neuro news
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The latest in cutting-edge neuroscience research |
New Study Now Demonstrates that Serotonin
May NOT Be the Culprit in Depression as Once Assumed!
Fascinating new study published in the August 2014 edition of ACS Chemical Neuroscience (Angoa-Perez & Kane, et al.) has challenged the long-held belief that the neurochemical serotonin is the main factor that causes depression. Although this has actually been challenged by a plethora of researchers in the field over the years, it was not until the popularity of Prozac and the issuance or should I say onslaught of the SSRI crush that the notion of serotonin being the main culprit in depression has solidified. Ironically, there had been very little if any true evidence to have made such a robust claim in the first place.
In a nicely condensed (and easy to digest) synopsis of this research, Medical News Today (MNT)provides a well-done timeline of depression research into the role of serotonin and it's quite an absorbing read. The MNT provides the following interesting quote... Dr. Joseph Coyle, a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, is quoted as saying: 'Chemical imbalance is sort of last-century thinking. It's much more complicated than that. It's really an outmoded way of thinking.'.
To read the condensed MNT article, click here... http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/281830.php
To read the original research article, click here... http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cn500096g
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A Brand New Take on Disease and
Your Stressed-Out Amygdala:
That minuscule almond-shaped object embedded deep within the sulci (those wrinkled-up hamburger-looking folds)
of the temporal lobe is part of what we refer to as the brain's Limbic System. The amygdala (Greek for 'almond') is responsible for an enormously important part of what makes us human and, conversely, what can make us mentally ill.
The amygdala plays a key role in fear and negative emotions and is the main culprit in a litany of issues related to
childhood trauma and PTSD not to mention depression and a host of stress-related conditions and illnesses.
It has been a fairly long-standing bit of scientific wisdom that has attributed these stress-related ailments to either inherited traits, traumatic exposure, or some combination thereof. For the first time, a new study is challenging this
theory in a rather unexpected finding. The study just published in Nature Neuroscience by investigators Nikolova and
Koenen, et al., from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, is suggesting that a change in genes over the course of time is actually responsible.
By studying fMRI imaging, saliva and blood testing, and post-mortem examination of pertinent brain tissue, the researchers were able to suggest that subtle changes at the level of the gene can produce the
dramatic reactions and subsequent pathology that may result. It is as if the genes albeit slight change over the course of time is enough to alter the path that the brain has been accustomed to, and that these changes throw the otherwise smooth and expected flow of neurochemical action into a type of brain tail-spin. This disruptive neural change is enough to cause an unexpected susceptibility in the brains mechanistic flow, which is really how we define 'stress' in the first place.
You can read more about it here... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140804100601.htm.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
May NOT Be the Culprit in Depression as Once Assumed!
Fascinating new study published in the August 2014 edition of ACS Chemical Neuroscience (Angoa-Perez & Kane, et al.) has challenged the long-held belief that the neurochemical serotonin is the main factor that causes depression. Although this has actually been challenged by a plethora of researchers in the field over the years, it was not until the popularity of Prozac and the issuance or should I say onslaught of the SSRI crush that the notion of serotonin being the main culprit in depression has solidified. Ironically, there had been very little if any true evidence to have made such a robust claim in the first place.
In a nicely condensed (and easy to digest) synopsis of this research, Medical News Today (MNT)provides a well-done timeline of depression research into the role of serotonin and it's quite an absorbing read. The MNT provides the following interesting quote... Dr. Joseph Coyle, a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, is quoted as saying: 'Chemical imbalance is sort of last-century thinking. It's much more complicated than that. It's really an outmoded way of thinking.'.
To read the condensed MNT article, click here... http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/281830.php
To read the original research article, click here... http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cn500096g
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Brand New Take on Disease and
Your Stressed-Out Amygdala:
That minuscule almond-shaped object embedded deep within the sulci (those wrinkled-up hamburger-looking folds)
of the temporal lobe is part of what we refer to as the brain's Limbic System. The amygdala (Greek for 'almond') is responsible for an enormously important part of what makes us human and, conversely, what can make us mentally ill.
The amygdala plays a key role in fear and negative emotions and is the main culprit in a litany of issues related to
childhood trauma and PTSD not to mention depression and a host of stress-related conditions and illnesses.
It has been a fairly long-standing bit of scientific wisdom that has attributed these stress-related ailments to either inherited traits, traumatic exposure, or some combination thereof. For the first time, a new study is challenging this
theory in a rather unexpected finding. The study just published in Nature Neuroscience by investigators Nikolova and
Koenen, et al., from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, is suggesting that a change in genes over the course of time is actually responsible.
By studying fMRI imaging, saliva and blood testing, and post-mortem examination of pertinent brain tissue, the researchers were able to suggest that subtle changes at the level of the gene can produce the
dramatic reactions and subsequent pathology that may result. It is as if the genes albeit slight change over the course of time is enough to alter the path that the brain has been accustomed to, and that these changes throw the otherwise smooth and expected flow of neurochemical action into a type of brain tail-spin. This disruptive neural change is enough to cause an unexpected susceptibility in the brains mechanistic flow, which is really how we define 'stress' in the first place.
You can read more about it here... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140804100601.htm.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ReGS or PGAS:
the new sex addiction that isn't!
First diagnosed in 2001 by Sandra R. Leiblum, PhD, ReGS is a life-altering disorder that at first blush appears to be sex addiction in hyperdrive. Except that the only thing it shares with sex addiction is a heightened state of sexual arousal caused by a traumatic event. While this already sounds exactly like a sexual addiction, the similarities stop there. This is one massive nightmare of a disorder. ReGs is also known as Persistant Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAS).
Although the majority of those diagnosed with sexual addiction are male, sexual addiction is by no means an exclusively gender related disorder. ReGS, an acronym for restless genital syndrome, is however, a gender-exclusive disorder. ReGS concerns the pudendal nerve complex and the constant misfiring of signals from the pelvis to the brain. In 2008 Leiblum and Goldmeier published their account of ReGS being linked to a woman's discontinuation from SSRIs. Of course most women will never develop ReGS after discontinuation of an SSRI, but those that do develop a malfunction in the pudental nerve complex wherein their pelvic nerves become over stimulated and without the ability to reduce the stimulation.
It is important to note that ReGS in not necessarily medication related. In 2011 Marcel Waldinger published his account of ReGS resulting from a type of neuropathy in the small fibers of the dosal nerve that project to the lower spine as being in a constant state of 'on' much like a broken lever that cannot be budged preventing it from being switched off. Another distinction between a sexual addiction and PGAS is that the later first occurs in adulthood whereas sexual addiction is directly attributable to a frontal lobe impairment secondary to developmental trauma. Additionally, those with a sexual addiction are not necessarily hypersexual, or sexual at all, whereas PGAS is a hypersexual disorder.
For further reading click here: www.restlessgenitalsyndrome.com
the new sex addiction that isn't!
First diagnosed in 2001 by Sandra R. Leiblum, PhD, ReGS is a life-altering disorder that at first blush appears to be sex addiction in hyperdrive. Except that the only thing it shares with sex addiction is a heightened state of sexual arousal caused by a traumatic event. While this already sounds exactly like a sexual addiction, the similarities stop there. This is one massive nightmare of a disorder. ReGs is also known as Persistant Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAS).
Although the majority of those diagnosed with sexual addiction are male, sexual addiction is by no means an exclusively gender related disorder. ReGS, an acronym for restless genital syndrome, is however, a gender-exclusive disorder. ReGS concerns the pudendal nerve complex and the constant misfiring of signals from the pelvis to the brain. In 2008 Leiblum and Goldmeier published their account of ReGS being linked to a woman's discontinuation from SSRIs. Of course most women will never develop ReGS after discontinuation of an SSRI, but those that do develop a malfunction in the pudental nerve complex wherein their pelvic nerves become over stimulated and without the ability to reduce the stimulation.
It is important to note that ReGS in not necessarily medication related. In 2011 Marcel Waldinger published his account of ReGS resulting from a type of neuropathy in the small fibers of the dosal nerve that project to the lower spine as being in a constant state of 'on' much like a broken lever that cannot be budged preventing it from being switched off. Another distinction between a sexual addiction and PGAS is that the later first occurs in adulthood whereas sexual addiction is directly attributable to a frontal lobe impairment secondary to developmental trauma. Additionally, those with a sexual addiction are not necessarily hypersexual, or sexual at all, whereas PGAS is a hypersexual disorder.
For further reading click here: www.restlessgenitalsyndrome.com
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