The Many Ways Our Brains Make Us Who We Are

 Kinley Fautin

Dr. Karpel

Capstone: Biology of Disease

The Many Ways Our Brains Make Us Who We Are

The brain is such an interesting organ. How can something so small carry so much responsibility regarding human knowledge? It is in charge of what comes out of our mouths, how we move our bodies, what goes on inside our bodies, and so much more. I often catch myself thinking about how the brain works. I have been taking a Child and Infant Psychology class this semester and right now we are talking about different specialized portions of the brain that are in charge of different things that make up our identities and help us to function. 

The right hemisphere is in charge of our creativity, seeing things as a whole picture rather than in parts, and it is what controls the left side of the body. The left hemisphere is where we see things in parts, think logically, and is what controls the right side of the body. It is also in charge of our language and analytics. To help explain the different hemispheres of the brain I will share with you an example given to me by my professor. He drew a “V” on the board, but it was made out of Z’s. The left hemisphere, when looking at the image, sees the Z’s because they represent the “parts.” The right side would see the whole picture as both the V and the Z’s, but when handed an object with the same shape as Z’s or a V they would choose the object in the shape of a V because that is the shape of the “whole picture.” It is just plain fascinating! 

With one slight change or injury to the brain our knowledge of who we are as an individual could change. As discussed before, the brain contains different specialized regions that each have their own function, and when one of these regions are “messed” with they will cause the body to be affected in different ways. 

There are so many different types of diseases that attack the brain. These include neurological disorders, storage disorders, personality and mood disorders, developmental disorders, and prion diseases. In high school I had the opportunity to work as a CNA in the Dementia unit at a care center. With this I witnessed first-hand how the brain is affected when attacked by the disease, Dementia. It was so sad to see the brain slowly deteriorate in my residents. I think that working there made me truly see how much of our identity resides in the brain and how, when it is attacked, we lose the knowledge of who we are. 

Brain injuries are another way certain brain regions are affected and change who we are. My cousin was in a terrible motorcycle accident about 9 months ago and he is still in the process of healing. He was flung 200 feet in the accident and his helmet was destroyed in the process. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, but he was one of the lucky ones. His TBI did not keep him from remembering his family. The only thing it keeps him from doing is using a filter and it gives him some short term memory problems. Doctors say he may never return to his full self. The brain is capable of repairing itself in some ways, but a lot of the time when it suffers a great trauma, like my cousins, it is only capable of repair to a certain extent. 

Concussions are another short term brain injury and are often acquired through sports! Have you ever been deep into a game and all of a sudden you hit your head on something or accidentally head-butt another player extremely hard and then start to see stars? If so, it is likely that you have experienced a slight concussion and didn’t even know it. Oftentimes, pro-athletes try to avoid being diagnosed with a concussion due to the fact that they would more than likely have to sit out for a while, but more recently they have begun to report them more often due to the fact that ignoring a concussion could lead to a worse brain injury. In the article, Frequency and Outcomes of a Symptom-Free Waiting Period After Sport-Related Concussion, from The American Journal of Sports Medicine, it was stated that, “Stigma associated with reporting concussions may be reduced as symptoms (vs traditionally recognized acute injury characteristics such as LOC) are more widely recognized as a brain injury. As a result, athletes may be more likely to report concussions with less severe acute injury characteristics, a conjecture supported by less frequent PTA and RGA in the current cohort who also self-reported symptoms for a longer period of time.” 

After thinking about how injury affects the brain, I found myself wandering into the thought of, “How do mental illnesses affect the brain.” So, what does go wrong when mental illness is involved? I had wondered about which regions of the brain were affected by certain mental illnesses, and so I did some research. According to the article, Many Mental Disorders Affect Same Brain Regions, “Schizophrenia differed from other mental-health disorders in the amount of gray-matter loss, and depression also involved shrinkage of the amygdala and hippocampus, brain regions involved in emotion and memory, respectively, the researchers found.” Knowing which regions of the brain are affected is one of the most important criteria in order to match the mental illnesses with their complementary treatment drug. The most common treatment drugs for certain mental illnesses include antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, mood-stabilizing medications, and antipsychotic medications. 

According to the Oxford Dictionary drugs are, “a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.” They have the potential of either being an amazing contribution to science and human health or have the power to destroy a human from the inside out. Any drug can be abused and that is where the danger lies. 

Our brains are essentially the control center for our bodies and drugs have the effect of taking our control center and manipulating it to either help us fight against certain viruses and diseases, or use its effects to cause more harm. It was interesting to me to actually get an insight into how drugs are able to do such a thing. They are able to do this by resembling chemicals that are already naturally produced in the body. Due to the resemblance the drugs are able to bind to certain site receptors, and then, from there, the body absorbs it. 

Depending on the type of drug, they will have many different physiological effects. The power point informs us that if a drug is a stimulant you will often recognize increased heart rate and blood pressure; depressants will have the opposite reaction and will actually relax the central nervous system causing a decrease in function. Cannabis can cause an alteration in perception and reactions and can also increase heart rate, and drugs such as psychedelics and hallucinogens do the same altering of perception, thoughts, mood, sensation, heart rate, body temperature, and also may induce a possible acute anxiety attack. The reaction each of these drugs cause relies highly on how much was taken and how fast it was introduced into the body. The brain is an amazing organ, and due to its amazing properties, and processes by which it works with drugs, we are able to overcome certain foreign invaders attacking our bodies.

In the paper Ayurveda and natural products drug discovery, the discovery and development of certain drugs are discussed. Researchers were focused on discovering, and developing, drugs that were made of natural products. That is where the Ayurveda comes in. Using natural products is great in some aspects, but it was found that they still needed science in order to get the Ayurvedic drugs to work properly. I think that the only reason researchers are able to create things like this is due to their knowledge of how the brain controls the body to metabolize drugs. Without this knowledge I don’t think their results would have been as successful. 

Works Cited

Lewis, Tanya. “Many Mental Disorders Affect Same Brain Regions.” LiveScience, Purch, 4 Feb. 2015, www.livescience.com/49694-mental-illness-brain-similarities.html. 

Patwardhan, Bhushan, et al. “Ayurveda and Natural Products Drug Discovery .” CURRENT SCIENCE, vol. 86, no. 6, 2004. 

Pfaller, Adam Y., et al. “Frequency and Outcomes of a Symptom-Free Waiting Period After Sport-Related Concussion.” The American Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 44, no. 11, 2016, pp. 2941–2946., doi:10.1177/0363546516651821.