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I'll try to answer this politely... >In chap. 7 of Bennet & Elliot's Physiology & Medicine of Diving (4th >ed), there's a discussion of two experiments (pp 185-186) performed in >1962 and 1970 respectively. Both of the studies noted that aspirin >(Acetylsalicylic acid) reduced the voltage necessary to evoke a >response in rats that were exposed to high N2 partial pressures (1.22 >ATA N2, 1.0 ATA O2 - '62 and 6.41 ATA N2, .9 ATA O2 - '70). >Reductions were apparently large and significant. Did it say where, and how much voltabe was applied or give more details? I'll read this tonight and review it, but... All this is saying is that *some part* of the neuronal pathway involved in reaction to electric shock is affected by high PPN2 and that apsirin removed this effect in this instance (if indeed this is the conclusion that they reached and if the tests were done properly). Before anyone says anything here I'm not saying it *wasn't* done properly, but, it wouldn't be the first time. It says absolutely NOTHING about the quality or cohesiveness of the reaction. Translation - if you had a problem when narced rather than stare at the problem and say DUH, perhaps you'd do something REALLY stupid. To summarize - it did not test the quality of the response and it appeared only to test the response to ONE type of input, and potentially not a very important one either. To get into a little more detail - some physical reactions involve only 2 neurons, the receptor and the notor neuron - the typical "knee jerk" is one of these. Tapping below the knee stretches a ligament with a "stretch receptor" that's part of one of these two neuron systems and bang - your leg twitches. The brain does not play a part in this - the receptor neuron is connected directly to the motor neuron in the spinal cord. So, testing such a reaction would say absolutely NOTHING about the response of the central nervous system under these conditions. I'm not sure exactly what the experiments performed were, but it sounds like they were pretty simplistic (which is why Bennett gives his disclaimer in the following paragraph. >At the end of the section (p 187), Bennet notes that 'there is still >no pharmacological method of preventing inert gas narcosis in man'. >My question is 'why?'. Have any more recent studies been performed on >nhumans, and if not, are there any anecdotal observations people might >like to share? See the above reasoning. Plus anecdotal evidence is often useless because it's not repeatable and it is not done in large enough numbers with proper controls to show any trends or reach any useful conclusions. I got flamed last time I knocked anecdotal evidence on rec.scuba but if anyone flames me for it here, where *supposedly* you know better, you can get out the kneepads. -Carl-
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