Unintended Consequences.

A few posts ago, John McManamy and I began a conversation about brain surgery to treat mental illness.  You can follow that thread at his blog.  The link will take you to November.  The comments under Me, Captain Ahab and the Anterior Cingulate Cortex are that conversation.  


It seems that brain surgery for mental illness is the topic of the season.  Yesterday the New York Times published the story of Henry Molaison, who had surgery in 1953 to remove part of the medial temporal lobe, including most of his hippocampus.  1953 was four years after António Egas Moniz received the Nobel Prize for his lobotomy procedure, targeting the frontal lobes, and fourteen years after Moniz retired, when he was paralyzed by a former patient who shot him in the back.

The intented result of the surgery in 1953 was to relieve Mr. Molaison's seizures, which he had since childhood and were getting worse, so much so that at the age of 26, he consented to this experimental surgery.  And the surgery was in fact successful.  It relieved his seizures.

Now everybody who has ever quit a medication because of side effects, or had ECT, or did a good deed that went horribly wrong knows about unintended consequences. It soon became apparent that Mr. Molaison's short term memory was gone.  If you have seen the movie Fifty First Dates, it wasn't gone like Drew Barrymore's, who forgot every night what happened that day.  It was gone like the man in the hospital, who introduced himself to people he was having a conversation with, over and over and over.

In the letter to the Romans, chapter 8, Paul says that God makes something good come out of anything.  He doesn't say that the new good measures up to the previous bad.  But it's something.  In this case, one person's tragedy was science's incredible research opportunity.  From all the experiments subsequently conducted on Mr. Molaison, scientists learned a lot about how memories are constructed.  They learned first that the particular part of his brain that was removed is critical for the formation of memories.  Protect your brain!  They learned that there are different kinds of memory.  Mr. Molaison could no longer acquire new information, like where he put his keys.  But he still had his motor or implicit memory; he could still ride a bike.

Mr. Molaison donated his brain to science.  I am curious about the legal implications of consent for a person who has no short term memory.  How long would it take for the docs to describe their desire for the donation and for him to absorb the information and make a decision, one which presumably he would not remember the next day?  Is it informed consent if the next day, (not to mention 52 years later, before he lost his life to pulmonary complications), he would not remember his consent to be able to withdraw it?  Would the law school readers and human research subject reviewers weigh in here?  Let me add that with his memory intact but his seizures undiminished, Mr. Molaison might not have survived to the age of 82.

Anyway, continuing the one enormously good, though unintended consequence, right this very minute they are busy shaving off pieces of his frozen brain in coronal slices, and photographing each slice, to give the most detailed pictures in existence of the structures of the brain.  These slices are measured in microns.  They will get 2500 of them out of this most famous brain.


My spouse, who works for Nancy Andreasson, the researcher in schizophrenia, (Broken Brain) says that the brain images they have from MRI's measure a millimeter.  They get 196 slices (that's what they call them, but they are pictures, really) out of the coronal view.  The side view is pictured here.  Imagine slicing it like a loaf of bread.  Your face is the left end of the loaf.  When you put the slice flat on a plate, you are looking at the coronal view.

And actually, as I write, they began a break at 8:40 AM, California time, while they change the blade.  They have already passed the damaged part of Mr. Molaison's brain, and expect to finish sometime this evening.  These images will be studied for years, maybe decades.

Obviously, nobody is doing the procedure used on Mr. Molaison anymore.  I believe that they do experiment with a pacemaker-like device that gives a periodic electrical charge to the brains of people with epilepsy.  A similar technique is one of the experimental procedures used on the anterior cingulate cortexes of people with OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and people with depression.  The advantage of the pacemaker device, called deep brain stimulation (DBS) is that presumably it is reversible and can be removed if the unintended consequences are not so good.  The other psychosurgeries that involve actual cutting or burning are not reversible.

These experiments are conducted only on the people who are most desperate for relief.  Sometimes they get relief.  Often they get something else, as well.  When weighing the pros and cons, I suppose that one of the pros is , however it turns out, they will advance what we know about the brain.

Photo from MIT 
Permission is granted to copy image under the terms 

News Flash -- Unintended Consequences

If it's still Friday and if you pay attention to science or technology or the brain, or if you think that live feeds are cool, then zip on over to the lab at UC San Diego RIGHT NOW where scientists are peeling 2500 slices off of a man who was brain damaged 57 years ago, during an experimental surgery to relieve his seizures.  Ever after, his short term memory was good for 15 minutes at a time.  He donated his brain to science, and this is what they are doing with it, to study memory.

I have to get cookie dough made, and will fill out this story later.  But they might finish the live feed today.  So watch it now, and read the story later.

Holiday Shopping for Your Favorite Normal

A friend once described what it was like to have cancer.  Like having a paper bag over your head, you can't see anything outside the bag.  It's all about you and your cancer.

Mental illness can be like that.  Try it for yourself.  Put a bag over your head.  Make sure it's not plastic!  Our issues can be all consuming, our fears, our doubts, our grief, our hysteria, our voices...  We lose track of the world outside our paper bag.

But outside that bag are friends, family, allies.  There are more of them, and they are truer to us than we can imagine when inside that paper bag.  The bag, our absorption in our own concerns, makes certain life skills difficult.

Like holiday shopping.

To do a good job at holiday shopping, you have to pay attention to something, or someone outside your own inner world.  So before I give suggestions to loonies about what normals like for Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, here are first steps.

The first step to successful holiday shopping is to turn your attention away from yourself.  Remove that bag from your head.

The second step is to focus on the person for whom you want to shop.

The third step is to pay attention.  Engage your eyes and your ears.  Watch and listen for clues.  If you want to please this person, you need to find out what would please this person.  Write it down, if you have memory problems.  I assume that you have memory problems.

I have a hard time paying attention to the world outside myself.  I pay so much attention to my world inside that I trip over cracks in the sidewalk, bump into furniture, nick myself with a knife (but not on purpose!)  I bruise myself and don't even notice until my wife sees it and asks me what happened.  I have no idea.

When I decided to write this post, I realized I would have to follow my own advice.  I had to pay attention.  Actually, given the time constraint, I took the direct approach.  I asked Helen, "What would be a good gift to give a family member of somebody with a mental illness?"

She said, "A cure."

Such is the love available to me every day outside my bag.  Five years after Prozac, I can cry again, and I almost did.  I wrote "a cure" on my list.  Then we went on.

Of course, I got a list of things that Helen would like.  That is the point.  The people who love you are just as unique as you are, you little snowflake.  We got a catalog from Target today filled with gift suggestions.  Some of them may work for the person who loves you.  Some of them won't.  You can't trust the catalog for good guidance.  That is why I gave you the technique for figuring it out.  Talk to them about what's in the catalog.

Having observed your loved ones, so that you know their interests, having paid attention so that you might even have heard, "Gee, I wish I had...," or seen them pick up something at a store, then you are ready to go out shopping.

No, those of us with PTSD or OCD or whose meds wear us out or who feel like whale shit at the bottom of the ocean do not want to go out shopping.  The internet is our best friend, at least for the length of time it takes us to do our shopping.  Internet shopping does require a credit card, so those with bipolar might need supervision.

Simply google the source of your desired gift, Williams Sonoma for all things cooking, Eddie Bauer, Old Navy, Victoria's Secret, etc. for clothing, Cabela's or Scheel's for all things sporty, Amana for meat, See's or Godiva for chocolate.  See's makes the gold foil chocolate coins for Hanukkah's dreidel game.  Chocolate is also a fabulous Christmas gift, or for any occasion whatsoever.  [Does anyone know a tie-in to Islam?]  And it stimulates the production of dopamine.  So you might want to order some for yourself, while you are at it. Oh, and Amazon for just about anything.


If all the choices are just too much, get a gift certificate.

If your meds or your disease has destroyed your credit, so this is a cash deal, and if you can bear the public appearance, you can now buy at the grocery store gift certificates for all kinds of other stores, restaurants and websites.  Purchase your chocolate and do all the rest of your shopping in one stop.

If you are having a good day, head out to the mall for baskets of bath salts and candles, next year's calendar, movie coupons, cheesy popcorn, that toy workbench that I recommended your normals buy for you, and a truly amazing assortment of gadgets that you never knew anybody needed and that nobody will use by December 27, but it is the thought that counts. That "thought that counts" thing only works for your mother, by the way, and not really for her, either. Play with the worthless gadgets in the store.  Then give them a pass.


Weekdays, mid morning are safest for the mall.  I wouldn't dream of going there unless pharmaceutically protected.  Bring a friend who can drive after you collapse.

But if the cost of meds or the consequences of your disease (you know who you are) has destroyed your credit, you might like a more personal (read:cheaper) approach.  Write a poem or a story.  Draw a picture.  Make a collage.  Frame a photo.  Knit a scarf.  Bake some cookies.  Remember that thing about chocolate and dopamine.  Fudge!

I don't believe in those homemade coupon books filled with promises you can't keep, like how you will do your own laundry or cook dinner once a week, walk the dog, smile once in a while.  Don't promise.  Just do something that your normal has been begging you to do: make that doctor's appointment, attend that group, remove the leftover pizza from your bedroom, wash your hair...

Write a letter of appreciation.  That one works especially well with your mom.

clip art from Microsoft.com

Thanksgiving and the Anterior Cingulate Cortex


Did anybody decompensate at your Thanksgiving Day feast, when there were no pearl onions in cream sauce, notwithstanding the fact that nobody has ever eaten a single pearl onion in cream sauce, since Great grandma Libby died forty-five years ago?

Was it you?

I think I figured it out. Unfortunately, this flash of brilliance came to me yesterday morning, in my hypomanic surge that prepared me for my speed pie-making. Not in time for you to prevent the scene by preparing said onions.

Somebody's anterior cingulate cortex blew a fuse.

Of course, I don't know for sure. It is one more hypothesis that I would like to test in that Million Dollar fMRI machine that I am not getting for Christmas. But here is the hypothesis:

The bad economy, the fear-mongering health care debate, the single-payer stillbirth, the war in Afghanistan, global warning -- your anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is doing all that it can to calm your amygdala. That is one of its jobs, partnered with the prefrontal cortex, to exercise executive function over your amygdala, which is convinced that you are about to die and is sending out messages to your adrenal gland, telling it non-stop to keep pumping out those glucocorticoids that are destroying your hippocampus, not to mention your heart. The amygdala must be brought under control! So your ACC has plenty of work to do already, and needs for you to help out by deep breathing. And yoga. And crystals.

But it also has another job, which is to detect abnormalities in patterns. You know those games where you are supposed to find five details that differ in two nearly identical pictures? That's a job for the ACC. But what with global warming and all that other stuff (and we still don't have any snow in Iowa the day after Thanksgiving, so my amygdala keeps telling my ACC, "I do so need to worry"), when somebody's ACC detected a variation in the Thanksgiving feast day table, i.e., the missing pearl onions, that was just one thing too many. And it blew a fuse, releasing the amygdala from its cage. And this time, the amygdala did not send out the message to freeze. It came out fighting.

So now you know. Or would know, if somebody who does own an fMRI machine would construct the experiment. Any takers?

Holiday Shopping for Your Favorite Loony

The Day after Thanksgiving, traditional start of the Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa shopping season is just around the corner.  You Hanukkah people better start cracking!  It is Prozac Monologue's attempt to be ever helpful to my dear readers. As my therapist says, " Virgo -- your destiny is service.  Get used to it." (I have a therapist who says stuff like that. The following is a holiday shopping list to guide normals who want to please their loony loved ones.

OMGThat'sWhatTheySaid! -- Language

The following post contains material that could be considered uppity, outlaw, provocative, offensive and paranoid. 

This month's OMGThat'sWhatTheySaid Award considers the nature of the vocabulary that we all use for mental illness, in particular, the language that norms the relationship between those who receive a diagnosis and those who make it.

Once upon a time, I wrote a senior thesis for Reed College on this topic.  I was a religion major, and it was 1975, when the Episcopal Church was considering the ordination of women.  My topic was what priests are called.  My thesis was that the language we use establishes the normative relationship between priest and parishioner.  I am discouraged thirty-four years later, that new, freshly graduated priests in Iowa still permit and even encourage little old ladies to call these twenty-somethings "Father."  Oh well.

In the mental health field, this kind of paternalism is out of favor, perhaps the influence of so many women in the field.  But the language has not escaped from reinforcing the power relationship, one up and one down.

Nonsense and the Anterior Cingulate Cortex


John McNamany put the thought into my head, the New York Times tickled my fancy and a blog new to me gave me the illustration.

Finally, it's Anterior Cingulate Cortex Week!  This lovely portion of the brain is found in the limbic system, located just above the center, about where Iowa would be, if you flipped the image so that it faced right, as I did here. Like a true Midwesterner, the ACC modulates emotional response. A hard-working manager, the ACC handles motivation to solve problems and anticipation of tasks and rewards. It also monitors for conflict, things that don't make sense. The brain is unhappy when it cannot detect the pattern. Confronted with anomaly, the ACC goes to work.

"Researchers have long known that people cling to personal biases when confronted with death... In a series of new papers, Dr. Travis Proulx of University of California Santa Barbara and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argue that these findings are variations on the same process: maintaining meaning, or coherence. The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns. When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense. It may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one." [Benedict Carey, New York Times, October 5, 2009]

To test whether confronting the absurd leads to pattern-searching behavior, they had twenty college students read Kafka, "The Country Doctor," a story that is urgent, vivid and nonsensical. Does anybody who is not in college ever read Kafka? Anyway, after reading the story, they were given a task, to study strings of letters that did not form words. They were then shown a longer list, and asked to find the strings they had seen before. The letters did have patterns, very subtle patterns.  And the students who had read Kafka did better at this task than another twenty who had not been exposed to the absurd, 30% better. With a Kafka-stimulated ACC, they were primed to find the patterns.

I wonder if that explains the college student's propensity to read Kafka, in the first place. Not to mention all those posters by Salvador Dali on dorm room walls. The college student is at a crossroads, and has to puzzle through the animal tracks of his/her life, to discern the pattern, the call, the next direction. These representations of the absurd stimulate the part of the brain needed at this developmental moment, just as caffeine stimulates the system before the exam.

I graduated from college at loose ends, with the Episcopal Church still discerning the patterns that would allow for the ordination of women. That was a few years off, and I wasn't ready to commit to a vocation that might not be received. But I didn't read Kafka. Instead, I decided to read everything that Kurt Vonnegut had written up to that point, a modern day Kafka, Kafka-lite, if you will. Today, as I am filling out disability applications, I am again at a crossroads, and again, instinctively, I am drawn to Vonnegut, whose body of work has grown since 1975. Evidently I am stimulating my ACC and boosting my pattern/meaning/coherence finding abilities, priming myself to discern my next direction.

Oh boy, I found another fMRI experiment!  There is a study in the Journal of Pain (what a title!) that discovered, when people were prompted by pain-related words to remember painful autobiographical episodes, the fMRI machines showed that it was -- you guessed it?! -- the anterior cingulate cortex that lit up.

"This person loved me; this same person abused me" -- two memories in conflict. Put them together, they cause pain. They call it dialectical thinking if you can hold two seemingly contradictory ideas in the same head at the same time. But dialectical thinking is a highly developed skill. Before anybody ever suggested to me that I could employ it to reduce my pain, I spent (and still do spend) enormous amounts of energy trying to make sense of events that were absurd.

Some of us had Kafka-esque childhoods. I wonder, does the ACC becomes quiet if we engage in dialectical thinking? I wonder. Does it can blow a fuse, if we don't?

If you are searching for Christmas gift ideas for the Prozac Monologues blogger, an fMRI machine would certainly be well received. 

image of brain from NIMH 
artwork found at Glocal Christianity

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