The Bassoon Causing New Brain Disorder

You punch in a date, and activate the time machine. There’s a flash of light, and you black out.

You awaken in what looks like a hi-tech hospital, with people walking around, conversing in a language you’ve never heard before. One person walks over to you, and says, in fluent English; “Well, you’ve managed to not only travel several thousand years into the past, but you’ve also managed to get into a timeline that honestly shouldn’t exist anymore. So, how do you feel?”

A serial killer murdered and buried you, unbeknownst to him you’re immortal. You spend the rest of his life tormenting him by pretending to be a ghost.

Snakes are so cute though!

Itsy Bitsy Spider: Fear of spiders and snakes is deeply embedded in us

Snakes and spiders evoke fear and disgust in many people. Even in developed countries lots of people are frightened of these animals although hardly anybody comes into contact with them. Until now, there has been debate about whether this aversion is innate or learnt. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig and the Uppsala University have recently discovered that it is hereditary: Babies as young as six months old feel stressed when seeing these creatures—long before they could have learnt this reaction.

Presumably, in Germany most people have never come across a poisonous spider or snake in the wild. Here in this country there are no spiders that pose a threat to humans. Likewise for snakes there are just two species that are indeed poisonous but they are so rare that you hardly ever encounter them. Nevertheless, there are few people that would not shiver at the thought of a spider crawling up their arm, however harmless it may be.

This fear can even develop into anxiety which limits a person’s daily life. Such people are always on edge and cannot enter a room before it is declared “spider free” or cannot venture out into nature for sheer fear that they may encounter a snake. In developed countries one to five per cent of the population are affected by a real phobia of these creatures.

Until now, it was not clear where this widespread aversion or anxiety stems from. While some scientists assume that we learn this fear from our surroundings when we are a child, others suppose that it is innate. The drawback of most previous studies on this topic was that they were conducted with adults or older children—making it hard to distinguish which behaviour was learnt and which was inborn. Such studies with children only tested whether they spot spiders and snakes faster than harmless animals or objects, not whether they show a direct physiological fear reaction.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig and the Uppsala University, Sweden, recently made a crucial observation: Even in infants a stress reaction is evoked when they see a spider or a snake. And this already at the age of six months, when they are still very immobile and have had little opportunity to learn that these animals can be dangerous.

“When we showed pictures of a snake or a spider to the babies instead of a flower or a fish of the same size and colour, they reacted with significantly bigger pupils”, says Stefanie Hoehl, lead investigator of the underlying study and neuroscientist at MPI CBS and the University of Vienna. “In constant light conditions this change in size of the pupils is an important signal for the activation of the noradrenergic system in the brain, which is responsible for stress reactions. Accordingly, even the youngest babies seem to be stressed by these groups of animals.”

“We conclude that fear of snakes and spiders is of evolutionary origin. Similar to primates, mechanisms in our brains enable us to identify objects as ‘spider’ or 'snake’ and to react to them very fast. This obviously inherited stress reaction in turn predisposes us to learn these animals as dangerous or disgusting. When this accompanies further factors it can develop into a real fear or even phobia. "A strong panicky aversion exhibited by the parents or a genetic predisposition for a hyperactive amygdala, which is important for estimating hazards, can mean that increased attention towards these creatures becomes an anxiety disorder.”

Interestingly, it is known from other studies that babies do not associate pictures of rhinos, bears or other theoretically dangerous animals with fear. “We assume that the reason for this particular reaction upon seeing spiders and snakes is due to the coexistence of these potentially dangerous animals with humans and their ancestors for more than 40 to 60 million years—and therefore much longer than with today’s dangerous mammals. The reaction which is induced by animal groups feared from birth could have been embedded in the brain for an evolutionarily long time.

For modern risks such as knives, syringes or sockets, presumably the same is true. From an evolutionary perspective they have only existed for a short time, and there has been no time to establish reaction mechanisms in the brain from birth. "Parents know just how difficult it is to teach their children about everyday risks such as not poking their fingers into a socket”, Hoehl adds with a smile.

Dear Neil, I think I've made a mistake. The thing is: I sent my manuscript to a small publishing house, that I really like (who have published my short story already). It was fine, they gave me feedback and said after that has been applied, they might like to publish my novel (no confirmation yet!). But it's my first novel ever. I've written/edited like 5-6 years. Maybe I should've let go long ago. The first novel isn't supposed to be published, right? It might have been a bad idea... Thoughts?

Either they will want to publish it, or they won’t. If they do, you didn’t make a mistake. If they don’t, then they’ll tell you, and you’ll be wiser than you were before, and that won’t have been a mistake either.

When I was a child I was afraid of the moon. I used to think that the sky was a giant raven and the moon changing phases was its slowly blinking eye, watching me.

Draw the giant space raven.

You and your fellow biologists setout to find the beast: a six ton monster with spikes and a giant tentacle growing out of its face. After months of searching, you find it and it turns out the monster is absolutely adorable!

Is an immunization for stress on the horizon?

Can probiotics fend off mood disorders?

It’s too early to say with scientific certainty, but a new study by CU Boulder researchers suggests that one particular beneficial bacteria can have long-lasting anti-inflammatory effects on the brain, making it more resilient to the physical and behavioral effects of stress.

The findings, if replicated in clinical trials could ultimately lead to new probiotic-based immunizations to protect against posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety or new treatments for depression, the authors say.

“We found that in rodents this particular bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, actually shifts the environment in the brain toward an anti-inflammatory state,” said lead author Matthew Frank, a senior research associate in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. “If you could do that in people, it could have broad implications for a number of neuroinflammatory diseases.”

Anxiety, PTSD and other stress-related mental disorders impact as many as one in four people in their lifetime. Mounting research suggests that stress-induced brain inflammation can boost risk of such disorders, in part by impacting mood-influencing neurotransmitters like norepinephrine or dopamine.

“There is a robust literature that shows if you induce an inflammatory immune response in people, they quickly show signs of depression and anxiety,” said Frank. “Just think about how you feel when you get the flu.”

Research also suggests that trauma, illness or surgery can sensitize certain regions of the brain, setting up a hair-trigger inflammatory response to subsequent stressors which can lead to mood disorders and cognitive decline.

“We found that Mycobacterium vaccae blocked those sensitizing effects of stress too, creating a lasting stress-resilient phenotype in the brain,” Frank said.

A previous CU Boulder study, found that mice injected with a heat-killed preparation of M. vaccae and then placed with a larger aggressive male for 19 days exhibited less anxiety-like behavior and were less likely to suffer colitis or inflammation in their peripheral tissues. For the new study, published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, the researchers set out to determine what exactly M. vaccae does in the brain.

Male rats injected with the bacterium three times, one week apart, had significantly higher levels of the anti-inflammatory protein interleukin-4 in the hippocampus — a brain region responsible for modulating cognitive function, anxiety and fear — eight days after the final injection.

After exposure to a stressor, the immunized animals also showed lower levels of a stress-induced protein, or alarmin, called HMGB1, believed to play a role in sensitizing the brain to inflammation, and higher expression of CD200R1, a receptor key for keeping glial cells (the brain’s immune cells) in an anti-inflammatory state. As in the first study, the immunized rats exhibited less anxious behavior after being stressed.

Mood-modulating microbes

“If you look at the field of probiotics generally, they have been shown to have strong effects in the domains of cognitive function, anxiety and fear,” said senior author Christopher Lowry, an associate professor in integrative physiology. “This paper helps make sense of that by suggesting that these beneficial microbes, or signals derived from these microbes, somehow make their way to the hippocampus, inducing an anti-inflammatory state.”

M. vaccae was first discovered on the shores of Lake Kyoga in Uganda in the 1990s by immunologists who realized that people who lived in the area responded better to certain tuberculosis vaccines. They later realized that the bacterium found in the lakeshore soil had immune-modulating properties that were enhancing the vaccine’s efficacy. Researchers set out to study it in lung cancer patients and found that, while it did not prolong life, it somehow improved mood.

M. vaccae is not commercially available but is the subject of numerous ongoing studies.

Lowry, who has been studying it for 17 years, envisions a day when it or another beneficial bacteria could be administered to people at high risk of PTSD – such as soldiers preparing to be deployed or emergency room workers – to buffer the effects of stress on the brain and body. It could also possibly be used to prevent sepsis-induced cognitive impairment, he said.

Meanwhile, he is working with researchers at University of Colorado Denver on a study exploring whether veterans with PTSD can benefit from an oral probiotic consisting of a different bacterial strain, Lactobacillus reuteri.

“More research is necessary, but it’s possible that other strains of beneficial bacteria or probiotics may have a similar effect on the brain,” he said.

Before we can live in a world of vertical gardens covering stained glass skyscrapers, we need to build a world of backyard garden boxes made of reclaimed wood. Before we can cover every rooftop with solar panels, we need to equip every home with solar smokeless cooking made of scrap metal

The appeal of those green cityscapes in the pretty pictures isn’t just that they’re hi-tech and clean, it’s that they sprout from a society that values compassion, the environment, and human lives more than it values profit. We need to build that society first, and we need to build it from the ground up with what we have available

The solarpunk future is for our grandchildren. Our job is to pave the way for it

Este mes

Siento una soledad frio y terrible sin el calor de tu corazon,

La culpa fue mia, pero me duele sin tu amor

Quisiera haberte dicho esto el 2 de este mes, pero me dolia demasiado escribirlo

Perdi el amor de alguien increible y maravillosa, y honestamente no se que hacer sin ti.

Puedo decir todo esto ahora, porque ya te estas alejando de mi, y aunque lo lamento, yo se que es lo mejor. 

Quiero ser mejor, porque algun dia, en algun futuro, yo espero encontrate y amarte otravez. Y cuando ese dia ocurre, espero que tu tambien quieras lo mismo. 

Te amo con una furia y dolor y no puedo explicar.

Espero que estes contenta, amor, y aunque ya no lo crees por la manera que he estado actuando, te extrano, nada va cambiar eso.