Brenna Fangupo Curated Paper 2: Brain, Drugs and Pathogenicity

Brenna Fangupo

4500 Biology of Disease

Jonathan Karpel

11/15/2024

Curated Paper 2: Brain, Drugs and Pathogenicity

    When learning about the brain, it’s understood that it is very complex. It is one of the most important organs in the human body and the reason for this being is because this is how the human body functions. We are able to function because of the signals that are coming to, and from the brain. There are many things about the brain and how it functions is still yet to be fully discovered. The changes that happen within the brain and the injuries that can occur to the brain can have a huge effect. on the way in which our body functions and how we function on a daily basis. 

     The brain is made up of over 100 billion nerve cells and these cells are able to communicate with one another through synapses. There is a synapse between each cell and these have specialized parts. The specialized parts are the cortex, the brainstem, the basal ganglia, and the cerebellum which all of these different parts that make up the brain control the different parts and functions of the body.  There are lobes within the brain as well, which is correlated with the functions of our body. The way in which the brain functions and how it can be affected, depends on what occurs there can be physical injury to the brain. Mental disorders can play into how the brain functions and there are also drugs that can affect how the brain functions.

    The wrinkles of  the brain are the cerebrum. This is the major portion of the brain. With a larger surface area, there will be more neurons. This indicates that an individual with a brain that has more wrinkles will have more neurons, and this makes them more intelligent than other individuals. In the YouTube video, we learn about how the cerebrum is divided into four lobes. The first one I learned about was the frontal lobe. The function of the frontal lobe is in which it controls problem-solving and takes care of the intellectual activities and the example that they used in the video was solving a math problem. This indicates that the frontal lobe was actively involved because I was trying to solve the problem. It was also fascinating to learn that our frontal lobe controls the attention span of an individual, how we make judgment on situations, how we behave and our muscle movement functions through the frontal lobe.

    The other lobe that it describes is the parietal lobe and its function is to sense pain and touch. It also gives us the ability to read and understand statements. The Temporal lobe is in charge of the visual and auditory memory and from the video, it explains what we see and hear is stored in the Temporal lobe as memories. The final lobe that the video describes is the occipital lobe and what this lobe does is it helps us recognize colors, words and the motion of things. I then learn about the cerebellum and how important it is to the brain. This part of the brain controls certain functions of the body that we as humans depend on, and this is things like posture, balance, and how our body moves in the correct way there were many examples brought up, but the one that stood out to me was that the cerebellum is the reason why we can run stand on one leg and why we can keep posture when standing. 

    The video had mentioned how we handle our emotions and I had never really thought of what is causing me to be sad or happy. People tend to think how we feel is because of our heart, but in reality it is our brain allowing us to express our emotions and feel emotions. There are many functions that we are capable of doing because of the brain. The brain is not given enough credit for all that it does and it is capable of supporting everything in which our body does. Knowing that the brain is a keystone in which we are able to function. When  something happens to the brain that causes injury or change. They way in which one functions can change dramatically.

    The psychology of the brain and how it influences our behavior shows in the different sections and lobes of the brain. Each brain has a different function that affects our mental state and how we react to different scenarios. This includes how we deal with brain diseases, such as neurological disorders, storage disorders, personality and mood disorders, developmental, and prion diseases can all play a part in how an individual functions. One of the disorders that I want to touch base on is developmental and these are due to genetics and how we develop in the womb. The brain diseases from this are autism and spectrum disorders that are due to the development in your mothers womb. I wanted to give attention to the brain disease in which I have relatives who suffer from both autism and spectrum disorders. The development of a human being is already complicated and trying to understand how brain disease came about is even more difficult to understand because in depth research needs to be done. 

    When the brain is not functioning how it is supposed to, the role of ayurveda will be disrupted. With ayurveda being the mind, body and spirit are one and if the brain is affected, both our mind and body will not be able to function correctly. The reason for this being is because our brain is so important that it controls how our mind thinks. It controls how our body functions. If our body is not able to send out the signals to move then we will not be able to move hence why our brain allows us to practice ayurveda. 

    This made me think of my grandmother who has Alzheimer’s, and how a stroke within her brain caused her to have the disease of dementia. It just made me think how important it is to be healthy to keep our brains away from injury so that we will be able to function properly.  With my grandmother, the part of her brain that was affected, the most was memory and recognition of others. As a child I remember crying because she didn't recognize me or others around her. There were also many times where she'd be confused because of how her brain was functioning. Our brains are important and keeping them in the condition they are supposed to be in will keep us away from diseases. This means doing all that we can to avoid harm to our brains. 

The brain and how it functions is affected when we partake in any kind of drugs. There are two types of drugs: legal and illicit drugs. The legal drugs are prescribed or bought over the counter. These types of drugs include pain relievers, allergy medicine, and many more. The illicit drugs are the illegal and forbidden drugs, such as cocaine, meth, and marijuana. Understanding that both types of drugs can affect the brain in some type of way makes us question if drugs benefit us or hurt us in the long run. 

With legal drugs being pain relievers, allergy medications, cold and flu medications and other over the counter medications as well as prescribed medications help us function to feel better. I have seen relatives who are prescribed pain relievers but over time their bodies start to acclimate to the prescribed drug making their body need a higher dosage. This shows how the brain becomes familiar with the drugs that we are using where the chemistry of the brain is changing in some way. The question is “what are drugs doing to us when we use them?” The answer is that the pathways in our brains where the neurotransmitters that are processing what is being sent and received are being tampered with when certain drugs are taken. Drugs can activate neurons, where the neurons release large amounts of natural neurotransmitters and can also block pathways or help the pathways work better.

Drugs affect the brain whether they are illicit drugs or legal. The balance of our brain of how we think, feel, and behave are all affected when we take drugs. How they get to the brain is first, through our bloodstreams. In the youtube video “How do drugs affect the brain?” It explains that when drugs are administered orally, it takes the longest to reach our brains because it has to be absorbed by our digestive system first before it can take effect. It also shows how inhaling and injecting a drug both get into the bloodstream much faster where it then reaches the brain. Many drugs must have a certain chemical composition that allows passage into the brain. Once in the brain, they begin to alter or mess with the natural functioning of the brain. 

The drugs target neurons and synapses, and when these are functioning normally they help in regulating our emotions, behaviors, and how we perceive and understand things. When drugs are present, they are able to inhibit or excite these neurotransmitters. Where there are dramatic decreases in the amount of neurotransmitters or abnormal large amounts of neurotransmitters being released into the brain. The drug and how effective it can be relies solely on the way it can manipulate the synaptic transmissions. One example given in the video is how pain relievers are able to reduce the pain perception in which the brain is telling us something hurts, but the drug we take reduces or inhibits the neurotransmitters to make it seem like the pain is no longer there. 

    From this example, I realized how when I take pain relievers I tend to not feel the pain anymore, but when the pain reliever wears off the area that was in pain hurts more. From this, we see how drugs are able to inhibit our neurotransmitters to where it is able to change how our brains feel, think, and behave. Drugs have powerful impacts and because they have an effect on our brains chemistry, it is understood that some need to have restrictions and be controlled by the law. The illicit drugs that many administer can permanently damage how our brains function and the neural networks. The repeated use of a drug can ultimately rewire our brains causing how we think, the ability to learn and our memory will be affected when using specific drugs. 

    I remember a family friend who became addicted to an illicit drug and would administer the drug repeatedly on a day to day basis. When my family members and I would encounter the person, they behaved differently from before and would often avoid eye contact. Their memory of the past was different and they would make up stories or tell them differently from how we all remembered it. Most of the time it seemed that they were in their own world where they were drifting from reality. This shows how drugs can affect one's mind and their relationships with others because after this person changed from drug abuse, our relationship with this family friend became distant because they grew aggressive and paranoid not only around us but anyone in general. The psychological side of their brain led to addiction where they want more and more causing change in their behavior. 

    Drugs, both good and bad, need to be further researched. The ones we often use are the ones that have been studied thoroughly to ensure that they are effective for our  medicines to improve our health. If we can study all drugs and understand how they affect our mind's balance and our body, we can then further our medical stance to improve the quality of medicine to where it will be more effective than before. 

    Ayurveda is a topic that we have touched base with since the beginning of the semester. It is the balance of our mind, body, and spirit. When drugs are in use, the practice of ayurveda is disrupted because our minds and bodies are affected, and if we touch base with the spiritual side of things it causes our minds to go away from the teachings in which we learned because our minds are not sober, we are most likely to fall into temptation. Drugs can benefit our health but they can also end up harming us if we don’t administer them correctly. This is why it is important for us to gain knowledge on all drugs in which they can or should not be used. 

Pathogenicity is the measure, where we see microbes being the cause of a disease in a certain host. Pathogens, and their ability to cause a disease depends on a lot of different factors, and this also depends on the host's ability to fight against that pathogen. There are plant diseases where pathogens can take entire crops out. And the microbes we see in our gut that can cause disease in the human body. There are many different results, but we see that the pathogens within our body can be long-term, or even have chronic effects where we could potentially die.

    There are some pathogens that are able to insert their own genetic material into our own DNA, and this can cause mutations in our DNA that can change it, and it will never be able to reverse. If we think about this and understand it, we see how pathogens can add or even affect our genetics over time. This just goes to show that our genome has been affected, and changed due to pathogens. “Pathogens are anything that can cause diseases” (Karpel, 2020). Types of pathogens vary; this can include bacteria, fungi, virus, and proteins. Hosts also vary and the pathogens can have different effects on the hosts. 

Pathogens can change a host's behavior and how they act and think could all be affected due to the pathogen. Whether it is short term or long term depends on their purpose and the type of pathogen it is. Pathogens can greatly affect our bodies mentally and physically and the effect can be great or even have little effect but one thing's for sure pathogens have an effect no matter how big or small they are. The psychological part of the brain shows how pathogens are able to influence us and change the way we react and perceive pathogens.

    Our body, mind and spirit will not function properly with any pathogen present. Pathogens are bacterias, fungi, viruses and other things that cause disease in a host. For the host we humans can be that host and depending on the pathogen we have anything could have to where our organs are shutting down. Our tissues are each eating  itself, and how we think, remember, and make judgment on things could all be affected because pathogens are present. This shows how ayurveda will not be able to act as it usually does because a  calamity has taken place within the host. 

The brain is the main thing being affected here where drugs and pathogens are influencing the brain causing behavior, emotions, and the way we think to change. If we did not have a brain these things would not affect us like they do today. With drugs we are able to feel things or not feel things because of the transmitters in our brain. Pathogens are able to rewire the behavior of their host because of their brain. All this is possible because there is a brain present. Our brain has the ability to do things beyond our control and when we think all is in control it's not because we don’t have ownership because our brains run us, not the other way around.