Tag Archives: brain

Concussions: Impacts on the Brain

The brain is a complex organ, and while researchers have made great strides in understanding its function and mechanisms, we still know relatively little about the consequences of damage to the delicate structure.

The brain is suspended in the skull cavity, and sharp accelerations can sometimes cause collisions between the unyielding bone of the skull and soft tissue, bruising the surface and damaging important neural connections within. This is known as a concussion, an injury common in contact sports where blows to the head are frequent.

A concussion can be harmful to anyone, but could the impact be greater on a developing brain, like that of a teenager’s?

Dr. Naznin Virji-Babul

Dr. Naznin Virji-Babul, a physical therapist and neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia, set out to discover the true extent of brain damage on concussed adolescents.

“The common perception of people is that your brain stops developing when you’re 3-5 years old. That’s not exactly true… the frontal areas of your brain are still developing when you’re a teenager,” she says, adding that this frontal area is what collides with the skull when a concussion occurs. The frontal and temporal lobes are most vulnerable to injury, and damage to these areas is associated with impairments of regular function. The study that her team conducted at UBC used Magnetic Resonance Imaging to gauge the extent of damage to the brain.

The study was conducted using a group of teen athletes, some of whom had experienced a sports-related concussion within the past two months and others who had not  Each athlete underwent an MRI scan which measured the rates of diffusion of the fluids within the brain.

The results were surprising to the team, who had expected to find clear evidence of damage, and lower rates of diffusion in the concussed group compared to the uninjured group.

“But it was completely opposite to what we had expected, we thought we would find a decrease in [one of the tests] but we found an increase… It was like solving a puzzle trying to find out what was so different.”

Diffusion Tensor Imaging scan for a healthy brain(left) and concussed brain(right)

Dr. Virji formulated a theory as to why the changes were different than expected: the neural damage in the brain was subtle, not outright breaking but causing smaller tears in the neuron which collect fluids and cause edema. This could throw off a diffusion tensor image but still indicates damage present in the brain long after the actual injury occurred.

“I wasn’t expecting to find changes in the kids who have had a concussion two months prior, but we still did… Kids and adolescents take longer to recover.”

These findings call to question the established guidelines concerning returning concussed athletes to play and school, as all of the concussed athletes scanned in the study had returned to their sport. Luckily, thanks to the findings of Dr. Virji and her team, new light is being shed on the nature of concussions on a teenager’s developing brain. This will hopefully lead to safer practices regarding the athletes care both during the game, and after.

Celebrating Hockey without injury

This podcast covers further the nature of this resistance by the public towards concussions in adolescents, and how the established safety measures are not adequate enough to prevent brain injury.

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For more information, feel free to watch this video on the impact of Dr. Virji’s research.

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By: Ammar Vahanvaty, Derrick Lee and Ashley Dolman

 

Could Peptides Be The Cure For Depression?

For the first time ever, scientists at the UCLA have measured the release of the peptides hypocretin and melanin concentrating hormone (MCH) within humans. Hypocretin’s release is increased when the person is happy, but minimal when they are upset. MCH levels are maximized when the subject is asleep, but those levels diminished awake.

“The current findings explain the sleepiness of narcolepsy, as well as the depression that frequently accompanies this disorder” explains Jerome Siegel, professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Sleep Research at UCLA. The measurable changes of these peptides’ release will eventually allow researchers to develop medications that target the changes in brain chemistry.

In 2000, Siegel was the first to show a biological cause of narcolepsy when he found that people who suffer from the illness had 95 percent less hypocretin nerve cells for in their brain than people who don’t have narcolepsy. Due to the strong affiliation between depression and narcolepsy, Siegel expanded his study by researching how hypocretin could be connected to depression.

Image Source: micah.sparacio.org

Siegel retrieved information on hypocretin and MCH levels from the patients who had intracranial depth electrodes implanted in their brains. The patient’s actions were recorded while they ate, fell asleep, woke up, were social with other patients, and watched television. Every 15 minutes, the patients’ activity was recorded along with the release levels of the peptides. Each waking hour, the patient filled out a questionnaire where they rated with mood and attitudes.

Siegel found that positive emotions, social interactions, and the act of waking up had higher hypocretin levels, while the levels of MCH were at their highest when the patient was falling asleep and were at their lowest when the patient wasn’t being social. “These results suggest a previously unappreciated emotional specificity in the activation of arousal and sleep in humans” Siegel explained. “The findings suggest that abnormalities in the pattern of activation of these systems may contribute to a number of psychiatric disorders”

Siegel mentioned that several drug companies are in the process of developing hypocretin antagonists to be used as sleeping pills, but this study means that not only will these drugs induce sleep, but they will also influence the person’s mood.

Recent studies have suggested that depression-fighting drugs, like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may have the same effect as a placebo as they are not based on the changes in neurotransmitter levels. Because as many as 10% of the US population suffers from depression, I think this study is a breakthrough in our knowledge on depression and I hope that this will lead to the production of a drug that can balance the release of these neurotransmitters.

Kathleen Leask

Video games are good for you!

The topic of whether or not video games are good for you has always been in murky waters. Are they really good or bad for your health? They are both good and bad actually, as it depends on what situation you are in. Just to throw in some examples, too much may lead to addiction, and also bad grades, if you are playing hours on end right before a final exam. However, playing games can improve problem solving, multitasking, hand-eye coordination, etc. Of course, that’s why moderation is vital here to prevent negative effects from taking over the positive ones. Alcohol is a great example of why moderation is good and this concept can also be applied to video games.

However, despite knowing the obvious negative effects of video gaming are, what are the positive effects of playing them in moderation? As a person playing video games since age 5, I have always wondered what life perks I have gotten from playing games. In Dr. Bavelier’s TED Talk, she focuses on some of the misconceptions of the gaming and the benefits of what ‘training’ in gaming can do for one person.

Here are some of the main ideas of her talk:

  • Gaming does not have a detrimental effect on your vision, but it actually improves your eyesight.

Some parents may believe staring at a TV or computer screen for long periods of time is the cause of their children having nearsightedness, but this is false. Gaming helps you distinguish small details in clutter and different shades of grey. For example, being able to read small print and driving in the fog easily are examples of how your vision is better.

  • Gaming improves your ability to pay attention.

By comparing gamers and people who don’t play video games, and using brain imaging, Dr. Bavelier’s study shows that areas of the brain which control your ability to pay attention are much more efficient in gamers than those who are not.

  • Gaming improves your multitasking skills.

Gamers are able to deal with many tasks and filter out unnecessary information to perform their tasks well. This idea is completely different than multi-media tasking, where you listen to music, text a friend, check your e-mail at the same time.  Multi-media taskers are actually worse when tested for multitasking than with gamers.

These are not the only positive effects of gaming but it should shed some light that gaming is not totally bad. The skills developed from gaming even made a boy save his sister from a moose (if the story is true)! If you’re a gamer, you will enjoy this multitasking game and should try to compete with your friends. If you’re not a gamer, compare your score with a gamer. Start casually gaming and you may start developing skills you never had before!

Derrick Lee