One thing to know before you dive into anything on this blog. This stuff is very complicated. This weeks article in particular was very scientifically based and dense to get through. Not even science students who have been in college classes for nearly 4 years, nor their professors, completely understand everything that’s going on. The brain is an extremely complicated organ. Our goal here is to give the science in more simplistic terms, and more than that, explain what this means for us living in our society. Why should we care about this stuff?
Many of the complicated terms discussed in Neurochemistry articles are not terms that the public is familiar with. One term that is familiar to most is dopamine. Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter found in the brain, sending signals from one nerve cell to another, which in turn controls physical movement, memory, alertness, attention, emotions, and perceptions. In order to work, dopamine binds to receptors, not-so-surprisingly called dopamine receptors. There are multiple kinds of dopamine receptors and the one that this article focuses on are D2 dopamine receptors. Recently, these receptors have been noted as acting in a certain pathway, and the effects of this pathway on different brain disorders were noted.
The pathway that this article focuses on is the Akt/GSK3 signaling cascade. Like most other things in the brain, it is vital that this pathway is functioning at the right levels, having enough signaling, but not too much. Now, I could bore you with the nitty gritty, science-y details of what’s really going on here, but I’m not sure how helpful that would be. What is important to understand here is that this signaling cascade starts because dopamine binds to a D2 receptor. If levels of dopamine are off, or something goes wrong in this pathway, we are left with brain disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Parkinson’s disease. This is why we care. The implication that disruptions in this pathway lead to these disorders is fairly new research, and by understanding exactly how this pathway works may lead scientists to discover helpful treatments.
Scientists are far from understanding everything about dopamine and the Akt/GSK3 pathway, but what is important to know is that current research is helping us get there. The complications come in when you realize that both dopamine and the Akt/GSK3 pathway do MANY things throughout the brain besides act in ways that affect these disorders. Thus if you are trying to target something in this pathway to help a specific aspect of a certain disorder, this could cause many unwanted side affects. The field of science and medicine has come a long way, but it has a long way to go! It is exciting to know that we understand more and more every day and this knowledge is helping discover new treatments of neuropsychiatric disorders.
Wait, what?
