Tag Archives: Spring 2016

Listening to our Brains’ Needs

Georgetown University Medical Center has released a new study in 2016 demonstrating the necessity for rest after incidents regarding head trauma in efforts to prevent long-term brain damage. The study found that more giving the brain more time to recover allowed for inflammation to go down and any percentage of long-term brain damage to decrease. About three days was the minimum amount of time to give the brain for recovery after brain trauma. This information is crucial for athletes and the military, being that they are in situations more frequently that make them more susceptible to these head injuries.

Georgetown University Medical Center worked with rats and mice to study the effects of the brain after given mild head trauma. Two groups of rats were compared, one group receiving head injuries once a day for 30 days, the other receiving once a week for 30 weeks. After examining the effects for each group, it was found that the group receiving the head injuries further apart had enough time to recover and therefore, the inflammation was much lower than the group that received head injuries once a day. The rats were also examined a year after the experiment and the researchers found that the long-term damage was significantly lower on the rats that received the head injuries once a week.

These results can help regulate sports where head trauma is common as well as the average person who gets a head injury, rest is crucial for recovery. It is important for even mild concussions to be acknowledged and cared for before exposing oneself to the possibility for more head trauma. This research also allows for the opportunity to examine how the brain heals itself and under what circumstances it cannot heal itself. As far as the study shows, rest really is crucial for the brain to be able to heal itself for short-term and long-term effects from injuries.

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160205100445.htm

http://ajp.amjpathol.org/article/S0002-9440(15)00663-X/fulltext

 

Reflection:

Summarizing the original study was hard because so much of it I didn’t understand due to the fact that I’m not a scientist. The original news story that I found was also quite good with it’s information and so I didn’t make that many changes to the information it included or didn’t include, I just tried to make it a little clearer. The original journal entry included a lot of technical information about the scientific findings in the brains of the tested rats and since I couldn’t really understand that, I decided not to include it. My goal was to condense this study into something the general public could understand and use, therefore, I did mention the rats because they were crucial to the experiment but I didn’t include how they were traumatized or exactly effected because that doesn’t effect how the public should take care of themselves. I mirrored the news article in that I didn’t include how the rats were injured because it probably would’ve taken away from the information that resulted from the study about our brains. People would’ve surely been upset that rats were used for experiments and were injured but the original journal did include that it got approval from the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the NIH. On the other hand, there are some people who wouldn’t care about the rats at all, they just want the information that applies directly to them so in that sense, it was all around a good idea not to include too much about the test subjects. The important part of the study was about the brain and I think the news article did a good job of presenting those results and I tried to do that same.


Johns Hopkins Exploring and Testing New Methods for Studying the Brain in Living Patients

Johns Hopkins’ 2014 study on concussions in former NFL players and the long-term effects was a fine study, not as far as learning about concussions goes, but for testing the usefulness of the newest technology in brain scanning and seeing its limits and advantages.

In the past, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was only diagnosed and studied during autopsy. The study also focused on the imaging of traumatic brain injury related damages by targeting the translocator protein (TSPO). A translocator protein (TSPO) is a special protein mainly found on the outer mitochondrial membrane of neurons. It interacts with StAR (steroidogenic acute regulatory protein) to transport cholesterol into the mitochondria of other neurons. In other words, TSPO is an indicator of the brain attempting to repair or patch brain damage. The study helps to support the idea that these new machines and new techniques for neural imaging can really advance our understanding of the brain and increase our medical abilities in providing accurate diagnoses for patients, before their dirt nap.

The primary test used for the study involved a positron emission tomography (PET) scan that used (safe) radioactive chemical injections that bind to specific proteins. In this case, the radiopharmaceutical used was [11C]DPA-713 which binds to TSPO. The idea is that the more prevalent this radio-transmitter is in the PET scan, the more brain damage (TBI) there is in in subject. The PET scan would also show a specific location for the damage. MRI scans were also performed on the participants to check for brain atrophy that may have been caused by TBIs. Along with the imaging tests, there were a few paper-and-pen tests performed on the subjects, including the California Verbal Learning Test-II (CVLT-II), the Rivermead Post-Concussive Symptom Questionnaire (RPQ), and an interview focusing on their past NFL career and past concussions. These tests (in order) covered their ability to learn and remember verbal information, the severity of mood, anxiety, and cognitive long-term symptoms of their concussions, and details of their past concussions (how hard were they hit, how long initial symptoms lasted, etc.). These interviews and written tests help the researchers compare the amount of brain damage they found with their scans to the severity of the side effects the players suffer.

In the results, many of the ex-NFL players who participated in the full study scored fairly highly on the RPQ test, scoring 32, 21, and 20 on a scale of 0-52 with a higher number indicating more severe symptoms. The CVLT-II scores where low as well, with averages ranging from 44% to 54%, indicating a struggle in verbal learning and recall. The article also reports evidence of brain atrophy (shrinkage) in multiple areas, which lines up with the test scores.

The study does have a few flaws, however, including [11C]DPA-173 binding differences between two TSPO genotypes (C/C and C/T) and the fact that the study size was in fact very small. To counter act the genotype flaw, however, the researchers used a GMVT method to correct differences produced by the genotype variation.

The study does a pretty good job of supporting the usability of the new methods in analyzing brain damage in living subjects. The brain scans showed high TSPO activity (through the radioactive injection [11C]DPA-173 binding to the TSPO present in the brain) when compared to a control scan on a person without a concussion (see image below). With this new technology and these new techniques, as supported by the Johns Hopkins study, we can make more accurate, lifesaving decisions for patients who are suffering from a traumatic brain injury.

 

johns hopkins jpg

Works Cited

Coughlin, Jennifer M., Yuchuan Wang, Cynthia A. Munro, Shuangchao Ma, Chen Yue,                           Shaojie   Chen, Raag Airan, Pearl K. Kim, Ashley V. Adams, Cinthya Garcia, Cecilia                   Higgs, Haris I. Sair, Akira Sawa, Gwenn Smith, Constantine G. Lyketsos, Brian                         Caffo, Michael Kassiou, Tomas R. Guilarte, and Martin G. Pomper.                                                 “Neuroinflammation and Brain Atrophy in Former NFL Players: An in Vivo                                 Multimodal Imaging Pilot Study.” Neurobiology of Disease 74 (2015): 58-65. Web.                   Mar. 2016.

(I have the article in a Word document i can share via Email, if needed, please let me know and I can send it to you)

 

 

 

Writing this article was actually fairly easy for me. To be honest all I did was edit my scholarly research article a whole lot and provide some more explanations for what things are. I really didn’t need to cut that much information out since my original article was a little over 700 words long, so I easily got everything I wanted into my article. As far as comparisons go, well, I’m still a little unhappy with the first article. The news article I read at the beginning of the semester made the research article sound like it was about studying concussions and how we can catch sports related brain injuries. The title of the article alone is misleading, “Johns Hopkins study of retired NFL players sheds light on concussion-related brain damage” (Hedin, 2015). I think, or at least I hope, that my article more truthfully describes and/or portrays the research article and its intents and findings. I tried to focus on the methods and tests used in the experiment and I hope I explained them and their purposes enough. In my opinion, Maren Hedin’s intentions for her article were probably to make the research look like a more hopeful or productive project to the public masses. I imagine most people would rather hear about research for helping concussion patients than about research on methods of studying the brain in applications like concussions. I understand that sometimes journalists have to decide what is more important and what can be left out so they can stay within their allotted space in there publication. I also see that, depending on what or who a journalist is writing the article for, can change the way they write their article and what they write about. I understand that, while news articles might be shorter, easier, and more convenient to read than original articles, they should not always be completely trusted, however, some might very well be trustworthy. It’s a little confusing, so, I think I’ll stick to trying to find original articles and original statements instead of reading news and other media articles written by journalists whose main interest is usually getting more readers.

Works Cited

Hedin, Marin. “Johns Hopkins Study of Retired NFL Players Sheds Light on Concussion-                     Related Brain Damage.” The Hub. Johns Hopkins University, 26 Jan. 2015. Web. 21                 Feb.  2016.   <http://hub.jhu.edu/2015/01/26/nfl-players-concussion-research>.


Do Women Handle Stress Better?

Ever wonder why people say that women are better at coping with stress than men? A new study explains why this could actually be true.

Researchers have been saying that men tend to react with the “fight or flight” response, and women are generally less aggressive and turn to the “tend and befriend” response, that is women are more likely to seek out social support instead of lashing out or avoiding the issue completely.

A journal article by State University of New York at Buffalo tells us about a study they created that explains the answer behind the question of why stress responses differ between sexes. The researchers behind this study point out that the Pre-Frontal Cortex region of your brain is the target of stress hormones, cognition, and emotion. This study was tested with 4 weeks old juvenile-adolescent Sprague-Dawley rats, because during this time there PFC region undergoes critical postnatal development.  There were various tests that showed how the PFC region can be tested.

One of the tests compared the impact of repeated stress on cognitive functions in young female and male rats. These animals were exposed to 7 days of repeated stress, and examined every 24 hours. It turns out the male rats that were the control spent more time exploring the less recent object in the test trial, whereas the stressed group lost the preference to the less recent object. In contrast, the control and stressed female rats spent more time looking at the less recent object in the test trial.

In addition to the repeated stress on the rats, another test examined the possibility that estrogen influences the impact of stress. Researchers manipulated the amount of estrogen produced in the brain. At the end of it, they found out that when estrogen signaling in female brains was blocked, stress had negative effects on the brain, and when estrogen signaling was activated in male brain, the negative effects of stress were blocked.

Males and females show different biochemical, cellular, and behavioral effects of stress, and they connect this with the PFC. Their results showed, “In contrast to the impaired cognition in male rodents after chronic stress, female rodents show unaffected or enhanced performance on the same memory tasks after the same stress.” In other words, female rats responded better to the chronic stress than male rats.

This experiment has not only helped to discover new ways of treating stress-related disorders in men, but also how they are now able to see sex differences in mental health more broadly. Another study related to this was found was women may cope with stress in better ways, however they internalize stress to a greater degree, and have higher stress levels than males.  The only difference is the coping mechanisms between them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/women-handle-stress-better-estrogen-study_n_3579735.html

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~zhenyan/MPs-female+stress.pdf

 

 

 

Reflection:

Overall, writing this new journal article was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I re-read both the scholarly article and the news article again and I thought it was going to be easy to combine both of them to create a new one, however the scholarly article holds too much information to where I can pin-point the main details from the study and put them in the new article. I realized that I had to sacrifice a lot of information that I felt was important for readers to know, but at the same time I know that as a reader myself it is very hard for me to get interested in a certain topic if it holds a lot of scientific information with terms that I do not understand or can’t even pronounce, so I knew that finding only the main details was what I had to do. Also, looking at the journal article from Huffpost, I felt that the article was way too broad for people to gain any kind knowledge on why women handle stress better than men. So I needed to figure out a way to create a new article that is not to broad, but not to much information where the people get bored either. I also now understand how difficult it is for journalists to do this for a living. They have to be able to look and analyze scientific research, but also make sure they do not plagiarize the researchers work, and create it as there own. This project gave a brand new perspective on how research/journal articles actually work and how difficult it is to come up with something brand new.


Can You Say Discrimination?

After viewing the video given below, I am honestly angry and in total disgust. I would not feel this way if the people, who viewed the actors stealing the bike, treated them all equally whether it be to just walk away from the situation or confront the thief or call the police on the them. It makes me very upset and angry because these experiments resulted in real outcomes that happen too often in reality. Honestly, if I were an on going bystander put in that situation, I could not tell you what exactly I would do but one thing for sure is that I would have done the same thing for every single actor. I would be lying if I said I was appalled from the outcomes but I already assumed how they would end being as though I myself am an African-American male. Without a doubt the events that take place within the video would be classified as discrimination. Discrimination perfectly describes those events as someone was treated differently or, in the video’s case, extremely differently based on their group memberships. Not only did the bystander’s obviously have a negative assumption but they also decided to act solely on that or those assumptions which furthermore proves the idea of discrimination. For those that still naive, discrimination is absolutely real and it will never go away unless we, as the people in our society, become less ignorant and more humane and sophisticated.


Orthorexia?

It’s very unclear to me how a simple lifestyle change like eating a salad instead of a burger, or some fruit instead of candy can be labeled as a mental disorder. Just because a person enjoys eating healthy, or forces themselves to make healthy choices in no way strikes me as being a mental disorder.Eating healthy is something you are supposed to do to keep your body functioning and provide your body with necessary nutrients. It should not be labeled as a disorder. Eating healthy has many different benefits and Americans should be accustomed to eating this way.  The obesity epidemic in our country has gradually risen over time and continues to rise because of the unhealthy choices people are making without thinking about the long term effects of these  choices. Grilled salmon and asparagus versus a McDonald’s  burger and fries is obviously the healthier option, but the healthier option isn’t always the tastier and more satisfying one.


Everyone Should Steal Bikes

In the “Bike Theft” video, three actors are trying to steal a bike chained to a sign in a public park. One actor is a white male, the next is a black male, and the last one is a white female. Different people encounter the actors as the so-called thieves attempt to steal the bike.

No one really tried to stop the white male or female. The man had a few disapproving looks and few questioning onlookers, but no one attempted to really stop him. The white woman actually had men trying to help her steal the bike because the assumption was made that women are less likely to steal. The black man, however, had the police called him almost immediately after someone approached him. A crowd actually gathered around him (of white people). One older white man even started taking the tools the actor was using to break the chain on the bike. The same man didn’t even stop accusing the black actor of stealing after the cameras came out of hiding.

It was really bizarre to watch. It was on the verge of nerve-wracking and upsetting to watch the black actor have to interact with those people because, especially with the last white man, it looked like it could potentially become a violent situation. It’s terrible to watch people discriminate against a person, clearly because of skin color, and then turn around and say that wasn’t the reason.  The scene with the white woman was laughable and somewhat disappointing. You don’t want to believe men would help a woman steal something just because she’s pretty, but it happens several times. The scene with the white male actor really displays what white privilege is, especially when compared to the black male actor. There was no consistency between the interactions, which shows there are general preconceived notions of social groups (stereotypes). It’s harder to tell if there is prejudice because that is defined as going towards all members of the group, but there is definitely discrimination/racism which is worse. One actor is allowed to steal and take a bike, while another actor has the police called on him and is even accused of stealing after it’s revealed that it’s a TV show. It’s legitimately all because of skin color. It gets even crazier when you compare the white woman to the black man because she had people trying to help her steal the bike. This shows discrimination which is negative in a general outlook (women can’t use tools, do things by their own, etc.), but in this particular situation it was positive because she stole the bike quicker and didn’t have to do any work. The show ironically displays its own discrimination by not showing what would happen if a black woman attempted to steal the bike as well.

It’s hard to say what I would do in the situation, but I would more than likely not say anything to any of the actors. Not because I don’t have stereotypes or I’m consistent, but because I absolutely hate confrontation, and if someone has the guts to steal a bike in broad daylight in a public place, go for it. I’m actually impressed.


Stress is your Friend?

This TED talk was about stress, and instead of stress being  harmful to your body, health psychologist, Kelly McGonigal, expresses how we should turn that harm to something positive happening to your body. I found this video very interesting, and I learned things that I never knew before. I enjoyed how she talks about the side effects of the stress response (such as heart pounding, starting to sweat), and instead of viewing the stress as harmful, all these side effects can be helpful and “prepare you for action.” One of the main messages discussed was on the neuro-hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin functions is various ways such as making you “crave physical contact with your friends and families. It enhances your empathy. It even makes you more willing to help and support the people you care about.” I did not know that Oxytocin does this, and more importantly I did not know that it is a stress hormone. How is it possible for a hormone to do two completely opposite things simultaneously? McGonigal succeeds on turning the tables around for stress, and explains how this hormone being secreted can actually benefit you. The trick is whenever you are stressed and you reach out to someone else you are releasing more of this hormone, and your stress response becomes healthier, and you actually recover faster from stress. I find this fascinating, because who knew stress can actually be a good thing, and the key factor into recovering is as simple as reaching out to a friend when I need help. After watching this video, I now see stress in a different perspective. I should not let stress wear me down, but instead I should let it help me accomplish what I need to do if I just look at it in a positive way.


Stress Kills?

After watching Kelly McGonigal’s Ted Talk over stress I honestly feel a bit stressed out. I may be focusing on the wrong part of her discoveries or maybe I’m going about it the wrong way, but her beliefs over stress killing is unbelievable! She spoke about how people who believed stress was a negative part of their lives were 43 percent more likely to die in the next 8 years. That was it, that was the only information she gave. She cannot do that there are so many more implications to death than just stress. For instance everyone on that list could have been around their 90’s living rich fulfilling lives, but with some stress due to physical limitations. Then eight years later 43 percent of them could have passed, but she attributes it to stress? That really doesn’t make sense to me. At first part of me thought it was a slip of the tongue she couldn’t possibly directly correlate stress with death there were way to many variables for that, but then not even five minutes later into this talk she goes to say that stress should be the 15th largest killer of people in the United States. My immediate reaction to that was “How?” Do people just die when too much stress enters their lives? What causes that, how can people determine how much stress will kill them? Unless 43% of her numbers all suddenly were stricken by broken heart syndrome and died from it, I find it incredibly hard to believe that stress was what did them in.

Stress may have something to do with death although without knowing anything about the data she used I cannot tie anything together there. Just the thought that she says that stress legitimately kills you if you think it is bad for you bothers me to no end. It is not a conclusion she can make, death isn’t black and white like that. Besides her belief that stress kills I will say that she made a good point that life is full of stress, but we take it and grow stronger from it. So that is what I am going to continue to do, I will keep going no matter the stress, because eventually I’ll make it to the other side.

 

Sources: http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?language=en#


Emotion

Dr. Gilbert’s TED talk on synthetic happiness changed my perspective on many topics, but also strengthened my opinions about certain issues. All my life, happiness is one thing that I have always given most importance. From simple things like “does wearing this shirt make me happy?” to life-changing decisions such as “will this college ultimately make me happy?”, I’ve based most of my decisions on how happy I would be if I were to pursue the action. Like Dr.Gilbert mentioned in his talk, however, “natural” happiness is not always reached, and it does lead to disappointment.Although I’ve always believed that time brings happiness, I have come across this idea of synthesized happiness. Even the simple statistic about how the happiness of a letter winner and a paraplegic is the same after a year simply blows my mind. If I ponder on that, however, it actually makes sense. Life is not always about chasing things which could possibly bring you happiness, it is about finding happiness in the things which are already present in your life. I am a strong believer that every thing in life has a purpose. Sometimes it may take time to realize what the purpose was, but it does not mean that the purpose was missing. Synthesized happiness, to me, seems like a form of how people accept the purpose behind events that occurred in their lives. For example, Dr. Gilbert talked about a man named Moreese Bickham who was imprisoned for no fault of his own, but upon release, described it as a “glorious experience.” I’m sure no one has high hopes and dreams to one day be imprisoned for no reason, but somehow this man has learned to accept the purpose behind this incident in his life. I believe synthetic happiness can also be described as being grateful. In the video, Dr. Gilbert talks about the fact that a freedom to choose is the greatest enemy of synthetic happiness. Freedom to choose will always result in a constant deliberation of what could’ve happened if I were to chose the other option, whereas only one option results in gratitude, even if time is required to reach that stage.

Dr. Gilbert certainly did seem credible as he used many resources and experiments to back up his results and findings. By doing so, his word was backed up with clear evidence which gives him credibility to be a reliable resource.


Emotions

Dan Gilbert knows how to work a crowd. He knows what people want, he knows what the audience will find topical and funny, and he knows about the self-help craze still sweeping bookstores. Fill a book or a TED Talk with reassuring people that they’ll be happy in unexpected, miserable situations, and of course they’ll like the premise. People want to be told that life is going to be okay, life will be great, and so on no matter what happens. Books and talks not uplifting and being positive about life aren’t as appealing because no one wants to be told life is a series of closed doors because everyone already experiences it.

He also makes an interesting comment towards the end of the talk: “But when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk.When our ambition is bounded, it leads us to work joyfully. When our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value.” Basically, kill any of your passions, and be completely complacent in life. This life is the only one we have, and this guy is telling the audience to keep everything in check? He never defines what “real value” is either. Things of value differ from individual to individual. It’s a horribly discouraging quote that should be taken with a grain of salt.

Listen, no one is suppose to be feel happy all of the time. Life is full of disappointments and anxieties. It’s okay to feel sadness, despair, and other usually connotatively negative emotions. No one has to call it synthetic happiness. If you feel like you are settling for less, or you would be happier in another situation, it’s okay to feel like that and go for something else. No one can tell you if it truly does get better or worse because no one knows the future, and no one knows your perspective. If you know you’ll be happy one way or another, you’ll know before anything happens. I realize that sounds lame and unscientific, but it holds truth. Masking other emotions towards your current situation as synthetic happiness is just going to catch up with you in the end. Ultimately, happiness just fills a void when we’re going through the motions of a meaningless life. Maybe it doesn’t matter if it’s artificial or synthetic or real. It does feel better when you admit you’re not really happy, and you’ve just been subscribing to the bizarre pop culture craze of happiness being the only feeling you experience though.