Brain chemistry research

Howard, Pierce J. The Owner s Manual for the Brain Everyday Applications from Mind-Brain Research, 3rd ed. Austin, Tex. Bard Press, 2006. With scientific research as its starting point, this book discusses how the present state of knowledge in brain science can have a practical impact on human lives. A wide variety of topics are discussed, including brain chemistry, the effects of drugs, brain disorders, learning and memory, and much else. 

Researchers find that abuse and violence can alter a child s brain chemistry, placing him or her at risk for various problems, including drug abuse, cognitive disabilities, and mental illness later in life. 

National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) research asserts that children exposed to cocaine prior to birth sustained long-lasting brain changes. Eight years after birth, children exposed to cocaine prior to birth had detectable brain chemistry differences. 

For years, scientists have known that cocaine interferes with the brain s dopamine system. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter—a chemical that passes nerve impulses from one nerve cell to another, and dopamine is associated with movement, emotional response, and the ability to experience pleasure. Research indicates that serotonin transporters are also inactivated with cocaine use. Serotonin is another neurotransmitter, and adequate levels are associated with well-being. Low levels of serotonin in the brain have been linked to depression. Inactivation of dopamine and serotonin transporters leads to receptor over-stimulation and the high. Continued use of cocaine can result in long-term changes in the brain chemistry as receptors decrease in number. These changes can be persistent and even irreversible, and may be responsible for the feeling of depression that lasts long after withdrawal. 

Microdialysis sampling has been applied to numerous tissues, especially the brain since the brain is sensitive to alterations in volume and ionic composition. Ultrafiltration has been primarily used for peripheral tissue sampling from subcutaneous tissue since the removal of fluid from the brain is believed to cause alterations in brain chemistry.2 For basic research use, microdialysis sampling devices are typically called microdialysis probes. For clinical studies, the device is called a microdialysis sampling catheter since in clinical medicine a catheter is defined as a small tube that can be implanted. 

Some researchers believe the reason some abused children develop MPD may have a biological basis. Studies of how brain chemistry affects memory indicate that when an intensely traumatic experience occurs, the brain s neurochemicals may be released in such large amounts they influence the area of the brain responsible for memory to pigeonhole what is remembered into separate compartments. Depending on their individual brain chemistry, some human beings may be better able to disassociate than others. About a third of people with MPD have complex partial seizures of the right temporal lobe of the brain. Some researchers think this form of epilepsy might also affect memory and be yd another cause for the disorder. 

Exercise has so many benefits in combating depression and improving brain chemistry that the following advice—while true—may sound like a cliche Find a form of vigorous movement that appeals to you, practice it three to five times a week for twenty to forty minutes, and watch your mood improve. In fact, there s so much powerful research on the health and mood benefits of exercise that I sometimes wonder why they keep funding more studies If a new drug came on the market that helped depression as much as exercise does, you can believe that patients would be clamoring for their doctors to prescribe it. Yet exercise is free, avail-... 

The goal of our research program in the Nuclear Medicine Division of Johns Hopkins in the late 1970s was to study how brain chemistry is related to mental activity and behavior. Consciousness is analogous to the story in a book, where molecular processes are sentences, and molecules are the words. PET and SPECT let us read the book. 

Many of the 80 million baby boomers born in the United States between 1946 and 1964 have had their lives affected by drugs, including Ritalin, Prozac, lipton, and Elvira. We need better understanding of the biochemistry of these drugs and their effects on behavior. Well-planned, ethical research relating brain chemistry and behavior can be carried out in the criminal justice system, although some daim that prisoners can never give truly informed consent to such research. 

The brain chemistry of happiness can now be a focus of biological research, just as it has become a part of economic theory, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry. Jeremy Bentham defined happiness in terms of utility, i.e., the sum of good emotions minus the bad. Human beings strive by their actions to increase pleasure and avoid pain. We can measure and correlate objective measurements of brain chemical processes with the emotions of pleasure, fear, and pain, and perhaps modify the undesirable brain chemistry when it is not helpful. Simple, probe radiation detectors can be used in many of these studies. 

The story of the effect of diet on brain transmitters is still incomplete, but it is an area of exciting research where sound scientific protocol htis been followed. Important discoveries ahead may help in understanding the relationship between diet, brain chemistry, and behavior. 

If the chemical-imbalance theory is wrong, and if depression is not a brain disease, how is it produced and how can it be prevented and treated One way to look for clues is to examine the process by which we were misled into the realm of chemistry. There is a culprit hiding in the history of the chemical-imbalance theory - a culprit that is guilty of leading doctors and patients astray over and over again in the history of medicine. The culprit is the placebo effect, and its darker twin, the nocebo effect. Depressed people got better when given MAO and reuptake inhibitors as antidepressants, and this led researchers to conclude that depression must be caused by a chemical deficiency. But much (if not all) of that improvement turns out to be a placebo effect. So to understand depression and how it might be treated effectively, we need to examine the placebo effect more carefully. That is the topic of the next two chapters. 

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