Cobbers on the Brain

It seems that most colleges only test obedience. Students are presented information that they are supposed to obediently memorize, and then write it down on a piece of paper, which is graded. I do not find this to be helpful in preparing students for the world. Luckily, I attend a college where they have broken out of this mold. Concordia College encourages liberal learning from the very first day you step foot on campus as a student. As freshmen are standing there wide-eyed in their bright yellow beanies, they are constantly reminded to “BREW.” If you are not from Concordia, I am assuming you are thinking of a different kind of brew. However, at Concordia, we understand BREW in a different context. To BREW means to become responsible engaged in the world. This concept is reinforced with Concordia’s five goals of liberal learning.

Concordia has 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 

As I am wrapping up my capstone experience in Neurochemistry, I truly believe this course encompassed Concordia’s goals for liberal learning and what it means to BREW. But, before I tell you how these goals were met, I have to describe to you how this class worked because it was like no other class I have previously taken. Every week, we examined a specific article that dealt with a disease or condition that affected the brain, specifically the chemistry or signaling pathways, which was the underlying effect that caused the symptoms we superficially see.

Monday: we came to class with a general understanding of the research article of the week. Everyone read the given article over the previous weekend, and prepared answers to provided questions about the article. We were also asked to come with questions about the article. It was not hard to come up with questions, as most of these articles were very intricate and detailed. At the end of ever Monday, after discussing the article and gaining a better understanding of the literature, we, as a class, came up with questions that we wanted to explore to further better our understanding of the current article. We assigned ourselves to each question to answer for Wednesday.

Wednesday: we came to class after researching our question from Monday. Wednesdays were known as “speed dating.” There was an outer circle and an inner circle. The inner circle rotated after about five minutes of discussing your findings with the partner.

Friday: we had group discussions. The class was split into halves on and each half was led by a few of our fellow classmates. Fridays were always enjoyable because the group discussions were laid back and we talked about the article of the week in light of the actual world.

Every week, we incorporated what liberal learning is all about-

1. Instill a love for learning.

Neurochemistry was all about self-learning. There was no textbook, no powepoints, nothing. The material you learned was through your own love and desire to learn. This is one thing that I loved about Neurochemistry. I would spend hours reading and vetting articles about the topics we covered, learning as much as I could.

2. Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities.

Neurochemistry developed skills that I will use for many courses down the road, hopefully in medical school. For example, reading scientific literature takes practice to fully understand. The learning in this course, from my experience, was from scientific literature because the diseases and conditions we discussed are all topics of intense current scientific research. The second half of this goal references “transferable intellectual capacities.” I perceive this as not only using the information in the course in other intellectual capacities, but also transferring your own knowledge in a manner in which other people can understand. This was a major topic in neurochemistry. We spent a lot of time trying to effectively communicate our findings to the rest of a class. This is a challenge because most people get bored or tune out scientific talk/jargon. Therefore, this class was very beneficial in ways that I can use to talk about science with people who do not have a scientific background.

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

Neurochemistry can be applied to many other areas of science and the world. One of my favorite sayings, which comes from a Time magazine I read back from when I was around 5^th grade, is “you are your brain.” This phrase has stuck with me and it seemed extremely relevant in neurochemistry. So, because we are our brains, and this course was learning about the chemistry and signaling of the brain, I believe this course touched on nearly every scholarly disciplinary. There is not one subject in school that I can think of that does not have a neurochemistry undertone.

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

During our group discussions on Fridays, which were my favorite, we often discussed how our western lifestyle seemed to be an underlying factor for how our brains were altering. We examined ethics of certain medications, or one Friday we discussed the implications of physician-assisted suicide for patients with terminal illnesses such as ALS. This was a somber and heavy discussion, but it is a real-world issue nonetheless. We talked about death, and sometimes our own religions compared to others and what that does for our belief-system.

5. Encourage responsible participation in the world

Lastly, our capstone project allowed us to reach out to the Fargo/Moorhead community. Personally, I was apart of the autism group. Our group decided to offer a student workshop that was geared toward education majors and working with students with autism as well as their parents. Although we had challenging times trying find a speaker, it all worked out as we found a fantastic person who fit our project perfectly. We worked with a mother who has a child with autism, and the experience was very humbling. The rest of the groups of our class had their own projects that acted with or for the community. Our projects actually helped people, they were not just presenting information to other students who are probably not paying attention anyway.

Ultimately, neurochemistry encompasses what it means to be a Cobber. As a Cobber who is graduated in the spring, we are constantly reminded to BREW- become responsibly engaged in the world. This is exactly what we did during my capstone experience. At Concordia College, and through this capstone experience, we are taught a much larger aspect than just grades. I know that as I leave Concordia with my diploma, I will be ready to BREW.

Throughout my experience in Neurochemistry this semester, I have had the opportunity to witness many of the topics that I have learned over the course of my college career at
Concordia come together and be applied to real-world situations and experiences.
Concepts from biochemistry, cell biology, human anatomy and physiology, and psychology intersected in many ways throughout the topics that we covered in Neurochemistry. Additionally, this course provided us the opportunity to work with students from the social work department, and also community members from various disciplines.

A Liberal Learning Experience

            This capstone course was the perfect culmination of applying the goals of liberal learning and using the knowledge and experiences I have gained over the past three years to discuss and analyze real-world issues. The first goal of liberal learning is to ‘instill a love for learning.’ I experienced this through the unique format in which Neurochemistry was taught. Instead of being a lecture-based class, obtaining knowledge came from collaboration of the whole class. For each week’s topic, our class read a research paper that discussed a given illness, disorder or disease we were focusing on. These papers were often challenging to understand completely because they are written at such a high level and included concepts, terms or topics that we may not have learned about. Each week, our class compiled a list of topics that we wanted to learn more about, and each of us researched a specific area. The following class period, we were responsible for teaching the others about the research we did and information we found. Prior to this course, I already did have a love of learning but the format of this course definitely taught me that there’s always something new that you can learn. Especially in the sciences, research is continuously developing and new discoveries are constantly being made.

The second goal of liberal learning is to ‘develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities.’ This was achieved through our class discussions and blog posts. After covering each topic, the discussions that our class held at the end of every week helped us put everything together that we had learned throughout the week. This allowed us to wrap up any loose ends or questions that we encountered throughout the week while also discussing possible controversies and other perspectives on the topic of the week. Our weekly blog posts allowed us to share our knowledge and research from the week with the outside world. These blogs allowed us to include our own viewpoints on the topics as well as sharing our knowledge of the chemistry going on in the brain for these various topics.

Through the work completed in this course, I was able to understand disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives which is the third goal of liberal learning.
During the community action project, we collaborated with social work students to benefit a group in the community. We educated direct-support professionals at Fraser on anxiety and PTSD, the neuroscience behind it, and methods to treat and cope with
these disorders. This experience allowed me to hear perspectives from other people besides my science-major classmates. I think when looking at the science behind illnesses and diseases, the fact that this is happening to real people can be sometimes be forgotten. It is important to recognize and address that there are social and emotional components when talking about neurological diseases, both for the patient and their family or caretaker. In this project, we were able to come together, each person bringing unique strengths, to come up with an effective project to educate professionals that work with individuals suffering from anxiety and PTSD.

The fourth goal of liberal learning was also accomplished through our class discussions and blog posts. This was done by conversing and debating different cultural and ethical perspectives in a respectful environment where everyone could share their personal views on the topic without judgement or criticism. The topics we discussed often had to do with differing morals and determining what was right or most fair for an individual. Additionally, the future of our country and world was also discussed with topics like obesity and addiction. We talked about changes that should be made to both the health care system and the role of the government to prevent these tragic health issues that are plaguing our country and the world’s population. If nothing is done to combat health issues such as these, there will be many detrimental health complications and likely a shorter life-span in generations to come.

BREW-ing!

            In summary of my experience in this course, I believe gained knowledge not only in the subject of neurochemistry, but how to actually use this knowledge along with everything else I have learned from my time at Concordia to be a valuable citizen to my communities. In today’s culture, knowledge is power; the more you know, the decisions you make are more informed and you are able to share that knowledge with others to create a more knowledgable community. This course provided me with the experience of being able to take things that I learned from the research papers and our class discussions and share that information with others in an easy-to-understand manner through the blog posts and also our community action project. I believe I have also achieved the last goal of liberal learning and truly ‘Become Responsibly Engaged in the World’ (BREW-ed) through this course and the past three and a half years at Concordia. I feel that I am ready to go out into the world and share my knowledge and perspective with others to make a difference in the lives of others.

Understanding Obesity: What Happens in Our Brain

One of the more common disorders that faces the public today is one that tends not to be thought of: obesity. Obesity involves having an excess amount of body fat but is much deeper than initially realized. There are many risk factors that are associated with being obese such as higher blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes, increased risk of heart disease, and many more. There is a way to reverse some of the changes that are coupled with obesity by losing weight but doing so may be much harder than you think.

Image 1: A small schematic that shows the way that weight can be gained in association with insulin and leptin receptors in the brain and throughout the body. Although very simplified, it portrays the message.

Source: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/307/5708/375

Often not thought of when dealing with obesity, the brain plays a large role in the disorder. Certain diets influence brain structure, causing hypothalamic swelling and changes in receptors. Two receptors play a pivotal role in obesity: leptin and insulin. These two receptors, also found throughout the body, are known to be apart of appetite suppression pathways. The dysregulation and inhibition of these receptors can lead to overeating, as there are no signal being sent or received that an individual is full. Eventually the energy that is being consumed isn’t needed by the body and is stored in fat, leading to weight gain and eventual obesity. Obesity is a complex disorder that researchers are still trying to understand. Right now, we know that a way that aids individuals is losing weight, but there are difficulties associated with that as well.

What is Weight Cycling?

Weight cycling is the repeated cycles of weight loss and eventual gain back. Many people who are attempting to lose weight end up falling into this cycle. In a normal brain, leptin is released from adaposity and acts as a signal to stop eating, binding the in brain. As well know, that doesn’t happen in obesity making it hard to lose weight by stopping eating so much.

Image 2: The infographic shows the problem that just American’s have with weight cycling and how many people truly have issues losing weight.

Source:https://medium.com/@chris.tsai/why-weight-cycling-is-the-pivotal-problem-of-obesity-e294006d2e54

One of the ways that people are encouraged to lose weight is by exercising and of course dieting. There is an issue with dieting however, it is very easy to gain the weight back one lost. When this becomes a pattern is when it’s issue and can lead to many problems in an individual’s health. Another term for this is the yo-yo diet and is a bigger issue than you might think.

“Yo-yo” diet

One of the biggest causes of yo-yo diets, or weight cycling, is binging. Once an individual has lost weight, this restriction of enjoyable food often higher the reward, they are susceptible to binge. Often the regaining of weight when dieting can be due to:

• The food they are surrounded by
• Response to new food supply
• Adaptive thermogenesis (the amount of calories that are burned lowers with weight loss and often is paired with an increased drive to eat food)

Image 3: A depiction of how the yo-yo diet can happen. 

Source: https://slideplayer.com/slide/8926242/

This being said, there are adverse side effects that can occur when weight cycling. These include:

• Gut dysfunction
• Psychological frustration
• Muscle loss
• Fatty liver
• Many of the symptoms that are associated with obesity

Overall, it comes down to this; some suggest that losing weight but not being able to keep it off may be worse than being overweight. Although, yes, weight loss can reverse many of these effects, unless it stays off your body is just under constant stress because of changes in major systems.

Where do we go from here?

There is evidence that the yo-yo diet, or weight cycle is bad for an individual’s health. But should that stop someone from attempting to lose weight? That depends on many intrinsic factors that I can’t tell you about. All information considered, it is important to know the risks that are associated with weight cycling when attempting to lose weight, no matter what your size is. That is the only way that you can make an informed decision for yourself to eventually be the best you that you can be.

Sources:

https://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/0517p18.shtml

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7741844

https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/yo-yo-dieting-what-it-and-how-it-can-wreck-your-body/

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/yo-yo-dieting

The abuse of marijuana is a highly prevalent in the US society, as there is a major push for legalization for recreational usage. This results in a high potential for abuse to obtain the “high” and euphoric effects from THC. This results in a major stigma for doing research and attempting to utilize endocannabinoids for medical applications. One solution to this would be to completely change the form of administering THC, by changing the face of it from smoking something to another means. This would reduce the seemingly abusive nature of the drug. This would give more control to the pharmaceutical industry to better control dosage and administration of THC and CBD.

The glamorization of smoking marijuana is glamorized in our culture, by stripping away the abusive nature and controlling THC content, this may result in a more acceptable means of legalization of THC for medical applications. As the usage of CBD offers many of the positive effects of THC, however without the euphoria. This would potentially limit people from abusing the medically administered CBD and THC, as the content of THC could be controlled to meet the minimum dosage for treating a patient, thus by decreasing THC, the euphoria and abusive nature of the drug is severely hampered.

Another question that seems to be irrelevant to many Americans is the  double sided outlook on smoking. Many young adults seem to discourage usage of cigarettes, however the concept of smoking marijuana and vaping further socialize our culture. Many Americans utilize the argument that smoking marijuana isn’t bad, and their claims are there’s no research as to it causing harmful effects. However, it has been shown to cause serious issues with the developing adolescent brain. Unfortunately many see the euphoria of the drug, rather than the potential future outcomes of its abuse.

With the current schedule system, marijuana is ranked I, this prevents research of it, this could be due to the wide range of other drugs that are synthetic cannabinoids that feature a more abusive and dangerous implications upon their usage. By potentially reclassifying THC to a schedule II drug, this would allow for more research to better understand the underlying benefits and harms that its usage entails.

In the US, obesity is seen everywhere you look. In this map, shown below, you can see a high prevalence of obesity for adults in the South and the Midwest.

In seven states, 35%, OR MORE, of the adult population is considered obese. That is outrageous! The numbers for childhood obesity are no better. The data for childhood obesity varies from race and gender, but overall, 18.5% of children are obese in America, equating to around 13.7 million kids.

How is obesity happening?
If a person mainly consumes a high-fat diet, full of saturated fats, it causes neuronal inflammation of the hypothalamus. The inflammation causes insulin and leptin signaling resistance, which increases the amount of AgRP and decreases the amount of alpha-MSH being released and absorbed by the MC4R neurons. The opposite signaling leads the body to believe that it needs to save energy and eat more food to store MORE energy.

Why is obesity dangerous?
The chronic inflammation that leads to obesity can also cause an array of terrible diseases, such as, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular diseases, and a wide variety of neuronal diseases. Each one of these diseases can lead to complications and death. Cardiovascular diseases are the top natural killer in the US. Once the heart is not able to pump blood to the body, the body starts to die. A high fat diet also stimulates an activation of IKK/NF-κB, which then leads to an increase of death factors and more expression of pro-apoptotic genes. By eating a high-fat diet, a person is literally killing themselves.

What do we do?
As a nation, we need to learn at a young age to eat healthy and exercise for 30 minutes every day. If we steer away from a high-fat diet, then the neuronal inflammation does not occur and the cascade of unfortunate events can be prevented. This is easier said than done. Our foods are full of saturated fats. We have technology that assists us in being lazier and lazier. I have a relative that is 350 pounds and orders delivery every single day. It is slowly killing her and it is heartbreaking. How do we completely change our society to make it so a 25% obesity rate is NOT the norm?

There are programs that are helping to reduce the obesity epidemic. Salad bars to Schools is a partnership that is promoting the establishment of salad bars in schools to encourage healthy eating in the public school system. These salad bars give children access to vegetables that they may not have, otherwise. Besides salad bars, schools are completely changing their menus to introduce more whole grains and less saturated fats in the food that they’re offering. Schools are switching out the items in their vending machines from sugary drinks and chips to sparkling water and apples. Another great opportunity is Fuel Up to Play. Fuel Up to Play 60 is a program initiated by the NFL to encourage children to get outside and play for 60 minutes to help reduce the childhood obesity issue. Together, with healthy eating and exercise, we can become a healthier, happier society that can live longer lives.

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/index.html

It’s crazy to believe that I only have one semester left of my undergraduate career. Although it has been a few years since my first day at Concordia, I still remember it like the back of my hand. I remember the overload of information that I received during Orientation week: where campus resources were located, how to access campus mail, etc., but one thing I remember vividly was the constant mention of a four letter word: BREW.

I remember President Craft mentioning this word throughout his speech when he addressed the entire freshman class before we set out to volunteer in the Fargo/Moorhead community for Hand’s for Change. He stated something along the lines of, “At Concordia College, you will learn the meaning of Becoming Responsibly Engaged in the World, or BREW.” As a beanie-wearing freshman, I was eager to learn the meaning behind this daunting acronym, but to my surprise, I did not fully understand what it truly meant to BREW until I took Neurochemistry my senior year.

Specifically, Neurochemistry taught me how to BREW by teaching me what a liberal arts education is all about by helping me understand the 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

I learned the beauty and purpose of each of these goals throughout this course, and I can’t wait to share them with you.

Neurochemistry was unlike any other class that I have taken at Concordia. I believe that what made this class so unique was it’s layout. The beginning of the year gave all of us the opportunity to develop a foundation in the basics of cell-signaling and the pathways that we would soon see at work as we dove into reading our weekly articles. Once it was time to start reading the articles, I quickly fell in love with how they were approached.
We were given a week with each article: three entire class days structured something like this:

(1) Monday: Come to class with the article read. When you read the article, try to gain an understanding of the main points, and come to class with questions about some aspects of the paper that you didn’t quite understand. The questions that you have will be the class’ assignment for Wednesday.

(2) Wednesday: Share your findings with the class: add your piece to help everyone understand the entire puzzle.

(3) Friday: Discussion leaders for that week will come prepared to talk about the topic more in depth. They will prompt you with questions regarding the disease/disorder in real life situations, and you will get the opportunity to hear the viewpoints of your classmates.

Fridays were the best days.

This was the only science class that I have taken at Concordia where learning wasn’t about memorizing facts and regurgitating them on a test. This class was about learning the science, and why it mattered.

Friday discussions gave everyone in the class a platform to discuss what was on their minds: their thoughts on the topic, how it made them feel, if they had a personal connection to it, and why they believed it was important to learn about. In no other science class are you given the opportunity to learn from your classmates in this way. This open communication not only strengthened my understanding of the topics that we covered, but it also made me dig deeper and think about topics in a new light.

These discussions allowed me to understand the first two goals of liberal learning:

• Instill a love for learning
  • I fell in love with looking past the science printed on the page. I loved searching for the bigger meaning, the “why it mattered” to help contribute to discussions. As I begin medical school in the fall, I know that I will dig deeper and promote this type of communication with my new classmates, as I believe that it helped our class become more of a community where opinions were valued and ideas were encouraged to be shared. I know that this type of discussion will not stop after medical school, but will continue when I am a physician someday. I know that I will strive to have these deep conversations with my patients to help us build better relationships so that they can get the best possible care.
• Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities
  • I believe that one of the most transferable skills that I will take from the discussions that we had in this class is the fact that personal opinions can be changed. It is so important to listen to others, and to remind yourself that you are not always right. I learned this time and time again throughout discussions when I would come with an opinion on a topic, only for it to be shattered and rebuilt by learning and listening from someone else’s perspective. Listening is such a powerful thing, and these discussions taught me how to actively listen to the opinions of those around me to gain a better understanding of my own beliefs.

In addition to learning in the classroom each week, this class also gave us the opportunity to make a difference in the community through a Community Action Project (CAP). The CAP not only allowed us to learn about issues in the community that we could help alleviate, but it also gave us the opportunity to discover the beauty of other disciplines outside of the sciences as we merged with social work students to complete the task.

This merging of disciplines gave me an insight into learning goal number 3:

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

I quickly learned as we merged with the social work students, that each of our classes had strengths and weaknesses to bring to the project. This interdisciplinary union helped me gain an understanding of when to be a leader and when to be a follower. We quickly learned that when the social work students had a strength, they would lead and we would follow, and vice versa. Not only is this strategy great for group projects, but it is very applicable to the real world. It’s often said that “teamwork makes the dreamwork,” and this couldn’t be more true. It is important to learn that everyone brings something unique to the table, and that no one has strengths in every area. We therefore learned that tackling a problem in the community was all about joining forces with those with differing strengths, so that the best outcome could be reached.

I gained an understanding of the last two liberal learning outcomes when we actually carried out our CAP.

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

The purpose of our CAP was to use musical interventions to enhance the quality of life for individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease, and we saw the music that we shared do just that. We partnered with Memory Café of the Red River Valley, and distributed the individualized plan of care that we developed as well as handmade CDs. As soon as one of the CDs began to play at a Memory Café event, an individual with advanced Alzheimer’s Disease immediately perked up and became more engaged in the craft that he was working on. Is there anything more fulfilling than knowing that something you were a part of helped someone? Even though this change may not seem like a huge difference to those of us without Alzheimer’s Disease, the music that that individual heard helped make his day better. I believe that this experience, and any other experience where you can help someone, is the best form of spiritual self-understanding. Isn’t that what life is all about? Leaving the world better than you found it? What could possibly be more fulfilling than that?

• Encourage responsible participation in the world

To put our CAP into perspective: we were able to positively impact the Fargo/Moorhead community. A bunch of college students enrolled in a capstone class changed the lives of individuals in our community because this class gave us the opportunity to. I don’t know about you, but knowing that something as unsuspecting as a school project could influence the community makes me wonder how else I could Become Responsibly Engaged in the World.

So what else do I have to say about this course? It changed the way that I viewed science. It made me want to become engaged in our world. It made me want to build better, stronger relationships with those around me. It pushed me to ask questions like “why” and “so what”. It made me a better person. I couldn’t recommend it enough. It was the perfect capstone experience.