Depression: The Absence of Vitality

Depression is a life altering mental illness that is characterized by feelings of hopelessness and dejection, due to which individuals are not able to feel pleasure or happiness in their lives. According to statistics from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Major Depressive Disorder affects 14.8 million American adults in the U.S. every year, which is a significant amount of the population. The concept of high negative activity and low positive affectivity in individuals affected by depression was studied by a researcher and professor at Loyola University Chicago: Dr. Rebecca Silton. Dr. Silton presented her research by first defining what depression is because it has negative connotations associated with it as it is thrown around so loosely. She began her lecture by showing a TED talk given by an American author and lecturer, Andrew Soloman, who stated that "the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality." Dr. Silton used this definition of depression to introduce her research because it shows that depression doesn't just affect one's emotions or mood temporarily, but affects their life as a whole.  

In relation to her research, Dr. Silton had postulated that anhedonia, which is a distinct feature of depression, is characterized by high negative affectivity and low positive affectivity. In order to examine the interrelation between low positive affectivity and activity in the brain, she performed a study consisting of participants with remitting depression as well as a controlled group of participants without depression. The participants were first asked to fill out a MASQ questionnaire in order to measure whether they presented symptoms of negative or positive affectivity. Afterwards, the participants' brain activity was observed in their resting state as they had electrodes placed on them hooked up to an EEG, which tracked their brain wave patterns. The results from this study indicated that participants with remitted depression exhibited low left prefrontal cortical activity due to high alpha wave activity. From this, they were able to conclude that depressed individuals with low positive affectivity presented low prefrontal cortical activity and high alpha wave activity, which provides implications to how depression may be caused by low activity in the prefrontal cortex.  

Similar to this study, another study was recently performed by PhD student, Yael Millgram, and her lab at the Hebrew University in regards to depression. People with depression experience negative emotions and one would think that given the chance, those experiencing depression would let go of their negative emotions; however, this did not appear to be the case. In this study, individuals with depression were studied to find that when given the opportunity to manipulate their emotions, they did not let go of their negative emotions and held onto their depressive thoughts, which prevented them from being "cured" of depression. This study was performed by first screening the participants for symptoms of depression. They were then divided into two categories of depressed and non-depressed individuals, similar to Dr. Silton's study. All of the participants were then asked to complete an image selection task in which pictures were flashed for a few seconds in front of each participant and they were asked to press a button if they wished to view the image again or press a different button if they wished to see a black screen instead. The images that were flashed before the participants consisted of 10 happy images, 10 sad images, and 10 images that were emotionally neutral. These images were each supposed to induce a certain emotion with respect to the emotion conveyed by the image. From the results it was observed that the participants displaying symptoms of depression chose to view  and re-view sad images more often than those without depressive symptoms. This study was repeated more than once with a different variables, such as music, and they achieved the same result. This indicated that the individuals with depression themselves were not motivated to decrease their negative emotions, as they denied the strategies that were presented to them to decrease their emotional response to positive stimuli, which kept them from escaping their depression.  

The Millgram study relates to that of Dr. Silton's in that it acknowledges the idea that high negative affectivity and low positive affectivity are what cause depression. The Millgram study builds upon that of Dr. Silton's in that it points out why certain forms of treatment may not work for treating depression due to the fact that the depressed subjects are not able to accept positive emotions into their lives, which prevents them from getting "cured" of depression in a sense. In addition, according to Dr. Silton's study, the activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is a region in the brain that is associated with executive functions (I.e. decision making), is observed to be low in individuals with depression, which explains why the depressed participants in the Milgram study chose the negative stimuli that induced unhappiness. The Milgram study, equipped with studies such as Dr. Silton's on positive affectivity, provide great implications to further studies regarding depression in the future, which may ultimately lead to finding a cure for such a debilitating mental illness.

Sources:

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/holding-on-to-the-blues-depressed-individuals-may-fail-to-decrease-sadness.html

http://www.adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics

Images: 
https://api.kramesstaywell.com/Content/6066ca30-310a-4170-b001-a4ab013d61fd/medical-illustrations/Images/pnerv20140331v0001

http://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/pfc1.jpg

Social Media and Dementia: How Being "Hip" Can Make You Very Very Aged

The benefits of social media are infinite. Communication across countries can happen in a second, there is an indispensable amount of cute kitten pictures, and knowledge is much more accessible. With innovations comes faults though. As the world has seen from experience, too much of a good thing is a bad thing; this is the golden rule of moderation. It is also no surprise that social media is often criticized for "dumbing down" millenials and younger generations. Well, recently studies have shown that this may in fact be the case. What many people do not yet realize is how far this "dumbing down" can extend...

As one looks down their FaceBook feed, it can be hard not to feel a little jealous. Maybe Jim from Freshman year Communications class has just gotten into an Ivy League law school. Or maybe Latavia is spending her summer in Puerto Vallarta. Regardless of who is doing what, social media can instill jealousy and even sadness within a person. A recent study at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that young adults who use more time on social media are more likely to be depressed (Nature World News). According to Dr. Silton, a professor at Loyola University Chicago, depression usually features anhedonia - a lack of feeling pleasure. Futhermore, depression is said to be more a lack of vitality than it is a lack of happiness (Solomon). Individuals who are depressed may lack feeling pleasure in what they do. Along with this is a fundamental lack of life and vitality. Ultimately, this may result in a more sedentary person. With a sedentary lifestyle, and easy access to technology and more social media, this may result in a viscous cycle of depression for the younger generations. 

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

If you thought a cycle of no energy and depression was bad enough, check this out. Dr. Ikram of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam stated that symptoms associated with depression that increase over time appear to predict dementia. Dementia is the loss of mental functions like thinking, reasoning, and memory that is significant enough to interfere with the daily life of a person (Alzheimer's Association). The study at Erasmus also found that people who had experienced depression for greater than three years were over 20% more likely to have dementia. Although, people that have remitted depression - depression that has not returned in multiple separate episodes - seem to not be at the same risk. What does this say for millenials? An increased likelihood of having depression is liked to an increase in social media. With longer episodes of depression, individuals may have an increased risk for dementia. The implications of a population that grows older, quicker would be devastating. 

Lastly, studying depression and the causes of it is very difficult. There may be many overlaps between mood disorders, as shown in the Tripartite Model of depression and anxiety, which makes categorizing each disorder difficult. For example, negative affect - a factor of subjective distress and  subsumes many negative mood states - is associated with both anxiety and depression. The best recipe to avoid depression and the symptoms that come with it is to delete your social media accounts immediately. No, not really. Staying up to date with current studies and news can help educate oneself on how to best avoid environmental contributors to depression and dementia. And look, you have already educated yourself by reading this article! Great job!

P.S. Positive affect is said to help restore vitality (i.e., fight depression). Try savoring moments and expressing gratitude more often!

Link to the article: http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/21428/20160502/worsening-depression-lead-dementia.htm

Solomon, Andrew: http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share 

Dementia: http://www.alz.org/what-is-dementia.asp

The Next Frontier in Depression

It’s finals week, which means the coffee machine is working overtime and sweatpants are not only acceptable but standard attire. It’s easily the most grueling week of the semester. With the accumulation of class projects, exam preparation, and last minute assignments, the rigor of the last week of a college semester requires immense cognitive stamina to stay sane. That is, assuming you’re psychologically sane and surrounded by peers that keep you level-headed and focused. But if you take a walk through a college dorm during finals week (or really any week of the semester), it becomes apparent that the environment a student is in shapes the way they view everything. This mentality is what Gerald Haeffel studied in dorms on Notre Dame University’s campus in 2013 . The way someone thinks about life stressors is actually a great indicator as to the likelihood of future depression. One way to identify an individual’s outlook is to watch for rumination. Rumination is the continual focus on life stressors and consequences instead of directing attention to positive aspects and solutions. If someone in the social group ruminates, the likelihood of other group members ruminating is significantly higher.

In addition to the social influences of stress and negative mood, are there physiological indicators for predicting depression? Dr. Silton et. al took on the same analysis of mood in college students but from a dimensional neurophysiological perspective and found that the answer was yes. Their study looked at mood in terms of positive affect (PA), or the ability for someone to experience positive feelings. To do this, they recorded the alpha waves of students at rest via electroencephalography (EEG). Alpha has been shown to be inversely linked to depression so higher levels of resting-state alpha in the left prefrontal region is believed to indicate brain hypoactivity, an indicator of depression. Dr. Silton’s study showed that positive affect has a unique effect on the prefrontal cortex resting state alpha, indicating a decreased activity level in that region.

These two studies show the importance of a biopsychosocial approach to psychopathology and the future of mental health treatments. There is hope, though, for those suffering from this debilitating psychopathology! With continuous advances in neural networks, positive psychology is paving the way for a new era in psychosocial treatments. Additionally, Haeffel found that healthy thinking is also as contagious as rumination. So, when you’re studying for finals and Negative Nellie starts bringing down the room, try coughing up a little contagious positivity to counter it. Or get out before you catch the fever.

Photo: USA TODAY 

Time Magazine:

http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/24/depressive-thinking-can-be-infectious/photo/200140235-001a/

Further reading:

Silton, R.L., Polnaszek, K.L., Dickson, D.A., Miller, G.A., & Heller, W. (Under review). Low positive affect is associated with reduced prefrontal cortical activity in remitted depression. Journal of Psychophysiology.

Haeffel, G.J. & Hames, J.L. (2014). Cognitive vulnerability to depression can be contagious. Clinical Psychological Science, 2, 75-85.

Can you really be addicted with one try?

Nicotine is a highly used addictive substance in the US. If its really addictive, how would one ever quit? What are the reasons behind this addiction? And can one smoking experience make you addicted? It is known that nicotine addiction is caused by the area of the brain that is stimulated. This stimulation is a reward pathway that elevates levels of dopamine which increases the brain’s pleasure center. If you’re constantly receiving reward/pleasure it would make sense to keep going to the source of that reward or pleasure, hence why nicotine is addictive. It is so addictive that it is hard to quit smoking or any use of nicotine completely. In an article posted in Psychology Today it states. “nicotine withdrawal activates anxiety- related brain circuitry.” 

There are many reason why people smoke. However, the most common use of smoking is to reduce stress or anxiety. When a person tries to quit smoking it triggers all that stress and anxiety during withdrawal. The findings given in the article showed that there are certain roles in different regions in the brain that can help reduce the withdrawal symptoms. The regions of the brain they focused on was the interpenduncular nucleus and insula.  These regions tend to deal with motor control and both are active in symptoms of withdrawal. They mentioned mindfulness, meditation, and neurofeedback as treatments to help quit smoking while reducing the negative affects. 

Dan McGehee from the University of Chicago came to Loyola University Chicago to talk about his work in nicotine aversion and reward. Part of his lecture explained the statistics of adults smokers who want to quit versus those that succeed. There is a whole process that goes along within neurotransmitters and synapses as nicotine enters the body. These neurotransmitters work to reward the stimulus entering which aids in addiction. However one way to treat nicotine addiction is through aversion. Nicotine aversion has both reward and aversive effects. A person’s first experience with smoking can either be future dependent on nicotine or completely aversive. He mentioned that being able to explore nicotine induced behavior and circuits in the brain would be helpful in finding new treatments since relapse is very high. Going back to the article there are many possibly treatments to explore. If we are able to find the links that McGehee mentioned and combine them with the brain regions that the article mentioned then maybe there could be more treatments to help combat the high relapse of people who try to break their nicotine habit. 

The article can be found below

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201505/whys-it-so-hard-quit-smoking-neuroscience-has-new-clues

Do Choice and Memory Have Any Correlation?

  

   Choices; our daily routine is based on thousands and thousands of little decisions that shape our day. We choose what clothes to wear, food to eat, even what lane to idle in during the morning rush hour - choice is important. Now, we may believe that the choices we make, take place in real-time, without any other cognitive intervention other than choosing one or the other. This is actually an illusion. Research from Yale University has shown that memory plays a significant role in the choices we make. 

    "People often need to remember information that has been labeled as important, at the expense of information deemed to be less important" says Dr. Michael Cohen of Northwestern University. His research has found that "older adults show a remarkably preserved ability to selectively remember information deemed valuable" (Cohen). So. how do choice and memory correlate?

     The study conducted at Yale University, under the supervision of Adam Bear and Paul Bloom consisted of participants being shown white circles on a screen, one quickly turning red and then returning back to white again. The participant was then told to choose the circle that they thought would turn red next. When the participants were given less time to choose, they were actually more accurate - although they chose the circles mostly at random - than when they were given more than a second to decide. Researchers concluded that "people subconsciously perceived the color red before they predicted it would appear, but they consciously experienced these two things in the opposite order" (Bear and Bloom).

"Dew et al. (2012) subsequently showed that in a memory retrieval task, older adults tend to be less responsive than young adults to a cue that might lead to proactive retrieval-related processing, and instead show stronger, reactive activity in response to the stimulus itself, consistent with the Dual Modes of Control Theory" (Cohen)

   

     Therefore the idea that experience leads to better choices in the future is not without basis. This research proves that older adults rely more on memory retrieval than on proactive processing in response to a cue; instead they react more to the stimulus. It can be theorized that perhaps, older adults make choices based more off memory, and younger adults are more forward thinking, using the situation / cue to dictate their response. 

    In conclusion, "the conscious experience of choice may be constructed after we act - even when it feels like it is the cause of our behavior" say Bear and Bloom. 

References:

 Cohen, Michael S., Jesse Rissman, Nanthia A. Suthan, Alan D. Castel, and Barbara J. Knowlton. "Effects of Aging on Value-directed Modulation of Semantic Network Activity during Verbal Learning." Neuroimage 125 (2016): 1046-062. Web.

 "Choice May Sometimes Be A Cognitive Illusion." Association for Psychological Science RSS. Web. 02 May 2016.

Image: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/october/images/14437-choices_news.jpg

Colorful Brains: The Dancing Colors of fMRI

By Suraj Sheth

The introductory sequence of the popular show “Limitless” shows portions of the brain lighting up in brilliant colors as new connections are made. While the show may be based on a claim that has been disproved (that we only use 10% of our brains at any moment) its introductory sequence is somewhat similar to the ways neuroscientists visualize the brain. With new technologies, neuroscientists, now more than ever, are gaining insights into how the brain processes information in real time, furthering our knowledge of the way this approximately 3-pound organ functions.

One major tool that has revolutionized neuroimaging is functional magnetic resonance Imaging, or fMRI. fMRI is a procedure that uses an MRI machine to detect the differences in oxygenated and deoxygenated blood flowing in the brain, and is used to track changes in blood flow to different regions. Based on the idea that increased blood flow indicates that a certain region of the brain is active, scientists can use fMRI to see how the brain responds to various stimuli, and what regions of the brain are activated to in response to different kinds of information. fMRI is relatively easy to use and is very safe, and its results are applicable to a variety of different studies.

Students in the Neuroscience Seminar at Loyola University Chicago got to hear about one such study on Aril 19^th, 2016, from Dr. Michael Cohen. Dr. Cohen is a post-doctoral fellow in the Reber Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University, where, using fMRI, he studies the effects of aging on how people encode their memories, especially memories of value. He explained how he found that there were differences in how younger people and older people (60 years or older) achieve “value directed memory selectivity,” during verbal learning. Essentially, the way the brain stores memories that are deemed to be “valuable” changes as we age, at least for verbal learning. Dr. Cohen and his colleagues found that when both younger and older people were exposed to a set of words they had to learn, with some words having higher importance than others (indicated to the subjects with a value cue), both age groups used a region of the brain referred to as the “semantic network.” However, only younger individuals showed a significant increase in activity in their semantic networks when they were presented with “high value words.” Older individuals, on the other hand, had only small changes with “high value words,” but responded to “low value words” by having lower activity in their semantic networks. This means each group had a slightly different way of identifying, prioritizing, and learning high value words over low value words. The study also found that only younger individuals had “value-related increases” in activity in their semantic and reward processing networks in response to the “value cue.” (an increase in activation based on the cue’s value, and not the word itself). Interestingly, this increase in activity did not predict any difference in memory selectivity between older individuals and younger individuals. Dr. Cohen’s study shows how the processing mechanisms used by the brain to interpret information changes over our lifetimes, and how different age groups may engage their brains in different ways in response to the same stimuli.

fMRI studies can also be used to discover functional regions of the brain that previously had only been described in theory. This was the case for Dr. Norman- Haignere and other researchers at MIT, when they discovered a small region of the auditory cortex that was specialized for listening to music. This is the subject of the New York Times article “New Ways into the Brain’s ‘Music Room’”. The article describes how Dr. Norman- Haignere and his team developed a mathematical model to determine which neurons in the brain’s auditory cortex have similar activation patterns in response to various stimuli. They developed this model by first exposing human subjects to a wide range of everyday sounds, from cars starting and planes taking off to people speaking in different languages. They then analyzed the voxels (which are 3D pixels) of the fMRI data to determine the generalized patterns by which the brain analyzes incoming auditory information. After coming up with 6 general patterns, they matched each pattern to the kinds of noises that activated them, and they found that one of the pathways was activated exclusively by music (sounds that had rhythmic and/or melodic qualities). This may indicate that there was some evolutionarily beneficial purpose to music in humans. The study is also a good stepping stone to future studies that explore differences in musicality between musicians and non-musicians, and whether musicality changes with age.

Both Dr. Cohen and Dr. Norman- Haignere were able to use fMRI technologies to discover how the brain processes information. Dr. Cohen’s study was comparative, seeing which functional changes occur as we age. Dr. Norman- Haignere utilized fMRI to discover the existence of a new network within the brain, one that has evolved specifically for the interpretation of music. Both studies are interdisciplinary, integrating psychology and computational neuroscience to figure out the function and importance of different areas of the brain. The fact that both studies are highly relevant is a testament to the flexibility of fMRI studies. Through technologies like fMRI, we can gain insight into the essential internal processes that make us who we are today.

Sources:

Articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/science/new-ways-into-the-brains-music-room.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/science/lending-her-ears-to-an-mit-experiment.html

Dr. Cohen’s Original Study:

Cohen, M.S., Rissman, J., Suthana, N.A., Castel, A.D., Knowlton, B.J. (2016). Effects of aging on value-directed modulation of semantic network activity during verbal learning. NeuroImage, 125, 1046-1062

Images:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/march/images/neuroimage_news.jpg

http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/article_main_image/public/media/music-brain-2016-billboard-650.jpg

Implications of Being Left­-Handed: Higher Incidence of Psychosis and the Lack of Research Studies

Left­-handed people may not be the “servants of the devil” as our early Catholic school days may have taught us, but there do appear to be certain implications related to left-­handedness and the effects on the brain as mentioned briefly in the discussion of Jadon R. Webb et al, in Left­-Handedness Among a Community Sample of Psychiatric Outpatients Suffering From Mood and Psychotic Disorders​. In their study among Psychiatric Outpatients, they found a strong correlation between psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and mood disorders such as depression and being left­-handed. Jadon R. Webb et al. wrote that “Hand dominance has been shown in the past several years to correlate with cerebral laterality of language expression, vision processing, declarative memory, emotional processing, and even the processing of taste.”

It is important to mention that most research around mood disorders or psychotic disorders only compares the data to healthy controls versus different psychiatric diagnoses. Jadon R. Webb et al on the other hand, examined the prevalence of handedness within the same population of outpatients on both mood and psychotic disorders to gain a better understanding of any correlation between the three. Left­-handedness was shown in 11% of the patients with mood disorders and 40% in patients diagnosed with psychotic illnesses. They do discuss given the small sample size they had, that more research needs to be done in relation to handedness and these types of disorders, given that majority of the time they are excluded given to any noise they may contribute to the study. 

Another study from Roel Willems in the Nature Reviews Neuroscience mentions how that many recent investigations, such as that by Jadon R. Webb et al, show that the “inclusion or targeted recruitment of left­handed individuals can be informative in studies on a range of topics, such as cerebral lateralization and the genetic underpinning of asymmetrical brain development.” There is great potential in studying this group of research subjects, given that the minority of left-­handed people have a substantive role in society. 

In reading a study written by Rebecca Silton from Loyola University Chicago, why is it, that in a study measuring the link between positive affect (extent one experiences positives moods; joy, interest, alertness) and prefrontal brain activity in individuals at rest, failed to include anyone who was considered left handed and focused solely on those “participants who were right-­handed as determined by the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971).” Therefore, if handedness plays a factor on the side of the brain you use, and Siltons research take a look at the prefrontal cortex brain activity, wouldn't the information be skewed since she had no left handed people included in her study? Left and Right handed people would be necessary to factor to take into consideration given a higher prevalence of mood disorders and handedness, despite any “noise” it may contribute to the study. Much like medical research focused on the male anatomy, there is definitely room for the individuals with left­-handedness to be included in more cognitive neuroscience and neurogenetics.

 “Brain activation when participants imagined performing common hand actions” 7 Actions included that of throwing a ball or writing, notice how the left­-handed participants had the most activity on the right-­hand side of the brain and vice versa for the right-handed participants.  


Sources:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140213112640.htm 
http://commonplacebook.com/current­events/religion/left­handedness­catholic­church/
 http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978­0­387­79061­9_2193 https://luc.app.box.com/v/neuroscienceseminar/1/5783525629/62930100982/1  http://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2014.00013
http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/4/2158244013503166 
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v15/n3/full/nrn3679.html