Recent comments in /f/askscience

ithinkformyself76 t1_j9f1kcx wrote

Reply to How and why does asphyxiation induce euphoria? by Ausoge

Slow down everyone. It may be true that there is some pleasure associated with asphyxiation, but there are far, far, too many dead people that thought they could play with this and live. There are much better ways to improve feelings - one is going for a walk. Anyone care to make a list under this comment? A list of safe and healthy things that boost emotions.

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Bbrhuft t1_j9ew86u wrote

Reply to comment by fourthwallb in Are some people immune to HIV? by Lass_OM

I see 4.9% of 555 newly diagnosed HIV infections in France between 2003-10, were the CXCR4-tropic variant. And of these, 1.5% were involved in a transmission clusters (one case).

I think it means the CXCR4-tropic variant usually arises/evolves after infection, it's less often involved in transmission?

I think they hypothesize, if I understand the paper correctly, that the CXCR4-tropic variant is less infectious than CCR5 variants.

Frange, P., Meyer, L., Ghosn, J., Deveau, C., Goujard, C., Duvivier, C., Tubiana, R., Rouzioux, C., Chaix, M.L. and ANRS CO6 PRIMO Cohort Study Group, 2013. Prevalence of CXCR 4‐tropic viruses in clustered transmission chains at the time of primary HIV‐1 infection. Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 19(5), pp.E252-E255.

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auraseer t1_j9evto1 wrote

Reply to How do our brains know where in the body a nerve impulse came from? by kzorlk0

It's not a different signal, but it comes in on a different nerve.

You don't have just one nerve that senses your whole arm. The nerve that senses a touch on your shoulder is separate from the ones that senses touch on your elbow, or your fingertips, or anywhere else on your arm. Your brain knows where you were touched because of which nerve gets activated.

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w4ckymunchkin t1_j9eutaz wrote

Reply to How do our brains know where in the body a nerve impulse came from? by kzorlk0

Each patch of skin is supplied by a single spinal nerve and this is called a dermatome. When you touch that area of the skin that single nerve receives an impulse and takes that impulse to a specific region within your brain where it interprets it as a sensory input (in this case touch) from that region. Obviously it works on an even smaller level than dermatomes as we can distinguish touch from two nearby areas and this is because impulses are travelling up specific neurones which form the spinal nerve

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