Tag Archives: serotonin

The worst endless cycle

Posted on November 6, 2017 by | 1 comment

Emma Bryce from Ted-Education explained why we itch, a common phenomenon that occurs to everyone. Although itching may not seem like a big deal, for people with skin diseases, it could become very irritating and painful. In order to target this issue, Emma described the itch-scratch cycle to give us a deeper understanding about itching.

We realize that we get random itching from time to time. So, what really causes itching? Our skin is evolutionarily built to feel the slightest of touch to alert us of harmful things that land on our skin. In our case, the danger that we encounter are things that irritate our skin. This includes bugs and allergens such as pollen and dust.

Skin sensitivity varies from person to person, and this is an important factor for skin diseases. For example, people with super sensitive skin can be prone to conditions like eczema, which is itching that turns into rashes. Another condition is psoriasis, which is an abnormally fast skin reproduction rate that piles up as dead skin, making the infected area look very patchy and scaly. These conditions lead to irritating consequences such as rashes, redness, and skin fissures, which is the skin cracking open. In severe cases, these could lead to bacterial infections.

Eczema, credit to flickr

The itching process occurs very fast. The trigger occurs when some irritant lands on the skin. The skin nerve endings detect it and shoot an itching signal from our spinal cord to our brain. Then, our brain alerts us that particular spot is itchy and our reaction is to scratch it. When we scratch, we are scraping against our skin and this induces a very low level of pain. Then, our nerve endings send pain signals via the same route as the itching signal to our brain. Since only one type of signal can be transmitted per path, the pain signals override the itching signals.

Scratching, credit to flickr

As this happens, our brain tries to relieve the pain by producing a neurotransmitter, which is a chemical messenger that helps neurons send signals to specific cells. In our case, the neurotransmitter is serotonin, and it is overriding pain signals with itching signals. For this reason, we end up feeling itchy again after scratching. This whole process is known as the itch-scratch cycle.

Personally, I have mild eczema and I easily get rashes and redness on my skin. I can definitely relate to the itch-scratch cycle and how irritating it could be. Hopefully, scientists will find a way to disrupt this cycle and find a cure for all these terrible skin conditions.

-Emily Lui

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Your Brain in Love

Posted on October 30, 2017 by | 3 comments

Have you ever rejected someone who was madly in love with you? Have you ever been rejected by someone you really loved?

Neuroscientist, Helen Fisher, asked these two questions 20 years ago, both to which 95% of men and women said yes. Determined to understand this magic, she began a multipart project in 1996 to investigate the neurochemistry involved in romantic love.

She studied couples who had just fallen madly in love with each other, individuals who were dumped by their partners that day (talk about a rough day, huh), and couples who have been married for 20+ years. The fMRI scans revealed that people in love show brain activity in the same regions, the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as those addicted to hard drugs such as opioids and cocaine. Both of these areas are associated with dopamine production and distribution. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter (chemical messenger) associated with the brain’s reward system, primarily involved in addiction, cravings, energy, and motivation.

Brain areas associated with dopamine.             Source: Wikimedia

Dopamine. Source: self

Essentially, this means that lovers and drug addicts show similar behaviour. I think that perhaps romantic love is an even stronger addiction in a sense that everyone experiences it at some point but the same can’t be said for other addictions such as substance abuse or gambling. Those in love show the same fundamental symptoms of addiction: craving, tolerance, emotional dependence and when they get dumped they experience withdrawal and relapse.

Another neurotransmitter involved, according to Fisher, is serotonin which regulates mood, anxiety, and depression. Interestingly, she found that new lovers and long-term lovers had the same basic reward systems, with one exception. The fMRI scans showed that new couple had more activity in brain regions linked with anxiety; whereas long term couples showed activity is regions associated with calmness and pain suppression.

Serotonin. Source: self

With 20 years of research on the brain in love, Helen Fisher is a household name in Neuroscience. She nicely summarises her major findings over the years in this TedTalk. Dating platforms such as Match. com, Tinder, and others use her research on what attracts people to each other in their algorithms.

I think love as a positive addiction is certainly an interesting perspective. I believe that the scope of this can go far beyond just algorithms. Perhaps this means that building strong and healthy relationships can help people recovering from addictive behaviours such as substance dependence, binge eating disorders, gambling, etc. by acting as a reward replacement. Additionally, with rising divorce rates cross-culturally, understanding the mechanisms involved in love and how we form relationships, can help us become more empathetic and build long-term relationships as a society.

 

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The ultimate stress-reliever

Posted on October 16, 2017 by | 1 comment

Scientists at Princeton University discovered that exercising stimulates the growth of new brain cells that makes us relaxed. However, this only occurs after three to six weeks of working out. Therefore, we must keep exercising to trigger these positive biochemical changes.

People always knew that exercising is beneficial in many ways, such as improving moods, boosting confidence, and preventing some diseases. But, no one explained this phenomenon scientifically. Thanks to researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder who picked up on what their fellow scientists at Princeton University discovered, these researchers learned that exercising remodels the brain. With exercising, the brain does not need to express a certain neurotransmitter to make us less anxious upon stressful conditions.

Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that help brain cells send signals to specific cells. One type of neurotransmitter is serotonin, it relieves us when the brain feels like the body is overstressed. The researchers at University of Colorado Boulder decided to target serotonin to see how exercising affects its activity. To do so, they conducted an experiment on rats.

Serotonin maintains mood balance, credit to Flickr

In the experiment, the rats who did not exercise was the control group and the rats who exercised for a few weeks was the experimental group. Both groups were exposed to a stressful stimuli and results showed that control group expressed more serotonin and rats who exercised had minimal serotonin activity. Therefore, this explains how exercising causes people to be less stressed despite facing tough situations, where serotonin is not needed to counter the stress.

Anxiety and stress can lead to oxidative stress, which is the overproduction of harmful free radicals in our body. Free radicals are chemical species that have unpaired electrons. This makes them highly reactive and can lead to cell death if they wrongly react with chemicals that are essential for life. While exercising, our body creates chemicals called antioxidants to counteract these free radicals by donating its electrons.

Oxidative Stress can lead to terrible consequences, credit to Flickr

In an experiment conducted on rats, there were two groups; those who exercised and those who did not. Then, both groups were exposed to an artificial chemical that induced anxiety. Unsurprisingly, the group of rats who exercised were unaffected by the chemical at all.

Exercising does wonders by improving both our physical and mental health at the same time. All we need to do is implement a bit of physical activity into our daily routine and we will feel the effects within a few weeks. From a young child to an elderly, the benefits of exercising do not discriminate. So, what are we waiting for? We should all stop whatever we’re doing right now and go for a run!

-Emily Lui

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