Starvation, Stress, and Fetal Development

I have been listening to a really interesting (and somewhat confusing) lecture series on human behavioral biology and have really enjoyed it so far. Out of all the interesting and unbelievable things I am now becoming acquainted with, there was one that I thought I'd share here. In a lecture called "Behavioral Genetics I" I learned about the pre-natal environment, and the lasting effects that things like stress and diet (of the mother) can have on a fetus while still in utero. Even though both stress and metabolic problems (or whatever you want to call them) are often passed from generation to generation (for about 3-4 generations being the average) neither is a genetic trait, i.e. they are not transferred to the offspring through DNA. These are examples of non-Mendelian inheritance, or non-genetic inheritance. They are circumstantially transferred from mother to fetus (and through subsequent generations) through some specific situation or as a result of some outside influence. I find that totally fascinating!
The following paragraph comes from a study on people who lived through the Dutch Hunger Winter in 1944.
For example, I guess it's during the third trimester that a fetus develops its metabolic pace, I guess you could say. That is to say it is during the last trimester when the fetus sort of (metaphorically) takes stock of how often and how much nutrition they are getting from mom and they adjust their metabolism, (which remains fixed ever after for the rest of their life) to most efficiently absorb calories. The staggering affect of this is that if the mother is starving, or otherwise not eating properly, or overexercising (so her body needs more calories than she is giving to her baby) then the fetus develops a very thrifty metabolism that can eek every last drop out of its caloric intake. If the mother eats normally, then the fetus develops a metabolism that is more normal, i.e. doesn't try to hold on to every calorie that enters the body. What that translates to down the road (in western society mostly) is that in the first case, there is a very high chance that the fetus will be obese, and will develop diabetes later in life, because it's body is tuned to absorb every last calorie, and once they are introduced to a western diet McDonald's and ice cream, their body can't process it normally. In developing nations this is actually adaptive because starving mothers there are more likely to raise their kids in an environment where there is little food and they need that frugal metabolism to survive.
It's just really incredible to think that during that 3 month window, way back when, inside mom, the amount of nutrients she consumed while the fetus was developing, could have lasting effects like her offspring having a lifetime battle against obesity.
Likewise, stress in the mother during pregnancy can alter the amount of stress hormones produced by her fetus and lead to things like depression and increased susceptibility to stress later in life. It basically works like this; mom gets stressed, she releases glucocorticoids into her blood stream. The fetus then absorbs them and as a result, develops a smaller than average brain, thinner cortex, which in turn makes it harder for the fetus to produce the hormones that block glucocorticoids (i.e. they can't turn off the stress response, after the stressful situation has ended). This leads to depression, anxiety, etc, And when the offspring get pregnant (years later) the cycle continues through the next generation.
So I guess the moral of the story is if you get pregnant, eat a lot of (healthy) food and whatever you do DON'T FREAK OUT!

I guess I should note that there are some scientists out there who disagree with the conclusions reached above. There were other studies conducted that produced different results. However from what I've read, it seems the differences are due to inconsistent controls from experiment to experiment. (For example, a similar study was done on Russian babies, and the results showed no correlation between mothers starving and obesity of fetus later in life, but in the Russian case the study covered the average of all babies (not just the ones in the last trimester), and the fluctuation in food supply was much more gradual than in the Dutch Hunger Winter study.)

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

Eli Manning suffered a head wound after having his helmet knocked off in the 2010 pre-season game against the Jets. (Photo borrowed from here.)

 Even if you are not a football fan, you may have heard on the news that Denver Broncos wide receiver Kenny McKinley committed suicide last week. He was only 23. From interviews of his teammates and coach Jeff McDaniels, it seems that McKinley was not the suicidal type. They recalled him as being thoughtful, and funny, appreciative and always having a smile on his face. His family was equally shocked. So the question is of course, why did he do it? And maybe more importantly, why didn't anyone notice something was wrong?

It is just a coincidence, but I was doing a little reading up on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is a degradation of brain tissue as a result of repeated blows to the head. It is rapidly becoming a major area of concern in the NFL, and that is where I first herd the term CTE for short. Several past players including Lou Creekmur of the Detroit Lions were diagnosed post-mortem with CTE (see photo). And recent findings are questioning whether baseball great Lou Gehrig may have actually died of CTE. It may be Lou Gehrig maybe didn't die of Lou Gehrig's Disease after all.

Photo of portion of Lou Creekmur's brain. Brown areas indicate deposits of tau proteins. Photo borrowed from CSTE Website.

I am no neurologist, but from what I gather, the basic idea is that when a head gets knocked around too much actual brain tissue gets replaced with Tau proteins which are supposed to stabilize microtubules that are found in neurons which make up the brain. So the whole organ becomes more stable in the cranium, but portions of the functioning brain are sacrificed in the process. This creates symptoms like dementia, and aggression, confusion, memory loss and sometimes unsolicited violence.

On the Wikipedia site for CTE, I read that as recently as this year a 21 year old linemen from the University of Pennsylvania, Owen Thomas, committed suicide for unknown reasons. His autopsy revealed elevated abundances of the Tau protein in his brain. It is believed that those early signs of CTE may have had more to do with his hanging himself, and less to do with whatever was actually going on in his life. He is the youngest documented case of CTE.

I was immediately struck by the similarity between the deaths of Thomas and McKinley, and wonder whether or not anyone has thought CTE could be cause of his untimely death. Of course those closer to him might have reason to suspect he was depressed or whatever, but if they are truly mystified, them CTE could explain it. I don't know if they are having an autopsy performed on him, and you wouldn't think a wide receiver would have sustained that many head injuries as say a linebacker or center, but I mean it is football, and I would think it would be worth investigating. If they did happen to find that he had accumulations of Tau proteins, then...shoot, well, the implications of that would be staggering to the NFL and all the players. And as much as I LOVE football, if it's killing young guys who have barely played in a game, then think of what it's doing to the veterans, guys that have been playing for 10 or more years!
Of course this is all speculation, and I am not a doctor, or a biologist even, so I am really not an expert, but it's just a thought.

Anyway, as I mentioned above the NFL is taking  CTE very seriously. So are the players. In 2009 Matt Burk, center for the Ravens, Lofa Tatupu linebacker for Seattle, and Sean Morey a receiver who last played with the Cardinals were the first to pledged to donate their brains to the Center for the Study of  Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy after they die. This year many other NFL players have followed suit.

I can't help but wonder how, or if, this problem can even be resolved in the NFL. Football is inherently a violent sport, and hard on the body. As long as there is tackling going on, heads are going to get hit and helmets are going to fly. But if you remove the dangers that bring about CTE, you're be left with a very boring, very cautious game that doesn't resemble football at all. So what do you do?

Sigmund Freud is So Last Week!

I just finished reading a book about how the brain works called Mind Wide Open by Stephen Johnson. It was really interesting. If I were writing a book review I would say it was "pretty good". The author uses himself as an example throughout and that gets a little...uninteresting, but the over all topic, and themes in the book are quite thought provoking. Like many of my other reads, I won't retell the whole story here. I will just pick one part to share.
Johnson makes a really good point in one of the later chapters about the state (or character) of the field of psychology that seemed very obvious once I read it, but not so much beforehand.
For the past hundred years everything in psychology has come directly out of the work done by Sigmund Freud, even though almost everything he proposed is outdated. We know (or hopefully at least speculate) that we don't have romantic attachments to our parents. That one is glaringly obvious. But there are hundreds of other, more subtle ideas that Freud brought to the field that are still considered current by modern psychologists today. We might roll our eyes when someone brings up the "Oedipus Complex", but we feel fairly comfortable discussing our Ego. We feel even more comfortable with the idea that we repress painful memories. We don't think we repress our bad experiences we just assume we do. This is my toppic for this blog: repression.
As it turns out neuroscience is beginning to cast doubt on our tightly grasped notions of repression. Through fMRI scans, and a host of tests, and experiments (which you can read about ad nauseum in the book) scientists can literally see what is happening in your brain (and where) while you are thinking. And it makes sense to know that different parts of the brain light up depending on the task your brain is focused on.
But how would our thinking about ourselves change if we realized that we are not secretly trying to bury painful memories? Would they seem as elusive and debilitating if we understood that we were not purposely trying to hide from those memories, but that our brain is just doing what it "normally" does?The first question we have to ask ourselves is why do we have memories in the first place? The quick answer is to protect us.

Consciousness is located in the frontal part of the brain. The closer you get to the brain stem the "older" evolutionarily speaking you get. Located just above the brain stem is your amygdala. It's where your gut feelings and instincts come from. As it turns out the amygdala stores it's own memories, separate from your conscious ones. There are a couple reasons for this. The first is that when back when the amygdala was first evolved, there was no frontal lobe to store memories, so they had to be kept somewhere. Babies store memories here before their brains fully develop. That's also why most animals have some sort of memory, but it is more instinctual and less specific than our own. The second reason is that the amygdala can recall memories much faster than your consciousness can, but the trade off is the image is much fuzzier. It's like comparing a tape recording to a digital one. The information still gets across (i.e. you can tell what song it is) but you might not be able to hear the base line or individual notes of the guitar solo clearly.
But what I am getting at is that ALL traumatic memories are stored in the amygdala, but they may or may not be stored in conscious memory. The best way I can think of to explain this is by using an example. It might be a long one, but I think it's worth reading.

I am afraid of bees. No that's not true. I am terrified of bees. My conscious memory and my instinctual memory have responded to this fact in separate ways. My conscious memory recalls two or three of the worst bee stings I received over the course of my life, and taught me never to stand on fallen tree trunks (because there might be a yellow jacket hive inside). It usually takes a bit of time to conjure up the details of these events, but once I do I remember them pretty clearly. My primitive memory doesn't really feel like a memory at all but it's sort of like a blurry idea that forms almost instantaneously in my head in certain moments. I constantly find myself swatting and freaking out over anything that is smallish and flies by my head. I respond the same to a harmless little butterfly flitting past my ear as I do to a wasp. Once I see it's a butterfly I am OK (consciousness), but it takes a couple of minutes for the Adrenalin to wear off. What is happening here? Well, for all it's lack of detail the amygdala is super speedy. A fly zips past my ear and without missing a beat my hand flies up, I duck my head, and my heart starts beating faster. My amygdala has just crudely recalled a very frightening memory but stripped it down to the barest essentials. It is bascially saying "small+dark shape+ flying by head= duck and get away". It remembers just enough to protect me from a bee (which is why I constantly mistake flies and moths for bees), but not enough to differentiate between a humming bird and a yellow jacket. If the insect were flying by in super slow motion and I was able to get a good look at it before it flew past, then a butterfly wouldn't scare me. But who has that kind of time?
But getting to my point. I don't remember every time I have been stung or every close encounter I have had with stinging insects. My conscious memory is just not that good, especially when I go farther back into my childhood, before my brain was fully developed. But even as a little kid I remember being scared of bees. That is presumably because although I have no recollection at all, I was probably stung as a two year old and learned to be afraid. I am not repressing that memory though, I simply didn't record it in my consciousness (either because my amygdala did a good enough job on it's own of storing it) or it got lost among all the new memories I have formed since then. I don't need a two-year-olds conscious memory (which was just developing) because my brain can protect me just fine with the more primitive one.
There are lots of memories that for whatever reason our consciousness has decided to abandon. Usually it has to do with utility. Just think about all the happy memories you don't remember! But our amygdala is not so likely to loosen it's grip, especially on things that frighten or upset us. Each time we have a feeling, but no conscious memory of why we feel that way, we assume we are purposely trying to hide from something that we just can't deal with. But what if that's not true. What if we aren't cowards? What if our brains, being the efficient machines that they are, just decided to get rid of the memory because it already had an adequate backup in the amygdala? I don't need to have a clear memory of every time in my life I have seen a bee. Just one or two is enough, and a vague plan to duck and swat if anything happens to fly by my ear has saved me more than once. It may seem a little archaic but it works.

I don't mean to imply that trauma like child abuse is exactly the same as a phobia of bees or spiders, but knowing that we are not hiding from our feelings and our past may be of great use in empowering us to let it go. As an adult you may not clearly remember being locked in the closet when you were little, but it's not because you are afraid (or can't face) of the memory now. It's because your brain got rid of it because you don't need it. Your brain has said "Hey, we don't need those log drawn out memories. They are a waste of space. The amygdala has it all under control. It says small room+ darkness= get out fast. That's all we need to remember to protect ourselves from now on."
In conclusion (I feel like this has been a really long post) I think there is a lot we can learn from neuroscience, especially when it comes to how we perceive ourselves and how we feel about our active roll in processing the events in our lives. The idea of repression is victimizing, whereas understanding how your brain works is amazing and empowering. Freud's psychology is a thing of the past. For a hundred years his ideas of sexual motivation for all things, and repression, made the brain something to be feared, and not to be trusted. But that time has passed (thank goodness!). Listen to your brain, appreciate it's complexity, and take comfort in the fact that it works 24 hours a day to protect you.

In the Blink of an Eye: Locked-In Syndrome

Last night I read this memoir published by the former Editor and Chief of French Elle Magazine. I came upon it a few weeks back while browsing at the local used bookstore.
Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a massive stroke in December of 1995 that left him in what is called "locked- in syndrome" which means he was conscious, but could not speak or move his body except to turn his head and blink his left eye. Apparently the syndrome occurs when the brain stem stops working and can no longer relay information from the brain to the spinal cord.
The only way he was able to communicate was by blinking his left eye. He could not blink the right one so it had to be sewn shut to keep the eyeball from drying out. He managed, with the help of his speech therapist to work out a method of communicating, and was thus able to complete his entire memoir by blinking out each letter of each word. The book is not a long one, but when you consider the pains that were taken to compose each and every syllable, it seems impossibly long.
The way it worked was the letters of the alphabet were arranged on a card by most frequently used (in the French language). The therapist would slowly say each letter and Jean-Dominique would blink his eye when she reached the letter he wanted. She would then write it down and start the list again. The amount of patience he must have had to compose even the shortest of sentences leaves me speachless.
The human body is a remarkable thing, but the resilience of the human mind is almost miraculous. Bauby was trapped in his body with nothing but his thoughts and he was able, to not only survive under such horrifing conditions, but to create and sometimes laugh in them too. As he put it so elloquently "If I must drool, I may as well drool on cashmere."
Bauby's memoir is a lot like life; difficult, sad, funny, and over before you know it. Maybe the lesson is not so much in the words he wrote but in the book itself, and the way in which it came about. If anyone would like my copy send your address and I will mail it to you! It's not the happiest subject, but it was a one of a kind reading experience, that really made me feel grateful for the little things in life like being able to smile.

What Are You?

Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Primate, Hominidae, Homininae, Hominini, Homo, H. sapien. That's the easy answer, but what does that mean? I have found myself asking this question over and over in as many different contexts as you can imagine. I am coming to believe that until each of us finds our own answer this question, our personal sense of morality will be resting on shaky ground. It's such a difficult question to breach though. Where do I even start? It is becoming clear to me that whether religious or not, most people think we humans are "higher" or "separate" from all the rest of the animals on earth. Whether it be because we are made in the image of God, or because our brains evolved consciousness, there seems to be a common opinion that (for whatever reason) the rules that apply to the rest of biological life don't apply to us. And here I must confess the more I think about that the less I believe it's true. There are several reasons for this, a couple of which I'd like to explain here.

The first is that it is impossible for us to objectively view anything. We are 100% influenced by our consciousness, and our self awareness. There is no avoiding it. Everything I am writing is influenced by my ability to think about it, it can be no other way. Wolves cannot view the world outside of being a wolf, and although we'd like to think we could imagine what it would like to be a wolf, the fact that we can "imagine" being a wolf is the very reason why we could never really know what it's like to be one.
We think we have a responsibility to the planet and to all life on it, but we only do as far as it appears to us, through our own narrow paradigm. And what if our paradigm is wrong, or at the very least not as ethical as we think it is? That is where I pause, and find fault in the above argument. I am all for saving the polar bears and stopping global warming, but is driving my car less, and donating to the World Wildlife Fund really the moral thing to do? If the earth became hotter we might perish along with the polar bear and Emperor Penguins but the fact of the matter is there are millions of species that would actually benefit from the warmer climate and who knows what animals and bugs natural selection would favor then? Is it our moral (and ethical) obligation to save the bears (and ourselves) and deny a warm and blissful future to all the critters that would benefit from it? How can we even claim to have any idea what is best for nature, when we can only view it through our own eyes.
I wonder what if there had been "intelligent" life around during the time of the dinosaurs, and those conscientious beings (like us) had started a campaign to "Save the Dinosaurs!"? What if they succeeded in repopulating the earth with T-Rex's and Velocaraptors? Wouldn't they have felt like they were doing the moral thing by saving a species from the brink of extinction? Doesn't that sound familiar? But then where would we be right now exactly? Probably sleeping in a burrow surrounded by acorn shells and our own feces, that's where. Even if these imaginary beings were intelligent, they could not possibly foresee the consequences of their actions.
It surprises me we think we know more than nature. It surprises me that we really think we have any right or authority to alter things in any direction on purpose. We criticize ourselves for depleting the ozone, but we pat each other on the back for trying to rebuild it. What is the difference? In both instances we are changing somethingto suit ourselves, that left to it's own devices would be different. All animals leave their mark. Bears don't tidy up a moose carcass after they are done gorging themselves. They leave it behind and other animals and bacteria benefit from it. How is it that we think our brains know more about how things "should be" than three billion years of evolution? We say we are doing it for the planet, for all living things, but that isn't true. We are only doing it for ourselves, because the fact of the matter is the world would get along just fine without us. Actually it would probably get along better. The environmentalists shout that they are trying to save the earth. Being as objective as I can possibly be given my humanity, I would argue the best way to "save the earth" (in the way the environmentalists mean) is to get rid of us. And I'd also like to point out we are doing a good job of heading in that general direction. So maybe nature does know more than us after all. I could go on and on about this, but I think I have made my point, and if I ever want to finish this blog I'd better move on.

Number two. Evolution may be unpredictable, but there are still patters that can be seen. One thing that stands out is evolution sticks with what works. If it ain't broke, evolution doesn't fix it. That's the reason most animals have bilateral symmetry, why there are only a handful of body plans in all of the biological world, and why all mammals have hair. Every once in a while natural selections tries something new, after all that's how we get change. If the "new" adaption works it proliferates, if it doesn't it goes the way of the dodo. Good ideas are expressed in multiples, bad ideas are singular. That is why I find it interesting that we are the only ones that developed intelligence. (OK maybe chimps and dolphins too, but not to the degree we do, and certainly not the environmental impact we do). Isn't that odd? Think about adaptive traits and how they spread among species. Teeth, claws, fur, big ears. All of those traits can be found on a number of animals. But our big brains are pretty unique. And more than that, (and more to my point) look what it has resulted in? Dinosaurs, with their little brains roamed the earth for over 150,000,000 years, yet in about 200,000 years we H. sapiens have evolved to the point that we can cause our own extinction. As far as I know, this has never happened before. And evolutionarily speaking that is a huge disadvantage. Our genes want to live and be passed on, anything that hinders that process from occurring constitute an unfit species. I am beginning to believe that our intelligence and our consciousness are an evolutionary failure. Stated simply our big brains are a bad idea from a purely evolutionary standpoint. I don't think we will be a long lived species because we are committing every no-no in the evolutionary book. We are outgrowing our resources, we are overpopulating our habitats, we are creating things that are harmful to ourselves, we are our own greatest threat. Just think about that last one for a second. Can you think of any other animal who's greatest predator is it's own kind? That's about as f*!ked up as it gets where nature is concerned. Right now humanity does not fit the criteria of an evolutionary successful species. If I had to guess I'd say we were at the bottom of the list. We might think we are "moving" ahead with technology and research, but I disagree. In a way I feel that everything that is happening in the world, from a scientific standpoint, is inevitable.

I know this sounds depressing, and I guess it is in a way, but that's not how I feel about it. The most comforting thought I have these days is that I really am a part of the world I live in. I really belong here just as I am, as much as the oak tree out my office window, or the snails that have eaten all my plants. I mess things up, and I make mistakes (like BP and the oil spill), but nature doesn't hate me for it. It will just exploit whatever it can from whatever happens as a result of my life. The proliferation of life on our planet is the closest thing to a miracle I have ever witnessed, and to know that I am a part of that process is humbling and exhilarating. The thing is I am not sure how morality and ethics fits into this view of the world. Can I even have a sense of morality if I think everything that happens (in the large picture) is OK? Am I replacing god with nature, and making up excuses for myself? It's a slippery slope. I think about all the children starving in third world countries, and I want to save them all. But at the same time the facts are if we actually succeed in saving everyone there would be too many of us and we'd all die of starvation. What is the moral view to take? If anyone has any thoughts on this I'd sure like to hear them. This is one of those topics that always leads me around in circles, and causes me endless hours of frustration....that and it's almost my birthday and I always get grouchy around my birthday.

Is 1 always less than 5?

I watched a video yesterday at discovermagazine.com (they have some really great interviews/panels). Anyway all of it was interesting, but one particular topic (or question) stayed with me all through the afternoon. The speaker gave two scenario's and asked the audiences opinion. See what you think.

Story 1:A conductor is driving a train. Ahead on the tracks he see's five men tied up and unable to move out of the way. There is a side track he could divert the train onto by pulling a lever, but there is one man tied on that side. Do you think he should sacrifice the one to save the five? Or, I guess the question is would you think he was a moral person in doing so?

Story 2: A doctor has five patients who all need organ transplants (different organs) or they will die, and a healthy person walks in the hospital that could supply all the organs for the doctor's patients. Do you think it is moral for the doctor to kill the one to save the five now?

I can guess what our response would be to each of these stories. The answer is different depending on the situation. Yes for story 1 and no for story 2. The first is a hero, the second is a murderer. The interesting question is why we would answer the questions differently when essentially the same decision is being made. I can't figure it out.
Any thoughts???Come on! I know you have a theory!

Boredom: A Workout for Your Brain

"If you, like many people, have spent your workday in a Walter Mitty–like haze wishing you were anywhere but the office, your medial temporal lobe subsystem, precuneus, medial prefrontal subsystem, and posterior cingulate cortex—the regions dispersed throughout the brain that together make up the DMN, a key player in daydreaming—have been lit up like a Christmas tree."

WOW! That is totally me right now! And here I thought I was being wholly unproductive and doing nothing. Who knew my precuneus was getting such a workout?
That quote incidentally came from an article I read entitled The Anatomy of a Brain Fart. Don't ask how I discovered this article. It was just happenstance. It's a quick easy read though, very scientific and they use the word fart like, 14 times!(It is a mystery to me why I chuckle every time I see the word "fart"...see? I just did it again!) So is totally worth the five minutes. Ok...I have to go. It's back to stimulating my posterior cingulate cortex...*sigh* I am so busy!