Chronic pain affecting the hippocampus

Chronic pain is any pain that persists. Common chronic pains are lower back pains and headaches. In this study, it was noted that anxiety, troubled memory, and depression often are present in people with chronic pains. Brain scans were used on such patients and they noticed that they all had a smaller hippocampus as opposed to a healthy person. Having a small hippocampus is a likely cause as to why those people were having memory and anxiety problems since the hippocampus controls learning, memory, and emotional processing. Also, when they were experimenting on mice they found that they weren't making any new neurons. The hippocampus is one of the structures within the brain where new neurons can form.

I found this article to be really interesting since I personally have chronic pains, and a lot of people will come across having a chronic pain or two in their lives. So I wonder how this will affect me now, and even further into my future. 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-chronic-pain-affects-memory-mood

^^found on reddit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=2MKNsI5CWoU&NR=1
I found this video while on youtube tonight. It is very interesting. It is about a little girl who had the right side of her brain removed.  She had a rare disorder that caused misfiring in the right hemisphere of her brain. This lead to severe and constant seizures. The  parents claimed that her quality of life was so horrible that the benefits outweighed the risks in this surgery. I find this to be a truly amazing example of plasticity. As we know, our right brain controls the left side of our bodies. She awoke completely paralyzed on her left side and WALKED out of the hospital four weeks later. I'd love to see what you guys think about her amazing story.

EEG Testing to Determine Learning

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120919103144.htm

This article discusses a study conducted that used EEG to determine how well a subject absorbed material and learned. The study had subjects study a list of words and used EEG to determine which subjects would be able to remember the most words on the list. The amount of brain waves conducted while the subject was studying would determine how much the subject would actually remember. The researcher was able to predict that 5 people out of the 23 would perform the best (and her prediction was correct). The subjects that the researcher said would perform the highest (by using their EEG information) remembered 72% of the words studied instead of the 45% that everyone else remembered. She also conducted another study to determine if different types of memory training would have an effect on memory performance and brain activity, but these results are still being analyzed.

If this is actually an accurate way of determining someone's ability to effectively learn material, I could see this being extremely beneficial in an educational setting. Although it would be very costly, schools could use these tests on students who constantly perform below standard. The tests could help teachers figure out the best way to teach each student in a way that the student would effectively learn the classroom material. It would be even better if these tests could be ran on all students in the classroom to determine the most effective teaching strategies for the whole class. As an undergrad on the pre-education track, I find this extremely interesting.

Do you think that this is a valid argument? Is it possible that in the future teachers could use these findings to better their ability to teach their students? Or does all of this seem to be too advanced to ever be utilized in schools? Would you ever agree to being a subject of one of these tests and determining what your perfect learning strategy is?

Origins of The Left and Right Brain

http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v301/n1/full/scientificamerican0709-60.html

This article basically addresses the evolutionary hypothesis of how the brain became divided in function. The hypothesis states that left hemisphere of the brain evolved to control behaviors associated with repeated patterns and the right hemisphere evolved to control emotional, social, and unexpected stimuli.
The article claims that the left hemisphere evolved to control the right side of the body due to hunting preferences in prehistoric animals. The animals mainly attacked prey from the right side of the body using the right side of the face (mouth and eye) to detect prey. This could be an explanation of why so many people are right-handed.
The right hemisphere of the brain evolved to deal with every other stimuli the ancient animal received. Most of the stimuli caused an emotional response. The theory claims that most animals watched predators with the left eye mainly and could also detect details of related species and distinguish between friend or foe.
Scientist conducted a research to test the specializations of the left and right hemisphere. A letter "H" made by many small letter "A's" was to be recognized by people with different brain injuries. People with damage to the left hemisphere could only recognize the letter "H" without the small A's. People with damage to the right hemisphere could only recognize the small letter A's.









Patrick Ryan

Autism and Schizphrenia

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/249454.php

The article addresses the topic of genetic mutations causing both autism and schizophrenia. Two  defective genes were identified :EPHB2 and CUL3.  what is unsusal about this article is that are looking at defects in the father's genes. The study yielded results showing that after 29 men were more likely to produce  genetic abnormalities. "For every extra year in the father's age, there was a two-mutation per year rise in offspring". I am really interested in what everyone thinks? I haven't  heard of many studies showing genetic mutations caused by the male genomes. I'd love to read other articles on similar studies

Re-Runs of Favorite TV Shows May Have Positive Effect.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2199790/How-watching-reruns-favourite-TV-shows-mental-boost.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

This article claims that watching re-runs of favorite television shows can have a positive effect on people's self control and will power. The article explains that several research studies have results that support this theory. Watching re-runs of favorite television shows requires very little cognition and effort. Watching a new episode or television show takes more energy than one that you may already know every actor's line. The researchers explained that people have limited mental resources and that watching a familiar television show can help restore them because you are not using very much effort and yet still enjoying it.

I cannot say that my personal experience with watching familiar television shows has actually increased my will power and self control. It seems to me that sitting down to watch old television show re-runs would be distracting and cause people to want to watch more television, therefore putting off over duties and decreasing their self control to work on more important tasks.

What do you guys think? Do you think that watching re-runs helps you to become more motivated or to have more self control when you are concentrating on certain tasks? Would you watch re-runs every night before studying for class if this study was proven to be valid?

Debunk the Junk in your DNA

I Saw this on twitter today: That 98% of human DNA we once labeled 'junk'? Turns out it's not so useless anymore | http://t.co/Wdt37tAp (via @TIMEHealthland) -- TIME.com (@TIME). 

        Our book proposes that 98% of our DNA is essentially useless, but that didn't really sound right to me. Maybe, I thought, geneticists could only determine 2% of DNA's functions. Well it turns out that the junk in our DNA is actually very useful. That 2% they did know about corresponds to the some 21,000 genes humans. The other 80% acts as "switches" or controls for those genes. They turn certain genes on and off at different points in our life, and they may play a critical role in many common disease's who's exact origins are not fully known.

        This has all been made possible by a project called ENCODE, which is the 21st century equivalent to the  Human Genome Project (HGP) (even though the HGP was completed in 2003). So maybe its just the 2010's equivalent to the 1990's HGP. Anyway, geneticists and medical researchers are thrilled at the promises of ENCODE, which aims to give a fully detailed version of how DNA works, which is to say, how humans work, or more generally, how life works, at the most fundamental level. In essence, they want to provide a blueprint that can allow us to understand ourselves and our diseases, and to hopefully make us a healthier people. 

        One thing that was not mentioned in this article was these DNA switches role in aging. It was mentioned that certain genes are activated and deactivated during different points in our lifetime. This raises the question: are we programmed to die? Perhaps as we exit reproductive age, our DNA kills us off, as to reserve resources for the next generation of children and child bearers. This seems that it could be plausible from an evolutionary standpoint. In the past, elders would certainly be a great burden on a resource scarce society; when the survival of the group is at stake, something has to give, and the most dispensable cohort would be those who were less, lets say, reproductively 'ripe'.

       As this branch of genetics matures, I will be watching to see how it fits into what I'll call, in a nod to physicists, the grand unified theory of aging, and how that effects biomedical research relating to degenerative diseases, especially ones dealing with the nervous system. I personally am hoping that we are programmed to age until death, because once geneticists learn how to manipulate DNA will the skill of a computer programmer, we may just be able to program ourselves to live forever.

Targeted Muscle Reinnervation

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=183371 - (this is the article, but you might also want to watch the video I posted below!)

This summer I was fortunate enough to be able to observe a plastic surgery research lab at Johns Hopkins University as well as attend several conferences on different topics within the medical field. In one of the conferences I attended, there was a doctor presenting targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR). Currently the research for TMR is being conducted on arm amputees. There is a team at Johns Hopkins that is working with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago on this project.

Put simply (for an extremely complex revolution) prior to amputating the arm of an arm prosthesis patient, nerves from the upper part of the extremity are taken and are grafted onto the chest of the patient. The goal is to have the nerves that were once from the arm transfer signal to the alternative muscle site on the chest. For this to work the patient must go through extensive therapy with the graft trying to reinnervate connections between the muscle, nerves, and brain. Therapy consists of using an electromyogram (EMG) to decode signals from the brain. Eventually with enough therapy the patient is able to move a prosthetic arm just by thinking about it. The link below is to a video that better describes and shows this process with the first patient to undergo TMR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We9O1CJusAU

I think that TMR is an astounding break through in the medical field. To be able to control a "bionic" arm just by thinking about it is amazing to me, especially since nerve regeneration in a healthy individual is a difficult process for the body. What I also think is astonishing is that the patients still have the same sensations they would feel in a normal arm, you can see this in the video. Although this exact topic isn't much related to psychology as it is to biology, there is to much potential for breakthroughs in psychology with this newly founded brain and nerve control. What more will we be able to accomplish with nerve and brain connections in the future? What about when we know more about the brain, could we eventually be able to essentially "re-wire" people in behavior/thought/function? What if people have brain disorders, will this project be affected differently or even still work?

Bipolar Disorder: Manic Gene is discovered.

http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_manic-gene-in-people-suffering-from-bipolar-disorder-deciphered_1735527

According to the article, researchers from the University of Bonn and the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim found the cause of manic episodes in bipolar disorder. It is called the NCAN gene. In their data, they found a correlation between the gene and the manic symptoms of bipolar disorder. Conversely, it has no correlation with the depressive symptoms. Using animal testing (mice) and lithium, they found a correlation in their behavior with human behavior. 

This research will definitely be beneficial for future projects. Having found the root cause of the disorder, maybe better therapy or medications will be provided to those suffering from the disorder. I remember back in my middle school in Northern Virginia, one of my classmates was actually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. We never really saw much of the symptoms because she was often a happy person. However, sometimes, for days at a time, she would miss school and we would not see her. Hopefully, with research such as this, her disorder will be better treated, and possibly even cured.

How about everyone else? How do you think this would contribute to diagnosing, preventing, or curing the disorder? Do you know anyone that has been diagnosed with the disorder?