Via AP,
USA Today displays some pretty intriguing timing and publishes an article with some, dare-I-say-it?, pertinent, contemporary political applications. That is, assuming they're not ALREADY being used...
More after the visual speed bump...
I dunno about you, but I'm certain there are plenty of folks who feel pretty beaten-down by ShrubCo's evil antics, their "dance with the devil in the pale moonlight."
We fret and fuss here about how the sheeple (AKA "the Silent Majority") can't seem to see and hear what we all see and hear.
Lauran Neergaard, who has way too many vowels in her name, has the story:
Bullied mice show brain reacts to stress
By Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Any bully's victim knows the experience can cause lingering fear. Now scientists watching big mice intimidate small ones have discovered the stress spurs genetic changes in the brain -- a finding that may help research into depression and other mental illnesses.
The experiment suggests a part of the brain linked to addiction also plays a previously unsuspected role in illnesses characterized by chronic anxiety and social withdrawal, Texas researchers report Thursday in the journal Science.
//CHOP//
Neuroscientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center wanted to test the role of the brain's "reward pathway" in depression-like behavior. This brain circuitry is involved in emotional learning, and recognizing pleasure, and thus has a role in addiction. But people with major depression become almost numb, unable to experience pleasure, suggesting another role for the reward pathway.
Enter the mice, normally sociable creatures who quickly determine their pecking order, steering clear of aggressors in favor of friendlier company.
The Texas researchers subjected some small brown mice to intimidation more intense than they'd face in the wild: Each was placed for five minutes in the cage of a particularly aggressive, large white mouse, who battled the little one into a corner. Then, researchers divided the cage with a perforated, plexiglass divider for 24 hours -- so the little mouse was in no physical danger, but saw and smelled the aggressor. For 10 days, each little mouse met a new bully.
The bullied mice emerged drastically cowed. Four weeks later, they still fearfully withdrew from even presumably friendly little mice.
))prune -- not Danish, you cartoon-obsessed dorks))
Lauren then goes on and talks about how this one chemical in proper levels in one's mesolimbic dopamine debenture actuarial infrastructure...well you get the idea. Read the damn article if you MUST know.
Painfully, she doesn't explain how to get people -- I mean, mice/meeses -- OUT of being forever cowed.
"The ability of stress to induce (the chemical) in this reward circuitry is probably a good thing" from an evolutionary standpoint, Dr. Eric Nestler, UT Southwestern's psychiatry chairman, said. "If you're constantly subjected to something bad like being beaten up, it makes sense to avoid what's beating you up."
But extreme stress can throw that normally protective system into overdrive, he explained.
That's similar to what can happen in people, when someone genetically predisposed to depression experiences a first bout after an emotionally stressful event. (My emphasis)
Maybe Shrub's right: "9/11 changed everything."