Anxiety and Depression with Internet Use

 When Rebecca Silton, a neuroscientist at Loyola University Chicago, presented her study, “Depression and Anxious Apprehension Distinguish Frontocingulate Cortical

Activity During Top-Down Attentional Control,” in January 2015, she emphasized the importance of apprehending anxiety and depression. Her research focused on psychopathology surrounding patients experiencing anxiety and depression. While explaining her research, she discussed cell phone use and Internet use. She even mentioned a phone application called, “moment,” that monitors how often someone picks up their phone. Internet use is awfully prevalent in our society. Its effects on our lives are widespread. It’s important to understand Internet use’s effects on our brains. 

In an article titled, “Relationship of Internet Addiction Severity with Depression, Anxiety, and Alexithymia, Temperament and Character in University Students,” a study was conducted on college students that assessed the relationship between internet addiction and various potential aspects of personality and feelings such as alexithymia, and temperament while maintaing depression and anxiety constant. In order to conduct their research, they used the following tests: Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, the Temperament and Character Inventory, the Internet Addiction Scale, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, and the Beck Depression Inventory. Ultimately, the results they obtained were not clearly indicative of a direct relationship between extreme internet use and alexithymia, however, it did reveal which type of students would be more prone to internet addiction. Their studies showed that students that were recorded to have high alexithymia and novelty seeking scores coupled with low self-directness and cooperativeness were more likely to experience an immense addiction to internet use. The characteristics measured were characteristics associated with experiencing anxiety and depression. 

Although Silton’s research differs from the research described in the preceding paragraph, the two studies in a way compliment each other. “Depression and Anxious Apprehension Distinguish Frontocingulate Cortical Activity During Top-Down Attentional Control,” focused more on brain activity in relation to anxiety and depression, and then, “Relationship of Internet Addiction Severity with Depression, Anxiety, and Alexithymia, Temperament and Character in University Students,” looked at what could be related to individuals with anxiety and depression. Ultimately, both studies reached new conclusions to better understand anxiety and depression. 

References 

Silton, L. R., Heller, W., Engels, S. A., Towers, N. D., Spielberg, M. J., Edgar, C., Sass, M.S., Stewart, L. S., &  Sutton, P. B. (2011). Depression and Anxious Apprehension Distinguish Frontocingulate Cortical Activity During Top-Down Attentional Control, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 120(2),272-285. https:// luc.app.box.com/s/4c031c26bsh2bj3619si/1/2914484651/24814624477/1

Dalbudak, E., Evren, C. Aldemir, S., Coskun, S. K., Ugurlu, H., & Yildirim, G. F. (2013). 

Relationship of Internet Addiction Severity with Depression, Anxiety, and Alexithymia, Temperament and Character in University Students, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16(4), 272-279. http:// web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=d3664c74-f568-4285- a355-8af2d09426bf%40sessionmgr4005&vid=1&hid=4204

               Bipolar disorder is a personality disorder resulting in mood swings varying from depressive states to states of mania. This disorder cannot only effect the person socially but also mentally. There are many different dysfunctions associated with bipolar disorder. A recent article written by Sara L. Weisenbach depicted how age and disease causes many problems in cognition and quality of life in people with bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder often experience many dysfunctions in their daily life such as psychomotor speed, attention, memory, etc. These dysfunctions have been reported to cause a lower quality of life for many patients with bipolar disorder. In the research conducted, the findings concluded that age and disease impact fine motor skills as well as memory. The overall impact was that bipolar disorder can impact cognitive skills such processing speed and emotion processing.

                In an article, “Brain Imaging Identifies Bipolar Disorder Risk in Adolescents,” published on Science Daily, The University of New South Wales is researching young people with a risk of bipolar disorder to show they have difference in brain activity. Researchers have used MRI to see brain activity, what they have deduced is that those with a risk of bipolar disorder have reduced brain activity in the part of brain that regulated emotion processing. Professor Mitchell of the university stated, “Our results show that bipolar disorder may be linked to a dysfunction in emotional regulation.”

                This means that similar to older adults with bipolar disorder, young people even with a risk factor of bipolar disorder are shown to have dysfunctions in emotion processing. There is ongoing research to recognize early identification of bipolar disorder, this may also be able to reduce onset of certain patients.

 Weisenbach, S. L., Marshall, D., Weldon, A. L., Ryan, K. A., Vederman, A. C., Kamali, M., Zubieta, J., McInnis, M. G., & Langenecker, S. A. (2014). The double burden of age and disease on cognition and quality of life in bipolar disorder.International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 29. p. 952-961.doi: 10.1002/gps.4084

University of New South Wales. "Brain imaging identifies bipolar disorder risk in adolescents." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 December 2012. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121217102649.htm

Fighting Cocaine Addiction

Ever since its resurgence in the 1970s cocaine use has been embedded in western culture. It is well known that cocaine is one of the most addictive and deadly drugs in the world. Recently, Dr. Loweth from the Department of Neuroscience, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine, published her research about a specific glutamate receptor (mGluR) that may play an important role in drug addiction and relapse. They work by affecting the synthesis of another receptor (CP-AMPARs) that is expressed on the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain that is critical for cocaine craving. When subjects withdraw from cocaine use, CP-AMPAR receptors increase causing intensified cocaine craving in the presence of an external cue (a smell, location, or event that is associated with cocaine). The mGluR receptors inhibit the synthesis of CP-AMPAR receptors and thus, as the research team concluded, activation of mGluR can prevent cocaine relapse by lowering the receptors responsible for the intense cocaine cravings produced by external cues.

            In 2013 scientific article reported the findings of Billy Chen, then of the National Institutes of Health, and his colleagues. The researchers used electric current to stimulate the prelimbic cortex that communicates with other areas involved in drug-seeking behaviors. They found that the neurons in cocaine addicted rats, were less likely to fire in response to the electric current when compared with rats that hadn’t taken cocaine. They focused on a group of “sluggish” neurons that seem to be causing the compulsive behavior. When these neurons were activated, the compulsive behavior diminished dramatically in the cocaine addicted rats. These sluggish neurons seem to play a similar role at the prelimbic cortext as the mGluR recptors do in the nucleus accumbens. Do they work by similar mechanisms? Do they affect different aspects of drug addictions? The only way to find out is by studying these systems in more detail. One thing is for certain, they create optimism and raise hope that one day drug addiction may be cured.

References

Kollipara, P. (2013). Cocaine addiction comes to light. Society for Science & the Public, 16.

Loweth, J. A., Tseng, K. Y., & Wolf, M. E. (2013). Using metabotropic glutamate receptors to modulate cocaine’s synaptic and behavioral effects: mGluR1 finds a niche. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 500-506.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23599283.pdf?acceptTC=true
https://luc.app.box.com/s/4c031c26bsh2bj3619si/1/2926647027/26012774523/1

The Power of Youth

            In the prime of our youth, we humans are at the peak of our abilities both mentally and physically. We are at our strongest when we are of a fairly young age; however, that strength begins to fade away as we get older. The aging process slowly strips us of our abilities and takes us down a notch over time. A prime example of this idea is seen in the sporting world. In sports such as basketball and football, certain athletes in their prime are designated as being the top player at their position. A few years after they are past their prime, these same athletes are no longer heralded as the best; instead, they have passed the torch down to their younger peers. These younger athletes are the new elite players of the sport, while the older veterans are a shell of their past selves. Both physically and mentally the older athletes have lost a step and are unable to process the sport as well as they used to. These athletes illustrate the idea that the process of aging negatively affects our abilities both physically and mentally.   

            Weisenbach and her colleagues wanted to gain a better understanding as to specifically how the aging process affects the cognitive abilities of human beings. Their research also focused on the effects of disease on cognitive skills, narrowing in specifically on bipolar disease. Previous research had shown that both aging and disease lowered an individual’s cognitive abilities such as psychomotor speed, attention, executive functions, memory, and motor skills. Based off this past research, Weisenbach hypothesized that older individuals would exhibit poorer cognitive abilities while younger individuals would exhibit higher performance levels. The participants of the study were split up into two age groups, one group of participants 30 or younger and another group of participants aged 50-65, and asked to perform various cognitive tasks. As expected, the older participants of the group performed worse in cognitive tasks than the younger participants, thereby illustrating the idea that aging impairs an individual’s cognition.

            The process of aging is irreversible; there is no known way to get younger or regain our youth. This also implies that, as we age, our cognitive skills continue to disappear and erode. However, there may be ways by which we can avoid the loss of our cognitive abilities while we age. Allerhand and his colleagues were concerned with inhibiting the loss of cognitive skills through aging and focused on the idea of psychological well-being. Maintaining a positive psychological well-being is associated with “healthy aging” according to past research shown in Allerhand’s study. However, what is unclear is how having a positive well-being affects cognition, a crucial component of aging as already discussed. According to Allerhand, higher levels of positive well-being are associated with reduced neuroendocrine activity, lower concentrations of inflammatory factors, higher concentrations of HDL cholesterol, and lower blood pressure. All of these factors that are in relationships with higher levels of positive well-being are also indicators of good health, especially in older individuals.

Participants in Allerhand’s study were chosen from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA), a longitudinal study of adults aged 50 or more. Cognition and positive well-being of the participants were measured through surveys and interviews. The results indicated that cognitive function is significantly associated with positive well-being; however, the associations were small in strength. This indicates that, though aging is an irreversible process, the consequences that come with old age are not necessarily ensured to come with it. With the right mindset, anybody can fight off the negative aspects of old age and maintain the same cognitive strength as when they were in the prime of their youth.

Weisenbach, S. L., Marshall, D., Weldon, A. L., Ryan, K. A., Vederman, A. C., Kamali, M., Zubieta, J., McInnis, M. G., & Langenecker, S. A. (2014). The double burden of age and disease on cognition and quality of life in bipolar disorder. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 29. p. 952-961. doi: 10.1002/gps.4084

Allerhand, M., Gale, C. R., & Deary, I. J. (2014). The dynamic relationship between cognitive function and positive well-being in older people: a prospective study using the English longitudinal study of aging. Psychology and Aging, 29. p. 306-318. doi: 10.1037/a0036551

http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com.flagship.luc.edu/sp-3.15.1b/ovidweb.cgi?&S=HIJKFPFPPMDDLLILNCKKPBGCJBNNAA00&Link+Set=S.sh.41|1|sl_10

                                                                                                

Video Games and Motor Performance

Our motor performance is needed for us to execute specific actions. Activates that involve speed, intuition, and skill such as sports and music use quick motor cues and quick motor responses.  In addition, our ability to respond and react to different cues are important to our daily life and our daily reflexes.  Our ability to time these motor cues and the patterns that our body creates in accordance to these motor cues are critical factors when looking at motor performance. A study done by Goble, Parrish, and Reber interpreted the motor performance and the sequences using circuits connected to different cortical regions of the brain in order to study motor performance.  The same ideas and principles can be applied to another similar study done by Gong, Lie, and Dong, who all studied the effect of video games on motor performance. Just like our motor skills in reaction to motor cues, video games are a prime example of something that uses a heavy amount of motor performance and intuition, especially high action video games.

Both of the studies tested the same regions of the brain and the same motor outputs of the brain, however, the experiments itself differ. For Goble, Parrish, and Reber’s study, motor sequence learning was monitored throughout the brain through Serial Interception Sequence Learning (SISL). In their study, participants needed to press a button in accordance to an appropriate target in a target zone. Through neuroimaging data, the responses were collected and measured and also by an fMRI scanner.  For Gong, Liu, and Dong, advanced action video gamers (AVGs) were studied against those who do not regularly play advanced action video games. In their study, it was shown that those who do regularly play advanced action video games have better attention and sensorimotor functions than those who do not. In their study, they concluded that cortical networks in the brain were affected when individuals played AVGs. Also, MRI scans were used in order to determine the effects of AVGs.

Gong and his collogues discovered that there was greater functional connectivity in the brains of players who were considered experts in contrast to the brains of those considered as of the amateurs. The anterior and the posterior regions of the brain were studied, and it was shown that the expert gamers had larger amounts of grey mater, which is used for processing. In addition, the anterior attentive network and the posterior sensorimotor region. In contrast, Gobel and his collogues concluded that learning a sequence and pattern before testing it actually decreases performance. While one would naturally believe that learning a pattern would cause us to react quicker, the reality of the situation as concluded by Gobel is that learning a practiced sequence does not guarantee it to be executed without flaw. With video-gaming, many of the reactions instinctive and quick and are in reflex to the game being played. These methods are not “practiced” per se, therefore, there is a higher amount of sensor motor ability when playing AVGs as opposed to pressing a button on cue in accordance to a learned pattern in the other study.

Both studies promote the importance of sensor motor and motor performance. In order to make sure that we are inept and able to perform motor skills with precision, we rely on our reflexes and our cortical pathways. In addition, our quick motor responses allow us to engage in actives such as music, sports, and activities of that require precision and skill, even advanced action video games. By stimulating our motor neurons and using them frequently, we can strengthen our pathways and allow our motor skills to become fine-tuned. These two studies conclude that our motor pathways are significant, and that the our motor pathways and cortical pathways can be studied even further in order to determine how to fine-tune and increase our motor skills.

Gobel, W. E., Parrish, B. T., Reber, J. P. (2011). Neural correlates of skill

acquisition: Decreased cortical activity during a serial interception sequence learning task. Neuroimage, 58, 1150-1157.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.06.090

Gong, D., He, H., Liu, D., Ma, W., Dong, L., Luo, C., & Yao, D. (2015, April 16). Enhanced functional connectivity and increased gray matter volume of insula related to action video game playing. Retrieved May 2, 2015, from http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150402/srep09763/full/srep09763.html

Using Neuroscience to Help the Schools

               Throughout the recent decade, the US has had a multitude of different issues, whether it be a failing economy, racial tensions or lessening of its global influence. While it seems like each of these issues are so different in nature, they can all be partly explained by the slow decrease of the quality and effectiveness of education policies in the US. Looking to each of these issues, one can see the downturn in the United States’ education ranking aligning with the start of these issues. Seen in the Huffington Post's analysis of a recent Harvard study, U.S. Students Still Lag Behind Foreign Peers, Schools Make Little Progress in Improving Achievement it can been easily seen that the US has decreased considerably in its educational improvement rank. The US has fallen from being a leader in every subject to 25^th in math, 17^th in science and 14^th in reading out of 49 countries (Huffington Post). While these ranking might not seem to be as alarming, one looks farther to see that countries near the top are increasing their lead in strides and bounds, as they improve their standardized test scores up to three times quicker than the US.

               So now, one may ask the question of how to fix such an issue, especially one seen nationwide. One of the most common attempts to fix the education decrease is just to throw money at the system and to hope that the schools will be able to teach students better with more funding. Yet this has been countered, shown especially by the case of Utah and New York, with Utah having a higher high school graduation rate, with close to half of the funding New York Schools get (per student) (Huffington Post). Recent results from the study of labs of Wang and Voss may now have possibly given the US education system a possible route in fixing the issue without incurring massive costs. One change possible change could be seen through the case of active versus passive learning, measured by memory tests. In the discovery of novel information, (learning pattern and sequences) Wang and Voss have shown that active learning significantly increases score on memory tests over their passive learning counterparts (Wang). These results can now be passed onto US school systems through policy changes, with more active learning in the classroom, in the form of labs, lesson exercises and more student questions/involvement, at the cost of decreasing passive learning, especially with less lectures and power point learning. The need for active learning is not the only thing uncovered, as Voss and Wang also go to show the discovery and learning of novel information is better facilitated through staying on topic. This was shown as those that stayed on topic, this discovering all new information in each quadrant, significantly outperformed those that continuously changed from quadrant to quadrant (Wang). Looking to the application of education systems today, this can call for the increasing of class times, possibly calling for high schools to adapt college style learning, with classes only on certain days. These longer classes can help students stay on topic and more thoroughly understand each lesson, leading to a strong improvement in information retention and test scores. Overall, this would allow for class times to increase without increasing school day lengths. So while  the US has lagged behind, shown decisively by the Harvard study, there are definite routes for US education administrators and legislators to take to help restore US to becoming a leader in education again, going on to help the US improve as a whole. 

Citations:

Article:
"US Students Still Lag Behind Foreign Peers, Schools Make Little Progress in Improving Achievement." The Huffington Post. HuffingtonPost.com Inc. September 22, 2012. Retrieved April 28, 2015 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/us-students-still-lag-beh_n_1695516.html
Note: no author listed

Harvard Study:

Hanushek, E., Peterson, P., Woessmann, L. (2012). Achievement Growth: International and US state Trends in Student Performance. Harvard University; Harvard Kennedy School. Retrieved April 28, 2015
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG12-03_CatchingUp.pdf

Journal:
Voss. J., Wang, J. (2014). Brain Networks for Exploration Decisions Utilizing Modeled Information Types during Contextual Learning. Neuron 82, 1171-1182.
https://luc.app.box.com/s/4c031c26bsh2bj3619si/1/2926648297/24814540863/1