Neuroscience Fact #2: You can
by fiona
Neuroscience Fact #2: You can use beta blockers to avoid stage fright (and to ski and shoot at the same time).
Have a big presentation coming up? That important audition got you nervous? Well, if you happen to have some beta blockers lying around, nobody has to see you sweat. Literally! Beta blockers like propanolol are a class of drugs that fight high blood pressure by inhibiting your body's response to sympathetic nervous output (what causes the fight or flight response). So if you take them before an event that makes you nervous, you will not have any physical manifestations of your internal anxiousness. Your hands will not tremble, your voice will not waver, you will not sweat excessively, and the lack of these signs will probably help you feel less nervous and more confident.
Beta blockers have long been used as treatment for anxiety disorders and folks that have panic attacks. It turns out that they are also commonly used by medical students and interns before rounds, by high powered executives before meetings, and by participants in biathlons.
Biathlon, in case you are among the uninitiated, is a sport that combines cross-country skiing and target shooting. This is an actual sport, a winter olympic sport nonetheless, that seems like it has to have been invented by norwegian hunters after a few too many beers. You ski a loop and then stop at a shooting range and attempt to successfully shoot some targets. And if you miss one, you have to ski an extra loop, so the pressure to be accurate is quite high. Incredibly random. I hear that these athletes often pop a beta blocker ahead of time, allowing them to keep a steady aim after frantically skiing around. I'm guessing, though, that this probably fall under the category of "performance enhancement."
Now you know.
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Posted on February 21, 2004 | Comments (0)
Neuroscience Fact #1: Narcolepsy is
by fiona
Neuroscience Fact #1: Narcolepsy is actually much funnier than you think.
Not only do people with narcolepsy have excessive daytime sleepiness (the major hallmark of the disease), they also have this really insane condition called cataplexy.
Narcolepsy involves inappropriate expression of REM sleep. One of the things that happens in REM sleep is a full body paralysis, so that you don't act out your dreams. This sleep paralysis occurs at weird times in narcoleptics, like while falling asleep and waking up. But the amazing thing is that it gets activated when they are fully awake, specifically in response to strong emotions. This is what's known as an attack of cataplexy.
So, for example, hearing a funny a joke or getting angry at something will cause a narcoleptic to suddenly become totally paralyzed. They go limp and flop down wherever they are, and literally can't move for a minute or two. But they are completely awake and conscious! Isn't that incredible? In class we saw a video of a kid that did this - just kind of fell down when he started laughing. And they actually developed a species of narcoleptic weiner dogs, who all slumped down in a motionless pile when it was feeding time. Because they were excited. It seems too absurd to be true - as if falling asleep all the time wasn't enough. Why haven't comedians latched on to this concept?
Now, narcolepsy is honestly a very debilitating and extremely unfortunate condition. But it also happens to be quite hilarious.
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Posted on February 21, 2004 | Comments (5)
So I was studying tonight
by fiona
So I was studying tonight (yes, on friday night), when I realized that the notes written by this morning's lecturer were taken almost word for word from our huge "Principles of Neuroscience" textbook. Man, I thought, this guy did some serious plaguerizing. Does he think we won't notice? Some of the paragraphs are exactly the same! That's not cool, especially coming from a neurologist, a professor of medicine, who is supposed to be a role model for the next generation of doctors. If I got caught doing that I would get kicked out of school.
Then I got to the end of the chapter in this massive, world renowned textbook and realized, Oh. He wrote the chapter.
I guess that means I'm getting a good education.
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Posted on February 6, 2004 | Comments (0)
How Nintendo can ruin your
by fiona
How Nintendo can ruin your medical career...
Today we started into one of the most interesting topics thus far in the Neuro course: seizures. There are many different kinds of seizures, though you wouldn't know it by watching tv - in the land of tv and movies, if you're gonna have a seizure, its gonna be a huge tonic-clonic grand mal seizure, where you end up flopping all over the floor with people trying to stick things in your mouth so you won't swallow your tongue (which, by the way, won't happen - you are much more likely to aspirate whatever it is they stuck in your mouth).
People do have those kinds of seizures, yes. But they also have less dramatic, more subtle ones that only involve one small portion of the brain. A little pocket of neurons decide to go crazy, and whatever part of the body or senses that pocket controls goes crazy too. This can lead to muscle spams, visual hallucinations, weird smells, or even periods of psychic-like experiences, depending on what part of the brain is affected. Its pretty amazing. Today the lecturer showed us videos of people with lots of different kinds of seizures, and one video in particular served as an important lesson of what not to do as a medical student.
So there was this guy whose seizures were so mild that they often went unnoticed, and the medical team hadn't actually gotten to witness one. So they hook him up to some electrodes (an EEG), and stick a video camera on him for a long period of time. Meanwhile, they have a medical student in there to hang out with this guy, with the objective to observe him and alert the staff when a seizure occurs. To pass the time they are playing Nintendo. This video is from the 80's, so its Super Mario Bros, all the way.
The camera is trained on the subject, who is leaning back in bed, apparently watching while the med student (who is out of the shot) plays his turn. You can hear him start his turn - he is clearly on the 1st level of one of the worlds, judging by the music, most likely its 1-1. Do do do... do do do do... You can hear him jumping, you can hear him get a "big" at one point. Suddenly, there is a change in the subject. His eyes fix foreward, his right hand starts tapping quietly on his leg, he shifts a little in his chair, in an almost rhythmic pattern. Meanwhile the medical student has no idea. He says, "Man, good thing I got that fireball." The sounds of jumping continue, against the backdrop of that oh-so recognizable theme music.
After several seconds of this, the subject, who has recovered a little, then reaches up and pushes the nurse alert button. Student is still playing nintendo - he's almost to the end of the level. The nurse comes in and says, "Did you have a seizure?" Yeah, the guy responds. You can just picture the look of suprise, followed by shame, that would flash across the unwary med student's face. You can hear the guilt and doubt as he says, "Oh. I had no idea." You can practically feel the sinking of that poor guy's stomach when he realizes that his mistake has been caught on tape, perhaps to be immortalized for over 2 decades in the lectures of a wily neurologist.
But the amazing thing is, he doesn't stop playing! Never do you hear that pause tone, not even when the nurses enter, nor do you hear the sound of mario's premature death to show that he stopped watching to come to the aid of his ward. You do, however, hear the sound of little mario jumping to pull the flag down the pole, and the sound of ringing coins as his points are tallied: Med student beat the level! Well I can understand that. He got wrapped up in the moment and needed to power through to the end, which was clearly in sight. We've all been there.
But what we don't all do, when we are playing super mario bros next to the epileptic patient we are supposed to be keeping an eye on, is move on to the next level while said epileptic patient is recovering from the seizure that we missed. He kept right on going! You clearly heard that classic Level 1 music start up again and then suddenly- warp sounds. He descends to the level 2 underworld and keeps right on trucking. Crazy medical students!
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Posted on February 6, 2004 | Comments (1)