Podcast
Questions and Answers
What is the function of the posterior language area?
What is the function of the posterior language area?
language comprehension
What is the definition of Aphasia?
What is the definition of Aphasia?
difficulty understanding, repeating, producing meaningful speech
What are the 3 issues associated with Broca's Aphasia?
What are the 3 issues associated with Broca's Aphasia?
What is one way the text describes how the amygdala is involved in fear?
What is one way the text describes how the amygdala is involved in fear?
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Which of the following is NOT a cause of Seizure Disorder?
Which of the following is NOT a cause of Seizure Disorder?
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What are the 2 main types of strokes?
What are the 2 main types of strokes?
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A Thrombus is a blood clot in the blood that has traveled to a different location in the body.
A Thrombus is a blood clot in the blood that has traveled to a different location in the body.
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What is the primary cause of Huntington's Disease?
What is the primary cause of Huntington's Disease?
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What is the most prevalent type of mental illness?
What is the most prevalent type of mental illness?
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Autism is NOT a neurodevelopmental disorder.
Autism is NOT a neurodevelopmental disorder.
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What is NOT included in the text as a comorbid diagnosis for individuals with Autism?
What is NOT included in the text as a comorbid diagnosis for individuals with Autism?
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What are the 2 main categories of symptoms associated with Schizophrenia?
What are the 2 main categories of symptoms associated with Schizophrenia?
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What is the main hypothesis for the cause of Schizophrenia?
What is the main hypothesis for the cause of Schizophrenia?
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What is a Hypofrontality?
What is a Hypofrontality?
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Atypical antipsychotic drugs are considered second-generation antipsychotics because they only influence the activity of a single neurotransmitter receptor.
Atypical antipsychotic drugs are considered second-generation antipsychotics because they only influence the activity of a single neurotransmitter receptor.
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What are the primary differences between mental illness and neurodevelopmental disorders?
What are the primary differences between mental illness and neurodevelopmental disorders?
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What is a Sclerotic Plaque?
What is a Sclerotic Plaque?
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The text suggests that ADHD is primarily caused by genetic factors.
The text suggests that ADHD is primarily caused by genetic factors.
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Bipolar Disorder is characterized by cyclical periods of mania and depression; however, the periods of depression do not alternate with periods of mania.
Bipolar Disorder is characterized by cyclical periods of mania and depression; however, the periods of depression do not alternate with periods of mania.
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What is the most effective treatment for severe depression and bipolar disorder, as mentioned in the text?
What is the most effective treatment for severe depression and bipolar disorder, as mentioned in the text?
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Which neurotransmitter is primarily implicated in the Monoamine Hypothesis of Depression?
Which neurotransmitter is primarily implicated in the Monoamine Hypothesis of Depression?
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What is the primary physiological reaction to threatening situations?
What is the primary physiological reaction to threatening situations?
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What are the main components of the HPA axis?
What are the main components of the HPA axis?
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What neurochemical signaling system is primarily responsible for the body's immediate response to threats?
What neurochemical signaling system is primarily responsible for the body's immediate response to threats?
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What is NOT a characteristic symptom associated with PTSD, as described in the text?
What is NOT a characteristic symptom associated with PTSD, as described in the text?
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OCD is exclusively caused by genetic factors.
OCD is exclusively caused by genetic factors.
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What is the primary treatment approach for OCD, as described in the text?
What is the primary treatment approach for OCD, as described in the text?
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The text suggests that Substance Abuse Disorder solely involves environmental factors, without any genetic contribution.
The text suggests that Substance Abuse Disorder solely involves environmental factors, without any genetic contribution.
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What is a Tolerance in the context of substance abuse?
What is a Tolerance in the context of substance abuse?
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The text states that Physical Dependence can only occur when a person is addicted to a substance.
The text states that Physical Dependence can only occur when a person is addicted to a substance.
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Which of the following is NOT a treatment approach for Substance Abuse Disorder as described in the text?
Which of the following is NOT a treatment approach for Substance Abuse Disorder as described in the text?
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The text suggests that there are many cases where genetic factors contributing to neurodevelopmental disorders are completely independent of environmental factors and vice versa.
The text suggests that there are many cases where genetic factors contributing to neurodevelopmental disorders are completely independent of environmental factors and vice versa.
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The text emphasizes that sex differences related to mental health conditions are primarily biological in nature.
The text emphasizes that sex differences related to mental health conditions are primarily biological in nature.
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The text suggests that autism in diagnosed males is associated with fewer harmful gene variants than in diagnosed females.
The text suggests that autism in diagnosed males is associated with fewer harmful gene variants than in diagnosed females.
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The text explicitly states that hormone fluctuations play a key role in the development of Autism.
The text explicitly states that hormone fluctuations play a key role in the development of Autism.
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The text mentions that the genetic component of ADHD is substantial, but the rates vary considerably amongst individuals.
The text mentions that the genetic component of ADHD is substantial, but the rates vary considerably amongst individuals.
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The text indicates that OCD is an anxiety disorder.
The text indicates that OCD is an anxiety disorder.
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The text suggests that the development of mental illnesses is predominantly influenced by genetic factors over time.
The text suggests that the development of mental illnesses is predominantly influenced by genetic factors over time.
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Genetic variants associated with mental illnesses can also regulate brain development and neuronal plasticity.
Genetic variants associated with mental illnesses can also regulate brain development and neuronal plasticity.
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The text suggests that, if a person has a severe form of mental illness, they are less likely to reproduce than someone without a mental illness.
The text suggests that, if a person has a severe form of mental illness, they are less likely to reproduce than someone without a mental illness.
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The text indicates that, in the developmental process, the brain is vulnerable to adverse environmental influences that can impact its trajectory.
The text indicates that, in the developmental process, the brain is vulnerable to adverse environmental influences that can impact its trajectory.
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The text suggests that some genetic variations linked to mental illnesses may have been beneficial or neutral in the past but have become problematic more recently.
The text suggests that some genetic variations linked to mental illnesses may have been beneficial or neutral in the past but have become problematic more recently.
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The text suggests that the use of deep brain stimulation can effectively treat all mental disorders.
The text suggests that the use of deep brain stimulation can effectively treat all mental disorders.
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The text mentions that, despite the progress in understanding mental illnesses, there is still much to learn about the optimal treatment strategies.
The text mentions that, despite the progress in understanding mental illnesses, there is still much to learn about the optimal treatment strategies.
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Study Notes
Language Lateralization
- Speech comprehension is located in the left side of the brain
- Prosody (rhythm, emphasis, tone of speech) is processed in the right hemisphere
- Emotional state is indicated by prosody
- Regular rhythm and emphasis on words in speech indicate phrasing (statement vs. question)
- Individuals with left brain damage still comprehend emotional state and phrasing of speech
- Voice recognition is independent of word comprehension
Aphasia
- Defined as difficulty understanding, repeating, or producing meaningful speech
- Not caused by sensory/motor deficits or lack of motivation
- Individuals must be isolated but aware of the environment around them
- Middle cerebral artery damage can cause aphasia with varied symptoms depending on the location of cell death, including damage to the sensory association cortex (can't understand language) or the frontal lobe (can't speak or write)
Posterior Language Area
- Function: language comprehension
- Location: junction of temporal, occipital, and parietal lobes
- Neurons in the posterior language area activate neurons throughout the sensory association cortex
- Helps understand the meaning of words
Transcortical Sensory Aphasia
- Damage to the posterior language area
- Difficulty understanding the meaning of words
- Ability to speak, but unable to express thoughts through speech
- Can repeat words
- Capable of reading and writing without understanding
Other Language Disorders
- Conduction Aphasia: Inability to repeat words
- Damage to the arcuate fasciculus connecting Wernicke's area and Broca's area
- Language comprehension and expression are still good
- Wernicke's Aphasia: Damage to Wernicke's area and posterior language area
- Combination of transcortical sensory aphasia and pure word deafness
- Poor language comprehension
- Fluent, but meaningless speech
- Difficulty with receptive aphasia and fluent aphasia
- Cannot repeat what is said
- Spoken word recognition and word comprehension are not distinguishable in brain scans
- Pure Word Deafness: Inability to recognize auditory words
- Damage to the small part of Wernicke's area
- Can still hear, interpret non-speech sounds, and read/write, but cannot recognize words
- Pure Alexia: Inability to recognize written words
- Damage to the visual word-form area (VWFA) in the left hemisphere's visual association cortex
- Disrupts the ability to perceive written words
Reading
- Two processes for reading: sight reading and sound reading
- Sight reading (whole-word reading) is using the VWFA
- Sound reading (phonetic reading) is decoding words by sounding out letters
Dyslexia
- Reading difficulty, often hereditary
- Surface dyslexia: recognize whole words, but struggle with irregularly spelled words
- Phonological dyslexia: read familiar words but cannot read unfamiliar or non-words
- Developmental dyslexia: struggles with grammar, spelling, and ordering of sounds.
Broca's Area
- Function: speech production
- Location: left inferior temporal lobe
- Damage leads to slow, labored, non-fluent speech
- Articulation issues: difficulties with sequencing
- Agrammatism: difficulty employing grammatical devices and word order
- Anomia: difficulty recalling appropriate words (may be a symptom of any aphasia)
Emotions
- Abstract thinking and expressing emotions happen in the neocortex
- Raw, reflexive feelings processed in the limbic system
- Two streams of sensory inputs: thought and feeling
- Wheel of emotion: four opposite dimensions that create emotional blends
- Many emotions don't have clear boundaries
- Key dimensions of emotion: arousal and valence
Expression of Emotions
- Facial expressions are innate
- Displayed in babies, but less when alone
- Rapid, accurate recognition through facial expressions
- Examples of identifiable expressions: fear, anger, sadness, disgust, happiness, and surprise
Reading Emotions
- Emotional expressions are not as specific to one emotion
- Inferring emotions is not completely reliable
- There are many blends of emotions, and no clear prototypical facial expressions
Animals and Emotions
- Emotional feelings in animals coincide with behavioral and physiological responses
- Includes behavioral, autonomic, and hormonal responses
- Lack of communication and culture; anthropomorphizing (giving human characteristics) vs anthropectomy (denying animals human qualities).
- Intracranial self-stimulation in animals indicates that dopamine is linked to reinforcement learning, not necessarily pleasure.
Sexual Behavior Circuitry
- Glutamate and GABA neurons on the medial amygdala (light activates specific cell types)
- GABA stimulation: low frequency = normal sexual response; medium frequency = high sexual response; high frequency = high aggressive behavior
- Glutamate stimulation: grooming and complete social disengagement
Theories of Emotion
- Common sense: stimulus -> feeling -> behavior/physiological response
- Emotion precedes physiological responses.
- James-Lange theory: stimulus -> behavioral/physiological responses -> emotional response from PNS feedback.
- Internal organs do not react quickly enough to cause an emotional response
- Cutting sensory nerves between internal organs and the CNS does not eliminate the feeling of emotion
- Artificially stimulating the nervous system does not produce specific emotions
Limbic System
- Cingulate cortex: interconnects limbic areas
- Hippocampus: explicit memory formation
- Amygdala: recognition of fear
- Both amygdala and hippocampus have their own nuclei
- Central nucleus of amygdala stimulation: fear, anxiety, agitation
- Consistent stimulation: stress-induced illness
- Lesion: no more innate or learned response to fear; only fear through suffocation
- Damage to visual cortices: still activity in amygdala when viewing faces and can mimic facial reactions
Beyond the Amygdala
- Somatosensory cortex, insular cortex, premotor cortex, and cingulate cortex are activated when seeing emotional faces.
- Right hemisphere: emotion recognition
- Damage in these areas: hard to identify emotional facial expressions in others
- Eye movements and fixation in emotion recognition
Phineas Gage
- Rod injury to skull
- Before injury = kind; after injury = childlike, irresponsible, outbursts, unable to plan
Strokes
- Ischemic stroke: blocked cerebral blood vessel
- Treatment: drugs that dissolve blood clots (like tPA) and devices (coils, aspiration devices, stents)
- Hemorrhagic stroke: ruptured blood vessel
- Treatment: anti-inflammatory drugs, physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, etc
Tumors
- Cause: uncontrolled cell growth -> rogue cell division
- Metastasis: cells break off the tumors, transported by blood vessels, and grow elsewhere in the body
- Malignant: cancerous; not encapsulated; grows by infiltrating tissue
- Glioma: specific rapidly proliferating, neural stem cell-originating tumors resistant to treatments
- Non-malignant: not cancerous; encapsulated
Infectious Diseases (Brain)
- Encephalitis: inflammation of the brain (caused by infection)
- Meningitis: inflammation of the meninges (caused by viruses or bacteria)
- Polio: viral disease destroys motor neurons of the brain and spinal cord
- Rabies: viral disease caused by brain damage and death
- Herpes simplex virus: viral disease that usually creates cold sores; rare cases enter the brain cause encephalitis and brain damage
Traumatic Brain Injuries
- Closed-head injury: blow to head with blunt object
- Coup: brain violently hits inside of skull
- Contrecoup: brain recoils and hits opposite side of skull
- Open-head injury: penetrating brain injuries, exacerbated by damaged blood vessels
Seizure Disorder
- Causes: scarring related to injury, stroke, tumor, abnormal brain development, high fever
- Many are idiopathic
- Gene mutations affect ion channels, excitatory/inhibitory neurons and synaptic plasticity
- Treatments: anticonvulsant drugs, sometimes requiring brain surgery
Grand Mal Seizures
- Aura: sensation preceding seizure, located on seizure's focus
- Tonic phase: skeletal muscles contract
- Clonic phase: rhythmic jerking movements
Developmental Disorders
- Exposure to toxins, drugs, viruses, heavy metals during pregnancy
- Fetal alcohol syndrome causes facial abnormalities and intellectual disabilities
- Inherited metabolic disorders: errors of metabolism -> genetic abnormalities.
- Phenylketonuria (PKU): hereditary disorder from enzyme absence.
- Tay-Sachs disease: hereditary, fatal disorder
Down Syndrome
- Cause: extra twenty-first chromosome
- Congenital, moderate to severe intellectual disability, and physical abnormalities
- Brain degeneration after age 30
Multiple Sclerosis
- Sporadic (not obviously caused by inherited gene mutation or infectious agent)
- Symptoms include cycles of flare-ups and remission (remitting-relapsing MS followed by progressive MS)
- Consequences include demyelination of axons, action potentials don't propagate well
- Myelin sheaths attacked by own immune system affecting neurological disorders
- Autoimmune disease
- Starts in late 20s
- Sclerotic plaques: hard patches of debris
Prion Disease
- Cause: accumulation of misfolded prion protein
- Widespread degeneration (brain looks like a sponge)
- Contagious; spreads within body and across animals. Prion = only infectious agent that is a protein.
Huntington's Disease
- Cause: mutation in Huntington gene -> misfolding of Huntington protein, degeneration of basal ganglia
- Symptoms/consequences: lack of coordination, jerky movements, and dementia -> death
- Treatment: Antisense therapy (promising)
- Injected DNA compliments mRNA into spinal cord
- DNA + mRNA -> no translation -> no protein
Parkinson's Disease
- Cause: degeneration of dopamine neurons in the midbrain (substantia nigra) -> misfolding and clumping of alpha-synuclein protein
- Symptoms/consequences: reduced dopamine signaling (muscle rigidity, slowed movements, shaking), cognitive, emotional, and sleep disturbances
Alzheimer's Disease
- Cause: clumping of misfolded beta-amyloid protein and severe degeneration in and around hippocampus, and neocortex
- Symptoms/consequences: progressive memory loss, motor deficits, death
- Treatments: Immunotherapy (injection antibodies are tagged to be destroyed)
ALS-FTD
- Cause: mostly unknown
- Starts at age 50
- Symptoms/consequences: ALS attacks motor neurons in spinal cord and cranial nerves, spasticity (increased muscle tension), progressive weakness, muscular atrophy, paralysis -> death
Reproductive Success
- Not all individuals reproduce.
- Reproductive success is impacted by physical and mental health.
- Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection -> gene variants that increase risk of severe health issues will eventually get eliminated
Bad Genes
- Natural selection eliminates bad genes over time
Good Genes
- Beneficial alleles increase until everyone has them. Promotes survival and reproduction.
Genetic Basis of Disease
- Variety of alleles
- Most diseases and disorders have a genetic basis but some alleles increase the risk of disease, but others are protective
- Strong evolutionary pressure on gene variants
- Gene-environment interaction: strong genetic component but prevalence varies across the world.
Gene-Environment Interactions
- In stable environments, only beneficial and neutral alleles are maintained.
- Prevalence of diseases vary across different cultures.
Mental Illness
- Doesn't always show gene-environment interactions
- Schizophrenia and autism = heritable, large genetic basis, but prevalence rates are not consistent (don't vary)
Schizophrenia
- Hundreds of common gene variants that individually contribute a small increase in schizophrenia susceptibility
- Combination of gene variants = likely mental illness
- If one twin has schizophrenia, 50% chance the other will get it regardless if raised together or apart
Diagnostic Categories
- Mental illnesses vary; people present differently, making grouping difficult.
- Diagnostic categories often result from historical conventions and are arbitrary.
Mental Disorder Susceptibility Genes
- Gene variants increase risk of schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder, depression and OCD, ADHD
- Gene variants tell vulnerability to developing a mental illness in general, but not for specific conditions.
Neurodevelopment Robustness
- Both sides of the body develop independently.
- Clear genetic instructions are crucial and robust to withstand environmental variations.
To Maintain a Healthy Brain
- General health is essential for brain health (active lifestyle, well-balanced diet, etc)
- Limiting external factors like alcohol, tobacco and drug use is a must
- Identification of gene variants and neural circuits are key to develop appropriate treatments for mental illnesses and related issues like gene editing and targeting intracellular signaling cascades
Schizophrenia: Consequences
- Social withdrawal
- Disorganized thinking
- Abnormal speech
- Inability to understand reality
Heritability in Schizophrenia (and other disorders)
- Measures of how much of a trait/phenotype is caused by genetics
- 50% chance of identical twins, 13% for having one parent with condition, 8% for having a sibling with the condition
- Highly penetrant gene mutations = rare gene copy number variations
Environmental Factors in Schizophrenia
- Mother's nutrition and stress during pregnancy are implicated
- Infections
- Birth month (seasonality effect)
- Childhood trauma
- Social isolation
- Brain damage
- Prenatal environment
Schizophrenia Evidence of Abnormal Brain Development
- Behavioral + anatomical evidence of abnormal prenatal development
- Less social, and difficulty with motor skills in children
- Possible physical abnormalities (e.g., slightly webbed feet, highly-steepled palate)
Schizophrenia: Treatment
- Medication + psychological/social support
- Antipsychotics/neuroleptics block dopamine D2 receptors
- Drugs to relieve positive symptoms
Dopamine Hypothesis
- Excessive dopamine D2 activity in nucleus accumbens (striatum) = positive symptoms
- Dopamine D2 antagonists reduce positive symptoms but not negative symptoms
- Negative symptoms are largely responsible for long-term disability
- Result of abnormal activity in prefrontal cortex
- Hypo-frontalty: decrease in activity of frontal lobes
Atypical Antipsychotic Drugs
- Second generation antipsychotics reduce positive and negative symptoms
- Influence multiple neurotransmitter receptors
- Examples: clozapine, aripiprazole
Autism
- Wide range of disorders, wide range of causes (genetic and environmental factors affecting early brain development)
- Symptoms and consequences:
- Category 1: Trouble with social interaction and communication
- Category 2: Restricted interests, repetitive behaviors
Autism: Trouble with Social Interactions and Communication
- Ppl with autism = abnormal behaviour, no language
- A third don't develop speech to meet daily needs
- Repeat what is said to them; refer to themselves in 2nd or 3rd person
Autism Heritability and Brain Development
- 70-90% heritability with rare chromosomal abnormalities and multigene interactions linked to common variants
- But, often differences in brain development at birth
- Hypotheses of quick brain growth during early gestation
- Altered neuronal migration, abnormal formation of synapses/dendritic spines
- Overconnectivity in many brain regions
- Unbalanced excitatory-inhibitory neural networks; less active activity in fusiform gyrus when looking at face in fMRI
Autism: Treatments
- Lessen impact of deficits and family distress (increase quality of life)
- Intensive special education programs
- Behavior Therapy in early life
- Medication: Anticonvulsants (increase GABA receptor activity), antidepressants (increase serotonin receptor activity) and Antipsychotics (decrease dopamine receptor activity); Stimulants (increase dopamine receptor activity)
ADHD
- Symptoms and consequences:
- Problems paying attention
- Difficulty controlling behavior
- Hyperactivity
- Act without reflecting
- Easily bored and distracted
- More than 5% of children are diagnosed with ADHD.
- Symptoms appear before age 12
- Comorbidity with learning disabilities, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, aggression, conduct disorder
- Mostly genetic, but some factors like drug/alcohol/smoking during pregnancy or low birth weight
ADHD: Treatments
- Counselling
- Medication (stimulants increase dopamine levels, block dopamine reuptake transporter).
- Antidepressants
Mood Disorders
- Affect (feelings, emotions)
- Affective disorder = disordered feelings
- Serious mood disorders: bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder
Bipolar Disorder
- Cyclical periods of mania and depression
- Major depressive disorder: unremitting depression, periods of depression do not alternate with periods of mania
Bipolar Disorder: Symptoms/Consequences
- Mania: state of unjustified euphoria, nonstop speech and motor activity, and risky behaviors.
- Mania followed by depression
- Treatments:
- Lithium (chemical element, rapid effect; unknown mechanism)
- Anticonvulsants (drugs) block VG sodium channels
- Antipsychotics/antidepressants
Major Depressive Disorder
- Treatments: drugs increase serotonin/norepinephrine signaling; inhibiting enzymatic breakdown or blocking reuptake
- Electro-convulsive Therapy (ECT) is most effective
- Treatments also include: Ketamine, Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), deep brain stimulation, Vagal nerve stimulation, Bright light therapy and sleep deprivation
Tricyclic Antidepressants and Other Antidepressants
- Tricyclic antidepressants: inhibit the reuptake of serotonin and norepinephrine
- Serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) specifically inhibit serotonin reuptake
- Serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) inhibit the reuptake of both norepinephrine and serotonin
Monoamine Hypothesis of Depression
- Depression may relate to insufficient monoamine receptor activity (monoamine = serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine)
- Success of tricyclic and SSRI treatments focuses on norepinephrine and serotonin
- Low tryptophan diet + tryptophan-free cocktail decrease serotonin synthesis (can cause depressive episodes)
- SSRIs and SNRIs increase serotonin and norepinephrine levels
Role of Frontal Cortex
- Subgenual ACC less active when depression is gone
- Deep brain stimulation targeting it is unsuccessful
- Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): highly effective, treats severe depression and bipolar disorder.
Sleep and Depression
- Disordered sleep is common in depression
- Reduced time in deep sleep stages (stage 3 and 4); quick entry into REM sleep (earlier in the night)
- Sleep deprivation may be an effective treatment for depression.
Stress, Anxiety, OCD, Addiction
- General physiological reaction to threatening situations, mobilizes body for action
- Triggers autonomic and endocrine systems; adaptive in short term, but long term = illness. Can lead to anxiety.
- Persistent feeling of worry; uneasy without and obvious trigger; more intense than stress
- Physiology of stress:
- Sympathetic NS: adrenal releases epinephrine and norepinephrine into blood
- HPA axis: Hypothalamus (CRH/CRF) -> Pituitary (ACTH) -> Adrenal (cortisol) -> increase heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow
- Glucocorticoids: essential to survival, maintain homeostasis, make glucose and fat available, prepare the body for immediate action, but persistent signaling weakens the immune system
PTSD
- Traumatic events: abuse, death, warfare....
- Symptoms: vivid, intrusive memories, dreams, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, hyperarousal(vigilance), negative mood, hopelessness
- Treatments: CBT, group therapy, SSRIs
- More common in women with abnormalities in HPA access, smaller hippocampus and prefrontal cortex (PFC)
Anxiety Disorders
- Variety of psychological disorders characterized by unrealistic fear and anxiety
- Symptoms: expectation of impending disaster, overactive autonomic nervous system, continuous vigilance
- Generalized anxiety disorder: excessive anxiety and worry
- Social anxiety disorder: fear of being judged
- Panic disorder: episodic periods of severe terror
- Anticipatory anxiety: fear of panic attack
- Agoraphobia: avoiding places and situations
Anxiety Disorders (Treatment, Causes and Other Details)
- Causes are genetic and environmental factors
- Treatments include lifestyle changes, CBT, SSRIs, and benzodiazepines
- Often comorbid with major depressive disorder, personality disorders, or substance use disorders
- Specific neural circuit disorders are absent
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Genetic and environmental factors involved
- Symptoms include repeated thoughts (obsessions) and ritualistic behaviors (compulsions)
- Examples: cleaning, hoarding, symmetry, forbidden thoughts
- Treatments for OCD include therapy (exposure and response prevention; a form of CBT) and antidepressants (SSRIs)
- Possible deep brain stimulation, but still being researched
Substance Use Disorder
- Genetic predisposition
- Addictive drugs positively reinforce behavior; speed of reinforcement by the brain
- Reinforcers cause dopamine increase in the striatum.
- More addictive = more rapid dopamine release
- Partially maintained by negative reinforcement, drug cravings outlast withdrawal symptoms
Substance Use Disorder (Tolerance, Withdrawal, Physical Dependence, and Comorbidity)
- Tolerance: drug effect gets smaller with repeated exposure (compensatory mechanisms).
- Withdrawal: opposite symptoms to those produced by the drug when removed from body; compensatory mechanisms
- Physical dependence: physical symptoms of tolerance and withdrawal. Tolerance and withdrawal can occur without addition.
- Comorbidity: most schizophrenics smoke cigarettes and have abnormalities in PFC and interaction between striatum and dopamine neurons associated with deficits involving PFC
Substance Use Disorder (Treatments)
- Block the receptor approach (ex. Nalterexone, Naloxone) which can be prescribed to alcoholics and opiate addicts;
- Maintenance approach (ex. Methadone, Buprenorphine, Varenicline) which can be used as a substitute for heroin. Methadone is a strong opiate, Buprenorphine is a partial opioid receptor agonist, and Varenicline is a partial agonist at acetylcholine receptors used for nicotine addiction
- Brain stimulation approach: using deep brain stimulation or transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to regulate cerebral cortex activity
Similarities Between Mental Disorders
- More common in women: anxiety disorders, major depression, OCD, PTSD, anorexia, bullimia
- More common in men: ADHD, autism, intellectual disability, Tourettes
- Influenced by genes and environment: autism, schizophrenia, seizures, OCD, ADHD, developmental disorder, traumatic brain injury, PTSD
Autism Diagnoses: Males vs. Females
- Diagnosed men have fewer harmful gene variants than diagnosed females
- Rare gene copy number variations (CNVs): section of genome is duplicated or missing.
Sex Chromosomes:
- Mammals (most insects): females have 2 of the same chromosome (XX), this is called the homogametic sex.
- In contrast, male mammals (heterogametic sex) have 2 different chromosomes (XY)
- XX promotes robustness in developmental pathways in humans.
Mental Illness Differences: Females
- Social/cultural stressors
- Hormone fluctuation during puberty, childbirth, and menopause
- Anxiety and depression fluctuate during hormonal changes
- Hormone signaling affects neural networks, adapting to the changes
Autism: Symptoms
- Wide range of disorders, wide range of causes
- Genetic and environmental factors
Studying That Suits You
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Description
Explore essential concepts related to language lateralization and aphasia in this quiz. You'll learn how different brain hemispheres contribute to speech comprehension and the implications of aphasia. Test your knowledge on emotional cues in speech and the effects of brain damage.
