Donald J. Trump speaks during CPAC Texas 2022. (Shutterstock.com)
CNN political analyst John Avlon was disturbed by the fact that former President Donald Trump remains the favorite to win the Republican Party's 2024 nomination despite going on a rambling and incoherent tirade at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
In particular, Avlon warned viewers against writing Trump off even though his power over the Republican Party appears to have diminished in recent months.
"It is easy to treat Trump as a side show because if you look at his, you know, posts on Truth Social, if you look at that rambling, 145-minute lie-filled speech, you'd say this is someone that is not well," he said. "Yet, we need to concede he's the front-runner for the Republican nomination and the more crowded the primary is, the more likely he is to win."
Avlon also said it would be a mistake to focus too much on Trump's verbal provocations given the other dangers he poses to the health of the American republic.
"He is somebody who is under multiple investigations right now, somebody who tried to overturn our democracy," Avlon noted. "But that is not a disqualifier in today's Republican Party. So I think we need to be wide-eyed about that right now."
When 17 people were in orbit around the Earth all at the same time on May 30, 2023, it set a record. With NASA and other federal space agencies planning more manned missions and commercial companies bringing people to space, opportunities for human space travel are rapidly expanding.
However, traveling to space poses risks to the human body. Since NASA wants to send a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s, scientists need to find solutions for these hazards sooner rather than later.
As a kinesiologist who works with astronauts, I’ve spent years studying the effects space can have on the body and brain. I’m also involved in a NASA project that aims to mitigate the health hazards that participants of a future mission to Mars might face.
Space radiation
The Earth has a protective shield called a magnetosphere, which is the area of space around a planet that is controlled by its magnetic field. This shield filters out cosmic radiation. However, astronauts traveling farther than the International Space Station will face continuous exposure to this radiation – equivalent to between 150 and 6,000 chest X-rays.
The blood-brain barrier keeps compounds flowing through your circulatory system out of your brain.
NASA is developing technology that can shield travelers on a Mars mission from radiation by building deflecting materials such as Kevlar and polyethylene into space vehicles and spacesuits. Certain diets and supplements such as enterade may also minimize the effects of radiation. Supplements like this, also used in cancer patients on Earth during radiation therapy, can alleviate gastrointestinal side effects of radiation exposure.
Gravitational changes
Astronauts have to exercise in space to minimize the muscle loss they’ll face after a long mission. Missions that go as far as Mars will have to make sure astronauts have supplements such as bisphosphonate, which is used to prevent bone breakdown in osteoporosis. These supplements should keep their muscles and bones in good condition over long periods of time spent without the effects of Earth’s gravity.
Microgravity also affects the nervous and circulatory systems. On Earth, your heart pumps blood upward, and specialized valves in your circulatory system keep bodily fluids from pooling at your feet. In the absence of gravity, fluids shift toward the head.
My work and that of others has shown that this results in an expansion of fluid-filled spaces in the middle of the brain. Having extra fluid in the skull and no gravity to “hold the brain down” causes the brain to sit higher in the skull, compressing the top of the brain against the inside of the skull.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, pictured here, is wearing the Chibis lower body negative pressure suit, which may help counteract the negative effects of gravity-caused fluid shifts in the body. NASA
These fluid shifts may contribute to spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome, a condition experienced by many astronauts that affects the structure and function of the eyes. The back of the eye can become flattened, and the nerves that carry visual information from the eye to the brain swell and bend. Astronauts can still see, though visual function may worsen for some. Though it hasn’t been well studied yet, case studies suggest this condition may persist even a few years after returning to Earth.
Scientists may be able to shift the fluids back toward the lower body using specialized “pants” that pull fluids back down toward the lower body like a vacuum. These pants could be used to redistribute the body’s fluids in a way that is more similar to what occurs on Earth.
Mental health and isolation
While space travel can damage the body, the isolating nature of space travel can also have profound effects on the mind.
Imagine having to live and work with the same small group of people, without being able to see your family or friends for months on end. To learn to manage extreme environments and maintain communication and leadership dynamics, astronauts first undergo team training on Earth.
Researchers are studying how to best monitor and support behavioral mental health under these extreme and isolating conditions.
While space travel comes with stressors and the potential for loneliness, astronauts describe experiencing an overview effect: a sense of awe and connectedness with all humankind. This often happens when viewing Earth from the International Space Station.
Earthrise, a famous image taken during an Apollo mission, shows the Earth from space. While seeing the Earth from afar, many astronauts report feeling an awed ‘overview effect.’ NASA
Learning how to support human health and physiology in space also has numerous benefits for life on Earth. For example, products that shield astronauts from space radiation and counter its harmful effects on our body can also treat cancer patients receiving radiation treatments.
Understanding how to protect our bones and muscles in microgravity could improve how doctors treat the frailty that often accompanies aging. And space exploration has led to many technological achievements advancing water purification and satellite systems.
Researchers like me who study ways to preserve astronaut health expect our work will benefit people both in space and here at home.
Dopamine seems to be having a moment in the zeitgeist. You may have read about it in the news, seen viral social media posts about “dopamine hacking” or listened to podcasts about how to harness what this molecule is doing in your brain to improve your mood and productivity. But recent neuroscience research suggests that popular strategies to control dopamine are based on an overly narrow view of how it functions.
Dopamine is one of the brain’s neurotransmitters – tiny molecules that act as messengers between neurons. It is known for its role in tracking your reaction to rewards such as food, sex, money or answering a question correctly. There are many kinds ofdopamine neurons located in the uppermost region of the brainstem that manufacture and release dopamine throughout the brain. Whether neuron type affects the function of the dopamine it produces has been an open question.
Recently published research reports a relationship between neuron type and dopamine function, and one type of dopamine neuron has an unexpected function that will likely reshape how scientists, clinicians and the public understand this neurotransmitter.
Dopamine is involved with more than just pleasure.
Dopamine neuron firing
Dopamine is famous for the role it plays in reward processing, an idea that dates back at least 50 years. Dopamine neurons monitor the difference between the rewards you thought you would get from a behavior and what you actually got. Neuroscientists call this difference a reward prediction error.
Eating dinner at a restaurant that just opened and looks likely to be nothing special shows reward prediction errors in action. If your meal is very good, that results in a positive reward prediction error, and you are likely to return and order the same meal in the future. Each time you return, the reward prediction error shrinks until it eventually reaches zero when you fully expect a delicious dinner. But if your first meal was terrible, that results in a negative reward prediction error, and you probably won’t go back to the restaurant.
Dopamine neurons communicate reward prediction errors to the brain through their firing rates and patterns of dopamine release, which the brain uses for learning. They fire in two ways.
Phasic firing refers to rapid bursts that cause a short-term peak in dopamine. This happens when you receive an unexpected reward or more rewards than anticipated, like if your server offers you a free dessert or includes a nice note and smiley face on your check. Phasic firing encodes reward prediction errors.
By contrast, tonic firing describes the slow and steady activity of these neurons when there are no surprises; it is background activity interspersed with phasic bursts. Phasic firing is like mountain peaks, and tonic firing is the valley floors between peaks.
Tracking information used in generating reward prediction errors is not all dopamine does. I have been following all the other jobs of dopamine with interestthroughmy ownresearch measuring brain areas where dopamine neurons are located in people.
About 15 years ago, reports started coming out that dopamine neurons respond toaversive events – think brief discomforts like a puff of air against your eye, a mild electric shock or losing money – something scientists thought dopamine did not do. These studies showed that some dopamine neurons respond only to rewards while others respond to both rewards and negative experiences, leading to the hypothesis that there might be more than one dopamine system in the brain.
These studies were soon followed by experiments showing that there is more than one type of dopamine neuron. So far, researchers have identified seven distinct types of dopamine neurons by looking at their genetic profiles.
A study published in August 2023 was the first to parse dopamine function based on neuron subtype. The researchers at the Dombeck Lab at Northwestern University examined three types of dopamine neurons and found that two tracked rewards and aversive events while the third monitored movement, such as when the mice they studied started running faster.
Dopamine release
Recent media coverage on how to control dopamine’s effects is based only on the type of release that looks like peaks and valleys. When dopamine neurons fire in phasic bursts, as they do to signal reward prediction errors, dopamine is released throughout the brain. These dopamine peaks happen very fast because dopamine neurons can fire many times in less than a second.
There is another way that dopamine release happens: Sometimes it increases slowly until a desired reward is obtained. Researchers discovered this ramp pattern 10 years ago in a part of the brain called the striatum. The steepness of the dopamine ramp tracks how valuable a reward is and how much effort it takes to get it. In other words, it encodes motivation.
The restaurant example can also illustrate what happens when dopamine release occurs in a ramping pattern. When you have ordered a meal you know is going to be amazing and are waiting for it to arrive, your dopamine levels are steadily increasing. They reach a crescendo when the server places the dish on your table and you sink your teeth into the first bite.
How dopamine ramps happen is still unsettled, but this type of release is thought to underlie goal pursuit and learning. Future research on dopamine ramping will affect how scientists understand motivation and will ultimately improve advice on how to optimally hack dopamine.
Dopamine(s) in disease and neurodiversity
Though dopamine is known for its involvement in drug addiction, neurodegenerative disease and neurodevelopmental conditions like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, recent research suggests how scientists understand its involvement may soon need updating. Of the seven subtypes of dopamine neurons that are known so far, researchers have characterized the function of only three.
There is already some evidence that the discovery of dopamine diversity is updating scientific knowledge of disease. The researchers of the recent paper identifying the relationship between dopamine neuron type and function point out that movement-focused dopamine neurons are known to be among the hardest hit in Parkinson’s disease, while two other types are not as affected. This difference might lead to more targeted treatment options.
Ongoing research untangling the diversity of dopamine will likely continue to change, and improve, our understanding of disease and neurodiversity.
Donald Trump now has to contend with testimony from one of his own former aides -- and CNN's John Avlon argued on Wednesday that the former president will have a very hard time knocking down her claims.
Reacting to news that former Trump personal assistant Molly Michaels has become a key witness in special counsel Jack Smith's case surrounding the Mar-a-Lago documents, Avlon outlined why she will be tough for Trump's lawyers to impugn.
"It's a very big deal because she was his gate keeper, his executive assistant," he said. "The fact she's speaking to prosecutors and saying the former president ordered her to deny information during an official inquiry not only speaks to the president's state of mind... but for the Trump folks, the calls are coming from inside the house at this point. These are people who can't be dismissed as having partisan axes to grind."
Michaels' testimony is important because she can back up notes that were written by Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran about Trump musing about lying to the government about possessing top-secret government documents, which Smith will argue shows his intent to obstruct the investigation.
