Digital High

Having just watched 21 Jump Street a week ago, I had a strong sense of déjà vu when I read this story- a new drug that's been circulating among high school students and has got them raving about it on YouTube. This is no ordinary drug though; it's music. Called i-Doser, the "drug" is actually a new online service that sells musical tracks for prices between $1-$5 per track, with the promise that you will get high or experience the euphoria of ecstasy, marijuana or cocaine. Appropriately then, each track in their library is named after a particular drug, both legal and illegal. The site prides itself on providing a legal alternative to the illicit drugs that pervade society today. So the big question is...how does this thing work??

With the tag-line of 'Binaural Brainwave Simulated Experiences', the underlying principle behind the product is using binaural beats delivered through stereo headphones to create an otherworldly experience.  Binaural beats, is a phenomenon that occurs when two different tones are played in opposite ears, and a low-frequency beating sensation is created in the brain. The beating sensation is the effect of the conflicting electrical signals in your brain’s wiring. The binaural beat effect was discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, a Prussian physicist and meteorologist, in 1839. His discovery only earned greater public awareness in the late 20th century, when claims arose that binaural beats could help induce relaxation, meditation, creativity and other desirable mental states. While there have been very few controlled experiments to study this effect, the hypothesis is that bineural beats can induce changes in a person's psyche by creating differential patterns of brain wave activity.  There are four different sets of waves that are produced in our brain:  Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Theta. Alpha brain waves are associated more with a relaxed state, while beta brain waves are associated with alertness, and so on. Thus, when these brain waves are mixed and matched, it is purported that a person may experience another state of consciousness, much like a drug-induced high. 

So will i-Doser keep people from seeking drugs, and more importantly is it safe? I have to admit that I am skeptical of i-Doser replacing recreational drugs. On their website, i-Doser states that there are three classes of people: Susceptible to Binaural Beats, Originally Unsusceptible to Binaural Beats, and Immune to Binaural Beats. They also make the bold claim that drug addicts can use these tracks to supplement their drug addictions and even break them;  I do have a hard time believing that. As for safety, the general consensus is that the technology is completely safe. Apparently, the brain slowly adjusts itself back to reality when the track is done playing.  And since it doesn't actually affect your body in any physical way, there are no physiological side effects to worry about. However, since the tracks are said to mimic drug-like states, driving after listening to one of their tracks wouldn't be such a great idea.

There are numerous links on YouTube documenting reactions to i-Doser. You can always try it out yourself, if you're curious. Be careful though, they don't give you a refund. 

Profile:Who says scientists can't rhyme

Earlier this year, I wrote a post describing my rotation project in Allan Basbaum's lab. Here at UCSF, Allan Basbaum is affectionately known as 'the most interesting man in science'. This poem that Allan wrote a while ago is a great example of his passion for the spinal cord (and neuroanatomy in general) and his witty sense of humor. In fact, one of our other faculty members, Allison Doupe, often tells us stories about how she calls Allan for joke ideas when she's giving talks at other universities. So, here it is: Praise the Lord for the Spinal Cord. 

Mum's the word

In a recent study from the UC Davis MIND Institute, researchers demonstrated that pregnant mothers who are obese are 67% more likely to have a child with autism, compared to moms with a healthy weight and no diabetes or high blood pressure. It is well established that obesity is a major risk factor for diabetes and high blood pressure (also known as hypertension) and can increase insulin resistance in the body. The authors of this study suggest that in pregnant women with diabetes, unregulated sugar in the body can result in prolonged fetal exposure to high glucose levels. Doctors say that this prolonged exposure can affect brain development in unborn children. The findings of this study will help in the search for non-genetic triggers of autism and encourage pregnant moms to take extra caution regarding diet and exercise during their pregnancy. Check this article out at CNN Health:

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/09/moms-weight-or-diabetic-condition-may-be-a-factor-in-autism/

What's the buzz: Neural Inertia

Getting your wisdom teeth removed? Most people wouldn't think twice about requesting general anaesthesia; in fact it is estimated that 25 million patients per year in the U.S undergo surgeries using general anaesthesia. However, we're still not sure how exactly anaesthesia interacts with the central nervous system to produce its effects. A group of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, led by Dr. Max Kelz, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care recently conducted a study to try to understand how the brain comes out of its anaesthetized state and back to consciousness. 

The prevailing theory about how anaesthesia works is that going under- or the induction of anaesthesia- is commonly attributed to drug-induced modifications of neuronal function, while coming back up- or emergence from anaesthesia- is thought to be a passive process, as the drug is eliminated from its sites of action in the central nervous system. If this is the case, then it follows that induction and emergence are the same process, just in different directions. Consequently, one would expect that the concentrations of the anaesthetic in the central nervous system would be the same during induction and emergence. However, using dose response data from animal models, the group of researchers were able to demonstrate that induction and emergence are actually not identical; in fact the concentration of the anaesthetic is lower at emergence than at induction. More interestingly, the researchers observed  their animal subjects exhibited resistance when returning to the wakeful state during emergence. They explain this observation by introducing the concept of "neural inertia", which they describe as the tendency of the central nervous system to resist behavioral state transitions between conscious and unconscious states. 

Intuitively, neural inertia seems useful in terms of keeping the patient unconscious as the body recovers from a surgery. I was terrified to learn that 1 in 1000 cases of patients undergoing surgery under general anaesthesia report experiencing wakefulness during the procedure. At the other extreme however, patients with neurological disorders like narcolepsy can take hours to emerge from anaesthesia-induced unconsciousness. Thus, elucidating the actual circuits underlying neural inertia will give anaesthesiologists better control of the effects of anaesthesia on patient. 

The concept of neural inertia is also fascinating in terms of understanding how people wake up from comas. A recent report in the New York Times Magazine described a significant number of cases where doctors were able to wake up coma patients after years of unresponsiveness (find the article here). The first of such incidents happened in 1999 in South Africa. The patient, who had been in a coma for 3 years, was given a drug called zolpidem to improve sleep quality. Miraculously, just within a few hours of being given the drug, the patient began to stir and when he woke, he immediately recognized his mother, who was waiting eagerly by his bedside. Over the next few hours and days, his speech, movement and cognition all slowly revived. Since this case, there has been a growing number of successful 'awakenings' using zolpidem. No one really understands how this drug is working, but Kelz says that "this line of research may one day help us to develop novel anesthetic drugs and targeted therapies for patients who have different forms of sleep disorders or who have the potential to awaken from coma but remain stuck in comatose states for months or years."