Curated Paper 2

        There are many connections that can be made between scientific ideas and ideas from different fields of endeavor. One really interesting connection that can be made is between the brain and psychology. The brain is in charge of many important functions that can affect every part of a person’s day to day life. When we look at these many brain functions there are a lot of ways that they interact with a person’s mood and emotions and when the brain is damaged there can be long lasting and damaging effects to a person’s emotional state. Another connection that can be made is between cancer and the economy. Cancer has a big impact on national and global economies resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars being spent each year to fight cancer. The last connection that will be made is between drugs, psychology and the economy. Drugs can affect a person’s psychology in a wide variety of different ways. There is also a lot of money that is spent each year on both legal and illegal drugs which can have both negative and positive effects on the economy. 

When most people think of psychology and the brain they often think of Traumatic Brain Injuries. Many people may have even learned about how Traumatic Brain Injuries can sometimes alter a person’s personality quite drastically. One of the first case studies that was recorded was of a man named Phineas P. Gage. Phineas was born in 1823 and at the age of 25 he suffered a severe head injury, an almost 4 foot, 1.25 inch diameter rod went through his brain (left frontal lobe). In less than a year he was able to make an almost complete recovery, which is quite amazing given the severity of the injury. Following his recovery, his family was dismayed to find that Phineas’s personality had changed from easy going to quite severe/extreme. Following the accident he became very impatient, stubborn and treated others with little to no respect. It is crazy how much his accident affected his personality and as a result he became an almost completely new person in the worst way. 

The effects of Traumatic Brain Injuries can be varied in severity, no one person’s TBI is the same as another person’s. These injuries are often very difficult to understand because there is so much that we don’t know about how the brain works. The human brain is also very complex which makes it a very difficult organ to study. Often we are forced to learn about TBIs from a variety of different case studies like that of Phineas P. Gage. We know so much more about how the human brain works than we did 100 years ago because of all the advancements in the scientific and medical fields but we are still far from knowing all that we need to know. As a result scientists are constantly making new discoveries about the human brain.

 I have some experience interacting and working with people who have suffered from TBIs while I worked at Chrysalis a few years ago. Chrysalis is a company that provides many different services for individuals with intellectual disabilities and while I worked for Chrysalis I helped to provide consistent support to individuals in order for them to become as independent as possible. One of the houses that I worked at had an individual who tried to commit suicide when he was around 30 years old. He tried to take his own life with a gunshot to the headshot but miraculously he was found in time to receive life saving care and survived this traumatic wound. This individual is now around 60 years old and lives full time at one of the homes Chrysalis owns and because of his Traumatic Brain Injury he has a diminished intellectual capacity and also needs to take a wide variety of medication everyday. In my interactions with him, he went from being very calm to very aggressive in a matter of seconds, the littlest inconvenience could and would set him off. When he didn’t get what he wanted, like going for a walk, he would have fits of anger where he would swear nonstop and threaten violence. He also suffered from extreme paranoia and would constantly look out the windows and claim that there were people watching him and the house. This could be if there was a car that he didn’t recognize parked across the street or if there was someone walking past the house. Overall I learned a lot working with this individual and found that he was all bark and no bite and there were also many times where I had positive interactions with him. Almost all of these problems that this individual suffered from resulted from his TBI and many of these problems are common symptoms of those who suffer from TBIs. 

Cancer has a very big impact on the United States economy because according to the American Cancer Society in 2022 there were an estimated 1.9 million new cancer cases that were diagnosed as well as 609,360 cancer deaths in the United States alone. There are so many different types of cancer some of which include: breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer and colon/rectal cancer. Since there are so many different types of cancers there are many more people who are at risk of developing cancer at some point in their lives. The cost of cancer related research and cancer treatment is very substantial in the U.S. and continues to rise each year. According to the American Association for Cancer Research the national cancer-attributable costs in the United States are projected to increase by over 30 percent from 2015 to 2030, corresponding to a total cost of over $245 billion.

Cancer affects many more people than just the person that develops cancer such as family members because when just one person is diagnosed with cancer a whole community can suffer the consequences. In my family there have been two cases of cancers, I have an aunt who developed breast cancer and a niece who developed Leukemia. In both of these cases friends and family as well as communities banded together to raise money for cancer treatments as well as providing support to both individuals. This isn’t just unique to my two family members and when most people are diagnosed with cancer many people are affected. This is important to remember when looking at cancer statistics. The actual number of people who are directly or indirectly affected by cancer may well be in the tens of millions or hundreds of millions in the United States. 

There are thousands of different types of drugs and many different ways they are classified. The use of both legal and illegal drugs have an impact on many aspects of our society.  Drugs can alter the way a person’s brain works because they interfere with how neurons send, receive, and even process signals via neurotransmitters. This interference within a person’s brain can cause many different effects. Some of these effects make the user feel active and energetic while others cause a person to feel relaxed and calm. With all of the different effects drugs can have on a person’s brain and body there is a large need and use for prescription drugs in the medical field. According to statista the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported prescription drug expenditure in the United States came to some 378 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. This is a massive amount of money that was spent in 2021 and it is projected that the cost spent on prescription medication is expected to continue to rise. Prescription drugs play an important role in the healthcare system because of the many benefits they can have on a person’s recovery and prolongment of life. However these benefits can be reduced if people are unable to afford prescription drugs. According to the Peter G Peterson Foundation 24 percent of people taking prescription drugs noted that they had difficulty affording their medication, and this finding was more pronounced for lower-income individuals as well as for those nearing retirement age.

There are many connections that can be made between the brain, cancer, drugs and the impact that they have on both the economy and a person’s psychology. Many of these connections have a lot of overlap when compared to one another. One example of this overlap could be a cancer patient will be prescribed medication that may alter their emotions. The majority of this paper came from my journaling of cancer, brain and drug topics. There was a lot that I added to each section as well as a lot of research that I did to support the different ideas that I discussed. There were a lot of really interesting topics from all these sections and there was a lot that I was able to learn.

Curated Paper #2

    The brain is one of the most complex organs of the entire body, driving life through electric pulses. In fact, the brain is able to outlive the body by many years but due to the nature of deterioration of the DNA and mechanisms replenishing the body, the physical form is the main issue to an increasing life span. Although the brain is evolutionarily advanced, many things can go wrong that contribute to different types of disorders forming.

    Neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s can severely affect motor function and inhibit cognitive or emotional function and growth. Storage disorders such as Tay-Sachs are very rare but destroy nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to loss of senses, seizures, and in most cases, a short life expectancy. Personality and mood disorders such as depression, OCD, and schizophrenia are becoming more common and talked about in the new generation. According to the American Psychiatric Association, about 9% of U.S. adults have been diagnosed with at least one personality disorder. Amongst the younger population who are in college and high school, an increase in depression and anxiety has been noted. Developmental disorders such as autism and spectrum disorders have also been talked about more in the newer generation and more resources have been available for the wider population. The last type of brain disease are Prion diseases such as Kuru and spongiform encephalopathy.

The brain is one of the most interesting topics to me as I’ve been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I have also been tested for sclerosis and know someone personally who has been affected by it. Multiple sclerosis is a progressive neurological disease that causes demyelination in the brain and spinal cord and we have yet to find a cause while the course of the disease varies from case to case.

One of the most well-known and disturbing diseases is dementia. Huntington’s disease rapidly progresses into dementia by affecting changes in mood and character and creating defects in memory and attention. Strokes, Korsakoff’s syndrome and Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s disease are the known causes of dementia. 

Another cause of brain diseases and disorders is physical trauma. A prime example is Phineas P. Gage who was struck with a tamping iron. The tamping iron passed through his brain, mostly the left frontal lobe, and Gage was able to make a complete physical recovery; however, his personality changed and Gage became an impatient, raging, and stubborn man. TBI or traumatic brain injury usually results in a diminished state of consciousness and impairs cognitive abilities. Mood and personality can drastically change after a TBI occurs and can further develop into psychiatric disorders.

TBI can be caused by many diverse causes such as concussions, tumors, car accidents, toxics, and more. TBI has a very high prevalence rate with 5.3 million Americans being affected. The elderly, substance abusers, males in the 15 to 24 year old range, infants, and prior head injury individuals are considered to be high risk groups to the effects of TBI. There are approximately 62% to 67% of severe and 10% to 21% of mild behavioral changes and approximately 60% to 80% of personality changes after TBI. The most common shifts are liability, aggression, disinhibition, apathy, and paranoia.

The effects of TBI and treatments are still being studied today. There has been evidence for a strong linkage between early abuse and the development of borderline personality disorders. One of the main reasons treatments for brain injuries are long and slow is due to the lack of information known about the brain. For example, Henry Molaison developed seizures and a loss of consciousness after experiencing a TBI from an accident. The proposed treatment was to cut out the hippocampus from the brain. While the seizures did stop, all memory was wiped from Molaison and he could not hold any new information. Another example is Eugene Pauly who suffered an illness that destroyed a 5cm oval of tissue in the medial temporal lobe which is responsible for many cognitive tasks. Pauly could not form new memories and could not recall and draw out maps of places he knew how to transverse well. 

We know a lot about the brain and how different parts work and what they control but our knowledge on how they all function together is still low. We are unable to take major parts of the brain out without causing some unseen consequences. It is similar to why we are unable to genetically modify humans, we do not fully understand the effect of removing or adding genetic code. We may know how each part works separately, but once we change one section, a bunch of sections in other areas are affected. It is difficult to have moral and inexpensive experiments on the brain and our genetic code which inhibits our ability to fully understand ourselves.

While physical trauma like TBI can negatively affect the brain by disrupting nerves and killing tissues which can then develop into many different disorders and diseases, drugs can also play a huge role in brain health. Due to how similar drugs are to the chemicals naturally produced, they are able to bind to receptor sites. Typically, drugs bind to neurotransmitters in the brain and affect behavior and mood. Due to the addictive nature of drugs, the disease of addiction  changes the structure of the brain. This causes the cycle of addiction where users must continue to increase the dosage to feel the same effects of the first high.

In order to achieve the wanted high, some drugs abusers may begin to mix drugs. Most easily attained drugs are safe when taken as directed and one at a time. A drug antagonism is when a user takes two different drugs that cancel or reduce the effect of one another. A drug synergism is when the combined drugs generate a greater effect than on their own. Another issue with drugs is the impurities it may contain. One of the biggest epidemics currently is the use of drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and morphine that have been laced with fentanyl. While it takes a lot more of the other opioids to seriously harm the user, according to the DEA, two milligrams of fentanyl is enough to be fatal. 

Neuroadaptivity, the dulling of the pleasure center, hypofrontality, interference with decision making, and memory loss can all occur due to the overuse of drugs. Typically, dopamine is the natural chemical released when a natural need like food or survival is met. In the case of drugs, there is an immediate increase in dopamine and when overused, the amount is reduced in each high. Due to the reward system, the brain then craves the amount of dopamine during a drug high, and addiction can occur. With longer term usage, the neurons change and alter their function. There can be a rearranging of synapses and connections as well as a change in the number of receptors. This can change behaviors, processing in the brain, memory, decision making, and many more crucial parts of brain function.