Fasting (the oppositte of Feasting) How it affects the Brain??

When people fast for a cause they simply think that they won't eat. What folks don't realize is that there are a lot of things going on internally when going about the process. A lot of what fasting deals with is the mind, rather then the physical body; hence the phrase mind over matter. While the body is enduring this grueling process, some form of energy needs to be created from another source besides food. In the past scientists believed that neurons were kept alive thanks to a chemical called leptin produced by fats in the body. This study was shortly proved to be incorrect though when scientists started a fasting study on mice.
New research has proven that when a human starts fasting the amount of mitochondria rapidly increases. This is key to the body because these mitochondria produce the energy that the food normally would. The lack of food causes also a lack of thyroid hormones, which in turn regulate the metabolism. So now that there isn’t any outside source to energize the body, the brain must produce something that does. This chemical that the brain produces is called Triiodothyronie. Not only does this chemical produce protein for energy, but it also regulates the body’s temperature. Without this chemical the body wouldn’t have the heat source to keep the body alive. This is just one of many reactions that occurs in the brain during the fasting state.
While doing this article I started to realize even more about how in depth the brain really is. Whenever something irregular is going on in the body the brain almost always has something to counter it. The complexity of it all is amazing. I don’t think anyone will fully ever understand the fullness of it all.

Sick of Poverty

Poverty is not the cause of poor health, but the daily stress and the emotional feeling of being poor leads up to bad health. The socioeconomic status (SES) is a social ranking based on income, housing conditions, occupation, and education. The United States SES, when put on a ladder, has a greater distance between the richer people at the top and the poorer people on the bottom. Some physicians think that the richer people are healthier then the poor people because of their wealth. Whitehall studies showed members of the British civil service with the higher powered executives with lower mortality rates from chronic heart disease than their staff members. Britain also has widespread health care so the SES did not matter. Type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis are more regular among the poor but medical checkups will not stop the poor from being affected by it. Poor people are more likely to smoke, drink, and live in a violent neighborhood because of their lifestyles. Wealth is not the cause of poor health but rather stress and the feeling of being poor. The human body has a well balanced heart rate, blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and other levels because of homeostasis the internal balance. Stress disrupts homeostasis and can have an impact on the body depending on how long the stress lasts. If the stress is physical and short-term then processes like digestion, tissue repair, growth, and reproduction shut down while the immune system increases to destroy diseases. The brain has less sensitivity of pain and an increased attentiveness during that time. The circulatory system is effected by the blood vessels constricting and the heart beating faster. Sugar glucose, which stores energy, is released because of the physical challenge to homeostasis that the body needs quickly in case of emergency. Most of the stress that people have is from interactions with other people and other matter that they worry about for extended periods of time. When stress becomes extended the symptoms are an increase in the risk of receiving depression and weakened memory. Next there is a higher risk of infertility and miscarriage from the reproductive organs; then there is higher hormone levels and weaker immune response that slows the recovery of stress. Finally there is higher blood pressure and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. A biomedical literature recognized that people are more susceptible for acquiring stress-sensitive diseases and triggering a stress response by: feeling like they have no control over their stressful situation, feeling that they do not know information about their stress and situation, they can not get rid of their stress, feel like their situation is getting worse, or they do not have any social support for their stress. The poor have burdens like working most of the day with more than one job which gives them no time for stress relieving activities. Nancy Adler from the University of California did a test to see where people saw themselves on a social ladder. People chose if they thought they were poor or wealthy by their emotions and their confidence level. Originally people that felt poor were not necessarily poor, but they ended up poor because of the stress in their lives that weakened their health. Not only is stress a cause of the poor becoming sick and people feeling poor, but when the wealthy people would not help out their community by sharing their income then the poor would have an increased chance of health risks. The poor would see their living environments next to the wealthy person’s environment making the poor have more stress to their lives. Communities that worked together and had an equally shared income ended up having better health. The United States has one of the greatest income inequalities because of the wealth not being spread evenly from the rich to the poor. The communities do not help each other out which adds to the lower life expectancy and the poor not able to get their needed health care.
I am not poor and have never experienced being poor so I am limited on my understanding about what poor people go through. I have experience stress but not in the way that it was lead to an illness. I did not know that stress over prolonged periods of time had a big impact on the body making parts of the body shut down. I knew people’s emotions had impact on them because if you think a certain way sometimes it leads to your actions like a sports team that thinks they will lose before their game and ends up losing. I also didn't think about how different communities and environments impacted our lifestyles.

Mirrors in the Mind

A person can watch someone else grasping an object and know what the other person is doing and why they are doing it. This left scientists wondering how the brain understands this action and intention so quickly. Scientists believed that in order to understand someone’s actions the brain uses a sophisticated reasoning process, involving the comparison of similar previous experiences. The brain could then conclude what the other person was doing and why they were doing it. This process may occur in some situations, most likely in situations where it hard to figure out what the other person is doing, but the ability to comprehend so quickly and so effortlessly lead scientists to believe there was a better explanation. A research center in Italy discovered that certain neurons in a monkey’s brain were emitted when the monkey performed a simple action, in this case picking up fruit. These same neurons were emitted when the monkey saw the same action being performed by another individual. Researchers named these cells mirror neurons. Mirror neurons program models for specific actions. Not only does another person’s action happen before our eyes, but it also seems to take place inside our brain. This surprisingly agrees with the theory philosophers believed that in order for a person to fully understand another’s actions he had to experience it within himself.

Scientists began to study the brain’s motor cortex, particularly an area called F5 that deals with hand and mouth movements to learn more about mirror neurons. By observing monkeys performing simple tasks, the scientists could see the specific groups of neurons that were released. This same process occurred in the monkey’s brain when they watched a person perform the task. This suggested that neuron activity involved in a performing an action is the same regardless of whether the person is performing it or someone else. Scientists would usually eliminate the subject in order to determine its function, but eliminating the neurons would only result in such general cognitive shortages that it would not be possible to understand the effects of the missing neurons. Scientists focused their attention on trying to discover whether mirror neurons are involved in understanding the action or just visually registering it. They began testing the monkeys by performing an action with a distinctive sound and then performing the same action, but alone allowing the monkey to hear the sound. Many of the same neurons were released in both cases. Scientists also found that mirror neurons were released when the monkey did not see the action, but had adequate clues to create a representation of the action in their mind. Scientists began to wonder if a mirror neuron system was also present in humans. People watching someone else grasping objects and performing simple gestures were found to have an increase in neural activation in the muscles that would be involved in doing that action. Scientists also held experiments involving external measures of cortical activity like electroencephalography to support the theory of a mirror neuron system. Investigations done in a hospital in Milan used positron-emission tomography to examine the activity of the neurons in human brains. Watching others perform certain actions stimulated neuron in three main areas of the brain’s cortex. These were the superior temporal sulcus, the inferior parietal lobule, and the inferior frontal gyrus. The superior temporal sulcus contains neurons that respond to watching moving body parts. The other two are the areas where scientists had recorded mirror neurons in monkeys.

Actions we perform are really a series of linked motor acts established by our intent. Different neurons are emitted when a person picks a flower up to smell it as opposed to when a person picks up a flower to hand it to someone else. This was observed in monkeys who picked up food to eat it and also picked up food to put it inside a container. This allowed researchers to believe that the motor system is organized in neural chains, encoding the specific goal of the individual. Researchers also found a link between the motor organization of intentional actions and the ability to comprehend the intentions of others. The neurons in the monkey’s brain matched the same ones released when an experimenter performed the task. Tests on humans showed that the brain responds differently when viewing a person pick up a cup to drink it as to viewing a person pick up a cup to clean up. Researchers believe that the mirror neuron system may allow us to understand what other people feel as well as what they do.

Humans understand emotions in more than one way. When observing another person they may come to a logical conclusion as to what the other is feeling by sensory information, or they may experience the emotion by the release of mirror neurons. The same neurons are discharged when a person watches someone else experiencing disgust or pain as when that person experiences the feeling themselves. Dysfunction in this mirror system could possibly been seen in people with empathy deficits, like children with autism. It should be theoretically possible to heal motor impairments if the mirror neuron template is somewhat engraved on the brain by experience. The mirror system is also believed to play a role in the way we learn new skills. The experiments conducted used simple, highly practiced actions, and left scientists wondering how mirror neurons respond when we learn an action by imitation. In Germany guitar students had high neural activity in the parietofrontal area when the watched guitar experts play chords. The activity in this area was even higher when the students tried to imitate the teacher. Another region also became active known as the prefrontal area 46, which is associated with the planning of motor actions and memory. Scientists wonder if other animals exhibit mirror neurons and are currently running experiments with rats. They are also working with autistic children to see if they have motor deficits that might cause a dysfunction of the mirror neuron system. Many questions are still left unanswered such as the mirror system’s involvement in language. Mirror neurons may be what allows to communicate and connect with others without saying anything.

This article contains good information about mirror neurons and how they allow us to understand the actions and feelings of others. It seems amazing that when we watch someone doing something, our brain’s neural system reacts in the same way as when we perform the same task. I found it interesting how different mirror neurons are released when the same task is done but with a different intent. This area of study leaves many questions however as does any study involving the brain. The way God has designed our brains is incredible, and I think we will understand more and more about it, but will never be able to fully understand all of it.

Broken Mirrors: A theory of Autism

Autism is a disorder that affects around .5% of American children. Ever since autism was first diagnosed scientists and doctors have been puzzled by what causes it. The main signs of autism include social isolation, inability to make eye contact, poor language capabilities, and absence of empathy. Some less known symptoms are inability to understand metaphors, mimic the actions of others, and ignore certain aspects of their surroundings while cluing in other things in their environment. Many theories have been presented that try to explain all the symptoms, however many of them only explain a few of the symptoms.

One theory that explains autism and it’s symptoms is the “theory of other minds.” This theory involves the mirror neurons that were discovered only a few years ago. Mirror neurons are involved in social interaction and what allow us to be able to imitate what someone else does. Such as a baby sticking out it’s tongue when the mother sticks her tongue out at the baby. Giacomo Rizzolatti and other researchers at the University of Parma have done experiments to study how these mirror neurons react in the brain. In their experiments they took monkeys and gave them goal orientated tasks. While performing these tasks certain parts of their brains “lit up.” When they saw other monkeys or researchers perform the same tasks the same part of their brain would “light up.” This is caused by the mirror neurons. Researchers then took this experiment and applied it to children with autism. When they perform a task they are able to do it and their brain “lit up.” But when they were shown a task they were unable to imitate it and their brain did not “light up,” Children who did not suffer from autism were able to complete the task and able imitate the action shown to them. This experiment helped researchers understand why children with autism are unable to interact socially. This is because they are unable to imitate the social standards.

However this theory does not explain why autistic children have difficulty understanding metaphors. One explanation is the bouba/kiki effect. This was first created by Wolfgang Kohler over sixty years ago. The experiment was to show two pictures: one jagged and one curvy. When asked which one is the bouba and which is the kiki 98 percent would chose bouba as curvy and kiki as the jagged. This is because a normal human brain matches sounds with sight. When the test is given to autistic children they fail it. This explains why they don’t understand metaphors because metaphors require the same abstract thinking that the bouba/kiki test requires.

Through the research of Giacomo Rizzolatti and many others like him autism is being explained more and more everyday. Hopefully one day they will be able to find a cure.

I thought that is article was very interesting and very relevant to what we just studied in class. I did not know much about autism when I picked the article. Now I understand how sad of a disease it is. I hope that researchers will be able to find a cure for it or at least to able to help families cope with it.

How Blind Are We? (We have eyes, yet we do not see)

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa017&articleID=000B5245-6805-128A-A3C683414B7F0000

A study conducted by Daniel J. Simons, now at the University of Illinois, and Christopher F. Chabris of Harvard University shows that we may not see the world as well as we think. We think of our eyes as video cameras that make a flawless recording of the world around us, but, as Simons and Chabris discovered, we actually take in very little information at a glance.The experiment was set up at a basketball game, and the audience was told to count the number of times each player made a pass to another person during a 60-second period. It was hard to concentrate on the ball while it was moving so quickly, but suddenly someone dressed in a gorilla suit ambled across the floor. He walked through the players, turned to face the viewers, thumped his chest and left. Astonishingly, fifty-percent of the people fail to notice the gorilla.

Researchers refer to this effect as "inattentional blindness" or "change blindness". Our brain is constantly trying to construct meaningful narratives from what we see. Things that do not quite fit the script or that are not relevant to a particular task occupying our interest are completely wiped from consciousness. (Whether such deleted information is nonetheless processed unconsciously has yet to be investigated.) An example of how the brain's running narrative can interfere with perception is the children's game "spot the difference". The two images are similar enough that the brain assumes they must be identical; it takes minutes of careful inspection to locate the differences.

The value of having an underlying brain "story" becomes clear when you realize how jumbled sensory inputs can be. As you look at the room around you, the image on your retina is jumping rapidly as various parts of the scene excite different bits of retina, but the world appears stable. Researchers used to believe that the experience of having an unbroken view was created entirely by the brain sending a copy of the eye movement command signals originating in the frontal lobes to the visual centers. The visual areas were thought to be "tipped off" ahead of time that the jumping image on the retina was caused by eyes moving and not by the world moving.

Jonathan Miller, an opera director in London, did an independent observation of this effect in the early 1990's. In this observation, he turned his television set upside down and turned off the volume. He stood slightly to the side of the set, looking at the screen with his peripheral vision and noticed sudden, jarring changes and visual jolts. While viewing the broadcast with the TV right side up and at normal volume, the cuts and pans of the camera flowed smoothly and seamlessly into one another and Miller did not even notice them. Even when the scene switched, say, from one talking head to the other as they alternate in conversation, he did not see a head transforming or morphing from one to the other as his mind alternated between each of the two speakers. Instead the experience is of vantage point shifting.

What is going on in this experiment is that when the TV is right side up and you can hear the sound, the brain can construct a sensible narrative. The cuts, pans and other changes are simply ignored as irrelevant, however gross they might be physically. In contrast, when the scene is upside down or viewed with peripheral vision and the sound off, it is hard for the brain to make meaningful sense out of what the visual centers perceive, so you start to notice the big changes in the physical image. This effect is also true for your entire life's experiences.

Yet another experiment was conducted in 1992 by Colin Blakemore, now chief executive of the Medical Research Council in London. Blakemore used three abstract, colored shapes: a red square, a yellow triangle and a blue circle. He left this frame up for two seconds, then replaced it with the same three shapes, which were each shifted in position by a small degree. The audience observed that all three appeared to flicker or "glitch" slightly. Blakemore was astonished when the majority of the audience didn't even notice when he swapped the circle with a square. Even with three simple objects, we experience sensory overload and change blindness.



It is so amazing that the most complex and mysterious creation in the world, the brain, does not have the ability the comprehend all things around you. With the gorilla experiment we learn that while focusing intently on one subject, we may fail to recognize the most obvious obscurities of nature. In Miller's television observation we discover that our minds can smooth together carema angles and changes, but only depending on our vantage point. I thought, as a whole, this article was very thorough and proved its theory many times by using effective experiments. I was impressed with the amount of research and time scientists put into this theory, but I'm also blown-away at the fact that only God can fully comprehend this matter, no matter how technologically advanced we become.