Brain Chaos

Brain ChaosThursday, 26 October 2000
Our brains are the most complex things in the universe. Yet while we’re all familiar with the Big Bang theory of how the Universe formed, even scientists are still struggling to explain the origins of our thoughts, memories and emotions.But a Melbourne mathematician may have finally cracked the secret code of our brainwaves. If he’s right, his visual model of a brain a work shows that our thoughts are as beautiful as they are complex. (full transcript...)
Producer: Naomi Lumsdaine Researcher: Joy Mitchell
Related Sites:
David Liley’s homepage
Story Contacts:
Dr David Liley School of Biophysical Sciences & Electrical EngineeringSwinburne University of TechnologyPO Box 218HawthornVIC 3122
Full Program Transcript
NARR: Our lives are directed by a mysterious controller. We know little about how it operates, and yet it forms our every action, thought and emotion, It’s the brain. DR DAVID LILEY: The thing that fascinates me about studying the brains is that it’s the most complex thing in the known universeNARR: Dr David Liley, believes it’s time to change the way we think about the brain. He’s frustrated by what he considers to be a theoretical vacuum in neuroscience.DR DAVID LILEY: At the moment our theories are relatively I would say, we basically don’t know anything about the brain. And we’re in a sense being driven by theories that really have their development sort of about 150 years ago.In the past, research has focussed on finding sections of the brain directly responsible for our body’s functions.David Liley sees this cause and effect approach as too simplistic.DR DAVID LILEY: Well locations can just show you location. That’s all they show you. So for instance if you say this part of the brain lights up when I do something. That doesn’t really tell you about the processing that underlies the task. It just tells you about the location of that, and even that’s debatable.NARR: So what’s the answer? David and his colleagues at Swinburne University of Technology, are trying to explain how the brain works using mathematics. They’re developing equations based on the physiology of the brain: details such as the way that neurons travel and interconnect.It’s a huge task. There are something like 100 billion neurons operating in the brain. How can we describe such complexity?Imagine the brain is like a town, and neurons the people living in it.It’s not feasible to predict the actions of the whole population by studying every single person. But by looking at general patterns of human behaviour, it becomes possible to make predictions. By taking a general view of the brain, David believes it’s possible to develop models of brain activity.DR DAVID LILEY: The equations were just basically asking the simple question, what is the behaviour, or the dynamics in a sense of large populations of neurones as found in the brain. NARR: And this is David’s first success - a mathematical description of brain waves. These electrical signals have been observed using EEG machines since the 1920’s, but they have never been fully understood. David’s equations are now helping to reveal hidden patterns in their rhythm.DR DAVID LILEY: One of the long standing questions in research in EEG is whether the EEG is noisy or whether there is actually detail in it. And by simulating these equations you get output that looks noisy, but when you project it and replot it in a certain way has quite profound order.NARR: David hopes that his equations will provide testable models of brain activity. Since they’re based on physiology, they can be adapted to predict the affect on the brain of changes in, say, blood pressure or medication. But David believes that ultimately, the brain will always defy total explanation. For him, the challenge of finding new ways to explore the brain’s complexities is plenty of reward.DR DAVID LILEY: "My student and I we sit there often looking at our latest results and just going wow, isn’t the brain just amazing. It’s just elegant. It’s just.. the aesthetic beauty of trying to understand something as prodigiously complex as the human brain is a great motivator."

Mystery of anesthetic mechanism may be solved

NEW YORK, Feb. 15, (UPI) -- Although more than 150 years have past since the discovery of general anesthetics, how they precisely work remains a mystery. Biophysicists at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York may be close to solving this riddle.
Huping Hu and Maoxin Wu have proposed a mechanism that may lead to better, safer anesthetics, a revolution in the treatment of pain, and a more complete understanding of the effects of alcohol on brain function. General (as opposed to local) anesthetics affect a variety of neurotransmitter receptors.
However, a universally accepted mechanism of anesthesia remains elusive. Presently, two schools of thought exist. The "lipid theory" proposes that anesthetics interact directly with cell membranes that are involved in brain functions. The "protein theory" suggests that anesthetics directly interact with cell proteins such as the ion channels and receptors that are involved in neurotransmission. Neither concept is supported by direct experimental evidence.
Wu and Hu, on the other hand, speculate that general anesthetics perturb the pathways of oxygen, the most essential component of brain function, in both cellular membranes and cellular proteins. In essence, their mechanism holds that anesthetics act as barriers to oxygen transport in both membranes and proteins, reducing oxygen availability to the brain. When the brain detects oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia, it immediately reduces its workload. Part of this workload is sensing pain. Wu and Hu claim that anesthesia, then, is a byproduct of the brain's own self-preservation mechanism.
Wu and Hu predict that better anesthetics can be formulated that more effectively block oxygen pathways by enhancing their ability to be absorbed by the fatty membranes that serve as oxygen gateways. Anesthetics with shorter hydrocarbon chains would be more effective than anesthetics with longer-chain hydrocarbons because the membranes that control oxygen uptake in the brain more easily absorb them. Additionally, clinicians may use the proposed mechanism to better control and predict side effects.
"Anesthesiologists need consider direct monitoring of intracellular or even sub-cellular oxygen concentrations during anesthetic procedures since our hypothesis suggests hypoxia or hypoxia-mimicking situations at the sub-cellular or molecular level," Dr. Hu told UPI. Too much oxygen deprivation at this level can lead to tissue death, he said.
Dr. Judith Tharp, a chief clinician with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, expressed fascination with the results. "There's no question that a mechanism such as the one proposed by Drs. Wu and Hu could result in the formulation of better anesthetics, simply by defining their exact targets more precisely," she said. "It is true--we still don't know exactly what we are aiming for with general anesthesia."

by MIKE MARTIN, UPI Science Correspondent

Older Adults and Mental Health

Important life tasks remain for individuals as they age. Older individuals continue to learn and contribute to the society, in spite of physiologic changes due to aging and increasing health problems.
Continued intellectual, social, and physical activity throughout the life cycle are important for the maintenance of mental health in late life.
Stressful life events, such as declining health and/or the loss of mates, family members, or friends often increase with age. However, persistent bereavement or serious depression is not “normal” and should be treated.
Normal aging is not characterized by mental or cognitive disorders. Mental or substance use disorders that present alone or co-occur should be recognized and treated as illnesses.
Disability due to mental illness in individuals over 65 years old will become a major public health problem in the near future because of demographic changes. In particular, dementia, depression, and schizophrenia, among other conditions, will all present special problems in this age group:
Dementia produces significant dependency and is a leading contributor to the need for costly long-term care in the last years of life;
Depression contributes to the high rates of suicide among males in this population; and
Schizophrenia continues to be disabling in spite of recovery of function by some individuals in mid to late life.
There are effective interventions for most mental disorders experienced by older persons (for example, depression and anxiety), and many mental health problems, such as bereavement.
Older individuals can benefit from the advances in psychotherapy, medication, and other treatment interventions for mental disorders enjoyed by younger adults, when these interventions are modified for age and health status.
Treating older adults with mental disorders accrues other benefits to overall health by improving the interest and ability of individuals to care for themselves and follow their primary care provider’s directions and advice, particularly about taking medications.
Primary care practitioners are a critical link in identifying and addressing mental disorders in older adults. Opportunities are missed to improve mental health and general medical outcomes when mental illness is underrecognized and undertreated in primary care settings.
Barriers to access exist in the organization and financing of services for aging citizens. There are specific problems with Medicare, Medicaid, nursing homes, and managed care.

Taken from : http://www.mentalhealth.com/