Cobbers on the Brain

I used to think that a Capstone course at Concordia was just a course with a special title because I thought all my classes accomplished the five goals of liberal arts education. Even when we went over the 5 goals of the Capstone course the first day of class, I was a little skeptical as to how we would accomplish these goals differently than we had in other classes. Over the semester, I learned not only that “Capstone” is not just a title, but also that Neurochemistry was the perfect Capstone for me.
Before I launch into my raving reviews of Neurochemistry, here are the five goals of liberal learning:

1. Instill a love for learning
2. Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities
3. Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives and their connections
4. Cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical and spiritual self-understanding
5. Encourage responsible participation in the world

Instill a love for learning

Neurochemistry reinforced my love for learning in a variety of ways. First of all, this course required active learning. We were not able to sit back and absorb information as it was presented to us, we had to seek it out on our own. As a student about to enter my final semester of college, the ability and motivation to find information on my own will be incredibly valuable in graduate school and beyond.

Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities

Not only were we asked to find what we wanted to know on our own, we had to be able to teach it to our classmates and relate it to the big-picture problem we were addressing. This is an essential skill to develop, because knowledge is pretty useless in an isolated environment. It is best utilized when it is shared with others and used to address larger-scale issues.

Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and intercultural perspectives and their connections.

This class was not only limited to chemistry and biology majors, it was open to social science students and neurobiology students as well. I learned so much from my classmates because of their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We heard stories about people’s life experiences dealing with the topics we discussed, and learned about how academic areas aside from chemistry can contribute to the knowledge required to solve neurochemical problems. Neurochemistry does not only involve or affect neurochemistry. Its effects are seen throughout the body and in behavior and physical deterioration, and having multiple perspectives with which to assess these problems gave us a well-rounded idea of the many paths that would need to be explored in order to completely understand the issue.

Cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical, and spiritual self-understanding.

When you are discussing end-of-life care, the morality of genetic engineering, or whether women should take antipsychotic medication during pregnancy due to risk of autism, you inevitably examine your cultural, ethical, physical, and spiritual views. This class fostered an environment in which we could discuss very difficult topics and respectfully disagree with each other. I really appreciated the opportunity to hear my classmates’ opinions as well as to express my own, and to combine science and personal ethics to further develop my views about these challenging concepts.

Encourage responsible participation in the world.

During our discussions, the conversation almost always turned toward what we can do about tragic diseases like autism, ALS, or obesity. I think this framed our discussions in terms of what we can do in our careers to be aware and active in these areas. Additionally, our community outreach project exactly accomplished this goal. For our project, we worked to increase awareness, knowledge, and intervention ability of students in situations of opiate use and abuse. In this way, we were being responsibly engaged in the world and encouraging our fellow Concordia students to do the same.
Overall, neurochemistry was an awesome course that initially looked at various health problems from a neurochemical perspective, but then broadened the view to a multi-disciplinary approach that is the epitome of liberal arts education.

My Neurochemistry capstone experience with Dr. Mach truly felt like a culmination of my learning and a practical application for that. Concordia’s five goals for liberal learning are a good basis to show how amazing this class has been. Concordia’s five goals for liberal learning are as follows:

• Instill a love for learning
• Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities
• Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives and their connections
• Cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical and spiritual self-understanding
• Encourage responsible participation in the world

Neurochemistry succeeded in instilling a learning for me in the way that it was taught. Our weekly schedule was to read a literature article critically for Monday, learn a portion of it really well to teach on a partner basis on Wednesday, and a general discussion group. We had tests, however, they were tests that applied what we had learned throughout the year and didn’t require too much studying. This class was on of the few classes I’ve had where I’ve felt that I’m learning because I want to, not because the professor is requiring it. Every week we’re learned interesting things about how the brain works and those mechanisms can be see in daily life. I know I’ve really enjoyed a class when I discuss it outside of class independently. I’ve also grown in reading academic literature and can now understand some of the crazy lingo in neurochemistry.
Neurochem has improved my ability to read literature, function in a group oriented reverse classroom (that succeeds in teaching very well) and organize events. Reading literature is something we’ve been doing since Freshman year, but it’s nice to finally see that these are starting to make sense in their entirety. It used to be that any academic article would just be overwhelming and the only thing that made sense was the abstract, however, with my overall experience in college and my capstone here, I feel like a can read and comprehend most literature within science. That will be important for me going forward because as a physician, I will be expected to keep up with my readings. The reverse classroom was really interesting. Essentially the students are required for producing class discussion and the lesson, at least more than usual. Having the classwork centered around discussion and direction by us is part of what enhance the effectiveness of this class. Working as a class to discuss ideas and questions is much better for learning than being lectured at. It may be less efficient, but things I’ve learned in discussion in this class will stick much longer than something I learned by lecture. Organizing our group’s Narcan events and training session for the capstone project was an experience. I was able to work on my ability to work with a different group of students and produce an event that seemed to have a strong impact on the student body.
Developing perspectives and connections between disciplines and cultures happened by virtue of the interdisciplinary nature of this project and The Good Neighbor Project. Working with Social Work students was very interesting in this project. There are different group dynamics that develop over time in different disciplines either. As a group, we had some conflicts, but working together and seeing everyone settle into what they were comfortable with led to success on our project. Our project’s success was also dependent on The Good Neighbor Project. They put on the Naloxone training session and offered a window into the addict’s life, one which many at Concordia do not have.
This class simply reinforced my self understanding as a future health worker (Doctor). We learned a lot about brain mechanisms of diseases and how they may be prevented in the future. This has obvious medical implications, however, the project also served to apply future medical skills. The project is a practical application of medical knowledge through the cooperation of multiple disciplines and organizations. As a doctor, it’s important to understand that you are not the only one on a team. Others are going to be better and their own specialties.
And finally, this class encouraged me to BREW by calling me do it actively. In my mind, Narcan training for a community can only hold benefits. The Narcan training session seems like a great application of my knowledge to help a community.
Stepping away from Concordia’s learning goals, this was one of the best classes I have taken at Concordia. The routine we settled into a class reviewing the literature throughout the week was very welcome in hectic college life. As a class of 12, we grew much closer throughout the class. We had a mix between Bio/Chem students and some psychology students too. It was good to continue class with those I’ve been with since Freshman, but it was also nice to have a class with some friends I’ve only known outside of class. There were some unforgettable experiences and class discussions throughout the weeks and Dr. Mach was one of best professors I’ve ever had. All she asked of us, was that we give our best effort to understand the material and she assured us that the class would go fine. This made the class less stressful and much easier to focus on the actual learning. Dr. Mach was always available as a professor and advisor. Part of the class includes meeting with her for self-evaluations and this served as a great time to talk to someone who knows more than myself. We had a few discussions about life before and after college, that helped me gain perspective in my life. One of the most important lessons from this class: Neurochemistry is a great capstone class and anyone who can take it.

“Obesity is a chronic disease, prevalent in both developed and developing countries, and affecting children as well as adults.”—World Health Organization (WHO).
Obesity at the molecular level causes multiple issues eventually leading to the inhibition of IRS’s which stands for Insulin receptor substrate. IRS plays a crucial role in the cascade of events for properly insulin signaling in the brain.
Our research article summed up obesity (over overnutrition) causing three main issues and those were: increase in fatty acids due to a high fat diet (HFD), insulin resistance, and chronic low-grade inflammation. Each of these issues have their own molecular pathway that stem from overnutrition and cause IRS complex’s to be inhibited. The main image encompasses all three issues at the molecular level.
As you read and could see from the drawing I made, obesity physically alters brain function and can cause permanent damage to areas in the brain where insulin receptors are located.
Dictionary.com defines a disease as “a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.”
With that, it’s clear that obesity should and is classified as a disease, but some people today would disagree. If there is no genetic predisposition, and you choose to get fat, that’s your issue and it’s not a disease. I would agree initially that someone who is obese and was skinny prior at some point decided to make poor nutritional changes and that lead them to eventually gain weight. Studies have come out stating that it’s only a period of time when you make poor food choices that causes an imbalance in glucose metabolism and energy homeostasis—thus leading to chemical changes in the brain and boom…obesity as a disease is born.
Maybe some would say that they agree it’s a disease, but since the individual made the decision to fall down that route, they don’t see that person as a priority for treating them over other diseases, but they should. First, our society is helping us become more obese by implementing so much sugar everywhere (because too much sugar is much more important/worse than too much fat) so it is already tough not to make poor food choices. Most importantly, people should care about treating obese people because their diseases automatically predispose the unborn child to the development of metabolic disorders which can lead to obesity.

There is an obesity epidemic happening in America. More and more people are struggling with health problems due to over nutrition and too little exercise and despite peoples best efforts it is only becoming worse. There are a lot of reasons for this phenomenon, first, our diets (in general) are terrible. We eat too much, and the foods we prefer have wat too much unhealthy fat, too much sugar, and too much salt.
Sadly, people like unhealthy foods a lot, and more than ever before unhealthy foods extremely common. In fact, it is faster, easier, and much cheaper to find unhealthy foods than it is to find a healthy option. Plus processed and unhealthy foods taste great, and are specifically designed to be eaten often and in large amounts.
We know that eating like this affects our body, but how does this affect our brains?
As well as regulating metabolism in the body, insulin plays an important role in the brain. There are many insulin receptors throughout the brain, including many in the regions that tell us when and how much food to eat. When food is consumed, insulin is released from the pancreas into the body and eventually the brain. This helps the body regulate how fats, carbohydrates, and proteins are broken down and it also triggers various receptors throughout the brain.
If Insulin levels are too high for too long insulin resistance can build up in the brain (and throughout the body).
Insulin, as well as being triggered by the intake of food, also helps regulate energy metabolism. This means that insulin signaling helps let people know when and how much food to eat. If the brain becomes resistant to insulin it can cause people’s eating habits to become even unhealthier because they will not know when they should stop eating.
This insulin resistance in the brain can also be passes down from mothers to children. If a mother has insulin resistance and/or chronic over nutrition is can be passed down to her baby through exposure to high insulin levels pre-birth. It should also be noted that the environment after birth also has a significant effect on obesity and insulin resistance in the brain. Still, the importance of this pre-birth insulin resistance cannot be ignored.
So what can be done? Currently the only practical answer is to eat well and exercise. I know that everyone is tired of this advice, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Eating our vegetables and exercising will make us feel better and be healthier.
Now, this doesn’t mean that we can never eat a cookie ever again. We just need to be mindful of what we are eating and make sure that we eat a well-balanced diet and do some form of exercise on a regular basis. If we make a habit of eating mindfully it is okay to indulge every once in a while. It is when we eat nothing but unhealthy foods that it starts to affect our body, mind, and insulin signaling.

When enrolling in the capstone course, Neurochemistry, I was very nervous about how I would do in the course with not much neurological background. Also, with this only being my 3 semester at Concordia I was a tiny bit skeptical of the whole capstone concept. I figured it would be just another class, that would be pretty hard and stressing, but in reality, it has been the best class I have taken at Concordia so far.
This class has made the whole Concordia experience come into reality, with experiential learning and becoming responsibly engaged in the world (BREWing). I wish all my classes could be like this one.
To me it has fulfilled all the liberal learning goals Concordia has set. First, instill a love for learning, never before have I wanted to read a journal article for the fun of it but this class has showed me how much I can learn by reading new information and dissecting the findings. It is truly amazing how much I have learned how excited I am to still be learning.
Second, it has definitely given me foundational skills and transferable intellectual qualities that I didn’t know I could even do. This class has made me look at science in many different ways rather than one straightforward way. This is partially due to us learning for ourselves but also being able to discuss with our peers about how they feel on a subject and learning from them.
Third, how not just one piece of science is key to all, that many different facets make up the whole picture and working with, and understanding everything will help in the long run.
Fourth, self examine my own understanding of cultural, ethical, physical and spiritual self. This was fulfilled by seeing a different side of illnesses that may not actually be our fault but really an imbalance in our brains causing these diseases, how to empathize with people and the ethical question about long term care. In this realm I also want to talk about our Community Action Project that opened my eyes to a real problem in this world and that is opiate misuse. I would hear news stories about opiate problems in our own community and not even bat an eye. After researching and hearing from the Good Neighbor Project I have a whole new perspective on opiate abuse in my own community that wouldn’t have been possible without this class.
Fifthly, when leaving Concordia to be responsibly engaged in the world. I think this class 100% does that for its biology, neurochem and chemistry majors it encounters. This course made me have to learn things for myself without the teacher simply handing over the material. It made me learn how to process things that I thought would be a hard concept in a manner that I could break down and understand because this class gave me the tools to do so. I hope I can continue to use these tools throughout my life to make hard tasks and problems simpler to do. These are the reasons why Concordia is the best in the league in producing highly qualified grad school and work positions.
 

When I first enrolled in the Neurochemistry Capstone course, I was a little unsure of what I was getting myself into. But, now that I am quickly approaching the end of the semester and thus the end of this class, I am finding myself a little nostalgic. I have loved every second of this course, as it certainly represents the concept of a capstone course. Concordia’s mission is for students to BREW (become responsibly engaged in the world). Neurochemistry has represented the mission well, as well as aligning with the goals of a liberal education.
Being a biology major, I was a little nervous when I started the course. My general chemistry and biochemistry courses were the only things that I thought would help me out with learning neurochemistry content. However, I found that a lot of the mechanisms and structures that we were learning were things that I was able to understanding fairly well. I really appreciated that I was able to use my foundational skills from other courses to incorporate information across disciplines. I also found out that a lot of neurochemistry involves quite a bit of background from my biology courses. Knowing that I was going to be able to pull previously learned information from my brain made class a lot more enjoyable. Interdisciplinary work is something that Concordia strives for, with neurochemistry not being an exception to their goal for learning.
The concept of BREW was definitely illustrated through this course. Through our Wednesday speed-dating, Friday conversations and blog-posts, I found myself becoming more socially engaged with my peers, many of whom I did not know well at the beginning of the semester. The Friday sessions were pure discussions about the topic that we had gone over for the week. We were able to discuss ethical, cultural, and personal opinions on the topic at hand, an experience I had not had in any previous classes. It was interesting to hear what others had to say about some pretty controversial topics. I also really enjoyed learning new information that I had not known previously. The blog post also gave us another opportunity to showcase our knowledge and opinions about the weekly topic. It also allowed us to connect with the community, spreading knowledge about topics that they may not know much about! Even if not many people read my blogs, I hope that I was able impact some people within the community with my thoughts!
My specific capstone project that I worked on all semester with both neurochem and social work students was on the topic of anxiety. We chose to specifically target the teachers on campus in order to have a “trickle down” effect on the students. I really believe that we were able to succeed with our faculty and staff workshop. This project was challenging, but it allowed me to expand my friendships into other disciplines, while also learning how to navigate through a “real world” issue that exists within our society.
Throughout my entire four years at Concordia, I have fallen deeply in love with learning, so as much to pursue a career that will immerse me in education for years to come. Specifically, neurochemistry has contributed to my love of learning. Learning about topics that are prevalent within the community and may contribute to my work as a physician really stimulated my learning within the course. The environment of students that I have been able to work with throughout the semesters have been phenomenal. Also, having a professor that shares the same passions as you makes learning even more fun and worthwhile. Overall, this was a class for the books. It is hard to find professors that are willing to hold a class in such an environment.

Concordia College prides itself on preparing its students for the real world after their undergraduate experience, and the capstone experience is supposed to be the final addition to the recipe. As my final semester at Concordia is wrapping up and I finish my capstone course, Neurochemistry, I believe I can say that Concordia is doing it right. I hope that I can say the same thing 20 years from now, too, but from where I am now I can.
Concordia has a list of goals for liberal learning that they try to incorporate into their liberal arts education, and at the same time they try to teach the students to become engaged in the world around them. I feel as though Neurochemistry has met these criteria.
The first goal for liberal learning is to instill a love for learning. Although this class has been challenging and a bit confusing at times, the material has been fascinating. I hadn’t taken a neuro class before this, so I thought I might be a little behind and easily overwhelmed. This may have been the case if it was a typical class, but, because we had to learn the material on our own outside of class, I could spend as much time as I needed. It was easy to spend a lot of time understanding some of the articles, but they were so interesting it didn’t matter.
The second goal is about developing skills and transferable intellectual capacities. I think that this goal was probably the most relevant to me because I am going into dentistry, which is a constantly evolving field. I will need to be able to pick up a scientific article years from now have the skills necessary to critically analyze and understand its content, something that I learned reading articles and discussing them in this class.
Developing an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives and their connections is the third goal of liberal learning. Our class had people from many backgrounds, majors, and countries, so we had people with different perspectives weighing in on our discussions. In addition, Dr. Mach did a wonderful job of bringing things to our attention that we maybe didn’t think of or that enhanced our discussion in some other way. Our topics were controversial at times (legalization of marijuana, end of life care, drug addiction, etc.), so it was interesting to see where people were coming from when they had a contrasting opinion.
The fourth goal is to cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical and spiritual self-understanding. Neurochemistry satisfied this goal through our class discussions. We were never just memorizing information from a lecture given by our professor. We were asking questions about the implications of a new discovery, discussing if a new treatment option was ethical or not, comparing our views to those of another culture, or looking inside ourselves to formulate our own opinions. Many of us will be professionals in medicine or a related field, so we will face these kinds of issues at some point and will need to deal with it properly.
The final goal of liberal learning is to encourage responsible participation in the world. Our weekly blog posts relaying scientific information to the public were an obvious way that we were participating in the world. In our discussions, we often found ourselves saying, “If only more people knew (fill in the blank).” Because we have the educational background and access to scientific articles, it is our responsibility to do what we can to educate others to make informed decisions.
Overall, this class was a great experience and I would recommend it to any science student that is looking for a capstone. It is challenging, yes, but it is an awesome class and is near the top of my list of engaging, interesting, and rewarding classes here at Concordia.

This week we asked ourselves a very important question: what comes first, over nutrition or insulin resistance?
In 2013, the American Medical Association (AMA) officially recognized obesity as a disease. According to new guidelines released by the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, the World Health Organization, and The Obesity Society, doctors should consider obesity a disease and more actively treat obese patients for weight loss.
With this new diagnosis as a disease, more research is being done on how the brain plays a key role in the way we eat. In a paper published in 2013 we found many things that contribute to this energy imbalance in our bodies.
Normally, the brain responds to many signals from within the body and from the external environment to help it to know when it is time to eat and when eating should stop. We are all familiar with things in our environment that seem to increase our appetites, such as the smells of food nearby, food advertisements, parties with friends, group meals and even emotional triggers, like stress, which can change our drive to eat.
This includes certain neurons in our brain that receive signals from insulin when we have enough energy, to tell us we don’t need to eat anymore. When we over eat these neurons can get desensitized and no longer receive the insulin signal that we are full. This starts a cycle of bad eating and just continues to damage the neuron. Also, research on animals has also shown rats fed a diet rich in sugar and fats are less sensitive to the pleasure-inducing neurotransmitter dopamine.
The other hormone controlling our appetite is leptin and as body fat increases, leptin levels also increase. However, instead of high levels of leptin leading to fullness and decreased appetite, it appears that obese people become resistant to leptin’s effects and it works less and less effectively as body fat increases. This resistance to the effects of leptin may help explain why many obese people have normal or even increased appetite despite having large amounts of stored calories in their bodies in the form of fat.
While scientists and doctors continue to work to better understand what causes obesity and to develop new treatments, there are many things individuals can do now and Diet and exercise and the key to it all.

Autism is seen four times as much in men than it is in women. This is a very odd phenomenon that has been hard to explain since it’s been observed. The reasoning behind it still isn’t well understood, but there were some interesting points brought up.
First off, the article Sex differences in autism spectrum disorders from NCBI discussed a possible diagnosing bias in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). There may be a gender bias in diagnosing ASD that stems from how ASD is identified. ASD is diagnosed with many behaviors that violate traditional social norms and it is possible that males exhibit those signs for diagnosing in a more extreme fashion than females. Their main source of evidence of this was that in patients that fell just short of being diagnosed with ASD, the gender ratio was much more even, closer to 60:40.
After getting beyond this, multiple ideas were discussed to explain the ASD gender ratio. The most interesting one to me was about the role of testosterone and other hormones in the development of Autism and women’s genetic resistance. Since there is such a gender discrepancy, the first culprits looked at are what make us a boy or girl, sex chromosomes. A girl has two X chromosomes and a male has an X and Y chromosome. The first idea is that the Y chromosome is destructive, in that it leads to Autism. On the other hand, it could be that the X chromosome is protective against ASD. More than likely, it’s a little of both. Interesting evidence for this is that people with more than two chromosomes, their rates of Autism make sense in consideration to X being protective and Y being destructive. More X chromosomes and fewer Y chromosomes correlate with lower rates of ASD. This association makes sense in consideration with the role of testosterone in Autism.

Elevated levels of fetal testosterone and throughout development are seen in many who exhibit ASD. The exact role of testosterone in Autism isn’t well understood, but an interesting connection was made by the authors. Testosterone functions, on some levels, in a positive feedback loop. Testosterone inhibits the enzyme that changes is to estrogen. So naturally, the accumulation of testosterone leads to the inhibition of its own breakdown, leading to further accumulation. This is relevant to the gender discussion because, not only does the Y chromosome create more testosterone comparatively, but the X chromosome codes for the enzyme that changes testosterone to estrogen. This understanding might explain part of the gender story, as females with less natural testosterone and more enzymes to handle high amounts of it are more resistant to ASD. The most interesting piece of evidence for this hypothesis involves the siblings of those with ASD. When compared, siblings of a girl with Autism exhibit more symptoms of ASD than those with a brother with ASD. All these little pieces of evidence support the idea that women are resistant to ASD in a way that involves their additional X chromosome. An interesting analysis that comes to a funny conclusion, women having lower rates of ASD is due to their additional X chromosome or lack of a Y. Which is effectively saying, women are resistant to ASD because they are women, nonetheless, testosterone’s role in ASD will be important in the future for understanding and treating ASD.