Author: efs5272

Anxiety can be a complicated and complex disorder that effects different people in different ways. Anxiety includes feelings of excessive and/or unrealistic fearfulness towards future or current events. Under the umbrella of anxiety, generalized anxiety is characterized as excessive worry, tenseness, and apprehension towards every day life events. Sometimes this worry comes from stimuli, but in other situations, there is no obvious reasons to worry. Another branch of anxiety is panic disorder. This disorder includes spontaneous episodes of intense dread and fear. Some physical symptoms during a panic attack episode can be chest pains, fear of loss of control, trembling, tightness in the throat and hot flashes. Major depressive disorder is characterized as extended feelings of intense sadness, loss of interest in activities, fatigue and feelings of worthlessness.

Being diagnosed in 3rd grade with generalized anxiety, major depressive disorder and panic disorder, I have been aware of what anxiety was and how it impacted me very early in my life. Although, because of the stigmatization of mental health, I never talked about it. But, a lot of things I constantly hear regarding my anxiety is, “take a breath, it’s not that big of a deal,” or “just be happy, you’ll be fine” or “it’s all in your head.” A lot of these things, instead of making me feel better, created more anxiety. Through learning about the psychological and scientific background of anxiety and depression, it has been cool to point to something that causes these feelings. When sometimes not knowing specifics of where my anxiety and depression stem from, pointing to reduced norepinephrine and serotonin, is in a way very freeing. Also looking at things like PET scans of the brain’s energy consumption has been a nice way to not only reduce the stigma in my conversations with others, but the stigma I have about myself having these disorders. Knowing not to believe the things I am hearing from my friends about “getting over it” through recognizing what these disorders truly are, has given me peace. I am excited to use the things we learn in class to spark conversation with people I know have preconceived ideas about these anxiety and mood disorders.

Retrograde amnesia is the loss of memory from the past, due to some type of trauma in the brain. This damage would be found in areas other than the hippocampus, because this part of the brain is involved in encoding new memories. The severity of this amnesia is dependent on the severity of the damage in the brain. This damage can be due to a traumatic brain injury, illness, seizure, stroke or degenerative brain disease. Although there is a loss in previous memory, the person still has the ability to create new memories. Also, retrograde amnesia can be temporary, permanent or progressive. This means that over time, the amnesia could fade out, stay the same, or get worse. The memory loss involves forgetting facts rather than skills. These memories are called explicit memories. Explicit memories are memories that are declarative, because you can consciously recall and explain the information. These lost explicit memories are usually episodic. These explicit memories requires a conscious effort to retrieve, so people with retrograde amnesia cannot access certain parts of this memory. Implicit memories can be procedural, meaning they are memories that are not consciously recalled and are produced indirectly. An example would be how to tie a shoe. These memories are not impacted in retrograde amnesia.

After my second concussion in soccer, I experienced retrograde amnesia. This concussion was more severe than my previous one, and all I remember is falling to the ground. I cannot remember two weeks prior to the incident, although sometimes I remember bits and pieces of the information since the injury. These episodic memories from two weeks prior seem to be permanently lost. Because of this amnesia, it predicted that my recovery would be slower. Although I can remember episodic memories from my past, I have a two-week gap in my memory. The only information I have on those two weeks is what my parents and friends have told me. Although, I can still remember implicit memories like tying my shoes and riding a bike because these memories processed in the cerebellum are not effected by this type of amnesia.

 

 

https://www.healthline.com/health/retrograde-amnesia

https://www.verywellmind.com/implicit-and-explicit-memory-2795346

Our brain is divided in two hemispheres. Within this structure comes a unique kind of processing called contralateral processing. Contralateral processing explains that the brain processes on the opposite side of the body. So, the left arm is controlled by the right side of the brain while the right arm is controlled by the left side of the brain. The corpus collosum is a mass of neural fibers that is located in between the two hemispheres. The corpus collosum is the communication site between the left and right hemisphere of the brain.

Because of this hemispheric specialization, there is lateralization between the two hemispheres. Lateralization refers to the specialization of some cognitive processes on one side of the brain. In class, we discussed that the left side of the brain is linked to spoken and written language, mathematical thinking, logical thought processes, analysis of detail, reading, and right-hand control. While, the right side of the brain is linked to art, creativity, imagination, insight, holistic thought, music, and left-hand control.

Because the left-handed population only takes up 10% of the world population, most of the studies were done on right-handed people. When left-handed people were studied, it was found that there was less lateralization in their brains. In other words, left-handed people tend to use both the left and right regions of the brain instead of only one side (also called bilateral language function or reversed lateralization) For example, Oxford conducted a study to compare left-handed and right-handed people on brain lateralization during face perception. Face perception, in right-handed individuals, is processed on the right side of the brain. But, they found that left-handers tend to use both regions of the brain when they see a face.

When I was looking into anxiety treatment options, I decided to look into how each medication would work in my brain. I was interested to see how there is a common theme of increasing activity on the left hemisphere with medication. The left hemisphere is associated with motivation. So, it would make sense that medication would increase activity in this area of the brain.

As I am a left-handed person, I was interested to dive into the idea that there could be less lateralization of my brain, especially when looking at medication. A 2012 study published in the journal PLoS ONE explains that motivation shows more activity in the right hemisphere for left handed people, while the opposite is true of right-handed people. Because anxiety treatment is usually targeting to increase neural activity in the left hemisphere, the attempt would be to increase motivation for right-handed people. Because this research proposes that left-handed peoples’ brains organize emotion differently than the majority, I talked to my doctor about the effectiveness of each proposed anxiety medication. I was able to be in a more engaged part of the conversation as my doctor and I talked about how this could affect my prescribed medication.

 

 

Sources:
Willems, R. M., Van der Haegen, L., Fisher, S. E., & Francks, C. (2014). On the other hand: including left-handers in cognitive neuroscience and neurogenetics. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(3), 193.

 

Brookshire, G., & Casasanto, D. (2012). Motivation and motor control: hemispheric specialization for approach motivation reverses with handedness. PLoS One, 7(4), e36036.

 

File:Brain Lateralization.svg. (2018, November 22). Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. Retrieved 00:30, September 19, 2019 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Brain_Lateralization.svg&oldid=328835878.