dinsdag 19 november 2013

Notes class 14 november

I will post the notes I made during last class here as well, they are not finished (I was in the middle of the parts of the brain where the different neurotransmitters came from).


Causes

Treatments/prevention

Mental illness: caused in the brain, by neurotransmitters and serotonin.
Mental disorders: caused by a trauma (mostly during childhood), not able to handle in a healty way, emotional growth stops at the age of the trauma.



Future: treatments/prevention
-       Food (diets)
-       (Brainresearch)
-       Vitamins
-       (Technology)
-       Exercise
-       Light/color

Future: The perfect diet.


Superfood, raw food
What do the … /vitamins/minerals do with us?
Neurotransmitter
Transmittertreatments

Planning, afbeeldingen, idea’s, visuals,
Prevention by transmitters

Moodfood
monoamine neurotransmitter
dopamine, noradrenaline, adrenaline and serotonin
Monoamines are neurotransmitters and neuromodulators that include serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine.
Norepinephrine may be related to alertness and energy as well as anxiety, attention, and interest in life; [lack of] serotonin to anxiety, obsessions, and compulsions; and dopamine to attention, motivation, pleasure, and reward, as well as interest in life.

Serotonin[edit]
Many variations of the monoamine hypothesis involve the neurotransmitter serotonin, regulated by the serotonin transporter, which assists the modulation of feelings and behavior such as anxiety, anger, appetite, sexuality, sleep, mood, etc. People with depression may have differences in serotonin transporter gene length.[33] People with both alleles that are long are less likely to become depressed, while people with one short and one long or two short alleles are more likely to develop depression.[34]
The functions of serotonin are difficult to describe in a simple way. In some circumstances serotonin seems to act as a signal of "repletion" or "satisfaction". Thus, satiation after eating, and orgasm following sex, both produce release of serotonin. In animals that have hierarchical social structures, dominant individuals show higher levels of serotonin metabolites than lower-status individuals. In the brain, serotonin exerts a suppressive effect on both the reward system and punishment system[clarification needed], and therefore is likely to reduce the intensity of motivation whether aversive or appetitive.[citation needed]

Fructose[edit]
Fructose malabsorption has been associated with depression in young women. Their mood improved when their intake of fructose was restricted. The mechanisms of these effects are not well understood, but may involve low circulating levels of tryptophan, which is the precursor of serotonin.[35] à In fruit, increases the level of tryptophan, which increases the level of serotonin

Catecholamine epinephrine: adrenaline, nnorepinephrine: oradrenaline and dopamine

Serotonin is made in the part of the brain that is called the Raphe Nuclei, a group of small nerve cell nuclei in the upper brain stem, located directly at the mid-line of the brain.

There is a powerful interaction between the Raphe nuclei and the SCN, SCN is the control center for the body's biological clock. In animal studies, this input has been shown to modulate the ability of light to reset the timing of the biological clock: the more serotonin, the stronger the effects of light. On the other hand, the biological clock exerts a strong influence on the Raphe nuclei: serotonin levels drop during sleep, and fall almost to nothing during REM (dreaming) sleep.

The ventral tegmentum (or ventral tegmental area) is a small area in the basal midbrain which is a critical part of the brain's reward system. It sends projections to the nucleus accumbens that use the neurotransmitter dopamine. Addictive drugs universally increase the effects of dopamine in this system, whereas drugs that oppose dopamine produce anhedonia of the sort seen in depressed people. Dopamine-enhancers such as cocaine often relieve the lack-of-pleasure in depression, but the effects only last as long as a drug is present in the body: that is, they temporarily alleviate one of the main symptoms, but do not help to cure the disease. à Dopamine is created in the Ventral Tegmentum, basal midbrain, critical part of the reward system.

Recent studies have shown that Brodmann area 25, also known as Subgenual cingulate is metabolically overactive in treatment-resistant depression.[42] This region is extremely rich in serotonin transporters and is considered as a governor for a vast network involving areas like hypothalamus and brain stem, which influences changes in appetite and sleep; the amygdala and insula, which affect the mood and anxiety; the hippocampus, which plays an important role in memory formation; and some parts of the frontal cortex responsible for self-esteem.[43][44] Thus disturbances in this area or a smaller than normal size of this area contributes to depression. Deep Brain Stimulations of this area have been successful in reducing its elevated activity and thus curing depression in patients that could not be cured by anti-depressants.[45]

The anterior cingulate cortex is activated by negative experiences of many types, and consistently shows higher levels of activity in depressed people than in non-depressed people. The functions of the ACC are controversial, but one proposal is that it mediates the conscious experience of suffering. Several decades ago, trials were made of ablating parts of the ACC in an attempt to relieve intolerable pain in patients who were terminally ill. These patients reported that after the surgery, they could still perceive the physical sensations of pain, but they no longer found them distressing. (The effects of heroin and morphine are sometimes described in the same way.) Very recently, clinical experiments were made in using deep brain stimulation to temporarily inactivate the ACC in severely depressed patients. This was not effective in all cases, but in some patients very striking results were achieved, with a perceptible lifting of mood immediately apparent to the patient as soon as the stimulus was applied.



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