Cobbers on the Brain

As I reflect on my semester of neurochemistry, I can’t help but think about all of the other things in my life and the way it has all come together. Two things really come to mind with this experience: growth and integration. I am all too familiar with living in the “science sphere” where everyone knows all the things you know and you get bogged down in reactions and complex names and endless facts to memorize. This semester taught me how to communicate this information with others.   I also took a course on healthcare law and ethics in which I was the only student well-versed in science. Having fresh knowledge on neuroscience issues allowed me to spread the information clearly and educate a different group of people. To me, this is what BREWing is about. Each person has their own unique experiences, and this was just one way I was able to share my unique knowledge to affect others in a way that responsible engages the world.

Let’s be honest. When I started blogging, I hated it. I want to learn and share information, but adapting to the new structure was so fundamentally different from my writing about science that it made for a rather steep learning curve. However, I loved the idea. I found new issues I was passionate about and now had a platform to share it. I have always loved learning, but I have accused college of stealing that love with arduous assignment and requirements. Neurochemistry definitely changed that. Each Monday, I looked forward to the class discussion where we talked about the article and questions we needed answered to better understand it. Between then and Wednesday, we each researched a topic, and this became my favorite part. I loved learning to teach others and really found a passion with this. I have also been working on an experiential learning project at Concordia where I am teaching some basic neuroscience to children, and I have learned so much in the process while fostering a passion for teaching others in a way that can positively influence the world.

I may actually continue blogging, even if just for myself. Life is a journey and pursuing medicine is a long and arduous road full of roadblocks. I think that’s something I want to remember, both for myself and for others pursuing the calling who haven’t had an easy go of it.

My newfound ability to better comprehend academic articles in a way that allows me to communicate information at different levels will be extremely beneficial in my future career. I plan to become a neurologist, and communicating well with my patients will be essential to my success. I plan to stay extremely educated about new treatments and issues and m ability to understand scientific writing and communicate it to my patients will be an everyday skill I now have plenty of access to.

Overall, this semester was challenging. I was stretched to learn in ways I hadn’t before and had to make changes to succeed. But, I can say it was one of the most influential semesters of my college education. I learned about things that really matter in my day to day life. I learned about disease treatment, healthcare barriers, and how research works. After learning all of these things, I learned to share them effectively whether that be blogging, presenting, or just having a simple conversation. I am extremely thankful to Concordia for providing me a diverse learning experience and helping me see that whatever the plan for my life may be, it will work out.

Schizophrenia is a devastating diagnosis, largely due to its lifelong nature and lack of effective treatment options. The underlying mechanism of schizophrenia is still largely unknown, but new evidence suggests a pathway that may be causing schizophrenia. While there is still much more to learn, this research has greatly increased the chance of new treatment options. This research implicated a pathway known as the canonical Wnt pathway. This pathway is present in nearly all organisms, indicating that it is highly important for proper development.

A large degree of the complexity associated with Schizophrenia is the fact that it is a developmental disorder, but symptoms don’t appear until adolescence. This progression also suggests that the disorder is somehow associated with the frontal lobe as this is the most active area of the brain during adolescent development. GS3KB is an important aspect of this pathway due to its role in regulation of gene transcription. The dysfunction associated with Schizophrenia occurs when GSK3B is overactive and cannot regulate transcription properly. The pathway on the left is more often occurring on the left than on the right in the brains of people with schizophrenia, leading to dysfunction and schizophrenia symptoms.

What is Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is characterized by a month or longer period of two or more of the following:

• Delusions
• Hallucinations
• Disorganized Speech
• Grossly Disorganized or catatonic behavior
• Negative Symptoms such as flat affect

People often think of Schizophrenia as having vivid hallucinations and delusions but don’t often realize there are negative symptoms as well. Negative symptoms include flat affect, lack of social interest, and little motivation. These symptoms are especially common after use of anti-psychotic medications, because the positive symptoms of the disorder have been treated.

Schizophrenia treatment

Anti-psychotics are a common treatment for Schizophrenia, but they are far from perfect. Common side effects of Schizophrenia include:

• Dry mouth
• Stiffness and shakiness
• Restlessness
• Weight gain
• Sleepiness and slowness
• Sexual dysfunction
• Constipation
• Blurry vision
• Uncomfortable jaw, lip, and tongue movements

In addition, the nature of the disease makes people less likely to adhere to their medication schedule. People start to feel better and don’t realize how much of an impact their medications make. Delusions may also convince people not to take their medications. New forms of anti-psychotics can be administered as injections, making adherence to medication less of a challenge.

Are people with Schizophrenia dangerous?

People who have not been exposed to mental illness and who lack education often assume that people with certain mental illnesses are more dangerous than the general public. This could not be further from the truth. People with mental illness are actually more likely to be victims of violence than people without. Schizophrenia is widely understood, but more education about it could lead to a collective understanding that people with Schizophrenia are still people who should be treated with respect, dignity, and compassion.

I took Neurochemistry kind of as an afterthought. I took it even after I swore to myself I was done with taking chemistry courses after I finished biochemistry in the fall of 2018. But Neurochemistry is different from other chemistry courses, and quickly came to be one of my favorite courses I had taken throughout my years at Concordia. Below I will be giving my Top 10 reasons YOU should take neurochemistry at Concordia. Many of these reasons involve the courses dedication to the goals of liberal learning through the Pivotal Experience in Applied Knowledge (PEAK) program at Concordia College. These goals are:

• 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

1. NEUROCHEMISTRY IS A PEAK – At Concordia, you need two PEAK’s in order to graduate. Many times it is hard to find a PEAK that directly ties to your major and what you want to do in life. If you are majoring in anything science related, I strongly encourage taking Neurochemistry as one of your PEAKs. Same goes if you are interested in going into a health profession. As a neuroscience major with future plans of attending medical school, I found the topics we covered in class interesting and relevant every week. It made me look forward to waking up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday even though it was at 8 AM! This course taught me material that I loved to learn

2. SMALL CLASS SIZE – Concordia College is known for their small class sizes. It was one of the main reasons why I chose to come to Concordia in the first place. In my Neurochemistry class, there were 16 students and Dr. Mach. This small class size allowed myself to be more comfortable in asking questions, adding input, and discussing with my peers.

3. INVOLVEMENT IN THE COMMUNITY – The Community Action Project is a project that relates directly to the goals of the PEAK program. For this project four neurochemistry students, including myself, joined two social work students to address a problem in the community. We addressed mental health in the Fargo-Moorhead area. We reached out to many mental health facilities and found information about anxiety and depression. We made brochures that were distributed addressing common symptoms of anxiety and depression, and how to access the resources available in the community. We discovered the importance of mental health education and the impact this education can have in both the short and long term. The presentation of our work and findings at the end of the year showed the potential impact of mental health education. It encouraged myself and others to continue to responsibly participate in community action.

4. STUDENT LED DISCUSSION – As mentioned earlier, Neurochemistry is unlike any other chemistry course I have taken at Concordia. There are no PowerPoint slides that go over the textbook topic for that day every class period. In fact, there is no textbook that you need to buy and we, as a class, practically made our own through collaborating on topics we thought should be explained more thoroughly. The way the class worked was Monday, we would read a scientific article before class and come with questions. We would discuss our questions and try to uncover what we knew and did not know. From what we did not know, we were assigned a topic from the article to research for the next class period. Wednesday, we would bring our research on the topic we were assigned and share it with the class. Friday, we took all the information we knew and had a class discussion on the entire paper. Many times this led to discussions of major societal concerns.

5. INTERPRETING SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES – Articles! Articles! Articles! Every week we read a new scientific article that concerned Alzheimer’s Disease, Anxiety, Mental Illness, Addiction, Obesity, Endocannabinoids, Concussion, Autism, and Cognitive Reserve. Before we started reading those articles, we read articles about neural pathways. This allowed us to have a better understanding of how neurochemistry plays such a major role in brain disorders. From reading these articles, I was able to develop strategies that enhanced my understanding. I took notes on every section of the paper. This allowed me to come to class with questions and areas where the material was unclear.

6. COMMUNICATING SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION – From reading the weekly scientific articles, the small class sizes, and the discussion based structure of the course, we got to become pretty comfortable with communicating scientific information. Many times, as we noticed in a few articles, scientific information is communicated in a way that is boring to read and difficult to understand. In Neurochemistry, we learned techniques such as the “And, But, Therefore” (ABT) strategy to communicate information in a way that is easily understood. One way this was practiced was during our written and oral exams. Yes, I said oral exams, but there is nothing to fear! For the exams, we were given excerpts of a scientific article that contained the key points. From the key points, we were asked to develop a hypothesis based on the neurochemistry we knew. After we completed that, we were given the full article. We were able to read the article and then we would go and have a discussion with Dr. Mach about the article. I enjoyed this setup very much and it prepared me for my future as well as allow me to become a better scientific communicator.

7. BLOGGING – Another way I communicated scientific communication was through the weekly blog posts. Surprisingly, I had tons of fun with these posts even though I am definitely NOT a blogger. But I enjoyed sharing what I knew and attempting to grasp the reader’s attention with each blog I wrote. On three of my blogs, my artistic ability was put to the test as we made “artstracts” that tried to communicate the overall message of the blog post. These were… interesting. Even though I might not have won the best artist award, I had fun making the “artstracts”, communicating the scientific information, and relating it to the big picture on how these neurochemistry related disorders are important for societal awareness. Below are a few of my “artstracts”.

8. SPEED DATING – Another component of this course that I was a little iffy on to begin with was the “speed dating” that took place every Wednesday. We would come to class with research on a topic that was not fully explained in the weekly article. We then had five minute meetings with people in our class to communicate our research. I believe this technique was extremely effective as I made sure I always had plenty of research to talk about so I wouldn’t have to endure the awkward silence if there wasn’t any more research to be discussed. The “speed dating” allowed for me to meet my classmates and learn from them. All the students in the class brought something different and it was always interesting to hear the different perspectives my peers had of the article. It was great to learn from each and every one of them!

9. NO LAB – Need I say more? When you see there isn’t a three-hour lab attached to a chemistry course, why wouldn’t you sign up?!

10. LEARNING NEUROCHEMISTRY – Perhaps one of the most important takeaways you want from any course is to learn something. Well… I learned a lot! I learned not only about the neural pathways that play such a significant role in brain disorders, but I also learned a lot about myself. I learned that I can make a difference. From getting involved in the community to being able to communicate important scientific information to my peers in an easy to understand manner, I can say that this course has allowed me to become more responsibly engaged in the world. The skills that you learn in Neurochemistry will be transferable to our everyday lives, no matter where you see yourself in the future. You will also learn a lot from/about your peers during discussions because the topics that are covered can relate to many on a personal level. Finally, you will learn how to apply the knowledge to your everyday life. You will use this knowledge to inspire and encourage others to make an impact on the lives of so many people who are affected by brain disorders.

So take Neurochemistry and PEAK while doing it. But don’t just take it to cross off your PEAK requirement. Take Neurochemistry because you want to make a difference. Take it because you want to learn more about yourself. If you take Neurochemistry and do those things, I guarantee that you will have a similar experience to mine!

It has been quite the journey, and compared to when I first added my neuroscience minor during my sophomore year, I am in a very different place, after having actually taken neurochemistry. I had realized I would have to enroll in the class without having completed the prerequisite and I was very concerned. Concerned that I would not be able to understand the material. 

To a certain extent, this was true.

BUT, this was a good thing, and I have grown so much! First of all, the set up of class was very different from what I was used to. I expected to be taught so much neurochemistry that I would struggle to understand and memorize, but instead, we all brought our individual knowledge, research and personal experiences to the table and learned from each other, students and professor alike. We read a different article each week, tried to understand the topic as best we could, and sometimes we all couldn’t quite wrap our heads around how things worked (oftentimes because more research was necessary). To address some of our unanswered questions we each researched a related topic for our “speed dates” on Wednesdays and then ended the week with open ended discussions every Friday. These were the days we made the most connections with other areas of study. The paper on obesity connected to my Body Politics class, the paper on neural signaling in schizophrenia connected to Abnormal Psychology, the endocannabinoid paper was closely intertwined with politics and societal issues in our discussions, and the list goes on. This integrated learning was the true goal of the class, and I quickly realized that the neurochemical details of a disease or disorder were important, but we could all still learn and integrate different areas of study without them, while critically thinking about real world applications. 

Of course, we did have to memorize one or the other signaling pathway for our exams, but even the exams were nothing I had encountered before. In the written part, we had to hypothesize how a possible signaling pathway might work and contribute to a certain disease. Whether our hypothesized pathway was right or wrong did not matter as long as we had thought critically about the information and could back up our ideas with some of the facts we were given. After then reading the whole research article, which the facts were selected from, we would have an oral exam to discuss our hypotheses and determine ways in which we were correct or false. 

Overall, the neurochemistry we discussed in the classroom really grew my critical thinking abilities and demonstrated that it is alright (and sometimes simply not possible) to not know all of the information, but that we nevertheless have to ask questions, be open minded, investigate what we don’t know and think critically to try our best. 

However, the class did not end there. For the PEAK or Capstone aspect, we directly integrated neurochemistry with different areas of study for real life applications, just as we were discussing in the classroom. We partnered with students majoring in social work and completed different projects in our Fargo-Moorhead community. One of the things this allowed me to do, is make direct connections between not only Neurochemistry and Social Work, but also integrate both of my majors of Psychology and Spanish. We did so by partnering with a Hispanic church, where we presented information about Alzheimer’s disease in both English and Spanish and provided some potential care options and financial resources for anyone who may at some point encounter the disease in their lives, whether that is personally or through someone they know. 

When considering all the different aspects of this course, it easily fulfilled Concordia’s five goals for 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

… and demonstrated to me again the significant impact a liberal arts education can have.

How many of us enjoy sitting down on the couch after a long day, whipping out some chips and watching our favorite Netflix show? I would argue that it is fairly common and that we do it much more often than maybe going for a run, eating healthy foods or reading a book instead. I get it though. It’s hard sometimes. But what if doing that could grow our brains? Like actually cause new brain cells (aka neurons) to develop? Well, read on for some interesting information.

Brain Reserve and Cognitive Reserve

To start off, we need to establish that some cognitive functions can decline through brain injury, aging, or other events. However, brain reserve and cognitive reserve have been found to play a role in preserving functioning in these circumstances. They may do so independently or interactively. But what exactly are they? Brain reserve is defined by molecular and supramolecular biological factors as well as the simple headcount of neurons and synapses, whereas cognitive reserve is determined by flexibly and efficiently making use of available brain reserve to successfully perform tasks. These concepts are important because three lifestyle choices in early and adult life have been associated with protection against cognitive decline, which may facilitate cognitive and brain reserve:

1. Social factors (marital status, parenthood, friendship, social engagements), 
2. Mental factors (education level, work complexity, mentally demanding activities), and
3. Physical factors (physical activity and healthy diets).

While these studies with humans were correlational, researchers have made interesting findings among mice that were provided with a similarly enriched environment, potentially indicating a causal relationship as well. 

Effects on Brain Reserve

When applying some of the factors named above to mice, numerous benefits were found. To increase environmental enrichment, mice were housed in groups and provided with extra items to explore. For physical activity, mice received wheels to voluntarily run in, and for the dietary factors certain nutrients seemed to be important as well as meal frequency, texture and content. Some of the outcomes that followed included:

• Neurogenesis (the generation of new neurons),
• Gliogenesis (the new development of astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia),
• Angiogenesis (the enhancement of the vascular system for increased nutrient and oxygen transport), and 
• Synaptogenesis (changing neural connections by enlarging dendritic surfaces or by increasing the number of dendritic spines the neuron has. 

Aside from these cellular changes, molecular bases of brain reserve have been found as well. Some of them include:

• Alteration of early and late gene expression in the neocortex,
• Alteration of expression of proteins
• Alterations in the neurotransmitter and neurotrophin systems
  • Neurotransmitters: possible increases in serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine
  • Neurotrophins: possibly increased levels of BDNF, NGF and NT-3

These findings all indicate that environmental enrichment and physical factors truly can be protective mechanisms against cognitive decline, and while much of this is based off of animal studies, it doesn’t mean that going on a run, eating healthy, reading a book or socializing won’t benefit us. It’s always worth a try.

What are those???

All these seemingly random letters have in common that they are compounds called cannabinoids that affect our endocannabinoid system (ECS). The ECS extends its reach throughout most of our body and has receptors in peripheral tissues and in the peripheral nervous system, as well as in the central nervous system (our brain and spinal cord). Some of the differences between them are that THC and CBD are both compounds found in marijuana, meaning that they are cannabinoids external to our bodies, whereas AEA (or anandamide) and 2-AG are endocannabinoids, meaning they are naturally produced within our bodies. Both types can bind to CB1Rs and CB2Rs, which are currently the most studied types of cannabinoid receptors in the ECS. 

So what is this system involved in? 

It has been found to affect numerous aspects of bodily functions, including but not limited to the secretion of hormones related to stress and reproductive functioning, food intake, certain types of metabolism, and more. Endocannabinoids are important regulators in all these instances, but external cannabinoids can be too. Some of the therapeutic uses of medical marijuana can be found in these areas:

• Anti-nociception (pain blocker)
• Anticonvulsant (to counter seizures)
• Anti-inflammation (reduction of swelling or inflammation) and 
• Antiemetic (to counter nausea and vomiting).

* Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that lots of THC use (the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana) could be connected to long-term negative psychiatric effects, and many states have legalized medical marijuana that contains THC.

THC vs CBD

While CBD and THC have a number of similar medical benefits, CBD does not have the side effect of the euphoria people tend to experience with THC. Nevertheless, differences do exist:

What is so controversial about marijuana?

While the recreational use of marijuana is widespread throughout much of society, it is illegal by federal law and, interestingly, categorized as a Schedule 1 drug, indicating there is a high potential for abuse and no medical use. Schedule 5 is the lowest categorization, indicating there are medical uses and less potential for abuse. One of the consequences arising from marijuana’s high categorization is that research into its therapeutic potential becomes more difficult, which in turn makes it more challenging to determine and confirm its medical uses through research studies. Only increasing some of the mixed signals we receive surrounding this drug is that many state laws regulate programs that allow for different types of marijuana uses. For more information on the state laws click here.