Over the course of my academic career, I have found a sort of interconnectedness between every topic I learn. I’ve switched my major three times, from biology, to psychology, to agriculture, and then back to biology. I used to beat myself up on this long-winded path that I chose to take. Would it not have been easier if I would have just stuck with biology in the first place? Yes, but also, I believe that there is no such thing as wasted knowledge. I’ve found that after a while a degree only gets people so far, their experience is far more important, a degree is a path to experience. I would argue that truly scientist have an ability to find this interconnectedness in everything, find meaning in everything. I mean it’s either everything matters, and everything is connected, or nothing matters, and northing is connected. The topics I would like to explore today are bran function, the effects of dugs and cancer and the gut microbiota, specifically how these are deeply interconnected with various aspects of human life that extend beyond biology.
The brain’s function is wildly unknown, what we do know is that there are different parts of the brain with different functions, diseases can riddle our brains and impact its functions. Some of these functions control our ability to problem solve, our judgment, behavior, muscle movement, pain senses, visual functions like reading, reasoning, balance and coordination and even our memories. Unbalance in this system can present as neurological disorders, storage disorders, personality and mood disorders, and brain diseases.
Brain injuries can affect people, it can change their brain function and can impact every element of a person's life. They can sustain behavioral changes and personality changes at pretty dangerous high percents. The once happy kid can now be depressed and irritable, or severely anxious. They can have rage outbursts, loose their concern for others or suddenly paranoid. They are a lot more likely to experience depression, anxiety, bipolar, OCD, panic disorder, PTSD, schizophrenia, and substance abuse, by a lot. They can have impaired memory; they could not even remember how to draw a map of their own neighborhood.
On top of this society can suffer, if brain injuries are not prioritized, our society will suffer, in the past it has been normal to get a concussion and go right back into the sport, 50% of our NFL players did it, and they are the standard to college football players, high school, little league. Football is not a standalone sport here; determination and grit are such a valuable aspect for athletes to have. Get hit, get back up. Most people struggle with starting again, they struggle with stopping. I think as we continue to study and prioritize or brains, our society can benefit, and we have seen it starting to. This can also have economic effects. Collage sports, professional sports, and international sports bring in a huge amount of profit, when athletes are benched due to brain injuries, everyone can lose money, from a personal level to a corporation level.
The brain has 100 billion nerve cells, and these nerve cells communicate via synapses. An interesting aspect of this interconnectedness I would like to touch on is the visual similarities between the neuron network, cosmic webs, spider web threads, mycelium fungus, and fairy cave sediments.
Figure 1. Mycelium fungus, Fusarium euwallaceae. Protasov AN, 2022.
Figure 2. Scanning electron microphotograph of Fe-oxide collected from Fairy Cave, Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The filaments are indicative of the bacteria Leptothrix. The mammalary growths coating the filaments are probably the result of inorganic precipitation of Fe-oxide. University of Colorado Boulder.
Figure 3. SEM picture showing the structure of the sheet that closes the whole of the ‘cocoon-sac’. Certain parts are covered with a film, while others aren’t. D. D. Bakker, et. al., 2006, Belgian Journal of Zoology.
Figure 4. Simulation of the cosmic web. Springer et.al., 2005, The Millennium Simulation Project.
I mean just look at how everything is so interconnected and imitating of each other.
Drugs are molecules that affect pathways of cells, which then affects our body. Basically, drugs interfere with how neurons send, receive and process signals via neurotransmitters. Drugs can activate neurons by mimicking the brains chemicals like marijuana and heroine, but these drug mimics don’t activate neurons the same way as natural neurotransmitters leading to abnormal messages being sent. Some drugs can even cause the neurons to release abnormally large amounts of natural neurotransmitters or prevent normal recycling of our chemicals through transporter interference, examples of this are amphetamines or cocaine. Drugs can be used therapeutically to block neuropathways and to even help pathways function better. These can be used to alter moods, emotions, behaviors, and bodily processes.
Drugs are thoroughly interconnected to psychology, and drug use can have effects on addiction and recovery. Nicotine a drug that many use is known to be addictive, but there are therapeutic drugs that can be prescribed to help people quit nicotine use, these therapeutic drugs can even make nicotine unappetizing to the addicted body. Drugs are a double-edged sword, they can, with repeated use, even rewire our neural networks permanently, which means they can permanently affect our ability to make decisions, learn, and our memory. Addiction is a devastating disease that so many people suffer from. Yet, recreational drugs have started to lose their bad reputation and clinical use of them has been used to treat psychological conditions like ketamine therapy for depression.
The effects drugs can have on a society are extensive. Crazily enough recreational drug use has even led to multiple scientific discoveries. I remember learning about Francis Crick’s use of LSD and it leading to the discovery of the structure of DNA, and it led me down a rabbit hole of drug use and scientific discoveries. Other examples of this are Kary Mullis and his use of LSD leading to developing PCR (Mullis 1998), August Kekule and his speculated use of laudanum leading to the discovery of benzene’s structure, Frederick Banting’s use of alcohol leading to to the discovery of insulin, Dmitri Mendeleev’s use of tobacco and alcohol theorized to fuel his discovery of the periodic table, and lastly Sigmund Freud, scientist and psychologists use of cocaine influencing his development of psychoanalytic theory.
Drug use has not just influenced scientific discoveries but also artists, lives and works. Some examples of this are Pablo Picassos use of cannabis impacting his artistic vision and creativity, Salvador Dali’s use of LSD influencing his surrealistic artwork, Jackson Pollock and his struggles with alcohol and how it impacted his art, especially his drip painting technique, Andy Warhol and his use of amphetamines and the effect on his art. Drugs have also influenced many famous authors like Edgar Allen Poe and his use of opium and alcohols on his writing or Hunter Thompsons’s use of LSD, cocaine, and marijuana and their influence on his works like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or even F. Scott Fitzgerald and his struggles with alcoholism and it’s influences on The Great Gatsby. We can see how drugs, and their addictions have impacted society deeply, everything is interwoven.
Cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell division; at the cellular level it is a genetic disease. Human cancers are classified based on the type of cell that has become cancerous, with more than 100 kinds of cancer identified. About 1 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer and every year about 500,000 will die from cancer. Around 5-10% of cancers are due to an inherited predisposition, that means that 90-95% are not. A small part of this 90-95% are the result of spontaneous mutations and viruses, but a huge portion, at least 8-% of cancers are related to exposure to mutagens, which alter the structure and expression of genes. Almost everyone has been affected by cancer in some sort of way, everyone knows someone who has suffered at the hands of cancer. Environmental agents that cause cancer are known as carcinogens. Interestingly enough changes in the gut microbiota have been associated with cancer. Around one hundred trillion organisms make up the human gut microbiota, colonizing our intestine. With further research, this connection between the gut microbiota and cancer could improve the clinical activity of anticancer agents. Most people want a cure for cancer, they have seen how cancer has impacted so many lives around us. As I get older, I see it affect not just family members, but friends. Two of my friends’ moms received cancer diagnosis this last year, and while one mom is now cancer free, the other mom sadly has passed away. It is harrowing and yet we as human's perceiver. Cancer is so interconnected in our lives. There are known things we can do to influence our risk of cancer, so our actions everyday can end up influenced by cancer, like a daily use of sunscreen or even daily use of nicotine. The financial incentive alone is a reason why people search for a cure for cancer, or why some conspiracy theorists would argue why we don’t have a cure yet… because a one-time treatment means no repeat customers… right? I digress. In 2020 208.9 billion dollars was spent on cancer treatment in the United States. This is a large economic impact. Personally, outside of cancer impacting my family and my friends, it has also impacted my social roles, I was challenged to fundraise money for the Huntsman Cancer Institute this last year though SUU’s Sigma Chi fraternity. What most people viewed as an organization for social events, became so much more, I got to see and experience their goal to be the “generation to end cancer”. Lofty, but it just goes to show that cancer is interconnected in our lives. As my days were spent cold calling, and passing out flyers for events, I was met with peoples' stories of how their mother, their brother, themselves had fought or were currently fighting cancer. Everything is really interconnected.
Throughout this whole class especially when researching the brain, I can't help but think of the well-known book and movie, Blade Runner. The general idea of it, is man made robots that are similar to humans, designed to kill other robots. There is this part in it where the main robot is questioned, here is a little excerpt:
A blood black nothingness began to spin.
Began to spin.
Let's move on to system.
System.
Feel that in your body.
The system.
What does it feel like to be part of the system.
System.
Is there anything in your body that wants to resist the system?
System.
We're going to go on.
Cells.
They were all put together at a time.
Cells.
Millions and billions of them.
Cells.
Were you ever arrested?
Cells.
Did you spend much time in the cell?
Cells.
Have you ever been in an institution?
Cells.
Do they keep you in a cell?
Cells.
When you're not performing your duties, do they keep you in a little box?
Cells.
Interlinked.
What's it like to hold the hand of someone you love?
Interlinked.
Do they teach you how to feel finger to finger?
Interlinked.
Do you long for having your heart interlinked?
Interlinked.
Do you dream about being interlinked?
What's it like to hold your child in your arms?
Interlinked.
What's it like to play with your dog?
Interlinked.
Do you feel that there's a part of you that's missing?
Interlinked.
Do you like to connect to things?
Interlinked.
What happens when that linkage is broken?
Interlinked.
Have they let you feel heartbreak?
Interlinked.
Did you buy a present for the person you love?
Within cells interlinked.
Why don't you say that three times?
Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked. Within cells interlinked.
Dark yet I feel like it really describes how life is interlinked. Is there such thing as an original thought, idea, invention, discovery? Or is everything influenced by something? Are we just one smaller system inside of a bigger system? There is that video that zooms out of the earth from a microscopic level to way outside of our solar system, but if we reverse that, do we not just get this idea of interconnectedness? These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg, and I feel like there are multiple rabbit holes to go down, but either way I would argue that everting, everyone, every atom, is interlinked. Interconnected.
