neurosciencestuff:

Taste of beer, without effect from alcohol, triggers dopamine release in the brain

The taste of beer, without any effect from alcohol itself, can trigger dopamine release in the brain, which is associated with drinking and other drugs of abuse, according to Indiana University School of Medicine researchers.

Using positron emission tomography (PET), the researchers tested 49 men with two scans, one in which they tasted beer, and the second in which they tasted Gatorade, looking for evidence of increased levels of dopamine, a brain neurotransmitter long associated with alcohol and other drugs of abuse. The scans showed significantly more dopamine activity following the taste of beer than the sports drink. Moreover, the effect was significantly greater among participants with a family history of alcoholism.

Results of the study were published online Monday by the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

“We believe this is the first experiment in humans to show that the taste of an alcoholic drink alone, without any intoxicating effect from the alcohol, can elicit this dopamine activity in the brain’s reward centers,” said David A. Kareken, Ph.D., professor of neurology at the IU School of Medicine and the deputy director of the Indiana Alcohol Research Center.

The stronger effect in participants with close alcoholic relatives suggests that the release of dopamine in response to such alcohol-related cues may be an inherited risk factor for alcoholism, said Dr. Kareken.

Research for several decades has linked dopamine to the consumption of various drugs of abuse, although researchers have differing interpretations of the neurotransmitter’s role. Sensory cues that are closely associated with drug intoxication (ranging from tastes and smells to the sight of a tavern) have long been known to spark cravings and induce treatment relapse in recovering alcoholics. Many neuroscientists believe that dopamine plays a critical role in such cravings.

The study participants received a very small amount of their preferred beer — 15 milliliters — over a 15-minute time period, enabling them to taste the beer without resulting in any detectable blood alcohol level or intoxicating effect.

Using a PET scanning compound that targets dopamine receptors in the brain, the researchers were able to assess changes in dopamine levels occurring after the participants tasted the liquids.

In addition to the PET scan results, participants reported an increased beer craving after tasting beer, without similar responses after tasting the sports drink — even though many thought the Gatorade actually tasted better, said Brandon G. Oberlin, Ph.D., post-doctoral fellow and first author of the paper.

(Image: iStockphoto)

Signing off for tonight. I’ll try to get online more often from now on, right now it’s a bit too shaky.

trumpeteroftheswan:

so i saw a post of all the sprite progressions of various pokemon through the years and snorlax looks like he spent all his time trying to sit up

like

alright let’s do this

rrRHRGG

wow no that was exhausting
ok baby steps time

ok so far so good

grgrhgh—

GGHRHGHGGHGHHH

AW GOD DAMN IT

maybe if I—

wait

…

successsssssss

(via kinoscribbles)

plumbroth asked: What part of the country do you live in then? At first I thought mjau might just be a "my family" thing, but then I realised my totally-unrelated friends were also doing it (both offline and online).

Dalsland, so somewhat rural. I just immediately assumed that it must be a Stockholm thing but it sounds like it could be quite widespread then? Wonder where it came from…

plumbroth:

sambo - one of a couple who lives together but isn’t married
slutspurt - closing sale
smutt - sip, sup
puss - kiss
sex - six (but also means sex)
suck - sigh
lust - feel like doing something
glass - ice cream
mums! - yum!
moms - sales tax
kram - hug
snack - chit-chat
hell - hail
plump - blur, vulgar
mitten - middle, center
hat - hatred
hiss - elevator
klunk - draft, draught
bro - bridge
farthinder - speedbump
kaka - cake (it means poop in lots of other languages).
slut doesn’t just mean “the end”, “slut på” (på meaning on/at) means “to run out of something”, ex. vi är slut på… we are out of….
Frigg - Odin’s wife (also a regular name)
mat - food
chef - boss
lax - salmon
gull - gold
munk - doughnut (typically either without hole or without frosting, with frosting it’s called “doughnut” because “frosting means exotic American food”)
redo - ready
frisk - healthy
pigg - lively
tack - thanks
dam - dame
gift - married, poison
bog - meat from a shoulder of a cow
svamp (with a Swedish accent, pronounced the same as swamp) - mushroom
slump - chance, accident, coincidence
stick! - go away! get lost!
fast - set, inflexible
god - tasty
mjau (meow) - common silence-filler or even greeting
nepp - nope
mönster - pattern
tja - hey, or “well…”
bad - bath
grape - grapefruit (or you can say grapefrukt)
barn - child or children
men - but
mens - a woman’s period (menses)
fagott - bassoon
kock - chef
gull - gold
island - Iceland
mapp - folder
Various words are doubled for no reason, such as “hej hej (hey)”, “morn morn (morning)”, “puss puss (kiss, but used as a “bye bye”), “tjänna tjänna” (greeting), “natti natt” (nighty-night), “gulli gullig” (cutie-cute)

dusch (pronounced douche) - shower
damm (pronounced damn) - dust
mätt (pronounced met) - full (not hungry anymore)
bord (pronounced bored) - table
stol (pronounced stool) - chair
ful (pronounced fool) - ugly
deg (pronounced day) - dough
bred (pronounced bread) - wide, broad
nja (pronounced nya) - yes-and-no. Like “chotto” in Japanese.
nej (pronounced neigh) - no
hjälp (pronounced yelp) - help
god morgon (pronounced goo moron) - good morning
dum (pronounced doom) - dumb
tum (pronounced tomb) - inch
hav (pronounced have) - sea
fel (pronounced fell) - wrong
duk (pronounced Duke) - cloth
tjock (pronounced shock) - fat
gubbe (pronounced like goo-beh) - old man

”Hej på dig” - greeting, literally “hey on you”.
bröstvårta - “breast wart”, meaning nipple.
grönsaker - “green things”, vegetables.
dammsugare - “dust sucker”, vacuum cleaner.
fruktkött - “fruit meat”, pulp.
utländsk - “outside-country”, foreign.
småpengar - “small monies”, coins.
vitlök - “white onion” - garlic
munspel - “mouth game”, harmonica.
dumskalle - “dumb skull”, idiot. likewise “sheep skull”, “bark skull” I heard once…
”smörgås” - “butter goose”, sandwich.
grymt (cruel), slang for cool.

See a Memrise list for all those words here.

What about the rest of Swedish? Well just take a look at these words:

kommentar (comment), blogg (blog), teve (tv), mobil (mobile, cell phone), hund (hound, dog), papper (paper), toalett (toilet), box (box), klocka (clock), kultur (culture), basket (basket, basket ball), premiär (premiere), gäst (guest), berg (berg, burgh, burg), problem (problem), projekt (project), koncept (concept), dansband (dance band), musik (music), teater (theatre) kommun (commune), chans (chance), historia (history), jobb (job), klick (click), extra (extra), miljon (million), dubbel (double), kaviar (caviar), slang (slang), Amerika (America), Japan (Japan), kaffe (coffee), kategori (category), orange (orange colour), idé (idea), upp (up), stopp (stop), buss (bus), post (post, mail)….

Mjau as a filler/greeting is definitely a new one to me. Clearly I live in the wrong part of the country.

sonicpixieradio:

Sign Language is an amazing language and Deaf culture is something I find extremely fascinating. So when my A.S.L. teacher showed us this video I thought it was so cool. Sia, (yes the Sia we all know from Titainium and Wild Ones) She incorporates American Sign Language to her video. It reminds me much of a narrative. This makes me miss sign. ~Hunter

Sia-Soon We’ll Be Found

(via fuckyeahpolyglot)

lostincomaa:

extremesportscalendarmodel:

In Norway we don’t say “I love you”. we say “jævla skapdører åpner seg alltid av seg selv midt på natten og skremmer meg når jeg våkner” which translates to “without you I’m nothing”. I just think that’s so beautiful.

(via linguisticsyall)

Because right now this blog just feels lika a big hodge-podge of what I like and as you can see that varies a LOT and I’m sort of worried about annoying my followers the way it is now.

kiloblogster:

rosaedora:

I love a:tlab, my kids love it too and when the whitewashed movie came out we talked about it. My ten year old son told me that the reason he thought that there were so few people of colour in the media was because there were not a lot of people of colour in the world. Maybe they couldn’t find Asian and south asian actors for the film because there just aren’t that many of them. This bears repeating:

My son thought that the reason there were so few people of colour in cartoons, in movies and in the media more generally, was because there are more white people in the world. 

We lived in Vancouver which demographically has more people of colour than white people. He was in daycare and school with a majority of poc, all of his friends were poc. I had talked to him about racism but not media representations because I imagined he understood. 

When we got talking about it and he realized that in fact the majority of the world isn’t white, he said, well maybe the stories of people of colour are not worth telling. Maybe that is why these stories don’t get told.

Maybe there are so few female characters because women are all more similar so there is no point in having a lot of them, whereas men are more different so you need more. Maybe it is the same with people of colour, maybe there are so few because they are all the same.

Whitewashing and the erasure of people of colour effects white people and white kids because it teaches them that the only interesting stories and the only people who matter are white. POC characters “could be anyone”, “we don’t see colour” we can imagine they are “just like us”.

Maybe, he says, in their countries they don’t include a lot of white people. So he imagines that “our” country is a white country and those people who belong here are also white. Other people are visitors here.

I didn’t teach him this.

My kid was saying really racist things. That doesn’t make him a bad person. The culture is a racist culture and he absorbs these things. Everyone lives in this racist culture and it is easy as white people to reproduce hurtful shit.

People of colour are erased all the time. This has effects. This creates a world that is made for white people and reaffirms that white people are the only ones who truly belong in “our” country. It is deeply hurtful.

If you are a white artist you don’t have to participate in this erasure. You don’t have to hurt people. If you have been hurting them, that doesn’t mean you mean it, it doesn’t mean you are some bad type of person. All it means is that this culture has affected you too and you can chose to stop now. 

If someone stepped on your toe. You would tell them, hey that hurt, regardless if it was on purpose or by accident. If they did it again, that would piss you off. If you told them and they said “what I did is not as bad as being punched in the face what are you complaining about?” You would probably be really offended. If they then got all their friends to step on your toes, again and again, and say “OMG can you believe how angry she was just because we stepped on her toes? What is wrong with her being angry for no reason. It’s not like we were punching her.” What would you do? That is what is going on here. People said hey whitewashing hurts me, and a bunch of people kept on doing it.

It is not about judging artists. It is not about naming a type of bad person called a “racist”, but about seeing how larger patterns work to hurt people of colour and distort the world view of white people. Do you, if you are a white person, want a distorted world view? Do you want to accidentally hurt others? 

A lot of white people are saying on this tag that they are suffering from reverse discrimination. Are you being erased? Do you feel you belong in your country or are you told to “go home?”

When people tell you that you have hurt them, responding with grace is a skill that will serve you for the rest of your life. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was doing something harmful. Thank you for telling me. I wont do it again.” That is all it takes. 

It would be great if more folks actually spoke to their children about the things they watch to see how their children are perceiving the world through that media because damn, what this kid says is chilling.