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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · 6d

Seeing this all the time in our "treatment resistant depression" clinic. Patients who say that they never could fit in or get it right, and got increasingly depressed/suicidal as they moved through adolescence. The article points the arrow the wrong way. ASD traits get you an MDD diagnosis.

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · 6d

The common take on this is "autism diagnosed late is a different disorder bc it has shared genes with depression, PTSD, etc".
OR, maybe, if you have autism that doesn't look like the textbook, you get masking-related trauma/anxiety and get misidagnosed!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Polygenic and developmental profiles of autism differ by age at diagnosis - Nature

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

www.nature.com

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · 7d

Very weird thing happening here, wondering if anywhere else. Award gets canceled for being on a Bad Topic (vaccines). Reinstated due to lawsuit. Now NIH proposing not to find Y2+, asking us to agree to "bilateral termination". Smells wrong... anyone else seen this?

Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · 27d

New paper out! A review of prefrontal mechanisms involved in deep brain stimulation, bringing together our work of the past few years and a foreshadow of where we're going next. Plus some cool rodent stuff!

www.jneurosci.org/content/45/3...

Prefrontal Network Mechanisms of Psychiatric Deep Brain Stimulation

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an emerging treatment for otherwise treatment-refractory psychiatric disorders. It can produce remarkable clinical results in expert hands, but has not fared as well in...

www.jneurosci.org

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Tina Smith @smith.senate.gov · Aug 28

I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do.

Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Aug 28

RFK Jr on the mass shooting in Minnesota: "We're launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence."

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Aug 17

In between the science funding nonsense note this proposal to end student loan forgiveness for anyone whose *organization* is deemed to have done unlawful things. Like, oh, ANY UNIVERSITY WITH A DEI PROGRAM?
I can't find the public comment link so hoping someone can.

apnews.com/article/stud...

Some workers would be excluded from student loan forgiveness program for 'illegal' activity

The Trump administration has proposed changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that could exclude teachers, social workers and nurses if their employers engage in activities deemed illeg...

apnews.com

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Aug 1

"The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The Court disagrees. "
Mic drop.
www.nationaltpsalliance.org/wp-content/u...

www.nationaltpsalliance.org

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jul 17

Ok, you two, then let's continue my thread w @shrewshrew.bsky.social bc this cuts right into anxiety and OCD. Do we know how/ where uncertainty gets tagged w negative valence? That seems like really valuable clinical target.

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jul 16

Which is close to what you say upthread but there's I think a subtle difference (maybe confounded). Which is interesting question bc do we know that exploit is less effortful than explore? I guess the RTs say that?

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jul 16

But also mental effort. cuz this was coding tasks. One could be asking it "write me a function that summarizes the output of these other 3" without having to hold those 3 in working memory. One of the worst things about coding is when it turns into basically N-back.

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jul 16

That's a different thing, though. The argument you were making to start, as I read it, was the idea that it's a sure-payoff action, so people are doing it bc it's easier than searching/trying to think of an answer, not bc it directly reassures them.

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jul 16

Also this thread really makes me think that at ACNP we should set up a giant beach arena, get some basketballs, and sponsor a marble burying contest for humans

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jul 16

So, logically, it is a low-variance, medium average payoff bandit. Going for long nature walks or drinking tea and coloring are high variance, often will produce nothing but lower blood pressure, but MIGHT suddenly produce "holy crud, what if we..." ideas, i.e. high variance.

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jul 16

But what about if the reward rate were mid? Bc isn't that the argument you're making here? GenAI doesn't produce huge payoff answers bc it can't -- it ultimately can only recombine tokens. The truly wild "nobody has ever thought this before" ideas are out of scope.

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Colette Delawalla @cdelawalla.bsky.social · Jul 16

I’m hearing a lot of despair and “what’s the point”-ing.

Here’s the point:

ONE less person kidnapped by ICE.

ONE more child vaccinated.

ONE grant reinstated.

ONE more PEPFAR treatment.

ONE more meal to a hungry kid.

ONE more person covered by Medicaid.

One life is ALWAYS worth resistance.

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jul 16

So if this is true, would we predict that given two bandits, one with lower variance on its random walk, mammals would prefer that? Because I thought the IGT data went the other way.

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IEEE Spectrum @spectrum.ieee.org · Jul 12

People with clinical depression have limited options if meds don't work for them. One technology that has long been on the horizon is #deepbrainstimulation. Elie Dolgin did a deep dive on the most cutting-edge versions of these brain implants🧵 spectrum.ieee.org/deep-brain-s...

Next-Gen Brain Implants Offer New Hope for Depression

AI improves deep brain stimulation to offer new hope for personalized depression treatment.

spectrum.ieee.org

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jul 9

New paper! (Something went right!) It turns out that if you want to auto-optimize neuromodulation for a low-SNR situation (pain, psych, anything subjective), standard Bayesian optimization breaks. Evan Dastin van Rijn shows how to fix it!

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Radware Bot Manager Captcha

To ensure we keep this website safe, please can you confirm you are a human by ticking the box below.

iopscience.iop.org

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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · Jul 9

Very grateful to have had the chance to attend the Science Fair of Cancelled Grants today.

As a program officer overseeing health equity research, I’ve heard far too many stories of lost science, lost careers, and lost jobs.

Dr. Naomi Casselli stands in front of her poster describing her cancelled grant on family language planning.

Dr. Reichert standing behind his poster on his cancelled On-Ramp training program.

Drs. Casselli and Norton in front of Dr. Caselli’s poster.

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Ardem Patapoutian @ardemp.bskyverified.social · Jun 25

So important! Please contact your Republican senators, especially Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), and Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA). 🙏 amplify!

Ferric Fang, MD @fangferric.bsky.social · Jun 24

As Robert Kuttner writes, the NIH will need support from Republican Senators to avoid draconian cuts to its FY2026 budget.

prospect.org/politics/202...

Will the Senate Save NIH?

Rescuing biomedical research is every bit as important as saving Medicaid.

prospect.org

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jun 14

The Democrat (former) Speaker of the Minnesota house was murdered today.
In her own home. With her husband.
By a white man (allegedly) in body armor.
But tell me again why "criminal illegal aliens" are the threat to our democracy?

www.startribune.com/melissa-hort...

Melissa Hortman, top Democrat in Minnesota House, shot and killed in home

Gov. Tim Walz confirmed Saturday morning that Hortman and her husband Mark had both been killed in what he called targeted political violence.

www.startribune.com

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · Jun 14

A friend just texted me from LA that this was happening at the park she was at

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · Jun 14

ICE is going to parks in Los Angeles and kidnapping nannies who are caring for small children

The children are witnessing these kidnappings and being held in custody until their parents are contacted

Women and children in parks

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · Jun 13

It is a proven scientific fact that this whole crisis would be solved if the protestors just went over to the San Andreas and jumped up and down in unison. California would break off, float away, and become a sovereign nation. Science, people, science.

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · May 29

Bro, your literal last statement was "15 years is, in my mind, enough time to at least see some glimmers of progress towards new treatments. "
There's your glimmers. We've been asking to do clinical trials for 3 years now and been told no. Can't get the proof if you don't do the test.

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Alik Widge @alikwidge.bsky.social · May 28

RDoC based discovery: scholar.google.com/citations?vi...

Replication: scholar.google.com/citations?vi...

Reverse translational model: scholar.google.com/citations?vi...

Therapy optimization: scholar.google.com/citations?vi...

And if you were on Council, Josh showed you all of these.

scholar.google.com

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