Reasons to be cheerful!

[jumbojak]

That's pretty cool xSilverPhinx. I doubt I could understand it when it's in print but I'll try.

[Sandra Craft]

I don't know exactly when it'll be available online, but when it is, you can be sure I'll link to it here!

This is so wonderful, congratulations!      

[xSilverPhinx]

I doubt I could understand it when it's in print but I'll try.

It has to do with caffeine attenuating the expression of fear memories. It's some interesting stuff. I don't fully agree with some of their conclusions in the paper but then again I was a mere slave undergrad intern at the time...

[Biggus Dickus]

I doubt I could understand it when it's in print but I'll try.

It has to do with caffeine attenuating the expression of fear memories. It's some interesting stuff. I don't fully agree with some of their conclusions in the paper but then again I was a mere slave undergrad intern at the time...

Interesting, similar I suppose to the thought that exposure to chronic caffeine during pre-adolescence or adolescence specifically affects hippocampus-dependent learning and memory as opposed to learning and memory in general?

[xSilverPhinx]

I doubt I could understand it when it's in print but I'll try.

It has to do with caffeine attenuating the expression of fear memories. It's some interesting stuff. I don't fully agree with some of their conclusions in the paper but then again I was a mere slave undergrad intern at the time...

Interesting, similar I suppose to the thought that exposure to chronic caffeine during pre-adolescence or adolescence specifically affects hippocampus-dependent learning and memory as opposed to learning and memory in general?

Good question! Interesting that you mention adolescents (the theme of my more important paper ).

We didn't evaluate chronic caffeine exposure, just acute administrations in adults before and after "remembering" sessions in a hippocampus-dependent task (contextual memory). The idea is that caffeine facilitates reconsolidation of an aversive memory by changing the emotional valence of the memory (just how aversive it is). I think it probably has more to do with diverted attention which cause the animals to be distracted during the remembering sessions, but we didn't test for that, so I can't say. 

Younger animals with chronic exposure to caffeine will most probably behave differently.   

Before animals reach adulthood there are a lot of structural and functional modifications going on, so it's very possible that caffeine could be influencing hippocampus-dependent learning and memory. Or maybe the pre-frontal cortex (attention), which develops much later. I don't know. There could be a receptor thing going on as well, if there is a higher number of receptors for caffeine which facilitate or impair learning in those age groups then there will be different behavioural outcomes. 

What exactly do you mean by "learning and memory in general"? The hippocampus in humans is important for episodic memories, especially. There are types of learning that do not depend on the hippocampus, such as cued learning, in which the animal learns to associate a beep with an aversive experience, such as a footshock. In that case, the amygdala plays a key role.

[xSilverPhinx]

Just bought a book I've been wanting to read for quite a while:



It'll arrive only in June, though. 

[Dragonia]

I doubt I could understand it when it's in print but I'll try.

It has to do with caffeine attenuating the expression of fear memories. It's some interesting stuff. I don't fully agree with some of their conclusions in the paper but then again I was a mere slave undergrad intern at the time...

Wow, good job! It sounds interesting and I can't wait to read it!

[xSilverPhinx]

I doubt I could understand it when it's in print but I'll try.

It has to do with caffeine attenuating the expression of fear memories. It's some interesting stuff. I don't fully agree with some of their conclusions in the paper but then again I was a mere slave undergrad intern at the time...

Wow, good job! It sounds interesting and I can't wait to read it!

It's been sent to production. I've been obsessively tracking its progress.

[Dragonia]

Geez, there are so many steps! And with each one being documented, I can see how you could get obsessed with waiting for the next little step to show up. It *looks like* the process is almost complete..... hopefully? 

[Dave]

Why do there seem to be repeat loops, submitted-checked-assigned-submitted-checked-assigned etc? Does that mean rewrites and re-submisdions or different stages of editing?

[xSilverPhinx]

Geez, there are so many steps! And with each one being documented, I can see how you could get obsessed with waiting for the next little step to show up. It *looks like* the process is almost complete..... hopefully? 

Yeah, mostly the obsession comes from wanting to know if it's been accepted or rejected...or if the peer reviewers and editor asked for further experiments or rewrites. After that it gets easier.

The peer review process is great for science and all, but it can be difficult when the rejection comes. Then, usually, the suggestions are incorporated into the paper, further experiments are performed, etc...we make it better. When I finish my own paper in which I am going to share first authorship, it's essentially going to be my baby, you don't want to read bad things about your baby! We joke about it at the lab, how long each paper's gestation period was and all. This one's was pretty long and stressful.

I have another one in the oven, again as a co-author, on the effects of fluoxetine (prozac) on memory generalization, which is a primary symptom of disorders such as PTSD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Overgeneralization is when robust and pathological memories are triggered by things with little to no association with traumatic events, and we found that fluoxetine keeps memories hippocampus-dependant, which means it lessens this kind of generalization, and saw what kind of subcellular structure may be responsible for this (dendritic spine shape). It was submitted to Neuropsychopharmacology, another of Nature's journals, still stuck in the peer-review process. We'll probably get an answer soon.



*deep breath*

[xSilverPhinx]

Why do there seem to be repeat loops, submitted-checked-assigned-submitted-checked-assigned etc? Does that mean rewrites and re-submisdions or different stages of editing?

The corresponding author/group leader knows for sure, but I think after a general quality check they asked for the paper to be fixed and resubmitted...before being officially submitted. I don't know why that happened that many times.

[Harmonie]

I had the most difficult of my finals today - my jury and piano. I did pretty well on both. Got told it was my best jury, which was really good. And I made a mid-B on my piano exam. Honestly, I wasn't even expecting that. I wasn't even sure what I was going to come out of there with.

Piano was straight-up hell this semester (because I suck lol). I'm so glad I am done with those classes forever.

[jumbojak]

On Sunday we cut hay and I started getting one of our four wheel wagons back into usable shape. It's pretty beat up and I was thinking about painting it but didn't want to fool with a wire wheel to clean up all the chunky rust. In the back of my head I was wishing for a needle scaler to make quick work of the job.

Fast forward to yesterday and I was perusing the local junk store on my way home from work. There wasn't much of interest but I noticed two boxes pushed back under a shelf labeled "Texas Pneumatic"! There ware two brand new needle scalers for about a $300 discount off list price.

Now I can take chunky rust and bubbled paint off with ease. It was a small thing but made me smile. It was funny having to explain to people what I was buying. Even the old guys didn't know what the hell it was. The cashier and lady in line behind me thought I was crazy to pay what I did. Little did they know...

[Guardian85]

So the bosses and the lady from the state employment agency have agreed with me that I should be licenced for these:

So this and most of next week will be spent in training to get a licence to operate these machines (don't know what they are called in English).
Started today and the theory is quite dull, but I expect the practical bits will be much more fun.