Brains need love too

I recently saw the new ad campaign from the institute where I work (the Douglas Institute), ‘Brains need love too’. Seeing as the campaign touches on brain awareness-related topics (including the brain's involvement in psychiatric illness), as well as today being Valentine’s Day, I thought it deserved sharing. The video is extremely open-ended, with the actual message of the campaign open to the interpretation of the viewer, at least until they visit the campaign’s web site. Here are the initial interpretations I took away from it:

- Psychiatric conditions are neurobiologically based, as implied with the opening shots of brains labelled by psychiatric diagnosis. I’m assuming the reasoning behind this is that it has traditionally been believed that stigma against mental illness could be ameliorated in the general public if it was more widely known that mental illness is fundamentally due to the structure and function of the brain itself, as opposed to any personal weakness of afflicted persons themselves. Although it’s noble to attempt to combat stigma by replacing popular misconceptions with fact, however, recent studies showing that stigma against mental illness persists even in the face of improvement of the public’s understanding of the origins of mental illness sadly cast doubt on the effectiveness of this particular strategy.

- People are more than their labels, another anti-stigma message. Outside of its labelled container, the brain reveals it’s capable of experiencing life just like anyone else.

- Take care of your brain, not meant as an anti-stigma message but more of a suggestion that all of our brains, well, ‘need love too’. Speaking of which, Brain Awareness Week is coming up in the near future, so get involved if you need some spring brain-awareness-lovin’. I’m assuming the figurative message here is to be aware that your brain needs care, if not by skateboarding and psychedelic brain-tossing, then by nutrition, exercise, mental stimulation, paying attention to your mental and emotional functioning, and not-sniffing-glue-or-opening-doors-with-your-head-or-something. They’re pretty vague on this one.

Overall, it’s charming and cute, and I like the bold approach of using real (albeit calf) brains up-close and bloody to show that something that may seem disquieting to us (in this case, a bloody brain) is capable of experiencing cognition, emotions and the world around us. Similarly, although mental illness can be disquieting to those with a stigma against it, psychiatric patients are fully capable of these same experiences. Also, regarding the brain images, I feel obligated to point out that we’re talking about something we’ve all got, which is processing this sentence right now within your own head, and while you don’t necessarily have to realize how cool that is, you should at least try to get over your squeamishness over the look of your own brain. It is, after all, what ‘you’ really look like.

It’s a bit difficult to determine the overarching message of the campaign from the 62-second ad alone; it does seem to be necessary to go to the campaign website for clarification, where there’s a slightly vague description urging people to take care of their brains and, more usefully, a list of diverse resources for information on the brain as well as psychiatric disorders and treatment. However, despite this it’s a well-produced and genuinely endearing ad. So go love your brain.

-Ian Mahar

(Adapted from a post previously appearing here)

New neurons and a new therapeutic target

The recent discovery that the human brain produces new neurons throughout life has led us to re-evaluate how we think about our brains and their plasticity, as well as examine potential new targets for psychiatric treatment.

In the narrow space between your ears, a roughly three-pound lump of tissue (composed mostly of water) contains everything that makes you who you are. Your brain is responsible for all of your memories, emotions, actions and aspirations. The human brain is also the source of all of our joy and misery, and understanding its workings offers hope for the amelioration of psychiatric suffering and, possibly, greater potential for happiness and enjoyment of life. However, one difficulty in dealing with the complexity of psychiatric disorders is that frequently multiple theories arise to help explain the origin or cause of any particular condition. 

Depression is one example of this; there are many hypotheses attempting to explain this debilitating condition that affects more than 120 million people worldwide. One of the most widely-known theories is the 'monoaminergic theory' of depression, which focuses on neurotransmitters (chemicals used by neurons for communication) like serotonin. However, in this article I will try to give a brief review of a more recent theory, the 'neurogenic theory' of depression.

Up until relatively recently, it was believed that the brain stopped producing new neurons after development; as the famous neuroscientist Santiago Ramon y Cajal said around a century ago, "In the adult centers, the nerve paths are something fixed, and immutable: everything may die, nothing may be regenerated". However, the creation of new neurons in the mature brain, a process known as 'adult neurogenesis', was confirmed relatively recently in humans.

But there are some mysterious aspects to this phenomenon. For one thing, there initially seems to be only two clearly neurogenic areas in the brain; the olfactory bulb, and the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. There's some early evidence to suggest other parts of the brain may be neurogenic as well, but even in these areas, the number of new cells produced seems to be limited at best. So this raises some questions; why just these few areas in particular, and not others? And what is the function of these new cells?

Although adult neurogenesis is still a relatively new discovery, it's become something of a hot topic in neuroscience, so we have some preliminary answers to the questions I just posed. For one thing, these new neurons seem to have special properties, in that immature neurons seem more 'plastic' or flexible in their firing responses than other cells. We also have some hints at their function, particularly with hippocampal neurogenesis; it's been shown to be involved in learning and memory and, most importantly for this entry, has been associated with emotional functioning.

This brings us back to the neurogenic theory of depression, an idea that essentially states that if the rate of production of these new 'special' neurons decreases, depressive symptoms may appear or be increased in severity, whereas increases in the rate of adult hippocampal neurogenesis can reduce the severity or appearance of depressive symptoms. Although this idea is only a few years old, there's some evidence supporting it. For one thing, factors that seem to make depression worse, such as stress, also decrease hippocampal neurogenesis, and factors that have been shown to improve depressive symptoms, such as antidepressant drugs and electroconvulsive treatment, also increase hippocampal neurogenesis. Human depressed patients also show decreased volume of the hippocampus. In addition, the delay between starting antidepressant medication and the amelioration of depressive symptoms, roughly four to six weeks, closely mirrors the time necessary for newly-proliferated cells spurred by this medicine to develop into functional neurons. And finally, experiments using animal models have shown that factors that increase neurogenesis also induce antidepressant behaviour.

So the neurogenic theory of depression, although it's still a relatively new idea, has the potential to offer exciting insight into depression and other psychiatric conditions, including treatment applications; if increasing the rate of neurogenesis can improve depression and depressive symptoms, then we can potentially develop new medications and treatments aimed specifically at increasing adult neurogenesis.

It's important to keep in mind that a lot of the theories scientists have developed concerning psychiatric illness are still preliminary, and a lot of important research is still needed before we can provide the definitive answers patients and their families are desperate to hear. However, the silver lining is that we're constantly getting closer to finding those answers, and offering hope to those searching for it.

- Ian Mahar

[Adapted from an article initially published here]