The Disappearance of Personality

Mar5

I’ve spoken before about my grandfather, and his Alzheimer’s Disease, but as with all stories, changes and new instalments occur.

Last I wrote, they were taking him off the Aricept. That was less than two months ago.

Last weekend, my parents saw him. He seemed well in general, until he asked after me, when he insisted he’d never been told that I have a partner.

He has met my other half several times over the last 6 years – but according to his brain, he had never heard of this, and asked what he’s like, and whether we would marry.

I wondered if he had forgotten my O.H because that little pathway is inaccessible.

But the fact that I’m with someone, might have stuck.

It seems not only has he forgotten the most important person in my life, but he’s forgetting more of me every day.

I cannot explain away that sadness.

My heart broke when I realised he will never know my future. Even if he lives long enough, he’ll never know my marriage, my children. And they would never know him.

Because he’s not just losing his memories of his family.

He’s losing himself.

I’ve talked before about my wish to be a scholar, and how in this topic I just can’t bring myself to understand the science of the disease.

Nevertheless, I told my mum he might have just had a bad day – that loss isn’t linear in this disease. That the protein build up on his neurons shifts every day, and that only specific neurons will have been affected.

But he used to have such a sense of honour, of loyalty; such a love and respect for education, and he used to get everyone out of their chairs to go for a walk, or play tennis, or croquet.

Hell, we played croquet less than six months ago, at his request!

It seems the man my mother had to sit beside knows none of those things.

From my understanding, he’s not supposed to lose his core identity only a year or two into a disease described as “early stages, slow moving”. Not two months after he’s been taken off the medication that only halted it for six months in the first place.

The loss of new events, the inability to find the right words to explain things and the personality differences don’t occur in stage 1.

Which means he’s shifted in stage 2 of a 3 stage process.

And the small child inside who remembers him bouncing me on his knee has realised:

I’ll never get him back.

Alzheimer’s Disease ~ No Scientist with all the Answers

Aug21

Last July, I wrote the beginnings of a post on Alzheimer’s Disease. I found out during my graduation that my granddad was going for tests to see if he had it.

That was over a year ago, and that post is still sat in my drafts document; with all the details of senile plaques being toxic to neurons and theories of neurofibillary tangles helping balance out oxygen levels…

I’ve gone back to it so many times, but I didn’t take any courses in dementia or aging – I know the brain regions and I know how chemicals affect neuronal structure.

But “severe loss of life”, I do not know about.

And I’ve found I really don’t want to know.

Emotional Reactions

I think of myself as a scholar and a seeker, I’m intrigued by life, keen to understand the world and to create my own senses through writing.

I’m not sure I can even entertain the idea of being slave to a condition “which strips away your living self a bit at a time.” (Terry Pratchett)

But there I was yesterday, sat next to the man who used to laugh, to go on and on about being hospitable to others and providing a service for your neighbours. The man who hiked up mountains until a few years ago and who told me I should do whatever it was that made me happy – countering every other male in my family who went on and on about getting A-grades.

He is the only decent male role model I’ve ever had, and he is fading.

The man sat next to me yesterday was depressing, picking up on negatives which weren’t there, focusing on how “I seem to have another qualification but no one wants to employ me” and talking about how there’s no point being here when everything in his body is falling apart. (I only finished at University last Thursday, I’m not worried about not having a job yet).

And then he spoke, looking at me, trying desperately to remember my name.

Last night, I dreamt of writing to Terry Pratchett; despite his particular variant meaning he can no longer read.

Knowledge

My granddad does still remember my name, after prompting a few times. This is the early stage, I know. They’ll have assessed the density of the plaques and tangles and judged him “early”. Each time I visit, I see decline, and I’m reminded “it’s only going to get worse”.

They’ve taken him off the Aricept medication, as it caused side-effects to his heart. He’s still able to speak, still able to move his hands and legs, still able to pour drinks and to play croquet with us.

He’s survived skin cancer, a knee operation, eye treatment and is now losing his mind; a little bit each day.

All I find myself wanting to do is to remember every moment with him and to distil those memories of him, and the lessons he wants. I want to make a guidebook for my life with all of his knowledge and beliefs within it… so that he can still give me guidance once he’s no longer there.

~ ~ ~

I was reading Ellie’s post over at The Headologist a few weeks ago, thinking of my granddad as I read each word about the Aricept, the frustration and that sense of loss she felt as Terry would never read a word she had written.

And I realised my grandfather will probably never see my life – he may see it, but he won’t recognise it. I’ll be the first one he forgets; being the youngest (the most recent new memory), the less-often-visiting. He’ll forget my name, and not understand why I tell him about any job I get, any achievements I have… when I tell him I’m happy; that I did what he asked and did something I enjoyed… he’ll wonder why I’m telling him.

If he lives long enough to meet my kids, he will never know them, and they will never know him.

The Scientist

I feel I need to know about this. His wife and my mum have both asked what’s happening in his brain, and I could only open a textbook and try to read it out loud, explaining the jargon as best I could.

I don’t want to know, to foresee his future. Yet I do.

Next his speech will go, he’ll lose the ability to perform daily tasks, his long-term memory will start to fade and I will most likely be removed then.

And then, if he survives any falls and lives beyond that, he’ll reach “advanced” and will be able to perhaps use phrases of speech, fall into apathy/exhaustion and no longer be able to feed himself or move.

~ ~ ~

I cannot be a scientist when the only person who has made an effort to be compassionate and just, is leaving me. I cannot explain the biological function of plaques when the main motivation for all my studying and all my work will never see me complete it.

And I will only have memories from when I was too young to understand, to guide me in how to be a decent human being.

Mostly though, I’m mourning that he won’t be playing chess again; the game he taught me was the answer to all of life’s problems.

– Rose –

Also, this is an important documentary about the problems Terry wanted to look at with Alzheimer’s as a mental deterioration on the topic of Assisted Suicide:
http://vimeo.com/25239708

Tuesday Titbit – Week 19: The Development Edition

Mar15

Week ten entered while my laptop was undercover. Thus, it’s another short one and it’s a bit late. Here are week nine’s facts.

This week we learnt about Consciousness in Schizophrenia and Neural Development in Sensory and Motor Function:

- There are six stages in the creation of neurons.

- 0.6% of people are diagnosed with schizophrenia. That’s 400,000 people in the UK.

- People with psychotic depression often experience auditory hallucinations in the second person.

- Neurons begin as stem cells, which then divide and travel up along guide wires (radial glia) to form a layer of cells.

- The earliest produced cells form the inner layers of the brain. The oldest layers form the brain which is just below the skull.

- As these layers form, gene expression occurs from the chromosomes.

- If you destroy cat’s eyes in various ways, it leads to weird findings. Only exposing 3-week old kittens to vertical lines until they are 3-months old means they’re unable to perceive horizontal lines; even moving ones.

- Turns our some scientists really are horrible and cruel.

- However, cutting the communication to one eye provides temporary blindness than can be repaired if you surgically repair it.

- There will be more neurons on the single eye which worked throughout this.

That’s it for this week. Next week I’ll be mixing science program information with my final lecture on animal consciousness.

– Rose –

Tuesday Titbit – Week 18: The Mix Tape Edition

Mar8

It’s Week Nine. Oops.

Here’s a late run through of week eight’s lecture. I only attended my Consciousness lecture, so this could be a short one. I might add in stuff I learnt form that program on the history of electricity and some smattering of random facts.

I’ve received two rejections for my further education. I’ve had a meeting with my course convener about my grades, who advised me to “just let it go” over a mark I was wrongly given. I went clubbing for the first time since July, and loved it.

Let’s do this.

- Neon lights in signs use different gases to make different colours. Passing electricity through nitrogen gives off a blue light. This is why lightning is blue.

- The integrated information theory of conscious is weird, declaring that “information is a number of choices available”.

- Global workspace theory believes that there are many cognitive processes wanting our attention, but the first one actually gets this attention.

- Unless a second one is stronger and barges that original one out of the way.

- The “winner” is then broadcast throughout the brain and distributed across networks.

- The ability to sense your own heartbeat is generally controlled by your right anterior insula.

- The amount of neurotransmitter released from a synapse is probabilistic; thus can be worked out using the maths used in quantum physics.

- 88% of your neurons go to 32% of your brain’s modules (particularly frontal lobes).

- English is the only language to capitalise the pronoun “I”.

- The neurons in the cerebellum have more synapses than others. These are the ones that allow you to carry out automated actions (e.g. driving).

Hope that helps you in a pub quiz some time in the future. Have a great week.

– Rose –

Tuesday Titbit – Week 15: The Half-Way Point

Feb14

It’s Week Five of the Ten-week Term. University is officially half over (being week 15 of 30 overall ).

This week, Sensory and Motor Functions covered Visual Perception; while in Neuroscience of Consciousness we were taught about the Neuronal Changes of Sense.

This weekend I also spent a few hours revising for my Neuroanatomy exam, and if you want some friendly resource, here are the two main places I’ve been using:

Neuroscience for Kids –
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/introb.html

Genes to Cognition –
http://www.g2conline.org/
, particularly the 3D brain option.

Anyway, here’s the week’s main lecture points:

- 3D glasses make one eye see one image and the other eye see a different image. Each image is polarised differently, and has the opposing polarisation on the selected eye’s glasses view.

- The act of binocular fusion then merges these two images to give you a coherent image; much like your nose does block out a section of what you can see right now… the hidden bit from one eye is fused with the sight of the other.

- There is a specific area of the brain that purely processes faces. This is relatively well-known.

- However, did you know there’s also a dedicated brain area for processing Houses? I didn’t.

- If you ever touch a mirror and your finger’s reflection is slightly displaced; it’s a half-silvered mirror and someone is watching you from the other side. I suggest dancing wildly if you find yourself in this situation.

- If you paralyse your eyes, but you tell your eyes to move (look right for example), the world will shift (I assume to the left?).

- Real scientists have paralysed there eyes temporarily to study this using drugs in eye-drop form, or plastering the muscles around the eyes.

- Transgender people have interesting phantom limb experiences. Woman who identify as male sometimes experience phantom penises (peni?), and men who identify as female do not generally experience phantom penises despite straight males often doing so.

- Neuroscientists like making ferrets blind and deaf. This saddens me.

- Sensory Substitution Devices are my idea of Hell, particularly the vOICe system, which reminds me of an alien movie*. It makes a noise which turns each light or dark patch of colour (form a camera) into sound; using higher pitches and louder volumes form items higher up the picture (birds in the sky) and lighter colours. I believe the pitch or space between noises also changes with depth. It read from left-to right, and sounds/looks like this.

So this week we laughed at the amount of penis talk, felt sad for ferrets, cringed at the idea of paralysing our eyes and I hid behind my friend as the creepy noises got louder and screechier.

Have a good week.

– Rose –

* I recognise it’s an amazing system for those who can’t see; and despite costing 35,000$ currently, it may well be a useful venture in the future. For me though, I’d much prefer it to sound more like this.

Tuesday Tidbit – Week 13: Bwainz

Jan31

Third Week of University.

Once more this is a “top ten” format, and summarises three lectures; as I was ill and missed my Sensory and Motor Function lecture. Our fMRI lecture also had nothing of any significant value to anyone, unless you want to know how to select participants in order to get published in Nature.

So here is one Visual Consciousness lecture and one Neuro-Anatomy lecture:

- The white matter in your brain (connections between regions) decreases 10% every 10 years.

- Your pre-frontal cortex (planning & reasoning) deteriorate faster.

- It’s fairly accepted that as we age, we lose consciousness.

- The working memory used to be thought to store 7 -/+ 2 items. It’s now thought we can hold 4 blocks of information. “Oh there’s a car driving, that dog’s looking angry, what shall I have for dinner, that flower’s pretty”

- The spinal cord has the same layers protecting it as the brain has: dura mater, arachnoid layer, subarachnoid space and pia mater.

- The neurotransmitter GABA turns part of the brain off. Glutamate turns bits on.

- A neurotransmitter called Noradrenaline (Norepinephrine if you’re American) controls your fight/flight response, and is the main reason heroin withdrawal gives you fight/flight symptoms.

- There are 12 types of cranial nerves; one of each type on each side of your head. Thus there are 24 cranial nerves, all of which are either sensory or motor.

- There are two types of pain-information fibre: the A-delta fibre, which gives you sharp, strong pains, and the C fibre, which causes your dull aches.

- Opiates stop this pain response at the spinal cord; stopping the fibres from going up to tell your brain that you’re in pain.

That’s this week’s key lecture notes. Next week my MRI lecture will still be difficult to get in, and my Anatomy lectures have finished; so it’ll be all about motion perception and implicit learning.

– Rose –

Tuesday Tidbit – Week 12: Dreaming and Energy

Jan24

Week Two. The Twelfth Tuesday Tidbit. Hello Again.

This week I’m back with another top ten things I learnt. Because the courses are all inter-linking this term, I’m unable to really focus on any specific lectures or courses and am really just learning the same thing about rats whiskers in three different ways… and getting confused in the process.

Once more, I’m summarising from four lectures: Sensory and motor functions, Basic neuro-anatomy, Neuroscience of consciousness and Advanced fMRI.

Here they are, pub quiz style:

- There are four states of sleep: Wakefulness, early non-REM, late non-REM and REM sleep.

- Non-REM sleep causes paralysis of the motor system, and cuts off the brain from sensory input.

- A lot of sleep deprivation models are based on animal studies including the rat and fruit fly. These drosophila are put in a centrifugal chamber and continually shook to keep them from sleeping. I’m not sure how they keep the rats awake.

- General Anaesthesia is nothing like sleeping. It is a reversible, chemically-induced coma, and usually there’s a second paralysing agent used in the process.

- Some people in a vegetative state or who are minimally conscious can regain consciousness temporarily if given a SLEEPING PILL. The mind boggles.

- I bet your dreams don’t smell. If they do, please tell me in the comments and then you’re local university/sleep study centre. Seriously.

- The brain (2% of your body) uses 20% of all your energy.

- 60% of this energy is spent on neuronal transmissions

- Most of energy used in neuronal signalling restores ion gradients (89%)

- The brain is the most blood-vesselled of all organs. Each neuron within your brain is only ever a maximum of 20 microns away from a blood vessel.

All those are from two lectures (first six, consciousness and last four from fMRI). Apologies for the statistics-heavy approach and apologies for the lack of vampires. But that fruit fly is cool (and cruel, right?). Next week you’ll get the full week of lecture material – unfortunately I used this week’s Thursday material to cover the gaps in my knowledge.

Do your dreams smell?

Do people change identity randomly and, it doesn’t phase you?

Has anyone here ever had an out of body experience or lucid dreamed?

Let us know your thoughts, your questions and your experiences in the comments section.

– Rose –

Tuesday Titbit – Week 7: Memory and Amnesia

Nov22

100-500 words of interesting science for use in pub quizzes and general knowledge relating to science. Today, I want to share this story about cases of people who suffer from a very particular form of memory loss, from my Cognitive Neuroscience lecture.

Evening! So, this week’s tidbit is a brief look at a particular memory issue known as Amnesia. Essentially, there are tow main types: Anterograde, which is the “what happened two seconds ago?” and Reterograde which covers what happened before the brain damage.

H.M. and Clive Wearing

The case of Clive Wearing is available on youtube, though the most famous case of this phenomenon was that of a patient known as HM or H.M. who had surgery for epileptic seizures when he was 10 which caused his memory difficulties. Clive’s is the only case ever recorded to be worse than H.M’s, which came from a Herpes virus (the one that gives people cold sores) which attacked his brain.

If the embedded video fails to load, this link can be found here: http://youtu.be/wDNDRDJy-vo

Clive’s ability to speak, walk and play the piano have led to revolutionary thought in neuroscience about how memory is either spread out across the brain; or how different forms of memory may reside in separate areas.

For example, H.M could learn new motor skills such as drawing tasks. Each day he’d say “I’ve never done this before” but he’d get better at it each new attempt.

What It Is

Anterograde Amnesia is specifically the inability to form new memories; although most brain damage leading to memory malfunction does loss some of the recent memories from before the damage too.

Memories are formed via a process called “plasticity”. As you encounter a piece of information, a little wire in the relevant part of the brain (e.g. for learning words, the left temporal lobe) is created for that learning. If it is rehearsed enough; that wire of information grows, becomes bigger and begins to connect to other wires. In terms of memory, which is thought to be around the medial temporal lobe, it takes a lot of rehearsals before it becomes a part of the wire; thus anything not fully committed to the long term hardware is lost during damage.

An Interesting Case

One of the latest cases to move neuroscience forward in terms of memory is the case of Jon Forbes (Baddeley et al, 2001), who had a brain injury as a baby, therefore has no “before the event” memories to fall back on. He has learnt to speak and walk, yet fails to remember where things are or learn facts. His story is mentioned on Brain Story, and there are two videos below which talk about him:

Video One: Brain Story 5, Part 3, begins Jon’s story at 7:05 minutes in (until the end of the video), then picking up with Video Two: Brain Story 5, Part 4 until 5:10 minutes in.

First Part:

– 7:05 – end.

Second Part:

– beginning – 5:10

Scientists are still trying to figure out how the brain stores memories, and thanks to cases like these, we’re learning more every day.

– Rose –

Reference:

Baddeley, A., Vargha-Khadem, F. and Mishkin, M. (2001). Preserved Recognition in a Case of Developmental Amnesia: Implications for the Acquisition of Semantic Memory? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13, 357–369.

Tuesday Titbit – Week 6: Attachment Hormones – Vole Love

Nov15

100-500 words of interesting science for use in pub quizzes and general knowledge relating to science. Today, I want to tell you about prairie voles and Montane voles. Mhmm. Seriously cute neuroscience coming up from my Social Neuroscience lecture.

Hallo! This week, I learnt about lots of scary brain stuff. And then, I learnt about VOLE LOVE. And I learnt, just about the cutest thing I have every heard in a Neuroscience lecture. Seriously cuteness, coming right up…

Vole Love or Lust?

Right. Vole. Love. [notice you can spell both those word with the same letters].

Prairie voles are monogamous, family-unit-focused voles that form an enduring attachment with their partner, known as a pair-bond.

Montane voles, however, are kind of slutty… who mate then sod off; not even sticking around to raise the kids.

The roles of two hormones are shown to be crucial in these behavioural differences; oxytocin and vasopressin, which are only a few amino acids different, with similar effects on attachment.

Hormones

Oxytocin, simply explained, reduces your stress and is crucial in forming bonds with partners, friends or your children. Oxytocin affects both males and females, though is more effective in females.

Vasopressin, gives you that “I will kill you if you harm my child” emotion, raising your stress and causing aggression to intruders. This hormone has a higher response in males.

Vole Hormones

Both vole species have similar amounts of oxytocin in their brains; yet the distribution (where in the brain; which lobes and areas they’re found in and thus where the stress is increased or decreased) differs.

Williams et al. (1992) ran a partner preference paradigm with these voles, letting each male near one female for a night. Then the male is given the choice of two females – the same one form the night before, and a new one.

Montane voles, instantly attempt to mate with the new one. (Much like rats, I do believe)

Prairie voles, however, prefer to return to their previously attached female and generally, are content to just NUZZLE HER.

*Cue AWWWWWWWWWWW*

It turns out that disruption of oxytocin or vasopressin prevents the formation of this partner preference, and this oxytocin release is especially important in the nucleus accumbens, alongside dopamine.

If there’s anything you want to ask or say about this, it would be great to see your comments, but really; I wanted to share that not all neuroscience is boring – sometimes it’s full of CUTE!

– Rose –

Inner Voices – Interesting Conversations

Nov3

We’ve all heard of intuition. Some say it’s our unconscious which noticed something small and is guiding us sub-consciously. Others would say there is a higher power in our inner voices.

Regardless of who we are and what we believe, I think most people experience moments where we talk to ourselves; weighing up pros and cons; dialoguing two sides of a situation, engage in conversation with… ourselves.

“If I do that then it’ll go wrong”
“But will it?”
“Well it depends…”
“If I did this, it wouldn’t…”

Inner Speech

Inner speech, or intrapersonal communication (within-person communication) is a common phenomenon in humans, thought to aid self-regulation. It’s involved in thought, day-dreaming, visualisation, writing, typing and speaking out loud and is considered part of the human consciousness.

As social creatures, certain parts of our brain has evolved for the pure function of being decent socially; often referred to as the social brain. Inner speech is likely to have evolved in order to avoid silence or process information in ways that we could then socially pass on to others.

Speech as a Tool

It’s been found that those strategically question or speak out loud are better at problem solving. This doesn’t surprise me, as we all know that talking a situation through with a friend can be helpful even if the friend doesn’t have any epiphanies to share. Talking is the therapy, not the feedback.

In counselling there’s a tool known as the ‘empty chair’ technique; where clients are asked to speak to an empty chair, as if another person is sitting there. This is just another example of speech as a helpful tool.

But what about inner speak? When we talk to ourselves purely in our heads; we’re still using language but we appear silent in terms of our mouth muscles moving. Is this helpful?

Self-Talk as a Tool

Many models have attempted to understand the phenomena; especially looking at those considered to have different forms of inner speech such as those experiencing auditory hallucinations (hearing voices/experiencing psychosis).

In these studies, it’s been found that some schizophrenics (who experience auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH)) can disrupt the inner voices by opening their mouth. This suggests that the mental and physical need to match – if my mouth moves but doesn’t match my speech; one of the two phenomena will stop; either the voices or the mouth movements.

Any form of language involves the language processing parts of the brain and the traditional turn-taking we’re taught as infants may use the same brain-areas as problem-solving; thus strengthening those neurons or just ‘warming them up’, as it were.

Conclusions

So. The votes are in. Here’s the results, plain and simple:

- Speak out loud to yourself = win

- Speak out loud at all = yay

- Read aloud = brain growth = woo

- Internal conversations, as long as they contain positive messages = helpful

The question of problem solving via internal conversations is hard to measure; but it can’t do any harm as long as the message/content is positive. Mental visualisation/daydreaming (Peynircioglu, Thompson, & Tanielian, 2000) has been shown to help athletes in many studies.

As the old quote goes:

“It’s an interesting conversation with an interesting person.”

- Rose -