by using your trust of science, but whether everyone can. There are studies that show that placebo effect works through the expectation effect (the anti-depressant study I mentioned), so pulling "wool over the eyes" is an important component of how it works

rembar -- can you rely on your "respect of science" to induce your pituitary to pump out endorphins when drinking tap water? That's essentially what pain-killer homeopathic remedies do.

1. A large part of the placebo effect is the expectation that a pill will work. In one study, depressed people who expected the anti-depressant drug to help them fared significantly better than those who didn't.

2. This power of expectation can quite powerful, beyond what people can induce by "willing" themselves to get better. In addition to helping with pain, there are studies that showed placebo helped with Parkinson's, by increasing level of dopamine in the brain, and with depression, by causing significant changes in the brain
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42930-2002May6

My point is that if homeopathic medicine is cheap, and works for someone through the "power of expectation" effect, why not use it?

3. There's a kind of knee-jerk reaction in US against using this effect. In Denmark and Israel, 50% of the doctors admitted prescribing placebos regularly. Is their health-care much worse? So why is US different in this respect? I would guess that a strong pharmaceutical lobby has something to do with it. Sometimes both a traditional course of treatment and an equivalent placebo treatment are effective at treating the symptoms, but who has better marketing staff?

As far as acupuncture goes, my point was not that it's untestable, but that it can be hard (and perhaps irrelevant?) to determine which fraction of the benefit comes from the placebo effect. Here's an anecdote I came across in NY Times journal

"""r. Howard Brody, a professor of medicine at Michigan State University who is the author of a coming book on placebos, tells a story of two Korean acupuncturists who met at a conference of alternative practitioners and chatted amicably until they discovered that each practiced a slightly different form of acupuncture. They then viciously accused one another of purveying a placebo."""

"A prune-size bit of tissue tucked under the frontal lobes, it controls gut feelings and habits; it's what drives a recovering smoker to yearn for the feel and taste of cigarettes. The "reward circuitry," a network of neurons at the core of the brain, also plays a role. Nicotine boosts the brain's levels of dopamine, the "feel good" neurotransmitter. Another, as yet unknown, chemical in tobacco smoke acts like an antidepressant, blocking an enzyme that breaks down dopamine. So smokers get a double dose of the stuff—and about half end up addicted, essentially, to their own brain chemicals.

Remove the nicotine, though, and the body can't maintain the high dopamine levels on its own. In the brain of a smoker who's trying to quit, receptors start "screaming," says Dr. Norman Edelman of the American Lung Association, "crying out to be satisfied." Smokers often say a cigarette calms them, but by the time they're addicted, the nicotine rush simply halts the first symptoms of withdrawal. "The addiction is why you're nervous in the first place," says Edelman. Longtime smokers also have to end a behavior that's "entrenched in their daily lives," says Corinne Husten, head of the CDC's Office of Smoking and Health. Add in the stresses of, say, running for president, and it's all too easy to slip.

It may seem drastic to call a smoker an "addict" but, says Chris Cartter, who runs QuitNet, the world's largest quit-smoking program, "a lot of doctors view this as on par with overcoming a heroin addiction." The withdrawal isn't as ugly, but it's not pretty, either: shortly after quitting, the typical longtime smoker becomes cranky, has trouble sleeping and making decisions, and gains weight. Usually, the first weeks are the worst, but for some people the symptoms can drag on for a year or more.

That's assuming, however, that the smoker is taking the cold-turkey approach, which there's little reason to do these days. Nicotine gum, approved in 1984, is the oldest anti-smoking aid. (Obama chews it throughout the day.) It's about as effective as the newer patches, inhalers and nasal sprays, all of which placate those screaming receptors without being addictive themselves. Other options include Zyban, which is also marketed as an antidepressant, and Chantix, introduced last year, which eases withdrawal and blocks nicotine's effects."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17193908/site/newsweek/