Human Behavior

Sugar, high-fructose corn syrup linked to ADHD, bipolar, aggressive behavior – UPI News

Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Diets high in sugar may increase a person's risk for developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder and aggressive behaviors, according to a report published Friday by the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus suggest that fructose, a component of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, and uric acid, a fructose metabolite, may work to bring about the onset of these disorders in those genetically predisposed to them.

By lowering energy in cells, fructose "triggers a foraging response similar to what occurs in starvation," which effectively stimulates behaviors such as risk taking, impulsivity, rapid decision making and aggressiveness, the researchers said.

This foraging response shares similarities with behavioral disorders such as ADHD, as well as bipolar disorder and aggressive behavior, they said.

"There have been many reports suggesting that sugar or other added sweeteners such as high-fructose corn syrup may be able to cause or aggravate various behavioral disorders," study co-author Dr. Richard Johnson told UPI.

"The evidence is based on the unique ability of fructose to lower energy that triggers a foraging type of response," said Johnson, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The theory is based on "an evolutionary-based survival pathway" used by animals to protect against starvation, according to Johnson and his colleagues.

Historically, animals and humans used this response for survival, understanding that they needed to take certain risks to obtain food and avoid starvation and death, the researchers said.

However, this survival pathway is now activated by the metabolism of fructose, leading to the storage of fat in the liver and blood, the development of insulin resistance and a decrease in energy expenditure, earlier research by Johnson and his colleagues suggested.

The introduction of refined sugar and high-fructose corn syrup into the human diet has led to a significant increase in fructose intake over the past 300 to 400 years, and Johnson and his colleagues argue that this level of intake is higher "than nature intended."

In addition to fueling epidemics in obesity and diabetes, high-fructose intake can lead to problem behaviors, as human cells seek to restore their lost energy.

The new report describes how high amounts of fructose found in refined sugars in the typical Western diet may contribute to the development of behavioral disorders.

Sugar does not cause these behaviors, however, as it's just a contributing factor, researchers emphasized.

"The identification of fructose as a risk factor does not negate the importance of genetic, familial, physical, emotional and environmental factors that shape mental health," Johnson said.

Conditions such as ADHD and bipolar disorder are genetic -- meaning they're passed from parent to child -- but they also have some "environmental components," according to Dr. L. Eugene Arnold, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University.

"Physical and mental health ... impact each other," said Arnold, a resident expert with Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, or CHADD, an education and advocacy organization for people with the condition and their caregivers.

Currently, CHADD doesn't offer guidance with regard to diet. However, the organization does cite research noting links between sugar intake and the worsening of ADHD symptoms.

With that in mind, Arnold recommends a diet built around "natural, whole foods," such as the Mediterranean diet.

"A rule of thumb is if the list of ingredients on a food product label is so long you don't want to read it, don't buy it," he said.

More research is needed to investigate the role of sugar and uric acid on mental health, especially with drugs designed to inhibit fructose metabolism for the treatment of diabetes and metabolic syndrome on the horizon, Johnson said.

For now, "reducing intake of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, especially sugary beverages, may be of additional benefit in preventing or helping behavioral disorders such as ADHD and bipolar disorder," he said.

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Sugar, high-fructose corn syrup linked to ADHD, bipolar, aggressive behavior - UPI News

Human Behavior

A Viral Theory Cited by Health Officials Draws Fire From Scientists – The New York Times

As the coronavirus pandemic erupted this spring, two Stanford University professors Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Scott W. Atlas bonded over a shared concern that lockdowns were creating economic and societal devastation.

Now Dr. Atlas is President Trumps pandemic adviser, a powerful voice inside the White House. And Dr. Bhattacharya is one of three authors of the so-called Great Barrington Declaration, a scientific treatise that calls for allowing the coronavirus to spread naturally in order to achieve herd immunity the point at which enough people have been infected to stall transmission of the pathogen in the community.

While Dr. Atlas and administration officials have denied advocating this approach, they have praised the ideas in the declaration. The message is aligned with Mr. Trumps vocal opposition on the campaign trail to lockdowns, even as the country grapples with renewed surges of the virus.

The central proposition which, according to the declarations website, is supported by thousands of signatories who identify as science or health professionals is that to contain the coronavirus, people who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal while those at high risk are protected from infection.

Younger Americans should return to workplaces, schools, shops and restaurants, while older Americans would remain cloistered from the virus as it spreads, receiving such services as grocery deliveries and medical care.

Eventually so many younger Americans will have been exposed, and presumably will have developed some immunity, that the virus will not be able to maintain its hold on the communities, the declaration contends.

But it does not offer details on how the strategy would work in practice. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the governments top infectious disease expert, has dismissed the declaration as unscientific, dangerous and total nonsense. Others have called it unethical, particularly for multigenerational families and communities of color.

Alarmed and angry, 80 experts on Wednesday published a manifesto of their own, the John Snow Memorandum (named after a legendary epidemiologist), saying that the declarations approach would endanger Americans who have underlying conditions that put them at high risk from severe Covid-19 at least one-third of U.S. citizens, by most estimates and result in perhaps a half-million deaths.

I think its wrong, I think its unsafe, I think it invites people to act in ways that have the potential to do an enormous amount of harm, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, an infectious disease expert at Harvard University and one of the signatories to the Snow memo. You dont roll out disease you roll out vaccination.

The declaration grew out of a gathering hosted in Great Barrington, Mass., by the American Institute for Economic Research, a think tank dedicated to free-market principles that partners with the Charles Koch Institute, founded by the billionaire industrialist to provide support to libertarian-leaning causes and organizations.

On Oct. 5, the day after the declaration was made public, the three authors Dr. Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard arrived in Washington at the invitation of Dr. Atlas to present their plan to a small but powerful audience: the health and human services secretary, Alex M. Azar II.

Over the course of an hourlong meeting in a wood-paneled, sixth-floor suite atop the health departments headquarters, the researchers walked the secretary and Dr. Atlas through their thinking.

Mr. Azar later tweeted: We heard strong reinforcement of the Trump Administrations strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace.

Battered by lost jobs, pandemic fatigue and isolation, and worried for their children, there is little doubt that Americans loathe lockdowns, although many still see them as necessary to control the virus.

Among scientists, too, there is near-universal agreement that lockdowns are harmful. Even Dr. Fauci has suggested that another national lockdown must be instituted only as a last resort.

But mostly, scientific disagreement centers on whether lockdowns are a necessary move when other strategies to contain the virus have not even been put in place, or have failed.

This has been wrongly framed as a debate between lockdown and no lockdown, said Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London.

Dr. David Nabarro, a special envoy to the World Health Organization, has urged governments not to resort to lockdowns as the primary method to control the virus. Masks, social distancing, fewer crowds, testing and tracing these are the ways to control the virus in the long run, he said in an interview.

But the lockdowns in the spring were necessary, he added, as emergency measures to give countries time to put in place strategies to control the virus.

There is a middle way, Dr. Nabarro added, between strict lockdowns and letting the virus freely infect people. If only we had a few more world leaders who would understand this, we wouldnt have this debate going on.

But Dr. Bhattacharya and his supporters go further. They say that governments should never have imposed lockdowns at all, and never should have tried to institute coronavirus testing and contact-tracing. Instead, the trillions of dollars in economic aid approved by Congress should have been spent on programs to protect those at highest risk of illness and death.

The manifestos central tenet is that young people should be free to resume normal life to re-enter the work force, attend college, dine in restaurants. They would become infected, hopefully without much illness, and gain immunity.

Eventually the virus would not be able to find new victims and would fade away.

People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity, the declaration said.

The strategy includes keeping older people cloistered, with regular testing to detect possible outbreaks in nursing homes, and with groceries and other necessities delivered to anyone over 60 sheltering at home. Alternately, older people might move to other facilities for isolation or quarantine.

There would be no widespread surveillance for the coronavirus. People would be given information about testing, with an emphasis on those who have symptoms but when and how to get tested, and whether to isolate if infected, would be left up to individuals.

Testing and isolating indiscriminately causes too much collateral damage for it to be useful, Dr. Bhattacharya said.

But some experts said the strategy was highly impractical, given the difficulty in determining who is truly susceptible. The risk of death from Covid-19 rises sharply with age, but about 37 percent of adults in America also are at significant risk because of obesity, diabetes or other underlying conditions.

The most recent statistics indicate that 20 percent of deaths from Covid-19 occur in people under age 65. And about a third of people who have recovered from the disease, including the young, still struggle with symptoms weeks later (a phenomenon the Barrington authors contest). Its amazingly irresponsible not to take these risks into account, Dr. Nabarro said.

The declarations strategy is both unethical and fails to account for human behavior, said Ruth Faden, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University.

Many high-risk groups people who live in multigenerational families or in crowded living situations, or who have diabetes and obesity are disproportionately found in poor communities, she said. The declarations strategy would require them to move away from their families or to risk having younger family members bring the virus home.

Are we going to compel these people to leave? And if were not going to compel them to leave, then hows this supposed to go? she said. Then you are going to see the deaths that you say were not going to see.

Reopening schools when community levels of the virus are high similarly rests on a misguided assumption that parents and teachers would agree to the strategy, she added.

Scientists who have signed the declaration did not offer many details for putting its ideas in place.

I dont know exactly how it would work, said Gabriela Gomes, a mathematical modeler at the University of Strathclyde in Britain and one of 42 co-signers.

Another supporter, Paul McKeigue, a genetic epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, said, Specific control measures for preventing coronavirus transmission are not my area of expertise.

The lack of a clear plan has turned away even some would-be supporters. Dr. Stefan Baral, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, attended part of the Great Barrington, Mass., meeting and said he was sympathetic to the effort.

But Dr. Baral, a Swedish citizen who supports that countrys approach, said he did not sign the declaration because it did not lay out a plan for workplace or housing accommodations for people at risk.

Sweden adopted an unrestrictive approach, offering guidelines to its citizens but leaving compliance up to them. The country is often cited as the model for controlling the virus without restrictions, but has among the highest death rates in the world, particularly among the elderly. It has also suffered economic losses comparable to those of other Nordic countries.

Its possible to avoid even those risks without lockdowns if governments impose some reasonable restrictions like physical distancing and universal masks and install test and trace strategies, Dr. Nabarro said.

I will contest anybody who says it is undoable, he added. Its doable without collateral damage if you bring together all the local communities.

The town of Great Barrington, Mass., home to the American Institute for Economic Research, recently distanced itself from the declaration, saying the strategy it proposed could cost millions of lives.

Anyone who might avoid Great Barrington, due to confusion over the Declaration, is invited to visit and see how COVID-safe works in a small New England town, the towns leaders wrote.

Please wear a mask.

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A Viral Theory Cited by Health Officials Draws Fire From Scientists - The New York Times

Human Behavior

People Trying to Control Your Mind Have More Tools Than Ever – VICE

Are you susceptible to mind control?

Both Donald Trump and Barack Obama have been accused of using some kind of hypnosis or mind control to cast a spell over unsuspecting Americans. Media companies, consolidated in ever fewer hands, can seem like cults that are brainwashing their audiences with propaganda. And online influence campaigns can lead us down dark rabbit holes, manipulate our emotions, or just trick us into buying stuff we dont need.

Of course, losing ones personal autonomy to some sinister force has taken many forms over the years.

For example, if you ever notice your head rotating a full 360 degrees or find yourself blaspheming in ancient tongues, you might be experiencing demonic possession, whichlike zombiesshow us mind controls roots in faith and folklore. But mind control goes way beyond the supernatural. Take the CIAs Project MKUltra, a series of dangerous, unethical, Cold War experiments that used torture, sensory deprivation, and drugs like LSD on thousands of subjects, aiming to perfect methods for controlling human behavior.

These days, much of the mind-control debate centers on social media, which uses little psychological rewards and punishments to condition users into new habits and behaviors. YouTube, with its reported penchant for pushing viewers toward extremist content has been called The Great Radicalizer.

The good news is that whether youre talking about politicians or would-be digital manipulators, most supposed mind-control methods dont exactly work as advertised. The bad news is that there are certainly plenty of governments, businesses, and scientists whod love to puppet you like a marionette, and theyre not likely to give up trying.

In this episode of Complexify, we got mesmerized by the world of mind-control, probing creepy street hypnotists and subliminal chicanery in an effort to master this spellbinding subject. Heres what we learned.

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People Trying to Control Your Mind Have More Tools Than Ever - VICE

Human Behavior

Are Trinity and its Constituents Protecting the Nest? – The Trinity Tripod

Jack Carroll 24

Staff Writer

Given the recent surge in positive COVID-19 cases in the last two weeks, as well as the Colleges struggle to contain the spread of the virus at Trinity, it could be potentially harmful for students to remain on campus for the fall semester unless conditions change.

As the COVID-19 dashboard recently reported an ominous total of 56 active cases (down to 18 at the time of this writing), it is evident that the reopening plansthe consequences of which are not yet fully understoodhave so far been ineffective in preventing the contraction and spread of the deadly virus that has already claimed the lives of more than 219,000 people in the United States alone.

Before going any further it would be unfair to assign the entire weight of responsibility for the rise in cases to the reopening plans. Any current student with a pair of eyes, a smartphone, and a tinge of common sense would be able to realize that the careless behavior of some students have not helped the College in its dying effort to Protect the Nest.

Indeed, if Trinity is a nest, then the nest has become littered and sickened with White Claws, discarded masks, and respiratory illness.

Nonetheless, last summer, Trinity joined many other institutions across the country in making the decision to reopen in the admirable attempt to provide its students with a quality education and a sense of community amidst the extremely difficult circumstances. However, there have been some challenges up to this point.

The Tripod recently reported that infected students were sent to quarantine on the same floor as non-infected students in the Stowe and Clemens dormitories. It was also reported that this move was made without any prior warnings or notifications to residents of either of these dormitories. In addition, the one student, one room idea for student housing was apparently revised.

It is further worth highlighting that the previous decisions essentially reintroduce any of the averted health risks from the social-distancing and mask mandates outlined in the Community Contractwhich is, in reality, a five page document which has proven to have as little influence on human behavior as a United Nations resolution calling for world peace.

Since some seem to have forgotten the implications and potential outcomes of the illness on the community, it is evident that the failure of some to recognize the virus as a threat to those on and off campus has played a role in the conditions that have developed to date.

Amongst those who have not been impacted by the virus, it is often not regarded as a severe illness. Many unaffected people tend to view the COVID-19 pandemic as an abstract phenomenon that only threatens the elderly, residents of crowded cities, and patients in nursing homes.This is far from the truth.

To those who think that their luck makes them more knowledgeable than medical experts at Johns Hopkins and the Centers for Disease Control, it is important to take the time to do some reading on how the virus has impacted the lives of certain individuals and families across the country.

In September, a sophomore at Appalachian State University in North Carolina passed away after suffering from neurological complications caused by the coronavirus. Disturbingly enough, ASU is still open today and its COVID-19 dashboard dismally reported over 100 active daily cases at the time this piece was written.

In New York City, where the virus has lead to the death of over 33,000 residents (which, for a sense of proportion, is the equivalent to the disappearance of the entire student body of UConn amongst each of its schools and campuses), coronavirus-stricken corpses were wrapped in orange body bags and placed in the hallways of the Wyckoff Hospital in Brooklyn in the months following the initial outbreak of the pandemic.

Also, in the spring of this year, an emergency room doctor at a Manhattan hospital committed suicide after heroically working at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic in one of the most affected cities in the country.

These real-life and devastating accounts hardly scratch the surface of the endless suffering that comprises the ever-rising COVID-19 statistics. Speaking of which, at the time this article was written, the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard reported over 8 million confirmed cases in the U.S. and over 39 million globally.

It was recently reported in The Wall Street Journal that the U.S. reached the highest level of daily cases since mid-August this past Wednesday. In the same article, it was also reported that the data from the University of Washingtons Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that an additional 180,000 deaths could occur in the U.S. by February.

On Oct. 15, the Hartford Courant released data from Governor Ned Lamont that identified the city of Hartford as one of 11 coronavirus hotspots in Connecticut.

As far as students such as myself are concerned, it is evident that many are eager to enjoy a rewarding college experience. Despite my frustrations with some of the behavior that has taken place, I have the utmost empathy for my peers as we have all had our high school graduations and first semesters of college hindered by such devastating and unprecedented conditions.

Nonetheless, given the COVID-19 case count at Trinity and its continual ebb and flow, as well as the fact that there is not a vaccine that is going to be available in the near future, the question now becomes: How will we protect the nest? If the case count continues along an upwards trajectory, it could become increasingly possible that instruction moves online at some point during the school year.

As I continue my studies during the fall semester, I will reserve my ambivalent thoughts about the current state of affairs at Trinity. Most of all, I wish a swift recovery for my on-campus peers who are infected with COVID-19, and a productive end to the semester for everyone.

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Are Trinity and its Constituents Protecting the Nest? - The Trinity Tripod

Human Behavior

Point of View The same strategies can help us recover from both the pandemic and the climate crisis – Palm Beach Post

WilliamCoty Keller| The Daytona Beach News-Journal

Before the pandemic,in spite of growingGDP, stockmarket highs and low unemployment,almost half American families were in bad shape financially.

Plus,we were doing nothing to avert the climate crisis. Lets not return to that scenario. Instead,we needa recovery that solves boththeseproblems.

United Wayreports thatwhen COVID-19 hit, nearly 2.6 million Florida households were considered ALICE (AssetLimited,IncomeConstrained,Employed)unable to afford the basics for survivaleven though theywereworking. When we add inonemillion families that were in poverty, 46% of Floridas 7.8 millionhouseholds were inadirefinancialsituation before the pandemic.

Meanwhile,wewereexperiencingmoreextreme weather,wild fires,droughtsand floods. What lies ahead isevenmore frightening.TheUnion of Concerned ScientistspredictsthatpartsofFlorida will becomemiserable, if not unlivable,withkiller heat.

Asthe UN panelon climatereported, Absent radical changes in energy policy and human behavior, we should expectsevere economic and humanitarian crises by as early as 2030.

What can we do to recover?Here are four steps:

Other benefits of carbon farming are increasing the soils ability to hold water and protectagainst erosion.

Lets support policies thatsequester carbon such as theHouse DemocratsClimateCrisis Action Plan,which dedicatesa chapter to investing in agriculture as a climate solution.In hisPlan for Rural America,presidential candidate Joe Biden promises to make the United States agricultural sector the first in the world to achieve net-zeroemissions, in part by increasing payments to farmers for carbon farming.

Lets abandon any ambitions to return to the pre-COVID 19 status quo.Lets instead set our sights on a recoverythat is effective (in that it will provide good-paying jobs and eliminate the cause of global warming) andthat isjust (it will benefit all Americans).

WILLIAM "COTY" KELLER, PORT CHARLOTTE

Editor's note:Keller is an ecologist wholives and works in Port Charlotte.This was first publishedin the Fall 2020edition ofCritical Times.

The Invading Sea isthe opinion armof the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a collaborative of news organizations across the state focusing on the threats posed by the warming climate.

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Point of View The same strategies can help us recover from both the pandemic and the climate crisis - Palm Beach Post

Physiology

Researchers Examine Effects of Repeated Droughts on Different Kinds of Forests – Noozhawk

Anna-Trugman

Drought is endemic to the American West, along with heatwaves and intense wildfires. But scientists are only beginning to understand how the effects of multiple droughts can compound to affect forests differently than a single drought alone.

UC Santa Barbara forest ecologist Anna Trugman along with her colleagues at the University of Utah, Stanford University and the U.S. Forest Service investigated the effects of repeated, extreme droughts on various types of forests around the globe.

They found that a variety of factors can increase and decrease a forests resilience to subsequent droughts. However, the study, published in Nature Climate Change, concluded that successive droughts are generally increasingly detrimental to forests, even when each drought was no more extreme than the initial one.

Droughts usually leave individual trees more vulnerable to subsequent droughts. Compounding extreme events can be really stressful on forests and trees, said Trugman, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography.

She compares the experience to a person battling an illness: Youll be harder hit if you get sick again while youre still recovering.

That said, the case is not quite so clear cut. Theoretically, responses to subsequent droughts could be quite varied depending on a wide range of tree-level and ecosystem-level factors, said lead author William Anderegg, an assistant professor at the University of Utah.

So, while a drought may place a tree under considerable stress, it could also kill off some of its neighbors, leaving the survivors with less competition for water should arid conditions return.

Trugman and her colleagues used a variety of data sources to investigate this effect on a broad scale. Tree ring data spanning over 100 years enabled them to see how trees that survived an initial drought grew afterward.

Data from the U.S. Forest Inventory and Analysis gave them access to metrics on tree mortality for more than 100,000 forest plots from 2000 through 2018. They combined these sources with satellite measurements of the water content in forest canopies.

Two clear tends emerged. We found that generally trees seem to become more vulnerable to stress after multiple droughts, especially conifers, Anderegg said.

The second finding, the researchers believe, comes down to basic physiology. Conifers and their kin have different vascular systems than broadleaf trees, or angiosperms. As a result, they may sustain more damage in an initial drought and be at a disadvantage compared to angiosperms during subsequent periods of drought stress.

The tree ring data bears this out, showing conifers that survived a drought grew much more slowly, especially if another drought settled in.

By contrast, angiosperms have much more flexible anatomy and physiology, and this seems to help them recover faster and more fully after initial droughts, Anderegg said.

Anderegg was particularly surprised by the impact repeated drought had on the Amazon Rainforest. We tend to think of these forests as not very impacted by drought and, due to their high tree diversity, able to recover quickly, he said. But our results indicate the Amazon has been hit hard by three very severe droughts in the past 15 years.

Forests are complex systems, and a variety of factors ultimately dictate how they respond to extreme events.

In terms of damage you need to not only think about it at the individual level, but at the forest level as well, said Trugman. So, while they will need time to recover from an extreme drought, surviving trees will face less competition for water resources than before. This could leave them in a better situation if drought returns to the area.

Whats more, natural selection will drive the forest as a whole to transition toward more resilient individuals, or even to more drought tolerant species overall. Repeated droughts affect forest pests and pathogens as well, and their response to these conditions will also influence how forests behave.

Scientists are still working to untangle the conditions under which each of these factors rises to the top. This [study] provides a lot of motivation, said Trugman, but I think the next pressing step is to get at the underlying mechanisms at a physiological level and ecological level.

Researchers can use these insights to improve computer models and make more accurate forecasts about the future of forests in a changing climate. Climate change is going to bring more frequent droughts, Anderegg said. So we have to understand and be able to forecast how forests will respond to multiple droughts.

These results are especially crucial in the western U.S., where we've had a number of major droughts in the past 20 years.

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Researchers Examine Effects of Repeated Droughts on Different Kinds of Forests - Noozhawk

Physiology

The Increasing Role of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: Will Ro | IJGM – Dove Medical Press

Abdullah Shuaib1,, Husain Arian,1 Ali Shuaib2

1Department of General Surgery, Jahra Hospital, Jahra, Kuwait; 2Biomedical Engineering Unit, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Kuwait University, Kuwait City, Kuwait

Dr Abdullah Shuaib passed away on July 21, 2020

Correspondence: Ali ShuaibBiomedical Engineering Unit, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Kuwait University, Kuwait City, KuwaitTel +965 24636786Email ali.shuaib@ku.edu.kw

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) pertains to the ability of computers or computer-controlled machines to perform activities that demand the cognitive function and performance level of the human brain. The use of AI in medicine and health care is growing rapidly, significantly impacting areas such as medical diagnostics, drug development, treatment personalization, supportive health services, genomics, and public health management. AI offers several advantages; however, its rampant rise in health care also raises concerns regarding legal liability, ethics, and data privacy. Technological singularity (TS) is a hypothetical future point in time when AI will surpass human intelligence. If it occurs, TS in health care would imply the replacement of human medical practitioners with AI-guided robots and peripheral systems. Considering the pace at which technological advances are taking place in the arena of AI, and the pace at which AI is being integrated with health care systems, it is not be unreasonable to believe that TS in health care might occur in the near future and that AI-enabled services will profoundly augment the capabilities of doctors, if not completely replace them. There is a need to understand the associated challenges so that we may better prepare the health care system and society to embrace such a change if it happens.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, technological singularity, health care system

This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License.By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.

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The Increasing Role of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: Will Ro | IJGM - Dove Medical Press

Neuroscience

Why We Lie, And The Neuroscience Behind It – Forbes

Shutterstock

Im fine.

Of course I love you.

Ill call you.

No, you dont look fat in those jeans.

We are liars.

All of us.

We lie to save face, to avoid hurting other peoples feelings, to impress others, to shirk responsibility, to hide misdeeds, as a social lubricant, to prevent conflict, to get out of work, and many more reasons.

And we lie a lot.

Deception costs businesses and government billions, ruins relationships, undermines what we care about and even takes lives. The more white matter (see my blog The Truth About How Your Brain Gets Smarter)or some might even say the more intelligent the neocortexthe greater potential a person has to lie.

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Virginia, has confirmed that lying is simply a condition of life. In her research she found that both men and women lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes. Wow. And over the course of a week we deceive about 30 percent of people we have 1:1 interactions with. Wow wow.

Women are more likely to tell altruistic lies to avoiding hurting other peoples feelings, and men are more likely to lie about themselves. De Paulo found that men lie more often to impress. A typical conversation between two guys contains about eight times as many self-oriented lies as it does lies about others.

Your Brain On Lies

Three key parts of our brain are stimulated when we lie. First, the frontal lobe (of the neocortex), which has the ability to suppress truthyes, its capable of dishonesty due to its intellectual role. Second, the limbic system due to the anxiety (hi, amygdala!) that comes with deceptionand yes, when were lied to our Spiderman sense here can perk up, just as we can feel guilty/stressed when were doing the lying. And third, the temporal lobe is involved because its responsible for retrieving memories and creating mental imagery. Just for fun, add the anterior cingulate cortex because it helps in monitoring errors, and the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex because it is trying all the while to control our behavior. Our brain is busy, busy, busy when we lie.

And its far more peaceful when we tell the truth, because our limbic systems isnt stressed about lying and our frontal lobe isnt inhibiting the truth.

Lies At Work

Where do we see a prevalence of lies? At work, or more specifically, to get out of work.

According to Zetys recent 2020 research, of over 1,000 Americans, they found 96% confessed to lying to get out of work. Heres the net-net:

More men than women were caught lying, and only 27% of respondents who lied to get out of work regretted it. For those caught, 70% regretted lying. But despite not feeling bad about themselves for lying, 59% of respondents said they wouldnt do it again.

Heres a silver lining: the older we get, the less compelled we are to lie to avoid work. Zety found:

Zety

Are we all pathological liars? Or do we need to look at why we feel compelled to make up stories instead of just telling the truth? Is lying to avoid work a cultural problem, at least in part? And what about people that dont experience regret when they lie? The stance of perpetual innocence, or extreme entitlement (and thus reality distortion) is a topic I addressed in my blogs on Borderline Personalities: How To Survive and How To Thrive.

Lying Rx

To reduce the amount of lying in your workplace, youll want to first look at how safe people feel. Is it ok to tell the truth? Is it ok to fail? Is it ok to be human and not a super hero/work robot/cog in a wheel? Is it ok to have feelings and need a break now and then? Find out.

Do regular employee engagement surveys see our fave one here.

Use the emotion wheel at the beginning of each meeting to check in on how everyone is doing

Create support groups if people need a little extra help

So why do we lie? Because it works for us. Temporarily, at least. For fun, you might want to join me in telling the five types of truth; youll notice not only how good it feels, but how much simpler it makes your life.

How often do you lie? Why?

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Why We Lie, And The Neuroscience Behind It - Forbes

Neuroscience

Neuroscience Can Help Us Understand Why Free Will Is Real – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne seems obsessed with denying free will. In a recent post on his blog, Why Evolution Is True, he supported the claim of theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder that we do not have free will:

If youve read this site, youll know that my own views are pretty much the same as hers, at least about free will. We dont have it, and the fundamental indeterminacy of quantum mechanics doesnt give it to us either.

Hossenfelder doesnt pull any punches:

This means in a nutshell that the whole story of the universe in every single detail was determined already at the big bang. We are just watching it play out.

QED!

Both Coyne and Hossenfelder are atheists, materialists, and deterministsa sort of intellectual dark triadand their beliefs are scientifically and logically uninformed. They use denial of free will to prop up their materialist and determinist irreligion. It is not science; it is an ideological project, without a shred of science or logic to back it up.

There are three lines of evidence supporting the reality of free will: Neuroscience, physics and philosophy all point to the fact that free will is real. In this post, Ill discuss the neuroscience. But first, we must start by understanding what free will is. Erroneous definition of free will is at the root of many mistakes inherent in denying it.

It turns out that free will is rather hard to define rigorously, if taken all by itself. Many have tried. Definitions such as choice that is uncaused, choice that is an inclination that originates wholly within an organism, and choice that entails the existence of alternative possibilities have been proposed. Each is inadequate to the situation.

The definition of free will really depends on the definition of will. Will is a subset of appetite (an Aristotelian term), which means an inclination to act. There are two kinds of appetitesensitive appetite and rational appetite. Sensitive appetites are appetites that arise from concrete perceptions and imagination. I perceive a piece of cake, and I imagine how wonderful it would taste, so (if I am impulsive) I eat it.

Rational appetite is inclination to act based on reason, not on perceptions or imagination. Suppose, for example, that I am on a diet. My decision about whether to eat a piece of cake because of its appearance and how I imagine it will taste is fundamentally different from my decision about whether I will break my diet in order to do so. One inclinationmy sensitive appetiteis based on concrete perception. The other inclinationto follow my dietis based on abstract reason.

Only abstract reason/rational appetite is the will part of free will. Sensitive appetite is not part of the willit is a passion based wholly on material factorsmy brain chemistry, etc. Sensitive appetite is not freethis kind of appetite is indeed dictated by my molecules and neurotransmitters. I can condition it and override it but in itself, it is wholly material and subject to the laws of nature.

My willmy rational appetiteis an immaterial power of my mind. My will can be influenced by my passions but it is inherently free of material determinism of any kind. For example, my decision whether or not to eat that piece of cake is the result of the struggle between my material passions and my immaterial willbetween my sensitive and my rational appetite. Sometimes my passion wins. Sometimes my reasonmy willwins.

Now that we have a satisfactory definition of will, what do we mean by free will? Philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas gave the best answer: My free will is inclination based on abstract reasoning that arises wholly from me. Nothing other than me determines my will. I determine my will and my will is an immaterial power of my soul. In this specific sense, I have free will.

Now lets get to the neuroscience. Neuroscience has a lot to contribute to the debate over free will and all of it supports the reality of free will. There isnt a shred of neuroscientific evidence that contradicts the reality of free will.

Two major types of experiments address the question of free will:

The first is the experiments of Benjamin Libet, a mid- to late 20th century neuroscientist who studied the precise timing of electrical activity in the brain and conscious decisions to do simple tasks such pushing a button. Libet found that we have pre-conscious impulses characterized by spikes in brain waves that precede conscious decisions by about a half-second. But he also found that these pre-conscious impulses (which are not freely generated) are merely temptations. We retain the power to accept or reject them, and acceptance or rejection of these temptations is not accompanied by brain waves. Libet called this state free wont: We are bombarded by temptations that are beyond our immediate control but we have the immaterial freedom to accept or reject them. He noted the congruence between his experimental results and the traditional Jewish and Christian understanding of sin. We are tempted involuntarily but we always have freedom to comply with or reject temptation.

The second set of experiments is, in my view, even more compelling. They derive from the work of Wilder Penfield, the pioneer in the neurosurgery of epilepsy in the mid-20th century. Penfield performed over a thousand awake brain operations on patients with epilepsy. He stimulated their brains and the recorded the effect of stimulation on these awake patients. He found that he was able to stimulate practically any concrete mental phenomenonmovement of limbs, perceptions of light or smell or tactile sensations, emotions, memoriesbut he was never able to stimulate abstract thought or free will. In his memoir, Mystery of the Mind, he concluded that abstract thought and free will (which he called the mind as distinct from automatic responses like perceptions, movements, or emotions) did not originate in the brain, but were immaterial powers of the soul. He began his career as a strict materialist but ended his career as a convinced dualist.

He also noted a remarkable fact: there are no intellectual seizures, and by implication, no seizures that invoke free will. There are no calculus seizures, no logic seizures, no seizures that make the patients think abstractly or will (apparently) freely. There are no seizures that make you choose to be a Republican or a Democrat, no seizures that make you Christian or Jewish, no seizures that make you apply certain kinds of logic to a problem rather than another kind of logic. This is remarkable: if the will is merely the product of brain activity, at least some seizures should evoke will. They never do. Many seizures do feature complex manifestations (theyre called complex partial seizures), but these complex seizures always involve concrete thoughts and actions perceptions, emotions, and stereotypic movements. There are no seizures that invoke abstract thought or abstract decisionsthere are no free will seizures.

This remains true to this day. There are no reports in the medical literaturedespite literally billons of seizures suffered by patients in the modern eraof any seizure that replicates free will. This remarkable factliterally based on billions of data pointsclearly shows that the will is not determined by the material state of the brain. If the will were determined by neural activity, the willabstract choice based on reasonwould at least occasionally be replicated by seizures. It never is.

Coyne, Hossenfelder and other free will deniers are ignorant of the mountain of neuroscience evidence confirming free will. They are also ignorant of the philosophical reasoning supporting free will and of the evidence in physics that refutes determinism (but these are both subjects for another post).

If Dr. Coyne reads this far in this post, I challenge him: If free will is determined by brain states, show us the medical or neuroscience evidence that free will is ever evoked by seizure or by neurosurgical stimulation of the brain. In other words, Dr. Coyne, show me the neuroscience behind your bizarre denial of free will.

NeurosurgeonMichael Egnorhas written a fair bit on free will forMind Matters News.Here are some selections to consider:

No free will meansno justice:Free will is the cornerstone of all human rights and the cornerstone of our Constitutional rights. The denial of free will is, literally, the denial of human freedom. Without free will, we are livestock, without the presumption of innocence, without actual innocence, and without rights. A justice system that has no respect for free willa justice system in which human choices are diseases is a system of livestock management applied to homo sapiens.

Also:

Jerry Coyne just cant give updenying free will.Coynes denial of free will, based on determinism, is science denial and junk metaphysics

How Libets free will researchis misrepresented:Sometimes, says Michael Egnor, misrepresentation may be deliberate because Libets work doesnt support a materialist perspective.

Doesalien hand syndromeshow that we dont really have free will? One womans left hand seemed to have a mind of its own. Did it?

and

Does brain stimulation researchchallenge free will?If we can be forced to want something, is the will still free?

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Neuroscience Can Help Us Understand Why Free Will Is Real - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Neuroscience

MRI and PET Reveal Link Between Blood Flow and Tau Accumulation in Alzheimer’s Patients – Diagnostic Imaging

There is a connection between impaired blood flow and the build-up of tau protein in patients who have Alzheimers disease, according to findings revealed on MRI and PET scans.

In a study published Oct. 12 in the Journal of Neuroscience, a team of investigators from the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles shed more light onto the vascular component of Alzheimers, noting that their findings point to the potential of a combination treatment.

Our results demonstrate vascular-tau association across the [Alzheimers disease] spectrum and suggest that early vascular-tau associations are exacerbated in the presence of amyloid, consistent with a two-hit model of [Alzheimers disease] on cognition, said the team led by Daniel Albrecht, Ph.D., a neuroimaging research fellow. Combination treatments targeting vascular health, as well as amyloid- and tau levels, may preserve cognitive function more effectively than single-target therapies.

To date, the connection between vascular dysfunction and tau pathology and how it affects cognition has not been well understood. Still, there is a growing body of evidence that shows vascular dysfunction plays a large part in Alzheimers pathophysiology.

Like the proverbial chicken and egg, it remains unclear if impaired blood flow causes or is caused by errant protein building, they said, or if these two symptoms occur for unrelated reasons.

Related Content: FDA Approves First Radiopharmaceutical for Imaging Tau

To dig deeper into this connection, Albrechts team used MRI and PET scans to compare blood flow and tau build-up in older adults. They examined 68 patients from USC who ranged from having normal cognition to showing signs of mild cognitive impairment, as well as a validation group of 138 individuals with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimers disease who were enrolled in the Alzheimers disease Neuroimaging Initiative. Alongside their MRI and PET scans, all patients completed neuropsychological testing and were assessed for executive brain function, attention, and memory.

Based on their analysis, the team discovered that spots in the brain with more significant tau build-up also had decreased blood flow. This was particularly apparent in the inferior temporal gyrus the area of the brain which typically experiences tau build-up in patients with Alzheimers disease. The team pointed out that this relationship also held true for the validation group.

The correlation between tau and vascular function was stronger in people with greater cognitive impairment and higher amyloid- levels, they said. It also appeared in more brain regions as the disease progressed in severity.

Consequently, Albrechts team said, their results suggest that targeting vascular function could be key to avoiding and treatment Alzheimers.

Results from the current study provide the first evidence of associations between elevated tau PET signal and vascular dysfunction, they said. Take together, combination treatments targeting vascular health, as well as amyloid- and tau levels, may be more effective in preserving cognitive function than single-target therapies.

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MRI and PET Reveal Link Between Blood Flow and Tau Accumulation in Alzheimer's Patients - Diagnostic Imaging