Winter Babies!

The season in which you are born may affect everything from your eyesight to your eating habits and overall health later in life. According to research, winter babies are more likely to develop schizophrenia than spring babies.  This particular study indicates the season-of-birth effect. The season- of-birth effect states that tendency for people born in winter have a slightly ( 5% to 8%) greater probability of developing schizophrenia than people born at other times of the year.  What causes this phenomenon is unknown but one indication leads to particularly pronounced in latitudes far from the equator.

Schizophrenia is a lifelong and disabling mental disorder that normally has an onset in late adolescence or early adulthood. It is a severe mental disorder characterized by two kinds of symptoms; positive psychotic symptoms - thought disorder, hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia - and negative symptoms – impairment in emotional range, energy, and enjoyment of activities.

However, how can we prevent this happening to our unborn child due to the season? Pregnancy complications, such as maternal influenza, are risk factors that can be modified. Quality prenatal care can decrease the risk of the child having schizophrenia. Previous studies have shown a statistically significant link between schizophrenia and maternal influenza in the second trimester. Maternal influenza has been linked to schizophrenia because maternal influenza can cause central nervous system abnormalities and low birth weight. Therefore, the reasoning goes, many pregnant women become infected in the fall with a virus that impairs a crucial stage of brain development in a baby who will be born in the winter. 

The video below gives you an insight of what children with schizophrenia go through. This video may be a little disturbing and heart breaking because we usually do not see this disease at a young age. Jani, 7, is in this dark and haunting journey called schizophrenia. The video explains how her parents and family struggle to cope with her disease. But as they struggle together, they are learning to adapt into her strange lifestyle.

 

It's a habit!

 

 

We all have habits and routines in our daily lives, such as brushing our teeth before bed, showering, and sleeping. However, for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), patterns of behavior get in the way of their daily lives. OCD is an illness that causes people to have unwanted thoughts  and to repeat certain behaviors over and over again. OCD is an anxiety disorder, which, like all anxiety disorders, is neurobiological in nature.  It equally affects men, women and children of all races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds.  In the United States, about 1 in 40 adults and 1 in 100 children have OCD.

 

Like a needle getting stuck on an old record, OCD causes the brain to get stuck on a particular thought or urge. Your brain contains complex chemical networks of neurons, neurotransmitters and receptors that work together to communicate messages for mood, body movement and behavior. OCD is a mental health condition resulting from low neurotransmitter levels that may improve with changes in nutrition habits.

 

Common themes in OCD center on feeling contaminated, being anxious about possible harm to self or loved ones, body imperfections or sexual preoccupation. The perpetual obsessions increase anxiety, and the anxiety escalates until the compulsion is carried out. This happens in a cycle that does not end without intervention.

For example, if the person has a great fear of getting dirty, he or she might be afraid of touching door knobs of public places or have a bottle of disinfectant spray everywhere he or she goes to spray everything she/he is about to come in contact with. If the person is obsessed with order and symmetry, he or she might take a very long time getting things arranged the ‘right’ way. Adults with this obsession feel a need to have objects placed in a certain order or position, or tasks or events to be completed in a set way. For example, "I need to sort all my clothes by color and have them face the same direction. Otherwise, it just does not feel right!"; "I just scratched my right arm twice and now I need to balance it out by scratching my left arm twice."

 

The video below demonstrates what an individual with OCD experiences in his daily routine. Millions of Americans suffers from OCD and one of those Americans is the famous comedian Howie Mandel. One stage he makes millions of people laugh, but off stage he can’t shake hands with them, touch a door knob or even be with his family at times.

 

 

Hooked on a feeling!

 

 

 

One morning I waited for the light to change so that I could cross the street to school. As the light in my direction turned green, I stepped off the curb. Suddenly, I froze as a car shot right past me through the red light and crashed into a car in the intersection. The car that went through the red light was not that close to me, but I felt terrified, then weak and shaky. That morning at school, whenever I thought about the accident I felt nervous and shaky. Although I was not physically hurt, my mind and body experienced a strong emotional reaction to a dangerous situation.

Emotions, often called feelings, include experiences such as love, hate, anger, trust, joy, panic, fear, and grief. Emotions are related to, but different from, mood. Emotions are specific reactions to a particular event that are usually of fairly short duration. Mood is a more general feeling such as happiness, sadness, frustration, contentment, or anxiety that lasts for a longer time. Indeed, emotions are associated with mild to extreme changes in the physiological processes occurring within our bodies. In addition to the changes just listed, these processes may include metabolic changes, altered muscle tension, changes in activity of the salivary and sweat glands, modified digestive processes, and changes in the levels of certain neurotransmitters in the brain.

People have very similar internal responses to the same emotion. For example, regardless of age, race, or gender, when people are under stress, their bodies release adrenaline; this hormone helps prepare the body to either run away or fight, which is called the "fight or flight" reaction. Although the psychological part of emotions may be different for each feeling, several different emotions can produce the same physical reaction.

Physiologically, emotions aid in survival. For example, sudden fear often causes a person to freeze like a deer caught by a car's headlights. Because animals usually attack in response to motion, at its simplest level, fear reduces the chances of attack. When I froze in response to a car racing by me, this was an example of a physical response to an emotion that improved my chances of survival.

The video below explains what emotions are. Karen Ellis explains emotions, providing an elegant map for understanding what they are and their effect on performance. The video also explains what causes our high arousal and low arousal of emotions.

 

 

 



N is for Narcolepsy

Have you ever pulled two all nighters in a row? If you have, then you know that afterwards, during the day, you drift off to sleep very easily. You feel physically and mentally exhausted and your body tells you that you need to rest. This is a normal reaction by the body to the lack of sleep. This however, is something that people suffering from narcolepsy must deal with on a daily basis even when they have had a full night’s sleep. Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder in which the brain does not regulate sleep-wake cycles as it should. Overwhelming daytime sleepiness occurs many times during the day, causing disruptions in daily activities. The most common symptom is excessive daytime sleepiness. Other symptoms of narcolepsy may include sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations.

Now, imagine you are in a boring lecture and you start to drift to sleep, usually you can manage to force yourself to wake up. This may be common occurrence, but try to imagine falling asleep while driving or walking. These situations seem rarer. A narcoleptic’s body doesn’t care what it is doing when it goes into these paralyzed sleeping episodes. The sudden overwhelming feeling drives a person with narcolepsy to fall asleep.

In narcolepsy, sleep episodes can occur at any time. People may unwillingly fall asleep while at work or at school, when having a conversation, playing a game, eating a meal, or, most dangerously, when driving an automobile or operating other types of machinery. In addition to daytime sleepiness, other major symptoms include catalepsy (a sudden loss of voluntary muscle tone that may be triggered by strong emotions), vivid dream-like images or hallucinations during sleep onset or when waking, and brief episodes of total paralysis, also during sleep onset or when waking.

The video below demonstrated an individual that suffers from narcolepsy. Nicole describes how this disorder has affected her life and how she has managed to overcome some situations. At various moments throughout the day, Nicole experiences sudden urges to sleep. If the urge becomes overwhelming, she may do so for periods lasting from a few seconds to several minutes. The condition is profoundly disabling, interrupting their basic day to day activities, including working, driving, even conversing with others.

Living with a Secret: Gender Identity

Gender is all around us. It is actually taught to us, from the moment we are born. Gender expectations and messages bombard us constantly. Upbringing, culture, peers, community, media, and religion, are some of the many influences that shape our understanding of this core aspect of identity. How you learned and interacted with gender as a young child directly influences how you view the world today. Gendered interaction between parent and child begin as soon as the sex of the baby is known. In short, gender is a socially constructed concept.

Gender identity refers to “one’s sense of oneself as male, female or transgender.” When one’s gender identity and biological sex are not congruent, the individual may identify as transsexual or as another transgender category. The word transgender was first coined as a way of distinguishing gender benders with no desire for surgery or hormones from transsexuals, those who desired to legally and medically change their sex. More recently transgender and/or trans has become an umbrella term that is popularly used to include all people who transgress dominant conceptions of gender, or at least all people who identify themselves as doing so.

In college, one of my friends announced he was gay. I honestly thought he was going through a phase, but instead Robert began to dress in women clothes and bind his genitals. On his Facebook profile, he announced he’d changed his name to Kendra. Today my friend “Kendra” has undergone surgery to remove her male genitals. She now lives in a safer environment and seems a lot happier.  If you were to talk to her she would more than likely tell you how her life has improved and the differences she has made in life. I am so happy that she made this choice because if she didn’t her life would had not been the same as today.

Every year hundreds and thousands of beauty pageants have stage the world.  Millions of women compete to be crown as Miss America, but when 6’1 Jenna Talackova enters into the competition, she was not able to compete because she was not born as a “natural women”. She was transgender. This video below demonstrates how Jenna Talackova's life as transgender and how it affected her career. Many people have gone through many difficult situations and have managed to overcome difficult obstacles similar to Jenna’s.

 

 

The Smell of Love

Forget the expensive French perfumes. If a woman really wants to reel a man in, all she needs to do is dab a dose of odorless pheromones strategically to her pulse points, and men will shower her with affection. At least that's what the results of one small study show.  When it comes to sexual attraction, many scientist's believe that our nose knows what’s best for us. However, how exactly does our nose relate to sexual attraction? From the nose, the pheromone travels to a part of the brain involved in emotions and sex drive.  Pheromones are chemicals that are secreted in our sweat (and other bodily fluids) that are believed to release neurotransmitters that directly modify the behavior of the opposite sex, such as triggering sexual excitement. The behavior effects of pheromones apparently occur unconsciously. That is, people respond behaviorally to certain chemicals in human skins even though they describe them as odorless.

Exposure to these chemicals, especially chemicals from opposite sex, alters skin temperature and other autonomic responses and increase activity in the hypothalamus. For example, “the smell of woman’s sweat-especially if the woman was near her time of ovulation-increases a man’s testosterone secretion.”  Armpit sweat broken down by bacteria may not sound very appealing, but that's the origin of pheromones, those elusive, odorless chemicals given off in response to sexual stimulation or even romantic fantasy. In animals including mice, dogs, and insects, these chemicals attract the opposite sex and initiate mating behavior. 

Pheromones are linked to some of the most crucial stages in our lives. The best-documented effect of a human pheromone relates to the timing of women’s menstrual cycle. Women who spend much time together find that their menstrual cycle becomes more synchronized, unless they are taking birth control pill. In the animal world, pheromones are individual scent "prints" found in urine or sweat that dictate sexual behavior and attract the opposite sex. They help animals identify each other and choose a mate with an immune system different enough from their own to ensure healthy offspring. They have a special organ in their noses called the vomeronasal organ (VNO) that detects this odorless chemical.

The video below describes what are pheromones and what exactly causes the humans to be attracted to the opposite sex. It explains a study how people that use certain pheromones such as perfumes, help humans become more attracted to other people. It also explains the differences between the pheromones of humans and animals. 

When the Mind Says Goodbye

 

 

Imagine living in a world where you tend to forget the date, the people you love or even where you live. As we grow older our body and brain change drastically. The way we think, perform, solve problems and analyze things change as well. Many of the times, these changes also bring with them a common disease we know as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, even the ability to carry out the simplest tasks of daily living. In most people with AD, symptoms first appear after age 60. AD is also the most common cause of dementia among older people.

Alzheimer’s disease begins slowly. It first involves the parts of the brain that control thought, memory and language. People with AD may have trouble remembering things that happened recently or names of people they know. A related problem, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), causes more memory problems than normal for people of the same age. Many, but not all, people with MCI will develop AD. Overtime, symptoms get worse. People may not recognize family members or have trouble speaking, reading or writing. They may forget how to brush their teeth or comb their hair. Later on, they may become anxious or aggressive, or wander away from home.  A person with the disease may not recognize that anything is wrong, even when changes are noticeable to their family members, very close friends and co-workers.

During the preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s disease, people are free of symptoms but toxic changes are taking place in the brain. Abnormal deposits of proteins form amyloid plaques and tau tangles throughout the brain, and once-healthy neurons begin to work less efficiently. Over time, neurons lose their ability to function and communicate with each other, and eventually they die. Before long, the damage spreads to a nearby structure in the brain called the hippocampus, which is essential in forming memories. As more neurons die, affected brain regions begin to shrink. By the final stage of Alzheimer’s, damage is widespread, and brain tissue has shrunk significantly.

 

Although there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, there are treatments that prolong the individual’s awareness and memory. Their medications can be taken in the early stages to minimize memory loss that the patient is experiencing. One drug that has a positive effect is tacrine, a drug that is used to increase acetylcholine, which helps to improve memory. Although extensive research has been done on Alzheimer’s disease, much still remains unknown about the destructive illness.

 

The video below is a story of a spouse trying to cope with her husbands loss of mind and spirit while still relishing in the brief moments of clarity that they share together.

 

Making Sense with Nouns

Language is much more than words. It involves our ability to recognize and use words and sentences. Much of this capability resides in the left hemisphere of the brain. When a person has a stroke or other injury that affects the left side of the brain, it typically disrupts their ability to use language. Through language, we communicate our inner thoughts, desires, intentions and motivations, understand what others say to us, listen, speak, write, read, comment and interchange among people.  People who suffer with brain damage suffer impaired language production, also known as Broca’s aphasia or nonfluent aphasia.

Aphasia is caused by damage to one or more of the language areas of the brain. Many times, the cause of the brain injury is a stroke. A stroke occurs when blood is unable to reach a part of the brain. Brain cells die when they do not receive their normal supply of blood, which carries oxygen and important nutrients. Other causes of brain injury are severe blows to the head, brain tumors, brain infections, and other conditions that affect the brain. Men and women are equally affected. According to the  National Aphasia Association, approximately 80,000 individuals acquire aphasia each year from strokes. About one million people in the United States currently have aphasia.

Aphasia can have tragic consequences. People who suffer from Broca’s Aphasia usually have comprehension deficits when the meaning of the sentence depends on prepositions, word endings, or unusual word order. Agrammatic, or telegraphic, speech means that the person with aphasia speaks mostly in nouns, and produces only a few words at a time. An example would be, “Well…..cat and…..up……..um, well, um…forget it”. The communication is non-fluent, meaning that their average sentences are five or fewer real words. This may be compounded by apraxia. Writing is typically similarly affected, and reading may be reduced.

For example, imagine going to a foreign country and hearing people speaking all around you. You would know they were using words and sentences. You might even have an elemental knowledge of that language, allowing you to recognize words here and there, but you would not have command of the language and couldn’t follow most conversation. This is what life is like for people with comprehension problems.

This video below shows the conditions that Aphasia patients suffer. At the age of 18, Sarah had a stroke which lead her to have Broca’s Aphasia. In this video you would see how Sarah struggles to complete sentences, pronounce certain words, and struggles to remember words and even her name.


 

Watch your brain!

 

Many parents do not understand why their teenagers occasionally behave in an impulsive, irrational, or dangerous way. At times, it seems like they do not think things through or fully consider the consequences of their actions. However, what these imaging studies show is that the brain may be behind much of this behavior.  To understand why adolescents act a certain way, it is important to understand what is happening in their brain.

As puberty begins, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) also begins to develop at an amazing rate, paralleling brain growth in the first three years of life. Their brains are wired in a way that floods them with emotional responses to external events. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain's rational part, but teens process information with the amygdala, the emotional part. The amygdala is part of the limbic system of the brain, which is fully functioning and utilized by age 13-14 years. The PFC fully develops between the ages of 18-25.

The prefrontal cortex is located in the very front of the brain, just behind the forehead. In charge of abstract thinking and thought analysis, it is also responsible for regulating behavior. This includes making choices between right and wrong, and predicting the probable outcomes of actions or events. This brain area also governs social control, such as suppressing emotional or sexual urges. Additionally, the PFC helps to focus thoughts, which enables people to pay attention, learn, and concentrate on goals.

People with damaged to the PFC have trouble on the delay-response task, in which they see or hear something, and then have to respond it after a delay. Unfortunately, the PFC is one of the brain regions most susceptible to injury. When the pathways between the pathways prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain are damaged or altered, serious personality changes can result. For example, a person who had been formally outgoing can become quiet and withdraw after the injury.  A damaged PFC can negatively affect a person's ability to assess situations or perform tasks. Since social judgments are made in this brain area, people with damage to the PFC are unable to discern appropriate behavior and/or suffer from emotional distress, such as irrational fears, anxiety, euphoria, and irritability.

 

The video below explains how our thoughts and actions are able to change while we grow up. It explains how the prefrontal cortex in adolescence and adults are very different such as making decisions and it's contributions with our actions. In it, you will see an assistant professor explaining a procedure to determine the changes in development in adolescence and adults.

 

 

Synapses and Drugs

 

 

Psychoactive drugs alter behavior, thinking, and mood by acting on the brain. Most psychoactive drugs affect the brain's activity by changing synaptic transmission of a particular neurotransmitter(s). Within seconds of entering the body, drugs cause dramatic changes to synapses in the brain. Drugs modify synaptic transmission, changing the way neurons communicate with each other. A drug that affects dopamine synaptic transmission can increase the dopamine that reaches the receiving neuron by bypassing the five senses and directly activating the brain's reward circuitry fast and hard. This can cause a jolt of intense pleasure. Drugs either facilitate or inhibit transmission at synapses. A drug that blocks a neurotransmitter is an antagonist, whereas a drug that mimics or increases the effects is an agonist.

 

Drugs of abuse affect the brain in such a dramatic way that the brain must try to adapt. One way the brain compensates is to reduce the number of dopamine receptors at the synapse. As a result, after the user has "come down," they will need more of the drug next time they want to get high. This response is commonly referred to as tolerance. As the brain continues to adapt to the presence of the drug, regions outside of the reward pathway are also affected. Brain regions responsible for judgment, learning and memory begin to physically change or become "hard-wired." Once this happens, drug-seeking behavior is driven by habit, almost reflex. This is how a drug user becomes transformed into a drug addict. When a person uses drugs, the brain learns to function in the presence of those drugs. When the person quits using drugs, the brain doesn't immediately start to function the way it did before the drug use.

 

 

 

 

Breaking Through the Barrier

Every day you use your brain to accomplish many tasks. You eat, think, drive a car, work, write emails, and send text messages. While you are doing all these things, you probably do not think about the shield of tightly packed cells, known as the blood-brain barrier, which is protecting your brain from harmful toxins and other substances. The human brain is well protected. The skull obviously shields the brain from outside impacts. Not so well known is the protection "on the inside": a barrier is present between the blood circulation and the brain, the so-called blood-brain barrier (BBB).

A network of closely sealed endothelial cells in the brain’s capillaries forms the blood-brain barrier. It expresses a high level of proteins that pump foreign molecules away from the brain, while allowing others (such as glucose and insulin) that are necessary for the brain cells to function to cross the barrier.  The BBB is a highly sophisticated organ that acts as a computer firewall. It selectively allows nutrients into the brain, while keeping out harmful components. However, in its task of protecting the chemistry of the brain, the BBB also betrays it by barricading many compounds that might help in diagnosis or treatment.
 

The BBB is essential to health.  It plays a critical role in your health, but many have asked, “Why would teams of researchers and physicians want to break through it?” Yes, the BBB is known to protect us from harmful components, but by breaking through the BBB, it can help people who are fighting cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other serious neurologic diseases.   While protecting the brain from potentially harmful chemicals, the BBB also keeps medications out. Scientists have spent decades searching for ways to breach the barrier just long enough for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or antitumor drugs to slip through the defenses. Now, researchers say they finally have a breakthrough known as microbubbles.

Microbubbles are only the latest and most promising in a string of recent projects aimed at solving the blood-brain barrier problem. These include running a catheter into the brain capillaries and designing a whole suite of drugs that would trick the brain into letting them cross. Although the new results might offer a viable way to sneak medicines past the blood-brain barrier, such an approach would need to be thoroughly tested for each disease and drug. Although the road seems promising, there is still a long way to go.

This video is based on microbubbles and how it helps the blood-brain barrier. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

Animal Reseach: The advantages and disadvantages!

 

Animal research plays a crucial role in scientists’ understanding of diseases and the developmental of effective medical treatment.  As of right now, millions or even billions of rats, mice, rabbits, cats and other animals are locked inside cold, barren cages in laboratories across the world. They languish with pain, ache with loneliness, and long to roam free and use their minds. Instead, all they can do is sit in their cold cages and wait in fear for the next terrifying and painful procedure that will be performed to them.  From toothpaste to shampoo that we use to the charities we support, our lives are full or opportunities to stand against animal experiments against animals.

Every year, cosmetics companies kill millions of animals to test their products. These companies claim they test on animals to establish the safety of their products and ingredients for consumers. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require animal testing for cosmetics, and alternative testing methods are widely available and lead to results that are more reliable. Product testing is commonly performed on animals to measure the levels of skin irritancy, eye tissue damage, and toxicity caused by various substances used in the manufacture of cosmetics.

Most of today’s prescribed medication or over-the-counter medications have come from animal research. Although some people such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) think animal research is wrong, other organizations believe that it is helpful in the world. Medical research has saved and improved millions of people. Today’s medicine and surgical techniques could not have been discovered without better understanding of the disease and the way the body and mind works.

 I, like many people across the world, believe that animal research should be range considerably in degrees. I guess you can consider me as a “minimalist.” Minimalists tolerate certain kinds of animal research but prohibit others depending on the probable value of the research, the amount of distress to the animal, and the type of animal.  I believe that animal research should be used effectively when it comes to science or the findings methods to treat or prevent AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and many other disorders. In many areas of medicine and biological psychology, research would progress slowly or not at all without animals.

 Animal research has contributed too many of the medical advances we now take for granted. We have probably all benefited from vaccines and antibiotics to prevent and treat infections, and anesthetics used in all forms of surgery. Medicines can now overcome serious conditions such as diabetes, asthma, and high blood pressure. According to PETA, the best way to stop companies, universities and charities from using animals is to refuse to purchase their products or give them donations and to write and tell them that you won't support them until they stop testing on animals.

The good news is that many companies are now citing 'no testing on animals' in terms of their ethical stance on cosmetics. Ironically, those companies who do not test cosmetics on animals are still benefiting from previous data that was conducted on animals. People need to realize that you can help without hurting!

I've inserted a video about animal research. This video describes the effects towards animal research and how it can help everyone across the world understand the concept better. Enjoy!