Scantlings

I've noticed that nearly every old fart around here with a nice boat and time to sail it seems to be a former professional or government type who is now a consultant. I have only the mistiest notion of what consultants are or do, but I am thinking maybe I want to be one. I have devoted at least half of my 28 year scientific career to the development and application of new brain stimulation techniques and actually invented/discovered some useful stuff, so I ought to be of some value to someone.

Does anyone know how to go about gauging one's value and/or setting one's self up as a consultant or have any potentially useful contacts?

Thanks!

E

Orestes Munn wrote:I've noticed that nearly every old fart around here with a nice boat and time to sail it seems to be a former professional or government type who is now a consultant. I have only the mistiest notion of what consultants are or do, but I am thinking maybe I want to be one. I have devoted at least half of my 28 year scientific career to the development and application of new brain stimulation techniques and actually invented/discovered some useful stuff, so I ought to be of some value to someone.

Does anyone know how to go about gauging one's value and/or setting one's self up as a consultant or have any potentially useful contacts?

Thanks!

E

We can talk next week. Big and broad topic.

LarryHoward wrote:

Orestes Munn wrote:I've noticed that nearly every old fart around here with a nice boat and time to sail it seems to be a former professional or government type who is now a consultant. I have only the mistiest notion of what consultants are or do, but I am thinking maybe I want to be one. I have devoted at least half of my 28 year scientific career to the development and application of new brain stimulation techniques and actually invented/discovered some useful stuff, so I ought to be of some value to someone.

Does anyone know how to go about gauging one's value and/or setting one's self up as a consultant or have any potentially useful contacts?

Thanks!

E

We can talk next week. Big and broad topic.

I'm with Larry, the topic is gigantic. Simply put, if your knowledge has economic value to someone who doesn't have it, they'll pay you for it. Typically, your first few gigs need to be with folks who already know your value well and trust you. From that base, you build up a clientele of folks who trust and value you. Often times, consultants are used to deliver messages that others either don't want to hear or don't have the courage to deliver themselves. That sort of consulting takes a lot of finesse, but from what I know of you, I think you'd be pretty good at it.

Is this about TMS or behavioural and learning techniques?

Someone in Marion spoke to me about this very subject, and you specifically. I'll make a couple of calls.

Olaf Hart wrote:Is this about TMS or behavioural and learning techniques?

Noninvasive brain stimulation in general. I don't know any more than the average Joe researcher about anything else.

Rob McAlpine wrote:Someone in Marion spoke to me about this very subject, and you specifically. I'll make a couple of calls.

Wow. Thanks!

Are these techniques useful for symptom control and/or repair of cognitive deficits?

Olaf Hart wrote:Are these techniques useful for symptom control and/or repair of cognitive deficits?

A bright guy named Mark George (a sailor) and I were the first to apply TMS in depression and, although we were pretty dumb about a lot of stuff, it showed effectiveness in several large, multi-center trials and several devices have now been cleared for depression by the FDA and regulators around the world. It is reimbursed by many public and private insurers and offered in hundreds of clinics. So, while it's still a little mysterious, it works. The sad part is that all of our kludgy and obsolete techniques got immortalized in the approved package and the poor community shrinks are still doing it the way we did back in 1994, which isn't very good.

There is a device cleared for aborting migraine attacks and neuropathic pain is probably the next application to be sanctioned.

I and others are now combining TMS with functional MRI imaging of task-based and resting state functional connectivity between brain areas and learning that we can target specific brain pathways for strengthening and weakening, so at least we have some reliable outcome measures and a marker of target engagement. We have been farting around for years with all kinds cognitive paradigms and getting statistically significant, but clinically meaningless, results in the smarter and dumber directions. Not much of it gets reproduced, though. The routine combination with imaging may put us on a more solid footing or, at least, clear away some of the bullshit.

Any idea how this relates to epigenetics, specifically the MTHFR stuff with folate metabolism?
Have a personal interest here but trying to stay objective

Olaf Hart wrote:Any idea how this relates to epigenetics, specifically the MTHFR stuff with folate metabolism?
Have a personal interest here but trying to stay objective

No. As neurophysiologists and learning folks, we have a strong bias to see these effects in terms of classical theories of synaptic modulation. That can't be completely right, but it probably explains most of what happens.

WOW! I feel like a 747 just flew 10' above my head. What the heck are you guys talking about?? ....... googling..... googling...... googling.....

OK, I'm back. That is really amazing stuff!! Amazing half hour of floating around in articles I only vaguely understand. Y'all are as bad as computer types with TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), we've had to move on to four letters and to numeric substitution. (EG: k8s for Kubernetes)

This is a fascinating field for an old barnacle, like me, who has tried to write software that "thinks". It's stuff like this that makes Scantlings an amazing place.

Orestes Munn wrote:

Olaf Hart wrote:Any idea how this relates to epigenetics, specifically the MTHFR stuff with folate metabolism?
Have a personal interest here but trying to stay objective

No. As neurophysiologists and learning folks, we have a strong bias to see these effects in terms of classical theories of synaptic modulation. That can't be completely right, but it probably explains most of what happens.

Interesting interface though, the MTHFR people seem to have trouble making serotonin and dopamine, which may explain why they don't respond to current drug treatments that rely on stimulating or inhibiting neurotransmitters.
In my simple mind, a synapse isn't much use without a neurotransmitter.

BeauV wrote:WOW! I feel like a 747 just flew 10' above my head. What the heck are you guys talking about?? ....... googling..... googling...... googling.....

OK, I'm back. That is really amazing stuff!! Amazing half hour of floating around in articles I only vaguely understand. Y'all are as bad as computer types with TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), we've had to move on to four letters and to numeric substitution. (EG: k8s for Kubernetes)

This is a fascinating field for an old barnacle, like me, who has tried to write software that "thinks". It's stuff like this that makes Scantlings an amazing place.

Don't know if I mentioned it previously here, but some University of Texas and Yale guys working on artificial intelligence managed to give their computer a paranoid psychosis just by changing its parameters.

Like they made a real Hal.

IIRC they increased the rate of thinking and took away the filter that prioritised ideas, so every Idea had equal value.

Made me think we might eventually understand severe mental illness by reverse engineering it through AI.

https://news.utexas.edu/2011/05/05/schi ... ia_discern

Olaf Hart wrote:

Orestes Munn wrote:

Olaf Hart wrote:Any idea how this relates to epigenetics, specifically the MTHFR stuff with folate metabolism?
Have a personal interest here but trying to stay objective

No. As neurophysiologists and learning folks, we have a strong bias to see these effects in terms of classical theories of synaptic modulation. That can't be completely right, but it probably explains most of what happens.

Interesting interface though, the MTHFR people seem to have trouble making serotonin and dopamine, which may explain why they don't respond to current drug treatments that rely on stimulating or inhibiting neurotransmitters.
In my simple mind, a synapse isn't much use without a neurotransmitter.

I have was too only referring to our little
Interventions. disease, of course, is caused by the most surprising things.

Olaf Hart wrote:

BeauV wrote:WOW! I feel like a 747 just flew 10' above my head. What the heck are you guys talking about?? ....... googling..... googling...... googling.....

OK, I'm back. That is really amazing stuff!! Amazing half hour of floating around in articles I only vaguely understand. Y'all are as bad as computer types with TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), we've had to move on to four letters and to numeric substitution. (EG: k8s for Kubernetes)

This is a fascinating field for an old barnacle, like me, who has tried to write software that "thinks". It's stuff like this that makes Scantlings an amazing place.

Don't know if I mentioned it previously here, but some University of Texas and Yale guys working on artificial intelligence managed to give their computer a paranoid psychosis just by changing its parameters.

Like they made a real Hal.

IIRC they increased the rate of thinking and took away the filter that prioritised ideas, so every Idea had equal value.

Made me think we might eventually understand severe mental illness by reverse engineering it through AI.

https://news.utexas.edu/2011/05/05/schi ... ia_discern

Good lord!!

Thanks for the reading, I'm off to goooooogle into the wee hours

Olaf Hart wrote:

BeauV wrote:WOW! I feel like a 747 just flew 10' above my head. What the heck are you guys talking about?? ....... googling..... googling...... googling.....

OK, I'm back. That is really amazing stuff!! Amazing half hour of floating around in articles I only vaguely understand. Y'all are as bad as computer types with TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), we've had to move on to four letters and to numeric substitution. (EG: k8s for Kubernetes)

This is a fascinating field for an old barnacle, like me, who has tried to write software that "thinks". It's stuff like this that makes Scantlings an amazing place.

Don't know if I mentioned it previously here, but some University of Texas and Yale guys working on artificial intelligence managed to give their computer a paranoid psychosis just by changing its parameters.

Like they made a real Hal.

IIRC they increased the rate of thinking and took away the filter that prioritised ideas, so every Idea had equal value.

Made me think we might eventually understand severe mental illness by reverse engineering it through AI.

https://news.utexas.edu/2011/05/05/schi ... ia_discern

That's fascinating and it is very tempting to me think about mental illness being a parametric distortion of rule-based behavior. Similar biology seems to be able to produce very different behavioral syndromes in individuals, like depression vs. schizophrenia, so that approach, which singles out specific behaviors and circuits, not diagnoses, is getting popular. Locally, the NIMH has largely abandoned categorical diagnoses in their programs and are awarding so-called, "Research Domain Criteria" (RDOC) based grants.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/constructs/rdoc-matrix.shtml

It's a very different structure from the DSM and a lot closer to the science.

We are informed consumers in this mess, primary carers for our youngest son who had a long standing anxiety state, went floridly psychotic at the end of high school, has never fit a clear diagnostic pattern, does not respond to medication, apart from getting all the side effects, and fifteen years on has a progressing dementia as well.
Although I am committed to evidence based practice, I keep an eye on all the fringe research.
There is no doubt in our minds this is an organic problem, and psychiatrists are floundering in this end of the mental health spectrum.
Recently we found he has a homozygous defect for MTHFR 1298, and are testing the effects of methyl folate and methyl B12. Things, including the cognitive problems, are slowly improving.
Most interestingly as he has male pattern baldness, his hair is starting to grow back!

OH, that is such a painful read. I'm sorry you've had to deal with all that. It's great that things are getting better! B

BeauV wrote:OH, that is such a painful read. I'm sorry you've had to deal with all that. It's great that things are getting better! B

Thanks Beau, shit happens, we just deal with it.

On one hand we are both well trained in this stuff, so that helps.

On the other, being a doctor and a family therapist the mental elves tend to leave him to our care, rather than helping out.

I respect his psychiatrists, but they are really fighting with their hands tied behind their backs.

This end of medicine is still in the 1800's, where diseases are classified by symptoms rather than causes, and treatment is largely suck it and see..

If your condition is an outlier, you are really on your own.

Olaf Hart wrote:

BeauV wrote:OH, that is such a painful read. I'm sorry you've had to deal with all that. It's great that things are getting better! B

Thanks Beau, shit happens, we just deal with it.

On one hand we are both well trained in this stuff, so that helps.

On the other, being a doctor and a family therapist the mental elves tend to leave him to our care, rather than helping out.

I respect his psychiatrists, but they are really fighting with their hands tied behind their backs.

This end of medicine is still in the 1800's, where diseases are classified by symptoms rather than causes, and treatment is largely suck it and see..

If your condition is an outlier, you are really on your own.

Thank God he has Triny and you as parents!!
Otherwise who knows what would happen to him!!

We FaceTime at least once a day, he is in respite care at the moment, not happy but safe, warm and fed.