Imagine the following situation. You're standing in a crowded checkout line at the grocery store when your eye catches sight of the magazine rack. Each magazine is filled with glossy photos of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, and other equally attractive and famous celebrities. You pick up a copy of The National Enquirer and start casually flipping through it, only to realize that you could easily move to another checkout line which has just opened up. But for some reason, you don't move. You would rather wait in line looking through your tabloid than move to an open line and therefore leave the grocery store sooner. Why is this? Is it simply because you like to look at pretty people? Is it perhaps your predilection for gossip? Or is it something else?

Addiction a brain disease or moral condition?

What is it that makes some of us become addicted to particular substances? We know it's bad for us, yet we repeatedly go back to it time after time, subjecting our body to drugs that have no survival or nutritional value. The act of addiction has brought countless debates onto the table of neurobiology: When does addiction become detrimental to the human body and damage the brain?
" All addictive drugs exert pharmacological effects that cause release of dopamine. Moreover, the effects of addictive drugs on dopamine release are quantitatively greater than that produced by natural rewards under almost all circumstances." 1
Though normally a learning signal for the brain, dopamine becomes more intense to the drug addict when drugs come into use. Normally, dopamine is released when something new comes unexpectedly into a world where everything seems orderly and circumstances are mundane. The pharmacological action in addictive drugs increases the synaptic dopamine, causing the normal controls of the brain to be cut off. This enables the dopamine in the addictive drugs to send excessively " better than expected" signals to the addict. Being bombarded by these pleasant signals, the circuits in the neural system go into overdrive and soak up an unhealthy and extreme amount of dopamine signals. When this occurs, the neural system starts to crave for the " better than" sensations caused by the drugs. What is considered a normal amount of dopamine release becomes trivial to the drug addict and in the course of such a superfluous amount of dopamine signal, drugs become glorified above all matters in life.
Even if an addict attempts to terminate the use of drugs, the changes in the synaptic structure and weight of the brain will have been fixed deep into the neuro-system, causing a long-lasting altercation in the biology of the brain, leading to relapses that are persistent and cannot be rid of. Drug addiction becomes embedded into the addict's brain, leaving him helpless against the cravings for the " better than" feelings. Drugs become an integral part of life for the user, even though its effects are detrimental in the long run. Though the user knows this, he continues on with the drug use, subjecting himself to greater dangers the dopamine will cause to his brain. When does drug use become a disease rather than a moral condition?
"Those who argue for the disease model not only believe it is justified by empirical data, but also see virtue in the possibility that a disease model decreases the stigmatization of addicted people and increases their access to medical treatments. Those who argue that addiction is best conceptualized as a moral condition are struck by the observation that drug seeking and drug taking involve a series of voluntary acts that often require planning and flexible responses to changing conditions - not simply impulsive or robotic acts." 2
Though both arguments are completely logical and deliver assurance, it is fine line that can easily be crossed. For addiction to become a brain disease, the addict would have to administer multiple drug usages for the structure of the brain to change and develop a thirst for a greater synaptic dopamine dosage. Each time the addict uses means a greater chance for the brain to reroute itself. However, each time the addict uses, he is fully and consciously aware of the consequences of his actions. Being well aware would mean he is morally performing an act that would without doubt damage the body. Whether it is a moral condition or a brain disease, both are paths that the addict will walk. Though clinical tests can prove the elements of a disease, it is the addict's choice to open himself to such elements, leaving it to be a moral problem. The fine line between whether it is addiction is a disease or a moral condition may never be cleared and given an accurate definition, however, addiction comes with a price: morally and neurologically losing one's soul and mind.

I’ve always wondered about people who can kill and feel no remorse. It just seems incomprehensible to me. Because I don’t understand this at all, I want to know more about the brain structure of someone that we may loosely term “a psychopath.” The DSM-IV does not use this term, so I will also be talking about “antisocial disorders” at times. The two are not synonymous, but it seems clear that a psychopath must suffer from some kind of an antisocial disorder. Therefore, the neurobiological studies of antisocial disorders may have some bearing on the brain structure of psychopaths as well.

First, it is important to provide a loose definition of a psychopath. Psychopaths tend to be cruel and manipulative, and may enjoy causing pain to others. They also tend to lie compulsively, believe themselves to be perfect, and feel no remorse. (1). Psychopaths are often violent criminals, but there is also evidence that many are able to control their violent tendencies, and simply find other outlets for cruelty. They may harm animals, or be psychologically manipulative of those around them, instead of being violent. The most common characteristic of psychopaths is a lack of conscience.

If you ever have the chance, open up your skull and take a good look at your brain. Inside you will see layers: meninges, infoldings, grey matter, white matter. Looking closer you will see different parts of the brain: the medulla, cortex, and cerebellum. An even closer look reveals even more small parts, boxes within boxes, until finally you arrive at the nervous system’s most basic unit: the neuron. Highly specialized, as many cells are, neurons are set up to be carriers of electrical potential. They are like microscopic batteries that race information around the body, enabling an organism to respond to its environment. Information is relayed as signals in the form of a traveling electrochemical gradient which may serve to inhibit or excite a response. All neurons are essentially the same in structure and manner of function, the manner being this all-or-none blip of energy moving down an axon to a target elsewhere in the body.

What makes us human? Humans possess the capacity for language, empathy, internal dialogue and emotions. However, before we were capable of such characteristics, we first needed to develop consciousness. It is consciousness that establishes our understanding of self and other. Here then, with the emergence of consciousness is the birth of subjectivity within a complex social network. So what then allows us to possess a consciousness? While the neural basis of consciousness remains a mystery, resent research has uncovered two classes of cells that could play major roles in organizing our capacity for social interactions. It seems that spindle neurons and mirror neurons could be responsible for separating us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

The Influence of Music on Neurons Anisha Chirmule Luciano Pavarotti once said “if children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them”. People are surrounded by music everyday; it affects mood, concentration, creativity, and even the ability to learn. How can a combination of a few notes have such a profound effect an on individual’s ability to learn? When in infant is born, there are billions of nerves and nerve connections in the brain that are necessary for survival. These neural connections are formed through experiences and strengthened through repetition. An infant is exposed to new situations everyday that affect the nerves in their brain, and once these connections are formed it is very difficult to reverse or rewire them. Listening to music helps to create and strengthen more neural connections because nerves that deal with the auditory system of the brain are being activated in order to hear the music (1). Music is a stimulus that needs to be processed by the brain because we have receptors for sensing and reacting to music. The act of processing this stimulus influences the neural connections in the brain and therefore affects other neural connections which in turn affect the outputs of the body. The Mozart effect is a phenomenon that states when an individual listens to short bursts of music, their intellectual and motor abilities increase and become more efficient (2). It has a profound effect on young children because their minds are still developing at a rapid rate and their neural pathways are easily influenced. The music composed by Mozart has a 60 beat per minute pattern that is repeated throughout his pieces. This pattern activates the action potentials in the right and left hemispheres of the brain and it strengthens the connections between the neurons that connect the two halves. Strengthening of the neural connections leads to more efficient information processing because the brain must concentrate on comprehending multiple stimuli and it therefore becomes capable of multitasking. The ductility of an infant’s brain must be utilized to its fullest potential, because unused nerves are rendered useless.

There’s a certain slant of light

On winter afternoons,

That oppresses, like the weight

Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;

We can find no scar,

I was shell-shocked and disoriented, unaware of what was happening to me. Every time I tried to express myself nothing came out. I was forced to remain silent and could not follow either verbal or written commands. Words sounded to me like jargon… the people around me spoke a foreign tongue. I could neither comprehend nor use language...I lay in bed, staring blankly and feeling helpless. (1)

Our ability as humans to understand the emotions of others allows us ease of socialization and empathizing.  With a mere glance at facial emotions, we are able to determine happiness, sadness, anger, distress, etc… In typically developing children, these abilities come naturally and easily; however, autistic children lack the capability to understand the emotional states of others. It has been determined that “mirror neurons” are responsible for the facility of emotional processing.  However, recent studies have revealed that persons with autism are missing “mirror neurons” and that explains why they have such difficulty with social interactions.  If autism is due to a biological imbalance rather than to a psychological deficit, then is it possible to “cure” autism?  Can the way that autistics view the world be altered?  And is that what they want?  After all, our emotional connections with others bring the burdens of stress, heartbreak, and depression.

Dear Dr. Drew Faust,

            My name is Alex and I am a Bryn Mawr College undergrad. I am currently enrolled in a course called Gender and Science. I wanted to write to you in a broad sense, and talk about the relationship between the scientific world and the gendered world, but more specifically, what it means to be a "woman scientist". Even more importantly, we recognize that there is an inconsistency or inequality among the ration of men to women in the laboratory. In order to analyze this discrepancy I think it is important to analyze what prevents women scientists from being made, rather than how these women scientists are made.