Cobbers on the Brain

Nowadays, more and more people are diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). It seemed like the anxiety is a part of our daily life. I want to discuss some myths about anxiety.
 
 

1. Not all anxiety is bad!

There are healthy anxiety (eustress) and unhealthy anxiety.

• The eustress helps you to focus more in the specific tasks/ projects/ goals. It also motives, encourages for accomplishing as well as preventing you from impulsive actions. Moreover, anxiety helps you to remember not repeating the same mistakes again in the future.
• However, the unhealthy stress causes panic attacks – usually occur in phobia, unhealthy behaviors, and constant worrying. All of these behaviors are come from the disrupt in pre-frontal cortex (PFC), which is responsible for executive functioning and reasoning. This plays a huge role in emotion regulation.

A person with abnormally high levels of stress and anxiety has a high chance of having disrupted PFC region, result in easily making poor decisions.
 
 

2. Anxiety can influence the neuroplasticity

Since anxiety is related to memory formation, the stronger of memory forming makes the person experience more anxiety. This then leads to the unhealthy anxiety.
In the molecular aspect, when H3S10p-K14ac histone is phosphorylated by mSK (mitogen- and stress-activated protein kinase), the histone is decondensed to allow the transcription in c-fos and Egr-1, which are gene induction for memory forming. Before that, mSK is activated by ERK from MAPK pathway and the high level of NMDA (N-methyl-d-aspartat) and glucocorticoid hormone.
 
 

3. GAD is different from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

People with PTSD mostly experience highly stress when they recall, reflect, and think about the past memories; whereas, people with GAD mostly experience anxiety when they think about the event in the future
 
 

4. Most childhood trauma’s memory is impaired

This is completely different from anxiety affecting on memories, because highly anxiety makes stronger and vivid memories. However, in childhood trauma’s memories are repressed and stored, but they can’t be recovered easily in order to protect the person from the emotional pain.
 
 

5. Non-pharmacological approaches can rewire the neuroplasticity and circuits relating to anxiety!

Cognitive behavior therapy looks at the cognitive component of anxiety and ignores the body manifestation of the disease. During CBT, participants are encouraged to think about their most catastrophic situation, the thing that is causing anxiety and encourage to face with it.
Meditation also has a similar method. During meditation, the participants are sitting comfortably, focusing on your breathing, and then bringing your mind’s attention to the present without drifting into concerns about the past or future. It helps the participants deeply engage in their mind to connect to the inner focus. This practice strengthens the mind’s attention, reducing the thoughts about the future or the past; therefore, the stimulation of these event will be less and may change the neuroplasticity of the brain.
 

Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety has been developing a larger presence in the public eye. This is due to not only ever the increasing numbers of people affected by anxiety, but also to more public awareness programs. Although it is normal to have some stress and anxiety in life, when that anxiety is affecting your daily activities it can become hard to deal with. This is where treatment such as medication, therapy, or exercise can be utilized.

What Is Happening In The Brain

The brain region called the dentate gyrus (DG), the hippocampus, and the amygdala have been implicated in the molecular signaling pathways contributing to high levels of anxiety. Glucocorticoids use glucocorticoid receptors to initiate the ERK-MAPK pathway, resulting in the kinases (enzymes that catalyze phosphorylation) MSK1 and Elk-1 to be activated. Histone H3 is acetylated and phosphorylated by them – this will ‘tag’ the histone – and causes typically silent genes to be transcribed.
In studies using animal models, these molecular signaling mechanisms have proven to play an important role in long-term behavioral modification. GABA also plays an important role in the hippocampus and memory formation. The problem with anxiety disorders such as PTSD is an inappropriately strong negative memory formation to stressful situations.
In summary, an individual’s environment causes a challenge, which causes activation of histone, which leads to epigenetic changes. Because of those changes, we are getting gene expression in the DG that leads to memory formation in the hippocampus. Anxiety makes this worse: treat the anxiety and this can be somewhat lessened.

Negative Memory Bias

In our class discussions, we questioned whether or not people suffering from depression also form the strong negative memories associated with anxiety disorders such as PTSD. In my research, I found that patients with depression typically exhibit a negative memory bias, in which there is an inaccurate recollection of frequency, duration, or specific details of past occasions and occurrences.
Patients have been found to remember more negative than positive words in free-recall tasks, and researchers have also found that it takes significantly longer to retrieve happy memories while in a depressive state than in a happy mood state, and negative memory retrieval time was unaffected by mood state. The negative memory bias typically affects only memories involving the self; this could be due to depressed individuals holding more negative self-schemas.

Exercise and Reducing Anxiety

Exercise is being prescribed more and more by doctors as a way to reduce stress and anxiety. Animal models for researching anxiety have shown that access to voluntary exercise has major benefits on their health, such as better sleep quality, neurogenesis in the DG, and improved cognitive, impulsive, and emotional behavior. Exercise increases the amounts of GABA and decreases amounts of ERK, both of which lead to less of the histone tag discussed earlier. This means you are not making the stress-induced memories causing anxiety.
Society has become more focused on exercise in relation to physical health, but there are many more benefits than just that. The endorphins and neurotransmitters released through exercise are helpful in combating not only depression and stress, but also anxiety too.
 

Many of us have been affected by addiction, directly or indirectly. From alcoholism, to opioid addiction, or even eating addictions! But so many people don’t how addiction works.
 
Well how does it work?
 
The brain is a powerful organ but has its flaws. The brain uses chemicals to tell our bodies different things. Some of those chemicals you might be familiar with:

• Acetylcholine– for movement
• Serotonin– inhibitory/ “sleep”
• Dopamine– excitatory/ “happiness

 
Different activities trigger different chemicals causing us to move, feel happy, feel  excited, or help us go to sleep.
 
Naturally our brains have a reward system in place. You do something good, you get a reward. The brain keeps a tally of what feels good and what feels bad.
 
For example: you go exercise, you feel happy and lower your stress levels, your brain will remember that and want more of it.
 
But this method has its flaws. Drugs or natural stimuli can have similar reactions in the brain. Taking a hard drug or having sex can cause a similar excitatory reaction in our brain by releasing a large amount of dopamine giving the brain a memory that indicates the good feeling. If the brain gets used to this large surge of dopamine it will constantly want more.
 
Here is where addiction comes in. Once the brain has felt that increase of dopamine, it will ask for more and more to reach that reward system boost needed. The problem is when the behavior is continuous and the person abuses the drug or natural stimulus because their brain needs more.
 
If that’s how addiction starts, why can’t we just stop it?
 
Well a lot of research has shown that the frontal lobe gets affected by addiction (that is to drugs, sex, or even something as simple as eating). The size of the frontal lobe decreases with addiction causing that constant need of a dopamine surge. For the brain to operate correctly, it needs to have a balance of dopamine. When the frontal lobe is lacking, it throws off the balance and causes the brain’s need for more dopamine.
 
So why can’t you just kick that addiction and get a job? Well it’s not your fault that you can’t easily quit it. In my opinion the systems we have in place currently to help people with addiction are not working.
 
In my opinion
 
I can’t see how anyone can just go in for a month of treatment and walk out saying they are done. Their brain will not let them because of that constant crave. I believe that there should be more of a personalized approach to this problem.
People need constant attention to kick this addiction and to have someone ready to help in moments of weakness not judge them. I think that the public needs to learn the problem behind addiction and to move towards a solution that focuses on the person within the addiction, not the addiction itself.

 

Cocaine and Methamphetamine are two stimulant drugs that we know to be highly addictive. These drugs both have terrible physical, emotional and psychological effects on users, including stroke, heart damage, aggressive behavior and decreased cognitive function. Symptoms of these drugs may be commonly known; however, the general public does not understand the science behind drug addiction.
 
What is dopamine?
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is responsible for signaling the reward pathway in the brain. Dopamine release is triggered by cues that predict reward (smelling fried chicken), and causes anticipation of the reward (eating fried chicken). If the reward (the fried chicken) does not appear, then the dopamine cell stops firing, and the reward (the feeling of eating delicious food) isn’t experienced.
 
Dopamine pathway in the brain
Dopamine neurons are located in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain, and they release dopamine into the nucleus accumbens (NAc). This pathway plays a significant role in the processing of reward-related stimuli, especially those associated with drugs of abuse.
 
How dopamine works to produce a high
When the brain is exposed to a drug of abuse, there is a quick and intense surge of dopamine released from the VTA. This overabundance of dopamine travels to the NAc and binds to the D1 and D2 dopamine receptors, causing maximum reward.
 
How are drugs different than food or sex?
For natural reinforcers such as food or sex, the dopamine signals will drive the motivation to get the reward. When the reward appears, the dopamine cells will stop firing, and the anticipation of reward goes away. This works very differently however when dealing with drugs of abuse. Due to their pharmacological properties, the drugs continue increasing dopamine release during their consumption.
 
How does this affect drug usage?
Since drugs cause the continual release of dopamine, the desire to take the drugs upon exposure to cues is increased, as well as the motivation to continue consuming them during use.
 
How does repeated exposure affect the brain?
As these stimulants are taken more often, the “high” is reduced, but the motivation to continue to take the drug is undiminished. The quantity of D2 dopamine receptors in the NAc is reduced, and this change contributes to tolerance. High drug doses cause the dopamine pathways to become stronger and more developed, therefore increasing the brain’s reactivity to drugs and drug cues.
Long-lasting memory of the drug’s rewarding and conditioning effects will modify behaviors. The neurons will grow and create bigger synapses, resulting in stronger connections and cues/triggers for drug use. The number of dopamine receptors will be decreased, leading to impulsivity, which can predict increasing and compulsive administration of stimulants. This also results in a lack of self-control and the inability to feel satisfied.
 
The conflict between the “highs” and the lows
Addicts experience cognitive dissonance because they know the drugs are terrible for them, but they feel so good when they are high, which they don’t want to lose. It is very challenging to quit because the circuitry of their brain has changed and they cannot control their cravings or impulsive behaviors.
 
Society’s view on drug addicts
It seems as though society lacks sympathy for addicts, but to what extent is it their fault? They made the choice to use drugs in the first place, but it led to a downward spiral that they never expected and can’t escape. The brain can undergo extreme irreversible changes after just one exposure, and this is something that many may not realize until it is too late.
 
Options for addicts
Treatment plans can help addicts improve, and there are oral prescriptions that can be taken to reduce cravings, but extreme steps and lifestyle changes must be made if an addict is to truly recover and avoid relapse. The difficult part about preventing relapse is that it usually requires a complete lifestyle change. The cues that trigger drug cravings must be removed, and if these cues include certain friends or a home environment, the changes required would be pretty drastic.
In recognizing just how scary, complex, and difficult drug addiction can be, it is truly in one’s best interest to stay away from drugs and avoid the chance of becoming addicted.
 
For more information on the brain on drugs, please visit https://moodle.cord.edu/pluginfile.php/642483/mod_resource/content/0/the%20brain%20on%20drugs%202015.pdf
 
To learn more about the dopamine pathway in the brain, view this following video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=YzCYuKX6zp8