Retaining Information and Just Brain-Dead

Off Topic
41

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]MattyG35 wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
Your studies aren’t large scale SM

40 people
[/quote]

You’re not being intellectually honest are you? You say “studies” - plural, are “not large scale” then you mention a study(singular). Conveniently, you’ve skipped over one of the actual “large scale studies” I proffered that tracked over a thousand individuals over 25 years performing brain scans from the age of 13 onwards:

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/40/E2657.abstract

You may not like the findings - lower IQ, psychiatric problems far more likely etc - but there they are.^^ [/quote]

The ones you referenced weren’t. You grabbed that one after you made your statement. Try to keep up.[/quote]

Matty, Matty, Matty…what am I going to do with you? Check the links fully before you attack them or you’ll look silly. The study of more than a thousand participants over a 20 year period was the study referenced in the UK Daily Mail link I posted. It was conducted by Kings College London. Here’s an overview of the study:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/news/records/2012/August/cannabis-IQ.aspx

And here’s a quote from one of my original links referencing the study:

“It comes after a review of 20 years of cannabis research, published last month by a professor at Kingâ??s College London, revealed that one in six teenagers who use cannabis become dependent on the drug, as do one in 10 adults…” - UK Daily Mail(one of my original links)[/quote]

I don’t believe that citing the Daily Mail has ever helped ones credibility.

A quick question: do you have access to the full text of the articles you cite, or are you working with newspaper summaries and abstracts?

Back on topic, here’s a fairly broad paper which address quite a few relevant points in regards to how we learn and evaluate information (also possibly the most interesting/depressing paper I’ve ever read):

  • Schwarz, N. (2015). Metacognition. APA handbook of personality and social psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and social cognition. Washington, DC, American Psychological Association; US: 203-229.

On learning and question formation:

  • Craig, S. D., et al. (2006). “The Deep-Level-Reasoning-Question Effect: The Role of Dialogue and Deep-Level-Reasoning Questions During Vicarious Learning.” Cognition and Instruction 24(4): 565-591.

Can’t be bothered to dredge up some of the others now, but recent work on sleeps role in memory fixation and the SQ4R study method (a free recall, deep reading, question formation combination) are pretty interesting.

Cheers,
Steak.

42

Ok, that’s one, you said “studies”, therefore plural.
You’ve posted one, and it’s a meta-analysis.
Two of your links were to the same n = 40 paper.
Here’s the whole paper if you’re interested

[quote]
Conclusions
The epidemiological literature in the past 20 years shows that cannabis use increases the risk of accidents and can produce dependence, and that there are consistent associations between regular cannabis use and poor psychosocial outcomes and mental health in adulthood. [/quote]
Sm, do you know how they controlled for other relevant factors in psychosocial outcomes and mental health?

Anyway, meta-analysis doesn’t prove shit. They’ve cited 165 papers, go to NCBI and search “marijuana use” between 1993 and the end of this year. There’s over 10000 papers.

43

^^ That actual studies can be accessed through links from the stories referencing them. The study of 1000+ people over 20+ years produced a large number of abstracts. Here are the actual abstracts:

http://www.dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/publications

And no, I haven’t waded through the thousands of pages. What did do was check the methodologies of the studies.

44

[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
Ok, that’s one, you said “studies”, therefore plural.
You’ve posted one, and it’s a meta-analysis.
Two of your links were to the same n = 40 paper.
Here’s the whole paper if you’re interested

The study is a collection of many different studies and so their methodologies and control groups/experiment groups are unique for each study. As you said, it’s a meta-analysis study. You say it “doesn’t prove shit” - presumably, because you believe that the studies were selectively picked. The onus is on you to demonstrate precisely why the study is flawed. And, as you said there have been thousands of studies over that period. If you want to go in depth and talk about specifics feel free to start a thread about it. I don’t want to derail this thread. I’m happy to go through the details of some of the most significant studies.

45

Nothing worse than a smart dumb N!!*@!( @ SM. Do you ever plan on doing some real research into your theories that hold no water?

46

[quote]Jlabs wrote:
Nothing worse than a smart dumb N!!*@!(

[/quote]

Did you just call me a nigger?

[quote]

@ SM. Do you ever plan on doing some real research into your theories that hold no water? [/quote]

I suppose the obvious question would be, what theory? What are you talking about? However,

"Abusive ad hominem usually involves attacking the traits of an opponent as a means to invalidate their arguments. Equating someone’s character with the soundness of their argument is a logical fallacy. Mere verbal abuse in the absence of an argument, however, is not ad hominem nor any kind of logical fallacy.

47

You always make drastic conclusions based off of a news report on single studies and somehow you try to come across smarter than everyone Your only fooling yourself. You remind me of this guy .

48

^^ It’s “you’re only fooling yourself” - a contraction of the words “you” and “are.” Have you ever considered that the reason you think I sound smart is not because I’m smart but rather that you’re an idiot? I haven’t drawn any “drastic conclusions”. I merely reported the results of studies into marijuana use. You see, marijuana is part of the reason you’re an idiot. It makes you stupid.

49

It’s possible that you have a learning disability. I have one that causes difficulty in taking in new information. It especially shows itself in jobs that require a lot of information processing/multitasking, such as waiting tables.

You should see a neurologist (as I did), who might be able to diagnose you. You could also check out the following books: The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, and The Woman Who Changed Her Brain by Barbara Arrowsmith-Young. These books present cases of people who have overcome learning disabilities. The odds of duplicating these feats might be against you–some brains are more “plastic” than others–but it couldn’t hurt to try.

I don’t know if your issues have affected you in the workplace, but I’d recommend avoiding any jobs that give you trouble. You could consider starting your own business, so that you could hire people to do problematic jobs for you.

50

[quote]stallone wrote:
It’s possible that you have a learning disability.[/quote]
Rekt.

51

I smoke pot regularly and have a 3.5 GPA. A lot of my friends (who I know from being in the mentor program in the psych department of my school) are pot smokers and all have higher GPA’s than I do. I know that means very little, scientifically speaking, but I think the whole “pot makes u stoopid” argument isn’t so cut and dry. Of course, they may be smarter if none of us had ever smoked pot in the first place, but still.

Anyway, that’s as far as I’m delving into that argument.

That said.

Centrophenoxine, the nootropic, can help clear away lipofuscion (the plaque that builds up in the brain from drug use/abuse, brain trauma, and the aging process in general.)

Start w 500mg/day and increase 500mg per day until you reach 2000mg-4000mg per day and stick with that dose for 2-3 weeks. I run that protocol about once a year and I notice a difference from it. (Take it w food or lots of liquids; some people report upset stomachs from high doses of it.)

Also, I feel that lumosity’s brain trainer helps me in overall cognitive ability.

AND

DebD is right - there’s a difference between reading something and conceptualizing something. Reading goes in one ear and out the other. Conceptualizing it, on the other hand, is what makes it stick. Google ‘levels of processing’ re: cognition and memory. The deeper the level of processing, the longer it will stay in your memory.

52

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
Centrophenoxine, the nootropic, can help clear away lipofuscion (the plaque that builds up in the brain from drug use/abuse, brain trauma, and the aging process in general.)

Start w 500mg/day and increase 500mg per day until you reach 2000mg-4000mg per day and stick with that dose for 2-3 weeks. I run that protocol about once a year and I notice a difference from it. (Take it w food or lots of liquids; some people report upset stomachs from high doses of it.)[/quote]
How do you judge where the top dose is? 2000-4000 mg is a pretty wide range.

Do you judge it based on side effects, or on “it feels like it’s working” or what?

53

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
Centrophenoxine, the nootropic, can help clear away lipofuscion (the plaque that builds up in the brain from drug use/abuse, brain trauma, and the aging process in general.)

Start w 500mg/day and increase 500mg per day until you reach 2000mg-4000mg per day and stick with that dose for 2-3 weeks. I run that protocol about once a year and I notice a difference from it. (Take it w food or lots of liquids; some people report upset stomachs from high doses of it.)[/quote]
How do you judge where the top dose is? 2000-4000 mg is a pretty wide range.

Do you judge it based on side effects, or on “it feels like it’s working” or what?[/quote]

The first time I heard of that protocol, it was recommended to use 3000mg. When I checked it again a while later, it was recommended 2-4g.

I wouldn’t expect to “feel” it working as far as lipofuscion removal goes. Centro in and of itself is a noop, and you can feel it working as a cognitive enhancer around 250-500mg. But as a “brain cleanse” thing, you won’t “feel” anything.

The only side effects I’ve ever heard coming from it are upset stomach (which is usually remedied by taking the dose with food or lots of water) or a bit of brain fog (because centro is a choline source, and overdoing choline intake can induce a bit of brain fog, so I hear.) That was never a problem for me, though.

I would make sure to get at least 2g/day, though. If possible, I’d probably run the lower dose for a longer duration, too. (Say, 4 weeks instead of 2-3 at the higher dose.)