Tag: brain

Biological Perspectives on Emotions Couple Therapy Depression and Mood Disorders Psychotherapy Relationships • • • • • • • • • By Ann-Marie Codori, Ph.D. 0 Comments

Major Depression May Be Triggered by Teenage Stressors

A recent study using mice to mimic stress and depression in adolescents suggests that the teenage years are a particularly vulnerable time for the brain.  Working with mice who carried an introduced human gene mutation for depression, the researchers exposed some of the adolescent mice to social stress (isolation for three weeks) and kept a control group of mice stress-free.  There were two important findings.  First, the gene mutation for depression had no effect on mouse behavior except among the stressed mice.  Second, they found that the behavior change may be mediated by increases in cortisol (a stress hormone) and decreases in dopamine (a neurotransmitter in the brain).  Morever, after they returned the stressed mice to their preferred social environment, the behavioral abnormalities remained.  This study, and others like it, suggest that once activated during adolescence, the neuro-biological pathway active in depression does not turn off, even after the stressor has passed.
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Depression and Mood Disorders Health and Behavior Psychotherapy • • • • • • By Ann-Marie Codori, Ph.D. 0 Comments

Talk to Your Children about Their Family History

It is scary to be diagnosed with depression.  However, it’s a lot less scary to be diagnosed with depression when you know that your grandmother and your uncle on your mother’s side also had it.  We may live in the age of biological psychiatry, and the NIH may have just announced their plan to map the human brain http://www.neuroscienceblueprint.nih.gov/connectome/, but we are still haunted by a view of brain illnesses that led our forefathers to drill holes in the skulls of depressed persons to let out the evil spirits.  Stigma is alive and well.  But its impact is reduced by the realization that, “It’s not my fault.”  Moreover, people diagnosed with the illness may be more open to the proven treatments (talk therapy combined with medication) when shown evidence that the predisposition is inherited, not a function of personal failure.   Most of my new patients with the illness have no idea that they are suffering from depression; they just know that they are suffering — sometimes for 30 years.  Without treatment.  Blaming themselves.  Concluding that they are worthless and that their situation is hopeless.

If depression runs in your family, do your children a favor.  Save them potentially years of suffering.  Tell them about it.


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Health and Behavior • • • • • • • • By Ann-Marie Codori, Ph.D. 0 Comments

There may be hard-wired preferences for high-fat and high-calorie foods

Archeological evidence of our human ancestors, observations of eating behavior in modern hunter-gatherer tribes, the anatomy of our digestive system and current neuro-scientific research suggest that humans may have a hard-wired preference for high-fat and high-calorie foods.  The available data lead scientists to estimate that ancient humans consumed more than half of their calories as meat, preferably large game.  Before the development of agriculture, some 10,000 years ago, ancient hunter-gatherer tribes of 25 or so members moved to different geographic locations to follow their food sources.  As one area became depleted of food, they moved to a new area.  This, as well as seasonal variation in the availability of food, must have resulted in periods of food plenty and scarcity.  It was in this unstable food environment that our “survival of the fittest” eating behaviors evolved.  One theory suggests that there would have been greater survival advantage to humans who consumed as much animal fat and carbohydrates as possible whenever possible, regardless of how hungry they may have been at the moment.  Those who had fattened up in periods of plenty would have been more likely to survive the periods of scarcity.
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Biological Perspectives on Emotions Relationships • • • • • • By Ann-Marie Codori, Ph.D. 0 Comments

Physical pain and emotional pain share the same spots in our brains.

 

Check out this article entitled, “Social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain” by Kross et al.  For non-geeks, here’s my summary:  Researchers studied the brains of 40 adults (21 women, 19 men) who had been rejected by a romantic partner within the previous six months.  Using functional MRI imaging, they compared the location of brain activity that occurred while the research participants experienced physical pain (heat applied to the forearm just below their pain tolerance) and while they experienced emotional pain (seeing a picture of the rejecting partner and remembering how it felt to be rejected).  The same brain regions were activated with both types of pain, and the authors concluded that “…intense social rejection may represent a distinct emotional experience that is uniquely associated with physical pain” (p. 4).  In essence, “hurting” after an unwanted breakup is not simply a metaphor.

Rejection and Pain

Link to article: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/03/22/1102693108.full.pdf


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Couple Therapy • • • • • By Ann-Marie Codori, Ph.D. 0 Comments

Trouble expressing your emotions?

http://www.elainebaileyinternational.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Triune-Brain.png
The Triune Brain

Blame it on your 3-part brain, each part the product of a different phase in evolutionary time.  Emotions live in the limbic brain; thoughts live in the neocortex.  Emotional information gets lost in translation.

 

(Figure adapated from http://elainebaileyinternational.com/wordpress/?s=triune+brain&.x=0&.y=0)


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Individual Emotionally-Focused Therapy

Emotionally-focused therapy (EFT) for couples is a highly effective method for resolving relationship distress and creating …

At what age do humans develop emotional intelligence? The answer might surprise you.

Emotional pain typically drives the quest for psychotherapy.  Pain, after all, is nature’s signal that an organism’s …

Major Depression May Be Triggered by Teenage Stressors

A recent study using mice to mimic stress and depression in adolescents suggests that the teenage years are a particularly …