Take this, you Big Pharma a–holes! You can’t charge $50 billion a year for bright light therapy!
Bright Light Therapy for Bipolar
January 4th, 2008
A new study finds bright light therapy can ease bipolar depression in some patients.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic studied nine women with bipolar disorder to examine the effects of light therapy in the morning or at midday on mood symptoms.
“There are limited effective treatments for the depressive phase of bipolar disorder,” said Dorothy Sit, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and the study’s first author. “While there are treatments that are effective for mania, the major problem is the depression, which can linger so long that it never really goes away.”
The study is published in the journal Bipolar Disorders.
Women with bipolar depression were given light boxes and instructed on how to use them at home. The women used the light boxes daily for two-week stretches of 15, 30 and 45 minutes. Some patients responded extremely well to the light therapy, and their symptoms of depression disappeared.
The responders to light therapy stayed on the light therapy for an additional three or four months. Four patients received morning light, and five used their light boxes at midday. Participants also continued to take their prescribed medications throughout the study period.
“Three of the women who received morning light initially developed what we call a mixed state, with symptoms of depression and mania that occur all at once – racing thoughts, irritability, sleeplessness, anxiety and low mood,” said Dr. Sit. “But when another group began with midday light therapy, we found a much more stable response.”
Of the nine women treated, six achieved some degree of response, with several reaching full recovery from depressive symptoms. While most attained their best recovery with midday light, a few responded more fully to a final adjustment to morning light.
“People with bipolar disorder are exquisitely sensitive to morning light, so this profound effect of morning treatment leading to mixed states is very informative and forces us to ask more questions,” said Dr. Sit. “Did we introduce light too early and disrupt circadian rhythms and sleep patterns?”
People with bipolar disorder are known to be sensitive to changes in outdoor ambient light and to seasonal changes. Researchers are asking whether the risk of suicide in patients with bipolar disorder could be linked to changes in light exposure.
“In our study, 44 percent of patients were full responders, and 22 percent were partial responders,” Dr. Sit and her colleagues write. “Light therapy, therefore, is an attractive and possibly effective augmentation strategy to improve the likelihood of full-treatment response.”
Optimal response was observed with midday light therapy for 45 or 60 minutes daily, noted Dr. Sit.
Source: University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences
Link between serotonin levels and anorexia
This is more for the professionals and something I wish they would take the time to research as I think there could be a lot to it.I really wish I had paid better attention in biology class. Basically what this article is saying is that there is a link between the neurotransmitter seratonin, which regulates sleep and hunger as well as mood, and anorexia. Somehow, the longer you spend starving yourself, the more pleasurable it becomes. And, perhaps, starving oneself leads one to devour all fat, including the fatty tissue coating the neuronal networks in the brain, which explains brain shrinkage and enlarged third ventricles found in bipolar brains. I am not a PhD in biology, nor a medical doctor, so this is all speculation, but most people I know with mental disorders also have a strange relationship with food which leads to malnutrition. It may also explain why the newer alternative treatments focus on vitamin/mineral supplements and diets as part of a comprehensive plan.
Interestingly, I told my psychiatrist the other day that lamictal – my wonderdrug (husband calls it “my crack”) makes me feel the exact same way that MDMA did. My psychiatrist could barely conceal his amusement as he said, “it’s actually a lot different than ecstasy” (duh!) “I know it is, but it affects me the same. It didn’t affect me the same way as it affected my friends.” He was quiet. I hope he thinks I am one of his interesting patients.
Of course, we can all just become lithiumzombieResearchers in France have discovered that anorexia and MDMA share a common signaling pathway in the brain – both reducing the drive to eat by stimulating the same subset of receptors for the neurotransmitter serotonin. The team believe the work could help explain the addictive nature of eating disorders.
In mouse studies, Valerie Compan from the University of Montpellier, and her colleagues, found that by directly stimulating so-called 5HT-4 receptors in the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain associated with feelings of reward, they could mimic the effects of anorexia – reducing the animals’ desire to eat.
This reduction in appetite is also a well-recognised side effect of ecstasy or MDMA. When the researchers injected MDMA into mice genetically engineered to lack 5HT-4 receptors, it did not cause the reduction in appetite seen in normal mice – suggesting ecstasy’s appetite-suppressing effect is mediated by the same receptors.
‘This is a starting point showing us that it is likely that anorexia is addictive, as anorexia-like behaviour in mice shares the same pathway with drugs that are commonly abused,’ Compan told Chemistry World.
She stressed the importance of uncovering the neuronal mechanisms involved in anorexia, to complete the ‘biological picture’ of the disease. ‘The 5HT-4 receptor could represent an important therapeutic target,’ she said.
BiPolar Disorder: New Findings
What? You mean people with bipolar disorder can’t just snap out of it? Get outta here!
From here: news story
In what amounts to a scientific breakthrough a combined team of scientists from Britain and the United States have located two genes linked to bipolar disorder. Professor Nick Craddock, of Cardiff University’s school of medicine, who lead the research says, “the findings will help people to avoid saying bipolar is just the way some people are, or that they should be able to control it . . . it puts it on a parallel with other diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes.”
In one of the largest research projects of its kind, genes from more than 10,000 people, including 4,300 with bipolar disorder were examined, constituting a review of around 1.8 million genetic variations. The research team then identified that people with bipolar disorder were significantly more likely to have variants of the ANK3 and CACNA1C genes. These genes help to make proteins that control the flow of calcium and sodium ions that move in and out of nerve cells.
The ANK3 gene has a role in controlling the activity of cells whereas the CACNA1C gene is responsible for channels that control calcium flow from the brain. Normal brain function relies on a delicate balance of sodium and calcium. “The brain operates according to how quickly calcium and sodium are going in and out of cells and how much of it goes in and out,” Craddock said.
The study, reported in the journal of Nature Genetics, is not expected to be helpful in determining risk for the disorder. Many people have the genes but do not have bipolar disorder. What the findings do achieve is they put to rest the notion that bipolar is purely psychological in nature. The fact that the disorder can now be identified as physiological will also help to provide a focus for future research and give direction to new treatments. Although lithium is known to help, it only achieves benefits for two-thirds of people and can cause weight gain and shakiness.
In an upbeat assessment of work to date and speaking to journalist Madeline Brindley of the Western Mail, Professor Craddock stated:
“When the research team can identify bipolar as an illness, like any other caused by a genetic predisposition, the stigma and discrimination faced by people with bipolar may finally be able to become a thing consigned to the history books.”
Neurogenesis in Major Depression
neuorgenesis
Protein markers for psychiatric disorders suggest new treatment strategies!
But what exactly are they?
In a review of the role of neuorgenesis and the plasticity of neural networks, researchers to date only postulate about the signficiant role anti-depressent treatment plays in providing not only the stimulus to create new neurons, but also to aide in directing the role these neurons play within the hippocampus.
Recent models of treatment of major depressive disorder postuate that regenesis of new neural cells in the hippocampus might provide statistically significant in successful treatment of this affective disorder. from Science Direct (full article only available through subscription)
Lack of plasticity cause of mental illness
The protein is called called GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein) and it’s the phosphorylated form of this protein which seems to be lacking.
Researchers, examining protein levels in autopsied brains from 66 people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression and 23 individuals unaffected by the diseases, discovered the brains of those with mental illnesses had signficantly less phosphorylated GFAP ((glial fibrillary acidic protein.
GFAP r forming filaments in the brain which are necessary for cellular division (plasticity) to occur. Factors such as neurotransmittors, growth factors and ‘cytokines’ can trigger phosphorylation.
A definition of GFAP
The GFAP gene provides instructions for making GFAP protein, a member of the intermediate filament family that provides support and strength to cells. Several molecules of GFAP protein bind together to form the main intermediate filament found in specialized brain cells called astrocytes. Astrocytes are star-shaped cells that support the functions of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system). If the central nervous system is injured through trauma or disease, astrocytes react by rapidly producing more GFAP.
Although its function is not fully understood, GFAP protein is probably involved in controlling the shape and movement of astrocytes. The protein probably also plays a significant role in the interactions of astrocytes with other cells, which are required for the formation and maintenance of the insulating layer (myelin) that covers nerve cells. (from Medterms)
Age Dependent Onset of MDD
The density of glial cells is reduced in certain layers of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in major depressive disorder (MDD). Moreover, there are reductions in the packing density of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunoreactive astrocytes in the same cortical layers in younger subjects with MDD. The objective of the present study was to test if the level of GFAP is preferentially decreased in younger subjects with MDD, and whether GFAP levels are correlated with the age of onset of depression. Abstract.
” …stress-induced suppression of neurogenesis would uncouple emotions from external context leading to a negative mood state. Persistence of negative mood beyond the duration of the initial stressor can be defined as major depression. Antidepressant-induced neurogenesis therefore would restore coupling of mood with environment, leading to the resolution of depression. This conceptual framework is provisional and merits evaluation in further experimentation. Critically, manipulation of newborn hippocampal neurons may offer a portal of entry for more effective antidepressant treatment strategies.” Abstract.
LIF promotes neurogenesis and maintains neural precursors in cell populations derived from spiral ganglion stem cells
An article examing the effects of leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF), a neurokinem, to promote self-renewal of other neural stem cells and to affect neural and glial cell differentiation. Abstract.
Neuron Birth (excerpt) …“Our study directly establishes that neurogenesis plays an important role in a defined process, the acquisition and storage of spatial memory,” Howard Hughes Medical Investigator Ronald M. Evans a professor in the Salk Institute’s Gene Expression Laboratory, was quoted as saying by Nature magazine in its online edition.
“This finding puts us in a new and important position to exploit the potential of stem cell-based therapies to improve brain function in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s that are accompanied by a loss of memory,” Evans added.
In a previous study, the same research team had found that a so-called orphan receptor, TLX, is crucial for maintaining adult neural stem cell in an undifferentiated, proliferative state.”
Neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus
“So the question is whether these small molecules that work on neurogenesis in the hippocampus also work on these other parts of the brain involved in depression. I don’t think neurogenesis is the be-all and end-all of depression, but it’s certainly very important.”
A new drug recently passed through second phase of clinical trials, a drug which battles depression by molecularly inducing neurogenesis in the hippocampus without effecting the brain’s serotonin, norepinephrine, or dopamine receptors. The payoff? The potential of alleviating the side effects associated with traditional antidepressents.
After screening over 500 compounds on neural stem cells, BrainCells, a San Diego based pharmaceutical research company, discovered BCI-540 succeeded in stimulating the cells to create neurons.
The idea that the brain was not capable of producing new cells was debunked in 1999 by Salk Institute Professor Rusty Gage, with the publication of research evidencing neural grown in the gyrus of human brains.
Researchers were initially aware of the significant role exercise and an enriched environment play in neurogenesis. And while scientists have since advocated antidepressent therapy for its efficiency in generating neural growth, side effects have diminished its effectiveness.
“The failures in central nervous system drugs have tended to be late and for failure of efficacy, in part because there hasn’t been a good biological basis for [the action of drugs on] many of these diseases, particularly in psychiatry,” says BrainCells CEO Jim Schoeneck.
“A suite of changes occurs in the brains of people with depression: hippocampal volume reduction, decreased density in glial cells and neuronal size in the prefrontal cortex, and changes in blood flow and glucose metabolism in the hippocampus and amygdala.
Still, researchers remain uncertain as to how central a role neurogensis alone plays in alleviating depression. A major issue is determining how new cells can actually integrate into a system in a remedial and effective manner.
Read more at Growing a new antidepressant;visit the Shroomery News Service
Rewiring the Brain: Discovery Magazine
adult neuroplasticity is a vastly undertapped resource, one with which Western medicine and psychology are just now coming to grips. An important emerging research agenda is to figure out ways to direct and maximize this brain repair and reorganization.
Two new books, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Ballantine Books, $24.95) by science journalist Sharon Begley and The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking, $24.95) by psychiatrist Norman Doidge, offer masterfully guided tours through the burgeoning field of neuroplasticity research.
Exercise, Meditation & Neurogenesis
What Can You Do to Help Save Your Neurons?
- Develop a regular mental workout plan to match your physical workout.
- The simplest and most complete methods are the computer-based programs that challenge you mentally with a variety of new stimuli. We will be talking about this in more depth in coming weeks.
- Read, play chess, do sudoku, complete puzzles (of all kinds – visual, linguistic, numerical), learn to play a musical instrument, take a class, etc.
- Eat well.
- Get plenty of physical exercise.
- Reduce your stress.
- Get enough sleep.
Using an MRI scanner, the Columbia researchers led by Professor Scott Small examined a living brain before and after exercise and, for the first time, were able to see neurogenesis effectively in action.
Qi stagnation Prevents Neurogenesis in Hippocampus
Exercise helps Qi stagnation. Naturally when we have a pathology that arises from the lack of movement, then movement will assist this condition. Exercises that marry the breath to movement such as yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong (Chi Kung) or others can have an even greater positive effect on Qi stagnation (and thus, depression). This is because the Lungs too have a relationship with Qi circulation in that they are said to “dominate” the Qi. They seem to have a sort of pumping effect on the Qi’s movement something like the Heart pumps the blood through the body. The Lungs are the propelling force for the Qi while the Liver is in charge of keeping the channels lubricated so that Qi can circulate more easily.
The fact that stress prevents neurogenesis of the nerves in the hippocampus and exercise stimulates this new growth indicates that Qi stagnation can be at least partly quantified by the amount of new nerve growth in the inner brain.
Clinical Trials: Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) in Unipolar and Bipolar Disorders
Major depression, chronic depression and bipolar depression are complex and difficult disorders to treat. They are often associated with residual symptoms with significant functional impairment. SKY (a form of yoga) has been shown to be beneficial in treating depressive symptoms but without the added risks associated with medication use and has the advantage of high consumer appeal (with likelihood of good compliance). However, it has only been tested in unipolar depression, thus far. SKY, if shown to be effective (as an adjunctive to pharmacotherapy) in improving residual symptoms and decreasing risk of relapse, would be of significant long-term benefit to patients not only with major and chronic depression, but also for those with bipolar disorder.
The aim of the study is to determine the safety and effectiveness of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) as an augmentation treatment to pharmacotherapy and in comparison to psychoeducation, in improving residual symptoms of depression.
Mental Depression & Sudarshan Kriya: Recent Research
Clinical trials at NIMHANS, Bangalore, showed that regular practise of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) – a set of breathing techniques promoted by Sri Sri Ravishankar, founder of the Bangalore based Art of Living Foundation – reduces symptoms of mental depression. NIMHANS researchers claim that SKY is as effective as the established anti-depressant drug imipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant, (Depsonil, Antidep). All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, has reported that SKYand Pranayam sessions reduced serum cortisol levels – an indicator of stress – in the blood more effectively than listening to classical music. They are also employing SKY to cure alcohol and tobacco addiction.
Sudarshan Kriya Yogic Breathing in the Treatment of Stress, Anxiety, and Depression: Part II—Clinical Applications and Guidelines ( Richard P. Brown, Patricia L. Gerbarg. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. August 1, 2005, 11(4): 711-717. doi:10.1089/acm.2005.11.711.)
Yogic breathing is a unique method for balancing the autonomic nervous system and influencing psychologic and stress-related disorders. Part I of this series presented a neurophysiologic theory of the effects of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY). Part II will review clinical studies, our own clinical observations, and guidelines for the safe and effective use of yoga breath techniques in a wide range of clinical conditions
Neuro-psychoanalystic researchers combine unconscious (and sometimes conscious) functioning revealed through psychoanalysis or experimental psychology to the biological processes of the brain. (See Wikipedia for more information)
Depression is brain-based, I don’t know what all this talk is of a “mind”. If it is brain-based then neural changes underlie depression. If neural changes underlie depression, then we can induce reverse changes to reverse the depression. We can do this through various cognitive/ behavioral therapies which have been shown to have the same affect on neural systems that anti- depressants do, such therapies just take longer to achieve a similar result. from ephilosopher
Online Resources
Why Freud still matters, and how it might still be possible to speak scientifically about psychoanalysis.
- Neuro-psychoanalysis claims to offer a kind of psychological grand unified theory: by correlating neurological insights into the structure and function of the brain with psychoanalysis’s attentive observation of subjectivity, neuro-psychoanalysis ought to be able to avoid, on the one hand, the mechanistic reduction of mental life sometimes associated with neuroscience, and, on the other, the mystical preference for theory over scientific fact sometimes characteristic of psychoanalysis. From an interview with Mark Solmes
- BrnMawr’s Serendep provides an outstanding cache of resources for individuals to learn more and brain and behaviour. The author also provides some interesting research on the impact of cognitive therapy) on effecting changes in the brain. The Mental Heath section provide access to magnficient studies … A few examples:
Depression … or (better?) Thinking About Mood
Elsewhere on the web
Looking For Spinoza by Antonio Damasio – chapter one
Brain Briefings – newsletters linking discoveries in neuroscience and clinical applications
Architecture and The Mind – Consciousness – describes various ways to think about consciousness
Gender and Brain Imaging brief overview of opinions on neurobiological differences between males and females
Some Thoughts about the Brain/Mind/Language Interface – a historical survey of the approaches to the neural basis of language and the modularity question; supports the view that language is autonomous and independent of other cognitive processes
Brain, Language and the Origin of Human Mental Functions – a discussion of language, “mental functions”, and self consciousness
Language and Brain: Neurocognitive Linguistics – considers how linguistics and the brain sciences are merged to better understand both language and the brain
sound therapy and mental disequalibrium
- Brain Explorer – Neurological Control: Disorders of the Brain
Books/Journals
The Mindful Brain: Leading neurobiologist Daniel Siegel presents a unifying theory that shows how being mindfully aware and attending to the richness of our experience, creates scientifically recognized enhancements in our physiology, our mental functions, and our interpersonal relationships. Being fully present in our awareness opens our lives to new possibilities of well-being. In this new book, Siegel uses theory, science, and anecdote in order to reveal how to transform the brain as well as promote well-being and emotional balance within everyday life as well as within psychotherapy.
Meditation & the Unconscious: Journal Article
Abstract: this paper begins by describing the practice of meditation. It goes on to discuss George Kelly’s view of the unconscious and uses meditation to illustrate this view. Some similarities between meditation and psychotherapy are also described within their mainly Kellian perspective. It is concluded, inter alia, that meditation practice sensitizes the world within, which includes subverbal and unconscious material. With increased adeptness its practice may lead to the temporary suspension of our habitual, dualistic, cognitive construing, and thus facilitate the experience of 
no-thought,
tranquility and a sense of oneness or unity. In the long-term, meditation practice may elaborate both subverbal and transverbal construing.
Programs of Study
BIRN’s Morphometry Test Bed focuses on pooling and analyzing data across neuroimaging sites for potential relationships between anatomical differences and specific memory dysfunctions, such as depression, mild Alzheimer’s disease, and mild cognitive impairment.
By acquiring and pooling patient data across sites, scientists are analyzing data from a large group of subjects, in order to investigate what structural brain differences correlate to symptoms of memory dysfunction or depression. This line of research has already uncovered new diagnostic differences and is expected to lead to potential therapies.
Promoting brain implants to cure depression (Video)
Electromagnetic Stimulation for treatment resistant depression
helmer@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
Brain Morphing
BIRN’s Morphometry Test Bed focuses on pooling and analyzing data across neuroimaging sites for potential relationships between anatomical differences and specific memory dysfunctions, such as depression, mild Alzheimer’s disease, and mild cognitive impairment.
By acquiring and pooling patient data across sites, scientists are analyzing data from a large group of subjects, in order to investigate what structural brain differences correlate to symptoms of memory dysfunction or depression. This line of research has already uncovered new diagnostic differences and is expected to lead to potential therapies.
Promoting brain implants to cure depression (Video)
Electromagnetic Stimulation for treatment resistant depression
helmer@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
