Schizophrenia

Have you ever heard voices in your head, or when you are tired, have you ever seen something out of the corner of your eye? It's not the most pleasant experience to see or hear something that you know is not really there. Luckily for most people these experiences are far and few in between, but for a few people these things are commonplace. This disorder is known as schizophrenia, basically the person has to deal with auditory and/or visual hallucinations.

For most people with this disorder there is no turning it off, there are a few medicines available, and a few up and coming treatments for schizophrenia, including transcranial magnetic stimulation. Unfortunaltely though there are no real cures for this disorder, and family members of people with this disorder have a higher chance of becoming afflicted with this same disorder. For a better understanding take a look at the video below in order to see that even children can be affected by this disorder. It truly is an unpleasant sight that I personally wish nobody had to go through.

Deep Brain Stimulation

Imagine a world where you are sad all of the time, oftentimes you don't even leave your house because you no longer feel joy when it comes to the things that once made you happy. Well there are many people who are faced with depression on a daily basis. many times the person with depression has no real control over how they feel and so they are offered treatments in order to help them retake their lives. Usually a person will undergo a regimen of antidepressant medications and/or undergo psychotherapy or cognitive behavioral therapy.

Unfortunately though the most prominent treatments don't always work. Not to worry though, for those people with a particularly resistant form of depression there is some help, particularly in the form of Deep Brain Stimulation. Below you can see Dr. Richard Bittar explain just how this procedure is undertaken.

Can you imagine having wires going through your body in order to regulate how your mood fluctuates, it almost seems like this should only be possible in science fiction movies. Well my friends we have caught up with those movies and we are making many things possible that were once only dreams. Let's see where this fairly new treatment ends up going.

The Human Amygdala

That's right today we're going to discuss the Amygdala.

No not Queen Amidala from Star Wars!

The Amygdala is actually a structure within the brain located in the medial temporal lobe. Now what exactly this structure does is a little sketchy but from the information available, it seems to have a pretty big role in the processing of emotions.

Now when the amygdala is damaged the ability of the person to process emotions becomes somewhat hindered. Most notably the person can recognize emotions but doesn't really feel them. For example, a person can be shown pictures and classify them as pleasant or unpleasant but they have little to no reaction to the unpleasant pictures.

Now Urbach-Wiethe disease is another form of damage to the amygdala, people with this disease tend to have skin lesions and calcium deposits in the amygdala which then slowly wastes away.

Take a look at the video below to see what amygdala damage does in rats.

As you can see the rat was not afraid of the robot and just went for the food without hesitation, this kind of behavior can be observed in people with Urbach-Weithe disease as well. Also these same people have trouble recognizing fear in others, as well as drawing out a facial expression of fear. Something of note though is that these people almost exclusively look at the nose and mouth of  a person, when asked to focus on the eyes they can recognize the emotion fear. 

Muscle Paralysis during Sleep

Have you ever woken up from sleep and for some reason you can't move a single muscle? You might start freaking out thinking you're gonna be paralyzed forever but just stop and relax and it will wear off. Basically what has happened is that part of your brain is awake but the other part, the part of the pons, that essentially paralyzes the bodies large muscles while sleeping is still asleep.

Its crazy to think that such a small part of the brain can stop our entire body from moving, but the fact remains that this part is still necessary for a normal nights rest. Just imagine if you went to sleep and instead of being "paralyzed" you instead acted out your dreams. Well that too is a very real possibility! This is known as REM behavior disorder (RBD), for instance you can start throwing punches in your sleep and not wake up, just take a look at the video below. One thing of note though is that RBD is different from sleepwalking because sleepwalking does not occur during the REM sleep phase.

I can't imagine sleeping through what this man does, but evidently he has no problem with it. While this does seem a bit comical there are very serious health risks, the person with RBD could injure themselves and/or their sleeping partner, they could even destroy property.

Androgen Insensitivity

Most recently I came across a new disorder, or rather I learned of a disorder known as Androgen Insensitivity (AIS), or testicular feminization. This disorder really stuck out to me for some reason and so I have decided to spread what little information I have gleaned from my research.

As far as I can tell there seven different levels of this disorder, ranging from 1-7 with 7 being complete androgen insensitivity (CAIS) and the rest being partial androgen insensitivity (PAIS). When a person has CAIS they are genetically male but look female, they have all the makings of a female, except they actually have testicles that are inside of them and there is no uterus. A characteristic of a person with CAIS is that they have no or very little pubic hair, seeing as how pubic hair is caused by testosterone, an androgen. Because their cells are insensitive to androgens, like testosterone, their body was unable to develop as it was intended, instead the person will develop breasts and their hips will widen, but menstruation will not occur.

The first video below will give a pretty good explanation of AIS, from what I have seen there is a good majority of AIS people who decide to live their lives as women, although this is not necessarily always the case. In the second video below the speaker reveals that while they outwardly appear to be female, inside they feel and know that they are male.

Unfortunately there are many disorders that can wreak havoc with our lives, AIS is just the tip of the iceberg. The most we can do is support those that suffer from their diagnosis, no matter what it may be, I personally wish the best to everybody going through a rough time. 

Cayenne Pepper to Relieve Pain!?

Have you ever heard of Cayenne Pepper being used for medicinal purposes? Well apparently something found in this pepper can be used for relieving pain. And that something just so happens to be Capsaicin! According to what I read capsaicin, when used topically, as a cream causes a burning sensation and this releases substance P at a rapid rate. Because substance P is released faster than it can be produced the pain tends to fade away and stays away for a good while. Not only that but capsaicin can even dull pain receptors by damaging them, now don't be alarmed, I know damaging your body doesn't sound like a good idea but it does have its benefits, I mean we are very aware of our surroundings nowadays so having super sharp pain receptors isn't as necessary as say, oh 20,000 years ago.

According to the video below there are even other ways that capsaicin can be beneficial to us, for instance it can help reduce the damaging effects caused by aspirin use, The video will even go so far as to explain some of the studies that have been done and their results. Check it out for yourself, but don't blame me if you decide to bite into a pepper and you come away with a fiery mouth.

Cleaning the Brain

One of the hot topics that has recently come to light, or rather should be a hot topic is that of Alzheimer's Disease. Now this disease is marked by the loss of memory and eventual motor controls, it even goes so far as to make you forget how to breathe. As we all know, breathing tends to be very important to the living human, without it, well we don't live very long. 

Now Alzheimer's is caused by the build up of plaques and tangles, they are caused by a build up of amyloid-β and the tau protein respectively. The amyloid-β protein builds up outside the neuron cell while the tau protein builds up inside the neuron cell, and eventually both of these kill off neurons and dendrites, basically severing the neural pathways.

Recently though, as in August of 2012, scientists may have found something that could help in the prevention, and possibly even the reversal of buildup caused by plaques and tangles. Basically the brain is not attached to the lymphatic system so it doesn't go through a normal cleaning process like the rest of the brain (see picture below). Instead what happens it that the cerebrospinal fluid enters the arteries of the brain and then flow through the brain tissue, as it moves along it gathers any particles of debris and once it reaches the vein everything can be transported out of the brain. 

Now what scientists are hoping for is to find a way to increase the flow of this system thereby increasing the amount of debris that can be removed possibly aiding in the fight against Alzheimer's. Of course this research is not only limited to Alzheimer's treatment but it can be applied to other diseases that are caused by similar buildups in the brain.

Hopefully soon there will be real treatment for this terrible disease, who knows maybe there'll be a cure. Take a look at the video below to see a researcher describe their findings, basically I just summarized what he will say.

Split-Brain People

There are many advantages for cutting the corpus callosum in people who suffer from epileptic seizures, including isolating the seizures to the originating hemisphere but also the frequency of the seizures decreases. Of course using this method is essentially a last ditch effort when the foci are too abundant and cannot be removed. 

An interesting thing can be observed in the patient after the surgery, for instance while shopping the right hand will place items in the cart while the left hand puts the item back. Essentially what happens is the two brain hemispheres act independently of each other and are essentially two separate people. If you look at the video below you will see the neurologist VS Ramachandran explain how he observed, after training the subject to communicate with each hemisphere of his brain, that one hemisphere of the brain was a believer of God while the other hemisphere was not a believer. 

Of course it has been shown that now hemisphere is truly the creative side and one the logical side, but this does raise interesting questions about that topic. Is divine creation logically possible or is there a component that requires one to be creatively inclined to believe in a higher power?

I personally feel that if one thinks about religion logically then the evidence against divine creation will outshine the evidence for it. But I am always more than happy to hear what others think and or feel.  

Binding

Of all the things that amaze me, one of the things that tops my list has got to be the "Binding Problem". Basically how this works, or is supposed to work, the different areas of the brain gather their information, sensory information, and from there they somehow integrate all of that information and create a single object.

This allows us to realize the fact that something that we see and hear is happening together, for instance seeing a light flash while there is a beep. Our brain will connect these two events and therefore allow us to perceive them as happening together. For an example of this you can look at a badly dubbed movie, your brain doesn't register the movement of the lips with the audio and therefore you realize it doesn't bind together. Take a look at the video to get a clearer idea about what I'm talking about. You can skip ahead about 2 and a half minutes to get to the better stuff.

One of the more interesting things that I have come across is the idea of using a mirror to "create" the sensation of having a third arm. By using a mirror to reflect an arm while having one arm hidden and then touching each of your fingers to your thumb for a minute or two you will end up feeling like you have three arms. Now I personally haven't witnessed this but I have heard that you can use this same technique to help alleviate some phantom limb pains. One of my professors once told us that there was a patient who had his hand amputated, but after the amputation his missing limb would start to cramp, and so to alleviate this he had to use a mirror and ball up his remaining hand into a tight fist and slowly release it. After a few repetitions of this the phantom pain subsided because the brain was tricked into thinking that the limb wasn't cramping anymore and was instead opening up.

How freaking cool is this!?

Temporal and Spatial Summation

One of the things that I find most interesting is temporal and spatial summation. Basically what this is, temporal summation has to do with time, whereas spatial has to do with space. Now summation adds stuff up, in the case of physiology it adds up the action potentials of the neuron(s). Ok so now we take a closer look at how this plays out in relation to the nervous system. Temporal summation takes the action potentials, that are much too light to trigger a response, and adds them up in order to finally trigger the response. For example, one drop of water on your head isn't enough to make you fix the leaky water pipe, but 20 water drops on your head in one minute is enough to make you take action and fix that leaky water pipe.

As you saw in the video spatial summation is similar to temporal summation, in that it adds different potentials in order to trigger an action potential. Only in this case the axon is receiving signals from different places instead of receiving signals from a signal neuron separated by time. If I am not mistaken this allows for a wide variety of ways that neurons can send and receive signals, and this in turn means that different signals can be sent by the same neuron. 

Refractory Period

The refractory period of an action potential keeps it from repeating itself over and over again. Of all the things I have read so far, this seems to be one of the more interesting, not only is there the absolute refractory period but also the relative refractory period. The difference between these two is that while the absolute one is short in time, it is impossible to overcome. As for the relative period, this period is longer than the absolute but given enough prodding it can be overcome allowing for the action potential to repeat. One example that I read of in a book is that of a toilet. After you flush the toilet it becomes impossible to flush it again, but if you wait a short time then you can flush the toilet (although with trouble). A good explanation of the refractory period can be seen in the  first six minutes of the video below.

As you can see in the video, at about 2:30, you can see the normal action potential threshold and the raised action potential that can be overcome in the relative refractory period. This was the most interesting part, the fact that our nervous system saw fit to leave a bit of wiggle room just in case there was a need for the action potential to repeat. This makes me wonder how exactly it would benefit an organism, whether it would prevent the organism from feeling pain over and over again, or maybe this helps the nerve cell keep from being used up and dying out.

Brain Size

One area that seemed so interesting to me is the fact that the size of brains tends to differ between men and women. Some research conducted by Dr. Ashton, who you can see in the video, found that the size difference is just a couple of percentage points, and is most likely due to the fact that men are just bigger. One thing of not is that men tend to have more gray matter and women more white matter, according to Ashton this usually accounts for why men are good in certain areas and women in other areas. This is in contrast to what I had come to believe, that despite size differences women were just as capable of excelling in male dominated areas but that social norms and expectations discouraged it. For instance math, this is a very male area, and women tend to be, at least this was the case, discouraged from pursuing math as a career, yet there are a few women who have contributed to this field. I like that Ashton kind of addresses this because she notes that the brain can be exercised so that certain areas increase in their mental capacities.

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500165_162-6890474.html