Cobbers on the Brain – Page 122 – Student Commentary on the Neurological Sciences

Let's Talk About Schizophrenia

Posted on March 22, 2016 by / 0 Comment

The Treatment Advocacy Center states that 1.1% of the world population is affected by schizophrenia and it is estimated that 40% of people with schizophrenia go untreated. Some symptoms of schizophrenia include delusions and hallucinations, changes in emotions movements and behavior, alterations of senses, an altered sense of self and the inability to sort and interpret what is going on.

There are numerous changes in the brain with schizophrenia, but not one specific condition that can be measured for diagnosis. The disease must be diagnosed by a measure of its symptoms. There are high functioning patients with schizophrenia who are able to carry on a mostly normal life while others must be hospitalized.

Schizophrenia is a brain development disorder, so it is difficult to prevent because we don’t see the effects until it has already progressed. There are studies that show that infections during pregnancy may disrupt fetal brain development which increases the risk of schizophrenia.

In the article we talked about this week found the main problem with schizophrenia is not enough Wnt signaling and overactive dopamine in the brain. The combination of these two cause increased phosphorylation of β-catenin. When β-catenin is phosphorylated it has no positive effects on the brain.

Wnt proteins are produced by wnt genes in the body and are used all over the body, many of the proteins are organ or tissue specific. Evidence of increased dopamine production as well as increased ability for dopamine to interact with its receptor have been a part of discovering dopamine’s role in schizophrenia.

β-cateinin is used across the body for cell-cell adhesion and gene expression. In schizophrenia there is not enough β-catenin, but many cancers are associated with the over expression of β-catenin.

The best thing we can do to help with the research in Schizophrenia is become informed. The more we talk about it, the more aware we will be about the symptoms, prevention, and treatments.

Disease/Health

Stigma and Schizophrenia

Posted on March 21, 2016 by / 0 Comment

Mental illness is an uncomfortable topic. Without the ability to talk about it, we can’t help but refer to people afflicted with serious psychological conditions as being unbalanced or crazy. This not only demonstrates ignorance but also allows for the characterization of those suffering as a separate population instead of as individuals. These conditions breed stigma and prejudice and so in the interest of improving the lives and those unfortunates whose minds have betrayed them we should explore and learning about these conditions.
What is Schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a severe and persistent mental illness that can be debilitating to how a person is able to think and perceive the world around them. Hallmarks of the disease include hallucinations, delusions, movement disorders, depression, reduced interest, poor attention, and poor decision making.

Example of dopamine action
What causes the condition?
A prevailing theory for the cause of schizophrenia is that it is a developmental disorder. This is supported by the fact that conditions that disrupt fetal brain development contributed to the development of schizophrenia as well as by the fact that those diagnosed with schizophrenia missed cognitive milestones in their childhood. The disrupted brain development creates the symptoms that are seen later in life.
One theory as to what is going wrong in the brain’s mechanisms deals with the Wnt signaling pathway in the brain. It is thought that excess dopamine, a neurotransmitter, is preventing the Wnt pathway from creating healthy proteins in the brain and so prevent key areas of the brain from fully developing.

Healthy vs Schizophrenic brain
Treatments
The most troubling problem with schizophrenia is that for all of its terrible effects we still lack adequate means of treating the disease. Anti-psychotics currently in use have such terrible side effects that patients routinely go off their medications because the symptoms associated with schizophrenia can be less severe. In addition to this, when the treatments are working they only affect half of the possible complications of the disease.
This disease affects the quality of life of millions and we are far away from coming up with either a successful treatment or cure. Research keeps pushing forward but currently the going is slow due to the resources invested in the disease. A shift in importance is required before we can develop the treatments that will improve the lives of millions.

Community/Disease/Health/Hot topics

What is Schizophrenia?

Posted on March 21, 2016 by / 0 Comment

Psychological disorders have always been a topic of interest of the general public. Movies and television series commonly portray various types of mental disorders, from eating disorders to schizophrenia. Even though these representations are important to inform the general public, sometimes what remains from the movies and TV shows is just the mystification and misconstruction of mental disorders.
One of the psychological disorders often represented in fiction is Schizophrenia. For example, in movies such as “A Beautiful Mind”, “Shutter Island”, and “Black Swan”, we can see characters that present symptoms of psychosis. Schizophrenia is characterized by positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and cognitive impairment. The positive symptoms are psychotic behaviors generally not seen in healthy people, presented as hallucinations and delusions. The negative symptoms are represented by disruptions of normal emotions and behaviors, usually presented as a “flat affect”. The neurobiology involved in the disease is still not fully understood. Scientific evidence points that there is a high expression of dopamine in the brain of schizophrenic patients. The relationship between dopamine and the onset of schizophrenia is not clear, but it is possible to treat positive symptoms with antipsychotic medications. Unfortunately, antipsychotics present a lot of side effects and they only treat positive symptoms. The negative symptoms and the cognitive impairment still cannot be treated with medication. Recent studies point that there are other chemical pathways involved in the maintenance of Schizophrenia, but it is still not clear how we could correctly target these pathways to treat the disease.
It is of great importance that the scientific community continues to investigate the biological basis of Schizophrenia and other mental disorders. It is also important to keep in mind that mental disorders are not just what we see in movies or TV shows, and the patients and their family need all the support to deal with such a difficult and complicated disease.

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Schizophrenia and Brain Development

Posted on March 20, 2016 by / 0 Comment

Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects a range of factors in a person, including how he or she thinks, feels, and behaves. Positive symptoms associated with schizophrenia include hallucinations, delusions, movement disorders, and hearing voices, while negative symptoms include reduced expression of emotion, reduced pleasure in everyday life, reduced speaking, and decreased cognitive functioning in many aspects including memory, executive functioning, and maintaining focus. Today roughly 1.2% or 3.2 million Americans are diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Although this mental condition has progressed from previous generations, where the patient was thought to be possessed by evil spirits, many steps toward the underlying causal mechanism have yet to be taken.
Recent studies have shed light onto alterations in Brain Development in patients with schizophrenia. Many studies have shown disruptions in fetal brain development have lead to increased risk in schizophrenia, while other evidence have shown delays in cognitive milestones in early childhood have lead to increased risk in schizophrenia. Altogether, this data suggests brain development has been linked to schizophrenia, and argues that an important factor in disease etiology could be Wnt signaling.
Wnt signaling, a pathway present in many regions of the brain, is important for a number of functions, including neuron plasticity, gene transcription, and overall brain development. In brief, when no Wnt ligand binds to the specific receptor complex, a internal destruction complex exists consisting of glycogen synthase kinase 3 β (GSK3β), Axin, adenomatous polyposis coli (APC), and casein kinase 1 α (CK1α). This complex functions to ultimately phosphorylate an enzyme critical for gene transcription, β-catenin. Overall, this leads to degradation of the enzyme, and a decreased level of gene transcription and neuron development. However in the presence of Wnt signaling (Wnt ligand binds to frizzled receptor complex), an activation of APC an Disheveled (Dvl) occurs, facilitating in the dissociation of the destruction complex, leading to active β-catenin and gene transcription.
Dopamine and Schizophrenia with Wnt signaling
The dopamine signaling pathway is the main target for antipsychotics, well-known drugs that act to reduce psychological effects. Dopamine signaling has a direct relationship with Wnt signaling, overall having a significant impact on (TCF/LEF)-mediated gene transcription. Activating the D2 receptor inhibits the enzyme Akt, which decreases phosphorylation of GSK3β, so overall, Dopamine signaling leads to degraded β-catenin.
Antipsychotic drugs, like clozapine and respiradone, inhibit DA receptors. These studies have established a strong relationship between dopamine signaling, Akt/GSK3β interaction, and Wnt signaling. Overall, the effects of antipsychotic medication act to decrease D2 signaling, and up-regulate Wnt signaling.
All in all, little has been clarified regarding the precise neurological mechanism leading to Schizophrenia. Other than Antipsychotic Drugs, which are accompanied by harsh side effects, treatments for Schizophrenia are therapy-modeled, targeting the patient’s behavioral and thought process. With knowledge of the role of the Wnt signaling pathway in the treatment of Schizophrenia, and other findings within genetics and stem cell research, deeper understanding of the etiology of Schizophrenia is on the horizon, along with how Wnt signaling is being altered to delay brain development.

Disease/Health

Bulimia: From Impulsive to Compulsive Behavior

Posted on March 16, 2016 by / 0 Comment

What is Bulimia?
Bulimia Nervosa (BN) is an eating disorder characterized by a period of binge eating followed by a period of purging. Binge eating is defined as eating a lot of food in very little time. Purging is the attempt to get rid of that food. The most common form of purging is vomiting
Impulsive Behavior
There are many situations in which humans make impulse decisions. Often times impulsive action takes place in the face of danger or following intense negative emotion. Research agrees that during times of intense negative emotion people are more likely to make rash impulsive decisions. A psychology/nuerochemistry review paper I recently read made the argument that the initial binge eating episode that can lead to BN is the result of impulsive action. Often this impulsive action is brought on by negative emotion. The act of binge eating is an immediate relief of this negative emotion. The writers of this paper also make the argument that the purge episode to follow is brought on by a number of factors including resentment following the impulsive decision. This resentment the writers believe can mostly be attributed to the “expectancy that thinness leads to overgeneralized life improvement.”
Compulsive Behavior
The path from impulsive binge eating and purging to compulsive binge eating and purging begins in the dopaminergic reward centers of the brain. People with BN show a similar reaction in this part of the brain during a binge episode as drug addicts do during drug use. The continued reward in this portion of the brain leads to a tolerance build up. You see dopamine is the chemical responsible for this reward feeling and in order for dopamine to do its job it has to bind with a dopamine receptor. However if dopamine gets release more often than normal, the brain responds by decreasing the number of dopamine receptors. This means in order to get the same reward feeling, it takes more dopamine than normal. However this reaction from the brain only happens after repeated use. Therefore the initial impulsive decision to binge eat does not exactly cause BN it would be the repeated binge eating and purging episodes that lead to BN.

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The Major Concerns of Bulimia Nervosa

Posted on March 16, 2016 by / 0 Comment

Body image is a topic that many adolescent girls and boys struggle with in the modern society. Wherever you go, there are unrealistic and hurtful images posted in magazine, newspapers, and websites. Not only are these images inappropriate, they also give vulnerable and impressionable adolescents impractical expectations for how they should look. These images, in combination with under developed emotional regulation can lead to serious mental health issues in this population and other men and women. Most commonly, the mental illness that manifests from this combination is Bulimia Nervosa (BN).

Characterized by episodes of binging following by purging, BN is a major source of mental health concern in the adolescent female population. With all of the societal pressures put on these young women to be thin, some of these people go to extreme measures to ensure that they will be looked upon by society with favor. However, these binging and purging episodes are extremely unhealthy and can lead to numerous physiological complications. One such concern is that excessive exposure of stomach acid to the mouth causes the degradation of tooth enamel. Commonly, people that purge consistently loose their teeth and can have other heart burn related issues.

The other major area of concern for these people is the recurrence and compulsive nature of this illness. There is more than a 30% chance that BN victims will relapse six months after treatment. This may be impart to the negative reinforcement of combating this illness. Studies have shown that people with bulimic tendencies also have lower resting metabolic rates. This means that when these people try to get start to eat healthy again, they will inevitably gain weight due to their slowed metabolism. This gain in weight following treatment negatively reinforces the action of eating healthy and can cause these people to revert to old tendencies.
Overall, it is imperative that when discussing this illness we analyze the emotional, psychological, and physiological aspect of these individuals. Additionally, it is also important to recognize that some people are at a higher risk to develop this disease given their social environments and neurological dispositions, such as impulsive behavior and risk taking personality traits.
While psychologists are working on developing new treatment models to help reverse the affects of BN, I think that the best form of care is to work on preventing it from evolving. I think that we need to continue to make the public aware of these dangerous images and teach kids the importance of eating healthy, exercising, and being physically fit, not skinny. If we are able to raise public awareness and education, I think that the amount of people affect by BN will significantly decrease and we can slowly combat the rising prevalence of this disease.

Community/Disease/Health/Hot topics

What is Bulimia Nervosa?

Posted on March 15, 2016 by / 0 Comment

Bulimia Nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by a cycle of bingeing and compensatory behaviors, such as vomiting, abuse of laxatives, and over exercising. It is a severe disorder that affects 1-2% of adolescent and young adult women. Highlighting the neural mechanisms involved in the outset and maintenance of the disease is of great importance, in order to develop efficient treatments to help those suffering with the disease.
Some studies revealed a connection between Bulimia and Serotonin, a type neurotransmitter (molecules found in the brain, responsible of maintain the communication between neurons) often related with mood. The findings are still unclear, but some patients are currently treated with a combination of therapy and medications, that interact with Serotonin levels in the brain.
Unfortunately, the relapse rates for Bulimia are still high: in one study, a relapse rate of 31% was observed during the 2-year follow-up period of recovery, and the vast majority of relapses occurred within the first 6 months after treatment. Thus, the development of novel and more effective treatment is necessary.
The efforts to find new types of treatment must join forces with those who make efforts to change the pattern of ultra-thin ideal body, that has been spread all over the world. Evidence indicates that the maintenance of Bulimia is sustained by many factors, including genetic predisposition, personality traits such as impulsivity, social environment that overvalues body image, and environmental stressors.

It is impossible to know if the disease would still exist if we did not have such skinny standards of beauty, but it is certain that the ultra-thin ideal body plays a role in the maintenance of not only Bulimia, but other eating disorders, as Anorexia.

Disease/Health

Uncovering Bulimia Nervosa

Posted on March 15, 2016 by / 0 Comment

For our topic this week, it was bulimia nervosa (BN). The article we discussed was written by Dr. Stephen Wonderlich, a Concordia Alumni, and the inaugural speaker for our Nornes Lectureship in Neuroscience.
BN is eating large amounts of food, and then purging or trying to get rid of the calories in an unhealthy way. These methods include vomiting, laxatives, diuretics or enemas after bingeing.
According to the Mayo Clinic, risk factors for BN are being a female, age, biology, psychological and emotional issues, media and sports pressure.
In Dr. Wonderlich’s review, his team designed a treatment based on how BN changes from an impulsive action to compulsive behavior. Their plan of approach is called the Integrative Cognitive-Affective Therapy (ICAT). As in the title, it focuses on the cognitive behavioral therapy aspect of psychotherapy. It helps a patient recognize their unhealthy, negative behaviors and replacing them with more healthy and positive ones.
The term negative urgency was present in Dr. Wonderlich’s review. The term is defined as the tendency to engage in rash action in response to extreme negative emotions, so it is a genetic factor for some people with BN. Negative urgency is the only trait that can consistently predict binge eating and purging. By understanding how some patients are genetically at risk for BN, and then incorporating the media idea of a “perfect” body image shows a recipe for an increase in BN patients.

By understanding how some people are at risk for BN, and decreasing the media’s “ideal” body as well as other risk factors will help reduce the number of bulimics. If a person does become diagnose with BN, but then incorporating Dr. Wonderlich’s and colleagues treatment plan of ICAT. It will help treat one the most severe eating disorders.

Disease/Health

Reducing the Stigma of Mental Illness: Bulimia Nervosa

Posted on March 15, 2016 by / 0 Comment

Psychological illness are a difficult thing to deal with, and make living and doing everyday activities difficult for sufferers. While there are many different distinct mental illnesses that are characterized, many of them seem to be linked to similar root causes, and two of those linked diseases now include Bulimia Nervosa (BN) and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). These diseases have been recently thought to involve some of the same pathological characteristics both related to psychological manifestations and with respect to brain chemistry.

Bulimia nervosa is a vicious cycle in which the person affected binges on food after a period of starving themselves, followed by throwing up the food because of feelings of guilt and shame. This is done in order to lose weight. This seems to ultimately come from the stigma against being overweight; people try to lose weight in order to feel better about themselves and live a better life. Unfortunately, environmental situations or genetic factors can make a person more susceptible to developing a mental illness, and often more than one will occur together. Bulimia and depression are very strongly linked: about 79% of people with bulimia also have depression.
It is important for society to look at mental illness not as a choice or weakness, but as a physical disease, to reduce the stigma associated with it. The chemical makeup of the brain is changed in specific ways that cause people to behave in ways that they do not truly have control over. In fact, with bulimia and OCD, the parts of the brain that are responsible for exerting control over our actions are dysfunctional, causing the disease in the first place. The idea of self-control is traditionally something that people are inherently born with, but it is actually more of a resource. This “resource” is actually a complicated system in the brain that uses neurotransmitters such as serotonin to control immediate emotion-based impulses that brain-healthy people take for granted.
This “resource” for effortful control is found as a linking system from the amygdala (responsible for experiencing emotions) to the prefrontal cortex. This signaling happens via dopamine. The prefrontal cortex then determines what to do with the information that the amygdala, and compares the demands from the emotional signaling to long-term goals. The prefrontal cortex can only inhibit these emotional responses with sufficient amounts of serotonin present. High levels of dopamine in these areas increase the power of the emotional signaling, while low levels of serotonin decrease the ability to inhibit the emotional signaling.

Emotional impulse regulation in the brain

Binge eating stems from the prolonged effortful control that is required to maintain the intense dieting the precedes it. Once the self-control resources such as serotonin in the brain are used up, a bulimic person will binge eat, satisfy their hunger, but then feel bad for failing their weight-loss or dieting ideal. In the end, they purge the food and continue the cycle.
Treating these diseases permanently is very difficult, although relief is often achieved. The recovery depends on the severity of the symptoms and how ingrained the compulsive behaviors are for each individual person. Usually both of these diseases are treated with Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) that increase the amount of serotonin in the brain. The importance of this treatment comes from increasing serotonin in specific areas of the brain responsible for controlling emotions that lack serotonin.
By understanding how bulimia and other mental illnesses develop, hopefully awareness of the disease as a physical illness (rather than some kind of weakness of the person’s soul) will make sufferers more likely to seek professional help.

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Emotional Regulation and Bulimia Nervosa

Posted on March 15, 2016 by / 0 Comment

Monday, March 14^th is a big day for the Concordia College Neuroscience Community. Dr. Steve Wonderlich, a Cobber Alumni, is going to hold a lecture about his new Bulimia Nervosa treatment model. Because of this, the Neurochemistry class focused on the topic Bulimia and worked together to break down Wonderlich’s 2014 paper discussing his model.

Bulimia Nervosa is serious and sometimes life-threatening disorder in which an individual undergoes a cycle of binge eating and then purging through vomiting, laxadives, or excessive exercise.
Dr. Wonderlich’s model focused on the importance of targeting the patient’s emotional regulation and working with them on an individual basis so that they are able to overcome their need for binging and purging.
The role of emotion plays a very critical role in bulimia because it is not solely about body image; it is about one’s inability to control their impulsiveness when in an emotional vulnerable state, according to Dr. Wonderlich. His new method is called interactive cognitive affective therapy (ICAT).
What is really interesting about this model is that it’s primary focus is on emotional regulation whereas some other forms of treatment focus primarily on the patient’s way of thinking cognitively. It target’s the patients emotional understanding, self-awareness, and triggers for episodes.
Dr. Wonderlich talked about how the brain plays a role in this disorder. The two main brain areas that are involved in emotion are the striatum and the amygdala, which are parts of the brain’s limbic system.

The amygdala is also essential for the brain’s reward pathway, which is activated during a bulimic episode, as well as with drug use.
During a bulimic episode, the individual wants to avoid negative feelings, so they resort to binge-eating (which can also be triggered after starvation with anorexia nervosa). The food acts as a reward and an escape from the negative aspects of their life, meaning that it acts as both positive and negative reinforcement.

After their binge episode, the individual may feel guilty and want to avoid the weight gain, so they go through a purge episode, which, again, acts as negative reinforcement.

This vicious cycle has made bulimia very hard to treat because, more often than not, it is about a lot more than just body image; it is about gaining control and avoiding the negative in one’s life. Although it is difficult to treat, Dr. Wonderlich’s breakthrough with emotional regulation shows promising results for a promising future of those suffering from bulimia nervosa.