Weekly Round Up
Researchers Aim for Direct Brain Control of Prosthetic Arms Credit J. Contreras-Vidal/University of Maryland.
Engineering researchers at four U.S. universities are embarking on a four-year project to design a prosthetic arm that amputees can control directly with their brains and that will allow them to feel what they touch. The researchers have developed a prototype of a device that provides feedback to the wearer’s arm while objects are moved with a prosthetic ‘hand,’ a gripper. The prototype, which incorporates noninvasive monitoring of electrical activity and blood-oxygen levels in the brain, may be incorporated into next-generation prosthetic arms.
Millions of people with severe, treatment-resistant depression could improve their condition by adding an anti-inflammatory drug to their antidepressant medication, a leading consortium of UK researchers in biological psychiatry has reported.
A new study of the brain’s master circadian clock — known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN — reveals that a key pattern of rhythmic neural activity begins to decline by middle age.
Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that our visual perception can be contaminated by memories of what we have recently seen, impairing our ability to properly understand and act on what we are currently seeing.
And finally, a new study provides clues about the cellular mechanisms of traumatic brain injury, a signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What fuelled the rage in Anders Baring Brevik’s brain?
Friends and loved ones gather at the Oslo cathedral to mourn (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
Along with so many of you, I was horrified this week to hear of the despicable attack of Anders Behring Brevik on the people of Norway. In his rambling 1500-page manifesto and instruction manual for would-be “crusaders” against Islam and liberal European politicians, Brevik describes how he will be on a “steroid rush” in the midst of the attack. In fact, the manifesto describes the extensive use of steroids and protein drinks to provide him with more energy and one point he writes that he wishes he could obtain “aggressiveness pills.” I believe that Brevik’s abuse of steroids provides a hint to understanding his behaviour.
Playing with fire
Steroids are dangerous drugs, and when used inappropriately, they can cause serious behavioural and psychiatric problems – possibly by interfering with the brain’s ability to regulate a hormone called vasopressin – which is linked to aggression1. Research has shown that the inappropriate use of anabolic steroids – man-made versions of the male sex hormone testosterone – can have catastrophic behavioural consequences including aggression (also known as roid rage or the “steroid rush” mentioned in Brevik’s manifesto) such as fighting, physical and sexual assault, armed robbery and property crimes such as burglary and vandalism. The full-blown aggression can last for up to two weeks after withdrawal. As if this is not bad enough, the psychiatric consequences of inappropriate use of anabolic steroids include jealousy, irritability, deluded thinking, mood swings and bad judgement due to a feeling of invincibility. Why would anyone even dream of taking such a drug – I hear you ask?
The upside of anabolic steroids
Anabolic steroids are powerful body-building drugs. They promote rapid growth of muscle bone, the larynx (voice box) and a decrease in body fat leading to increased strength and endurance. For this reason anabolic steroid abuse is widespread among athletes, bodybuilders, weightlifters and football players at all levels. However, in this case anabolic steroids are taken to simply replace the discipline required for the long hours of training needed to build up more muscle – as nature intended – and are thus a “shortcut” to an athletic body. These bulking-up effects of steroids on muscle can boost confidence and strength leading the abuser to overlook the potential serious long-term damage that these substances can cause. These drugs are also abused by people who believe that they look underweight, are the wrong shape, to stop being bullied, beaten up or sexually attacked.
Anabolic steroids are very effective in treating conditions such as delayed puberty, some types of impotence, body wasting in patients with AIDS, and other diseases that occur when the body produces abnormally low amounts of testosterone. However, the doses prescribed to treat these medical conditions are 10 to 100 times lower than the doses that are abused for performance enhancement usually by some athletes, nightclub bouncers and others interested in beefing-up their muscles.
Why are anabolic steroids addictive?
By enhancing certain types of performance or appearance anabolic steroid abuse is increasing in adolescents and most rapidly among females. Abuse of anabolic steroids differs from the abuse of other illegal drugs because the initial use of anabolic steroids is not driven by the immediate euphoria that accompanies most drugs of abuse, such as cocaine, heroin, alcohol and marijuana, but by the desire of the abuser to change their appearance and performance, characteristics of great importance to adolescents and young adults.
Route of administration
They can be taken orally (by mouth) as tablets or capsules (Anadrol® [oxymetholone], Oxandrin® [oxandrolone], Dianabol® [methandrostenolone], Winstrol® [stanozolol], and others), by injection into muscles (Deca-Durabolin® [nandrolone decanoate], Durabolin® [nandrolone phenpropionate], Depo-Testosterone® [testosterone cypionate], Equipoise® [boldenone undecylenate], and others) or by ointment preparations rubbed into the skin and are often taken together with drinks rich in protein – the building blocks of muscle. Health food supplements such as dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and androsterone (street name Andro) are not anabolic steroids.
Enough is never enough
Anabolic steroids are legally available only on prescription and for the illegal market are manufactured in illegal laboratories (poor quality), smuggled in from other countries or stolen from hospitals and pharmacies. One of the hallmarks of addiction is an inability to control drug intake and anabolic steroid abuse is no exception to this. Abusers use two ways of maximizing the effect of the drug on muscle growth – stacking and pyramiding. Both can cause very high levels of steroids to accumulate quickly in the body resulting in acute behavioural and psychiatric problems such as the controlled rage or “steroid rush” described by Brevik.
Stack ‘em high
Stacking is the term used when abusers take two or more anabolic steroids together, mixing oral and/or injectable types, sometimes adding drugs such as stimulants (caffeine, nicotine) or painkillers (codeine, morphine, heroin, diazepam). Stacking is thought to produce a greater effect on muscle size than could be obtained by simply increasing the dose of a single drug.
The ultimate pyramid scheme
In a separate procedure called pyramiding at the beginning of a cycle, the abuser starts with low doses of the stacked substances – gradually increasing the doses for 6 to 12 weeks. In the second half of the cycle, the doses are slowly decreased to zero. This is followed by a second cycle during which the person continues to train, but without drugs. Abusers believe that pyramiding allows the body time to adjust to the high doses, and the drug-free cycle allows time for the body’s natural hormonal system to recover.
Inside the enraged brain of Anders Baring Brevik
Brevik carefully planned his terrible crime suggesting that while he took care of his physical body and noticed the interest females took in his appearance he abused anabolic steroids probably for the psychological effects – to fuel his jealousy and irritability with Islam and liberal European politicians, and for the controlled rage or “steroid rush” required in the midst of his attack. Individuals who abuse steroids can experience prolonged withdrawal symptoms (up to one year), the most dangerous of which is depression, because it sometimes leads to suicide attempts. So it’s no surprise that Brevik has been put on suicide watch and will be for some time to come.
Life is not just about winning
A key lesson to be taken from this appalling tragedy is the importance of encouraging youths to avoid anabolic steroid abuse. However, most adolescents already know that anabolic steroids build muscles and can increase athletic prowess and a failure to acknowledge these potential benefits creates a credibility problem and can actually make youths more likely to try the drugs. Young people need to see the benefits of working with what nature has provided – such as the importance of proper nutrition and exercise and other techniques for improving performance – and not “cheat” by using steroids and thereby exposing themselves to the negative side-effects associated with these drugs. Participating in sports offers many benefits, but young people and adults shouldn’t take unnecessary health risks in an effort to win. By giving a balanced picture of what these drugs can do for you and to you I hope that this blog post will help in those prevention and education efforts by reaching young people, their parents, and others who may think that anabolic steroids are a harmless way to ‘bulk up’ or achieve athletic goals.
What can we learn from the actions of Anders Baring Brevik?
Probably the most important lesson to be taken from this appalling tragedy is the realization that the stresses of life and how we manage them IS the difference between life and death. We also need to support research that increases our understanding of the impact of steroid abuse and improve our ability to prevent abuse of these drugs, but also promote other healthy behaviours and attitudes. I look forward to developing this theme in greater detail including drug-free tips on how to manage anger and stress in future posts, but in the meantime, my deepest sympathy goes to the victims’ loved ones and to all the people of Norway at this difficult time.
- Plasticity in anterior hypothalamic vasopressin correlates with aggression during anabolic-androgenic steroid withdrawal in hamsters. Grimes, Jill M.; Ricci, Lesley A.; Melloni, Richard H., Jr. Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol 120(1), Feb 2006, 115-124. doi: 10.1037/0735-7044.120.1.115
For those interested in the topic of steroid abuse more information can be found at:
How to make good decisions
The cognitive subconscious, otherwise known as the “felt sense” or gut feeling, is activated when strategizing decisions. Watch as Daniel Goleman talks about brain activity and good decision-making in this short video.
Weekly Round-Up
Transcranial magnetic stimulation can minimize forgetfulness
Memory failure is a common occurrence yet scientists have not reached a consensus as to how it happens. However, according to a new study at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is able to minimize forgetfulness by disrupting targeted brain regions as they compete between memories.
A new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, finds changes in brain activity after only five weeks of meditation training.
In an ongoing quest to map the brain, scientists have determined how the brain works to understand others. According to a new study, the brain generates empathy in one manner for those who differ physically and in another method for those who are similar. In a paper published online by Cerebral Cortex, researcher Dr Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, suggests empathy for someone to whom you can directly relate — (for example, because they are experiencing pain in a limb that you possess) — is mostly generated by the intuitive, sensory-motor parts of the brain. However, empathy for someone to whom you cannot directly relate relies more on the rationalizing part of the brain.
The brain holds on to false facts, even after they have been retracted according to a report in Scientific American.
Psychologists have found that thought patterns used to recall the past and imagine the future are strikingly similar. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the brain at work, they have observed the same regions activated in a similar pattern whenever a person remembers an event from the past or imagines himself in a future situation. This challenges long-standing beliefs that thoughts about the future develop exclusively in the frontal lobe.
Many dementia patients being prescribed antipsychotic drugs could be better treated with simple painkillers, say researchers from Kings College, London, and Norway.
Brain damage can cause significant changes in behaviour, such as loss of cognitive skills, but also reveals much about how the nervous system deals with consciousness. New findings reported in the July 2011 issue of Cortex demonstrate how the unconscious brain continues to process information even when the conscious brain is incapacitated.
Years after a single traumatic brain injury (TBI), survivors still show changes in their brains. In a new study, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggest that Alzheimer’s disease-like neurodegeneration may be initiated or accelerated following a single traumatic brain injury, even in young adults.
This is your brain on art
Andy Warhol for Neuroscientists. Image by Valerie van Mulukom
This morning I spent some time looking through the winners of the first annual Brain-Art Competition, a competition designed to “recognize the beauty and creativity of artistic renderings emerging from the neuroimaging community”. This competition aims to recognize the artistic creativity of our community that often goes unappreciated in the publication process.
There are some incredibly visually striking images and you can view an online gallery of these here.
Is the search for the cause of autism a hall of mirrors?
The ‘broken mirror’ theory is a popular theory in autism research but it seems that all is not as it appears as a high-profile paper in Neuron reports that people with autism do not have trouble understanding others’ actions or intentions or even imitating those actions1.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Mirror neurons were discovered by neuroscientists in the 90’s while recording the activity of nerve cells or neurons in the brains of monkeys where it was noticed that certain neurons remain silent when the monkeys observe other monkeys performing the same action2 – hence the name mirror neuron.
Scientists have extended this finding in the human brain to show that nerve activity in mirror neurons also remain silent when observing another person performing an action and/or expressing an emotion3 and this silence is not observed in people with autism – hence the ‘broken mirror’ theory of autism.
Getting it “write”
However in a 2007 study 25 children with autism were compared with non-autistic ‘controls’ on several goal-directed imitation (mirror) tasks shown to activate regions of the brain believed to contain mirror neurons4. In one experiment, the children sat at a table and were asked to copy an adult as she touched a pattern of dots on the tabletop. The study showed that normal healthy children make typical errors on this task – for instance copying the adult’s goal but using the wrong hand. The children with autism made exactly the same error, meaning that they selectively imitate the goal of the action and both groups show the same pattern of brain activity in brain regions believed to contain mirror neurons. These findings suggest that there is nothing wrong with basic mirror systems in people with autism.
Hall of mirrors
Part of the problem may be that the ‘broken mirror’ theory relies on several unsupported assumptions: that the mirror system is responsible for understanding goals and imitation, that goal understanding and imitation are abnormal in autism, and that these deficits cause the social difficulties seen in autism.
It’s all about connections
One possible explanation is that the mirror neuron system itself could be normal in autism, but its projections, or the brain regions it is projecting to, could be abnormal instead. Also, the mixed findings could be due to the broad spread of the autism spectrum disorders.
References:
Weekly Round Up
All in the mind: Repressing bad memories for long enough can lead to us forgetting them completely, researchers claim
Fear burns memories into our brain, according to new research by University of California, Berkeley and if those memories are causing you distress, a team of researchers from Lund University in Sweden may have the answer. People can train their minds to erase embarrassing moments from their mind, according to their research. Scientists used EEG scans to monitor the parts of the brain that became active when volunteers actively tried to forget something. They were also able to pinpoint the exact moment a memory is ‘forgotten’, and claim that long-term suppression of a memory is a sure-fire way of permanently erasing it. The researchers say that mastering the technique could be useful for people who suffer from depression or post traumatic stress disorder, where constantly dwelling on upsetting or traumatic memories has a devastating effect on mental health.
And on the subject of PTSD, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, are looking into the link between post-traumatic stress disorder and shrinkage of the hippocampus structure in the brain. (The hippocampus, which is Greek for “seahorse,” is a paired structure tucked inside each temporal lobe and shaped like a pair of seahorses, thence its name).
When we find something funny, our brains as well as our faces “light up” and the funnier we find a joke, the more activity is seen in “reward centres” – specific neurons which create feelings of pleasure, recent research shows.
Another region of the brain which also ‘lights up’ is in the medial orbito-frontal cortex when we experience beauty in a piece of art or a musical excerpt, according to new research funded by the Wellcome Trust. The study, published July 6 in the open access journal PLoS One, suggests that the one characteristic that all works of art, whatever their nature, have in common is that they lead to activity in that same region of the brain, and goes some way to supporting the belief that beauty does indeed lie in the beholder.
Your brain and the art of confusion
It’s good that the brain gets some airtime every now and then and so it was last Thursday when I was a guest on the Limerick Today morning radio with Joe Nash. The topic was confusion and what we can do about it. The discussion during the show, ranged from confusion to the role of the brain in sleep, dreams, memories, the subconscious and the practice of mindfulness. I particularly enjoyed being able to respond to callers and their questions.
How to focus on being focussed
One thing became clear to me over the course of the show – the lack of awareness of mindfulness mediation as a drug free way to increase concentration. As a neuroscientist and teacher I have a keen interest in this area. During the show I mentioned to listeners that meditation exercises can be accessed for free on the internet. Click below for one of the best sources of free online meditations that I have found.
http://www.themeditationpodcast.com/index.html
These exercises are a great way of sharpening your focus. They require little time and have no nasty side-effects. Try it! Your brain will thank you later.
Click here to hear a podcast of the show.
Weekly Round Up
Pathways within the brain can be strengthened by reading and language exposure
Recent research shows that reading boosts brain pathways and can actually affect understanding in nearly all school subjects – a great reason to encourage the reading habit in your children.
Scientists at the University of Michigan Health System have demonstrated how memory circuits in the brain refine themselves in a living organism through two distinct types of competition between cells. Their results, published in Neuron, mark a step forward in the search for the causes of neurological disorders associated with abnormal brain circuits, such as Alzheimer’s disease, autism and schizophrenia.
The left and right halves of the brain have separate stores for working memory, the information we actively keep in mind, suggests a study published online yesterday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Over time, and with enough Internet usage, the structure of our brains can actually physically change, according to a new study.
Bringing the real world into the brain scanner, researchers at The University of Western Ontario from The Centre for Brain and Mind can now determine the action a person was planning, mere moments before that action is actually executed.
And finally good news at last for coffee addicts.For years we’ve been told that caffeinated coffee was bad for us. It’s unhealthy and addictive, doctors warned. But as vindication for all who stuck by their energizing elixir, a new study published early online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, shows that guzzling caffeinated coffee may actually be good for our brains. In fact, it may help keep Alzheimer’s at bay. So enjoy that cuppa joe!
inside-the-brain.com 