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Snails On Methamphetamine
sciencehabit writes "Science answers the question: What happens when you put a snail on speed? From the article: 'The results suggest that meth improves memory, something that has been previously observed in creatures with large, complex brains like rats and humans. But since the snails store their memories in a simple, three-neuron network, the team hopes that studying the meth effect in these gastropods will help pinpoint how the drug's memory magnification powers work.'"
Three neurons for a memory. Sounds like the congress.
This is what happens when you put scientists on pot.
scientist1: "DUDE!!! what would happen if we took a snail, (pause) and gave him speed?"
scientist2: "PHHAAAA HAHAHAHAHA, lets' get to the lab!!"
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Oh, the irony.
Well, since we're only just starting to understand how memory is stored at a molecular level... Starting with a super simple system (the snail) and looking at how a chemical alters that system, it's not impossible to see how this research might have some value in understanding how memory is processed and stored. There are similarities, even if a snail looks nothing like a human.
Er, Focalin isn't chemically different than Ritalin - they're both C14-H19-NO2. The difference between the two, apparently, is that Focalin contains only one stereoisomer of the compound and Ritalin contains both. As a (gross) example my bio prof once used, if you had two bags full of severed hands, Ritalin would be the bag of left and right hands but Focalin would only contain left hands. They're all the same compound (hands), but some of them are mirror images of the others (left vs right).
An interesting aside is that the body commonly treats steroisomers very differently. A good example of this would be Thalidomide, which was commonly prescribed to pregnant women in the 50's: One isomer of Thalidomide is a sedative (was prescribed for morning sickness), but the other isomer wreaked all kinds of havoc on the fetus and caused birth defects. Since the body freely metabolizes one form from the other (ie: even given a pure dose of L-Thalidomide, the body would convert some of it to R-Thalidomide), the drug is no longer used. This all varies by compound though. In some cases, steroisomers have different effects, in some cases they have the same (or similar) effect. And sometimes one isomer of a compound is active and the other inert - penicillin is an example of that. :)
Biochemistry is crazy stuff.