hypothalamus

Oxytocin and Social Bonding

Posted on by Iasmina Livia Hornoiu

While most of us would be able to describe what being affectively close to someone feels like, we might find it harder to explain why and how such a connection forms.

Why do we love and what makes us love certain people? Why is love so different depending on the subject of our affection? Is it possible to measure love? What does the complete absence of love in an individual reveal about their health state? With so many questions having been formulated throughout centuries, no wonder love has become a universal conundrum. Traversing various disciplines, it not only represents the realm of the literary, but it has increasingly become one of the central focuses in philosophy, biology, social sciences and neuroscience.

As far as the neuroscientific approaches to love go, this concept is represented by affiliative bonds. Therefore, from now on we shall refer to love as such. For the sake of the reader’s personal interest, we shall further discuss affiliative interactions as they appear and manifest in humans. Affiliation describes the ability of an individual to form close interpersonal bonds with other individuals of the same species. Three prototypes of affiliation have been identified: parental (between children and their parents), pair (between romantic partners) and filial (between friends).

This article is intended to introduce the reader to the evolutionary significance and neurochemical mechanisms underlying social bonding/affiliation. As such, the above-mentioned types of affiliative behaviours will be only in part separately discussed. Instead, we shall focus on what these categories share in common, particularly, the hormone-neurotransmitter oxytocin and the concept of synchrony.

Synchrony refers to the process by which the members of a social group collaborate with each other, in order to achieve a social goal. This kind of collaboration involves concordance in time between members, at the level of behaviour and physiological processes (e.g. hormonal release, neural firing). Through these synchronous processes underlying social reciprocity, each member is introduced to the social milieu, becomes adapted to his/her environment and learns how to survive.

Intimate reciprocal relationships between two individuals in a social group help shape the individual’s moral, empathic and pro-social orientation, as well as social adaptation and self-regulation. The interaction between mother and infant is critical to the social maturation and well-being of the young. Human mothers, just like other mammals, exhibit specific postpartum behaviours, such as affectionate touch, high-pitched vocalisations, expressing positive affect, which lead to the notoriously strong mother-infant bond.

This type of specific attachment relationship coordinates the physiology of the infant with the behaviours of the mother. Moreover, this mother-infant synchrony enables the temporal alignment of the infant’s inner state with the responses of the social environment (via the mother). The absence of a proper interaction between mother and child, especially within the critical period (between 3 and 9 months after birth), has been shown to contribute to the development of autism spectrum disorders (for more information on autism, check out this previous article – Decoding autism).

Romantic attachment is another type of social bonding in humans, with significant implications to the normal psychological functioning of the individual. According to recent studies, both parental and romantic relationships share similar behavioural characteristics (gaze, touch, affects, vocalisations and coordination of these behaviours between the members of the pair) and rely on similar neuroendocrine mechanisms. These mechanisms mainly involve a nine amino-acid neuropeptide known as oxytocin.

Oxytocin acts as both a hormone and a neurotransmitter. It is associated with a variety of functions including the initiation of uterine contractions during parturition, homeostatic, appetitive and reward processes, and last but certainly not least, the formation of affiliative bonds. For the latter, oxytocin plays a very important role in social recognition, maternal behaviour and development of partner preferences.

Oxytocin is produced in the hypothalamus, by the magnocellular neurones clustered in two types of nuclei: the supraoptic and paraventricular. These neurones send projections to the posterior pituitary gland, thus engaging the oxytocin system with the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, mediating the stress response, as well as parturition, lactation and milk ejection. Other projections from the paraventricular nucleus go to various forebrain limbic structures (e.g. amygdala, hippocampus), brainstem (e.g. ventral tegmental area) and spinal cord. There are also other areas, apart from the brain and spinal cord, which receive oxytocin signalling, such as the heart, gastrointestinal tract, uterus, placenta, testes etc. With such extensive projections, it comes as no surprise that oxytocin is involved in a wide variety of processes.

In romantic and parental attachment, oxytocin induces the motivation to initiate sexual behaviour, the formation of sexual preferences and the increased stimulant value of the infant for its mother, via its connectivity with the mesolimbic dopaminergic neurones. The neurotransmitter dopamine plays a major role in the reward-motivated behaviour. Therefore, the oxytocin-dopamine interaction is key to the motivation to bond between members of romantic or child-parent relationships.

If you were wondering why the parental attachment has so far been presented only from the perspective of the mother-child relationship, that is because in males a different hormone mediates parental behaviour. Vasopressin can be seen as the male equivalent of oxytocin, as it modulates affiliation, aggression, juvenile recognition, partner preference and parental behaviour in males. Having said that, there are studies which show that oxytocin also supports paternal behaviour and is linked to the father-typical affiliative behaviour.

Oxytocin is also very important in establishing close connection with our best friends (what is known as filial attachment). According to research in this area, children start showing selective attachment to a ‘best friend’ around the age of 3. This kind of interpersonal interaction represents the first attachment to non-kin members of society, therefore, a crucial step in the normal development of any human being.

Depending on the level of synchronous parenting children experienced during infancy, their interactions with best friends can vary in the degree of reciprocity, emotional involvement and concern for the friend’s needs. These behaviours are modulated by oxytocin. During the first 3 years of life, oxytocin secretion in humans depends on the parent’s postpartum behaviour (which is predicted by the parents’ own levels of oxytocin) and, in turn, determines the degree of empathy between close friends. Therefore, a reasonable assumption, which has been recently proven, is that children benefiting from high parental reciprocity during infancy develop better social adaptation, are more friendly and cooperative, and show greater empathy.

All in all, the social bonds we form with members of our social group, be they our family, romantic partners or friends, are dependent on certain hormones and behaviours occurring at critical stages of development. Close attachment bonds with our parents, during early infancy, are later translated into affiliations to non-kin members of the social groups, who we come across during childhood, evolving into intimate friendships during adolescence, which eventually shape the ability of the adult human to form and maintain romantic connections and provide nurture for the next generation.

What we have just discussed is of importance for different aspects. Focusing on oxytocin and synchrony provides better understanding of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. At the same time, this focus offers some answers to questions regarding the reasons and mechanisms underlying the many types of love us humans experience throughout our lives.

References

Feldman, R. (2012). Oxytocin and social affiliation in humans. Hormones and Behavior, 61(3),  380-391. 

Hammock, E. A. ., & Young, L. J. (2006) Oxytocin, vasopressin and pair bonding: implications for autism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 361(1476), 2187–2198. 

Fear and the amygdala

Posted on by Iasmina Livia Hornoiu

What is fear? Why are we sometimes afraid? Can fear be inhibited? What produces fear – the brain or the heart?

It is definitely the brain! More exactly, something in the brain – a tiny, almond-shaped structure, which sits anteriorly to the hippocampus, called the amygdala. This small part of our brain is to blame for  the perception of fearful stimuli and the physiological responses (increased heart rate, electrodermal responses etc.) to fearful stimuli.

As part of the FEAR system, the amygdala connects to the medial hypothalamus and the dorsal periaqueductal grey matter (in the midbrain), which is important in pain modulation in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, as well as to sensory and association cortices. The lateral nucleus of the amygdala receives inputs from different brain regions, thus allowing the formation of associations, required for aversive conditioning. Following the processing in the lateral nucleus, information about the stimulus is, then, projected to the central nucleus of the amygdala, where an appropriate response to the stimuli is initiated, provided that the stimuli are detected as threatening or potentially dangerous.

The amygdala is involved in emotional learning and memory, modulating implicit learning, explicit memory, attention, social responses, emotion inhibition and vigilance.

You can find the article on memory here, to brush up a bit.

  • Implicit memory is a type of learning, which cannot be voluntarily reported or remembered. It includes the memories for skills and habits, for procedural knowledge, grammar and languages, priming, simple forms of associative learning and classical conditioning. The latter is particularly important for fear. It involved a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned, painful/fearful stimulus (US), with US preceding CS and determining a fearful response to CS. This type of fear learning is adaptive and is known as sensitisation or acquisition.

There are two different pathways in the amygdala, important for fear conditioning. The “low road” pathway: sensory information projects to the thalamus, which directly communicates with the amygdala; this pathway is fast, modulating rapid responses of the amygdala to different types of fearful stimuli. The “high road” pathway is an indirect pathway: sensory information projects to the thalamus and from there, it is conveyed to the sensory cortex for a finer analysis; the sensory cortex, then, communicates the processed information to the amygdala. This pathway ensures that the sensory stimulus is the conditioned stimulus. So the responses of amygdala to threatening stimuli are both rapid and sure.

  • Explicit memory refers to the memory of facts and events; in the case of fear is means the processing and retention for a long time, of emotional events and information. For this type of fear learning, the amygdala interacts with the hippocampus. There is a distinction between the formation of memory for aversive experience (fear conditioning), which is based on previous experience, and explicit learning (in the hippocampus), which involves learning and remembering aversive properties of different threatening stimuli. The memory in the hippocampus is enhanced by arousal produced in the amygdala. The activation of the amygdala can make different cortical areas, not just the hippocampus, more receptive to stimuli that are adaptively important, thus ensuring that unattended, but important stimuli gain access to consciousness.
  • Social responses involve the ability to recognise a stimulus as good, bad, neutral or arousing. This ability, however, does not depend on the amygdala. There is one exception here, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about it in the context of fear mediated by amygdala – fearful facial expressions. According to Darwin, social species, like humans, use facial expressions to detect internal emotional states of other members of the group. This function, mediated by the amygdala, is crucial in the emotional regulation of human social behaviour. Damage to amygdala has been demonstrated to result in impairment of the patient to identify fearful faces correctly and, therefore, react to them, accordingly. It should also be noted there is no need for the subject’s awareness of the fearful stimulus, for the amygdala to respond. In other words, when a fearful facial expression is presented subliminally, the amygdala will still show activation.
  • Inhibition of fear – it is actually very difficult to escape your own fears, as fear proves to be resistant to voluntary control. However, there is a process called extinction, a method of classical conditioning, where a CS previously associated with an aversive US in presented alone for a number of times, until the CS no longer signals the fearful stimulus. If the US is presented again, after the passage of time, it will evoke fear responses, but in different brain areas. So, the learned fear has been retained in memory, but extinction learning eliminates the response to fear. This mechanism of extinction relies on the activity of NMDA glutamate (excitatory) receptors in the amygdala. When these receptors are blocked, extinction is inhibited (so you will react to fearful stimuli) and when they are active, extinction is augmented (you no longer respond to aversive stimuli).
  • Vigilance – the amygdala is not necessary for the conscious experience of emotional states, but it plays a major role in increasing the vigilance of cortical response systems to emotional stimuli.

Memories about fearful events, just like other types of long-term memory, become permanent through a process of gene expression and novel protein synthesis, which is known as consolidation. Upon retrieval, the memories become susceptible to change and alteration, before they are reconsolidated, which involves additional protein synthesis.

The fact that humans (and probably other animals as well, I am sure, although not widely proven) have the ability to distinguish between emotional information and unemotional information is regarded as an evolutionary advantage. Emotional stimuli signal dangers and the ability to detect and appropriately react to them increases the chance of survival. However, exacerbated fear is detrimental to the individual who experiences it and is a sign of pathology. For instance, in atypical monopolar depression, which includes anxiety as one of the main symptoms, the amygdala is overactive and it determined lowering the threshold for emotional activation and abnormal reactions to stressful stimuli. A similar pattern can be seen as a result of partial chronic sleep deprivation or complete acute sleep deprivation.

References

 Beatty, 2001. The Human Brain – Essentials of Behavioural Neuroscience, Sage Publications Ltd., pg. 293-296

Bernard et al., 2007. Cognition, Brain and Consciousness – Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience. 1st edition. Elsevier Ltd., pg. 373-383

Gazzaniga et al., 2002. Cognitive Neuroscience – The Biology of Mind. 2nd edition. W.W Norton & Company, Inc., pg. 553-572

Image by  Saya Lohovska. You can find her arts page here.

Depression and why some of us are SAD

Posted on by Iasmina Livia Hornoiu

I am warning you, this is going to be a long one! But it’s interesting, I promise.

There is a lot of confusion and mixed opinions when it comes to depression. Some people use the term inappropriately, to describe what is in fact grief (the feeling of sadness that humans, and presumably other animals, experience after a loved one has died, for instance), others tend to label depressed individuals as “weak”, “selfish”, “useless”, “cowards” etc.

At the same time, for the past 30 years, there have been extremely important discoveries in the field of affective disorders, which have helped eliminate many misconceptions and laid the foundation for a better understanding of what this set of disorders (affective disorders) are and what is actually happening in the brain of the ones “affected”. Moreover, according to some new theories, depression is in fact an evolutionary advantage in situations such as physical illness and dominance. When the body is sick it needs time and energy in order to recover, so the organism experiences depression in order to avoid activity and focus on recovery; in nature, many animals with a dominant status are forced (by a variety of factors) to occupy a lower hierarchical level, in which case “depressive” behaviours such as avoiding eye contact or sexual contact helps reduce the risk of attack by other dominant, more powerful individuals. There are many theories, as you can see, and this article is meant to present and analyse some of them.

We should start by clarifying a very important aspect: depression is different from grief. While the latter is a normal reaction to some external factor(s) with a negative emotional impact on our day-to-day lives, and dissipates by itself after a certain period of time, depression is a pathological, abnormal condition (either in its own right or as a symptom of other metabolic or neurodegenerative diseases). However, it should be noted, and this is one of the key concepts in understanding depression, that the way individuals interpret and react to various external events, which affect their mood, differs, which means that some individuals have a stringer predisposition to depression than others. Now, why is that? A variety of factors, both genetic and epigenetic (developmental, such as child abuse, neglect) play a role and often act synergistically, but we will deal with them (especially, the genetic factors) a bit later in the article.

Different types of depression

Major depressive disorder, also known as “the classical depression”, which is characterised by insomnia, anorexia and lack of joy and interest in things. At the opposite side of the spectrum, there is atypical depression, which manifests itself through increased sleepiness, weight gain and anxiety. Dysthymia is another form of depression, more difficult to diagnose, due to the fact that it presents itself with mild depressive symptoms. All these types discussed so far have been categorised as monopolar.

Bipolar depression refers to a kind of depression accompanied by periods of mania – manic episodes are characterised by elevated, euphoric mood, impulsiveness, hyperactivity and even psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions). A case described by Dick Swaab in his book “We are our brains – from the womb to Alzheimer’s” portrays a woman, who developed mania following the death of her husband. She would talk and laugh hysterically, call the police in the middle of the night for no reason and eventually began to make up stories about people whom she had never met before, but who she believed were longtime friends of hers. After her manic episodes disappeared as a result of treatment, she developed severe depression. Luckily, her story has a happy ending, as she made a full recovery.

Bipolar depression is also associated with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), characterised by extreme mood seasonal swings. In this article, I have dedicated an entire section to SAD, so I am not going to delve into it for now. Given all these particularities of BD, it is often regarded as a separate disorder (bipolar disorder or manic disorder), rather than another type of depression. As there are so many things to mention about depression, I will leave BD for future article.

Diagnosing depression

In order to be diagnosed with depression, one must have at least one of the two main symptoms: persistent sadness and marked loss of interest, as well as at least five secondary symptoms: disturbed sleep (either increased or decreased), disturbed appetite (increased or decreased), fatigue, poor concentration, feeling of worthlessness and excessive guilt, suicidal thoughts.

Depending on the number of these symptoms, as well as the degree to which they manifest, monopolar depression can be sub-divided into: sub-threshold depression (fewer than five secondary symptoms; no treatment needed), mild depression (fewer than five, but in excess secondary symptoms), moderate depression (more than five, plus functional impairment between mild and severe depression) and severe depression (most of the secondary symptoms and also true psychotic symptoms – yes! they can occur in severe monopolar depression as well, not just BD).

Biochemical pathways and brain systems involved in depression

In Ancient Greece, there was a biochemical theory of depression. It was believed that depression was caused by the failure of liver to eliminate toxic substances from the digested food, resulting in the accumulation of “black bile” (melan means “black” and chole means “bile”, which give the words melancholy). Biochemical theories nowadays have at their core three monoamines, which I am sure you are all familiar with: noradrenaline (a neuromodulator very similar to adrenaline) and serotonin and dopamine.

These two substances have long and diffuse projections throughout the nervous system and in levels lower than otherwise normal, they are said to be involved in affective disorders. For example, drugs such as Reserpine, used to treat the positive symptoms of schizophrenia by depleting dopamine (and also serotonin and noradrenaline) elicited depressive symptoms in schizophrenic patients.

Therapies involving monoamines

The idea is, you want to higher levels of monoamines in order to treat depression. Enzymes involved in the monoamine re-uptake mechanism from the synaptic cleft back into the presynaptic level and enzymes involved in the monoamine metabolism, such as monoamine oxidases (MAO) are the most common targets for the majority of anti-depressants.

  • Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRI) and selective noradrenaline re-uptake inhibitors (SNRI) – Prozac (Fluoxetine), Zoloft (Sertraline), Celexa (Citalopram), Paxil (Paroxetine) block serotonin reuptake and Effexor/Viepax/Trevilor/Lanvexin (Venlafaxine), Cymbalta (Duloxetine) inhibit the noradrenaline reuptake enzymes. For those of you who are currently under this treatment, be careful! Side-effects such as sexual dysfunction, insomnia, increased aggression and self-harm/suicide can occur. Moreover, SSRI are not so effective. They have a very long induction, which means that it takes a long time (2-3 weeks) for the therapeutic effects to start working, during which time there is a high risk of suicide (due to depression). They also have a placebo effect of 50%, which is not necessarily a bad thing as long as it works, but raises the question whether the monoamine hypotheses is really that valid in the case of depression.
  • Tricyclic antidepressants – also block the reuptake mechanism, resulting in more monoamines in the synaptic cleft. Amitril (Amitriptyline), Aventyl/Norpress/Noritren (Nortriptyline) and Tofranil (Imipramine) are a few examples. They are derived from Phenothiazines (such as Chlorpromazine), which are antipsychotic drugs (used to treat schizophrenia). Some of the side-effects are: chronic pain and suicide overdose.
  • MAO inhibitors – Nardil/Nardelzin (Phenelzine), USAN (Thanylcypromine), Marplan/Enerzer (Izocarboxazid) and Amira/Aurorix/Clobemix (Moclobemide) are very effective and widely prescribed for in major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder, although the first three pose the high risk of hypertensive crisis and death if the patient is consuming cheese or wine.

The big problem with these drug therapies is dependence – if antidepressants, especially Paroxetine and Venlafaxine are administered for a long period of time and then stopped, the patient is likely to experience Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome, characterised by flu-like symptoms, motor and cognitive disturbances.

Non-drug therapies

An alternative to pharmaceutical treatments is represented by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TSM) of the cortex, electroshock therapy – this is, apparently, very effective, BUT might result in impaired memory – and gene therapies. The latter refers to the insertion, via a vector or a plasmid, of genes that encode neurotransmitter molecules, receptor proteins or neurotrophic and neuroprotective substances. Given that many variations in genes for chemical messengers in the brain are responsible for the predisposition of certain individuals to depression, gene therapies, although still at a developing stage, provide powerful approaches to the treatment of affective disorders.

Over-activation of the stress axis

Another theory for the development of depression, which goes hand-in-hand with the “monoamine hypothesis” is that in depressed individuals there is an exaggerate amount of cortisol (a steroid) in the blood, which can affect the brain. Basically, our brains react to stressful situations by producing some hormones in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland (hypophysis), which eventually result in the production of cortisol. In turn, cortisol acts on these structures to inhibits their activity and, thus, preventing further increases in its level – this is an example of a negative feedback mechanism.

In normal people, a stressful situation will result in increased levels of cortisol, but this steroid will then revert to its normal levels. In depressed individuals, the stress axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis) becomes hyperactive and, as a result, a stressful event will result in the overproduction of cortisol.

In excess, cortisol affects brain structures involved in the control of emotions and fear, such as the cingulate cortex and amygdala (which explains the anxiety symptoms experienced by people suffering from atypical depression) and memory, such as the hippocampus, which explains the cognitive dysfunctions. Moreover, the activity in the prefrontal cortex, which normally inhibits the hypothalamus (overactive in depression) is decreased by cortisol. So, really, it is like a vicious circle.

Why is the stress axis hyperactive in the first place? Possibly due to decreased sensitivity of the cortisol receptors to cortisol, which might be the result of genetic as well as developmental factors (previously mentioned).

Monoamines play a role here, as increased levels of monoamines (by the administration of antidepressants) can determine neurogenesis in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, so these areas can function properly again and can, thus, inhibit the hypothalamus, so no longer hyperactivity of the stress axis!

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)

Although I am planning to write about bipolar disorders in another article, I thought it is worth discussing SAD in this article as well, given that so many people, especially those living in the Northern hemisphere, suffer from it.

In the References section there is a document called “The recent history of seasonal affective disorder (SAD)”, which is a transcript of the 2013 Witness Seminar in London. I highly recommend this reading for two reasons: it is full of remarkable, extremely important information regarding SAD and the participants at this seminar included personalities such as Prof. Josephine Arendt, Prof, Norman Rosenthal, Prof. Alfred Lewy, Prof. Rob Lucas, who are pioneers of the SAD diagnostic criteria and underlying causes (for instance, Rosenthal is the first psychiatrist who diagnosed SAD).

As many of you probably know, and sadly from personal experience, SAD is a seasonal mood change disorder, a type of bipolar disorder, which determines depression during the autumn/winter seasons and hypomania during summer. In order to understand SAD, we must remember a few things about the circadian rhythm, which I have previously discussed in two articles: Why “sleep” and Even flies sleep and learn. In short, we have an internal, genetic “clock” inside our brains (in the Suprachiasmatic nucleus – SCN), which determines the body to function in an approximately 24-hour cycle and which is also entrained by the light-dark cycle. This is not only a circadian (day-night) clock, but also a seasonal clock, which means that changes in the environment (especially light and temperature) across the year entrain this clock and determine physiological and psychological changes in our bodies.

In SAD, there is an abnormal secretion of melatonin (the hormone that triggers sleep, when it is dark outside). Light inhibits this hormone: cells in our retina, which are not coding for visual information, send projections via a distinct pathway than the rods and cones. These cells, containing  the peptide melanOPSIN, project via the retinohypothalamic tract to the SCN, “telling” the brain that it is dark outside, so the brain (SCN) determines the synthesis and release of melatonin from the pineal gland. When there is light outside, the production of melatonin is inhibited. The duration of melatonin secretion is also affected by the circannual changes – long secretion in short days and short in long days. The scientists who took part in the Witness Seminar discovered that melatonine production was increased during the depressive/winter phase and that sunlight decreased its production, thus, alleviating the symptoms of depression in SAD. A note here, sunlight is an effective treatment for SAD, not ordinary room light. This explains why, during winter, when people tend to spend more time indoors, their levels of melatonin increase. The reasons why room light does not inhibit melatonin production are the intensity of light (sunlight is five times more intense than room light) and spectral differences. More about SAD and bipolar disorder in a future article!

I hope this article made sense and that you enjoyed reading it!

References
SAD – Pdf of The Witness Seminar transcript

Beatty, 2000. The Human Brain – Essentials of Behavioural Neuroscience. Sage Publications. Inc., pg.464-471

Dick Swaab, 2014. We are our brains – From the womb to Alzheimer’s. Penguin Books, pp. 112-122

Image by Damaris Pop

Why “sleep”?

Posted on by Iasmina Livia Hornoiu

In a previous article, we talked a bit about narcolepsy as one of the very intriguing sleep disorders. It was perhaps easy to understand why people suffering from narcolepsy could have a pretty hard time performing several normal tasks; however, most of us would probably relate less to narcolepsy. But something which almost everyone can agree to have experienced regularly, in one way or another, is sleep. In comparison with disorders associated with it or derived from its impairments, sleep itself might not seem so interesting. We all do it and we can’t deny how much we enjoy it and long for it after it stops. Yet, there is much more to sleep than we think.

Sleep is very important for the normal functioning of any being. For animals as well as for humans, sleep helps in energy conservation, body restoration, predator avoidance and learning aid. Different animals have different sleep-wake cycles, from nocturnal animals (like rodents), which sleep during the day and are active at night, and animals which sleep with only half of the brain (like dolphins), all the way to diurnal animals, like humans. Although humans are advised to sleep approximately 8 hours per night, some people sleep very little (around 2-3 hours/night) and still function perfectly fine. An example of such a situation is presented in the textbook of Rosenzweig et al. (pg. 389).

But what triggers sleep and how is it regulated?

Most of us are certainly able to recall a dream the next morning and the memory of that dream is usually accompanied by feelings and emotions we sometimes do not even experience in real life. We are often under the impression that our dream has lasted the whole night. In fact, there are two stages of sleep, one of which is associated with the formation of dreams. These stages, known as non-REM sleep and REM sleep, succeed each other in cycles lasting approximately 90 minutes. Just to define the terms, REM means rapid eye movement and represents the part of sleep with the most increased brain activity. Interestingly, during REM the brain seems to consume more oxygen than during arousal!

Normally, when we fall asleep we slip into the non-REM stage or the slow-wave sleep (SWL). This, in turn, is divided into four other stages: from light sleep to very deep sleep. During this phase, the brain is said to be truly resting and the body appears to repair its tissues. No dreams can be seen! The movement of the body is reduced, but not because the muscles are incapable of moving; it’s the brain which does not send signals to the body to move! One interesting feature of non-REM sleep is sleep-walking. This peculiar behaviour some people show while asleep usually takes place during the fourth (last) part of the non-REM sleep, when the person is the deepest sleep. This is the reason why it is very difficult to wake a sleepwalker up.

In turn, REM sleep (which starts after a 30-minute non-REM period) is the “active” part of our sleep. This time, the brain sends commands to the body, but the body seems to be in an almost complete state of atonia (immobility). The heart rate and breathing become irregular and the brain is not resting. In fact, our dreams happen during this time and more importantly, our long-lasting memories are thought to be integrated and consolidated.

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When it comes to sleep regulation, many neuroendocrine systems and brain functions play a role. The circadian (or sleep-wake cycle), which is controlled primarily by the suprachiasmatic nuclei, in the hypothalamus, need special attention. For the purpose of this article, I won’t focus on the circadian clock now, but I will come back to this in a future article. The autonomic nervous system and parts of the brain such as the brainstem, the limbic system, especially the amygdala, and the forebrain modulate different aspects and stages of sleep. Amygdala, which I mentioned in a previous article about emotions and decision-making, is a brain region involved in the emotions such as fear. It also appears to be very active during REM-sleep and may account for the awful nightmares we often experience.

Many cognitive functions, such as intelligence, performance and emotions are associated with disrupted non-REM as well as REM sleep. To be more specific, REM-sleep loss appears to be associated with increased anxiety and stress and loss of emotional neutrality – this means that a person deprived of REM-sleep is more likely to react negatively to neutral emotional stimuli than in normal conditions. The explanations vary, but most of the studies agree that impaired REM sleep triggers increased release of noradrenaline, hyperactivity of amygdala and decreased function of prefrontal cortex (which tells “stop!” to the amygdala when it goes crazy). At the same time, people deprived of non-REM sleep could experience depression, due to deficiency in another neurotransmitter, this time an inhibitory one, called GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). Other problems linked to sleep deprivation are attention deficits, working memory impairments and usually affected divergent thinking (creative, innovative thinking).

Aging people seem to sleep less and this deprivation is also associated with conditions like Alzheimer’s. Moreover, sleep deprivation can kill you! Sustained sleep loss can cause low immune system and drop in body’s temperature, which can make bacterial infections fatal. Another consequence of sleep loss is increased metabolic rate, which leads to weight loss and eventually death. Don’t think this could be a good idea for a diet! More like for “die”!!! Having said that, most people should try their best to get enough hours of sleep.

I hope this article convinced you of the importance of sleep and as usual, any questions or comments are welcome 🙂

Further information:

Article 1 – about REM-sleep and emotional discrimination 

Article 2 – about non-REM sleep and GABA 

Article 3 – about how sleep loss affects behaviour and emotions

Article 4 – a review on many articles about the link between sleep deprivation and emotional reactivity and perception

Bear et al., 2006. Neuroscience – Exploring the Brain. s.l.:Lippincott Williams & Wilknins 

Rosenzweig et al., 2010. Biological Psychology – An Introduction to Behavioural, Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience. 6th edition. Sinauer Associates Inc.,U.S., pg. 380-401

Both images by Gabriel Velichkova

Don’t be anxious about anxiety!

Posted on by Iasmina Livia Hornoiu

I remember when I was a small child and my mum or my uncle would take me out to one of my hometown’s parks or to the shopping centre. For some reason, I so often experienced an unexplainable fear and even dizziness and the terror that I might faint. I also had the feeling I couldn’t walk in a straight line. But no one noticed. Whenever I went to an indoor show or a classical music concert where people were sat on their seats and all they had to do was watch something and not move, talk or most importantly, look at me, I was fine. Little did I know what the problem was as it never occurred to me it was a problem at all. I knew I was shy and self-conscious and in my head that was the reason for my fears of crowds.

After I hit puberty, those irrational fears and the following symptoms became amplified and I started to seek for some scientific explanations. By reading and talking to different people I finally found out about agoraphobia. As the name suggests, agoraphobia is basically the fear of open and/or crowded spaces. The most important steps, I think, in dealing with an anxiety is first of all realising you have one and identifying the type.

Anxiety disorders are very common worldwide (with about 2% of the population suffering from them) and they are characterised by the pathological expression of fear. The most common types of anxieties are: agoraphobia, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social phobia, specific phobia, generalised phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder.The manifestations as well as the characteristics and the severity of anxiety disorders differ from person to person. Moreover, some anxieties can derive from other anxieties, like panic disorders. No wonder it took me a while to figure out what was going on with me. Here’s the thing and I would like people who suffer or have suffered from anxiety disorders to think about it: we often do not realise we have an anxiety (because we believe the causes underling the symptoms are different, like lack of self-confidence, heart attacks, pure coincidence etc.) or we just refuse to admit the reality.

Although anxiety has been mentioned in scientific literature since the 16th century, it wasn’t until the 1800s when it started to be considered  a mental illness. Before that, people attributed physiological and hormonal causes to anxieties.

Modern medical advances like fMRI and PET have made possible the discovery of the major role of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in anxiety formation and development. Through a cascade of hormones released by this three-structure system, the brain responds to stress by activating the adrenal glands to produce cortisol. This, in turn, determines physiological changes which lead to exaggerated fight-or-flight reactions.

We shouldn’t pin all the blame on the hypothalamus though, as it only obeys two other structures: the amygdala and the hippocampus (which respond to the information processed in the neocortex). In this case, the amygdala and the hippocampus act as antagonists – the amygdala has a positive effect on the activation of the HPA axis, whereas the hippocampus suppressed this activation. This is how the normal fight-or-flight responses are regulated. Nevertheless, in patients suffering from anxiety disorders, hippocampal damage due to continuous exposure to cortisol (probably as a result of amygdala hyperactivity) leads to more cortisol being resealed from the adrenal medulla, thus the symptoms of anxiety becoming even more pronounced.

Several treatments, ranging from anxiolytic medications (benzodiazepines, alcohol, serotonin-selective reuptake inhibitors etc.) to psychotherapy have been developed in order to heal anxieties. Psychotherapy aims to get the patient accustomed to the stressor (the stimulus that produces anxiety) and, at the same time, to assure them of the extremely low risks potentially posed by that stimulus. In time, the fear of the stressor would disappear as the neuronal connections involving the stimulus processing would be altered.

I know I put between brackets alcohol as one of the many treatments against anxiety disorders. Indeed, due to its stimulating effects on the main inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA. Essentially all drugs that can activate this neurotransmitter are considered anxiolytic, meaning they are able to treat anxieties. Keep in mind, though: This is should not be an excuse for people to become alcoholics 😛

In my case, the anxiety went away by itself, or maybe it was just me who kept on going to crowd places and telling to myself nothing bad was ever going to happen; which, to be honest, is a bit unrealistic – bad things can actually happen, but we should try to prevent them, instead of fearing them to the point when we would refuse to leave the house.

Hopefully, this article gave you a clearer idea about what triggers anxiety disorders and also made the anxious ones more confident that their fears don’t have to last forever.

Further information:

Article about anxiety

Short video on anxiety 

Documentary about anxiety

Bear et al., 2006. Neuroscience – Exploring the Brain. s.l.:Lippincott Williams & Wilkins pp. 665-670

Picture by Damaris Pop

Gender differences and sexual preferences

Posted on by Iasmina Livia Hornoiu

When it comes to gender and sexual orientation, most of you would probably agree that it has always been a controversial topic. Not only are people’s opinions mixed about a variety of aspects related to gender and sex (the differences between males and females; the “gay problem”; the transgender and transsexual “trend” etc.), but it is also the complexity of these aspects that makes them difficult to be understood and accepted.

Do women’s brain differ to that of male’s? If so, what are the factors involved in the process of differentiation and when and how does all of this occur? Is homosexuality a choice or a genetic determination? Why do some people attempt to change their gender? These are some of the most common questions that have been raised throughout time and that I have come across. Nevertheless, one question that really got me thinking is: Are homosexuals, bisexuals, polysexuals, demisexuals, transgenders, transsexuals and so on NORMAL?

Hopefully, by the end of this article you will find some of these questions at least partially answered. Given the fact that the article is intended to cover such a diverse subject, I have decided to divide it into chapters. Having said that, let’s dig in!

Why do boys like blue and girls like pink?

It might come as a surprise that the behaviour of people according to their gender is not as much influenced by the society as one would expect. It is true that parents guide their children to behave in a certain way depending on whether they are boys or girls: the type of toys they are offered (action toys versus dolls); the kind of sports/activities they are encouraged to perform; the colours of their cloths and/or rooms etc. Moreover, it seems that this distinction between girls and boys is perpetuated in school by teachers: boys are expected to perform better tasks that involve mathematical and spatial reasoning, while girls are said to outperform boys in word comprehension and writing. Some have argued that all the previously mentioned are myths and that society should stop differentiating between genders when it comes to brain and intellect.

It turns out that these differences exit with or without the social stereotypes, or more precisely these stereotypes are based on real facts. Studies have shown that female monkeys prefer dolls, while male of the same species would rather play with toy cars and balls. This is not surprising if we consider the evolutionary roles of males and females inside the family and community: males have evolved specific abilities for more dynamic activities such as hunting and protecting their territory from enemies, thus their native spatial skills; females are structurally designed for more domestic activities, such as motherhood and housekeeping, therefore are more sociable and more inclined to have a better verbal memory than men.

So how are our brains programmed to develop certain male/female behavioural characteristics in us? It all comes down to genes. As we all know, at a chromosome level females differ from males in the heterosome pairs: XX for women and XY for men. Even though the X chromosome is larger and contains the majority of genes (including those coding for some masculinity traits), the Y chromosome has a crucial role in sex determination. The presence or absence of a specific gene called the sex-determining region of the Y chromosome (SRY) “decides” whether the foetus develops into a male or female. This gene codes for the protein testis-determining factor (TDF) which is responsible for the differentiation of the foetus’ genitals into testes.

The hormones produced by the testes (androgens), primarily the testosterone, have a very important role in the male development, as well as the oestrogen (like estradiol) influence the female features. During the first half of pregnancy, between the sixth and twelfth week, testosterone (produced at first by the Y chromosome) differentiates the sex organs into testes or ovaries. During the second half of pregnancy, the brain differences occur, due to a peak production of testosterone. The role of hormones in gender differentiation is important not only during the intrauterine period, but throughout the whole life of an individual. At puberty, the release of sex hormones induce the secondary female/male characteristics, such as facial hair, breasts, voice change etc.

It is important to note that the release of hormones is highly regulated by the nervous system and the endocrine system. Having said that, the pituitary gland secretes luteinising hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) also known as gonadotropins which stimulate the gonads (testes and ovaries) to produce hormones. In turn, the pituitary gland’s hormone production is controlled by the hypothalamus through another hormone – gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which is influenced by the circadian cycle (more on this in a future article or if you have any questions, please address them to me). The adrenal glands also secrete a small amount of androgens.

Brain sexual dimorphisms

Yes! There are structural differences between the female and male brains and they are called sexual dimorphisms. The hypothalamus is a key region of the brain to sexual behaviour. As expected, a striking dimorphism can be observed here, more specifically within the preoptic area of the anterior hypothalamus. Here, the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the mammalian hypothalamus is significantly larger in males than in females. In humans, the preoptic area contains four clusters of neurons out of which at least one – INAH-3 (interstitial nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus-3)- was shown to be bigger in men. Also, the corpus callosum (the major neural pathway that connects the two cerebral hemispheres) and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) are larger in men.

The abnormal (?!) 

We finally got to the point where we discuss the “anything else other than heterosexuality” which is often classified as abnormal. Heterosexuality is known to predominate and is thought to be the only form of sexual orientation in all the other species apart from humans. Nevertheless, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Fish, birds, reptiles and even some mammalian species shown homosexual behaviour. It appears to be more common in birds than in mammals, although the examples are quite sufficient to prove that mammals are inclined to develop homosexual behaviour too. However, homosexuality among mammals is often temporary and is due to certain situations, such as better protection of the offspring, defence mechanisms and seeking help from other animals against enemies.

Having read the chapter about gender differences, we are entitled to assume that some sort of chemical and structural modifications generate gender identity and sexual orientation. Many of these changes happen in the womb. As explained above, genes and hormones play a very important role in the development of a foetus into a male or a female. But if these two factors don’t “agree” with each other, the individual will experience sexual and/or gender changes. The genetic and hormonal influences can be easily observed in twins: monozygotic twins have an incidence of 50% of both being homosexuals, while the percentage in dizygotic twins in 25%. At the same time, in the case of opposite sex twins, the female twin is more likely to develop congenital adrenal hyperplasia due to being exposed to her brother’s testosterone.

Before we go deeper into the subject, I would like to point out a few interesting things. The principal female sex hormone estradiol is actually synthesised from testosterone by the action of an enzyme –  aromatase. At the same time, the androgen receptor gene is located on the X, not on the Y chromosome, so males have only one copy of this gene. 

The fact that males have a single copy of the androgen receptor gene makes them prone to androgen-insensitivity, if the gene is not functional. The androgen-insensitive genetic males develop normal testes and produce testosterone, but they look and behave like genetic females. They are also attracted to men instead of women. The female version of this is represented by congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Women with this condition have been exposed to an abnormally large amount of testosterone and they develop a man-like behaviour, being more inclined to choose women as their sexual partners.

Even though the up-bringing of children and the social environment might have some influence on their sexual preferences and gender identity, the hormonal and central nervous system structural and functional changes have been demonstrated to be the cause. In most cases, if too much or too little amount of a specific hormone is released (or the receptors for that hormone are inactive or hyperactive) during pregnancy, this leads to changes in brain development. Previous studies have indicated that some structures in the hypothalamus are larger in homosexual men than in the heterosexual ones. Other differences have been observed in the brains of transsexual people. The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, for example, is smaller in male-to-female transsexuals than in males, being more similar to the women’s BST.

Also, brain circuits appear to function differently according to sexual orientation. Usually, the way some brain areas respond to specific pheromones (see previous article about olfactory memory) and other stimuli is similar in heterosexual men and homosexual women and consequently, in heterosexual women and homosexual men. These functional and structural differences appear early in development and cannot be changed after birth by any social and environmental means. 

I believe we can all agree now that there are many forms of “normal” in the world and that nature is a lot more open-minded than humans. We should learn to think outside the box and accept those who are not abnormal, but only different from us just as we are different from our parents, family, friends in terms of eye colour, food preferences, fashion style etc. Nevertheless, there is something I would like to place emphasis on: it’s one thing to be in a certain way and a completely different thing to choose something just because it’s cool or a lot of people do it. If you are one of those people who think being gay for instance is cool, but do not identify with it at all, my advice is: Don’t jump on the bandwagon! Be who you are and accept the others for who they are!

For further information:

Bear et al., 2006. Neuroscience – Exploring the Brain. s.l.:Lippincott Williams & Wilknins pp. 534-560

Swaab, 2014. We are our brains – From the womb to Alzheimer’s. Penguin Books, pp. 55-71

Kandel, 2005. Psychiatry, psychoanalisis and the new biology of mind. Trei, pp. 122-126

Photo taken by myself and edited by Isuru Priyaranga

Mechanisms of schizophrenia

Posted on by Iasmina Livia Hornoiu

It took me a while to figure out whether to divide this article into two parts or to sum up everything in one long, possibly tedious reading. Honestly, I still don’t know, so I’ll just start writing and we shall see what it turns out to be.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of schizophrenia – the disease of thought disorder, or know people who suffer from it. But only a few actually understand what it is about.

No wonder scientists have been struggling to develop efficient treatments for schizophrenia; not only is it largely uncommon (1% of the world’s population is affected), but also its causes are usually unknown. Scientists generally refer to schizophrenia as a psychiatric disease involving a progressive decline in functioning, which begins in early adolescence and persist throughout the patient’s life. Due to its heterogenous symptoms and multiple possible causes, there are many hypotheses that intend to explain what triggers schizophrenia and how it develops.

In spite of the fact that is it a genetic disorder, the environment and external factors (such as viral infections during the intrauterine and infant period) may be crucial to the development of schizophrenia. The symptoms have been divided into two categories. The positive symptoms include thought disorder, hallucinations, delusions, disorganised speech etc., whereas the negative symptoms are characterised by poverty of speech, reduced expression or emotion, memory impairment, anergia, abulia etc. In addition, the brains of schizophrenics show structural macroscopic abnormalities (for instance, the enlarged ventricles and the shrinkage of the surrounding brain tissue), as well as microscopic changes, such as the dysregulation of dysbindin gene in the formation of abnormal dendritic filopodia. There are three types of schizophrenia, according to its symptoms: paranoid schizophrenia – auditory hallucinations, delusions, strong belief of being chased by powerful people; disorganized schizophrenia – reduced emotions and lack of emotional expressions, incoherent speech (mostly negative symptoms); catatonic schizophrenia – impairment of movement, usually immobility and catatonia, bizarre grimacing (this is similar some of the symptoms of hysteria, which has been described as a sexually related and later on, as a psychiatric disorder up until the beginning of the 20th century).

But enough with the boring general details! Let’s get to the fun part: The monoamine hypothesis of schizophrenia! Here we are going to talk about two very important neurotransmitters in the central nervous system: dopamine and glutamate. The second one is the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain. There are four main types of glutamate receptors: AMPA, NMDA, kainate and mGluRs. It has been demonstrated that reduced activity of the NMDA receptors can result in some of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia (lack of social behaviour, catatonia).

Dopamine is the metabolic precursor of another neurotransmitter, noradrenaline (norepinephrine). But there is a lot more to dopamine and its roles in the brain than this. There are four main dopaminergic pathways: the mesolimbic pathway – related to the “reward” system and significance; it has its roots in the ventral tegmental area and projects to the nucleus accumbens (in the ventral striatum) and the limbic system; the mesocortical pathway – involved in cognition and motivation; the tuberoinfundibular pathway – roles in lactation; these dopamine neurones originate in the hypothalamus; the nigrostrial pathway – involved in movement planning and connects the substantia nigra (midbrain) to the striatum.

Schizophrenia and another mental illness, a neurodegenerative one, Parkinson’s disease, are also linked to dopamine. When it comes to schizophrenia, it seems that the mesocorticolimbic pathways have more influence on its onset: the ‘positive’ symptoms appear to be triggered by dopaminergic hyperactivity in the mesocorticolimbic system. At the same time, hypoactivity of dopamine is this region is the cause of ‘negative’ symptoms. Nevertheless, it has been discovered that overexpression of the dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2) gene in the striatum also reduces motivational behaviour in mice, therefore mimicking psychotic ‘negative’ symptoms. Similar findings show that increased density of dopamine D2 receptor in the striatum, along with lower thalamic density of this receptor appear to induce divergent thinking, which is associated with schizophrenia.  

All these changes may account for the abnormalities that we see in “mad” people. It seems that we are so fragile, given that often small chemical and physical disruptions can trigger something as big and terrifying as schizophrenia. Imagine hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling things everyone says are not real (schizophrenics often have multiple hallucinations: auditory, visual, gustatory, tactile, olfactory). But to you they are so real and disturbing! Many schizophrenics even hear their own thoughts as if they are coming from the outside and therefore believe that everyone knows what’s in their heads. Imagine having the constant feeling that someone is after you (paranoia) or being certain that you are dead (the Cotard’s Syndrome) or that your husband has an affair (the Othello Syndrome).

I think this topic can never be fully covered and we would spend days talking about schizophrenia, so this article should better come to an end. As I am sure you have lots of questions and comments, don’t be shy and post anything you think it’s relevant to what has been discussed above. Hope you enjoyed this reading.

For further information: 

Bear et al., 2006. Neuroscience – Exploring the Brain. s.l.:Lippincott Williams & Wilknins, pp. 679-684

de Manzano et al., 2010. Thinking Outside a Less Intact Box; Thalamic Dopamine D2 Receptor Densities Are Negatively Related to Psychometric Creativity in Healthy Insividuals. Public Library of Science

Jia et al.,  2014. The Schizophrenia Susceptibility Gene Dysbindin Regulates Dendritic Spine Dynamics. The Journal of Neuroscience, Oct.pp. 34-41

Kandel et al., 2011. Modeling Motivational Deficits in Mouse Models of Schizophrenia: Behavior Analysis as a Guide for Neuroscience. Behavior Processes, pp. 149-156

Kolb et al., 1996. Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology. 4th Edition ed. s.l.:W.H. Freeman and Company

Image by Damaris Pop

Smells, learning and memory

Posted on by Iasmina Livia Hornoiu

After seeing this article’s title, you might have thought: “That sounds rather boring. I mean, what is so interesting about the nose?” Perhaps the “memory” part aroused your curiosity, though. If that’s so, you might find the following reading worth having a look at, as you could discover some surprising things about the “nose”.

I’d like to begin by emphasising something important: we don’t actually smell with our noses; it’s the brain that identifies different odours through the central olfactory pathways, but we’ll get to that soon. What does happen in our nasal cavity is the activation of the olfactory receptors (a type of neurone) of the primary olfactory system, by chemical stimuli called odourants. The binding of odourants to the olfactory receptors’ cilia triggers the transduction process, which involves G-protein stimulation, formation of the cyclic AMP (cAMP) and membrane depolarisation, by the opening of ion channels (calcium, sodium and chloride). This complex signalling cascade results in a receptor potential which is then coded as an action potential (provided the receptor potential reaches a certain threshold) and then transmitted further along the receptor’s axons (remember, they are actually neurones!) The axons form the olfactory nerve, but they also group in small clusters and converge onto the two olfactory bulbs, in spherical structures known as glomeruli. Here, the axons synapse upon second-order neurones which form the olfactory tracts and finally project to the olfactory cortex (involved in the perception of smell) and to some structures in the temporal lobes, the medial dorsal nucleus (in the thalamus) and the orbitofrontal cortex. The last two are thought to play an important role in the conscious perception of smells. A pretty intricate process, isn’t it? But it is a lot more to olfaction than this!

Running parallel to the primary olfactory system is the accessory olfactory system. This has been shown to detect our favourite smelling chemicals, the pheromones. As I am sure most of you are aware of, pheromones are involved in reproductive behaviours, identifying individuals, aggression and submission recognition. Not only the type of chemical stimuli, but also the structures in the accessory olfactory system are different: the vomeronasal organ in the nasal cavity, the accessory olfactory bulb and last but not least the hypothalamus and amygdala (and hippocampus) as the final axonal targets. The amygdala and hippocampus are known for their implications in emotions and long-term memories (check out article about memory). Thus, olfaction also plays an important role in the integration of different odours in emotion processes, as well as explicit memory and associative meanings to odours.

Interestingly, each receptor cell is defined by only one receptor protein, which is encoded by a single receptor gene. These genes form the largest family of mammalian genes: 1000 in rodents, 350 in humans. The receptor cells have unique structures and are divided into different types according to their sensitivity to odours: each receptor type is activated by a single odour; nevertheless, one odour can activate many receptor types and the combination as well as the frequency, rhythmicity and temporal pattern of receptor stimulations encode for odour information.

Studies in Drosophila have shown another very important function of the olfactory processes: the associative learning. Gustatory unconditional and odour conditional signals both converge on the antennal lobe and mushroom body of the Drosophila, establishing learning efficacy of appetitive and aversive memories in classical conditioning. The release of certain catecholaminergic neurotransmitters such as dopamine and octopamine (the insect analogue of noradrenaline) are involved in the aversive and appetitive behaviours, respectively. In an incredibly revealing study, Lee Chi-Yu and his colleagues developed this topic in much more detail. I strongly recommend you have a look at it here.

As you might have guessed, given the fact that olfaction has a wide range of implications, its impairments are present in different mental diseases. Olfaction deficits or absence (anosmia) have been identified in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, whereas olfactory hallucinations and weird smells are one of the main symptoms of schizophrenia.

Hopefully, you didn’t find this article too long or confusing. Did you find out new information about olfaction? If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to upload your posts. I’m looking forward to them as always.

For further information:

Bear et al., “Neuroscience”, third edition, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

My friend’s article

Another very relevant article

Photo by Isuru Priyaranga