- My honours thesis has evolved into a possible linguistics paper as well as a psych paper, so my supervisor is doing various analyses of the data I used and has come up with some interesting new findings. I’m not going to say much more than that, but I will say that it mirrors some of the stuff discussed in a recent Mixing Memory post on Language, Writing, and the Spatial Representation of Events. Neat.
- Mixing Memory has become one of my favourite cogs blogs. Here’s another great one: Thinking About Evolution.
- Here’s a glowing review of PT-141, The Greatest Sex Drug… Ever… from someone who I’m assuming has never even tried it. Oh my. This Guardian article seems to be a bit more even-handed. It references an even more interesting study about personal autonomy. “That’s a tricky thing to measure, but it can be done. Paredes did it like this: first, he looked at rat couples living in standard, box-shaped cages and recorded the details of their sexual behaviour. Then, he altered the cages in only one particular: he divided them into two chambers with a clear wall broken only by one opening, too small for the males to get through but just right for the females…. It let them get away from the males whenever they chose to, and thereby made it entirely their choice whether to have sex…. The effects of giving a female rat greater personal control over her sex life are essentially the same as those of giving her PT-141. Autonomy, in other words, is as real an aphrodisiac as any substance known to science.”
- Choose Your Science Idol!
- And continuing the political bent: The Frontal Cortex on Fearmongering.
- What’s your favourite scientist-artist dream team?
Bremelanotide Bulletin Author said,
June 28, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Hiya,
I write the Bremelanotide Bulletin and agree with your point that many of the articles about PT-141, especially ones with more extreme descriptions of its effect, are written by people who haven’t even tried it.
BTW those articles may be a bit old as Palatin Technologies, who own the drug, named it ‘Bremelanotide’ quite a while ago - perhaps because numbers and a couple of letters are more difficult to tradesmark than a unique name, similar to why Intel went from ‘486′ to ‘Pentium’ named processors, iirc…
And in an attempt to curtail that especially wild Sfgate article you link to above, Bremelanotide DOES increase arousal - but that’s not necessarily the same as desire and it certainly doesn’t drive a person uncontrollably horny!
But your post is a good heads up to your readers, since Bremelanotide is sure to garner a huge buzz when its eventually released.
Regards,
-Steve
jtl said,
June 28, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Wow…
A research supervisor who actually cares about your work? And gives you, like, feedback on it and stuff? Seriously? They do that?!
Eve said,
June 28, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Iiiiii know!