Brainy Stuff

Bupropion?

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:25:24 -0400

Bupropion is also known as Wellbutrin. It is completely unique in that it doesn’t affect serotonin like citalopram fluoxetine do; it uses dopamine and noradrenaline instead. It can be used on depression, bipolar, and nicotine addiction.

While SSRIs decrease libido, bupropion actually increases it. It also reduces fatigue and even causes temporary weight loss. Pretty awesome!

It acts just the same as in SSRIs, which is stopping reuptake. Basically it’s stopping the janitors from sweeping it away so that the receptors can use it for longer. Unfortunately too much of this can mimic the problems of schizophrena, even seizures, due to so much activity in the dopamine pathways. That also means that people with bipolar have to be ultra careful when using it.

Put some medications in my ask, and I'll write a post about how they work in the brain

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:50:40 -0400

If I’ve studied them at least |Da

eatoncrow asked: Actually, I have a follow-up question: do medications used for bipolar disorder protect and repair the brain the same way antidepressants do for unipolar depression? Or do they at least halt the damage?

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:23:10 -0400

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 know what some of the meds do, so let me go down the list and give you a rough breakdown:

Lithium and Valproate: Promotes cell growth/survival, shows promise of preventing Alzheimer’s disease. Is also an antioxidant. Valproate even alters your DNA to make your cells stronger! It’s also capable of increasing BDNF and brain volume. But these can be risky drugs, especially lithium.

Lamotrigine: Studies have shown protecting neurons in people with traumatic brain injury, and it also promotes growth/survival for cells the same way as the other two above. Neuromodulators in general seem to improve function and stabilize the chemical processes going on.

Antipsychotics can be used with traditional antidepressants - not because you’re psychotic, but because it’s shown that these medicines are excellent in regulating manic episodes, while the antidepressants can do their work on feeding your brain some good BDNF.

Actually, you know what? If you’d like you can tell me some of your medications, and I’d be glad to write about their neurological effects. It’d help a lot of other people too who are either taking them or considering them. :D I’d like to do some drug-related posts. After….my essays and projects, though, which might be the end of this week, with luck.

(Also, I misworded a few things in the last ask: less volume in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, not frontal/limbic areas!)

eatoncrow asked: hi, I have a question relating to your (excellent) post about depression and brains!! Do you have any intel on bipolar disorder and brain structure and brain composition (I guess, if that’s the right word)?

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:22:27 -0400

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, especially in the parts that allow one to control their emotions. However, activity really changes depending on the state someone is in. For example, in depression there is even less activity in the frontal region.

Just like in unipolar depression, bipolar has less volume in those two areas, as well as lowered BDNF, the brain fertilizer. BUT the main difference between these two is that there is a LOT of evidence pointing to actual cell death in those areas, as opposed to the ‘eh maybe’ response to garden-variety depression.

There is a theory that those with bipolar have a brain that is very optimistic in its recovery - a bit too much, really. So much that every now and then it perks up and goes, ‘my god, today’s the day I’m not depressed anymore!’ and then goes out on a huge manic episode, which of course ends up making you feel worse because you’ve just overcharged yourself and may have gotten more damage than repair. Evidence that points to this is the fact that if people with bipolar are given your run-of-the-mill antidepressants, their brain overreacts and triggers a manic episode.

Unfortunately, science isn’t really too great when it comes to handling bipolar. Most medicines want to pin bipolar as a cross between depression, epilepsy, and schizophrenia, which is…not very great, at all. Even though everyone is HUGELY interested in bipolar disorder, the problem is that everyone is just so damn unique that it’s nearly impossible to conduct exact research, if the bipolar isn’t even the same in every person, you know? If you’d like, I’d be happy to provide some primary sources of research to you, though they’re a bit hard to read even for me.

Just send me your email in an ask and I’ll give you what I can find! I really like studying bipolar, when summer rolls around I’ll try to write more about it!

“The functional significance of new hippocampal cells is not clear. In birds, food storage and...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:21:22 -0400

“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 potentiation in mice” 1999

It probably doesn’t mean much to you, but to me this really signifies just how far neuroscience has come in the past decade or so. In 1999 we knew that the hippocampus created new neurons, but we had no idea why. Now we do know, at least to an extent. Can you think of what it could be?

The hippocampus isn’t just for making new memories. It also has to do with places, and space. Neurons are made when birds try to memorize where they store food in the woods, and a busy environment for mice means more memorizing in order to move around.

In 2006 we discovered that the hippocampus is way more dense in London taxi drivers than the average person, and the reason is because these people spend like two years training and memorizing their way around the city.

At first it’s kind of weird that the place we make new memories is also where our mental map of the world is, but the examples of the animals show you just how crucial it is out in the wild, and the same is for us humans, too.

And now you know!

Sources:
Maguire, E. A., Woollett, K., & Spiers, H. J., London Taxi Drivers and Bus Drivers: A Structural MRI and Neuropsychological Analysis (2006)

tw: pedophilia, child molestation, and the brain

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:20:44 -0400

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, considering what they do to pedophiles in prison, but someone realized that losing bladder control to such an extent indicated that there was something seriously wrong with his brain.

When they took a brain scan of him they found an absolutely MASSIVE tumor! And it was growing right over his frontal cortex, which deals with reason and inhibition.

And get this: when they took out the tumor, the man went completely back to normal. He was released and went back to not being a creepy fucker.

Until he started doing it again, and when they caught him and did another brain scan, they found the tumor growing back. It was removed, and he went back to normal.

When they interviewed this guy, they asked that now that he’s been through this, should he - and others like him - still be jailed? He said yes, because he knew with rational thought that it was wrong and sick, but he did it anyway.

What does this say about these people? What does it say about other people? Those with depression, those with bipolar, or OCD, or panic? When you know with every rational fiber of your being that what you do and feel is stupid, or wrong, or silly, but you do it or feel it anyway because there is something in your brain preventing you from functioning normally?

The man gave his answer, but it’s not the all end-all and be-all. There is in fact no right answer to this, but it’s certainly food for thought.

revolutionator: Read More My book doesn’t seem to really say much about SSRIs and ADHD, except...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:20:10 -0400

revolutionator:

Read More

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 level, like the serotonin sites are positioned farther? This makes it more difficult for some messages to reach others, I think, not sure - it’s a bit hard to read this early in the morning, heh. But ADHD has an inherent disturbance in serotonin production and usage that I think would be interfered by a serotonin enhancer like citalopram

I’m by no means any expert, and I’m probably pulling this out of my ass, but if we’re trying to connect dots, I’d say… that…. because you’re so entrenched in homestuck you’ve probably developed an easy neural connection system about it, which makes it easy for you to concentrate on because its already there

for others you have to work twice as hard to build up a good network for anything else, or anything new.

citalopram seems to me like it’s making it harder for you to develop those actual networks, but as to exactly why or how, I really have no idea.

though if citalopram is helping you out with your depression then I’m fairly sure it’s doing its job very well, you might just have to work extra hard to focus. If it’s still not working out, you may need to talk to your doctor :\ They may be able to add on medication, or switch you to a different SSRI?

please also don’t listen to me I’m not an expert like at all but do you think that makes any sense anyway?

Effort Driven Rewards

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:17:56 -0400

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 happy no matter how hard you try? Limbic system.
Can’t feel motivated to do a damn thing? Nucleus accumbens.

This doesn’t explain all of depression (my other posts talk about that), but it does tell a heck of a lot. This highway is easily damaged by depression, which in turn makes depression even stronger, creating a cycle so destructive you can’t even get out of bed, things are that shit.

And how are you supposed to penetrate it and cut the cycle off? You can’t control the limbic system or nucleus accumbens, because these are located in the midbrain, a place that is pure instinct and no thought.

The keys here are the other two. The prefrontal cortex requires heavy retraining and rewiring through cognitive therapy, which is hard to do if you have no motivation. The other is the striatum, where you have to move in order to jumpstart the system.

The big word though is effort-driven. You can’t just do any movement, you have to do something with meaning. Drawing, writing, cooking, taking up crocheting or building birdhouses - exercise your creativity. Say what you will about your shitty _____, if you look back at a masterpiece that you just created and go holy shit, I fucking made that, I guarantee you’ll feel at least a little pride. And that’s what you’re looking for, trying to penetrate this system.

If you keep exercising your brain, using this effort-driven reward system, and doing what you can to do meaningful work with your hands, you may just kick it back into gear.

Unstressing Your Brain #2

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:17:11 -0400

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 brain keeps a careful schedule of events and activities. You’re more tired in the evening/morning, you get hungry midday, you even have a peak in energy at the same time every day. What time these things happen depends on your genetic makeup, but they all work by the sun. And if you don’t get these events in your schedule addressed, you can have some moodiness happen as a result, or even a prolonged overall state of negativity and sluggishness.

While people with more severe cases are said to have Seasonal Affective Disorder, who are extremely depressed only in winter, it essentially works that way for all of us. So try your best to recalibrate your internal clock, and go out in the sun. If you aren’t in a sun-friendly place, a brightly-lit room can help out as well, though the sun is always better.

Unstressing Your Brain #3

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:16:31 -0400

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 friend.

Two groups of children had to read a paper to a researcher, one with a stuffed toy, and one with a dog. They then had their cortisol levels measured. The dog group won.

A high school specializing in troubled children instilled a program where distressed students, instead of being taken to detention, would spend time with a specially trained dog. One student lashed out to the entire classroom because his best friend committed suicide. After half an hour with the dog, he was smiling and even laughed. The program has been wildly successful in treating severely distraught students, putting them back on a path to being able to get out.

Not just dogs, either. Cats in pet therapy heal patients in mental institutions, hospitals, and nurseries, helping them recover faster and better. And even if it doesn’t, seeing an animal eases their depression in their circumstances, enhancing their quality of life.

There’s just something about an animal. They won’t judge you, won’t hate you, won’t say rude things. They listen. They love. They’re there for you. Though the cat’s probably just there because the human serves them for life at the cost of a little drivel.

Pets are amazing little creatures! Love your pet, play with them, give them hugs. If you don’t own an animal, try seeing if a pet-owning friend will let you play with them, or maybe try volunteering at an animal shelter. They will heal you as much as you heal them.

Unstressing Your Brain #1

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:15:16 -0400

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 does, coaxing back the connections that cortisol scared away.

You’ve probably seen studies where cardiovascular exercise helped patients with depression a heck of a lot, and now you know why!

Try doing 15 minutes a day and work your way up to maybe half an hour. You can run in place, dance, hula hoop, jump rope, etc. Your brain will thank you for it!

Does exercise make you drink more alcohol?

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:14:49 -0400

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 that’s the reason or is alcohol the reason :)

Stress and the Brain

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:14:19 -0400

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 you stress about is mostly based on your personality and experiences, but how you handle stress is based on things well outside your control.

The control center for stress is the hypothalamus, which looks at how much cortisol (the stress hormone) is running through the body, and adds or takes away when the situation is right.

In a lot of depressed people’s brains, this isn’t working. Whatever the hypothalamus is doing, it’s not doing its job. In fact, it kind of just releases cortisol haphazardly without regulating the levels.

Turns out, cortisol is absolute shit for the brain. It sucks. It’s horrible. It’s like really badly done dubstep of Dev or something. Your neurons hate it, and they try to cover their ears by reducing their dendritic branching. Shit man, can you even imagine that?! And the more cortisol, the more the dendrites are going to pull away.

And that’s not the only thing abnormal stress does, either - with your body and brain in code red, your brain’s going to shut down things it thinks it doesn’t need for the moment, even though ‘the moment’ turns out to be ‘however long it’s going to take to get these three papers and four exams over with.’ And um, turns out some of the stuff your brain shuts down is your immune system, your digestive system, and your reproductive system. Brain-wise it also turns off neurogenesis, messes with the chemicals involving sleep, and screws over your ability to remember things. And that’s only some of the shit stress does!

Considering that all of these things are crucial to your ability to function as a human being, you need to take care of yourself. I cannot emphasize this enough! Not only are you threatening your physical health but mental health as well, and for depressed people you absolutely need to watch for it! RELAX!!

Desatadora asked: Yo Chass, for my Modern Art class I have to write a 2000-word research paper at the end of term on any topic I want (related to the class of course). Since neuroscience interests me, I decided to write about the effect of art on the brain/how the brain perceives and processes visual stimulus. I was wondering if you could offer any insight, or if you knew any sources I could look into?

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:13:40 -0400

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 back which takes apart everything and kind of codes it so that the rest of the brain can understand. After that, the path breaks off into two streams of information.

The Dorsal Stream goes along the top of the brain to the parietal lobe. This part looks at it purely for its properties as a physical object: approx. left 2ft at 32° angle, #003300 in color, vaguely circular in shape with a spiralling pattern from center, etc. It is purely mathematical, focused purely on where it is and what it looks like, and how it relates to you in space.

The Ventral Stream goes along the underside to the temporal lobe, where the limbic system is. Here it identifies what it is - a flower, a painting, your mother, the love of your life, etc. It’s very emotionally-based, and this is the stream that art influences the most, with it being so subjective in nature.

There is a great book with a chapter about this, called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (first chapter). If you google the title you can find a pdf really easily. It was written in the 1970 so it’s a little condescending and rude, but it’s got some great case studies that’ll interest you a lot :) You can also see if you can find a book called Phantoms in the Brain, which has a chapter about emotion and recognition.

I can help you find some scholarly articles about art and the brain, as well! Considering that your class is about modern art, it would be really interesting to compare the emotional traditional art which focuses on emotion and recognition and the shift towards post-modern mathematical kind of shapely stuff? But I can see all kinds of really cool stuff you can write about!

Depression and the Brain

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:10:22 -0400

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 depression:

- It’s related to chronic stress.
- It’s a neurodegenerative disease.
- It kinda looks a lot like a concussion on a PET scan.**

That second one probably scares you - there’s some pretty concrete proof that depressed people’s brains are less dense than those without depression. Without BDNF, there’s less dendritic branching, leading to less volume and less ability to function normally.

I had said before that new neurons are made in the hippocampus and an area called the prefrontal cortex. There isn’t enough evidence to say that the cells in those areas are dying, exactly, but what we can see is that no new neurons are being made, which is crucial in how these areas work. So because neurogenesis is halted, because volume is decreasing, and because dendrites are for some reason shrinking away, depression is considered a neurodegenerative disease, right up there with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

That said, it’s true that depression is way, way easier to treat than Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s…if only because those two are pretty much incurable at the moment, while depression just takes several months to several years, since those problems I just said can be helped if you add BDNF back to the equation, though there are many other problems that can’t be so easily solved.

So that’s the great news: any neurodegeneration can be reversed with antidepressant treatment. Even if it takes months and years, it is certainly possible, provided that you persevere!

Remember, antidepressant treatment doesn’t necessarily mean pills, either - cognitive therapy works just as well and then some, at the cost of more time and effort. I’ll go over treatments in another post sometime soon, as well as those other things above, so watch for it.

** EDIT: Scratch that thing about concussion, I got it wrong! Stay tuned for an update about that, I guess.

Neurotrophins

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:08:58 -0400

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 when they’re developing, and adults need it to keep up their lovely brain garden. The more BDNF you have, the healthier your brain, the more active your brain, and the longer your brain’s gonna live.

Unsurprisingly, people with depression or other mental disorders have very low levels of BDNF, which does a number on their brain garden. Modern antidepressants like citalopram and other SSRIs actually increase BDNF levels in the brain, which is great. The problem, though, is that BDNF is only fertilizer and can only encourage neurons to grow, which takes time and energy, and until then those new neurons are extremely vulnerable. That’s (probably) why it takes so long for antidepressants to take effect - an entire three weeks, usually, because that’s the amount of time it takes for those new neurons to grow and branch out.

Whether you’ve got a disorder or not, one way to increase BDNF levels is to exercise often, usually cardio. Eating healthy also helps - antioxidants defend your new neurons from free radicals.

The prefrontal cortex

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:06:52 -0400

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 that plans things and makes decisions. It then gathers up those thoughts, along with your internal goals (whether it’s ‘get an A’ or ‘get away’), and puts it into action. Pretty easy.

It’s also responsible for stopping you from doing something, making you think about it, and thinking about the consequences.

Kinda sounds like something a typical adolescent doesn’t have :\ But it’s true - in fact, the brain develops from back to front, and nothing is more front than the prefrontal cortex. That’s not to say that adolescents CAN’T MAKE DECISIONS EVER, but only that it takes them a really long time to get to where a regular adult would be like, ‘well, duh!’

Even for a really obvious and stupid thing like ‘Is it a bad idea to light your hair on fire?’ teenagers can and will take more than three times as long as an adult to have their brain say yes. That’s a long time! And in the time between being a teenager and becoming an adult, you’re more than capable of making completely idiotic decisions, or even not making decisions at all, instead just going with your feelings on the matter.

Right before the prefrontal cortex is the limbic system, which is the forefront of emotions. So it’s kind of no wonder that as a teen you can’t help but become engrossed in your own complex emotions, and end up acting mostly on those emotions. It’s the most sophisticated thing online in your brain, and you’re going to exercise it as much as you can. Though exercising your PFC is also the best way to get it going sooner and faster, too.

But it makes sense that it’s the last to develop, too - it’s requires so much time because it’s just so important to what it means to be you! And you can also see why it’s the other neurogenerating area - of course you’ll need an endless supply of neurons to keep up with your constantly morphing thoughts and actions and decisions, building up all these experiences to create you.

So I said that someone who learns quickly has fast dendritic...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:04:39 -0400

So I said that someone who learns quickly has fast dendritic...:

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 to comfort a friend. Or how to blindly move stupid shit slide puzzle pieces around so that damn worm can get inside the center of that damn apple. You know, that kind of stuff.

Because it’s that kind of all-encompassing adapting instead of just book learning, neuroscientists simply call it plasticity - the brain’s ability to adapt. Children who are still growing and making new connections by the millions adapt the quickest, but people are lying when they say that it stops when you grow up. You keep learning throughout your entire life, how can you not be, erm, plastic?

So if someone says that you aren’t very smart, or you think you aren’t very smart, do remember that the human brain wasn’t evolved to survive exam period, no matter how you wish it did, sometimes. It evolved to move around the world, function in society, connect with others, and solve problems in order to survive. That’s the real smarts, there.

Oh, and that whole idea that Darwinian this and survival of the fittest that? Psh. Old, outdated, and 100% untrue. Like I said, we are wired to love, feel, and connect with others. Trying to do things the manly way with logic, strength, and competitiveness just ruins us all in the end.

desatadora replied to your post: Little known fact, but you’re not...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:04:20 -0400

desatadora replied to your post: Little known fact, but you’re not...:

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 unfortunately have a very shoddy memory and the earliest I can think of is my third birthday…

People do have different starting times that they start making (and keeping) memories, and it really depends on the person themself and how their neurons are feeling.

It’s just that you’ve got some new age hippies who try to convince people that if they thought hard enough they’d remember being in the womb and it’s like, what a load of shit. Then people start imagining so hard that they actually become convinced that those are their real memories, and you just have a really stupid cycle going on there.

The nucleus accumbens is hardly ever talked about in your standard...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:02:27 -0400

The nucleus accumbens is hardly ever talked about in your standard...:

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 a lot to get addicted. You might be the type to be easily but strongly motivated, or you might be so lazy that nothing can pull you from your couch. Because of your NAc you might get a crazy good high, or you might find it a turn-off.

The NAc takes a long time to mature - not until you’re 25. You probably aren’t even that old yet! It doesn’t mean you’re stupid though - it just means that you take longer to get to where you need to. Having an underdeveloped NAc only means that you need a stronger ‘high’ and a stronger reason to do something you just ain’t gonna do. Doesn’t mean you’re a stereotypical teen, but honestly, think of all the people you know that probably do follow that. To get that high they might take stupid risks, might do drugs at higher doses, promise they won’t have sex but end up doing it anyway.

All thanks to an immature NAc.

But that’s why, if you’re going to do drugs, might wanna wait until it’s done growing. You can mess it up and develop an addictive personality.

However, if you culture your NAc, build up motivation and hold strong goals, even if you’re past 25, you’ll find that you’re better motivated to do good things, you’ll find more pleasure in doing the things you do, and you’ll be healthier in how you want what you want.