Concussions and the Self
06 Dec 2011 3 Comments
in Journal Entry 10, Traumatic Brain Injury Tags: Taylor
This morning, my roommate asked me if I had heard about how researchers had discovered that Derek Boogaard, a professional NHL player, had similar brain injuries to those found in football players. At the time, I was unaware of these findings but I did a little bit of investigating…
Boogaard died last May from a drug overdose. The articles I found about him repeatedly noted that he was well-known in the NHL for his aggressive fighting on the ice. His brain, like many other professional football and hockey players’, was donated to the VA Brain Bank following his death. Researchers at Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy have found that like many NFL players, Boogaard suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is a progressive brain disease that is characterized by the accumulation of the tau protein, leading to memory loss, confusion, and depression. The aspect of the CTE that I found to be most interesting and related to our ongoing discussion of the self is the fact that CTE is caused by multiple head injuries, for example concussions.
In this video from this morning’s Good Morning America, one doctor describes concussions and their effects on the brain. Interestingly enough, he specifically states that there are no structural changes that appear on CAT scans or MRIs as a result of concussions. Seconds later he explains that most concussions diagnoses in athletes come from an individual’s teammates expressing concern that the individual is “not acting right.” In other words, the teammates are worried that the individual is not acting like him/herself.
But wait, how can this make sense? We’ve spent hours discussing how our self all boils down to the structure of our brain, specifically our synapses. LeDoux tells us that our synapses are who we are. So, how can these concussed athletes not be acting like themselves but researchers are struggling to find structural changes in the brain? Shouldn’t they be finding issues at the neuron’s synapses, whether it’s neurotransmitters, receptors, or overall functioning? Well there is substantial evidence that concussions affect cerebral blood flow, altering it for as long as a month after the initial injury. So is this change in blood flow changing the athletes’ ability to act like themselves? The video certainly seems to suggest so. Does this mean that we’ve forgotten to discuss a huge dimension of the self: blood flow? By the end of Synaptic Self, LeDoux had definitely convinced me of the significance of synapses, but I wonder what he would say about the role of blood…
You and your synapses are what you eat
06 Dec 2011 1 Comment
At times, I tend to over analyze the idea that we are our synapses as I walk around and consider that every passing moment is making some change within my brain. We constantly interact with our environment both during arousal and sleep, and this interaction causes a ceaseless dynamic current within our minds. Fortunately, the way in which our brain changes provides some sort of continuity from moment to moment in terms of our personalities, but if I look at myself even two years ago, I notice radical changes in myself. However, the way my brain changes is not solely the product of my interaction with the environment, but also my mother’s and possibly my fathers. Currently, the rise in obesity has led to many children developing in a malnourished over-energy-enriched womb which has lasting consequences for their brain development. Not only does it increase the likelihood of childhood obesity, but behavioral disorders such as ADHD have also been correlated with children from obese parents.
The rise in obesity has links to the increased consumption of processed foods. These processed foods contain all sorts of chemicals and preservatives which may impact pre-natal development, but they are also energy rich in all of the wrong ways. This high-energy pre-natal marinade affects brain development and has lasting consequences for the child’s plasticity from which they are likely to suffer for their entire lives. Unfortunately, this perpetuates the problem as obese people tend to have obese children who tend to have obese children.
At SfN, I attended a social issues forum concerning the obesity epidemic in the U.S. The last speaker, a Dr. Krog, gave a very stimulating lecture as to the ways in which people become obese, as well as surgical procedures he uses to curb obesity. The results of these surgical procedures were quite remarkable. Children born to obese parents had a host of problems from diabetes to behavioral disorders, but when the same mother gave birth to a child after losing weight and watching their diet, those problems almost disappeared. I am not suggesting that all obese people undergo surgery, but Dr. Krog proposed an interesting idea.
Obesity has clear links to SES, and often low-income families cannot afford the proper nutrition needed for healthy pre-natal environment. Dr. Krog proposed a system by which people using food stamps could get their food directly from clinics which would provide frequent check-ups as to the health of the mother and consequently expected child. If this program were put into place, obesity in children would begin to decline and the future economic burden caused by obese people on healthcare each year (100 Billion Dollars on average) would also begin to decline.
Because the immediate economic incentive for such a project does not exist, policy makers do not address the issue given the current state of the economy. However, foresight predicts that if the obesity problem continues to rise, the burden on the economy for healthcare is going to be much greater in just a short amount of time. It is time to start considering options to alleviate this growing problem and no longer be the fattest country in the world.
Trapped in the borderlands between consciousness and oblivion; just one block from the intersection of brain and behavior.
02 Dec 2011 1 Comment
in Traumatic Brain Injury Tags: Robyn S.
I might be writing at the intersection of brain and behavior, but sometimes I definitely feel like I am “trapped in the borderlands between consciousness and oblivion”. A lot of our discussion during seminar seemed to suggest that our self is dependent and defined by our interactions with the outside world. Though it makes me wonder, why do we place so much more importance on those interactions when we have so many experiences that occur entirely inside our head? Don’t worry, I won’t get all philosophical on all of you, that’s not my style. But, just from personal experience, I feel as though what I define as my self is something that is most salient when I am “cut off” from the outside world; like when I’m zoned out or “in my own little world”. Yes, this self is influenced by my past experiences with the outside world as well, so maybe I’m getting more at consciousness than the self. In order to be conscious, must we be aware of the outside world or our own little world? Or both? This leads nicely into an article I’d like to discuss…
My roommate informed me of this fascinating article that was in the NY times today. It’s about some people in vegetative states that can come out of it by taking Ambien (a sleeping drug). One of the doctors discusses how a lot of these brain damaged people are floating in limbo somewhere between consciousness and oblivion, making diagnoses and decisions about treatment difficult. I thought about just posting this article and writing something separate for my last journal entry, but this was actually that topic from class that I found most interesting for the semester.
How is it that we are able to come to decisions about whether or not someone is “worth” keeping alive? In my perspective, I’ve always thought … if I’m unable to use the majority of my brain, that’s no longer me: please pull the plug and spare myself and my family the misery of keeping a body functioning without a mind. While articles like the one above make me question this decision (pulling the plug on a vegetative Robyn), I still feel pretty confident that this is preferable for me. In my neural plasticity seminar with Melissa, we learned about the different ways to euthanize laboratory animals. Despite my persistent unease with the actual act of beheading animals as our way of sacrificing, I am able to understand that this is in fact the best way. Learning about how “less gruesome” euthanasia is actually a pretty terrible experience for the animals (basically they suffocate to death) allowed me to realize the distinction between deciding what is best for the patient and deciding what is easiest for those making the tough decisions to stomach. This realization of the more humane approach for rat sacrifice however does not lead me to be able to conclude the best way to deal with vegetative states, since I hardly can imagine that we would ever behead humans. Though what I can take away from all of this is that we really need to be more insightful when it comes to determining ethics in these sorts of cases. Are we deciding on treatment based solely on the well-being of the patient, or are we allowing our own potential feelings of guilt and unease to get in the way of making the most humane decision. If anything, I’ve decided that though my “self” is constantly changing, upgrading, and reinventing itself; an utterly brain-damaged and barely functional version of my “self” is not something that I personally value holding onto.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/magazine/can-ambien-wake-minimally-conscious.html?pagewanted=1
It’s not all happening in our heads
01 Dec 2011 3 Comments
in Depression, Journal Entry 10 Tags: Kristen
Throughout the semester, we’ve talked about many different instances of how our experiences influence who we are. As Jess said in her post, if there is one thing I’ve learned from the Synaptic Self, it is that we are our synapses. Everything we do influences our synapses in one way or another, and this is reflected in who we are. In the chapter of Synaptic Self that we discussed today in class, LeDoux discussed how our understandings of disorders like depression and schizophrenia have grown in complexity since the early days of treatment in the 1930′s. We know now that many different aspects of our brain circuitry are involved in depression. With this in mind, I came across a recent article from the New York Times about depression and exercise. As you may know, exercise can be helpful in treating depression because it seems to alleviate symptoms. It turns out that exercise can increase neurogenesis in the hippocampus, just as anti-depressants do.
The New York Times article looked at the depression-exercise relationship from the other side. If exercise influences depression, does depression influence exercise in any way? It turns out that depression does influence the way our bodies respond during exercise. Specifically, depression prolongs the time it takes for the heart to return to a normal rate after exercise. This finding helps explain a link between depression and heart-disease, where people who are depressed have more heart-attacks than people without depression, and people with heart disease who are later diagnosed with depression tend to die earlier than their non-depressed counterparts. Depression probably prolongs the return to a normal heart rate because of dysfunction in the stress-response system of the brain. (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/depression-may-slow-exercise-recovery/?ref=health)
I wanted to share this article because I think it demonstrates a lot of what I have learned in our class this semester. We have discussed at great lengths how our experiences shape our selves, via synaptic changes. Every single thing we do has some effect, large or small, on our synapses, and this is how we become the person we are at each second. However, our synapses and brain also change the way that we experience things, on a conscious or unconscious level. And, psychological experiences can influence the rest of our bodies, just as changes in the rest of our bodies influence our brains. Depression changes the way our brains act, but it also changes the way our bodies act. On the other hand, changes in our body, like exercise, change our brains and therefore depression. This shows how incredibly complex our entire bodies are. At the root of this complexity is our brain, which is why I started this post by saying that we are our synapses. Even though this seems simplistic, they really are at the root of everything.
Canine PTSD
01 Dec 2011 5 Comments
in Journal Entry 9, PTSD Tags: Reesa
I want to share this article from today’s NYTimes because it’s about PTSD in dogs and I thought you guys might like it! The article reports that up to 5% of dogs in the military get PTSD. Interestingly enough, an official diagnosis of PTSD in canines only began to be used 18 months ago. Even more striking was that the dogs exhibit almost the exact same symptoms as humans: they avoid areas where the had an adverse experience, their temperament changes and they become hyper-vigilant amongst other things. These are all symptoms we see in humans. Moreover, the same type of therapy works as a treatment in dogs as in humans. Exposure therapy is used to desensitize the dogs (they’re exposed to a sight or sound that now scares them, like a gunshot, and are rewarded if they don’t react), which is very similar to the exposure therapy that works with humans. This article was really moving to me. I think it’s because it seems to suggest that these animals have a richer emotional life than we might sometimes give them credit for.
Psychopharmaceuticals and ethics
01 Dec 2011 5 Comments
in Depression, Journal Entry 9, Neurodegeneration Tags: lauren
When we were discussing the effects of medicating young children with ADHD, I was reminded of my uncle. He was put on medication to treat depression when we was around 3 years old. 40 years later, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. He has always been convinced that this was due to taking anti-depressants from a young age. In “Synaptic Sickness”, LeDoux mentions that reserpine and chlorpromazine could lead to the development of tardive dyskinesia, which includes symptoms of rigidity similar to Parkinson’s disease. I am unsure of what type of anti-depressants he was on (though I know that tricyclic and Monoamine Oxidise Inhibitors were popular in the 1950s), most target either dopamine, serotonin, or norepinephrine. A decreased amount of dopamine is associated with Parkinson’s Disease, so I believe there is some merit to the argument that he was affected by the use of pharmaceutical drugs.
The Synaptic Sickness chapter in the book and this idea really bring to light the ethics of using drugs, especially on young children as John talked about in class on Tuesday. If my uncle was on drugs that inhibited reuptake or increased the amount of dopamine in his brain, would his brain adapt and begin to produce less dopamine? Is it possible that these two conditions are related? Our brains are greatly impacted by our experiences and substances we use.
Most of the articles I found for this subject included using antidepressants in patients suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Although none of them cited antidepressants as a cause, this article found that SSRIs worsened the symptoms in the motor function of Parkinson’s patients. Due to ethical issues (since Parkinson’s doesn’t occur in other species, it is very difficult to do research on), they merely observed patients that had been treated with some form of antidepressants (tricyclic, SSRI, SARI, SNDRI, antagonists, NDRI, and SNRI) in the past five years. They found five patients (out of 140) that experienced worse motor symptoms (shaking, rigidity, tremors, and slow movement) after using SSRIs. They found no significant results for the other types of anti-depressants. Note: the amount of time that patients were on antidepressants varied, which could change whether or not their brain was altered, especially since most of these medications requires a few weeks for effectiveness. As LeDoux mentions in Synaptic Self, this could be due to changes in gene activation and protein synthesis.
Accepting All Synaptic Shapes, Sizes, & Selves
01 Dec 2011 4 Comments
in Journal Entry 10 Tags: jess
I am my synapses.
I am my synapses.
I am my synapses.
If I were to only take one thing from this class, LeDoux has forever engrained in my brain the idea that we are who we are because of our synapses. Every impulse, emotion, desire, motivation, and memory can essentially be traced back to synaptic transmission.
In his last chapter “Who Are You?” LeDoux states, “If the mental trilogy breaks down, the self is likely to begin to disintegrate and mental health to deteriorate.” Initially reading this, I immediately associate words like deteriorate and disintegrate with negative implications. A lot of the time, as LeDoux goes on to describe, mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, anxiety disorder, or depression are the result of an unbalanced mental trilogy, but the changes in an individual’s personality or self that come from them shouldn’t necessarily be considered a mental hindrance. NY Times did a feature on a man living with schizophrenia who embraces his mental illness as a positive in his life claiming that the experience has changed and humbled him for the better.
A recent article in TIME posed the question, “Do psychotic symptoms like hallucinations have meaning, or are they just the products of a broken brain that misfires neurons?” The term “broken brain” bothers me in this context. Being that we are our synapses, I don’t like to think of people with schizophrenia or anxiety as broken. Instead, I am very intrigued by the way the schizophrenic man in the NY times embraced his changed personality by accepting the way his synapses were firing and using it to support a strong, purposeful personality. While he claims to have visions of God and Jesus, he fosters his unique experiences into making tangible changes in his community. Mental differences have a lot of research potential, but I feel as if it all shouldn’t be focused in a negative way trying to figure out what is wrong. In the present, mental illnesses are a part of an individual’s self and it doesn’t appear that any miracle regulators are on the brink so instead we need to focus on better adapting their lives to embrace the way their brain is responding to the outside world. I’m definitely a believer in using medications when the situation is appropriately assessed and demands for them, but I see things such as cognitive behavior therapy as critical to the near future.
Getting lost in my thoughts, I suppose I just wanted to stress the importance of embracing the self. We all have our own talents, quirks, and flaws based on our own synaptic connections, but whether they are ideal or not they make us who we are so we might as well find the hidden benefits underneath the burdens.
We are our Brains: From English to Psychology and Beyond
30 Nov 2011 3 Comments
in General, Journal Entry 8, Uncategorized Tags: Reesa
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
–Shakespeare’s Hamlet
I am an English major primarily because I believe that reading literature helps me understand both myself and others better; I turn to literature to make sense of human desires, secrets, and emotions. It is for this same reason that I am a Psychology major— to unlock the secrets of the human mind and of the self. It has always baffled me that the way I act, that the person I identify as “me”, originates in the three-pound grey mass in my head. Since I was young it has puzzled me that while I am my brain, I know so little about how it actually works. Why was I learning about neurons in Biology? Shouldn’t I just be born knowing about them?! I began this post with the Shakespeare quote because, besides that it’s good advice, it leads me to question what exactly being true to one’s self means. Who is this self that we hold up to a certain standard? And if we all have such a strong sense of self then who are we when we act out of character and why does this happen?
I was reading reviews of an interesting new book by neuroscientist David Eagleman’s called Incognito. Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor University and in his book he describes and examines the unconscious processes of our brain. In particular he looks the unconscious’ role in making us who we are. He writes that our minds are, “mostly a closed system” and “the conscious mind has little access to the giant and mysterious factory that runs below it.” This is exactly what frustrated me when I was younger! According to Eagleman, different neural networks and synapses in our brains are competing for our attention. This is why we sometimes act in ways that we do not understand or why we sometimes hear voices in our heads telling us to do different things: “You cannot go to that party and forget about your work” vs. “You should go; you only live once!” It’s also why everyone sometimes has embarrassing or uncharacteristic ideas pop into their heads. Yet just because the brain is operating in ways that we don’t always fully understand or have access to, does this at all mean that we are something (or, better yet, someone) different from who we think we are? Can’t our conscious self fully represent who we are as human beings?
Eagleman would certainly disagree and would argue that our unconscious selves are equally significant in fashioning us into individuals. After all, it would explain why strippers make more tips when they ovulate or why people most often marry people who’s names beginning with the same letter as theirs (these are examples from the book that I got from a review). Inevitably, all this talk about the unconscious brings me back to Freud. How much of what I do and of who I am is due to the unconscious processes of my brain? How many “mes” are there? I have so many questions! (I definitely need to read this book…) Eagleman argues the conscious mind is just a tiny sliver of what makes up who we are. I find all of this very interesting, and I know that much of what I do is unconscious, but I don’t think this means that I need to see who I am in a different light. Maybe it’s naïve but I still believe that my conscious sense of self is absolutely the most influential piece in dictating who I am. Maybe I’m arguing against the science and maybe it’s because it’s too hard to conceptualize otherwise, but I place the most value on the part of me that I am mindful of; nevertheless it’s pretty awesome, but also scary, to realize that there is a part of me that is unknowable. Sure, it’s disquieting but it also just adds to the complexity and mystery of humans.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Shakespeare would disagree with LeDoux’s claim that we are just our synapses. There is something more, but what is this something? Our souls perhaps? LeDoux’s book makes the case that our synapses are the key to understanding just about everything about us. Learning, memory, motivation, illness, and emotions can all be explained by our synapses. And, yes, LeDoux has convinced me that we can explain the majority of what we do and how we feel by understanding the ways in which our neurons are connected. Yet I take it all with a grain of salt. There’s definitely some fine print—it’s just too simple.
Somehow I’ve gotten back to the crux of my last post: free will. Although we all think we make out own choices LeDoux, and almost every other neuroscientist, is quick to point out that this is simply untrue. Our class has undoubtedly changed my perspective on free will. I used to resist arguments against free will but I have seen biological evidence that has changed my idea of what free will is. We don’t make decisions that aren’t rooted in the biology of our brains. Individuals make decisions but this also means that our brains make decisions: there is no differentiating because we are our brains and our brains can make decisions for us that we believe to be our own, spontaneous, ones.
I am personally interested in studying psychopathology after I graduate. I want to use my knowledge of human nature and of ‘synaptic sickness’ to help others discover their full potential and to relieve the pain that accompanies mental illness. This Psychology and Neuroscience course will, I am sure, prove to be immensely influential in my future studies and beyond. The way I see it now is that our brains are who we are and so it is through understanding the brain that we can understand others. This is not to say that my English degree was a waste of time… actually, quite the contrary. Instead, viewing the self through the point of view of both Psychology and English has allowed me to create a fuller picture of what it is to be human. These two very different disciplines have both given me greater compassion and have solidified how immensely complex, mysterious, wonderful, and completely awe-inspiring humans are.
Real X-Men (Squids)
30 Nov 2011 4 Comments
in Awesomeness, Journal Entry 8 Tags: Petey
My neurobiology professor showed this video of a squid at the beginning of class. It prompted several questions: How often do I walk past squids and not even notice? And, more seriously, what occurs within the squid neurologically to allow for such a fantastic transformation? If anyone has any idea, or good guesses, please comment! It’s truly remarkable.
A Real Batman
28 Nov 2011 3 Comments
Last week, when I was on vacation with my family, we were sitting on the deck when a bat flew extremely close to us. After being quite startled and screaming a little, my sister started to tell us about humans who are capable of echolocation. She explained that some humans who are blind can use a clicking noise that they make with their tongue to locate objects and understand their surroundings. Fascinated by this, I did a little research, and it’s true! There’s such a thing as human echolocation, also known as flash sonar.
Humans who can see and hear gather information about their environment based on visual and auditory input. Both types of input come in the form of waves: light waves and sound waves. However, blind individuals using flash sonar depend solely on the sound waves, otherwise known as echoes. The clicking noises that blind individuals make are sound waves (or echoes) that bounce off of objects in the environment. Depending upon how the sound waves hit the objects and bounce back to the individual, the echoes provide the individual with lots of information about the surrounding objects, for example the distance to an object, the size and density of an object, and the exact location of an object. Some individuals, like Daniel Kish, are so talented at flash sonar that they can cross an intersection and ride a bike. In fact, Daniel trains young blind children to use flash sonar.
Check out this video of Daniel. Some people refer to him as a human batman!
It’s so interesting that two different systems in the brain can provide the same information but with very different types of input!
psychneuro
