funding a neuroscience lab's day to day expenses with cryptocurrency donations

[behavioralneuroscience]

Hey all,

I'm a neuroscientist at Loma Linda University with a lab focused on finding treatments for brain disorders like Alzheimer's disease, stroke and traumatic brain injury (my lab's publications are listed here: www.behavioralneuroscience.org/publications). Given the current paucity of funding opportunities for science, I have decided to solicit individually-sourced micro-donations for everyday lab expenses to keep the lab running between funding acquisitions. I think that it could help my students wrap up various projects or generate some pilot data that we would ultimately use to acquire larger, peer-reviewed grants. The donators would know that they directly supported some actual scientific grunt-work in a specific lab by a specific scientist. I posted this in the newbies section last week and got some good advice along with enough BTC to purchase about 700 microscope slides (enough to complete about 1 project)... here is the thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=225440.msg2371327#msg2371327

I would be happy to set up a "donations" page thanking individuals for helping to support our science - however, since the donations are anonymous, you would need to email me in advance of any donation to let me know your info.

lab BTC address: 1KxqK9w8uH8gvYNxDAg4FS8Soij2RwnhWE
lab LTC address: LV1CpYdJcQXKyZvD3HkaaEu1oMBpGkbBNZ

Thanks!
Rich

--
Rich Hartman, PhD
Associate Professor
School of Behavioral Health
Loma Linda University

[grue]

[kodo]

Wow this is amazing, cool!!!

[behavioralneuroscience]

https://i.minus.com/ibeAI5HEpCnLGU.png

2005 - 2011 was www.behavioral-neuroscience.org
since then it's been www.behavioralneuroscience.org (no dash)

[raze]

For what it's worth, I sent an email to 'rhartman@llu.edu' which is the email cited at http://www.llu.edu/behavioral-health/psychology/faculty/hartman.page. I then received a reply from Rich Hartman <behavioralneuroscience@gmail.com>. So this appears to be legitimate.

[jdbtracker]

Definitely would be a good idea to fund this research for future generations. Is there any way that the data generated by your lab can be enhanced with our help? If a appropriate program is provided to distribute the computing power we can help significantly with reasearch data.

[Loozik]

I have decided to solicit individually-sourced micro-donations for everyday lab expenses to keep the lab running between funding acquisitions.

I do not think you will be successful trying to find people wishing to fund your everyday expenses.

You may however succeed if you list specific neuroscience projects that you want to be financially supported, e.g.:
- finding a substance that will cause neurogenesis in adults (in other than dentate gyrus parts of the brain);
- finding a substance for speeding up neuroplasticity
- etc.

If people see you work on interesting projects, they might be inclined to co-finance those project which are of interest to them.

[behavioralneuroscience]

You may however succeed if you list specific neuroscience projects that you want to be financially supported, e.g.:
- finding a substance that will cause neurogenesis in adults (in other than dentate gyrus parts of the brain);
- finding a substance for speeding up neuroplasticity
- etc.
If people see you work on interesting projects, they might be inclined to co-finance those project which are of interest to them.

Good point - I included my publication list to show the types of projects that we publish. We currently have data showing that polyphenolic compounds found in many plants (typically those with red/blue pigmentation) can dramatically increase neurogenesis (birth of new neurons) in adults, along with improving learning, memory, and other cognitive abilities (indirectly suggestive of increased neuroplasticity). Our current main project involves figuring out how to use these chemicals to help prevent or reduce damage in Alzheimer's, stroke, TBI, etc... as well as general cognitive enhancers (which is what many of us are actually interested in, but it's most difficult to get funding for improving performance of normal individuals)

[behavioralneuroscience]

Definitely would be a good idea to fund this research for future generations. Is there any way that the data generated by your lab can be enhanced with our help? If a appropriate program is provided to distribute the computing power we can help significantly with reasearch data.

The computing power required to analyze the data for my experiments is relatively trivial - it's collecting the data that takes all the resources. The best part of any scientist's day is analyzing the data at the end of an experiment and observing a result that has never been demonstrated before

[Loozik]

Our current main project involves figuring out how to use these chemicals to help prevent or reduce damage in Alzheimer's, stroke, TBI, etc... as well as general cognitive enhancers (which is what many of us are actually interested in, but it's most difficult to get funding for improving performance of normal individuals)

Since you have ''behvioral'' in your name...

there is one behavioural addiction (dopaminergic in its nature I think, same / similar as alcohol addiction) which is very common among these gambling Bitcoin community members https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.16900

You could devise a method of diagnosing and curing this addiction. Bitcoins will pour into your pockets for this research 

[Loozik]

We currently have data showing that polyphenolic compounds found in many plants (typically those with red/blue pigmentation) can dramatically increase neurogenesis (birth of new neurons) in adults.

And this neurogenesis happens only in hippocampus or in other parts of the brain?

[ScriptGadget]

Neat cause. I'll be donating when I land.

[behavioralneuroscience]

We have currently only looked for it in the hippocampus - that was what our original funding payed for... It should be noted that increasing neurogenesis in the hippocampus using plant-based compounds is pretty cool! We have some ideas about other areas that we want to check, though, and this is exactly the type of exploratory (e.g., somewhat risky in terms of return-on-investment) pilot data that could be generated with these donations. Last week we got a little over 2.5 BTC, which is enough to buy about 700 slides (which is about enough to mount slices of these other brain areas from 1 experiment). A few more would cover the histology reagents and cutting blade costs - with these, we could generate some (potentially) innovative data with micro-donations that a peer-reviewed grant would not have funded (the hippocampus has a much higher chance of success when looking for neurogenesis)....

[behavioralneuroscience]

there is one behavioural addiction (dopaminergic in its nature I think, same / similar as alcohol addiction) which is very common among these gambling Bitcoin community members https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.16900

we have actually generated some data showing that traumatic brain injuries (TBI) induce risk-taking behaviors (which are very similar in nature to addictive behaviors) and that reducing that damage seems to reduce the behavioral impairment (not that everyone with addictive personalities has brain damage, but having brain damage can dramatically increase your chances of developing these behaviors)

[Lethos]

Has any of your research (or potential future ones) in the field neurological disorders, cover epilepsy in anyway? (personal interest)
I couldn't find any, but I do admit to just being amateur in my studies of epilepsy.

I really like the areas of research you cover, it sounds like some good studies being done.
I have a family member who suffers from bad memory loss due to brain injury, so any research in this area helps (unrelated to first query).

So it sounds like a interesting cause to support.

[Loozik]

We have currently only looked for it in the hippocampus

Everybody looks at hippocampus... I would be interested in a study that shows neurogenesis effects also elsewhere. How many politicians / sociopaths could be cured of their madness if someone discovered (i) neurogenesis in frontal lobe can happen in adults and (ii) neurons responsible for compassion and morality could be grown...

[Loozik]

we have actually generated some data showing that traumatic brain injuries (TBI) induce risk-taking behaviors (which are very similar in nature to addictive behaviors)

The catch is every neuroscience department of a medical university generated the same / similar data.

But no effective cure for addiction of this type was found! Find the cure! That would be a breakthrough worth financing. The world wants solutions / cures, not another non-controversial set of data.

and that reducing that damage seems to reduce the behavioral impairment (not that everyone with addictive personalities has brain damage, but having brain damage can dramatically increase your chances of developing these behaviors)

How do you reduce the damage? Did you discover a medicine for reducing the damage in the brain?

[behavioralneuroscience]

Everybody looks at hippocampus...

That's mostly because peer-reviewed granting agencies want the best chance of success when they send you money, and currently the hippocampus is one of the only areas that has consistently shown evidence of new neuron growth throughout life... we suspect that our compounds are working elsewhere as well. Frontal lobes are definitely good candidates...

The catch is every neuroscience department of a medical university generated the same / similar data. But no effective cure for addiction of this type was found! Find the cure! That would be a breakthrough worth financing. The world wants solutions / cures, not another non-controversial set of data. How do you reduce the damage? Did you discover a medicine for reducing the damage in the brain?

True - this is a finding that keeps emerging across many labs and many experimental models. Although the public (and scientists) want and get excited about "breakthroughs", the fact is that the vast majority of science consists of slowly and methodically confirming / rejecting ideas over and over again until a general consensus begins to emerge. Understanding that many types of brain injuries induce risk-taking behaviors will slowly but surely develop an understanding of the behavior itself. We are using compounds from plants, as well as exercise, to show that a "well-maintained" brain is less susceptible to brain damage and behavioral impairments. This in itself is clearly not a "breakthrough" - however, our experiments are designed to assess the mechanism(s) by which nutrition and exercise impact the brain, which may ultimately lead to breakthroughs about how to treat these disorders.

Has any of your research (or potential future ones) in the field neurological disorders, cover epilepsy in anyway?

only in the sense that our damage models often induce epileptic seizures. If epilepsy interests you, maybe you could google some scientists working in that area and email them with an offer to donate. I doubt that any scientist with daily lab expenses would turn down such an offer once they realize how easy it is to set up a wallet and exchange account.

[Lethos]

Has any of your research (or potential future ones) in the field neurological disorders, cover epilepsy in anyway?

only in the sense that our damage models often induce epileptic seizures. If epilepsy interests you, maybe you could google some scientists working in that area and email them with an offer to donate. I doubt that any scientist with daily lab expenses would turn down such an offer once they realize how easy it is to set up a wallet and exchange account.

Thank you for your quick answer.

[mprep]

Good luck with your research. It's good to hear that bitcoin is helping science.