#this is peak me during a full on psychotic episode. in the middle of a school day. awesoem pog epic

[hongjoongpresent]

someone talk to me. no one talk to me. someone hold me no one touch me get away get away no one look at me pls look at me pls talk to me someone nope no one talk to me leave i dont want to talk i dont want to listen ill listen to u dont worry im here nope not today talk to me dont talk to me huiehfuhcuhfdbcfhjbchjfbdhjs

[littleoddwriter]

Panic | Dan Torrance x Gender Neutral!Reader

Another vent fic ‘cause I needed it. This describes sth that happens to me on an almost regular basis, often multiple times a day or night. Idk what to call it, really. It doesn’t correspond with any symptoms of actual panic attacks (which I also have and they are wholly different), it’s not night terrors, it’s probably not a psychotic episode either. I honestly don’t know. Every therapist and doctor pretty much ignores it when I talk about it. They never corrected me in tiltling it a panic attack, but I believe it’s because they don’t know what else to call it. Anyway. I woke up this morning and kept thinking about this. Then I wrote some stuff and posted it on my WhatsApp story, making myself cry, lol. So, here we are. (Also??? My sister shared a room with me all my life, but moved out in April. Today, she told me that, especially at night, I would scream these words, like “No”, “I don’t want to”, “You won’t get me”, etc. and I legitimately don’t remember doing that, ever? Wild shit. Cooperated it in the fic, tho, because uhhhh).

summary; you experience “a fit of panic” for the lack of a better word. Dan helps you with the aftermath. Also: Love confessions. 

notes; TW // Death Anxiety, panic attack, ig, self-harm (pulling on hair, punching oneself); Gender Neutral!Reader (can therefore be read and enjoyed by anyone!), love confessions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, ig. 

Darkness. Forgotten. Meaningless. Pointless. "No! Please, no! Don't! I don't want to!" You shouted. You shot up. Whimpering, you pulled on your hair, making your scalp burn with it, trying to make it all stop. The images forced their way into your mind's eye all over again. Panic settled into your bones. You screamed. High-pitched. Full of terror. You tried to run. You scrambled out of bed and ran into the next corner of the bedroom, screaming, whimpering, pulling on your hair, punching yourself repeatedly. Y/N! It's okay, you're okay. You startled. Ripped out of this haze. Dan's voice in your head. You were trembling, shaking all over, breathing so heavily as if you had just run a marathon. You whined. Tears welled up and threatened to spill. Distantly, you noticed Dan coming closer to you, your teddy bear in one hand. He gently pressed your stuffed bear into your hands. You automatically grasped onto it so tightly, fearing you might tear it apart by accident. You lifted it to your face and pressed it into its furry tummy. It restricted your breathing, but you didn't care. A few tears found their way out of your eyes, wetting your teddy's fur. You were still whimpering and shaking. You felt weak and exhausted. Broken.    Hesitantly, Dan put a hand on your trembling shoulder. You tensed, but leaned into his touch after realising that it was his hand.    You're okay, baby. Can we lie back down? Dan's voice resounded in your head again. Lowering the bear from your face, you nodded, avoiding his eyes. He rested his hand on your shoulder, guiding you back to bed. Your blanket was on the floor, tangled up into a fluffy mess. Dan picked it up as you sat down on the edge of the bed. Kneading your teddy bear rhythmically, you tried to slow down your breathing and will down the tears that still tried to make their way out of your eyes.    The sheer panic had stopped by now; you were slowly coming back to reality. What was left was guilt, anxiety, shame. You could feel the warmth that Dan was radiating on your back, where he was close to you. He wasn't touching you anymore. It made you feel like he didn't want to, even though you knew that wasn't it. You couldn't help feeling anxious about him leaving, though. You were so broken beyond repair. He had his own problems. You would only add onto them anyway. "I'm sorry," you whimpered brokenly. "Don't. It's alright, you're okay. Can you lie down?" He replied softly. You nodded and lied down next to him, as he shuffled back a little to make space for you. "Can I touch you?" He whispered, after he spread the blanket over the both of you. "Yeah," you said, nodding. You were lying on your back. So he shifted onto his side, closer to you, and wrapped his arms around your middle, resting his chin close to the top of your head and intertwined your legs with his own. You held your teddy bear close to your chest, both of your hands intertwined on top of it. "Do you want to tell me what happened? You don't have to if you don't want to," he asked, whispering it. He was so gentle with you. "I'm not really sure. Uh, I- I've had this since I was nine years old. It occurs at night, during the day, whenever, really. It's because... It's because of my fear of death. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. I'm sorry. I should have told you. I- I knew it would happen eventually, I'm sorry," you explained, rushing through it towards the end. The two of you had started dating a few months ago, sleeping over at each other's homes more frequently as time was passing. You cursed yourself for not having told him beforehand.    "Ssh, no, it's okay. It's alright, yeah? I understand," he shushed you, kissing the top of your head gently. "Is there anything I can do for you? Now? Whenever this might happen?" You shook your head. "I don't know. What you did was already perfect, I guess," you chuckled brokenly. "It's just difficult. I don't know what to do about it. I don't even know what to call it. We've always called it a panic attack, but it's not that. I know what panic attacks are like. It's not night terror because it happens at any given time, just mostly during the night. I- I just don't know. I'm sorry. B-But what you did was great. Giving me my little bear and stuff. Thank you." "I'm sorry. I wish I could help you with this, take it away from you. Anything. Telling you that we don't end won't help, though, will it?" "No, all it would do is lead to another episode or whatever." "Okay." He sighed, nuzzling your hair, squeezing you. "I've got you, baby. I promise," he whispered. "Thank you." You turned your head, looking at his chest. Some of his chest hair peaked out of the shirt's collar. You lifted one of your hands and stroked over it. He chuckled above you. "I love you, y/n. This is probably not the best time to say it, but I do," he said.    Your heart was pounding for a wholly different reason than before.    "I love you, too, Dan. So much." Smiling, he leaned back a little, shifting to be face to face with you. Then he pressed a gentle kiss on your lips. Whatever had happened those few minutes before no longer mattered.

[serahne-is-here]

Rant incoming - Veronica Mars Season 4

Now that we know the show is probably never coming back - and as sad as I am to think that, thank god - I just wanted to talk about the way fans are being treated by some people who enjoyed the season, and by Rob Thomas himself.

I mostly want to tacle the elephant in the room : the idea the the only reason fans are upset is because Logan is dead. And thus that the fans who are upset are only ‘shallow Logan fangirls’ who didn’t even watch the show for the right thing anyway. In order to try and counter that, we had plenty of meta written from upset’s fans perspective, explaining everything they disliked about season 4, to try to prove that Logan’s death isn’t the main reasons fans are mad.

Here is my two cents on that : Logan’s death is exactly why fans are mad. But not for the reasons pro-seasons 4 folks think.

I’ve been a fan of she show since it aired, on french TV, the episodes in the complete wrong order, because of course it was. I was eleven I think, and I was at that stage where I loved badass ladies on TV shows. There was Buffy, who kicked and kissed vampires, there was Charmed, who kicked and kissed demons, and there was Veronica.

I didn’t like Veronica as much, at first. It was a bit too real, and full of stuff I didn’t fully understand, but I liked Veronica as a character, I liked her relationship with her dad, with her friends. I liked that Veronica seemed more ‘normal’ and grounded in reality. The show stuck with me, despite its short-run, more than Buffy or Charmed did.

I came back to it a few years later, in high-school, and I absolutely fell for it again. I loved the characters, Neptune’s atmosphere, I loved Veronica and Logan together of course - they were one of my first true OTPs, the kind you read fanfictions for and that you cry about in the middle of the night. I was so sad that the TV show has been cancelled. I understood why, of course. At that time, I wished I was American, and that I could have been one more viewers to help the ratings, I was stupid, but I loved the show so much.

And then, the movie. I learnt about it late, once it was completely funded already, but I was absolutely delighted. I watched all these videos on youtube, I watched the cast tell me how amazing the fans were, and how much they loved them, and how special we were. There was this stupid ‘Who is the best love interest ?’ stuff used for promotion that I thought was a bit stupid, but I didn’t care.

I was high on love.

And how god, was this movie a love confession. I didn’t care that Jason looked a bit sick, I didn’t care that Kristen clearly hadn’t recovered fully from her pregnancy - actually, I liked seeing them as adults. I loved seeing Mac, Weevil, Wallace, even Dick, I loved that everyone was so happy to be back. Was the movie perfect ? Heck no. But you could feel RT’s intentions behing : to give us something that would make us happy.

And happy it made us. And proud. Because the fans made this happen. They brough back Veronica Mars by love, and the Veronica Mars’ cast returned this love at the fullest.

And then, season 4.

Listen to me, season 4 wasn’t great. The mystery was very messy, the ‘new’ cast mostly uninteresting or underexploited. Veronica wasn’t really herself, Logan subdued. There was some racist-ish, misogynist-ish stuff lying around, that I didn’t really care for.

But listen. I have loved this show for fifteen years. The show loved me back, I knew it, because everyone involved with it told us so for years. So, by love, we were able to close our eyes. There had always been some unfortunate stuff in earlier seasons : the whole ‘this feminist faked being raped’ business, Dick being framed as sympathetic, class and race issues being handled very clumsily... but I think we all could see, at least, the good intentions behind it. We could tell ‘well, at least Rob Thomes is trying’ ( note that this is a weaker argument in 2019 than in 2003, I won’t lie ). We were not about to trash this show that we have loved for fifteen years for some plotholes, and mischaracterization either. It’s fine, we’ll write fanfics to fix it, we told ourselves.

And then, the ending.

Logan is a fan-favorite. He has been a fan-favorite since season 1, we love Logan, and we love Veronica and Logan together, and we followed his entire journey, from being a ‘psychotic jackass’ to being the kindest, bravest, purest soul on earth. We love Logan, and everyone knew it. Veronica was the brain of the show, and Logan was its heart. He made us cry, he made us laugh, we made us fall in love with him so much that it hurt. And when you see the promo around the movie and the crow-funding, and even the one around season 4, it’s clear that everyone knew that.

How.

How can I still believe that Veronica Mars loves me, when they, willingly, understanding fully what they were doing, killed - with no ceremony - the character they knew we loved more than anything. It was the end of the season. I was still smiling from the wedding, and I guess I was thinking to myself ‘well, the mystery was underwhelming, but at least we got some LoVe to make everything better’. Despite all the flaws of the season, I still thought Rob Thomas loved me, see. That the season wasn’t that great, sure, but that he still had tried to make me happy, and that this wedding was the proof of that : yes it was rushed, and Veronica’s characterization wasn’t satisfying, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

By love. By LoVe.

And then the fucking punch in the face. It’s like realizing that the friend you had for all these years didn’t care about you at all, despite them telling you how much they valued you, and how much they owed you. That was someone I thought was on my side, who decided to spit on fifteen years of relationship for... for what ?

I don’t even know.

This is what hurts the most. Not Logan’s death, not really. Just the way RT’s decided to destroy everything we built together during these years. The Marshmallows carried this show with their bare hands for years, until the movie, the peak of our love story. And after everything is done, and that people are hurt and angry, and sad, the only reply we get is ‘you weren’t the fans I wanted from the beginning’, as if we weren’t good enough to be fans of this show, as if we were shallow and silly, and not focused on what is really important.

Sorry to break it to you, Rob Thomas, but ‘noir’ fans didn’t save your show. We did. The best relationship in Veronica Mars was never between Veronica and Keith, or Veronica and Logan, it was between the show and the fans.

And it seems like you blew it.

[doctorveera]

Cortical thinning, Schizophrenia and Cognition

A brain imaging study published in Human Brain Mapping by the ENIGMA consortium beautifully captures the thinning of brain cortex as humans age. The study presents data spanning almost the full human lifespan from as early as 3 years of age to 90 years of age in an impressive sample size of 17,075 healthy individuals, which is the largest to date.

The rate of decline in the cortical thickness seems to be not uniform throughout the life. The cortex is at its thickest during childhood, then there is a steep decline until 30 years of age, and thereafter, the decline is gradual. This is an impressive finding, and it sparked a multitude of thoughts in me.

I am surprised that the authors didn’t write anything about the biological processes that drive the cortical thinning. Of course, they are due to loss of neurons. But why this happens very early in life? It is likely that the early steep decline in the cortical thickness is the outcome of synaptic pruning, a process through which our brain gets rid of unwanted neurons. Our brain development happens in such a way that first it produces as many neurons as possible (the process called neurogenesis, which happens predominantly in-utero,) then, it keeps the ones it wants and gets rid of the rest. It is a process of molding the brain to perfection like an artist sculpting a statue to its perfect shape by chipping away the unwanted parts bit by bit. The synaptic pruning is carried out by glial cells such as microglia, which are produced predominantly after birth (the process called gliogenesis).  The peaking of the prenatal neurogenesis and postnatal gliogenesis have been beautifully demonstrated in vivo, and more importantly, in vitro using brain organoids, which I have tweeted just a few days ago.

When I looked at the plot from the ENIGMA study illustrating the cortical thinning across lifespan, I wondered what happens to the cognitive abilities during the early steep decline in the cortical thickness. Disappointingly, the authors didn’t discuss that either in the paper. I remembered a great review article published in Annual Review of Developmental Psychology by Prof. Elliot M. Tucker Drob. I have superficially glanced through the paper many months ago.  Particularly, a plot from the article stayed fresh in my memory; it illustrates the age related change in the fluid and crystallised cognitive abilities. In the article, Prof. Tucker-Drob writes

Cognitive abilities that require predominantly effortful processing at the time of assessment (e.g., fluid reasoning, visuospatial ability, episodic memory, and processing speed) typically peak in early adulthood (e.g., the twenties) and decline monotonically throughout middle and late adulthood, whereas cognitive abilities that rely predominantly on recital or rote application of previously acquired knowledge (e.g., crystallized knowledge, procedural knowledge, and specialized professional skills) typically peak in late adulthood (e.g., the sixties) …

From the article, it’s clear that during the adolescence and early adulthood all our cognitive abilities are in the rise, and it amazes me that, at the same time, our cortex is thinning out swiftly due to synaptic pruning. So, it is sensible to assume that the outcome of synaptic pruning is increase in the cognitive abilities. We grow wiser and wiser as our brain gets sculpted to perfection during our adolescence and early adulthood. But I wonder if the cognitive effects of the cortical thinning differ between the fluid and crystallised abilities. It is possible, as both follow different trajectories. While the fluid abilities peak at 20s, the crystallised abilities peak at 60s.

One way to deduce the cognitive associations of synaptic pruning is to find out the cognitive associations of disorders characterised by disrupted synaptic pruning. Yes, you guessed it right. Schizophrenia. One of the strongest GWAS associations of schizophrenia sits in the MHC locus where the alleles corresponding to a higher C4 expression poses an increased schizophrenia risk. C4 codes for complement factor 4, whose deposition over neurons sends eat-me signals to microglia resulting in the neuronal death.  The C4 schizophrenia risk allele leading to an accelerated synaptic pruning has been demonstrated in mice models recently, and I have tweeted about it.

People often tend to quickly equate schizophrenia with poor cognition. But it is much more complicated than that. Clinically, schizophrenia patients exhibit poor cognitive functioning, particularly during the first psychotic attack (which is often considered to mark the disease onset). But as we know, phenotypic associations are affected by multiple confounding factors. If you look at the genetic correlations, schizophrenia exhibits a puzzling relationship with educational attainment and intelligence (two main cognitive phenotypes for which large scale GWASs exist.) Schizophrenia shows a positive genetic correlation with educational attainment, but a negative genetic correlation with intelligence. This might be a reflection of schizophrenia’s differential correlations with crystallised and fluid abilities. Educational attainment is a measure of crystallised abilities, and intelligence is a measure of fluid abilities (at least the one used in the past GWASs, which were powered mainly by the UK Biobank sample). In line with this assumption, I have also observed similar findings in my own work.

In my PhD project, I found that individuals with schizophrenia exhibit poor cognitive functioning in secondary school at around 15 years of age, long before the disease onset. Interestingly, the poor cognition was reflected only in their mathematics grades (a measure of fluid ability), but not in English or Danish grades (measures of crystallised abilities). Genetic correlation analysis revealed positive correlations with language grades, but negative correlations with mathematics grades. More interestingly, even individuals who never had schizophrenia exhibited differential math and language performances when stratified based on their polygenic risk for schizophrenia. Those with higher polygenic risk performed better in language, but poorer in math, and those with lower polygenic risk did the opposite.

Assuming that math grades and intelligence measurements reflect fluid abilities, and language grades and educational attainment reflect crystallised abilities, it makes sense to assume the differential cognitive correlations of schizophrenia should be--at least partly--driven by the synaptic pruning disruption and its likely consequence on the cortical thinning. To test these hypotheses, we need large scale genetic studies based on longitudinal brain imaging measures.

I’ll conclude by listing some research questions that need to be answered by the future studies.

Does the early steep decline in cortex thickness is driven by synaptic pruning?

What are the cognitive effects of cortex thinning during adolescence and early adulthood? Does the effects differ across cognitive domains?

Is the cortical thinning more accelerated in individuals with schizophrenia or in those with increased schizophrenia polygenic risk?

How much influence does genetics has on the early life cortical thinning ?

Are the genetic variants associated with early life cortical thinning under the influence of natural selection? Perhaps, they evade negative selection by trading off one type of cognition for the other? Does this has anything to do with the fact that schizophrenia remains common in the population despite having a high negative effect on fecundity?