Comments on: Drunken monkeys reveal how binge-drinking harms the adolescent brain

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:27:43 +0000

Apparently some people can’t comprehend the difference between the words “how” and “that”. Perhaps they’re drunk…

There does seem to be a strange correlation in this thread between wielding the word “idiotic” and actually being it.

By: Diana

Diana — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:23:27 +0000

This sounds more like a prank carried out by some idiotic fraternity with too much alcohol on their hands and (unfortunately) access to animals.

Yes – teen drinking is bad…it’s amazing that it required liquoring up a bunch of monkeys to find this out. This is government sponsored animal abuse.

By: becca

becca — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:21:31 +0000

So many questions!
1) Is there anything that can protect against it? Maybe antidepressants, or exercise? (I’m afraid my knowledge of things that stimulate neurogenesis or prevent degeneration is fairly limited)
2) When are they gonna look at AUTOPHAGY?! They went and found non-caspase dependent neurodegeneration, and then DIDN’T look for autophagy? If I were reviewer #3 I’d kick their BUTTS. At least stain for HMGB1, people!!!!!
3) I notice the monkeys were routinely exposed to ketamine- what might this do?
4) In this context, two months is “long lasting” but how long does it really last?
5) Most importantly, once this research is completed, will we be able to create SuperMonkeys who can clean oil spills for us? Or at least fetch us burritos?

Finally, a comment: when you write in a paper ‘we did behavioral testing, which you all really wanna know about, but we broke it up into another manuscript so you can’t find it out, but we’ll tell you it’s gonna be published, so you know we got p<0.05 in some behavioral something, but you don't get to find out yet, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!' is just plain DIABOLICAL.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:33:20 +0000

Beth has clearly unearthed one of the biggest scandals in academia. I have it on good authority that the reason this study was funded was that the grants review meeting for the National Institute for Ranking All Of The World’s Problems In Order Based on Public Vote And Then Solving Them Sequentially was cancelled after the members couldn’t work out if they should turn up or solve world hunger first. So instead the money went to the NIH instead. Pity.

By: Eleanor

Eleanor — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:18:14 +0000

Hi Beth, I’m struggling to see how you class this as idiot information. It shows that teen drinking is likely to be bad (which we’d guessed already), but it shows very specifically what effect it is likely to have.

You could give neouroscientists money to study oil spills I suppose, but I’m not sure what use they’d make of the money….

By: beth

beth — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:22:10 +0000

Did we give our hard-earned tax dollars for this study? Is this another NIH idiot grant?

Why don’t we give money to researchers to figure out how to stop oil spills instead of this idiotic information.

By: mat

mat — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:05:44 +0000

DOI can take time to go live, the publisher’s link is here http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/05/20/0912810107.abstract

By: lucas

lucas — Mon, 31 May 2010 20:50:50 +0000

How did the researchers count the neurons? By staining brain slices and using that good old eye and tally marks?
Counting data can be heavily subject to confirmation bias, so I always look for proper blinding of the subjects studied in studies like this..

Pity the abstract isn’t even available!

By: Diana Guerrero (Animal Behaviorist)

Diana Guerrero (Animal Behaviorist) — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:46:42 +0000

A lot of animals seek out fermented fruit, indulge, and so become inebriated.

I didn’t really ponder this too much but the symptoms are similar when an animal suffers from toxicity.

So, just wondering where the origins of the self-medicating behavior came from for wild animals.

I thought we already knew about the impact on the brain but appreciate the link to the article–but sad I get a link error from DOI.