Empathy

The article on empathy discusses how emotional empathy is developmental as well as evolutionary. Empathy ranges from feelings of concern for other people, experiencing emotions that match another individual, knowing what the other is thinking or feeling, and anything along the lines of having an understanding of the other individual’s feelings. The article discusses how humans are special in that they can feel empathetic concern for a wide range of others in need. Such as, donating money to the poor, helping out starving children in Africa, sending money or supplying donations to shelter’s providing for the needy. The article also states that those who are more securely attached to their mothers and are provided with care and nurture, will grow to be more empathetic to others; not only to their close relationship partners but also to non intimate people, whereas individuals who were evaluated as avoidant are less likely to forgive, and their relationship is mediated by lack of empathy. I can surely say that I have a great amount of empathy for others. When a friend is in need I am always there to help, I donate to the poor and always took part in food drives held at school. So I can definitely classify myself as someone who grew up to be securely attached and was provided with proper care and nature through my loving parents. The article continues to discuss various studies that have been done to test certain areas of the brain that are activated during certain situations of nurturing babies. There has been evidence which supports parental care to be addictive and includes elements of both dopamine and encephalin signaling, which are activations of the reward pathways. The article focuses on the growth of empathy in humans as we age and how it is a predisposed trait in us all.

empathy

The paper on Phylogenic and ontogenetic perspectives on empathy goes into depth about how the emotion empathy is developmental and evolutionary. Bringing together neuroevolutionary with developmental perspectives to find out how the mechanics come together when dealing with emotions. Empathy is an emotional state or condition that comes as a response for a given situation. Basically, an emotional response. This scientists say, comes, as empathy is an adapted function. This ability drives what humans do, as it is a response mechanism. For instance, if we see a friend crying, or initial response is to help them cope, that is to be empathetic and caring. Without realizing it. Just as mammals develop parenting behavior, they also develop emotions such as separation, pain, love distress etc. those emotions we form arbitrarily. We continue to have kept these emotions as they have rewards. Parental nurturing has its rewards says the article in which parents seek out thus creating a cycle of empathy where care is shown and happiness and love is rewarded.

Infants use attachment as a form of survival. This is another trait humans are biologically predisposed to. Studies show the more attached an infant is, the more empathetic he or she will be towards others. Whereas children who are not exposed to this type of care can result in sociemotional difficulties.

This essay goes over how empathy is a predisposed trait humans are exposed to. This essay is interesting in that, it suggests that if they can figure out the neurobiological underpinnings of sociemotional difficulties they can try to find interventions. I did not realize how many ties empathy had as far as development is concerned. 

Hakuna Matata

Worrying is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it keeps us in check; propels us to work harder and more efficiently. On the other hand, it limits us, clouding our rationale with irrational thoughts and feelings. It is only human to worry, but when we look at “worrying” from a practical perspective, our brains do a measly job of analyzing the risks and benefits of our actions. David Ropeik, an instructor and the Harvard Extension School, adequately states, “our brains are wired to worry first and think second.” If you have ever experienced a mild panic attack, you know this is true. It is easy to frantically worry about something once your brain has been triggered to do so. But only after your heart rate relaxes, do you realize that you must take some kind of action to solve your problems. NYU neuroscientist, Joseph LeDoux describes that anatomically, “connections from the emotional systems to the cognitive systems are stronger than connections from the cognitive systems to the emotional systems.” This is the connection between the limbic system and the cortex. Thus, our emotions tend to control our thinking, but with a little practice and a lot of will power, the roles can be reversed.

But from where do these irrational fears stem? According to Albert Ellis’ theory, emotion follows an A-B-C model. First occurs an activating event (A), which can either be a small or large occurrence. Then, the event triggers a certain belief (B), usually irrational, which lastly leads to (C), a consequent emotion, in this case, worriedness. So, the solution to worrying less is essentially, thinking more. For more extreme cases, however, cognitive-behavior therapy seems to do wonders.  If the neural circuits to the cortex are sped up or strengthened, the brain can actually be “re-wired” to “change our feelings before they impair our behavior.” In fact, Patricia Riberio Porto and her team of neuroscientists concluded that cognitive-behavioral therapy can actually change the neural network involved in the regulation of anxiety. The goal of this therapy is to change the way your brain processes information and in effect, change the A-B-C flow of an emotional response.

There are a few steps involved in tuning down the brain’s worry center. First, you must examine your irrational beliefs. In order to disconnect the trigger from the response, you must identify the belief that causes you to worry in the first place. Usually, worry stems from a fear that something is not going according to plan or expectations for yourself are not being met. Once these fears are identified, it is easier to calm your instinctual response of “freaking out”. In addition to this, you must talk your way through your feelings. After identifying the irrational belief, you must convince your brain that there is no reason to feel this way. Once that is achieved, it is must easier to live the life Timon and Pumbaa preached. Just say “Hakuna matata!”

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201210/turn-down-your-brain-s-worry-center

The LSD Brain

Psychoactive drugs are known for their profound changes in the visual world, colors that produce sound or taste and the loss of self. These "trips" cause people to enter into the a world all there own. When asked to recall a "trip" users will tell a tale of mythical creatures and flying object, basically, what seems like an alternate reality. The common belief was that LSD increased brain activity in certain regions, but the opposite is now evident.

Psychedelic drugs became widely popular in the 1960s counterculture. Similarities between reports of LSD users and psychosis led researchers to consider that serotonin might help mediate the experience. Scientists now are quite certain that the subjective and behavioral effects of psychedelics are produced by the arousal of certain serotonin receptors. Due to the classification of being a controlled substance, psychedelic researched ceased. It was not until the idea that psychedelics could be implemented into treatments of certain illnesses that research started up again.

With the advent of PET scans, researchers were able to see where psychedelic drugs acted on the brain. LSD users showed increased activation in the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). This finding corresponds with expectations that the "trips" one experiences while on LSD is an increase in brain activity. A new study done by David Nutt at Imperial College London is uprooting these notions.

In his study, he gave patients either a placebo or an injection of LSD and put them under an fMRI to see what goes on in the brain during a "trip." His results should that brain activity was widely reduced. Blood flow was reduced in regions of the thalamus, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the ACC and the posterior cingulate cortex. Also, the more activity was reduced in the mPFC and ACC, the more the subjects felt the effects of LSD. The scans showed no increase anywhere in the brain. The mind expanding effect of psychedelic drugs is produced by turning the dial down on brain activity.

The ACC and parts of the mPFC inhibits the limbic system and other structures. Reduction in response of the ACC and mPFC would allow the limbic system, which processes emotion and perhaps sensory cortices, increase its role. These findings are still speculation because the tests need to be replicated in other labs and the discrepancies of the earlier PET findings need to be explained. What is most interesting in these findings is that the regions that show the most reduction are also the most heavily interconnected in the brain. This means that the brain becomes more fragmented when on psychedelic drugs, this could account for some of the dissociative aspects of acid trips.


Source:
Christof Koch. (2012.) This is Your Brain on Drugs. Scientific American Mind, May/June 2012, p.18-19.

Deadly Sin Gluttony Demystified

       With obesity rates rising in the United States, part of the way people think about obesity is that some individuals just have a taste for food more than others which may lead to a stigma applied to certain parts of the population. It is implied in the article “Simply Irresistible: Scientists Trace Gluttony’s Path in the Brain” that this isn’t exactly the case. Instead, neuroscientists at the University of Michigan have proposed that obese people and addicts have stronger opioid activation of the neostriatum when viewing pictures of food or favorite drug imaged by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The neostriatum in humans is located above the well-known reward centers of the ventral striatum and nucleus accumbens. When the neostriatum is activated, an increase level of the neurotransmitter enkephalin emerges. 

To test the theory of whether or not this motor area is responsible for reward activation, tests were conducted with rats by injecting them with a synthetic opioid directly to their neostraitum. In the control group, rats ate about 10 M&Ms in 20 minutes then were satiated and stopped eating. The experimental group that received the opioid injections continued eating after 17 M&Ms and did not show signs of ceasing and had to be forcibly removed from the feeding.  Results of these rats equate to a 150 pound person eating 6 pounds of chocolate within an hour, or the 6 boxes of double stuffed Oreos (in oz). Evidence that also suggest that reward seeking regulation is linked to the neostraitum includes that other chemicals injected in the neostraitum, and artificial opioid and other chemicals injected elsewhere had smaller correlations.

       If opioid activation doesn’t surprise you, a finding about taste preference might. In addition to the injection of a synthetic opioiod, a taste preference test was administered to both control and experimental groups. These results showed that the opioid induced rats had no more preference for chocolate. This suggests that the obesity relates to motor compulsion and reward motivation, not simply overeating for the taste. 

       Evolutionary theories suggest why we have an opioid receptors at all within the brain, and Gary Wenk at Ohio State University mentioned that “the brain helps by activating the opiate system as a euphoric reward, counteracting the discomfort of a swelling waist and encouraging us to have one more bite.” In modern society, we lack the need to overeat at every meal, and if anything, fast food corporations exploit this evolutionary desire to eat plentiful, available, fatty foods. Perhaps looking at obesity from the angle of imbalanced motor control may help increase the understanding of the facets of obesity. 

To read more please visit http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=simply-irresistible-overeating

Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks...

Many people are under the impression that as people grow older, their ability to learn decreases. Just like the saying, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” adults themselves may buy into the idea that they cannot pick up new skills. But hope for adult learners comes from the research done by Barbara Strauch of the New York Times, who investigated how adult brains learn differently than developing brains. While adults may not learn as quickly, new growth is still possible with practice and the correct methods. Because adults have more experiences, the networks in their brains are more developed and rigid. But if adults can try to learn new information in ways that challenge their old assumptions, for example by looking at history from multiple points of view, learners can “jiggle their synapses a bit” and form new neural connections.

           

Strauch’s research also shows advantages to how the aging brain works. Because of the wealth of knowledge that comes from a lifetime of learning, adults are better at understanding the bigger picture, identifying patterns, and even spotting solutions to problems more quickly than their younger counterparts. However, it is healthy for adults to shake things up a bit, try to see things from a different angle, and exercise their brains in the process.

More evidence gives hope to adults who wish to be lifelong learners and pick up skills as they age. In his book Guitar Zero, Gary Marcus explains the process through which he was able to learn to play the guitar as a middle-aged man. All he needed was lots of practice time and a method which broke up the skill into small, manageable parts. This gives hope to all those dreamers who wish they could have been Jimmy Hendrix growing up… or at least Bob Dylan.

Experimental data has also been obtained to support the idea that adults can learn too. A study done by Avi Karni and Giuseppe Bertini showed that with practice, performance on perceptual tasks can be improved. It is believed that neural changes can still be made when adults retain new information over long-intervals. In fact the same mechanisms present in early development appear to promote adult skills as well. This experiment showed plasticity in adult brains such as changes in sensory and motor representations that aided in the retention of new skills.

All in all, while aging brains may require more time or different methods to learn new information and skills, teaching these old dogs new tricks is a very real possibility.

Sources: Karni, Avi, and Giuseppe Bertini. "Learning perceptual skills: behavioral probes into adult cortical plasticity." Current Opinion in Neurobiology 7.4 Aug. (1997): 530-35.

Marcus, Gary. Guitar Zero. New York: The Penguin Press, 2012.

Strauch, Barbara. "How to Train the Aging Brain." The New York Times 29 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Oct. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/education/edlife/03adult-t.html?_r=0>.

Alternative approach to Depression

In today's society it is very easy to find a  person trapped in the deep hole that is depression. Currently it is estimated that 1 in 10 adults in the United States alone suffers from clinical depression. With all the financial,emotional and physical factors, it is easy to give in to feelings of hopelessness as well as sadness. The first and most common approach to treat depression is medication, specifically psychotropic drugs. In fact since the 1990s the number of antidepressant drugs has risen from 55.9 million to 154.7 million. However there are several other alternatives to treating depression, medication is not necessarily the only option. For what ever reason many of the different choices out there are often over looked, furthermore, one of the most commonly overlooked ones is psychotherapy.

What exactly is Psychotherapy? It is a set of procedures that helps individuals identify the source of their depression or anxiety, show that the origin of the problem is a product of their own imagination, as it is with most patients, and ultimately help individuals to overcome this obstacle. It provides individuals with the skill they need to move on past their negative feelings and improve self-esteem as well as overall health. Psychotherapy is a relatively new field that has ever increasing and promising results. However this procedure is not for everyone, if you're looking for an immediate or miraculous cure to depression, you won't find it here. A person must also be willing to open up and co-operate with a professional in to make progress in their therapy. In the least, psychotherapy is a much safer way of approaching depression since it does not involve the consumption of drugs that psychiatrists still do not fully know the effects of.

In conclusion, it must be stated and shared with the public that there are several other treatment options no only for depression, but for other mental health disorders. One of those treatments is Psychotherapy, while further research is necessary to provide more concrete results for psychotherapy, it does not hurt to give it a shot. So next time you think you need a prescription to fix your illness, consider your other alternatives.

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2012/10/psychotherapy-depression.aspx