Many of the skills I’ve learned throughout college are skills I thought I already knew. Courses such as Christianity and Religious Diversity, Social Psychology, Organismal Biology and Philosophy of Art, among many others, have taught me how to think critically about different problems and the world itself. Our Neurochemistry course has undoubtedly improved my critical thinking skills as well- group discussions centered around research implications every week and exams that required synthesizing ideas instead of memorizing information have given me invaluable practice for processing and working with concepts in the moment. The biggest thing I’ve learned from this course, however, is how to learn itself. As a byproduct, this has exponentially increased my confidence in the scientific field.
At the beginning of the course, I relied on the learning strategies that have always been enough in the past, and quickly realized that I would need to adopt new methods to succeed. Usually, I would copy down notes from lecture, read the textbook, and go through it all over and over before an exam. This had worked great for me previously, but since there weren’t any true lectures in the course, this process need to be replaced with utilizing new resources. These included information that my classmates had shared and learning how to conduct my own background research.
Neurochemistry was also the first time that I was pushed to understand research articles from top to bottom; this was a learning curve for me because I was used to just skimming the introduction and discussion of articles, but I was surprised by how much I was able to comprehend on my own by the end of course. While it definitely required more time and effort, the structure of this course taught me how to better integrate information into my foundation of knowledge, instead of passively absorbing content. More specific skills that I’ve also taken away from the course include pulling information together from various sources and communicating it in an effective way to different audiences.
As my understanding and appreciation for neuroscience has grown since I began my studies in the field last year, I’ve slowly begun to see themes in the inner workings of the brain. Through investigating a diverse mix of neurological conditions/diseases and the cellular processes that underlie them, our neurochemistry course in particular has helped me piece together some overarching patterns. Interestingly, one of these themes is relevant on a larger scale, including life itself: balance.
The Theme of Balance Throughout Different Neurological Disorders
On a biological level, this idea of balance is conceptualized as homeostasis, and as I learned in this course, loss of homeostasis can lead to many neurological disorders. The functioning of our brain is very tightly controlled, with many feedback loops and mechanisms for auto-regulation. An example that demonstrates how disruption of excitation/inhibition balance can contribute to pathophysiology – often meaning disruptions in glutamate or GABA signaling, the main excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters in the brain – is anxiety.
In general, overabundance of glutamate and low levels of GABA can lead to an anxiety response, with many underlying mechanisms and areas involved that are responsible for this happening. As I learned while conducting research for the course, one of these mechanisms involve GABAergic signaling in the amygdala; these circuits normally work to inhibit the amygdala’s interaction with stress, but chronic stress may cause the networks to reduce, lowering amount of inhibition and increasing anxiety as a result. Overexpression of glutamate is thought to contribute to many other disorders as well, such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia, while underexpression has been indicated in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Another type of imbalance between orexigenic and anorexigenic peptides can promote metabolic syndrome, essentially increasing food intake while decreasing energy expenditure.
In attempt to resolve certain disruptions to homeostasis, the brain can implement compensatory mechanisms that counteract the disruption. Behavioral tolerance after consistent drug use is an example of this; through dopamine-mediated pairing of stimuli, the brain implements effects opposite of the drug when exposed to the associated cue, and this process can contribute to drug overdose and relapse. Compensatory mechanisms can even be seen after Traumatic Brain Injury, where ionic pumps shift into overdrive and cause hyperglycolysis in an effort to restore ionic and cellular homeostasis that were disturbed from the initial biomechanical blow to the head.
While these connections may seem a bit out of context as a whole, balance has always been a significant challenge in my own life, and as a result it has become a major value. More than just juggling everyday priorities, I’m still figuring out how to manage my own levels of excitation and inhibition. Without constant and consistent effort, I quickly fall into patterns that only harm myself and perpetuate a cycle of dysregulation that can be extremely difficult to break out of. I would guess that in some way or another, many people can relate to this feeling of being out of control when it comes to regulating themselves or their lives.
Of course, the etiology of these disorders are more complex than ‘imbalances in the brain’, as the common rhetoric often goes, but understanding that they can stem from impairments to our brain’s mechanisms for maintaining balance can ultimately help remove stigma and blame from the individual. Especially for conditions such as metabolic disorder, where many people have essentially been told that their struggles are completely due to their actions, learning the physiological reasons for what they are dealing with might actually allow them to find ways forward through education and empowerment.
Considering that many mental health and neurological disorders involve an aspect of difficulties with self-regulation on a behavioral level as well as a physiological one, treatment plans may often benefit from a multi-dimensional approach. To me, this stresses the importance of integrating the psychological and neurological fields as much as possible; as someone who is interested in a mental-health related career, I intend to do just that, equipped with the skills I’ve gained from our Neurochemistry course.
