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)

"Memory, Aging and Alzheimer's: When forgetting too much becomes a problem"

Although our brains produce new neurons throughout our lives, their overall number peaks in our early twenties and then gradually declines as we age. Certain forms of memory tend to get worse with age as a consequence. Episodic memory in particular is often weaker in the elderly, making it more difficult to remember where a car was parked, or what time a friend was supposed to arrive for dinner. The good news is that other types of memory such as semantic (remembering general facts and concepts) and procedural (remembering how to do something) memories remain robust in most people well into their later years.

Unfortunately this is not the case for people suffering from an increasingly well-known disorder called Alzheimer’s disease, which severely impairs normal memory. Alzheimer’s is the most common example of a spectrum of disorders known as neurodegenerative diseases, all of which cause neurons to die off more rapidly than they would with normal aging. The prevalence of Alzheimer’s increases dramatically with age, rising from just 3% in those aged 65-74 to almost 50% among those 85 years and older.

Currently available treatments tend to focus on minimizing the symptoms of Alzheimer’s by compensating for the loss of neurons. Some of these therapies can be helpful, but scientists have not yet found a ‘cure’ for Alzheimer’s, i.e. a treatment that would actually slow or halt the neuronal loss. This is because it’s still not entirely clear why neurons die in Alzheimer’s, although thousands of laboratories across the world are bringing us closer to the answer every day. We can hope that several of the many promising therapeutic avenues currently under investigation by scientists in Montreal and elsewhere will one day provide an effective means of combating the disease for both present and future generations. (Andrew Greene, McGill University)

All are welcome to join us on Wednesday, February 23rd, at 7:00 pm at La Sala Rossa (4848 boul. St-Laurent, Montreal, QC, H2T 1R6) for an evening of questions and answers, as we discuss memory and aging with world-class experts Andrea Leblanc, Ph.D., Serge Gauthier, M.D., F.R.C.P.C., and Judes Poirier, Ph.D., C.Q. Refreshments will be provided. This is a free event! We hope to see you there!

for more information: http://sfn-montreal.ca/baw/cafe/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=183243215043955

hosted by BAW Montreal as part of our 2011 Brain Awareness Week public events. 

Thank you to our sponsors .

*** Our popular Science Cafés offer the public the opportunity to meet and discuss various topics in Neuroscience in an informal setting. These Cafés feature a Question & Answer with three to four guest panelists who are experts in their fields, snacks and entertainment. Our Cafés are always free thanks to our sponsors. ***

Certiorari emptor; on informal routes of public science education

A recent editorial by Dr. Royce Murray, editor of the journal Analytical Chemistry, has garnered significant attention in its attacks on informal dissemination of scientific information to the general public. Given that public education of science is a relevant topic to this blog, I thought it merited a response here.

The basic premise is that the only trustworthy sources of scientific information that can be given to the general public are peer-reviewed journal articles and a small number of established news sources, the latter of which Dr. Murray correctly admits are faltering. To distill his point further, he doesn't like the rise of scientific blogging.

I readily agree that, "The picture of scientifically grounded innovations feeding progress in science is well established. I firmly believe that this system has served science well and that the scientific literature has provided generally reliable information and vast benefits to society over the centuries to the present and will continue doing so into the future." It's true that this information should reach the public for many reasons, including that it protects the public, reduces stigma and susceptibility to pseudoscience, influences public policy, and fosters a sense of scientific wonder in prospective scientists and non-scientists alike.

However, I reject the premise underlying his statement that, "...editors and reviewers reinforce the meaningfulness of Impact Factors by explicit attention to the reliability of submitted articles; if the Scientific Method has not been adequately followed, then there should be a downwardly adjusted evaluation of impact." This is a misrepresentation of impact factor, the measure of how frequently a journal's articles are cited relative to the number it publishes. Impact factor does not measure the extent to which an article follows the scientific method whatsoever; it is more an index of how novel and important, on average, an article published in a particular journal is likely to be, as assessed by how frequently other scientists refer to it in their own articles. The principles of impact factor, far from applying only to peer-reviewed sources, apply just as accurately to informal sources, in that their quality and novelty determine their audience and are reflected by how frequently they are referred to and discussed.

More importantly, it's false to say that the optimal venue for dissemination of knowledge from scientist to layperson is necessarily a published journal article. Scientific articles are not accessible to the general public, even to those members that actively seek them out; restrictive language and jargon, in tandem with prohibitively high costs for accessing articles, prevent access to anyone aside from university-affiliated experts in the respective fields, which defeats the entire concept of limiting the scientific information available to the public to peer-reviewed articles.

In agreement with Dr. Murray, I'm not a fan of the word 'blogger' or its derivatives, but I fear by his attempted definition that he does not understand the term, in that he assumes their primary motivation is to be "entrepreneurs who sell 'news'". This blatantly overlooks the fact that the vast majority of the population he attempts to describe act not out of personal financial gain but rather out of an altruistic desire to educate, and this is especially true of scientific writers in this medium.

Dr. Murray warns, 'caveat emptor'; let the buyer beware, as communication through informal channels increases the risk of malicious misinformation. I propose an alternate viewpoint. Certiorari emptor; let the consumer of these media be informed. This is the ultimate goal of those who seek to educate regardless of medium.

References:

Murray, R. 2010. Science Blogs and Caveat Emptor. Analytical Chemistry 82: 8755.

- Ian Mahar

(Adapted from an article originally appearing here).