Cobbers on the Brain

Coming into Concordia confident that I would pursue a Neuroscience major, the Neurochemistry course is one that has always been on my radar. To say I enjoyed this class is an understatement. Each week, I came to class ready to read and engage with peers on a relevant topic in today’s world. This class is also unlike one I had taken before, so the new methods of learning information were extremely beneficial to my understanding of the course content and helped me develop my critical thinking and communication skills. Courses such as this are the reason I chose to come to Concordia: wonderful classmates who were just as excited and ready to be there, an engaging course with focuses on real-world topics relevant to many of our future career choices, and a discussion-based learning style to allow us to dive deeper into topics that we are actually interested in. As I said earlier, I can’t speak highly enough of this course, as it is surely one of my favorites so far in my Concordia experience. Concordia’s five goals for liberal learning present a good template to explain my takeaways from this course.

Instill a love for learning

For me, I think I have always had a love for learning, leading me to pursue challenging courses that I know I am interested in. Also, Concordia offers the chance to take a variety of classes outside of your major, so I’ve had the opportunity to expand my love for learning in that regard as well. Still, while I would say I had a pretty well-developed love for learning coming into Neurochemistry, this course revolutionized the way I see that love for learning. Like I mentioned earlier, this course has a different style than any I had taken before, and the discussion-based “workplace” setup of the course solidified for me the fact that I am passionate about Neuroscience and love learning and exploring the subject with peers. Also, reading dense literature articles is very relevant to what I am considering pursuing for a career, so I appreciated getting to develop those skills in a classroom setting before going off into the “real world.” Neurochemistry greatly helped develop and expand my love for learning.

Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities

This goal was incredibly evident throughout the Neurochemistry course. Especially considering everyone (or most everyone) taking the course was a Neuro major or minor, these skills we learned are so valuable to not only our major, but also to future career paths. As mentioned previously, reading literature articles is one example of a foundational skill that I appreciated getting to focus on in class. Also, I know that my communication skills have improved throughout the duration of this course in a variety of ways. Blogging was something completely new to me, so it was a helpful learning experience to spend time focusing on writing a creative, compelling piece of writing while also including valuable information about the science as well. Along with blogging, communication was an important facet of this course through the Wednesday “speed-dating” days and Friday discussion days. In both of these, it was important to demonstrate understanding of the topic and reflect that well through your communication with peers.

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

Because Neuroscience is a very interdisciplinary field in itself, this course definitely expanded on those themes. Especially in reading current literature, we were exposed to a wide variety of research fields, techniques, and concepts that did not fit under one umbrella. Also, the community action project, one of the main elements of the course, was combined with social work students, who had different insights on certain subjects. Their perspectives helped widen the range of ways I was able to think about concepts.

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

While this goal may not apply as directly to the Neurochemistry course, I still found elements of this within my time in Neurochem. Self-understanding is crucial to being successful, and I think it’s a concept which I have developed throughout my years at Concordia. Specific to Neurochemistry, we were able to have rich discussions on many “hot topics” that brought about questions where self-understanding comes into play. Being confident in my own opinions and experiences is probably where I see this the most.

Encourage responsible participation in the world

The biggest way in which this was accomplished was through the community action project in the course. My group members and I were able to get into the community and engage with at-risk youth, promoting addiction awareness and resources should they need them. It was a pivotal experience, as I had yet to really see addiction in action and this project allowed me to do so and feel like I was making a difference. I don’t know that I would have received as great of an opportunity if it weren’t for the Neurochemistry course.

All Together

Neurochemistry, in my opinion, was the epitome of a capstone course. It allowed me to step back, reflect on all that I’ve already achieved at Concordia, and also see where I am able to go. I had such a fun time in this class and I will surely miss our engaging discussions, interesting course concepts, and just having fun with classmates. My biggest piece of advice would be to take Neurochemistry if you get the chance!

While there are inevitably reasons why people enjoy listening to music, many of these reasons can be attributed to changes in the brain, giving off a reward signal that leads to the pleasurable feelings associated with music. Music’s impact on the brain is a relatively new area of research, so there are still many, many unanswered questions. However, research over the last couple of decades have given us more information than ever before on the neurochemistry of music. The four areas on which to focus are 1) reward, motivation, and pleasure, 2) stress and arousal, 3) immunity, and 4) social affiliation.

Reward, Motivation, and Pleasure

The main question regarding music’s impact on reward is whether it has the same features of another rewarding stimulus that encourages repetition of the activity to obtain the pleasurable feeling. Music is already known to have the capacity to evoke emotions in an individual, and these emotions can span across the entire spectrum: happy, sad, joy, fear, etc. While musical pleasure can be tied to the intensity of emotional arousal, music doesn’t seem to have the survival benefit or addictive properties associated with other reward-inducers, such as drugs of abuse. There is evidence, however, that music effects the same reward systems as other reinforcing stimuli, so music is surely capable of giving off a rewarding feeling.

Music has also been identified as involving activation of the nucleus accumbens (NAc), which is a brain region crucial to reward responses. This was discovered through the use of positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), demonstrating that pleasure-inducing music was associated with higher blood flow (activation) to the NAc. To support the contention that music acts along the same pathways as other rewarding stimuli, fMRI was used to identify the involvement of dopaminergic reward pathways in the processing of music.

Stress and Arousal

Music has largely been thought to decrease stress levels and modulate arousal levels. Interestingly, music has also been used following a stressful operation to decrease use of painkillers in recovery. There are plenty of ways for music to be used as therapy, especially since it is known to have a notable effect on mood. Guided Imagery and Music, a specified therapy technique, was shown to reduce activation of the HPA stress axis and decrease cortisol levels, both of which are very positive responses. However, these findings do depend on the type of music, as some genres had the opposite effect. This could also mean that personality plays an important role in music’s effects, as preferred genres will likely have a more significant effect. Music is believed to initiate reflexive brainstem responses, which explains why it can affect stress levels and mood.

Immunity 

Music’s role in immunity is one that has produced many questions, but also some interesting findings as to how music could be used to strengthen immune responses. It might be obvious that music can cause positive feelings, but what may not be obvious is the fact that those positive feelings can mitigate negative effects of age and stress on the body and brain. One specific experiment studied the effect of group drumming on participants and found that it caused enhanced immune functioning and a buffered stress response. What a positive finding! There are also studies that concluded that recreational music-making can counteract immune modulation normally caused by advancing age and stress levels. Essentially, there appears to be a modulatory role for music in immune regulation.

Social Affiliation

It’s clear that music creates positive feelings within those who experience it. Two possible sources of these social effects are the neuropeptides called oxytocin and vasopressin. These molecules suggest a biological basis for music’s role in the formation of social bonds. For example, a 30-minute singing lesson caused an increase in oxytocin levels. However, there are questions surrounding music’s role in social affiliation due to the findings so far not having controls required for full comparison. This is an important future pursuit.

Conclusion

While the neurochemistry of music is a relatively new area of research and discovery, it is clear that there are interesting findings yet to be discovered. Future research should consider more comparative controls, allowing for more conclusive results. Still, it means that there’s music to your ears, but also music to your brain!

For further reading, check out the paper linked here.

Joy, fulfillment, hope, gratitude, and passion. These are the emotions that come to mind as I reflect on my capstone neurochemistry class and on my Concordia College education as a whole. My four years have been marked by cycles of awe, inquiry, and growth in which my personal and scholarly development far exceeded my expectations. I am deeply grateful for the faculty and peers at Concordia who have shared their wisdom and expertise with me.

This final blog post is rather bittersweet. I’ve anticipated Neurochemistry 475 since my first year because it combines twin passions of mine: a fascination for cellular/molecular neuroscience and a passion for discussion-based humanities courses. I’m struck by how much I already miss this class, especially the community of aspiring neuroscientists (and neuro-interested doctors/dentists/et. al.) who came together with shared goals of understanding more about the brain than we did four months ago.

Reflections on Concordia’s goals for Liberal Learning:

1) Instill a love for learning

My Concordia College education extended my initial love of learning to just about every discipline I’ve encountered on campus, deepening my fierce desire to learn. Neurochemistry followed suit with other upper-division science courses in that concepts I previously thought straightforward turned out to be significantly more complex. Memorable examples include learning that the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA, actually is excitatory early in development (which blew my mind) and that oxytocin, which I thought was the “love hormone” actually can increase with negative emotional feelings as well. These examples illustrate the enormous complexity of the human brain— after 3.5 years of intensive study, my biggest takeaway is that I really don’t know much at all about how the brain works.

2) Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities

I’ve expanded my neurochemistry knowledge this semester, and I’ve learned a lot about becoming a scientist, and what sort of scientist I aspire to be. I’ve become much more competent at reading and summarizing primary literature, and at finding and piecing together neurochemical pathways. I’ve developed a foundational knowledge of key signaling pathways (GPCR, RTK, Jak/Stat, and Wnt/β-catenin) which are already useful in other classes and will continue to inform future scholarly work. While these signaling pathways are intrinsically interesting, the best class days were when, like during the addiction unit, we as a class tied intricate neurobiology to real-world examples nearly everyone can relate to.

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

Neurochemistry 475 is a culmination of the neuroscience major, my 7^th consecutive chemistry course, my love affair with the nexus of ambitious science and contemplative humanities, and the experience of co-learning with a cohort of highly motivated, compassionate, intelligent students. This class would have been much less impactful if not for the insightful perspectives and knowledge offered by classmates, making our Friday afternoon discussions, whether on Olin Hill, Spread out on the Knutson couches, or virtually via Zoom, so meaningful.

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

I distinctly remember our Friday afternoon discussion on Alzheimer’s Disease—our conversation wrestled with complex philosophical and societal questions about what it means to be a part of the natural aging process, and how best to ameliorate distress in those suffering from dementia/AD. This conversation in particular stands out because of how everyone brought their unique skills and perspectives to the conversation, and I walked away with a richer appreciation for the utter complexity and mystery of neuroscience and broader society. Neurochemistry 475 enabled me to build off of the discussion skills developed throughout my religion, philosophy, and other humanities courses to think through interpersonal/societal consequences of whatever the topic of the week, be it ASD or obesity.

     5) Encourage responsible participation in the world

Drawing connections between the sciences and humanities, whether in class, through discussions, or in my blog posts strengthened my desire to continue pursuing science communication throughout my career. Further, the blogs and community action project gave me experience translating relatively high-level neurochemistry concepts to become understandable and interesting for general audiences, a unique and impactful opportunity. This is how I want to do neuroscience, zooming in to understand the molecular mechanisms at play in a given system/disease/ etc., but then zooming out to connect with broader audiences.

Neurochemistry 475 was a key part of my Concordia education, and one I will miss next semester and beyond. Neurochemistry has sharpened my drive to pursue neuroscience, through research, teaching, and outreach, as my vocation and equipped me with technical and conceptual tools to achieve those goals. I’m deeply grateful for Dr. Mach and my classmates who made this class a wonderful learning experience. Thank you.