When we are stressed, the
lower part of the brain takes over.
I'm
freaking out. My boss is bellowing, my kids are klamoring, I'm stuck in a maze,
and I can't find my chocolate chips. I think I'm losing my mind. What's a poor
rat like me to do?
Dear
Stressed:
You're not alone. I get this kind of letter every week. Whether it's final exams, impatient pups or writing applications for research grants, many of us feel stressed these days. I suggest you take time off work, visit a rodent retreat, and check your protein kinase C levels.
- Amy Arnsten
You're not alone. I get this kind of letter every week. Whether it's final exams, impatient pups or writing applications for research grants, many of us feel stressed these days. I suggest you take time off work, visit a rodent retreat, and check your protein kinase C levels.
- Amy Arnsten
Department of Neurobiology Yale Medical School
Blaming the
messenger
Everybody laughs about stress, but stress can change your brain. In a psychology lab, it's easy to show that stress interferes with your working memory, making you temporarily dumb. But stress can also trigger serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder (manic depression) and schizophrenia.
Everybody laughs about stress, but stress can change your brain. In a psychology lab, it's easy to show that stress interferes with your working memory, making you temporarily dumb. But stress can also trigger serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder (manic depression) and schizophrenia.
Stress affects the prefrontal cortex, the executive
section of the brain that regulates thought, behavior and emotion. But how?
Perhaps through a messenger compound called protein kinase C (PKC).
When Amy Arnsten of Yale Medical School and her
colleagues increased PKC levels in rats and monkeys, the animals got stupid.
Before the test, they had an easy time finding a chocolate chip they had seen
before. But after getting a chemical that increased their PKC levels, they had
trouble finding this critical food.
Then, when the researchers blocked PKC, the rats could
again find the chips.
In a second experiment, the researchers created the same
picture by administering a chemical that simulates stress. As before, the
decline was reversed by a PKC-blocking chemical.
Major maladies
If you konstantly kvetch about stress, you might greet these results as interesting, but not terribly significant. But stress and PKC also factor into the most severe mental disabilities among young adults:
If you konstantly kvetch about stress, you might greet these results as interesting, but not terribly significant. But stress and PKC also factor into the most severe mental disabilities among young adults:
Photo: OSHA
Bipolar
disorder causes profound mood swings in 1 percent of adult Americans.
Schizophrenia causes hallucinations, delusions,
disordered thinking, bizarre speech or behavior, and social withdrawal in 1.1
percent of American adults.
Curiously, both these brain diseases, according to
Arnsten, "involve profound dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex, the most
highly evolved part of the brain, which lets us concentrate, organize, plan for
the future." The prefrontal cortex is the home of working memory, a
short-term storage that helps you recall where you left your keys.
But there's more: The prefrontal cortex also
"inhibits inappropriate thoughts and lets you act appropriately
socially," Arnsten adds. So a problem with the prefrontal cortex can
prevent you from finding chocolate chips in a lab -- or impair impulse control,
distraction, insight and judgment.
The present study grew from the observations of
scientists like Husseini Manji of the National Institute of Mental Health, who
found excess PKC in brains of people with bipolar disorder. But there are other
reasons to wonder about the role of PKC in brain diseases. For example, some
drugs for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia "reduce PKC very
markedly" in rodent brains, Arnsten says, even though they "are very
disparate molecules... and seemingly have nothing in common."
Photo: Insurance
Commission of Western Australia
Messing with the messenger
If stress raises PKC levels, and PKC changes how the prefrontal cortex works, Arnsten says PKC could explain the role of stress in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. "Often the first psychotic break happens when a teenager goes to college or to the military for the first time. Stress is often what puts them over the edge."
If stress raises PKC levels, and PKC changes how the prefrontal cortex works, Arnsten says PKC could explain the role of stress in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. "Often the first psychotic break happens when a teenager goes to college or to the military for the first time. Stress is often what puts them over the edge."
Having identified how the messenger molecule PKC
affects the prefrontal cortex, Arnsten hopes that blocking PKC might help
bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Marinus Pharmaceuticals, of New Haven
Conn., and the Stanley Medical
Research Institute are now funding some of her research to see if PKC
inhibitors can be used safely in humans. "We hope this might be a new
direction for treating bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, because it would be
acting inside the cell, and it might act more quickly," Arnsten says.
"We hope that if it's more selective, there will be fewer side
effects."
David
Tenenbaum
Bibliography
Protein Kinase C Overactivity Impairs Prefrontal Cortical Regulation of Working Memory, S.G Birnbaum et al, Science, 29 October, 2004.
Protein Kinase C Overactivity Impairs Prefrontal Cortical Regulation of Working Memory, S.G Birnbaum et al, Science, 29 October, 2004.
http://www.whyfiles.org/shorties/163stress_memory/index.html
You can TCR software and engineering manuals for spontaneously recall – or pass that exam.
I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.
I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.
A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
How
to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?
Perhaps
you’d like to check out my sister blogs:
www.innermindworking.blogspot.com
gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life
www.ourinnerminds.blogspot.com which takes
advantage of the experience and expertise of others.
www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com just for fun.
To
quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will
know.
The
more that you learn; the more places you'll go.
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