What about me?

I don't normally talk about me personally, but this time, I'm gonna.

I have always been fascinated by the mind. It's a terrible thing, you know. I mean it's a terrible thing to waste (hee hee). In particular I've been captivated by the study of consciousness. Scientists do a pretty good job of pretending to be objective, but when it comes to studying consciousness, objectivity starts getting muddy (read 'impossible'). And when you get into it, you start to realize that "objectivity" is just a farce. No one is objective. Everyone has an opinion about everything. It's the soft science version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The part about the observer influencing what is observed.

When you start to get into consciousness, you invariably start to ask questions like "Why do I think the way I do?" and "Who am 'I' anyway?" - Classic philosophy. About 13 years ago, I did the Landmark Forum, and to paraphrase Douglas Adams - it illustrated that everything I had held to be true, ain't necessarily so. For the first time in my life, I was able to effectively mold that "me" that I was so sure was already established. And I could create that "me" in any way I saw fit. I have been leading seminars for Landmark Education for several years to that very end - I figured why keep that kind of thing to myself, everyone should have it.

In the not too distant past, I was dead set on the academic track - I was going to use my Ph.D. to study the kind of brain plasticity involved in altering really set pattens, like who you know yourself to be. It then occurred to me, who cares?. Knowing how that happens will make absolutely no difference, even in the small scheme of things. What would make a difference, however, is actually altering those patterns of thinking for large numbers of people.

So I've altered the course of my life. I am now working full-time on altering - fundamentally altering - the experience of being for human beings. I love science. I will continue to talk about things from the viewpoint of a scientist, and I will continue to have people critically think about the world around them, but my day job is ensuring that people who register into the Landmark Forum in the Seattle area - powerfully complete the course.

Just say no to (prescription) drugs.

You know you are seriously messing with brain chemistry when they say that the drug you are taking takes several weeks...several weeks... to take effect. That should make us take a step back to really reconsider what this drug is doing to our brains. There are some drugs that have immediate effects - like opiates or painkillers - that inhibit pain reception; you take the drug, it binds to specific receptor that interrupts the painful signal. The biology is pretty straightforward here.

However, there are some drugs that we don't know how they work... I've taken a statement directly from the package insert of an antidepressant...

Although the exact mechanisms of the antidepressant and central pain inhibitory action of xxxxxxxx in humans are unknown, the antidepressant and pain inhibitory actions are believed to be related to its potentiation of serotonergic and noradrenergic activity in the CNS.

This in itself isn't bad, (although using the word "believe" in scientific speak always sets my teeth on edge) I just find this kind of scary. Mind you, we didn't know how aspirin worked for decades and we still used it to GREAT benefit. Now that we know how it works, we have tweaked it so that it doesn't cause other adverse effects (like ulcers).

Here is my BIG disclaimer, for conditions that are really debilitating, like depression you really should do whatever you need to, to take care of your well-being. I still think that you should carefully consider what is going on with your brain while you are on the drugs.

I think where I take the most offense however, is at the ads on TV that suggest that if you have this or that (sometimes unheard of) condition, you should talk to your doctor about {outrageously expensive but very effective} drug for {your unusual condition}.

Now I don't personally have restless legs, so I don't know how debilitating this syndrome is but apparently if you take a new class of drugs designed to treat this condition, you could turn into a pathologic gambler. This drug apparently interacts with the dopaminergic system (read: reward pathways, Parkinson’s disease). Big brain areas.

I'm just saying...

It's not a cure to Mad Cow Disease... yet.

We've all heard of Mad Cow Disease... no not the one that has cows retaliating for the whole cow tipping phenomenon, the one that has everyone scared that if they eat a cow, they are going to go crazy. In case you haven't heard or if you don't know much behind the biology of it, I'll give you a little primer.

Prions are proteins that in their natural state are responsible for... well, we don't know really. A recent Nature article says that we are narrowing down their role...

There is now increasing, albeit patchy, evidence that the process of prion infection might have a vital role in a large number of biological processes—not only in single-celled organisms but also in higher eukaryotes—ranging from adaptation to new environments to the establishment of long-term memory.

...Ok, so it's not narrowed down much.

But anyway the interesting point about these proteins is that when they are folded in the "prion" conformation, they are almost impossible to degrade. Which means they don't go away. Ever. Which is bad in the brain. Even heating to very high temperatures doesn't harm these proteins.

Here is the next really cool thing about prions, well morbidly cool anyway... when a prion protein comes into contact with a native form of the prion protein, the native protein changes conformation and becomes highly stable as well. So not only do prions stick around, but they make others just like them.

And the scary thing about this kind of protein is that a lot of animals have them. Sheep have them, the disease they cause is scrapies. Cows have them, that disease is actually called bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE). And humans get it, one form of it is called Crutzfeld-Jacob disease. The worst part about it is if we were to eat a cow that had BSE, those prion proteins could start interacting with our normal proteins and give us the human form of the disease.

Recently, a group has produced genetically engineered cows - over a dozen of them - that don't have the message for this protein (December's Nature Biotechnology). Which means they can't get the disease. These cows are almost 2 years old now and... At over 20 months of age, the cattle are clinically, physiologically, histopathologically, immunologically and reproductively normal.

So, I'm left with a nagging question... What the heck is this protein for?

Everything in Moderation

Hormesis is a biological response to a substance at very low doses that is opposite the response of the same substance at high doses. In other words, substances that have been shown to be dangerous at high levels might actually be good for you at very low doses. Studies have shown that irradiating a mouse with a very low dose of gamma radiation before subjecting it to a high dose, actually protects it from developing cancer.

The link above is the wikipedia entry and goes into why this is not a popular theory at all. It's not like hormesis is hogwash, even you have heard of it. It is why very small concentrations of botulinum toxin (yes the stuff that causes botulism) injected into our faces makes us look years younger, instead of causing horrible pain and death. Scientists have also described the hormesis effect with opiates. Very small doses of opiate antagonists (pain killer blockers) actually enhance high doses of pain killers. And very small doses of opiates have been shown to induce pain.

There are a lot of government agencies that were designed specifically to protect us (no, not the FBI) that have presumed that the dose-response curves of many substances are linear. As a scientist, I can attest to the pain of measuring a dose-response curve at concentrations below the linear ranges. Still doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. A recent survey based on a review of more than 56,000 tests in 13 strains of yeast using 2,200 drugs indicates that hormesis may actually be a valid phenomenon and dangerous to ignore. Anti-cancer drugs that normally inhibit cell growth actually enhance it at very low concentrations.

Acknowledging the validity of hormesis comes with a whole mess of consequences, however. Environmental groups have advocated completely eliminating toxic substances when that may not be necessary.

But even harder for the government agency types to swallow may be granting credence to the entire field of homeopathy. Homeopathy is a medical practice entirely predicated on treating illnesses with very small doses of substances that at large doses mimic the disease being treated. Maybe there is something behind that whole "crack-pot" theory.

OK, I've worked out this whole Intelligent Design thing...

I've been trying to ferret out this whole ID thing and it turns out, I've been going about it all wrong... it's not about ferrets, it's about squirrels.

Specifically, God designed squirrels intelligent enough to outsmart trees.

Bet you didn't know trees were smart, did you? Well, they are. To ensure the survival of their species against their major predators (which are squirrels, just in case you didn't know), they do not produce the same annual amount of seeds (the part of them that squirrels eat). They employ a "swamp and starve" strategy, which means that some years they hold back seeds - starving out the squirrel populations - and then swamp the land with seeds once they have starved out the hungry rodents. Pretty bloodthirsty if you ask me.

Turns out the red squirrel has foiled this carefully planned coniferous plot. In a manner that is - as yet - undetermined, the squirrels have worked out this seemingly random schedule and birth not one but two litters in these lean years. So they, and only they, amongst all their squirrel brethren decimate the unborn trees.

It's all starting to make sense to me now...

It is a toomah

This last month has been quite the experience. My grandmother died at the end of last month, she had senile dementia and didn't remember her kids before she died. She'd also been married to my grandfather for 69 years. When my father visited them about 8 months ago, my grandfather told him that the warranty on his heart was up. When my dad asked him what he was sticking around for, he said that Mother needed him. Less than three weeks later, my grandfather joined her. It was a really beautiful end to an amazing love story.

And it was a testament to mind over matter. Once grandpa had Thanksgiving dinner with all 7 of his kids (something that hadn't happened in decades) he was ready to go. I think he stayed alive out of sheer will-power. He was strong that way. It is unfortunate the way it came about, but it was great to see my relatives (my dad, his 6 siblings, and a myriad of offspring of the afore mentioned) two times in a month.

Which made this particular study stand out for me. Apparently the more siblings that you have, the greater chance you have of getting a brain tumor. Here's the cool thing, it only depends upon the number of younger siblings you have. Which seems like a very weird association. Unless, as these authors suggest, that many brain tumors might have an infectious disease origin. My dad is one of the oldest of the bunch so it seems kind of relevant, except he's just past 60 so unless it is a very dormant thing, it probably doesn't apply to him.

This observation makes identifying the vectors thay may cause tumors an important and unexpected line of research to follow.

Show of hands... how many knew it wasn't really junk?

In my last post I mentioned "junk DNA". If you don't know what that is... briefly, a lot (and by "a lot" I mean most) of our DNA seems to be non-coding or, it doesn't directly result in proteins. With the sequencing of the genome came a revelation on the order of Copernicus... (remember he said that the sun didn't revolve around the earth - which apparently downgraded our view of ourselves in the universe.) Our genome isn't much different from other beings on our planet, well, except for all the junk DNA. Apparently we have a lot more of it. Given that little piece of knowledge we've actually started looking at what junk DNA might be.

An article in news@nature.com (you can't see the link unless you have a subscription but here it is anyway) talks about what all this junk might actually be for:

'They found that these stretches of non-coding DNA tend to lie near genes involved in brain-cell function — specifically, in building connections between brain cells. This suggests that the non-coding DNA pieces might orchestrate the wiring of our brains'

How interesting is that, the junk DNA is likely to be responsible for how our brains are hooked up. Go figure.