April 2012
24 posts
Anonymous asked: Bupropion?
1 tag
Put some medications in my ask, and I'll write a...
If I’ve studied them at least |Da
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eatoncrow asked: Actually, I have a follow-up...
Short answer: Yes….ish.
Long answer: Depends on what you mean ‘the same way’ and also which medication you’re looking at. They don’t focus on giving your brain fertilizer like antidepressants do, but they do have some interesting things that are beneficial to your brain. Honestly though we know even less about bipolar than we do depression, so there’s a lot of research to go.
That said, we do...
4 tags
eatoncrow asked: hi, I have a question relating to...
Of course! I don’t know as much in detail, but from what I can pull off the top of my head, people with bipolar depression are similar to those with unipolar depression in that they have depressed function in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. They also have overactivity in the limbic area (especially the amygdala, the core of basic emotion), and underactivity in the frontal regions,...
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“The functional significance of new hippocampal cells is not clear. In birds, food storage and retrieval experience correlate with changes in hippocampal size and neurogenesis. In mice, neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus increases with exposure to an enriched environment, and it is associated with improved learning.”
- Henriette van Praag, “Running enhances neurogenesis, learning, and long-term...
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tw: pedophilia, child molestation, and the brain
There is a case study of a middle-aged man who had never done any criminal activity in his life, until he started acting strange. He began collecting child pornography and hitting on his 13-year old stepdaughter. He was very quickly caught and convicted with pedophilia.
On the night he was supposed to be sent to prison, he suddenly lost control of his bladder. At first this wasn’t surprising,...
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revolutionator:
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My book doesn’t seem to really say much about SSRIs and ADHD, except they aren’t effective in treating it which I think we could have gathered
It says that in rare cases one can get apathy and lack of motivation but it seems you really just can’t concentrate
From what I can read in literature, ADHD brains are structured differently at the neurochemical...
7 tags
Effort Driven Rewards
The Effort-Driven Reward System is a pathway that converges the striatum, the prefrontal cortex, and the limbic system into the nucleus accumbens. That is, the centers of movement, thought, and emotion all connect into motivation. And this entire road is severely affected by depression.
Can’t summon the energy to move? Striatum. Can’t concentrate or think rationally? Prefrontal cortex. Can’t feel...
5 tags
Unstressing Your Brain #2
Take a walk in the sun.
We humans live for the sun. It does lovely things for us. Not only does it give vitamin D, but it also triggers the clockwork cells in your brain that keep time. Whenever we’re in sunlight, we kind of wind up our internal clocks and correct the time that we made before.
These clocks are insanely important in running the system - you probably don’t notice much, but your...
4 tags
Unstressing Your Brain #3
Play with a pet.
There’s a notable study that looked at three groups of high-stress career women who had to read a presentation out loud in a room to a researcher: one alone, one with their best friend, and one with their dog. And for every single one of them, the dog group won. The cortisol levels of the people who read with their dog were lower than both the one alone and with their best...
6 tags
Unstressing Your Brain #1
Exercise.
Exercise has a strange effect of releasing not only endorphins but also BDNF. One is a mild painkiller and gives that ‘runner’s high’ while the other is brain fertilizer that encourages dendritic growth in your brain!
The endorphins only last a few minutes, but the BDNF builds up. This is why BDNF is good for people with depression or chronic stress! It counteracts what the cortisol...
3 tags
Does exercise make you drink more alcohol? →
This is my professor whose lab I am working under! I was there arranging brain tissue onto slides when the reporter came in and rudely asked, ‘is this really what your lab looks like’
yes
yes it does
scientists are not actually that rich
but anyway, people who exercise are more likely to drink more! No one really knows the reason why, but right now we’re researching whether it’s exercise...
4 tags
Stress and the Brain
There are people who are prone to a lot of stress yet are extremely mentally healthy, while there are people who don’t have much stress at all but at severely depressed or suffering from another kind of disorder. This is because in those cases, it’s less about how much stress you have, but how your brain handles stress, and what kind of things they decide to stress out about.
What kinds of things...
5 tags
Desatadora asked: Yo Chass, for my Modern Art...
Oh man that is…. quite a lot to talk about in only 2000 words! Our visual system is bigger than our limbic system let’s just say that
Okay, um, basically, visual information goes from the eyes to the thalamus, which is devoted to taking sensory information and sending it on its way to the various offices in the brain. After that the info goes to the occipital lobe, which is a big area at the very...
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Depression and the Brain
The neuroscience community really can’t figure out the true source of depression, or why it happens, or what’s the actual thing that’s going on. And since they can’t figure it out, they can’t figure out good treatments, either - the history of antidepressants is pretty much nothing but tangents and they still haven’t gotten back on track about it.
But here’s some things we know for sure about...
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Neurotrophins
Neurotrophins are brain fertilizer, and your brain loves the shit out of the stuff. There’s a special brand of this miracle-gro that’s called BDNF that’s all the rage in the academic community nowadays, and is easier to type than neurotrophin, so let’s talk about that.
BDNF is that stuff that makes your neurons sprout, grow, and branch out beautifully. Babies spray that stuff all over the place...
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The prefrontal cortex →
The prefrontal cortex is the other neuron making machine in the brain, next to the hippocampus. It’s right behind your eyes and forehead. Instead of being an inside organ of the brain, it’s actually the outside - the bark of the brain tree, if you will.
The PFC is most of your thinking, actually. It’s not your entire consciousness, since that’s impossible to pinpoint, but it’s the part of you...
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So I said that someone who learns quickly has fast... →
So I said that someone who learns quickly has fast dendritic branching, right? Though really the learning isn’t limited to like, school learning, or anything. You can be very quick to learn about social things, emotional things, athletic, puzzle solving, any of that. Really all you’re doing is responding quickly to a situation and adapting yourself to it, whether it’s how to solve calculus or how...
4 tags
desatadora replied to your post: Little known... →
desatadora replied to your post: Little known fact, but you’re not actually the…
Is it weird that I do have memories from when I was a baby? I remember loads of things that people say are impossible…
It’s not weird at all!! Some people do have very early memories - I have a friend who has a very vivid memory of being in his crib, but I doubt anyone in the world remembers being born! I...
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The nucleus accumbens is hardly ever talked about... →
The nucleus accumbens is hardly ever talked about in your standard textbook, but is the entire life of drug addicts (or any addict, actually). The NAc, as it is called, gets a bad rap for often being called the addiction center, but it also holds the reins on your motivation and pleasure, even laughter.
Depending on how you NAc is built, you might be the addictive type, or you might need to take...
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Little known fact, but you’re not actually the... →
Little known fact, but you’re not actually the cells in your brain - you’re the connections those cells make. Cool, eh? It’s called dendritic branching, since there are…little branches called dendrites, and they carefully touch hold hands with all those other cells. When you learn, you’re actually allowing even more branches to grow, touching other cells and connecting dots. In a way, I suppose...
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The limbic system is a bunch of brain parts that... →
The limbic system is a bunch of brain parts that all work closely together. While these parts have their own specific function, together they weave emotions, motivations and behavioral responses. Neuroscientists like to describe it as the four F’s - Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Fucking, an awful joke that’s been around as long as biopsychology itself.
The more noted brain parts include the...
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I guess I'll start with some basic brain parts →
My professor researches the hippocampus, so this is one area I know a lot about! There’s tons of absolutely fascinating things about it, so I think I’ll start with this one.
The hippocampus looks like a seahorse. It’s deep in the brain, around the area where the top of your ear connects to your head. It’s extensively studied because its role is fairly clear - not only is it critical to forming...
No posts yet, but I’m getting to that. I’ll see what I can do to repost everything, urghghghghghghghghhgg
Let’s hope it works out!
March 2012
1 post
4 tags
Concussions and Depression
I’m in the middle of compiling several neuroimaging studies in the hopes of finding some pictures but so far it’s nothing but data
stupid academia GOSH I WISH THERE WERE PICTURE BOOKS FOR NEUROSCIENCE JOURNALS
but this is going to take a while so let’s just talk about how concussions and depression are related
People who get a traumatic brain injury often end up getting majorly depressed...
