Monday, July 8, 2013

The Human Brain and Mental Health Issues

I consider myself a bit of a smarty pants when it comes to the human brain. In fact I think I'm a bit of a genius when it comes to the human brain and some of the stuff that can go wrong up there but I don't have the time or space here and now to establish why I believe that, I trust that it'll be self evident when I finish writing all my thoughts on it. Anyway, that's a major, major work and for a possible future day.

When I started researching mental health issues at the beginning of this year I quickly discovered, and quite rightly as I'll demonstrate (again in the future), that the "white coats" in mainstream psychiatry are, to sum it up rather ineloquently, morons. Backwards, ill-educated, unscientific, rote thinking morons. Their "ideas" for mental health problems are at least five decades behind most recent research. I have such little time and respect for them that I'm not even sure that I want to bother explaining how they're morons. It's not that some of them aren't well meaning enough, but their backwards ideas of medicine remain what they are - unscientific, disproved and out of date. I think my time, and yours, would be much better served by furthering my studies and writing in what really counts but the sad truth is that many lives are ruined - every day - by those in the psychiatric "profession". So my thinking is that if people are to discover a better direction - and there most certainly are better directions - they'd best understand that the direction that is currently in vogue (and it is little more than that, just "in vogue") has to be exposed for what it is and what it is is a sham. Once I discovered that, I began looking elsewhere and that elsewhere is neuroscience. I became deeply, deeply interested in neuroscience. This, I saw, is the future. This, I saw, was where the hope for those with mental health issues lies. And the funny thing is that when you have a manic mind (the ability of a manic mind to work at ridiculously high levels is well documented) and a deeply curious mind and highly motivated mind, it'll absorb, assimilate, learn and create knowledge extremely quickly. Which is why I think I'm a smarty pants genius. And why I think you should listen to me when it comes to understanding all this stuff (the fact that I have myself as a study model is also reason for this). But anyway.

The point here wasn't to blow my own horn, the point was to introduce my good readers to some basic facts on the human brain.

The brain remains truly one of mankind's greatest remaining frontiers. But this is only if we include space. I'll argue (elsewhere) that is THE greatest frontier. And as mysterious as the human brain, the biological organ, is, the human mind is even more mysterious. The former is the field of neuroscience, the latter the field of psychology. [you'll note that I separate the "brain" from the "mind". A key feature of mine. You'll also note that though I included neuroscience and psychology, I left psychiatry out of the party. This was no accident.]

Evolutionary biology is – give or take – four billion years old. Millions and millions of species have come and gone in that time. All the while, life forms have continued to evolve. As life forms evolved, sensory and other organs evolved and improved. Organs to process oxygen, organs to circulate blood, the organ known as skin, organs to process food, organs to filter toxins, organs to make and distribute various body chemicals and hormones, organs of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. All these organs evolved and improved for one reason and one reason only – to help any given species to survive and thrive in whatever environment that was, or is, dominant at any given time over those past four billion years.

When we look at the organs of the species we have on the planet today, anyone with even a passing interest in biology, or nature, has to be amazed. The sight organs, the eyes, of eagles which can spot tiny prey from great altitudes in the sky or the osprey which can spot fish underwater and adjust for the illusion of light refraction on the water's surface. The olfactory organs, the noses of bloodhounds (and most breeds of dog), a million times more sensitive than those of their human counterparts, able to sniff out the faintest of scents and trace elements of a dizzying array of substances. The auditory organs, the ears, of whales and elephants which can hear signals from their mates many, many miles away. The internal organs, while simpler, are all wonders of nature as well. How lungs can draw in air and separate life giving oxygen while disposing of fatal carbon dioxide. Amazing! How the organs of the digestive system manage to process what we humans and domesticated animals toss into it and extract everything we need to grow from a newborn into a healthy adult and all the other calories, minerals and vitamins necessary to keep us going along the way. Incredible! Just think of how these and all other various highly developed organs in the animal world have evolved over billions of years.

Yet as amazing as all these organs and their evolutionary history are, NOTHING on the planet compares to the human brain. It is far and away the most complex organ four billion years of evolutionary history has produced and witnessed. Now you may argue about what the human species has done with that brain but there is no argument against its superior complexity.

I think the brain of any species is a wonder to behold. How, for example, do the brains of certain swallow species process the information that allows them to navigate thousands of kilometers each migration season between the southern and northern hemispheres? How do the brains of orcas process their migration information (with all the factors such as food sources and birthing areas) and social structures and language? And look at the complex calculations many monkey species have to make as they navigate swinging through jungle forests not to mention their fairly evolved social structures. Cognitive science research into the brains of many animal species shows that much basic animal behaviour has many similarities to human intelligence. And sure some of these things can be chalked up to instinct passed on genetically, but more recent research has shown that a lot of this is learned behaviour that has to be modified over time and from year to year and communicated among a given pod, or flock, or group.

But whatever impressive brain functions that we can find in the animal world – and they are many and they are complex – absolutely nothing compares to what the human mind can do.

From the amazingly precise control over and training of our physical abilities in complicated, highly organized sporting events (not to mention the complex social organization required to compete as units of many people), to the strategizing required in games like chess and go (let alone those required in wars and major businesses), to conceiving of and composing great musical compositions and novels, to predictive abilities, to conceiving of and designing highly intricate and novel machines and systems, to conceiving, discovering and comprehending amazingly complicated math and science formulas that help us understand space and time (and to even conceptualize concepts such as space and time), to the incredible social and logistical organization of large cities ... we could go on and on. The abilities and accomplishments of the human brain are truly astonishing.

But those are just the “tangible” accomplishments of human brain power. The human mind is a whole other matter. This is what really sets us apart from other species. How do you explain human belief? The human spirit? The human soul? (we will set aside, for now, the beliefs of some that all living things have souls. The science on this is very incomplete and there's no tangible way to measure these things outside our own species. Whatever the case, I don't think there's much argument about the human soul being a far more complex concept) Our sense of self? The human languages? The ability to appreciate the arts? The ability to conceptualize what we cannot see? The human imagination? (which is the springboard of all the accomplishments listed in the previous paragraph) The complexity of human emotions and moods? The complexities of human sexuality? We're the only species that has taken sexual acts far and away from it being a simply biological and instinct driven function. How do we explain the wondrously mysterious human subconscious? All these intangible things seem to go beyond the “simple” biological nature and make up of the brain. How do we account for these things in the human brain? How do we explain the mechanisms for these? Science has only gotten as far as identifying the systems of the senses, motor-sensory control, where thought occurs, memory, language processing and so on. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think neuroscience has discovered the mechanisms for our deeper (and unique, I'd argue) human functions, those of the human mind.

The human brain is made up of one hundred billion neurons and one hundred and fifty trillion synapses. There are one hundred thousand kilometers of wiring in the human brain, enough to stretch more than two times around the earth. Even with the most sophisticated brain mapping techniques currently available (and there are some impressive ones) and more than a century of scientific examination, we are just beginning to comprehend how this fantastically complex organ works.

One amazing discovery about our brains (and this applies to all species' brains) is its “neuroplasticity”. Neuroplasticity means that the brain is not, as long believed, set past a certain age. It can grow and contract and change form pretty much up to the day we die. It can, in effect, “rewire” itself to meet changing conditions and environmental stimuli. This was actually discovered in the late sixties by neuroscientists such as Michael Merzenich. This concept took decades to begin to reach mainstream neuroscience because of initial outright hostility against the idea from localizationists. Localization was the long head belief that brain functions were strictly localized and once the part of the brain for a particular function was damaged, that was it. But discoveries over the past five or six decades have shown that brains can actually adapt new functions in “out of the way” locations to make up for damaged areas. This is very exciting news for all kinds of rehabilitation projects – including, I believe, mental health issues (we will investigate this more in later chapters).

So not only is the brain an amazing organ in its original form, we can perform mental and physical exercises that will actually reshape the brain and allow it to rebuild or repair lost functions.

But as amazing as the brain is and as amazing as some discoveries are, the brain remains our most sensitive and least understood organ.

Those one hundred billion neurons communicate with each other through those one hundred and fifty trillion synapses through neurotransmitters, neurochemicals such as glutamate, norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin (among others). There are hormones that play strong roles. While the roles of many of these transmitters have been basically identified, it seems their exact functions – how they actually make all those amazing brain functions of ours operate - remains a little beyond our understanding at present. The research shows many exciting discoveries and theories but it remains short on conclusive facts showing clear functionalities and mechanisms let alone explanations for the unique mind of humans.

And to further get an idea of just how vast the "inner galaxies" of the brain are, this is how it was explained by neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman. This is, as he puts it, a “look under the hood of the brain”.

When we look under the hood, what we find is the most complicated devise in the universe” and “it contains tens of billions of neurons” and then “each neuron is as complicated as the city of San Diego” and “these are packed together in such density that they have hundreds of trillions of connections between them.” 

You think that's something? It gets better. 

“So what this means is if you were to take a cubic centimeter of brain tissue, you'd have as many connections as there are stars in the milky way”. 

To but that in perspective, let's attempt to scale that up to the full human brain. The average brain weighs three pounds, in there there must be ... well, my math isn't that good but you can kind of imagine if you look in the mirror and guess how many cubic centimeters of brain matter you have and then multiply that by stars in the milky way. There isn't, as Dr. Eagleman goes on to say, a number in our mathematical language to express how many stars that is. 

Repeat, a cubic centimeter of human brain matter has as many connections as there are stars in the milky way.

So this is what I read. This is what I study. I follow the work of some of the top neuroscientists on the planet and there is not a one of them that will look you in the eye and tell you that they even remotely understand the human brain or mind. Which, coming back to my original point, is why psychiatrists are morons. They can - literally - have no idea what's going on "under the hood" of the human brain. None of them (at the street level medical treatment level) study the brain to that extent. Yet they attempt to "fix it" with simple concoctions of chemicals. Brain damaging chemicals (which is not opinion, but fact proven in long term studies using the most advanced brain scan equipment).

And here's the other point - if anyone thinks that among those billions of neurons, trillions of synapses, the hundreds of kilometers of wiring and among the hundred or so neurotransmitters and hormones that make it all that stuff "tick" that shit isn't going to go wrong, well, godspeed to you. It's a miracle - a literal miracle - that more stuff doesn't go wrong up there. And the point of this is that there are people - many of them, trust me on this - that doubt mental health problems. Sometimes, honestly, I want to poke people's eyes out. But of course I don't. 

So this is what we're looking at. The most complex structure in the known universe. And stuff goes wrong up there. And here's the kicker - no one, literally, knows why or how it goes wrong or how to fix it. Whatever mental health problem there is, it takes place in that organ I just described. Which is, as you can see, "complicated". So no, psychiatry does not have the answers. Not even close. 

But there's hope. I think. Maybe. Keep on reading. 

[final note - I apologize once again for formatting issues. It always happens when I cut and paste into the blog posting box. Fiddling with such things to the point of perfection just is not one of my greater priorities right now.]

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